Whew, the activity in CoS topics has gone up in the last week; I'll try to keep up, but as I have work to do it might take me a while. So, starting here with comments on SC; first some new thoughts/info on those already present in original fluff - Morathi and Dechala
Morathi
After looking through a couple of armybooks I haven't found any character who would have access to all spells from more than one list (slaans are the only ones who mix lists AFAIK, and none of them can choose their spells or has access to more than 6).
So another take on CoS version of Morathi would be simply to give her Pact with Slaanesh rule for 5 pts and ability to know all spells from either Dark Magic or Lore of Slaanesh (or Daemon Lore of Slaanesh, would that be available to Supreme Sorceresses; will comment on that in the main CoS rewrite thread) list according to player's choice (at no additional cost), making her a total of 460 pts.
Dechala
Got a quick read through Liber Chaotica, and found out that Dechala has a whole 4 pages of background there! This includes her description, history of her corruption as well as some info on her warband - the Tormentors; there are even some illustrations, which are supposedly skeches of her by LC in-world author (too bad they seem rather a colletion of concept art of daemonettes and different Slaaneshi champions
still, they are inspiring).
As usual with LC fluff this is all given as in-world info, her history being some of the more consistant legends about her. Still, as they really are consistant within and both with general and CoS fluff I think we can treat them as her objective history. In short it goes it as:
- Dechala was once an exceptionally beautiful elf-maid, daughter of An-Toralis, mighty lord of Nagarythe who fought alongside Aenarion.
- She and her family were chased and persecuted by Daemon Prince Samael, who wanted her like no other being since his ascention to daemonhood (concering world's timeline, either he also was an elf once or came from some other world... or maybe time simply)
- Samael came repeatedly with one demand: he would leave whole family at peace if they gave Dechala to him
- Finally, tired - and probably also corrupted by Widowmaker effect on all Aenarion's followers - they decided to agree to Samael's demand.
- Rather than abuse her, Samael wanted to corrupt Dechala and keep her with him forever. In anger and frustration, she agreed to marry him, as long as he granted her power to revenge upon her family.
- She killed them all, making her father especially to suffer long tortures before his death. Slaanesh, amused by her imagination and fury in that respect marked her and in time bestowed more gifts upon her.
- That made Samael jealous; While Dechala wanted him to tread her as an equal, he would not agree for that; seeing that he might soon turn against her, Dechala fled into Chaos Wastes
- Samael raged; he called upon Slaanesh to bring his beloved back, so he could punish her
- Slaanesh, irritated by Daemon Prince making him demands refused. He did however had soft spot for Samael, and so promised him, that as long as Samael existed, Dechala would not be ascended to daemonhood.
- So while aquiring many gifts from Slaanesh, such as her snake-like tail or many arms, Dechala remained mortal. She gathered a band of followers around her and fights in the Chaos Wastes
So the only thing that would be needed is bringing this story a little further, to a moment where Dechala decides to join CoS:
- I believe as a daughter of Aenarion's companion she must have known Morathi
- It also might have been Morathi who helped Daemon Prince to harras elven family in the material world (though Dechala is most probably unaware of that)
- Morathi new what has become of her. So she might send expedition to seek Dechala out in the Wastes to further her case.
Another thing is that her elixir is said to be fed by force (on the battlefield already) to victims by Dechala's followers, and as it's highly addictive it gives them a choice of following her or die in great suffering. This however is hard to represent in-game, so I'd go with the following:
Venom of Damnation
Dechala covers her blades with a poison of her own creation; while not as potent as her elixir, it does give it's victims a taste of nightmare that unholy potion brings.
The rule itself stays as:
All of Dechala's attacks count as having the Piosoned Attacks special rule; A model that suffers an unsaved wound from her blades may not strike during that combat phase unless it can pass a Leadership test.
After discussion here, I agree that she might be modeled to fit well on 25mm base, and think it fits her rules better than bigger base, so I'd go with that.
This means she costs total of 225 points.
@MartialArtist - link to Dechala's old miniature is next to the link to picture, in the same sentence.
Characters from older druchii.net CoP fluff
@Voodoomaster - thanks for the links; found some interesting background there. Some of it became a bit dated with 7th ed DE AB, but nothing that can't be dealed with.
Concerning characters described there:
As number of SC to include in the list is limited, I believe only some of those mentioned in background should have rules (just like other ABs have it); Would base that on both their importance to fluff, diversity (as in not to put too many of one type or too similiar SC in the list) and also originality rule-wise (seen as: 'what does this SC bring to the list that regular ones can't?').
I also think, that if rules for a certain character are not developed, it might be a reason not to include it (rule-wise of course; no problem with having them as a part of background). If someone voluteer for making such rules, then its great. On the other hand, I suspect most people would be more inspired by their own ideas for SC and I see no reason to forbid that; all those characters come from unofficial background after all.
Ok, so going to specific characters:
Lonicera
- plays an important role in the backgound and already has rules, just needing an update to 7th ed.
- being a regular Supreme Sorceress her only untypical rules (either from gifts or items) are:
#If she succeedes in either wounding or affecting enemy with a spell, she can steal power from enemy in both friendly and enemy magic phase. She may take one enemy power or dispel dice and use it has her own dispel/power dice. Each time she does that, she must pass a Ld test or suffer 1 wound.
# enemy within 6" suffer -1 to all Ld tests
# Bound spell - Eternal Hatered towars everyone, not just HE; affects herself, as well as a unit she joins
# 5+ ward increased to 4+ against HE magical attacks and spells from Lore of Life & High Magic
# enemy must pass a Ld test to attack her
#If Morathi's not present, she must be the army general
- The most importat (powerful&untypical) special effect IMO is her staff's ability of stealing power/dispel dice. I do believe it is quite powerful, so needs some restrictions and such she gets.
- On the other hand, it seems to me that those restrictions don't translate well into the fluff - what does 'stealing of power' represent in terms of background that she needs to hurt enemy (not nessecerly enemy wizard) to do it?
- So I'm a bit mixed about her. Not a particular fan of her rules, as even if mentioned issue is explained, she still is a regular SS with a little bit of offensive power, some protection and spellcasting bonus and as such is quite similar to Morathi. She still is an important part of background and her fluff is interesting.
What do you guys think of including her?
Nagathi
- an Anointed; not very unique beyond that
- so unless someone gets inspired by his story and comes up with the rules, not much of a SC.
- add to that, that we do have other ideas for Anointed, such as Morgoth (BTW MartialArtist - did you decide wether to rename him and if so - how?) so I'd leave Nagathi out.
Sam'aan - Cabal of Pleasure and its characters
A good piece of CoS background (as with other earlier fluff - might need some tweaking for 7th ed), though rarther on local scale; definitly it would be too much to include all 3 characters from there
- Dhearanna, High Priestess is a regular Supreme Sorceres; don't know if her lack of Mark of Slaanesh is a mistake or intentional, but doesn't make a good SC anyway IMO.
- Senix the Torture Master gives some potential for interesting, original rules
- might make an interesing diad-character-entry with his apprentice Yrael, still how would such rule-bind translate I have no idea. Also what unique might a torture master do during a battle (without stretching credibility and usfulness of rules) is beyond me.
- Yrael as a separate special character doesn't fit I believe; his only unique thing would be equippement of beastmaster anyway.
- so all in all - I'd leave these out completly from rules for now. They might make interesing material for a campaign involving Clar Karond or simply be a piece of background.
Lorellia – The Minstrel of Despair
(I believe she is a devoted-hero?)
Well, I do have contradicting, but quite clear feelings about her:
- do like the idea & fluff much
- dislike the rules
In details:
1. I think idea of 'minstrel' type character is great; singing enhanced with Slaaneshi power makes a very cool concept.
2. Her background story is interesting; I find some names unfitting (IMO should be Slaanesh instead of Atharti and dances shouldn't be named after all Cytharai - Khaine in particular), but those don't affect general idea and come from differences in our view of fluff, as I believe.
3. I like her her ability to support friendly units - quite a rare concept for offensive army, still one put in a way I thinks fits CoS.
4. I do not like her ability to hinder enemy units, because - while also fluffy - it is IMO too similiar to Masque's rules (at least with given rules for Lorellia's songs).
5. Also, her singing affecting only some targets is problematic in a couple of ways.
- what is and what is not a 'non-sentient being' might be discussable; I'd rather stick with 'does not affect models ItP' only, as undead (and all other non-sentient beings I can think of now) already have it.
- 'does not affect ItP' was once quite common, in 7th ed it has been removed from most places; I assume reason for that is:
a)it's magic, so can find a way to work
b)hard to cost out, as such ability would be totally usless against some armies (Undead and Daemons most notably)
So I'd remove that also - it's more in line with general rules, simplier and still easier to explain than poison affecting undead.
6. IMO she definitly should cost more.
- taking the Masque as a base, one has to consider that she doesn't have Locus of Slaanesh or ASF rules that regular Slaaneshi Herald gets, and also is a T3 2W 5+ Ward character who can't hide in units for protection
- taking in account all that I believe her dances alone are worth about 25 points (a bit on the cheap side IMO, but that's what I came up with from the calculations)
- now, Lorellia's singing rules are more limited, but the effects themselves are more powerful and varied. If having same rules as dances (simple 12" effect for 1 unit) they would cost about:
# -1 to hit for enemy unit-> 50-55 pts
# -3 Ld for enemy unit-> 50-60 pts
# test Ld or flee for enemy unit -> 50 pts
# unbrekable upon friendly unit -> 75-90 pts
A bit hard to make fair total cost, because of big difference in one effect's worth, still would be about 60-65 pts total; should 'unbrekable' be changed to 'stubborn' (60 pts) total should be 55 pts IMO.
- As I said above, I believe effect not covering ItP to be hard to price out; My guess would be 50 pts instead of 60-65 for orignal effects; it should be balanced against most opponents, but is still 50 pts for nothing against some armies and underpriced against those that have little in the way of ItP
- So, without any changes to her rules, coming up from Druchii Master she would be:
Master - 80 pts
Additional HW - 4 pts
Mark of Slaanesh - 5 pts
+1 I, A & WS - 25-30 pts
Speed of Slaanesh - 25 pts (same as Quickening Blood - she's not a champion, but a hero with other bonuses to reinforce her, so should pay full price)
Soporific Musk (now renamed to Narcotic Fumes) - 30 pts
Allure of Slaanesh (now renamed to Aura of Slaanesh) - 25 pts
Voice of the Minstrel - 50 pts
for a total of: 245 pts
also bear in mind that she gets total of 130 pts of item-like special rules, wheras normal master gets access to 50.
7. To me she seem an interesting idea, but in current version would need to be quite costy with what she does. I would rather see her (although this has more to do with me wanting to introduce champion-level characters to our list, than with anything else
) as a spiced-up Mistress of Devoted:
- regular Mistress stats (+1 WS and/or I on top of that at most, but looking at her background I don't think she needs it - her special talent lies in singing, not fighting itself)
- Mark of Slaanesh, EH and Narcotic Fumes as per normal Mistress
- Speed of Slaanesh as available to normal Mistress
- Voice of the Minstrel
Would rather see her songs talent as supporting friends than hindering enemies, but that, as I've written above is more about making her more unique than more fluffy (as she already is
).
As she's would be a champion I'd also see her songs support rather her unit than any within 12" (would also help to keep her resonably cheap)
Or how about her voice having two-level effect:
- a couple of effects to choose from for her unit
- one additonal effect for all units within 12" (stubborn? +1Ld?)
Well, thats my ideas and comments about her. Pick what you want from that.