A friend is starting a game and I have a short list, but I don't know a lot about the characters and was hoping you guys would help me out by telling like a sentence of what you think is cool about my picks.

I am trying to decide which one I pick, these from the book appeal to me.

Navigator

Explorator

Astropath

YokuniCat said:

Out of the three you will get the most adventuring bang for your buck out of the Explorator. He is definitely the most valuable addition to the 'Away team' so to speak of the three. The other two, while being very interesting role playing options strike me as more likely to confine themselves to the ship. The Navigators for example are so rare and valuable that to send one to investigate some ruins would be a bit much, and Astropaths seem rather frail, and if one has to face down an Orc then things have not gone according to plan are most definitely FUBAR'd.

Go with the Explorator, because then you are most useful in most situations (on board and ashore) compared to the other two, which will probably be more fun for you.

The whole "Navigators and Astropaths stay on the ship" thing is so much bull. There's backups, and having someone who can read minds or kill with a glance, not to mention detect psychic shenanigans, is incredibly useful. Furthermore, navigators only got so much time before they descend into mutated slabs of immobile wtf, so they're all about getting to see the world before that happens. And since nobody wants the Navigator to be cranky... they get to do it.

So, what's cool about them:

Navigator: You got respect, you got power, you can kill with a glance and wear the pimpest of clothes. You get powerful psychic powers with little danger, which is a ton of fun.

Explorator: You get to build ****, you get to be the science guy, you get to replace all your fleshy bits and transform into a metal-forged war-like killing machine that possesses more armor than an tank and more brains than Stanford.

Astropath: Slow start, but once you get going... You are the mind killer.

Explorator, because going nuts with their whole demented religion and supposedly logical natures would be amusing to roleplay.

Of those three I'd play an Astropath. Simply because I've had a concept for a curmudgeonly, awkward and disagreeable astropath since before RT was published and I'd love to bring life to him (other than the fiction I've written and his cameos in games I've GM'd).

I currently play a navigator in a pbp, lots of fun. At lower levels he's already mean enough, but the higher you get the more versatile his powers become and thus the bigger his powerhouse becomes.

I also play a genetor, and to be honest, the dude is almost a techmarine when it comes to killing power and ability to handle blows (regenerate is your friend, as is sonar sense), he has an insane amount of usefull skills and is just plain fun to roleplay. I'd advise that to anyone. Forget the traditional admech, boring twats. Go with a genetor who sculpts the flesh and who - as an explorator - believes in study and learning through experimentation :-)

Putting on my powergaming hat for a second: Techpriests are the most versatile and survivable class in the game, with some of the highest potential for consistent damage-dealing (thanks to the ease acquiring and ubiquity of bionics for them, they can either become the strongest hand-to-hand characters or the best weapons platforms (why yes, I can heft a heavy weapon easily and brace it with my additional bionic arms)). Essentially, the only characters that Tank better are Space Marines 'ported in from Deathwatch, or those actually in a tank.

Navigators, however, are ridiculously awesome at damage dealing. The Lidless Stare is one of the absolute best intrinsic weapons in the game. Add that to The Course Untravelled, Tides of Time and Space and A Cloud in the Warp and the Navigator can easily become the Kwisatz Haderach. Shove him in good or better quality powered armour and a decent force sword and he becomes pretty much the unstoppable close-combat monster. Throw in a vox-bead and some blinkers/goggles and some pre-arranged signal for those on his side and you can switch from the impossibly fast and agile ninja-stick to Mr Medusa in the blink of an eye (pun intended).

This isn't to slight the potential of an astropath, mind you, it's just the other two make stupidly awesome and surprisingly rounded characters, both combat and otherwise.

Switching to the roleplaying side of things- I'd personally go for the Navigator, and possibly use a slightly less extreme combat version. I mean, the whole Weirding Way thing is awesome, but the whole quirky "doomed to mutation and life support in a tank of orange gas" bit has a lot of roleplay potential. Add into that the fact that the Navigator is one of the most influential persons on the ship (and given that in my group's interpretation of 40k fluff the majority of interstellar finance is handled by the Banks of the Houses of the Navis Nobilite, this influence is not wholly limited to power over the ship in Warp). The shifting balance of power between the RT and his Navigator is definitely fertile fuel for fine roleplay.

And, yes, I like Dune, and I'm very glad that 40k drew so much inspiration from the setting.

Thank you guys, I appreciate your inputs, it is looking a lot like navigator or explorator and I will know when everyone else decides what they want to play.

I hate to say it, especially after Reverend Mort's exposé on the pimpness of Navigators and the Mindkillerness of Astropaths, but I'd go with the Explorator. Not because I feel that you'd get more or less gameplay out of any of them, but because I just fracking love Adeptus Mechanicus to bits. However, if you're willing to get into it, the Adeptus Astra Telepathica and the Navis Nobilite do offer considerable background that, while maybe not written about as much as the Adeptus Mechanicus, surely rival them in complexity in the actual backdrop of the Imperium by large.

Don't forget to check back and tell us what you end up with, because I'm sure some of us would love to hear it.

Alasseo said:

This came up when my players were making their PCs - I thought (as per into teh Storm - that Navigators got no benefit from using Force Swords - has that been errata'd and I missed it?

(sorry to sidetrack the thread)

not unless it happened very recently

Nerd King said:

You're right. I have to admit that line in ItS is something I just kept missing when I read it. Ah well, stuff like a Loi Burning Blade or Mezoa Thunderhammer works just as well.

So the group was formed and we began playing,

There is a Rogue Trader, a Void Master, an Arch Militant and me the Explorator, we are playing a scenario with The Emporers Bounty in it.

I have to say I love the explorator, good skills and is a monster in combat, all round good character

I'm playing a Navigator and find I wish I had picked up more diffing skill out side the path skills! any of the 3 would be fun. depends no what you are looking for and how you play.

To be honest, I like Astropaths. Their power level is like D&D wizards -- starting out slowly and them becoming very powerful as they level up -- but their ability to use psychic powers without almost no fear of Perils (with talents) is astounding, and the errata has made TK a very powerful combat discipline. At your highest levels, you can use Push without almost any risk of harmful Perils (Rite of Sanctioning, Favored by the Warp, Soul Bound, and Warp Conduit) Theosophamy is also good, though narrow, but Armor of the Soul more than justifies it, and with the bonuses against Daemons with Soul Bound to the Emperor, it means that once you get the banishment powers, you can destroy them easily. Warp Weapon also pairs well with Divination, since the bonuses to your BS/WS rolls goes great with ignoring most armor.

Navigators also seem fun. While their powers are more restricted, they have a good mesh of combat, non-combat, and starship scale powers (with Into the Storm). If I were to guess, the path to success with them would probably be a good mix of powers, so you have something to do no matter where you are, and having good Navigation skills, of course. Implants that boost perception are also a good choice for this.

Explorators seem to have your normal Tech Priest fun in them. Get cyborged up and start exploring the galaxy for knowledge and power. The cool twist with them is the Genetor alternate advancement, which offers a new twist over the typical Dark Heresy Tech Priest.

I would probably play Navigator, if I had to choose; I've always been a fan of having the character the party feels is essential, and Navigators are just that. Sure, your ship will have a few, but no one will want to lose one. I have a character I wrote up from a concept I had, of a rather high-Fellowship ambassador-like Navigator, engineered to be hot, and practically mutation-free (noticeably, anyway). If I ever get to play a game, she's going to be what I try to play, with a good assortment of Skills, planned future skills, and Navigator ability (written at Rank 2, so if it started higher, she could only get even better.)

If I didn;t play Asteira, I'd probably go Astropath, if the GM didn't allow a more healthy, robust "oh, and he also happens to be a telepath" character. Playing a psyker who didn't have to have Sanctioned Psyker (with so many options I don't want to have to roleplay for downsides to having power), and possibly also Soul Bound, would be nice, if not a slower progression, though the wriieup for AT says nothing of having either trait, so maybe I'm wrong.

As for the Explorator, he irritates me, with his fear of other people's tech. The Imperium could be a great deal further ahead if they were willing to study and incorporate xenotech, such as that found among the Tau. Such gear has no spirits, that I am aware of, so the AM should be able to us e it without fear, or perhaps place machine spirits into it. If I could play a more xeno-obsessed tech-priest, maybe I'd enjoy it, but probably not. Still, I've heard that tech-priests are easy to pimp for combat and shenanigans, so it could be worth it, if it didn't kill the fun.

The Astropath has Soul Bound to the Emperor as its special ability. It's at the end of the Careers section, where all of the special abilities are lumped together.

Rite of Sanctioning is a Rank 1 Talent for 500 XP. If you go Transubstantial Initiate (an alternative rank 1 that is amazing for Astropaths IMHO, from Into the Storm ) it's only 300.

venkelos said:

That's actually something Explorators are great at doing -- IIRC, part of the Mechanicus' mandate is that they have the right to Xeno tech, so they can reverse engineer it into a proper Imperial technology. I don't know which supplement it's in off the top of my head, but I also recall that there's an inferior version of teh Tau stealth suit that can be acquired that's based off of such reverse engineering.

The thing about Machine Spirits is that they're mostly a construct of dogma, and another part of Imperial and Mechanicus propaganda. You can definitely experiment with Xeno tech, but it has to be evaluated to see how dangerous it is, if it can be used to benefit mankind, etc. Explorators are exactly the types to ransack ancient ruins and dead worlds for Xenos artifacts that they can then explore and dissect.

venkelos said:

There is an AM faction that specialises in studying Xeno tech and uncovering it's secrets. Just as there are those that do believe in inventing new things and who don't believe in the dogma of the machine spirits (dark mechanicus has a very nice example).

Explorators tend to be a bit "loose" when it comes to the beliefs of the AM, hence why they are explorators. Nothing about playing one means you should feel confined to the typical AM beliefs. It's an option to stay true to those, not a straight jacket. My own genetor is currently using a guest AI probe to try and work out how to create BQ cortex implants. And the captain of the ship has no clue. As he doesn't know jack about the secrets of the mechanicus - and neither do most others - it's rather easy to fool them. It's the other AM you got to worry about, and i'm assuming if you're the PC you'll have the others on board the ship in your pocket, so it's all about keeping up appearances when encountering AM on an away mission ;-)

So the GM has decided my explorator is not fun, I am therefore now playing a an astropath (my 2nd choice). He hated my explorator I could do tech stuff and fight really well in close combat.

YokuniCat said:

Wait, hold on. Are you saying he forbade you from being a Tech-Priest because you were doing too well? Your GM's a freaking tyrant if I'm interpreting you correctly. You should be able to play any class you wish! And too good in close combat? Dude, the Explorator isn't a melee scrapper first and foremost. He can do it, sure, but most of his offensive talents seem to focus on ranged combat. Is he going to take the astropath away from you too if you start dominating people's minds and crushing your foes with a thought? Argh.

YokuniCat said:

If I'm reading this right - and there's no reason I wouldn't - your GM is an idiot.

YokuniCat said:

YokuniCat said:

Honestly, sounds to me your gm is newbie at gming. Have a sit down and tell the dude that he should rethink his approach to gm-ing. Railroading is fairly common with new gms but seriously: this is ridiculous. If he's got no challenges for you then he's not doing it right. Plain as that.

YokuniCat said:

I agree with everything everyone said above. You can be brutal in combat with any PC and the right build/weapons, and picking a well-built astropath is just going to cause more problems later when it comes into its own power and starts doing things like Pushing at least once every encounter to Psi-Bolt/Psi-Storm, TK grip, etc. for stupid damage.

I can understand the GM have issues with powerful combat PCs if he's new, but telling you your PC isn't fun is simply ridiculous. How does he expect to deal with Arch Militants who don't do anything but be awesome at combat, melee and otherwise?