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My gaming club seems snooty about my wanting to have a homebrew army. I am constantly balancing it to make sure it isn't OP, but nothing I do seems able to please anyone.

So here are a few examples of characters and rules I've proposed before:

1) a Chapter Master character with a captain statline, a pseudo-Paragon Blade (User-Strength AP2 ID on to-wound of 6), a Storm Shield, Artificer Armour, and has Rites of Battle
2) a Thunderhammer with the Force rule for a special character
3) giving Rending to all weapons with "Bolt" in their name (Pistol, Boltgun. Heavy Bolter) but not modifying their Strength
4) an AP1 Power Axe with Armourbane for another special character
5) a Storm Bolter with Soul Blaze for yet another special character
6) Sternguard and Vanguard Squads having Artificer Armour as default
7) a bodyguard unit which is a combination of GK Paladins and DA Deathwing Knights (so WS5, W2, A3, etc) for the leader
8) "Land Raider Thermitus", an ancient pattern that is armed entirely with an assortment of Volkite weapons (only one)
9) Terminators having access to Multi-Meltas and Plasma Cannons (despite not being DA)
10) "Power Halberds", an AP3 weapon which would allow the user to attack all enemies in base-contact (Sweep Attack rule)
11) The leader having a weaker version of the Swamlord Bonesabres, "ignore all Armour saves and force Inv saves to re-roll" (but not Instant Death - it'd just cut through all manner of protection)
12) Small flyers like the Nephilim Jetfighter (despite not being DA)
13) Some sort of anti-Psyker "Beast" unit (despite not being Inquisition)
14) Tau-like Plasma weapons (weaker Strength but no Gets Hot!)
15) a Dreadknight-style unit (despite not being GK)

I mean it isn't like I'm under-costing all this, or giving the basic Tactical Squads access to "Assault 3 Heavy Bolters", or any nonsense like that. Maybe they're just purists at my gaming club.
I do what I can to make sure everything is balanced and has at least one weakness.

Any advice on this would be appreciated. Should I just give up on the idea, are find a way to go with it? I like that I be creative with 40k, so I'd hate to see that be stifled by purists.

Most of those sound squarely in the overpowered category unless they are costed significantly higher than normal options.

All artificer armour vet squads? Seriously? That's be like a 50pts upgrade for 5 guys.

Anyways, none of these can be assessed without the entire context. What units can take those options? Are they all available for the entire army? Are they costed appropriately?

When making a homebrew marine codex, always remember that less is more. No need for a million different changes or new options.

Everything I see smells of overpowered or "I want all the good things without having to pick one." Sorry, pal, but I ain't seeing balance and weakness here.

 Blacksails wrote:
Most of those sound squarely in the overpowered category unless they are costed significantly higher than normal options.

All artificer armour vet squads? Seriously? That's be like a 50pts upgrade for 5 guys.

Anyways, none of these can be assessed without the entire context. What units can take those options? Are they all available for the entire army? Are they costed appropriately?

When making a homebrew marine codex, always remember that less is more. No need for a million different changes or new options.

Keep in mind that not all of the above would be approved by me. Most are just ideas to be thrown around.

The special characters would be the only ones with unique weapons and no one else. Their one-of-a-kind, making them prized by the chapter.
Power Halberds would be for Assault Sergeants only.
With Terminators, Multi-Meltas and Plasma Cannons would be restricted just like Assault Cannons and Heavy Flamers are.
The anti-Psyker Beast would have AP- attacks that gain Fleshbane against Psykers ONLY.
Considering I'm looking to a "pro-technology anti-Warp" chapter, I'll forget the Force Hammer weapon entirely.

Well, its the combination of everything that just screams overpowered and special snowflake syndrome, as curran12 pointed out.

Making a weapon a 'one-of' for special characters doesn't make it any less overpowered, in fact, being on a Captain/character makes it more overpowered.

Just, pick three special things to add to the whole army, then be done with it.

Less is more.

Exactly. You are not exactly seeing the point. When your response to the criticism is "well just one guy has it!" it does not make the item LESS overpowered. It just makes your army less interesting and more annoying to play against.

And even then, things like your halberd, even in the hands of a sergeant, are still overpowered, giving your 2 attack sergeant far more attacks than any other guy would have, with smart positioning.

Right now, it seems like your process of making a new army is "go through another codex and take the stuff I like" repeated across every single codex. I mean, look at your own ideas, you have good stuff from:

Tyranids (Bonesabres)
Tau (cold plasma)
Grey Knights (Dreadknights, Force hammers, paladins)
Dark Angels (planes, Deathwing, terminator weapons)
Chaos (soul blaze weapons)

And on top of that, you have items and rules that are downright ridiculous.

Rending bolters? Really? You REALLY think that is balanced?

 curran12 wrote:


Hit the nail on the head.

Listen to this guy.

I like the attempt and coming up with some thing new and interesting, but frankly, I'd probably be irritated if you showed up trying to play that, too. Too many goodies, not enough weaknesses. Moreover, its not particularly thematic other than "I yanked lots of coolstuff and threw them into a pot", and that's the nail in the coffin.

Some good advice here. Don't give up on the idea, but tone it down a bit. Uniqueness adds flavor but it should come with a price.

And this is why we don't get to write the codexes...

 curran12 wrote:

Rending bolters? Really? You REALLY think that is balanced?

/Thread

I stopped for a second when I saw this. I would't let you use rending Bolters, simply because it makes no sense from a fluff perspective.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 SoloFalcon1138 wrote:
And this is why we don't get to write the codexes...

You're right, one dude who makes a bunch of OP stuff is why we all don't work for GW. Please, regale me on how terrible my or LlamaAgility's fan-dex's are. I think you've said something akin to this in every thread in this sub-forum you've commented on. Time to come up with something new.

Ever wonder why? because most homebrew rules come down to this. There are reasons why certain armies have certain options. Making new rules and options usually comes down to being frustrated that one doesn't have an OMGAWESOMESAUCE ruleset, so they usually go a bit overboard with the "improvements". And so when a new codex comes out, whether it fixes the problems or not, the fandex writers gnash their teeth over the immense waste of time they have created, rather than just playing the game.

Okay forget the Rending bolt weapons. Clearly it is one of my crap ideas.

Draigo seems to do fine without his Titansword being AP2. I'd imagine that his Attacks, backed up by those of a Paladin squad, could possibly overwhelm even the most resilient enemies. Would I be right in saying that?

On the flipside, I don't see how this....

Range: - / Str: User / AP: 2 / Melee, Master-Crafted

...would be considered OP. I do not intend to raise my leader character above S4 (the Captain standard) for the sake of balance. I'd consider it less powerful than many other weapons, being that it doesn't hit at S10, doesn't cause Instant Death, nor anything else of the like.

My lead character is unchanged from a standard C:SM Captain save for:
1) the above mentioned weapon
2) Rites of Battle as a special rule

These seem to be all very marine-centric ideas, perhaps if instead of trying to buff one group of armies' weapons with special rules, look at the overall core mechanics and find what doesn't work right or smoothly and find a fix for that. This would benefit the game as a whole without leaving others out in the cold.

NeoAigaion wrote:
Okay forget the Rending bolt weapons. Clearly it is one of my crap ideas.

Draigo seems to do fine without his Titansword being AP2. I'd imagine that his Attacks, backed up by those of a Paladin squad, could possibly overwhelm even the most resilient enemies. Would I be right in saying that?

On the flipside, I don't see how this....

Range: - / Str: User / AP: 2 / Melee, Master-Crafted

...would be considered OP. I do not intend to raise my leader character above S4 (the Captain standard) for the sake of balance. I'd consider it less powerful than many other weapons, being that it doesn't hit at S10, doesn't cause Instant Death, nor anything else of the like.

My lead character is unchanged from a standard C:SM Captain save for:
1) the above mentioned weapon
2) Rites of Battle as a special rule

People didnt say that this particular option is op. They pointed out the combination of the stuff you wrote is op.



That being said i wouldnt play with or against fandexes. I understand why people want to play around with their own ideas for rules but if i play 40k i want to play 40k.

Honestly, I don't think I've ever seen a homebrew codex that wasn't OP.
Veterans in Artificer armour with rending bolt weapons?
Unless they're around 50 pts per model you're having a laugh.

All of these things are bad ideas. You are bleeding into the flavour pie of the other codexes. The flavour pie means that certain rules belong in certain codexes and breaking them means that the codexes who's rules you steal become less unique and the game as a whole suffers. You are lacking the macro perspective on game design here. Also, when designing for something as arbitrery as warhammer 40k you need to take inspiration from the fluff and find rules that fit the fluff. Right now you are finding rules you like and bending fluff around to suit this. Well actually you are not even bending fluff, you just leave it dead in the water.

"I am constantly balancing it to make sure it isn't OP," You are just not getting it. The reason why you can not get multi melta on razorbacks and terminator for instance is because the melta mechanic functions like a counter to AV targets. The interesting thing about melta weapons is the hard part of delivering them in the system. You need to grab a dreadnough to do it. Or get devestators in a drop pod, but then they need to survive a round of shooting. Or play space wolves and take grimnar. All who have problems, ussualy in the cost department. Yes forge world breaks these rules once in a while, but they often do it within a good balancing act. And it is alwasy very fluffy and thematicaly right.

Perhaps you should start designing something smaller first. Not en entier codex.

 marv335 wrote:
Honestly, I don't think I've ever seen a homebrew codex that wasn't OP.
Veterans in Artificer armour with rending bolt weapons?
Unless they're around 50 pts per model you're having a laugh.

Which is funny to me because I made a homebrew a while back (last summer) and everyone who played it actually told me it was a bit under-powered/over-priced. Mostly because I try as hard as I can to make things difficult for me, so the main unit choice in my army was basically Imperial Guardsmen but the "las-gun" had AP 6 and it cost the same as a Space Marine.

Overall, what kills a homebrew codex is not necessarily the ideas alone which can be quite balanced, when mixed together they make obviously OP combos. In this case, you are trying to mix too many good ideas from all sorts of 'dexs and it's not working.

If you REALLY want to write the codex, then this is my first tip. Narrow the design a bit. Obviously this is a Space Marine dex, but what do you want your specialization to be? CC, Long-Range combat, Close-Range shooting, Alpha Strike ability, etc? Pick a focus, and work on that.
Second, work on fluff a bit. One thing I suggest is writing the fluff for the codex FIRST, and then going back and making units to fit in the fluff. If you make the units/rules first, what you end up doing is bending and distorting otherwise "realistic" fluff to fit with the OP ideas (which, is bad).

Hopefully we can be of some help.

While i can enjiy the read of a really nicely made homebrew rule/codex, gotta admit on this that it is terrible.

But for the Bolters, while rending will be a bit OP, i understand the motivation.

After all Bolt weapons are described in the fluff and novels to be like grenade launchers, where the bolt explode once it has penetrated its target, wich is really nasty.

But yeah its a case of Fluff=/=rules, imagine the nightmare if your opponent is facing a SM gunline...

I appreciate you trying to come up with your own thing, but I think your approach and attitude towards it are pretty off-base, Neo.

Right now, when people are pointing out flaws or problems in the list, you are pretty much ignoring most of them, or focusing on something entirely different. In all honesty, you don't seem that interested in crafting a new army or chapter, you seem more focused on getting powerful new rules included with your stuff and anyone who points this out are being 'snooty' towards you. That's the vibe I'm getting.

I think, if you want to build your own homebrew, you need to take a step back, a few steps back actually. Push everything, all the special rules off of the table and ask yourself 'what do I want my homebrew to be?' This is for the fluff and how they will behave on the battlefield. Remember that additions should be small, no space marine chapter has nearly a dozen new rules or options compared to another.

 McNinja wrote:

 curran12 wrote:

Rending bolters? Really? You REALLY think that is balanced?

/Thread

I stopped for a second when I saw this. I would't let you use rending Bolters, simply because it makes no sense from a fluff perspective.

Yes and No. Rending Bolters have been done before. Retributors from the Sisters of Battle White Dwarf can get them with an Act of Faith. And while I firmly believe that Retributors are good- especially with their 4 rending heavy bolters... I haven't really heard anybody say that they are overpowered, and people generally take Exorcists instead of them.

I'm just saying that it can be done.

 akaean wrote:

 McNinja wrote:

 curran12 wrote:

Rending bolters? Really? You REALLY think that is balanced?

/Thread

I stopped for a second when I saw this. I would't let you use rending Bolters, simply because it makes no sense from a fluff perspective.

Yes and No. Rending Bolters have been done before. Retributors from the Sisters of Battle White Dwarf can get them with an Act of Faith. And while I firmly believe that Retributors are good- especially with their 4 rending heavy bolters... I haven't really heard anybody say that they are overpowered, and people generally take Exorcists instead of them.

I'm just saying that it can be done.

Those, however, are not army wide, and require a test to be passed, which requires faith points from a limited pool to be used by the entire army.

They also take up a heavy support slot, which contains another competitive unit.

This proposes army-wide rending on anything bolt related. That cannot be done.

Exactly. All I am saying is that giving a unit Rending Heavy Bolters, provided there are sufficient drawbacks, is totally in line with balance.

Lets say I came up to you and said, " HAY, I want to give my Space Marines AP 3 Bolters and a 4+ invulnerable save, and their unit leader is a psycher with a force weapon!"

Sure, that sounds imbalanced as hell, but there are plenty of ways to balance that. Slow and Purposeful, requiring a certain HQ to unlock as troops otherwise they are elites, and 23 points per model with a crazy expensive and required leader upgrade, and no special weapons. Of course I just described Thousand Sons, and I don't think you'll find very many people who will tell you that THEY are overpowered.

Assuming that these are just ideas that he has, none of them seem terribly wrong. As long as he only goes with a few of them. And takes proper steps to balance them I don't see anything wrong with these ideas individually... Except of course for the obvious lack of creativity since most of them are just lifted from other codexii

I have to agree with the above posters, that list is...well it reads like the shopping list for a whine and cheese convention. I kind of feel bad that you're insulting the members of your gaming club for being reasonable human beings and wanting to play against these rules. They aren't "snooty" or "purists," they have brains with a capacity for rational thought. No one would play against these rules.

Rending on all bolters? you cannot possibly have that was going to be in any way balanced, maybe on one costly unit (call it special ammo or something), but army-wide is insane. Honestly, I'd say not even really prohibitive costs would balance all these rules, you would have to actually build some drawbacks into the rules for any sort of balance. Also, you should probably just stop yourself every time you think of taking something unique for a random codex, its pretty cheesy to just cherry-pick all the good wargear from across 40k. Pick one codex to base the rules on, and stick to that codex for all unit and wargear comparisons.

It's unfortunate that so many attempts at personalized rules just devolve into this. I think unique rules can be fun, but you have to approach them with a measure of common sense.

Rending is traditionaly also a close combat effect. Very few other things break this. I bellive the assault cannon and the thorax swarm bug spray where the tyranids cover you with beetles (esentialy a melle attack.) Sniping for puncturing armour representing sniping.

The fact that the bolters are exploding shells is represented by the S4 AP5.

NeoAigaion wrote:

On the flipside, I don't see how this....

Range: - / Str: User / AP: 2 / Melee, Master-Crafted

...would be considered OP. I do not intend to raise my leader character above S4 (the Captain standard) for the sake of balance. I'd consider it less powerful than many other weapons, being that it doesn't hit at S10, doesn't cause Instant Death, nor anything else of the like.

My lead character is unchanged from a standard C:SM Captain save for:
1) the above mentioned weapon
2) Rites of Battle as a special rule

If you don't see how it could be considered OP, that's probably because you aren't looking at the big picture. Don't just look at the Strength, look at everything involved. Your Captain has a relatively high initiative, good number of attacks and good weapon skill. That sword isn't unwieldy, doesn't prevent you from gaining more attacks due to extra weapons, and comes on a model with good options for survivability. Specifically coming with at least an Iron Halo, and likely Artificer Armour. That kind of combination of AP 2, striking before other AP2 weapons with decent offensive and defensive stats isn't that common any more. That he then handed out LD10 like candy is icing on the cake.

How many points did this proposed character cost, and what exactly did he have?

NeoAigaion wrote:
I like that I be creative with 40k, so I'd hate to see that be stifled by purists.

Sorry, I don't see anything creative here. You've got some powerful rules, but no fluff to justify them, and you haven't given any reason to believe that you started with an awesome fluff idea and couldn't possibly represent it accurately without making your own rules. Before you even think about asking people to allow you to write your own rules you need to give them a reason WHY.

Yeah, if you want to get people into your idea you need to make it sound awesome and epic. For that you need to start with fluff.

I play nids so if I were to try to create my own hive fleet so different it needed it's own codex I'd probably start with a story of how it ended up in the warp, what it did to them and how they had to adapt to survive. They return many years later... changed.

Perhaps the hive mind was strengthened by the warp but is also now dependent on it and it's conduits (synapse creatures) must return to it often to maintain the connection(LD test at the start of every movement phase it has or they must phase into the warp for the rest of the turn). Perhaps the hive mind connection is so strong their psychers can channel their power through other tyranid creatures within synapse range but it's dangerous(any roll of doubles causes pearls of the warp for both models)

Can go many directions from there.

SM's have lots of story material out there to use, I'd say look it over and expand upon something that could lead yours off the beaten bath. Some objective undertaken that leads them down a twisted road. Add in some betrayal that makes them question everything they valued. Just general story stuff with a few detailed scenes and characters.

From that, you can then come up with their new goals, their new order, their new way of thinking about everything, their methods and their tools(equipment).

At that point it's no longer just an arbitrary shift in numbers. There's a reason why.... without that 'why',you have nothing of meaning. You can change a 4 to a 5 and no one will care because it has no meaning without the 'why'. So start with the 'why'... start with fluff.

Just my two cents

I'm a tyranid player and i want to homebrew some infestors from starcraft 2. If i lived by you we could home brew it up all day long man. rock on!

 TheContortionist wrote:
I'm a tyranid player and i want to homebrew some infestors from starcraft 2. If i lived by you we could home brew it up all day long man. rock on!

Not the Mawlocks big brother the Nydus Worm?

Sorry, off-topic but had to bite.