Design your own character rules

[Kaede45]

Hearing the ideas that people have of rules for kitbashed characters makes me want a sort of “build-your-own character” system. Like a list of keywords, abilities, wargear, etc. with point values that one could use to make their own characters for the tabletop & give them their own unique flavor!

[Jukkiz]

1 hour ago, Kaede45 said:

Hearing the ideas that people have of rules for kitbashed characters makes me want a sort of “build-your-own character” system. Like a list of keywords, abilities, wargear, etc. with point values that one could use to make their own characters for the tabletop & give them their own unique flavor!

"We still talk about you..."

[Kaede45]

2 hours ago, Jukkiz said:

"We still talk about you..."

Wait, what!?

You mean that was actually a thing?

[ThaneOfTas]

6 hours ago, Kaede45 said:

Wait, what!?

You mean that was actually a thing?

Absolutely it was, honestly it's really only been this edition that it's been almost entirely gone thanks to Wargear becoming significantly more limited and warlord traits and relics being simplified down into Enhancements (although the new Crucible of Champions rules are a step back in the right direction).

 

The 3.5(?) CSM codex is generally held up as the pinnacle of that sort of freedom and customisation though, although since it was well before my own time I'll leave it to those who were there to explain why.

Edited Saturday at 03:51 AM by ThaneOfTas

[Jukkiz]

12 hours ago, Kaede45 said:

Wait, what!?

You mean that was actually a thing?

you could have Daemonprince in plain sight, aslong as it was on proper base and tall enough. 

People sadly abused this as they made their lord stand on rocks or scenery and people thouht it was just a chaos lord...

Ah, the memories... 

[Evil Eye]

The 3.5 edition Chaos Codex was honestly one of the best books GW ever put out. Most of the customization options were pretty fair too; there were some options that were flat-out busted (Iron Warriors bypassing the 0-1 Obliterator limit and getting the Basilisk and Vindicator notably) but for the most part it was quite well written. I think the majority of abused things were the result of actual abuse of the system, rather than the book itself being fundamentally overpowered.

 

But then bad actors/people deliberately abusing customization options have been a problem for a while, and I really wish the community as a whole would realize the solution is to embrace the social-contract element of the game rather than wanting a more limited/restrictive ruleset. To me at least, if I play a game with someone and my army steamrolls them based on broken rules I was hitherto unaware of, I wouldn't run that list again and/or would discuss with them "How can we avoid this happening again?". If someone is running a broken list in a casual environment on purpose and their reaction to an opponent getting completely flattened is "Get a better army lolololol" the solution is to tell them to knock it off and refuse to play them if they do not do so. It's one thing if you're in a tournament environment or preparing for such, or even if both players just want to try playing to win, but that comes back to the social contract thing; both players should have a good idea of what they're going into before the game starts. Things like the aforementioned "surprise daemon prince" is only acceptable if both players have agreed "let's see how well we can trick each other with what our models actually are without completely breaking the rules"- if you're doing that against an unsuspecting player who's expecting a normal "honest" game, that's a bit of a dick move.

 

I dunno, I feel like if players in general adopted the attitude that it was their job to police abusive players rather than GW's job to legislate the potential for loophole abuse out of existence (which is impossible, especially with a game with factions as varied and asymmetrical as 40K) things would be better.

[Brother Tyler]

This topic was created from some off-topic posts in the discussion about...

 

[Tawnis]

Fully agree on what was said about the old CSM codex. My lil brother used to run that back in the day and the characters he came up with were always great. 

As for now, design space is a lot more restrictive. When I'm making a custom character for a campaign, it usually what kind of rule and/or weapon can I give them to make their character come across in the rules as best as possible. 

For example, my SM 5th company captain is also a Librarian. I made him from a conversion of the Castellan Crowe model, using the fact that his storm bolter was in his offhand to give him twin swords and twin storm bolters in a pretty cool pose. For special weapons, it is the normal stats for Storm Bolters and Force Swords, but they are both Twin-Linked. Stronger, but not to an excessive amount. As for rules, while he retains the normal Captain's 0CP strat rule, his lore is that he's constantly having psychic visions of his Primarch that sends he and his company on strange missions for usually unknown reasons. So he gets the Guide Psychihc ability normally from the Aeldari Farseer to give a unit re-roll hit rolls, both for him narratively being a guiding force in the lore, but also allowing his unit to be able to do it's own thing on the tabletop. When away from the oath target, they are still strong, which is how I portray his tendency to go off mission.

 

So yeah, that's how I try to design things for the current edition as there really is only so much design space to play in at the moment. 

[DemonGSides]

There's the Crucible of Champions from a recent campaign book as well. It's not a full "Make whatever you want" builder but if you have friends who are cool they shouldn't have too much issue with letting you use that. Can find rules for it pretty easily around the Internet and there's even support inside of New Recruit for adding them to an army list.