First time poster as well as new DH GM. Do you GM's find your players interested in playing Adepts or Clerics? On the surface, there's nothing that "jumps out" as a cool reason to play them, and none of my group gave them a second glance. If you have players using them, how effective are they? Thanks!

Ahadiel said:

Yeah, adepts and clerics jump out for my group, but then again I've been gaming for 15 years. We tend to play games where intellectual characters end up better off than stupid muscle. In fact most group dynamics include one bookworm, one thug, and a smattering of people in the middle with some physical ability and a little bit of mental skill.

Let an NPC cleric cut through Ecclisiastic red tape, let an adept show the PCs that their abilities are worth while as well. Then take them away. Offer less combat and more investigation, social interaction, mysteries. Warn the players ahead of time that it won't all be bolters and plasma grenatdes.

The Cleric is one of the best classes around, a perfect mix of mental skills and combat skill, they also have the oppertunity to buy all social skills by rank 3.
They are well connected and funded so a good choice for a leader character.

Adepts are somewhat combat weak but have reasonable social skills but excellent knowledge skills.

The Adept in my party is their Prime (group leader) and he is a very good medic and has a sh*t load of knowledges.

Don't underestimate them, they are however different to roleplay.

My main char is an adept and to say that he is -weak- in combat would be to seriously underestimate him. Decent weapons help to compensate for a BS of 36 though...

You also get most of the forbidden and scholastic lores which allows you to 'know' most things and to call in favors. With some xp spendage you can be a good second choice to a tech priest and if you take the chirgueon rank then prepare to be amazed by the amount of healing you can dish out. And if your GM allows it, there are two psi-ratings to take at top ranks.

I've seen 3 clerics come and go through the various games I play and run. All of them were very solid.

Also one adept, who is still being played. I think the class is much more viable at higher levels where you've had a chance to spend points on both your mental focus and put a little into combat skills.

For the online group I GM, all three campaigns, not a single Adept, and only a single Cleric (whom was played by an atrocious Roleplayer). The reason why that is, is because, quite literally, the guys said they "don't want to be the ***** class."

During this current campaign though, I know one player, if his psyker ever dies permanently, that he is making an Adept. The point got across when they've been asking questions, and my response has been, "Does anybody have (example)? Oh no, only Adepts have that at this current level. Too bad, you go on unknowningly." Just to clarify though, those things they're trying to find out, aren't the main points of the plot of the mission, just side notes that'll help them, so I haven't been telling to get an Adept or die.

Still though, I find it kind of insane to call it the ***** class, when I see them as the most incredible helpers around, and muscle is simply much too commonplace, especially when you can hire muscle, but not exactly hire knowledge...

I personally would like to play an Adept in the online group where I play, but, I'm not giving up on my current guy ever, I like him (especially being a jerk). And with 5 fate points, I don't think he'll be dieing anytime soon.

One of the coolest reasons for being a Cleric has to be the whole crazy fire n chainsword happy Redemptionist!

Clerics are handy simply for the massive amounts of social skills they have + quite a few knowledges which are very useful, got one in the party that isn't a specialist in burnination... though he still burns a lot of people anyway.

Adepts now they've been relatively 'un-gimped' with errata I'm hoping someone will play one, it'll save me having to make up 'smart' NPC contacts for not so 'smrt' characters, as I stated to them, its usually the things you don't want to ask anyone about that the Adept would know and let me expand the depth in some areas in terms of obtaining things for the adept to research answers from.

One of the two main characters in my group is an Adept and she's loving it. They are most definitely not a "***** class'. In fact, I would say there are no "***** classes". This is 40k after all. Everyone has a gun, everyone can shoot tat gun, and everyone is quite proficient at making themselves and others quite dead -it's 40k. Some are just more specialized in their methods of generating body-counts then others.

As adepts go, they are not fragile things that shouldn't get into combat. They can hold there own, especially when they are Schola educated and take the comptroller path arming themselves with some kind of accurate basic weapon. The little twitchy black-harted killer of an adept that my game has is proof of that and, beyond killing, he's got the know-how to requisition most anything, intimidate folks with endless paperwork, and the abilities to cut trough the red-tape when needed, never mind the sack full of lores e totes around and his goal to learn to pilot anything and everything under the stars...

When he dies, the player has already stated that her next character will be a Cleric based on Prince Charming as depicted in Vertigo's Fables comics. That will be one damned interesting character, though it is some time off as her adept has 3 fate points and is too big of a ruthless sob to get caught in a situation where he absolutely has to burn one.

Wow, thanks very much for all the posts. That's really helped give me some insight. To further explain my situation a bit, my gaming group ranges in age from 10 to 18 (one exception) and they're pretty interesting in killing stuff. While I'm an experienced gamer and familiar with the universe from past years of 40k playing and book-reading, I haven't actually had the chance to play Dark Heresy at all, so I'm a little more gimped from a rules immersion standpoint than I'd like to be. I do better by experiencing than I do by reading tons of stuff.

At any rate, thanks much for the replies and advice. The Emperor protects!

Thanks much for mentioning errata. For some reason I hadn't thought to check on that.

Ahadiel said:

Just to add my two cents I would recommend you to check out the Black Priest of Maccabeus alternate career rank from the Inquisitors Handbook. These guys are so übercool and gives the Cleric career just the extra (chainsword-)edge in my opinion...

On top of that, I would always chose an Adept and secondly maybe a Cleric to act as the groups prime (this can be a motivation to play one either). As my group is lacking both, this honour goes to the Imperial Psyker who is about to become a Legate Investigator.

Clerics have the ability to get local information (once high enough to be a confessor) by use of the confessional and the repentence of the locals.

Ahadiel said:

Seems self-explanitory to me. Don't pressure for adepts or clerics. Run the game style everyone wants to play. Give them lots of stuff to shoot & kill. Even Inquisitors have hit squads.

There's been an interesting turn of events in my group. As I was coordinating when the game would be over the weekend, I discover that the 10 year old and 14 year old want to roll new characters.....a cleric and adept respectively. I know they're all bright guys, I should really have given them more credit.

I'm considering playing an Adept for our group (one of the other DMs expressed an interest in running DH, freeing me up to run WHFRPG). I've decided I'll be tailoring him (in character) after Lord Viktor (Bill Nighy) from the Underworld movies. Just enough menace and verbosity to get around and get his way, with a hint of dangerous in a pinch.

Illithidelderbrain said:

Now that is a very cool idea. I really like the thought of picking an actor or character to use as a basis for a character in an RPG. One of the most fun games I've been in was a Feng Shui campaign where we had to pick actors to play our characters. It really helped flesh things out.

The npc in my current game is a scholar progentum adept, and I would not say that he is slouch in combat. He carries a las carbine, and uses burst fire quite often. If I were a player I probably would play an adept since investigation is such a huge part of this game.

Salcor

Things are going well for the new cleric and adept so far. The cleric got the kill shot on the corrupted hexalid (currently playing Illumination) and the adept has had a chance to make some cool knowledge-type checks. And my psyker very quickly figured something was up with Aristarchus. DH is such a fun game, and Illumination is a really fun adventure.

I have recently started using a 4000xp Adept, who has taken the Hetaireia Lexis background [which I feel is far too good for it's price] and is so far being very good for myself and the group.

I don't expect to be much use in a fight, but being able to support the group with one of my twenty Lores is more then making up for it currently. One example was where we have just arrived on a chartist ship, and one player requested all information they have about our destination. We were allowed to make a Trade (Velet), Inquiry, Intimidate, or Deceive test, to which one player rolled VERY badly, failing by several degrees. I asked the GM if I could make a Scholastic Lore (Bureaucracy) test to see if there was some official means of requesting the data, which was allowed at -10. Getting three degrees of success however meant I got the data we wanted.

If we were nothing but a team of meatheads, whilst we could kill anything that moves, we wouldn't get any information and quite possibly use the wrong kind of weapon. I wouldn't want to use a shotgun at point blank range against a monster that had acid for blood, for example, and would rather someone tell me that as soon as they see it and advise a different weapon instead, for example.

Adepts are very under appreciated, yet to me are the best career in my mind.

Ahadiel said:

Let me guess: your players first thought is how their character will fight, therefore the first class they look to is the more martially inclined ones while they skip the intellectual ones?

Adept: fighter?

Arbitrator: cop/fighter

Assassin: ninja fighter

Cleric: fighter?

Guardsman: solider/shooty fighter

Psyker: Wizard/magical fighter

Scum: backstabber/fighter

Techpriest: gadgets/techie fighter

Looking at everything through the "fighter" mindset, then the Adepts and Clerics will be overlooked most of the time. If the GM designs his adventures to be in need of Clerics or Adepts on the other hand, it will hopefully be a different story.

By the way, Adepts can make for hilarious characters. Especially when the group needs to get into places and the Adept start waving papers and forms at the guards, regarding standardized habitation inspections and indoors shrubbery measuring and whatnot confusing his way into the most strongly defended areas simply through the might of buearocracy leaving stupyfied heavily armed guards scratching their heads trying to figure out what the hell that robed Adept was talking about!

"We desire a shrubbery"

Looking at everything through the "fighter" mindset, then the Adepts and Clerics will be overlooked most of the time.

*shrug* As soon as you convince your GM to switch the advancements for BS and WS for clerics, they get really ugly real quick.