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Now I've never been a fan of SCs, when I started playing they where only usable with opponents permission and even then I didn't use them. But these days they move around the FOC so much that you often have to have them for certain builds (Inq henchmen for example). Or they are a normal version x n (want a farseer that can cast 3 times? say hi to Eldrad). So I've been thinking that perhaps the SCs that allow certain builds should perhaps have some disadvantage to them too. So Vulkan while making meltas, flamers and hammers twin linked should also make all marines -1i as with the old salamander rules, meaning you wouldn't see him in every marine army. Shrike could reduce HS slot by one and raise FA by one, while Lysander could do the opposite. There could be an Iron Hands SC who would allow sgts to be upgraded with TDA for a price but didn't allow the taking of terminator squads. This would allow people to build forces that match the fluff of their chosen chapter but always with a disadvantage built in.

Also I would like to be able to match SCs overall abilities, like the Eldrad thing, so if you wanted to spend the points you could get a farseer that can cast as many spells. Obvoiusly characters would need something different, not necessarily better, but different.

What are peoples opinions on Special Characters? Do you use them and would you still if they had inbuilt weaknesses? What would other people like to see with SCs?

Sounds like someone has been catching a beatdown from Vulcan and Eldrad.

FattyJay wrote:Sounds like someone has been catching a beatdown from Vulcan and Eldrad.

Lulz. Alas not, haven't played a game since 4th, now waiting for 6th to hit before I bother learning a rule set, but putting together and paining up a few armies (Eldar and Raven Guard, hence why I reference Eldar and SM) and have been researching army lists and tactics, watching batreps etc. Just noticed a prevalence of Special Characters I never saw back when I played, guess it's just evolution of the game, but still I'd rather not use them and rather not they be auto includes. Am I to take it you're an advocate of SCs?

There's a handful of SC's that are abuseable. Most really aren't an issue. It's no different than anything else aside from the fact that they have unique names. Yes, some are *very* abuseable in terms of army benefits (Vulkan, Imotehk), are silly-abuseable combat machines (Mephiston, Draigo) or are just auto-takes over normal equivalents for most armies (Eldrad).

Most however don't have anything wrong with them, you don't see people complaining about Ahriman, Drazhar, Grotsnik, Yriel, Creed, Bastonne, Trayzn, Seth, Farsight, Rakarth, etc.

Not all special characters are OP


Only some special characters are OP


The special characters that are OP get played more often, so people tend to forget about the crappy ones.




Vulkan Hestan is one of the few things that makes the "Normal Space marines" still somewhat competitive compared to Blood Angels and Space Wolves. Without him (and to a lesser extent some of the other special characters) there is very little reason to take the normal marines over their newer brethren.



Moving around the FOC seems very powerful, but there are Normal Characters which do the same 9or very similar) things as well.

ORKS: Warboss makes 1 Nob unit troops. Big Mech makes one Deff Dread troops.
SPACE MARINES: Captain on a bike makes bikers troops
DARK ELDAR: Hemis make Wracks troops.
GK: Grand Strategy can make whatever you want scoring





In general I am a fan of anything that gives a book multiple options for different builds. The easiest way to do that is by having a special character that changes the entire flavor of the list.

I will use my current army as an example, Grey Knights lead by Coteaz with a bunch of henchmen. it is a completely different list from a "normal GK" list.

I am of firm belief that SM captain should do the same for assault marines as he does for bikes if he takes a jump pack. Do you think that FOC shenanigans should have a downside as mentioned in OP?

I love the GK henchmen list, plan to do an ad mech army using it (knight titans, techmarines, jokaero, electro priests). Just seems hugely versatile. Good tactica article on henchmen btw svendrex, hugely helpful.

The only named characters I consider stupid broken are draigo and mephiston. Everything else is fine.

juraigamer wrote:The only named characters I consider stupid broken are draigo and mephiston. Everything else is fine.

Celestine is also stupidly broken, but in a good way.

I dont know, some armies like guard really dont have any super amazing special characters. They're good, but not amazing (kind of true to the fluff I guess)

As for moving around the FOC, I wish all armies had that to some extent or another. I love the idea of being able to take an all bikers list, or taking extra dreads as troops, etc. Makes the codex more flexible and allows for some cool ideas. The problem is WAAC players will always look for the most powerful build. If you take away a broken character, they'll just use the next best thing. Taking away any one part of the game won't change that sadly, and I don't think we'll ever be truly rid of it.

MrMoustaffa wrote:I dont know, some armies like guard really dont have any super amazing special characters.

Creed and Straken are both amazing force multipliers.

dæl wrote:

FattyJay wrote:Sounds like someone has been catching a beatdown from Vulcan and Eldrad.

Lulz. Alas not, haven't played a game since 4th, now waiting for 6th to hit before I bother learning a rule set, but putting together and paining up a few armies (Eldar and Raven Guard, hence why I reference Eldar and SM) and have been researching army lists and tactics, watching batreps etc. Just noticed a prevalence of Special Characters I never saw back when I played, guess it's just evolution of the game, but still I'd rather not use them and rather not they be auto includes. Am I to take it you're an advocate of SCs?

I only run SCs when I want to spice up my game a little or have some points left over. Granted I play guard so my SCs are largely stuff like 60 point veteran sergeants or Marbo.

SC are supposed to be powerful hence their points. Look at Abaddon he's 275 points hes supposed to be powerful.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

pretre wrote:

MrMoustaffa wrote:I dont know, some armies like guard really dont have any super amazing special characters.

Creed and Straken are both amazing force multipliers.

Not to mention Marbo is pretty amazing.

Mephiston is fun to make people stress over killing him, but that in itself is a problem as well. If anything I like the SCs that can go into units, but Mephiston has his place.

He's more powerful than necessary though.

Titan Atlas wrote:Mephiston is fun to make people stress over killing him.

the big thing is that he's significantly more powerful than even something like a Daemon Prince and is the size of a basic marine and can be very easily hidden, on top of moving 12" a turn.

pretre wrote:

MrMoustaffa wrote:I dont know, some armies like guard really dont have any super amazing special characters.

Creed and Straken are both amazing force multipliers.

Only for specific builds, primarily those that rely on large numbers of footslogging infantry, which in and of itself means you're leaving out a lot of goodies typically.

pretre wrote:

MrMoustaffa wrote:I dont know, some armies like guard really dont have any super amazing special characters.

Creed and Straken are both amazing force multipliers.

Creed is really overrated, you get 4 orders, but you can get that many from two CCS for almost the same price giving you more survivability and Straken only really works with assault oriented guard.

Thing is though, Mephiston's really fragile and not as useful as people may think. He's a beatstick, but very vulnerable.

Titan Atlas wrote:Thing is though, Mephiston's really fragile and not as useful as people may think. He's a beatstick, but very vulnerable.

T6 W5 and a 2+sv is hardly vulnerable. He can very easily get cover saves against Ap2 shooting attacks, and unless he's trying to take on a TH/SS unit by himself in CC he can probably weather whatever is being thrown at him.

And he can:
boost his Strength to 10,
Get Preferred enemy
Activate a Force Weapon
become Jump Infantry

He can do 3 of the above per turn and has Transfixing gaze to kill any IC that come near him. And T6 with a 2+ save and 5W totally fragile

dæl wrote:What are peoples opinions on Special Characters?

Special characters cost too much for what they do. They're good if you want something fun and different, want to do an unconventional army build (when said special characters unlock stuff, like terminators as troops, etc.), or when you underestimate their cost.

Ailaros wrote:

dæl wrote:What are peoples opinions on Special Characters?

Special characters cost too much for what they do.

Hrm, many do, some very much do not, especially those that appear consistently in armies over their "mundane" counterparts. That's not specific to SC's, but there are SC's that very much could use cost increases. Vulkan would be one, if you're going to kit out a killy HQ that isn't in Termi armor, he's about as close as you'd get, and his army wide bonus makes all the stuff you'd take lots of anyway even better, for an irrelevant relative cost increase. There's a reason I didn't see a single C:SM army without him for a full year after the release of the book in 2008.

Vaktathi wrote:

Ailaros wrote:

dæl wrote:What are peoples opinions on Special Characters?

Special characters cost too much for what they do.

Hrm, many do, some very much do not, especially those that appear consistently in armies over their "mundane" counterparts. That's not specific to SC's, but there are SC's that very much could use cost increases. Vulkan would be one, if you're going to kit out a killy HQ that isn't in Termi armor, he's about as close as you'd get, and his army wide bonus makes all the stuff you'd take lots of anyway even better, for an irrelevant relative cost increase. There's a reason I didn't see a single C:SM army without him for a full year after the release of the book in 2008.

So would you advocate an army wide initiative decrease to tie him to the sallies rather than just superspacemarinewitharmywidebuffs! Sorry to keep on going on about this, just think its a nice way to get more fluff on the tabletop, and would mean less specific chapter SM codexes if SCs could make lists fluffy and different from each other.

Vaktathi wrote:Vulkan would be one... for an irrelevant relative cost increase.

As I said...

Ailaros wrote:or when you underestimate their cost.

For 45 more points than a captain with a relic blade and a storm shield, you basically get a heavy flamer. That and a small percentage of your weapons become +1/3rd killer for the loss of combat tactics. If you don't see why losing combat tactics is bad, then you're seriously underestimating the cost of vulkan.

Which is why you see vulkan a lot. There are a lot of SM commanders who don't understand their codex and so think of giving up combat tactics for chapter tactics as a free upgrade. Not that there aren't people who want to play salamanders, or who know the cost, but take it anyways, but I would bet a big majority of SM players literally don't know what they're missing when they take vulkan.

Not to disagree with your point, but that small percentage of weapons are often the most important ones in your army.

pretre wrote:Not to disagree with your point, but that small percentage of weapons are often the most important ones in your army.

sigh...

Ailaros wrote:or when you underestimate

If you look at a tac squad and all you see is the meltagun...

No, I get what you're saying. I use Combat Tactics all the time, but to say that you are giving up too much for Vulkan is not always correct. Some builds using Vulkan maximize his benefits to the army and hence he is a good buy.

I've never had a hard time with mephiston... I can see he'd be tough for some armies but with my orks the first time i had him put on the field was vs ghaz and mephiston was tar pitted by some orks and da lads were close to running scared after fearless saves they were down to like 3-4 boys and the nob so ghaz let out a mighty waagh and ripped mephiston to ribbons

though i guess ghaz is another one of those big bad independant characters... nobz also rip through mephiston, i usually take a few sacrificial nobz anyway for instant death allocation ... also because what else am I going to do with AoBR nobz.... and his lack of in inv save really hurts mephiston.

i do see where he could rip through alot of armies though if they weren't mobile enough.

in general though i like big powerful independent character they are usually price appropriatly set and the ones that give specific units force org work arounds really help to make some unique armies liek a draigo all paladin army sure they are tough but they are so expensive that some lists will roflstomp them while opthers will just fall apart to it

Okay, I play Salamanders, so I'm admitedly biased.

But I think I already have a disadvantage when I play Vulkan. I lose Combat Tactics. Seriously. I primarily play one of two builds, either with Vulkan, or with a Librarian, so I spend about half of my games with the twin-linked goodness and about half my games with Combat Tactics, and I think they are both extremely useful. I am opposed to penalizing me with a further negative just so that my opponents can feel better about my fluffiness. The loss of Combat Tactics is penalty enough for Vulkan, I think.

pretre wrote: Some builds using Vulkan maximize his benefits to the army and hence he is a good buy.

Right.

Ailaros wrote:Not that there aren't people who want to play salamanders, or who know the cost, but take it anyways, but I would bet a big majority of SM players literally don't know what they're missing when they take vulkan.

I think the OP's problem here isn't that vulkan lists are overpowered, because they're not, given the costs you need to field vulkan. The problem is more likely that he's getting stomped by a person who can competently field vulkan and is blaming his loss on the character, rather than the other player.

I kid you not, I saw a game where a tau player with a farsight list crushed someone else, who then came to the conclusion that farsight is "so overpowered" because he lost to tau. Was kind of painful to see...

... yes, the fact that you failed to castle up against his suit spam, causing your army to collapse like a piece of tin foil, giving your opponent something to use farsight against means that farsight is so totally OP because look what he did to your army...

lol. People will blame their losses on anything. I generally blame them on my poor generalship.

Ailaros wrote:

pretre wrote: Some builds using Vulkan maximize his benefits to the army and hence he is a good buy.

Right.

Ailaros wrote:Not that there aren't people who want to play salamanders, or who know the cost, but take it anyways, but I would bet a big majority of SM players literally don't know what they're missing when they take vulkan.

I think the OP's problem here isn't that vulkan lists are overpowered, because they're not, given the costs you need to field vulkan. The problem is more likely that he's getting stomped by a person who can competently field vulkan and is blaming his loss on the character, rather than the other player.

I kid you not, I saw a game where a tau player with a farsight list crushed someone else, who then came to the conclusion that farsight is "so overpowered" because he lost to tau. Was kind of painful to see...

... yes, the fact that you failed to castle up against his suit spam, causing your army to collapse like a piece of tin foil, giving your opponent something to use farsight against means that farsight is so totally OP because look what he did to your army...

See post #3. My main point was to try and get SCs to be more chapter specific, hate the idea of having to use BA codex for Raven Guard, or SW for Iron Hands, and think that SCs should reflect their chapter in the force that gets put out when they are played. So by Vulkan (why not run with it) making sallies into actual sallies with the reduced initiative, and possibly 1 unit of termies taken as a troops choice. Farsight is a good point actually, doesn't he impose restrictions on your force? Thats what I would want from lyasnder and shrike and all, so as there aren't 100 ultramarine armies led by lysander and assault termie list led by shrike.