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Hi all,

I have a question, I'm building a custom sub chapter for my Dark Angels.
I was wondering, are there any rules for building custom chapter masters and librarians?

If so, what are those or where can I find them?

If you mean some sort of template that GW has released for special characters, you are out of luck. But you can always take the base librarian, throw an extra rule on that you think will make him play like your special character, and then throw it up here/show it to your mates, and we/they can help you get him in working condition

My chapter would be lead by two brothers, Ulrich and Ulfried Friedenstahl. Ulrich would be the chapter master, his brother Ulfried would be the head librarian. I was thinking of basing them on Azrael en Ezekiel, with slightly different rulings, the stats would be the same, their weapons, rules and relics slightly different.

chapter tactics would be based on versatility in deployment, presicion deep striking elites and fast moving tacticals and bike's.

For the master I was thinking about a crossover between azrael and belial, seeing as I converted myself a mini for him in semi terminator armour. I would like to give him a ruling so he can use a stormraven gunship as dedicated transport, but don't know If that would be to overpowered.

My librarian would be on a bike.

The thing I like most about dark angels is the possibility to use termies and bikes as troop choises, so I would like to give the master that option for the termies and the librarian that option for bikers.

Still doing a lot of thinking about it, but since I'm fairly new to 40K (only started playing in 6th edition) I don't have a good idea about what would be ok, and what would be overpowered.

My suggestion would be to put your initial thoughts together, and then post them here for Dakka to take a look at. Just going by what your wrote you seem level headed enough to come up with something that is at least workable and can be tweaked until its good and balanced. Lets see what youve got so far

So far, I want my master to be able to penetrate armour, he should be more of a close combat chap then a shooting fellow, so I was thinking to base his prime weapon on a powermaul (with lower ap value) and give him something like a special plasma gun or something (storm bolter like plasma gun)
He should get special rules for the dedicated transport, and something like eternal warrior. Assides from that he should give the option to use deathwing as troops or elites as he sees fit
should give tacticals scout or infiltrate (thinking of infiltrate to have a couple of rhino's with outflanking possibility)

the librarian should be mastery level 3 like ezekiel, should have some special force sword (perhaps with fleshbane) and a special psykerpower that gives a large blast effect with low strength and ap-- or something that gives the bikers he is with a better cover save, should make ravenwing bikers a troop or fast attack choise,

I would also like for both brothers to get raged if one of them is slain, and to give them both some handicap that is contradictory to the other fellow

this is a bit what I want to do, have to do somethinking about the chapter itself and the names for the special rules and stuff.

basicly the chapter would be separeted from the Rock since the great betrayal, they got into a warp storm that flinged them to an undiscovered corner of the universe from where they are trying to get back to Terra. In their long history all the lore and knowledge about there mother chapter has been lost. They are a very small chapter with only about 400 to 500 marines (don't know if thats considered small though). since they haven't been in contact with the rock since the horus thingy they don't get to use the inner cirle special rule on any unit. When they got seperated they where a recon company with some deathwing and ravenwing parts, that have long since been renamed. I'm still thinking of names for the chapter, their deathwing and ravenwing parts. Was also thinking about colour schemes. I will be using some mixture of red and white for the deathwing, purple for the ravenwing and white red and green for the greenwing

If you try to give him too much he will be way too unrealistic. Making all bikes and termies troops as well as giving him the raven guard chapter tactics? As well as better power maul with a combi stormbolter? It's hokey to me. Seems like a major stretch.

That's a bit over the top. If he can make everything troops while flinging ap2 pie plates everywhere and giving more cover to his squad... ehh. Plus rage and EW? Nah.

It seems like you should consider more of a 'pick one or two things from the list' sort of thing.

For most characters, you can build for army utility (give special rules to the army), or combat prowess. You can do both with really top level guys like Grimnar and Calgar, but it's an interesting balance, because you can quickly stack so many things that stuff becomes awesome but impractical.

In terms of cost, base cost of captain is just shy of 100, and for CM, with an extra wound and attack, they're usually 40 points more.

Calculating a Libby is a bit more complicated. A base libby is cheaper than a captain by a bit (since they drop a wound and the invuln save), but then you've got to stack in Mastery Levels.

It's not official, but in general I follow:

- For Wounds: 15 points for the 2nd and 3rd wounds, 30 for the 4th. You probably don't need to go higher than that.

- For Attacks: 5 points per attack above 1 up until you have 3, then ten points per attack after that. Max out at 4, unless you're going full beatstick, then maybe to 5.

- For Weapon Skill: 5 points per WS (or BS depending on if you want a shooty guy) up until WS 6. Then 15 points per after that. For SMs, you should max out at 6 usually. The jump from 5 points to 15 is due to the fact that almost no SMs have WS7, which is usually reserved for truly ridiculous things in the game. You can raise the other stat by one from base (of 4) for free IF you've raised the other stat by at least 2 (so basically, if you raised WS to 6, you could raise BS to 5 for free), but you need to pay for raising the other stat after that.

- Everything else is pretty standard. S4 and T4, Sv is 3+ unless you buy wargear, LD10. The only thing that varies is Initiative, CMs are usually 5 and Libbies are usually 4. Even Tiggy is striking at 4, so I think Chief Libbies are good there, unless you're making him a beatstick Libby (in which case his army utility should decrease).

- You can raise S, T, and I from the base amount if you really want to, and for those, I generally think 10 points for the first point increase is fair, with it going up to 15 for the next point in S and I. Toughness should increase by 20 points per point of T after T5 (so 30 points total to get to T6) (then 30 for T7, then 40 for T8), because you make yourself less and less capable of being instant deathed as well as just hurt in general.

- Obviously, saves are tied to wargear, unless you're doing something like Ragnar's save (which just stands in for wargear). Invuln saves I find tend to develop where for a 6++ it's 5 points, and then it's 10 points per after that, and should max out at 3++ (2++s are very rare and SMs usually shouldn't have them, except in very special circumstances). The one place this doesn't hold is with the stormshield, where it's cheaper than the formula, but that's because you're losing an attack/weapon for the shield.

So doing that, with a 15 point base for a standard marine, let's say you wanted a base captain statline, so WS6 BS5 S4 T4 W3 I5 A3 LD10 Sv3+/4++.
15 (base marine) + 15 (2nd wound) + 15 (3rd wound) + 10 (BS4 to 6) + 0 (free increase to BS5), + 5 (2nd A) + 5 (3rd A) + [5 (6++) + 10 (to 5++) + 10 (to 4++)] = ...well you can do the math (I've broken things up so as to not put any GW definite rules so they don't get angry), but it equals what a captain does in the new book, and if you wanted to go to a CM it would end up working out to the same cost as the book too. So in general the formula holds.

As for Psychic powers, each mastery level equals the same in cost as a 4++ save, based on the formula.

So now you've got your statlines.
From there, grab base wargear off the wargear list. You can make them special by adding rules. Generally speaking, adding +1S, or -1AP, or special rules that always are around or activate very often (like rampage or rage) are 10 points each, while things that are more situational (like Preferred Enemy: Eldar, or something that only activates once in a while) you can make 5 points, since its utility is limited. For a 2nd copy of a weapon (for example, two Lightning Claws), pay the cost of adding a 4th attack for the 2nd version, since that's basically what you're doing, adding another attack.


Then you get to army utility rules, like "Give army Scout" or "Everyone within 12" gets +1A" or "Makes Terminators Troops."

That stuff is hard to gauge. Generally speaking, I think people say 10 points per rule is good, unless it's very limited, in which case, 5 points might be ok. But it is a very inexact science, and some things might be better to cost more than 10, closer to 20.


So briefly, since this has been long, let's look at your CM idea. Let's start with a base CM build, and then add a powermaul with AP2 (base cost is powerweapon, plus 20 to get down to AP2). Then you want to add in a plasmagun, but I guess make it Assault 2 instead of rapid fire, so maybe add 5 points to the cost of it.

By the way, EW as a base cost is very expensive as a blanket ability. It's definitely NOT 10 points, but rather generally comes in at 3.5 times that.

But anyways, he gives dedicated transports something special, so +10, giving tacticals infiltrate or scout is another +10, and Deathwing as troops would be another 10 (though Terminators as troops is one of those situations where it might be good to cost it more than 10 points).

So all told, cost would be around 240 points for that I think.

The one thing though is usually guys help promote ONE type of unit's abilities (like Termies as Troops OR Tacticals get scout), not multiple, unless it's army wide (in which case it might cost more). I'd probably impose a tax there, but again, inexact science.

Anyways, I hope this helps.

Edit: It is worth noting that much of this is based on Ovion's concepts from the "Your own unique character" thread.