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I was wondering what other people thought about the amount of special characters GW are putting in the new codices.

Personally, i don't really like special characters. I feel that you can make just as characterful a character (lol, pun not intended) by tweaking the the character slots and inventing your own fluff for them.

What say you?

I agree with you yet I dont. I dont like most of the characters they have in the books.... BUT the stats and rules kick ass. So in that point I make up my own character and mini, then use the counts as rules.

I too dislike the reliance on special characters to customise your army. The old Chapter traits, Doctrines and Chaos legions whilst abusable as hell at least allowed you to make fluffy choices without beng pigeon-holed into one specfic type of character.

Im with you on that one. MAn CHAOS in the previous edition.... jesus could you make some SERIOUS lords with that codex or what lol

"I too dislike the reliance on special characters to customise your army. The old Chapter traits, Doctrines and Chaos legions whilst abusable as hell at least allowed you to make fluffy choices without beng pigeon-holed into one specfic type of character"

QFT

@KingCracker: thats why i dont like them, they seem too overpowered compared with their non-special equivalents (eg. Calgar compared to a normal SM chapter master, whats so good about Ultramarines anyway, soooo boring). But, i dont mind when people use the rules as long as they have adequate fluff.

Pff Calgar is the only reason people make Ultramarines IMO. HE is WAY to cheesy. Anytime my brother talks about wanting to make a counts as I just laugh. His rules are truely ridiculous.
And compare his to Thraka. Yes Thraka is a serious badass....but not THAT much over powered compared to a regular boss.

Despise them with the fury of a thousand sons... or, at least, despise the emphasis on Special Characters and the way that Special Characters these days tend to shape your force, so much so that some of them have become mandatory.

Special Characters should be something you take to add a little flavour and a little power to your force, not something that shapes your force. Why do Salamanders only act like Salamanders in the presence of H'stan? Why does Belial show up to every skirmish the Deathwing are enacting? Why can you only have an elite Raven Guard strike force if Shrike's along for the ride?

None of these things are necessary and none of these things should exist. If you want to play Salamanders, or Ravenwing, or Imperial Fists, you should just choose whatever their alternate Chapter Tactics is, and go from there. You shouldn't have to bring a mandatory Non-Special Special Character just to have the privilege of using the army you had in the previous edition.

I completely agree

Meh.
Special characters can be ok I guess. For me though, part of the fun in this hobby is creating a backround for my army. I mean, the 40k universe is supposed to be a BIG place right?

Also, I think there are too many characters in the new IG 'dex. I thought the IG was supposed to be the faceless masses of humanity, no-named dog faced grunts who get zero recognition for their sweat and blood. You don't stand out.

Whatever happened to the days when you had to ask permission before writing a special into your list?
Regards

Straken!!! he is a MC human!

Oh, and if you put special characters like CREEEEEED on the table you get to yell imperial slogans, always a +1 imo.

I agree with Malnourished though I wish you still had to ask permission

If you had to ask permission no one would ever use special characters because people would always assume that they were overpowered therefore never agree to use them.

(/long sentence)

Asking permission is not something they should bring back. The problem is they've just exchanged one extreme (no one uses special characters) for the other (everyone uses special characters).

The biggest problem I can see with special characters comes from the marine codex.
Most army lists that ask for suggestions on what to add are told 'take Vulkan' or 'Add Shrike'. It seems kind of ridiculous to me that the single strongest thing you can do for your list is to add a special character.
I don't think that special characters should add army-wide rules. Maybe something like the ork character's options (make a single unit troops, and therefore scoring) is okay, but having some random fellow show up and suddenly everyone's supa-fast?

I'm not a fan of it. Not a fan at all.

TL;DR
What HBMC said with more whining.

I like special characters. I like that they add army abilities. I don't really like that they are story specific characters. But there really isn't a way to do it that is more elegant that I can see.

Typeline wrote:I like special characters. I like that they add army abilities.

Let me ask you this question then:

Do you like that they are the only way to add to your army's abilities? Say you were a White Scar player, would you like the fact that they only way to play White Scars with their own rules was to bring the same character to every game? Or would you prefer to be able to use those special rules without the need for a character.

Or, if you play a DIY Chapter, do you like having to bring named characters from other Chapters to tailor your force to a specific theme or idea you like? Would you prefer if you could just exchange Chapter Tactics for another similar rule without the need to take a different army's leader into battle all the time?

And, as a followup question, why do see no other elegant way of doing it? I'm interested to know.

What's the difference between using a special character's rules for your counts as commander
and using the same customized character all the time?

What if my fluff has my army being led by a Chaplain, or a Librarian, or a Master of the Forge? What if I want to bring a Chaplain to lead my Deathwing, or a bike-mounted Librarian to lead my White Scars?

What if I want my Crimson Fists to be led by a Termiantor wielding Lightning Claws, and not the same guy in power armour with a Fist and fancy Storm Bolter?

Last edition there were traits to create DIY chapters, now this edition to add difference to your DIY chapter, you have to take special characters. There is always plus's and minus's to each system and each allows abuses if some body wants to. I think difference in marine chapters adds fun to the game.

thesilverback wrote:I think difference in marine chapters adds fun to the game.

So do I, but again, I ask:

Why do I have to bring a named character in order to have a different Marine Chapter? Why can't I just play Salamanders as Salamanders without the need to bring H'Stan to every damned battle I fight?

Why couldn't there just be a page of rules with:

Salamanders - Exchanged Chapter Tactics for X, Y, Z.
White Scars - Exchange Chapter Tactics for Bikes as Troops/Outflank.
Crimson Fists - Exchange Chapter Tactics for Scoring Sternguard and Stubborn.
Death Wing - Exchange Chapter Tactics for Deathwing Terminator Squads as Troops.
etc.

There's no need to have these things tied to Special Characters other than GW's need to sell new models.

I agree that there is probably no real reason not to include both army changing rules and interesting special characters, I have no real problem with the current system.

It's relatively elegant, and it does force players to make game decisions about their choices. There is no "something for nothing." Sure, they could just as easily have made it a rule that you can swap Chater tactics for the other rules, but I think that there are two problems with that:
1) not all chapter tactics are equal, and the cost of the SC includes those points
2) There really isn't a good way for GW to add the price of chapter tactics outside of through models, either per unit or lump sum on HQs. It's not that it can't be done, it's just that GW doesn't want to.

I also think that it makes more sense to think of armies built around the special characters are being less a generic force for a deviant chapter, and more like a picked force from that chapter that stresses the deviance for specific missions. So, it's not that salamanders all get twin linked meltas, it's just that they tend to use more short ranged weapons. However, many Salamander captains train their companies to stress that doctrine instead of the flexibility that combat tactics allows. In other words, only certain officers can over ride the training all marines get and replace it. its' a weak fluff justification, but it made more sense in my head.

A better explanation may be this: all marines are trained in a basic fashion, and thus can be lead by any marine officer. Those that are specialized require an actual captain to lead them, as captains actually focus on training, doctrine, and tactics, while libbies and chappies are more supporting characters. If anything, I think that GW wants to encourage SM armies to include a captain as a commander, and not use libbies and chappies as much.

If you can't beat 'em, join em. Sad but true, I've join em.

I personally hate special characters. I think it's stupid that you can include super powerful heroes in small skirmishes.
Besides, I much prefer having my own commander with more of a personality than a character created by someone else, even if the rules are beneficial.
It also saddens me that in order to make my Imperial Fists different than ultrasmurfs I have to include either Lysander, or a counts as Pedro Kantor.

Weak.

Also, Yriel is straight up unfair.

Mad Rabbit wrote:
Also, Yriel is straight up unfair.

He costs about the same as the avatar, who would you choose?

A special character can add a lot of character (pun) to your army. You just have to try and not get carried away with it. There are also plenty of opportunities for you to add a bit of flair without a special character.
And in many cases I have LOL 'ed when the enemies toughest, baddest macho man walks onto the field, and then get Zaaaaped! by a lascanon manned by you'rs truly the humble guardsmen. They cry when that happen , serves 'em right for putting all thier eggs in one basket. That's what they are doing, kill the big dude and they will rarely have something to fall back on. Stop complaining about them and start figuring out ways to kill em.

Also, there is nothing wrong with the counts-as rule if you represent it properly.

H.B.M.C. wrote:

thesilverback wrote:I think difference in marine chapters adds fun to the game.

So do I, but again, I ask:

Why do I have to bring a named character in order to have a different Marine Chapter? Why can't I just play Salamanders as Salamanders without the need to bring H'Stan to every damned battle I fight?

Why couldn't there just be a page of rules with:

Salamanders - Exchanged Chapter Tactics for X, Y, Z.
White Scars - Exchange Chapter Tactics for Bikes as Troops/Outflank.
Crimson Fists - Exchange Chapter Tactics for Scoring Sternguard and Stubborn.
Death Wing - Exchange Chapter Tactics for Deathwing Terminator Squads as Troops.
etc.

There's no need to have these things tied to Special Characters other than GW's need to sell new models.

Why should Salamanders be defined as having special rules? You're free to play Salamanders without Vulkan, just paint them how you wish, and if you want to get even more detailed, take plenty of flame/melta weapons (they're the best in 5th anyways).

Similarly, White Scars do just fine with a Captain on a bike, rather than Kahn (better, IMO).

Special rules don't define a chapter, fluff and paintjob do.

With the newest marine codex, they wanted to focus more on allowing you to play the chapter you want, with the paint scheme and theme that you want, while not denying any chapter the special rules of a character that can be used as "counts as."

I think that's a better direction for the metagame.

Personally, I've started using Maugan Ra with my Eldar a lot, and he's the first special character I've ever used. I think it actually adds to the fun of the Army when I have a hero I can kind of attach myself to. Most of the Eldar options are so alien and faceless that it's a bit hard to empathize otherwise.

My Chaos, that I've been playing for 15 years, do fine without a special character, as I have a Daemon Prince with his own background and history that I connect to better.

Emperors Faithful wrote:

Mad Rabbit wrote:
Also, Yriel is straight up unfair.

He costs about the same as the avatar, who would you choose?

Can the avatar charge a MEQ squad and kill them all in one shot?
10 Marines=roughly Yriel's points cost.

Then he gets to charge someone else with I7. Great.

Not too bad, but his points cost should be closer to eldrad's or a phoenix lord

Well yeah, but don't forget that the avatar is a Monstrous HQ choice, and a pretty cheap one to. Yes it may take him a little longer to kill MEQ unit but he would be much harder to kill than Prince Yriel.
I've taken that fella out with an Autocannon! Sad story (for the my bro's eldar.)


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also I think eldrad is overpriced.
He is more of a support unit. Throw him into combat and he'll die pretty quickly with only 2 attacks (extra weapon).

Mad Rabbit wrote:

Emperors Faithful wrote:

Mad Rabbit wrote:
Also, Yriel is straight up unfair.

He costs about the same as the avatar, who would you choose?

Can the avatar charge a MEQ squad and kill them all in one shot?
10 Marines=roughly Yriel's points cost.

Then he gets to charge someone else with I7. Great.

Not too bad, but his points cost should be closer to eldrad's or a phoenix lord

How did you manage to get your marines charged by a single character? If he was in a unit, he would have hit his allies too. Or did the player outmanoeuvre your units?

That's a one shot ability; Chapter Masters have Orbital Bombardment (one shot) and can kill a squad of 10 Terminators! should Chapter Masters cost 400 points then?

Yriel's cost is fair; in fact, there's very few people who use him in the Eldar lists I've seen. He's generally taken to fill a niche (Close Combat Autarch on foot) where there are no other viable options, and even then that's rare. He's a T3 3+ save model with no Eternal Warrior, which is pretty easy to kill too.

Anyway, I don't mind the SC in all armies; they're just another option as far as the army list, and allow you to 'spice up' your list.

Also, the background on them can be interesting like Yriel and Pedro so I wouldn't begrudge someone for taking them for this reason either.

I kinda like special characters, i used to run Crimson Fists led by Kantor. However, i think its stupid that the only time you can really use a specific army is with a special character (im talking rules-wise, you cant have specal rules without special characters). Not every salamanders army is going to be led by he'stan, theres plenty of other commanders in that chapter.

Vitruvian XVII wrote:I kinda like special characters, i used to run Crimson Fists led by Kantor. However, i think its stupid that the only time you can really use a specific army is with a special character (im talking rules-wise, you cant have specal rules without special characters). Not every salamanders army is going to be led by he'stan, theres plenty of other commanders in that chapter.

And you can have a salamanders list without Vulkan just fine... it just won't have any special rules, and there really is no problem with that.

i no, its just that sometimes it can be like fielding green UM. im not saying you cant make a perfectly fluffy salamanders force with redeemers, lots of melta tac squads and terminators, it would just be nice to be rewarded for doing sometthing like that.

Or maybe Ultramarines are just fielding blue salamanders