I'm not a fan of halving the amount of damage Adamas takes. Reducing incoming damage by 1 was powerful, frustrating for Dd3 damage weapons, and made D3 need an extra wound to put him down. Halving incoming damage turns even Dd6 weapons into basically Dd3 weapons and makes all D2 weapons just D1 (meaning you'd need to get 6 wounds past his saves and
FNP to put him down. The
FNP on top of halving damage makes it extra annoying to face.
If I were you, I'd pick one of the following:
* 3+ invul (it's going away for smash captains, but we've been killing smash captains for a while now)
* 5+
FNP
* Reduce damage by 1
Any one of those rules will convey the idea that this guy's armor is tougher than usual. No need to put a hat on a hat. Double-dipping on buffs of the same type (so having multiple defensive buffs or multiple offensive buffs) tends to quickly get out of hand.
Some thoughts on Daelo:
* What kind of weapon is Stormstriker? I feel like you're going for some sort of lightning/EMP weapon, in which case you might want to consider stealing the haywire weapon rules.
* Your master-crafted heavy bolter will just be a normal heavy bolter when the new marine update comes around.
* Toughness 6? The idea being that he's wearing gravis armor (T5) that has been improved to give him a 2+ save instead of a 3+ save, but also his armor is so good that it offers an extra +1 Toughness on top of that and also has a built-in forcefield that no other tech priest could figure out how to make?
What's the elevator pitch for this guy? In one sentence, what's his fluff? Because everything about him seems like you took a standard tech priest and just gave it a
raw power boost. All of his weapons except the servo-arm are just straight up better versions of their non-mastercrafted counterparts. He has the Faith & Fury ability that makes him better than the average tech priest at patching up vehicles. His gravis armor is superior to every other suit of gravis armor in the galaxy in 3 different ways (better save, better Toughness, has an invul). And on top of that, he gets to heal himself automatically every turn.
How comfortable are you explaining to your opponent that your tech priest is better than his tech priest in every way? And is your fluff explanation something other than, "I guess my guy is just smarter and better at technology than yours"?
You might see if you can find the rules for Lias Issodon floating around. I'm not sure he survived the transition to 9th, but he's generally been a pretty good example over the years of a named marine character that is different from but not better than other chapter masters. His melee weapon,
iirc, is just a humble power sword. He has a special gun that shoots some decent dakka, but nothing that will turn the tide of battle. I think he's generally had a 2+ armor save from basically artificer armor; not terminator armor with an invul and built in deepstrike. Not super special armor with a bunch of special rules. Just a hardy 2+ armor save. When other marines had the ability to blast a chunk of the board with an orbital bombardment, he instead got to do a couple of wounds before the game started representing sabotage and booby traps. His biggest selling point is that he's always let you sneak forward (via infiltrate, outflank, or pregame scout style deployment depending on the edition) with units that normally wouldn't be allowed to sneak forward like that.
He's not a powerhouse. He's not unkillable. An army with him in it plays differently from an army without him. That's a good target to aim for when making characters. I don't want to discourage you in your homebrewing efforts. We've all made over the top super duper versions of generic characters at one point or another. But how would you describe as Adamas other than saying he's, "A lightning claw jump pack captain but better." What is Daelo other than, "a tech priest but better?"
