One of my players has recently brought up a desire to have a go at playing some other classes, notably pskyer. As this wouldn't really fit in with his current class of Tech-priest (Im guessing tech-priest psykers do exsist? but the whole sanctioning thing might cause a few problems) I've been thinking of other ways to let him try other classes short of killing off the current char or just dropping it and have it wonder off somewhere...

My current favourite idea is that the player's Inquisitor has been told/feels that he needs to recruit more acolytes but hasn't really got the time to spare training them up himself. Therefore the players have been given the task of mentoring them. This is also partly recognition of the players' advancement and a way of being able to feed relevant information about the current plot without having them going out and doing all the leg work. The new acolytes would essentially be a 2nd character that each player would generate and choose the skills for as they advance and would either be used along side the characters in large and dangerous adventures (rare) or more commonly either out of scenario factors that the players can direct around, or the main characters of a different part of the story that will inform the main characters of useful plot info without having to break away their high level characters (essentially parrallel plot lines).

Has anyone tried anything like this before? If so any words of wisdom from experience? If not any forseeable floors?

Have you looked at Nascent Psyker from IH?

There is one known case of a psyker becoming a tech priest, and they removed the part of his brain that made him a psyker (the rite of pure thought). In general, it is completely unheard of for a tech priest to become a psyker, and psykers are taken into black ships, not the priesthood (the one known case was considered heretical).

As for how to handle new characters, the training plan is a good one. I'd just have the "mentor" move to a "off camera" support role when the player is using the new character (have the tech-priest handle the comm gear, coordination with local authorities, pilot/driving duties, etc). As having multiple characters tends to work out less well.

I'm against it all together. One player, one character. Anything more (even if oldies functioned as NPCs) is power-gaming. Hence the ability to double the group with everyone making second characters under their first. When in the RP world you are that one person, not two or more.

Now if he wants to 'alter' the way he plays, that would be fine. Give him a split personality, one of which is the tech-priest, the other is a nausicant psyker. Although this will ultimatly lead to his death, it would be a great RP oppertunity.

‘Troupe play’ appears as a suggestion in several RP systems (Ars Magica I think was the first), I see no reason why it couldn’t work in DH.

From the sounds of things you’ve already got a handle on how things might work, personally I see three possible ways of doing it.

Mission Impossible
You remember at the start of each episode of Mission Impossible(TV) where Phelps would flick through the IM dossier and assemble a team based on the mission? Well maybe after hearing the briefing your players could do the same, each selecting one character from a team dossier. This allows players to create specialist characters, but may lead to slower or uneven xp progression between characters.

Burning the candle at both ends
The players create two sets of acolyte cells, both investigating the same mystery (perhaps even working for different Inquisitors), but starting in very different situations, and following very different routes. This is a lot of hard work for the Ref through, and may confuse players as to who there currently playing.

Mirror Mirror,
As above, the players form two separate acolyte cells, but alternate between them each session (one week playing Party A, next week Party B). The Acolytes all exist in the same ‘continuity’ but the adventures they play don’t necessarily have to be connected. I played in a AD&D campaign like this several years ago, with two ref’s (one running, one npc’ing on rotation), the two groups where separated by 100 years of history, the first group were asked to keep a journal and as things progressed the second group would occasionally find bloody and burnt pages torn from it. Both groups where trying to defeat an evil necromancer, needless to say Party A failed, but thanks to all there hard work, Party B where able to finish the job.

I've done a few forms of troupe play before, and all the one's that went well had one thing in common: the player only had control of one character at a time, and any other character of theirs was either off screen entirely (no game impact, just operating as part of the backdrop) or actively in the GM's control (and doing things in character but frequenly not in the player's interest. I even got assassinated by my own characters in one game).

The best way it worked for us was when we all had multiple characters as part of an arganization, and the org hand picked agents from our pool of characters as the mission demanded. This only worked when we were playing A LOT though, as it was otherwise easy to lose connection to a character. I wouldn't recommend this unless you're in college or otherwise have a lot of social time to devote to gaming (or are more interested in running around blowing things up rather than character development).

Im now definatly going ahead with the idea. The new characters will all start at level 2 (several levels below their first characters) but will give the players chance to have some fun characters now they know the DH system a bit better. Initially the character selection will be forced by the plot, the 2 teams will hardly ever be together at the same time, but as they level up it may be possible to let them mix and match a bit more.

Im also considering some kind of 'party' experience system. So the unused players will get ~1/2 or 1/3 the experience of the active ones, explained as the unused ones taking the down time to get some training in and go learn some new skills/talents/etc. If the players really prefer their new characters to the old ones I might just let them fast track the new ones with some "intensive experimental training program" - maybe a few insanity points for that.

The 'Mirror Mirror' style sounds like great fun, and loads of cool story possibilities there, but as we're currently intercutting DH and DnD sessions I feel this would be streaching things a bit far! So basically going with 'Burning the candle at both ends' until they're at enough of a level to be able to do 'Mission Impossible'

With regards to powergaming, my understanding of it was one player trying to push the rules to their breaking point at the expense of the others enjoyment. Now since all the players would be getting a new character that wont really apply and as I said, the 2 parties will very rarely be together, much less together in a combat environment where the numbers would count .(Unless the combat is specificaly designed for this, which might be the case for the end of story arc mission.)

I have ran games with multiple characters per person (even as high as 4). My problem was power gamers who wanted to play all of their characters at once.Eventually I came to the decision to keep them as seperate parties.As far as dividing the experience I had them split everything equally.Another consideration is character death.Should one pc die, they would have a backup that could arrive in a day or two.I found that this creates a better transition for the gamer.

We've never done expliciet troupe play before, but often key NPCs end up being played by particular players instead of the GM.

So you introduce a psyker (perhaps sent by your inquisitor on a simalr or nearby mission or whatever) and when he's around, (governed by the GM, as he is still fundamentally an NPC) you hand the character sheet over to the player.

I've always liked the idea of having two groups, an investigative one and another that is more combat-focused (the latter having a higher power level, possibly up to consisting of space marines). Whenever the first group stumbles upon something massive they can call for the cavalry and instead of watching from the side-lines while the GM narrates the titanic fight, play it out for themselves.