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I was looking at some Middlehammer homebrew on this forum, and noticed Daemon Princes were Ballistics Skill 3 (for people who started in 8th, that's the equivalent of BS 4+).
I thought that was a bad choice, but then I checked the 3rd Edition Battle Bible, and saw that the updated Princes were BS3!

Why? Similar with the Greater Daemons. A Bloodthirster being WS9 feels good, but a Great Unclean One being less accurate than a Marine at shooting and barely better in melee feels bad to me. A Keeper Of Secrets was likewise worse at shooting than a baseline Marine, and the Lord Of Change was only equal, while worse than a Lord/Captain.

Mostly keeping pace and mindset with WHFB.

Daemons didn’t have many ranged weapons at all. Pretty sure it was just the Horrors flicking spectral bogies. But in WHFB? They were casting spells which you didn’t roll to hit for, so their BS was moot.

Which is weird for Horrors. Take away their spell casting and their splitting into Blue Horrors? And all you get is an underpowered infantry unit with, if memory serves a 4+ Invulnerable save.

Because in 3rd edition, not everything had to be a killfrenzying powerhouse.

The Daemon Prince wasn't designed to be chewing through entire units at a time and dominating everything else in combat.

And then 3.5 happened...

Did 3rd edition Daemon Princes even have guns?

I thought they were completely melee (meaning BS was basically just flavour) but I could well be misremembering.

3.5 certainly introduced a ranged Daemon Weapon. But for pure 3rd Ed? Maybe Smite as a psychic power?

 Lord Damocles wrote:
Because in 3rd edition, not everything had to be a killfrenzying powerhouse.

The Daemon Prince wasn't designed to be chewing through entire units at a time and dominating everything else in combat.

And then 3.5 happened...

I don't think hitting on a 2+ instead of a 4+ is going for one model is gonna make the difference between slaughtering a whole squad and being a chump.

I don't think it should be controversial to say "I want a Daemon Prince to be more accurate with their weapons than Joe Schmoe Guardsman."

 JNAProductions wrote:
I was looking at some Middlehammer homebrew on this forum, and noticed Daemon Princes were Ballistics Skill 3 (for people who started in 8th, that's the equivalent of BS 4+).
I thought that was a bad choice, but then I checked the 3rd Edition Battle Bible, and saw that the updated Princes were BS3!

Why? Similar with the Greater Daemons. A Bloodthirster being WS9 feels good, but a Great Unclean One being less accurate than a Marine at shooting and barely better in melee feels bad to me. A Keeper Of Secrets was likewise worse at shooting than a baseline Marine, and the Lord Of Change was only equal, while worse than a Lord/Captain.

I think the more important question is... what weapon would they even be shooting with?

I remember the Kai gun, which was like a heavy bolter but AP 3.

 amanita wrote:
I remember the Kai gun, which was like a heavy bolter but AP 3.

That was 3.5 Ed though where DPs were upgrades to Chaos Lords, so weren’t they BS5 then? Or did Daemonic Stature nerf BS?

Lord Zarkov wrote:

 amanita wrote:
I remember the Kai gun, which was like a heavy bolter but AP 3.

That was 3.5 Ed though where DPs were upgrades to Chaos Lords, so weren’t they BS5 then? Or did Daemonic Stature nerf BS?

They went from BS0 in the 3rd ed. Codex, to BS3 in Chapter Approved 2001, to BS5 in 3.5.

 Lord Damocles wrote:

Lord Zarkov wrote:

 amanita wrote:
I remember the Kai gun, which was like a heavy bolter but AP 3.

That was 3.5 Ed though where DPs were upgrades to Chaos Lords, so weren’t they BS5 then? Or did Daemonic Stature nerf BS?

They went from BS0 in the 3rd ed. Codex, to BS3 in Chapter Approved 2001, to BS5 in 3.5.

Makes sense, so I was right on 3.5. I didn’t have the original codex, but I had the latter two.

I remember the CA with an intro that basically said “yeah DPs suck and are boring, so here’s an attempt to fix that”

I don’t think they had any guns though in the CA article? (And presumably not in original 3rd Ed given BS0)

 Lord Damocles wrote:
Because in 3rd edition, not everything had to be a killfrenzying powerhouse.

The Daemon Prince wasn't designed to be chewing through entire units at a time and dominating everything else in combat.

And then 3.5 happened...

That's a tough one, because the Daemon Prince examples in 2nd edition were pretty nasty customers, although all fairly different. I think their incarnation in 3rd is the aberration.

 Lord Damocles wrote:

Lord Zarkov wrote:

amanita 818914
11820664 d58e1ce54bcbc3ef14dfbb468e066a1f.png wrote:I remember the Kai gun, which was like a heavy bolter but AP 3.

That was 3.5 Ed though where DPs were upgrades to Chaos Lords, so weren’t they BS5 then? Or did Daemonic Stature nerf BS?

They went from BS0 in the 3rd ed. Codex, to BS3 in Chapter Approved 2001, to BS5 in 3.5.

Chaos Lords could organically be upgraded to Daemon Princes in 3.5, so it's reasonable that the new statline reflect their Chaos Lord origin.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Lord Zarkov wrote:

I don’t think they had any guns though in the CA article? (And presumably not in original 3rd Ed given BS0)

I think there was a Tzeentian spell that required a BS, like Bolt of Change.

Lord Zarkov wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:

Lord Zarkov wrote:

 amanita wrote:
I remember the Kai gun, which was like a heavy bolter but AP 3.

That was 3.5 Ed though where DPs were upgrades to Chaos Lords, so weren’t they BS5 then? Or did Daemonic Stature nerf BS?

They went from BS0 in the 3rd ed. Codex, to BS3 in Chapter Approved 2001, to BS5 in 3.5.

Makes sense, so I was right on 3.5. I didn’t have the original codex, but I had the latter two.

I remember the CA with an intro that basically said “yeah DPs suck and are boring, so here’s an attempt to fix that”

I don’t think they had any guns though in the CA article? (And presumably not in original 3rd Ed given BS0)

They had no guns, but they could use two different psychic powers that were fired like guns, hitting with BS, i believe.

Lord Zarkov wrote:
That was 3.5 Ed though where DPs were upgrades to Chaos Lords, so weren’t they BS5 then? Or did Daemonic Stature nerf BS?

Daemonic stature did knock them back down to BS 3.
They got the full BS 5 (and WS 7) in the 4th edition chaos and daemon books.

Early 3e princes felt like three different people writing bits of them without talking to each other. A toughness 4 monstrous creature with the ability to take ranged attacks but not shoot them - you could even mount it on a juggernaut which would have made for an interesting model given their size*


(*RAW in order to field a daemonic stature lord in 3.5 you needed a model at least 10 feet tall - until it was FAQed)

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Mostly keeping pace and mindset with WHFB.

Daemons didn’t have many ranged weapons at all. Pretty sure it was just the Horrors flicking spectral bogies. But in WHFB? They were casting spells which you didn’t roll to hit for, so their BS was moot.

Which is weird for Horrors. Take away their spell casting and their splitting into Blue Horrors? And all you get is an underpowered infantry unit with, if memory serves a 4+ Invulnerable save.

In both systems (40k 2nd Ed, I think pre-6th Ed Ravening Hordes game-wide stats reset for WHFB) Greater Daemons (and the Avatar) were BS10 apart from maybe the GUO. Then the 3rd Ed/6th Ed changeover dropped it all down.

Doesn't make much sense for a prince to be worse at shooting than a chaos marine, since he presumably was one. He should at least get BS4.

To be fair I imagine the changes of becoming a Daemon prince could very well negatively impact ones shooting ability. After all, fine manual dexterity might not be amazing when you suddenly find yourself with massive claws.