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.

My gaming group and I are throwing together a campaign and we are giving each army a cool special ability. My issue currently is that we are trying to make all the special abilites worthwhile, while still not too powerful. The two armies in particular that we are having trouble with are necrons and chaos marines.

For chaos we are making it so chosen, berzerkers, thousand sons, plague marines, and noise marines are all troops without the lord tax.

For necrons we are giving them a 1 use per game ability. Basically the necron player keeps track of all his dead warriors and immortals, and once per game they can all be revived, either rejoining their squad if its still alive or coming in from reserve from either a monolith or his board edge.

Now fluffwise I like both of these rules, especially since the Chaos player's favorite is Black Legion, but the actual ingame balance is what worries me. I feel like the bonus for chaos less buffs them like the other armies, and more just sort of fixes them. And the necrons one seems too powerful to me. I was thinking of making it so the respawned necrons lose the objective secured rule maybe? Does anyone else have any suggestions on what could be done for these two armies?

Perhaps make the Necron one a +1 to Reanimations for a turn instead of a "everyone gets up" thing

The necron ability does seem like a bit much. Hard to say if its too powerful since we don't have the other armies abilities to compare against.

As you say with the CSM thing, its not really special ability so it feels pretty lack luster. It just frees up list building a bit and after that won't have any cool factor such as something that changes the game a bit like a one use ability like the necrons. It seems even more lack luster when you consider that few to no people take those units except as troops so you're not even really changing how those units are used. The lord tax is a silly restriction that wasn't in the last codex and isn't really all that fluffy to begin with.

With 7th, making them troops doesn't accomplish as much either.
What if you gave a single unit a roll on the boon table, applying the effects to everyone in the squad? (Rerolling Spawn and DP results, of course.) Sort of the 'Blessed Champions' unit.

I thought about that but I figured it had the chance to be even more lackluster than the troops options or worse then the overpowered necron buffs. Can you imagine how irritating a full unit of zerkers with a 2+ would be?

Maybe alow once per game the necron player can try to reanimate d3 units on the role of a 5+ but the unit must still be on the table, in example if you have 10 immortles your opponent killes all but 1 you can try to get them all back but if he killes all of them then they are completely gone. For chaose maybe if you take the lord that is associated with your army your army gets preferd enemy or something like that but only while the lord is alive