It's been long enough since Ascension came out that I probably don't need to get into details of why the Vindicare having bazillion dodges per turn is bad, so I'll just skip it and get to the chase:

Instead of gaining extra reactions, the Temple Assassin's exquisite training grants him an effective force field with a rating of 50 that never overloads.

This way, the Vindicare can still dodge a lot of things, but he will be failing more often. Even better, since force fields don't stack, he won't be able to cheese it up by stacking a force field on top of his bazillion dodges.

Thoughts? Comments? Critique?

Seems a solid fix to me.

Thanks.

By the way, it's unlikely that I'll be playing or running Ascension in any foreseeable future, so if anyone wishes to steal this fix and take it for a test ride, I'd be happy to see some field reports

After getting the ascension book and reading through it i agree the Vindicare assassin is totally BROKEN from ground up... I dont even allow THAT assassin in the game because its so broken on too many levels to bother with. Ive toyed with the idea of nixing that ENTIRE cult from the game permanently since this is the ONE glaring faceplant that FFG has done with the game ( the rest i adore as DH and RT are my favorite RPGs at this point and for last 3yrs now )

But as for a proposed fix to the "Temple Assasin" Trait...simple the Vindicare should NEVER have gotten that trait in first place. IF any assassin cults should have it it would ONLY be the ones that utilize CQB ( Close Quarters Battle ) in this case meaning blades...to dispatch the foes of the Emperor... The vindicare is nothing more than a sniper..specialzed in RANGED combat ONLY...and has no need to have such superior close in skills if they do their job right...

Ive begun giving the Temple Assassin trait to actual death cult assassins ONLY ( Vindicare DONT qualify since they are too militarily AND ranged combat oriented to be a TRUE Death Cult---they are specialized military and should be an offshoot of the Imperial guard NOT assassin branch due to their serious preference for military structure training and specialized military grade weaponry vs any true Deathcult assassin.

I would instead give them some other trait to even the field a bit better more suited to their style...some kind of sniper training bonus etc...perhaps doubling all damage dealt that gets past toughness etc or automatically granting ALL ranged weapons they use to count as having the Tearing trait to maximize all damage dealt with ranged weaponry ( reflecting their honed specialized lethal skills with ranged weapons )...or some such variation thereof...

Huh, you have no idea what Officio Assassinorum is, right?

In short, they are the best of the best Imperium has to offer, producing the nigh-infallible assassins only to be used by the highest ranking Imperial officials, and only when the job really calls for it. Sniper or not, all Officio operatives undergo the same basic training that makes Astartes tutelage look like kindergarten.

Death Cultists, by contrast, are zealous murder-hobos with no formalized training.

I kinda agree that the Vindicare shouldn't have been included as a playable option, but that's because FFG had to **** the Officio fluff twice to make it happen (first in stating an Inquisitor can have his Acolyte trained into a Temple Assassin, and second time in assuming a Vindicare can join the Inquisitor's retinue for a prolonged assignment, rather than get deployed to off a specified target and return to the Temple - neither of which is possible by Codex fluff).

But, since it's been included at all, he's the only Career whose fluff makes him eligible for that trait. Period.

Cobramax76 said:

Sorry, but considering we're discussing Ascension here....

Hahahahaha oh no you're so wrong. Ascension is full of screwups. See: the entire Primaris Psyker career, a maximum levelled one of which can kill around three Greater Daemons per turn (the toughest kind of enemy FFG has ever statted).

Ascension is a mess on so many levels... the fluff on how the Inquisition works is top notch and much welcome, though. And the adversaries section is perfectly fine.

Yeah it's a decent book if you completely ignore anything to do with the actual career trees. Really, a Rank 8 Acolyte is ridiculous enough with the right gear, anything more is overkill.

Each 40k game was built on the experiences derived from the previous one. Dark Heresy had the misfortune to go first, and it's really showing nowadays.

Yeah, we can only hope that they put out a second edition eventually. Preferrably a unified core book with all the different campaign types (RT, DH etc) as addon books to keep things unified.

Cobramax76 said:

Do you add that to Preternatural Speed trait they get from a Death Cultist?

And while the whole Idea of the Vindicare appear to be broken, I do hope someday in the future we do get breakdown of the whole Officio Assassinorum. And yes the I know Dodge is something all of them are allowed in the 40K Fluff and The Death Cultist as well. Hopefully in a book on Assassin/Death Cults

Culexus - The Psychic Killer!!

Eversor - Well for lack of a better word the Beserker Killing Machine

Callidus - the Metamorph/Inflitration specialist

Vindicare - Sniper

Morangias said:

It's OK, basically a direct port of TT (according to DW's rules).

I've been toying with upgrading my current (on hold) DH party to assension and I know 1 player is certainly going to pick a Vindicare if I do and if I let him. And If I don't let him he's going to be put out.

First thing I'm going to do is not let him use ANY other equiptment. No fields, no power fists, you get those relic equivalents from the Temple and are specifically trained (and Hypno indoctrinated) to use them.

I also agree that the Death Cult assassin needs to be able to at least have the ability to dodge any attacks (like that part of the TA trait), if you use the horde rules from DW at any point (undodgeable attacks) then unless you have a DC in power armour they are going to get squidged (now that's admittedly what's going to happen to most DH characters in DW situations but that's not the point). So maybe limiting that to a maximum of bodygloves only to get the dodge the undodgeable trait.

And I didn't used to think it was so unlikely that a vindicare could dodge any attacks you threw at him at close range but moving up a to a battlefield it was basically only a matter of time before he got hit by something that he didn't see coming. Of course as per RAW they can dodge that anyway.

I'm considering having a cumulative -10 modifier to every dodge after their normal reactions (I also let dodges fail on 96-00 anway, not that it's come up in DH yet but they know it technically would).

Other options are to limit their free dodges to perception bonus instead of agility, or have them made at perception plus dodge skill.

If you're moving your party to Ascension, you'll probably want to rebalance the Primaris Psyker completely as well. When I moved my group to Ascension my Psyker basically broke the game. Nothing I threw at them was a challenge, up to and including boss monsters from Deathwatch.

Face Eater said:

You can always use the Horde rules from BC instead. Major change is, only melee attacks from Hordes are unavoidable. Also, at GM's discretion, non-Astartes don't suffer unavoidable hits at all, and the Horde doesn't add extra damage against them. It's a variant rule made specifically for mixed human-astartes campaigns, but it works pretty well otherwise.

Tom Cruise said:

The quickest fix for that is to change everything within individual powers that depends on the psyker's WP Bonus to scaling by the psykers Psy Rating instead - at that point, the upper limit is reduced and the choice of Fettered, Unfettered and Push actually matters (because choosing to use a power Fettered heavily restricts the potency of the power)

N0-1_H3r3 said:

Ah I'd heard of that and it's sounds like an immediate ffix, pretty much scooped that straight up for RT onward IRC. However my team doesn't have a Psyker anyway so at worst they'd be pretty low level (if I were to let one find out they were nascent which I was considering).

Its definitely overpowered by default in the last game I played the Assassin easily took down the main antagonist by himself while the rest of us spent all our fate points surviving against a tech priest.