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Hello,

My friend and I had a long talked up game the other night (last time we got together to play was January). My Space Marines vs his Daemons.
The last 5 games had been a crushing defeat for his Daemons, mainly due to bad rolls for his 'gifts'. This game he rolled amazing, and the game was over for me by turn 3.

Thinking last night, I was trying to figure out how we could make some house rules that allow him to be able to choose his gifts but obviously some sort of limitation so that he could not just choose all the best ones.

Hoping for your guys thoughts on if this could work, and any suggestions?

I was thinking if we were to rank each gift by its usefulness and then assign a 'cost' to it outside of the army cost that he could spend to upgrade each of his characters. With a limited amount of these 'points' he could take some of the gifts he wanted but would also have to make sacrifices.

I look forward to your guys ideas, I have limited knowledge of his codex so this might be impossible to do.

Thanks.

So you're proposing just removing the random roll and giving each gift a points value?

 Valkyrie wrote:
So you're proposing just removing the random roll and giving each gift a points value?

I am proposing he removes the roll and instead can select gifts with points (but these points do not come from his army value). If this was the only way to do it, I would need to figure out the value of each of the gifts and then calculate how much 'points' he should be allowed so that he can not make his characters too powerful.

Ahhhhh how about no, becuase yeah you have a chance to turn into something crappy, you can also turn into a blood thirster which on top of that, you can buy an upgrade that prevents you from turning into something like a chaos spawn.

Daemons are supposed to have some randomness, it puts the "chaos" in "chaos daemons". But much of the time it does feel like daemons are too random. What I think should happen is that some of the randomness should be cut back on, but a few core random mechanics should remain.

 gnome_idea_what wrote:
Daemons are supposed to have some randomness, it puts the "chaos" in "chaos daemons". But much of the time it does feel like daemons are too random. What I think should happen is that some of the randomness should be cut back on, but a few core random mechanics should remain.

Agreed, I like randomness of the roll to see which god attacks the other etc, and the book that can either increase your save or lessen it. I am basically trying to get some more consistency in our games without taking away too much of the randomness that makes Daemons what they are.
Perhaps dividing the traits into a few groups based on how 'good' they are and then having him roll within each of these groups to see what trait he gets?

I really dislike the randomness of the chaos codex. When it wins games for my opponent, it's because Nurgle farted at the wrong moment and wiped out a key squad sitting on an objective or something. And there's not much your opponent can do to interact with the randomness.

Also, while I realize "chaos" is in the name of the army, I'd argue that chaos daemons aren't actually all that "chaotic." They're basically just four major groups (plus random godless daemons) of like-minded animals that feed off of certain emotions and take actions to proliferate those emotions or further certain goals. Slaanesh doesn't roll dice every time she's presented with a decision and act based on the roll. She plots and schemes to spread more hedonism and influence through the galaxy so that she can feed on/enjoy the results. But that's getting off-topic.

What I'd kind of like to see is this:
*Random gifts and the warp storm are no longer a core part of the codex.
* Gifts are treated as normal wargear, so now you can actually represent the backstory you've created for your daemons rather than rolling and hoping you just so happen to get something that makes sense. If I model a herald with armor or metal skin, I want a 3+ armor save, darn it!
* The warpstorm and gifts become special rules for a detachment that requires all four chaos gods be represented with random gifts essentially being "free points" that you have to "spend" randomly instead of paying for them. Mechanically, this would be identical to what we have now, it's just that you have the option to actually fluffily represent your characters with the wargear you want rather than rolling for it.
* Other detachments in this hypothetical book would gain god-specific fluffy effects like blood points for a khorne-themed detachment or an "infection" mechanic for the nurgle detachment. Because while a warp storm table makes sense when the gods are all clashing over one spot and occassionally shooting lightning at each other's daemons, it's less fluffy (based on what I've read on Black Library novels and the codex itself) for a nurgling to spontaneously erupt into tzeentchly flames or for a greater daemon's planet-wide campaign to abruptly end after weeks of combat because Buzzglix the Foetid, Great unclean One of Nurgle, failed a random instability check.

Something that I think can be looked to as a good example is the Warpstorm table in the Magnus book - It's still a Warpstorm table, but rather than all the results randomly doing something between nothing, awesome, or terrible, the results all have a noteworthy and tangible effect on most turns, but an effect that can't be accurately predicted - It takes a potentially gamechanging but usually pointless roll and makes it into something noteworthy. It represents the fluctuation of warpstuff accurately, without being gamebreaking. (Most notably, the +1 and -1 invuln results have been removing, taking away what were the most and least powerful effects by far.)

 gnome_idea_what wrote:
Daemons are supposed to have some randomness, it puts the "chaos" in "chaos daemons". But much of the time it does feel like daemons are too random. What I think should happen is that some of the randomness should be cut back on, but a few core random mechanics should remain.

This is not true as the first Chaos Daemon had no Random tables at all just purchased abilities. The previous "Chaos Daemon" codex good old Chaos Space Marines 3.5 had no random charts for daemons either. Random does not equal chaos.

 benf wrote:
Hello,

My friend and I had a long talked up game the other night (last time we got together to play was January). My Space Marines vs his Daemons.
The last 5 games had been a crushing defeat for his Daemons, mainly due to bad rolls for his 'gifts'. This game he rolled amazing, and the game was over for me by turn 3.

Thinking last night, I was trying to figure out how we could make some house rules that allow him to be able to choose his gifts but obviously some sort of limitation so that he could not just choose all the best ones.

Hoping for your guys thoughts on if this could work, and any suggestions?

I was thinking if we were to rank each gift by its usefulness and then assign a 'cost' to it outside of the army cost that he could spend to upgrade each of his characters. With a limited amount of these 'points' he could take some of the gifts he wanted but would also have to make sacrifices.

I look forward to your guys ideas, I have limited knowledge of his codex so this might be impossible to do.

Thanks.

allow him to reroll and pick the best of result, mark the best traits and you can deny those gifts on a six

Perhaps you could use a 'higher grade' of Gift to roll on the relevant table, or choose one from a 'lower grade' in much the same way that you can always choose the 'default' weapons.

For example, a Greater Reward allows you a roll on the table, a choice of Greater Weapons, or selecting anything from the Lesser Rewards.
Similarly, an Exalted Reward allows you a roll on the table, a choice of Daemonic Artefacts, or selecting anything from the Greater or Lesser Reward tables.

That way, you can have your control, but it comes in fairly expensive and at a point that rolling may be more cost-effective.

 Sersi wrote:

 gnome_idea_what wrote:
Daemons are supposed to have some randomness, it puts the "chaos" in "chaos daemons". But much of the time it does feel like daemons are too random. What I think should happen is that some of the randomness should be cut back on, but a few core random mechanics should remain.

This is not true as the first Chaos Daemon had no Random tables at all just purchased abilities. The previous "Chaos Daemon" codex good old Chaos Space Marines 3.5 had no random charts for daemons either. Random does not equal chaos.

The first Daemon Codex forced you entire army to deep strike (so every unit had to roll for the random turn they came in on and random scatter) but also they used a daemon version of drop pod assault where after you split your army in half you randomly determined which half showed up on turn one and which half went into reserves. Pretty damn random if you ask me

 Bishop F Gantry wrote:

 benf wrote:
Hello,

My friend and I had a long talked up game the other night (last time we got together to play was January). My Space Marines vs his Daemons.
The last 5 games had been a crushing defeat for his Daemons, mainly due to bad rolls for his 'gifts'. This game he rolled amazing, and the game was over for me by turn 3.

Thinking last night, I was trying to figure out how we could make some house rules that allow him to be able to choose his gifts but obviously some sort of limitation so that he could not just choose all the best ones.

Hoping for your guys thoughts on if this could work, and any suggestions?

I was thinking if we were to rank each gift by its usefulness and then assign a 'cost' to it outside of the army cost that he could spend to upgrade each of his characters. With a limited amount of these 'points' he could take some of the gifts he wanted but would also have to make sacrifices.

I look forward to your guys ideas, I have limited knowledge of his codex so this might be impossible to do.

Thanks.

allow him to reroll and pick the best of result, mark the best traits and you can deny those gifts on a six

That is a good idea, and quite simple. Might have a try and then make adjustments based on how it goes.

Thanks

 CrownAxe wrote:

 Sersi wrote:

 gnome_idea_what wrote:
Daemons are supposed to have some randomness, it puts the "chaos" in "chaos daemons". But much of the time it does feel like daemons are too random. What I think should happen is that some of the randomness should be cut back on, but a few core random mechanics should remain.

This is not true as the first Chaos Daemon had no Random tables at all just purchased abilities. The previous "Chaos Daemon" codex good old Chaos Space Marines 3.5 had no random charts for daemons either. Random does not equal chaos.

The first Daemon Codex forced you entire army to deep strike (so every unit had to roll for the random turn they came in on and random scatter) but also they used a daemon version of drop pod assault where after you split your army in half you randomly determined which half showed up on turn one and which half went into reserves. Pretty damn random if you ask me

Well, you've go me there. But requiring all units to deep strike can be planned around. As opposed to random tables for weapons, abilities, and wargear which you can't.

 Sersi wrote:

 CrownAxe wrote:

 Sersi wrote:

 gnome_idea_what wrote:
Daemons are supposed to have some randomness, it puts the "chaos" in "chaos daemons". But much of the time it does feel like daemons are too random. What I think should happen is that some of the randomness should be cut back on, but a few core random mechanics should remain.

This is not true as the first Chaos Daemon had no Random tables at all just purchased abilities. The previous "Chaos Daemon" codex good old Chaos Space Marines 3.5 had no random charts for daemons either. Random does not equal chaos.

The first Daemon Codex forced you entire army to deep strike (so every unit had to roll for the random turn they came in on and random scatter) but also they used a daemon version of drop pod assault where after you split your army in half you randomly determined which half showed up on turn one and which half went into reserves. Pretty damn random if you ask me

Well, you've go me there. But requiring all units to deep strike can be planned around. As opposed to random tables for weapons, abilities, and wargear which you can't.

You totally can plan around around those, you just buy extra rolls on the table and you'll get desired results through redundancy. That's how psyker deathstars work. They need specific powers to be randomly obtained but when you roll the the table 12 times you have over 90% chance of getting it.