I'm GMing a game and I've got two new players coming either next section or the one after, one is going to play a Kroot as I understand it and that's fine I'm fluent in the lore and I've already got a guy playing an Ork so it's not like I can say no. Honestly I was worried about letting the one guy play an Ork but it's really worked out he does a really good job of it, but then again an Ork really has something to do outside of combat even if it's just to tool around and be comic relief wheras I'm not really sure what a Kroot is going to be doing outside of combat.

That's my first concern really, that I'm going to have this character that just grunts at stuff, follows everyone else around and waits for trhe next thing to kill and presumably devour, and that then the guy will get bored waiting. I run a primarily exploration based game so far, I make sure to put at least one signifigant combat in every session even if I have to shoehorn it in because the players really like killing things and they really like looting them even if it's like say some sort of dog monster. In any case Into the Storm has about a page regarding Kroot personalities and dispositions, and that's probably the longest anyone has ever written on the subject. Thinking on it the Kroot are really known more for what they do, how they do it and where they come from than who they are.

So if any of you have ever had a Kroot player or a Kroot character let me know, what sort of direction did that go in? How well did it really work in a narrative or roleplayeing sense? Any advice?

My second concern is this, Kroot don't use cybernetics and as far as I'm aware they do not regenerate lost limbs, so what the hell do I do if this character gets it's arm lopped off? At that point I'll have to come up with some way to allow the guy to make the character playable again but that's tricky. The best ideas I could think of off hand would be to have them seek out a somewhat heretical but highly skilled genetor or some planet full of extremely regenerative creatures that he'd then have to chow down on for months worth of narrative time. Both would basically put the brakes on for anything else.

As far as lost limbs, you're talking about maybe one Endeavor to go find a Shaper that's cultivated an easy limb-regeneration mutation, and doing him a favor so he'll show your Explorer how to get it done.

Greater Endeavor: Restore our Xeno friend to fighting capacity!

1. Find a Shaper with the knowledge - Open ended objective, that might include knowledge and research, Exploration challenges, or hunting Tau and Kroot ships to interrogate / negotiate with to find a Shaper that knows how to regenerate limbs quickly. Consider this an Exploration objective worth 200 Achievement Points.
2. Convice the Shaper to help - This will probably open with negotiation, but in the end the Explorers most likely agree to do a task for the Kroot Shaper. Depending on what the Shaper wants done, this is probably a Criminal or Military objective, but could be any of the objective types, and is worth 400 Achievement Points.
3. Find the creature! - Depending on how long the Endeavor has been running compared to how long a storyline the GM wants it to be, the Shaper might have given you only vague hints or possibly directly said "you need to eat three of Creature X that can be found on Planet Y in the Z Area". Regardless, it's time to locate and devour the creature. Finding and getting to a planet with them, fending off other xeno-hunters and possibly overcoming the creature itself are possible challenges for this section. Upon completion, the Kroot Explorer's lost limb begins to regenerate, and by the time the Rogue Trader has finished leveraging all his new assets into Profit Factor (he's friends with a Kroot Shaper, he possibly opened negotiations with a Tau warsphere, he knows where to find creatures that allow Kroot to regenerate lost limbs - and who's to say what other uses a regenerating creature could be put towards in human or xeno medical research?) the limb has likely returned to full functionality. This could be considered a Trade or Creed objective worth 600 achievement points.

• Depending on how the players went about it, and what challenges they faced, they may have ended up with significantly more than 1200 achievement points. In particular, the first objective has plenty of opportunity for them to face several challenges and earn plenty of encounter-based achievement points. For each 100 AP by which they exceed the 1200 AP requirement, you should award them +1 PF, in addition to the 3 PF base this Endeavor awards. If, on the other hand, the Explorers succeeded mostly by throwing their Profit Factor at the problem, they shouldn't have earned as many AP - for example, objective 2 could have boiled down to simply paying the Shaper or buying him stuff. In this case, feel free to dock the earned PF from extra AP, but the total PF increase probably shouldn't go below +2. And the Kroot Explorer can keep the mutation - it would probably be a bit much to give him the actual Regeneration Trait, but an ongoing ability to regenerate limbs seems like a fair trade-off for the inability to use Best-Quality Bionics.

Sounds good, I've archived your suggestion in my campaign outline bin.

gatherer818 said:

For as much artistic license 40k has with biology and science in general, I'm pretty sure kroot only inherit devoured genetic material from their parents. They don't go full Kirby and mutate from what they eat, but rather pass it on to their offspring, as far as I know.

As far as 'having something to do' outside of combat: Kroot are natural 'rangers'. You said you run an exploration-focused campaign, so that should be a good fit.

That was my understanding too, but now I'm thinking tie that in by having it be some sort of crazy ancient Kroot ritual where he has to take some sort of drug made by the shaper and then a process will follow that will require toughness tests. So thereby he could go full kirby that one time, but it might just kill him instead on a few bad rolls and even if he succeeds he'll take a d10 of insanity.

Obviously, Amazing Larry had something to share with the rest of us

I am certainly no expert, but both the RT core book fluff and the 40k wiki appear to support my hypothesis:

A unique feature of the Kroot is that they evolve by selecting traits of their defeated foes to absorb by eating them. Due to this, the many Kroot warbands across the galaxy often look radically different. Kroot leaders are known as Shapers ; they are generally the Kroot with the best ability for recognizing desirable traits in defeated foes and tell his Kindred (the word for a Kroot clan) what to eat to suit the task at hand. For instance, a Shaper who wants his Kroot to gain muscle mass will take on campaigns against Orks to acquire the right DNA, while extensive feeding on flying predators will allow the Kroot to grow wings.

http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Kroot

I just assumed that was how it worked because that's how it works in every piece of fluff I've been exposed to, but I've not played the original 40k tabletop, only Rogue Trader…

You are right, kroot DO absorb the genetic material of devoured foes, however not in their current generation.

If you read the entries for the Kroot Kindreds in Into The Storm, you note that the entries speak of how Kindreds and ancestors has chosen to devour useful prey and evolve in particular directions. The Headhunter entry specifically states that the kroot that specifically hunted the most toxic prey later produced a new generation of kroot who are highly resistant to poision and is also toxic themselves.

I think this is to assist GMs, since a kroot character would otherwise easily become strange, gaining talents and stats left and right.

My copy of Into the Storm is ordered but not yet delivered *sigh*. I have the PDF, but I never manage to take everything away from them like I would a few times through the physical book. Unless a Shaper has a way to trigger the change early, then, perhaps his fear is justified…

…but then, if the main reason Kroot don't use bionics is their religion, perhaps the "My PC fits no mold" trope is useful - ask the player, should his character lose a limb, to consider having the character decide that his religion that prevents his GETTING A NEW ARM is useless and discard it in favor of… the Imperial Creed seems an obvious choice, but I could see that Kroot falling for the Machine God while the Tech-Priests work on building and installing his new arm

There's the middle ground, you could get a vat-grown cloned arm if you know some near-hereteks and probably graft that on as a replacemet. There should be somebody who can do that.

While the original cultural bias against cybernetic augmentation might be overcome in the right situation I think it would logically lead to more practical problems as well in terms of going that route specifically in the nuts and bolts. Kroot are very different biologically, so if you set out to make a cybernetic augment for one you'd probably be the first guy who ever tried to or at least as far as you know, and the mechanicus DOES NOT INVENT they just copy because EVERYTHING HAS ALREADY BEEN INVENTED and if it hasn't and it is then IT HAS COOTIES IS HERETECHAL.

Among others, the Dark Eldar have ways of replacing a destroyed limb - or even an entire body. If you're going to deal with xenos, don't just look to Imperials for answers to your problems.

Others include Strixys, which are probably easier to deal with. I think that most of this questions should be answered by player not GM. In example: kroot dislike implants, but what if that particular kroot is a kind of heretech? - a question for the player not GM.

Turns out not to matter, those players joining fell through. Turns out they just can't stop drinking soon enough on Saturday nights in order to make it to my game Sunday first think in the afternoon. Honestly two xenos in a party of four would have been a bit much.

Even though your potential Kroot fell through I just thought I'd add my thoughts for future reference.

The Kroot are obviously very animalistic (or perhaps avian?), but that doesn't mean they're unintelligent or one dimensional. If you're wondering what a Kroot might do out of combat, I'd say probably the same things a feral worlder character might do.

I think it's the first Ciaphas Cain novel that has him running around with some Kroot for a while, and the Kroot are actually very polite, well spoken, and interesting characters. I really liked that take personally, that they're not savage animals, but rather thoughtful trackers and hunters. Most of the Imperium just thinks they're savages because they only ever see them in battle. I would treat a Kroot character a lot like a Native American from the 1800s. Some people think he's a mindless savage because those are the stories they've heard, some people see him for what he really is, and to almost everyone he's an outsider they have a hard time accepting as one of their own. (though if there's an Ork onboard already your crew may be a more accepting lot -- my first Rogue Trader character was a missionary that would have killed the Ork and anyone he thought was responsible for bringing it aboard.)

Honestly they're borderline heretical, at this point beyond the Ork I have an ex-navy and then ex-pirate Voidmaster Pilot who is essentially an ambitious heretical (but also extremely anti-chaos) psychopath with the capacity for social camoflage when required, an explorator who's happy just so long as she finds technology to play with, another voidmaster who is essentially an emotional basket case as a result of some past event she doesn't talk about and who ALSO hates the ecclisiarchy for some reason. That and an aged NPC Rogue Trader who is drunken, lusty and senile and who stays on the ship and I basically just use as a plot device to make **** happen when I need it to so basically he's like a mixture of Professor Farnsworth and Walder Frey.

As a crew so far they mostly seem interested in hunting for treasure and pulling off heists. The biggest reason they get along with the Ork is that he's uncomplicated and they know what to expect from him, so they think of him kind of like a big green attack dog that talks and doesn't **** on the floor quite as often. They often say the following: "Ork, you go in front!"