Just a quick thought/challenge fo you..

How would you make an elite career path for a Titan Pilot?

What career would you base it around? Guardsman is the obvious choice so we'll go for that..

Lets see what you can come up with.

Reason being is that i intend to have a NPC in game some point soon, and wouldnt mind having character like that put in to the "Character Stable" for our group if they handle things well and co-opt one of the Moderati to working alongside them or a little while whilst the titan he's partnered with is in Repair and his Princeps is suffering from psychostigmatic wounds & fatigue...

Velvetears said:

Why is Guardsman the obvious choice? Guardsmen are soldiers... titan crewmen have more in common with techpriests than they do the common infantryman.

Personally, I'd start with Adept, and ensure a suitable array of technical skills to allow the Moderatus to reasonably operate the functions of the God-Machine he must oversee. That, and an MIU-link - it's kind of essential for the process of Titan operation.

I'd wait for Rogue Trader and the Void Master career within. It's got "Pilot big stuff" written all over it.

Cifer said

"Pilot Big Stuff"

oh gods you've said that out loud. Now the TP in my group will want that.....

N0-1_H3r3 said
Why is Guardsman the obvious choice? Guardsmen are soldiers... titan crewmen have more in common with techpriests than they do the common infantryman.

Exactly for that reason, they're Soldiers. Albeit in in Really Big Walking Suits Of Armour & Leet Kewl Gunz.

The Guardsman career path has the vehicle skills as well as the things like tactics and associated things that the average Tech Priest doest have.

Whilst yes the tech preists Do have the augmetics, having read things like the recent Mechanicum novel, i see (and always have) that the Legios are a seperate entity who are tied/loyal to but not part of the Ad-Mech.

This might have to be something i put together myself then post for criticism on here in the next week or two...

I'd go with Adept and give them the tactical lore skills and some mechanicus skills, Princeps are going to be focused on an abstract view of war rather than down and dirty combat and the Stat advance line confirms that... you could also use the Psy Rating they get later on in the career to focus on what they can do inside the MIU but not outside it.

Moderati would I guess be based mainly on a standard Tech Priest because they are chief engineers....

Velvetears said:

Titans are to armour as shoeshops are to shoeboxes. It's not comparable on the same scale.

Velvetears said:

Doesn't mean they're soldiers. Titan warfare has more in common with space combat (vast distances, extremely advanced control systems, insane firepower) in terms of scale than it does with the kinds of things represented by the Guardsman career (infantrymen, sentinel pilots, tank crews).

As I said, I'd start with Adept - you're the one inferring that I claimed that they should be Techpriests (I said they had more in common with techpriests than with common infantrymen - that statement still stands, but that doesn't mean I'm advocating the use of the Techpriest career as an appropriate proxy in this instance), because I see the act of operating a Titan as something more concerned with technical and theoretical skills (Intelligence-based, like Tech-Use) than marksmanship or manual dexterity (BS, and Agility-based pilot skills). Manual dexterity is irrelevant when you control something with your brain, and your ability to aim and fire a lasrifle has nothing to do with laying down controlled bursts of fire from a Warlord's Gatling Blaster against a target you can only detect on your Engine's auspex.

The Guardsman career path is physically able, naturally resilient, and gets all sorts of useful personal combat abilities, but is frankly a bit thick. I see the matter of piloting a War Engine like a Titan as being more reliant on intellect and mental fortitude than anything else.

I agree with No-1_H3r3, especially after reading Titanicus by Dan Abnett. Very indepth look at how titans, princeps, and moderati function. They are far from guardsman and definitely more akin to adepts. Skiitarii on the otherhand, would be a class befitting to guardsman

However, there are exceptions to every rule and there very well could be someone from any of the base classes as a princeps. Which is why I would design an elite advance rank that has certain requirements, but the characters career path would not be one of them.

Well, first of all. Titanicus...Was...Awesome...

That said, I would tend to think that a Tech Preist would serve as the best template for Tian crewman and officers. They are citizens of forge-worlds and privilaged ones at that. They often hold to the doctrine of the omnissiah and the primacy of divine technology. They are also riddled with implants of all kinds, and many Princeps eventually become almost completely cybernetic organisms, much like tech priests.

There's already a class that encompasses all these traits. Its Techpreist or Explorator.

EDIT: screw it, messed up quotes, will try again.

That said, I would tend to think that a Tech Preist would serve as the best template for Tian crewman and officers. They are citizens of forge-worlds and privilaged ones at that.

Your status isn't part of the career package you choose, so this is irrelevant to the base career that any hypothetical Princeps career should be based on.

They often hold to the doctrine of the omnissiah and the primacy of divine technology.

A character's beliefs also aren't part of the character's background package, so this, too, is not a valid reason to choose tech-priest over any of the other careers as a base to work off of.

They are also riddled with implants of all kinds, and many Princeps eventually become almost completely cybernetic organisms, much like tech priests.

Firstly, you can't have a "completely cybernetic organism" any more than you can have an atom of water, Cybernetic denotes a fusion of two things, it would be like saying you have pure steel

Secondly, the techpriest's implants are basically meaningless until they buy the talents to use them. As princeps tend to have completely different implants to techpriests, it would be just as feasible to add new implants to another career as it would be to repurpose the Techpriest implants to suit the same purpose.