As a theoretical excersise, I'm looking to make the Adept, a class regarded by many as useless, into a powerful player within the party. In a group of chainsaw wielding fanatics, brain melters, heavy-weapon toters, and so forth, the humble adept can seem a bit out of place. How would you make him fit right in with this group?

I was contemplating a xeno-arcanist with crazy xenotech found on his digs (Eldar D-grenade, anyone?) but I really haven't put too much thought into it (Midterms, you know), and obviously that concept relies heavily on DM largesse. Any other ideas from y'all?

And after a few attacks on me in other threads, I feel it ought to be said that I am not purely a roll-player, I just enjoy breaking the game system in theory. In play I try and keep it pretty reasonable.

With the adept you need to approach the game from a more rational view point. You are not a front line fighter so don’t try to be one. Sit back in fights take pistol Las and SP and Marksman ASAP. Go for a best quality Hell pistol or a nice hand canon and a red dot sight. Sit back and take half action aims with a called shot to the head when your BS is high enough.

Where the adept really shines though is information gathering and management. Don’t let the other players know anything they don’t have to. Knowledge is power and you can be a god among your group.

If your GM is game and you have the right skills then you should be able to get access to equipment and items outside the range of normal possibility. If you need a distraction setup a PDF or Arbities exercise or raid to go down a couple of blocks over from where you need to be. Reroute a guard regiment to on the enemies compound for you, get creative with the bureaucracy of the Imperium.

From what ive seen the Adept gets his good stuff very late, so the only thing would be to try to survive till you get psy powers and powered melee.

ill suggest to get a sword of best quality with mono enhancement and a fullauto hangun ( Hecutor, Orthlak ) early on. The sword to be able to block in melee mainly cause it takes forever till you get dodge, the fullauto handgun cause it makes it easier to hit enemys and does good damage ( manhunter bullets). Use the pistol in main hand and the sword in your offhand till you get ambidextous. As armor i would use synskin or a hardened bodyglove, try to be the grey man like ItsUncerteinWho said. Try to get Weapon Skill, Toughness( only to get the absorpion bonus if you cant get to 40+ try to reach 35 or cut it to 30 ) , Agility and Ballistic Skill as high as possible in that order when you create the char. Then go the Inditor, Lexographer > Loremaster Magister route. The Adept will be still no real Killing Machine, but he should be able to hold his ground and if played smart be able to tip the scale of battle into the groups favour ( maybe also try to work more with drugs ).

ItsUncertainWho said:

This.

Adepts can do pretty sick things by pulling the strings in Imperial bereaucracy. I remember this one time when we played an adventure where we had to infiltrate the hab block apartment of a local hive gang boss. We pondered over this for a while until suddenly the adept sprung into action. He took a dataslate and fabricated some false documents, went straight up to the door of the apartment during the middle of the day-cycle and knocked. A rather puzzled wife/girlfriend of the gang boss in question opened the door, and the adept went on to explain that he had been sent by the local governing agency of plumbing and moisture control and that he was there to make a house inspection. Suffice to say that the wife/girlfriend didn't really know how to react, but said something along the lines of: "Hey, wait a minute..." but she was cut short by the blathering adept who held out all kinds of forms, permissions documents, illustrations of Molliers diagram and kept on asking bizzare questions like asking if they had green plants in the domicile, or if the bathroom was outfitted with a faucet and if said faucet could expell hot water, cold water or even both. etc. etc.

The poor woman couldn't really do anything but scratch her head at the peculiar questions all the while the adept let himself in, rummaging through the entire apartment (scouting it out in detail for the rest of the group of acolytes to exploit later on), knocking on walls, pipes, moving furniture around, bombarding the woman with even more strange red-tape questions. Just as he was about to give her a tome of documents and forms to fill out, the gang boss woke up in the bedroom and was in a pretty foul mood because of all the noise the Adept had caused. The Adept in question wasn't the most brave character to say the least, so he sort of cowered behind his dataslate and tried to explain that he had permission from the local governing agency pf plumbing and moisture control to inspect the apartment.

The gang boss wasn't pleased, but he just threw the Adept out of the apartment rather than killing him for the intrusion.

No the Adept didn't actually have the Blather skill before, but as soon as that adventure was over he was rewarded by the GM (with the entire group of players behind the decision) to buy the Blather skill as an elite advance. He had certainly earned it, and made the rest of us laugh our asses off in the process.

Sure, going up against a skilled killer armed with a bolter or MP Lascannon might be a bit scary, but that wouldn't be anything compared to an Adept, armed with an almost Tzeentchian understanding of bureaucracy and how to exploit it. Bolters and lascannons might kill you, bureaucracy can drive your very soul insane.

Here's an idea I had for a build...

First play a Feral Worlder. I know they can't be adepts, you'd have to get GM permission on that one. Pick the Dusk package, too.

Characteristics: Put your highest roll (let's call it a 17) into WP, also, put at least a 15 into AG.

Take three WP advances and a AG advance, to put you at WP 50 and AG 40

At Rank 1, take both Drives, Pilot, Sprint, Swim, Resistance (Cold), Light Sleeper.

At Rank 2, make sure to take Awareness.

At Rank 3, advance Awareness, Resistance, (Poisons), Ambidextrous, take Flagellant if you like the flavor, maybe go for Electro-Graft use.

At Rank 4, go Inditor, and take the combat talents, advance Awareness, and take Tech-Use

That's as far as I'm going to go. At this point, basically what you have is a hardened operative with a few key strong points.

-With WP 50 and Little Left To Fear, you keep your cool in situations that would have Veterans blubbering like children. See how tough the rest of your party looks when you're the only one not frozen in terror.

-Coupled with that, you have an Indiana Jones-esque array of skills that make you a highly mobile and capable operative. You might not take out as many mooks as your stubber-toting friends, but you can wake up, traverse the battle-field, swim through the icy river, hotwire a car, drive to the objective, download the data, and fly back while your friends are still loading their weapons. (Maybe not, but you get the point.)

-Once you're an Inditor, you can decently hold your own in a fight. You won't be as frail as most Adepts, thanks to your Feral World origins,and two melee attacks and a called shot each round is nothing to scoff at. If you want, take some additional Weapon Training talents to play up this aspect.

-At Rank 5, you have a couple options you can become a scholar, at which point you can take dodge and step aside, which, with agility 40, is considerably advantageous. Alternetively, you can go Tyrantine Shadow agent, and take Labrynthine Conditioning, Resistance (Psychic), Strong Minded, and Mental Fortress, making you a true mental powerhouse.

There you have it. That's my two cents.

The group that I plays in now have a powergamer playing our adept. He will be able to claim up to 11 rates of success on some normal difficulty lore skill checks in a few levels (int 63, trained +20, appropriate peer +10, unnatural intelligence +2 rates). He mends 12 points of damage with a successfull medicae test . Adepts are btw the only career that can gain the Unnatural Ability talent at all.

Since he always knows what protocol to follow, wich daemontainted items that are safe to pickup, who makes what kinds of decisions, what this strange little button does, how to cut through this strange piece of red tape etc, he is always sorely needed by our group. Once we get into combat he digs out his dueling laspistol and pretty much kills one target every second round with it. (we have a houserule that makes all "accurate" weapons do the extra d10s of damage, not only basic weapons). And his killcount is most impressive when you calculate numerous clever applications of the Demolitions skill or appropriate versions of Drive or pilot, not to mention that time he by clever stringpulling and manipulation repositioned the arbites new years formal dress party to the hangout of the heretech/druglord that had a contract on the characters. The adepts power is often more indirect, as is her application of force.

Mellon said:

Personally if you wana run an adept who can hold his own (but not be a combat master) i would run one from the Schola Progentium, as they get weapon trainings base. Put one of your finer starting rolls into BS, pick up an autogun with red dot laser, and you should stay alive reletivly well.