In the next campaign I'm running for Deathwatch, I'm planning on including an Inquisitorial Assassin in the mix (not too sure of which variety yet, though probably Eversor). Considering my group leans a bit towards the 'shoot first, think later' strategy, I'm expecting a fight of some sort to break out and would like to be sure the Assassin holds up to the title.

I've been cruising through the various books but I've yet to find any stats for Asssassins. Has anyone found the rules for them in any of the books or possibly wrote up their own rules for them?

Well, the case made by the Horus Heresy novel " Nemesis " notwithstanding, Eversor aren't really the type to fit in to any sort of group. They're really sorta just 'fired' at a problem and everyone ducks until the fighting is over, which is when they collect the assassin if it is still alive.

That said, the Kill Team being at the scene when one suddenly lands and begins slaughtering everything around it is always a fun moment in a game. In a Dark Heresy campaign I plan to eventually run for some friends, I know I certainly plan to include a moment like that (also them getting to watch a live vid-feed of Exterminatus being enacted on a planet, and other various horrors), where the acolytes are clearing through some cultist stronghold, or traitor fortress, when they suddenly see It down a long hallway from them, slaughtering its way closer through their very preoccupied enemies... but I'm getting off track here.

Nemesis is good inspiration for if you want to have a more social Eversor in your game, or any other Clade of your choice. As for how to build the Assassin, I'd suggest using the Vindicare as something of a base to work from. With the exception of how Vanus are depicted in the novel, they all seem to possess varying measures of agility, and they're all supreme examples of human beings in one way or another (often augmented even further).

I'd suggest letting an Eversor activate as many glands as they want at once, and as a free action, as the whole enterprise is second nature to them, not to mention their system has been extensively modified to withstand the high stresses it's under. I also just remembered that the Gland War soldiers found within one of the Rogue Trader books (Into the Storm?) would also be a good place to look for inspiration.

I'm also sure someone somewhere has already written them up and posted them online.

A full write-up for an Eversor Assassin can be found in Ascension for Dark Heresy.

There are stats for a Vindicare Assassin named 'Nihl Zee' in The Emperor Protects adventure book on pg.92. He has high stats, very high skills, a lot of combat talents and he should be able to handle most ranged combat on it's own, maybe better then any SM of your Kill-Team.

Ugh, don't use the Temple Assassin trait as written, it's broken as hell.

Just use an unmodified dodge against everything of 50% instead of giving him those extra dodges an parries per AB.

That's about the same way I'm handling it - due to superior training, each Temple Assassin can attempt to dodge each and every attack directed at him, effectively granting him a Force Field with a Protection Rating of 50 that never overloads.

I suppose since you're not going to have assassins around all the time it doesn't matter too much, but I'd argue that the Eversor, Callidus, and even the Culexus would tend to have better agility than the Vindicare, Vanus, and Venenum. And of course there's be variance found within each informal grouping as well. The Eversor in particular, as they are pumped full of so many combat drugs that they probably see the world in bullet-time when they're in a fight.

Blood Pact said:

Not to try to derail the thread to much, but I like to imagine a big squeezy bottle filled with water that follows around wargames fluff writers. If they are tempted to write something along the lines of 'lives only for war' or 'emotionless killing machine', the bottle squirts them in the face and shouts 'BAD FLUFF WRITER! NO TWINKIE!'.

The ninja story has a long and fine tradition. We have Ninja Gaiden, Tenchu, Ninja Blade, Shinobi (and Nightshade) and Shinobido, and that is just the video games.

As 40k's preminent ninja, Eversors should be at the forefront of the merchandising campaigns, but the current fluff makes them difficult to use.

Assassin's Creed 40k. You know it makes sense.

And it would make some sense if the Eversor Temple trained "ninjas", not mind-wiped mass murderers whose veins pump more combat rugs than red cells.

Seriously, you use Eversor Assassins when using a nuke runs a risk of damaging important infrastructure. They were never meant as ninjas. They were never the subtle assassins, and always the crazed killing machines. Even the name of their temple means "Destroyer". They compete with the Culexus for the title of the most monstrously inhuman Officio operatives, and that's a big deal considering the Culexus are actual soulless aberrations.

If you want a ninja, try Callidus. Perfect camouflage, easily concealable weapons, great infiltration skills. Their preferred method of assassination is pretty much the epitome of ninjutsu - instead of dressing in a black pajama and challenging the enemy lord to a katana duel at midnight, become yet another face in the crowd and stab the target in the back when he's busy not paying attention to you. Or, try the Vindicare - silent, unseen death, more precise than any surgical tool, relentless in the pursuit of their target, undergoing one of the harshest training regimens in the history of ever.

These are the "ninjas" of the Officio. Where did you get the idea that the Eversor fit, or should fit, the same mold?

I think to me Ninja is more an aesthetic than a modus operandi. Anyone can be an Assassin, but to be a Ninja you need to be rocking the pyjamas.

An Eversor is more of a Ninja Gaiden/Ninja Blade/Shinobi Ninja than a Shinobido Ninja, but it takes all kinds.

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This is all just part of the playing with the cool toys thing. Eversors are cool toys. We should play with them.

AluminiumWolf said:

Except, of course, that Ninjas didn't do that. That's a trope brought about by Japanese theatre, because the black garb of the stagehands was accepted by the audience as being a sign to ignore someone's presence, so ninja characters within a story were clad in the same garments, so they could attack without being acknowledged as characters by the audience.

The ninja aesthetic you're cleaving to is pretty much an example of ninja failure - if a ninja found himself in a fight, then he'd failed to reach his target or escape undetected.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

Someone's been watching recent episodes of QI

Rules for playable* assassins at Deathwatch level are in the Darh Heresy supplement "Ascension" - which includes PC Vindicare, Death Cultists (not Temple assassins, I know) and an NPC Eversor.

My current Deathwatch group includes a Death Cultist Assassin (my son had been playing a bit too much Assassin's Creed and *needed* to bring it to the table) and that works pretty well.

*I say playable because, as has been mentioned, the "Temple Assassin" trait is somewhat borked. The suggested "50% chance to dodge anything" could be a good fix though.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

Ninja come in two flavors. The first is the Tenchu flavor, where they die if anyone sees them. The second is the Ryu Hayabusa flavor, where anyone that sees the ninja dies.

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There is a pretty strong line these days of combat ninja who are more or less guys who wear a black bodysuit and kill people with acrobatics and ninja magic.

One of these is probably easier to integrate in to a Deathwatch game, as they are more or less just another melee focused combatant rather than someone who has failed if the rest of the party ever know they exist.

Raiden from Metal Gear Solid 4 (and soon* Rising**) is a pretty good example:-

* Ish

** :Revengence

*** Kewl?

AluminiumWolf said:

And Eversors are neither of them. I know the word "Assassin" may be confusing, but the Eversor temple is not about assassination at all - their operatives are mass murderers and terrorists.

Morangias said:

I would agree here, Eversors are a poor choice for a PC IMHO. Lexicanum has a good write up of them if you don't have the other books available. Eversors are killing machines, not ninjas; not thoughtful, but mind wiped killing drones that are addicted to the combat stims so horribly they're put in stasis between assignments. They don't get to walk the halls, read books, go on dates, or learn new tactics; when they're not murdering people in an orgy of blood they're asleep. This is why they're in Ascension as an *NPC*, becuase A) they are a little over the top even for that game (which is saying something), and B) they're not that interesting from a character perspective, epsecially when in a group.

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Eversor_Temple

There are other temples to choose from that fit the theme of 'ninja' more than the Eversor.

This is of course if you're considering the existing back story here. If not, go knock yourself out.

+++++And Eversors are neither of them. I know the word "Assassin" may be confusing, but the Eversor temple is not about assassination at all - their operatives are mass murderers and terrorists.+++++

Sure, but I don't think that disqualifies them from being ninja. You get some pretty brutal ninja these days.

I'm just saying that if you show someone a picture of an Eversor they will totally say it is a ninja.

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I can't help but feel that this proves I really will argue about anything.

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I don't disagree that current fluff makes Eversors poor choices for PCs. I argue that this makes it bad fluff, as people are going to want to play the coolest ninja in the setting. If you can retcon the bleeding Necron to have more personality, you can do something for the Eversor!

AluminiumWolf said:

How often do these brutal ninjas butcher entire cities, not even because they're in the way, but because their whole assignment was razing the goddamn city?

AluminiumWolf said:

You're absolutely the first person I've encountered making that connection.

AluminiumWolf said:

That's about the first thing I've seen from you that I can fully agree with.

AluminiumWolf said:

There are many cool things in 40k - murder servitors, titans, Baneblades, Ordinatus, Wraithlords, Bloodthirsters, just to name a few - that are nonetheless unplayable. Sometimes, more is less.

AluminiumWolf said:

What, precisely, makes it the coolest? Because it blows up when it dies or it has a skull face? Of course it's opinion based, but I don't know that most people find the eversor the 'coolest ninja' outside of you, though, and the 'coolness' comes from their fluff, not just the fact it has a skull for a head and carries a sword.

Yeah, Eversors are cool exactly because they're psychotic killing machines stuffed to the ears with the most powerful combat drugs humanity ever developed.

These are all ninja.

+++++There are many cool things in 40k - murder servitors, titans, Baneblades, Ordinatus, Wraithlords, Bloodthirsters, just to name a few - that are nonetheless unplayable. Sometimes, more is less.+++++

Servators are always going to be difficult, although I guess you could make the C-3PO and R2-D2 from Star Wars. Baneblades, Titans and Ordinatus are at least driven by real people with motivations. Doing a game with them is going to be... hard, but not impossible. I draw your attention to Lone Wolf for the 2300AD roleplaying game. This is the gold standard for Starship Captain roleplaying. Everyone plays the commanding officer of a cruiser divison from different countries tasked with hunting down an alien commerce raider. It is a competition to gain the most victory points, and hence the greatest glory for your nation in the eyes of the public.

http://web.me.com/pentapod2300/mag/lonewolf.htm

Wraithlords are more or less Dreadnoughts, and Bloodthirsters, well an all Demon game could be fun. Have you read the novel Good Omens?:-

+++++Many Phenomena—wars, plagues, sudden audits—have been advanced as evidence for the hidden hand of Satan in the affairs of Man, but whenever students of demonology get together the M25 London orbital motorway is generally agreed to be among the top contenders for Exhibit A.

Where they go wrong, of course, is in assuming that the wretched road is evil simply because of the incredible carnage and frustration it engenders every day.

In fact, very few people on the face of the planet know that the very shape of the M25 forms the sigil odegra in the language of the Black Priesthood of Ancient Mu, and means "Hail the Great Beast, Devourer of Worlds." The thousands of motorists who daily fume their way around its serpentine lengths have the same effect as water on a prayer wheel, grinding out an endless fog of low-grade evil to pollute the metaphysical atmosphere for scores of miles around.

It was one of Crowley's better achievements. It had taken years to achieve, and had involved three computer hacks, two break-ins, one minor bribery and, on one wet night when all else had failed, two hours in a squelchy fi eld shifting the marker pegs a few but occultly incredibly signifi cant meters. When Crowley had watched the first thirty-mile-long tailback he'd experienced the lovely warm feeling of a bad job well done.

It had earned him a commendation.+++++

Something like the In Nomine roleplaying game, in which all the players play Demons looking to corrupt man.

So not all characters will be suitable for all campaigns. But you should at least be able to tell stories about all characters.

Morangias said:

Sure, but unless you can make the character compelling enough to hang a novel, comic or video game on, it is just a toy no one can play with, and hence is worthless.

AluminiumWolf said:

Yeah... no. Not everything in a fictional world has to meet the same set of criteria. Some things are player character material, some aren't, and that's perfectly fine.

Also, spamming pics of tech-ninjas next to that of an Eversor and claiming "these are all ninjas" proves, yeah you guessed it, absolutely nothing.

Morangias said:

Yeah, alright, maybe that is putting it a little stong. But if you have a cool character, you want to be really working them with a line of novels and related merch.

Always gotta consider the merch potential.

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At the moment, the discussuion goes something like:-

'What do you want to play?'

'I don't know. Who are the best fighters?'

'Eversor Assassins!'

'Can I play one?'

'No'

This is non-optimal. And silly. Assassins don't have to be written as unplayable non entities who only get woken up for combat. We have a lot of ninja mythology. Ninja clans, betrayal by your master, training montages. That kind of thing.

Really, someone should have been there to ask whoever made up the fluff if they really wanted to make their 'coolest' character about as interesting to be with as a block of wood.

AluminiumWolf said:

Dude, come on and stop trolling for five minutes. Eversor is one of many temples, and most of the others look more like ninjas than the eversor. And saying they're the best fighters is subject to debate. How about "I don't know, who are the best fighters?" "Well, the Chaos gods considering they're literally immortal...probably a blood thirster." "Can I play one?" "No dude, this is a deatwatch game." You also can't play a SM Chapter Master.

And you CAN tell a story about an Eversor, but they don't tend to be team players. You could paint a very interesting picture of the inside of an Eversor's mind, the tormented psyche and the surge of addiction. It just doesn't make a good character to roleplay in a group.

And I always thought you figured Space Marines were the end all be all