Aureus said:

This is ultimately what my group agreed to for simplicity's sake. We just didn't want to bother with dealing with rules conversions and a myriad of possible imbalances. It's not canon, but we're playing this game to have fun. I'd rather have my group laughing and carrying on about how they took down that Ork Warboss rather than them bickering about whether Faith powers are unbalancing the game or one player being too weak compared to the others. No one in my group is bothered by me hand waving it. I'm sure that there are some who would be, but whatever. It works for us.

MILLANDSON said:

Technicalities, really. InqHB and DH were both written pretty much by same people (then under company name "Black Industries" now under FFG). They are still pretty much different people that work in GW writing tabletop fluff. And these two versions of "official truth" don't match so you can always pick'n'choose the version you like and its still as much "canon" as the other one. At the moment there are two official truths about SoBs and thats just the way it is.

The tabletop version (last republished 2010 as PDF) makes Sisters pretty much comparable to Astartes in armor, weapons, equipments and skills but not size, raw physical strenght and toughness. The Dark Heresy version (as published in InqHB) makes Sisters considerably inferior to Astartes in each and every way, including having considerably less powerfull armor, weapons and equipment.

Polaria said:

Except they have different developers who would have done it differently, if the comments from the devs about redoing Sisters of Battle in Blood of Martyrs is any indication. Plus, only a couple of the writers were the same, the rest are different, and without us knowing who wrote the IHB Sisters, we won't know if he/she is still writing for the RPG.

Mack Martin said he would have done it differently than it was done in the IH.

He is doing the first book Blood of Martyrs, so after that then you could say stuff about it.

Either way, you could never make everyone happy, no matter who wrote the book. Also, I believe SoB get power armor at rank 1. I also believe it will be "balanced".

MILLANDSON said:

If memory serves, Andy Hall (formerly in charge of GW's Specialist Games division, currently a staff writer for White Dwarf) wrote the Sisters of Battle rules in The Inquisitor's Handbook; at least, when I spoke to him at Games Day while the Dark Heresy playtest was still going on, that's what he said he was working on.

I really think that first, you would need to establish, in your game, why a single Sister of Battle was accompanying the Deathwatch. I'm not saying that it is impossible, but that so much of what would "need" to happen should follow from answering that question. Sisters normally operate within the hierarchy of the Ecclesiarchy, or under the auspices of an Inquistior, so the fact that she is operating with the Deathwatch (which functions independently of the Ordo Xenos itself) is itself a story needing to be told.

If I were to do it, I would instead consider making an Inquisitor (or Interrogator) character of roughly the same power level, or an Imperial Assassin, or a female Adeptus Mechanicus, just because those all function reasonably independently of any particular organization. The other thing to realize is that short of an Imperial Assassin, most of these option are going to be imbalanced relative to a Space Marine. They are probably going to have many more resources, or many more skills, but much less in the way of direct combat power. Even the Assassin is a different type of combat monster from the Marine (less staying power, more killing power).

If, on the other hand, she wants to play something that works exactly like a Marine, then play a marine. If someone wants to play an Elf in D&D, but use all the rules for Half-Orcs, they want to play a Half-Orc, in my book.

Of course, you are free to do anything you want in your own game universe, but for me, female Marines are right up there with "I want to play a friendly Ork who was raised by humans" or "I want to play an Eldar Aspect Warrior who belongs to the Deathwatch". Destructive to the setting, in my own opinion, but hey, unless you tell us, we'll never know what goes on in your own games.

There are myriad ways in which a SoB could be incorporated. One of which is the massive macguffin that is the Omega Vault.

The vault opens to find a SoB in suspended animation and in full Astartes Battle armor. Her armor is painted black, an ancient unknown Chapter marking on her right shoulder. On her polished silver left shoulder resides the mark of the Deathwatch.

No explanation necessary.

CrispyRat said:

No explanation necessary?

"Sister, why were you put into Stasis?"

"Why do you have a Chapter Marking, rather than an Order?"

"What Order do you hail from?"

"How did you come to join the Deathwatch, especially as it is an organization of Space Marines?"

Sure, the Battle Sister could be ignorant of all of these things, but then you have to have a player willing to play a character who has a marked degree of amnesia about her past. You also have to have a group, or a situation, where they are willing to take a completely unknown quantity along on important missions.

Heck, even if the Sister pops out of stasis and has a bunch of good answers, I can still see the question of "Why is she accompanying us, rather than acting as an advisor? The Sororitas are not privy to the internal workings of the Deathwatch, or of my Chapter, and I am not willing to bring her into my confidence."

I'm not saying that you can't (or shouldn't) resolve all of these concerns. I think it would probably be an awesome and interesting story. However, you've also taken the focus off the Deathwatch proper and put a lot of it on this one Sister in this one situation. You can take any number of Marines, throw them together on a Kill Team, and run with it. They can develop as you go, as there is already a ready made backstory for them all being there. If you want to throw a Sister of Battle into the Deathwatch, you have to make sure to develop a particular backstory for her.

I might suggest the Sister might be from the Order Dialogous, seconded to the Inquistion, and tasked to assist the Deathwatch, due to her fluency with one or more xenos languages. Thus, she would be a skilled and well-equipped Battle Sister (as she has the patronage of an Inquisitor), and she would have unique skills (as she would speak languages that none of the Marines were capable of speaking initially). Thus, she's not a hindrance, and she has irreplaceable, unique skills, like a Librarian or Tech-Marine. Heck, that sounds like a fun idea to me right now!

Brother-Sergeant Cloten said:

Your knowledge of WH lore far (!) surpasses my own here. What I meant by no explanation necessary was the vault is already an enigma and anything that comes out of it will be welcomed by the DW. Of course the character would have a backstory (I would prefer amnesia - as it is easy... but kinda cheap), but every character does and while the Sister's backstory would be different from everyone elses, the character would be accepted. This doesn't seem all that difficult is all.

Your analogy about the Orc character and the Sister is correct. They will both stick out a bit. Drag attention a bit. But, with a group which is willing to let it go, could be a lot of fun... especially if it means your friend can actually play because his wife/significant other is mollified by the fact she doesn't have to play a male... or something.

CrispyRat said:

Oh, yeah. I'm certainly not suggesting that you shouldn't include a Sister in the group. It's just that the "quick generation" system at the front of the book (Roll Stats, pick Chapter, Demeanor, and Specialty, spend XP and Req) isn't going to be sufficient for a Sister. You need to devote a little more thought into slotting her into the group, whereas you could really have 5 random people meet up at a gaming store with pregenerated Battle Brothers with 14,000 xp and 45 Req and start playing.

I've been considering opening the option up to play a SoB in my DW game to one of the players. It would take work, but not as much as you might think.

For one, build the sister normally, then give her the 14k XP she is getting. This should bring her up to where she is just going into Ascension (probably a crusader, but if they want something else you can work with that).

The big difference now should be gear. Why? Because odds are for the big 3 stats (Weapon Skill, Ballistic Skill, and Toughness) she'll have a 30+ at creation. Since you roll 2D10, and the default in DH seems to be +20. 14000 XP is more than enough to get all of those into the 40+ range. She'll be lacking in the Strength and Toughness range, but gets other perks to make up for that. Such as breadth of skill, and all those wonderful Pure Faith abilities.

Gear wise, Sisters that do front line work (TT) are given equivalent equipment to space marines. So give them Astartes Armor for stats. Give them the Astartes Bolter weapon damages (custom gun to fire the larger rounds is all it really needs here fluff wise). They don't get the benefits of the space marine upgrades, meaning they'll count as hulking in the armor. but they also can have a Dodge of +20 to +30 which should cancel it out fairly nicely, and bought at much lower XP costs 'back in the day'.

The last thing I'd probably need to do is modify pure faith. Which can be done just by making it work different in Squad and Solomode. In Solo mode, the pure faith abilities that require you spend a fate point can now be done at will. In squad mode they count the same as normal. In squad mode, the Sister can only benefit from generic Astartes squad mode abilities, unless the leader is a Tactical marine (as normal)

Now, the sister will have issues with not absorbing as much damage. The player will just have to be aware of this, but they also bring a lot more to the table. As a final nod to this, I'd let them roll on the Space Marine fate point table, with a +1 added to the result (since their abilities are based off of Fate more than the SM).

As far as story reasons for why? There are tons of them, if nothing else a Sister Oblatia could very easily team up with a Deathwatch Kill Team in her quest to die gloriously for the sins of others.

Siranna said:

Actually, it does matter, or it wouldn't be an issue. If gender roles didn't matter as they actually do (because people generally work and play to their strengths) then this whole discussion is moot.

In all my reading of the Space Marines, one thing I can't find is how precisely the process of becoming a Space Marine affects sexual attraction and behavior. I realize it renders them sterile (the hormones alone would do it), but if at all possible you do not want to lose the competitive and aggressive drive males intuitively have. So I have no reason to believe that while it may make a Space Marine sterile it should not affect how he approaches the opposite gender, unless the hypnotherapy covers that too, but I don't know where it says that. It is through ritual, faith, and a devotion to the Emperor and his Chapter that helps keep the Marine's behavior in check, which gives them more of a reason to employ Chaplains and other specialists who help keep the Space Marines in proper military bearing and their focus squarely on where it needs to be at all times. Seems to me that some Chapters would have no problem sending their Space Marines out for some R&R and some female companionship from time to time, like the Space Wolves.

(One of the ideas my group is exploring is what if the process failed to render a Space Marine sterile? I can imagine how that might cause a stir among the Chapter itself, and probably call the poor guy a mutant.)

The only issue I'd have with a Sister of Battle finding herself among a Kill-Team. What is she doing there? Was she found by the Kill Team during a mission, or assigned?

You could go the route of trying to make the Sister of Battle equal to the Kill-Team by giving her 13,000xp to spend, but then that returns us to the same question: What is she doing assigned to a Kill-Team? A woman like that has no business being in a Kill-Team when she should be leading her entire Order into battle. She has authority; she quite literally possesses more authority than the Space Marines she's found herself with. If she has no Sisters to lead, well, what happened? How did she lose them? Did she merely get separated or were they all ambushed and killed?

Seems to me that a Kill-Team would be assigned to her as a supplement for her forces. They're out there to destroy a major heretical cult that happens to be in league with an alien force, such as the Ork or the Dark Eldar. She'd go with the Kill-Team to do a reconnoiter and a crippling raid or two, with orders to the rest of her Sisters to go in guns blazing (literally) if they don't come back in X amount of time.

Wayfinder said:

As I understand your statements above, you're defining sterility different from something like chem-geld (which I agree with, even if I don't totally buy the fact that all SMs would be rendered sterile due to gene therapy- something tells me if the things they stuffed SMs with had similar side effects to modern medicines - sterioids or otherwise - things would be bery different, but that is a side rant).

Given that assumption, how would any of the others in the chapter KNOW that he was not sterile? Would the apothecaries be taking sperm samples of chapter members to be certain all of them are dead or MIA? Would it be a hormonal blance test? But either way, I'd expect behavior and reliability in action to be a greater factor for whether or not he was accepted in their club. If he was for some reason an outcast, I doubt he'd last long enough to show up in the Deathwatch.

Our Sister of Battle made the marines look like chumps, She was skilled. As in skills that Kill it ! Bots dont get for some time Nearly all her gear was mastercrafted or hand tooled from a tech-priest. plus with the fact 80% of the group droped old toons to play Deathwatch. She was left to Acend and runs the show. Lots of the group buckled at that but most know the lore and get why this little female runs the show. Sure she stands behind the wall of Meat , at horde time but after the one round it takes. She is top dog on the Elite monsters "mastercrafted multi-melta" that a marine cannot req. till several games. The one player even enjoyed his Cleric ranting to the masses' to do as "he said " till the deathwatch had forgotten to requisition teleport homers. Me thinks this was some conspiracy on the Deathwatch tired of being summoned to the " loud mouth big britches wearing Cleric" aid .

We had one of our female players her marine and pick up an equally experienced Arch Militant from RT, and whilst she can dish out just as much damage, she nearly got exploderised by the first Stealthsuit elite to shoot at her. I think ultimately, the only way to cater to players who refuse to play a male marine is to upgrade, equip and generally buff other characters so much that they might as well just play a space marine anyway for all the character and roleplaying options the buffed character will give them.

Has anyone considered the possibility of playing a hybrid of Dark Heresy and Deathwatch , with an all-Sisters of Battle Killteam carrying out similar missions to Deathwatch , but on behalf of the Ordo Hereticus? You wouldn't have nearly the starting power level of DW , but that's not necessarily a bad thing...

Sisters of Battle can truely be quite a force to recon with. If you think that an ascended SOB is not on par with a Deathwatch Marine I think you might want to take another look at the Powers of Faith portion. An Ascended SOB is basicly as incorruptable as possible and the damage they can do to warp entities is pretty extreme.

As far as them fighting along side deathwatch, they would have to be part of a Cabal. SOB are associated with the Ordo Hereticus, and the Deathwatch is the chamber militant of the Ordo Xenos and typically if two Ordos are working together it is in the form a cabal. For instance I have a Deathwatch campaign going and we added a Grey Knight who is in the same Cabal, that being the Tyrant Star Cabal from the DH calaxis sector mentioned in most of the DH material out there.

Nimon said:

For me at least, any threat that warrants specialists from all 3 Ordos is a threat with only one solution - Exterminatus.

ItsUncertainWho said:

Hate to poke holes in your point but the Space Marines dont take children, they take young adults, they need a fully developed body to adjust to the implants. While some do come from death worlds, they do tend to come from all the different planet types. However you are partly right they they prefer to recruit from harsh worlds.

I would say a SoB is ideal for a DW game, while they lack the hardiness of the Space Marines they come with a bucket load of skills the Astartes dont, Failing that the Kill Team could be joined by an Ordo Xeno Inquistor, whos knowledge of the xeno will dwarf the marines and has access to other wargear the Astartes do not.

cptmachine said:

All current fluff points to 8-12 being prime recruiting age, with 14 being on the verge of too old to survive the process. The Horus Heresy novels have gone into this in several books. The latest, "The First Heretic", has the main character remembering when the space marines came for him as a young boy.

Have to find what it is the Exterminatus first right? Which is what the inquisition does is investigate, the imperial navy can decimate a planet it just needs to know the target.

It is rather easy to tie in a non Marine Character into DW as long as the character is tied to the Imperium or the Inquistion. For example I have a guardsman in my game who is starting at rank 7. He is a veteran and asissts in training the 117 Lordstrom PDF.To make sense why he sticks with the Kill team rather than be brain wiped is I made him a Blunt or blank, or Pariah etc.. He is an untouchable and therefore has a use to the Kill team. Sisters of battle could in a likewise fashion be bodyguards of an inquisitor who earlier called for help and needs to find their leader. Let us say for example in Final Sanction, they find said inquisitor dead, she refuses to leave their side till she avenges them etc... For slapping in a rogue trader pc you just say they are crew of or are the RT himself that provides the marines with mode of transport. For whatever reason for advice or for need to make sure they are getting a return in their investments accompany the marines. However break the canon all you like, it is your story. Things to keep in mind, how do they interact with the group, do they gain benefits of kill team mode? Who knows...

Terminus_Est said:

Good examples, It is really alot easier then people are trying to make it out,

Make an inquisitor, slap him in the heavy PA from Ascension, give 'em a SM bolter, good to go. Make it a her if that is the issue. Hell, make a SOB and give her a SM bolter. Will still be squishy, but will at least contribute her fair share of firepower.

I was never of the opinion that it was hard to include characters from different systems, merely that in my mind it is both unnecessary and fairly canon breaking.