The future of Sisters

[ValourousHeart]

I personally would love to see the Faith System redesigned.

 

Story wise to game play design, I feel that most armies play close to the story.

Yes of course some of the novels take great liberties, but for the most part I feel that, especially with some of the formations... and as long as you stay far away from tournaments.... they play like the stories.

 

That is except for sisters.

 

All of the stories since they were released in 2nd edition claim that the sisters are highly trained, equivalent to the best that the IG has to offer.

In addition to this they are also supposed to have such profound faith in the emperor, to such a degree that their faith actually manifests itself.

Well that is the story.

 

In game play however, faith for most of the renditions has been random access to veteran skills, once per game.

Now other armies get these same veteran skills all of the time... no random component.

 

I would prefer a system that we had constant access to veteran skills.

And then once per game.... or once every 3 games... something spectacular and miraculous happens.

 

But as it stand right now, it isn't very spectacular or miraculous... it is expected.

Wow my Dominions disembarked and fired a bunch of melta guns that ignore cover... the miracle is if the Dominion squad survives after that... which they never do.

 

And have that miraculous thing be something that people talk about, because it doesn't happen every game.

Have it be.... BOOM.... WOW... THAT IS AWESOME!!!

 

I am not sure how to make that miracle game mechanic work... I have some thoughts but I am not sure how to flesh them out.

[Aqui]

As a relative newcomer, I have no practical experience of how the old system worked. If I recall, it worked by expending a number of Faith points to do something? Each turn you'd roll to add to the total amount of FP for that turn (or the next turn)?

 

I think the Faith system does need to change, but I have no clue how that is fluffy but not over powered.

[ValourousHeart]

The method that keeps coming back to me it to somehow integrate the faith effects it into the psychic phase.

 

The biggest problem with that is, that you don't want the sister's faith ability to be psychic powers.

But as a game mechanic, it makes more sense having their miracles happen in the same game phase as nightmares happen, then it does in any of the other phases.

 

The primary reason that psychic power can be so devastating is because they are considered balanced because they are contested rolls.

Having faith effects happen in the psychic phase and allowing them to be contested means that you can make the effects more spectacular, while still keeping them balanced.

 

Well as I said, I am not sure how to flesh them out.

[ElectricPaladin]

The method that keeps coming back to me it to somehow integrate the faith effects it into the psychic phase.

 

The biggest problem with that is, that you don't want the sister's faith ability to be psychic powers.

But as a game mechanic, it makes more sense having their miracles happen in the same game phase as nightmares happen, then it does in any of the other phases.

 

The primary reason that psychic power can be so devastating is because they are considered balanced because they are contested rolls.

Having faith effects happen in the psychic phase and allowing them to be contested means that you can make the effects more spectacular, while still keeping them balanced.

 

Well as I said, I am not sure how to flesh them out.

 

Eh. The Navigator's powers are psychic, but don't act like psychic powers. The Sisters' powers could act like psychic powers, but not be psychic powers.

[GogglesDown]

I always thought it made sense to use the psychic phase. Make the faithful rule like brotherhood of psychers and let us manifest his will and counter the witch's vile corruption with our faith pool and adamantium will. Preists could be fl1, Jacobus and canonesses fl2, Celestine fl3.

 

Make divine guidance the "primaris power".

 

@Aquilanus the old way was that each faithful unit gave you a faith point and you could spend them to take a faith test and manifest any power you wanted on whichever unit you wanted at the time. So you could spend all your points on the units that needed them when they needed it and gave them the power that made sense. It was much more flexible than the current system.

[*Furyou Miko]

Under the original (3e) faith system Goggles is desdribing, you also gained a faith point when a Faithful unit died - essentially, you had two Faith Points for every Veteran Superior (and Seraphim squad) in your army, plus four for every Canoness or Celestine.

 

Of course, you also needed a Faithful unit in the squad to use an Act of Faith, so it was fairly easy to end up in a situation where you couldn't use any of your fifteen odd Faith Points because you didn't have anyone left who could activate an Act.

 

You also had a pool of five Acts to choose from (which boiled down to, in modern terms; +2 Strength / Unwieldy, Fearless / autoregroup, +2 Initiative, 3++ save (Or 2++ for Canoness with the Cloak of St. Aspira), or Rending-but-not-against-vehicles).

 

Celestine could come back as often as she wanted on a leadership test, but if she failed, you could not use Faith for the rest of the battle. For anyone. Other than that, she was basically identical to her current incarnation aside from having to choose her save at the start of the game and being S5 instead of Poisoned (4+).

 

Better in some ways, worse in others.

 

Then in 5th, it was changed to d6 Faith Points at the start of the turn (lose unspent FP at end of the turn), and each squad had its on Act of Faith (Hatred for Canoness, Relentless for Command Squad, +1 Strength for Celestians, Strike-once-if-dead for Repentia, Fearless + Preferred Enemy for Battle Sisters, Shred for Seraphim, Twin-linked for Dominions and Rending for Retributors).

 

Then here in 7th we have the current system of once-per-game-per-unit.

 

Personally, I'm actually in favour of going back to the 2e method.

 

Instead of Acts of Faith, we had Rites of Battle. Every unit led by a character got to roll on a table at the start of the game. Veteran Superiors gave +1 bonus to the roll, Priests +2 and the Canoness and special characters +3. The unit would then gain the benefit of a special rule for the rest of the game - usually something minor like re-rolls to Morale checks or +1 attack when charging, but there were something like eight different possible outcomes (plus four 'no game effects' sadly, it was a 2d6 roll). Faith was less 'space magic' (leave that to filthy witches) and more of a morale/inspiration effect.

 

Powerful as the Shield of Faith in its current incarnation is, it's not fluffy. The 3e version was - that was 'ignore incoming psychic powers on a 6+, immune to minor psychic powers' - but it wasn't especially useful.

 

So here's my suggested change to the Faith system;

 

1) Current Acts of Faith are lost. Replaced with: Canoness has Preferred Enemy, Fleet and Crusader. Command Squad has Fleet and Crusader. Celestians are reworked from the ground up. Repentia have 4+ Feel no Pain. Battle Squads have Stubborn. Seraphim have Shred. Dominions have Advanced Optics (Ignores Cover). Retributors have Twin-Linked, and Rending-if-stationary.

2) Shield of Faith grants Dispel Dice, Sisters dispel on a 5+ on each die. One extra Dispel Die per unit.

3) Rites of Battle are rolled for at the start of the game. Veteran Superior grants +1 bonus to the roll. Canoness has +2 bonus to the roll. Celestine doesn't get them, she's Special anyway. Jacobus gets to roll. Priests don't. Rolling an ability the unit already has allows a re-roll (but only one, as normal - if you get the same result twice, bad luck)

 

Rites of Battle table;

Roll | Benefit

2 | Nothing

3-4 | Unit may reroll Morale Checks (both failed and successful)

5-6 | Unit has Hatred

7 | Unit has Rage

8 | Unit has Feel no Pain (5+)

9 | Unit has Twin-Linked

10 | Unit is Relentless

11 | Unit may fire twice each turn

12 | Roll Twice (without bonusses)</table>

[Arkaniss]

I can see the appeal in the simplicity of making Acts of Faith a sort of Psychic discipline only accessible to Sisters of Battle - similar to how the Grey Knights work. I think that could be a viable way of updating the system without making them Psychic powers.

 

I have a lot of fond memories of the old Faith system - it made sense and wasn't hard to keep track of and I really liked having a table of Acts to choose from as the situation demanded. I'm not keen on units having only the one Act of Faith as they are now. I liked having the flexibility to use different Acts on different units and it made my army somewhat unpredictable. Since I'm looking back with my nostalgia glasses on: I'll always treasure my beatstick Canoness with her Inferno Pistol, Eviscerator and Cloak of St. Aspira...

[sedibear]

Canoness with Jumppack.

 

T_T

[BitsHammer]

Small point about old Celestine: her resurrections ate half the points in your Faith pool too.

 

Shield of Faith granting mastery dice for countering psychic powers would likely be the most fluff way to update it I could think of.

 

Having the free combat shield isn't bad mind you and saving an extra sister now and then is nice but if we lost it for something fluffier I'd be okay with that.

[ValourousHeart]

 

Personally, I'm actually in favour of going back to the 2e method.

 

Instead of Acts of Faith, we had Rites of Battle. Every unit led by a character got to roll on a table at the start of the game. Veteran Superiors gave +1 bonus to the roll, Priests +2 and the Canoness and special characters +3. The unit would then gain the benefit of a special rule for the rest of the game - usually something minor like re-rolls to Morale checks or +1 attack when charging, but there were something like eight different possible outcomes (plus four 'no game effects' sadly, it was a 2d6 roll). Faith was less 'space magic' (leave that to filthy witches) and more of a morale/inspiration effect.

 

Slight correction here... Pulled out my book to make sure I quoted this right.

 

Sacred Rites table was rolled on 1D6, but there were 9 different results.

The 1 result was the only no effect result.

So if you had any modifier, you were guaranteed to get something.

 

Canoness gave +3

Superior gave +1

Vet Superior gave +2

Missionary lvl 1-2 gave +0 and lvl 3 gave +1

Preacher gave +0

If the army includes any psychers -1 to all sacred rites rolls

 

Most of the special characters gave the same bonus to the roll as their generic counter part.

The one notable exception was Helena, she was the head of all of the orders on Ophelia 7.

As such she gave +4 to the roll, and if you rolled a 10, you got to get 2 results off the list.

[BitsHammer]

So take with a bucket of salt (or whatever your daily dose is when rumors arise) but according to one person I know, supposibly Sisters are done and in the warehouse awaiting the legal team to finish negotiating rights regarding them for release.

 

I remain skeptical until I'm holding plastic models in my hand, but considering GW's cageyness about IP stuff post-CH it wouldn't be surprising. Though, like I said, I'm not really relying on the idea of any rumors being "true" at this point.

[*Furyou Miko]

That rumour's old as dirt, and any legal team negotiations would be incredibly strange since they're GW property being sold by GW under the GW imprints.

[WarriorFish]

Yes, why would the lawyer team need to negotiate anything for GW's own stuff? Not worth the bytes its written with, tell that person you know to filter their rumours better ;):P

[BitsHammer]

Supposibly there is some potential IP conflict that they're trying to negotiate rights for but unless it's with the Catholic Church your guess is as good as mine.

 

Anyways, that's honestly the only rumor I've heard for Sisters since the digi-dex dropped. I'm so far past rumor withdrawal at this point that I'd need to get addicted from scratch again.

[WarriorFish]

No bad thing to escape the rumour mill, I've long been in a sort of zen place of indifference about it :P The trouble with Sisters is that it has been so long that potentially almost anything could go (within reason, of course). Perhaps we will find out more when they're released, or can make an educated guess from what we see - assuming it's correct that is!

[tvih]

Good ol' limbo, eh?

[Aqui]

Rather than starting a new topic, I thought I'd post this here:

I've just come back from Warhammer Fest and I have something to tell you all - The Repressor IS coming back! As many have been told over the last few months, the mold was beyond repair and they are having to rebuild it from scratch. It's also advertised in the 2016 FW catalogue. The other thing - the Immolator. Basically, the plastic injector that makes the canopies bite the dust and was one of the reasons why it is no longer available. However, the FW staffer said that they had managed to find around 100 of the canopies somewhere, so in the near future, it WILL be available again, but once they are gone - THEY ARE GONE! So keep your eyes peeled on the GW site!

When I was in the queue and saw the page below, I thought I was given an older catalogue!

In my haste, I forgot to add - Alan Bligh of Forge World was asked a question regarding the updating of Imperial Armour: Aeronautica (for the Avenger fighter) and the Death from the Skies supplement. He said no reprinting of the book to include any changes because of the DftS book is likely yet (there are a lot of books that need finishing first), but not impossible. he did, however say that it was very likely that an FAQ will be issued at some point.

[WarriorFish]

Good work Special Agent Aqui :tu: Now it's time for your next assignment: Operation ETL... ;)

[Goonbandito]

Rather than starting a new topic, I thought I'd post this here:

 

I've just come back from Warhammer Fest and I have something to tell you all - The Repressor IS coming back!

You're doing the Emperors Work citizen! :)

[Kros Morotho]

So... for want of a single, transparent piece, the Immolatorhas been pulled?!?

[BitsHammer]

So... for want of a single, transparent piece, the Immolatorhas been pulled?!?

Some time ago no less.

 

And while it can be ignored for the Sisters Rhino, it missing from the shield plate on the Immolator is less impressive looking.

[Naminé]

So... for want of a single, transparent piece, the Immolatorhas been pulled?!?

It's basically what we had suspected :p

[Sviar]

Well if you look at GWs site the sisters have scarce selection. I like to think that in near future a plastic range will appear, and when it does I'm going to buy a lot of boxes.

[Bjorn Firewalker]

Regarding Immolators: Does this mean Forge World will manufacture a conversion kit for Razorbacks, and that Immolators will count as Razorbacks when 'Codex: Adepta Sororitas' is updated (whenever that happens)? Or will Forge World manufacture a new Immolator, possibly one without the gunner's windscreen?

[Bjorn Firewalker]

Well if you look at GWs site the sisters have scarce selection. I like to think that in near future a plastic range will appear, and when it does I'm going to buy a lot of boxes.

I really, REALLY wish this was true, but I'm not the only one to remember the words "Hope is the first step on the road to disappointment," (or "Hope is the first step on the road to DAMNATION," for those buying models from Raging Hormones because REAL Adepta Sororitas models are unavailable).