I often wonder what it is like to play a tech-priest, So i've been looking into it. It seems to be as confusing as a psyker with all the extra things you have to take into consideration. Now, Tech-Priest obviously have a very important role in a group, repairing and dismantling nouns, but what do they do for combat? I know that they have their las-pistol arm and they get a desent bit of weapon training in las. This is all good, but can tech-priest hold their own in heavy combat or do they have more of a support role using servo skulls and other mechanized things to fight for them.

On top of that, the 1d10 extra tools? what extra bits and tools can they be? Last but not least, can anyone who has played with or as a tech-priest please give me some advise? (for those keeping up iam play 3 differn't campaigns with 3 different groups and character)

They are a bit hard early on combat wise. They have a good number handy skills. Get a good shotgun, and autogun with laser sights. The Inquisitor's Hand book has an alternate career path that is a combat machine.

PS- Personally for tech guys I prefer the reclaimer from the IH.

The 1d10 spare parts are just that: spare parts. Think of it this way: The Acolytes are making their way to the sub-level of the infested base and arrive at the elevator. The GM decides to add a complication: The elevator is damaged. The Acolytes can either use the stairwell or attempt repairs. Now, it is unlikely that the GM or the Tech-Priest player have a common grasp of exactly what parts make up the inner workings of a mag-lev lift cage. So instead the GM calls for a test to repair the lift and has the Tech-Priest expend one of his spare parts.

It's a useful abstraction that allows for MacGuyverism.

A Tech-priest is wonderful in that he has a very unique role to play as a supporting character but can be upgraded in later ranks to perform a lot of other tasks too (go into lore, piloting etc.). My own cog-boy Xerxes Vai is now using the Secutor-path from the Inq. Handbook as the other players in my group aren't really combat characters either. This alternative rank effectively turns you in to a killer machine granting you some nice bonuses if you take the 500xp implants upgrade although don't expect to swim anytime soon or socialize with others. Very cool to do but you have to be at least rank 4 to get it in game terms let alone what your GM might decide story-wise. I literally went through tech-hell to get there.

Beware when you are at lower ranks as a tech-priest as they definitely don't have much staying power in combat. As tech-priest you also have access to some very unique talents which come in very handy. I suggest Feedback Screech as on of your starting skills as it makes for a handy little advantage in your first combat encounters.
If you like to be a bit social put a good score in your Fel. attribute as it cannot be upgraded later on and some of the implants you might take will disturb interactions with others. We have a bit of a house-rule that the more implants you take, the less pure "fleshies" will like you or feel at ease around you. My fellow acolyte who is a cleric doesn't even want to be near me at times though the feeling is mutual...

Servo-skulls are really cool but very pricey and for what they can do you're better off buying the appropiate mechadendrites. The medicae mechadendrite is a life-saver and was my first one as nobody in my group was smart enough to get the medicae skill. Mechadendrites will cost you around 500 thrones each and about 100xp each to be able to use them properly which is a very good investment IMO.

For the spare parts it's like kjakan stated; go McGuyver!

My current character is a tech-priest. He is slowly making his way towards the secutor package. The hardest thing I found about tech-priests, is trying to understand how they think in order to fully roleplay them. I still have trouble grasping the concept of machine spirits and a "Machine God", since I work with computers I understand that aspect of it, but since the Fluff is really gray on what exactly machine spirits are, I go with them being the equivalent of souls for machines, similar to how pagan religions believed all things had a spirit (rocks, trees, etc), I also have him believing Ommisiah to be the Emperor, ((causes a lot of trouble between the cleric and the tech priest.))

Emprah_Horus said:

Seriously? My character follows he old path meaning for him the Omnissiah is definetly NOT the Emperor plus he was born on a Forge-world, now that makes for interesting role-playing as he sees the Emperor very much like the Astartes do. Yes a great man but not a deity...oops. Sounds like your cleric is even stricter than the one I have to deal with...good luck with that!

As for the role-playing diffculties I do not have any but for those that do you might want to keep in mind what drives tech-priests; the Quest of Knowledge which is guided by the 16 Universal Laws.:

The Mysteries.
* 01. Life is directed motion.
* 02. The spirit is the spark of life.
* 03. Sentience is the ability to learn the value of knowledge.
* 04. Intellect is the understanding of knowledge.
* 05. Sentience is the basest form of Intellect.
* 06. Understanding is the True Path to Comprehension.
* 07. Comprehension is the key to all things.
* 08. The Omnissiah knows all, comprehends all.

The warnings
* 09. The alien mechanism is a perversion of the true path.
* 10. The soul is the conscience of sentience.
* 11. A soul can be bestowed only by the Omnissiah.
* 12. The Soulless sentience is the enemy of all.
* 13. The knowledge of the ancients stands beyond question.
* 14. The machine spirit guards the knowledge of the ancients.
* 15. Flesh is fallible, but ritual honours the machine spirit.
* 16. To break with ritual is to break with faith.

As for what the Machine Spirit is; it differs for everyone who digs into the AdMech fluff as it's not clearly stated anywhere but for me it's also the soul or ghost in the machine. That thought was underlined by Magos Geard Bure, a character in the Eisenhorn trilogy who said Eisenhorn could not yet pick up a weapon because he had to respect it's anima as it was still resting.
I also dislike the idea of the AdMech not knowing what they are really doing so in my version of the 40K-verse those of higher rank fully well understand how a simple machine works as opposed to Abnett's ideas in Mechanicum (great writer but I really didn't like that book, Titanicus however I found superior). Obviously some like this idea and say that the Machine Spirit is actually a simple program mistaken for a soul. I prefer the more esoteric version.

Deus Machina said:

I understand that to be precisely what the AdMech believe it to be. The accuracy of this belief is left as an exercise for the individual player.

Deus Machina said:

I think every Mechanicus knows exactly what they are doing. The rituals and gestures (which are never really described as more than "rituals and gestures" in the fiction) are necesary to operating AdMech derived technology (that is to say almost everything in the Imperium). The Omnissiahan Cult is a mystery cult, meaning that if any man jack could figure out how to operate a cogitator or rebuild a Rhino transmission, then there isn't much reason for the religion itself. All those arcane gestures are actually flipping the appropriate switches, adjusting the knobs, and generally prepping the much more baroque and vastly less user-friendly technology of the Imperium of Man. A RADAR unit in the 20th century may have a button that says "On", and, if we're really modern, a cool icon that glows green so you don't even have to be able to read to turn the thing on. A RADAR unit in the 41st millennium probably requires the operator to manually adjust the circuit relays, tune the frequency of the radio signal, and align the receiver/transmitter. If your tech knowledge is, like the average Imperial citizen, entirely limited to "push this button" or "pull this trigger", then it's very much going to appear to be mystic and arcane. The rituals are rituals. I mean, this is still a religion.

I think most advanced tech designs have machine spirits in that they are derived from Dark Age or prior designs that incorporated a rudimentary AI in almost everything more advanced than a gun or toaster. The fanatically tradition-bound AdMech won't excise those parts of the design specs despite their loathing of true AI, and so many items of high tech have a true "spirit" which is just aware enough to be responsive to the proper verbal and physical input codes. The machine spirit of low-tech items is simply the proper response to maintaince. You appease the gun's machine spirit with sacred machine oil, and the proper rituals of adjustment, and miraculously it operates better and fires truer than a gun with an angry and neglected machine spirit.

Just my two Thrones.

Strange. Each time I look at the Mysteries and Warnings of the 16 laws, I cannot help but feel that they are deliberately written to be contradictory, i.e. the Warnings are deliberately there to enforce an orthodoxy. Don't get me wrong, I think it's cool, but just thought that I would mention it.

Edit ... (Yes, I actually managed to get to the darned edit function in time . What are the odds of that?)

There's pretty much latitude to interpret the "machine spirit" any way you want. The most commonly cited contenders include animistic belief (the idea that all machines are touched with the spirit of the Machine God), some form of programmed or actual machine intelligence (expert systems, AI/PI, and MI), or supernatural (a variation on the premise of psychometry). Some will select one over the other, while personally I tend to blend all three, though rarely use the supernatural aspect under normal circumstances.

This remains the age-old argument of whether the Adeptus Mechanicus is the "Adeptus Me-can-icus" or the "Adeptus Me-can't-icus." Personally I feel it is a combination of the two, with those of lower ranks understanding less (and tending more towards rote learning—ritualisation obfuscates the knowledge that it encodes just as with, say, the meaning behind the somatic rituals of a Christian church) and the higher ranks having that knowledge. (Some take this to be the result of implants ( c.f. Philip Sibberring's concept page), while I personally go down the route that they are more for support than anything else.

As always, though, YMMV.

I don't think that is necessarily true. Having faith in something doesn't mean that someone else who can do similar things invalidates that faith.

Personally I'm a believer in "technological diffusion," or the idea that worlds can have knowledge of technology that is independent of the Adeptus Mechanicus who themselves control the high or advanced technology of the Imperium.

Kage

cappadocius said:

In my opinion, the Techpriests HAVE to know what they are doing, at least in the rudimentary sense of " this part does this, that part does that". Otherwise, you cannot achieve jack, no matter what technology you have at your hands.

After all, while the Imperium is dependant on STC designs, small deviations or variations from those designs have been observed, especially when it comes to the war machines of the Imperium. I

In theory, Tech-priests, especially the higher-ups, should be able to construct and invent on their own. However, this is considered heretical. Why? Because of fear, plain and simple. Most people have no idea why some things should not be done with the technology and knowledge that they have, but they are told that something really ugly happened and that it shattered the first civilisation of Man. Hence, they keep away from invention, AI and the like.

I see the Techpriests as the equivalent of shamans in the culture of the Imperium. Heck, even today most people have no idea how technology works and I can easily make the jump from " I have no idea why my computer works" to, " that **** thing is evil and loves to tick me off".

Just crank up that ignorance a notch and most people will believe that machines are, if not sentient, at least spiritual entities as well as material ones. In that case, you do need someone to communicate between the machines and their spirits and the people who use them. Enter the AdMech, the Witch Doctors of the 41st Millennium. They can communicate with the machine "spirits" and relate their desires to others outside their society. They know how and can use their knowledge and implants to better understand the machines they take care of.

They share the same belief as the rest of humanity, albeit they are much more sophisticated about it.

Even a Magos will still believe in the Machine Spirit inside his cogitator. However, he will be privy to additional knowledge. He knows how to strengthen it (installing more components), how to sustain it (maintenance and cleaning) and how to incapacitate it should the need arise (switch it off). Rough handling of a machine can upset its machine spirit.

The Techpriest knows that as do all others. However, he knows WHY the Spirit is upset. He knows that simply begging for forgiveness will not do. He knows something got dislodged inside the machine, unbalancing it, disturbing its currents and putting th spirit in pain. Functionality will have to be restored first, then the Spirit will listen to apologies and become compliant again. Mysticism and knowledge are, in my opinion, completely intertwined in the mind of the Techpriest and he uses both to achieve the desired results.

Turpin said:

Increase toughness like mad, get dragonscale, replace everything with metal, take the sectutor rank, get machinator array and high tech weapons. You'll shrug off just about any attack and the high tech weapons are both in character and very lethal.

For example, say you roll a 30 starting toughness, two advances are going to cost you 350 XP, machinator array costs 500. That's 5 TB, with cybernetics all around you'll shrug off 7 damage in your underwear. Xeno mesh or dragonscale are both affordable armours for their protection and ease of use and add 4 or 8 in AP so you'll easily withstand any attack made with normal basic weapons for quite some time.

Tech priest are never going to be agile melee monsters, your best bet is to either support from the sidelines with medicae and other useful tricks or go all out tank. It's going to cost a lot of money but it's the only real alternative for a front line role in combat.

Personally I prefer to stay out of combat and just take on a support role with medicae, tech-use, lots of lore and other handy stuff, but if your game is combat oriented they can be turned into monsters.

HeirofNagash said:

So tech-adepts are basically the helpdesk/IT dept of the 41st Millenium.........while the higher ranks are like programmers/engineers, I like the analogy

HeirofNagash said:

Couldn't agree more.

As far as combat goes, my Tech Priest uses Feedback Screech as she charges in with her brand new Omnissian Axe. Next round comes Right of Awe. This gives her a pretty solid advantage against most opponents she goes up against (of course she's trying to keep up with a Cleric in power armor and an assassin who totes around modicfied heculars, and a psycher who likes to one shot crap...) Her biggest strength is getting close to thing and using her Medicae Mechanendrite to inject Promethium and other poisons which she puts into the sirenges instead of medicine. Things go down pretty quick when you're injecting them with Unleaded.

Her main role in the group is, like most Techpriests I know of, is repairing guns, armor, vehicles and making new ones. I've had to build two "tanks" out of cargo crates and a semi truck so far. And the cleric has been taking time out to recite litanies of Hate that I've been scrimshawing onto ALL of our bullets... No, we have NOTHING better to do during travel between planets... The bullets get a house ruled +1 to damage and +1 if fired at the particular object the litany is about.

But, yeah, we can be beasts in combat if we choose to be. Our mechanendrites hold more opportunities for tricks than the book implies. Use your gun'drite turn the ground into hindering terrain by making pot holes. Use your medicae mechanendrite for poison injections and torture. Utility mechanenrites to choke someone, hold them in place (cause if they're dragging your metal body around they deserve to run away), or to climb to higher vantage points. A smart Techpriest (and its player) is about the most unpredictable opponent you can face. Ferric Lure/Summons helps you get neat weapons from people who aren't really holding to tight to their guns/other weapons.

I think my favorite thing so far is coming upon some idiot citizen hitting his las pistol because he didn't know why it was working anymore. I offered to find a solution for him. He handed me the gun, I Lumian Charged it back to full, then shot him for mistreating the weapon in such a contemptable manner. Yes, I play an extremist. lol

Tullist said:

I like it.

Kage2020 said:

Even when teh entire religion is built around hte very fact that only those with the knowledge of ritual and rites can do these things? I'd say that if Bob Citizen can figure things out and realises that he doesn't -need- necessarily the incense or the permission, or the sigils runes or other paraphenalia of the Machine Cult, then the religion becomes defunt and would die out as this realisation spread. Now, mind you, if Bob Citizen figured this out and told people, they'd probably burn him as a heretic for saying, and especially proving, that such was possible, but the point still stands I'd think.

Deus Machina said:

You see, THIS is the sort of thing that the core books should be giving us to support roleplaying.

Details !!

The core books should contain information taken directly from freely available sources without expanding or adding to them in any way?

I'd rather they had, you know, new stuff

As it was already said: Cog Boys are the finest support and frontline warriors. My AdMech, Khan G4RV3L (its not sure name, as rest other group thinks, its genotype number ) is one of the most accomplished warriors in my gaming group. With his D'laku Hellgun, environmentally sealed carapice and medicae mechadentrite hi can survive almost anything and bring the holly light of Solex to the unbelievers and heretecks. He plays role of medicae, reconnaissance (thanks to Zane the servoskull) and technomancer. One of his most memorable quote is "Folks who do not know how to send n-mail do not deserve to live". But again he is breed for combat Solex extremist.

As for AdMech fluff I love one presented by Dan Abnett in his "Titanicus" novel. Its fine mix of animistic religion with good knowledge of hi-tech. There is very fine concept of freedom of information flow between all Tech Priests that add nice flavor to Cog Boys and Girls.

Charax said:

Which is why i said 'this sort of thing'...

Detail rather than vague handwaving...

Easiest thing for most gamers is to be told that an member of the AM treats technology as they treat dice and dice throwing - as many I know have strange and arcane rituals about how and which dice can be used, colours, others "touching" them, lucky and unluck methods, etc etc

Personally I believe a tech-priest is the most interesting career to play. They have special abilities like psykers without risking deamons or an exploding head. They also are great chances to develope interesting backgrounds and storylines. All praise the Machine God.