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 Insectum7 wrote:
Named characters should be buildable. As mentioned above the real problem is GW stripping units of options. Making super special named characters seems to be mostly a business decision of wanting to sell models, or a sort of comic-bookification of the lore to create an in universe superhero pantheon.

Re: Phoenix Lords. I don't quite remember if the 2nd ed Phoenix Lords were much more powerful than the Exarchs you could build at the time. You could make very dangerous custom Exarchs, and I think the special abilities of the Phoenix Lords were just combos of Wargear and generic Exarch Powers.

2nd ed also had a set of custom Chapter Master rules too, which included a few "generic" skills you could amp them up with, iirc.

Not second, one of the mid editions let you customize your chapter, and 8th let you promote a Captain to a Chapter Master using CP.

 Orkeosaurus wrote:
I agree with Wyldhunt, Calgar's "unique" equipment is just a post-hoc justification for giving him unique rules that are stronger than a generic chapter master. Originally he just had two powerfists with bolters in them. There's no theoretical reason why the chapter master of the Star Leopards can't have a relic called The Leopard Fists that do the same thing, nor for that matter is there any reason Calgar couldn't fight with a power sword or a meltagun (if for some reason he thought it was necessary).

And yet even when the Gauntlets were mechanically just two power fists with a storm bolter duct-taped to them, they were still not something available to any Tom, Dick or Harry, as they were a, a Wargear card with "Marneus Calgar Only" on them; and b, not a set of weapons a standard character could take.

Yes, they've been improved mechanically since then, but even when Marneus first appeared in Codex: Ultramarines, the Gauntlets were unique.

 Dysartes wrote:

 Orkeosaurus wrote:
I agree with Wyldhunt, Calgar's "unique" equipment is just a post-hoc justification for giving him unique rules that are stronger than a generic chapter master. Originally he just had two powerfists with bolters in them. There's no theoretical reason why the chapter master of the Star Leopards can't have a relic called The Leopard Fists that do the same thing, nor for that matter is there any reason Calgar couldn't fight with a power sword or a meltagun (if for some reason he thought it was necessary).

And yet even when the Gauntlets were mechanically just two power fists with a storm bolter duct-taped to them, they were still not something available to any Tom, Dick or Harry, as they were a, a Wargear card with "Marneus Calgar Only" on them; and b, not a set of weapons a standard character could take.

Yes, they've been improved mechanically since then, but even when Marneus first appeared in Codex: Ultramarines, the Gauntlets were unique.

And I find that something that should be changed.

Not to 'well.aktually' but the 2nd ed wargear card was not restricted to marneus, but to lord macragge, of which marneus was only the current incumbent.

2nd ed had suprisingly few named character restrictions on wargear cards they used, because originally the name characters were given as examples you could create, so you could use the equipment they had for your own character.

Obviously if you wanted to play Ultramarines from 1000 years before marneus, you could create your own character and call him lord macragge (in great 2nd ed writing tradition his unit entry didn't even call him that, rather master of the Ultramarines. You don't see the term Lord macragge referencing him until a few sentences into his description on the page...).

None of the Phoenix lord wargear was locked to them, so any character could use it - a solitaire in Jain zars mask for example...


The only item locked to a named Character in the angels of death codex was the inferno pistol, everything else was locked to a faction or rank within a faction. Same with codex space Wolves - for some reason njals staff was only for him, by the psyber Raven created specifically for him by an iron priest was not...


As all these weapons were artefacts of the army they were only currently carried by that named character but were carried by different people before and different people after.


It seems their attitude to this changed over the edition, as latter codexs like chaos and the guard had highly restricted wargear to named characters.

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Dysartes wrote:

 Orkeosaurus wrote:
I agree with Wyldhunt, Calgar's "unique" equipment is just a post-hoc justification for giving him unique rules that are stronger than a generic chapter master. Originally he just had two powerfists with bolters in them. There's no theoretical reason why the chapter master of the Star Leopards can't have a relic called The Leopard Fists that do the same thing, nor for that matter is there any reason Calgar couldn't fight with a power sword or a meltagun (if for some reason he thought it was necessary).

And yet even when the Gauntlets were mechanically just two power fists with a storm bolter duct-taped to them, they were still not something available to any Tom, Dick or Harry, as they were a, a Wargear card with "Marneus Calgar Only" on them; and b, not a set of weapons a standard character could take.

Yes, they've been improved mechanically since then, but even when Marneus first appeared in Codex: Ultramarines, the Gauntlets were unique.

And I find that something that should be changed.

The Gauntlets of Ultramar should remain unique. A Gravis Captain should be able to select Twin Boltstorm Gauntlets that gives him 5 Twin Linked Power Fist attacks and either 3 TL Pistol shots, or D6 TL Flamer shots. Lets switch to Sicarius for a minute: Every captain should be able to get a Pre-Heresy/Artisan/pick your name Plasma Pistol that doesn't overheat. Not every captain should be able to select HIS Talassarian Tempest Blade. Much of the sword stats are mixed with his "character" as a swordsman. The current design system is one that works very hard to prevent us from "permanently" modifying stat lines all game long. It used to be you picked a Captain with a Captain statline. And if you picked Terminator Armor they told you to deduct 1" of movement. Now they made a new Datasheet with all the armor and other stat mods built in. They still let us do a "For the rest of the phase add 1A" and similar stuff, but not the All Game Long things too often. If they allowed everyone to have a Talassarian Tempest Blade, they'd have to go back to having people mod their stat lines. And then they have to create two (sets of) profiles for all these unique weapons given to unique characters. Is the 6A for Calgar's power fists because he's a Chapter Master (I think so- Captain 5 +1 for Chapter Master) or a reflection of the Super Master Crafted nature of the Gauntlets? Is the extra Damage and Armor Pen a relflection of their quality, or Calgar's skill using them?

Long term, I'd like to go back to one Datasheet, and armor/armory choices with a better version of the 2nd Ed Wargear Cards or artifacts and such from the middle editions but again we're in an edition reacting to people demanding a dumbed down less "bloated" version of the game.

Ultramarines are, after all, well known for being the best hand-to-hand fighters. /s

 JNAProductions wrote:
Ultramarines are, after all, well known for being the best hand-to-hand fighters. /s

They're well known for being the Little Bit Of Everything Chapter. But I see you don't want to discuss the topic in good faith.

Breton wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
Ultramarines are, after all, well known for being the best hand-to-hand fighters. /s

They're well known for being the Little Bit Of Everything Chapter. But I see you don't want to discuss the topic in good faith.

Why should Marneus Calgar be the best brawler?
Or Cato Sicarus be the best swordsman?

You're presupposing that the named characters are extra powerful relative to non-named characters. Why?

 JNAProductions wrote:

Breton wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
Ultramarines are, after all, well known for being the best hand-to-hand fighters. /s

They're well known for being the Little Bit Of Everything Chapter. But I see you don't want to discuss the topic in good faith.

Why should Marneus Calgar be the best brawler?
Or Cato Sicarus be the best swordsman?

Show me where I said best? I'm looking at my posts and I don't see the word best.

I'm pretty sure the best swordsman out there is supposed to be Fulgrim.

Let me look:

Much of the sword stats are mixed with his "character" as a swordsman

Yeah, I didn't say the word best. I said his "character" was noted for swordsmanship. Rip Sewell is noted for the Eephus Pitch. Does that make him the BEST pitcher in the world? Like I said, you've made it obvious you don't want to discuss the topic in good faith.

Edit to add: I missed this part:

You're presupposing that the named characters are extra powerful relative to non-named characters. Why?

I'm not presupposing they are more powerful. This is yet another case of you lying about what I said because you don't want to discuss in good faith. There was one point where Chaplain Cassius was not only "weaker" than all the other named Chaplains, he was weaker than the generic chaplains.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Lord Damocles wrote:

Breton wrote:

 Flinty wrote:
I think Wyldhunt set out a reasonable distinction. Calgar is a chapter master. There are at least 1,000 of those, and they should all be roughly similar power level. There are only single digits of Phoenix Lords, and the lore is clear that each one is specialised to their own aspect. It doesn’t t make any sense in that regard to have a generic character sheet for Phoenix Lord, that you can choose a fixed set of options to build Jain Zar.

But only one named Marneus Calgar of the Ultramarines. How many Exarchs are there?

How many Exarchs named Steve Angryfire of Biel Tan are there?

You know you just remade my point? There's one and only one Marneus Calgar. There's one and only one Jain Zar. Marneus Calgar is not Chapter Master Steve Angryfire anymore than Jain Zar is Exarch Steve Angryfire.

I apologize for being overly critical.

But why should named characters (who, yes, can be noted for being exceptional sword fighters, or brawlers, or tacticians, or leaders, or...) automatically be better than generic ones?

Your earlier post said that a generic captain should be able to get 5 TL Powerfist attacks and 3 TL Bolt Pistol or 1d6 TL Flamer shots.
Why should Calgar have an extra attack with extra AP and extra damage?

 JNAProductions wrote:
I apologize for being overly critical.

But why should named characters (who, yes, can be noted for being exceptional sword fighters, or brawlers, or tacticians, or leaders, or...) automatically be better than generic ones?

Your earlier post said that a generic captain should be able to get 5 TL Powerfist attacks and 3 TL Bolt Pistol or 1d6 TL Flamer shots.
Why should Calgar have an extra attack with extra AP and extra damage?

I said that as part of the point about having to remove whatever Calgar stats are in the Gauntlets and what Gauntlet stats are indeed the Gauntlet stats. I do not have to strip Gauntlet Stats from giving a generic Captain the Aggressor weapon stats.

Let me check:

Is the 6A for Calgar's power fists because he's a Chapter Master (I think so- Captain 5 +1 for Chapter Master) or a reflection of the Super Master Crafted nature of the Gauntlets? Is the extra Damage and Armor Pen a relflection of their quality, or Calgar's skill using them?

Oh I see. I literally said I don't know how much of the Gauntlet profile is Calgar's Skill and how much is the Gauntlet's Quality. How long do you want to keep lying about what I said in an attempt to pretend you want to engage in good faith?

Do you think a general Captain be able to have 6 S8 AP-3 D3 TL attacks in melee, if they choose the appropriate options?
And 4 S4 AP-1 D2 TL Pistol shots?

I think it may also be worth mentioning that, broadly speaking, people aren't taking Calgar for his marginally better melee and ranged punch.

They're taking him because he can join units that normal Terminator/Gravis Captains can't (Victrix, Company Heroes), that he can generate Command Points in a way unlike any other generic Space Marine character, that he gets two bodyguard buddies if he's in Gravis armour, and gets to Advance and Charge which no generic Space Marine character gets to do without Stratagems.

As has been mentioned, it's not that he's a slightly beefier fighter, or has better wargear innately - that's not why he's taken for the most part. He's taken because he has very powerful datasheet abilities, which are nearly impossible for other characters to access. Remove those, and Calgar becomes much much less of an auto-take in Ultramarines lists. Who cares if his power fists are slightly better, they don't make him much more different to any other Gravis/Terminator Captain - it's the datasheet abilities which make him so much more valuable, and that's where the problem lies.

When special characters get abilities which are so valuable that they end up hinging entire builds around them, then you have a problem.

 Orkeosaurus wrote:
I agree with Wyldhunt, Calgar's "unique" equipment is just a post-hoc justification for giving him unique rules that are stronger than a generic chapter master. Originally he just had two powerfists with bolters in them. There's no theoretical reason why the chapter master of the Star Leopards can't have a relic called The Leopard Fists that do the same thing, nor for that matter is there any reason Calgar couldn't fight with a power sword or a meltagun (if for some reason he thought it was necessary).

The Leopard Fists can. They use the Calgar Datasheet and UM rules. And Calgar had/does have a Power Sword. There's a Powersword on his model, and in previous editions when Powerfists struck last, he had the power sword on his datasheet for those times the controlling player didn't want to strike last.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 JNAProductions wrote:
Do you think a general Captain be able to have 6 S8 AP-3 D3 TL attacks in melee, if they choose the appropriate options?
And 4 S4 AP-1 D2 TL Pistol shots?

As should be obvious from the rest of my posts you've been dishonest about: No. I believe Captains - Generic or Named - get 5 Powerfist Level attacks. I believe Chapter Masters - Generic or named - get 6.

Let's look. (Again)

Why not? That's the "options" that were taken. And he actually doesn't have more stat over the other Chapter Masters and Captains. His fists are very comparable to Agatone's Thunderhammer. Adrax gets 2 more S, Calgar gets 1 more AP and Calgar gets 1 more A for being a Chapter Master instead of a Captain. Lysander's Thunder hammer is 2 more S, and the same AP. again with 1 more A for Chapter Master. Pedro Kantor is a Chapter master and his Fist of Dorn but instead of getting +1 A his Dorn's Arrow shooting is RF2 +1S and Sustained Hits instead of A4 and Pistol. Suboden Khan has a spear with the same A, 2 less Strength, 1 less AP and D, but Lance (which regrants some S) and Anti-Monster 4+ and Anti-Vehicle 4+ making the S almost unimportant. Then for shooting he has an Onslaught Gatling Cannon. Caanok Var's Tetsubo has generic Captain with Power Fist stats. And an entire second "Sweep" stat line. Plus his bespoke. Iron Father Feiros has Chapter Master 6A, and 1 less S, AP and D. He also has a second EXTRA ATTACKS weapon that that provides two more S8 -2 D3 attacks which more or less equals out with Calgar. Tor Garadon's fists are absolutely hillarious. Captain 5A, S+4 AP down 1, Damage down 1. Unless you're punching a Monster Vehicle or Fortification in wich case its +6S 1 more AP, and 1 more D. Tor Garadon is - as far as I know - the only SM Captain/Chapter Master who can single handedly melee a Great Unclean One to death in a single fight phase. Everyone else (Captains and Chapter Masters with Fists/Hammers/equivalent as opposed to power/chain -swords, maces and the like) is pretty evenly equipped except Garadon. And Pedro needs to get +1A on his fist which I'm guessing was lost in the edition update.
T

Here in the list of all the Power Fist equivalent named characters where I looked at their weapon statline to dispute your claim Calgar is alone in getting some sort of stat boost that other Captains and Chapter Masters don't - I specifically pointed out many of them are Captains thus 5 Attacks, and that Cantor needs to get bumped up 1A because he is a Chapter Master.

And Pedro needs to get +1A on his fist which I'm guessing was lost in the edition update.

Chapter Master should be an upgrade to the Captain datasheet.
And you're doing a lot of comparisons of Named Characters to other Named Characters, when they should be compared to generic Captains.

I'll also echo Smudge's post, and add to that that not every Captain should necessarily have 5 attacks with a Power Fist.
Let there be captains who have four S5 AP-2 D1 Power Weapon attacks, because they're better with their sniper ranged weapon.
Let there be captains who only carry a chainsword and a shield, but are tactical masterminds with rules to reflect it.
And sure, let there be captains who can mix it up with the best fighters, because they're also some of the best fighters.

 JNAProductions wrote:
Chapter Master should be an upgrade to the Captain datasheet.
And you're doing a lot of comparisons of Named Characters to other Named Characters, when they should be compared to generic Captains.

I'll also echo Smudge's post, and add to that that not every Captain should necessarily have 5 attacks with a Power Fist.
Let there be captains who have four S5 AP-2 D1 Power Weapon attacks, because they're better with their sniper ranged weapon.
Let there be captains who only carry a chainsword and a shield, but are tactical masterminds with rules to reflect it.
And sure, let there be captains who can mix it up with the best fighters, because they're also some of the best fighters.

You said Captains and Chapter Masters. The only Chaptermasters right now are Named.

And as +1A for Chapter Master over Captain IS an upgrade. Its the same upgrade you get from a Lieutenant to a Captain. And From a Terminator to a Lieutenant

Terminator: 3 Power Fist Attacks
Lieutenant: 4 Power Fist Attack
Captain: 5 Power Fists Attacks
Chapter Master 6 Power Fist Attacks

Edit to Add: My mistake, you said over any other Chapter Master.

Calgar doesn't need +2 Strength or +1 Damage on his Powerfists over any other Chapter Master.

Which - with Fist/Hammer tier weapons, is just Pedro. But I went ahead and included the captains to show you that he isn't the only one with Super Master Crafted stuff.

Breton wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
Chapter Master should be an upgrade to the Captain datasheet.
And you're doing a lot of comparisons of Named Characters to other Named Characters, when they should be compared to generic Captains.

I'll also echo Smudge's post, and add to that that not every Captain should necessarily have 5 attacks with a Power Fist.
Let there be captains who have four S5 AP-2 D1 Power Weapon attacks, because they're better with their sniper ranged weapon.
Let there be captains who only carry a chainsword and a shield, but are tactical masterminds with rules to reflect it.
And sure, let there be captains who can mix it up with the best fighters, because they're also some of the best fighters.

You said Captains and Chapter Masters. The only Chaptermasters right now are Named.

And as +1A for Chapter Master over Captain IS an upgrade. Its the same upgrade you get from a Lieutenant to a Captain. And From a Terminator to a Lieutenant

Terminator: 3 Power Fist Attacks
Lieutenant: 4 Power Fist Attack
Captain: 5 Power Fists Attacks
Chapter Master 6 Power Fist Attacks

Yes, the only current datasheets for Chapter Masters are Named Characters.
That's an issue-you should be able to design your own.

 JNAProductions wrote:

Breton wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
Chapter Master should be an upgrade to the Captain datasheet.
And you're doing a lot of comparisons of Named Characters to other Named Characters, when they should be compared to generic Captains.

I'll also echo Smudge's post, and add to that that not every Captain should necessarily have 5 attacks with a Power Fist.
Let there be captains who have four S5 AP-2 D1 Power Weapon attacks, because they're better with their sniper ranged weapon.
Let there be captains who only carry a chainsword and a shield, but are tactical masterminds with rules to reflect it.
And sure, let there be captains who can mix it up with the best fighters, because they're also some of the best fighters.

You said Captains and Chapter Masters. The only Chaptermasters right now are Named.

And as +1A for Chapter Master over Captain IS an upgrade. Its the same upgrade you get from a Lieutenant to a Captain. And From a Terminator to a Lieutenant

Terminator: 3 Power Fist Attacks
Lieutenant: 4 Power Fist Attack
Captain: 5 Power Fists Attacks
Chapter Master 6 Power Fist Attacks

Yes, the only current datasheets for Chapter Masters are Named Characters.
That's an issue-you should be able to design your own.

We were able to. In 9th. The options were very few, but we had them. Then people complained about bloat. So we got what we asked for. Well, we got what some of us asked for. This was also the same edition where you could build a character with the Soldier's Blade and other relics that STARTED to return to the 2nd Ed Wargear Cards. It was again a too small sample size. None of this has anything to do with incorrectly claiming Calgar gets more powerful weapons than any other Chapter Master (let alone the captains).

Breton wrote:
We were able to. In 9th. The options were very few, but we had them. Then people complained about bloat. So we got what we asked for. Well, we got what some of us asked for. This was also the same edition where you could build a character with the Soldier's Blade and other relics that STARTED to return to the 2nd Ed Wargear Cards. It was again a too small sample size. None of this has anything to do with incorrectly claiming Calgar gets more powerful weapons than any other Chapter Master (let alone the captains).

I bolded the big issue.

Wargear options were limited, and so was anything that would actually change how they functioned.
Captains had a RR1s to-hit Aura. Chapter Masters could select a unit in the Command Phase within 6" to RRAny hits until the next turn.

In an ideal (for me, at least) 40k, you'd be able to have a variety of uses.
All captains should be at least decent fighters, but some might push that to the extreme.
Others might focus on subterfuge and trickery, with rules to represent that.
Some might focus on leadership, directly aiding their soldiers rather than messing with opponents or being outright killy.

Imo named characters should only be represented by a fate rule that reflects their plot armour, rather than uber weapons and profiles. Some exceptions apply, where they are unique entities or supernaturally powered. Primarchs, daemon primarchs, phoenix lords, the silent king etc.

But where the character is just a named rank like autarchs or captains, they should be represented by that profile.

Lotr fate and might are about as unique as they need to be in comparison to their equally ranked fellows - ie prince yriel is an autarch and all autarchs are pretty equal. As are all chapter masters. Colonels and shas is.

 JNAProductions wrote:

Breton wrote:
We were able to. In 9th. The options were very few, but we had them. Then people complained about bloat. So we got what we asked for. Well, we got what some of us asked for. This was also the same edition where you could build a character with the Soldier's Blade and other relics that STARTED to return to the 2nd Ed Wargear Cards. It was again a too small sample size. None of this has anything to do with incorrectly claiming Calgar gets more powerful weapons than any other Chapter Master (let alone the captains).

I bolded the big issue.

Wargear options were limited, and so was anything that would actually change how they functioned.
Captains had a RR1s to-hit Aura. Chapter Masters could select a unit in the Command Phase within 6" to RRAny hits until the next turn.

In an ideal (for me, at least) 40k, you'd be able to have a variety of uses.
All captains should be at least decent fighters, but some might push that to the extreme.
Others might focus on subterfuge and trickery, with rules to represent that.
Some might focus on leadership, directly aiding their soldiers rather than messing with opponents or being outright killy.

Again we sort of have that with Phobos Captains, and Gravis Captains and Terminator Captains and such, but a lot of the customization was lost because people didn't want "bloat". I want a huge number of enhancements. I want MOST of the enhancements from named characters to be in the pooI I want every character (or at least every character of certain categories If Veteran Sergeants come back as Characters they should not get a free Enhance - some chapters it might make sense for Aphothecaries or Techmarines but not all and Named Special Epic Hero Characters would have these enhance(s) chosen for them like they used to with Warlord Traits) to have an enhancement for "free". I want a huge number of "named" wargear (meaning stuff like Sunwrath Pistols, Foe Smiter, Heavenfall Blades, Blades of Burden, Maces of Redemption, and so on that one of each can be assigned to any generic character. Maybe more than one for stuff like the Sunwrath Pistol which was just the name for the Heresy No-Overheat Era Plasma Pistol. This should be done in such a way as to limit the wombo-combo stacking tendencies of the players. For example, the ability stack a Devastating Wound 8A Chainsword with Digital Weapons that let you crit on a 2+ shouldn't be a thing, and definitely not a common thing.

Breton wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
Named characters should be buildable. As mentioned above the real problem is GW stripping units of options. Making super special named characters seems to be mostly a business decision of wanting to sell models, or a sort of comic-bookification of the lore to create an in universe superhero pantheon.

Re: Phoenix Lords. I don't quite remember if the 2nd ed Phoenix Lords were much more powerful than the Exarchs you could build at the time. You could make very dangerous custom Exarchs, and I think the special abilities of the Phoenix Lords were just combos of Wargear and generic Exarch Powers.

2nd ed also had a set of custom Chapter Master rules too, which included a few "generic" skills you could amp them up with, iirc.

Not second, one of the mid editions let you customize your chapter, and 8th let you promote a Captain to a Chapter Master using CP.

Yes 2nd. White Dwarf 209.

Breton is acting in a suspiciously trollish manner in this thread, but I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they're trying to have the conversation in good faith.

Flinty wrote:I think Wyldhunt set out a reasonable distinction. Calgar is a chapter master. There are at least 1,000 of those, and they should all be roughly similar power level. There are only single digits of Phoenix Lords, and the lore is clear that each one is specialised to their own aspect. It doesn’t t make any sense in that regard to have a generic character sheet for Phoenix Lord, that you can choose a fixed set of options to build Jain Zar.

Largely this. Without meaning to come across as just hating on marines (which is why I was sure to include Eldrad as a similar example in my earlier post), chapter masters aren't really inherently all that different from regular captains. They're basically just captains who were chosen to boss the other captains around. The difference between Logan Grimnar or Marneus and Bob the Chapter Master from Generic Chapter 777 is just that the guys with bespoke datasheets get more screentime than Bob. Presumably whoever succeeds Calgar as chapter master will also be a guy in chonky armor with hundreds of years of battle experience and access to the chapter armory.

Basically, Calgar isn't actually that special or unique. He's just the guy in charge of a faction that gets a lot of screentime. Him being the only guy with a pair of power fists and storm bolters isn't some character-defining piece of lore that shapes the personality of Ultramarines as a faction or him as a character; they're just, as Orkeosauras put it,

a post-hoc justification for giving him unique rules that are stronger than a generic chapter master.

And honestly, marines are kind of more guilty of this than most factions. Again, not trying to just gak on marines here, but Shrike probably shouldn't be the only captain who can figure out how to take his jump pack squad back into reserves. Dante and Logan have historically just been +1 versions of generic captains/chapter masters so that BA and SW players can feel superior to generic-brand marines (to help justify being convinced to buy an extra book.) So rather than pretending that Shrike is the only captain in the galaxy who figured out how to be good at flying/sneaking around, those could just be abilities available to generic datasheets. Instead of giving him super-duper double-ultra-plus-one lightning claws, you could just give him a pair of lightning claws. His lightning claws are lightning claws. They're not that special even if the blacksmith was having a good day when he made them.

Breton wrote:
I'm not sure why Jain Zar is Epic Hero Unique and Marneus Calgar is not. Theres only one of both in the entire universe. You could maybe make the case that generic captain characters should exist and that most of the Chapter Master's gimmick could be covered by wargear/Chapter Master power options, but there's plenty of reason to state that Chapter Masters should be a cut above even a Captain, and thus deserve to have their demigod plot armor and noticably better abilities represented. See how easy that worked?

So my iffyness with phoenix lords was for a couple of main reasons.
1. Eldar haven't had the ability to take an exarch character since 2nd or 3rd edition. So giving aspects a character than can hang out with them to do the things characters usually do is sort of a niche in its own right. Autarchs have been able to kind of do this? But an autarch is a swiss army knife commander type whereas aspects tend to be beatsticks and/or modify the behaviors of aspect units in ways that autarchs can't. Ex: Baharroth granting a squad hit & run back in the day or being the only way to let hawks drop grenades out of deepstrike now.
2. Phoenix lords are fundamentally different from exarchs in a way that chapter masters just aren't fundamentally different from captains. Chapter masters are basically just captains who get to boss other captains around. A phoenix lord is a demigod whose haunted armor can eat passers-bye to allow them to instantly resurrect.

So whether or not a phoenix lord warrants their own datasheet kind of depends on whether or not GW is leaning into the reanimating demigod thing in a given edition. Which is why I was on the fence about it in my post. Good faith question for you, Breton: do you see the difference?

I think one of the problems is that the Epic Heroes are the theme enabler for themes that are not directly related to the character. Calgar is THE road to Tactical Doctrine. And I get it that Ultramarines are THE Tactical Doctrine Chapter so that should be their thing. But it shouldn't be run through Calgar and only Calgar. Compare and Contrast that to several editions ago when using Sammael made all the BIKE units BATTLELINE (so to speak) and Belial made all TERMINATORS BATTLELINE (and OC2). That was a bespoke that was directly related to taking Belial and Sammael for a non-standard theme. You can argue all TERMINATOR CAPTAINs should have had the same bespoke and you'd probably be right...

Right. That's largely what I'm saying. You don't have to tie stuff like that to named characters. You can just make it a thing you can get from generic characters. Kind of like how bike captains made bikes troops in 5th edition (iirc).

but the example does pretty effectively show what I mean by directly related to the character. Making Terminators troops wouldn't have made (enough) sense if it came from Azrael. Or even Terminator Calgar.

Then it sounds like you would choose to not take the optional "make terminators troops" upgrade when you personally were fielding Azrael or Calgar.

Without putting words in your mouth, I get the impression you might be getting defensive because marines are involved, so we can move the discussion to other factions.

Urien Rakarth seldom warranted being a bespoke datasheet, in my opinion. He's basically just the most famous haemonculus, but he's not *that* unique beyond having died more often than most. The various special rules and gear he's had over the years could easily be generic options for other haemonculi.

Orikan the Diviner maybe warrants being his own datasheet because his whole "go super saiyan when the stars align" thing is supposed to be so rare that it would be really weird to have two crypteks pulling off the same trick on the same battlefield, even if you were reskinning him as Glorikan the Designer or whatever.

Shadowsun (cool as I think she is) is basically just a smart lady in a stealth suit. She could just be a generic stealth suit commander datasheet if they ever made one of those.

Farsight makes more sense as a bespoke datasheet because tau with surprisingly powerful melee weapons on their crisis suits aren't something you see every day.

Ahriman (whom I use often) could just be a generic sorcerer because at the end of the day, he's just slinging spells like everyone else.

Magnus is meant to have stats representing a being whose capabilities aren't really similar to anything else in the faction if not the galaxy. Give that guy a 0-1 datasheet.

tldr; most exist named characters aren't actually special enough to be 0-1. The like-generic-but-better weapons a lot of them wield are usually just an attempt to justify making them a different datasheet (and getting you to buy the model or the book they appear in) when the generic rules would be perfectly sufficient to represent them.

Iyanna Arienelle hasn't had rules since 3rd edition. She doesn't really need them. She's a spiritseer. A famous spiritseer with ties to the ynnari. But being famous doesn't mean she needs a +1 version of her staff or an extra special rule to show off how much better at spirit seer'ing she is than every other spirit seer in the galaxy.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Hellebore wrote:
Imo named characters should only be represented by a fate rule that reflects their plot armour, rather than uber weapons and profiles. Some exceptions apply, where they are unique entities or supernaturally powered. Primarchs, daemon primarchs, phoenix lords, the silent king etc.

But where the character is just a named rank like autarchs or captains, they should be represented by that profile.

Lotr fate and might are about as unique as they need to be in comparison to their equally ranked fellows - ie prince yriel is an autarch and all autarchs are pretty equal. As are all chapter masters. Colonels and shas is.

Pretty much this. Iyanna doesn't need an Iyanna datasheet; she just needs a spirit seer datasheet.

And if you really want to dive into characters in general, autarchs, captains and colonels don't develop super natural resilience as they rank up. They're just as vulnerable as a line trooper. The difference between marneus calgar and a veteran tactical marine is basically one of education. Two Marines of equal age, one that went down the officer training path and one that stayed a non com. They have equal war experience, in fact the vet should have more boots on the ground experience and thus be a better fighter than Calgar.

But 40k is heroic so bigger hats equal bigger stats (I made that up), when in reality it wouldn't be that way at all, except for the supernatural characters like primarchs and phoenix lords that physically are powered differently.


I've often thought it would be interesting to have a game where you can buy champion upgrades and command upgrades to give to random models, to reflect that the 400 year old assault marine veteran is going to be the best melee combatant in the chapter while the captain is basically a tactical marine with extensive command and control abilities.

Breton wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:

Breton wrote:

 Flinty wrote:
I think Wyldhunt set out a reasonable distinction. Calgar is a chapter master. There are at least 1,000 of those, and they should all be roughly similar power level. There are only single digits of Phoenix Lords, and the lore is clear that each one is specialised to their own aspect. It doesn’t t make any sense in that regard to have a generic character sheet for Phoenix Lord, that you can choose a fixed set of options to build Jain Zar.

But only one named Marneus Calgar of the Ultramarines. How many Exarchs are there?

How many Exarchs named Steve Angryfire of Biel Tan are there?

You know you just remade my point? There's one and only one Marneus Calgar. There's one and only one Jain Zar. Marneus Calgar is not Chapter Master Steve Angryfire anymore than Jain Zar is Exarch Steve Angryfire.

So how one and only one Marneus Calgar = super special named character rules, but one and only one Steve Angryfire = generic scrub?

Why does/should having a name necessarily equate to unique rules?

https://www.warhammer-community.com/en-gb/articles/zivixehm/bring-your-own-warlords-to-life-with-custom-character-rules-in-the-maelstrom-crucible-of-champions/

Seems relevant to this conversation. BYO named characters.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
Breton is acting in a suspiciously trollish manner in this thread, but I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they're trying to have the conversation in good faith.
Disagreeing with you is not trollish. Trying to claim your special dudes are more deserveing of than someone else's special dudes is not good faith.

Breton wrote:
I'm not sure why Jain Zar is Epic Hero Unique and Marneus Calgar is not. Theres only one of both in the entire universe. You could maybe make the case that generic captain characters should exist and that most of the Chapter Master's gimmick could be covered by wargear/Chapter Master power options, but there's plenty of reason to state that Chapter Masters should be a cut above even a Captain, and thus deserve to have their demigod plot armor and noticably better abilities represented. See how easy that worked?

So my iffyness with phoenix lords was for a couple of main reasons.
1. Eldar haven't had the ability to take an exarch character since 2nd or 3rd edition. So giving aspects a character than can hang out with them to do the things characters usually do is sort of a niche in its own right. Autarchs have been able to kind of do this? But an autarch is a swiss army knife commander type whereas aspects tend to be beatsticks and/or modify the behaviors of aspect units in ways that autarchs can't. Ex: Baharroth granting a squad hit & run back in the day or being the only way to let hawks drop grenades out of deepstrike now.
2. Phoenix lords are fundamentally different from exarchs in a way that chapter masters just aren't fundamentally different from captains. Chapter masters are basically just captains who get to boss other captains around. A phoenix lord is a demigod whose haunted armor can eat passers-bye to allow them to instantly resurrect.

So whether or not a phoenix lord warrants their own datasheet kind of depends on whether or not GW is leaning into the reanimating demigod thing in a given edition. Which is why I was on the fence about it in my post. Good faith question for you, Breton: do you see the difference?

Good Faith answer? No. I took your own reasoning, replaced the special dudes you like with the special dudes you hate, and it was the same sentence only now the special dudes you hate were the special dudes to save and you called it trollish. I'll do it again. Phoenix Lords are fundamentally no different than Aspect Warriors, they're just Aspect Warriors turned into a character. Oh wait, you said Exarchs. I'll do it again. Phoenix Lords are fundamentally no different from Sergeants... I mean Exarchs in a way that Chapter Masters just aren't fundamentally different from Captains. Did you ask yourself why your own logic applied in the other direction was "trollish" but not when you used it? I mean if you really want to argue in good faith, what you're doing is an informal fallacy called special pleading. And its rather inaccurate too.

beatsticks and/or modify the behaviors of aspect units in ways that autarchs can't.

A beatstick who modifies the unit it is leading. Like a Chapter Master who gives the unit he's leading the movement abilities to advance or fallback and still shoot and/or charge? Or gives them a +1 to Advance and Charge Rolls? Adding +1A and +1S to their fight weapons? Giving them Sustained Hits 1 and 1 CP per round that makes everyone use more Strats? FNP? Being able to Use Rapid Ingress and Heroic Intervention for Free and Repeat? I mean its not EXACTLY dropping Grenades from Deepstrike but every Chapter Master appears to allow the unit they're leading to do something they couldn't do without the leader. So that appears to be the same between Chapter Masters and Phoenix Lords. And nearly every leader unit everywhere. It appears Phoenix Lords are not fundamentally different than Captains either. Good Faith Question: You see where I'm coming from here, right?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Lord Damocles wrote:

Breton wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:

Breton wrote:

 Flinty wrote:
I think Wyldhunt set out a reasonable distinction. Calgar is a chapter master. There are at least 1,000 of those, and they should all be roughly similar power level. There are only single digits of Phoenix Lords, and the lore is clear that each one is specialised to their own aspect. It doesn’t t make any sense in that regard to have a generic character sheet for Phoenix Lord, that you can choose a fixed set of options to build Jain Zar.

But only one named Marneus Calgar of the Ultramarines. How many Exarchs are there?

How many Exarchs named Steve Angryfire of Biel Tan are there?

You know you just remade my point? There's one and only one Marneus Calgar. There's one and only one Jain Zar. Marneus Calgar is not Chapter Master Steve Angryfire anymore than Jain Zar is Exarch Steve Angryfire.

So how one and only one Marneus Calgar = super special named character rules, but one and only one Steve Angryfire = generic scrub?

Why does/should having a name necessarily equate to unique rules?

Its not the name, its the rule(s) itself. EPIC HERO. And no I don't literally mean its an epic hero. I mean the rules for EPIC HERO - in the first place mean everyone needs to get some for balance - and for another says GW Made the guy, and they made the guy to be one and only one. Even if you could still make Chapter Master Steve Angryfire, he would not be an Epic Hero, and you can have three of him. But you can't have three of Calgar. That's not the reason Calgar should be stronger, its the reason Steve should not be that strong which in this case ends up the same, but is different.

I want unique datasheets that do something niche, 10% overpriced to discourage their use. Once in a while you get a game against a unique datasheet doing cool thematic things. I dislike refluffing a character like counts as Marneus Calgar.

 Hellebore wrote:
And if you really want to dive into characters in general, autarchs, captains and colonels don't develop super natural resilience as they rank up. They're just as vulnerable as a line trooper. The difference between marneus calgar and a veteran tactical marine is basically one of education. Two Marines of equal age, one that went down the officer training path and one that stayed a non com. They have equal war experience, in fact the vet should have more boots on the ground experience and thus be a better fighter than Calgar.

But 40k is heroic so bigger hats equal bigger stats (I made that up), when in reality it wouldn't be that way at all, except for the supernatural characters like primarchs and phoenix lords that physically are powered differently.


I've often thought it would be interesting to have a game where you can buy champion upgrades and command upgrades to give to random models, to reflect that the 400 year old assault marine veteran is going to be the best melee combatant in the chapter while the captain is basically a tactical marine with extensive command and control abilities.

While generally correct there are holes here. Not all Captains would be Tactical Marines. Some would have been Assault Marines too. Some would have even been Devastator Marines. But they're not going to give a Captain a Lascannon with equivalent output to the melee power fist. Another is that there aren't that many Marines in the chapter (most of the time) that will have the same age as a Chapter Master. As you point out they're in combat all the time and thus die faster/sooner/younger because of it so there is SOME merit to them being older and wiser. But that would theoretically also come with physical deterioration. And on the other-other-other hand (as I realize I'm arguing both sides of this over and over) the wounds, and attacks and so forth are the same - I'm brain freezing on the word here.... But like in D&D when you level up and get a new round of hit points. You don't actually get stronger and tougher, you got wiser and craftier. Each hit point isnt a drop of blood, its the number of tricks and skills you have to avoid getting whomped on or to reduce the effect when you can't avoid it. Same here. A powerfist can crumple an armored tank (in the fluff which is sort of what we're talking about here). Dante can get hit by one 3 times. He's not three times tougher than a tank. He's just so experienced he can twist out of the way, deflect or other wise lessen the impact of getting punched in the face.

Breton, do you honestly not see the difference between a Chapter Master (an experienced Marine and the highest ranked of their Chapter, of which there are approximately 1,000) and a Phoenix Lord (the epitome and originators of the Aspect Shrines of the Eldar, of which there are about 10 total).

Like... I can name every single Phoenix Lord. I did have to Google it, but here you go:

-Asurmen
-Jain Zar
-Fuegan
-Maugan Ra
-Baharroth
-Karandras
-Lhykhis
-Irillyth [FW]
-Drastanta [Missing]

And then the one that's no longer a Phoenix Lord, Arhra.