Home made special character critique

[lost user 13]

Hi I'm new here and if I have posted this in the wrong place my apologies.

I am looking to create a nicely balanced but powerful fluff based general for my high elves and would like a bit if feedback on what I have come up with so far. I will try to explain why I did what I did and try not to make it too long.

I won't bore you with the character fluff I have written but the basics are essentially that he is an 'Anointed Loremaster'. A gifted Loremaster that took a pilgrimage to the chamber of days and gained Asuryans blessings. His sole focus now is High elf preservation hence 'the healer'

I have based him on Malekith the witch king for stats (adjusted strength and toughness accordingly) and level 4 magic, also rearranged magic items to fit with the fluff.

So here goes

Belaryan Anointed Loremaster

M5 WS8 BS7 S4 T3 I10 A4 W4 LD10

The Healer - Loremaster of Life magic in addition knows Apotheosis and Drain Magic from High Magic Lore (8 spells like other Loremasters)

Special rules:

ASF, Martial Prowess, Valour of Ages, Lileath's Blessing, Deflect Shots, Fear, Witness to Destiny, Blessings of Asuryan, Inspiring Presence.

Magic Items:

Sword - Great weapon, does not cause ASL, Heroic Killing Blow

Armour - 4+ armour save, wearer may only take a single wound from any attack.

Talisman - Channels with 2 dice on a 4+

Coming in at 500 points

I took out Malekith's 2+ ward against mundane attacks as this would make him untouchable with BOTWD and replaced it with the 4+ ward from witness to destiny.

Malekith already has immune to psychology, magic resist 2 and causes fear so that fits perfectly.

Malekith should have the Magical feedback damaging casters targeting him or his unit, took this out completely as Blessings of Asuryan gives his unit 6+ ward.

Removed strength and toughness to make him elven and increased initiative to fit with sword master bit.

Magic weapon, is completely different. Magic sword master blade with heroic killing blow as I can see a 6ft blade slicing anything in two if it was sharp enough. Makes him dangerous if he gets lucky.

Armour, I liked the single wound thing so kept it and already altered the ward.

Talisman, instead of having a single all powerful magic phase I think the gamble works. Average roll= 1 extra dice. Lucky roll = 2 extra dice (instead of 1 for a normal channel) Unlucky roll = 0 dice

I have yet to use him, I only ever play with friends and we try to use fluff and encourage character creation (I rewrote Korhil to make him a sword master captain)

I think he would play fairly, could be powerful (he's meant to be) with the right luck, tried to keep it a bit of a gamble, he is weaker than Malekith in a lot of ways but I think slightly more rounded.

I would appreciate any feedback, things you think won't work, things you think I could improve etc.

Thanks for taking the time to check out my first post

[Asurion Whitestar]

Welcome Belaryan,

First I must say I've done a lot of what you're doing, and I do mean a lot.
Most of my high school years and after were spent writing special characters, special army lists, special campaigns and literally everything in between. Fantasy, Mordheim and Necromunda were the most frequently dabbled in, especially the former, Warhammer Fantasy.
So, I do know exactly (for the most part :3) what you do to work out special characters costs and rules etc..

Having said that, your Character is way too over powered, I created several scores of op characters, armies and exp trees to know now what is too op and to know "what was I thinking?" back then..

I would dare say that using an op character as a base is a not so great idea.
I know in reality your character would be the boss and kick major tail, but in the warhammer universe only the bad guys get op rules.
You need to understand our own characters to understand what limitations on stats you need to make.
Tyrion has 4W, he is the reincarnation of Aenarion himself, no-one else has 4Ws, (most of my mageknight generals had 4Ws but in WFBs it's too much. So, no 4Ws.
Next, the base characters we have access to are in fact already awesome characters that slay enemies in their hundreds. The rules do not reflect this very well, but nonetheless need to be adhered to.
So, your Anointed Loremaster is the love child of the Loremaster and the Anointed. This is a difficult amalgamation because fluff-wise both characters have spent their entire lives dedicated to their respective fields, so you've got someone quite old already, or he has been chosen by Asuryan himself, which of course is a hard sell because Caradryan has been already.

So, in my experience, start with a Loremaster base, then give him the added rules for an Anointed; Fear, Witness to Destiny, MR2 and Blessings of Asuryan. Also take the highest Stat for each from both, ie: Anointed has WS7, BS6, I8. So use these stats over the Loremaster.
As for costing.
The Anointed is at least 61pts more expensive for his rules and inclusive stat drops of -1 BS (which doesn't really matter), -1 A & Ld also. So you take that into account for max stats.
4+* is worth <45pts, fear <5, MR2 <30, ItP and 6+* on unit is not certain but around <25-40.
At bare minimum the cost is 90pts for the rules, I would personally not use the minimum though.
But remember that most, if not all special characters get "free" stat boosts to either WS, I, Ld and in rare cases A.
So you can still keep an influence of superior stats.

Then the Loremaster is a Lv2 with all Sig spells from the 8.
I would change this too much, but an almost fair trade would be to allow the swap of any spell (for a roll, that would have to be taken from the Lore of Life), alternatively and inclusively to allow the swap of a spell for Apotheosis and/or Drain Magic from High Lore.
This gives what you want, but at a far more appealing angle than just, he auto knows every life spell plus the 2 from High (which would actually make him know 9 spells, not the 8 you stated).
Anyway, the Lv2 cap on him is very important. He should not have all these rules and somehow be a Lv4 Master. Lv3 would be a maximum for him as Balanaear is the ultimate Loremaster whom would be Lv4 and not have built-in protection like the Anointed.
Lv3 or rather any +1 to Wizard Lv is fairly costed accross the varies Armies at 35pts, you could decrease this to 30 but I'd keep it as is for an extra stat increase.

So to recap on the Anointed Loremaster so far:
Cost: 350>pts
Stats: M5-WS7*-BS6*-S4-T3-W3-I8*-A3*-Ld9* (the *'s are for your choice of stat +1s, 2/3 available)
Magic: Lv3: knows all Sig Spells from the 8, but can trade any number of spells (except from the Lore of Life, meaning pretty much Earth Blood) for the same number of rolls for spells from the Lore of Life, not being able to swap unless the spell is already taken or known as normal. Can also swap any spell not from the Lore if Life for either Apotheosis and/or Drain Magic from the Lore of High Magic.
Rules: Always Strikes First, Blessings of Asuryan, Deflect Shots, Fear, Magic Resistance (2), Martial Prowess, Valour of Ages & Witness to Destiny.

Then for Magic Items:
+2S sword 40, requiring two hands you could cut the cost by maybe as much as -20 (arguing that his other hand could do as much damage or give very good protection from a super shield or something equally amazing). But you've also got HKB without reducing the number of attacks from him to 1 like every other up to date version of the rule. This is worth at least 15 with only one Attack available (Master Strike from the Vampire Counts Army Book).
The only closest weapon would be the Destroyer of Eternities from the Tomb Kings Army Book, costing 80 for close to the same but auto hitting only up to 3 models at a time, unless the model/a in base contact are riding separate creatures/things, in which case you could hit up to 4 models once each.
This sword would be worth at least 80, but described as yours is it would be at least 100, leaving no other allowance for a "balanced" character. Although most special characters can have some form of over-allowance either in the form of extra magical items/allowance or extra rules. You already have super rules.

The armour is worth at least 35>pts, but coupled with the 4+* and MR2, it's insanely cheap. With these rules also added in to consideration the armour is worth at least 50>.

Then the Talisman (which really should be an Arcane item, seeing as it only effects magical abilities and all), is worth at the very least 40-60+ pts.

That's roughly 200pts spent on magic items, giving a total of 550 for the character so far, if you had him stay at a Lv4 it would easily tap over 580.

I would personally drop the HKB to KB, and add HKB for 1 attack (rolled separately).
This would be roughly 80pts, 25 for KB, 15 for HKB and 40 for the +2S weapon, also not including the two handed discount nor the effect of HKB disregarding all attacks for one. This in my opinion is a very good deal still.
I would also drop any armour and grant him a +1 to his Ward vs shooting, so a 3+* because of his Deflect Shot rule. I wouldn't keep the same rules for BS shooting only at the front etc as he is a master of his blade and skill. This I would swap outright as he would never use his Deflect Shot rule normally.


So to finish him off I would go with this:

Cost: 450pts

Stats: M5-WS8-BS6-S4-T3-W3-I8-A4-Ld10

Equipment: Hand weapon, Heavy Armour.

Magic: Lv3: knows all Sig Spells from the 8 Lores of Magic found in the WFB Rule Book, can trade any number of spells (except from the Lore of Life) for the same number of rolls for spells from the Lore of Life, not being able to swap unless the spell is already taken or known as normal. Can also swap any spell not from the Lore if Life for either Apotheosis and/or Drain Magic from the Lore of High Magic.

Rules: Always Strikes First, Blessings of Asuryan, Deflect Shots, Fear, Magic Resistance (2), Martial Prowess, Valour of Ages & Witness to Destiny.

Magic Weapon:
Requires two hands, grants +2 Strength and Killing Blow to the wielder. In addition, one attack made with this sword may be nominated as a Heroic Killing Blow attack (roll a different coloured dice if you use this ability).


This is all of course only my personal opinion in the field and you could add some channelling boost without him pulsing too badly with OPness ;3.
I wouldn't go too overboard though, I think only 1 channel at 4+ would be very sufficient. I would only cost it 20 aswell.

I hope this helps, was what you meant by critique and all that :3.

[lost user 13]

Well what can I say,

Your reply is far more than I was expecting and is exactly the king of critique I was looking for, with a healthy dose of knowledge and explanation for the uneducated like me.

I'm glad I'm not the only one that finds great pleasure in creating my own characters, I used to have a good system for it but I've been out of touch for a couple of editions so wasn't sure, which is why I asked

The idea was to make him ever so slightly OP (May have gone a bit too far ) he is meant to be my ultimate general only appearing in very large games, I chose Malekith because he already came with many of the things I was looking for plus he is an Elf.....well a crispy one.

I get what you mean about the wounds, Malekith himself only has 3 in 8th he used to have 4 which is why I put it down, did not have all my literature in front of me when I put up my first post.

Magic wise again I made a rookie mistake, I only put Drain Magic down for numbers, I clearly forgot about the signature spell on top of the 6. I was going with the whole, 8 colleges are branches of high magic and figured apotheosis would be the life branch. So Loremaster of Life plus Apotheosis would be 8 and work for me (also attainable using your suggestion so thank you)

Sword wise I was not sure about the HKB rule, standard KB would be fine for normal use, what do you think about the option to swap all attacks for a single HKB attack with D3 wounds?

I am worried obviously about the survivability hence keeping the 'only single wound from any attack' would help not to get steam rolled in a challenge by high attacks causing multiple wounds.

As for the fusion of Loremaster and Anointed I appreciate it is a bit of a stretch but we are talking about fantasy

My interpretation of a Loremaster is that they are young 'genius' elves who find things ridiculously easy to master and as they get older they become reclusive and eccentric. The ones you find in battle would be young and eager but lack focus. With time and the focus given by the creator god himself, one could really excel and become truly powerful. Yes my story is similar to Cadryans more of a 'what is the meaning of my existence' plea rather than out and out arrogance.

As for all of your other suggestions I will/ have already started to put them into practice, once again many thanks for such a comprehensive reply. A real help.