Paranoia and Unremarkable

By Brother Orpheo, in Dark Heresy House Rules

Wagstckly gurgenhamsp fel tor ibenwule.

Edited by Brother Orpheo

The Lazy-mans talents?

I only allow paranoia for people that actualy play their PCs paranoid. And with that I mean the real mental disorder and not the common paranoia everyone that works for the inquisition should have. If they do they get their bonus but on the other side this has a huge impact on social situation for they constantily mistrust people and hardly can get any sympathy for themselfs. Paranoia has its pros, but it is bad roleplay to leave out the cons that are not written in +-(X) to this or that.

And Unremarkable just means that it is easier to blend into crowds. He is not a punk with a red mohawk on a feudal world everyone remembers. A PC with this talent has a ordinary face or nondescript face and might be harder to identify. But by no means this is a psycic power that makes everyone forget you just when you have passed by. If you commit a crime with tons of witnesses they might remember you, maybe the composite sketch is not that detailed because you just look like thousand others but they will still remember you, it might be a bit harder but it works. On the other hand this also might have some cons. For example a merchant cant remember who you are and while he offers special discount to regular customers he forgets about you. Also the character may seem unattractrive to other people he tries to seduce because he is just an ordinary guy, nothing quirky or special. And the moment he recieves a specific scar or wound in the face that makes him quite easy to discribe this talent might be lost too. You can have a baby-face but by any means, you are not unremarkable if you have a fucktastic branding right on your face, lost an eye or whatever.

Talents can be lost by situation. Ambidextrous for example is no guarantee that you wont loose an arm and never recieve a replacement. Also there are a lot of thinks more you have to take into account that some talent discriptions that are 3 sentecnes long.

Unremarkable might be useful but I never end up taking it for fluff reasons. It's rather easy to remember the smug-looking psyker with fancy clothes or the shy, awkward, six-foot-four-and-full-of-muscle Feral-world teenage girl in flak armor with tribal runes scrawled all over it. Or the smiling, handsome young priest with a gigantic rifle with the name "SUZY" engraved on the body. Or the Moritat assassin with the extremely flattering outfit. Or the Guardswoman from Krieg who rarely takes off her gas mask and never speaks, ever. Or… you get the picture. The only one who might even remotely qualify was a Rogue Trader character, of all places, and even he had a storm bolter, a beard, and a thick Scottish brogue.

If I'm going to be Unremarkable, I'm going to make a character who could easily be described as such. The problem with this is that it often means that the character isn't very memorable or interesting, which seems to work TOO well. Paranoia, on the other hand… THAT could make for an interesting character.