My girlfriend recently tried to run a campaign where we all started at 6000 xp, just to give us a chance to play high powered PCs. However, although it was actually a rather fun game, we had a few oddities such as a 16 yr old PC with bags of XP and several characters with 3 or 4 starting fate. (in our normal games this would be highly irregular, most of our PCs barely make it past 200 xp with more than one fate).

In order to try and address this i knocked up this table to roll on. Please note its meant to be a 'punishment table' , and not balanced, in order to mess up a high xp character who got there by GM fiat rather than hard slogging roleplay. Feel free to steal it/comment on it etc

For each full 1000xp your character starts above the first, roll once on the table below (D100):

1-10: Brush with Death: Begin with -1 Fate permanently; if you have no fate remaining, the character is killed.
11-15:Injured in the Line of Duty: Roll a further d10 and gain the appropriate permanent injury, randomising left or right as needs be: 1) Deafened, 2-3) Loss of one eye, 4-5) Loss of a hand, 6-7) Loss of an Arm, 8-9)Loss of a Leg, 10) loss of a Foot . At the GMS discretion you may start with a bionic replacement of a quality befitting your stature in Imperial Society.
16-30: Unhinged: Gain D5 Insanity points
31-45: Witness to the Warp: Gain D5 corruption points
46-60: Old War Wound: Begin with -1 Wound permanently.
61-70: Passage of Time: Increase your age by one year
71-80: Ravages of Time: Increase your age by d10 years
81-95: It’s a Hard Life: Gain an extra ‘Quirk’
96-00: Experience Maketh the Man: Gain one Lore or language at Basic. This should be appropriate to your experiences within the time frame, and is ultimately at the GMs discretion.

Example: The GM wants to play a higher level campaign and starts the PCs off with 4000xp. This means that Bob the Scum rolls 3 times on the table above, getting a 27, a 78 and a 13. He therefore gains D5 insanity points, getting a 3; increases his age by D10 years, rolling a 7, and getting a permanently injury. This time he rolls an 8, meaning his lost a leg. The GM refuses to grant him anything but crude bionic, resulting in Bob sporting a peg leg.

Well it's a start.

But personally I'd expand the list and include more 'organic' modifiers that were both good and bad. After all most characters who naturally went from thier starting rank to say the 6000xp point wouldn't all be horrid wretches. Some might have had a good go at the acolyte process, or had both good and ill times along thier proession. That being said it still allows for bad rols and have a bad history.

The age thing should be a natural occurance though. All characters who start at more then usual xp amount should roll a d10+ an amount for thier profession for say each 1000 xp and add it. (just throwing numbers out of the blue, so feel free to think on it more.)

Thoughts?

I like the idea, a lot, but some of those things should be replaced. Age should indeed be automatic. I'm not sure about the dying part. Removal of fate point, yes, but perhaps allowing it to have no effect after they are all gone. I mean, what GM is going to say "sorry, you died during character creation, go home". Otherwise a really good start.

Maybe I'm just a jerk, but I like the idea of dying during character creation.

"Okay, yeah. This character's really shaping out. He's from a Hive World, he's an arbitrator. I guess he was exposed to a lot of crime and corruption growing up in the lower hive."

"Roll for his distinguishing marks"

"Oh yeah, okay. Huh, twitchy fingers. That's gotta make people nervous. Oh, he's only got two fate points. Well that's enough to start."

Some more rolling.

"Oh, he's dead."

"What do you mean he's dead?"

"Yeah, he lost both his fate points and uh, your character's dead. He had a good run. Roll for your new character's origin."

"What?!"

Sounds hilarious to me.

As far as constructive feedback, I agree that aging should be automatic, based on experience total with a random modifier. I also think more random events could be cool. Actually, I might steal this idea for my own campaign. Everyone's on their fifth rank or so, and fate points are running low...

Like i said, it was just knocked up 5 minutes. as for age being automatic...thats a matter of opinion regarding the relationship between rank and age. But i'd probably assume a bit of automatic aging, for the group as a whole, but this table would add some 'extra aging'.

Remember that the idea for the table was a 'punishment table', in order to balance the 6000xp or whatever that the players were being given without 'earning' it through actual roleplay. I ought to be bigger (a true D100 table), but it was only meant to be a start. If ayones got more time to write up a bigger one, i look forward to reading/stealing it.

I did wonder if the dying within character creation was a bit harsh, but it is indeed hilarious and also, its a valid risk. Think about in turns of actually role playing, there is a real risk of dying on your way to the heady heights of 6k (or whatever), and i have no problem with influicting it upon 'theoretical' PCs that don't actually yet exist. Its a harsh galaxy out there....

Yes, it's a valid risk. The problem is that it's a lot of work for little or no effect "Ok, so i'll make a NEW scum, and this one might have his fate points left".

It doesn't do anything in game, it just gives you the extra work of starting all over again and a chance to regain all your fate points.

maybe just leave it as minimim '0' fate. if you roll 01-10 again treat it as a roll of 11-15, or a 'roll again'.

on a bigger table, it probably wouldnt be too big an issue, as it'll be less likely to happen so many times.

I fail to see anything amusing about dying before you can even play. IMO, this table promotes an adverserial style of DM'ing, which is counter to the spirit of the game.

Well, as always, play it however you want. Individual GMs can discuss it with their players and decide whether to stop at 0 fate points, kill the character, or have some other penalty. The character generation rules can already result in an unplayable character through random rolling, how is this any worse?

The last step in creating a character, the Emperor's tarot, can result in a random mutation. Some of the minor mutations could probably render a character unplayable, and there is a result on that table that prompts you to roll on the major mutations table, most of which would render a character (practically) unplayable. It's up to the discretion of the players (including the GM) how to deal with such an eventuality. I don't consider that a case of "adversarial" GMing, nor do I consider the character (or party) killing Perils of the Warp results to be adversarial GMing.

EDIT: I also think random and arbitrary death, including that of PCs, is very much in the spirit of the game, as I point out above.

I think that the previous suggestion of modifying the table to encompass both good and bad events/whatever would be more satisfactory than just using it as a means of punishing players for starting with more experience. Death during character generation just seems to be a pointless waste of time, to me at least. They've had this in other games, but you might as well just roll the dice at the beginning of character generation and save yourself some time if you're going to explore this quirky option. Then once the dice have come up with the appropriate value just continue with character generation. Or you could just ignore it and save yourself a few minutes rather than wasting a few hours on character generation just to have the character "killed" because of an arbitrary die roll.

Personally I don't have the slightest problem of a "powerful 16 year old" if there is something to back it up in terms of the background of the character in question, the context of the campaign, or whatever.

Kage

Not wanting to hijack an idea, but I think I will see what I can add to the table and post it up here to see if another set of eyes and a mind can come up with something workable. Love the idea, it would also be very good for creating more experienced NPCs with real life and colour. I do not have the GM kit, so maybe it has something in it for that, but I like this, it's worth exploring a bit.

EDIT

Okay, here is what I knocked up using the above table. I think that the two changes to the actual table would be a great place for the GM to modify to make the table fit their campaign. Whatcha think peeps?

For each full 1000xp your character starts above the first, roll 1d5 to determine the number of years it took to reach their current level and roll once on the table below (D100):

1-10: Brush with Death: Begin with -1 Fate permanently; if you have no fate remaining, the character is killed.
11-15:Injured in the Line of Duty: Roll a further d10 and gain the appropriate permanent injury, randomising left or right as needs be: 1) Deafened, 2-3) Loss of one eye, 4-5) Loss of a hand, 6-7) Loss of an Arm, 8-9)Loss of a Leg, 10) loss of a Foot . At the GMS discretion you may start with a bionic replacement of a quality befitting your stature in Imperial Society.
16-30: Unhinged: Gain D5 Insanity points
31-45: Witness to the Warp: Gain D5 corruption points
46-60: Old War Wound: Begin with -1 Wound permanently.
61-70: Successful Campaign; recieve one Good Quality piece of Equipment
71-80: Impressive Action; Gain an upper level contact in the Inquisition or Administratum
81-95: It’s a Hard Life: Gain an extra ‘Quirk’
96-00: Experience Maketh the Man: Gain one Lore or language at Basic. This should be appropriate to your experiences within the time frame, and is ultimately at the GMs discretion.

hehe, died during character creation....

I'd hate to see your inquisitor debriefing results chart.

On a more serious note, I would definately be handing out A LOT more insanity and possibly corruption points. I would expect by 6000xp the characters would have seen things (or done things) that would break less hardened and experienced characters. I'd either allow the player to choose how many insanity/corruption points to give the player more control over how curious their character is, or roll 4d10 and 2d10 respectively (with bonuses for Forbidden Lore skills). I know in games i've played, some characters are constantly sticking their noses (or other body parts) where they don't belong. Plus at that level its nice to stare down a warp creature without wetting your pants.

I don't like the idea of dying during character creation, either. Maybe it's because my group gets together to roll characters as a group, but it seems like a pointless waste of time unless you're completely randomizing homeworld/career, and something that would tick off the player and group for no benefit. Sure, pointless death is a staple of the universe (getting sent to a war world the Guard is pulling out of due to an Administratum typo, for example), but in an RPG, pointlessness should take a backseat to fun, at least somewhat. Sure, it might be in-universe for the Gellar field to malfunction during Warp transit, killing everyone aboard the Inquisitor's vessel, but what does that gain for the RPG group/story?

With the complaining out of the way, on with the constructive criticism: Losing a fate point is huge, especially since the character won't have had an opportunity to gain one back. What about instead of automatically losing a fate point, something like...

01-10 - Pawn of Fate: Roll a d10. 1-6: Lose one fate point permanantly. Fate intervened to save the character's life when he otherwise would have been killed. 7-9: Gain one fate point permanantly. The character serves fate above all else, albeit indirectly and unknowingly. He is blessed with incredibly good luck. 10: No effect. This servant of fate has trusted luck one time too many, and barely emerged unscathed.

if you can die a character creation why bother..... but being hideously mutated can be made to work. that said on the whole i like the idea.... because lets be honest you dont get to the 5000/6000 exp mark unscathed!!! not unless you have close personal ties to the empoer and you live on terra. lol. but you do get those uncannily lucky sods who do managed to just go from being hard to double ard to treble ard... so some bonuses could work too.

I think dying durring Character creation could be histaricaly funny and well within keeping the spirit of Warhammer 40k. We are talking about a universe where they torch planets for harboring heresy, much less a single guy. Whatever else happens, that C will not be missed.

It's not like dying during character generation has any effect besides taking up time. Are you going to play a dead character? Probably not. And what GM is going to send a player home because his character died during creation? It's a waste of time.