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I always thought proper Primarch level rules for 40k would be something like:

We each deploy our Primarch or Primarch level being. Each turn they march directly towards each other killing any enemy model unlucky enough to find itself within 6" of said Primarch. When they reach each other they fight. For the rest of the game they fight. On each players turn they move d3 in a random direction still locked in combat. Again each Primarch killing any enemy model unlucky enough to be caught up in the Titanic struggle.

Why? Because Lt Dan should not be able to kill a Primarch simply because he charged and swings first with his hammer and Angron got unlucky with his saves. Primarch battles should be Epic. And yet they never are when i see them on the table. I'm looking at you Mortarion when you got run over by a Baneblade. Or when Magnus died to Lasgun fire that one time. Or when Gulliman tripped on a hair-squig and broke his silly neck. Ok that last one didn't happen. But you get the point. Seeing any Primarch get chumped makes them far less epic.

Justyn wrote:
I always thought proper Primarch level rules for 40k would be something like:

We each deploy our Primarch or Primarch level being. Each turn they march directly towards each other killing any enemy model unlucky enough to find itself within 6" of said Primarch. When they reach each other they fight. For the rest of the game they fight. On each players turn they move d3 in a random direction still locked in combat. Again each Primarch killing any enemy model unlucky enough to be caught up in the Titanic struggle.

Why? Because Lt Dan should not be able to kill a Primarch simply because he charged and swings first with his hammer and Angron got unlucky with his saves. Primarch battles should be Epic. And yet they never are when i see them on the table. I'm looking at you Mortarion when you got run over by a Baneblade. Or when Magnus died to Lasgun fire that one time. Or when Gulliman tripped on a hair-squig and broke his silly neck. Ok that last one didn't happen. But you get the point. Seeing any Primarch get chumped makes them far less epic.

Yeah, I pictured it this way too...
The weight of future-history also bear representing.

Some power of destiny that doesn't let the (anti)hero fall.

Justyn wrote:
I always thought proper Primarch level rules for 40k would be something like:

We each deploy our Primarch or Primarch level being. Each turn they march directly towards each other killing any enemy model unlucky enough to find itself within 6" of said Primarch. When they reach each other they fight. For the rest of the game they fight. On each players turn they move d3 in a random direction still locked in combat. Again each Primarch killing any enemy model unlucky enough to be caught up in the Titanic struggle.

Except WH40k doesn't support or reward this behavior, quite the opposite. Two heroes (not just primarchs, but pretty much any named characters of similar power) dueling each other always boils down to who rolls better saves, it can't get any less epic than that.
It's no more an RPG than a game of risk is.

Why? Because Lt Dan should not be able to kill a Primarch simply because he charged and swings first with his hammer and Angron got unlucky with his saves. Primarch battles should be Epic. And yet they never are when i see them on the table. I'm looking at you Mortarion when you got run over by a Baneblade. Or when Magnus died to Lasgun fire that one time. Or when Gulliman tripped on a hair-squig and broke his silly neck. Ok that last one didn't happen. But you get the point. Seeing any Primarch get chumped makes them far less epic.

The other two didn't happen either. You also need to understand that some of the ridiculous feats Primarchs(and others) have done during their respective novels are nothing but plot armor and overblown story-telling. Having an enjoyable game is far more important that doing all the silly stuff that happen in the lore.
I often face Magnus and play Mortarion regularly myself. I also assure you that both Magnus and Mortarion leave an epic portion of devastation on the battlefield unless they are removed ASAP - and the amount of firepower to remove them is non-trivial either. We are talking about a single person taking the same punishment that's needed to remove small titans, not even greater demons can match that.
If you are looking for immersion, you should try to interpret game events in a way that keep you immersed, rather than tearing yourself out of it whenever anything doesn't go exactly as you envisioned it.

The other two didn't happen either. You also need to understand that some of the ridiculous feats Primarchs(and others) have done during their respective novels are nothing but plot armor and overblown story-telling. Having an enjoyable game is far more important that doing all the silly stuff that happen in the lore.
I often face Magnus and play Mortarion regularly myself. I also assure you that both Magnus and Mortarion leave an epic portion of devastation on the battlefield unless they are removed ASAP - and the amount of firepower to remove them is non-trivial either. We are talking about a single person taking the same punishment that's needed to remove small titans, not even greater demons can match that.
If you are looking for immersion, I suggest immersing yourself instead throwing a tantrum as soon as something doesn't match your head-canon.

Man, if posting an off hand thought online is throwing a tantrum in your book I'd hate to be around you in RL. Do you react the same way when people ask you if you are having a nice day? If they comment that the weather is nice? Have a nice day, I hope the weather where you live is great!!!


The other two are things I have seen happen on the tabletop. That was the point of the thought. That said if they make a Primarch (or similar model) for something I play, hell yes I'll use it if the model looks cool. Cool models > all.

Jack Flask wrote:
-snip-
So yeah, I don't know, but the idea that the Primarchs are "too big for 40k" just seems pretty laughable when you stop to consider all the other rediculous stuff running around gaming tables since the start of the game.

And this is why it was a mistake for GW to make Special Characters the focus of both the game and the lore, rather than opponent's permission only extras meant for narrative games. The idea that stuff like Pheonix Lords and C'tan would show up regularly on the tabletop has *not* been around "since the start of the game". Up until probably 5th edition the focus was very much on Your Dudes and you brought out special characters for narrative campaigns, or "my dad could beat up your dad" joke games, or just for a bit of variety on occasion. Some people certainly tried to bring their favourite snowflake to every game, and some players were willing to accommodate that, but it was very much not the default approach.

40K as saturday morning cartoon where everyone plays along with the story about the Big Hero Punchy Men is still a pretty recent state of affairs.

 Yodhrin wrote:

Jack Flask wrote:
-snip-
So yeah, I don't know, but the idea that the Primarchs are "too big for 40k" just seems pretty laughable when you stop to consider all the other rediculous stuff running around gaming tables since the start of the game.

And this is why it was a mistake for GW to make Special Characters the focus of both the game and the lore, rather than opponent's permission only extras meant for narrative games. The idea that stuff like Pheonix Lords and C'tan would show up regularly on the tabletop has *not* been around "since the start of the game". Up until probably 5th edition the focus was very much on Your Dudes and you brought out special characters for narrative campaigns, or "my dad could beat up your dad" joke games, or just for a bit of variety on occasion. Some people certainly tried to bring their favourite snowflake to every game, and some players were willing to accommodate that, but it was very much not the default approach.

40K as saturday morning cartoon where everyone plays along with the story about the Big Hero Punchy Men is still a pretty recent state of affairs.

You are officially considered old when you refer to events that happened a decade ago as "recent". And that's assuming that this actually started with 5th, in my area named characters were pretty normal even during 4th.

 Jidmah wrote:

Spoiler:

Justyn wrote:
I always thought proper Primarch level rules for 40k would be something like:

We each deploy our Primarch or Primarch level being. Each turn they march directly towards each other killing any enemy model unlucky enough to find itself within 6" of said Primarch. When they reach each other they fight. For the rest of the game they fight. On each players turn they move d3 in a random direction still locked in combat. Again each Primarch killing any enemy model unlucky enough to be caught up in the Titanic struggle.

Except WH40k doesn't support or reward this behavior, quite the opposite. Two heroes (not just primarchs, but pretty much any named characters of similar power) dueling each other always boils down to who rolls better saves, it can't get any less epic than that.
It's no more an RPG than a game of risk is.

Why? Because Lt Dan should not be able to kill a Primarch simply because he charged and swings first with his hammer and Angron got unlucky with his saves. Primarch battles should be Epic. And yet they never are when i see them on the table. I'm looking at you Mortarion when you got run over by a Baneblade. Or when Magnus died to Lasgun fire that one time. Or when Gulliman tripped on a hair-squig and broke his silly neck. Ok that last one didn't happen. But you get the point. Seeing any Primarch get chumped makes them far less epic.

The other two didn't happen either. You also need to understand that some of the ridiculous feats Primarchs(and others) have done during their respective novels are nothing but plot armor and overblown story-telling. Having an enjoyable game is far more important that doing all the silly stuff that happen in the lore.

I often face Magnus and play Mortarion regularly myself. I also assure you that both Magnus and Mortarion leave an epic portion of devastation on the battlefield unless they are removed ASAP - and the amount of firepower to remove them is non-trivial either. We are talking about a single person taking the same punishment that's needed to remove small titans, not even greater demons can match that.
If you are looking for immersion, I suggest immersing yourself instead throwing a tantrum as soon as something doesn't match your head-canon.

I feel like the level of vitriol you're bringing is uncalled for, but I do agree with what I think you are trying to convey.
In general after reading Dakka for so long I've noticed that the vast majority of players seem really bad at using their imagination to properly contextualize their games within the setting.

Basically, players should be assuming the following about all of their 40k games:

The battle on your table is not the entire battle which would actually be occurring in the narrative. If not for the number of units present then almost certainly for the scale of the engagement area.

The battle you are playing is NOT just a normal engagement within a larger warzone. You are playing the inflection point of that conflict, the moment and location at which one army pushes the other onto the back foot. (Killteam can largely be an exception to this)

Named characters reduced to 0 wounds are NOT killed, rather their removal from the table indicates said character either being incapacitated or forced into retreat due to non-trivial injuries. This also applies to players' homebrew characters unless decided otherwise in advance for things like narrative campaigns. ("Hey for our narrative campaign do you want to make any character deaths permanent?")

If those 3 assumptions are woven into your tabletop narrative then it's really hard to find a situation which compromises your immersion.
That's of course assuming you are playing a game with any narrative basis at all. If you are playing unorganized pick-up games or building your force based on "efficiency" then you forfeit all rights to complain about anything narrative related.

Jack Flask wrote:
I feel like the level of vitriol you're bringing is uncalled for, but I do agree with what I think you are trying to convey.
In general after reading Dakka for so long I've noticed that the vast majority of players seem really bad at using their imagination to properly contextualize their games within the setting.

Basically, players should be assuming the following about all of their 40k games:

The battle on your table is not the entire battle which would actually be occurring in the narrative. If not for the number of units present then almost certainly for the scale of the engagement area.

The battle you are playing is NOT just a normal engagement within a larger warzone. You are playing the inflection point of that conflict, the moment and location at which one army pushes the other onto the back foot. (Killteam can largely be an exception to this)

Named characters reduced to 0 wounds are NOT killed, rather their removal from the table indicates said character either being incapacitated or forced into retreat due to non-trivial injuries. This also applies to players' homebrew characters unless decided otherwise in advance for things like narrative campaigns. ("Hey for our narrative campaign do you want to make any character deaths permanent?")

If those 3 assumptions are woven into your tabletop narrative then it's really hard to find a situation which compromises your immersion.
That's of course assuming you are playing a game with any narrative basis at all. If you are playing unorganized pick-up games or building your force based on "efficiency" then you forfeit all rights to complain about anything narrative related.

I thought every player thought these three things?

Aren't they common assumptions we all hold when playing our games?

 Jidmah wrote:

If you are looking for immersion, I suggest immersing yourself instead throwing a tantrum as soon as something doesn't match your head-canon.

That was totally uncalled for in response to such a well thought out and rational post, please don't post in a similar manner again (not least its against rule1).

That was intended to sound a lot less harsh than it did. I'll change it.

 Yodhrin wrote:

Jack Flask wrote:
-snip-
So yeah, I don't know, but the idea that the Primarchs are "too big for 40k" just seems pretty laughable when you stop to consider all the other rediculous stuff running around gaming tables since the start of the game.

And this is why it was a mistake for GW to make Special Characters the focus of both the game and the lore, rather than opponent's permission only extras meant for narrative games. The idea that stuff like Pheonix Lords and C'tan would show up regularly on the tabletop has *not* been around "since the start of the game". Up until probably 5th edition the focus was very much on Your Dudes and you brought out special characters for narrative campaigns, or "my dad could beat up your dad" joke games, or just for a bit of variety on occasion. Some people certainly tried to bring their favourite snowflake to every game, and some players were willing to accommodate that, but it was very much not the default approach.

40K as saturday morning cartoon where everyone plays along with the story about the Big Hero Punchy Men is still a pretty recent state of affairs.

Yeah, I never liked the idea of Special Characters. They just feel wrong.
Its like being able to field Patton against the Russians in a WW2 game. It just doesn't make sense if you think about it. Like, what if Patton gets blown up? What is he even doing fighting Russians? Its a similar problem here.
It doesn't help that Special Characters tend to have powerful abilities, so of course you are going to field them if you can.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Jack Flask wrote:

Named characters reduced to 0 wounds are NOT killed, rather their removal from the table indicates said character either being incapacitated or forced into retreat due to non-trivial injuries. This also applies to players' homebrew characters unless decided otherwise in advance for things like narrative campaigns. ("Hey for our narrative campaign do you want to make any character deaths permanent?")

That's what the assumption is, but it does get a bit weird when they lose their last wound in melee or to a lascannon or something, or if you think about logistics
Like, does their opponent not just cut off the SC's head to make sure, and wouldn't a wound from a lascannon or explosion be fatal? What if the special character's army loses the battle? How are they going to retrieve the incapacitated character?

Funnily enough, Demons, Necrons and C'tan actually make the most sense in this regard, as they are practically immortal; they can just teleport out and regenerate. Everything else gets a bit strange.
Maybe there should a rule where if a named character falls in battle, you need to have a unit nearby to retrieve his body, or else your opponent gets extra VP for capturing someone important.

 Yodhrin wrote:

Jack Flask wrote:
-snip-
So yeah, I don't know, but the idea that the Primarchs are "too big for 40k" just seems pretty laughable when you stop to consider all the other rediculous stuff running around gaming tables since the start of the game.

And this is why it was a mistake for GW to make Special Characters the focus of both the game and the lore, rather than opponent's permission only extras meant for narrative games. The idea that stuff like Pheonix Lords and C'tan would show up regularly on the tabletop has *not* been around "since the start of the game". Up until probably 5th edition the focus was very much on Your Dudes and you brought out special characters for narrative campaigns, or "my dad could beat up your dad" joke games, or just for a bit of variety on occasion. Some people certainly tried to bring their favourite snowflake to every game, and some players were willing to accommodate that, but it was very much not the default approach.

40K as saturday morning cartoon where everyone plays along with the story about the Big Hero Punchy Men is still a pretty recent state of affairs.

U wot m8.

I've been around since Rogue Trader, too. And, I hate to break this to you, but... that was a while ago. Like, quite a while ago. If we were to measure it in years it would be "quite a few". There are countries that existed at that point that no longer exist now. There are countries that exist now that did not back then. The entire Discworld series bar only one came out between then and now. That's 40 novels.

I loved it too, but not only have times changed, so has 40k. It literally isn't the same game. It has gone from an RPG-style skirmish to a mass battle wargame. As for being "ridiculous", that aspect has never changed. If people want to have Roboute Guilliman walking around their battlefields, then that's exactly what they can have. Imagination is a wonderful thing. Possibly why it is apparently in such small supply.

It might have changed but it's still game of tiny skirmishesh

Justyn wrote:
I always thought proper Primarch level rules for 40k would be something like:

We each deploy our Primarch or Primarch level being. Each turn they march directly towards each other killing any enemy model unlucky enough to find itself within 6" of said Primarch. When they reach each other they fight. For the rest of the game they fight. On each players turn they move d3 in a random direction still locked in combat. Again each Primarch killing any enemy model unlucky enough to be caught up in the Titanic struggle.

That sounds really boring, and the last thing the game needs is more lethality for the sake of "cinematic experiences"

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

Justyn wrote:
I always thought proper Primarch level rules for 40k would be something like:

We each deploy our Primarch or Primarch level being. Each turn they march directly towards each other killing any enemy model unlucky enough to find itself within 6" of said Primarch. When they reach each other they fight. For the rest of the game they fight. On each players turn they move d3 in a random direction still locked in combat. Again each Primarch killing any enemy model unlucky enough to be caught up in the Titanic struggle.

That sounds really boring, and the last thing the game needs is more lethality for the sake of "cinematic experiences"

Yeah, this is like when people say they'd like to play games where you get 8 space marines and they have 2++ rerollable save 6 wounds boltguns fire 20 shots etc etc... "marines the way they're supposed to be in the lore!"

Like, people love playing against armies of nothing but imperial knights so much, right? Why wouldn't it be fun to have models that cannot be harmed in any meaningful way but they're tiny instead of big?

Justyn wrote:

Why? Because Lt Dan should not be able to kill a Primarch simply because he charged and swings first with his hammer and Angron got unlucky with his saves. Primarch battles should be Epic. And yet they never are when i see them on the table. I'm looking at you Mortarion when you got run over by a Baneblade. Or when Magnus died to Lasgun fire that one time. Or when Gulliman tripped on a hair-squig and broke his silly neck. Ok that last one didn't happen. But you get the point. Seeing any Primarch get chumped makes them far less epic.

That certainly is the best thing about giving these guys rules.

 Yodhrin wrote:

Jack Flask wrote:
-snip-
So yeah, I don't know, but the idea that the Primarchs are "too big for 40k" just seems pretty laughable when you stop to consider all the other rediculous stuff running around gaming tables since the start of the game.

And this is why it was a mistake for GW to make Special Characters the focus of both the game and the lore, rather than opponent's permission only extras meant for narrative games. The idea that stuff like Pheonix Lords and C'tan would show up regularly on the tabletop has *not* been around "since the start of the game". Up until probably 5th edition the focus was very much on Your Dudes and you brought out special characters for narrative campaigns, or "my dad could beat up your dad" joke games, or just for a bit of variety on occasion. Some people certainly tried to bring their favourite snowflake to every game, and some players were willing to accommodate that, but it was very much not the default approach.

40K as saturday morning cartoon where everyone plays along with the story about the Big Hero Punchy Men is still a pretty recent state of affairs.

Ummmm, no. This is very much a thing that will vary by locale and is not universally true. For example, several areas in the US had wide usage of Special Characters way back in 3rd, which was 20 years ago. It's not something new or recent and your local area's idea of "default approach" was and is not everyone's.

Yeah, Special Characters aren't new. They've been around for a very long time. They were even around in WHFB.

They tended to be pretty expensive points wise though in earlier editions, iirc. I think they are relatively cheaper nowadays.

2nd ed is full to the brim of special characters and pretty much everyone played them back then.

Primarchs should get that rule Morathi has in AoS where they can’t take more than a certain amount of dmg per phase. She can’t take more than 6 per phase and dudes like Morty could do with this kind of rule.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I need to know if Jain and her banshees are getting updated rules besides Jain’s one ability and the Exarch Powers. I want them to be good sah bahd.

 Crimson wrote:

Justyn wrote:

Why? Because Lt Dan should not be able to kill a Primarch simply because he charged and swings first with his hammer and Angron got unlucky with his saves. Primarch battles should be Epic. And yet they never are when i see them on the table. I'm looking at you Mortarion when you got run over by a Baneblade. Or when Magnus died to Lasgun fire that one time. Or when Gulliman tripped on a hair-squig and broke his silly neck. Ok that last one didn't happen. But you get the point. Seeing any Primarch get chumped makes them far less epic.

That certainly is the best thing about giving these guys rules.

This. Part of the fun of 40k is Terminators getting ganked by grotz, and the fact that long odds sometimes come true. In the books protagonists and heros just rolls 6s for everything.

 ekwatts wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:

Jack Flask wrote:
-snip-
So yeah, I don't know, but the idea that the Primarchs are "too big for 40k" just seems pretty laughable when you stop to consider all the other rediculous stuff running around gaming tables since the start of the game.

And this is why it was a mistake for GW to make Special Characters the focus of both the game and the lore, rather than opponent's permission only extras meant for narrative games. The idea that stuff like Pheonix Lords and C'tan would show up regularly on the tabletop has *not* been around "since the start of the game". Up until probably 5th edition the focus was very much on Your Dudes and you brought out special characters for narrative campaigns, or "my dad could beat up your dad" joke games, or just for a bit of variety on occasion. Some people certainly tried to bring their favourite snowflake to every game, and some players were willing to accommodate that, but it was very much not the default approach.

40K as saturday morning cartoon where everyone plays along with the story about the Big Hero Punchy Men is still a pretty recent state of affairs.

U wot m8.

I've been around since Rogue Trader, too. And, I hate to break this to you, but... that was a while ago. Like, quite a while ago. If we were to measure it in years it would be "quite a few". There are countries that existed at that point that no longer exist now. There are countries that exist now that did not back then. The entire Discworld series bar only one came out between then and now. That's 40 novels.

I loved it too, but not only have times changed, so has 40k. It literally isn't the same game. It has gone from an RPG-style skirmish to a mass battle wargame. As for being "ridiculous", that aspect has never changed. If people want to have Roboute Guilliman walking around their battlefields, then that's exactly what they can have. Imagination is a wonderful thing. Possibly why it is apparently in such small supply.

I have Chapter Approved - the first Army lists released for Rogue Trader - loads of Special Characters - it also had rules for Giant war machines etc etc etc

Yup... lots of special characters in second edition... hence why it was nicknamed herohammer!! That being said none were clearly as powerful as having a primarch!

 An Actual Englishman wrote:

Jack Flask wrote:
I feel like the level of vitriol you're bringing is uncalled for, but I do agree with what I think you are trying to convey.
In general after reading Dakka for so long I've noticed that the vast majority of players seem really bad at using their imagination to properly contextualize their games within the setting.

Basically, players should be assuming the following about all of their 40k games:

The battle on your table is not the entire battle which would actually be occurring in the narrative. If not for the number of units present then almost certainly for the scale of the engagement area.

The battle you are playing is NOT just a normal engagement within a larger warzone. You are playing the inflection point of that conflict, the moment and location at which one army pushes the other onto the back foot. (Killteam can largely be an exception to this)

Named characters reduced to 0 wounds are NOT killed, rather their removal from the table indicates said character either being incapacitated or forced into retreat due to non-trivial injuries. This also applies to players' homebrew characters unless decided otherwise in advance for things like narrative campaigns. ("Hey for our narrative campaign do you want to make any character deaths permanent?")

If those 3 assumptions are woven into your tabletop narrative then it's really hard to find a situation which compromises your immersion.
That's of course assuming you are playing a game with any narrative basis at all. If you are playing unorganized pick-up games or building your force based on "efficiency" then you forfeit all rights to complain about anything narrative related.

I thought every player thought these three things?

Aren't they common assumptions we all hold when playing our games?

No, they aren't. There is nothing to suggest there is a wider battle going on, battles are just standard meeting engagements, and a character vaped by a lascannon is very much killed outright.

But then, the game and fluff really have nothing at all to do with each other. They're simply incompatible- the best way to enjoy the game is just treat it as a game, not a story telling device. It is extremely bad at that. A series of random charts would produce a more coherent narrative.


As usual, the answer to any question posed as 'doesn't everybody think that?' is NO.
There is no hivemind or One True Way.

 Legiocustodes wrote:
Yup... lots of special characters in second edition... hence why it was nicknamed herohammer!! That being said none were clearly as powerful as having a primarch!

The 2nd ed Codex Chaos also allowed you to build characters that were significantly more powerful than Abaddon or Khârn. A Chaos Lord with all 4 marks, terminator armour, praise of Khorne, a daemon weapon, a power fist and a displacer field was nigh unkillable and packed a nasty punch. Yeah, a 3++ followed by a re-rollable 2+ on 2D6 save. Good times!

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

Spoiler:

 Yodhrin wrote:

Jack Flask wrote:
-snip-
So yeah, I don't know, but the idea that the Primarchs are "too big for 40k" just seems pretty laughable when you stop to consider all the other rediculous stuff running around gaming tables since the start of the game.

And this is why it was a mistake for GW to make Special Characters the focus of both the game and the lore, rather than opponent's permission only extras meant for narrative games.
The idea that stuff like Pheonix Lords and C'tan would show up regularly on the tabletop has *not* been around "since the start of the game". Up until probably 5th edition the focus was very much on Your Dudes and you brought out special characters for narrative campaigns,
or "my dad could beat up your dad" joke games, or just for a bit of variety on occasion.
Some people certainly tried to bring their favourite snowflake to every game, and some players were willing to accommodate that, but it was very much not the default approach.

40K as saturday morning cartoon where everyone plays along with the story about the Big Hero Punchy Men is still a pretty recent state of affairs.

Yeah, I never liked the idea of Special Characters. They just feel wrong.
Its like being able to field Patton against the Russians in a WW2 game. It just doesn't make sense if you think about it. Like, what if Patton gets blown up? What is he even doing fighting Russians? Its a similar problem here.
It doesn't help that Special Characters tend to have powerful abilities, so of course you are going to field them if you can.

Ok, but here's my counterpoint, at what point does a character become too important to be field-able? Let's use Space Marines as an example:

Each chapter has 10 companies of 100 marines led by 1 Captain and 2 Lieutenants, with all captains reporting to a single Chapter Master.

Of those 10 companies only 4 are standard operating forces, an additional 4 are reserve forces, 1 consists entirely of veterans, and the final company is covert operations.

That means that there are only a total of 31 officers with command higher than squad level, of which only 12 (4 battle companies) are likely to be deployed to non-significant battlefields.

I'm not including Chaplains, Librarians, or Techmarines because while they can rules-wise be utilized to fill HQ requirements, by lore they are specialists outside the standard chain of command.

What this means is that if you want to field a captain of any of the first founding chapters they are literally all named characters since GW has full chapter command charts in the codex. Moreover what really is the difference in narrative significance if Chapter Master Felix Walsh of the Ursine Avengers Chapter shows up instead of Marneus Calgar? I literally just made Walsh and the Ursine Avengers up, "they are my dudes", does his lack of Black Library novel suddenly make Walsh's position less important or time consuming?

If I become a Black Library writer and publish a novel about Walsh and GW gives him rules in White Dwarf does that mean I need to stop running him because he's now too significant?

I agree with you about it being unfortunate that named characters are the only way to access many incredibly strong thematic leader abilities. Part of the difficulty though is that the only real alternative would be to make "build-a-Chapter tactic" style charts for all generic leaders and relics, which (while I'm in favor of it) is just another mess of rules to stack on top of a game which already exceeds many other tabletop games multiple times over in sheer number of options.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

Jack Flask wrote:

Named characters reduced to 0 wounds are NOT killed, rather their removal from the table indicates said character either being incapacitated or forced into retreat due to non-trivial injuries. This also applies to players' homebrew characters unless decided otherwise in advance for things like narrative campaigns. ("Hey for our narrative campaign do you want to make any character deaths permanent?")

That's what the assumption is, but it does get a bit weird when they lose their last wound in melee or to a lascannon or something, or if you think about logistics
Like, does their opponent not just cut off the SC's head to make sure, and wouldn't a wound from a lascannon or explosion be fatal? What if the special character's army loses the battle? How are they going to retrieve the incapacitated character?

Funnily enough, Demons, Necrons and C'tan actually make the most sense in this regard, as they are practically immortal; they can just teleport out and regenerate. Everything else gets a bit strange.
Maybe there should a rule where if a named character falls in battle, you need to have a unit nearby to retrieve his body, or else your opponent gets extra VP for capturing someone important.

Taking a wound (even the last wound) doesn't indicate a fatal blow though. Losing your last wound to a power sword could be anything from your character getting nicked on the arm and realizing "wow, I don't really think I got enough sleep to be duelling Lucius right now..." to a lascannon taking a chunk out of their thigh and having them limp away to go get patched up.

As for retrieval, just assume they leave before it gets that dicey.
And if you want to argue "But what if my whole army dies turn one, then I charge Calgar to the middle of the map where he is surrounded and beaten to death but cultists with socks full of soap?" then I have only one response:

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
I thought every player thought these three things?

Aren't they common assumptions we all hold when playing our games?

I'd like to think so but given how often I see people complain about why they see X character and how unrealistic it is, I'm starting to think that our line of thinking is not so common.

Back in 3rd and 4th every special character in a codex had a rule that stated something to the effect of requiring opponent's permission to use as was most Chapter Approved items and Forgeworld. This lead to a widespread perception that these units were unbalanced and not properly playtested. In some cases this was true (looking at the dumpster fire that was Vehicle Design Rules) and in other cases was an unfair stigma (almost all Imperial Armour rules of that era.)

While some posters here are pointing out a contrarian view of Special Characters in 3rd and 4th edition, that was the unusual exception, not the norm. They were banned from the Grand Tournaments (the official GW tournies before NOVA and Adepticon) and as such were not allowed in the regional and local tournament circuits whose rules usually reflected the GTs.

witchdoctor wrote:
Back in 3rd and 4th every special character in a codex had a rule that stated something to the effect of requiring opponent's permission to use as was most Chapter Approved items and Forgeworld. This lead to a widespread perception that these units were unbalanced and not properly playtested. In some cases this was true (looking at the dumpster fire that was Vehicle Design Rules) and in other cases was an unfair stigma (almost all Imperial Armour rules of that era.)

While some posters here are pointing out a contrarian view of Special Characters in 3rd and 4th edition, that was the unusual exception, not the norm. They were banned from the Grand Tournaments (the official GW tournies before NOVA and Adepticon) and as such were not allowed in the regional and local tournament circuits whose rules usually reflected the GTs.

Outright lies don't help. I have several of those coedexes from that era and there was no such rule associated with the special characters from the Dark Eldar and Tyranids codexes at least (the ones I've just checked) though several of them did specify a minimum (and in the case of Old One Eye, maximum) points limit for the game before you could use them (Vect couldn't be used in games of less than 2K for example, the Red Terror 1500pts).

I can't speak for the tournament scene of the time as I wasn't playing then, but a friend of mine who was playing in 2nd ed regularly made use of special characters, Jain Zar in particular, as did many of his opponents.

 Imateria wrote:

witchdoctor wrote:
Back in 3rd and 4th every special character in a codex had a rule that stated something to the effect of requiring opponent's permission to use as was most Chapter Approved items and Forgeworld. This lead to a widespread perception that these units were unbalanced and not properly playtested. In some cases this was true (looking at the dumpster fire that was Vehicle Design Rules) and in other cases was an unfair stigma (almost all Imperial Armour rules of that era.)

While some posters here are pointing out a contrarian view of Special Characters in 3rd and 4th edition, that was the unusual exception, not the norm. They were banned from the Grand Tournaments (the official GW tournies before NOVA and Adepticon) and as such were not allowed in the regional and local tournament circuits whose rules usually reflected the GTs.

Outright lies don't help. I have several of those coedexes from that era and there was no such rule associated with the special characters from the Dark Eldar and Tyranids codexes at least (the ones I've just checked) though several of them did specify a minimum (and in the case of Old One Eye, maximum) points limit for the game before you could use them (Vect couldn't be used in games of less than 2K for example, the Red Terror 1500pts).

I can't speak for the tournament scene of the time as I wasn't playing then, but a friend of mine who was playing in 2nd ed regularly made use of special characters, Jain Zar in particular, as did many of his opponents.

I dont have my old books but it's not a lie, I think its mentioned in the 3rd ed core book?

 Legiocustodes wrote:
Yup... lots of special characters in second edition... hence why it was nicknamed herohammer!! That being said none were clearly as powerful as having a primarch!

You never faced Logan with a displacer field then LMAO.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Dudeface wrote:

 Imateria wrote:

witchdoctor wrote:
Back in 3rd and 4th every special character in a codex had a rule that stated something to the effect of requiring opponent's permission to use as was most Chapter Approved items and Forgeworld. This lead to a widespread perception that these units were unbalanced and not properly playtested. In some cases this was true (looking at the dumpster fire that was Vehicle Design Rules) and in other cases was an unfair stigma (almost all Imperial Armour rules of that era.)

While some posters here are pointing out a contrarian view of Special Characters in 3rd and 4th edition, that was the unusual exception, not the norm. They were banned from the Grand Tournaments (the official GW tournies before NOVA and Adepticon) and as such were not allowed in the regional and local tournament circuits whose rules usually reflected the GTs.

Outright lies don't help. I have several of those coedexes from that era and there was no such rule associated with the special characters from the Dark Eldar and Tyranids codexes at least (the ones I've just checked) though several of them did specify a minimum (and in the case of Old One Eye, maximum) points limit for the game before you could use them (Vect couldn't be used in games of less than 2K for example, the Red Terror 1500pts).

I can't speak for the tournament scene of the time as I wasn't playing then, but a friend of mine who was playing in 2nd ed regularly made use of special characters, Jain Zar in particular, as did many of his opponents.

I dont have my old books but it's not a lie, I think its mentioned in the 3rd ed core book?

I remember it being in specific codexes and then not in some and then requiring limited points in others. You know, totally inconsistant which is the MO of GeeDubs.