lizardbrain:
Hi everybody, i just read Grimstonefire’s brilliant thread Daemonology and CD http://www.chaos-dwarfs.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=6731 and thought this might be a cool way of doing runic magic stuff, Chaos Dwarf style. My idea was to take every lesser and greater daemon from each of the four big Chaos gods and allow the daemonsmith to bind them to different pieces of equipment, similar to socketed equipment in Diablo 2. For example, a Bloodthirster bound to a weapon might add strength and inflict extra wounds, bound to armor give a great save and magic resistance, bound to a helm give frenzy and hatred. The more powerful the daemon obviously the more powerful the effect, maybe with the most powerful requiring a daemonsmith be included in the army. I think this would be a great way of personalizing our characters, and really separate our army from the others. Any thoughts?
Thommy H:
I did some rules for something pretty much exactly like this some years ago. The idea was that some magic items were “Bound Daemons” and you could customise them with Daemons of each of the Chaos powers. So there was an item called a Daemon Stone that gave magical attacks and a 5+ ward save or something, and if you bound a Khorne Daemon to it, you’d also get Frenzy. A Daemon Weapon bound with a Nurgle Deaemon had poisoned attacks as well, etc. etc.
I liked the rules, but found them a bit unwieldy and, in the end, decided it wasn’t as thematically interesting as I thought. Like Beastmen, I think Chaos Dwarfs benefit from not going into too much detail with the different Chaos powers. I’d be interested to see what you come up with though.
lizardbrain:
Thanks for the feedback, i had a feeling that if anybody had experimented with something like this it would be you. Like I said, I was thinking each daemon (but maybe not every daemon) would imbue its predominate characteristic on whatever item it was bound to, of course in a logical an appropriate way. Slanesh would grant would probably grant extra attacks or initiative/ASF offensively, defensively make the bearer more difficult to hit, or possibly reduce opponents’ leadership. Nurgle would do ugly nurglish things, such as per your recommendation inflict poisoned attacks or reduce stats for a bound great unclean one, grant toughness/make harder to wound on armor, tzeench would give fate-twisting re-rolls, ward saves, and weapons that can be used as breath weapons or that mutate, Khorne could have abilities similar to those mentioned. mixing and matching of different gods’ daemons on a single item would be a no-no, abilities granted by some lesser daemons might be stackable eg. 2 daemonettes would give +2 initiative but cost more than double the points. I really envisioned this as being a daemon fueled parallel to what the dwarfs do with their runes, only with more variety and flexibility. any and all ideas are greatly appreciated!
zobo1942:
Diablo2 is a freaking awesome game. I still play it sometimes - on my old Powermac G4!
I love the idea of having ‘socketed’ weapons, etc., and your idea of using them as daemonic gift-embuing runestones is really great. The modelling ideas that come to mind are pretty cool, too. Suddenly, I have the urge to model he ‘secret cow level’!
Have you thought about modelling anything else video-game inspired? I’ve been thinking about making an Ayleid Ruin from ‘Elder Scrolls IV: Obllivion’.
Fequiil:
sounds really cool, i’m looking forward to seeing the results.
RoguePanda:
I do rather like the idea of Diablo style stacking - however my real concern is keeping it balanced with the rest of the army. After all, we’ve already got a dwarf army with cavalry, cheap disposable infantry, and real magic… on top of the normal dwarf strengths. I love the idea but I’d definitely do as you suggest and make it real expensive to get beyond base rate abilities.
Perhaps you could think about almost setting up a set of rules where the army as a whole is “aspected” to one of the eight points of the Chaos Star and gets certain benefits for that? For example, a Khorne aspected army pays like, oh say, +50 points per thousand being used (so a 3000 point army pays 150 to be aspected) - as a result each Hero or Lord gets +1 Attack, and it makes upto 1 unit per 1000 points Stubborn or something? Those points values are just numbers I pulled out the air as a way to illustrate, but maybe that helps make sense?
Just a thought. I also love the idea of doing this using bound spells or the like, a bit like the Wood Elf Sprites system. Hope to see more from this topic soon :cheers
Thommy H:
Okay, I’ve attached a document which is the work I did on this idea. Now, this was originally part of my first attempt at a Chaos Dwarf Armies book, which is nothing like my later rules - it was essentially just Ravening Hordes with a few extra units. I just cut the Bound Daemons rules out of that document and threw them in a new file. The formatting isn’t pretty, and the rules may well be complete crap - this stuff is about two years old now, and I’ve learned a lot since then! So please don’t critique the rules: I’m not even pretending they’re any good.
It might give you food for thought though.