Necron in =][=

[Darksinger]

Yes yes, I know, Necrons. Unstoppable killing machines, ridiculously O.P, ecetera ecetera. Please don't think for a second longer I'm here for stuff like Lrods and that. For a certain Campaign i'm planning, which i can't delve into because theres at least one person taking part who's still on the Conclave, I need a couple of Necron rules, and Rules for Attack Scarabs- Not huge swarms of them, But just a few (5 ish).

[Brother_Brimstone]

Kaled and I used some necrons as NPCs during a campaign we played, and the following rules suited us well:

Necron (NPC)

WS    BS    Str   Speed
5      5      4      2

Special Rules -
"We'll Be Back!" - In each recovery phase, roll a d6 for every Necron which has been taken Out Of Action. On a roll of 4-6, the Necron is back in the game!
Metal Body - All locations count as having an armour value of 8
Terrifying - With their aura of cold menace and lack of warp presence, these killing machines are fairly horrific opponents!

Obviously, these are using the NPC rules found in the old SG site bundle that Marco has up. They're extraordinarily nasty, but then again, they're necrons, what do you expect?

Hope that helps.

[Darksinger]

Thats... not too much help, No Offense, of Course. I was hoping for a full profile, special rules and such. I think last time i including anything necronic (namely and Arm) it had regeneration, and al sorts of stuff like that. Just hoping for some more stuff.

Plus, I think Scarabs might have additional rules for being small, thier deadly teeth things, stuff liek taht.

[Brother_Brimstone]

What? You want rules for Necron PCs? Do you know that there are special rules for NPCS? There's an article from the old SG site (someone will be able to tell you what it's called, as its name escapes me) detailing special rules for NPCs. As far as I recall, they go at the end of the round, and you just roll a d6 for everything they do, measuring its value against that given in their NPC stats. The stats I gave you, along with the NPC rules are enough to field a squad of Necron NPCs, as I actually did so using nothing more.

I would suggest giving them PC profiles is a bit much, and would unneccessarily slow down game play, but it's your campaign, I suppose.

[Darksinger]

As i said, I only want scarab swarms, but they are essential GMPC's, rather than NPC's, and will be taking a rather active role in the game. So yes, PC statlines please. I probably should have been clearer.

And it won't slow gameplay down too much, considering they will be pretty much the only things on the field other than the other warbands.

[Brother_Brimstone]

Ah, okay. When you said

I need a couple of Necron rules, and Rules for Attack Scarabs- Not huge swarms of them, But just a few (5 ish).

I read it as meaning rules for a couple of necrons, as well as rules for scarabs. Well, the rule for 'i'll be back' is still appropriate, I think - roll a d6 whenever a Necron-style thing is taken OOA, and on 4-6 it's back in play. For damage tables, you might want to try and base their profiles on the Cyber-Mastiff from the Inq rulebook, but obviously more technologically advanced.

Hope that is of more help.

[Darksinger]

Thank you! This is more what i meant, yes. Although, if you don't mind, could you post up the profile? My laptop is having troubl running PDF's, paticularily those on teh GW website, and i havent got the time to mess around with things. Prehaps with the more ''Technologically advanced'' things you mentioned.

And i think the rule should be named ''Repair Protocols'' now, considering its been changed and makes more sense. (Not to mention it drasticly reduces terminator references)

[Brother_Brimstone]

You're welcome. Feel free to change the rules however you'd like, the rules I posted are jsut a guide, and my personal interpretation of Necrontyr technology.

Cyber Mastiff:

WS   BS   S    T     I   Wp   Sg    N     Ld
60     0   80  70  40    -       -    200    -

Cyber-mastiffs have 5 points of armour and the following damage results:

Superficial No effect

Heavy Immediate: Cyber-mastiff is stunned for one turn
Persistent: -10 S and T

Serious Immediate: Cyber-mastiff is stunned for D3 turns
Persistent: As heavy, plus -10 Initiative

Crippled Destroyed.

Cyber-mastiffs make improvised attacks in close combat. They can be fitted with additional sensors as detailed in the auspex rules, which are always used on passive.

The technological upgrades I would suggest may be something like >5pts armour, perhaps a higher WS, if you feel it appropriate etc... However, i might suggest a strength decrease, as they're smaller than a cyber-mastiff.

Also, there's the -30% to hit them, because they're small creatures and similarly, they gain +30% to hit. You might also want to say that they can cross any terrain without penalty or risky actions, as they hover.

Beyond that, any more flavoursome rules you feel like implementing, you should feel free to do so. Unusual creatures should be characterful!

[Darksinger]

Necron Scarab Swarm

WS    BS  S     T    I    WP    SG    NV       LD
65     0    60   70  50   -       -      200     -

Scarab Swarms have 5 points of armour and an additional D6 points fo Force Field Armour at range. They have the following Location chart:

00-95- Main Body
96-100- Optical unit

Main Body damage
Superficial: No effect

Heavy Persistant: -10 S and T, -1 speed

Serious: Reduced to Speed 1

Crippled: Destroyed

Optical Unit Damage
Superficial: No Effect

Crippled: Destroyed


Wargear: Scarab Swarms are equipped with Phasic teeth, which deal D6+2 damage, cannot be used to parry and which ignore D10 points of armour.

Special Rules: Small Target (-30% to hit, +30% when attempting to hit), Hovering Construct (Can cross any terrain without incurring risky actions), Necron Regeneration, Repair Protocols, Energy Matrix

Necron Regeneration: The Scarab recovers 2D10 in every recovery Phase, which can always fullry regenerate the amount of Injury Done.

Repair Protocols: If the Scarab is taken ''Out Of Action'', In the Recovery Phase, roll a D6. On a 4+, the scarab becomes in action, and its Necron regeneration trait can activate. On a 1-3, the scarab is Permanantly destroyed.

Energy Matrix: Scarabs can repair other Necron units by sharing the energy in thier bodys. If a Scarab within 3 inches of an Out Of Action Necron unit, it can use an action to share energy. If it does so, it cannot use its necron regeneration trait that turn. However, The Necron unit with which the energy was shared has a greater chance of standing up again, and its Repair protocol D6 roll gains a +1 modifier. The Modifer is Culmative if multiple Scarabs use thier energy Matrix per turn. A scarab may only use this special rule Once Per Round.

[Ynek]

The rules for a scarab swarm injury table would be quite unlike the standard 'accumulative injury' injury tables that we see for larger organisms. (I.E. The light/heavy/serious/acute/crippled method) If you hit a scarab swarm with an axe, you'll hit maybe one or two scarabs with it, but the rest will still be in tip-top fighting condition, so really, the swarm as a whole will not be significantly damaged, and each individual scarab that remains functional will keep fighting just as effectively as it did five seconds ago. Therefore, reductions in speed don't really fit, because the functional scarabs won't get any slower just because there are fewer of them in the swarm, and similarly, they are unlikely to lose any points on toughness, because each functional scarab is still as tough as it always was, even if you destroy some of their buddies.

You could streamline their injury rules to something like this:
A scarab swarm cannot be knocked 'unconscious', as there are several of them, each with a semi-independent mind which must individually be knocked unconscious... So in game terms, they do not fall unconscious due to damage accumulation.
For every level of injury the scarab swarm suffers, (I.E. every 7 damage it takes) it loses D10 from it's Strength and Weapon Skill stats. (Because there are fewer functional scarabs in the swarm = not quite so overwhelming in hand-to-hand combat, and also, their cumulative strength will be less.)
Scarab swarms reduced to Weapon Skill or Strength 0 are considered to be destroyed.

Rules such as these would give a feeling of a swarm thinning as it takes more and more damage, until finally, there are no more of the constintuent creatures left to form any sort of significant 'swarm', and the swarm is, for all intents and purposes, destroyed.

You may also want to come up with rules for swarms combining. For instance, a pair of scarab swarms each at 50% of their starting strength come together to form a single swarm at starting strength... But this would probably need a little more thought.

[Lazarus Caladine]

I agree with Ynek, and would like to point out that scarabs don't appear individually in any game system or fiction they are involved in. Also, the 40k scarab swarm bases do not accurately reflect the scrarabs. Looking through the new necron codex, there is a picture of a guardsman hiding behind a ruined wall, being crept up on by fist-sized scarabs. These more accurately represent the machines IMO, and should be considered as such.
On top of that, despite what the new codex says, scarabs have to posess some kind of hive mind, since they would literally just sit around dissolving each other and making new scarabs all day. To that end, I would make sure a character in base contact with more than one swarm suffers serious penalties. However, I would introduce the likelyhood of one attack hitting more than one of the bugs, so perhaps take out 'Injuries' per se, but make it so each successful hit (at -30% to hit, naturally) removes d6xd10 Strength points from the base as a whole.

[MarcoSkoll]

at -30% to hit, naturally

To hit a small target, yes. But the target is not any specific scarab, it's the the swarm as a whole, which is not a small target.

Hitting them isn't difficult - if you shoot or swing, there's so many of them that one or more of them will probably be in the way. Hitting enough of them, however, is a problem.

[Ynek]

However, I would introduce the likelyhood of one attack hitting more than one of the bugs,

This is already accounted for in the method I described, where each injury level (7 damage) suffered confers an additional -[base dice] to the reduction to the scarab swarm's WS and BS. If you do two or more levels of damage, this might represent hitting more of the little metal bugs, thus having a greater impact on the WS and S of the swarm as a whole. Doing D6xD10 damage to the swarm as a flat modifier for a single hit, regardless of what weapon you use and the strength with which you use it, is a bit rich, as this could theoretically mean that a single slap from an unarmed opponent could destroy an entire swarm, with some extremely lucky dice rolls. I'm not disputing that a lucky dice roll shouldn't have such miraculous power. With the right dice rolls, you can turn your Inquisitor spontaneously into a talking burrito. However, the main point of disagreement that I have with these rules is that they're more dice rolls than are necessary, and (for example) a player armed with a power sword has the same probability of a favourable outcome as an unarmed man, which we all know is unlikely as a power sword is going to be far more effective in real terms.

One alternative method would be that you simply deduct damage done to the swarm from it's WS and S value. This may be more streamlined, but it would effectively make the Toughness stat redundant, as you would no longer be using it to calculate consciousness (too many 'minds', as illustrated earlier) and you wouldn't be using it to calculate BIV. They're probably immune to system shock (same reason - there's millions of them, and they won't all spontaneously suffer from system shock) So Toughness would in effect just be there to look pretty on the statline. That's why I originally thought that going through BIV might be a better way to represent swarming enemies, as it still keeps Toughness in the loop. (Therefore meaning that there is an effective difference between the resilience of a swarm of natural ptera-wasps, and hyper-engineered weaponised insectoid robots (scarabs).

Further rules for swarms should include things like a substantial negative modifier to parry the swarm's attacks. (How much use is a sword as protection when fighting a swarm of angry bees? Less than useless. You're more likely to hurt yourself with it when you start to panic. "Parrying" an attack by an airborne swarm would be like trying to parry the hail of shrapnel from a frag grenade. It just isn't going to work.) In fact, I would be tempted to say that attacks from swarming enemies shouldn't be able to be parried at all... And dodging their attacks would have a similarly narrow likelihood of success. (You swerve to one side, they'll just turn mid-charge. Ever tried to dodge a wasp when it's angry? It doesn't just go in a straight line like a bull with a matador when you step out of the way... It follows you.)

In a similar vain, you might want to consider a heavy negative modifier to shooting at or attacking the swarm in close combat. In effect, you're talking about a cloud of tiny robots, but the cloud is still made up mostly of empty air, and your bullet or sword is quite likely to pass right through the cloud without hitting a single scarab. Although the swarm itself doesn't present a small target, it is made up of millions of individual small targets which are buzzing around at one hell of a speed, so hitting one with a ranged weapon is likely to be very difficult. I'd say that the rules for small targets fits the bill quite nicely in this case, but it would hardly be realistic. (-30% to hit would suggest that the swarm is only 30% empty space... That's one hell of a dense swarm. More like a solid wall than an actual swarm. But on an anecdotal note - Have you ever seen siafu ants? They're a blind army ant from Africa which is extremely dangerous. They live in colonies of up to forty million ants, and 'hunt' as a living river up to eighteen feet wide which flows across the land in search of food. Through sheer weight of numbers and a mildly venomous bite, they can even bring down bull elephants. If they reach a body of water which isn't flowing too quickly, they make a bridge out of the dead bodies of their kin and walk across the water. Fascinating animals, but my point is that these are terrestrial swarming animals which occur in nature, and they can bring down prey millions of times their own mass. Imagine how potent they would be if a) they were a hyperengineered weaponised microrobot and b) they could fy. Another example would be mosquito swarms in the Americas. They've been known to bleed cattle dry by exsanguination. Cattle are bigger, stronger and more physically apt than humans, and they die like farts in a hurricane when a swarm of bloodsucking insects come along. Imagine what it would be like if these insects were little robots armed with razor-tipped legs and cutting mandibles...) But meh, I'm sure you don't want the scarabs to be an invincible, unstoppable enemy, although in truth, that's precisely what a swarm is. In nature, when it comes to swarms, you either get out of the way, or die.

To offset the natural resilience of swarming enemies and to give your players a fighting chance, I would suggest rules whereby certain weapons (namely area-of-effect weapons) have an increased effectiveness. You could say that each hit caused by an Area of effect wepaon, such as an explosive, flamer or certain psychic power, actually causes D6 hits. (Is is because they'd hit a lot of scarabs with each 'shot'.) Haywire grenades should probably stun them for a number of turns, or perhaps even disable them outright. (Their circuitry is probably quite delicate.... You could argue that Necron tech is immune to this sort of interference due to adequate shielding and Necron technosorcery, but that would be a cheap cop out.) Machine empathy is also another option, but perhaps with a negative modifier as you're effectively trying to empathise with about 5,000 machines, which is probably a bit more tricky than trying to sweet-talk a bolter into jamming or clearing for you.

You might also want to count force fields as armour against swarm attacks. Each of the scarabs in the swarm is effectively an intelligent projectile, so force fields would probably offer some measure of protection from them in much the same way as they offer protection from bullets. Also bear in mind that each individual attack by the swarm is small, in comparative terms. An ENCLOSED (don't want them flying inside) suit of armour would probably render a human immune to their attacks, at least in the immediate short term.

As a final note, I would say that the swarm should have an armour value of no greater than 3, if any armour at all. They're small constructs, so that means they would have equally small amounts of armour.


[[EDIT:: Come to think on it, there's probably enough mileage in this sort of idea to make a Dark Magenta article.... Hmmm..... *ponders*]]

[MarcoSkoll]

-30% to hit would suggest that the swarm is only 30% empty space... That's one hell of a dense swarm.

-30% is not a representative percentage of target size, it's a reasonably large modifier to show "this is small and thus more difficult to hit".
The small target modifier applies to things like a single servo skull - Which, obviously, represents only a small fraction of the human body. Enough that it's not even the entirety of a location which only takes up 5% of the hit charts (which is, to be fair, a little small as a percentage, but not too far out - the head is only about 8% of body mass).

If you assume that there's a swarm of creatures, even if they're only fist sized, the overall amount of stuff to hit is clearly much greater than trying to pinpoint three quarters of a human head.

Now, I've long used a rule of thumb that Inquisitor stats/modifiers are logarithmic, with a difference of ~20 points representing an approximate halving/doubling of skill/difficulty.
Trying to choose realistic percentage modifiers - particularly as they're not actually percent, they're percentage points - would make for a lot more maths, as well as bringing up the problem that realistic chances are not exactly very heroic or exciting.
People might not consciously agree, but it does seem to rather closely agree with how most people stat and define modifiers.

So, with that rule of thumb, a -30% is really closer to something being about three times as difficult.

Also, you've fallen into a bit of a mathematical fallacy, confusing volume and area. What might be empty space as far as the volume of the swarm is concerned is not necessarily empty space as far as the area target available to the shooter is concerned. In theory, you could have an almost entirely empty space, but nothing but stuff to hit.

Take Olbers' paradox. In that case, despite the fact the universe could be almost infinitely empty, there is literally a star in every direction. So, what is mostly empty by volume is not necessarily mostly empty by area.

Taking the "three times as difficult" figure for earlier, and throwing some rough numbers at that, a swarm of 1.8 metres diameter made up of 10cm diameter creatures presenting a target area a third of that of a human would be... something like 99.5% empty space. A lot more than 30% empty.

And that's not exactly a very cinematic swarm of death. Drop that to 95% empty space, and there's actually three times as much target area as a human.
Take the denser parts of this bird flock - while it might have "gaps" in the flock, the flock as a whole takes up more space than a human, so there's also plenty of chance for a shot that would have missed a human sized target to hit another part of the flock.

With that in mind, a swarm doesn't seem like the prime candidate for hit penalties. Its toughness should come from the difficulty of hitting enough of it, not the trouble of hitting it.

~~~~~

Here, therefore, is my version: A degrees of success system that determines how many of them get hit - your bullet/sword passing through several of them on the way.

Just passing your hit roll narrowly will only hit one of them, but for every additional 10 points you pass your hit test by, you hit another of them.
The important thing is that you can only do as many injury levels as the number you hit (with all excess damage being wasted as the bullet/sword passes through the swarm without hitting anything else).
So, unless you hit more than one, an anti-materiel rifle isn't going to do much to that swarm.

However, area effect weapons ignore the above rule. As they will naturally hit lots of creatures, they get to do as many injury levels as their rolled damage will allow!

Being made of tiny creatures, even if they are all metal, they're not going to be very tough, so they'd have an Injury value of probably 3 (flimsier creatures would only get 2). In theory, a stubber might be able to plough through three, maybe four, in a go. A power sword should be able to mince five or six if the hit roll was good enough.

Of course, the important thing would be that doing only a single injury level would mean almost no effect on the swarm. You'd need to do lots of injury levels in to do any real damage.
I'll work on the actual injury effects later, but right now, I have other things to do. But I do rather like the basis of the hit roll.

One last thing - as far as hit penalties, I'd suggest that they would accumulate as a swarm thinned. I'm thinking that -30% would be appropriate for an almost totally trashed swarm, but for every full X creatures in the swarm, that penalty would drop by +10 (even to the point of a hit bonus if the swarm was large enough).

[Ynek]

confusing volume and area.

That's a fair point, and well made.

Here, therefore, is my version: A degrees of success system that determines how many of them get hit - your bullet/sword passing through several of them on the way.

Used in combination with my suggested 'BIV-powered stat reduction,' this could work rather well....

I took the liberty of combining the essence of both of our approaches to create a relatively harmonious set of rules regarding swarming and damage. They're by no means complete, (things like the effects of attacks made by the swarm, the effect of force fields on the swarm, swarm movement etc. are still absent,) but should tie together the core aspects of these hypothetical rules that we seem to agree upon so far....



The stats of a single 'swarm point' of scarabs:
WS   BS   S    T    I   Wp   Sg   Nv   Ld   Armour
7    0    12   30   40   -    -    -    -    3



And their special rules would go something along these lines:

Swarming up:
Scarabs do not attack individually. They mass together and attack as a swarm which appears to have a singular consciousness guiding it's actions. Therefore, the above statline does not represent a singular scarab, but merely represents the stats of a singular "swarm point" of scarabs.

A swarm consists of several 'swarm points' represented by a singular miniature with a singular statline. To do this, multiply the weapon skill and strength stats of the swarm by the number of swarm points in the swarm to give the swarm's final stats. So, for example, a three swarm point swarm would have WS 21 and S 36. To give another example, a ten swarm point swarm will have WS 70 and S 120.

A swarm can split up or merge together with another swarm at any point in the controlling player's turn. Simply combine or divide their number of swarm points and re-calculate their stats.




Attacking the swarm, and resolving injuries against the swarm:
There is a flat -30% modifier for any character attempting to target the swarm. However, there is also a +5% modifier to the character's to-hit roll for every swarm point that is currently in the swarm. This represents the fact that the denser that the swarm is, the easier they are to hit.

When rolling to hit against the swarm, take note of how much you pass your WS or BS test by. For every degree of success (in this case, 10 percentage points or part thereof,) that you pass the test by, you have the potential to do one point of damage to the swarm.

Roll for damage as normal, but do not consult the injury locations and injury results in the Inquisitor Live Rulebook. Those rules are concerned primarily with singular humanoid targets, rather than adversaries such as swarms. Instead, to resolve injuries against the swarm, for every level of base injury (in the case of the above statline, this would be three points of damage) the swarm loses a single swarm point, with the appropriate drop in it's weapon skill and strength. You cannot cause more points of swarm point damage than you had degrees of success in your to hit roll. Area of effect weapons, such as flamers, explosives and certain psychic powers (GM's discretion) ignore this particular rule, and may score as many points of damage to the swarm points as their damage allows, regardless of the number of degrees of success in their to-hit roll.

When a swarm drops to 0 swarm points, it is considered to be destroyed.










I quite liked the idea of 'swarm points', because you could represent each individual swarm point with an additional scarab swarm base in the 'swarm', effectively showing the swarm growing in size, but in terms of rules, it would act as a singular entity unless it chose to split up...

EDIT: Amended the red-coloured segment as per Marco's advice.