A Pirate Princess character in a game I'm running ran away from a fight, into a bunch of Dark Eldar. After they asked that she apologise for interrupting their sport, she began to beg for her life. At which they cruelly laughed and said that they would indeed let her live, for a long time. I had one of them come at her, trying to subdue her for some good old-fashioned unspeakable torment, and she tried to defend herself. Would this count as a failing in Slaanesh's eyes, do you think?

Edit: We've decided I am being too harsh, and it may simply be because of the player in question.

Using her wits and other parts to avoid getting killed? Why would that be a slaanesh failure?

Avoiding opportunities for new sensations. Perhaps I should have made it clearer that they're not trying to kill her, just subdue her to become one of their latest torture pets.

And people wonder why RAW Slaanesh makes me facepalm.

I avoid the "failing" rules, because frankly, they force players to act like complete twits. A real failure in the eyes of Slaanesh, as per his actual bloody dogma, would be losing the fight that's about to start. Slaanesh is an OCD perfectionist. If you start something, regardless of WHAT it is, he expects you to finish it.

Indeed. If you were to consider 'avoiding any experience, no matter how unwanted' as a failing, theoretically she should be picking up corruption points every time she tried to dodge or parry an attack.

For that matter, refusing is quite justifiable even considering slaanesh's hedonist/sensationalist nature.

After all, if she surrenders to the Commorites, she's going to be imprisoned (a definite no-no for a slaaneshi) and she's going to have no say in her own destiny (a definite no-no for any heretic).

After all, the commorites want her to suffer. They're smart enough to quickly figure out that 'sticking knives in tender bits' is not really suffering for a slaaneshi devoted and stick her in an isolation tank to drive her insane with sensory deprivation.

Who knows what experiences she might be denying herself by being stuck in a dark, dank, boring dungeon.

Besides, which, what about the (extremely satisfying) experience of force-feeding those arrogant eldar their own eyeballs?

While that running away from sensations is frowned upon by she who thirsts, it is the dark eldar we talking about so denying them their sport will find some favor in Slaanesh eyes.

Now my slaaneshi space marine would favor attack over flight: charge in screaming something along the lines of

"pain for the prince of pleasure! Soulstones for slaanesh!

Ok, good points being raised here. Although if they actually do end up capturing her I intend for them to pump her full of the drug that enhances physical sensation (I think that's Rose...) and then mercilessly tickle her with feathers. I can be unconventional too!

Would this count as a failing in Slaanesh's eyes, do you think?

I don't think so. Slaanesh has no use for a defeated/dead champion that can no longer spread the word of Slaanesh. If the character dies or is rendered incapacitated (either by capture or via other means), then she can't do Slaanesh's work.

BYE

I'm with a lot of others in here. As always, I say that the rules are really just guidelines, but this really goes triple for the rules on these kind of things.

It is more important to encourage the players to do things that is in line with their characters and their interpretation of the faith they serve (or, serve them, as it often is) than to strictly adhere to some objective idea of what constitutes "right" to the greatly anthropomorphised ideals of the ruinous powers as presented in most modern fluff and the FFG ruleset.

In some rare cases, the players should definitely be punished for trying to avoid death, if it involves going straight against the strictures and tenets of their lord(s). For example, if a proud khornite would beg at the feet of a tzeentchite sorcerer in order to survive, I would not consider that acceptable simply because "Well if he dies, it's game over and a live servant is better than none" .

However, a slaaneshi servant not wanting to be murdered and tortured is perfectly alright in my book. Slaanesh is more than just torture and sex, and they represent the truly decadent part of Chaos - avoiding pain might even be considered a virtue in more than one slaaneshi cult, and I can easily see a pampered noble completely falling apart at the thought of getting tortured instead of the promised ****-slaves.

Also, Slaanesh would probably not like you having that sort of fun with Dark Eldar, effectively helping them save their soul from she who thirsts. Might actually consider it a horrible insult to assist the dark eldar in saving themselves from him/her.

It should also work with the character. A mix of how the character is and what the god expects of you. Even khorne bersekers don't kill everyone they see, if so you'd never see two together as they'd kill eachother in a heartbeat, yet they still recieve his gifts.

Khorne does aprove of mortaly wounded berzerkers lopping their own head off as a final offering.

And Slaanesh can be very patient, why eat all the dark eldar now, when they can fear her and feed her more souls?

And the craftworld eldar' soulstones? Preserves, delicious preserves. Canned eldar souls.

And the Harlequins are even better: The soilitaire's soul BELONGS to slaanesh!*

*why would an eldar a) do such a thing? and b) also be the one who represents slaanesh in their harlequin performances?

I mean: How angry are you trying to make she who thirsts?

Slaanesh: "I do NOT dance like that! you call that gracefull? why you- just wait till i swallow your soul!!! pesky harlequins!"

I'd like to point out that losing a fight or running away from one, as well as winning a fight or running to one is not typically in the purview of a "new experience". Neither is getting shot or avoiding getting shot (stabbed, etc.) because these characters are supposed to have experienced 100 points of corruption before ever being created.

In that time, all of those things will have occurred. As for being raped, or defending one's self from being raped; both of these may be new experiences.

The Chaos gods represent aspects of mortal souls and emotions but none are truly dogmatic they are, in fact, Chaotic.

It is a fallacy to think that the further down the path of a Chaos god you get the closer you get to seeing the true perfect form of the gods aspect. In fact the more travel down the path the more you realise the insanity and mind destroying capriciousness of the Chaos gods. Those who realise this and embrace it will achieve Demonhood, those who falter at this final realisation are destined for spawndom.

Which is a fancy way of saying while you should have a theme to ensure good roleplaying all the Chaos gods have a pretty wide tolerance for all kinds of behaviour.

Well, this player has given me a different conundrum now. During a playthrough of the Tome of Excess, our players have been performing at the Delights in an exemplary way. Two of them even burned Infamy for the sake of completing them. As a result, I felt that the Dark Gods would give them something to better reflect how the contests shaped them.

For the Nurgle Sorceror who beat the Delight of Gluttony by eating until he exploded, I awarded Grossly Fat. As a player he began to make plans to get Terminator Armour, since his Agility is now 16. But he adapted and went on, making the most of the extra Toughness he got as a result.

Another player got extra Infamy and CP, since he was required to slay an Onir with almost no help, and his character was Unaligned. He also did not burn Infamy in the effort it took to slay the Onir, though he came close.

The Pirate Princess took the Delight of Carnality, which ended up being a dance-off. She broke several bones during the process, including her skull. Slaanesh decided in her infinite and twisted wisdom that she needed fewer bones in order to dance better, and so gave her the Boneless Gift.

Never before have I seen somebody flip their **** quite so hard. She accused me out-of-character as treating her like she had accomplished nothing, and referred to the other rewards the players had got as horribly OP, which is demonstrably false.

Upon asking if she'd like it put to a vote as to what other Gift would be a mixed blessing as a reward for dancing until her bones broke, she said yes. People agreed that either Boneless was suitable, or perhaps a modified version of Bestial to substitute the Strength bonus with Agility instead. She has now gone off to sulk.

The other members of the party have expressed that they would be fine in carrying on without her. I have given her until next session (Friday 17th at the time of writing) to come up with a decision, and pointed her to the rules on reversing Gifts and afflictions. I then also pointed out that, as per page 303 in the rulebook, "Chaos can be pretty Chaotic sometimes..."

Would you have done anything different? Am I coming down too hard on her? As a Pirate Princess with a Legacy power sword missing a couple of points of Strength won't make a huge different in the long run, and the added Agility will be better for dodging and winning Initiative, especially now she has the Pendant that adds 1d5 to her Agility every time she's hurt.

Give her a way to get rid of / change that gift - a ritual, an investigation, a sorcerer or daemon who could do it for a favor. It should not be easy, but possible to accomplish. Turn it into plot hook, not drama generator if she feels this gift is not fitting her character.

I fully intend to. I think I was justified in what I did, but anybody can reverse a Gift with effort.

The scope of mutations in the BC core book is fairly limited. That said, most of them can be fixed with creative admech help. In other words, if she can get a legacy power sword anyway, it might be time to look into cybernetics. They don't even have to show. My champion of malal has nothing showing she's basically a cyberzombie on the outside for tactical reasons. (no one expects the guns you can't see, basically. Bit hard for an infiltrator to work in various disguises with obvious mutations/cyberware of her own)

Pirate Princess begging for her life... perhaps that is not the right class/career for this player.