Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

The example below is the basic unit, basically a CSM stat wise.
It will eventually become a full blown race, with Resurrected marines and guardsmen as the infantry (Or maybe the skeletons are an alien race who found SW armor and figured out how to use it, havent decided) and they would be controlled by an entirely new race, yet to be named, who raise the dead. This new race would serve as the "Commander" units, the HQs, and would produce something akin to Tyranid Synapses. The difference would be, if a unit of undead is outside of the range, it takes a leadership test. If it fails, it takes a number of wounds equal to 1d6. This would represent the ancient magics keeping them alive being radiated by these commander beasts, and the dependence of the undead apon them.

The real twist that would set them apart from VC and other such undead, they arent wholly evil, and the undead keep their sentience and individual thought. They remain who they where before, and they can choose not to serve these necromancers. However, few do for a few reasons: 1. They'd die without them, an unintended side effect of resurrection is dependence apon the necromancer beings. 2. They feel they owe a debt to the being who raised them from eternal slumber, and that being is like a father to them. 3. No one would accept them anywhere else, any way.

Skeletal Marine: WS: 5 BS: 3 S: 4 T: 4 W: 1 I: 4 A: 1 LD: 7 SV: 4+

Wargear:
Power Armor
Scrambler Grenades (Work like haywire grenades with a new name)
Spear: S: User Type: Melee (May get a range, if you can do that. It would be 3 inches, the actual messurement of the spear on the miniature. This would represent the thrusting of the spear giving it a longer range than that of melee.)

May replace spear with a sword: Free
May take bolt pistol: 5 points
14 Points Per model, Minimum 5 squad members.

Sword: S: User +1 Type: Melee

Why is your undead skeleton higher WS than the person he was before he died and got skeletonized? "Ranged" melee weapons aren't a thing, I'd advise dropping that as it's prone to introducing unnecessary complication (making spears grant Counter-Attack simulates their effect more easily), flat +1S for a "sword" doesn't make a lot of sense in light of the fact that a sword-shaped chainsaw doesn't provide any benefit over a Bowie knife in the rules. Also the "Undead, but retains independent thought and personality and not always evil" plus sticking Haywire grenades onto people who don't classically have access to them is raising red flags for Special Snowflake Syndrome over here. Consider reworking the lore and dialing back some of the excesses; the model's pretty cool but the ideas behind it need some adjustment.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
Why is your undead skeleton higher WS than the person he was before he died and got skeletonized? "Ranged" melee weapons aren't a thing, I'd advise dropping that as it's prone to introducing unnecessary complication (making spears grant Counter-Attack simulates their effect more easily), flat +1S for a "sword" doesn't make a lot of sense in light of the fact that a sword-shaped chainsaw doesn't provide any benefit over a Bowie knife in the rules. Also the "Undead, but retains independent thought and personality and not always evil" plus sticking Haywire grenades onto people who don't classically have access to them is raising red flags for Special Snowflake Syndrome over here. Consider reworking the lore and dialing back some of the excesses; the model's pretty cool but the ideas behind it need some adjustment.

They're equipped with Scrambler grenades by the Necromancers who raised them, which has a reason I'm working on explaining (They have a complex relationship with technology, and the grenades are more for using against the necromancers them selves if they go overboard.). The WS went up 1 to counteract BS going down one (Because the undead wouldn't have very nice eye sight, now would they?). In the lore it could be explained as them training post-death in melee combat to cancel out losing ranged ability. They remain Independent and not entirely evil because the beings that raised them where either unable or unwilling to remove all personality. They arent evil because they Necromancers arent evil, but they arent good by any means. (Also, in a bit of fluff yet to be fully made its explained that the "Fatherly love" they feel towards the necromancers is entirely intentional, but a flawed practice in that it doesn't always work completely. Make of that what you will)



Edit: S: 1 + was to make it a viable alternative of the spear. No one would take a sword if it was just flat out worse than a spear, now would they? Counter-Attack will be adopted as the replacement for ranged melee in the future, thanks for that idea

I'd agree that the sword doesnt make any sense raining the strength by one and that there is no justification for giving the spear a ranged attack. What I'd suggest is making the sword the default weapon, able to be switched out for a spear for X points which gives them an initative boost when charged (representing the enemy running into a wall of spears).

For the wounds taken when outside necromancers area of influence I'd go with:

Times Decay: When outside of Necromancy range every unit with the rule must make a leadership test, if failed they take a number of wounds equal to the amount they failed by.


This then cuts out another roll which would slow things down a bit.

For unit variety you could have "fresh" dead and long dead units, obviously the longer they were gone before raised the more the body would have decayed (worse stats) but the less connected their "soul" might be to their body (feel no pain). While fresh dead retain their muscle memory (normal stats) but take wounds as normal.

Bringing your undead Space Marines post-death past the point of Space Marine Veterans and into the territory of Grey Knight Paladins and heroes doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

It's explicitly stated many places in lore that human souls don't retain sentience after death (to contrast with Eldar that do), it's not a question of not being able to remove personality, it's a question of having to expend enormous effort to reconstruct it. Once people are dead their mind and soul is gone, you'd have to come up with some sort of facsimile to replace it.

The +1S on the sword may be there to make it a viable alternative to the spear but it makes no sense from any other perspective. Why not start them with the sword (which is just a close combat weapon) and then have the spear as an upgrade they can pay a point or two for? Or better yet make whether they have a sword or a spear physically on the model entirely irrelevant and just give them all counter-attack period (potentially representing the fact that it's hard to panic skeletons into being caught unprepared).

Hmm. A lot of people have seemed to raise some other issues. In terms of fluff, I'd say don't worry about it. There is a lot of stuff crazier in 40k then humans being re-animated.
---
In terms of rules, unfortunately, a lot of these just don't make sense to me, either. If you want to think of an undead army, think Legion of the Damned. While the LoTD aren't truly undead, their rules actually behave like so. Maybe, what you should do, is use the Legion of the Damned rules, but flavor them as resurrected Marines and what not. And if you want rules for a Necromancer? How about you ally with ][nquisition. You could use the rules for regular Ordo Malleus, Ordo Xenos, and Ordo Hereticus Inquisitors, but flavor them as Necromancers. And even re-use some of the special characters, but change them to be famed Necromancers of some sorts.
---
TL;DR

-Changing/creating your own fluff in the Warhammer 40,000 universe isn't all that tough, and most people won't object to it, even if it is a bit wonky, in fact, they'll praise you for it! (People... well... most people love creativity.) However, when it comes to writing and creating your own rules? Well, most people object and it can be really hard to pull-off. So I say just re-flavor another Codex to fit your fluff needs, mate!

Noremac Signing Off
And As Always
Happy Wargaming!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, if you really, really, really do want to create your own Codex, I highly recommend starting out by just simply copying and pasting other Codex entries into yours and re-fiuffing them, but leaving stats alone.

The models with mostly be used as another army, but I wanted them to be able to be played as their own army as well. The rules are in very, very rough draft right now, with no playtesting having happened.

Edit: Also, I removed one BS and added one WS. (Or atleast I think I did...)

We mostly complain when the rules don't make sense. Starting from CSM and Rubricizing more things could be another route as opposed to starting from the LotD.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Lorewise thought: what if you took the Dragon Age approach to undead and had them as corpses possessed by some sort of Warp entity (not necessarily a Daemon aligned with one of the four gods, there are a lot of stranger and weirder things in the Warp)? It might actually explain some of the stat changes you've made better (though I'd still prefer WS4).

Hmm... Perhaps the warp manifestation of dead Necromancers? The race has a deep connection with the warp as it is, so maybe the skeletons are simply vessals for the dead necromancers. That way it makes sense in the lore and is still technically necromancy.

Fair enough. As I said, maybe you can just start by looking at the LoTD for a rough estimate of what they should be like. Rubric Marines would work too. Great and wise Melcavuk mentioned the idea of young/old bodies, etc. I love it.
---
Here's a very rough idea of what I would use as your basic re-animated troop.





Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, please don't tell me how horribly balanced this is. I didn't even spend but five minutes on it. It is just a very rough starting template that Hive Fleet Cerberus can either choose to:
1) Take as is.
2) Edit the crap out of.
3) Throw it out the window.

I don't mind either option Just don't think I am some anti-balance Ork loving commie. xD

Those stats would work nicely, the only issue being with the necromancer. Having a required necromancer in every squad would cause an abundance of Synapses (Not what its actually called, havent made a name for them yet). Also, the plan for the model I have is way to large for them (As they're alien beings and not regular humans. The plan is to have them be Large, Multi-limbed snake like beings. Also, not called necromancers. They will have enthralled humans that look and act like your standard necromancer in any other setting though, appropriately called necromancers.)

Oh alright. My bad, I thought you meant humans! And however, how about this:

-Apprentice Necromancers don't have any sort of Synapse (whatever you Dark Arts wizards call it), but, while alive they can allow your squad to re-roll one failed LD roll per player turn.

Just thinking of something like that, because I'm thinking Rubric Marines and how they all have Apprentice Sorcerers.

That would work, possibly also while alive the squad uses the Necromancers LD when taking Leadership tests.

Yeah! That definitely sounds feasible.

Why not counts as iron hands sm scouts?
lower ws and bs and armour and fnp to represent being undead
move through cover could be some magical power