Staff Sergeant Silva Abigail Birgen

[Kaled]

I'd say she counts her T as 20% less for purposes of injury total too, but doesn't count damage to bionic parts against it.

But that goes against the rules as they stand - what would be the justification for damage to her bionics not counting against her injury total when it does for everyone else?

[RobSkib]

If anything I'd say it would do double damage to bionics - the sheer amount of fiddly, fragile equipment you've crammed into her arm and head (She has full bionic senses, but not a single mark on her face? Tut tut tut...), every bullet would have a considerable chance of hitting something functional.

And really, does she need a laspistol and a hand flamer in that arm? One is characterful and gives her a nasty surprise attack, but two is just plain greedy.

[MarcoSkoll]

Looking at the pictures, they are at odds with the background and stats that indicate an exceptional strength. You claim artistic licence, but I don't think you can strech it that far.

Theoretically, you can stretch artistic licence as far as you

As far as your comments on her other stats...

BS: It might not be where she focuses her primary attentions these days, but she hasn't always been possessed of the physical strength to tear people limb from limb.

I: Her quick reactions and honed reflexes show up in her skills. She might not necessarily be Spd 5, but she's capable of thinking quickly and reliably, without fear - hence Heroic, and its ability to make snap second decisions that can redeem a situation before it even goes wrong.
Her violently quick reactions come in the form of Lightning Reflexes.

Sg: So you wouldn't agree that someone who's been the partner to an Inquisitor for many years and who is the first person whose decision he'd trust would be pretty learned and intelligent?
Sure, I'd argue against giving most of Marco's entourage a high Sg, as they've not been working with the Inquisition all that long, nor will they likely ever reach the same level of trust and involvement in Marco's decisions, but I think Silva's Sg is reasonable enough under those circumstances.

Especially as the fluff suggests the weapons were added later, meaning they had to find space for them, possibly hollowing parts of it out.

When it says "her arm" it's whichever one she has at the time. The bionic arm she has now is not the same one she started out with. It was firstly once replaced with a version that included the weapons, and given she's had the bionics for 12 years, sometimes they've just been damaged more extensively than can be easily repaired.

My other thought was that the reduced organic mass, if significant enough to warrant a rule, should also affect injury total, as she would have a lot less blood to loose etc.

-20% was chosen as a value as it roughly represents a fraction that relates to the in-game percentages.

Essentially, probability withstanding, your version and mine would play out pretty similarly. The difference is that if the GM is required to decide which limb has been hit, there's no bias put into the decision based on whether or not it would cause Injury Total or not.
It's something that shouldn't factor in the GM's decision, and so I keep it so that it doesn't.

Not that I'm suggesting that any single GM might do that (normally when I'm asked to decide and it's not reasonably clear, I just roll a die), but if it doesn't need to be a possible problem...

She has full bionic senses, but not a single mark on her face? Tut tut tut...

She did originally have a power linkage that ran down the side of her face, threading from up near the temple, down the back of the jaw  to down near the chin.
Unfortunately, everyone mistook it for a comm headset in the drawings (you can see an early version of it in the first drawing I linked) - until I've sorted a design I'm happy with and which doesn't get, it's been removed to stop the confusion.

~~~~~

On the note of the arm, it will be adjusted somewhat. However, given that my proflines (I like that word - a nice mix of "profiles" and "statlines") need to work for me and my gaming group before anything else, I'm no longer really planning on putting up the end results of my statline changes. I think I've picked up the measure of what the forum thinks on average, and I can work from that. I don't really need to degenerate the forum into a backwards and forwards discussion from people at differing ends of the spectrum.

One thing I will need to remember on the day is to do the D3s the "right" way. I've long done them as roll a D6, and if it's 4+, subtract 3 from the result, but I'm sure someone will complain if I do that rather than the GW suggested version.

[RobSkib]

One thing I will need to remember on the day is to do the D3s the "right" way. I've long done them as roll a D6, and if it's 4+, subtract 3 from the result, but I'm sure someone will complain if I do that rather than the GW suggested version.

Roll a D6 and half it - what's confusing?

On the note of the arm, it will be adjusted somewhat. However, given that my proflines (I like that word - a nice mix of "profiles" and "statlines") need to work for me and my gaming group before anything else, I'm no longer really planning on putting up the end results of my statline changes. I think I've picked up the measure of what the forum thinks on average, and I can work from that. I don't really need to degenerate the forum into a backwards and forwards discussion from people at differing ends of the spectrum.

Good scheme. I do the same sort of thing - post backgrounds and stats up so people can comment on, but don't give the final version. This way, you can get a feeling about what people would say if you turned up with her previous incarnation, tweak it slightly to keep her scary, but not to go overboard so much that the Spring Conclave will grind to a halt every time someone stops and says "Hang on, she's S 70 without her bionics?'

I look forward to seeing what you do with her model - I hope it's a bit more 40k than the (otherwise excellent) jeans 'n' t-shirt comination I've seen her toting in your pictures.

[MarcoSkoll]

Roll a D6 and half it - what's confusing?

It's not that it's confusing, but that I'm just completely used to doing it the way I do it. I've been rolling numbers from 1 to 3 like that before I even started with GW games, so when I started, I kept it.
I'll probably make the mistake of doing it my way at least once.

This way, you can get a feeling about what people would say if you turned up with her previous incarnation, tweak it slightly to keep her scary, but not to go overboard so much that the Spring Conclave will grind to a halt every time someone stops and says "Hang on, she's S 70 without her bionics?'

Well, I should note that I always define things like jumping distances without bionics.

If S70 really troubles people, then I suppose it can be adjusted, but I've seen it as more than just perhaps raw strength, but also being able to leverage her weight to get it behind blows or whatever she's doing.
She's the warband muscle - Marco now has S62, Jax is S60, and all the other characters lie in the S40-55 range depending on how combat oriented they are.

Actually, now I look, outside of these two, there are only a handful of stats over 60 and only two of those over 65 in the remainder of the warband*. Namely Gianna's WS (and she's trained in less-lethal hand-to-hand, and pays for it with a mediocre BS), and Alpine's Sg (and she's a Tech Adept. Don't ask why a Tech-Adept is called Alpine) - although I haven't actually penned the statlines for some of the support characters yet.
*I should note, I'm not counting Frost as part of the warband.

Marco and Silva are tough all-rounders, sure. But he's an Inquisitor with someone insisting that he keeps in practice, and she's a Guardswoman with someone regularly involving them in matters of particular importance.
Neither one of them really allows the other to be less than competent in any particular area.
I don't know how many of you will have read After Hours, but the introductory sections I post near the start cover this kind of symbiotic relationship of theirs. The two of them sparring (although, as you'd imagine, she trounces him) and other stuff like that.

The rest of the collection, although still skilled, are very much more specialised.

I look forward to seeing what you do with her model - I hope it's a bit more 40k than the (otherwise excellent) jeans 'n' t-shirt comination I've seen her toting in your pictures.

Well, as I've said, Silva is sort of half a character in my art, half a character for my Inquisitor gaming. While she keeps the same personality in both cases, I don't pretend she'll keep the same clothing on the 54mm model. (Nor does she keep breaking the 4th wall in 40k, although as her quotes suggest, she is still somewhat Genre Savvy.)

I'm working on what exactly she'll be wearing (No corsets though. She'd absolutely kill me if I did), but it will keep some of the characteristic aspects of what you see in the art - things like the asymmetrical trouser legs.

[Inquisitor Cade]

I'd say she counts her T as 20% less for purposes of injury total too, but doesn't count damage to bionic parts against it.

But that goes against the rules as they stand - what would be the justification for damage to her bionics not counting against her injury total when it does for everyone else?

It may be overcomplecating matters, but I'd ggo so far as to say that in a perfect world it wouldn't for anyone. Unless the boinics are constructed in amalgam with actual tissue, damaging the bionics would not hurt the character. It wouldn't cause bleeding for example. Crude bionics might also be immune to system shock, if they are not connected to the characters nervous system.

So you wouldn't agree that someone who's been the partner to an Inquisitor for many years and who is the first person whose decision he'd trust would be pretty learned and intelligent?

Pretty intelligent maybe, mid to high 50's, a bit higher after a few decades of Inquisitorial service, but at the moment this guard vet could out think some Inquisitors!

[Kaled]

Unless the boinics are constructed in amalgam with actual tissue, damaging the bionics would not hurt the character.

Isn't the point though that bionics are linked into the character's nervous system and injury total includes both damage to the character's flesh and bionics - seperating the two would add needless complexity to the game IMHO.  I agree though if a character had a particularly crude bionic, such as the bosun's peg leg, that damaging it probably shouldn't increase injury total (but some of the injury effects could still apply, such as halving movement).

[Inquisitor Cade]

(but some of the injury effects could still apply, such as halving movement).

I meant that. Hitting a Bionic arm would still have the affects such as reducing strength or Ws, stunning or loss of speed etc.

But a bionic arm could take infinite damage, be completely disintergrated, without harming the character.

[DapperAnarchist]

Fits a piece of art from the LRB as well -  the guy with two bolt pistols, getting his bionic arm blown off by a storm of gunfire from above...

[Kaled]

But a bionic arm could take infinite damage, be completely disintergrated, without harming the character.

I disagree - any reasonably advanced bionics are integrated into a character's nervous system in such a way that damage to their artifical 'nerves' causes pain in the same way as if his organic nerves had been damaged.  Yes you could destroy the artifical 'bones', pistons, servos etc, but any hit is likely to hit the 'nerves' as well - thus Injury Total is increased as well as the character suffering the effects of location injury.

[Inquisitor Cade]

Yeah, so it would be possible to suffer system shock from a hit to a bionic, but I don't think it would contribute towards death.

[MarcoSkoll]

Unless the bionics are constructed in amalgam with actual tissue, damaging the bionics would not hurt the character.

With the kind of neural interfaces and linkages involved with bionics of this level - if a bionic was going to be much use, it would have to include all kinds of different sensors giving feedback to its user.

Pain is a sense. It's not a bad thing - it provides feedback about the fact you've damaged yourself. If you're going to fit an organic creature with bionics, the simplest way to tell the user about bionic damage is in the innate way as they'd be told about organic damage.
Perhaps you can talk about overload cutouts, but I'd argue that meant immunity to system shock, not immunity to injury total.

Even without such sensors, damage to the bionic could cause other sensors to go haywire. I would say it's pretty much a given that damage to sophisticated bionics would hurt its user.

It wouldn't cause bleeding for example.

Well, the Inquisitor rulebook is adamant that it does.
We have to assume that "bleeding" effects on the arm are either due to parts of the arm that do have the user's bloodstream running through them - or just some general other effect of equivalent in game damage. Perhaps an arcing connection that keeps sending damage pulses to the user's brain.

I don't think it would contribute towards death.

And in this case, it doesn't. If the game declares my character dead, I'll take it under advisement.
And like the character I'm quoting, I'll usually ignore it - although, fortunately, this doesn't usually result in a large explosion.

I'll almost certainly ignore it if the cause was a hit to a bionic. But it is still possible to die solely of CNS shock - death by essentially just excess pain.

Pretty intelligent maybe, mid to high 50's, a bit higher after a few decades of Inquisitorial service, but at the moment this guard vet could out think some Inquisitors!

To put her in just the 50-60 range would be to describe her as "an educated human". As it is, she grew up in an educated family and received a decent childhood education - and she's since been privy to the second half of Marco's acolytehood. There are few secrets and decisions Marco has/makes which Silva doesn't also have a part in.

I may knock a handful of points off it, but I can't see it descending out of the 60s.

[Myriad]

A high sagacity doesn't seem bad if Marco's been training her in the way you describe.

Notwithstanding nerve feedback, most bionic limbs are linked directly to the nervous system and extensive damage most likely would involve internal injuries around the join, especially if it was torn off.  In the end, it makes the game easier to assume damage translates to much the same thing.

[MarcoSkoll]

Well, Marco doesn't have a savant - some of my Inquisitors do, but I don't see it as compulsory. When he does need assistance with something, with a lack of a savant, the obvious example is the person he most connects with and trusts.

In many ways, Silva performs roles that would normally be seen as the realm of an Inquisitorial acolyte.
But don't get the wrong idea from that, Marco has no plans to start shuffling her through the ranks of the Inquisition, and quite frankly, she wouldn't much want it either.

[Dosdamt]

To the best of my recollection, Eisenhorn might have had feelings for Bequin, but they didn't ever get into a relationship, nor did it ever substantially affect his judgement or his ability to get the job done.

More than that, by keeping her around just because she's a bit stubborn / unhinged / whatever, would that not necessarily countermand his authority if he does want her to be away from the front lines of things?

Thirdly, while you might plead 'it's what humans do', the sheer weight of personality, the force of will required to actually be an Inquisitor - wielding the ultimate authority, the ability to perform mass genocide on a whim and so on - would require enormous reserves of willpower and to be honest probably a sociopathic detachment from your own humanity.

But that's just my take on it. If you want an Inquisitor in a relationship, cool. It's just not for me (I say that, I mean in the context of this sort of relationship - I see nothing wrong with, for example, an Inquisitor being in a relationship with his ex / now-daemonhost / hooker / partner that he's now being manipulated by).

-Dos