Hello all. This is my first post so sorry if it's in the wrong thread. Apologies also if this has been suggested elsewhere.
I've read a few threads on including Astartes in Inquisimunda, which have all been controversial to say the least. I have a suggestion of how to include them in a lore friendly way that doesn't break the game balance wise.
Many Space Marine chapters explicitly recruit from Hive Gangs in 40k lore, to find the meanest, toughest, nastiest fighters to implant with gene seed. If you want to know why a super soldier would be interested in petty gang warfare, this is why. They want recruits.
So my suggestion is to have an Astartes scout sergeant leading a gang of regular, non-astartes fighters who will eventually become Astartes if they can survive their training. Your leader would be Astartes, the rest would be regular old run of the mill human gangers.
Players can still get that Astartes flavour by having their regular human sized gangers practicing Astartes style tactics and using Astartes style equipment as they hone their skills. They'd just be human sized instead of Astartes sized, and not quite as skilled (yet).
In this flavour, 'retirement' would actually mean 'joining the chapter'. They get beamed up to the chapter barge or wherever it is they stick you full of gene seed, and bye bye hive world. Scout sergeant would likely stay behind and continue to recruit the next generation of Space Marines.
Similarly, Eldar Aspect Warriors recruit regular Eldar and train them to become Aspect Warriors over many, many years. You'd have a similar style of Warband, with an Aspect Warrior Exarch leading a team of Eldar Guardians on their journey to become powerful Aspect Warriors (in time). You'd theme these Warbands around the Aspect Shrine that is doing the recruiting (i.e. you'd play a Dark Reaper Warband, a Banshee Warband, etc).
The Houses we already have aren't even too dissimilar from this - Banshees are kinda like the all lady house (is it House Escher?) and Dark Reapers are like the Van Saars with their big weapons, etc. You'd take that rough template and make it Eldar-y (Aeldari...?).
Basically the flavour here would be that the Eldar have infiltrated a Hive World and are using the humans as target practice for the next generation of Aspect Warriors. Maybe a Farseer sent them after seeing an urgent need for more Aspect Warriors at some point in the future. Or whatever really. But Aspect Warriors have honed their craft over many, many years, so they've gotta start somewhere, right?
In my view, the core of Necromunda that makes it different from other games is the character progression. The entire game is built around your fighters growing and learning new skills over time, your gang building up their credits and territory and so on. This is what creates the narrative.
If you wanted to include Astartes and Eldar, that's how I'd do it. It plays to Necromunda's strength of character progression, with a reasonable in-universe justification.
Sorry for the long post. Have at it.
I've read a few threads on including Astartes in Inquisimunda, which have all been controversial to say the least. I have a suggestion of how to include them in a lore friendly way that doesn't break the game balance wise.
Many Space Marine chapters explicitly recruit from Hive Gangs in 40k lore, to find the meanest, toughest, nastiest fighters to implant with gene seed. If you want to know why a super soldier would be interested in petty gang warfare, this is why. They want recruits.
So my suggestion is to have an Astartes scout sergeant leading a gang of regular, non-astartes fighters who will eventually become Astartes if they can survive their training. Your leader would be Astartes, the rest would be regular old run of the mill human gangers.
Players can still get that Astartes flavour by having their regular human sized gangers practicing Astartes style tactics and using Astartes style equipment as they hone their skills. They'd just be human sized instead of Astartes sized, and not quite as skilled (yet).
In this flavour, 'retirement' would actually mean 'joining the chapter'. They get beamed up to the chapter barge or wherever it is they stick you full of gene seed, and bye bye hive world. Scout sergeant would likely stay behind and continue to recruit the next generation of Space Marines.
Similarly, Eldar Aspect Warriors recruit regular Eldar and train them to become Aspect Warriors over many, many years. You'd have a similar style of Warband, with an Aspect Warrior Exarch leading a team of Eldar Guardians on their journey to become powerful Aspect Warriors (in time). You'd theme these Warbands around the Aspect Shrine that is doing the recruiting (i.e. you'd play a Dark Reaper Warband, a Banshee Warband, etc).
The Houses we already have aren't even too dissimilar from this - Banshees are kinda like the all lady house (is it House Escher?) and Dark Reapers are like the Van Saars with their big weapons, etc. You'd take that rough template and make it Eldar-y (Aeldari...?).
Basically the flavour here would be that the Eldar have infiltrated a Hive World and are using the humans as target practice for the next generation of Aspect Warriors. Maybe a Farseer sent them after seeing an urgent need for more Aspect Warriors at some point in the future. Or whatever really. But Aspect Warriors have honed their craft over many, many years, so they've gotta start somewhere, right?
In my view, the core of Necromunda that makes it different from other games is the character progression. The entire game is built around your fighters growing and learning new skills over time, your gang building up their credits and territory and so on. This is what creates the narrative.
If you wanted to include Astartes and Eldar, that's how I'd do it. It plays to Necromunda's strength of character progression, with a reasonable in-universe justification.
Sorry for the long post. Have at it.
