How to reduce Corruption points

By Katherinius, in Dark Heresy Rules Questions

Greetings everyone,

And thank for any help you may provide for I am really lost.

One of my players wants to do a new character, a Sister of the Adepta Sororitas. They have special Faith Powers, but one special Talent preventing them to use the Faith powers if they are unclean.

Here is the text of the talent from the Inquisitor's handbook.

Suffer Not the Unclean (Talent)

A character with more than 10 Corruption Points may not use any Faith Talents and may not acquire new Faith Talents. If, through some means, they reduce their Corruption Points to below 10, they may again use and acquire Faith Talents.

And here is my problem:

There is absolutly nothing, in any rulebook, which explains how to reduce Corruption Points. There is no way to reduce Corruption Points according to Dark Heresy's corebook. Nothing in the Inquisitor's handbook.

Meanwhile there are tons of way to gain Corruption Points, especially for players involved in terrible quests. :)

So, does it means that all Sisters characters are supposed to lose their powers after a few missions? And if there is no way to reduce, then why the talent is talking about "some means to reduce" ?

(Note: I know they have a Faith power to prevent them to receive Corruption Points from fear. Pure faith. But 1/ How a player is supposed to protect his character for all a game session with 2 Fate points ? 2/ It doesn't prevent to gain Corruption Points from other sources, witnessing Dark rituals, demonic invocations, unclean artifacts, etc, etc.)

For the Glory of Terra,

Katherinius

I'm not sure where it is in the Rule Books but I beleive that it makes a note in one that penance, prayer and other such activities can reduce corruption.

Especially in the Sororatis characters case this would fit the fluff and the way this character should work.

It also suits more than one GW narrative where the character has had to "reduce corruption" and it is either forced on him or it is self realised and enacted.

(please see Eisenhorn, "looking into the abyss renewed my faith and the vigor of my religion" or something to that effect.

There is a note in the rulebook about penance, prayer and reading holy books.

It clearly says that it reduce Insanity points. Not corruption points at all . (The note itself is part of the Insanity chapter, not Corruption chapter)

The trick for a Sororitas is not to get Corruption Points in the first place. They already have some immunity to Warp Shock, as you mention. Beyond that, they must not pick up unclean artifacts, participate in dark rituals or learn forbidden secrets. To be an Adepta Sororitas is to be strictly puritanical.

In theory there will be ways in the upcoming Accension book.

I play a sororitas when not GMing, so here's what I've figured so far:

It should be noted that, as far as I see it when GMing, Insanity Points rack up all the time from brickshittingly scary scenarios and supernatural horrors; it's okay for PCs to have these things slathered on if the situation demands it. Especially since there are rules for removing them, though very costly, (and I don't see why you'd want to unless you're going Templar Calix and need the prerequisite, since they give you all sorts of awesome fear resistances and cool RPing of mental illnesses).

Corruption Points, however, are serious business . Gaining them and losing them should be rare and in small doses. Even a handful of them can and quite likely will permanently screw over a character through malignancies, and this is before you consider Purely Faithful acolytes. These things should not be handed out on a platter anywhere near as callously as IPs, so unless your character is delving into chaotic rituals and/or eating babies, you shouldn't be racking these things up.

The biggest source I can see is from some sort of warp-power bleeding into the materium, either through a daemon and Warp Shock or Perils of the Warp. Fear tests should be ignored or mitigated if at all possible for you to survive them, but since you can't 'naturally' get Fearless short of that terribad Oblatia rank, you'll have to make do with Pure Faith. If your GM is throwing you more than 2 daemonic fear tests a session either you're up to your knees in a chaos invasion (in which case you should expect this, they used to/still do execute people en masse after such outbreaks for reasons like this) or your GM is Doing It Wrong IMHO.

However, it's quite likely you'll end up without Fate Points in the middle of a session or you end up burning them all away sooner or later (I should know, I've had some terrible situations). For this, I like Armour of Contempt . Any time you'd gain CPs it takes it down a notch, so you can be relatively safe from 'minor' things like Perils etc. And our group has (house?)ruled the term "Ignore the effects of your accumulated corruption" to mean you qualify as under the threshold for Faith talents if you pass the WP test, so it's not a guaranteed success but you can potentially still manifest those abilities if you're lucky/skilled enough. Unfortunately, you wouldn't be able to purchase new ones anymore, but I did say corruption was serious business didn't I?

As for ways of reducing them, I'd make them just as rare if not rarer than acquiring CPs, and almost always costly in other ways. I've got a visit to the Cathedral of Illumination which I plan on sending the PCs to soon, and they can reduce their CPs through sheer Emprah-Power - but even that's only going to be a handful or so, and they won't be losing any malignancies/mutations. As a radical alternative, why not have a ritual similar to daemonic possession, where the party can transfer a bunch of CPs from themselves into a (un)willing host?

Sure, one would think a righteous and pure member of the Imperium would balk at such measures, but what if a PC thinks that their purity (and potentially their whole group's) is worth the price of some random? What if it was similar to an exorcism, where you dump all the CPs onto them before ripping them all out along with their soul? Worth the price? That's the only question that needs answering to a Radical.

I grant downtime points, generally about two per mission completed. One of them can be used to
-get paid your monthly wage
-reduce insanity by 2
-reduce corruption by 1
-reduce cost and/or availability of an item by x
-acquire a connection or improve an existing one by x (haven't got my notes with me)

LuciusT said:

The trick for a Sororitas is not to get Corruption Points in the first place. They already have some immunity to Warp Shock, as you mention. Beyond that, they must not pick up unclean artifacts, participate in dark rituals or learn forbidden secrets. To be an Adepta Sororitas is to be strictly puritanical.

Quite right. My first DH character was a Sororitas, played from Rank 1 up to mid Rank 6. We played through Maggots in the Meat, all of Purge the Unclean, as well as at least two GM-created scenarios (that I know of). I never acquired a single corruption point. Insanity, well ... that's another story. gui%C3%B1o.gif

However, I hope that Dalnor Surloc is right, and that there will official rules for the removal of corruption in Ascension. happy.gif

from france

no rules at least for now but good roleplayning game should be reward with burning corruption points. pilgrinnage, sacrifice, charity and so on.... all what is descreibed in real religions can help purge the bad points.going to saint drusus world for example in pilgrinage.

Sister Cat said:

LuciusT said:

The trick for a Sororitas is not to get Corruption Points in the first place. They already have some immunity to Warp Shock, as you mention. Beyond that, they must not pick up unclean artifacts, participate in dark rituals or learn forbidden secrets. To be an Adepta Sororitas is to be strictly puritanical.

Quite right. My first DH character was a Sororitas, played from Rank 1 up to mid Rank 6. We played through Maggots in the Meat, all of Purge the Unclean, as well as at least two GM-created scenarios (that I know of). I never acquired a single corruption point. Insanity, well ... that's another story. gui%C3%B1o.gif

However, I hope that Dalnor Surloc is right, and that there will official rules for the removal of corruption in Ascension. happy.gif

Well, in the pod cast, Ross did mention that if you have a character that has become next to unplayable due to Corruption or Insanity, one of the "Transition Packages" would be like a PC "cloistering" themselves up for a bit and purifying their body and soul to get rid of some of those points. So, it looks like there most likely will at least be a form of elite advance packaging that will do the trick when you upgrade a corrupt PC into a Throne Agent.

I believe it was one of the 'transition packages' that every character takes as part of the, well, transition, between being a rank 1-8 acolyte and rank 9+ throne agent. I'm expecting something akin to the list of Origin Paths in RT, but with only 1 or 2 steps.

I have a PC that has aquired over 30 corruption points over sessions and has gotten a mutation for it. Ive also noticed that the game rules standard is for corruption points to be handed out like candy at halloween ( something i dont actually agree with ). So i modified the rules for it....those with the necessary talents that normally allow you to lessen corruption effects caused by the warp will instead allow you to IGNORE them instead ( No roll needed ). As for the corruption effects of more natural ( man made ) problems like chemical exposure etc....sorry but your stuck ( HOWEVER i do not have those points counted against PCs for the use of or ability to gain faith abilities ) In other words non warp based mutation is not counted against a PCs tainted level ( unless its a very hideous or deforming mutation..in which case they NEED to get some parts cut off and replaced with cybernetic ones to correct the disfigurement ) since interraction rules with every NPC do still apply and there is a seriously dim view of the malformed muties in most all Imperial locales.

What i would do, as corruption and insanity are what i call "roll playing elements," is let them loose them both through roleplaying. If you wnat an actual system, have your player spen 100 exp and roll a d10 that minuses from one or the other. Note: for my DH game, this is the only way to either below the the tens, ie from 12 CP to 8 CP. Similarly, let your players take a WP roll intheir down time. If they pass, they can spend an unspent FP from the last session to roll a d5 and reduce either. The first represents the vigorous praying and purifing need to make real change. The second represents lose through time and the characters reafirming their cause by distancing themselves from the evils they just experianced.

I thought somewhere (ascencion radicals or disciples) was a rule that bascially let's you exchange corruption for insanity and then you can buy off insanity as normal

Sirion said:

I thought somewhere (ascencion radicals or disciples) was a rule that bascially let's you exchange corruption for insanity and then you can buy off insanity as normal

Copied from "Average ammount of Insanity/Corruption per rank " here .

Ascension , page 12;
Mind and Soul: Dealing with Insanity and Corruption

  • Covers spending XP to remove CP at the same value as for IP.
  • Sacrificing Characteristics; 2 points to remove 1d10 IP or CP.
  • Trading IP for CP, and vice versa.

It also suggests by the wording that the XP spends be allowed even pre-Ascension. But, yes, prior to Ascension being released there was nothing in the mechanics which allowed for CP to be removed.

-=Brother Praetus=-

Do these methods also get rid of accumulated disorders/malignancies?

nabs said:

Do these methods also get rid of accumulated disorders/malignancies?

I think malignancies,mutations & mental disorders never go away from just droppng below the threshold where they were achieved

there are a few possibilites to get rid of them (ascencion for example has a translation package) but normally you should be stuck with what you have

either that or the normal rules disallow reducing your insanity/corruption beneath those threshholds

edit: "A Character never may go down a degree of madness and so will never loose their disorders."

found it.... I dunno about corruption but I'ld handle it the same

You could get rid of mutations possibly through surgery or something, and illnesses can be removeed through therapy. The way we run it though is that the character is out of commision for a few months, under going physical therapy, or regular therapy. Granted there are some problems not solved that easily, and we have rules set up so that character who have mutations removed, gain mutation points faster as they have the taint of the warp on them.