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Inquisitor Thade and warband

Started by Thade, January 08, 2013, 09:43:42 PM

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Thade

So I introduced myself on this forum some months ago, but then got too busy before I could post much. I'm getting back into the game a bit and figured I'd post the material I have for feedback. Below are the profiles for my main warband (toned down a bit to Conclave standard--my friend wants to run a space marine, so I've had to beef them up accordingly). Background for the characters will be forthcoming, all I really have is stuff for Thade, which can be found here: http://www.the-conclave.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=2260.0 (includes links to short fiction).


Inquisitor Lucifer Thade, Recongregator, Ordos Hereticus

WS BS  S   T    I   Wp Sg  Nv  Ld
75  37 52 70 68  80   76  64 73

Thade is left-handed.

Equpiment: Daemon sword Gnar'laxx (Wp 77, Deflection, Warpflame); Rapier (sword); Autogun with 1 reload; average bionic eye with infrascope; duelling pistol with 1 reload; 1 point of armour on head (average bionic cheek) and flak armour everywhere else.

Abilities: Leader; Feint; True Grit; Xenophobia - Tau.

Xenophobia - Tau: Thade, though a radical, is extremely xenophobic, having lost half his face to a Tau pulse round. If Thade becomes aware of a Tau character, he must take a leadership test every turn. If he fails, he becomes Frenzied until all Tau characters are out of action. In addition, Thade will never treat alien characters as friendly or allow them in his warband. He will, however, allow his allies to use xenos technology (Thade is always a fan of an ironic demise).

Thade

#1
Flesh-smith Boris Falco, ex-Tech Priest

Falco served the mechanicum as an enginseer who specialized in implanted weaponry. He did a stint as a low-ranking officer in the Skitarii before returning to his post. But his military service had changed him, opening his eyes to the potential of human flesh. He began more and more experiments, blurring the lines between steel and skin. When he showed his findings to his superiors, they expelled him from their order. Some years later, Thade requisitioned his services for augmetics and eventually brought him into his warband.

WS  BS       S          T    I    Wp    Sg    Nv    Ld
56   65  51 (150)  54  57   52     78    79    63

Falco is right-handed.

Equipment: Two advanced bionic arms (S75, +2 armour); implanted great hammer (left-hand); implanted breacher (right hand); MIU-linked, shoulder-mounted Bolter (Mk II straight mag);  advanced bionic eye; mechadendrites; two points of armour on all locations except head; refractor field.

Abilities: Rock Steady Aim.

Thade

Krull 1001, arco-flagellant

Krull is Falco's creation, a heretic brought down by Thade and transformed into a tool of the inquisition. Thade often refers to Krull as "Falco's pet."

WS    BS    S     T     I     Wp     Sg     Nv     Ld
59     12   83   80   56    91      8     155     11

Equipment: Two implanted power claws (counts as power fists, except a natural 10 on 2 or more dice cuts off the limb entirely); combat stimm injectors containing 'slaught, psychon, reflex, and spur (each contains enough stimms to last for 50 turns).

Special Abilities: Ambidextrous; Furious Assault; Fearsome; Force of Will.  Krull's trigger word is Evisorex.

MarcoSkoll

Quote from: Thade on January 08, 2013, 09:43:42 PMXenophobia - Tau: Thade, though a radical, is extremely xenophobic, having lost half his face to a Tau pulse round. If Thade becomes aware of a Tau character, he must take a leadership test every turn. If he fails, he becomes Frenzied until all Tau characters are out of action. In addition, Thade will never treat alien characters as friendly or allow them in his warband. He will, however, allow his allies to use xenos technology (Thade is always a fan of an ironic demise).
I've never much been a fan of rules for things that should really be handled by roleplaying.

However, in some cases, I admit there is a benefit to having rules - but I don't feel that these should force the character to act.

In the case of my rules for hatreds, phobias, addictions and the like, I tend to instead encourage/penalise the character for acting/not acting as their compulsions would be.

One character someone I knew used to play had a fixation on his family's heirloom sword, to the point he would never leave it behind.
A sensible version of these rules was to give him a penalty to all tests if he had lost his sword. Normally this was -20, but if the GM felt he was making adequate efforts to get it back or had a decently important distraction, this could go down to -10 or even 0. On the flip-side, inadequate effort or shallow excuses not to go after it could increase the penalty.

This left enough sensible room that he could do things like deal with a gunman trying to kill him before retrieving the sword, or decide that going back to get it when he'd dropped it two storeys off a building during a chase would let his quarry get away. Ultimately, much better than just giving him rules he had to retrieve the sword immediately.

In this case, the consequences of failing the leadership test might be better replaced with something similar. Penalties for getting on with other things, maybe bonuses for glorious slaughter... but still, I don't think it necessarily needs rules, just roleplay.
S.Sgt Silva Birgen: "Good evening, we're here from the Adeptus Defenestratus."
Captain L. Rollin: "Nonsense. Never heard of it."
Birgen: "Pick a window. I'll demonstrate".

GW's =I= articles

Koval

Quote from: MarcoSkoll on January 09, 2013, 04:23:17 PM
Quote from: Thade on January 08, 2013, 09:43:42 PMXenophobia - Tau: Thade, though a radical, is extremely xenophobic, having lost half his face to a Tau pulse round. If Thade becomes aware of a Tau character, he must take a leadership test every turn. If he fails, he becomes Frenzied until all Tau characters are out of action. In addition, Thade will never treat alien characters as friendly or allow them in his warband. He will, however, allow his allies to use xenos technology (Thade is always a fan of an ironic demise).
I've never much been a fan of rules for things that should really be handled by roleplaying.

However, in some cases, I admit there is a benefit to having rules - but I don't feel that these should force the character to act.
Basically this. One of my own characters, Tyra Vargas, has a genuine distrust of the Adeptus Arbites -- Distrust from the Carthax wiki is fine for representing that, as by losing Speed, she's clearly going on the defensive and waiting to see what they're going to do. Similarly, she has a real hatred of traitors (semi-justified considering that by the time the Twin Arches rolled around, Tyra was a Commodore that had lost both her ship and her rank), but in-game, that's just a re-roll to hit as she's going to put more effort into shooting them. However, although Tyra is also hugely xenophobic to the point that everyone at the Twin Arches event commented on how blind to reason she was, she doesn't need a rule to force her to attack an alien -- she does that all on her own through me roleplaying her.

So for Thade, I'd probably replace your rule with Enmity, also from the Carthax Wiki, and tailor it towards being Enmity (Tau).

I'll go over the rest of the group a bit later, my dinner's cooking.

Koval

#5
Okay, here we go.

Looking at Thade's fluff, he strikes me as having been made an Inquisitor very early on. Stranger things have happened, but being ordained at 38 is still a bit on the young side in my estimation.

The monasteries "falling outside the jurisdiction of the Ecclesiarchy" is also a little odd -- loose affiliation would sit much better than actually being separate from the Ecclesiarchy, because that probably causes quite a few problems.

Thade being "strangely resilient" to the daemon's influence sounds a bit Marty Stu-ish; I might change it so that there's more than just him. I don't imagine it would have an awful lot to do with the Black Ships, either; they hoover up nascent psykers and take them to Terra, not act as a taxi service for the Inquisition.

I'm surprised that if the Ordo Malleus were already involved with Gnar'laxx, the Grey Knights didn't at least make a token gesture when Gnar'laxx escaped (which also raises the question of how Gnar'laxx escaped).

Putting his, and Eois', operations further towards the Ultima Segmentum than Obscurus would help explain the Tau a bit better -- Obscurus and the Tau Empire are a galaxy apart, after all, and that's quite the journey. If you're looking to use Obscurus because of the Eye of Terror, just relocate the Xygus Sector so that it's near the Maelstrom instead. Having said that, it does open up a Warp-related time dilation thingy, because his age and birth date are otherwise at odds with the time scale the rest of the Conclave uses, and losing 86 years along the way -- though a bit extreme -- is a decent enough way to squeeze him into Conclave stuff if that floats your boat.

Let's have a look at the stats now.

Quote from: Thade on January 08, 2013, 09:43:42 PM
WS BS  S   T    I   Wp Sg  Nv  Ld
75  37 52 70 68  80   76  64 73
Toughness 70, but only Strength 52: why?
His BS is abnormally low, and I'd bump it up to the 60s. Trying to "balance" a character with a high WS by giving him a crappy BS is a bit of a fallacy, as there's no way he wouldn't have had firearms training in Eois' service. I also think you need to boost his Nerve by about ten points -- he's an Inquisitor.

QuoteEqupiment: Daemon sword Gnar'laxx (Wp 77, Deflection, Warpflame)
Warpflame is fine. Why Deflection?
QuoteRapier (sword)
Just call it a sword, as that's what a rapier is, and the game currently makes no distinction between rapiers, katanas and scimitars (while getting falchions completely wrong!). While there are some design-your-own-melee-weapon rules floating around, I've not seen them for a while and they're not exactly in use here. :P

QuoteAutogun with 1 reload; average bionic eye with infrascope; duelling pistol with 1 reload; 1 point of armour on head (average bionic cheek) and flak armour everywhere else.
Seems fair enough.

QuoteAbilities: Leader; Feint; True Grit; Xenophobia - Tau.
True Grit: why?
See above regarding Marco's and my thoughts on Xenophobia.


Quote from: Thade on January 08, 2013, 09:46:03 PM
Flesh-smith Boris Falco, ex-Tech Priest

Falco served the mechanicum as an enginseer who specialized in implanted weaponry. He did a stint as a low-ranking officer in the Skitarii before returning to his post. But his military service had changed him, opening his eyes to the potential of human flesh. He began more and more experiments, blurring the lines between steel and skin. When he showed his findings to his superiors, they expelled him from their order. Some years later, Thade requisitioned his services for augmetics and eventually brought him into his warband.
I don't really like the reasons for Falco's expulsion given what the Magi Biologis get up to, but presumably he was part of a really conservative sect...

QuoteWS  BS       S          T    I    Wp    Sg    Nv    Ld
56   65  51 (150)  54  57   52     78    79    63
I'm surprised that his Nerve is that high and his Willpower as low as it is.

QuoteEquipment: Two advanced bionic arms (S75, +2 armour)
Convenient, then, that he can lift a great hammer one-handed...
Quoteimplanted great hammer (left-hand); implanted breacher (right hand)
If he's got no proper hands, then I'm sorry, but he's not very bright. Please consider giving him at least one hand. I have a heretek character that replaced his right hand with a chainblade/drill/cutting torch doohickey, then gave himself a servo-arm because he realised too late that, actually, hands are useful...
QuoteMIU-linked, shoulder-mounted Bolter (Mk II straight mag)
Hmm. Prepare to come under a fair bit of fire for this. I personally have no problem with a bolter, but bolt weapons are probably the most powerful ranged weapon category in the game at the moment (short of getting a really good roll on a flamer), and the character's already got two pretty powerful melee weapons. As we know naff-all about Falco, can I just ask what made you give him the bolter on top of the breacher and great hammer?

Quoteadvanced bionic eye; mechadendrites; two points of armour on all locations except head; refractor field.
Seems fair enough.

QuoteAbilities: Rock Steady Aim.
Rock Steady Aim is an extremely powerful ability, especially when paired up with a bolter. He's already a very powerful character, so this is likely to just make his turns look like "I KILL YOU WHEREVER YOU ARE". In the circumstances, I don't find that it's appropriate -- if he's going to have the bolter and Rock Steady Aim, he should probably lose the melee weapons.

Quote from: Thade on January 08, 2013, 09:48:25 PM
Krull 1001, arco-flagellant

Krull is Falco's creation, a heretic brought down by Thade and transformed into a tool of the inquisition. Thade often refers to Krull as "Falco's pet."

WS    BS    S     T     I     Wp     Sg     Nv     Ld
59     12   83   80   56    91      8     155     11

Equipment: Two implanted power claws (counts as power fists, except a natural 10 on 2 or more dice cuts off the limb entirely); combat stimm injectors containing 'slaught, psychon, reflex, and spur (each contains enough stimms to last for 50 turns).

Special Abilities: Ambidextrous; Furious Assault; Fearsome; Force of Will.  Krull's trigger word is Evisorex.

Seems like an expy of Simeon 38X with a higher Strength and less detrimental drugs (I think the only downside that even remotely matters comes from Reflex). I realise that all Arco-Flagellants are going to look and smell roughly the same, but I do think he could benefit from being toned down just a tad.

greenstuff_gav

Quote from: Thade on January 08, 2013, 09:43:42 PMXenophobia - Tau: Thade, though a radical, is extremely xenophobic, having lost half his face to a Tau pulse round. If Thade becomes aware of a Tau character, he must take a leadership test every turn. If he fails, he becomes Frenzied until all Tau characters are out of action. In addition, Thade will never treat alien characters as friendly or allow them in his warband. He will, however, allow his allies to use xenos technology (Thade is always a fan of an ironic demise).

Quote from: Koval on January 09, 2013, 06:29:17 PMTyra is also hugely xenophobic to the point that everyone at the Twin Arches event commented on how blind to reason she was, she doesn't need a rule to force her to attack an alien -- she does that all on her own through me roleplaying her.

everyone shoots my tau  :'(
especially as i wanted to play with the "doesn't speak Gothic" aspect of the character  ::)

QuoteFlesh-smith Boris Falco, ex-Tech Priest
not that unusual; my Magos for the GT this year is heavily into blending flesh and metal.. now if Falco was to y'know, use warp energies to further his research, that'd be reason for expulsion or just to grab random citizens to play with or deal with the Eldar Haemonculii for example...
i make no apologies, i warned you my ability to roll ones was infectious...

Build Your Imagination

Thade

Thanks everyone for the input. Below are some revised notes for Thade and Falco.


Thade


WS BS  S   T    I   Wp Sg  Nv  Ld
75  43 61 70 68  80   76  74 73

I increased Thade's BS, but I still like the idea of him being a terrible shot: he just never got the hang of guns. I also increased his Strength and Nerve.

Quote from: Koval on January 09, 2013, 08:07:03 PM

Looking at Thade's fluff, he strikes me as having been made an Inquisitor very early on. Stranger things have happened, but being ordained at 38 is still a bit on the young side in my estimation.

One of my biggest influences for Inquisitor is Dan Abnett's Eisenhorn and Ravenor trilogies: Eisenhorn became an Inquisitor at 24, so I didn't see 38 as that old.

QuoteWarpflame is fine. Why Deflection?

If you look at the story "Gnar'laxx Entrapped," the host form deflects lasbolts with his bare hands. It used to be Gnawing (when I first made Thade, he was very close to Lichenstien from White Dwarf), but I went for something more interesting than extra damage and different from Lichenstien.

QuoteTrue Grit: why?

Thade's supposed to be one tough bastard, hence the high toughness. He is also very strong willed, wanting to fight to the bitter end.

I don't really know what to do with the Xenophobia rule. I liked Marco's comments about roleplaying: I'm thinking of changing it to a -10% or -20% penalty for non-Tau related actions when a Tau's around, or scrapping it altogether.


Falco

WS  BS       S          T    I    Wp    Sg    Nv    Ld
56   65  51 (100)  54  57   59     78    79    63

Raised his Wp a bit, and toned down his epuipment: average bionic arms, regular hammer, and a stubber instead of a bolter. I want to leave Rock Steady Aim, so I figure this will balance things out a bit.

The miniature has two implanted weapons, so I can't really add a hand. Out of combat, I imagine him detaching his weapons for bionic hands. Otherwise, his mechadendrites do the work in the mean time.

In terms of the fluff, I'm still working on it a bit. I like the idea of him being an ex-tech priest, so I'll come up with something more interesting. If blending flesh and metal isn't that uncommon, I need something more twisted...


Krull I'm still working on. Although I really like the model, I want to add someone more interesting to give more depth to the fiction surrounding Thade.

MarcoSkoll

Quote from: Thade on January 10, 2013, 05:09:23 PMOne of my biggest influences for Inquisitor is Dan Abnett's Eisenhorn and Ravenor trilogies: Eisenhorn became an Inquisitor at 24, so I didn't see 38 as that old.
Views about Mr Abnett around here vary, but general consensus is that this was generally pretty silly.

There are several reasons why an Inquisitor before 40 is a bit of a stretch.

- A Inquisitor does not have time to waste dealing with hormonal teenagers. It's unlikely that an apprentice would be less than about twenty at recruitment. (And even at that point, it's questionable how much said candidate has actually done to prove themselves worth the Inquisition recruiting them).

- It's the most powerful rank in the Imperium (save the Emperor, Inquisitors with more influence and perhaps the High Lords).  In the real world, it takes decades of proving oneself to become a big cheese such as a President, Prime Minister, Field Marshal, CEO... whatever. Given the far greater weight on their shoulders, a prospective Inquisitor has to prove all the more that they are capable and experienced before being entrusted with the role.

- Imperial medical technology. Those of wealth and power can comfortably live into the multiple hundreds, have injured limbs completely replaced, etc. As the onset of age is slowed to about a fifth of its normal rate, it's quite feasible to train an apprentice for decades and still have an individual who's barely out of their twenties in physical terms at the end of it.

~~~~~

That said, I should admit that my Inquisitorial namesake was ordained at 38... but that's because I specifically wanted to play a young and relatively inexperienced Inquisitor (he's ageing in real time, but is still only 46 at present), with a certain acceptance that his promotion had perhaps been a bit before its time.
S.Sgt Silva Birgen: "Good evening, we're here from the Adeptus Defenestratus."
Captain L. Rollin: "Nonsense. Never heard of it."
Birgen: "Pick a window. I'll demonstrate".

GW's =I= articles

Alyster Wick

I find Falco to be a little troubling. The Mechanicus pretty expressly favors strong steel over weak flesh and it's a staple of Tech Priests to go as far as they can in removing their humanity. Falco's penchant seems pretty standard.

Expanding on some of Gav's thoughts though, if you made his obsession go one (or two, or ten) steps further in any number of directions it could become infinitely more interesting. If he is literally looking at binding metal and flesh as one this could take his investigations into the territory of using Warp energies to transform flesh into metal or he could become obsessed with Necron living metal. Falco could also be looking to races that have more advanced technology/materials (Tau weapons or Eldar "metals") or he could look at races that have more learned/biological experience in transforming flesh (Dark Eldar, as Gav mentioned, or if you want to go into more unexplored territory the Barghesi). Hell, with some tweaks to the backstory I could easily see Tyranids as a point of interest for him (improving the flesh that can't be replaced with metal) or he could go all the way into heretical AI territory.

My point is that all of these different options will make Falco stand out more than he does right now and they'll actually be grounds for excommunication. It'll also create a much more interesting internal dynamic with Thade since he hates aliens but isn't against using their weapons ironically. If Falco is pushing his leaders' boundaries of what it acceptable or creates a new "pet" that Thade considers borderline heretical it'll be much more interesting on the board than a more straightforward acroflagellant. 

Building off of that, for an excommunicated Mechanicus his loadout is pretty boring. There's nothing wrong with this, I mean it makes sense but if this guy has gone and gotten himself kicked out then use this as an opportunity to give him some more interesting stuff. I will add that you should give him some precision mechandrites as it Falco should ALWAYS have something with him that can replace the function of hands. I don't buy that someone as curious as him would leave himself open to the mistake of "Damn, this is a great specimen but I left my hands in the next to the sink again." Either that or give him some mewling assistants that function like servo-skulls (or maybe just servo-skulls).

Last thing is that I feel for you in terms of having to face an SM on a regular basis. A number of years ago my brother create a Dark Angels Chaplain and while we had some very fun games that were very RP heavy the bottom line is that sometimes you want to get into a fight ad firing a revolver at a character with fully enclosed power armor is like shinning a flashlight at an oncoming train. It isn't fun to have to modify your warband to avoid being pummeled by your opponent. That said you can use it as an opportunity to explore rare and exotic wargear/skills/characters as opposed to just jacking up some stats.

I don't want to sound overly critical, you've hit on a lot of interesting pieces here and I really like your Inquisitor. I just think that you're in a great spot to stretch yourself and bit and have a breakthrough with some unique characters and wargear combos.

Thade

Alyster: no worries, I'm finding all this very helpful.

Marco: Good points, though I would argue that the 41st millennium is a much harsher world and I would imagine that children/teenagers mature quicker.