Before you start shrieking hatred at me, please read my reasoning for what I'm doing below. I'm having my 6 players' characters very slowly mutate into becoming primarch-like beings.Your head's already exploded, hasn't it?

Here's why I want to do this, based on the fluff of the 40k universe. The emperor was created when all of the shamans on Earth decided to unify their souls into one being. I've read five of the Horus Heresy books, including the one where Horus looks into the past where the primarchs were created. The book indicates that not only is the emperor's soul special, but the primarchs' souls are made of some non-standard stuff too. If I'm reading it right, the book implies that the Emperor actually captured some of the raw power of the warp and used it to supercharge his 20 sons (21 including the twins). Otherwise, the primarchs simply would have been normal men. Now, if the souls of the primarchs are similar to the emperor's own, then why couldn't they reincarnate if they could escape the clutches of the ruinous powers?

The idea is that my group's characters are descendants of the primarchs. Why not? The emperor had kids too. Because of the resonance their souls generate with the primarchs' own, they can stand out in the warp as a beacon. On a fateful journey through the warp, the geller fields of the MIsericord failed and the primarchs' souls darted to attach themselves to the player characters' souls.

Before you jump to any conclusions, no, the characters do not start out special, nor does the soul fusion provoke any amazing transformations. Nor are the characters' personalities subsumed by the primarchs'. I'm planning to have the characters very gradually mutate throughout the sessions so that they only approach primarch-likeness at rank 16, with 45,000 experience points under their belts.

Does anyone have constructive criticism for this idea?

An interesting and tempting idea... I personally have thought of something similar with DW after reading the Horus Heresy books...

I can't give you any tips in it or anything, but just remember that the Primarchs are VERY different from normal Astartes let alone Humans.

I'm not going to say that this is a bad idea, because that's pretty harsh. For an idea to be completely devoid of merit is a rare thing, and what your describing is not that. Basically, you want your PC's to be special, and powerful, and that's a good thing. However, I do see some places in which your idea could do more harm than good...

The first thing that came to mind was that this concept, of the PC's being something approximate to unique and special individuals, who have enough power to singlehandedly make a change in the galaxy, rouns counter in many ways to the grimdark feel that the game attempts to establish. You AREN'T special in the far future, and your tiny, miniscule contribution generates as much change as a of water in the oceans of a thousand worlds.

Now, this grimdark feel may not be a focus in your games. That's fine. If you're not concerned with preserving it, then this isn't a problem. If it is, though, you'll need to take steps to make sure the setting preserves the feel once they become capable of being players on the galactic stage. To that end, some suggestions:

-DON'T LET THEM BECOME PLAYERS ON THE GALACTIC STAGE! The reincarnatied primarchs, if legitimate would be some of the most important people in the entire Imperium. They would be flown to Terra, used as tools for galactic politics. Given vast amounts of power and authority. While this might make a good story, it'd be a little unwieldy to do as an RPG.

-MANAGE YOUR INFORMATION. Carefully consider when you want the pc's to become aware of their abilities, if at all. Also consider the fact that, unless they have proof, there is a very slim chance anyone will believe them. This will go a long way towards preventing the previous situation. A good game theme could be developed if they are branded as heretics for their assertations and pursued by the inquisition.

-FINALLY... Invest a lot of time in crafting the exact nature between the PC's and the souls of the primarchs. This goes beyond what bonuses they give, whether or not the bonuses are different, and so on. Are the primarchs fused with the characters' souls or are they just riders, temporary or permenant? Either could cause metaporphosis. Why did the primarchs reincarnate? Was it just to get out of the warp? Or did they return to combat a specific evil? Why did they choose the PC's? Do they have a separate consciousness? Can they communicate with the PC's, if so? These are the kind of questiosn you need to be asking.

If it was me, I would have the primarchs return from the warp to combat a specific threat they have precognitive knowledge of. They attatch themselves to the bodies of 6 individuals in order to lend them the power to combat this coming doom. I'd have the PC's be present for a highly localized warp event in which the primarchs emerge, and join themselves to the soul that best suits their temperment. (To this end, I'd carefully pick one for each PC) You could go two routes, one being that the primarchs intend to steer the characters towards the threat, the other being that they came simply to lend strength to those who are destined to face it.

I'd make the primarchs separate, semi-conscious entities, who are most of the time dormant, but under certain circumstances, can become fully aware and communicate with the PC's. Exactly when this first happens is up to you, but I'd wait a while, at least until the PC's begin to notice some change in their abilities. When the PC's find out, or shortly thereafter, I would have the Inquisition get wind of it and start chasing them. The PC's then have to deal with fulfilling the primarchs' expectations, while also keeping the inquisition off their back.

That's me. It's your game. Last piece of advice, scale the threats to reflect the unique nature of the heroes. If you're giving them additional power, give them additional challenge. The game should still feel deadly.

Currently my players have no idea what is happening to their characters, they're stuck inside the Misericord for another week transiting the warp while continuing to mutate at a frightening pace. The mutations are random, and are due to the fact that everyone got doused with raw warp energy shortly after the geller field failed.

I like the idea of a localized warp surge into reality providing an entry point for the primarch souls. The primarchs notice the breach in the wall between planes of existence, and make a last desperate effort escape the individual hells they've been trapped in. They succeed by resisting the surprised ruinous ones together, then fuse with the characters' souls to escape the warp-hells permanently. Once the characters back into real space, the mutations will reverse as the new soul made from the old ones anchors itself to reality. As the characters gain experience, new mutations occurring according to a theme will occur at a steady pace, proportional to their gain of experience points. I have absolutely no intention of letting my players know what's up.

The souls of the primarchs have fused entirely, permanently, with the souls of the characters. They aren't separately sentient, they only influence the behavior of the characters somewhat. I've no intention to railroad them. I had already planned to have the souls bond based on personality, not physiology. For instance, Sanguinius was even-tempered most of the time, right up till he went completely berserk in battle. He had golden hair, a lean body, fair skin, gigantic white wings, and no blemishes. I'd planned on bonding his soul with Strang's soul, a guardsman from Dusk. Strang is gigantic, heavily muscled, black haired, black eyed, pale, and has ritual piercings, tattoos, and scarification. However, he's stoic, even tempered in most situations, and a frenzied monster in combat. I'm going to ask that the player roleplay his character as being slightly more relaxed and friendly once, and then let him do whatever.

The mutations will be so gradual, and require so much experience to acquire, that by the time the characters are close to being primarchs they'll be rank 16 inquisitors and what have you. At that level of play, you're supposed to be important, you're a seasoned, wily inquisitor with plenty of reputation and resources. The characters will still be squashy, interchangeable foot soldiers until at least rank 7. Assuming they earn an average of 350xp per session, it'll take them 20 sessions to get to that point, 20 weeks in real time. At that point, they'll have earned characters that aren't insignificant.

I'm going to give the players absolutely no hints as to what's going on, they're going to have to have their characters research it independently of any mission objectives in game. If they start parading around their mutations or claiming they're the saviors of the galaxy, they're going to be in trouble because their master is a puritan ordo hereticus inquisitor. And of course the threats will be scaled, this is dark heresy, after all.

Your idea sounds interesting and looks to be fairly balanced considering you "leveling" their mutations at a gradual pace. Also, it seems it could add a lot of flavor and intrigue to your campaign too (and maybe an extra advantage or two that could come in handy with the PC's). Just remeber the Imperium's overall view of those people who "sport" mutations.

When I say "sport" mutations, I'm speaking of their ability to become inquisitors (should have included this above, oops)

It can be a difficult balancing act to plan a predetermined destination for your players characters without their knowledge or, by implication, their consent. What you are doing here is making a significant investment in the individual characters, and this can go wrong in at least two ways;

Firstly your players might have different ideas about where they want their characters to go or how they want them to develop. Players enjoy being in control of their own characters. Right now, in your position, with characters beginning to mutate, I would anticipate players either resigning their characters or burning fate points to escape the mutations. "An agent of the Inquisition with a mutation? No thanks. I'll resign him and start another character without one". At the very least you will have made it difficult to square their long term survival to the indicated experience level, because the life expectancy of a mutant in the Imperium is not great.

Secondly the characters themselves seem destined to endure a lot of missions before the investment starts to pay off. Are you sure the characters are going to survive all those missions? Unless they are going to be dull as dishwater or you are going to fix the dice, personal risk is inevitable. Do you have a Plan B if one, two or all of the characters die because of bad calls and/or bad dice rolls? Fate points don't last forever.

These risks arise any time the Gm is tempted to write a book rather than a roleplay. My advice is to abandon the long plan because so many things can and probably will make it go wrong. Concentrate instead on making the individual missions fun. The most memorable episodes in roleplay usually come from the little things that work well, rather than the epic arc of storytelling, which probably means more to you as a Gm than the players anyway.

I would think very carefully before trying to prescript something character based into a campaign which you imply will last for some 3 years (350 xp a week I think you said and 45,000 being the goal). Assuming they all last that long, after 3 years of real time play your players will probably be rather protective of their characters. I would not guarantee they will all take kindly to the revelation that their souls have been mandatorily fused with a primarch since practically the first session - or that they will leap to embrace any wholesale changes in career direction, etc.

Does this forum seriously have no quote functions?

DavidJones said:

To the contrary, the players are absolutely gung-ho about the mutations. They're immensely enjoying the insane stuff that's happening. As to their long-term survivability, you have a point, so here's what I'll do: The characters are manifesting extremely subtle mutations right now, and will continue to do so until they're inquisitors and throne agents. Past that point, the mutations still aren't exactly what Imperial authorities consider to be true mutations, as the primarchs themselves were still fundamentally human. Rogal Dorn was basically just a 3 meter tall human to all outside appearances. Sanguinius had wings, Magnus had one big eye and red skin, and Leman Russ was extremely hairy, but these are the most extreme cases. Keeping in mind that the mutations will be more noticeable, but just as gradual, an inquisitor and his cadre should be able to get enough respect and pull enough strings to keep themselves safe and in the Lord Inquisitor's good graces.

DavidJones said:

Our campaign will probably last the rest of the school year, and maybe through the summer, but I'm not sure. However, I won't mind if it's cut short. I don't intend to pull punches, and I'll be scaling up the opposition they'll be facing, so no, I don't know that they'll survive all the missions. I've got seven canonically dead primarch souls to use in the event of a character death, and six more I can justify using. The new primarch-scions will be pulled into the party by Chaos manipulation, if the players try to figure out how all these unusual individuals bumped into each other.

It seems like you may have drawn the wrong conclusions about what I'm doing. There is no long plan. The characters are going to be sent on missions, as normal for acolytes, and there isn't going to be some fated role for them, they're just going to be gradually mutating and how they deal with that is up to them. The party is going to be drawing some attention from entities in the warp, but because of how subtle their transformations are, said beings aren't going to be hounding and haunting them. The narrative is still going to be in the hands of the party, the party is simply going to be mutating gradually in a way that is at first unnoticeable. Furthermore, the nature of the mutations will depend on the personalities of the characters, not my fiat.

I say go for it, with everything above in mind. You're playing to have fun, and what could be more fun that obtaining the powers of a god? It'll force you to be crafty when they want to start abusing their powers, but it also lets you amp up the action and have them fight Greater Daemons and stuff. Cool idea!

I haven't read a great deal of the comments. As someone whose followed 40k, penned up research papers of its works, somehow managed to make the Star Child once more a part of lore (Whether you call it the Thorian Reincarnation or the Star Child, it is all the same), and has spent a large portion of his life following this, I will say something: There is precedence.

In Space Marine (and, to a lesser extent, the Inquisition War Trilogy), Rogal Dorn speaks directly to certain blessed Space Marines. In addition, as you pointed out, the soul of a Primarch is a powerful thing. I'll also cite Chaos Child where Magnus is able to communicate to his Thousand Sons directly through sorcery.

Interesting notes:

1. The Emperor is in fact the final evolution of mankind once man has gained total control over his psychic powers.

2. The Primarchs were clones of the Emperor. Each one had his genetic makeup altered (dominant/recessive genes turned on/off) and therefore they were more like... a different/imperfect version of the Emperor.

3. In this case, my own personal pet theory is that because the Primarchs had the genes of the Emperor they had similar abilities to interact with the warp. Therefore, they are able to draw great amounts of power from the warp. Hence, their "souls" would be made of sterner stuff

4. There is a chance that someone, say Fabius Bile, could have stolen a lock of hair from the Emperor and spliced its decaying genetics into the people of an area. The random mutations might throw up something Primarch-esque

5. Morgan, Matriarch of the Horusians (She is the last living of the original 4 Inquisitor according to lore) would try to recreate the Primarchs by any means necessary and has power beyond comprehension (she lives in the Eye of Terror outside the notice of the Chaos Gods, has a whole group of ancient Inquisitors following her, has made use of sorcery/xenos devices/etc. that would make Rykehuss's head explode, and she's crafty like nothing else). Maybe your PCs are a result of her experiments?

I'd say go for it Kerikath. If you want to incorporate some more stuff: The Emperor has gone schizoid while he's been on the Golden Throne, dividing up his mind into multiple personalities to try and "be everywhere at once" along with becoming a true, heartless, control freak (everything must have order; this is because he drove all the kindness/compassion/things that made him human out of his body when he slew Horus so he wouldn't have anything to stop him from anihilating him on every level). Ian Watson had that in Draco/Inquisitor. Imagine what would happen if your characters caught his undivided attention.

Ok, I have to confess i didnt read every word of this thread... sorry I'm lazy.

I have done something similar to what your doing in a D&D game, different setting, same basic idea. I had the players eventually learn that they had the soul of a demigod in them. This gave them power and ability over the normal but also had downsides. That was the most important balancing side was to have restrictions and possible adverse effects or the players will math hammer the abilities to hell and back. The other really interesting thing i learned was that as i gave more and more information on the original personalities of the souls inhabiting them they started turning their characters in those directions. All but one anyway, but that was a special situation, he came into the campaign 2/3 through. Anyway, by the end one of my players had managed to completely flip his characters personality to almost mirror the attached soul, another had taken the long off a cliff to do the same, although his character and the soul attached somewhat similar anyway. The other character had also made subtle but multiple changes in her actions to bring her closer to the attached souls personality. And the players never had any real interaction directly with the personalities of the soul, I just gave them the occasional story and ideas/concepts about how they had acted. This game lasted 18 sessions. between 5 and 8 hrs a session, once every 2 weeks. There was a lot of game time for them to really embrace their characters. It was a lot of fun and really interesting to see it happen.

What the point I'm trying to say here is that I think its a good Idea, but be careful how you do it, make sure the characters gain a slow understanding of it, give each change time to sink in and make sure there are requirements and possible side effects if they push too hard. one the most fun things is to allow players to find the edge of their abilities by discovering the consequences. It gives them a real feeling of accomplishment every time they use the abilities without messing it all up and also gives them pause about using them in the first place since they know they have a side effect.

This is a bad idea, it was a bad idea when you brought it to /tg/ and it's still a bad idea that you bring it to us now.

You're still going to go ahead with it despite what others tell you, no use telling you otherwise now, just keep on bein' special then, man.

Hmmmm a thought popped to mind. In case you're fearful of tampering with the canon setting too much (these beings would attract a LOT of attention from everyone), why not give it a twist.

Have the characters slowly find out details that makes them thínk that they're descendants/incarnations of the primarch but instead of it being pure and divine as they think, let it be the machinations of chaos. It seems like a perfect thing that Tzcheench would want to pull off. Gradual mutations, visions of perfection, eveolving into the pinnacle of humanity, only to have it turn sour and have the characters trying to claw back their way to humanity or making the hard choice of heroic sacrifice. It would make an amazing apotheosis to a long campaign... Be tempted by chaos and the promise of daemon-princehood or defy the ruinous power at great personal cost but saving the galaxy from an even greater horror.

I like your idea, just be careful with giving the players too much power. Sometimes is more easy to kill themselves with it.

Maybe they have the genes of a primarch in them, because they are its descendants, but for becoming like them, they need help. Remember that if the Ruinous Powers know that they have Primarch level potential, but not the fortitude or " blessing" for mastering their powers, they are prime candidates for possesion and corruption. Also , i believe they will clash directly with the Ecchlesiarchy, because such thing as a Primarch reborn is difficult to explain, let alone to accept for them. Is as the Sensei, they are outcasts, since they are in a way outside the norm and customs of the Imperium.

Zamnil Blackaxe said:

Well that's certainly helpful, Zamnil

On to the OP: It's not a bad idea in an of itself. Giving players 'godlike' powers is rarely game-breaking provided the threats increase accordingly in order to keep the overall gameplay fun and challenging.

Just so long as your aware of the impact that doing this would have on the established setting. Not sure how hardcore you or your players are in the 40k universe, but if they're very into it you'll just need to be careful to try and treat their situation accordingly. Given existing fluff, things that others have mentioned like being flown to terra, etc, would all be likely. While the mutations may be subtle, a good inquisitor will keep an eye on his/her acolytes and will likely notice something is up. An Inquisitor with powerful psychic powers is likely going to figure out something is amiss. Any 'sequel' games in the setting will either need to ignore what you've done, or fully incorporate the impact - this is earthshaking at the galactic level.

The Baron said:

The concept that the Emperor is the pinnacle of human evolution has been stated by GW and made canon? Also, weren't the primarchs' souls infused with raw warp power, instead of being uber-shamans like the emperor?

The Baron said:

I can't find Mogran in the Lexicanum, and Google isn't pulling up anything about her. Where is she from? Also, I don't see any benefit story-wise or roleplay-wise to having the emperor be watching over the PCs.

A lot of you seem to think that I'm godmoding the PCs, but I'm not. Here are some brief descriptions of the characters and the mutations they currently have at 1250xp.

Father Castus- Ex-imperial guard cleric. Loud, manipulative, and often passive aggressive. His new trait is Know Them by Their Deeds, which lets him make a scrutiny test once per day to determine one personality trait an NPC has, regardless of any deception or acting. This gives vague information which Castus could use to manipulate someone rather well, but it's not specific enough to provide blackmail material or help solve mysteries.

Drake- Moritat initiate. Often quiet, proactive in solving problems, and a fanatical servant of the God-Emperor. Face of Terror gives him a temporary fear rating of 1 whenever he manages to kill an opponent I deem overmatches him, or kills an equal opponent with one attack. This is quite handy in battle, but doesn't often come up outside of it, and doesn't trigger too often. The fear rating lifts if he wants it to, or if he goes WP bonus x 5 minutes without combat.

Ignatius D.- Traditionalist techpriest who is driven by the desire to achieve perfection. Perfection lets him upgrade the quality of equipment at a faster rate, so long as it isn't an augmetic that's already part of him. He can't create new tech that's better than anything else, and he'll need to expend money and unusual resources proportional to the item he's upgrading.

Strang- Stoic, suspicious, story telling guardsman from Dusk who carries a pet glow slug around with him. Juggernaut gives him a +10 bonus to resist conditions that would hinder his movement or force him to be moved, such as being stunned, knocked unconscious, fear, or pinning . This is handy in many combat situations, but a +10 bonus isn't amazing.

Narla- Inconspicuous, convincing, tech-savvy scum. Disruptive either gives her a +10 bonus to attacks with weapons that cause hindering conditions, or leverages a -10 penalty on enemies. This includes hallucinogen grenades, flamers, and shock weapons. It's handy, and has wide combat applications, but the bonus is modest.

Solomon- Powerful, cautious, potentially bloodthirsty imperial psyker. Power Overwhelming gives him the ability to supercharge his psychic abilites, but at an increased risk of Perils of the Warp. The player isn't ignorant of how incredibly dangerous that table is, so he knows not to abuse it.

Zamnil Blackaxe said:

Troll/10. Insert picture of the argument pyramid; arrow pointing from your avatar to the Low Tier. Not **** Tier because there wasn't an accusation of hurt.

I guess I need to reiterate that the only way the players are going to find out about this is if they actually choose to pursue the knowledge. There won't be any hints whatsoever. At this point I've also decided not to have the primarchs' souls influence the personalities of the PCs at all. All the traits I've given are based on the ways the Pcs have been played so far. Solomon's is especially fitting, because his player is roleplaying the struggle between reaching for the power necessary to serve the Imperium, and staying away from madness and destruction. I think I should note that I just left this forum alone for a while because I hadn't seen anyone comment here in two days, this is surprising.

What would be useful now is if I could get some help stating up what a primarch's raw attributes are like.

A primarch as in a natural state, living primarch?

You're talking 70s-90s statwise (or 100 if you feel that's even possible), with unnatural characteristics for probably half the statline or more. Take a look at the SM profiles (stats from 40-50 baseline with x2 unnatural strength and toughness), and figure the primarchs are their dads. The reason SMs have their powers is because of their genetic link to the primarchs. Check the lexicanum for details of the organs that are implanted into space marines and what the do. These are the types of abilities that will be present, and amplified, in a primarch. Some have some potent psychic powers as well.

That's why some consider what you're doing giving god powers to characters- the primarchs were amazing, and would outshine even the level caps for any of the existing game lines. Consider a warrior with more experience, better training, better equipment, and more raw talent than any man alive. They weren't killed by the hordes of aliens on the battlefields, they were only brought low by each other - and even then they got Chaos to back them up.

Meph said:

Of all the posts I've seen, I think I like this one best.

Why?

It's the one idea that keeps the players from BEING the new group of players on the galactic stage. With their abilities & potential, they could easily be manipulated to aid the wrong faction somewhere, even if they are Primarch. A planned plot by one of the ruinous powers (no, NO! don't mention names, they'll hear) is much more believeable and consistent with the WH 40k universe.

Charmander said:

Yes.

Charmander said:

In the Deathwatch core rulebook, the baseline stats for deathwatch marines are 30 + 2d10. This is taking into account the fact that, according to the book, every deathwatch marine has already faced and defeated countless foes of the emperor, and been selected for the deathwatch for being especially capable. If you think about it, starting deathwatch marines are to starting regular space marines what starting Rogue Trader characters are to starting Dark Heresy Characters. This means that a starting regular space marine would probably have baseline stats of 25+2d10, only 5 above a normal human's. I've brought this up because in order to figure out what kind of stat adjustments a primarch would have, it's necessary to deduct any bonuses from experience. I think baseline stats of 70 + 2d10 for a primarch are an exaggeration. Primarch were in fact brought down by non-primarchs, Horus was almost killed by an enchanted blade and Rogal Dorn was killed fighting chaos space marines. Perhaps a baseline along the lines of 50 + 2d10 would be more appropriate. Of course, I would have to include various traits that mimic and surpass the glands all space marines are implanted with. And I think unnatural strength and toughness x 3 would make sense.

I'd like to respond to more comments, but I'm rather busy right now.

Kerikath said:

Why would a primarch deduct experience bonus? I guess I can see it's the soul and power, but not the memories in full. But to clarify, I wasn't saying 70+2d10, I was saying you'd end up with stats somewhere around 70-90, given rolls, baseline, bonuses, etc. 50 +2d10 doesn't seem bad, and Unnatural traits of x3 actually feels close. I'd also consider any 'specialits' primarchs you're using to have other traits as unnatural as well.

And sure, it was kind of possible to take down a primarch without being a primarch, but the vast majority were either slain/wounded by other primarchs, killed by the emperor, killed by horus, or vanished. But in those same stories of near deaths, didn't they have the Emperor nearly choked to death by an orc? Really, an orc? The guy that guides ships through the warp, is theoretically been alive for over 41M, constructed a giant throne around a webway gate could be choked out by an orc?