Throne Agent Marcus Veer

[Shard0808]

To the Conclave
Please offer any advice on Throne Agent Marcus Veer, Helena's long standing guardian and father figure. The hope is to have him as a CQB expert hence the Bullpup rifle and rock steady aim, and a constant companion to Helena through thick and thin. I was hoping to add to the compassion rule in that if  Helena should be rendered out of action then he gains Enmity against the character who attacked her (if it was indeed a character).
Please have a look over his stats and equipment etc and let me know what you think!

WS 64
BS 68
S 68
T 66
I 62
WP 60
NV 72
SG 58
LD 74

Bullpup Assault Rifle, Armor piercing ammunition, lighting bolt, laser sight
Combat sword
Combat knife
Med kit
Coms headset
HUD Bio-scanner/motion tracker Auspex, with updated location & medical condition of Inquisitor Helena Shal'tan.

Rock steady aim
Survivor
Compassion (Inquisitor Helena Shal'tan)
Medic

Enclosed carapace helmet
Carapace armor entire body
Bionic arm (advanced)

[MarcoSkoll]

I was hoping to add to the compassion rule in that if Helena takes a serious injury Marcus MUST disengage from whatever combat he is in and make his way to her location to provide help in whatever way he can. Also should Helena (Emperor forbid) die then he becomes subject to frenzy and gains Enmity against the character who attacked her (if it was indeed a character).

I'm generally not any kind of fan of rules that enforcing non-compelling character behaviour.

If he's on a crazy drug that completely overwhelms any possibility of common sense, Frenzy is fine. If he's really angry/upset - roleplay it, don't use Frenzy.

As for his stats... some of them they may be a little on the high side. Ballistic Skill 74 is a lot, considering it's one of the few skills that regularly gets to stack big +20 modifiers (and you've got two shooting skills)!
BS 73 is the maximum I've used, and that character is armed with only a pistol (although it is a nice pistol), not an assault rifle.

I also tend not to put multiple speed 5 characters into the same warband. Occasionally, yes, but you should really think about which characters should be that fast.
That said, I know one of the other characters is a servitor, who's likely to be pretty slow, so it'll probably work out.

Still, while the high Nv makes sense, the high WP might serve to lose a few points into his Ld (seeing as he is supposed to be a Captain, if I recall).

As far as Dodge... I'm tempted to say no. It is a more powerful skill than is often assumed, and he's already in full carapace - he's already quite protected by that (plus a decent toughness) and won't be particularly agile on his feet either.

[Shard0808]

Thanks for the advice Marco, I've downgraded his BS and WP, while raising the LD (I've also lowered his Initiative for the Conclave event as I don't think I'll have the servitor model by then)
Frenzy has also been removed from the compassion rule, as well as dodge and practiced aim, which have been replaced with survivor and just a flesh wound.
Hopefully this should balance him out a bit, any other comments welcome!

[MarcoSkoll]

I think you're underestimating the "Just a Flesh Wound" ability a fair bit!
Effectively reducing all injury levels by one (because of the "spare" level to soak some of the damage up) dramatically reduces the injury penalties he'll take.

Bearing in mind he's already got AV 6 and BIV 7, he's a pretty tough cookie anyway. I'd normally only use such kind of thing as an alternative to a high toughness or for "lone ranger" type characters that don't have allies to rely on.

Furthermore, personally - and no offence, I forget who wrote it - I don't really like it as is. I'd prefer it if the extra injury level duplicated the "light" injury effects - these are pretty trivial (and often "no effect") anyway, but it makes the character slightly less bulletproof.

[Koval]

I'd definitely drop Just A Flesh Wound. As Marco pointed out, let's not forget that he's currently a BIV 7 character in carapace armour; this is not unfeasible by any means, but it might raise an eyebrow or two when paired up with Just A Flesh Wound.

His Strength also looks a little odd, but here I think it could simply be divided up into "natural Strength", "Strength of bionic arm" and "total effective Strength" (which is half his natural Strength, plus the arm). Bearing in mind that the Strength guidelines for bionic arms in the Inquisitor rulebook really need reining in*, I imagine Veer's arm could work well at either Strength 35 or Strength 40; that's irrespective of whether the Strength 68 you've listed is his natural or augmented Strength, as they can both work.

*To the point where I've used the suggested bionic arm Strength values on servo-arms instead.

I'd be tempted to change your note about Compassion to "if Helena is taken out of action", as actually dying in Inquisitor is relatively rare -- and raises all sorts of questions when, as characters do at Conclave events**, a "dead" character ends up making a full recovery after missing a couple of games.

**From a metagame point of view, it's a bit jarring if you've put all that effort into making a character and writing background for them only to have them killed off -- there's a certain level of "it's my character, I decide whether he's dead or not" in play here (and rightly so, as having characters die too regularly isn't conducive to a good gaming mood).

Beyond that, I don't see any immediate problems.

[Shard0808]

Read and understood, consider just a flesh wound dropped. I'm hoping that should do it for both Marcus and Helena, all that remains is to test them out in the field. Thanks for your help guys, it's been invaluable (and definitely required!)

[MarcoSkoll]

On the note of bionic arm strength, I'm guessing you have kept it separate, but I really do recommend doing as Koval says - keep the strength of bionics separate, as strength also affects things like jumping distances and knockback.

As an example from my own collection, Vera Canton's strength stat reads as 56/78 (28:50).
Possibly a little hard to read without instruction, but 56 is her basic strength, 78 is her modified strength and 28:50 is the split for each arm.

... although, as you can probably see, I'm a little bit more generous about what I consider a reasonable strength value for a bionic arm. Still, I do think that the rulebook's starting at 70 for advanced bionics is a bit daft, and I consider that more of an upper limit!

I'd be tempted to change your note about Compassion to "if Helena is taken out of action"

Agreed on this one. Dead results are quite rare, and are something that most people tend to ignore anyway - from a game perspective, I consider it injuries beyond what can be recovered within game, but not necessarily fatal. Imperial medical technology is pretty astounding.

And one of my characters is, after all, my character and it's up to me to decide when their story is over.

(Of course, me being the silly person I am, I ended up parodying myself by writing a character who can actually die in any game, regardless of how ignoble or unfulfilling it would be... but she doesn't stay dead).