So what ideas have you had to make (Lesser) Minion of Chaos not suck horribly? I really just wanted an infiltrator/spy-type fellow, but with the points allotted for the game, how do you make an even halfway-decent lesser minion? I've given up on the possibility of having a cool fella, how about just a shooty combat NPC? The points... so little. Nine stats.. how?!

Give me some of your minion ideas/stats!

I've been trying to stat out a basic melee minion for one of my players, and I have not found a way to do it that I like using just the Lesser minion talents. If you look at the examples (servo skull or canid) they give, I can see the lesser minions as basically less powerful than even a basic imperial citizen, but more specialized.

Now, once you hit regular minions, it appears to get a lot easier, but just using lesser minion I don't see how you can get a combat effective minion.

You cant do much with lesser minions, but here are my ideas.

Medicae Servo-skull

WS01 BS01 S10 T20 Ag06 Int30 Per 30 WP 01 Fel 01

Wounds: 4

Skills: Medicae, Awareness, Tech Use, Scrutiny

Talents: Heigtened Senses (Hearing, Sight), Technical Knock, WPn training (flame), Combat Sense

Traits: Hoverer 4, Machine 2, Size (puny)

Weapons: Flame Pistol

I also made Sniper Cherub

WS01 BS30 S10 T20 Ag06 Int30 Per 01 WP01 Fel01

Wo: 4

Skills: Medicae, Tech-Use, Security, Logic

Talents: Lightning Reflexes, Quick Draw, Technical Knock, Rapid Reload, Wpn Training (Las)

Traits: Hoverer 4, Machine 2, Size 3

Weapons: Long Las

Servo skull is supporting minion - warns him against danger, and helps with medicae and tech use test.

Second is more focussed on intelligence, and sniping enemies from distance. Both can be pretty usefull, and expendable - easily replaced or repaired when destroyed.

It has been suggested that you should be able to trade unwanted trait slots for additional skills, talents and characteristic points, thereby allowing for more normal, less frankensteinian minions - right now, the system definitely favors those.

I think that lesser minions can by intresting and useful if you do not treat them just as a walking set of statisctics and skills. One of my players is ex-ecclesiarchy apostate, and his lesser minion is actualy not a servitor or servo-skull but human. Its elderly man, who spent his whole life on reading books and doing all kind of bureaucratic stuff. We explain his low staticsics with age- 01 WS, BS is obvious, but why only 30 Int? Because of sclerosis- he knows a lot about everyting, but has a terrible problems with memory. And thanks to this tyhis minion is also vital part of group, not just set of stats and skills to use when needed.

There are cool rules for folowers in Deathwatch book - First founding. For mundane minions you can exchange any trait for +10 to any characteristic (normal limit for minion still aplies), skil or talent.

There are also rules for hordes of followers which can be bought for cost of minion +500xp. This horde magnitude equals minions wounds, so its still pretty useless for lesser minions. I mean the better (tougher) the minion the greater the magnitude? Makes no sense.

There are also rules for hordes of followers which can be bought for cost of minion +500xp. This horde magnitude equals minions wounds, so its still pretty useless for lesser minions. I mean the better (tougher) the minion the greater the magnitude? Makes no sense.

Since magnitude does not translate 1:1 to numbers, it actually does. The definition of magnitude is that it goes down by 1 if an attack surpasses TB and AP. Now if you've got a horde of CSM lackeys, would they be killed by any such hit? Of course not - which means that their horde will have more magnitude than members. A swarm of Nurglings, on the other hand, would have many more members than magnitude because once you start tearing into some, daemonic instability sets in for others. Underhive gangers or pitchfork-wielding mobs would be another kind of enemy that has more members than magnitude because most of them will run as soon as you kill some.

My little heretick loves her minion, it's a poor little cherubim that was trapped outside a ship during a warp transit. Now it's a real boy with a head full of daemonic knowledge to give me assists on knowledge rolls. Typical familiar type of role.

@Cipher - I understand, and I agree. But in order to make a bigger horde of normal minions (like mutants, or hive rabble) you'd have to remove the limit on sound constitution. Then not every horde you take would have Unnatural Toughness in order to have higher magnitude then 10. You could exchange your traits for extra magnitude etc.

Not that I think that hordes of minions are a good choice. A heretic with 30 infamy could easily hire mercenaries or buy slaves to fight, without spending xp. Such minions should be obtained by playing the game. (besides who wants to spend over 1000xp to have bunch of mutant rable, you need tons of xp for more important things). Besides hordes die at astonishing rate. Unless you make horde of Machines in power armour (maxed out machine and unnatural tb), one guy with right gear is usually more usefull.

Amaimon said:

I'd also like to note that minions from Deathwatch start off with FAR more points to spend on characteristics than minions from Black Crusade. 180 vice 100, 240 vice 175, and 300 vice 250. That is the only mechanical difference between the two (along with XP costs, DW minions cost double a BC minion). Are the extra characteristic points worth the increased XP cost? I doubt it. My suggestion would be to make minions from a pool of build points. Lesser minions have 220 build points, minions have 335 build points and greater minions have 520 build points. Build points can be used to buy characteristics on a one-for-one basis while skills, talents and traits cost 10 build points each. Minion creation otherwise follows the rules outlined in Black Crusade.

I decided to not have my Lesser Minion be some sort of combat-orientated character. Instead I gave him lots of Stealth abilities, and also gave him piloting abilities, and made him tiny. He's like a tiny little chauffeur.

BYE

Sounds like an advanced cherub/servo-skull!

I never really think of making anything big with Lesser Minion. For the average human sized lackey I go with Minion at least (the mid ground) and Greater Minion if they're to be particularly talented. I've always imagined the use of Lesser Minion for things like servo-skulls, psyber-eagles, little chaos familiars (baby nurgling?), cats, etc. Things that would be equated to familiars in other fantasy RPGs, you know?

Enfeebled characters can certainly work. I think Lesser would also work well for minions that work in the background, like moles on the inside of imperial organizations who can feed out secret info to the player, stuff like that.

Here's one I came up with for my group's Apostate. He really wants to play a guy who is almost exclusively non-combat focused. Very much a "Let's you and him fight" type guy. As time goes by, he's going to have an easier time of it, but right now they are on the Chains of Torment in the intro adventure, so I wanted something both useful and in keeping with the location.

Corrupted Rendering Servitor
This servitor was originally used to assist in butchering and rendering livestock for consumption by the crew of the Chains of Judgement, but long exposure to the warp has corrupted it with a feral hunger for flesh.

Statistics: Stats in parentheses are stats when frenzied.
WS: 30 (40)
BS: 01 (00)
S: 30 (40)
T: 30 (40)
Agi: 30
Int: 01 (00)
Per: 01
WP: 06 (16)
Fel: 01
Inf: 00

Wounds: 9
Initiative: +3

Skills:
Athletics (Str), Parry (WS), Dodge (Agi), Stealth (Agi)

Traits:
Machine (2)

Talents:
Sound Constitution (3), Weapon Training (Chain), Frenzy

Weapons:
Chain Greatsword (2d10+5 R, Pen 3, Tearing, Unbalanced)

Armor:
Machine (2) and Subdermal Reinforcement (Counts as Guard Flak Armour) - 6 AP all locations.

Notes: I only selected 1 Trait, and I gave it +20 Attributes with the remaining traits (+10 for each one turned in), which I based off the Deathwatch First Founding rules. I added Frenzy as a figured it was the easiest way to add a little crunch to the minion in combat without upping it to a basic Minion. Int, WP, and Fel are all low, but only the WP (and to a lesser extent the Per) really bothers me. I am going to be ruling that to drop out of frenzy at the end of combat it will use a Loyalty check instead of a WP check, as otherwise the darn thing will just keep chopping until someone kicks it over.

Given how my player runs his character (in the back behind the biggest Chaos Marine in the group), I figure he will be able to keep it close to him, and then spend a round "rousing the blood spirits" of his servitor when bad guys get close, and then firing it off into the nearest bad guy (or good guy, in this case?).

Of course, since this is Black Crusade, I've already thought of a few ways to mess with his head on this stuff... like maybe having the servitor randomly wander off and return covered in blood for no apparent reason, or have it stare constantly at another party member when not in use. I like to give my players stuff to play with, but I do enjoy messing with them a little bit at the same time...