Mechanicus implants has been the same copy/paste description since Dark Heresy. Ironiclally most of the talents related to them have been removed and replaced with other implants. Am I going out on a limb if I were to suggest we are now expected to roleplay these implants?

The Electro-graft is a small port that is grafted into the nervous system. Once a recipient has been properly trained, this allows him to interface with machine data ports and certain types of data nets. Electro-grafts can take many forms, such as skull shunts, finger probes, or spine jacks.

You can plug into stuff, handy for downloading/uploading information.

Cradled within the cyber-mantle is a power unit known as the Potentia Coil. This mass can store energy and produce various types of fields. Coils come in many types, from small crystal stack affairs to bulky electrical galvinators.

You can use you coil as a power source. Plug your sholder glow glob in sow it never runs out of power. Plug your stummer in so you never need to recharge it. Hell plug your laspistol in so it doesn't have a clip, and just draws power whenever you need to fire.

Does any of that sound reasonable? Thoughts?

Mushkilla said:

There's a feat somewhere that describes using the potentia coil to recharge things. Might not be in OW yet. I'd use that as a baseline for what you can and cannot power/recharge. I believe it causes fatigue and takes a bit of time.

The first thing you describe sounds very reasonable.

If you've played 11th Hour, The Enginseer's sheet says that he is plugged into his las pistol, and never runs out of ammo for it.

@Fail Bot: That's the luminen capacitor those are designed for intense bursts of energy like charging an empty power pack or generator. Plug in a light into a the pointentia coil or a las pistol is not a intense burst of energy in one go but a gradual drain of energy of a long period of time.

That being said I found some great rules in The Lathes supplement for Dark Heresy.

Integrated weapons can be connected/disconnected to a tech priests potentia coil, as an Ordinary(+10) Tech-Use Test and is a half action. Whilst connected las weapons have unlimited ammunition and do not need to be reloaded. Integrated Weapons do not Jam; Whenever an Integrated Weapon would suffer a jam, the user instead takes 1 Level of Fatigue as the drain on their own Potential Coil starts to wear them down. Upgrading a weapon to an integrated weapon follows the standard rules for weapon upgrades, except that the character attempting to upgrade the weapon requires Forbidden Lore (Adeptus Mechanicus) as a Trained Skill before he may attempt the Test. The components required to create Integrated weapons are only available on Forge Worlds (for only war I would say Mechanicus controlled domains, wherever you would get your mechadendrites from etc, aka not your regular guard base).

I like the fatigue dynamic as its a lot riskier than a jam for a tech priest (as they have Technical Knock, so can remove jams without losing ammo). If you fire a las gun on overload it's unreliable and therefore more likely to jam and drain your fatigue (risky) as -10 to all rolls is a pain. Firing on semi auto, more chance of getting fatigued too. What if you have a toughness bonus of 3 and already have 3 level of fatigue? Do you risk firing your lasgun on any setting other then the standard reliable mode? Do you risk semi auto or overcharge/overload? If it jams you would pass out!

As for some of the other implants roleplay ideas.

Cranial circutry: that data you downloaded from the cogitator bank, you can now view/read the files in your augmented brain. Lots of roleplay goodness here.

Commisar: Where is your Uplifting Primer Engineseer? Your supposed to have it on your person at all times!

Techpriest: I have a digital copy on my person at all times, sir. I can recite it too you if you want?

Respirator unit (contains a vox-synthesiser capable of transmitting the voice in a variety of ways): Uses female voice to distract guardsmen "help help i'm in danger" everyone runs out of the recreation tent to see the source of the voice.

"Engineseer did you see any woman in danger around here?"

"Negative" *smirks behind respirator mask*

"****, my mind must be playing tricks on me, since the cadian regiment left I haven't seen a real woman in months!"

Sometimes I forget this game is a roleplay game. Too used to power gamers. Unlick 90% of the techpriest in 40k role play mine isn't a walking tank, and is a rather awkward individual who has a personified MIU hellpistol on his shoulder that he likes talking to called Hades.

Techpriest: In the name of the Omnissiah blessed machine stop!

Guardsmen: Why did you stop the chimera, is something wrong?

Techpriest: Yes, my reservoir is full.

Guardsmen: Your what?

Techpriest: You know my waste reservoir, I've been on maximum waste recycle for the last two hour to try and stop it overflowing, but there is only so many times you can try to reclaim waste. Don't want it overflowing in here, that's for sure!

Guardmen: *Sigh*

Techpriest: Hercules do you need to empty your reservoir too?

Servitor: *Screach of binary*

Techpriest: He's had terrible constipation for almost a month now, poor guy.

Meanwhile whilst the techpriest is outside relieving his reservoir, a Terror Cat approaches!

BLAM!

Techpriest: What the hell did you do that for Hades! *Shoulder mounted hellpistol turns to the techpriest inquisitively* You can't just go round killing local fauna! It might have been an endangered species, poor thing was probably just fascinated by the radioactive glow of my waste! Bad Hades! *Hell pistol droops*

Wounded Terror Cat get's back up and attacks.

Techpriest: On second thoughts Hades, maybe you were right! Fire away. *BLAM! BLAM! Hades fires away excitedly*

…Next week in the adventures of Hades the Homicidal Hellpistol…

@Mushkilla: It's FLailBot. :-p Also, you sound like a tech priest I wouldn't actively loathe having in my group for once.

There's also the Luminen talents from Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader. You can do some handy stuff with them.

Flail-Bot said:

Sorry missed the L.

Hehe, in dark heresy it's very easy to turn things into a GM/Player arms race. This is really bad for the rest of the party as they more often then not will not be as resilient as the Tankpriest and die horribly as a result. Makes the game really boring. Never understood the whole race for shiny gear, you get better gear, enemies get tougher, nothing changes.

Mushkilla said:

:-( Why can't we be friends in real life?

Luminen Capacitors are in the implants on page 207. They're requisite for the shock/blast talents, but their primary use is to recharge or power equipment through toughness tests. Internal Reservoirs allow two charges or shock/blast uses without worrying about fatigue, but take a day to slowly charge back up [so one use per twelve hours, really].

Lathe Worlds [technically Dark Heresy, but, once again showing how badly the system could use a unification of the rules to bring everything up to date, the equipment's perfectly suited to the other games, and certainly fits Rogue Trader Explorators even better than an enginseer] has the rules for integral systems fed off your potentia coil.

A lot of great stuff that really lets you focus on the 'mechanicus only' parts of the character, rather than them being a useful addon. Powerful stuff, though, and hard to get your hands on.

Nothing a starting OW character would have, but definitely something you'd expect on an Explorator with a bit more experience under his belt.

To be honest, the techpriest rules are a complete mess. Half of the abilities get changed, or dropped/rehashed. It took them four iteration to say luminen shock was a standard attack. Now there's a jumble of cybernetics too, and traits that don't do what they used to do etc. Mechadendrite are a mess. Tech-use, technomat, common lore (machine cult), common lore (tech) and forbiden lore (mechanicus) all overlap. Its a real nightmare to come up with a simple and streamlined techpriest gaming experience. As a result they just end up getting built as supper tanks. Which is quite frankly boring as hell. They just come accross as so clunky compared to any of the other classes, like a bunch of bits from all over the place welded together in the hope of making something semi-functional. maybe that's the idea though.

Does anyone else find it silly that a tech priest in only war can start with two baleful eyes!? Time to get two weapon fighting and use my laser eyes!

I’m not even getting into this one.

The whole issue of Mechanicus Implants, Talents and Cybernetics is a very good example of how mixed up, confused, convoluted and generally disorganized the whole 40K RPG family has become.

Every time they bring out a new game, a new book, an errata, or whatever, you have to rethink and reorganise your whole campaign.

What I would suggest the RPG officially needs at this point [i've said this before maybe] is a unified, 'living rulebook' style of rules.

Added bonus, currently, except possibly for battletech because who knows what's going on over there, there's nothing like that for any sci-fi RPGs, let alone 40k.

Now I don't necessarily mean we should require a rulebook and then buy the settings and all that seperately. But rather than "new setting = new rules = new incompatibilities", things could get OFFICIALLY overridden and brought into the new editions. Because that's what every setting's been, really; a new edition of the rules.

The old books would still have their old rules, as the books introduce the rules, so you can always stick to the older stuff if you prefer, but we'd all get a healthy dose of "alright, this new iteration of Lasguns is how the basic models work, and here's the new modifiers for aiming and autofire".

Unfortunately a lot of work, but its not as though we're not all doing just that already; plenty of groups are starting Dark Heresy in Only War or Black Crusade…

Actually, I think the family of 40K RPGs NEEDS a second eddition. Release a core RULE book covering every Skill, Tallent, and Trait, weapon, armor and cybernetic in the game, as well as the rules. Now, the rules I would use the OW/BC set as a starting point. From that book you release settiing books for lack of a better word, like DW RT DH, that have their classes and advance schemes, with associated experience costs for all the skills/tallents/traits in the main rule book. This way every 'setting" shares all the same rules and functions, but with their own flavor and all the tallents/triats function the same accros setting making intercompability easier.