Hail, Battle-Brothers!

In my group there are two Space Wolves. My friend, Matt, is an Assault Marine who fires a lascannon and then jump packs into the fray with a chainsword and I am a mostly machine Iron Priest with a heavy bolter and a pet Fenrisian Wolf. Matt is all into ridiculous, up-close, crazy heroic battle and he's already planning on dying in the most glorious way possible and we haven't actually started playing the game yet. He REALLY likes Dreadnoughts so we talked to our GM to see if there is anything he can plan for. Our GM thought about it and said if he died awesomely and we were high enough in ranks, he would figure something out.

So...

Q1: Is this awesome?

Q2: How would we go about making him a Dreadnought character, crunch-wise? A suit of armor with modified abilities and special weapons sounds OK. What would you suggest?

Well, first, this is something that will be detailed in a later supplement.

Of course, some of us are impatient. I haven't had a chance to look at Into the Storm, but it has vehicle rules, so I would say look at that first, try to deveop some walker type (I'm fairly sure it includes that). Past that, the weapon options are already fairly well detailed in the codex, so just take matching weapons (missile launchers, TL lascannons, assault cannons, etc.). The tricky part would be coming up with a proper melee system. I'd say something that is fairly massive damage, 2d10+20 pen 10 or something.

I would certainly not allow them to operate next to rank 1 characters, probably more like rank 5.

I seem to recall one of the old DH fan made rules for astartes or the old vehicle rules listing dreadnoughts, so might want to check those out.

Also, how the hell is an assault marine using a lascannon and a jetpack? Wheres the ammo pack?

(don't want to sound rude, but it does bug me).

EDIT: Also, I would probably force some form of insanity, probably just saying dreadnoughts always suffer the maximum effect of the Primarch's curse.

That would be cool!

In case anyone was wondering what the stats for facing a Dreadnought would be (I made them up on the spot last session):

I combined the armor, structure points, etc. from a Rhino APC (Armor 25, 25, 20 with 25 SP) from Into the Storm with the Long Barreled Twin-Linked Autocannons (4D10 + 5, Pen 4 I think?) from the Gunship in the same book.

That combined with a Dreadnought Close Combat Thunderhammer (4D10 + 10, Pen 10, Power Field) and it was a rough encounter for them. The Khonite Dreadnought had Lightning Attack and could make 2 Full Auto shots with the Twin-Linked Autocannons each round (If I remember correctly it was S/2/4).

For stats, I just used the Elite Chaos Space Marine detailed in the Deathwatch Rulebook.

SpawnoChaos said:

Did you have him have Toughness as standard for damage reduction purposes? As I have come to understand, usually when some one is put in Dreadnought armor, they are beyond repair/have very little of their body remaining. Just wondering if you took that into account.

Sounds like a good Dreadnought, though. I'll have to mention it to our GM.

gorezerker said:

In this case, I didn't account for any TB that the character used to have. I just used the Armor and Structure Points for the Rhino APC.

I hate to be a downer but is your friend planning on retiring his character? the reason i ask is from everything i have read about dreadnoughts, while they are awesome machines of destruction, they only really come out when the chapter needs them. other then that they sit in a basement somewhere like it this case in the Fang and are not sent out to clean up an ork camp or anything that a DW team would be doing.

While indeed Dreadnoughts are awesome with plenty of awesome sauce & chunks of awesome sprinkled on top, it does seem something that's better used for 'post-player' usage. If he barely survives, I'd say he gets interred into a dreadnought sarcofagus and promoted to an NPC while the player rolls up a new character. As SonofRuss said, a dreadnought does not offer much roleplay opportunities. True, while some dreadnoughts are also wise councelors that are consulted in times of great need & peril, it does rule out most of the standard adventure mechanics...

Clandestine transit aboard a military ship? Stealthy approach to any camp or city? Sneaking around said city to capture said objective? Run fast and make heroic jumps to escape some distarter or jump on the only escape ship that's lifting off? Saying hi to natives without them crapping their pants? Crossing a ravine in the wildernis by any mean? Er, opening and passing through a door without taking out the whole building?

While not impossible, any adventure would have to be tailored to specifically tailor in the Dreadnought, which would get stale real fast I think. Better to have the character retire in NPC'ism and take him out during the heroic or dramatic moments in a campaign, perhaps even let the original player 'play' the dreadnought for a bit, but as a full-time character, I'd say no....

Yes, the player as well as I recognize that dreadnoughts are only used in the most extreme of circumstances.

By the time it comes to making the character a dreadnought, we'll have something. I'm an Iron Priest, taking care of dreadnoughts is my responsibility... I'm sure I'll figure something out. The whole point of making the dreadnought is so my friend could... PLAY A DREADNOUGHT and **** heretics for the Emperor!

We also are in a strange campaign where we are with other non-space marine folks and we're lost in space, cut off from the Imperium, caught between the Eldar army, a group of Tau and a Tyranid invasion. Even becoming a dreadnought depends on where we go in our adventure, but if the opportunity presents itself, I'm sure I'll think of something for the RP aspect of it.