Starting Campaign for new players, please critique character creation system

[The Tanagrad]

Hey ho Conclave!
   Long time no see! It's been a long time since I've had the chance to even think about Inquisitor as my old group and I have moved all over the country for university! I have found a new group of fellow nerd enthusiasts though, and have been playing plenty of D&D with these fine folks. However, the current campaign is wrapping up, and we are playing the next escapade. I've been toying with the idea of introducing them to Inquisitor and starting up a campaign. Now these guys have had years of D&D but only a few have had any experience with the 40K universe, and even then only the briefest touch. Before I feel ready to start though, I would feel much happier if I had created a decent set of rules for the campaign. That's where you folks come in. I've been slowing working my way through various systems but I would really appreciate some review by the esteemed members of the conclave, particularly those of you who have had experience running narrative campaigns. I have 3 main objectives for this campaign:
1.   Make a fun and interesting introduction to the grim darkness of the far future
2.   Create interesting character who have room to advance, without being to weak
3.   Make the players appreciate the power and expense of powerful weapons, particular bolters and power weapons (I plan to have trigger happy bolter users to cringe with every pull of the trigger, if for no other reason the cost).

Thus comes my first section; character creation. I kinda' mishmahsed the 'Hivequake in Newpitt ' and Dark Heresy systems together on this. I won't reprint all the things I'm using here, as they are in their respective documents, but I will indicate what I got for my chars. So without further ado...

Character Creation System V1.0
Step One: Select Birth World. This will affect the stats rolled.
Feral Word: +5Ws, -10BS, +5S, +5T, -10Sg, +5Nv, -5Ld
Hive World: +5BS, -5S, +10I, +5Sg, -5Wp, -5Nv, -5Ld
Civilized World: No change
Void Born: -10S, -5T, +5I, +10Sg, +5Wp, -5Ld\

Step Two: Roll Stats
Ws:30+3D10, Bs:30+2D10, S30+3D10, T30+2D10, I25+3D10, Wp30+2D10, Sg30+4D10, Nv15+3D10, Ld40+3D10

Step Three Traits: See hive quake in newpitt. (Basically roll from 2D100 to find 2 bonus +5's to whatever stats)

Step Four: Background: Seen hive quake in newpitt. (Selection of careers to ti give character definition, ex noble or scavy)

Step Five: Add +5 to any two stats.

Step Six: Roll/choose on dark heresy background tables (tribal tattoo, hive world class. This give characters a quick bit of background to expand on)

Step Seven: Choose to roll on adjusted dark heresy divination table (adjusted to affect inquisitor stats. Ex +3 intelligence become +15 Sg)

Step Eight: Select 2+D3 pieces of common equipment (equipment system being worked out still).

Step Nine: Name them, and give a quick background.

So to test the system I rolled up two characters:
Parthus, Void Born Smuggler
Ws:41 Bs:40 S:43 T:35 I:53 Wp:57 Sg:78 Nv:33 Ld:43
Talents: Dodge, Fast Draw
Equipment: Laspistol, 2 reloads, short sword, flak jacket (when I get to equipment a chest and abdomen armour will come together in one piece)
Divination: "The wise man learns from the deaths of others" +15Sg included in profile
Background: Born on a chartist vessel that follows its traditional route. Materialist and cynical view on human nature, with a good eye for deals. Expanding on this I could say: Parthus was born on one of the great trading vessels of old. He was raised around exotic riches he realized he could never own. He soon found that by 'borrowing' small amounts of shipments, he could sell them in port for personal profit, as well as get goods that many of the crew would pay finely for. Always staying one step ahead of both port and ship authorities, he was finally caught when he was selling goods to Inquisitor Malthus under the guise of a black market dealing. Seeing the man's potential, as well as his ability to make goods available to all people, without upsetting the balance of trade, or attracting undue attention, the Inquisitor had Parthus seconded to his retinue rather than punishing him.

Ferax, Feral World Guardsman (brawler) 
WS:60 Bs:27 S:59 T:62 I:46 Wp:37 Sg:44 Nv:36 Ld:49
Talants: None
Equipment: MP Lasgun, 2 reloads, Axe, 3 frag grenades, bolus
Divination: "Only in death does duty end" +1 to base injury
Background: Living record. Ferax's tribe believe that you must write your victories into your flesh so that when you die, then Emperor can read your hide to determine your greatness. Expanding on this: Ferax comes from one of the many brutal feral worlds of the Imperium, where tribal based warfare is commonplace. Conscripted into the imperial guard, Ferax was given rudimentary military training with the rest of his feral regiment. Deployed on a death world to battle the ork invaders, his squad came under attack from a brain leaf while on patrol. With the rest of his squad succumbing to the thralldom of the plant, Ferax mercifully ended their lives, and hacked down the offending plant. Catching the eye of Inquisitor Malthus, he was seconded to the man's retinue as someone who could be counted on to obey orders to the letter, no matter how brutal or bloody.

So there you have it! Nothing special, but those characters took me about 10 minutes each to make. So input please guys. Are they to powerful for starters, or to weak? I feel pretty good about them, though some of the high stats (Sg on the first guy, Ws and T on the second) feel kinda' high. Thanks again!
]

[Ynek]

Just a little point - Rolling for stats isn't a particularly popular idea around here. It tends to lead to some very strange situations.

For instance, if I made a model of a character who has a powersword and nothing else, and largely resembles a sci-fi samurai master, then rolled very low on the weapon skill roll, and very high on the ballistic skill roll, it makes very little sense.

Or similarly, a guy who has a sniper rifle and little else, and has an abnormally high weapon skill and strength, and virtually no ballistic skill.

Or maybe a player decides that he wants to have an admech warband, but then rolls very low on the sagacity stats, meaning that his entire warband would be outwitted by a glass of water. The admech doesn't promote idiots... So what's going on there?

[The Tanagrad]

Oh yes, I am well aware of that. And when you have practice at it, selecting the most appropreate stats is very easy. However when we started, didn't most of us have characters who could *ahem* 'arm wrestle an ork warboss with one hand, slap down a hive tyrant with another, all the while frying bystanders brains with his mind"? I love the freedom of Inquisitor, but that is also one of its greatest weaknesses to new players, and it's hard to tell a person who has never done anything 40K related to come up with an appropreate fleshed out character out of thin air.

[Inquisitor Cade]

My suggestion would be that you let the players choose a basic background, and style (as in fighting style, sword and pistol, dual weilding, rifle with backup etc.) and then from that you choose the stats, with the player if you have the time. That way balance issues can be settled, but the characters can be well represented by their stats, probably better than the randomiser would.

[Myriad]

I think it works at creating relatively balanced starting characters - I would test it by taking a few existing models and seeing if you can generate characters that 'fit' the models well.  If this proves difficult, I'd make it a little more flexible.

The average initiative would be 40, which gives you speed 3, in my experience quite a slow character.  I'd consider adding a few points basic, especially since low action rolls may discourage new players.  Quite a few injuries reduce speed.

[InquisitorHeidfeld]

If 'x' refer to subtable 63...

While not a bad introduction to some of the beurocratic nature of the Imperium of Man this sort of thing is rarely a good basis for a character creation system.
Especially as your players are coming to the (reasonably) heavily regimented background of D&D (4th Edition presumably) and you want them to play in the far more freeform world of Inquisitor.

I would suggest that you approach things in a much more arbitrary way.

Start them out with stock archetypes, whether these are Inquisitors or Gunslingers or whatever else doesn't matter but I would suggest low rent mooks will be better.
Take them through writing their characters up, they know they're a (eg) Gunslinger but don't tell them anything else. Anyone who's ever seen a western can probably come up with an interesting gunslinger (albeit probably a clichéd one.
Take them through the 20 Questions to flesh things out and help them understand some of the background and then, when you have all of their backgrounds start to make choices.

Give the character with the most interesting background some better gear, give the one with the most aggressive background a better gun, the one who's survived most scrapes some better armour (including a Carapace Codpiece)...etc. Reward the players who've put the work in rather than rewarding the lucky ones.

Now take these characters and play a couple of games with them. Put the players in a team on one side and take a bunch of NPC Mooks against them - they'll learn the system, learn how freeform it can be and (if you write the scenarios well) they'll learn more about the universe.

Now that they know the system you can start to let them develop their real characters (be they Inquisitors, Rogue Traders...etc), Most likely you'll see some obvious twink-work but ignore the statline and work on the background. then assign a statline, let them request equipment and start playing. At the end of any given time period in game make changes to the statlines and skillsets to reflect the things each warband has done, thus differentiating the statlines from each other and giving the players a sense of progression.