The Conclave

So perhaps I'd better get this statted up rather than trying to do it on the day, yes?
I'm referencing the marine article in Dark Magenta 2, and using a veteran statline, but with an improved BS to represent Cypher's crazy abilities. I'll also be referencing the skills gained from the various marine implants.
Dark Angels are known for having some of the most stable and pure Gene-Seed in the Imperium, so there's that.

Should I ignore Hypno-Indoctrination (nerves of steel and ambidextrous)?
Although he might count as ambidextrous while using his pistols, but not while doing anything else?

His skills based on fluff and the dataslate, he's very nasty. That said, he's also held in check by needing to be not noticed unless he does need to be noticed.
But holy crow, marines are just *nasty*!!!
And Cypher is worse by miles. He's fitting from a backstory perspective, but from a character perspective yeah, only for special occasions.


WS 74
BS 79
S 81 (121)
T 82
I 91
Wp 73
Sg 74
Ld 72
Nv 94

Speed: 6

Right-handed

Skills: (Oh dear me!)
True Grit
Ambidextrous
Nerves Of Steel
Spit-Acid (bloodfire)

Cypher Specific Skills:
Gunfighter
Fast Draw
Dead Eye Shot
Dodge

Gun-Fu (May use his pistols at their standard strength in close combat - counts as reach 1, cannot parry, must always dodge, bolt pistol goes first, uses ammo, D6 damage if used as melee, reach 1).

Silver-tongued (+30 to Ld when in conversation - carthaxian) instead?

Heroic (arguable, but he's known for charging in to save people in the most reckless way possible for anyone not him, and then having the pistol skills to get himself back out after having saved them - see: the most recent Regimental Banner article from Warhammer Community where he was reputed to have saved some guardsmen (who were later... "lost" while alongside some Dark Angels later founding marines))



Equipment:
Power-Armour (mixture of MkIV and MkVII scavenged) all locations except head (I'm going to just assume a flat 10 for all here)
Bolt Pistol w/5 reloads (should he have more? Less?)
Archeotech Plasma Pistol (does not Get Hot - not risky)
1 Frag Grenade (on the model)

Non-usable mysterious giant sword

Possible c'tan phase knife (otherwise fires pistols in close combat) (counts as a power knife??).

Marine Implants (from DM2):
Black Carapace
Betchers gland - Spit-Acid (bloodfire) - chew through inanimate objects, 2D10 D p/full turn
Hypno-Indoctrination (ambidextrous, Nerves of Steel)
Mucranoid (toughness re-roll, -1point on temperature based damage)
Neuroglottis -  detect poison/toxins via taste Awareness test no penalty/via smell with -20%. track by taste -20% modifier, additional -10% each hour scent is cold
Oolitic Kidney - reroll resistance, +10% to resistance if unconscious
Melanochromic Organ - reroll T vs radiation. -1d from radiation
Sus-an Membrane - enter after d3 meditation turns. no longer roll for recovery or bleeding. GM decision re-awakening
Lyman's Ear - reroll failed hearing awareness
Occulobe - reroll failed sight awareness
Multi-lung - reroll T vs drowning/asphyxiation +10% resistance vs gas toxin
Preomnor - +10% resistance ingested poison
Omophagea - info from ingested brain tissue after d3 stunned turns w/ sg test
Catalepsean Node - no awareness penalties for staying up late
Larraman's Organ - true grit, D6 recovery, any roll less than bleeding stops bleeding
Haemastamen (+50% T for system shock, death, unconsciousness)
Biscopea (+40 S?) (currently included)
Ossmodula (any damage above heavy must be greated than BIV before armour)
Secondary Heart (Ignore first stunned result, always only test for system shock (not automatic))


*?
RIA stats
Name - Plasma Pistol
Type - Pistol
Rng - E
Mode - Single
Acc -  -15
Dam - 3D10+2
Mag - 9
Rld - 4
Enc - 25
Spcl -  -
Rrty - Exotic
Changes for RIA made as per suggestion - alterations included in profile.
Not risky/hazardous.
Can only be fired on low power?

Quote from: mcjomar on March 08, 2017, 12:47:37 PMBS 90

Cypher or not, there is nonetheless a responsibility to make any character in Inquisitor something viable to play against.
A Ballistic skill that high is just over the top, particularly when he's also packing several skills that let him ignore penalties. It's just not fun when a character has almost no chance of missing.

Personally, because BS is a rare case of a stat that can easily stack itself with multiple +20 bonuses, I feel the system breaks down very fast above BS 70 and characters better than that are almost always best represented by abilities. (I've never done a character with more than BS 73)

QuoteJust a Flesh Wound (?)

No. Marines are already obnoxiously tough, perhaps even more so when using the Dark Magenta rules (while they can't brush off melta guns any more, bullets can bounce off their skulls, they can ignore stunned results, they quickly stop bleeding, they get True Grit...).
They don't need this additional advantage.

QuoteHeroic

I'd say that it's broadly acceptable. Regardless of whether or not he is a hero, he is a legendary figure with the ability to regularly cheat the odds.

QuoteBolt Pistol w/2 reloads (should he have more? Less?)

More, in my opinion. While (hopefully), he'll never use that much in one game, it doesn't make sense that he'd carry so little.

QuotePossible c'tan phase knife (counts as a power knife??).

Phase weapons are considerably nastier than mere power weapons. Power weapons merely disrupt solid matter. Phase weapons cut through it like it isn't even there.

Personally, I'd probably represent a phase weapon using Unnatural damage (something cooked up for IRE), intended primarily to represent weapons that ignore physical law.

Updated made - still following DM2 I've changed his BS to 80 - I'm not sure how his 40k crazy high BS statline translates to Inquisitor.
I'm wondering if his Phase Knife just doesn't exist during the event?
(Not sure)

QuoteUnnatural
Unnatural damage is horrendous. Such attacks either warp physical law or are so hugely powerful that they can crush and annihilate almost any defence. As such, unnatural attacks do not roll damage as normal.
Unnatural attacks directly roll the number of injury levels caused - this is not modified by the target's Base Injury Value, and completely ignores armour, cover and forcefields. Once a number of injury levels is determined, the target takes a total of D6 injury total per injury level caused (which may cause system shock as normal).

This stuff?
What scale would that have?

The maximum BS in 40k still needs a 2 to hit (unless they've changed the rules since last time I played), which would translate to a maximum BS of 83. However direct comparisons between 40k and Inq. don't really work that well when you take into account all the special rules and the aiming rules. As a general rule of thumb I consider a combat or shooting skill to be roughly equivalent to 5 BS or WS, so I would suggest a BS in the 70-75 bracket.

Quote from: mcjomar on March 08, 2017, 02:18:08 PMThis stuff? What scale would that have?

When I throw out the new version of IRE (hopefully in a few hours), it has a new variation where Unnatural damage goes to more normal looking damage rolls (e.g. 3D6) - it'll still ignore armour, but rather than consulting the target's BIV, every die result of 3+ immediately causes an injury level (to a minimum of one).
The thoughts are that this is slightly more adjustable, with a better spread of results. As it was, the old system was difficult to vary much, particularly if players didn't have access to D4s, and it made one level of injury as likely as any other unless you got into die rolls like 2D6/3 , which felt slightly ugly.

Under the new system, you probably could simply apply Unnatural damage to the existing power weapon profile.

However, the old system is still functional enough. Under that I'd probably make it something like D3 Unnatural Tearing. That's reasonably powerful (with a good chance of inflicting three injury levels on  even a Space Marine), but not so horrific that it'll automatically mangle characters.

Okay so for this weekend which would you recommend I use?

Power knife with automatic damage level on a 3+? (The power knife is 3d6 right?)?
I mean this assumes that the time period gav sets the campaign in will even have Cypher carrying that knife. It might not exist in reality at that point.

Going down the list of cypher skills I've added them based on fluff.
So gunfighter is self explanatory
Hipshooting is a maybe but he seems good at running and gunning a lot?
Fast draw he was able to murder a terminator while abaddon was blinking
Dead eye shot should be fitting for what he does
Dodge is mostly guesswork as he looks survivable on paper
Torrent of fire is theoretical as backstory shows him throwing out lots of shots which seems intimidating but maybe this is a bad idea?

Gun-fu is me trying to represent his 40k ability to use pistols in close combat. Does it work?

Gunfighter and Fast Draw fit the character so no issues there.

Hipshooting and Dead eye shot are more questionable depending on what you go with BS wise. If you keep the very high BS then I'd suggest dropping Hipshooting, if you drop it to the low 70's then it would be ok (but still very strong).

Dodge and Gun Fu kind of go together (thinking of the movie Equilibrium here). I'd change Gun Fu to can use pistol in close combat at any distance (instead of just at arms reach), unless you want to represent him hitting people with the pistols themselves.

Torrent of Fire? Not sure it fits really, he only has one Bolt Pistol after all (Plasma weapons aren't really torrenty due to the recharge rules  :P).

Torrent of Fire comes off him being able to fire his weapons twice in the shooting phase (granted by the skill Blazing Weapons in the 40k Dataslate). I think that would be pretty nasty to get in the way of.

I've dumped "Leader" as based on the dataslate, Silver-tongued is far more fitting, background and rules-wise for what he does.
The dataslate says he reduced the leadership of fellow HQ choices, so Leader is not as fitting as Silver-Tongued is.

His dataslate grants him a BS of 10 (no I don't know what that's doing there, or why it needs to be higher than 5 or 6, but there we go).
This leaves me unsure how to handle his completely abnormal BS skills. Ditto things like the hipshooting/dead eye shot. For that latter, he is known for placing shots extremely well. But perhaps I'll dump hipshooting - he still looks like he has to choose between shooting and/or sprinting for 7th edition rules.
His weapon skill, by comparison is "only" 7 on the tabletop, with a leadership of 10, and an initiative of 8. :o

RE:Gun-Fu, I just didn't want him to be too crazy given that he can fire weapons like a plasma pistol and bolt pistol in close combat. I mean, he's terrifying as it is, although he's hiding from actual Dark Angels, so if a GM deployed one of those on the tabletop to counter, then he'd have to keep a low profile for the entire game, or just leg it (hint hint Gav).
Note: his plasma pistol does not "Get Hot" in the dataslate either. It's an archeotech weapon, basically. Given that it lacks Gets Hot, how do I handle this?
But yes, I do think he might - if needed - use the pistol butts as close combat weapons.

New problem - Dataslate says the sword gives him "Eternal Warrior" (Immune to instant death), and Shrouded (bonus to cover saves).
Shrouded I'm not sure - represent with Stealthy maybe?
Eternal Warrior just boggles the mind given that marines are - as stated - already a nasty proposition in any Inquisitor game.
I mean, he's already got Dodge and Heroic, so maybe that counts enough? I really don't know. :-\

Well his earlier versions only had a BS of 8...

Trying to completely, 100% recreate a special character from 40k in Inquisitor isn't a great idea as it's far too easy to create somebody who isn't fun to play with or against. So you need to tone things down somewhat in order to keep it interesting and trying to represent every 40k skill isn't going to work (the games are too different).

I would definitely drop Hipshooting if you want to keep the BS at ~80, the combination of no movement penalties and such a high BS would be a bit too good. 

Speed 6 would actually be fitting for the character (and would represent that I8), more so than Torrent of Fire in my opinion as this would give him the ability to fire more shots just by the virtue of having more actions.

WS 80 is also quite high (you'll only fail 1 in 20 first round dodges). I'd consider 40k WS 7 to be ~WS 75 in Inq.

So for stats I'd probably go with something like this (n.b I prefer not to use multiple of 5):

WS BS S   T   I   Wp  Sg  Ld  Nv
75  73  81 82 91 76  74  73  93

Using his pistols at any range in close combat wouldn't be particularly overpowered, no more so than a powersword especially as you won't get any strength bonuses and the Plasma pistol will need to recharge. If you want to use the pistols as cc weapons then I'd suggest giving them a basic stat-line such as D6 damage, reach 1, Parry -15% (Gun Fu style)

His Archeotech Plasma Pistol shouldn't be a risky action, but will still need to recharge.

Eternal Warrior sounds more like the kind of skill that would be used in campaigns rather than on the tabletop. i.e. the character can never be permanently killed (but can still be taken out of action) and will always recover in time for the next mission.

For Shrouded I'd suggest adding to the armour points added by being in cover although that would make him rather hard to kill (as if he isn't already  :P)

Okay, I've applied most of the updates.
I'm not sure about letting shrouded give extra armour, as it implies he's able to get more out of a cover save simply by being sneaky/harder to spot. I think.
But it only applies while in cover on the battlefield, so I'm not sure - maybe stealthy but only when behind suitable* cover?

*suitable being decided by the GM I guess.


The current Dataslate makes cypher into someone seriously nasty, albeit at the expense of your commander's ability to command.
Should I ignore the RIA version of the plasma pistol then?
I do sort of like it, if only because whenever he ran out of shots for both guns, he'd have to spend an entire turn standing around and carefully reloading everything.

Up to you which version of Plasma weapons you use. I'm not a great fan of either to be honest, I quite like the recharge idea but find it's a bit too long for normal games of inquisitor and compares unfavourably with Melta and Bolt Weapons.

If you want to use the RIA I'd suggest removing hazardous for low power, hazardous for high power, getting rid of the -2 for limited cooling and always considered to have had maintenance.

If you want to use the Original rules then get rid of risky action and change it to accuracy -5% reload 2

Okay, I'm going with the RIA version I think, but removing the ability to use high power, as maybe as an archeotech weapon it didn't have that option?
No point throwing Tearing into the mix.

Quote from: Cortez on March 08, 2017, 08:16:15 PMUp to you which version of Plasma weapons you use. I'm not a great fan of either to be honest

I'll admit that the Plasma weapon rules are not the strongest part of the RIA, but they're difficult to get decent play-testing done on, given the rarity of plasma weapons in the game.

For now, it's an attempt to try to consolidate the different fluff interpretations out there (recharging, overheating, plasma flasks, rapid fire, variable power, etc), and make them a bit less useless than in the rulebook (where I think I've only once seen a plasma pistol get two shooting actions in a game*).

*And even then I'm not sure we didn't miscount the number of turns.

Okay, I think this is probably more a GM or (this is how he gets away) thing, but the fluff makes mention that he can somehow hide/shroud his psychic signature so that folks can't find him - then he escapes. I stumbled over that bit while skimming his dataslate.
I don't think it's necessary for in-game use as such but I could be wrong?

Not to go completely nuts but it is hinted that he is actually a Psyker...... Or at least he is the loyalist librarian who fought alongside Luthur on Caliban (I forget his name). This does somewhat explain his ability to 'always' escape even when escape is physically impossible and explains his ability to do the funky 'time-stop' shenanigans.

The power 'Instability' springs to mind. This way he can phase out of existence and 'escape' but, from a GM points of view, he would only use this in the direst of circumstances.



As for Plasma Pistols, yeah, they're a bit pants. The reload kills them and they pale in comparison to Melta and Bolt weapons.  They should have a number of shots before they need to recharge. Even if it's 2 or 3. Then Recharge 2. That would at least let them be useable in games. However, the whole Rld thing depends on what fluff you read. They hydrogen flasks were changed during battle just like the 'clips' on a gun (but it's incredibly risky to do so). So you could always do that instead of the whole recharge thing.

However, in regards to Cypher. He still has a Heresy issue Plasma Pistol which was more destructive than the later (and safer) imperial versions but at the same time, less safe to use. The fact that it is a master crafted version of the heresy era weapons should really curb the effects of the dangers to the wielder. So Maybe the heresy (and Chaos) weapons should be Rld1/2 but have a higher chance of overheating and/or exploding catastrophically.

Quote from: mcjomar on March 09, 2017, 08:26:13 AM
Okay, I think this is probably more a GM or (this is how he gets away) thing, but the fluff makes mention that he can somehow hide/shroud his psychic signature so that folks can't find him - then he escapes. I stumbled over that bit while skimming his dataslate.
I don't think it's necessary for in-game use as such but I could be wrong?

Like Eternal Warrior I think that's more suitable in a campaign setting. Always escapes, can't be captured etc.

As for Plasma weapons, I agree that they are poor when compared to Bolt and Melta weapons. Even in the bad old days of overpowered god-like inquisitors they weren't popular, they're even less so considering the general lack of heavily armoured characters at Conclave events (I don't think I've ever seen a Tyrus conversion at a Conclave event).

I've been thinking about this for a bit as I was considering sculpting a Plasmagun for the Missionary I'm working on, here are some of my thoughts:

Melta weapons are a bit too accurate when compared to Plasma, especially at the short ranges most inquisitor action takes place at. Lower The accuracy penalties to -5% on Plasma weapons, increase the penalties for Melta weapons (they are supposed to be more reliable but less accurate).

I quite like the recharge idea as it makes the weapon feel and play differently, the RIA version just feels like a riskier pistol with ammo and reloads etc.

You could go with 4 settings:

Low Power: 2D10+5 (2D10 pistol), no risk, no recharge.
Low Power multi shot: add semi 2/3, risky, no recharge.
High Power: 3D10+5 (3D10 pistol), risky, recharge 1
High power multi shot: add semi 2/3, higher risk, recharge 2

Another option would be to make it riskier the more times you fire it without letting it cool down/recharge. So you can fire it once with no penalty, fire it a second time (in a consecutive action) with a low risk + chance it'll need to recharge, three times - higher risk of overheating running out of charge and so on. Each action spent not firing it would allow it to cool down/build up charge again. Can also spend a maintenance action (checking gauges, coolant levels etc.) to double the recharge for that action (once per turn).

Quote from: Lord Borak on March 09, 2017, 08:31:06 AM
Not to go completely nuts but it is hinted that he is actually a Psyker...... Or at least he is the loyalist librarian who fought alongside Luthur on Caliban (I forget his name).

Zahariel, and there are suggestions and theories that this might not be the case, given that outside of his ability to always escape, he never uses psychic powers on the battlefield.
There are two other possible choices, given events in The Primarchs, and other HH books involving the Lion

Quote from: Lord Borak on March 09, 2017, 08:31:06 AM
However, in regards to Cypher. He still has a Heresy issue Plasma Pistol which was more destructive than the later (and safer) imperial versions but at the same time, less safe to use. The fact that it is a master crafted version of the heresy era weapons should really curb the effects of the dangers to the wielder. So Maybe the heresy (and Chaos) weapons should be Rld1/2 but have a higher chance of overheating and/or exploding catastrophically.

The trick with Cypher is that his plasma pistol does not Gets Hot, and he can fire it twice in the shooting phase along with his bolt pistol, while a standard plasma pistol can only fire once, and does Gets Hot.
Would his pistol being master crafted negate the risky/hazardous state of a normal pistol of that era?

Quote from: Cortez on March 09, 2017, 09:13:14 AM
As for Plasma weapons, I agree that they are poor when compared to Bolt and Melta weapons. Even in the bad old days of overpowered god-like inquisitors they weren't popular, they're even less so considering the general lack of heavily armoured characters at Conclave events (I don't think I've ever seen a Tyrus conversion at a Conclave event).

Except for Lord Borak's model which ended up with my Hot Potato incident  ;)

Quote from: Cortez on March 09, 2017, 09:13:14 AM
I quite like the recharge idea as it makes the weapon feel and play differently, the RIA version just feels like a riskier pistol with ammo and reloads etc.

For my part I take the opposite stance due to weapon artwork in 3rd edition rulebook (nice diagrams showing where fuel cells are plugged into the weapon), and the way plasma weapons worked in the Chaos Gate PC game (stable, no Gets Hot, limited to 6 rounds on pistols, 8 on plasma guns, and only the Cannon had high or low power settings, first shot takes lots of action points, rest are cheap to represent weight of fire or something).

Quote from: Cortez on March 09, 2017, 09:13:14 AM
You could go with 4 settings:

Low Power: 2D10+5 (2D10 pistol), no risk, no recharge.
Low Power multi shot: add semi 2/3, risky, no recharge.
High Power: 3D10+5 (3D10 pistol), risky, recharge 1
High power multi shot: add semi 2/3, higher risk, recharge 2

Another option would be to make it riskier the more times you fire it without letting it cool down/recharge. So you can fire it once with no penalty, fire it a second time (in a consecutive action) with a low risk + chance it'll need to recharge, three times - higher risk of overheating running out of charge and so on. Each action spent not firing it would allow it to cool down/build up charge again. Can also spend a maintenance action (checking gauges, coolant levels etc.) to double the recharge for that action (once per turn).

I think I like the second one a little more maybe, in general terms, with or without ammo.
It would cause Mordecai and Samantha to be more sparing with their plasma pistol shots (as if they weren't already).

I have to say the work you did on this guy is amazing.

You mentioned creating a more normal space marine character at the last event, but honestly I don't really think that is needed. He wasn't noticeably more powerful than the other marines, in fact I would say that he was more balanced for a regular Inquisitor game than Banus, Lycus, Paulinus or the unfortunate traitor Arkus, which probably didn't do him any favours considering Saturdays scenarios.

I think he would work fine as a single character in regular conclave events, especially when you consider that they aren't usually just about killing as many enemies as possible!

I think part of the reason he works - outside of basically being 40k's answer to Carmen Sandiego - is that his Gun-Fu means that when he doesn't have his C'tan Phase Knife, he can't use his strength bonus in close-combat, and so can't rapidly mulch dudes in seconds the way a power-weapon equipped marine can.
Being further restricted by ammo counts means then in close-combat, if he runs out, he's down to fists - not bad as he's a space marine, but still not murder-crazy, like Artemis is.
Plus the fact that there are so many secrets and mysteries attached to him in the 40k lore, the fact he impersonated an Inquisitor at least once, and the fact that he's also been at the centre of a lot of questionable events that any Inquisitor worth their salt would be asking questions about means he's good to slot in anywhere - although being a named character, I'd still be tempted to only use him as a GM NPC from here on out.