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 Mathieu Raymond wrote:
Most likely true, but look how well it turned out for them in the long run. I rather enjoy the variety we have now.

Don't get me wrong, I think shifting certain kits over from FW should be the way to go. There's only so many people that will buy resin enthusiast kits and lots more that will spend money on plastic crack. Certain older models like T-Hawk are ripe for this kind of treatment and as you said, FW is fully capable of branching out enough to cover the losses.

I realise I'm a little late to the party on this reply, but I've explained this before to some people so I'll explain it again:

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Would be nice. Or traits. Dunno why everyone hated traits.

That’s easy: Traits are inherently unbalanced.

The problem with Traits (and this applied to the Guard Doctrine system from 3rd Ed as well) is that it allowed you to gain benefits for free with no real downsides.

Guard Doctrines took away your ability to take Priests, Sanctioned Psykers, Enginseers, Ratlings, Ogryn and Rough Riders. Other than Rough Riders, no one used these units, so you weren’t really losing anything.

All my Infantry can get +1 Initiative for free just by standing in formation, and to get that all I need to do is not take any of the units I wasn’t going to take in the first place? Sign me up!!!

The same applied to Traits. You had to balance up-side traits with down-side traits, so you just took the “No Allies” down-side – and if you weren’t planning on taking allies then this isn’t a down-side. Or the one that limits FA... not a big deal if you weren’t going to take any. It even applied to Night Lords/Iron Warriors in the 3.5 Chaos ‘Dex – I wasn’t planning on taking an FA choices, so I’ll gladly give them up to get an extra HS slot... except I’m not really giving anything up, am I?

I get what they were trying to do with Traits and Doctrines, but they didn’t work because the things you gave up weren’t actual sacrifices. There was no balance. You often got a bonus and suffered no consequences at all.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Reecius wrote:
http://www.frontlinegaming.org/2013/05/28/rumors-space-marines-genestealer-cults-and-forge-world-oh-my/

FW has a "CEO"?

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Reecius wrote:
http://www.frontlinegaming.org/2013/05/28/rumors-space-marines-genestealer-cults-and-forge-world-oh-my/

FW has a "CEO"?

Of course they have a CEO, they are a company.

Agreed, the downsides need to exist if balance is going to exist. That's REALLY hard to do properly (as you have noted, people just build lists that mean the downside is not a real one).

Ironically, one thing where they have put in a downside that exists like these doctrines are linking HQ choices to specific force orgs. Interesting thing is that you don't like these (for a totally different and I feel justifiable reason) but it is actually an example where the downside is a real downside for a specific upside.

There needs not to be downsides for traits besides there being limited number of traits you can have. Have a list of traits. You can choose, say, two for your Chapter. Done.

At what cost though?

At 'some cost' - maybe more points for the extra whatevers.

Some level of customization can certainly be 'figured out', right?

The Traits shouldn't be pick the upside and the downside allowing for people to pick stuff that won't affect them.

Each bonus should come automatically with a negative and not let the players pick it.

Just tossing stuff out here..... something like, you want Counter Attack on Troop Choices so you lose FnP Army wide.

It shouldn't be Pick from column A for gain and pick from column B for loss of something you would never use anyway.

It should be Pick A, automatically lose B. Make your choice on if it's worth it to you or not.

You don't need to lose anything. This is not how this game usually works. You choose stuff, and it is limited by points and/or how many you can get.

 Crimson wrote:
You don't need to lose anything. This is not how this game usually works. You choose stuff, and it is limited by points and/or how many you can get.

I agree. I've no idea why the 'there needs to be a downside' argument is still so prevalent. It's an army book and it can be balanced around the fact that each army chosen from it gets to choose its army wide perks from a list. I think the 'free stuff for nothing' problem HBMC is talking about belongs to previous editions where all Space Marine chapters were essentially identical aside the fact that they had one or two differing special rules (one's stubborn, one's got counter attack, one's got furious charge) etc. Back then the most exciting thing about a Marine codex was if Assault Cannons were 3 shots or 4 shots, when today every book gets a bunch of new and unique units.

A simple example regarding this is like Codex: CSM allowing certains squads to be Veterans of the Long War. A boost, yes, but you field fewer marines if you do. It's not "lose a troops choice"... but it might end up being that if you spend over 100 pts on VotLW.