Necron Cryptek rules?

[Crystal-Maze]

Hello, people of the Conclave. I'm setting up a campaign themed around uncovering a dolmen gate, and was wondering about how to create a GM controlled necron cryptek as a boss-level nemesis. I don't really have much idea of what its power level should be; in the necron codex for 40k they have a profile similar to that of a marine, which is very good for the 'terminator' aspect of the necrons but doesn't really scream inquisitor style scientist types. Has anybody out there created rules for using necrons? Does anybody have any thoughts on profile level (ie/ highly advanced human with lots of armour, or above 100 stats? obviosly, sagacity will be through the roof given that these are the smartest guys of a race that does origami with space-time.

Any and all help would be appreciated

[Koval]

Why don't you make something up and see what we think of it? Cryptek capabilities are pretty diverse, after all, and the last time I saw rules for Necrons, they were my own from way back in the days of I think 4th Edition 40K, which is of course a long time prior to the current iteration of the Necrons. (As such, I'd probably use the Revised Space Marines from Dark Magenta as a starting point if you think it's meant to be that tough.)

[Kaled]

If it's GM controlled you don't need to make stats - just have it do whatever you need it to do to make the scenario fun and interesting.

[Crystal-Maze]

I know some people use unstatted GM controlled characters, but if they're intended to fight with the PCs, I don't like the idea of arbitrarily deciding how much damage they do/take against PCs; that completely invalidates the player's carfully created stats for their characters.

After skimming through the necron codex again, I'm thinking of using a triarch praetorian instead of a cryptek; whilst they lack the sciency aspect of the crypteks, they remained awake during the great sleep and taught necron laws and tech to other races and were worshipped as gods. This opens up interesting opportunities for a warband made up of squisher aliens or even humans with scraps of necron tech, instead of having more necrons in the warband. As far as stats go, I was thinking something along the lines of:

Ws    Bs   S       T     I      Wp   Sg    Nv     Ld
90     80  160  160   50    200  100   180   100

Now, this is alot of 100+ characteristics, but the triarchs are encased in the same body as a necron lord; the product of a race whose technology is beyond the fathoms of the human race. He will also hardly ever turn up, and may follow some very strict martial code limiting when he can attack.  What do people think?

[Kaled]

I don't like the idea of arbitrarily deciding how much damage they do/take against PCs; that completely invalidates the player's carfully created stats for their characters.

But it does have the advantage that you can make the scenario as exciting as possible - if you play them by their stats then there's the chance that the PCs will get lucky and take them out really easily which is a terrible anticlimax when the scenario should be the most exciting one of the campaign. And if you're going to over-rule the dice to prevent that happening, then why not go the whole hog and do that all along. Or, in games where I've played against Necrons we used a variation on the Architecture of Hate NPC rules which worked very well, so you could do a combination of that and GM control to give it some randomness but still retain sufficient control over the game.

[Crystal-Maze]

Then why not just overrule (as I tend to do) if there is a severe anticlimax, and obey the dice everywhere else, which would prevent GM biases sinking in and me just dictating the scenario. Plus, I quite like creating full characters for myself, as I let my players design all of their own characters. I suppose it just comes down to personal preferance.

[MarcoSkoll]

I would come up with some rough guidelines of what you're looking for, then tweak or outright overrule those dependent on how the scenario is balancing up.

When dealing with particularly powerful models, that's often the best way to go.

~~~~~

The most powerful model I have yet statted is the Wraithguard that was crashing around the underground complex at the event earlier this month - and despite having a good few years worth of experience of writing powerful (but not overpowering) rules, it was a bit of gamble and I was fully prepared to use the GM omnipotence if necessary.

It had two stats of 100+: Str 180 and Wp 120. But I'd probably make both 20 points lower if I were doing it again.
Well, and Nv 9001, but that was basically my way to exempt it from any and all Nv tests. And to use a "What does the character sheet say about his nerve level?" joke.

Its toughness was "only" 80. Its toughness was instead represented by a mix of Dark Magenta's Space Marine and Ogryn rules, and a pinch of one from one of my own characters.
It had six injury levels on all locations, and ignored/downgraded several injury effects.

This (had any damage been done to it*) would have worked considerably better than giving it an obscenely high toughness.
It meant that there was actually a chance of weapons doing two or three injury levels, but that only doing piddling damage a time with a pistol would be a slow process to take it down. It also wouldn't be rolling D3+15 or something for injury recovery.
*Someone did try to damage its wraithcannon, but it never took damage itself.

The wraithcannon had no damage stat and instead rolled for injury levels.
No-one was in any doubt it was a very scary weapon, but the guy it hit could have walked away if if the first location rolled had been any location other than his head. (Which, although it only rolled one injury level, stunned him long enough that he passed out from the blood loss from his missing arm - taking that hit to the chest would have left him conscious enough to have time to staunch the bleeding.)

~~~~~

But my even more powerful models will almost certainly not get stats at all. Trying to put numbers to the Warhound titan would be an exercise in pointlessness - as I've put it before, the only difference between a direct hit from any titan scale weapon is how much of your corpse is left and how wide an area it's spread over.
If (or more likely, when) it comes to it, I'm going to have to use quite a lot of ways for player characters to not be taking those direct hits. It is going to be pure Indiana Jones GMing ("I don't know, I'm making this up as I go").

Either of those approaches (special rules rather than stats, or just all out making it up) is completely different prospects to just racking up the stats until the system breaks.

Inquisitor doesn't much like 100+ stats. Hence, I only have two amongst my player characters.
- Brother Dante's strength of 117. Being a Space Marine, he is strong beyond human extremes.
- Jax Lynn's nerve of 120. Not staying dead has rather boosted her confidence. I prefer this to Nerves of Steel or Force of Will, as she's not the emotionless automata that would imply - even being near-immortal, something scarier than bullets (i.e. something with a big enough negative modifier) can cause her to think twice.

High damage rolls are similar. It tends to go off the top of the scale in a related fashion and not have the fun/interesting chance of giving your opponents their chance.

[Alyster Wick]

I was screwing around with making a Lord (which I've revised to a Cryptek after the new codex came out). Never got around to putting a full rules set together for it but he had a piece of kit I dubbed the "Rod of Creation" which allowed him to generate jutting walls of crystalline matter out of the sand and some limited "telekinesis" (there was nothing psychic about it, the rules would just function that way). My goal was to give him cool, almost godlike options beyond just having a deathray.

Of course I never tested these out (as the wall-making ability, while cool, would require its own modeling project to be effective). I think there are lots of neat possibilities out there such as phasing in and out of reality (cribbing off of some preexisting psychic powers) and possibly having him be able to knock other characters halfway into another reality (not doing damage persay but temporarily taking them out of the action/limiting their effectiveness. You could have lots of fun generating a table with the queasy effects characters full when phasing back in).

These things are more in character with a Cryptek than a typical Praetorian but who's to say that the Praetorian didn't let his deification go to his head? I've always liked Necrons with personality.

Anyway, getting back to actual useful suggestions, how about you combine some of what Kaled is suggesting with your own feelings? Give him a Toughness so you can calculate his BIV and create a couple simple tables. I'm going to put this together in two minutes so it'll be sloppy:

Table I:
1 - Shrugs off the hit
2 - Shrugs off the hit
3 - Knocked down
4 - Knocked down
5 - Drops Weapon
6 - Critical Hit (roll on Table 2)

Table II:
1 - Knocked down
2 - Drops Weapon
3 - Minus 1 Speed
4 - All rolls count as doing +1 BIV
5 - Stunned for a turn (and knocked down)
6 - Critical Hit (stunned for a turn, roll again on Table II)

If a character does 1-3 BIVs worth of damage you roll on Table I (add 1 to this roll for every BIV over 1 that you do, example: His BIV is 10, the attacker does 15 points of damages doing 2 levels worth of damage so they roll d6 plus 1). 4-6 BIVs worth and you roll on Table II (adding +1 for every BIVs worth of damage done above 4). You can apply your own rules about how many BIVs worth of damage take him out of the game if you'd like, otherwise you've given yourself a variety of effects that can be applied without you having to fudge it but preventing the character from dying unceremoniously.

Now that I think about it I've pretty much described what I believe Kaled suggested. What I put together there is very rough and probably unbalanced but I was just throwing it together as an example. Regardless, throw together a model! I'd love to see more 54mm Necrons.

[Myriad]

You could always just make if indestructible (but can be slowed down), and assign an objective other than killing it.

[Crystal-Maze]

I'm liking your suggestions Alyster, and all of the help that people have been giving in general. I'll probably be going down the route you suggested, it nicely combines randomisation with GM control over the scenario so that it doesn't become boring.

As far as the cryptek vs. praetorian thing goes, looking through the necron codex there is a briefly mentioned character named 'Lord High Judicator Krammathal'. A leader of the praetorians could surely have alot of personalit about him and also some suitably off-the-wall wargear like you mentioned

[MarcoSkoll]

His BIV is 10, the attacker does 15 points of damages doing 2 levels worth of damage so they roll d6 plus 1).

I'd say that a BIV of 10 would have all its normal problems regarding characters actually being able to do more than two (or even one, if he's got lots of armour) injury levels. A good critical with a power weapon or something might be able to do 4+ injury levels, but for reference from just the games from 'Clave or 'Bunker events (ten events, 38 games), I can only recall two 30+ damage hits:
- Orla Riall putting a plasma sword through Sgt Gillmore's groin (Critical, 18x2 damage)
- Romain Varteg using his chainsword to cut an eight-foot scavvy brute in half (Critical, 15x2 damage - rather redeeming the fact he'd only succeeded on one action that turn!)

I tend to use a limit of BIV 8 - although I might swing 9 for a exceptionally tough character with very little armour (but haven't yet done so).

[Koval]

I'd say you could knock the stats down a bit, then boost the model's overall capabilities all over again with extra stuff. A Triarch Praetorian's the sort of thing that might have True Grit and (justifiable) Force of Will or Nerves of Steel, for example. He needs abilities and wargear.

[Alyster Wick]

His BIV is 10, the attacker does 15 points of damages doing 2 levels worth of damage so they roll d6 plus 1).

I'd say that a BIV of 10 would have all its normal problems regarding characters actually being able to do more than two (or even one, if he's got lots of armour) injury levels. A good critical with a power weapon or something might be able to do 4+ injury levels, but for reference from just the games from 'Clave or 'Bunker events (ten events, 38 games)

You're absolutely right, I just tossed out an arbitrary BIV. While I don't think 10 would be unreasonable for an actual Necron Praetorian it's too high to keep the original concept I was going for interesting.

After throwing together my random example it's actually growing on me. Maybe trying a d10 rather than a d6 with more options would work. Lower the BIV and maybe have the results go up to 15 (with some results only being reachable with a bonus due to multiple BIV levels being done).

[Crystal-Maze]

If I aim for BIV 8, with 8 points of armour on all locations, and a couple of special abilities: nerves of steel and possibly regeneration for 'reanimation protocol' purposes. This will make him very difficult to kill, but the object of the scenario will be object based (the dolmen gate) rather than killing him off.

As far as weaponry is concerned, a void weapon with reach 3, damage 2D10, and parry penalty 15, and a shorter ranged flayer type weapon, both of which follow the rules for gauss weaponry causing armour damage.

Thoughts?

[Koval]

Actually, I'd be tempted to lump both of those under the Rod of Covenant.

Having said that, the Cryptek angle does strike me as easier to play than the Praetorian one -- Crypteks tend to wander a bit, whereas the Praetorian's probably got to have a reason for operating alone.