Should competitive play remove special characters again?

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**Melissia**

No, GW should just balance the special characters right.

**Dionysodorus**

"Must be X% <faction>" at least stops Celestine from showing up everywhere, but it doesn't seem to do much to address the underlying problem. It's not like the problem with Celestine is that she synergizes really well with other Imperium units. And It's not clear to me that it does much for Guilliman at all unless you're going to go all the way and just say that you must have a 100% UM army; Guilliman already wants to be in an army with lots of UMs for him to buff.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

I think Celestine is fair, and Gulliman is probably fair too.

I don't think this methodology makes any sense at all. You're comparing Celestine to units that work completely differently, and then with Guilliman I really have no idea where you're pulling numbers from. Guilliman's worth a 55% increase in firepower only in the worst-case scenario, when the unit he's buffing is wounding on a 2+. He's more commonly worth about a 78% increase in firepower, when you're wounding on a 3+. He's especially valuable when you don't have a better target for a heavy bolter or assault cannon than a tank, where he boosts output by 122%. You "assume about 33% of the cost of a unit is for its firepower", and you say that this is reasonable because about 1/3 of what you pay for a Razorback is for its weapon options, but it simply doesn't follow that you can separate a unit's defense from its offense in this way. I mean, think about it. It follows that a Predator body is somehow by itself worth 90 points. So now imagine you could just take a Predator with no guns at all. Would anyone actually do this? Of course not. Much of what you're paying for with units' bodies is the fact that those bodies can take weapons. A useful rule of thumb is that the square root of the product of offense and defense is proportional to how valuable a unit is. If you double a unit's firepower, probably it's worth about 40% more points. You can break this -- fragile units tend to benefit more from getting more durable, for example -- but it's pretty good for small changes. So Guilliman's aura is probably about twice as good as you're valuing it at, being worth about 33% of the cost of anything he's buffing.

Of course, Guilliman also more than doubles Overwatch output and provides 3 CP. You also weirdly pick some very short-ranged units so that you can then say that he can only buff so many things or else he'll just get outmaneuvered, but his buff also works on things that can shoot much farther like lascannons and heavy bolters. Before the flyer nerf, we saw Guilliman alongside a bunch of Stormravens, where he would charge forward trying to keep them in range as long as possible. Currently he works really well with, yes, Razorbacks, but also various kinds of shooty Dreadnoughts, Devastators, and a few flyers.

But, regardless, it seems like just a bad approach in general to rely on some pretty assumption-heavy mathhammer to try to show that characters that show up in all sorts of competitive lists are not a problem. Empirically, they seem to be a problem. Celestine is everywhere. Guilliman is less ubiquitous but this appears to mostly be because Guard has some stupidly powerful units that outshine even UMs buffed by Guilliman, and Guilliman doesn't synergize well here.

**Breng77**

Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
Xenomancers wrote:
You are going about it all wrong. Competitive play needs to make an actually unbroken point system. Special characters on the whole aren't even that busted - you can only take one of them. They just need to be pointed right. Guilliman needs +40 points as does Azreal. Celestine needs +100. There are plenty of units that need obvious point adjustments - start there.

+40? +100?

I think Celestine is fair, and Gulliman is probably fair too.

More to the point:
At 150, Celestine alone is appropriate. I'd place her in the upper-middle of her bracket in terms of efficiency. She naturally has 14 wounds.
At 200, Celestine with 1 Gemini gains ~10 wounds., about 45% increase
At 250, Celestine with 2 Gemini gains another 2 wounds. a further 9% improvement

Something to keep in mind is the fact that once wounded, all further wounds must be allocated to her even if she has her Gemini.

Celestine is mostly a beatstick. Her AoF is used on herself, 90% of the time, either to move or to heal. She would be able to give it to someone else, but she's too expensive not to heal herself if accompanied by Gemini, because if she doesn't then you're not getting anywhere near the value of the Gemini. Her aura is at best situationally beneficial, but mostly pointless.

For 150 points, she's somewhat better than a 133 point Manticore. For 200 points, she's about as good as a Preadator at being a beatstick, but is tougher. For 250 she's more resilient than but far less killy than Pask.

Guilliman is 360 points, IIRC
Obviously, you're not buying him to be a beatstick. His physical stats aren't crap, but I wouldn't pay 360 for them, buy a Knight instead.
So, you're taking him for the buff aura, which is insanely good, but at what point does it become more efficient than its cost? Let's assume he's buffing Leviathan Dreadnoughts and Razorbacks. He improves damage output by about 55%. If we assume about 33% of the cost of a unit is for it's firepower, on the assumption that a Razorback's 80 points for the tank and 35-50 for the gun is the model for all units, which isn't entirely true, but is a fair assumption, then his presences increases the value of surrounding units by about 16%.

So, assuming that he himself does nothing, he needs to be supporting about 15 Razorbacks, or 7 Leviathan Dreadnoughts.

His physical beatstick stats:
In shooting, he's pretty bad. In shooting, he's about an Assault Cannon and a half,
In melee, he's pretty good. Both options are good, but most of the time he's going to use the Emperor's Sword.
Resiliency wise, he's pretty good, but mostly because of the character protection. Once exposed to fire, he doesn't hold up that well to plasma, melta, and lascannons, from experience facing him.

His physical stats are definitely worse than a Leviathan Dreadnought; but not by too much, and a Leviathan is a good unit, so I can say that he's about 250-300 in physical characteristics.

Therefore, he has to buff about 3 Razorbacks or 2 Leviathans to be performing at-cost, not including the fact that he can't really use his melee weapon all that well while babysitting gun platforms. [His melee attack does protect them though, by deterring potential chargers, so there's that.

So, here's the way I see it:
Celestine is fair at 150 and 250, and marginally undercosted at 200. This makes sense, because the first Gemini is actually worth about 75 points while the second is worth about 25, but they're valued at 50 ea.

Guilliman is fair if supporting about 3 friendly heavy-hitting units. I think this is okay. It's not hard for him to support 2-4 friends for the duration of the game, but going more than that means you're either already winning [and therefore free to move as you will and have a lot of surviving units] or you've packed yourself in a tight bubble and are going to get outmaneuvered.

I think you are really under rating the value of the character rule on these models. If they are about as good as some unit in stats that is not a character then they are quite a bit superior to that model in terms of durability and thus overall performance.

Celestine isn't 100 points undercosted (I think she should be around 200 base given her stats and abilities), but she is way better than most 150 point HQ choices in the game given her durability and offensive ability.

Lets look at these 2 compared to say the best Ork character in Ghazghkull

He is 215 points.

So 65 more than Celestine, same saves, 8 wounds (so 6 less than Celestine if you include both her lives, 9 if she buys 1 Superior to be 200 points), she can also heal with acts of faith Ghaz is higher toughness, most anti-infantry guns wound him on 5s. Shooting, Celestine is better with hear heavy flamer, than Ghaz with his 5+ to hit Twin big shoota (hits better more, better ap, worse range, but she is fast), she is way more than twice as fast. Melee She has +1 attack but wounds most things on 3s, vs him wounding most on 2s. His attacks are 3 damage instead of 2 (depends on what they fight whether this actually matters but it is a point in his column). I would say that they seem about equal to me overall, with Ghaz a little better against big targets, but acts of faith put Celestine over the top I think since she can act twice in a single turn.

Looking at Guilliamn - He has same armor save better invul, 1 additional wound, with the potential of an additional D6 wounds. Better in shooting, better in melee (more attacks better weapons, he has Ghaz's claw + a sword which is better.), he is faster and gives way better buffs (which he also benefits from, so basically he will always hit and wound in melee.) and you get +3 CP for having him. He is probably closer to costed correctly than Celestine, I would put him maybe at 380.

**auticus**

The problem is and always will be that the GW point system is always designed poorly and is always chalk full of loop holes and underpointed units that break the game.

**Xenomancers**

Dionysodorus wrote:
"Must be X% <faction>" at least stops Celestine from showing up everywhere, but it doesn't seem to do much to address the underlying problem. It's not like the problem with Celestine is that she synergizes really well with other Imperium units. And It's not clear to me that it does much for Guilliman at all unless you're going to go all the way and just say that you must have a 100% UM army; Guilliman already wants to be in an army with lots of UMs for him to buff.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

I think Celestine is fair, and Gulliman is probably fair too.

I don't think this methodology makes any sense at all. You're comparing Celestine to units that work completely differently, and then with Guilliman I really have no idea where you're pulling numbers from. Guilliman's worth a 55% increase in firepower only in the worst-case scenario, when the unit he's buffing is wounding on a 2+. He's more commonly worth about a 78% increase in firepower, when you're wounding on a 3+. He's especially valuable when you don't have a better target for a heavy bolter or assault cannon than a tank, where he boosts output by 122%. You "assume about 33% of the cost of a unit is for its firepower", and you say that this is reasonable because about 1/3 of what you pay for a Razorback is for its weapon options, but it simply doesn't follow that you can separate a unit's defense from its offense in this way. I mean, think about it. It follows that a Predator body is somehow by itself worth 90 points. So now imagine you could just take a Predator with no guns at all. Would anyone actually do this? Of course not. Much of what you're paying for with units' bodies is the fact that those bodies can take weapons. A useful rule of thumb is that the square root of the product of offense and defense is proportional to how valuable a unit is. If you double a unit's firepower, probably it's worth about 40% more points. You can break this -- fragile units tend to benefit more from getting more durable, for example -- but it's pretty good for small changes. So Guilliman's aura is probably about twice as good as you're valuing it at, being worth about 33% of the cost of anything he's buffing.

Of course, Guilliman also more than doubles Overwatch output and provides 3 CP. You also weirdly pick some very short-ranged units so that you can then say that he can only buff so many things or else he'll just get outmaneuvered, but his buff also works on things that can shoot much farther like lascannons and heavy bolters. Before the flyer nerf, we saw Guilliman alongside a bunch of Stormravens, where he would charge forward trying to keep them in range as long as possible. Currently he works really well with, yes, Razorbacks, but also various kinds of shooty Dreadnoughts, Devastators, and a few flyers.

But, regardless, it seems like just a bad approach in general to rely on some pretty assumption-heavy mathhammer to try to show that characters that show up in all sorts of competitive lists are not a problem. Empirically, they seem to be a problem.

Guillians aura is only about 15% better than a reroll captain and a LT can do for about half his cost. Your argument pretty much falls apart right there. Nether are special characters and nether is expensive. If you have an issue with force multipliers you are playing the wrong game IMO. This game is all about force multiplication. You also have to take into account that ultra marines have the worst chapter tactic - It's very easy to go a whole game without ever using it. Where as Salamanders/ Imperial fists get straight up damage amplification and white scars make a whole new list of units viable and Raven gaurd get a huge defensive benefit. Unless ofc you think marines are OP...considering they are one of the weakest armies in the game - yet again - relying on imperial soup to be viable.

**JNAProductions**

Weakest in the game? No.

Marines aren't the best, but they're a far cry from the worst.

And Fists tactics are also very situational.

**Dionysodorus**

Xenomancers wrote:

Guillians aura is only about 15% better than a reroll captain and a LT can do for about half his cost. Your argument pretty much falls apart right there. Nether are special characters and nether is expensive. If you have an issue with force multipliers you are playing the wrong game IMO. This game is all about force multiplication. You also have to take into account that ultra marines have the worst chapter tactic - It's very easy to go a whole game without ever using it. Where as Salamanders/ Imperial fists get straight up damage amplification and white scars make a whole new list of units viable and Raven gaurd get a huge defensive benefit. Unless ofc you think marines are OP...considering they are one of the weakest armies in the game - yet again - relying on imperial soup to be viable.

I honestly have no idea what part of my argument you think this is a response to. As far as I can tell it supports the point I was making, except for your weird use of "15%". I'm not quite sure what you mean here, maybe that he re-rolls an extra 15% of hit rolls an extra 15% of wound rolls if you're hitting and wounding on a 3+ already. But of course what this really means is that his aura is about twice as good as the combined effect of the Captain and Lieutenant (though it will often be better). Katherine concluded that Guilliman's aura was worth less than 100 points. 2 Captains and 2 Lieutenants would come out to 268 points, and you would much rather have Guilliman's body than those 4 bodies.

Whether Marines are OP or not in general seems irrelevant here. I mean, I'm not arguing that special characters should be banned right now. I'm arguing that they should be appropriately pointed. Presumably this will happen, if it happens, in a rebalancing sweep where other units also get their points looked at. If Marines are right now only good because of Guilliman, maybe they should see some changes so that they can be good without Guilliman. Unfortunately, I think soup is here to stay and so all Imperium armies need to be balanced while keeping in mind their potential for souping. As it happens, I've argued elsewhere on this board that several core Marine units are pretty bad, and that in particular the standard tactical Marine is over-costed. But I don't see that it's productive to get into that here.

**Breng77**

Xenomancers wrote:
Dionysodorus wrote:
"Must be X% <faction>" at least stops Celestine from showing up everywhere, but it doesn't seem to do much to address the underlying problem. It's not like the problem with Celestine is that she synergizes really well with other Imperium units. And It's not clear to me that it does much for Guilliman at all unless you're going to go all the way and just say that you must have a 100% UM army; Guilliman already wants to be in an army with lots of UMs for him to buff.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

I think Celestine is fair, and Gulliman is probably fair too.

I don't think this methodology makes any sense at all. You're comparing Celestine to units that work completely differently, and then with Guilliman I really have no idea where you're pulling numbers from. Guilliman's worth a 55% increase in firepower only in the worst-case scenario, when the unit he's buffing is wounding on a 2+. He's more commonly worth about a 78% increase in firepower, when you're wounding on a 3+. He's especially valuable when you don't have a better target for a heavy bolter or assault cannon than a tank, where he boosts output by 122%. You "assume about 33% of the cost of a unit is for its firepower", and you say that this is reasonable because about 1/3 of what you pay for a Razorback is for its weapon options, but it simply doesn't follow that you can separate a unit's defense from its offense in this way. I mean, think about it. It follows that a Predator body is somehow by itself worth 90 points. So now imagine you could just take a Predator with no guns at all. Would anyone actually do this? Of course not. Much of what you're paying for with units' bodies is the fact that those bodies can take weapons. A useful rule of thumb is that the square root of the product of offense and defense is proportional to how valuable a unit is. If you double a unit's firepower, probably it's worth about 40% more points. You can break this -- fragile units tend to benefit more from getting more durable, for example -- but it's pretty good for small changes. So Guilliman's aura is probably about twice as good as you're valuing it at, being worth about 33% of the cost of anything he's buffing.

Of course, Guilliman also more than doubles Overwatch output and provides 3 CP. You also weirdly pick some very short-ranged units so that you can then say that he can only buff so many things or else he'll just get outmaneuvered, but his buff also works on things that can shoot much farther like lascannons and heavy bolters. Before the flyer nerf, we saw Guilliman alongside a bunch of Stormravens, where he would charge forward trying to keep them in range as long as possible. Currently he works really well with, yes, Razorbacks, but also various kinds of shooty Dreadnoughts, Devastators, and a few flyers.

But, regardless, it seems like just a bad approach in general to rely on some pretty assumption-heavy mathhammer to try to show that characters that show up in all sorts of competitive lists are not a problem. Empirically, they seem to be a problem.

Guillians aura is only about 15% better than a reroll captain and a LT can do for about half his cost. Your argument pretty much falls apart right there. Nether are special characters and nether is expensive. If you have an issue with force multipliers you are playing the wrong game IMO. This game is all about force multiplication. You also have to take into account that ultra marines have the worst chapter tactic - It's very easy to go a whole game without ever using it. Where as Salamanders/ Imperial fists get straight up damage amplification and white scars make a whole new list of units viable and Raven gaurd get a huge defensive benefit. Unless ofc you think marines are OP...considering they are one of the weakest armies in the game - yet again - relying on imperial soup to be viable.

I mean how much better depends on what you are shooting with and at. If I am wounding something on a 4+ with my attacks, then it is a pretty big improvement. But if we grant that captain + LT is close (a little worse) and they cost what ~150 points for just re-rolls (no other buff that RG hands out) and basically have no other value (they suck in combat, unless you are adding points to them), we can establish that RG is easily worth 200 points just for his stat line so 180ish for buffs seems like it would be fair.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Dionysodorus wrote:
Xenomancers wrote:

Guillians aura is only about 15% better than a reroll captain and a LT can do for about half his cost. Your argument pretty much falls apart right there. Nether are special characters and nether is expensive. If you have an issue with force multipliers you are playing the wrong game IMO. This game is all about force multiplication. You also have to take into account that ultra marines have the worst chapter tactic - It's very easy to go a whole game without ever using it. Where as Salamanders/ Imperial fists get straight up damage amplification and white scars make a whole new list of units viable and Raven gaurd get a huge defensive benefit. Unless ofc you think marines are OP...considering they are one of the weakest armies in the game - yet again - relying on imperial soup to be viable.

I honestly have no idea what part of my argument you think this is a response to. As far as I can tell it supports the point I was making, except for your weird use of "15%". I'm not quite sure what you mean here, maybe that he converts an extra 15% of hit rolls into hits and an extra 15% of wound rolls into wounds if you're hitting and wounding on a 3+ already. But of course what this really means is that his aura is about twice as good as the combined effect of the Captain and Lieutenant (though it will often be better). Katherine concluded that Guilliman's aura was worth less than 100 points. 2 Captains and 2 Lieutenants would come out to 268 points, and you would much rather have Guilliman's body than those 4 bodies.

Whether Marines are OP or not in general seems irrelevant here. I mean, I'm not arguing that special characters should be banned right now. I'm arguing that they should be appropriately pointed. Presumably this will happen, if it happens, in a rebalancing sweep where other units also get their points looked at. If Marines are right now only good because of Guilliman, maybe they should see some changes so that they can be good without Guilliman. Unfortunately, I think soup is here to stay and so all Imperium armies need to be balanced while keeping in mind their potential for souping. As it happens, I've argued elsewhere on this board that several core Marine units are pretty bad, and that in particular the standard tactical Marine is over-costed. But I don't see that it's productive to get into that here.

Agree a lot here, Soup makes things bad for basically every imperial faction as a stand alone, because unless all their power comes from synergy that doesn't allow for souping, then the imperium essentially needs to be balanced as its own army, otherwise it will always be more powerful than the other single factions.

**Inquisitor Lord Katherine**

I would be on board with requiring your army to actually be Sisters to use Celestine, Space Marines to use Guilliman, etc.

Make the characters of a faction available IFF that faction is the largest faction in your army.

**Breng77**

Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
I would be on board with requiring your army to actually be Sisters to use Celestine, Space Marines to use Guilliman, etc.

Make the characters of a faction available IFF that faction is the largest faction in your army.

Personally I would like all army benefits to be only usable if all factions of your army came from the same sub-faction. Detachment just isn't very restrictive.

**Purifier**

daedalus wrote:
To make it less number crunchy and more fluffy, maybe each special character needs a "must include x of y" to more closely tailor it.

For the purposes of this conversation, y can be a keyword, force org selection, or specific unit, i.e: "To get Celestine you must include at least 3 units of some sort of Soritas or whatever they call sisters of battle nowadays." , "In order to get Yarrick, you must include at least 3 AM troops of some sort (not that this is hard or expensive)" and so on.

Those numbers are low for things like Rowboat, but the idea is solid.

**Inquisitor Lord Katherine**

Dionysodorus wrote:"Must be X% <faction>" at least stops Celestine from showing up everywhere, but it doesn't seem to do much to address the underlying problem. It's not like the problem with Celestine is that she synergizes really well with other Imperium units. And It's not clear to me that it does much for Guilliman at all unless you're going to go all the way and just say that you must have a 100% UM army; Guilliman already wants to be in an army with lots of UMs for him to buff.

That's good. If I can wishlist for my army a bit, I think that if Canonii got the ability to equip a Jump Pack, you'd see Celestine drop from a lot of our lists overnight. A Jump Pack is something like 20 points. Just giving a Canoness a Jump Pack for 65 points total instantly makes having one of them an auto-take, before you bring Celestine, because now all your tanks and Dominions are re-rolling 1's to-hit, and she can still take almost as powerful, if not more powerful, offensive loadouts. Celestine moves to your #2 choice, but you still don't want a 2nd Canoness, because without an Act of Faith they're still too slow.

If you gave Canonii an extra Act of Faith [replace re-rolls] and a Jump Pack, they're Celestine -1, and they'll be fieldable and desirable. Because they can equip for ranged combat, they don't need it for themselves after the first turn, and they can then give the buff to friendly Dominions, Seraphim, or who-else-knows-what.

Anyway, the character protection is pretty powerful, but Celestine doesn't really benefit from it, because she's almost always in CQC, where it doesn't apply. Celestine is strong, no doubt, and is optimally run with 1 Gemini.

As I said, with 0 Gemini, she's pretty much on the power curve, with 1 Gemini she's definitely considerably above it, and with 2 she's back to being on it. It's so obvious that the first gemini is leagues better than the second, so I'm not sure why they cost the same.

WRT Guilliman:
Leviathan Dreadnought Stormcannon Array: 1.75x effectiveness
Razorback Lascannons: 1.78x effectiveness

You're right. Guilliman's aura is about 75% offensive effectiveness, not 50% offensive power.

However, I do asset that he's buffing units that are 33% gun:
A Lasback is 38% gun-by-cost.
A Leviathan Dreadnought is 33% gun-by-cost.
Plasma troops are about 50% gun-by-cost.

Breng77 wrote:

I think you are really under rating the value of the character rule on these models. If they are about as good as some unit in stats that is not a character then they are quite a bit superior to that model in terms of durability and thus overall performance.

Celestine isn't 100 points undercosted (I think she should be around 200 base given her stats and abilities), but she is way better than most 150 point HQ choices in the game given her durability and offensive ability.

Lets look at these 2 compared to say the best Ork character in Ghazghkull

He is 215 points.

So 65 more than Celestine, same saves, 8 wounds (so 6 less than Celestine if you include both her lives, 9 if she buys 1 Superior to be 200 points), she can also heal with acts of faith Ghaz is higher toughness, most anti-infantry guns wound him on 5s. Shooting, Celestine is better with hear heavy flamer, than Ghaz with his 5+ to hit Twin big shoota (hits better more, better ap, worse range, but she is fast), she is way more than twice as fast. Melee She has +1 attack but wounds most things on 3s, vs him wounding most on 2s. His attacks are 3 damage instead of 2 (depends on what they fight whether this actually matters but it is a point in his column). I would say that they seem about equal to me overall, with Ghaz a little better against big targets, but acts of faith put Celestine over the top I think since she can act twice in a single turn.

Looking at Guilliamn - He has same armor save better invul, 1 additional wound, with the potential of an additional D6 wounds. Better in shooting, better in melee (more attacks better weapons, he has Ghaz's claw + a sword which is better.), he is faster and gives way better buffs (which he also benefits from, so basically he will always hit and wound in melee.) and you get +3 CP for having him. He is probably closer to costed correctly than Celestine, I would put him maybe at 380.

Celestine is a giant beatstick, Ghazskull as a kickass aura and is a giant beatstick.

Ghazskull without his +1 attack and charge-after-advancing field isn't worth anywhere near 215 points. I'd actually question if he's worth 215 with his aura, since he's kind of overpriced, I think.

Celestine has for support abilities:
1: An Act of Faith, except she uses it herself 95% of the time. This is actually quite good, because she'd be pretty bad otherwise, but it's still generally a personal ability.
2: +1 to Shield of Faith saves. It only works against Plasma, Lascannons, and Melta, and even then it's minor at best.

Most importantly, for the Sisters, Celestine is fast. Our whole army is fast, so our HQ's need to be fast. Canonii aren't, and block Vanguard, and add deployment drops, so it's a choice between a beatstick HQ that requires no support and contributes positively and can at least shore up our melee deficiency, or a HQ that cost points, does nothing positive, and is an active detriment to our army in almost all situations.

Notably, Celestine's aura benefits Guard far more than it benefits Sisters, and Celestine is self-supporting. Guilliman has to have Ultramarines with him to operate at anywhere near his 360 point cost, and Ghazskull needs some boyz, but Celestine doesn't need any Sisters. Seraphim are good thematic bodyguards, but Celestine is just fine running around on her own, because her only function is as a beatstick.

**Amishprn86**

SO.. b.c they are abused in a few OP lists (slightly under costed but nothing honestly to bad) you want to ban them even before all the codex's are out to see if they are even still viable, while at the same time GW has already stated they will nerf what needs to be nerfed.

Question.... are you just trolling? or trying to start an argument?

**JNAProductions**

Amishprn86 wrote:
SO.. b.c they are abused in a few OP lists (slightly under costed but nothing honestly to bad) you want to ban them even before all the codex's are out to see if they are even still viable, while at the same time GW has already stated they will nerf what needs to be nerfed.

Question.... are you just trolling? or trying to start an argument?

Well, G-Man's Codex is out and he wasn't nerfed.

**Inquisitor Lord Katherine**

JNAProductions wrote:
Amishprn86 wrote:
SO.. b.c they are abused in a few OP lists (slightly under costed but nothing honestly to bad) you want to ban them even before all the codex's are out to see if they are even still viable, while at the same time GW has already stated they will nerf what needs to be nerfed.

Question.... are you just trolling? or trying to start an argument?

Well, G-Man's Codex is out and he wasn't nerfed.

He didn't need one.

I've played against him and his UM, and he was good, but not OP-good.

Celestine may get a change, since she's frequently run outside of Sisters, but I think GW has her configured that way so that people will use her without having to be Sisters players. Of course, I think this approach is terrible, but that's a whole different matter entirely.

**Amishprn86**

JNAProductions wrote:
Amishprn86 wrote:
SO.. b.c they are abused in a few OP lists (slightly under costed but nothing honestly to bad) you want to ban them even before all the codex's are out to see if they are even still viable, while at the same time GW has already stated they will nerf what needs to be nerfed.

Question.... are you just trolling? or trying to start an argument?

Well, G-Man's Codex is out and he wasn't nerfed.

There's going to be yearly updates to address imbalances after the codex's are out.

**Dionysodorus**

Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

WRT Guilliman:
Leviathan Dreadnought Stormcannon Array: 1.75x effectiveness
Razorback Lascannons: 1.78x effectiveness

You're right. Guilliman's aura is about 75% offensive effectiveness, not 50% offensive power.

However, I do asset that he's buffing units that are 33% gun:
A Lasback is 38% gun-by-cost.
A Leviathan Dreadnought is 33% gun-by-cost.
Plasma troops are about 50% gun-by-cost.

What I'm saying though is that this just doesn't make sense as a way to think about the value of a buff. The division of point costs between base bodies and weapons is simply not a good representation of how many points you're paying for defense vs offense. As I pointed out, absolutely nobody would take a naked Predator, if that were an option. Paying 90 points for the Predator's body is only ever justifiable because that body can carry some guns, and you're ignoring this offensive capability when you totally ignore those 90 points when adding up what Guilliman is effectively buffing. Offense and defense just aren't separable like this. That's why I suggested the more useful measure of taking the square root of the improvement. If Guilliman buffs something's offense to 1.78x while leaving its defense untouched, this is as if he's increasing the unit's budget by a factor of ~sqrt(1.78)=1.33x.

You can see that this is reasonable by asking what happens if you have huge armies of identical units firing at each other simultaneously, just as a toy model. If I have 1000 Marines exchanging fire with 1000 Marines at 24", then each army is going to take down about 11% of the other each volley. Now suppose that one side has Guilliman's buff applied, so that they get 2x as many wounds (re-rolling a 3+ and then a 4+). How many Guilliman-buffed Marines do you need to fight 1000 unbuffed Marines to a draw? I'm not sure how you personally would go about trying to figure this out -- your method of looking at the gun costs seems to break for things with free guns. But my way is to say that the square root of 2 is 1.41, and so I'd say that about 1000/sqrt(2) = 707 Guilliman-buffed Marines are a fair fight for 1000 unbuffed Marines. And, sure enough, if they're exchanging fire simultaneously then both armies are going to whittle each other down at the same rate, about 16% of their strength each volley. It seems fair to say that the buff was worth the cost of 293 Marines, or 41% of the cost of the 707 being used.

Edit: But yes, I would absolutely love to see a sort of generic Living Saint HQ. I still think that even if you could only take her in Sisters armies and Sisters had a couple more reasonable HQ choices, Celestine would still be basically an auto-take in most Sisters lists, but they're rare enough in general that this wouldn't bother me; GW would just need to balance around the availability of Celestine.

**doktor_g**

How about using likelihood of wounds caused for comparison?

**Inquisitor Lord Katherine**

Dionysodorus wrote:
Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

WRT Guilliman:
Leviathan Dreadnought Stormcannon Array: 1.75x effectiveness
Razorback Lascannons: 1.78x effectiveness

You're right. Guilliman's aura is about 75% offensive effectiveness, not 50% offensive power.

However, I do asset that he's buffing units that are 33% gun:
A Lasback is 38% gun-by-cost.
A Leviathan Dreadnought is 33% gun-by-cost.
Plasma troops are about 50% gun-by-cost.

What I'm saying though is that this just doesn't make sense as a way to think about the value of a buff. The division of point costs between base bodies and weapons is simply not a good representation of how many points you're paying for defense vs offense. As I pointed out, absolutely nobody would take a naked Predator, if that were an option. Paying 90 points for the Predator's body is only ever justifiable because that body can carry some guns, and you're ignoring this offensive capability when you totally ignore those 90 points when adding up what Guilliman is effectively buffing. Offense and defense just aren't separable like this. That's why I suggested the more useful measure of taking the square root of the improvement. If Guilliman buffs something's offense to 1.78x while leaving its defense untouched, this is as if he's increasing the unit's budget by a factor of ~sqrt(1.78)=1.33x.

You can see that this is reasonable by asking what happens if you have huge armies of identical units firing at each other simultaneously, just as a toy model. If I have 1000 Marines exchanging fire with 1000 Marines at 24", then each army is going to take down about 11% of the other each volley. Now suppose that one side has Guilliman's buff applied, so that they get 2x as many wounds (re-rolling a 3+ and then a 4+). How many Guilliman-buffed Marines do you need to fight 1000 unbuffed Marines to a draw? I'm not sure how you personally would go about trying to figure this out -- your method of looking at the gun costs seems to break for things with free guns. But my way is to say that the square root of 2 is 1.41, and so I'd say that about 1000/sqrt(2) = 707 Guilliman-buffed Marines are a fair fight for 1000 unbuffed Marines. And, sure enough, if they're exchanging fire simultaneously then both armies are going to whittle each other down at the same rate, about 16% of their strength each volley. It seems fair to say that the buff was worth the cost of 293 Marines, or 41% of the cost of the 707 being used.

Edit: But yes, I would absolutely love to see a sort of generic Living Saint HQ. I still think that even if you could only take her in Sisters armies and Sisters had a couple more reasonable HQ choices, Celestine would still be basically an auto-take in most Sisters lists, but they're rare enough in general that this wouldn't bother me; GW would just need to balance around the availability of Celestine.

Sure, squares work, and get that Guilliman needs to support 1 or 2 gun platforms to be about worth his cost, I think.

I don't think we need a non-unique Living Saint. Saints are rare and each is unique, and living ones are even rarer. Celestine is a Living Saint because she has died and returned from the dead [several times].

However, I do thing we need a tactical way to fill the function, as it were. To this end, adding "Jump Pack" to the available upgrades to a Canoness would solve the primary problem, and exchanging her re-rolls ability for granting an Act of Faith would make her tactically identical to Celestine, while keeping Celestine miraculous.

I really just think a lot could be fixed by just giving Canonii Jump Packs. They used to have them, and I see no reason they lost them, particularly because both Genevieve and Eleanore were Canonii before becoming the Geminae Superia, and they have jump packs, so jump-pack Canonii are clearly a canonical thing.

Notably, a single Canoness as-is with a Jump Pack would be considerably more powerful than Celestine. She would have better gun options, would move just as fast using the army's natural Act of Faith, and would grant an aura of re-roll's of to-hit rolls of 1 to units within 6". Re-rolling the missed Meltaguns, and missed fire from the tanks, is very powerful. All things considered, making her distribute Acts of Faith would be weaker than having her distribute re-rolls, assuming you only have 1 Canoness.

However, our Jump Pack units need and Act of Faith each in order to be viable. Seraphim have 6" range, so they need to be able to travel at least 19" in turn on. A Canoness would need to be able to travel at least 13" in order to get within hypothetical combi-melta range, or 17" to get within combi-flamer range. The reason for this is that Dominions have a 22"-27" move range and have weapons with twice the range of Seraphim. With an Act of Faith, Seraphim can compete with Dominions for a place in the list, but with only 12" of move they have no value. The same applies to a Jump Canoness.

Canonii, and characters as a whole, not interfering with Vanguard would actually be the most powerful buff. Then, they could join the Dominions in their transports, thus not counting as a drop on deployment, and still grant their buffs and always be with the troops they intend to buff they they arrive.

**Dionysodorus**

doktor_g wrote:
How about using likelihood of wounds caused for comparison?

I'm not sure what you mean. It's easy to work out how much of an offensive buff Guilliman is providing in different situations. For hitting and wounding on a 3+, he's increasing average output by about 78%. The question is: how many points is this buff worth when applied to a given unit? Obviously the buffed unit is not worth 78% more; if you just took 78% more models you would enjoy the same increase in offense alongside an equal increase in defense. What I'm proposing is that we should assign the buff a value such that what used to be fair fights are still fair fights.

**Inquisitor Lord Katherine**

As an addendum, I find the poll kind of odd.

It strikes me that Special Characters should always be allowed in Competitive play, but that Narrative play would be where you might restrict their use.

After all, in Narrative play is where the argument that Guilliman doesn't fight every battle the Ultramarines are in and Pask isn't part of every IG Regiment actually has merit.

For competitive play, it's just that "oh, X-unit is kinda above the power curve," in which case it's function should be evaluated and adjusted, rather than banned.

So, in that vein, of course they should be allowed in competitive play. There's really not be much point to them otherwise.

**Tidfortad**

I don't really like using named characters, but field them as random dude "x" sometimes. I find it silly that Abaddon would be with my small (in a grand scheme) ~2k point army. Primarchs even more so. I could not possibly fool myself that Mortarion is "Bob the defiled".

I don't mind them because they are OP/UP though. Would love to play a 5k DG game with Mortarion.

**Izural**

I think SC needs balancing via points adjustments, but this is competitive play we're talking about. This is were power gaming lives, so I don't see the issue.

This is like banning cards in MTG standard because EVERYONE is using them.

This issue is, once a codex is out, its in print, so you can only hope for an FAQ, if it ever happens. I do think GW playtest, but they want to sell models, so they undercost them so everyone will buy the new hotness to roflstomp other players.

Either join the power gaming club, or devise some form of extreme anti-meta army to counter what you're seeing and force meta change. Competitive play exists for the extremes of the hobby to play. Are there some ridiculous things that crop up? God yes, the assassin abuse is one of the most broken things i've ever seen in a game system, but do GW care? God no, the sales from assassins alone probably account for a greater revenue stream then the Primaris marines.

For the record, I have never used a SC, nor will I ever use one. I consider it a point of pride if I beat someone using a SC using my generics

**Rolsheen**

The poll is "Should competitive play remove special characters again?". Fairly easy question to answer ( I voted No ) yet the discussion has fixated on just two certain characters again. So I think a better question would be "Are certain characters over used in competitive play? and how to better balance their usage?" Personally I think some characters should have double keyword limits e.g. Roboute Gulliman should only be taken in detachments with <Imperium> and <Ultramarine> keywords.

**Dionysodorus**

Rolsheen wrote:
The poll is "Should competitive play remove special characters again?". Fairly easy question to answer ( I voted No ) yet the discussion has fixated on just two certain characters again. So I think a better question would be "Are certain characters over used in competitive play? and how to better balance their usage?" Personally I think some characters should have double keyword limits e.g. Roboute Gulliman should only be taken in detachments with <Imperium> and <Ultramarine> keywords.

This is pretty trivial since unless you're bringing him and just 2 Knights he's probably in a detachment all by himself.

**Slayer-Fan123**

I'm waiting for all the people that voted yes to come out of hiding and list all the terribly broken special characters that made them vote that way.

**MechaEmperor7000**

Dunno about the others but I voted to remove them because they take away from the generic characters.

Even if they were completely balanced, it still raises the issue of "why not take *special character* instead of a *generic character* in *x-list*".

Special Characters will always come with special rules that buff others in ways generic characters can't, or have special Weapons that generic characters don't have access to. If these are completely, point for point, balanced against generic characters, there is still no reason to take a comparative generic character over a special character since the special one just flat out has options the generic one doesn't.

For example, in any situation, Typhus is better than a Lord of Contagion simply because Typhus buffs Poxwalkers. Even if they are both perfectly balanced for their points and effects, you'd still want Typhus over a Lord of Contagion simply because the latter flat out cannot buff Poxwalkers in that way.

This is kinda why I think they would be better suited to just being in Narrative Play, as in a pure number-crunching scenario they will always either be objectively better than their generic counterparts (even if completely balanced) or be objectively worse (overcosted to compensate for cheaper characters). Narrative, at least, is more broad and loose, so characters would be less of an impact.

Failing that, I would instead recommend that their special abilities be turned into a set of Character traits (different from Warlord traits so you can still have multiple characters in a list. These would obviously cost points) while their wargear become Relics; this way if you wanna field a special character, he is simply represented by a specific combination of Character Traits and Relic Wargear, which other generic characters can take if you simply do not wish to have this special character.

(In the Typhus Example, they could turn him into "The Destroyer Hive" relic and "Poxmaster" Trait, with the Manreaper being a generic one since it's so common. Any lord of Contagion can thus take those items, you could represent the actual Typhus with both, or run your own generic Lord of Contagion with both without having to call it typhus.)

**Dionysodorus**

MechaEmperor7000 wrote:

For example, in any situation, Typhus is better than a Lord of Contagion simply because Typhus buffs Poxwalkers. Even if they are both perfectly balanced for their points and effects, you'd still want Typhus over a Lord of Contagion simply because the latter flat out cannot buff Poxwalkers in that way.

I mean, unless you aren't bringing many Poxwalkers. Right? Like, yes, if special characters with special rules are balanced, then you will want to bring them if your list will benefit a lot from their rules, and you won't want to bring them if your list won't benefit a lot from their rules. I don't see the problem. That's how every unit works.

It's not really true that the special characters have "options" that the generic ones don't. They typically don't have options at all. They have particular rules that they presumably pay for whether you want them to or not. If they're balanced, then you should sometimes want to pay extra for those rules and sometimes not. The problem with Typhus was that he was just clearly a better, cheaper LoC -- he had the Poxwalker buff and psychic powers, and cost less. Now he costs more, so maybe Death Guard lists that bring lots of Plague Marines instead of Poxwalkers won't find him very appealing (though being able to cast 2 psychic powers a turn is probably worth his extra points in almost every case regardless -- he's still under-costed relative to LoCs).

**Inquisitor Lord Katherine**

MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
Dunno about the others but I voted to remove them because they take away from the generic characters.

Even if they were completely balanced, it still raises the issue of "why not take *special character* instead of a *generic character* in *x-list*".

Special Characters will always come with special rules that buff others in ways generic characters can't, or have special Weapons that generic characters don't have access to. If these are completely, point for point, balanced against generic characters, there is still no reason to take a comparative generic character over a special character since the special one just flat out has options the generic one doesn't.

For example, in any situation, Typhus is better than a Lord of Contagion simply because Typhus buffs Poxwalkers. Even if they are both perfectly balanced for their points and effects, you'd still want Typhus over a Lord of Contagion simply because the latter flat out cannot buff Poxwalkers in that way.

This is kinda why I think they would be better suited to just being in Narrative Play, as in a pure number-crunching scenario they will always either be objectively better than their generic counterparts (even if completely balanced) or be objectively worse (overcosted to compensate for cheaper characters). Narrative, at least, is more broad and loose, so characters would be less of an impact.

Failing that, I would instead recommend that their special abilities be turned into a set of Character traits (different from Warlord traits so you can still have multiple characters in a list. These would obviously cost points) while their wargear become Relics; this way if you wanna field a special character, he is simply represented by a specific combination of Character Traits and Relic Wargear, which other generic characters can take if you simply do not wish to have this special character.

(In the Typhus Example, they could turn him into "The Destroyer Hive" relic and "Poxmaster" Trait, with the Manreaper being a generic one since it's so common. Any lord of Contagion can thus take those items, you could represent the actual Typhus with both, or run your own generic Lord of Contagion with both without having to call it typhus.)

That's the precisely opposite logic of what I thought.

I figured that, in competitive play, it doesn't really matter that I'm the Cadian 9125th Armored and Pask is from Cadian 423rd Armored. I mean, it's not any more lore breaking than having the Order of the Argent Shroud fight against the Ultramarines. As an addendum, the "fun with Keywords" of having all my things use the CATACHAN keyword despite being the Cadian 9125th Armored so that they can be buffed by Harker confuses people.

In narrative play, it makes sense that you wouldn't want Special Characters, because my narrative battle is about the Cadian 9125th Armored's battle against the Tyranids, not about the Cadian 423rd Armored.

I do think it's important for a Special Character's role to be able to be met my non-special characters, because otherwise strategies aren't scalable to multiple game sizes. This game already has a fairly major problem with scalability, Special Characters don't really help.

**MechaEmperor7000**

Dionysodorus wrote:
MechaEmperor7000 wrote:

For example, in any situation, Typhus is better than a Lord of Contagion simply because Typhus buffs Poxwalkers. Even if they are both perfectly balanced for their points and effects, you'd still want Typhus over a Lord of Contagion simply because the latter flat out cannot buff Poxwalkers in that way.

I mean, unless you aren't bringing many Poxwalkers. Right? Like, yes, if special characters with special rules are balanced, then you will want to bring them if your list will benefit a lot from their rules, and you won't want to bring them if your list won't benefit a lot from their rules. I don't see the problem. That's how every unit works.

It's not really true that the special characters have "options" that the generic ones don't. They typically don't have options at all. They have particular rules that they presumably pay for whether you want them to or not. If they're balanced, then you should sometimes want to pay extra for those rules and sometimes not. The problem with Typhus was that he was just clearly a better, cheaper LoC -- he had the Poxwalker buff and psychic powers, and cost less. Now he costs more, so maybe Death Guard lists that bring lots of Plague Marines instead of Poxwalkers won't find him very appealing (though being able to cast 2 psychic powers a turn is probably worth his extra points in almost every case regardless -- he's still under-costed relative to LoCs).

The problem is that Special Characters also have locked wargear, discouraging people from actually customizing their stuff (although this has now become a problem with the newer generic characters too, but that's another issue that I wanna tackle). Typhus will always be armed with the same Manreaper, Destroyer Hive, and special abilities; there's no real reason to make variations on that. This may have been more evident in the last few editions; back in 6th the only way to get zombies was to run Typhus or Necrosis; there was no other option for this. Similarly, in 5th edition The Duke (I can never spell his name) was basically mandatory for Cabal lists because no generic character provided the buffs he had, and many admitted that the only reason the Duke was in their lists was for the buffs. In both cases some really interesting stuff weren't seen a lot on the tabletop simply because people couldn't afford to bring them AND the special character.

Basically my feelings towards not having special characters is because i think their items and special rules shouldn't be unique to them alone in a competitive setting.