The Horror! The Horror!

Perhaps some sort of mechanic that would allow you to use them either way: bound or unbound. Bound daemons would cost a bit more, be less powerful, but be always under your control. Unbound are cheaper, stronger, but difficult to control -- requiring a Sorcerer w/in X distance to make a Psychic test or they "go crazy".

Col. Tartleton wrote:

I'll respond: Essentially my design is that Marines have a base 5 for WS/BS and the best marines would have higher WS/BS so Lords have rather high BS/WS.

Secondly I'm trying to get away from "I'm important I need more wounds." Unarmored "Scout" marines have 1 wound. PA marines have 2 wounds. TDA marines have 3 wounds. Anything extra is awarded based on merit in specific instances. You will be able to have a 5 wound Chaos Lord with Nurgle. But Khorne is finesse and thus you can give him TDA for an extra wound.

Considering the WS/BS increase in the base marine, this increase makes sense for characters.

I kinda like the concept of wounds being based largely on armor, but this seems like a *huge* change (one that would required a change to the main rules and other codexes to be balanced properly). Now that's okay, but if we are trying to keep it in context of the current books, this may not work. Also, the idea of 3 wound Terminators scares me a bit...

Well they're still S4 and I'm dropping them to a 3+ and dropping the Invulnerable (2+/5+ would be possible via "Artificer Terminator Armor" and a Combat Shield but will require more points and be limited to sarges and characters generally.) Terminator is basically in my mind at least like a Marine putting Power Armor on over his Power Armor which is over the Black Carapace.

Naked Marine is a match for the best of the best the Schola could throw at him. In his power armor he could take on a squad of them. Terminator Armor? Bringing a grenade to a knife fight.

The way I see it If we're going to knock out a dozen Chaos lists or at least set the groundwork for them for others to come along and massage the whole game could be put back together.

Of course we'll end up wanting to convert it all over to Edition X if that ends up going somewhere alien and hostile to the rules as we know them.

The Long War rages on and the Chosen toast with a wine of bitter grapes to their fallen.

Again, I think better armor = more wounds is an interesting idea, and will be good to put out there for Xth edition, but I think it would have to great a ripple affect on the current edition. For it to work, other codexes would need to be altered in kind.

Also, I'm assuming 3 wound TDA troops would be very expensive. With T4 and 3+ save (and no invulnerable save), there will be many, many things that can waste them (and a HUGE chunk of your points) with ease (ie, krak missiles, power fist, battle cannons).
I agree TDA should be a bit better than it is, it used to be very powerful, but I'm not sure if adding wounds is the way to go. Maybe a bonus to Toughness or Feel No Pain, maybe re-roll failed armor saves and a better invulnerable?

Well Genestealers for example go through their armor like butter so it should be more of a bulk and kick ass factor.

A scout is probably half the mass of a marine and a terminator is more mass than a marine and a dread is even bigger and uglier.

A genestealer can cut through a terminator but that terminator will get back up and shoot him in the head with a assault cannon.