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As a newly returned player there is a lot about this edition I like. One of the main things that bugs me is that warlord traits are randomly chosen each game. As a player who leans a bit more towards the narrative I find this a huge immersion breaker. I find it out that my librarian is good at one thing for one battle, then suddenly has a new skill the next.

Game play wise do you think it would improve the game if you just picked your trait with your list.

Would need rebalance (ah!), some traits are vastly superior to others.

I completely agree, Hounds. The problems with simply letting people pick traits however are:

A.) Some traits are just crummy compared to others
B.) Some traits that are normally not too scary are potentially terrifying when you can count on building an army around them. Master of Ambush, for instance, would let me count on infiltrating things like big units of Talos and Cronos.

Personally, I really like the idea of letting people purchase powers with points. This could either get rid of randomized warlord traits or be an alternative to them (essentially letting you pay to lock in an otherwise random trait). This also reduces the need to rebalance most traits as the less useful ones would simply cost fewer points.

SM is really hit-miss with it's traits, but the sheer number of fives I roll is excellent.

Bringing Calgar, however, mitigates this issue.

I posted something like this before:



This was an old idea of mine



PURCHASEABLE WARLORD TRAITS IDEA:

How to Purchase Warlord Traits:
Instead of rolling a D6 to determine warlord traits as normal, the model you select as your Warlord may instead opt to purchase warlord trait(s) instead. This is done during the army-building step and must be decided upon before rolling for warlord traits. In order to purchase a warlord trait you must pick a warlord trait from its associated table and then apply its points cost to the warlords point total. In addition you must always purchase the warlord trait with the higher point value first. Additional warlord traits may be purchased or rolled for but for every additional warlord trait you possess you double the point cost of the warlord trait total. You may only purchase a maximum of two warlord traits. If you choose to purchase from or roll choose one and then roll for two warlord traits from separate tables then you must pay an additional 5pts.

Example 1: You want to purchase one warlord trait for your warlord Immovable Object (25pts).
You must pay an additional 25pts to your warlord to your warlords profile in order to give him the warlord trait Immovable Object.

Example 2: You want to purchase two warlord traits for your warlord Strategic Genius (25pts) and Master of Maneuver (20pts). First since you are purchasing two warlord traits you must purchase the one that is worth more and double its value before adding its points cost to your warlords. The warlord trait with the highest value is Strategic Genius so you will begin by doubling the cost of this trait and adding it to the warlords point cost. 25x2=50 so you will add 50pts to the warlord. Since Master of Maneuver is from a different table from the first warlord trait drawn you must pay an additional 5pts. Finally, you must add on the cost of the Master of Maneuver (20pts).
50+5+20=75pts.
You must pay an additional 75pts to your warlord to your warlords profile in order to give him the warlord traits Strategic Genius and Master of Maneuver.

Example 3: You want to purchase a warlord trait Night Attacker (15pts) and then roll for a randomly decided second warlord trait on the same table (Strategic).
You must take the point value of Night Attacker (15pts) and double it in order to have an additional warlord trait.
15x2=30pts.
You must pay an additional 30pts to your warlord to your warlords profile in order to give him the warlord traits Night Attacker as well as an randomly generated trait from the Strategic Table.
How to purchase an additional warlord trait for Unique Characters:
Unique characters that already have a set warlord trait may also purchase an additional warlord trait in a similar way to what is described above. Before the unique character may take an additional warlord trait they must add the cost of the warlord trait they already own to their profile, and then they must pay an additional 5pts (if they choose a trait from a different warlord trait table then the one it already has) and then add the cost of the trait they are adding on.

Example: You want to give Captain Shrike from the Space Marine codex the additional warlord trait Master of Ambush from the Strategic Traits table. You must first add the cost of his warlord trait to his profile before purchasing another one. Captain Shrike’s warlord trait is Angel of Death so you pay 15pts initially. Now you must decide what table you are drawing the additional the trait from. Since Master of Ambush is from a different table from the one Captain Shrike’s original warlord trait is taken from you must pay an additional 5pts. Finally, you must add on the cost of the Master of Ambush (30pts).
15+ 5+ 30= 50pts
You must add an additional 50pts to Captain Shrikes profile in order to give him the additional warlord trait Master of Ambush.

Command Traits
Inspiring Presence - 10pts

Intimidating Presence - 15pts

The Dust of a Thousand Worlds - 15pts

Master of the Vanguard -15pts

Target Priority - 20pts

Co-ordinated Assault-15pts



Strategic Traits
Conqueror of Cities - 15pts

Night Attacker -15pts

Master of Ambush -30pts

Strategic Genius -25pts

Divide to Conquer - 20pts

Princeps of Deceit -20pts


Personal Traits
Master of Defence – 20pts

Master of Offence -15pts

Master of Maneuver - 20pts

Legendary Fighter - 15pts

Tenacity-20pts

Immovable Object - Fearless and It Will Not Die. -25pts


Space Marine
Angel of Death-15pts
Storm of Fire-30pts
Angel of Death: -15pts

Imperium's Sword- 20pts
Iron Resolve: -15pts

Rites of War: -15pts

Champion of Humanity:-20pts

Cool stuff, DoomShakaLaka! A couple things to note though:

* No Tactical Traits costs?

* Dust of a Thousand Worlds costs the same as Concqueror of Cities, but the latter is just flat out better than the former if your tables look anything like the ones around here (there's usually quite a bit of ruins).

* 15 points seems relatively high compared to the other options. Even if you build your army around it, you only benefit from it for a turn, and unless you have night vision, it helps your opponent out too. 15 points wouldn't be a terrible cost for it in a vacuum, but I don't think I'd ever take it over CoCities at the same price point. Part of me feels like you might be better off just rolling randomly and saving your points; while the trait isn't bad, I'm not sure you can really build an army around it that wouldn't benefit more in most situations from most of the other items on the strategic table.

*The points on the personal table seem pretty off to me. Master of Defense is priced higher than Coordinated assault. That means you can pay 5 points less and give up one less attack in close combat to grant the warlord rerolls to all his to-hit rolls of 1 (which probably works out similarly to +1 attack on average), and then he's also buffing all his buddies in the vicinity. Master of Manouevre also costs more than other abilities with farther-reaching effects, and if I'm not mistaken, it doesn't confer to the warlords unit. That one might be fine if you use it to outflank a warlord with an outflank unit that he can't normally team up with or if your warlord is a vehicle or MC or something though.

Overall, those prices look about right to me though. I never use the marine traits table, so I can't really comment on those.

Wyldhunt wrote:
Cool stuff, DoomShakaLaka! A couple things to note though:

* No Tactical Traits costs?

* Dust of a Thousand Worlds costs the same as Concqueror of Cities, but the latter is just flat out better than the former if your tables look anything like the ones around here (there's usually quite a bit of ruins).

* 15 points seems relatively high compared to the other options. Even if you build your army around it, you only benefit from it for a turn, and unless you have night vision, it helps your opponent out too. 15 points wouldn't be a terrible cost for it in a vacuum, but I don't think I'd ever take it over CoCities at the same price point. Part of me feels like you might be better off just rolling randomly and saving your points; while the trait isn't bad, I'm not sure you can really build an army around it that wouldn't benefit more in most situations from most of the other items on the strategic table.

*The points on the personal table seem pretty off to me. Master of Defense is priced higher than Coordinated assault. That means you can pay 5 points less and give up one less attack in close combat to grant the warlord rerolls to all his to-hit rolls of 1 (which probably works out similarly to +1 attack on average), and then he's also buffing all his buddies in the vicinity. Master of Manouevre also costs more than other abilities with farther-reaching effects, and if I'm not mistaken, it doesn't confer to the warlords unit. That one might be fine if you use it to outflank a warlord with an outflank unit that he can't normally team up with or if your warlord is a vehicle or MC or something though.

Overall, those prices look about right to me though. I never use the marine traits table, so I can't really comment on those.

Firstly, thanks for looking it over. Like I said, it was an old idea of mine that never really gained any traction before. Just C&P'd it over here because it seemed relevant

Secondly:
Master of Maneouvre does confer to the unit unless its changed.
&
Master of Defense, Dust of a Thousand Worlds, and Intimidating Presence can drop by 5pts each.


On a final note, I never use Tactical Traits (and don't use GW's card objectives) so I can't comment on prices for those.

I should note that I once rolled Warlord Traits for my commander and got the Outflank result. Against Space Marines.
I rerolled and got Furious Charge.

I'm ok with them being free, sorta like an added bonus to counter balance that your warlord is worth a vp. as for some being better than others thats true of everything in this game. All codexs have good and bad units

HoundsofDemos wrote:
I'm ok with them being free, sorta like an added bonus to counter balance that your warlord is worth a vp. as for some being better than others thats true of everything in this game. All codexs have good and bad units

Having an extra bonus (a warlord trait) does help to offset the fact that warlords are worth extra victory points. That said, I disagree about it being okay for some things to just be better than others. Bad internal balance is a sign of bad design. The world won't end if your internal balance is off, but it's not exactly a good thing either. Bloodbrides in the Dark Eldar codex are pretty bad compared to basically everything else in the book, but there's not reason they can't be designed better to make them more fun on the tabletop. The thing with just letting some warlord traits be better than others is that the "bad" ones might as well not exist. Each player has a resource in the form of 1 warlord trait that they can pick. Assuming there's nothing in place to recognize that some traits are better than others (like a higher points value for purchasing them), you wind up with:

A.) Traits that no one will ever use.

or

B.) Traits that someone will use because it's fluffy (Night Attacker for dark eldar, let's say), but will basically put them at a disadvantage (however minor) against the guy who chose to take Master of Ambush and infiltrate his deathstar instead. This is a problem because it punishes you for taking fluffy options (sometimes), and that's generally not fun for the same reason that taking a fluffy-but-weak unit into a game against an OP unit is not fun.

It's not a big deal, but I'd rather see either a points system (so that the guy with the crummier trait has more points to spend on wargear/models to make up for his minor disadvantage) or a rebalancing of "weak" traits that make them as appealing as more powerful traits. For instance, you might make Night Attacker allow you to keep night fighting active all game. It's a pretty potent buff comparable in effect to Conqueror of Cities (trade MTC for a more generally useful cover bonus and a susceptibility to night vision, spotlights, etc.), and it lets you play your fluffy darkness-loving dark eldar warlord without feeling like you're punishing yourself slightly for wanting to take a fluffy trait.

This rant was much longer than it needed to be. Sorry about that. ^_^;

I think there is merit to having varying warlord traits in cost and power just so all armies have access to equally weak and powerful traits with the same number of each. What you take for a warlord trait might depend on what you take with you for an army or the points of the army.

rowboatjellyfanxiii wrote:
SM is really hit-miss with it's traits, but the sheer number of fives I roll is excellent.

Bringing Calgar, however, mitigates this issue.

My Juggerlord seems to always roll the "reroll Possession leadership check" trait. This would be fine, but all I do is summon Skull Cannons so it's not really that great.

The idea of picking a warlord trait is interesting. It would require the traits to be re-worked, as there are some that are far better than others. Alternatively they could be bought as Doom suggested.

Wyldhunt wrote:
I completely agree, Hounds. The problems with simply letting people pick traits however are:

A.) Some traits are just crummy compared to others
B.) Some traits that are normally not too scary are potentially terrifying when you can count on building an army around them. Master of Ambush, for instance, would let me count on infiltrating things like big units of Talos and Cronos.

Personally, I really like the idea of letting people purchase powers with points. This could either get rid of randomized warlord traits or be an alternative to them (essentially letting you pay to lock in an otherwise random trait). This also reduces the need to rebalance most traits as the less useful ones would simply cost fewer points.

Imagine, in the far flung future, commanders ACTUALLY HAVING STRATEGIES.

It boggles the mind, no?

Honestly, NOT picking your warlord traits blew my mind when I first saw it. Then again, so did not being able to choose your psychic powers...

It is a testament to how absolute gak GW rule balance is.

Here's an idea: why not make Warlord traits work like Psychic Powers in a sense?

You choose a Warlord Traits table which would have seven Warlord Traits: one Primaris Trait and six random Warlord Traits. You can either picked the rolled result or go with the Primaris Trait.

Not perfect and sure it doesn't let you customize, but it gives players a bit of play with their Warlord Traits.

 Marik Law wrote:
Here's an idea: why not make Warlord traits work like Psychic Powers in a sense?

You choose a Warlord Traits table which would have seven Warlord Traits: one Primaris Trait and six random Warlord Traits. You can either picked the rolled result or go with the Primaris Trait.

Not perfect and sure it doesn't let you customize, but it gives players a bit of play with their Warlord Traits.

We don't need more tables, and this misses the point completely, both about picking Warlord traits and the broken psychic power system.

Its absurd from an in-universe standpoint because no commander goes into combat, much less a whole fething war, without having a very well-thought-out plan. Rolling for random abilities does not fit that in the least. It's also absurd from a gaming standpoint because you plan for random and the power difference between certain traits can mean the difference between winning and losing, especially if you roll a trait that is either useless for your army or actively works against it while your opponent rolls a huge boon for his army. It is not fair in the least, and spare me the "but the dice" bs.

Psychic powers are also gak because of the power differences in the various powers. No one rolls pyromancy, and you don't need to roll on divination, because the primaris power is awesome. In Biomancy every single fether who could roll on that table only rolled because they wanted Iron Arm or whatever the feth it's called.

Much as I enjoy 7th, random d6 warlord traits are an atrocious rule.
No strategic or even tactical elements can you build nor even forsee with them.
Lash out a d6 on a chart and....... Fingers crossed.
Oh.........I got Nid carniveruos forrest. Ffs lol.


Just horrible imho.