So, I am running a campaign of chaos-worshipping norscans. The group as a whole was nearing rank 4 when two of them died just a session or two apart. So the group is now one badass rank 3 chaos warrior jarl and two newbies.

One guy decided to make a skald as his new character since the group had suffered throughout the campaign so far by having no fellowship based characters. Social interactions were usually solved through intimidation or bloodshed. So this guy starts with Fellowship 5 and Charm trained, but a Strength of 2.

The other character made a Seer which he is planning to turn into a magic-user. He also has a high fellowship, but has Guile instead of Charm.

So anyway, during our last session, the party reaches a Shrine of Tchar(Tzeentch) where they fight a beastman shaman. The skald calls for Tchars aid and gets it, along with a side-dish of corruption. He reaches his treshold and gets... Grotesque Face: +1 Purple Dice to all social rolls.

Now, I mostly find it amusing, it's the kind of stuff that's bound to happen when your playing chaos-worshippers, but I also have some sympathy for the player who has just developed a new character dedicated to being the "face" of the group who now has a serious handicap in the one area he specializes.

Luckily for him, the party wound up transported into the chaos wastes where people might not dislike his new face as much, but it is still a bit of a problem for the player. Also from a pure meta-game perspective, since few players really enjoy playing mechanically useless characters, his character needs some kind of plan where to go from here.

I am not completely averse to "fixing" mutations in some way; another player got a beak which I allowed to have ripped off in a ritual dedicating the character to Khorne giving him the Skull-face mutation instead (and earning the animosity of Tzeentch). But I generally feel the players should roll with the punches and try to incorporate the mutations, insanities and permanent injuries into their stories instead of trying to work around them.

But I want the players to enjoy their characters and I am at a bit of a loss as to what to reccomend the player to do with his character. Seeing as he used Strength as his dump-stat, he's not even a semi-competent warrior. He's just a really ugly singer

I am thinking of rewarding him at some point with a helmet with a beautiful metal face which he can use to disguise his uglyness, or perhaps a musical instrument that gives him a bonus to charm rolls involving performances, but the character is a bit one-sided anyway. What exactly do players with social characters DO, other than maxing out Fellowship and mastering Charm? How hard will it be for him to change is character to more of a warrior? I am thinking it'll cost him a lot of exp just to get Strength and Thoughness to 4.

I am mostly just hoping to give him some guidance as to where he can take his character from here.

First off, have you ever run a social encounter in your game? I'm not super familiar with the fluff for norsca, but why not have the face character get a message from tzeench to start uniting tribes? Maybe in exchange for fixing his face. In addition, do many norscans actually care about mutants, or do they regard them highly? Maybe that mutation will actually give a bonus with a lot of people. In addition, the face mutation creates a disembodied voice, right? Why not let him throw his voice to sound like the other chaacters and speak for them?

As far as social encounters go, some things I can think of would be:

1) your group is asked to tell a story of their great deeds around a campfire while NPCs question them or challenge them to prove it. Have a track that they need get enough successful rolls on to prove it.

2) your group is trying to elect a new leader/serve as a tribal jury and must convince a majority of people of their point, have them get enough successes on the tracker toget the majority with failures being people who just won't agree with them.

3) have the players go on a hunting trip in which they must prove themselves. This can be by catching the big game, charming the NPCs, blackmailing, etc. Have a tracker that has two markers, one for how close the hunt is to finding the animal and one for how much te group has charmed the NPCs. Players must reach a Threshhold before the hunt ends.

Keep in mind that for some of these encounters a round may take a few seconds or a few days. The size of the area may be a tent or may be an entire hunting plain. Require maneuvers to engage with different NPCs. Give different NPCs specific goals or desires the players have to figure out then meet before they can roll to influence them. Other rolls made should be basically meeting these desires so that the actual charm roll can be made/to make that roll much less difficult.

Does all of this help?

Yeah, there are some good suggestions there. The character who is now a Jarl mostly became it because of the Skalds influence. So far social challanges like these have been sort of easy though, as the characters were famous heroes with mutations to show the favour of their gods. At the same time thei tribe was under attack, so people were desperate for strong leaders and along comes a a couple of legendary heroes. Not the hardest social challenge to overcome. That will end now though, as they are now up in the wastes where mutations are pretty common and no one has heard of them.

I will probably use the Grotesque Face mutation on a case-by-case basis while they are up there. Allthough the mutation might make the character more impressive, it might not make him more charming.

I think I will have to come up with a few character concepts that can be evolved from where the character is now, just to give the player some inspiration and a way forward. If it was my character, I would probably have gone for something like: "Tchar felt I relied too much on my good looks. This is a test to make me find other strengths within myself so I might grow and change." Maybe he gets so charming that he overcomes his handicap. Or perhaps he learns how to fight, as his pretty face can no longer protect him.

I am tempted to at some point, if he earns it, give him a Mark Of Tzeentch. Boom, instant sorcerer

As your players are in the chaos wastes you could take an "easy way out". You could have all the characters swap out their old mutations. Either for random new ones from the deck, or specific ones you picked out. It could be fun to just swap them from your players boxes between sessions and not tell them.

They seem aligned with Tzeentch, so it would make sense that Tzeentch changed thir mutations for a future purpose. You could then tailor some encounters where their new mutations further some grand scheme of Tzeentch.

I prefer the idea of 'rolling with it' and helping the player develop their character with the mutated face, but one option could be some sort ot Tzeentchian ritual of change which enables the player to mutate away his facial mutation... in exchange for 2 new mutations from the deck.

It's a risk, but potentially everyone wins: the PC gets his face back, and Tzeentch gets to visit double the number of mutations on the world. Of course, the 2 new mutations might be worse than a weird face, but you got to take your chances don't you?

I actually did something like that earlier. A guy who played a Khorne-leaning berserker got the "Beaked Face" mutation and he just could not work with it. He met a Khorne worshiping chieftain who led him through a ritual where he renounced any ties to Tzeentch and dedicated himself to Khorne. The violent blood-soaked ritual culminated with a beastman leader grabbing the characters face and ripping it off. The character got the "Skull Face" mutation instead, as well as a fitting insanity (violent impulse or something like that).

But I'm a bit hesitant to always letting the characters "fix" their mutations if it goes wrong. These are gifts from the gods, not some piece of equipment you can trade away if you don't like it.

But I guess as long as I make the price for getting rid of the mutation high enough, I can allow it.

In one of their upcoming adventures, the party will come to a tzeentchian city filled with sorcerors who use their skills to appear beautiful and handsome through surgery and illusion. That can probably present some kind of solution (I swear I didn't write this to offer a solution to the problem. I am converting adventures from Black Crusade).

Converting adventures from Black Crusade?

Are there particularly good ones to do that with?

So far I’ve only read through the Core book, the GM booklet and the Tome of Fate. They are possible to convert, since the W40k and particularly Black Crusade is very “fantasy-scifi”. It a lot of melee warriors and sorcerers, feudal lords and stuff like that.

(SPOILER for Black Crusade adventures below)

Core book “False Prophets”:

There’s a huge temple filled with ancient tomes maps etc. The head of the temple is an oracle. He finds an ancient tome witch triggers a vision that he (falsly?) interprets as his death. The Player Characters are implicated as being directly connected. He invites the characters to the temple in order to ascertain that they are the ones mentioned in the prophesy, then he tries to kill them. At the same time, a group of chaos space marines are looking for signs of a coming champion of chaos, which might be part of the same prophecy.

If you just swtich out the chaos space marines for a warband/cult of chaos warriors you are good to go.

GM booklet “Rivals For Glory”:

A merchant has hired a bunch of mercenaries to retrieve a chaos artefact. They never arrived back. The merchant has given up on getting the artifact, but is willing to sell the information as to where the mercenaries might be. Another group of chaos worshippers have gotten hold of the artefact and are hiding in the ruins of a city while waiting for transport out. The characters need to establish connections or increase their reputation in the city high enough to manage to get any info about the group currently in possession of the artefact.

Again. Except for the transport out, the story can be set in a huge ruined city where only one part of it is occupied while the rest is abandoned buildings from a lost civilization. You could also probably set it in Mordheim.

Tome Of Fate “Toppled Spires”:

In a city filled with Tzeentchian wizards, three powerful users of magic want to use the characters as a tool to kill or humiliate their rivals. Which one they ally with (Maybe none? Maybe several?) is up to the players. But they have to act fast, the ruling wizards in the city are sequestered while deciding in a new terrible law to impose on the city, and once they emerge to announce the new law, the players do not want to stay for long.

A city full of sorcerers who plot against each other is also pretty easy to convert to a fantasy setting

The thing is though, since I am running adventures in the Chaos Wastes at the moment, it makes it much easier to just stick these adventure location wherever I feel like. If you are running an adventure in the Empire, they would need quite a bit more converting. Possibly toning down the amount of chaos and making it more mundane. But it should still be possible:

“False Prophets” could just a be an obscure monestary up in the mountains and instead of chaos space marines, a Sigmarite knightly order/cult is searching for a promised hero of the Empire (the second coming of Sigmar?)

“Rivals Of Glory” is basically just a treasure-hunt that has the players attempt to get information out of the locals in a town/village and then have them search through ruins until they find their goal and have a fight with whoever stole the treasure.

“Toppled spires” is just three wizards trying to one-up each other while the their leaders are distracted.