One of my players is a guardsman with a ramped up BS and his heart set on being a sniper. He recently crossed swords with an undercover interogator and she sent a none to polite message to the groups inquisitor explaining how much of a tool he was.

Now as a GM I like the idea of him being a sniper and i'm considering having him mind-scrubbed and sent to a Vindicare temple for training as a punishment. However something in the back of my mind tells me that assassins are trained from birth and I know that the players response to this "punishment" will be "SWEET!"

Basically I want him to have a snowballs chance in hell of redemption. i.e. Roll 1D10, 1-9: you suffer a fatal accident and die. 10: you survive the training.

Or something to that effect.

I'm unsure how to proceed. Any thoughts anyone?

VarniusEisen said:

The Officio Assassinorum isn't exactly somewhere you can send people to be retrained - Temple Assassins are generally trained from an extremely young age, as you've noted.

The issue you've got is twofold - you appear to want to punish both the character and the player, afterall, and what works for one won't necessarily be appropriate punishment for the other.

However, simply going "on anything but a ten, you die horribly" and making it come down to a single roll is extremely heavy-handed and frankly rather obvious. There's little or no way for it to come off as anything but you picking on the player.

Mind-scrubbing seems like something that'd only work with a cooperative player interested in roleplaying a character whose memories have been stripped away - otherwise the mindscrubbing will be swiftly and repeatedly forgotten about by the player as he continues to play the same character. Specialist training, even extremely dangerous specialist training, is more like a reward, which doesn't send the right message.

Really, you need to make him work for it - no lesson can be learned from punishment that happens in an entirely arbitrary and random manner. To start with, any rank or authority he possesses can be stripped away with no difficulty by his Inquisitor, even if only temporarily. Pay and/or access to resources can be reduced in a similar way - an Acolyte must demonstrate that he's worthy of his master's trust. Make it clear that this Acolyte is being placed under considerable scrutiny until he demonstrates his worth. Inquisitors are busy people with a vast amount to consider... as a result, they are intolerant of those who get in the way, act out or generally interfere with the duties an Inquisitor must perform, and Acolytes must be mindful that they continue to be useful and valuable to their master, because they are expendable and replaceable.

Why not have him seconded off to a frontline unit in the Tranch war or fighting Orks? Once there he get's posted as a point man/scout or forward observer and gets to pick up the training in the field (along with some insanity points, the Jaded trait, some psychological ticks (Hatred: Orks) or some such - use the Tranch War veteran background in IH for inspiration but strip out the benefits).

You could even run some solo sessions for the player or just discuss what happens. In my own group I'd have the player write up something about what happened (either a prose story or a mock report from his temporary commanding officer) but that's my group's style.

He gets the skills and experience, he has been disciplined (effectively sent on a "Dirty Dozen" mission) and eventually comes back to the group a veteran but a changed man.

As a person, he's a nice enough guy and usually a good roleplayer but on this evening he was just being a cock and that reflected in his roleplay. He was shouting at in Arbiter that had just found her dead brother, showed her a data slate with a picture of a guy that knew something. He then formed a 1 man plan, ignoring the rest of the team, that involved swiping a load of equipment from the arbitrator base. He watch the greiving woman put away a shotgun and draw a bolter and plasma pistol, whilst in the armoury and when she asked him what he was doing, he said nothing and smiled like an idiot.

In the end I tranquilized his ass and stuffed him in a locker. Only later did he find out the the Arbiter was and undercover interogator.

Later that session the Scum and group leader said to him "You screwed up which means the boss is going to have a go at ME. I'm then going to have a go at YOU.

Maybe I should lay into the Scum. She'll then make the guardsmans life a missery. The ingame punishment may be better than anyhting I can come up with.

He's a guardsman who wants to be a sniper, he has a high BS, I fail to see why he cant just try and aquire a long las or some such? and train skills like sharpshooter and the like, the imperial guard have tons of snipers.

VarniusEisen said:

That would be the best solution. Probably have your sniper be volunteered to "scout out" dangerous areas and the like. Preferably put into places where the barrel of everyone's gun is pointed at his back and he can't turn around and shoot at any of them. He won't consider it a punishment (until that genestealer or the like sneaks up on him and he has to burn fate points) and the rest of the group will be satisfied seeing as how it means that if he royally screws something up, then he's the one who bears the brunt of the consequences.

Cryxx said:

Is it that you have two problems?

1. Your player wants to become a sniper type character.
2. The character has made some bad calls.

I'd think best to deal with the two problems seperately. With the character's mistakes try to get him censured in game, either by the PC's or the NPCs. For the sniper well if he wants to spend his XP on skill & talents to help him that way so be it. If he comes to you wanting advances outside of Guardsmen I'd start him on the path of having to get external training pay for it.

Now you can link this by if he wants a special advance you could have it that only his Inquisitor can provide the training for it. Have it that he needs to perform well on a mission to get the training he needs.

Baldrick