Does anyone find that some Slaanesh things in this game are somewhat lacking?

Firstly, the Mark of Slaanesh.
Its sorta disapointing.
The upsides of it are a free extra degree of success on Fellowship tests, lets you command 200 more people with demagogue, and heightened senses.
At first glance those look cool, but then you dig in a little. While the extra degree on Fel tests is nice, its not used terribly often, and you can bet a Slaanesh character already has the power to charm a Berserkers pants off. Plus, Hermaphrodite is wayyyy more effective. Doubling your degrees is amazing.
As for commanding 200 more people, at that point you can already probably command 500-700 people. At this point I would honestly, as a GM, be moving it into the realm of entirely RP instead of numbers. How else do you control armies of thousands?
And finally. More Heightended senses. Maybe if you are a human in carapace this is exciting. For Marines though, they can have up to 2 stacks from implants and armour. As much as I would enjoy +10 to tasting their fear, its not terribly useful, or used much in a game.
All in all, Mark of Slaanesh seems really situational when compared to the always useful abilities of the other gods.

Khorne gets Extra strength bonus (Also a bonus degree on strength tests), bonus damage on the charge, and resistance to psychic powers!
Nurgle gets extra toughness and becomes IMMUNE to all environmental stuff, poison, suffocationg, stunning and crits. This one seems too good.
Tzeentch gets a juicy +1 to psy rating, and +1 unnatural wp for all the casters needs.

I think the best fix would be adding Unnatural Agility +1 to Mark of Slaanesh. Just this tiny boost would be super awesome. Slaanesh is just as much about agility as fellowship, and I wish that showed more in the gifts.

Second is Slaanesh characters Infamy point ability.
Ignore all crit results. Cool.
Except stunning, loss of limbs, and death. What.

Now wait, this still might be good. It just depends on one thing. Do you ignore toughness tests to die or lose limbs or be stunned? If yes, this ability is awesome. If no, it sucks.
Since a huge amount of crits involve stunning, or limb loss, a Slaanesh character has a good chance of just being stunlocked to death once they get into the crits, rather then being able to spend infamy and retaliate.


Daemonettes also suck for daemon weapons rewards, due to them having 28 WP, where all other minor daemons have above 30, meaning that Slaanesh daemon weapon gifts can only ever have 1 attribute, and a lot of weapon abilities scale directly on Deamon willpower, so thats a point missed out on.

Finally, and this doesn't really matter, but come on.
In BC Slaanesh's thing in Fellowship.
Daemonettes have 08. Every other daemon has more. The goddamn Juggernaught has a better chance of charming someone.

I know, I know, I'm probably being very gamey about all this, but I really love Slaanesh and I think she got shafted. (heh)
I wish the agility and perception side had been played up more. Maybe some cool new perception talents.
Fellowship fits, but not THAT well. All the chaos gods try to convert, subvert, and shmodge people.
Tzeentch is even the Lord of Lies.

Oh, and one other question. How exactly does Unnatural Senses work. If I have Unnatural senses, say 10, does that mean I can always see everything within 10 meters, regardless of walls or darkness and such?

Heightened Senses gives you a +10 bonus to any tests (usually Perception tests) for a particular sense. So Heightened Senses (sight) gives you a bonus to sight-based perception tests. In Slaanesh's case, it happens to be all of them, effectively granting you a permanent +10 bonus.

Also, on the tabletop, Slaanesh-aligned units have better Initiative because their heightened senses let them react faster. Perhaps something like this could be added?

I know how heightened senses work. I pointed out Space Marines already usually have Heightened Senses +20 thanks to Autosenses and Organs.

I meant Unnatural Senses, which is a Trait, rather then a talent. It lets you sense out to a number of meters assosiated with the trait.
So Unnatural Senses (10) is 10 meters. But it doesn't say exactly what it does mechanically, so I was wondering if it lets you like see through walls, or underground.


Yeah, I've always wished Perception had a bigger role in the game.
Maybe a talent like adding half your PB to your Initiative. Though that might get really good really fast.

Felenis said:

Combat Sense allows for PerB instead of AgB. If you can get Unnatural Perception this can be a lot of fun. Adding Paranoia (which works best with high Per), you can really boost Initiative.

HappyDaze said:

This could actually be rather appropriate for my character - Paranoia into Combat Sense; but how would one gain Unnatural Perception? I cursory search of the books doesn't really turn up any way to get Unnatural Perception legitimately, any more than it can get you Unnatural Agility. :|

Edit: Nevermind, I thought I was in another forum. I didn't realize I was in Black Crusade. D'oh.

I doubt most Unnatural Senses would go beyond massive physical obstacles. However, I would assume they require neither light nor sound for you to detect something, meaning that as long as your opposition doesn't know about your specific sense and take some techno-babbly measures to counter it, they'd be unable to hide from you as soon as they come into sense range.

Regarding the rest… I'd assume that in battles, the Slaaneshi can lead more troops personally, which would likely give hir unit a bonus for hir inspiring leadership. Especially in combat situations, this will come in helpful, considering that Command is Khorne-aligned. Further, a Slaaneshi's minions are going to be rather more succesful when it comes to achieving tasks on their own - not a bad thing when you consider that you can almost outsource entire parts of an adventure to your trusty henchcreatures.

That being said, I've found that it's rather more problematic to become aligned to (or marked by) the Dark Prince in the first place, especially when starting as an Apostate who's not interested in exploring the "Acrobat" and "Blade Dancer" aspects of Slaanesh, as many of the remaining advances are already granted by the starting skills and talents. While most others have certain cheap ways of obtaining alignment (Nurgle: SoundConSoundConSoundCon, Tzeentch: Umpteen Forbidden Lores, Khorne: More combat talents remaining since a fair number of useful ones are aligned to other gods), Slaanesh is somewhat problematic.

The Infamy Point trouble, on the other hand, is IMO not as bad as you describe it. Firstly, only a high-Corruption heretic can recover from being stunned via Infamy, so the Slaaneshi loses out only late in the game. Secondly, shi will be able to more easily shrug of Fatigue than all other characters - something that can make a human Heretic go unconscious and can otherwise not be negated by Infamy at all. Not taking the first point of Fatigue and its -10 penalty to everything is essentially worth an Infamy point for every subsequent test.

Does anyone else think that Hermaphrodite and Massive Intellect should have just been Unnatural Characteristic?

"Regarding the rest… I'd assume that in battles, the Slaaneshi can lead more troops personally, which would likely give hir unit a bonus for hir inspiring leadership. Especially in combat situations, this will come in helpful, considering that Command is Khorne-aligned. Further, a Slaaneshi's minions are going to be rather more succesful when it comes to achieving tasks on their own - not a bad thing when you consider that you can almost outsource entire parts of an adventure to your trusty henchcreatures."

Yeah, its useful, but at the same time, still really situational. For instance, my current character is much more into the perfection and sensation of Slaanesh, rather then the fellowship. And Hermaphrodite pretty much completely covers that base for you. Its awesome.

"That being said, I've found that it's rather more problematic to become aligned to (or marked by) the Dark Prince in the first place, especially when starting as an Apostate who's not interested in exploring the "Acrobat" and "Blade Dancer" aspects of Slaanesh, as many of the remaining advances are already granted by the starting skills and talents. While most others have certain cheap ways of obtaining alignment (Nurgle: SoundConSoundConSoundCon, Tzeentch: Umpteen Forbidden Lores, Khorne: More combat talents remaining since a fair number of useful ones are aligned to other gods), Slaanesh is somewhat problematic."

Felenis said:

I'm really failing to see the downside here.

I'm just very wary of effects that out and out double degrees of success. That seems like it could get way too powerful way too fast.

Terraneaux said:

I once played a Slaaneshi Champion CSM with the Hermaphrodite mutation. He was extremely fey and androgynous, with long white hair, and had fellowship in the sixties, and that's not even counting the bonus that the mutation gives. He'd been taking great care of his good looks for ten thousand years, to the point where he would always go into battle wearing a helmet (which he'd styled to look like a mask) just so his beautiful face wouldn't get damaged. He was basically Vega from Street Fighter with power armor (yes, I was planning on giving him a single Lightning Claw too). Great fun because he'd persistently annoy the hell out of the (Khornate) party leader and shamelessly flirt with anything on two legs.

Never went into details on what's underneath the codpiece, don't particularly want to, but whatever it is, it causes Insanity Points.

Also, it annoys me to no end when somebody uses the fake pronoun "hir". Use "he" or "she", whichever is closer, or "it" or "they" if you want to stay gender neutral. "Xe" or "xir" is just as bad. [/rage]

I prefer to to combine the words she/he and it. The result is a four letter word that most forums censor