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This is just something to think about while writing rules.

One of the things about 40k is that every character has the same profile as every other character of that army with the same rank. Every justicar is the same as every justicar and every archon is the same as every other archon.


There are a lot of good reasons for this. For instance with line troopers, if I have twenty guardsmen, one or two of them probably should have bs4 or 5, but since they probably also have lasguns, it would make practically no difference to playing the game and be pointless to have in the rules. It's very common for bs4 guardsmen to exist, they are right there in the veteran squad entry, and there is no reason they would not appear in regular platoon squads. The thing is there is not really any good way to determine which one of those models has bs4 or has a trick leg and only moves five inches per turn, and it does not matter in games of such size as we play.

However, it is possible to make a decision in the case of HQ units. The classic profile for a space marine captain was ws5, bs5, wounds2, ld9. It's true. There is every reason to believe that, like those bs4 guardsmen, the ws5, two-wound captains exist.

Here is where they exist. The Ultramarines have ten company captains. You play their second company (not sicarius?). Obviously, the captains of the seventh and ninth companies are the captains that have wounds2. So I guess the point should be that when an honor guard or deathwing knight is the equal of a captain, or when someone can kill an avatar or greater daemon, they really mean the generic, special education version of an avatar, and you shpuld build missing steps into your army, where those also-ran characters would be.

I'm sorry, I'm not following. Is there a question?

I'm confused. Are you proposing stat boosting RPG elements to HQ units?