News: No news is good news...

Login  |  Register

Author Topic: Alternative Power From Pain  (Read 2270 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline Wyldhunt

  • Senior Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 1447
Alternative Power From Pain
« on: February 23, 2015, 06:41:03 PM »
I've had the new Power From Pain rule come in handy since the new book came out, and it's nice to not lose your pain tokens entirely when units die, but I miss the visceral feeling and reward you used to get for wiping out an enemy unit. Plus, the new power from pain encourages us to beta strike rather than alpha strike despite the fact that we're too fragile to hold much in reserves against any enemy with even half-decent mobility/range. Without discarding the new PFP entirely, I think I'd like to see something like this:

Instead of incrementing the effects of Power From Pain based on what turn it is, treat the "turn" part of the Power From Pain chart as "levels." At the start of the game, your dark kin are still savoring the pain from those victims they just got done playing with (or the ones that are still strapped to the raider somewhere).  They start at PFP level 4 thus giving them the benefits normally associated with turn 4 PFP.  Each turn that the army fails to kill a non-vehicle unit, they go down a level. Each turn they completely destroy a unit in close combat  (either stabbing it to death or winning a sweeping advance), they go up a level. 

Haemonculi would simply boost the effective PFP level of any unit they join by 1. Urien does the same thing, but as an aura as per his entry in the current codex.


The benefits of doing it this way that I see are as follows:

* We're once again an alpha strike army
* Not only do we alpha strike, we want to keep on striking to avoid losing PFP levels.
* The fact that you can only increase your level through melee encourages a great mix of units (wrakcs, incubi, mandrakes, talos, etc.) as opposed to simply using venom spam.  This also helps wyches.
* Wyches start the game with Furious Charge and will keep it so long as you keep the pressure up. This makes them more effective against infantry and also lets teh entire squad threaten vehicles again (by letting them glance rear armor on the charge).  I've heard a lot of complaints about wyches of late, and I think this will give them a small boost. 
*Putting the starting PFP level at 4 means that units that go to ground on turn 1 or 2 can reliably stand back up the next turn so long as the rest of your army is killing stuff. 
*That first turn salo/drop pod flamer assault doesn't leave our units in the wind when explosions and flamer hits ignore our armor.

If this seems too good, what would you think of this same rule but only having it apply to a detachment/formation that emphasizes the use of wych cult units?

Offline Ambience 327

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 334
  • Country: 00
Re: Alternative Power From Pain
« Reply #1 on: February 24, 2015, 03:02:59 PM »
Seems like an interesting idea, but would definitely benefit from playtesting obviously. I don't see anything wildly abusive about it at least. (If you were starting it at Level 5 or more, it would probably be a bit unfair.)

Have you considered a slightly more random version though, to offset the Alpha Strike potential a bit (and prevent people from just list-tailoring to completely take advantage of it)? Something like starting at Level D3+1 or D3+2 (so you'll always get some benefit, but potentially not everything you'd hoped for). This could represent the ebb and flow of the slave trade that your Kabal/Cult/Coven is currently enjoying, with high rolls meaning they are swimming in quality slaves, and low rolls meaning that pickings are slim.

Offline Calamity

  • Concussor Concussed Dice | Captain
  • Lazerous Penguin
  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 3055
  • Country: gb
  • Cocking up miniatures since 1998
  • Armies: Kharadron Overlords, Bloodbound, Celestial Lions
Re: Alternative Power From Pain
« Reply #2 on: February 24, 2015, 04:25:21 PM »
If it's making the Dark Eldar an alpha strike army again, what about a system that works purely on the amount of enemy units you kill?  You could have those six effects as levels, and the force starts off at 0.  But for every enemy unit wiped out, it goes up by 1, and if it was wiped out in cc then it goes up by a further 1.  This would in theory encourage and reward the player for getting stuck in early, but is balanced off by the fact that if you aren't killing enough then you aren't getting the rewards.

Also, the really encourage the player to get stuck in, it could be linked the total number of units (friend and foe) killed.
« Last Edit: February 24, 2015, 04:29:43 PM by Tangi »

Offline Wyldhunt

  • Senior Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 1447
Re: Alternative Power From Pain
« Reply #3 on: February 25, 2015, 01:46:34 PM »
Good suggestions, guys!

@Ambience 327: The thing about randomizing it is that I'm not sure it's really worth randomizing.  Say you used d3+2 (which has the potential to put you dangerously close to level 6 territory right off the bat).  No matter what, you'll still be getting the same amount of FNP.  If you get level 5, you can be a little less scared of having units get pinned when their vehicles explode, but the unit inside probably isn't going to do much all game if they lose their transport turn 1 anyway. If you get less than level 4, you suddenly lose the offensive boost these changes give wyches unless they rolled the right drugs or are hanging out with a haemonculus. So by randomizing it, you get these results:

*No effect on FNP
*Possiblity of having a turn 1 fearless army (but fearless arguably won't matter much on turn 1)
*Make wyches riskier to field

I don't know. You mentioned the advantage of randomizing it is to prevent tailoring to take advantage of the rule, but I'm having trouble picturing many ways of really taking advantage of it that don't also discourage raider spam somewhat (which I consider to be a good thing to discourage).  Another thing to consider is that, because your level is only increased by melee kills, melee-heavy armies (which might mean wych-heavy armies) would have to win a combat before they started getting their extra melee oomph. Which makes it harder to assault early with them.  Thoughts?

@Tagi:  I thought about doing something like that. Sort of a dark eldar equivalent to Epidemus's rule.  Part of me likes the idea of the dark eldar growing more powerful as friend and foe alike die around them, but it presents a couple minor issues. For one thing, it sort of encourages dark eldar to suicide attack enemies, which doesn't seem to fit them. They're less reckless chargers into melee and more arrogant-but-graceful deliverers of elegant attacks.  The other issue is that with the rules you've proposed, I see your PFP level sky-rocketing very quickly. By turn 3, it would be relatively easy to have an entire army with rampage.  Which isn't to say you can't have turn 3 rampage with my rules or Ambience's proposed tweaks, but to get that rampage rule, you have to have exposed your units to fire as they crossed the board, overwatch, and possibly return attacks in melee. Still, the idea of having a rising tally as the game goes on is appealing. Maybe if the levels were staggered a bit? 1 kill gets you to level 1. 3 kills total to level 2, etc.?

Offline Calamity

  • Concussor Concussed Dice | Captain
  • Lazerous Penguin
  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 3055
  • Country: gb
  • Cocking up miniatures since 1998
  • Armies: Kharadron Overlords, Bloodbound, Celestial Lions
Re: Alternative Power From Pain
« Reply #4 on: February 26, 2015, 06:47:05 AM »
@Tagi:  I thought about doing something like that. Sort of a dark eldar equivalent to Epidemus's rule.  Part of me likes the idea of the dark eldar growing more powerful as friend and foe alike die around them, but it presents a couple minor issues. For one thing, it sort of encourages dark eldar to suicide attack enemies, which doesn't seem to fit them. They're less reckless chargers into melee and more arrogant-but-graceful deliverers of elegant attacks.  The other issue is that with the rules you've proposed, I see your PFP level sky-rocketing very quickly. By turn 3, it would be relatively easy to have an entire army with rampage.  Which isn't to say you can't have turn 3 rampage with my rules or Ambience's proposed tweaks, but to get that rampage rule, you have to have exposed your units to fire as they crossed the board, overwatch, and possibly return attacks in melee. Still, the idea of having a rising tally as the game goes on is appealing. Maybe if the levels were staggered a bit? 1 kill gets you to level 1. 3 kills total to level 2, etc.?

I think I see now why GW wrote the rules as they are.  Putting some sort of break on it is necessary but at the moment I can't figure out what it should be.

 


Powered by EzPortal