Thanks ! No problem for the time… I'm still in the Deathwatch's dev (we french have some late in 40k's publications) and it's a big job for me, so i'm not in the hurry !

Update: July 12th

Sorry for another dry spell between updates.

Everything but Warp Anathema (rank 8) Skill table, art touch ups, and special thanks pages are done hopefully by the end of this week or early next week I'll have it all up for you guys.

Skeletor said:

I am sorry for joining the discussion so late in the game but I find this ability so overly powerful that it will ruin all encounters that the group will be in with Pyskers. For example, your group comes up against the Burning Princess (Ascension p.197) and she knows they are coming. So she prepares some defenses and the group shows up on scene. With that ability, the Sister of Silence will use it almost immediately and strip her of all defensive powers plus prevent her from manifesting any powers unless she moves out of the zone. If the group all spends a fate point to count as having a 10 on their roll and if you have 3 other people besides the sister, you could feasibly take down an Alpha level psyker in 1 round of combat pre-Ascension.

The change I suggest is to remove the bold and add something to this effect: have all sustained powers act like they have lapsed every turn that they are within the zone, testing with the power threshold increase as if the target were in the sister’s null zone, and having the powers resume their normal 10 round cycles after they are no longer affected by the zone. With this change the Burning princess would have to instantly test for all powers she is sustaining instantly at a +10 threshold increase (remember you only get the same modifiers as when you initially enacted it). i.e. if she rolled only 1 die to activate sense presence she only gets that 1 die to sustain it at a total of a +4 modifier (14 WP – 10 null field) and have to check it each round.

With the change most psykers will still have their active powers removed but it does give them more of a fighting chance.

I'll probably be working on a Sister of Silence specialization for my Dark Heresy to Only War hack.

How would you reconcile her necessary silence (and the following BattleMark sign language) with the rest of the party? What sorts of Gear should she get?

Zenoth:

Once again I point to the example of soulstorm, I won't go through all the details right here but to say the least it can affect everyone within a Willpowerbonus x 10 meter radius, deals d10 (plus d10 to psykers) through armor and toughness and also locks out their ability to use psyker powers for the remainder of the encounter. Not to mention if I'm reading it correctly a BoM sororitas could pick this up at rank 2 (dangerous but possible). With this in mind I find that the limited range, cost to sustain, and full round action justify the power of a talent you can't get till rank 8.

That in mind if you want to use the career, and I hope you find it interesting enough to do so, but do not like the power feel free to modify it as you see fit. The beauty here is that I feel with a little work you can make anything work to fit your campaign needs, and clearly from your post you are a creative individual able to come up with what you feel is practical for your needs.

Plushy:

The idea is that the sect is so seclusive and has illuded the minds of the greater imperium for so long that it will come to the GM and his players to come up with a proper method of dealing with their silence. My personal suggestion is to allow the sister to in time teach Thoughtmark and Battlemark to her fellow acolytes. Darth Smeg on page 1 has a good example of a sample how "conversations" could be held.

The starting gear will be posted with the final pdf and I'd urge a GM to use it as a set of suggestions and not strictly as written.

Lastly:

Putting on the final touches now and it should be up in the following days. Thanks everyone again and I hope you enjoy the final product!

Skeletor said:

I don't think a speech-synthetizer (vocal cogitator?), similar to Stephen Hawking would be out of the question. Say, a vocabulary of 30-80 words, (attack / help / watch out / friend / enemy / up / down / left / right/ above / below / shoot / grenade / …), to help co-ordinate operations with non-sisters. One could possibly even make a larger unit with proper keyboard and combined vox to transmit longer communiques in times of need. Or just use a translator / servitor.

Imperium does have a long history of utilizing "lateral thinking" to sidestep orders and legal issues (Sisters of Battle, anyone?).

You could add vocal cogitator use to the talent -section, like:

"Quick Typist": "May communicate a short sentence (<5 words) to others using a vocal cogitator as an instant action."

"Lightning Typist": "May communicate a long (<15 words) sentence to others using a vocal cogitator as an instant action."

That's how I would improvise it.

H2SO4 said:

The fluff does state that the Novice sisters act as translators before taking their oath. I also think a servitor that has the skill to translate is a good alternative (though I don't know how practical it is to drag around a servitor from the get-go just to communicate.)

Your solution is an elegant one, though it sort of feels like it cheats the experience a little bit. Then again it's all about fitting the sisters comfortably into your campaign that matters.

My solution in hypothetical land goes something like:

Skeletor the player: "My sister motions towards the door to her comrade, pats her auto pistol and prepares to fire once the door is opened" or "Sister Avicus nods approvingly to the strategy provided by the cleric, but points to a spot on the map to indicate a better position to strike from."

In both these examples I provide the relevant information to get my point across and my character never says a word. This does however have its own set of difficulties since conveying complex thoughts or ideas without words is difficult (especially when time or circumstance doesn't allow for writing it down).

Skeletor said:

Using the example of Soul Storm the psyker still gets a WP check to prevent extra D10 damage and the loss of their abilities. My point is that there is always a way to prevent the really bad things from happening. Like dodge being a basic skill, I may only 15 out of 100 to succeed but it exists.