What do you guys say?

I'm not a great fan of the idea, personally, but I seem to recall that the Exorcists chapter are all turned into daemonhost and then exorcised to actually make them proof against possession and warpcraft.. so there ARE canonically worse ideas out there

Stupid bloody lack of edit button...

After hitting publish, I realised I didn't say WHY I'm not a fan... Given the genetic testing and construction of an astartes, I figure than any child that is physically suited to become a space marine who has the Pariah gene detected will probably be shipped off to the Culexis Assassin Temple as they are far rarer than young lads between 5-9 with a killer instinct. So it's possible, but I have some issues with fluff behind it.

On the other hand, a Cursed Founding chapter made of cloned pariahs... THERE'S an idea that could never, ever go bad!

This questions has turned up on this forum before, or the DH one.

But basically I agree with Prof Kylan, basically the incredible rarity of nulls and their usefullness as nulls is such that hoping that putting 10 forward for the Astartes upgrading in order to get 1 working Null astartes is waste.

Especially seeing as Historically (from there point of view) the field of the nulls can be used effectively by sending them in with an given Astartes troops.

Edit

P.s. In further agreement with the Prof the Exorcists themselves show the lengths they are willing to go to try and get a similiar result to a Null Space Marine with out having to attrition through their existing expensive nulls.

I agree with the consensus view. Null/Pariah/Untouchable space marines seem a bit too "Special snowflake" for me. Reminds me of the occasional character who'd crop up in the old WoD games who was a vampire AND a werewolf AND a mage... The concept of nulls fighting for the Imperium is covered in quite a bit of depth by the Inquisition and Officio Assasinorum already, so I don't feel any desperate desire to see Null Marines.

That said... The Inquisition use psykers. The Marines use Psykers, as Librarians. It's not a complete reach to say that the occasional chapter might use nulls...but in the same way they use Psykers, just one or at most two every company.

I do hesitate about advancing that idea, because, like I say, it seems like one is almost reaching too far for a special, unique concept...like an Adeptus Mechanicus psyker who's also a member of the Officio Assasinorum. It just feels wrong...

Yeah, I'd also have to go with no. The folks at GW had their chance to make Null Marines, and they passed on ot. I'm relatively sure that when they sat down, and penned up the Grey Knights, someone had to say "what better Space Marines than those the Warp cannot corrupt, who are immune to the powers of the Warp, all together?", and then the 1 in 1 billion thing probably came up, and they said no. Instead, my favorite chapter is ALL psykers, and they still don't fall to Chaos. The numbers thing, along with the way so many people apparently have no idea they exist still fits the Knights though, psyker or null. If they didn''t make Null Knights when they could've easily shoehorned such a Chapter in then, I doubt we'll ever see one, now. That said, I can't argue that it could be cool to see that one stray Space Marine who is a null, and see how well he goes with the rest of the Kill Team. If it was a developable mutation, rather than from birth only, I could maybe see a Space Marine leave his Chapter, become a Blackshield, and then offer his Blank services to the Deathwatch, as penance for his genetic impurity/weakness (I bet he'd see it as one, since it developed in him, later). Depending on how one rules things, it could be interesting to see how either Nids or Chaos fares against that one Marine, backed up by his buddies. On an offnote, I also sort of want to incorporate the Null gene into a group of Tau, seeing as they are psychically mute, compared to most other races. Push it a little further, and they could cause some serious problems for several other races (more so than they already do). They are in an almost unique position to not be bothered by psychic interference; they don't have any, and their culture might be right to look at that Fellowship penalty, and wave it off as silly, so long as the individual is doing his part. Being less affected than others, the Tau might not even suffer such a full penalty, maybe only -5 or to 3/4 of their stat (depending on which variant you use of Untouchable, as they are different with regards to the Fel penalty.) Tau Nulls could be really cheesy cool; I might write that up, just for fun (the Void Caste; I've already thought of making a group of Tau psykers, the real power behind the Ethereals, but this might be cooler, and if Tau are pheromonal, rather than psychic, Void Caste members wouldn't even interfere with the Ethereal's task ).

I doubt a null would even be accepted as a candidate, let alone into the Astartes. For one very simple reason: they feel wrong. No matter how good a fighter they are or how determined, any space marine assigned to reviewing candidates is going to feel there is just something wrong about this one. For all they know it could be chaos taint or something worse. If the null is lucky, they'll be allowed to leave or be shipped off the Ordo Assassinatorum or Inquisition.

A theoretical null space marine, even if the implants work with nulls (they could have latent psychic links to the primarches) would have serious trouble working within a squad or killteam. Their battle brothers would instinctively distrust the null and squad cohesion would collapse. But frankly I can't see a null getting that far.

venkelos said:

I think it all developed a bit more organically than that. The Grey Knights were originally mentioned offhand in an early WD article as a chapter that operated just Terminators: they were a way of encouraging players to buy termie models. Then with Slaves to Darkness, they were fleshed out as a chamber militant of the Ordo Malleus, with a full army list, which was not restricted to terminator marines.The whole concept of Pariahs/Nulls came along with the Culexus mini, which was about 1995, I think.

So Grey Knights predate nulls by some time. By the time nulls came out, the Grey Knights were already established as a powerful all-psyker force. So GW didn't really have a choice at that stage.

To be honest, I imagine that given the large number of writers working on 40k, we will at some stage see a null marine. I agree, it's not my favourite concept, for a number of reasons, but I reckon it'll happen.

Ooops. Double post!

Here is an older thread on this topic.

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp?efid=214&efcid=3&efidt=491017&efpag=0#491588

Youmay need to scroll to the top.

Lightbringer said:

Gaetch said:

But arn't they a really, really special case?

I always think that it's funny how people bring up that Nulls "feel wrong". In the game we are playing here exorcised have to reduce their fellowship TO 10. nulls have to reduce it BY 10. There's a whole friggin chapter of exorcised around.

Concerning the original topic: I would say it depends on the chapter. There most certainly won't be any null Ultramarines. Ultras are so embedded into the Imperial civilization that the Officio Assassinorum would have first dibs. Space Wolves could see that differently. And with homebrew chapters you can go pretty much nuts. I once saw a concept of one that used nulls instead of psykers.

Mjoellnir said:

Correct, but you left out that a Null also takes an automatic penalty to all social tests on top of the fellowship reduction, exorcised don't.

Exorcised = scared mentally and emotionally, you find it difficult to connect with people.

Null = perceptibly wrong on some instinctual level to anyone who interacts with you. You give everyone the chills just by being around them.

There are very distinct differences between the two penalties and what they represent.

There's plenty of very good reasons. One that's worth not overlooking, and has been mentioned before, that they are incredibly rare.

The only close to official figures I've heard were about one in a million, what are Nulls, like one in a million psykers. So we are talking 1 in a trillion (give or take a load. that's a hundred planet empire with a 10 billion plus population on each. That aint the kind of odds that a chapter can do themselves. Then if you want them to be a space marine you need something like 10 applicants for one to be suitable.

And you can have a chapter of Exorsized because that's soemthing you do to each one, you aren't playing the odds with human genetics.

The Grey Knights are all psykers (which incidentaly you can't be in Deathwatch either) and hail from the same solar system that ALL the psykers in the Imperium are sent. Coincidence?

So they did exist they would be in Sol, they would be at the beck and call ordo Hereticus and would be a millions times more top secret and less likely to be in Deathwatch than a Grey Knight.

ItsUncertainWho said:

The average marines has a starting fellowship of 40. So the average null would effectively have 20 while the exorcised would have 10. And "giving someone the chills" is something psykers don't do by default but still regularly. The possibility of perils of the warp doesn't keep anyone from using them, at worst they have someone on standby to blow the psykers head off if he does more than making the walls bleed.

Concerning the rarity: Sorry, I don't buy it. The sisters of silence were nulls (a whole friggin army of FEMALE nulls, so they started by sorting out 50% of possible candidates as physically unfit), the whole Culexus temple consists of nulls, the Necrons were able to field whole squads of them before the latest codex, Eisenhorn had a null as far as I remember, one of the Guardsman miniatures in the Inquisitor game was a secret null. Yeah, rare....

The only things that stand in the way of a pariah marine:

1) They are more rare than psykers.

2) Well-integrated chapters will send them to Terra with the Black Ships.

3) With less-well integrated chapters it depends on their view of a being that according to witches doesn't have a soul. That's a philosophical/religious/pragmatic matter.

So you've named every instance of nulls being used. That''s not a lot when think about it the Sisters of Silence are rarely even mentioned these days, no codex no 41st millenium fluff, notthing. The Culexus temple, while not specifically mentioned to always be male stands to reason that they soak up to males that the Sisters don't take and are still as rare TEMPLE assassins.

I'd forgotten that Marines are only male too, so at most they could have 10 percent of the sisters of silence. You'd risk killing off most of these incredible rare genetic aberations so that they can gain super strength and toughness. The only real time they are mentioned as being used in anger they just stood next any given space marine for the same effect.

Death Watch already lets you play one of only a million super soldier brothers, if you belive the orignal video adverts less than 1 in Thousand space Marines have got what it takes to be in Deathwatch. On top of that, we got the really rare specialities and advances specialies, Psykers, Deathwing, Honor Guard, Chaplins, Dreadnoughts, etc

The fact that when faced with this people then people aren't happy unless they are playing the only Null Space Marine, someone who's been lost in the warp since before the Heresy, the last Loyalist of a Traitor chapter or some crap really makes me dispair. Please try to make a character with a past that isn't defined by being the only or last or the rarest of the rare, there's a **** ton of character options, 980 chapters that aren't being used by the rules at the moment it's not nescesary.

Face Eater said:

I'm pretty sure that I forgot tons of nulls because I barely know any of the fluff Black Library has churned out over the years. That there isn't any recent fluff about Sisters of Silence does not mean anything unless you want to claim that whatever made their importance diminish was linked to a decrease of available nulls. In fact that the jobs of the SoS (manning Black Ships and hunting rogue psykers) where usurped by the Ordo Hereticus and the Sororitas would mean that there are even more available nulls around. Not mentioning that it is highly unlikely that the SoS put every female null they could put their hands on into power armour.

Face Eater said:

Again, you are assuming that SoS recruited every female they could get their hands on which would make their elite status only a matter of genetics. I guess they would have all died on Prospero then. Sorry, but saying nulls are rare is kind of like saying that bolters are rare outside of the Adeptus Astartes. Doesn't keep the sisters and tons of members of the Imperial Guard from having them.

Face Eater said:

Sorry, but if you believe that, you have a big problem. There are only 1000 chapters of which the big majority follow the Codex Astartes which forces them to have no more than 1000 battle brothers. If we play one in a million the whole Deathwatch is a single Kill-Marine. If we play one in a thousand that's a bit more realistic but I am pretty sure that many chapters have more than one brother at a time in the Deathwatch, otherwise having and manning multiple watch stations and fortresses scattered over the whole galaxy would be even more unrealistic when the Imperial number games already are.

Face Eater said:

Ehhhh... Do you know this game called Warhammer 40k? The one that is full of special snowflakes like the Grey Knight Purifier who is so pure (not just pure, pure pure) that he is the only person in the whole wide Galaxy who can't be corrupted by a silly daemonsword, so that it's better he carries it with him on the battlefield against the people who want it instead of putting it in a vault on Titan or dumping it into a sun? Or the descendant of Chuck Norris who suckerpunched an Avatar? Or Lysander who managed to escape from an Iron Warrior Fortress world without his armor? No? You should try it, it's what Deathwatch is based on, you know?

Sorry, I don't appreciate people who try to make up reasons why something shouldn't work in a gameworld just because of their personal likes and dislikes. There's nothing that forbids null marines as a rule. There are tons of things that speak against a whole chapter of nulls, or a null Ultramarine, but the Imperium is big and lots of things are possible.

There is nothing that prevents anything in your game world. I am going to repost my responses to a similar thread from a few years ago, when DW just came out.

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The big problem is the fact no one likes or is comfortable around nulls. That would be a huge issue for space marines.

SM's rely on being very close knit as a part of their doctrine. If you can't stand being near someone in your squad and don't trust them, that makes for a huge crack in that squads armor.

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Personally I wouldn't allow a null marine. My view is based on the combat doctrine of space marines being one that relies on very close knit units fighting together as one organism, represented by squad mode with cohesion being what allows the various chapters to work together in Deathwatch. I see a null as having a horrifically detrimental effect on the groups ability to function properly.

So, if I had a player who just wouldn't let it go I would impose the restrictions I mentioned. But if you like the idea knock yourself out and impose whatever penalty you like. I'd be interested to here what your final restrictions would be and how the character works out in the squad.

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If you were really set on using one I would consider reducing the squads max cohesion by the nulls WP bonus, just for being part of the kill-team, and instead of no squad mode you might say all cohesion costs incurred while the null is participating are increased by his WP bonus. Solo mode abilities are unaffected.

So he can play, but the other kids really don't like it at all when he does.
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I would give it for 500 xp and all cohesion lost while the null participates in squad mode is doubled from all sources.

I haven't had a chance to read all the cohesion rules thoroughly yet, so this might be extremely harsh or not harsh enough. I think a cohesion penalty could be the balancer.
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ItsUncertainWho said:

Exactly.

ItsUncertainWho said:

As far as I know Eisenhorn fell in love with one and many nulls aren't even discovered. They are simply people that are not very likeable. Not mentioning that no one likes or is comfortable around psykers either.

ItsUncertainWho said:

This is completely unnecessary. The null already comes with his own penalties, and I'm not talking about the effective -20 fellowship. He will nerf every librarian that stands to close to him, if I'm correct even including his force weapon, he cannot benefit from any beneficial psy powers. So the squad has to decide, either a librarian or a living null rod. Or if they want both the null has to keep his distance from the rest of the squad (possibly becoming a Kill-Marine as soon as he has raised his Fellowship enough). The only penalty I would consider would him being unable to take advantage of oaths since being a null excludes true faith.

Mjoellnir said:

Not as simply as that. Their relationship, over decades of working together, led to their love. That didn't stop the fact that he felt pain with physical contact and general discomfort and unease in her presence.

Mjoellnir said:

I disagree. I feel that a Null space marine would destroy the basic fabric of Astartes combat doctrine. Astartes rely on a level of unit cohesion that can't handle disruption. Deathwatch uses the Cohesion mechanic to show how different marines from different chapters have a difficult time working together. If you throw in a marine nobody likes and doesn't want to be around, then you throw out any real possible cohesion within the unit.

Then there is the creation process of a space marine. The null can't have any of the psychic conditioning or training other marines get, Librarians can't judge his mental fitness, and there is a question of if the implants can function within a null. The geneseed was created using both science and sorcery, how would they interact with a null?

As far as a chapter of nulls, they would have absolutely no problem working together. They would not be weirded out in any way by their fellows. Yes, they would have a hard time working with other chapters and I think that a major cohesion penalty at base and an increased cost for and squad abilities they participate in would be appropriate.

As for rarity, there are a few ways to look at it. using the smaller numbers I can remember seeing, If one in a thousand are psychicly abnormal and one in a million of those are nulls then that puts them at one in a billion. If the population of Earth now is over 7 billion then we'd have around seven of them. this doesn't sound verry good. But planets in the imperium often have way larger populations than our current Earth and the fact that there are billions of these planets. That means that there are likely billions of nulls out there. yeah, a whole bunch are killed early for being 'wrong' maybe one in a hundred survives. that's still tens of millions. Plenty for all the groups that would want to use them for their projects. We already aknowledge that space marines use psykers in greater numbers than naturaly occur in humans or each chapter would have one librarian.

There's another option as well. If it's a mutation of the gene seed that causes the new marines to be nulls. Through mutation or experimentation to make an even more resistant marine it reaches this level. No this would not be 'standard.' I would see this as being an even bigger secret than the exorcised or Grey Knights, or assassins. But they would be fools not to use something this powerful in the war against Chaos if they had it. They would be able to screen them and hypno condition them before implantation. I doubt they would be seconded to the Deathwatch in this scenario, but when I started this thread I wasn't talking specificaly PCs or NPCs or realy anything specific. just looking for ideas.

My friend and I have come up with something easier than a whole chapter of nulls that still presents it as a possibility. A chapter of extremely psychicaly resistant marines that have a few null members the way other chapters have librarians. The whole chapter essentialy has 'Abhor the Witch' going all the time without the option to not use it. The vague mention in the Rogue Trader description of nulls having different levels of ability made us come up with some house rules for variable levels and our null marine specialty in place of librarians. We haven't tested them out but it seems pretty decent in theory.

Based on my personal research and opinion

Psychic null person canot be effected by psy power, warp powers or faith related powers - the warp, holy weapons simple not working when they using them.

This means for me they can not be trusted to be loyal and faithful servant of the God emperor.

Having a chapter of possible traitors is not tolerated.

Conclusion - Space marines can be very resistant against psy power due to faith, they should use that against a daemons instead of a rare genetic deformation.

Well you this seems to be an insue that pushes my buttons, BUT yeah there's nothing that expressly forbids it yet. There's nothing in the rules to say you can though, but I can't stop house ruling things.

Especially, Nathiel, as you say out side the scope of DW.

For rarity, and they are seem to be trying to not have to put it in print but some-one on these boards quoted a reliable scource as saying about 1 in a million, which seems right for something that's fairly rare in the imperium (but still present everywhere and fed in their thousands to the Emperor).

And yes rare enough that you could have 1000 untouchable space marines or 10000 (assuming there is that many) Culexus assassins. And as Temple Assassins are better than Space Marines that's a no brainer.

I'm adamant that if a chapter happened to find to a Null (rare in hive worlds once in a millions years (for example) on a Deathworld like fenris) and their Psykers (all Psychics are taken before the Libarians) happened to put up with him long enough and ignore those orders from the High Lords to start training, and they just happened to be suitable and didn't die or become crippled by rejecting the implants, AND it was possible to Hypno Condition them and they made it full Battle Brother. The very last thing they'd do would be to send them to join the Inquisition.

I have been running it that the Deathwatch is a single Chapter, not bound by Codex rules so like the Grey Knights they have a lot more than a thousand Bros but in very general terms 1 in 1000 Space Marines, some chapters give a lot more, many don't give any. Watch towers aren't crawling with Space Marines, they crawling with vassel humans and Ordo Xeno's specialists and which ever squads are having their armour fixed or having a new arm. If you are playing a Dark Angel you won't be able to get together regularly with your DA homies, and if you are a member of the Deathwing then yes you are the only member of Deathwing in the DW (that any one knows of).

[i'm adamant that if a chapter happened to find to a Null (rare in hive worlds once in a millions years (for example) on a Deathworld like fenris) and their Psykers (all Psychics are taken before the Libarians) happened to put up with him long enough and ignore those orders from the High Lords to start training, and they just happened to be suitable and didn't die or become crippled by rejecting the implants, AND it was possible to Hypno Condition them and they made it full Battle Brother. The very last thing they'd do would be to send them to join the Inquisition.]

The key problem is that you can't get a Pariah 'by accident'. No 'normal' chapter will recruit them in the first place for the simple reason that almost the first thing done during the recruitment process is a librarian looks inside your head for any taint of moral, spiritual or psychic corruption. If he cannot look inside your head to confirm this, you are an unnacceptible risk to the chapter and are hence discretely removed from the process.

Now, for a chapter which doesn't use librarians (e.g. Black Templars), this isn't an issue. Of course, they won't be able to specifically seek them out either, so you're after a lottery-winning combination of a warrior able to meet the standards of the astartes who also has a genetic trait orders of magnitude rarer than the psyker gene. Still, it's not impossible.

[That''s not a lot when think about it the Sisters of Silence are rarely even mentioned these days, no codex no 41st millenium fluff, notthing. ]

Its one of the not-yet-revealed wierdnesses of the aftermath of the horus heresy. We've seen inside the scholastica psykana fortresses and on the black ships where they should be (were) stationed in multiple black library books. Put simply, the Sisters of Silence do not exist anymore , and as yet no-one knows why. What happened to them as an order (hard to imagine they were all sent into the webway as some wouldn't have been on Terra at the time), at the moment, one of those odd but easily overlooked questions up there with "what the hell was the Phalanx off doing during Horus' assault on Terra?"

[The Culexus temple, while not specifically mentioned to always be male stands to reason that they soak up to males that the Sisters don't take and are still as rare TEMPLE assassins.]

To be fair, two things should be noted about Culexus. One, they are Assassinorium, That means they will kill approximately nine hundred and ninety-nine promising recruits out of every thousand. The imperium is quite prepared to treat even untouchables as disposable. Two, at least in the heresy era, they had the ability to bake up untouchable 'protiphage' clones to order (see nemesis )

An untouchable chapter is most likely to exist for the same reason the Grey Knights and Exorcists and Red Scorpions exist - the Inquisition covertly breaking the rules and quietly setting up its own chapters. A cabal of inquisitors with access to protiphage archeotech and prepared to burn an awful lot of dead dudes and gene-seed could probably sustain an untouchable chapter - at least until someone found out and came to ask them what the hell they thought they were playing at...