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Ok Gentlemen, we all have our various Codecies(exes?) with a page or 3 dedicated to showing off a few of the SPECIFIC heroes for individual groups. IE Magneus Calgar/Lemun Russ(?)/Captain Shrike/Mephiston etc etc.

We know there are Vehicle design rules.

Has anyone out there put any thought to "Character design rules"?

I know you can Fluff-up a hero in Vanilla marines with Wargear etc. But how do you go about assigning points for a pair of Master-crafted Powerfists with built-in Bolters?

This is just an idea about Vanillas having the option....

You field 'Carnius Malgar' (by which I mean, pinch any special characters from the list you're building from and rename them. Other than that, it'd be entirely house ruled.

You hit Warseer or B&C, hope the hyper kids with overactive imaginations are on, and proceed to create a topic with variations of a 100-point Str 10, WS 10, A6 models with a rerollable 2+ save character.

The last chaos codex is a good start. A few special rules, like giving his unit veteran skills or scout moves or whatever, would round it out nicely.

I've been curious about this myself. I've wanted to make my Chapters Epistolary a "special character" by giving him a Force Power Fist (fluff wise, that he had a wraith lord blow his arm off with a bright lance, and then replaced his arm with a powerfist forged from the wraith bone of that Wraith lord).

BTW, does anyone have a good link to a VDR program or site? I want to build rules for my Eldar Knight Titan.

good question, ive always wondered this myself

The VDRs are 2 editions old. If you want to field a special Titan, take a god look at the other Titan rules and try to build up from there. Or down, depending on the size of your titan.

I don't know anything about character creation rules, I guess that would depend on what kind of special rule you want your commander to have.

Hi all.
Some other companies give finite PV allocation methods in the back of the rule book , so you can design you own characters, units , vehicles etc.(And list restrictions on force composition too , to stop things getting too silly for pick up games!)

However GW feel thast this level of freedom given to its gamers would have a negative impact on its ability to hype its new releases.

So just create what you want , and get your opponents concent.(Usualy overcost it a bit to be on the safe side.)

TTFN
Lanrak.

The cost of weapons and most wargear is covered in the books and it should be possible to take an existing character and change it a bit and keep it fairly priced.

For example, take Tau Commander Shadowsun and change her twin fusion guns to plasma guns. Compare the price of a fusion gun and a plasma gun in the Crisis Suit wargear, and adjust points accordingly.

The difficulty is the characters that have non-standard powers. The new SM special characters have various kind of powers like one guy allows Terminators to be taken as Troops, another guy allows his troops to have Furious Charge, and so on. These powers are priced into the overall character cost along with his basic stats and weapons, so it would be impossible to fairly price a new character that allows Terminators with Furious Charge as Troops.

In friendly games it would not matter so much as you can compensate for the combination of powers if it is too cheap.

Indeed, for these kinds of things your best bet is to just start with something close and work your way back.

For example, I wanted my DIY chapter to have a special Master of the Forge, allows one tactical squad (the Forge Guard) to be taken as Elites and upgraded with Artificer Armour and a Servo Arm (+15 pts/model), and keeping Lord of the Armoury. The Forgemaster himself is in Terminator armour with an Iron Halo, has a Servo arm and a pair of Assualt Cannon (The Forge Hammers, may count as twin linked if he moves with Slow & Purposeful that turn).

So, letsee, Master of the Forge is 100 points, Terminator Armour is 25, but he's droping the Servo harness for -25, Assault cannons are 30 points a pop (we'll call the second one 20 since it's not a full AssC) and we'll say the Forge Guard option is an extra 15. So, 165 points. Now I'd convert the model, get together with my regular group, and play test him, adjusting points as neccissary, until he seemed fairly balanced and everyone was willing to play against him on a regular basis.

Ta Da, special character.

Kilkrazy wrote:The difficulty is the characters that have non-standard powers. The new SM special characters have various kind of powers like one guy allows Terminators to be taken as Troops, another guy allows his troops to have Furious Charge, and so on. These powers are priced into the overall character cost along with his basic stats and weapons, so it would be impossible to fairly price a new character that allows Terminators with Furious Charge as Troops.

In friendly games it would not matter so much as you can compensate for the combination of powers if it is too cheap.

GW designers admit themselves that they just tack on a points cost that "feels" right. You might as well do that.

I used to generate special characters all the time but that was back in second edition and they certainly didn't have army affecting abilities like the ones you see today. But with the heroes becoming quite common in regular lists ( at least from what I've read) I'd certainly like to see something like a fandex that lists special abilities as well as stat improvements with requisite point costs etc. But aside from that just go off what everyone else is posting here, make you're own and play-test him/her until a majority of your opponents feel it to be balanced.