Fleshmelding

By Ghaundan, in Black Crusade House Rules

Hey, this has happened in my group before and we've encountered the "problem" again. How to deal with flesh shaping and are we doing it right.

The ritual is peformed, he rolls once and gets 4 DoS. He can now choose 6 abilities, and increase abilties marked with X 3 times, so either 3 1's, a 2 and a 1 or a 3 and nothing. And the rest are traits without an X. That's correct, right?

My problem is, how is stacking supposed to be handled? Yes, there's downtime involved but that doesn't stop this thing from escalating out of time. Any tips how to deal with this in an effective manner? I've been considering them only having 1 flesh meld per person, they can try again and if tehy do better they get that, but not allowed to stack with previous fleshmeldings.

1. you only get one stat per ritual so 4 DoS means you could have regen 5

2. You set the rarity of the ritual to keep it from getting out of hand

3. This is a great way to keep a human on par with marines

4. Set the skill level of the fleshaper low so that are actually risking death when rolling on the failure table. Nothing like burned infamy to set your focus.

5. Let them go crazy and have fun is always an option

6. Given that it involves dedication to slan as an inherent part of the ritual, feel free to slap corruption down on khorne and nurgle players.

2. That feels kind of weird though, to arbitrarily make it difficult. Maybe when stacking?
3. Nothing prevents marines from doing this....
4. Players tend not to let NPC's do this. Also, you don't have to be a fleshshaper, merely know the ritual and the other requirements. Being a fleshshaper gives a rather meager bonus.
5. Yeah, trying to prevent this as I don't want to FORCE people to fleshmeld and i find the bog standard marines in the npc section weak enough as is.
6. Doesn't require it at all. It uses his numbers and people aligned against him get negative modifiers but they only need to have a slaanesh aligned person do it to them. The practinioner contributes the bonuses, not the subject....unless he's unwilling.

I'll houserule that they can only have 1 fleshmeld active at any point to keep it from scaling to stupid levels. 6 unnatural characteristic on all things? yeah, no. 10 AB and wings. Have fun.

Think papa nurgle will be happy to see his plague marine enjoying the pleasures of the flesh? Corruption is the ultimate slap down tool for blind power gamings.

Flesh Melding requires a few things which are variable depending on your sought after result.

1. The ritual must take place that doubles as a shrine to Slaanesh (Opposing Dedicated Heretics would take appropriate penalties)

2. Their must be at least one Sacrifice (they Die)

3. Their must be one Subject (who gets the Traits)

4. At least 6 hours

The test is modified as any other ritual with a couple of extra bonuses

1. The Flesh Shaper Archetype gets a +10 bonus (They also count as a psy rating 3 unbound psyker during the ritual, but this has no effect at all)

2. If the Subject (the one who gets the Traits) is unwilling then The Flesh shaper Archetype gets a +10 bonus

The Test itself is a -30 Medicae Test Or a -10 Scholastic Lore Occult Test (bonus's from gear and assistance can effect this test)

Now the Effects:

For Every Sacrifice (up to 6), choose one of the listed Traits; if the test is successful then the Subject Gains that Trait.

If the Trait has a X value then the X value is equal to the Degrees of Success minus one (up to 6)

Therefore 3 Sacrifices with Four degrees of Success will give the subject Trait 1 (3), Trait 2 (3) and Trait 3 (3)

Cost

The subject takes 1d10-WPbonus days to recover

All living participants gain 1d5 corruption points

All Sacrifices Die

RAW doesn't mention any penalties from doing the ritual multiple times

That being said I would not allow a character to have multiple sources of Trait X (unless stated in the rules ie Fear) and instead only apply the Highest Source (Unnatural Strength 4 from being a marine and Unnatural Strength 6 from the Ritual would result in Unnatural 6, not Unnatural 10)