Wanted to try my hand at a faction design for Sisters of Battle

[Prof_Nekko]

I was somewhat bored and figured I wanted to try my hand at trying to make a faction concept myself. Just something quick so lets see how it goes.

Faction Story: Gladius Prime is a fallen world. It's cities lie in ruin. Heretics, mutants, and alien filth cover the surface. The imperial forces on the ground succumbed to cowardice and failure. To see such humiliation is a disgrace to the name of the God Emperor and shall be corrected. Lady Vahl has ordered a crusade on the planet, and we of the Prioris Convents shall answer. When the day is done, Gladius Prime shall once more be a shining star of the Emperor's light. Be it glowing from the light of faith... Or burning from our cleanse.

Core Mechanics:

• Faith: Wouldn't be the sisters without faith now would it? The way it works in this game is that the sisters have a unique resource which is naturally faith. Generating it is fairly simple as every city center generates faith, so expansion is desired. Additionally your builders can construct chapels next to resource nodes much like the Space Marine's fortresses. So long as the chapel is connected to a resource they will generate additional faith, though they are defenseless til you can do some research.
  
• Miracles: This is the Sisters covers the form of faction powers and edicts. How the powers work is that some sisters units like heroes or support units possess a trait called Devout, which will possess a rank number of 1-3. This manifests as an aura that affects tiles a distance equal to the rank of the trait. AKA: Devout 1 affects 1 tile, Devout 2 has 2 tile range, ect. Whenever you cast a hotbar ability its effective range is anywhere within a Devout units range. This counts for offensive abilities as well as buffs. City buffs however are of course targeting cities.
  
• Fire: They're the sisters of battle what did you expect? Burn everything my friend.
  
• Convent Cities: Of the Prioris convent, there are 3 orders, Argent Shroud, Sacred Rose, and Ebon Chalice. Whenever you found a city you choose which order it "belongs" to and your choice will have an impact on the city growth. Argent Shroud cities will provide a bonus to resource generation, Sacred Rose cities have improved defenses, and Ebon Chalice cities dedicate themselves to Combat and when they produce units they start with a free level.
  
  Playstyle: The goal of the sisters is expansion. You want more cities as soon as possible to benefit from the city Order bonuses. Protect your devout units and build a large force to overwhelm your foes in the name of the Emperor!
  
  Pros
  
• Generally competent during each phase of the game
  
• Very good at preventing/causing morale damage
  
• Fire is fun, infantry fears them
  
• Miracles can change the tide of battle quickly
  
  Cons
  
• Does not recover easily from battles going south
  
• Usually needs a Miracle or two to maintain their edge
  
• Devout units are sniping targets and losing them will put you in a bad position
  
  Infantry
  
  
• Battle Sisters: Your bread and butter unit. They come equipped with chainswords, flamers, and bolter guns. Compared to Space Marines they have less health and armor, and do less damage at 2 range, however because of their flamers they do more damage at 1 range. Can be upgraded with increased damage and AP on their flamers and increased AP on their bolters.
  
• Sisters Repentia: Very low Armor but high damage melee unit. Has a charge ability that on a multiple turn Cooldown will increase their movement. Kill them quickly because if they get in melee range they're going to be ripping apart whomever is there.
  
• Retributor Squad: Your anti armor force. They have multi melta guns and will rip through armor. Can be upgraded to further improve the AP of their melta guns to turn tanks into slag.
  
• Seraphim: A somewhat unique unit. They carry twin bolt pistols so get many attacks at low AP and only 1 range. However their jump jets are what makes them special. A seraphim can activate jump jets to ignore terrain penalties for a turn, gain one additional move, and with a later tier upgrade will ignore overwatch. A dangerous first strike can quickly break an infantry line so your other sisters can move in and obliterate.
  
• Celestian Sacresants: These are your heavy Melee units. Their shields provide them exceptional Armor and their Anointed Halberds always allow them to calculate damage first in melee engagements even if the enemy is attacking. Orks claim this to be cheaty.
  
• Paragons: The strongest infantry the sisters can field. Paragons have the best armor and come equipped with storm bolters, multi melta, and war sword, making them effective at dealing with most units.
  
  Vehicles
  
  
• Dominus Striker: I'm cheating a bit here to make the Dominus a more scout unit. However these gals are on jetbikes and carry melta guns. Very effective at swooping in and popping light vehicles, and possibly artillery if you can position well.
  
• Repressor transport: The sister's main transport and terrain clearer. Dozer blades make them not lose movement to forests or wireweed (ruins and rivers however still impede) and come equipped with a storm bolter for defense.
  
• Immolator: The sister's favorite tank. Comes equipped with 1 range heavy flamers and 2 range Multi Meltas to be a good general purpose tank in spite of being a bit more fragile than most tank types. Has a special ability where they can bathe a tile in promethium fire for a turn that will damage any unit that passes through it.
  
• Castigator: While it possesses the same defensive stat line as a Leman Russ tank. What makes the Castigator unique is that it has two types of ammo you can toggle between (once per turn of course, after you fire you gotta wait). Sanctified Rounds are effective at taking down high armor targets while Pyro shells will melt infantry. Of course they also have a couple storm bolters for melee range just in case.
  
• Mortifier: Their front line vehicle. High armor melee fighters that charge in and smash things with their maces.
  
• Exorcist: Artillery unit. Likes to rain hell on their targets, good against infantry and cities, has a 2 turn CD hunter killer missile to stave off tanks or just deal additional hurt to cities.
  
  Air:
  
• Thunderhawks: Standard air transport. Has an autocannon to shoot at the ground but that ain't their job.
  
• Lightning Fighter: Air superiority unit.
  
• Lightning Strike: Bomber version of the Fighter.
  
  Support:
  
• Hospitalier: Your infantry support unit. Devout rank 1 and provides both a direct heal and will also let nearby infantry passively heal like they were within owned territory.
  
• Imagifier: Mostly an aura unit, but the most important one you have. Has devout rank 2 and has an ability that heals morale damage to any nearby units as well as giving a slight boost to attack and armor.
  
• Reliquant: Possesses devout rank 1 and can heal and buff vehicles, as well as the one who constructs cities and cathedrals. Only support unit that has a power sword in addition to the wimpy bolt pistol the other support units are stuck with.
  
  Heroes:
  
• Dogmata: your heavy melee fighter hero. Has a Mace of the Righteous for some armor crushing fun. Can stand toe to toe with a Space Marine Chaplin since while he has more armor than her, she has more natural AP, making it a pretty even match. Abilities mostly consist of offensive buffing auras, though her ultimate ability can drop a mortifier on the board with a pretty long CD.
  
• Canoness: General purpose hero, devout 2. Has a brazier for melee and storm bolter for range. Abilities are mostly targeted abilities such as a direct damage smite and the ability to imbue a sister with violent fervor. Her ultimate will heal nearby allies to full, but also long CD.
  
• Living saint: The Greater daemon of the emperor true symbol of faith of the sisters. The living saint is the only unit with devout 3. You can only have one on the field at any given time but she more than makes up for it. Her presence alone provides an aura that significantly reduces morale damage of allies as well as being able to set her sword aflame for additional AP and attacks. She can also get skimmer status for a turn. Her ultimate ability even allows her to passively heal to full if she is killed, though it's a long CD.
  
  Super Heavy:
  
• Mobile Cathedral: It's a giant Cathedral on tank treads armed to the teeth with heavy firearms... What more could you ask for? It also has Inferno Guns because of course. Also it's devout 2 and its presence alone acts as a cathedral building so it generates faith by existing. Super expensive though so don't let it die.
  
  Anyways that's all I have for now. I'll get to work a bit later on making the various miracles they can use and I figure I didn't really need to go over structures since they're all just various names for doing the same thing as other faction equivilant structures. Feel free to toss in your own thoughts on this as well. (just be constructive we don't really care about you whining about how too many Imperium factions already)

[adder007usa]

At first read, interesting. I only have two concern:

Most infantry don't have more than 2 arms, so how would the battle sister be using chainswords AND flamers AND boltguns? This is a LOT of dakka coming out of a tier 1 unit.

Being able to do multiple cities, but ALSO being able to build chapels that claim resources. half the struggle for most races is the fact that resource locations are easy to take away unless something is standing on them. Even if the chapels are unarmed, this is still something that would give them a few turns to get back, stop the steal. And considering they're more armored than the squishy AM boys, it may be a hard sell here.

[JLH4AC]

The Sisters doesn't have any bike units in lore thus there are no rules or models for Sister bike units so GW will not allow Proxy add any to the game.

Your outline of the Immolator sounds like it was in DOW1: Soulstorm which was quite inaccurate to the lore thus will be unlikely to be allowed due GW's new polices on lore in relations to video games, and even if it was not for GW's polices it would be best to keep units as accurate to the tabletop as possible. The should be Immolator the sister's version of the Razorback.

Given that the Space Marines don't even have the Thunderhawk in game it unlikely that the Sisters would get it, the Aquila Lander would be better suited to their in-game air airborne transport unit. The Avenger Strike Fighter is better fit than the Lightning Strike Fighter for the bomber unit as it is part of the lore that due to its reputation of holiness the Avenger Strike Fighter is specifically requested by the Adepta Sororitas should they require close support.

[Prof_Nekko]

just to answer a couple of the mentioned things already. For the weapons for the standard battle sisters it's a case of some models in the squad have bolters and some have flamers. The chainsword only applies for counters if they are attacked in melee.

While Cathedrals function similarly to fortresses of redemption in that they can keep resources captured from adjacency. Their primary role is to use the resource to generate faith and unlike the FoR do not transmit resource bonuses to the nearest city.

The Jetbike thing was mostly so I could find a way to get a proper scouting unit for the Sisters and I was aware it was going against the codex a bit. I settled with putting a Sisters Dominus on a standard Imperial Jetbike since the Dominus sisters are known for their love of being the first to blitz the front lines, and getting on a speedy bike brings them into purging range that much faster. It's against codex but not so far distant that it would be unfeasable.

Yes I did use the soulstorm template for Immolators because I love the super ham voice lines that came from the unit (BEHOLD! THE IMMOLATOR!) and I could tweak it to be a more heavy support tank in the vein of a Razorback, but I still want it to be the mid point between Repressor and the Castigator... and having multiple transports would fit into the spirit of the Sisters' love of getting into the killing fields fast as possible.

As for air units... I didn't really put that much effort into them since Air transports will fill the same functional role no matter which one that gets used. I also used Lightning fighters mostly because I did refer to soulstorm in that regard (and I like the wing design and wanted an excuse to use it)

Feel free to ask any other questions as well. I'm still working on potential Miracle options and tech tree upgrades that I will try to put up when I get the chance.

[Phaeron Amarkun]

This game modding is very straight forward. You can try to creat yourself

[adder007usa]

Originally posted by Prof_Nekko:

just to answer a couple of the mentioned things already. For the weapons for the standard battle sisters it's a case of some models in the squad have bolters and some have flamers. The chainsword only applies for counters if they are attacked in melee.

While Cathedrals function similarly to fortresses of redemption in that they can keep resources captured from adjacency. Their primary role is to use the resource to generate faith and unlike the FoR do not transmit resource bonuses to the nearest city.

Mixed armaments in a unit aren't something the game supports, I believe, so having a mixed unit wouldn't work. This is why we haven't seen squad leaders for infantry units. Similarly for chainswords; I can't think of a single unit that has melee weapons that are ONLY used for melee countering. Unless, you're suggesting that they simply have a retribution style ability to damage melee attackers? In that case, the damage returned would need to be quite low, not really reflective of what chainswords really do.

What COULD work, as a suggestion: Maybe a researchable ability for combi-flamers. Battle sisters would be armed with their usual godwyn pattern bolters, but would have an ability on cooldown (similar to frags) allowing them to make a flamer attack against an adjacent hex.

As far as the cathedrals go, that makes a bit more sense when you put it that way. I would be concerned about cathedral spam however; They would need to be priced in such a way (possibly escalating cost) so that there's no reason to just build a massive pack of cathedrals somewhere in the back line to generate a massive amount of free faith.

[Prof_Nekko]

cathedrals would gain increasing costs for each one owned naturally. I also mulled over having them only generate faith when they have "relics" (aka resource nodes) attached to them.

Mobile Cathedrals would also generate faith... But that's held by by them being their ultimate unit and having a high upkeep for it.