I am about to start up a new campaign and was wanting to get a consensus of how you have your players (or had your GM) use the Origin Path?

Did you have them trace the path they wanted without seeing benefits/detriments of each path, or did you let them see what each part had to offer?

I realize I am the GM and have ultimate authority, but I wanted to get the general idea behind it, pro's and con's. I appreciate the help.

I let them go through each step of the way. Some of players read the description and formed a rich and interesting backstories, and someone decided they were playing an Astropath and took every step necessary to maximize his starting Willpower possible.

Annoying, but min-maxers are going to min-max no matter what you do, so I just let people build characters the way they want to. Makes them happier overall, and you can always have enemies "decide" to target them with heavy weapons in combat.

Yeah, I let them trace their own path with full knowledge. Any other way only works if none of the players know what they're doing, in which case the game is going to be challenging anway. I do make them stick by the path, though...no straying.

Of course I let them use origin paths, theyre very good at fleshing out characters. And time to time i have point out player that "it looks like you are min-maxing" but thats rare, Although that created one real unique navigator... One born on forgeworld, as a fruition of the pact between Shrouded Navigator house and radical genetors to produce a viable heir (by sampling a milllenias worth of ancestral bone for genetic material.), result A navis scion gengineered for perfection, and more than readily hated by many, while unloved by fate. Though very hard to kill...(combine false mans Autosanguine with navigator mutation of strange vitality).

And also being 40K the origin path help me the GM to figure how big skeleton they have in a closet, even with player who is not too keen to write backstory down.

./At0miclich

I wasnt really concerned with the min/maxing with Origin, there are enough detriments in there to balance them out. I really didnt understand (perhaps old age) what they were saying about drawing the path on a piece of paper. Was thinking you did that instead of rolling random stuff. I agree though it will make some interesting characters and give me plenty of background information for future sub-plots or full plots...now if only one of the players would take a Rogue Trader (6 players, no Rogue Trader), most have already chosen a archetype. I am already working on a different background to compensate for this.

Also, are you aware of any other alternate "official" Origin Paths? I want to cover my bases before moving forward with finishing character generation.

I let people move through the origin path as normal, then pick whatever class they like. Makes for more fun combinations.

Also, there's alternate paths in Into the Storm, but they all cost some of your starting xp.

Appreciate it. I have compiled all the Origin Paths from RT and Into the Storm and built a new chart and consolidated list. Helps since we only have the one book to pass around. Next step is to make a quick reference list for all the archetypes (starting skills, gear, etc.) since our group is now at 7 people. Just some word documents but should be helpful with initial character generation.