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Does anyone else do this?
Im not going to use farsight because my sept is loyalist
I dont use named SM characters other then khan because they are not white scars.

Does anyone else do this? Like not use Marbo because you pllay cadians or something?

I dont think that's why people aren't using Marbo

Its an example

I don't use any Space Marine SCs because they don't fit the fluff of my army. My Marines aren't bikers, or jump pack assault dudes, or smurfs, or sexually attracted to fire. They are just dudes with boltguns.

I don't use SCs in my CSM armies because I think Ahriman has a silly hat and putting Kharn in a Thousand Sons army is a full-bore fluff violation (ditto all the other SCs).

I *do* use SCs in my IG army, but I use "counts as" and make up my own names for them... although the only SCs I use in my IG army are Al'Rahem, Mogul Kamir, and Marbo, so make of that what you will...

I would love to play without special characters, unfortunatly I have to have them in order to make my army run the way I want to.

Rarely use them, rarely see them in my group. Wish 40K treated SC like WFB does.

I usually come up with some silly excuse to use SCs when I use them. Usually though, not really. I like to see my vanilla HQ grow into its own character.

As a DA player I'll take any excuse I can get to run SCs. I would much rather not, though.

Well, in gaming terms, my SoB army needs every advantage it can get, and taking a regular canoness is pretty much a self-imposed handicap in most cases.
In fluff terms, whenever I field a SC that doesn't 'belong' in that army, I convert and re-name them.

I've played a couiple games where Named characters were not allowed.

I didn't think I would like it, but I did.

I use the rules for SM characters - but I give them an alternative name

Sicarius = Artemis - Master of the Watch (Deathwatch)

I also don't always use the characters model, but make my own (using the commander sprue and my bitz box) to make a new model with the correct wargear for the named character, just my own style

While I do this for my Chaos armies (slaaneshi marines and daemons) because I much prefer to have my own characters and storylines, I have recently got Maugan Ra for my small fledging Eldar army.

And I love him.

I only use named characters when I want the fluff monkeys to cry.

I like Karandras to run with Incubi led by Arha...I mean Drazher.

Other than that I rarely use SCs.

Aside from Longstrike, I haven't used a special character in all of 40K. I just don't like it. Don't like the feel of it.

To me it feels like playing an RPG and using a premade character from the sheet instead of rolling your own.

I just create my own models and names for special characters. They are fully WYSIYG of course.

Give them another name?

Meet 01000100 01101111 01101111 01101101, Necron Overlord with Zahndrekh's profile.

Also: Marbo goes where he pleases. Even the Cadian army.

I have never used a named character. It completely breaks my suspension of unbelief. It doesn´t fell OK to me, it is like using the character created by another person. Like playing the army of other person without his consent.

That doesn´t stop me from fielding custom made characters using rules originally intended for named characters. My WE lord uses the rules for Kharn, and I have a count-as-Pedro-Kantor captain to make my sternguard scoring. And a Tigurius-like librarian.

Hello, Hkerdnaz Rosemen and Norybo Draugrav

I like playing special characters because I think it's more fluffy to play WITH them than without. They're the 'main characters' of the 40k storyline. If my own madeup Joebob Snodgrass was so special, then the story would be about HIM.

That being said, I would definitely feel yucky inside if I fielded people who disliked one another, or who had dogmatic reasons for despising one another. I mean, I could technically field Vulkan and Trazyn together, but those dudes HATE each other. I'd feel likewise yucky about fielding Salamanders (Vulkan or Tu'Shan included) with ANY Dark Eldar as an ally.

... I think taking a unit like, say, Kharn, giving him the name Roger the Shrubber, and slapping him into your Army List is the same thing as using Kharn straight out of the book. It's still a Named Character, using the rules for a published Named Character, and takes up the same slot as the as-printed SC would in your FOC.

I have absolutely no issue with people who do this, mind you. Shoot, I do the same thing with Coteaz as my Codex: Inquisition allies... I give him a different name to fit my personal army fluff, but otherwise it's Coteaz. What I find odd, though, is people say "no" to using Named SCs/ICs, and then go and get a model for an SC, slap a new name on it, and use it as "counts as" JoeBob from Codex: Smackytimez.

 Psienesis wrote:
JoeBob from Codex: Smackytimez.

Dude! I gotta get me a copy of that Codex

 Sigvatr wrote:

Marbo goes where he pleases. Even the Cadian army.

I love using Ghazzy. I nearly always take him in larger games. sometime I take him in smaller ones too. I am however a fluff nut. It drives me bugger when my opponents Space Marine Vets don't have white helmets, and when Sergeants don't have red ones.

OT: Either you play League of Legends or this is an incredible coincidence. A champion I play is named Dr. Mundo and one of his lines is "Mundo goes where he pleases."

It pwns.

 Psienesis wrote:
... I think taking a unit like, say, Kharn, giving him the name Roger the Shrubber, and slapping him into your Army List is the same thing as using Kharn straight out of the book. It's still a Named Character, using the rules for a published Named Character, and takes up the same slot as the as-printed SC would in your FOC.

I have absolutely no issue with people who do this, mind you. Shoot, I do the same thing with Coteaz as my Codex: Inquisition allies... I give him a different name to fit my personal army fluff, but otherwise it's Coteaz. What I find odd, though, is people say "no" to using Named SCs/ICs, and then go and get a model for an SC, slap a new name on it, and use it as "counts as" JoeBob from Codex: Smackytimez.

I think it is just the principle of it. People have a strange tendency to associate the lore closely with the actual rules. It isnt that you took Kharns rules. It is just that you are using, well, Kharn the person.

I can... kind of... understand that, from a narrative perspective, but I don't pretend to understand how doing so means you're not using a Named Character... because you are, it just has a different Name.

 Psienesis wrote:
I can... kind of... understand that, from a narrative perspective, but I don't pretend to understand how doing so means you're not using a Named Character... because you are, it just has a different Name.

I think it's more due to removing the fluff aspect of the character. In a narrative sense, the fluff is about 1/3rd of what makes the character along with model and rules. By removing that and, at least conceptually, refitting it to be something else it becomes a different character. Bonus if one makes their own model. In reality one is still using those special characters in terms of rules though so it is certainly a bit odd.

 Psienesis wrote:
I can... kind of... understand that, from a narrative perspective, but I don't pretend to understand how doing so means you're not using a Named Character... because you are, it just has a different Name.

For a lot of 40k players the narrative is everything for them. Just look at the "Units I refuse to use". A lot of the answers are based on the lore of the unit(s) in question. Ex. People wont take Plague Marines because they hate Nurgle despite the units advantages.

I plan on fielding Gabriel Seth with the Flesh Tearers I'm working on as he is very often right in the thick of things with his men, it's just how he rolls. Not likely to see Dante or Tycho visiting though.

Yeah, you're actually invited to re-skin special characters. To make up new ones and use the rules of the ones provided. Presuming you can make an appropriate model, of course.

I'm not big on the named special characters as said named special characters, because I don't like the idea of "oh look, here's yarrick again, at every battle again, and this time he's fighting space elfs!" Furthermore, it would be kind of difficult to justify the character getting consistently killed all the time, and I'd feel like someone else shouldn't be able to use the character if he got killed off in one of my games, because he's already dead.

Plus, you avoid the inevitability of Coteaz fighting himself over and over again. "Who is the real Coteaz?" matches used to happen regularly at my FLGS, sometimes at more than one table at a time.

As for using the rules for special characters reskinned, or for their impact in the game, it depends on what I'm looking for. Often there are special characters that unlock something that a non-special character can't, like how you used to need to have Chenkov (or a re-skinned copy) in order to be able to run a SitNW conscript list, or needing ahriman or huron for a CSM mass-infiltration army. They're getting a little bit better about that, though, providing more generic options to make force changes than just relying on special characters, but it's still there.

 TheCustomLime wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
I can... kind of... understand that, from a narrative perspective, but I don't pretend to understand how doing so means you're not using a Named Character... because you are, it just has a different Name.

For a lot of 40k players the narrative is everything for them. Just look at the "Units I refuse to use". A lot of the answers are based on the lore of the unit(s) in question. Ex. People wont take Plague Marines because they hate Nurgle despite the units advantages.

That's not the same thing, not to me. Like, I have a SOB army list that I term my DTW List. It makes no use of psykers, of any kind. No Inquisitors, no IG Psykers, no GK, nothing. So people who don't take Plague Marines because "eww, Nurgle!" but take Plague Marines-called-Bloody-Khorne-MeatBeasts are still taking Plague Marines, they're just calling them something else.