Well, this might be a bit early, but in preparation for the release I've been working on a set of Battle Sister houserules for Deathwatch. Long story short, the group I run games for contain both a hardcore 40k fan who'll ***** about inaccuracy to canon and a woman who'd prefer not to play ultra macho dudes. She's a sci-fi fan and loves combat oriented characters, so and I believe she will enjoy the setting, but I wanted to be able to make it a bit more palatable to her by opening up her options.

So, long story short, here's the link .

For those who don't want to click out, I've done the following:

-Provided multiple Adepta Sororitas Orders, analogous to Space Marine Chapters. Most of these have an ability drawn from one of the Chapters, only one of them being significantly modified from the source. The demeanors are all the same (I love the emperor, he's so awesome! Hail the emperor! Praying rocks!) largely because I can't figure out much difference between the personalities of each order.

-Provided multiple Adepta Sororitas Specializations, analogous to the Assault Marine, Tactical Marine, and Devastator Marine. The only changes here are flavor and the characteristic advance schemes. Battle Sisters come off favoroing strength and toughness less than SMs, placing emphasis instead on Willpower and Fellowship. The Seraphim also has slightly different weapon options from the Assault Marine. Again, largely flavor.

- Instead of having "Deathwatch Training," which makes SMs kick alien ass, they have "Witchhunter Training," which has the same effect vs Psychers.

- Instead of having double Strength and Toughness modifiers, they have double Willpower and Fellowship modifiers.

-Provided Adepta Sororitas Power Armor. The only differences are that it does not provide a +20 Strength bonus, but doesn't incur a -10 penalty to dexterous work either. This is the part I'm least satisfied with.

It's incomplete due to the current state of available material. Most notably, not a word on skills.

If I were to improve anything at the moment, it would be a better way to balance out the loss of 2xStr and Toughness and +20 Str from the armor. The idea would be that, when the two groups are together, the SMs are going to be bodyguards to the BS, who's going to handle most of the talking and be handier within the Imperium in a lot of the non-combat situations. The SMs take orders from their XO, but he, begrudgingly, is taking orders from her. Still, I want her to be able to become part of the group over time and not be crippled in combat due to that large imbalance.

What do you guys think though? Serviceable, good idea, bad idea? Suggestions?

Why did you the +20 to strength ?

It is present on the full sized DH and RT power armours.

DH lists them as wearing only a carapace breast plate at chargen, but it is clearly intended to be a form of power armor. It's certainly easier to balance if so.

The Lexicanum describes Battle Sisters' power armor as "a lighter, less bulky version of power armor [that] does not increase the strength of the wearer to match that of the Space Marines, but does provide the same protection."

So, I could have used DH's "light power armor" and merely left them at -1 armor, but it seemed more canonical to me to keep the same armor but drops the strength boost.

I could leave a +10 in there, and that would seem to balance better with the improved dexterity. Either way, I want them to seem noticeably less dangerous, without impeding their ability to pull their own in the group.

Soyokaze said:

Gentlebreeze ,

As much as some dislike the particular book, Ascension for Dark Heresy has examples of full on Sisters in Adepta Sororitas Light Power Armor , which is AP 7 - All, without any strength boost. Reference page 247, Legatine Sister Vespasia and her Honour Guard. Hope that's helpful.

-=Brother Praetus=-

Looks good. In my own games I already give Sisters AP8, because the original GW fluff doesn't support the "girls wear light power armor" -route the Ascension sourcebook goes.

As for sister specialities, in addition to Battle Sister, Retributor and Seraphim I would add Dominion. Whereass Retributors are defensive kind of heavy-weapon fighters with heavy bolters (immovable warrior suits them well) the Dominions are mechanized, short-range fast-attackers driving right into enemy and then using flamers and meltaguns to "cleanse" the heretic.

One question on the Unnatural Characteristics, though:

I'll get the Willpower (with all the nigh-uncorruptable fluff), but why Fellowship?

I could see Adepta Sororitas using Light Power Armor that instead lends +10 str and ag over the +20 str armors. It would just be a different way to make them, model it after the bionic arms and legs to a point. Also, I could see the Adepta having the unnatural Toughness and Willpower rather than fellowship. These are just my two cents, I don't know if anything like this will be allowed in the game I'm going to be playing in, kind of doubtful though.

My personal plan is to make a class that's kind of a mish-mash of the Missionary and the Arch-Militant, from Rogue Trader. Give them the Arch-Militant special ability as a quick way to make a Retributor, Seraphim or mainline battle sister (Take "Heavy Weapons" "Pistols" or "Basic weapons" respectively.) Pure Faith and the related talents certainly seem like a must, to me - I mean they were introduced to DH specifically for the Adepta Sororitas, after all. I'll probably let them use Marine-caliber weapons - ranged is all they've got after all. AP 8 armor, +20 Str. That still only gives a Str bonus of 5-6 for the Sister, as opposed to the hulking 10 for the Marine. The TB of ~4 and lower wounds would also really hammer home how much physically ... less the Sister is than the Marines, so I don't feel the need to punish them further, y'know?

I *may* give her Unnatural Willpower, but if you go through the Origin Paths of RT to make the character (again, like I plan) you can pick up Unshakeable Faith, and Nerves of Steel, and have a Willpower of around 45-50 (+3 from Imperial World, +3 from Child of the Creed, +3 from Duty to the Throne) so she'd likely be as good/better than the Marines at pinning and fear tests. That seems like a nice little bonus.

What about Sisters of Silence any plans for them as they could of survived the attack on the moon?

I don't get the Unnatural Willpower or Fellowship. Space Marines are superhuman . Sisters, though heavily indoctrinated, aren't. There are some good Willpower and Fellowship buffing Talents out there to use instead of going right into Unnatural attribute buffs.

Hmmmm..... fluffwixse it could be argued that Sisters deal with the public more then space marines do. Remember that preists tend to gauge their sermons to influence public opinion, so it would make sense that most members of the clergy would have at least a basic understanding of PR, and anyone in authority would probably have a much deeper understanding of how to influence people.

It could also be to mirror the Seraphim moral boost form the TT game.

Another note, the Sisters of Battle do not have the black carapace, they would not gain the benefits from that, also i am not sure if their power is the same, if it is awesome, or if it does not last as long. hope these help!

Awesome, these were pretty much along the lines of what I was going to do for my 1-2 potential female players that didn't want a Space Marine. They only other addition I was going to add was a handful more Fate Points, to represent Acts of Faith and what not. Or potentially adding more powerful versions of what you could get out of one.

Ascended allows for unnnatural strength, etc.

Rank 9 Death Cult assassin can buy unnatural agility x 2, exp 13,000

Vindicare assassin gets unnatural agility at rank 9 (13000 exp), unnatural toughness at rank 11 (21000 exp), unnatural strength at rank 12 (25000 exp), and unnatural speed at rank 16 (45000 exp)

FFG had talked about inquisitors joining a deathwatch for missions, and they are at these levels. SM have their glands/etc to make them superhuman, but that doesn't mean other characters can't be just as good or better. Assassins are many times much better than a single SM, in stories and in the tabletop game.

just one question why make a sister of battle when you can use the one in the inquisitors hand book for DH??????

lord inquisitor revan darksoul said:

Because to hardcore fans of the Sisters, that single class is NOT what many of us (to wit: I can only speak for myself) wanted from Sisters.

I know that aside from this gent, I, myself, and several others I know are "revisiting" the sisters, and attempting to give them a rebuild to what we would like and consider appropriate to the 40k lore.

They made two complete "orders" of Sisters into single ranks.... they themselves are revisiting the Sisters in detail in the Martyr book. So obviously they even thought they could use a bit more fleshing out.

Alexis

*smiles*

PS- I have two armies I won't ever let go.... my Witch Hunters, and my Daemon Hunters.... SoBs are absolutely a blast.

You will probably prefer the Sister's rules in Blood of Martyr's then

I look forward to it Millandson.

Enjoying Deathwatch by and large some neat things they did in there, testing must have been fun.

Alexis

*smiles*

lord inquisitor revan darksoul said:

In my case, it's a practical matter. I want to run a Deathwatch game, I want to use the one Deathwatch book and not have to learn the alternate rules in order to facilitate one player. When I'm running my players through char-gen, it's much easier if the Sisters' use the same chargen and advancement systems. I can get the whole group rolled up in one pass, rather than going through it all once with the guys and once with the ladies.

I also don't want to have a have and have not dynamic within the group. In the session I ran last night, the Sister in the group enjoyed being dramatically different from the SMs. She felt less like a military superpower, but like a much more subtle and intelligent character. This, however, would not have gone over so well if I had essentially told her that "the boys get these things, you don't, because you have boobies."

As the previous paragraph mentions, we playtested these last night and things worked out nicely. In short ,we began the first pre-made adventure (didn't have time to finish due to chargen). The Sister did not begin with the group, but happened to be in the church in which the first combat encounters take place. I added a bit of extra stuff ahead of the default setup in order to emphasize that the Sister too was brought in in order to help quell rebellion, the Deathwatch only being called once the Inquisitor discovered exactly what was up and had given up on winning heart and minds. The plan is to let them remain allies of oppurtunity for now, unify them as a group in the future, and grant the SoB the benifit of the Squad abilities once she's fully integrated into the sqaud. The D-Watch wouldn't recognizer as one of her own, of course, I merely refer to the squad accepting her and she them.

@Cailieg:

Sadly I was too busy testing Rogue Trader stuff, starting testing Dark Heresy stuff (after Mack invited me on when he started at FFG, apparently one of the other Devs suggested he bring me on to test DH stuff ), and doing my first year of post-grad law, to test Deathwatch, though I would have loved to have done so. I did playtest Final Sanction though

I'm personally hoping I might be able to sneak my way onto the Deathwatch playtest list for the supplements, but I'm probably going to be too busy for that. Still, at least then it means I have a surprise to look forward to when buying one of the RPG lines at least

MILLANDSON said:

I have one question connected to play-testing even if it's slightly off-topic: Isn't it a bit difficult for a GM to remember the cumulative effects of traits and talents that a NPC or creature (demons?) might have? For players it's usually fairly easy because they have built their single character that way and will know it. But for an NPC I find it easy to overlook/forget talents (speaking from experience with other RPGs with similar mechanics) if they have scores of it.

Sometimes it just seems easier to say "Ah, heck, I'll give the NPCS instead +5WS and +15BS and an aditional attack and be done with it". The Genestealers in FS were manageable but recently I noticed that the GS in Creatures Anathema have much more traits and talents.

Any experience wrt that during play-testing?

Alex

Not really, since I usually make copies of the table that gives the brief overview of the talents/traits, and after you've been playing the game constantly since Dark Heresy was released (though I only started playtesting when Rogue Trader came out), you get to learn what most of them do just from their short descriptions.

I'm just waiting for what people say about the starting equipment of the SoB in the new Blood of Martyrs book. People will always fly off the handle about basically nothing, without consideration for anything else.