I made this back in Beta, got the core book today, and reworked it. Behold, the easy way to playing a party of Battle Sisters!

Origin: Penitent (3)

CO: Supine (1)

Regiment Type: Line Infantry (2)

Training Doctrine: Iron Discipline (3)

(3 points left over)

Favored Basic Weapon: Flamer

Favored Heavy Weapon: Heavy Bolter

Standard Kit additions (36 points):

One Very Rare item (Boltgun) (20)

Increase one item from Common to Good (Guard Flak) (5)

Increase on item from Good to Best (Guard Flak) (10)

You now have the entire squad in what is essentially Light Carapace armour (5AP) with lots bolters and flame weapons. It works best with Weapon Specialist, Heavy Gunner, Medic, Commissar, and Priest, although you could have an Ogryn (Gav and Bob, anyone?) or Enginseer tag along. I would also certainly allow a PC to become a Repentia and lose their gear for an Eviscerator.

Back in Beta, I also built an Arbites regiment and a Storm Trooper regiment. I'll have those done tomorrow but in the meantime I must ask; have you guys built anything fun yet?

Our group played a pretty average regiment so far, but certain events (a Party Kill at the hands of a Hive Tyrant ) forced us to invent the Ultimate Firepower Regiment (project name):

- Death World (+3 Strength, +3 Toughness, Lightning Reflexes)

- Line Infantry

- Choleric officer

- Sharpshooters

- +Knife

- +Micro-bead

- +Targeter

- +Common item (ripper gun)

- +Common item (stun grenade)

- Favored weapons: ripper gun and multi-melta(!!!!)

Just imagine it: a whole squad with ripper guns (and targeters on said ripper guns). We think that this regiment should be some sort of heavy-duty assault force, deployed against "highly unwanted" foes. Move in and blast em' out.

AtoMaki said:

Ripper Guns and Multi-Meltas are both Heavy, so you might want to fix that.

I'm fond of either Hot-Shot Lasguns or Boltguns as the Favored Basic, and Autocannons as the Favored Heavy. You can add Storm Trooper carapace to the Standard Kit and things get pretty messy from there. I love making OP regiments.

Regular Guardsmen using Ripper Guns? Ripper Guns are bigger than Marines… how did they use them unassited?

BYE

H.B.M.C. said:

Same way they use plasma cannons/heavy bolters/multi-meltas/multilasers unassisted: with Bulging Biceps! Either way, ripper guns are not that big. They are roughly the same size as an IRL light machine gun (say, the SAW).

Plushy:

Yeah, we stared away from the rules on this one. Ripper guns need a lots of investment, as Bulgin Biceps is not the cheapest Talent (For my Medic, it will cost 700xp overall! My only luck is that I have 2000 starting xp…) by any means and we (the players) have already stated that all-ripper guns or no more OW adventures .

My concern is ammunution for the rippers. We play with the "rule of three", so everyone will start with three clips for the rippers, but hell it sounds few!

Plushy said:

I love the Idea but the Sisters wear light powered armor not Carapace! (It's a pretty big difference! 7ap vs. 5 and +10 to STR as well as all the other nifty little tricks it does,)

Radwraith said:

I'm quite aware of this, but I feel like this is close enough; a game that starts the players off in Power Armour doesn't have much room to grow from there. This keeps the "Sisters have good armour" thing without making them quite so crazy.

I thought not all Sororitas were issued powered armor? Although, yeah, the archetypical ones have powered armor.

Sororitas
1) Limit them to Imperial/Penitent/Schola homeworlds
2) Swap out Armoured Regiment for Sororitas Crusade
3) Replace the tank with Power Armour, lasguns with bolters and one bolter clip per 2 lasgun charge packs. Restrict their usage of Equipment Doctrines.
4) Forbid usage of Psykers and abhumans,
5) Characteristic Changes: +3 Willpower, -3 Intelligence, starting Skill Scholastic Lore: Ecclesiarchy and starting Talent Pure Faith as per that of Rogue Trader or Blood of Martyrs, your pick.
If we're going for BoM though, I'd houserule that the various Aptitudes for Faith Talents would be as follows:

• Emperor's Sign: Willpower, Defence
• Emperor's Mercy: Willpower, Social
• Emperor's Wrath: Willpower, Offence

^Is one someone made a while ago.

Frankie said:

I feel the "close enough" bit is almost insulting to the Sororitas; by the same token you could do a squad of Space Marines with such values and gear. That being said, it is a matter of interpretation and preferred sources. Given how "low-key" this RPG depicts them, it might actually fit in well with the material so far. Certainly, it would render them much more balanced to standard OW characters, and as Plushy pointed out, it would have the advantage of allowing a greater range of potential upgrades, depending on how important this is supposed to be in the game.

Perhaps you could handle them closer to 'Support Specialists'.

If it's a mixed party with Guardsmen and Sororitas, Sororitas could be statted as a specialty.

If the player doesn't want that, though? You can let them start off with the better gear, but they get no Comrades from their specialty. Depending on whether they choose a Guardsman or Support Specialty, subtract X00 starting XP from their sheet. I have no idea how much would be necessary to balance them against the other PCs, or whether Sororitas players may even need to 'pay off' an XP deficit.

Frankie said:

The closest power-level for a Support Specialist would be the Storm Trooper. who gets the best armour (Storm Trooper Carapace) and a Hot-Shot Lasgun (a Very Rare weapon) but has no Comrade. The traditional Battle Sister would have a Bolter (another Very Rare weapon) and Power Armour (rarer than Carapace) with no Comrade. It would be tough to balance unless you handled it like the Advanced Archetypes from the Black Crusade supplements (with an xp debt.)

If we tried this, it would be something along the lines of:

Battle Sister

Characteristic Increase: +5 WP

Aptitudes: Willpower, Ballistic Skill, Fellowship, Strength, Offence, Defence

Skills: Common Lore (Ecclesiarchy, Imperial Creed), Forbidden Lore (Heresy), Intimidate

Talents: Unshakeable Faith, Hatred (Heretics or Psykers), Weapon Training (Bolt, Flame or Chain, Low-tech)

Starting Gear: Boltgun and 2 magazines of ammunition, Hand Flamer or Chainsword, Power Armour, 2 krak grenades

(Just popped this one out, no attempt made at balance)

In the TT Battle sisters are sort of a missing link between IG trropers (or Stormtroopers for that matter!) and the Astartes. They are an Elite unit that answers to the Ecclesiarchy (Elite in fluff not as TT troop type!) and prosecutes it's will. While they are more numerous than the Astartes I doubt you would ever see them deployed on a regimental scale! (As in Division size or greater per RT ITS). In the Inquisitor's Handbook a chapter Militant sister would start at about the same Exp. as a RT character. making well beyond the power lvl of a starting squad. Alternatively, Per the Martyr's handbook she could conceivably start at a lower level than an OW trooper. From what I have read about the Sisters I think I liked the original interpretation better but I would have stuck with the light powered armor. Note that Light powered armor is an important distinction. It is AP 7 (Which is only 1 greater than Carapace) but also does a number of interesting parlor tricks that remove the need for a lot of extraneous wargear. Lastly, I have trouble imagining all those very feminine curves having the same armor value as an Space Marine!

I dunno, but for me, a Battle Sister is not a Battle Sister because she has a boltgun and power armour, but because of her Faith. So if you just have a chick with a power armour and a boltgun, then I guess she wouldn't be a Battle Sister, but a chick with a power armour and a boltgun. On the other hand, the chikc with Faith will be a Battle Sister even with a tattered robe and a broken stick.

I think the Support Specialist idea is pretty cool, but then the Sister should have a custom Trait like the Ogryn to represent her Faith. In our homebrew Warhammer 40k enviroment, we have the following Talent to represent Faith (note: in that enviroment, there are no Fate Points):

TRUE FAITH

The character gains a number of Faith Points equal to (Willpower Bonus + Fellowship Bonus)/2 (rounding down). The character may spend these Faith Points for various effects, called Acts of Faith. The character may spend any number of Faith Points per Round, any time, and the effects of the Acts of Faith are cumulative. Once spent, the Faith Point is lost permanently. At the GM’s discretion, the character may gain Faith Points by accomplishing truly epic and astonishing deeds on his own, but the GM may also decide that the character loses one or more Faith Points because of committing heresy or treason.

The character may call forth the following Acts of Faith:

- Blessed Might: The character gains +20 Strength and the Supernatural Strength (2) Trait for the rest of the encounter. Note that this bonus Strength counts towards the character’s Strength Bonus as normal.

- Pure Faith: For the rest of the encounter, the character is immune to Daemonic presence – both to the negative Willpower modifier and the Fear/Insanity/Corruption these creatures cause.

- Shield of Faith: The character immediately shakes off any and all Psychic Power effects (both friendly and enemy!) and for the rest of the encounter, any psyker that targets the character with a Psychic Power will suffer a -30 penalty on his Focus Power Tests or doubles the Warp Demand of the Psychic Power.

- Spirit of the Martyr: The character immediately removes 1D10 Damage (removing Critical Damage first) and all levels of Fatigue. He also gains the Supernatural Toughness (2) Trait for the rest of the encounter.

- Wrath of the Righteous: The character doubles the Damage he dealt and causes Critical Strike on any Damage rolls of 9 and 0. This Act of Faith only affects a single Damage roll.

- Zealous Faith: The character immediately recovers from Pinning, Shock and any Mental Traumas, and gains the Fearless Talent and the Supernatural Willpower (2) Trait for the rest of the encounter.

We call this Talent "Screw the rules, I have Faith!" for a good reason …

Radwraith said:

But … that's the studio material, and the Sisters in this RPG are different, in more than one way. Notably closer to the IG than to the Astartes, and I don't think they could accomplish "here" what they do in the tabletop's fluff, where they purge entire Chapters of Space Marines.

Radwraith said:

You could make a Sister Novitiate (I think that's the term?) as a balanced Support Specialist. Give her the Pure Faith talent, potentially bring in the Faith talents, and then put her in robes but give her a Boltgun, Flamer, or Chainsword and send her along her way.

A Novice would probably the best option for a low-key Sororitas character, staying true to the source material yet keeping the PC balanced to the rest of the party. It shouldn't be too hard to come with an excuse to attach her to the squad. Trial by Fire, perhaps? Or tailoring it to the campaign and just having her stranded on the planet, as she was just on the way to Holy Terra to take her Oaths of Adherence and become a full Sister of Battle, yet her transport got grounded in the wake of an invasion the Guard is intending to stop. So without anything better to do, she grabs a weapon and volunteers to help out.

Personally I'd avoid giving her the Holy Trinity of weapons as a mere Novice, and also not any of those Faith talents, but that's just my bias in favour of GW's fluff speaking. I realise that this lets the character be fairly close to an ordinary Guardsman, so aside from minor mechanical differences due to Schola education and religious zeal it is more of a roleplaying choice I guess.