Duplicate Characters

[Caluin]

Something occured to me recently.

I have to wonder how people justify special characters appearing more than once in a battle? What I mean is, two players both have Raven Guard armies, and both use Captain Shrike. Since he's obviously a unique individual, one has to be a fake, right? Yet he uses the same rules and what not, so it's not too far off to say maybe he's a clone, or a pupil gone bad, or some other silly fluff reason for why he appears twice in the same battle. Nobody really thinks twice about it.

I bet right now you're wondering why this is in Rules Help and not Fluff, huh? Well, here's why.

What's to stop someone from taking a Special Character twice in the same army?

Say I want to use Tigerius twice in my army list. I can come up with plenty of fluff reasons for why this could happen - one is the real, the other is his pupil. Or maybe they're not Tigerius at all, and just Alpha Level Psykers that have gone rogue with a band of Space Marines. People rename Special Characters all the time.

But what I'm interested in is what hard, fast rule stops me from taking a Special Character option twice? Where does it say each Special Character is a 0-1 choice?

[MiketehFox]

I can't think of anything....Imagine 2 Calgars!or 2 Shrikes with thier Wings! (retuine) *Whimper*

That would be nasty stuff, adn I can't think of anything from stopping you off the top of my head...

Mike

[SilverMane]

I googled it and found nothing.

So i say it would be allowed if you are all cheesy-like.

However in my SW codex for example, it states a army of 2000pts or more may include
logan grimnar not logan grimnars.

So i woud personally allow it because nothing says you cant execpt for the above statement.
But i think GW have just overlooked this particular factor.

Hope that helps.

[Bugs_n_Orks]

strange but i dont see anything preventing it either

though most dark eldar characters take the place of our archon so that prevents you taking two of the same

though you could take two decapitators........

or maybe a retinue full of drazhars, that could be interesting, Archon plus 9 drazhars in a raider 1000ish points and 30 wounds of power weapon wielding, power armoured lunatics......hmmmm, interesting.....

[mephistophales]

Common sense dictates that you can't do this. But then again, since when do GW rules follow common sense. I also can't find anything that says you can't take a bunch of the same special character.As silvermane said, the only thing that suggests you can only take one is that their names are in singular form, not plural.

Doesn't do much for me as a tau player, as i'm not exactly dying to take the point sink Aun'va so he can sit and look pretty.

[The_Outsider]

I think SilverMane has the right idea, when it mentions the characters name it is singular, not plural, thus saying the character can only be taken once.

True, there is no 0-1 but how it is worded (and how the english languages works) leads me to think they are effectively 0-1.

[Caluin]

Originally Posted by The_Outsider

I think SilverMane has the right idea, when it mentions the characters name it is singular, not plural, thus saying the character can only be taken once.

True, there is no 0-1 but how it is worded (and how the english languages works) leads me to think they are effectively 0-1.

So would that apply to other unit entries as well? For instance, a Tyranid Hive Tyrant is oft referred to in the singular form. For instance, 'The Hive Tyrant has the following Psychic Powers...' That's singular, but you can have two of them...

I'm sure there are other instances of that. Chaos Lts, Space Marine Dreads, etc.

I see where you're going with it, and it makes sense, but there are plenty of places where Games Workshop's grasp of the English language has been less than desirable.

Originally Posted by mephistophales

Common sense dictates that you can't do this. But then again, since when do GW rules follow common sense.

Very true. I doubt anyone else would ever seriously consider taking duplicate special characters, and I know for a fact I never would. I just found it an interesting subject and one worth discussion.

[The_Outsider]

God I really wish sometimes GW can sort their writing out.

That being said this discussion has spurred me to look for other inconsistencies in the codexs, who knows what one could find?

[mephistophales]

Originally Posted by The_Outsider

God I really wish sometimes GW can sort their writing out.

That being said this discussion has spurred me to look for other inconsistencies in the codexs, who knows what one could find?

erhm. I think you're going to be finding them for a very long time if you do that. I can point out a plethora of them from the tau codex off the top of my head. Good luck though.

Edit- On the other hand, that would make for an interesting thread. Players could scroll down to their codex entry in the thread and find all the problems which could arise.

[Grey]

Page 52 of the main 40K rulebook mentions special characters.

It states that:

"Special characters reprsent unique individuals..."

In the case of two players showing up with the same special character(s), I don't believe that both of them should be allowed to use them as they are as stated, unique.

In the unusual case that two or more players show up to play a game with the same special character(be it Captain Shrike or whoever) some method(whether this be a die roll, rock, paper, scissors, arm wrestling, whatever) would have to be determined to see which army actually had the unique individual, and which army actually had (if necessary) an ordinary HQ choice with a jump pack and lightning claws.

Unfortunately GW hasn't seen fit to grant us any specific examples of such instances or a simple rule stating that "A special character may only appear once on one side in any battle" so we are in somewhat uncharted territory as Caluin has pointed out.


However, I think the word unique is pretty straightforward and as such, any claims that for example, one Shrike is the real one and the other is a clone with exactly the same special rules is dubious.


I would hold that this logic would apply to trying to take the same special character more than once in the same list.

Simply that, as special characters are stated to be unique, you couldn't take two or more of the same special character in one list.

Admittedly this is all pretty tenuous rules wise, since I'm basing it on a single word to be found in a general statement.

EDIT: Hopefully this sort of thing doesn't come up that often. In the last maybe 100 games of 40K I've played I think I can recall two to three special characters making an appearance. But I guess it can come up occaisionally.