First off, this is not to whine about not being able to take a Black Templar Librarian. I have no problems with the fact that that particular chapter doesn't field them.

That said, the Black Templars do have recruits with psychic potential, not all of whom are purged as heretical witches. The old White Dwarf article which gave us tabletop rules for Deathwatch kill-teams also mentioned that not many chapters send their Librarians to the Deathwatch, quite understandably viewing them as too valuable a resource.
However, the Deathwatch apparently has their own Librarians, taken and trained from scratch from the recruits of chapters (like the Black Templars) who refuse to make use of them.

The same article also implied, if not outright stated, that the majority of Deathwatch Librarians were home-grown from the psychic rejects of rabidly anti-psyker chapters.

If this is the case in your campaigns (or even if it wasn't, and you simply had someone who wanted to play one anyway), how would you handle it, ruleswise?

(I'm intrigued, as my own instinct is to go with a slightly tweaked Black Shield. If your response would be to disallow it, fair enough, but it's not massively helpful)

So are you saying that perhaps your character was a recruit with psyker potential from BT that got sent to DW? I could see that, maybe get the organ deficiencies and characteristic bonuses, but none of the squad or solo mode stuff from the chapter(since that would be learned and not part of your geneseed). Your Idea sounds resonable if I understood you right.

Got to agree with Nimon.

Also i would use the black shield table instead of the chapter one. Mainly to represent the training that they had within the Deathwatch instead of what they would have had from their original chapter.

All that scenario says to me is that it's a Marine who can claim they were recruited by the Black Templar, but were passed off after discovery of their psychic potential. Black Shield as the choice doesn't strike me as necessary, when all it really amounts to is a note in the character's history. My suggestion would be simply to play the character as somewhat more zealous in his veneration of the Emperor, to represent the short influence the Templar recuiters might have had on them.

The problem I see is that psychic potential is going to be found very early in the recruitment process. I don't know if the BT's would suffer a witch to live, they would be untrained and unsanctioned at this point. They might take great offense to a witch trying to infiltrate their untainted ranks.

Also, going to have to disagree with the OP on the nature of Deathwatch Librarians. Current fluff in the book makes it fairly clear that librarians are coming from various chapters, not serving as "home grown" within the Deathwatch.

Black Shield is made for situations like these. Although I don't see it as likely that the Templars would hand over witches, rather than just putting a bolt in their face.

I stick the Psy-potential recruits into another chapter, of my own creation and give that chapter animosities towards the BT. However the option of doing the whole black shield thing would be just as good....

I always assumed that BT recruits who were identified as psykers were killed. At the very least they would be put on a Black Ship I would have thought. Certainly no further geneseed implantation/conditioning would be done after discovery.

The proposed concept would require the BT to complete geneseed implantation/conditioning - a 6 year period iirc.

Imo DW Librarians are from other Chapters. They are simply rare as few are seconded.

My other issue with the use of BT stats and Librarian abilities is how they actually stack quite nicely (in game mechanics at least). As a GM, some of this sounds like someone trying to come up with a reason to get some very powerful abilities for their librarian (holy vengeance + force weapons, both base stat improvements are great for a cc focused librarian, etc.).

I would imagine any non-sanctioned psyker that the BT find, they kill. And I don't think there are any examples of a sanctioned-psyker ever being recruited, due to age issues (it takes a while to fly back to Terra).

I could maybe accept a black shield, representing a psychic manifestation after recieving the implants (doubt the BT would kill one of their own), but would require that the stat line not be using BT mechanics.

What the Black Templars don't mention about the Feast of Blades is that this is also where the back room trading of psychically gifted recruits to the other Sons of Dorn takes place.

Double post, sorry.

KommissarK said:

Also, going to have to disagree with the OP on the nature of Deathwatch Librarians. Current fluff in the book makes it fairly clear that librarians are coming from various chapters, not serving as "home grown" within the Deathwatch.

It is clear however that this is the only way the DW recruits librarians?

Alex

KommissarK said:

If I wanted that, I'd just make up a Black Templar successor that is less strict about Librarians.

Alex

" (doubt the BT would kill one of their own)"

Really? Are we talking about the same BTs, here? In Armageddon the Chaplain's monologue states that he would have himself strangled a Templar that had showed cowardice.

ak-73 said:

I hadn't really considered that, but it is possible within the rules. Could be interesting.

The only difficult part might be coming up with a set of psyker powers for them, but they could likely get training from the Imperial Fists (and those are some nice powers too).

HappyDaze said:

Lol, back to the roots - the Space Roots!

Alex

I'm gonna have to back the "burn the witch" contingent; I don't see any way an aspirant of the Black Templars that manifested psychic ability would be allowed to survive long enough to be handed over to someone else. From all existing fluff, the unfortunate aspirant would almost certainly be executed as expediently as possible, and if he was unlucky he might be used as target practice by other Black Templars.

I agree with the others, seems unlikely that this would happen.

Also, current fluff for the Deathwatch shows their Librarians coming from other chapters. The example Librarian in the core rulebook is from the White Scars even.

You could be a subjugators space marine. They keep the +10 WP and get the black templars solo and squad abilities.

Now that I think about it, how would a subjugator Librarian and black templar get along? The Subjagator's seem to have alot of the zeal a BT does, yet he is a pysker.

nolsutt said:

He'd be treated as the family's black sheep, but he's still a Son of Dorn, so there's still a bond.

HappyDaze said:

Yeah. The Crimson Fists employ Librarians and still the CF and BT fought mixed ranks in an entire crusade (Declates Crusade).

Alex

The problem with a Black Templar sucessor chapter is that they more than likely dont exist. The Black Templars were founded by Dorn to beat the rules laid down in the Codex Astartes, he wanted his legion as whole as possible but could not have it without kicking off a second civil war, instead after reducing his men down to 1000 Imperial Fists, 1000 Crimson Fists, 1000 Soul Drinkers (if you take any of Ben Conter's work seriously) he formed what was left into the Black Templar who went off to continue the Great Crusade. Templars dont reduce their number by haveing sucessors they just lie to the Imperium and declare new crusades when they are annoyed enough about a particular subject.

Banjulhu said:

RoB even allows Space Wolves/Salamanders successors.

Alex

Personally I think (Being a Templar fan, They are my main army in the table top game) there is NO way they would allow anyone with any psyker abilities to be seconded to an area of combat. The recruitment screenings are VERY thorough they would detect it almost instantly, and continue doing tests throughout training in case any latent abilities surfaced. It must be kept into consideration that Black Templar are uneasy even around non combat psykers (navigators, astropaths) and are ready to execute at a moments notice. So sending recruits with psychic talent to the Deathwatch or any other organization just would not happen. There are plenty other chapters willing to do it. This is one thing the Templars are not lenient about. And they are not a lenient chapter.