So I was just playing around with the Enemy Within material and rolled up a Mutant character (turned out with some truly awesome stats, legitimately rolled; unfortunately won't be using him in a game as I had no witnesses!). When I got around to rolling for his starting Mutation, I rolled (100) The Warp Made Manifest , making him a de facto Daemon!

It got me wondering about how GMs and players alike would handle a starting character with something like this. For starters, he's a friggin' Daemon; what Inquisitor in his right mind would even recruit someone as clearly corrupt as this and what Acolytes, if they knew, would tolerate his presence? Second, he has a Fear rating of 2; this is pretty scary on the old fear-o-meter. Are his companions having to roll Willpower every time he shows his face, or every time he enters the room? Is he going to be able to hide this Fear rating somehow?

I suppose it comes down to a question of how to handle any of the gross physical mutations. Some mutations are easy to conceal, but others like wings, extra arms and so forth are just too obvious. For a character in play, there's the potential for "mitigating circumstances" for service in the Inquisition or whatever, but being recruited as a mutant? Slightly different kettle of fish.

Just looking for some thoughts.

[Just as an aside, the Mutant I rolled up ended up with Unnatural Toughness (1) which was chosen, The Warp Made Manifest (rolled for his "freebie") and Bestial Hide (took Mystic Role, rolled an extra 10 Corruption Points for being a non-Sanctioned Psyker and got an additional Mutation in place of a Malignancy, as per his Background Bonus). Between all this and a TB of 4 (natural Toughness 35 +5 from starting XP), he ended up being pretty resistant to harm: TB 4 +1 (Unnatural) +2 (Daemonic) +2 (Natural Armour) = 9 "Armour Points" to get through before even considering actual Armour. I couldn't resist splashing out on True Grit with his starting XP and the fact that I'd chosen his Homeworld as the variant Forge World "Pellene" and as such, had Resistance (Radiation) and Dark-Sight was just gravy! Sigh. So much for curiosity-rolled characters that will never be used...]

For starters, he's a friggin' Daemon; what Inquisitor in his right mind would even recruit someone as clearly corrupt as this

Considering the number of Radical Inquisitors who create and utilize daemonhosts, plenty. This being may be marked by the warp but he is not a true daemon, and can, in theory, still remain loyal to the Emperor. Of course, he would need to be treated with care and suspicion, but could be a priceless asset if the Inquisitor can be convinced* of his loyalty. For starters, he is instantly convincing as a heretic to try and infiltrate a cult. For that matter, given his nature, he should be easily able to take over and start manipulating a chaos cult, as he could easily protray himself as some sort of chaos-touched messiah.

You should definitely make the acolytes roll a fear check the first time they meet him (and possibly the first time he uses his abilities). However, for the sake of sanity, I assume that either they become used to his sanity-shattering presence (eventually) or he learns to restrain it (a bit) - which still allows for occasional outpourings when he lets it loose in a fight. They shouldn't be forever testing for fear from their own comrade for the same reason a GM wouldn't have cultists checking WP every turn to avoid fear from their own mutated/possessed master.

Mutant acoltyes are more or less the same. Humans would look down on them - they're twisted, disgusting freaks and the ecclesiarchy drums this into pretty much everyone it can on a regular basis - but just because someone is a freak doesn't mean they're not useful or occasionally even necessary, especially if the warband is operating on a frontier world, in the underhive, or similar. A lot of outcast characters are likely to be suspected, known or even convicted criminals - so theoretically any Adeptus Arbites characters should have a twitchy trigger finger in their presence, but they're expected to cope. The Inquisitor has said "you will work with this person". You can either say "yes, My Lord", or report for termination....

At the same time, yes, if your mutation can't be hidden, you have a problem. You're going to be extremely recognisable outside the underhive or mutie districts, which means that unless you use a lot of intelligent planning, your subtlety will be shot to hell very quickly, and there's no way he can operate openly anywhere where he's dealing with large mobs of middle-class citizens, or the nobility, or much of the ecclesiarchy. But again, that's true for a lot of character archetypes. Yes, a sanctioning brand means you've passed the Scholastica Psykana trials. It's also a **** great tatoo on your face or neck which tells the superstitious, rabid, rhabdophobic, paranoid mob inhabiting the hive district you're walking through that you're a witch .

* Note - this is likely to be a very painful and lengthy process....

sidenote, you should roll 5d10 (so you'll get something between 5-50) and not d100 for the mutants starting mutation, and therefore you can't get "the ware made manifest" as a starting mutation

sidenote, you should roll 5d10 (so you'll get something between 5-50) and not d100 for the mutants starting mutation, and therefore you can't get "the ware made manifest" as a starting mutation

Huh. So you do. Good catch. I wonder why they decided that...

Precisely so you don't get starting characters with Fear 2.

Precisely so you don't get starting characters with Fear 2.

To be fair that's a 1-in-100 chance, if rolling d%. The other >50 results are not, as far as I can see, any more or less grossly obvious than those <50; they're pretty well mixed. In the <50 range available to the Mutant Background are extra arms and wings; hardly non-descript and inoffensive to the average citizen if the Imperium.

Haha! awesome!

Imagine being an inquisitor with a fear 2 Acolite.

Inquisitor Zorg: *On comunicator* "This is Zorg here. Send Mister Shadow."

Reminds me of a day many years ago, I was playing around with the Realm of chaos books and decided to roll up a human mutant: Except I rolled chaos lord witch gives your character an aditional 1D6 (5) more chaos attributes. One of course turns out to be chaos where , turning it into shape changer with its own set of chaos attributes! So after a half dozen rolls my mutant is this weird spiky limbed, boar headed , giant leech crosbreed (In it's normal form and something with bright skin, a goat head and wings in it's were form) and I get ready to roll for it's final atribute: Warp frenzy ! Wich means each time my mutant suffers frenzy he gains a random set of 1D6 aditional chaos atributes! Ungh...That's when i called it quits.

Who knew to much chaos was a bad thing

So at some point, would you turn into a misshapen or shapeless being of ever-changing organic mass, true to the nature of Chaos?

Meh... I'm GM-ing a Black Crusade campaign at the moment, and a shapeless being of ever-changing organic mass is an improvement over the state some of the players have got themselves into.

One player is rapidly running out of extremities to have shot or cut off (and yes, the head counts as an 'extremity' - he was shot in the head with an inferno pistol, burned infamy to stay alive then appropriately enough rolled 'Headless' for the resulting mutation...), 1/3 of the party have significantly more than the standard issue number of arms and one has a lower willpower than either of the two daemon weapons he carries and only stays vaguely functional by suffering simultaneous and more-or-less mutually preventative attempts at possession from both of them at once.

I did like Realm of Chaos, though. The 'Generate Your Own Chaos God' table verged on the ridiculous, but was totally worth it....

Ok now you got me curious, so i decide to whip out the ol' slaves to darkness tome:

Well first off all you could (quite easily) end up as a chaos spawn.

But then i read this one:

Blood Substitution (4) Protoplasm: When the mutant is reduced to 0 wounds, the slime coaleses into a single mass of protplasm to fight on in it's own right.

Hooo boy! (why did i look?) Duplication and Multiplication so you can seperate into different pieces for the whole amoeba experience...

D1000 mutanion tables: you gotta love them.

One player is rapidly running out of extremities to have shot or cut off (and yes, the head counts as an 'extremity' - he was shot in the head with an inferno pistol, burned infamy to stay alive then appropriately enough rolled 'Headless' for the resulting mutation...), 1/3 of the party have significantly more than the standard issue number of arms and one has a lower willpower than either of the two daemon weapons he carries and only stays vaguely functional by suffering simultaneous and more-or-less mutually preventative attempts at possession from both of them at once.

Daemon waepon #1: "I get to control the human!"

Daemon weapon #2: "No! It's my turn!"

Chaos champion: "Duuuuuuuuuuuurrrr"

I was thinking might it be worthwhile making an option for the mutant to spend experience points to choose their starting mutation like the mutant background option that is available in Rogue Trader.

I think this would give one a bit more control over what their mutant gets (crazy or out there options can be vetoed by the game master) to help match whatever concept the player might have instead of just having a high chance of being a multi-limbed freak or even just being blind.

What do people think?

Also just out of curiosity Jolly P did you end up using the 5d10 method and if so what did you end up with for your hypothetical character?

Great idea! That let's players play mutants from a local, world with semi-stable mutant populations ( Like Necromunda with it's Scalies.) And have it be subject to GM approaval so the group's munchkin doesn't go overboard with it. Altough to be honest: If I was the GM in my group, I'd allow Fear (2) just tp see what stuff the players would get up to.

Well if you have a radical inquisitor operating out of the Screaming Vortex trying to stop the chosen one from arising, when it comes to acolytes Demon Folk might just be his dream team

I was thinking might it be worthwhile making an option for the mutant to spend experience points to choose their starting mutation like the mutant background option that is available in Rogue Trader.

I think this would give one a bit more control over what their mutant gets (crazy or out there options can be vetoed by the game master) to help match whatever concept the player might have instead of just having a high chance of being a multi-limbed freak or even just being blind.

What do people think?

Also just out of curiosity Jolly P did you end up using the 5d10 method and if so what did you end up with for your hypothetical character?

I kind of like having to accept the random factor of rolling your starting mutation. You already get to pick one bonus from a list and mutation is supposed to be chaotic! Perhaps giving the option of choosing your chosen bonus after rolling your starting mutation would mitigate the potential for mis-matched characteristics (not that there's anything in the book saying you can't do that anyway...just thought I'd point it out as an option).

As a point of note, no, I didn't re-roll that guys mutation with 5d10...give me a minute..

...clatter, clatter...

...hmm, 30...Deathsight

Well, he lost all the Daemonic bonuses (including the +2 armour), but gained +2 damage 1/session and a reliable way of accumulating more Corruption Points...

I can see Amroth's point. Mutation happening later in the game is just a consequence of how the campaign was running, and as such it's less of an issue for this to be out of the player's hands ... but I don't see why it should limit the character creation phase, given all the other things the player can customise.

With mutants in particular (and given how colourful the mutations are in this game) I think very few people are interested in playing "any mutant" over a more specific character concept where the mutation will (or rather should ) determine much about their background and lifestyle/profession/role.

I mean, this is kind of like as if Only War only had an "Abhuman" class and you'd have people roll dice on whether they get to play a Ratling or an Ogryn.

Mr. Grave's Necromunda Scalie is a good example of something players may be interested in!

Precisely.

Not that there's anything wrong with the rules as written just this option gives people more control over what they create and can lead to interesting semi-stable mutant populations that can feature in future games.

Robin and Lynata have eloquently expanded on the point nicely.

Of course any future mutations beyond starting, well then you've got to roll as usual just like everyone else.....