Varnias Tybalt said:

There is, IMO, a difference between the "uber, superhuman hero" and the "image of what an Acolyte should aspire to be". Every Acolyte, on some level, has the raw potential (the innate doubt and curiosity, the capacity to question and reason, and the will to act where others may falter and to make decisions that influence millions, billions or trillions of lives) to be an Inquisitor in their own right. Inquisitors are, afterall, most frequently chosen from amongst the most promising of their former master's own Acolytes.

An Inquisitor, then, represents what an Acolyte could be - the culmination of decades, maybe over a century, of service to the Emperor's Inquisition. He is at the far end of the path they are walking upon. Consequently, he'll be better than them in a great many ways, simply because he's already been through everything that they're currently going through and more besides - he's vastly more experienced. If he was a Sanctioned Psyker beforehand, then he'll have the skill and experience needed to wield his abilities with as much or more efficiency and finesse than the most potent Psyker in the PC group; if he was an Arbitrator beforehand, then he'll be extremely well-versed in investigation and interrogation techniques, and so forth.

The important bit here, though, is that he's not the hero here - he's the teacher, the advisor, the superior, the stern master and the wrathful judge. In decades past, he would have been the hero, but now he's Obi-Wan to the group's Luke Skywalker - the mentor who gives them direction and purpose, and the patron who gives them the means to better themselves (because they cannot survive if they don't better themselves), and occasionally (very rarely) the powerhouse who fends off the unstoppable foe so that the group can achieve the important part of their mission.

The same can be said about any senior member of an Inquisitor's staff, really. Even if an Acolyte doesn't quite have what it takes to be an Inquisitor at some point down the line, those who serve their Inquisitor most closely and have done so for the longest can (and should) still serve to represent what the players can aspire to.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

Hehe, I think we have a disagreement of philosophies here. In my opinion, the relationshop between the Inquisitor and his Acolytes is more Sith-like in nature rather than Jedi-like. (possibly because I hate the Jedi in Star Wars and go to great lengths with m own stories not having characters reminiscent of the Jedi)

Meaning that the Inquisitor is this, probably frail looking, but still menacing person, training his acolytes to become just as ruthless and efficient as he is. Possibly culminating in the ultimate test or a series of ultimate tests where he goes rogue or perhaps orchestrate a huge heretical coup and his former students will have to take him down or pass their trial by fire in his orchestrations. If they succeed, they are worthy of being elevated to Inquisitors themselves. If they fail... They die.

But being ruthless, ingenious and menacing doesn't, nor shouldn't be enforced by superhuman abilities all the time. In fact it should be kept to aminimum. Mainly because it's way too simple and way less intimidating than the ingenious evil mastermind. If I took an Inquisitor and basically made him as an acolyte but with tripled stats and wearing power armour and such, all the acolytes would think of is how to triple their own stats and getting a power armour of their own. The power of a real intimidating and aweinspiring Inquisitor is a power that is less tangible in game mechanics. A power of always being three steps ahead of whatever his adversaries (or students) plan, of always seeming to know things that shouldn't be known, and being able to command respect from even the most brutish and intimidating giants of the Adeptus Astartes, in spite of looking like a seemingly normal human being without superhuman uber skills and strength of any kind.

Varnias Tybalt said:

Precisely. What better role model could you ask for?

I think an Inquisitor can have any stats - from pathetic to insanely powerful. An Inquisitor isn't an acolyte with a Prestige Class added on after reaching 15000xp. He's an individual who has been given an amazing amount of power. He might be a dilettante of the nobility with a lot of contacts, allies and influence. He might be a former researcher of the Administratum who spends all his time putting together different leads and then sending acolytes out to follow them up. Or he might be an Ecclesiarchal thug who's approach to investigating heresy is to kill everyone and let the God-Emperor sort them out. None of which need particularly impressive stats.

Varnias Tybalt said:

All the Inquisitors in my campaign have their own particular characteristics and personality traits which range from Bureacrat that is only there as a pawn of other Inquisitors through to 'Jedi' like stereo type Inquisitors. They all have their own role.

Probably the most interesting character for me is Inquisitor Lord Solomon Malagrave the chief Inquisitor in the Hadros Sector. He looks young, 25 with an almost angelic look to him save his eyes which are decribed simply as cruel. Pretty extensive re-juves...except he hasn't seemed to aged in 110 years at least. Its going to become apparent in the next few sessions he is at least 400 years old and still looking young.

Basically there are 'ninja awsome' Inquisitors just as there are more subtle examples. As long as you know how to handle them they all have their uses.

The PC's own Inquisitor (Inquisitor Lord Saul Narasay) falls somewhere in the middle. They know he is pretty hard but so far they have only seen his political side. They only know he is a formidable fighter from reputation.

I would never make out detailed stats for the inquistor, mainly out of lazyness, but I would sketch it out broadly based on my description.

For example

Frail (Low Tough), but menacing (high intimidate), who you can't be fooled (high PER, INT, scrutiny, and Aware), and great knowledge of the Great Enemy (FL: Daemons and warp) and widely respected throughout the ordos (peer/good rep Inquistion)

Or a disarming (high CHA), chameleon of a man (high disguise), who has infultrated many cults (FL Heresy), but also has knowledge outside of his ordo in connection with the Eldar (FL Xeno; Speak (eldar).

In terms of compate they have PLOT points of armour on all areas.

I read a line for a source book for the Deadlands system that says "If you stat it you can kill it". Which is why some of the major forces are never really given stats. Same for my Inquisitor.

Toharent said:

Why should an Inquisitor be impossible to kill?

Varnias Tybalt said:

Because the story requires that he not be dead?

The same principle applied to the gods in D&D - as soon as they had stats, they became just another creature in the monster manual, so to speak. If it has hit points, it can be killed, which means that sooner or later, a player will try to kill it.

The severity of this issue varies from game to game and group to group, of course, but by not giving a character stats, you essentially remove it as a viable target...

Oh I'm not saying an/my inquisitor can't die, in fact he's MIA in my game right now. But if he is actually going to die, haven't decided yet, it will be in an impressive way, not bound by stats or possibly game rules.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

Wouldn't a good story be centered around the Player Characters, rather than an NPC? They are supposed to be the "main cast" of the story after all.

That's what I like about Rogue Trader. The story revolves more around the PC's rather than a bunch of NPC's who rule over them all the time, and I try my very best to incorporate that in Dark Heresy as well.

While certain Inquisitors might be difficult to kill, and it might **** the PC's and inevitabely kill them by doing so, I would never say that it's impossible for them to do it, nor would I simply say "Okay guys, game over! You just shot at your boss and he and his Inquisitorial buddies wants you all dead."

I'd might need a time-out of course to adapt to such radical choices that the PC's might make, and the players would be well aware of how difficult the lives of their PC's would get if they did such a thing. But the story is still primarily about them, like it should be...

Varnias Tybalt said:

The main cast they may be, but you do still need a supporting cast, otherwise things get very boring very quickly.

There is nothing saying that just because the Inquisitor can't be slain for reasons of narrative necessity that he has to be a main character - indeed, the two things are utterly unrelated. He's an important supporting character, not some disposable mook (like a recurring guest star in a TV show), and his importance is a means to provide context for the player characters' adventures. If he dies, the player characters lose that context (it may, in some cases, allow for another context to be formed in its place, but that's not the point here).

Or are you honestly saying that nobody but the player characters are allowed to be important or to benefit from the quirks of narrative?

N0-1_H3r3 said:

Oh sure they can have that benefit. It's just that in my games pretty much everyone are living, breathing creatures and they can all be killed... Well aside from that campaign where my players came face to face with an incarnation of the C'Tan known as "The Deciever", they couldn't hurt it no matter how hard they might have tried, but they were busy trying to fight and flee from a bunch of Necron Pariahs in the vicinity so they didn't pay too much attention to the golden/bronze maniac with glowing white eyes, suspended in mid-air cackling like crazy over the joys of toying and fooling with the humans into doing it's mysterious and unknown bidding.

But gods and godlike creatures are normally an exception to this in my games (unless the players are involved in a campaign where they are to seek out some sort of method to destroying or sealing these godlike beings).

But Inquisitors and Space Marine heroes and such are still very much possible to kill (however so are the PC's, so the door swings both ways), and while I might not always have prepared stats for every single NPC, I've always kept a rough idea of what their stats would look like at the back of my head.

I can't be certain that the PC's will always be loyal and do what their Inquisitor says. Especially not when dealing with some of the more radical ones who order the acolytes to do pretty atrocious things from time to time. Some day one of the PC's might justifiably get fed up with that Inquisitor and try to plant a bullet or twenty in said Inquisitor's face at a convenient opportunity. And I don't want to be the type of gamemaster who simply fudge those results and say something like:

-"Oh, well to bad for you, your Inquisitor was immortal as per GM fiat, he kicks your asses and you all die. Poor shame..."

As a general rule of thumb, I try to think that the campaign doesn't have to be over just because the characters in it do something unexpected. The campaign will simply have to be modified to follow the PC's in their unexpected turn. And while I might give NPC's GM fiat protection from other NPC's, I rarely hand out the same protection for NPC's against PC's simply because I can't be bothered to cope with the changes a battle between them might cause.