Shadow War: Plus - WIP Expanded/Modified Ruleset for Shadow War: Armageddon/Necromunda/Inquisimunda

I really, really like the sound of the ruleset for Shadow War (and Necromunda), but one thing I've never really liked much was the restrictions on what you can field. Now, I know why they're there (to give people new to the universe a feel for what each faction is like), but I'd really like a game utilising the Shadow War ruleset (as it seems like an easier pick-up than Necromunda), but with more of a free-form warband creation.

Shadow War seems to have an excellent ruleset, which is slightly simpler to pick up than Necromunda. However, it's fantastically restrictive in what you're able to field.
Necromunda is really cool in the level of detail you can go into making your gang, but it's limited to human gangers.
Inquisimunda is better in that it's greatly expanded to allow for xenos and other such gribblies (and it's usually amenable to houseruling), but it's still reliant on spec sheets with which to create your warband.

What I'd like, is a game where it assumes you already know enough about the 40k universe to make a fluffy fighting force, and then lets you go nuts with customisation of Your Dudes

So, the idea was to come up with a points costing architecture that basically allows you to generate a points value for (pretty much) whatever it is you want to come up with. My thought was to make something that calculates a points value for the raw stats of a model, assigns a points value for any special rules, assigns a points value for armour, weapons and wargear, and allows you to mix everything up to make whatever it is you fancy making

Here's the basic method I had for coming up with points values based on stats (example stats are a mix of 40k stats and Inquisimunda stats, whatever I've felt fits the fluff best):



This seems to scale pretty well with the points values for Shadow War combatants, after you take into account the fact they don't have any wargear or special rules.

The next step would be to cost out all of the special rules, weapons and wargear which is a bit of a mammoth task, but wouldn't be too tricky once 8th comes out and we can compare weapon statlines to Shadow War costings. I've lent on Necromunda for the cost of armour, and wargear and special rules I'm still working on. For now, I've had a go at costing out a few models who I have basic wargear options for from Shadow War:



What I need some help with is sorting the balance of points values. It seems at least moderately balanced to me based on what I've played around with so far, but can anyone see any glaring issues?

The idea with this is to allow people to play with some really cool little narrative plots. Things like 'I've just converted up a Zoat survivor for an Ordo Xenos band', or 'my Marines' fortress has been attacked, and a load of aspirants midway through their implant process have been pressed into action, having a statline somewhere between a regular human and a Marine'. Another hopeful result is to allow people the freedom to construct their warbands however they see fit. Basically allowing anything to be taken with anything, relying on the (hopefully mature) players to keep it fluffy

Of course, there do need to be some restrictions or else people would be walking around with Wraithknight-stat units in an infantry-level skirmish game. So, based on the stats of sergeants and special units I came up with some suggested limits that races' unaugmented biology can reach (with a load of WIP Necromunda-style bionic enhancements and mutations to take things further). I also ported across the Inquisimunda limits for stats, and added some minimums.




I've got some other ideas for neat stuff, like making force fields work like they do in Necromunda as strength or To-Hit modifiers which always felt a little Dune-like to me which is cool, and an expanded and hopefully fun set of combat drugs for most races I'll expand on that later, but I'd like to see what people think of the core idea and get some feedback on the method of costing things up

Oh, another thing. I'd like to keep everything as compatible as possible with regular 40k when it comes to weapons and statlines suchlike, which should work as a bit of future-proofing so the ruleset can be adapted easily for any new models or changes to existing models.

Everything's WIP at the moment, so I'd love to hear some feedback.