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 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.)

Generic characters get more choice in Warlord traits, can get relics, and are typically cheaper. There is several reasons right there.

The current landscape is better than before (where some people took special characters purely for warlord traits sometimes) but I still think those options should be available to generic characters.

On the flip side, is there any downside to removing these rules and wargear's exclusivity from Characters and throwing them into buyable traits, relics and warlord traits? In this theoretical model, a Special Character built to be like it is now would not have an increased cost for them; in fact they'd remain completely identical. But another unit can pay a price to gain a copy of their rules (for example, say Kharn's axe is now a relic that can be taken if Kharn himself isn't in the army).

Couple pages late, but Celestine would be absolutely fine for her cost if she was limited to Ministorum armies only. That or if there was a weaker version for a generic HQ for them.

Edit: The same goes with Guilliman. Limit him to his stupid Ultrabros and keep him out of other lists where he doesn't belong. They said they wanted to remove deathstars which, by their definition, most often occured by mixing factions and armies and made for a snowballing effect of power.

Well...why can you mix armies of the Imperium so easily still? The codices should fix a lot of that issue. Hopefully people will be swayed toward pure armies instead of the mix and match that we have right now.

Keeping the Faction keywords limited is a strong case for it.

After all, if the only Faction Key Word that Guillaman had was <Chapter: Ultramarines>, would he be considered so powerful?

Dionysodorus wrote:

 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.

Sorry, that should have been army not detachment

maybe they should make (Primarchs & such) a specific detachment with -x command points? that way you don't get their aura stuff and extra cp for discounted points.

 Galas wrote:
"Ey guys, some units of Forgeworld are OP, others are fine and others are UP, what should we do, fix their rules or point costs when appropiate?"
"No way! Just ban them!"
"Ok, and what about special characters? I hear 3 or 3 from the 80 or so that exist are OP, should we fix them or..."
"BAN"
"Ok guys. Superh-..."
"BAN THEM ALL"
One week latter they all played with their imaginations.

THIS.

 Charistoph wrote:
Keeping the Faction keywords limited is a strong case for it.

After all, if the only Faction Key Word that Guillaman had was <Chapter: Ultramarines>, would he be considered so powerful?

As much as I hate that they brought a loyalist Primarch back, that makes no sense at all. He is the Lord Commander of the Imperium, of course he should be able to lead any Imperial army.

I don't use special characters as a personal rule. I do very much like armies themed around them and do not like that some armies are simply so much weaker without them. This thread has some very good points both for and against.

I tend to think that, from a lore perspective, special characters are horrible. They make the setting look smaller, they take away from "your dudes" and they undermine anything that happens in a game, because lore wise they've done much greater things.

On the other hand from a game mechanical perspective I can definetly see the appeal in using them. Many special characters have fun special rules, and at the end of the day games are all about having fun. Old sly marbo for instance was highlarious, as where many of the old SM special Captains. Giving the army all kinds of unique gameplay opportunities.

I tend to think that tournament should not put a ban on special characters. In a tournament you play to win and the game will never be perfectly balanced. In a local friendly setting however special characters can easily dominate play because many build their armies with fluff in mind. Therefore it's more up to everyone to not be "that guy" and have their opponents conceit. I don't think a tighter "faction keyword" system would solve things, neither would just a point increase. Personally I'd love to see special rules in a pool that could be taken by generic characters, much like the warlord traits. The only diffrence is that it would be on par with the rules SC get. This way my dudes get the same treatment as your dudes while the SC could retain their iconic wargear and such. I think it would help to mostly balance the problem, even though people would still complain about SC:s stronger stats. Give us the rules without the characters. Give us generic HQ that are more intresting to invest time in and model up.

 Crimson wrote:

 Charistoph wrote:
Keeping the Faction keywords limited is a strong case for it.

After all, if the only Faction Key Word that Guillaman had was <Chapter: Ultramarines>, would he be considered so powerful?

As much as I hate that they brought a loyalist Primarch back, that makes no sense at all. He is the Lord Commander of the Imperium, of course he should be able to lead any Imperial army.

1) That doesn't actually answer the question.

2) When he goes in to battle, are there not going to be at least a significant portion of Ultramarines (or descendants) with him?

 Charistoph wrote:

1) That doesn't actually answer the question.

He would still be OP; boosting a full parking lot marine vehicles and some devastators is plenty powerful. But as the suggestion is absurd to begin with, it is pointless to speculate further.

2) When he goes in to battle, are there not going to be at least a significant portion of Ultramarines (or descendants) with him?

Not necessarily. Guilliman's base of operations is not on Macragge, it's on Terra. It is more likely that he'd be accompanied by some Custodes.

I like special characters in the game, but I don't feel that they should be the default choice for a lot of armies. There seems to be very little choice between things like Commander Pinpoint, Mephiston, Dante, Rowboat Girlyman, Magnus and other characters.

They just provide so much utility to the army for their price that a lot of times it is a no-brainer wether you take them or a generic/two generics based off of how much the named character costs.

I question the premise of this thread, given the arguments on both sides. This is degenerating into an spat about points costs and no one has given a good reason for or against removing special characters. There are some interesting ideas around rules going around, but nothing that makes me think competitive play needs to be adjusted one way or the other.

Yes, some special characters are probably undercosted. But they all cost a lot of points, usually about a quarter or a third of an army. It's not like they are autowin options, I see people losing games with Magnus, Gulliman, Celestine, and others all the time.

In all honesty, the units that have a bigger impact on games are cheap troops choices, especially conscripts. 40k goes up to 7 turns, if someone takes 120 conscripts that's a huge number of wounds to have to dish out, most of the firepower of an opponent's army will be soaked up for a couple turns dealing with them. And they have the ability to return fire, it's not like they are paper tigers.

When you combine that kind of force with a Gulliman or a Celestine, the mechanics of the game work against your opponent. There's not enough time to dish out all the wounds necessary before having to take on a special character, and your forces are going to be diminished by the time they get there. It seems to me that's the real issue.

Someone brought up the idea that a certain percentage of the underlying force needs to represent the faction of the special character. That would be fine, except we have keywords and formations specifically designed for HQs and Lords of War. Given that there are only so many options available to fill these slots in each faction, it would probably make it impossible to take certain special characters were this rule to be adopted.

So, while that rule might work with a Gulliman or a Celestine, it probably works against Orks and maybe even Daemons and would create other complications for players. It would probably be making the whole situation worse.

So there's not a good reason to ban them, forcing some faction choices would probably make the problem worse, and the mechanics of the game offer other kinds of advantages based on wounds versus shot output.

The special character most of my opponents worry about is Abaddon, who I bring to every game. His buffs, special rules around damage, and close combat capabilities make him a beast on the table. I usually position him around some Noise Marines for the rerolls to hit and just go to town on opponents. This combination has worked well for me and could almost be called OP - along with DttFE, I've used it to drop multiple 40 man conscript squads along with Gulliman in a single game (dying Noise Marines are Chaos' snipers.) And I'm about to start bringing Malefic Lords for Smite spam on top of that, and maybe some Earthshaker batteries just to screw with my opponents.

The point of all this: there are other imbalances in the game which likely have a bigger impact on competitive play. They do not involve special characters, at least not the big ones. If you want to fix them, fix the points, but don't try banning them or forcing people to select certain forces as part of their army. Rules changes are likely going to make the problem worse when you consider the armies that DON'T have a special character right now, who already face an uphill battle taking on these characters.

 Crimson wrote:

 Charistoph wrote:

1) That doesn't actually answer the question.

He would still be OP; boosting a full parking lot marine vehicles and some devastators is plenty powerful. But as the suggestion is absurd to begin with, it is pointless to speculate further.

Why is it absurd? It is how Marine Special Characters have been operating since Chapter Tactics have existed.

 Crimson wrote:

2) When he goes in to battle, are there not going to be at least a significant portion of Ultramarines (or descendants) with him?

Not necessarily. Guilliman's base of operations is not on Macragge, it's on Terra. It is more likely that he'd be accompanied by some Custodes.

Not the point. Even when he was running around after Battle for Terra, he was still escorted by his Ultramarines, not Custodes. And far more likely to be having the sons of Macragge then the sons of Fenris, Baal, or Dorn.

 Charistoph wrote:

Why is it absurd? It is how Marine Special Characters have been operating since Chapter Tactics have existed.

It is absurd to limit the Lord Commander of the Imperium to one tiny specific subgroup of armies of the Imperium. It is literally his job to be the leader of the combined forces of the Imperium of Man.

 Crimson wrote:

 Charistoph wrote:

Why is it absurd? It is how Marine Special Characters have been operating since Chapter Tactics have existed.

It is absurd to limit the Lord Commander of the Imperium to one tiny specific subgroup of armies of the Imperium. It is literally his job to be the leader of the combined forces of the Imperium of Man.

And? When he hits the actual field of battle, he is going to do so with a cadre of his Ultramarines (probably Primaris), because everyone else goes to sleep, crying, because they are not an Ultramarine, right?

There are far more absurd plot holes in army creation than that little problem.

 Crimson wrote:

 Charistoph wrote:

Why is it absurd? It is how Marine Special Characters have been operating since Chapter Tactics have existed.

It is absurd to limit the Lord Commander of the Imperium to one tiny specific subgroup of armies of the Imperium. It is literally his job to be the leader of the combined forces of the Imperium of Man.

If you're that bothered by the lore of it you can easily make a lore reason for him to not lead your group....

I'm failing to see a problem here - at least, nothing more than the symptoms of a problem.

Tournament play is about power gaming. That's the play style - play to the meta, buy what you need to win everytime it changes.

Narrative play is about the fluff, and playing an interesting scenario with your mates. If you don't want to use a SC, then don't - it's as easy as that.

If you're after entertaining games of well balanced 40k, then why are you in the tournament scene? Head down to the FLGS and have a ripper of a game with any one of the other guys down there thinking the same thing. So long as they're not 'that guy,' you'll be fine.

I tend to not bring SC myself, because I'm more interested in the fluff aspect of it. For that matter, I run Poxwalkers, LOCs AND no Typhus in sight (I mean sure I'm going to buy Morty, but I mean, look at that face).

This whole problem seems to boil down to more of an issue with the tournament scene, where players are buying armies designed to win tournaments, as opposed to buying armies that look good, play well, and make sense in the fluff.

Yeah, you guys are obviously not taking this even remotely seriously. There are better ways to fix Guilliman, the easiest one is obviously to just increase the point cost, slightly more difficult one is to nerf his aura.

 SexierThanYou13 wrote:
I'm failing to see a problem here - at least, nothing more than the symptoms of a problem.

Tournament play is about power gaming. That's the play style - play to the meta, buy what you need to win everytime it changes.

Narrative play is about the fluff, and playing an interesting scenario with your mates. If you don't want to use a SC, then don't - it's as easy as that.

If you're after entertaining games of well balanced 40k, then why are you in the tournament scene? Head down to the FLGS and have a ripper of a game with any one of the other guys down there thinking the same thing. So long as they're not 'that guy,' you'll be fine.

I tend to not bring SC myself, because I'm more interested in the fluff aspect of it. For that matter, I run Poxwalkers, LOCs AND no Typhus in sight (I mean sure I'm going to buy Morty, but I mean, look at that face).

This whole problem seems to boil down to more of an issue with the tournament scene, where players are buying armies designed to win tournaments, as opposed to buying armies that look good, play well, and make sense in the fluff.

I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding about what most people go to tournaments for. IME most people are there to play games against new opponents, get in 3+ good games in a day/weekend, and have fun. There are a bunch of people that like to compete that don't want to meta chase, but just want to refine their lists and throw down in serious games. People like that want balanced match-ups.

The question that needs to be asked is: Would the removal of special characters have an impactful effect on the lists that would be popular in such tournaments?

 Charistoph wrote:
Keeping the Faction keywords limited is a strong case for it.
After all, if the only Faction Key Word that Guillaman had was <Chapter: Ultramarines>, would he be considered so powerful?

He is still very powerful but you have to commit to your army being blue.
For true competitive players, if the rules require pink with purple pokadots, that is what they will do.
I have a huge army of BT's and I have the Guiliman model and I am trying to convince myself to make a side army of the Ultramarines for the very reason I assume they will go the "Ultramarines" keyword only.

Darsath wrote:
The question that needs to be asked is: Would the removal of special characters have an impactful effect on the lists that would be popular in such tournaments?

Probably not all that much honestly, they would just get replaced with non-special analogs with much the same effect. That said these analogs would make the lists slightly less powerful in most cases.

 Crimson wrote:
Yeah, you guys are obviously not taking this even remotely seriously. There are better ways to fix Guilliman, the easiest one is obviously to just increase the point cost, slightly more difficult one is to nerf his aura.

Specifically to what?
The trick is limiting what units get to use his aura.
The keyword "ultramarines" would be helpful for what army he can be part of, "infantry" for the aura could help limit any Razorback AC shenanigans so then devastators is what remains.
Some people kept saying his aura could be used for aircraft but I think that is an opportunity thing only, most weapons are too short range so going into hover would be bad.

Being very careful on what units auras are applied to is key, that is largely what made 6th and 7th strange since we were mixing ultramarine librarians with AM/IG conscripts.
It is hard to apply a proper points cost to a unit with auras since you would have to account for how much of a multiplier you gave to units.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
It is funny, this exercise reminds me of failure mode removal or production line bottlenecks: as you remove your top problem, it is immediately replaced by the next worst one: it never ends.

Competitive players are just that: they will find the best the rules will allow.
The trick is balancing out any items that are drastically better than any other alternative and making it less so.
Similar when you are faced with similar threats in an army and no particular one is a target priority.

 mmzero252 wrote:
Couple pages late, but Celestine would be absolutely fine for her cost if she was limited to Ministorum armies only. That or if there was a weaker version for a generic HQ for them.

This is true. Unfortunately, GW clearly intends her to be used with Guard, because they specifically added rules to let her buff Guard armies.

Because raisins.

It's dumb and stupid, but that's the design that GW intentionally and specifically added to Celestine for this last version of her.

 Melissia wrote:

Spoiler:

 mmzero252 wrote:
Couple pages late, but Celestine would be absolutely fine for her cost if she was limited to Ministorum armies only. That or if there was a weaker version for a generic HQ for them.

This is true. Unfortunately, GW clearly intends her to be used with Guard, because they specifically added rules to let her buff Guard armies.

Because raisins.

It's dumb and stupid,[b] but that's the design that GW intentionally and specifically added to Celestine for this last version of her.

Dumb. And stupid.
Why do we follow along?

 mmzero252 wrote:
Couple pages late, but Celestine would be absolutely fine for her cost if she was limited to Ministorum armies only. That or if there was a weaker version for a generic HQ for them.

Edit: The same goes with Guilliman. Limit him to his stupid Ultrabros and keep him out of other lists where he doesn't belong. They said they wanted to remove deathstars which, by their definition, most often occured by mixing factions and armies and made for a snowballing effect of power.

Well...why can you mix armies of the Imperium so easily still? The codices should fix a lot of that issue. Hopefully people will be swayed toward pure armies instead of the mix and match that we have right now.

I whole-heartily agree. The soup nonsense is really tarnishing a good 8th ed.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Talizvar wrote:

 Crimson wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:
It is funny, this exercise reminds me of failure mode removal or production line bottlenecks: as you remove your top problem, it is immediately replaced by the next worst one: it never ends.

Competitive players are just that: they will find the best the rules will allow.
The trick is balancing out any items that are drastically better than any other alternative and making it less so.
Similar when you are faced with similar threats in an army and no particular one is a target priority.

Except that in industry you weigh the cost of doing so before you keep removing bottle necks.

If your final solution is you are left with a bunch of HQ choices that are all really good, then you have an HQ problem compared to other units, which is the game dynamic most of us want. (Characters SHOULD be really good.)

The issue with special characters is they are inherently fluffy. They should be broken and powerful, because in fluff terms they have a HUGE impact on the universe as a whole. They should be fun to use, and powerful, not balanced and boring. But these types of things do not belong in competitive settings. I should not be penalized because the Saint is too good not to take, of course she is too good not to take, she's the freaking Saint.

You have competing ideologies from a game standpoint, they should not be mixed imo.

There are two legitimate reasons to not use unique characters in non-narrative games:

Having two players with the same PRIMARCH (with the same one-of-a-kind 'emperor's sword,' for example) is .. unequivocally silly. There's no way around that.

The simple fact that unique characters have lore and back story implies they should not have their fate decided in a random game of 40k.

Allow me to interject the thoughts of someone who has literally played one game of 40K ever.

The original reason I was interested in 40K was that I could build my own original force exactly how I wanted it, and it would be entirely unique. No other army I would encounter would be like it.

That being said, I never wanted to use special characters because that would mean my character and your character would look the same. Aesthetically I just never wanted to see that.

For the most part I have no problem with two people playing the same unique character against each other because you can easily say that your special character is just some other guy who behaves like that special character on the battlefield. Paint them up in a unique way and there you go. No problem.

Rowboat does present a different issue, though. He is the only active loyal Primarch, so saying your model is just some oversized chapter master and not actually Gillyman is a bit more of a stretch.

More to the point, if someone wants to run special characters then by all means I think they should be able to do it; however, if someone doesn't like the idea of special characters they shouldn't be at a substantial disadvantage just because they want to take generic HQs versus those special characters.

I don't play Space Marines and I don't have their codex, but I feel like taking a generic captain and lieutenant should allow me to get similar buffs as taking say Roboute. Now if Robooty is higher toughness and better in close combat that is fine as long as the points reflect that.

The only specific thing I have heard about from the Space Marine codex that I don't like that has to do with Mr. Primarch is that he gives you +3 command points just for taking him; whereas, if I want a generic Chapter Master I would have to pay three command points. That is a six point swing. I really don't feel like that is taken into enough context with regards to the point values.

Anyway, the bottom line is it comes down to point balance. If the points are balanced well then you won't see every army running the same special characters because there would be other choices in the codex or index that produce similar effects for similar points costs. From what I have read it does not seem that this is the case for several special characters across different armies.

In summary, run what you want, but let's see points balancing so if someone doesn't want to run a special character they don't have to do it if they want to be competitive. Set it up so we can all play the style of army we want and still have fun and be competitive.

Thanks for reading this venty, long, rambling post!

jaxor1983 wrote:
There are two legitimate reasons to not use unique characters in non-narrative games:

Having two players with the same PRIMARCH (with the same one-of-a-kind 'emperor's sword,' for example) is .. unequivocally silly. There's no way around that.

The simple fact that unique characters have lore and back story implies they should not have their fate decided in a random game of 40k.

Both of those reasons are fluff/narrative reasons.

In a non-narrative game how is either of these a problem?