Allright. We all hate Tech-Priest. Everyone does, it's only natural. Now, how to really ruin their day? When they reach Rank 8, have nasty Dragonscale Armour, Rosariuses and Amulets of Warding and a Tougness that lets them survive meltabombs stuck to their asses. They Maglev their way out of lethal drops, Laugh at Fatigue and unleash veritable hordes of combat servitors and skulls at anyone you send their way.

Let's have it! Electromagnets in the walls, EMP bombs in the mail, I'm all ears

Corruption and Insanity :]

Dark Mechanicus fiddling with their servitors/their body (oooouuuuuh yeah, that ain't no possession, it's simply greater ). "Battle of wits" of sort with a Dark Tech-Priest (so he takes physical damage from the "tech-combat", not the physical one: screw Toughness and Armor!). GM fiat, but that would be too harsh, wouldn't it?

Simple. Open up Creatures Anathema, go to that crazy Schismatical things. Suddenly bionics become a weakness!

For some reason I have to remember the rust monster from D&D . Custom xenos, anyone? Could be an indigenuous vermin of any size (from "gas cloud" microbes to ant-sized parasites to fully-fledged alien T-Rex), or even a lab-bred creation, including the possibility of it or its creator being part of the campaign storyline.

Yes, it would also be a very nasty encounter for every other player character - especially those with bionics - but a heavily augmented Tech-Priest would surely be hurt the most. >:3

I found that if you have a Tech Priest that is just a little too beefy then throw some heretics at them with haywire rifles.

One of these

and

Aye, the electromagnet is a fun idea, but the jury is still out on whether their bionics are of a ferrous metallic nature or not. Some sorta arma-plasteel-crete alloy or summat

It's more fun if they are ferrous.

Where else are you supposed to keep the party's tourist magnet collection if not stuck to the TP's big metal arm?

I don't recall seeing stats for an Electro-Magnetic Pulse in DH , but I don't think it would be too hard to extrapolate them- basically, anything that requires electricity ceases to function until repaired...

In my personal opinion, fight fire with fire. Who is more technologically advanced than any tech priest, why artificial intelligence of coarse. And what artificial intelligence is more powerful than the necrons? What are the puny powers of a mind trapped in a fleshy cage to those who have ascended the mortal coil? Also possible corruption through The Flesh Is Weak (for every good, crazy tech priest can't live without it), or some similar device. (after all, what tech priest wouldn't want to become one with the ultimate machine, or better yet, be driven insane by the revelation of the true machine)

Just a thought

MP Lascannon + rightous fury = fraked Tech Priest.

Or have gutter snipes throw lots of jars of 'acid' at him, I don't imagine he has much of a dodge,

Or paintball gun all his sensors, then repeat the previous idea,

Or stage a fight in a foundry T2 style, we all know how that one ends,

Or copy his character sheet, change the name, add +10WS, BS, S and T and make him fight his 'nemesis',

Or lure him into an excavation, have some sneaky little bugger clamp a large manacle and chain around his ankle and fill it up with concrete. Make it 50MPa at least, that'll frak the frakker, or use the next idea in a gladiator pit and add this one for effect,

Or (my favourite) an Ogryn Greco-Roman wresting team or Lucidor wrestling tag-team.(okay not so serious about that one but you could). . They tie him up in knots up and proceed to break all his limbs, and pluck his mechadendrites before beating him to a pulp with them. "Hulk and Hulk and Hulk Smash!"

Yeah I hate em too, so much to answer for in holding back humanity. We just got one in the party and I intend to give him constant jibes for being gross.

EMP Grenades (from Deathwatch ):

They have 3 meter radius Haywire effect, which means you roll 1d100 when it goes off

1-20 No effect

21-40 All actions utilizing ranged weapons or all physical actions while wearing armor that does not have Primitive quality or while using cybernetics gets -10 penalty

41-60 As above but with -20, in addition all melee weapons that use any technological components cease to function and receive Primitive quality

61-80 Dead Zone. All technology ceases to function. All persons who have cybernetics receive 1 fatigue per round at Dead Zone

81-100 Prolonged Dead Zone.

A Ogyrn with slam, Frenzon, and a BQ mono-great weapon.

Throwing out 2D10+21 damage pen 2, messes of up anyone's day, and keep in mind that people can only use one force field at a time.

A psyker with Soul Killer and Astral Projection would work as well, but is incredibly unfair.

Traitor marines, or Mark of Xenos/daemonhunter style lesser daemons would mess him up some, as would one of those weird Ork force mines.

Lots of options here.

@SomVone

Ogryn with slam and frenzon. I love it. Make the great weapon a BQ Eviscerator and you get D10 +30-odd, pen5, tearing. Ouch! Heck, give crushing blow and jack it up on some slaught too to make sure it goes first.

And what do you know? Rolled rightous fury as well - the GM cannot cheat.

I don't think the psyker is unfair when the Tech Priest cannot otherwise be hurt. That's called game balance. The Tech Priest had better hope he hasn't alienated the Psyker when that happens.

I love you people

Twisted, vicious and evil. Just the way I like it.

Darth Smeg said:

This "protective reasoning" of your Tech-Priest(?) on this topic is a double-edged sword. Remember that whenever he wants to "summon" some metal item to his hands and you =REALLY= do not want him to have that this item is/could be of the same material that his non-ferrous implants are made of.

What is fair for the players is fair for the world // What is fair for the world is fair for the players

Do not over-do this, so. Making a player pay xp for pc feat and then turning it useless for the rest of the campagine is bad style AND straight betrayal.

Not just him, I was thinking of this thread from last year.

But I think ItsUncertainWho said it best:

It's more fun if they are ferrous.

Where else are you supposed to keep the party's tourist magnet collection if not stuck to the TP's big metal arm?

So I guess he is ferrous

Force the tech-priest into social situations where he is expected to negotiate (say with other Mechanicus). If he's neglected fellowship (or logic) then it'll show.

Acid rounds from Rogue Trader's "Into The Storm". Also, organgrinder rounds.

The Haywire weapon trait from Deathwatch as mentioned. It can be applied to say a heretek rifle weapon...

Have a room flood with acidic sludge. More agile party members can escape it by climbing. Not so easy for a half tonne chunk of metal.

Fight fire with fire,

MACHINE VS MACHINE

IRON HANDS SPACE MARINES. And if that's not enough, give them MP Lascannons supported by marines with powerfists.

Ogryn cyber psycho jacked on combat drugs dual wielding chain axes with dual strike will probably do even more damage that the previous ogryn examples (and bionic arms frak yeah!)

Or go all Robocop on his ass and give the bad guys custom 'accurate' anti-materiel rifles using autocannon ammo called Cobra Assault Weapons.

Does this monstrosity need to sleep?

Mission to a moon where the surface is constantly ravaged by lightning. Guess which PC it will be most attracted too?

Or put them in isolation to ensure he misses maintenance and gets too much guass build up because he missed his last deguassing session meaing his electronic systems go haywire next time he come close to a large electric engine of turbine.

Or have a nano-virus take over his dragon scale and watch the look on his face when the heretek makes him turn on his friends (you will need to offer a way out of this), or

Seraphim dual weilding melta pistols with dual shot. That should ruin anyone's day and if it can't then the system is broken.

from france

i do not hate tech priest in fact i don't hate a specific classe as arbitraitor i just hate evreyone who does not respect law . i have a fondnes for acide bullet reducing the ap round after round without possibility of repair i like. leaving the techpriest exposed like everyone.

but and that s the most important thing you forget that not all tech priest are amrored tank you forgot the one kind that eschew most augmetics and see the flesh as a machine this one seem easy to take down but i believe that they have tought about it and has somes nasty surprise.

You could try bombarding him with plot reasons to doubt his faith. Constant images and exaqmples of the dark age excesses of the AdMech that ae obviously keeping people back.. Set it up so he has therest of the AdMech after HIM.

A hive where the food processors are ancient and in need of an upgrade. A simple improvement in filter technology was not carried out because the AdMech were too jealous about sharing the tech (or it's a grand experiment): This has led to toxins in the food which have caused all the new born over the last ten years to be mutants.

An enterptising buch of merchants who attempted to go around the AdmMech and import the gear to upgrage the processors from 'elsewhere' were hunted down and brutally exterminated by Secutors. Despite constant pleas for assisstance from the nobles the AdMech have refused to upgrade the processors. Encourage your PC to do the upgrade, perhaps have the nobles come to him for assisstance.

I'm sure you can come up with plenty more. Just make him doubt everything and coax him towards becoming a renegade. Then he will have the AdMech after him and if the doesn't count as royally screwed I don't know what would.

Making the PCs the Bad Guys for doing the morally Right Thing is an Excellent idea. Having the Good Guys hunt them for "just trying to help" is very GrimDark

On a completely unrelated point:

Are there any rules, or fluff sources, that mention increased bodyweight from cybernetics and other tech-priest addons? I guess it depends on the material of the cybernetcis, but whether it be plasteel, ceramics or some other technobabble compound, I assume it weighs more than flesh?

Mate ferrous metal is heavy ****. I would go with at least 250kg, and wouldn't argue too much with 500kg. I weigh 100kg and have a 32kg kettlebell that takes no more (actually less I think) volume than my head (it is iron). At least x3. Then add armour. Can't help with fluff or canon sources though.

Glad you like the idea of becoming a renegade for doing the right thing (he heh heh). Sorry about the editing in that post, it was rather late when I wrote that one.

So no Ogryn Lucidor wrestling teams then?

Hallo Darth Smeg,
sorry for joining the discussion this late.

Time ago I figured out some ideas to «ruin a techpriest’s day» and put them in my drawer for a future use, yet now I fear I won’t be able to use them before long: in fact in my experience I’ve seen that the best way to ruin a techpriest’s day is to have his player face real life problems (health first, work then), as it happened too bad to the one friend playing my group’s techpriest.
Now I share those ideas - mostly «narrative ploys» - in the hope you can take some hint from them.

1) A jamming device that:
a) interferes with the techpriest’s thinking, acting and/or speaking (binary chatter and such);
b) prevents him from doing certain things (by blocking certain logical functions of his implants);
c) shuts his mechanical parts off;
d) compels him to do some actions he wouldn’t otherwise do.
You can decide if allowing the player a save roll or not.

2) Partly connected to the previous: a safeword .
When first joined the ranks of the Adeptus Mechanicus as a porter or such, the now rutilant techpriest was blessed with his first implants: among them, the Cranial Circuitry.
Yet his Magos and mentor, as a precautionary measure, programmed the techpriest's (and every other techpriest's and servitor's under his command) implants with one or more safewords that, when heard by the subjects, prevent them from attacking the Magos (now turned heretek) or compel him to do that task associated with the safeword. Of course the techpriest doesn't know nor even think he's been programmed this way.
Now you only have to let him face his old preceptor...

3) A virus-like disease he «downloaded» the last time he used his electrograft on an unknown (maybe heretical) machine. This disease can do everything you want to, from formatting his memories to resetting his brain (both flesh and cyber).

4) While on a mission, he finds no spare parts to perform the holy repairs on his sacred cyber limbs (it can be both as an ordinary maintenance or as a necessary mending after a firefight): yet he would need right that little screw he can't find anywhere, thus reducing his functionality on that limb.

5) A rejection crisis : the remnants of his fleshy body refuse to be bound with metal. The surgical suture becomes infected, then quickly gangrenes, then...you know.
Should he survive, this would drive the character towards disorders like «The flesh is weak» and such.

6) A long time ago I read Fritz Leiber’s book «Gather, darkness!» , in which the protagonist is a technopriest of a cult which has the monopoly on all things technological. Even though they aren’t as augmented as Warhammer’s techpriest, there you could find more inspiration for sabotaging your techpriest.

Oh, and I also love the magnet idea and D&D's rust monster suggestion!

Hi Darth,

if your pc are going to visit a hiveworld next time, how about some Heretek-Bandits specialized in abducting & salvaging people with a high number of kybernetic upgrades? Solomon would be especially fighing world for such things, as would be the hive of Sinophia. I would dub such people "Wreckers". A full blown Tech-Priest would be a daunting but really rewardings target for such a crew.

This not only gives you an "excuse" to bring about all those Anti-Techpriest things already mentioned here...it does provide you with a reason for this s*** to happen in the first place as well. ("wrong time / wrong place, buddy!")

Any change your pc are going to visit the "Interior Zones" of Solomon soon?