I am going to be blunt about the only one in our small conclave of characters who wants to be the Inquisitor...he is an assassin yet shows off in all of the wrong moments with attempted deeds at "ninja" moves/tactics that usually have him bringing a cultist war party or a gang of under-hive scum after falling on his ass. His definition of interrogation is usually hitting on any/all female NPC's within area, even Sisters of Battle and in actual interrogation, ****. He usually can't read inbetween the lines with conversations and has the intelligence/tactical ability of a Obscura addict...suggestions on what I should do?

He might want to be the God-Emperor instead, but he's equally unsuited to that role. Let him fail.

Leaping straight from showy assassin to Inquisitor would be a helluva leap anyway. If he really wants to be an Inquisitor, he's going to have to learn, in game and out of game, what is expected of him... and the best way I can think of for that to occur would be to allow him a chance as an Interrogator, seconded to a REAL inquisitor who can teach him the gravity and self-control necessary to be such a powerful servant of the God-Emperor. For 3-4 sessions, have the group travel with an NPC Inquisitor (perhaps their own Inquisitor from when they were mere acolytes) and have the Inquisitor absolutely LAMBAST any of the stupid (and from your description, downright perverted) actions the Assassin takes trying to be "the hero". If he continues on the womanizing path, have the Inquisitor Chem-geld the assassin - it's getting in the way of the missions, and distracting him from his true potential.

If, after a few missions, the Inquisitor (played by you) feels the Assassin has learned the proper way to present oneself as a frickin' INQUISITOR, then promote the guy (and call him before the Conclave if he starts acting like a git again). If the assassin continues to act like an perverted idiot, it wouldn't be unreasonable to demote him back to assassin, or, if he'd rather, send him off for a few sessions to train as a Vindicare or Death Cult Assassin. While he's there, talk to the player again (you, uh, HAVE talked to him about how the inappropriate behavior he's been presenting is unbecoming of an Inquisitor, right?) and either have him play the former Inquisitor for those sessions or make a new Interrogator that WILL behave properly. As always, keep the game fun for everyone - if the guy's assassin's characteristics indelibly include perversion and foolish heroism, he isn't a good leader, and its not fair to the other players OR you for him to ruin your fun.

Well...no other pc wants to be the Inquisitor. So you can either QUIT the game (if you think you will not have any fun at all) or live with the fact he is going to fail As already mentioned.

There is nothing within Ascension which requires any of your players' characters becoming Inquisitors. There is precedent that to become an Inquisitor one must have a recommendation from the Inquisitor they are in service to, and have at least three other Inquisitors ratify it. It is also recommended that one not go directly to Inquisitor in Ascension, but to serve at least one rank as an Interrogator.

Remember, you do not have to allow the Inquisitor path in your game if you feel it is either inappropriate, or that it may be abused. And based off of the behavior that the player has exhibited in-character, it sounds quite likely to be a matter of abuse.

-=Brother Praetus=-

Depending on if _you_ want to play that sort of campaign you can always let him be a nasty direct-action inquisitor. Compare to Inq Ryykehus image. Give him an inquisitorial badge and let him dualwield powerswords with flamers. Let him be one of the inquisitors that think the most important part of the job is to make the general populace way more scared of the Inquisition than they are of aliens, witches or mutants. Do random very visible acts of violence, ****-interrogate apparently innocent citicens (NB: doing such scenes would require either enromous maturity or a staggering lack of maturity from all involved players) and let the victims back to their communities to spread the word of how horrible the Inq is. Let him be the noisy distraction that the other inquisitors use to do their shadowy work unnoticed. If he does this campaign of fear properly, he will hardly need to do any investigative work at all since people will much rather kill anyone suspected of witchery rather than risking the attention of the assassin with an inquisitorial license to do whatever nastiness he wants. Fear is a powerful motivator that is widely used withing the Imperium, and the Inquisition are not good guys.

It would be quite possible, probably even easy, to build a sandboxy open ended campaign around this theme.

"We are the holy inquisition -Nobody lives!"
"Everyone is lying"
"I'd rather a thousand innocents die than a single heretic live."
"One dead is a holy martyr, a million dead is a statistic."

I'd make him go Interrogator- with his Inquisitor giving him regular critiques of his performance, and the veiled threat that he had better get his act togeather if he ever wants to earn his Rosette...

Adeptus-B said:

Or not be donated to the local Adeptus Mechanicus for use as servitor bits.

-=Brother Praetus=-

Let me preface this post by saying that in the spectrum of GMing, I fall hard on the side "fast and loose." Combat, plot points, xp spending, exactly what you can and can't do, dice rolls, effects, you name it...all in the name of a good time and a good game.

That being said, there are somethings that CANNOT be fast and loose and still have you in a game set in 40k, and not "how I wish 40k was homebrew." The terrible responsibility, power, and sheer magnitude of personality of an Inquisitor is one of them.

This is not some Imperial Guard garrisson, or minor clerical post of the administratum where if you serve enough years without causing amazing failure (or dying) you'll happily retire as a sergeant/senior clerk/what-have-you. This is not even becoming a battle brother, where one in three thousand might prove worthy to finally assume the full power armor. The Calixis Sector, with an abnormally high concentration of inquisitors, will still likely never see their number above four hundred.

To become an Inquisitor is not in any way inevitable. Or even likely. In addittion to being EXCEPTIONAL, not just "good enough" in Inquisitorial work, you have to have the discipline and character required, a patron, some form of political support from other inquisitors, and quite frankly, the good luck to be in the right place in the right time where you can prove yourself several cuts above the merely excellent. It requires a combination of enormous talent, remarkable success, and the blessings of Fate to even be considered. And even then, it must be proven to Individuals who have already achieved the stature, who may approve or deny for reasons Ideological as much as the entry fee of being better than one in a billion.

So, in short, he has probably already failed. he is morally unreliable, suspectible to the most basic of tempations, and most damning of all, utterly incompetent. He not only won't be an Inquisitor, he's not even in the running. He will never make interrogator, because you don't make your right hand man out of a moronic, poor impulse control, unstable dumbass if you have the choice. And I assure you his Inquisitor, with hundreds of acolytes and staff, as well as political debts to peers who have subordinates who ARE deserving of the role, has the choice. Your acolyte cell wiill, without further ambtions from an actual potential, be relegated to acting as a cell for their owning Inquisitor for the rest of their lives. Which will likely be much shorter than his.

So now its come to jesus time with the player and group. If the player wants to assume the mantle of leadership, theres only three paths I see: 1) Your early in (still sub rank 3/4) and the assassin changes his spots. With hard work to prove himself and erase his past foolishness, MAYBE he can be considere dcfor an interrogator, and then have the possibility of Inquisitor around 13 or 14 when he has truly proven himself. 2) Assassin dies/relegated-to-obscurity and the player , after carefuly GM vetting, gets the chance to run a new char from a start point with enough time to at leats prove to the group that is was a character flaw, and not a player flaw, before bestowing the title upon him. 3) The player is frankly, too immature to handle it, and too bad, so sad, it doesn't happen.

Really, the core of this is identifying whether its a player issue or a character issue. He can even, still, remain a nasty bastard. If he was ****** to crush the pyshcological spirt and utterly shatter the human being he was ******, in the name of Mankind, realizing that, in the face of the inquisition, this is an abominable tehcnique, yet far better than consigning a planet to die,..and that this still is the product of an arorgant and twisted mind, okay...may not be many tables cup of tea, but at leats the Player is in the right frame of mind. If he's doing it because "hhr..hhr..he has sex"...no way shoudl you.

AppliedCheese said:

Can't stress how much I agree with this. Becoming an Inquisitor should be something really extraordinary. It should require the applicant is not only the best of the best in skills and willpower, but also lucky enough that he has had the chance to show his talent for the right people in the right time... and lucky enough not to meet something he could not handle.

In the case of this particular character the route you take should depend on several factors:

1) What is the player like? From the description of the character I got the vision of teenage wannabe with limited social skills and limited problem-solving capacity... However, I might be completey wrong. He might be a really nice guy/gal, intelligent and social... who just wanted to play a complete ******* and has bad luck with dice to boot. I don't know. In any case you should realize that when you put a certain character in lead of a team you are putting a very large part of the campaign into his/her hands. The very first thing you should think through is this: Do I want this particular player have the keys to the future of my campaign?

2) How much problem is the current character? Is he a problem to you, to everyone or just to the player? Sometimes when a character starts to go down wrong path it is better for everyone to kill off the sick puppy and roll a new character. Even though most of my characters have been successful, fun to play and generally entertaining I admit that during my now 20 years with RPGs I've played a few characters who just didn't work out for one way or another. When GM kills them off it always hurts at first, but if he did it for the good of the continuing campaign I've always thanked him in the end.

Sometimes bad things happen to bad people because they're not smart enough to graduate from common street punk to criminal mastermind. I'd sort of question why the Inquisitor picked him as an acolyte? As grubby and lowly as they may be, acolytes are picked from the morass of humanity because they're either exceptional or have some kind of quality (even if they're just a lucky son of a gun) that other people don't have and if they don't perform up to the level expected of them, why have them around?

Think of it as a 'yearly review' by the Inquisitor's leading acolyte/interrogator along the lines of performance testing, or more crassly put to my own employees that somehow manage to sneak through the interview process and proceed to suck arse- "what the f**k am I paying you for?" To be even handed (which as an Inquisitor you don't actually have to be...) you sit down at the table and pick on everyone else in regards to their performance with the inquisition and unlike a lot of the more politically correct hiring practices today, we're allowed to hardball them with mean questions, no such thing as an employee contract and can conveniently shoot them in the face when they ask questions out of line or when we just dont like them

What was your greatest achievement in the last 12 months?

What was your greatest failure in the last 12 months?

Where do you see yourself in the next 12 months?

What is you motivation for this objective?

What do you think of your coworkers?

Which of your coworkers puts in the most effort?

Compared to yourself, could you match that effort?

Which ones are failing to deliver?

What do you think of your employment so far?

Also at this point, you should be making safely assuming that the Inquisitor/Interrogator has about 120% skill in Bullsh*t Detection, so lies and misleading answers that avoid the original question count as a big negative to a final score. If they're actually honest, don't punish them and get points for at least having the guts to be accountable for what they do.

The guy looks like some other character I have a "pleasure" of knowing... different sins, but the same amount of stupidity.

In my experience, the best way to treat a player fooling around is to react to his... unortodox exploits... with mocking seriousness. In your case, let him "interrogate" whoever he wants, but make sure the action WILL have consequences. The most obvious choices could be:

1. An interrogated victim has powerful and influental relatives who are not cowed by the Inquisition (and trust me, of these Imperium has many). They may not necessarily choose a path of direct confrontation, but resort instead to guerilla tactics. In example: high-ranking PDF officer, which daughter was interrogated, can stage a lethal accident for Inquisitorial shuttle (involving a malfunctioning AA-Battery and security codes not recognized in time).

2. Make his character become afflicted by a particular kind of disease after interrogating someone. In example, Nurgle's Rot contracted from a recently converted (and therefore not disfigured and ugly yet) Nurglesque cultist would prove to be a most memorable experience for the character. And his attempts to find a cure can prove to an adventure in its own right. And if player does succeed in saving his life... well, Little Him must not necessarily survive the process.