I've been playing around with the various levels of the 'Minion' Talents as I intend to play a Heretek character with an entourage of Servitors of various types. You get a Lesser Minion Talent for free and I plan on spending my starting XP on either 2 Minions, or 1 Minion and 2 Lesser Minions but I'm having some problems getting my head around the design process.

Do any of you have any ideas on the best way to make a Gun Servitor using either the lesser or normal level talent?

If anybody can work out a way of making an Auspex/Look-out style Servo Skull using the lesser minion talent you get for free that would be great as well.

Any help would be much appreciated ;-)

Servo skull from the monster section is a lesser minion and the tainted servitor is a medium... is that good enough?

Even a Servitor is nearly impossible with Lesser Minion. You are really looking at Servo Skulls at that level. A Gun Servitor is entirely possible with Minion. Dump Fewllowship, Intelligence, and WS hard (1-10 in each). Take BS up to the maximum of 35. Then give it a Toughness of 30, and then the bare minimum of strength to carry the gun and armour you give it. Perception should be low. Agility can be dumped if you are not relying on things like dodge, but if you are, keep it reasonable. Give it various traits to classify it as a Servitor: Machine, Undying, Unnatural Toughness. That's most of the work done.

The Tainted Servitor example they give is actually invalid as a Minion of Chaos. It has at least one Rank 3 Talent which are limited to Greater Minions of Chaos.

Truthfully I am a bit irked by the minion system. I get minions are meant to be well below a PC, and that to be relatively decent in one area they have to sacrifice in others. The limitation of talents and skills based on the level of the minion works fine. However, if you want to make an anyway near sensible human being you just can't while at the same time as them being even semi-competent at anything. To reach the maximums that a talent let you you really need to dump characteristics. I haven't got a problem with that for things like Servitors or Animals and the like. However, I just cannot agree that a human who is capable of participating in an adventure would have stats below 15 (especially as a normal Imperial citizen, who are hidebound, malnourished and more than slightly derpy, have stats about 25 across the board). At that point you are talking about sickly men, barely able to hold up their own body weight. Int less than 15 strikes me as being barely sentient. Fellowship of less than 15 should only really be reserved for tech priests and the like. Its not even like a higher stat (say 25) would make them good at things generally (you don't have the skill? Ok, roll a 5 or less for me please). Personally I think I would have liked different selections to choose from based on what your minion was going to be (Such as different selections for Daemons, Animals, Servitors and Humans). They would all have different base characteristics and Talents and Traits that you could pick from. Humans would get much fewer traits to pick from, but would have higher average characteristics (it would also give incentive not to take the full traits. At the moment there is no reason not to take the maximum 5 traits allowed by being a Minion, aside from "roleplay reasons").

I think a bit more flexibility in creating minions would have been nice. Maybe a merits and flaws system, where you can get weaknesses in exchange for abilities or being able to sacrifice traits in exchange for more attribute points. It does seem reasonable to be able to make an average human with no exceptional skills as a minor minion, though by the rules it isn't possible.

I have to agree, it is pretty much impossible to have even an average human with the current system, which is kinda "meh".

I like the idea and basis of the system, but I think the minions should have had base traits of 10 or something like that.

I like the idea and basis of the system, but I think the minions should have had base traits of 10 or something like that.

Add the option to drop a characteristic to 1 or -- and receive 5 extra points from that and I think you could have something. Maybe one could also trade low-level traits on a 2:1 or 3:1 base for higher-level ones in order to enable concepts like a lowly daemonic familiar or others requiring a single high-level trait.

Or, y'know, you could just look at the Unique Minions sidebar on page 136. Basically, anything you want to do with the minion rules that's beyond the normal limitations of those rules is permitted if your GM says it is. The rules are there, as all the rules in every rulebook and sourcebook are, as a starting point.

For example, I'm allowing Rubric Marines as Greater Minions, but only to Tzeentchian Sorcerers who know the right things (primarily those who bear the geneseed of the Crimson King). I'm allowing Daemonic on minions other than Greater Minions so as to permit nurgling 'pets' and daemonic imps.

The system can't cover everything, and if it's too loose, then it becomes open to abuse (and if that were the case, there'd be a crowd of people here all be complaining about how broken it is and how it caters to powergamers). So the rules start tightly constrained with the Rule Zero clause to allow flexibility and expansion beyond those limits when that flexibility and expansion is for the right reasons, as determined by the only person who can really make that sort of decision for your group... the GM.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

merashin said:

Bear in mind that Psyker also allows you to purchase and use the Psyniscience skill. A psychic 'sniffer dog' type minion, who has the Psyker Trait just to get Psyniscience +10 (the maximum for a Minion, as opposed to a Lesser or Greater Minion) and Warp Sense could be a potentially useful early-warning system, sort of like a sentient auspex.

I think I'll use a straight forward system of 'trading down'; so a Trait can be traded for a Talent, a Talent for a Skill, a Skill for, say, an extra 10 Characteristics. (So a Lesser Minion's 3 Traits could become an extra 30 Characteristic points). Since trading can only go down, it should stop power play with ridiculous Traits, and keeping the bars on maximum Characteristic, Talent, & Skill levels should prevent daft results. I'll have to try it out.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

I apologize for necro'ing this thread, but this caught my eye as I was searching for entries on Minions. I didn't catch the link between the Psyker Trait and the Psyniscience Skill on my first read through. Has Psyniscience always been linked to possessing the Psyker Trait? In Rogue Trader, characters with the Footfallen background get Psyniscience at character creation. Navigators are stated repeatedly to not be Psykers, yet they have the Psyniscience Skill. There is no indication in the description of Psyniscience on page 107 that a character must possess the Psyker Trait to learn it. There is no indication in the earlier charts in the Skills chapter or the Character Creation chapter that Psyker is required to take Psyniscience. Why was this change made? Or does this only apply to Minions? If it is to apply to everyone and everything, perhaps stating that much earlier would be a good idea as I never even considered such a limitation until I saw this thread.

The thought of a Minion with Psyniscience did cross my mind, particularly for a character who otherwise has no psykic or warp-based abilities. Is this perhaps another thing that can fall under Rule Zero?

iridium said:

It's noted in the Psyker trait description, if memory serves.

N0-1_H3re said:

"It's noted in the Psyker trait description, if memory serves."

***

This is true, and that desription is on page 142.

So do I understand it correctly that the specific linking of Psyniscience (Skill) to Psyker (Trait) is a new rule change/clarification for BC? If that's the case, something should be inserted in the Psyniscience description stating that fact, as that Skill has now become the only Skill that has a prerequisite. Otherwise, one could foresee the six non-Psyker archetypes purchasing the Psyniscience Skill any time they have the available exp, as such a linkage is not apparent in either the Character Creation chapter or the Skills chapter.

I think it has only really become an issue with Black Crusade, which is why it is not listed in the skill (basically forgetting/not realising the implications of some change, which has been the cause of so many of the problems with the clarity of the new rule sets when they first come out). With career advance tables generally only psyker type characters got access to Psyniscience anyway, and those characters that did (say through a background or alternate career rank) did so by having some other connection to the warp (some exposure in their past, dabbling in sorcery and the likes). It is only an issue now, with the ability to buy freely from the skills lists.

However, if you tend to read the rules quite cartefully, like I do, you will come across the Psyker trait description and will realise the difference. Not the best way of doing it, but when have Fantasy Flight Ever got rules clearly presented on the first try?

The way I would view this is that while the character is not a psyker, he may be able to feel the fluctuations of the warp due to previous connections.

These are all heretics that have gone through extended exposure to warp material, it is unnecesarry to say that they have this connection. The honing of a 6th sense if you will. It shouldn't be impossible for a normal human to feel the manifestation of the warp in the material world, that feeling of wrongness that is described so often in the fluff. It would be much like training ones nose, being able to pick out certain scents and trails through long term exposure to it. Perhaps leaving it at a constant negative modifier without the psyker trait, as they're not as sensitive. To completely rule it out, however, seems wrong.