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The point that's trying to be made is that there exist a certain set of statline (including S3/T3), rules, and points cost that makes a good melee unit. No, his example was blatantly undercosted, but the point stands.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

A.T. wrote:
As for the armour, it was commissioned by Vandire.

Not official fluff.
Fancanon only.

It's stated pretty definitively in Dark Heresy that it was commissioned by Vandire. It was made under the 40k licence at the time, and I can't recall anything stating otherwise.

Anything older than that and I'm pretty fuzzy, but isn't it also stated in the old Witch Hunters codex?

 Captain Joystick wrote:

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

A.T. wrote:
As for the armour, it was commissioned by Vandire.

Not official fluff.
Fancanon only.

It's stated pretty definitively in Dark Heresy that it was commissioned by Vandire. It was made under the 40k licence at the time, and I can't recall anything stating otherwise.

Anything older than that and I'm pretty fuzzy, but isn't it also stated in the old Witch Hunters codex?

I find the FFG fluff difficult to use. Some of it is contradictory to main GW fluff, and in those cases, I chose GW proper. In cases where no GW fluff exists, generally FFG is a reasonable compromise as "highly likely". 40k is somewhat of a sandbox mess of competing propagandas and narratives anyway, where the canon explicitly declares that there is no one truth per se, so I think this does work fairly well in most cases.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
I think Celestians will be a separate kit with much more orange armor and probably meaner looking weapons, even before considering whether the concept itself will be rethought.

Orange???

Haha *ornate, whoops!

 BBAP wrote:
You're misrepresenting your argument here. What you want to do is load the Celestians down with a bunch of upgrades and then deliberately undercost them. I mean, that works - but it works because they're undercosted, not because you're a game design genius.

What's the right cost for this unit then?
Go ahead, tell me what the right cost is.

Then I'll just tell you "Hey look, this Sisters melee unit is perfectly fine and balanced despite having T3".
If you answer me "No it's useless" I'll just answer "Then you overcosted it!".
I'm such a genius!!!

 BBAP wrote:
Spess Mehrens have been the Imperium's premier fighting force for 10,000 years at this point. They're not asking anyone for anything, it's already there in the armoury.

Versus

A group that didn't exist prior to the Age of Apostasy and is currently serving as the armed wing of an organisation actively disliked by the new Lord Commander of the Imperium, and whose relations are nil to indifferent with the Tech-Priests.

Let me rephrase this:

Sisters of Battle have been the elite fighting force of the most powerful Imperium organization for 4, 000 years at this point. They already have everything in the armory, and have the money to buy much more than just replacements and repairs They own many things of interest to the Priest of Mars, and have been officially documented in the fluff as having beneficial exchanges with them.

Versus

A group that has spent 10 000 years with no resources or revenue of its own, while spending this time suffering an enormous attrition due to being constantly fighting, with barely any political power BY DESIGN, who went without having any representative among the High Lords of Terra during all this time.

Yeah I guess it still makes sense that Sisters have more artificer armors than Space Marines.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Captain Joystick wrote:
It's stated pretty definitively in Dark Heresy that it was commissioned by Vandire. It was made under the 40k licence at the time, and I can't recall anything stating otherwise.

Missed that.
Can you find the exact text easily? I'm interested now.

 Manchu wrote:
Haha *ornate, whoops!

Funny auto-correct fail .

 JNAProductions wrote:
The point that's trying to be made is that there exist a certain set of statline (including S3/T3), rules, and points cost that makes a good melee unit

And more importantly, there's a solid precedent for rocket bras resulting in massive boobplate!

Get the tits right, and the rest will follow.

 BBAP wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
So Bloodletters are a bad CC unit? They're T3, and they kick quite a lot of butt.

Do they really? I was under the impression Bloodletters were the inbred cousins of the Chaos Daemons faction, and had been for like 3 editions. I certainly never gave a gak about scrapping with them when I was playing GSC in 7th, and I don't see any major improvements in 8th either.

Bloodletters are good now so if they work with T3...

You want them to have a 2+/3++, AP -4 CCWs, all kinds of other gak, and then want to pay 6 points per model for them? Behave yourself.

Well then. There clearly then is room for S3 T3 that's actually good if you can undercost them. After all if they aren't good CC unit then even with 6 pts then they AREN'T undercosted(well I'm assuming they aren't super shooters instead)

So then if we assume that is indeed undercosted it's then matter of upping cost until we come into point where it is overcosted. Thus we then know proper point cost is somewhere in the between. And we have unit that a) isn't sucky cc unit(as it would have been undercosted. Sucky unit cannot by definition be undercosted) with S3 T3 and b) isn't undercosted. Mission accomplished.

I'm currently waiting on the Baal predator spreu to come in the mail so I can do exactly that because me and my buddy were messing around and I stuck the turret from his predator onto my immolator and it fit in the front slot pretty easily. Already have an immolator kit ready for it to do the conversion and just need to shave off the BA icons on some of the Baal predator bits and it will fit right in.

Thinking about repentia, one change that would help would be to make the mistress part of the unit again. That way they woudn't outrun all of their buffs. There's already several examples of squad leaders having different statlines from the rest of the squad (aspect warriors, ork vs nobs, ect) so that shouldn't be that big of a deal. Now, I'm not claiming that this fixes everything, but it would be a good start.

Also, give them back their normal evicerators. Cannoness and priests can still use them, so there's nothing stopping regular sisters from having them. Hell, I'm in favor of letting regular vet sisters have access, even if it's a poor choice for them.

 Mmmpi wrote:
Thinking about repentia, one change that would help would be to make the mistress part of the unit again. That way they woudn't outrun all of their buffs. There's already several examples of squad leaders having different statlines from the rest of the squad (aspect warriors, ork vs nobs, ect) so that shouldn't be that big of a deal. Now, I'm not claiming that this fixes everything, but it would be a good start.

Also, give them back their normal evicerators. Cannoness and priests can still use them, so there's nothing stopping regular sisters from having them. Hell, I'm in favor of letting regular vet sisters have access, even if it's a poor choice for them.

I think the best fix for repentia is actually to drop the PPM on them down to 14-15, drop the mistress down to 20-25, drop a rhino down to about 65, and make a strategem that allows vehicles to use Acts of Faith. That means a unit of 8 repentia with a mistress and a priest in a rhino would be about 245pts and be able to send the repentia 15(ish) inches down field, let them disembark 9 and then charge another 9ish on average, even using the rhino to soak overwatch. A CC unit that hits like repentia do and can reliably hit something 31-35 inches away would be a decent little suicide squad.

You can design the faction in a billion different ways and yet all Sisters players on dakka seem to think about is how they compare to Marines and how similar their equipment is to Marines.

Edited by Manchu

ERJAK wrote:

 Mmmpi wrote:
Thinking about repentia, one change that would help would be to make the mistress part of the unit again. That way they woudn't outrun all of their buffs. There's already several examples of squad leaders having different statlines from the rest of the squad (aspect warriors, ork vs nobs, ect) so that shouldn't be that big of a deal. Now, I'm not claiming that this fixes everything, but it would be a good start.

Also, give them back their normal evicerators. Cannoness and priests can still use them, so there's nothing stopping regular sisters from having them. Hell, I'm in favor of letting regular vet sisters have access, even if it's a poor choice for them.

I think the best fix for repentia is actually to drop the PPM on them down to 14-15, drop the mistress down to 20-25, drop a rhino down to about 65, and make a strategem that allows vehicles to use Acts of Faith. That means a unit of 8 repentia with a mistress and a priest in a rhino would be about 245pts and be able to send the repentia 15(ish) inches down field, let them disembark 9 and then charge another 9ish on average, even using the rhino to soak overwatch. A CC unit that hits like repentia do and can reliably hit something 31-35 inches away would be a decent little suicide squad.

I think even 14ppm is too conservative. Repentia are a suicide unit- there is basically zero chance that they're going to survive past the first turn of combat- and that should be reflected in their points cost. I don't remember what the WS of repentia are but assuming it's a 3+ I'd say that 4-5ppm with an additional 5 for the swords would be totally acceptable.

 BlaxicanX wrote:
You can design the faction in a billion different ways and yet all Sisters players on dakka seem to think about is how they compare to Marines and how similar their equipment is to Marines.

Edited by Manchu

ERJAK wrote:

 Mmmpi wrote:
Thinking about repentia, one change that would help would be to make the mistress part of the unit again. That way they woudn't outrun all of their buffs. There's already several examples of squad leaders having different statlines from the rest of the squad (aspect warriors, ork vs nobs, ect) so that shouldn't be that big of a deal. Now, I'm not claiming that this fixes everything, but it would be a good start.

Also, give them back their normal evicerators. Cannoness and priests can still use them, so there's nothing stopping regular sisters from having them. Hell, I'm in favor of letting regular vet sisters have access, even if it's a poor choice for them.

I think the best fix for repentia is actually to drop the PPM on them down to 14-15, drop the mistress down to 20-25, drop a rhino down to about 65, and make a strategem that allows vehicles to use Acts of Faith. That means a unit of 8 repentia with a mistress and a priest in a rhino would be about 245pts and be able to send the repentia 15(ish) inches down field, let them disembark 9 and then charge another 9ish on average, even using the rhino to soak overwatch. A CC unit that hits like repentia do and can reliably hit something 31-35 inches away would be a decent little suicide squad.

I think even 14ppm is too conservative. Repentia are a suicide unit- there is basically zero chance that they're going to survive past the first turn of combat- and that should be reflected in their points cost. I don't remember what the WS of repentia are but assuming it's a 3+ I'd say that 4-5ppm with an additional 5 for the swords would be totally acceptable.

3 points for human
+1 point for 3+ WS
+1 for shield of faith and AoF access
+1 for +1 attack
+5 points for an evicerator
Total 11 points. Maybe give them -1 or -2 points for the whole package. so 9 points.

My guess for if they get a points decrease.

 Mmmpi wrote:
Thinking about repentia, one change that would help would be to make the mistress part of the unit again. That way they woudn't outrun all of their buffs.

Characters just need to be able to share the faith of nearby units (still only 1/turn). It's going to be an issue with the jump canoness losing her seraphim, imagifiers keeping up with infantry.
I'd guess it's the reason behind Celestine getting an extra act, a band-aid fix to the wider problem.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
Can you find the exact text easily? I'm interested now.

Blood of Martyrs, page 118.
And the 2nd ed rulebook page 19 for the sisters explicitly wearing uniforms based on those worn as the brides of the Emperor.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
The point that's trying to be made is that there exist a certain set of statline (including S3/T3), rules, and points cost that makes a good melee unit

And more importantly, there's a solid precedent for rocket bras resulting in massive boobplate!

Get the tits right, and the rest will follow.

This man speaks the truth. Just take a look at his avatar.

 JNAProductions wrote:
The point that's trying to be made is that there exist a certain set of statline (including S3/T3), rules, and points cost that makes a good melee unit. No, his example was blatantly undercosted, but the point stands.

This is the point I made two pages ago; we're past it now. Currently we're trying to decide how to give our T3 unit a bunch of close combat advantages without gaking on existing Adepta Sororitas lore.

Actually scratch that. I'm reading through the stuff I missed and it seems our current efforts are focused on undercosting Repentia so their inclusion in a Sisters army can be justified. I'm still none the wiser as to why people think Sisters need CC units at all, other than "because it's cool". Which is fine, I suppose, but... meh.

 BBAP wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
The point that's trying to be made is that there exist a certain set of statline (including S3/T3), rules, and points cost that makes a good melee unit. No, his example was blatantly undercosted, but the point stands.

This is the point I made two pages ago; we're past it now. Currently we're trying to decide how to give our T3 unit a bunch of close combat advantages without gaking on existing Adepta Sororitas lore.

Actually scratch that. I'm reading through the stuff I missed and it seems our current efforts are focused on undercosting Repentia so their inclusion in a Sisters army can be justified. I'm still none the wiser as to why people think Sisters need CC units at all, other than "because it's cool". Which is fine, I suppose, but... meh.

Undercosted...you keep using that word but I don't think it means what you think it means. As far as I can tell based on your posts so far 'undercosted' seems to mean 'good' and 'overcosted' seems to mean 'bad, but I want everything to be bad anyway' and 'appropriately costed' apparently doesn't exist. And the reason people want a CC unit in a sisters army is because *drumroll please!* Sisters Already Have CC units! They're just not very good.

Appropriately costing repentia and penitent engines combined with giving them some method of reaching their destination at least some of the time would make them an interesting and fun tactical option that SoB players could build lists around(or even just splash in because they're cool).

Also, just a side note: Can you point out the alternate universe where repentia would be worth even 14ppm because that sounds like a fun place to live?

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
Sisters of Battle have been the elite fighting force of the most powerful Imperium organization for 4, 000 years at this point. They already have everything in the armory, and have the money to buy much more than just replacements and repairs They own many things of interest to the Priest of Mars, and have been officially documented in the fluff as having beneficial exchanges with them.

Most powerful? Not really... generally speaking they actually have little other factions want. Wealth sure, but it isn't like wealth is an issue for the priesthood of mars, or really any of the major branches of the imperium. In point of fact the administratum and mars probably have more access to wealth as a whole. Beyond that they have few bargaining chips. They mostly keep normal citizens in line and satisfied. Denouncing figures and heretics will generally just make the inquisition wonder why their toes are being stepped on. Imperial governors and their enforcement arms also keep people in line and doing their jobs and it's a brave priest who tries to disrupt that process, given that will lead to the imperial guard being called in to suppress it at best.

The ecclesiarchy also actively antagonizes a lot of the most important factions in the imperium. Many of the factions actually essential for the continued existence of the imperium (navigator houses, tech priests, and the sanctioned psykers/astropaths) are wary of them, due to the clear hostility many members hold for their organizations.

In particular, consider how much closer the average space marine chapter is, with individual space marines who are full members of the mechanicus and will act in the defense of nearby forge worlds if needed. Honestly, just having access to power armor and bolters as a whole is impressive.

I don't think the Ministorum is the most powerful, but they do have one of the permanent 7 members of the High Lords of Terra, which makes the Ecclesiarch one of the 7 most powerful people in the Imperium (now 8th, after the return of Guilliman), and shows how much clout the organisation has as a whole.

The Ecclesiarchy has a lot of power in that it holds sway over much of the common people, and is able to whip up a lot of fervour and hysteria through religion. They can also wield a lot of influence through the threat of heresy. It is very similar to the medieval Catholic church, in that their actual power is technically limited, but their influence was generally similar to the more powerful kings and emperors in Europe.

It would be best to start a new thread on this particular tangent in the 40k Background section, thanks!

What I'm not seeing in this thread is ideas on how to fix A0cts of Faith.

Right now you get one, maybe two AoF per turn. That's great for a soup army that has only 1-2 Sisters units in it - Each Sisters unit gets one AoF per turn every turn. But for an all Sisters army this stinks. you have to pick and choose what unit gets to use an Act each turn. Some units might go an entire game without ever getting to use an AoF.

What are your ideas on how to normalize this?

^
Making imagafiers(?) better, a trait that gives another AoF and another act of faith if the entire detachment is battleforged. I could see a stratagem that can be used multiple times a turn being useful on paper but 1-3 CP just to make a single unit shoot again doesn't sound too good to me for some reason.

Acts of Faith are pretty awkward as they are, that's for sure. As it is, they're like pseudo stratagems, which is a little bit bonkers IMO. Imagine of Necron Warriors or Space Marine Hellblasters got to fire a second time? Devastating. As is, Bolters, Flamers, and Melta Guns aren't nearly as devastating, compared to many of the other weapons that either have many more shots, better rend, or higher strength. In that way, Acts of Faith are about as good as the unit they're used on.

What I'd rather see is Acts of Faith become a sort of pseudo psychic power. Maybe Sisters of Battle could get access to the psychic phase, but instead of psychic powers, you have Prayers, much like the Daughters of Khaine. The DoK have priestesses that enact 'prayers' that give buffs to nearby units or themselves.

Then, the sky's the limit. Buffing the strength, rend, fire rate, or range of your weapons, or, indeed, allowing a unit to fire, move, or assault all over again. If the prayers are focused on buffing your army instead of debuffing the enemy, that would work well, in my opinion. Then, you could have Imagifiers, Canonesses, or other units perform these prayers, perhaps getting one or two inherently and then having an option to take another from a list depending on your strategy.

drbored wrote:
Acts of Faith are pretty awkward as they are, that's for sure. As it is, they're like pseudo stratagems, which is a little bit bonkers IMO. Imagine of Necron Warriors or Space Marine Hellblasters got to fire a second time? Devastating. As is, Bolters, Flamers, and Melta Guns aren't nearly as devastating, compared to many of the other weapons that either have many more shots, better rend, or higher strength. In that way, Acts of Faith are about as good as the unit they're used on.

What I'd rather see is Acts of Faith become a sort of pseudo psychic power. Maybe Sisters of Battle could get access to the psychic phase, but instead of psychic powers, you have Prayers, much like the Daughters of Khaine. The DoK have priestesses that enact 'prayers' that give buffs to nearby units or themselves.

Then, the sky's the limit. Buffing the strength, rend, fire rate, or range of your weapons, or, indeed, allowing a unit to fire, move, or assault all over again. If the prayers are focused on buffing your army instead of debuffing the enemy, that would work well, in my opinion. Then, you could have Imagifiers, Canonesses, or other units perform these prayers, perhaps getting one or two inherently and then having an option to take another from a list depending on your strategy.

Pass.

The current acts of faith system is amazing and changing its core would be a devastating loss to the army. Even the replacement prayers system you've suggested would be a MASSIVE nerf.

Side bar before I get to my next point: The DoK prayer system works because DoK use massive units of Witch Aelves and Blood Sisters that mean the buff is hitting a ton of models. Also, there are no vehicles so the characters can actually keep up with the units they're buffing. Almost every single viable build of SoB is MSU, and most make heavy use of transports that can't usually afford to cart a character around, which means the units that need buffs outrun their buffers turn one. Giving buffs to single units would horribly underwhelming, unless it was ridiculously powerful like say...letting a unit move, shoot, or fight twice in the same turn. And trying to tie them even more heavily to characters would be a straight up shackling.

I'm adding this because I really want to emphasize this point Sisters are NOT space marines. They don't play ANYTHING like space marines and the biggest difference is that sisters are actually REALLY REALLY fast in 8th edition. Celestine is the only character in the SoB army capable of keeping up with dominions and to a lesser extent seraphim. Sisters can't afford to be tied down to 6" move characters. The canoness is lucky if her reroll 1s aura hits 1 other unit per turn. And since I'd rather give up my left leg than my scout move, putting characters into vehicles is a no go. Any expansion or change to the AoF system needs to keep in mind that the characters are likely to only get maybe 1 turn where they're anywhere near other SoB units.

What the Act of Faith system needs is more ways to generate AoFs. Strategems are the obvious answer. Combine that with some way to use Acts of Faith to generate CP and bam, good to go. You'd have to balance out the numbers a bit so it's a push pull rather than an infinite fountain of CP, but it would work.

Could have the faith system reworked to all sisters getting faith on a 4+. Roll for each unit. Celestians and seraphim could do on 3+ and cannoness on 2+. Celestine can keep auto as it is.
Imagifiers could then have a 6" bubble buff of +1 to faith rolls.
Just a thought. Scales with army rhen but might be too powerful?

 Giantwalkingchair wrote:
Could have the faith system reworked to all sisters getting faith on a 4+. Roll for each unit. Celestians and seraphim could do on 3+ and cannoness on 2+. Celestine can keep auto as it is.
Imagifiers could then have a 6" bubble buff of +1 to faith rolls.
Just a thought. Scales with army rhen but might be too powerful?

It could work if the Acts were nerfed.

Yeah i dont want the current power nerfed thpugh. Theyre amazeballs.

 Sim-Life wrote:

 Giantwalkingchair wrote:
Could have the faith system reworked to all sisters getting faith on a 4+. Roll for each unit. Celestians and seraphim could do on 3+ and cannoness on 2+. Celestine can keep auto as it is.
Imagifiers could then have a 6" bubble buff of +1 to faith rolls.
Just a thought. Scales with army rhen but might be too powerful?

It could work if the Acts were nerfed.

The only new bonus AoF roll that I would like to see, would be to give the Cannoness a chance to generate an AoF on a roll (4+ or 5+) or an upgrade/wargear to give the cannoness that option.

AoF could be roll a D6 for each unit at the start each turn and it goes off on a 6+. Then you have a series of modifiers:

+1 for being within 6” of any Imagifiers
+1 for being within 6” of Celestine
+1 for a Stratagem
+1 for being within 6” of a Relic
Seraphim have a native +1 (not an aura) - maybe give Repentia a +1 natively too but prevent them from getting any other bonuses to it?
(Possibly) -1 if the unit failed a Morale Check last turn

Then hard cap it at a 4+, except for Celestine who natively gets it on a 3+.

There’s room for fine tuning in there but I think it would scale nicely (certainly better than the current system does).

For Repentia, I agree they should be dropped to the low-teen points range (12 or so?). For the Mistress, either make her be part of the squad and worth 20pts or something or let her be affected by her own Repentia aura so she can keep up.

Celestians are a hard one, but for a melee build I would suggest:
- Str +1 AP-2 Dmg1 sword (essentially a Power Axe in profile)
- Shield that gives +1 to saves, making them a 2+/5++ with Shield of Faith
- A special rule to bump them up a little bit - something like a reroll to hit/wound or +1 to hit/to wound/attack in the first round of combat. It doesn’t have to be world-beating, just a little boost.
- A relevant Stratagem. It doesn’t have to be Celestian-specific but something they can make use of.
- 20pts a model, tops. Maybe 11 for the body, 5 for the sword, 3 or so for the shield.

This would make them a reasonable assault unit that could handle Assault Marines or something but wouldn’t go hunting Berserkers.

Edit: I would also make the Shield of Faith a 5++ rather than a 6++, since the latter is all but useless - it’s only useful against things like Melta which are usually targeting tanks, and even on the rare occasion you can use it it’s only a 1/6 chance of doing anything.

Your above mentioned AoF system would crush sisters. It would force them to be foot based when they need to be screaming about in much faster transports. Going transpports would effectively sacrifice all faith there as as you said for SoF, a 1/6 is rare. Not to mention it reeks heavily of the disgusting way they did faith in that horrible white dwarf not-codex they got in 6th.


Oh random stratagem that just came to me. 2 or 3 cp cost. Hits inflicted by flamer weapons in a unit count towards morale resolution in addition to models the target unit lost. Or maybe make it flamer weapons lower targets Ld value by the amount of hits they cause for the rest of the player turn.

Would never happen but would be a nice way to see a wall of flame coming at you being scary.

 Giantwalkingchair wrote:
Yeah i dont want the current power nerfed thpugh. Theyre amazeballs.

Which means they will be nerfed.