The following is only half-polished, so feedback would be very welcome. I plan to drop these into the hands of one of my players by the weekend

WS: BS: S: T: AG: INT: PER: WP FEL: W: Move:
Wytchhound 25 - 20 20 30 15 40 20 - 6 4 / 8 / 12 / 24

Skills: Tracking; Awareness+10; Silent Move +10; Psyniscience;
Traits: Bestial; Quadruped; Size (Scrawny);

A wytchhound is a dog breed sensitive to the warp. Unfortunately, most breeds are quiet hypersensitive, which limits there skills for other purposes.

As a bond Familiar (see RH p. 149) the Wytchound counts as assistance for a psykers (or sorcerers) test for Psyniscience.

As an utility animal:
A skilled animal handler will without Psyniscience will profit from the wytchhounds unnatural senses. However, after the GM has roled for the hound, the handler has to pass a test for Animal Handling (-10) or will otherwise misinterpret the hound to be barking at shadows, mice or something else.

By the same mark, the benefit of assistance for Awareness (or the use of the creatures awareness instead) is only granted on a successful test for Animal Handling (-10) (even if hound is bounded to the handler as described above). The breed is hypersensitive and might be simply barking at god-emperor knows what!

Using him for tracking -10 as well as a track needs to be followed for a longer time (let´s say: an hour an up) since the dog is distracted much to easly.

Getting a wytchhound to be more orderly is a difficult task for an animal handler (see RH p. 141), but will make the handler skill test for interpreting its behaviour one step easier.

Price & Availability:
Suggestion: 100 thrones for young, untrained dog (or puppy). A trained hound might be bought for 300 thrones. Untrained dogs are rare; trained ones for sale are very rare.

Looks good in my opinion, though I would include some kind of drawback, as most things (and especially creatures) in 40K are dangerous and at least somehow double-edged. So, you could say the Wytchhound looks very vile (at least not like a normal hound), stinks awful, gives strange howls in response to detecting a Psyker (maybe even causing something like the 'weakening the veil' or 'warp howl' psychic power) or becomes sort of frenzied/uncontrollable when detecting a psyker by rolling a certain score (or a certain amount of degrees of success/failure).

Either that or make it a poodle. That is a pretty big drawback.

Hi Luthor,

"howling" or "whining" is indeed what I planned to be among the sounds..together with quiet some barking and snarling.

Otherwise, I do not plan to add further drawbacks (as long as the powerlevel is fine). I am not a big fan of adding drawbacks "per se" since it keeps players from picking things up.

Plus, this dog already comes with drawbacks compared to a normal dog (you need keen knowledge of the animals behaviour in order to tell a real threat apart from ...well, just something!).

The one thing I'd be careful of is continuity wise - if wytchhounds are so cheap and relatively (rare isn't *that* bad, really, in my opinion), why are they not *everywhere*? The biggest threat to pretty much anyone in the Imperium is Psykers; everyone knows it and everyone is terrified of it. If something like that is introduced that makes them just over 1/100th the cost of a Psy-Tracker and close enough effect, what organization would not want them? Seriously, you would think that every Inquisitor would have legions of these dogs; criminal elements would give life and limb to get a hold of a few of them, every noble would have at least one or two.

*Shrug*

Not saying *DONT* do it, but just saying, I wouldn't put them in as a one off thing. If its going to be introduced, I would have them be found in possession of people of power - or bump up the worth of them. Or both.

Gregorius21778 said:

Well yes, but that way it is not really distinguishable from a 'normal' hound. I simply fear it is too mundane and - as Rakiel said - would wonder why not every Inquisitor has at least one of them. In my opinion such a creature should at least be officially forbidden (Xenos Minoris) and should be indigenous on a single planet (Death/Feral World most probably) within the Calixis Sector. Capture and/or trade of these creatures should be forbidden and most are smuggled (e.g. by the Beast House) and sold to the highest bidder. With the exception of the more puritan Inquisitors, it would certainly be of widespread use within the Inqusitioin any way. I would simply make it more dangerous and difficult to handle or maybe it has to feed on the fresh flesh of psykers at least once in a while...

Rakiel & Luthor, I get the point. And your are right about it. I would either need to rise the price for the breed drastically or need to make the creature more unreliable. Or something else.

How about this: any time the creature encounters some manifestations of the warp, it does gain insanity points. Instead of getting human derrangements, it simplies get harder to handle (-10 for every 20 points of Insanity) and in every further warp encounter there is chance (Insanity Points in %) that the dog will go into a frenzy where even the handler will have a hard to time to put it back under controll (Animal Handlung -20).

In addition, I will change rarity and price. The creatures are (by now) only breed on worlds with a thin veil (like Dusk). Price double and rarity goes up one step if one is not around there.

EDIT: I could easily think of some worsening phenomenae, but my psyker would then never touch them...