Greetings, brethern,

as "Blood of Martyrs" came out, I re-build an existing pc in one of my gaming groups from the old format (IH) into the new format.

This might have been a little rush, since know the pc seems to lack prowess compared to her team mates. While she does have access to Faith Talents and a shiny set of power armour, she is a little hindered as soon as dice are to be rolled for anything else.

As BoM suggested, I started to open up some other advance routes for her (in fact, building some elite training packages custom tailored for the player).

What are your experiences with the "New Sisters" of BoM? How do you feel about them and how good do you come along? What "tweaks" do you use?

Input from gamers of said chars or GM with said chars in their groups welcome, thanks!

I'm playing as a sister of battle Unfortunately, our GM refused to give me a power armor and bolter, so i use boltpistol and guardsman carapace - nothing shiny at all .

And you know, when the party is doing some investigation i find sister a great class to roleplay. Our GM is a reasonable person, an experienced DnD master and so on, so sisters authority is often crucial for the investigation advance. We usually treat her to have some "conversation" skills when it's about speaking with ministorum representatives, imperial creed fanatics and other "holy men". Just like you expect her to shoot any scum on sight.

Also, we expect her to be very experienced in questions of combat. For example once, when we were investigating a crime scene with a man shot down by unknown killer, i said that i can tell from where he was shot.

This system works like she has some basic skills that work like full version in certain situations. Want them activated all the time - write a back story with explanation how you got them and spend 100 exp.

The Inquisition cell training packages might be a quick way of bulking one out with useful skills pertinent to their career. Though I think it may just mean waiting until she gets to higher levels as they do get a fair variety of Forbidden and Scholastic Lores by the end, as GM I just take note of who has what and making sure during the course of playing in the sandpit that such skills will be used and relied upon.

going quite well; the sister in my campaign is rather..innocent to say the least, or better yet, doesn't have a wider-Imperium knowledge. The rest of the cell walks rather softly when she's around (they are not heretics or border-line heretic, but they don't push their luck with Chaos/Xeno/other weapons and artefact they find), The whole cell is hiding the fact than one of them is a Psyker, and with her crappy intelligence and perception, she ends up being 'played' and moved around by the other players, who rather enjoy having manipulated a sister of Battle (within limits mind you)

If the sister player feels ok about being fooled, that it's fine Cannot imagine myself tolerating that, however.

Sobakaa said:

Well, they never told her there was a Psyker in the cell; nor is his powers that much visible (mostly the basic powers, like lucky, stench wounds, healing etc etc...no bio lightning yet) As far as she is concerned, she's just an old sage, not a witch.

And of course: you are controlling your PC, but your PC is FAR from having your mentality (except if he's some sort of radical or free-thinking, equilitarian heretic)

What's wrong with killing a witch, even if she is sanctioned? And also, some of the heretics who were hiding her

Your party follows a dangerous way, i think, but an interesting one.

Sobakaa said:

The crime here is NOT the killing of a wytch, the crime is the DESTRUCTION OF IMPERIAL PROPERTY! That sanctioning brand makes the Psyker a useful tool of the Imperium, the same as a lasgun, a Leman Russ battle tank and a Lunar class cruiser. Destroy any of these at your own peril.

Well, they can allways send their objections to Ophelia VII.

Sobakaa said:

Their objections would actually, if they fallowed proper channels in such, go to the Adaptus Arbites since this is an Imperial Crime. Any objections would need to be filed by Ophilia VII to the arbitrator Judge (as a Judge would more then likely be involved in such a volatile case) in charge of of the trial and sentencing of the criminal. In most cases, to avoid a nasty war between the two factions, most sane (please note that there is a rather large dearth of people deemed sane in 40k) Judges would hand the criminal over to the Sisterhood with the understanding that they will handle her punishment, more then likely with a fun romp with the repenta.

This is all, of course, if situations went without involving the cells big bad =][= would could theoretically do any damned thing he wanted to any of the parties involved for any reason at all.

Edit: Or, more likely for the Adaptus Sororitas, once the offending sister is turned over and chastised for a year and a day (repenta might be a bit harsh as such zeal is a good thing), she would probably be demoted and placed back into a proper Sisters of Battle unit where her zeal to burn the witch can be better directed against the enemies of mankind. Another sister, one who might not fit in so well with one convent or another, perhaps one that has been flogged one too many times for having too damned many independent thoughts, might be reassigned to the Inquisitor to replace the sister. That way, everyone gets what they want. The Inquisitor still has s Sosoritas as requested, the Sisterhoods reputation and standing will not be besmirched, a convent gets rid of a “bad apple”, and an overly zealous sister will have a closer hand to guide her fires to better use.

Sobakaa said:

Well, the Psyker is not branded (mostly due to the fact of the campaign introduction part, and also that the Psyker is mind-cleansed) and since they are working for an Inquisitor, as a cell, having her kill everyone else will only result in her own termination by the Inquisitor's hands, or if she's lucky, mind-cleasing or shipped to the Tech-Priest for her promotion to mindless Servitor.

No, even if she does learn (in-game, the player knows about the Psyker being a Psyker) I don't think it'll go into a PCvsPC bloodbath for a few reasons.

1- like it or not, the sister is part of the cell now, and her success depends greatly on the cell's success and survival.

2-The psyker actually saved the cell in the past during the intro mission (where the sister wasn't around) giving him decent back-up, and recently he went critical fighting a chaos space marine with the sister (in melee too); can't have a better proof for Faith in the Emperor than charging a CSM with a mono folding knife and buckler.

3-Again, she's not too smart and perceptive (stat-wise) so chance are they can Grox-**** her about that weird power or another and it might actually stick

Sobakaa said:

What the heck. The extremely poor advancement scheme, income and harsh equipment restriction of an SoB are all due to the sister's powerful starting equipment. If he doesn't plan on replacing it or giving it to you further down the line, he dang well better make up for it by reworking the class.

Quartermus said:

I have no Sisters in my group, but I've been wondering how power armour at 1st level actually plays; it seems to me that anything that could threaten a PC in power armour would spell almost certain death to most 1st level PCs not inpower armour, i.e. the majority of the party. What are other players' actual experiences with this?

Yes, all the party would be dead right the moment power armored sister was killed. It's much like vindicare assasin in Ascention. So, unwilling to tailor all the module to just one of the players, our GM gave me crappy equipment.

However we tried to balance this. I already described how we treat sister's social and combat skills during investigation. Plus, i can always ask for a certain skill, if we both agree it fits (for a reasonable price, of course).

And, at least, i made some additions to sisters combat skills (mostly seraphim). It's written in the fluff section that seraphims are trained ancient arts of combat from the Age of Apostasy, and what you find in her advancement section? Nothing really cool and secret. So, i've added some jump pack and power armor oriented tricks, as well as some skills for each type of pistols (you have to choose what tree to advance, though).