Promotions?

By player1197498, in Dark Heresy

Several of the military-type careers involve ranks - Imperial Psycher and Guards for example - Lieutenant, Captain, etc. The rules say as soon as you're XP hits the minimum, you go up to that level.

Within the game logic, how does that work. Does the Inquisition just tell the organization you're seconded from to promote you. To the best of my knowledge, in "real" life, you have to get some kind of training as you go up in certain ranks.

It doesn't relate to their in-game ranks - it's just names for the career ranks as part of character creation.

You can (and I do) view it as the relative skill levels of those in their careers that don't join the Inquisition. 'Course, I run that elite advances aren't prohibitively expensive, so characters wind up diverging from what their career path says they ought to be.

Its also a good way of judging where NPC characters would be if they have equivilent XP.

Of course the Inquisition itself can probably nudge a few IG officers and get a promotion if its needed for one of their acolytes.

Inquisitor: I think private smith should be made a captain

General: I am not sure that he has all the appropriate training Inquisitor.

Inquisitor: I think you should be assigned to a gulag on charges of sedition heresy and treason.

General: So was there any particular regiment that he wanted to be captain of?

I've always put it down to "down-time" between adventures for the most part - the PCs are an Inquisitor's entourage after all, so they get roped in to aiding the Throne, then have to go back to their day jobs until they're called upon again. (I've also run sessions involving their normal careers - not just Inquisitorial work.)

And if they go up a rank during an adventure, they don't actually get the physical promotion until the next appropriate gap. (I usually get the players to write up some suitable escapades to explain the promotion - assuming we aren't actually playing through them).

You might have noticed that individual names for each rank stopped at about the same time that FFG got control of Dark Heresy, and that some of the Ascension careers use the same name as DH ranks (Stormtrooper and Magos), even in cases though the character has a choice of Ascension careers.

I'd say that the rank names should be ignored. The PCs don't work for that organisation any more, they work for the Inquisition now. If you want to give them specific ranks, I'd suggest that the lowest rank of acolyte be called a Canary.

Bilateralrope said:

I'd say that the rank names should be ignored. The PCs don't work for that organisation any more, they work for the Inquisition now. If you want to give them specific ranks, I'd suggest that the lowest rank of acolyte be called a Canary.

Is this perchance because the Acolytes are the first to die, and their deaths indicate the presence of something nasty and difficult to detect?

"Inquisitor Sir, we have rumors of a nasty and difficult to detect heresy in sub-level 42."

"Hmmm, better send down some canarys then to be sure before we commit any significant resources. Make it so."

My PCs' cell's codename is 'Mockingbird', so canary fits into the mood

I LOVE the rank names for their flavour and the way some of them just sound so awesome and they can lend some colour to the careers. (I loved them so much I made up my own for Rogue Trader careers - at least the 3 we're player. Sensate Astronimican just sounds cooler than R2 Navigator...)

But yeah - they have no real in-game effect other than when the tech priest decides it's time to call him Cyberseer because he feels he's unlocked some weird mysterious tech level (or whatever).