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So I've been a long time lurker, mostly posting my custom codexes on Warseer, but with all the trouble they've been having I figure it's time to post somewhere else that's more active. I've been working on three codexes semi-simultaneously as follows:

• Codex: Adepta Sororitas
  
• Codex: Adeptus Ministorum
  
• Codex: Inquisition <- You are here

Codex: Inquisition
I've always been disappointed with the Inquisition rules in 40k ever since they were rolled into Codex: Grey Knights. Codex: Witch Hunters had its flaws, but also allowed you to build a more powerful Inquisitor with a bunch of neat options, as such, I'm hoping to capture this in my own codex. Fair warning, compared to my other two codexes this one is much more complex, so here's a rundown of what you can expect:

• Units:
  
  • Inquisitors: I wasn't going to include them, but then I thought, hey, why not right? These guys have a ton of options, and can be further tailored with Inquisitorial Credos that allow you to create a Ruthless Burner of Worlds, or a Puritan Blade Master with various bonuses and stuff. They also have access to Stratagems, which can trigger various useful abilities to ruin your opponent's day. Also they start out as Interrogators, a.k.a your watered-down Inquisitor on a budget. If there's a flavour of Inquisitor you want to represent and for some reason can't using this codex, then uh… you're a heretic?
    
  • Acolyte Warbands: I've paired these down to warrior types, with other specialists getting their own entries, because even without them this unit has a list of options that will make your eyes bleed. They allow you to represent various warriors (melee fighters), gunners (soldiers, mercenaries etc.) and also have access to brutes (abhumans, mutants or even aliens if you like) for some extra muscle. You can also pump your warrior acolytes full of deadly combat stims, and throw in a medicae if you'd prefer them to live long enough to use them, it's your party.
    
  • Daemonhosts: I decided to add a Daemonhost that doesn't bore me to tears, but be careful, these are as powerful as they are increasingly likely to break containment, tear you to pieces and drag your soul screaming into a personalised hell dimension. So uh, handle with care?
    
  • Lexmechanic: Tech adept who probably did something hella shady to get forced into the Inquisition's service. Can also take servitors and Jokareo Weaponsmiths for a bit of extra kick.
    
  • Pariah: Hate Psykers? Want to ruin their day? Then you need one of Haravikk's patented personal Pariahs, just add water… I mean wargear.
    
  • Sanctioned Psyker: Hate Psykers? Hate not having your own even more? Well now you can have no only a powerful Sanctioned Psyker but you can throw in some Wyrdvane Psykers too for good luck (also known in the trade as "so bullets aimed at you will hit them instead".
    
  • Savant: Remember how the Savant in the Eisenhorn trilogy was the only one who ever seemed to have any actual sense despite being addicted to data? Well now you can have your own, giving you some keen insight into your enemy.
  
  
• Relics & Wargear: Let's put it this way; the armour and relics sections combined have 18 pages, because the Inquisition has access to everything, plus some unique goodies like different types of Servo-skull, and relics for every Ordo.
  
• Detachments: A themed detachment for each Ordo with their own Chamber Militant (stuff you can include as part of the same detachment and faction). Also I made Inquisitors Elites so you have take one of these detachments instead, because I'm mean that way.
  
• Tactical Objectives: Capture stuff, kill stuff, blow stuff up. I'm ad-libbing, but that's the gist of what the Inquisition's all about, right?

Download
I'll be making this codex available as both a fully interactive iBook (requires iBooks for Mac or iOS) and a PDF. Unfortunately I discovered that when exporting a PDF from iBook Author the clickable links to wargear, rules etc. don't work, so you'll need to use the search feature of your PDF reader to navigate quickly, sorry!

• Version 1.2 [iBook | PDF]

Minor update to this with only a handful of changes:

• Cheaper Power Weapons; they're not quite as deadly on Strength 3 models after all.
  
• Added a new item; Suppressor Field, this grants Shrouded to a unit that starts the game in cover, or ends its Movement phase in cover. This is lost if it shoots, is charged, or moves (unless it moves in its Movement phase, and ends in cover).
  
• Ditched the Sabotage Stratagem (damages a vehicle); it was too difficult to balance as it either inflicts too much damage making it overpowered, or not enough, and is better against some armies than others. Plus all of the most dangerous vehicles these days are Monstrous Creatures for no reason.
  
• Replace Sabotage with Misdirection, this lets the operative and their unit deploy normally (or go in Reserve) then deploy as Infiltrators at the last moment, i.e- after enemy Infiltrators are deployed, making for a nifty surprise. This goes well with the Suppression Field to allow the Inquisition to send a recon team forward. Somehow I managed to finish the whole codex without remembering to give anyway Infiltrate, and as a Stratagem it's useful because of the ability to choose before the game begins, so if you mess up deployment of your operative(s) you can redeploy one of them via this Stratagem, or you can exploit a weakness in the enemy deployment etc.
  
• Tweaked the Stratagem names. Arguably the most important update to any codex ever, they are now Destruction (mine terrain), Disruption (Dangerous Terrain for enemy Reserve), Misdirection (Infiltrate) and Orchestration (control friendly Reserve arrival).

Not an especially large update, but somewhat significant so I'm dubbing it v1.1. Most of the changes are minor, and mostly cost tweaks, most notably around the Acolyte types (Warrior Acolytes are a bit cheaper overall). Also Coteaz is no longer a Lord of War. I've also tweaked the Ordo Xeno Operative's special rule to grant one characteristic test re-roll per turn, I swear I can't find a rule I'm happy with, but this one feels better. Gunner Acolytes with Heavy Bolters can now take Hellfire shells.

The most important change is the addition of Drop Pods as a transport option for acolytes, but also most notably available to the power armoured Codex: Adepta Sororitas units taken as a Chamber Militant in an Ordo Hereticus Strike Force (Malleus and Xenos don't require these as their Chamber Militant options already have Drop Pods). The restriction on who can take them is because I thought that have Sisters Repentia arriving via Drop Pod, while funny, might be be a bit much. Sororitas with Heavy Bolters can also take Hellfire Shells as part of a strike force.

I haven't read through the whole thing yet, but I have to say that I like it. The Task Forces are a great idea and I really like how you've implemented the Chambers Militant. The credos are nice. The formatting is cool, though your placement of artwork is a little weird in places.

Why can't a radical Ordo Hereticus Task Force take a Daemonhost, but an Ordo Xenos one can?

I'll definitely be checking out your other works (and the rest of this one) soon.

EDIT: I'm not up to date with the Inquisition rules, so I'm just going to treat everything in this PDF as your own content.
- I feel like the Pariah needs more of an edge compared to the Sanctioned Psyker. A Psyker with a Psychic Hood is not that much more expensive and is far more useful with the added bonus of not causing a Ld malus to friendly models.
- Your "hellgun" is using the name of a variant lasgun. I also don't think they're necessary weapons. I looked it up, and "hellrifle" is from the 5th Edition Grey Knights Codex. Silly GW. I'd take them out, honestly.
- Jokaero changes are good. Well, I haven't seen them since 5th so I don't know what they're like now, but I definitely prefer the "Xenotech Blaster" over the hyper-functional weapon array they used to have.
- I like the Savant. Powerful but not too much so. Definitely interesting and useful.
- Changes to the Plasma Siphon are great. It's an odd and unique weapon now rather than just a massive nerf to certain enemies. That said, the mechanic is a little off. Forcing Snap Shots is oddly worded because it works on models, which means models hit by it in a unit have to be singled out (which isn't too odd but I don't like it for some reason). Also, being able to force Snap Shots by simply hitting any model with a high BS blast could be very, very powerful. Would it work better as an invulnerable save, generating tokens for hits or wounds? Wounds would probably be better (counting both saved and unsaved Wounds), just so that the token generation scales with the Strength of the attacking weapon, as it should. This way, the Siphon could serve as a deterrent to shooting at your Inquisitor; if she or he survives the attack, their alien device will hit back hard.
- I like how the Daemonhost works with the "turn number + powers" thing. It really depicts them well, growing in power while also becoming more and more likely to break free. I think the Daemonblade should have something similar; a small chance of turning against the wielder (but not the same as other Daemon Weapons, as the fluff description states). Like Daemonhosts, such things should be like playing with fire for a radical Inquisitor, and bring great power at great risk.

 Frozen Ocean wrote:
The formatting is cool, though your placement of artwork is a little weird in places.

If you mean images that are aligned over to the right, this is because I've left space for fluff, but was too lazy to write any or find some place to copy it from

 Frozen Ocean wrote:
Why can't a radical Ordo Hereticus Task Force take a Daemonhost, but an Ordo Xenos one can?

I couldn't find much precedent for Hereticus using one, and Daemonhost weren't available in Codex: Witch Hunters, I could make them available again to Rogue Radicals, but it doesn't seem like something the Ordo Hereticus would be likely to accept, as no matter how powerful a psyker is, unleashing a daemon usually ranks as worse.

 Frozen Ocean wrote:
I feel like the Pariah needs more of an edge compared to the Sanctioned Psyker. A Psyker with a Psychic Hood is not that much more expensive and is far more useful with the added bonus of not causing a Ld malus to friendly models.

The main benefit is that they're pretty cheap but you're probably right, as they're not really durable enough to run on their own. That said, it's worth noting that their Leadership penalty doesn't affect the Pariahs themselves, so when they join a unit the unit uses the Pariah's leadership, so they can work well with mobile units gone psyker hunting. I'll definitely have a think about it though, what about if they also had a Refractor Field like the Sanctioned Psyker?

 Frozen Ocean wrote:
Your "hellgun" is using the name of a variant lasgun. I also don't think they're necessary weapons. I looked it up, and "hellrifle" is from the 5th Edition Grey Knights Codex. Silly GW. I'd take them out, honestly.

Actually the Hellrifle is current as of the latest official Inquisition codex, and was in the Grey Knights codex too I think. Hellguns have pretty much been abandoned in favour of Hot-shot las weapons, so I kind of liked the idea of re-imagining them as something slightly different.

 Frozen Ocean wrote:
I like the Savant. Powerful but not too much so. Definitely interesting and useful.

Thanks! This is one I wanted to add perhaps the most after reading various inquisition themed books as it always seems to be the savants that are the unsung heroes who actually figure stuff out, discover weaknesses and so-on

 Frozen Ocean wrote:
Changes to the Plasma Siphon are great. It's an odd and unique weapon now rather than just a massive nerf to certain enemies. That said, the mechanic is a little off. Forcing Snap Shots is oddly worded because it works on models, which means models hit by it in a unit have to be singled out (which isn't too odd but I don't like it for some reason). Also, being able to force Snap Shots by simply hitting any model with a high BS blast could be very, very powerful. Would it work better as an invulnerable save, generating tokens for hits or wounds? Wounds would probably be better (counting both saved and unsaved Wounds), just so that the token generation scales with the Strength of the attacking weapon, as it should. This way, the Siphon could serve as a deterrent to shooting at your Inquisitor; if she or he survives the attack, their alien device will hit back hard.

Yeah, I've made a few attempts to re-write this to be simpler or more streamlined to do but it's tricky; I like the accumulating power aspect, but representing the actual drain on the target is fiddly. Anything that affects the unit specifically could be too powerful if the template only slightly touches the unit, whereas requiring some portion of the unit to be affected could make it very hard to apply. Per-model is annoying, though it's a relic so it's not like it should come up all the time. One alternative I had thought of was to add counters to the target for each point of energy drained, the unit must then re-roll this many 6's when rolling to hit with shooting attacks; this is a bit simpler, and not especially abusable as it's effectively losing one point of Ballistic Skill on a portion of your shots fired, the problem is how to decide which 6's to re-roll?

 Frozen Ocean wrote:
I like how the Daemonhost works with the "turn number + powers" thing. It really depicts them well, growing in power while also becoming more and more likely to break free. I think the Daemonblade should have something similar; a small chance of turning against the wielder (but not the same as other Daemon Weapons, as the fluff description states). Like Daemonhosts, such things should be like playing with fire for a radical Inquisitor, and bring great power at great risk.

Thanks, these were another one I desperately wanted to be more like the fluff, as in the Eisenhorn books the Daemonhosts are incredibly powerful, whereas the older rules are just too unreliable to be of much use.
Applying the same idea to a Daemonblade is interesting, the current form is from the existing digital release. The big problem with Daemonblades is that the randomness is a bit like Warlord Traits; they make it very difficult to build your Inquisitor for a particular role, as most of the time I find that I roll abilities that aren't much use against my intended target, or that make my Inquisitor much better suited to a target he's going to struggle to get to. Using the same mechanism as the Daemonhosts would a bit, since you can risk disaster in order to get another chance at the ability you really wanted, but it still makes it a tough item to build around.

I have had another idea though; instead of one big table the Daemonblades could use say two or three small tables themed around different abilities such as character killing, monster killing or mass damage. The tables wouldn't be random, but instead you have two points to assign allowing you to unlock the first ability of two tables, or first two abilities of one table, with abilities starting relatively weak but becoming much more powerful and more unreliable as you progress, and the ability to earn more points for kills? It's definitely a tough area to get right, as too random makes it tough to use, which isn't as big an issue with the Daemonhost as it's fast enough to find something to hurt whatever powers your roll.

Certainly bears thinking about!


Thanks for the great feedback! I'll start thinking about some tweaks to the list right away

I've been thinking about making my own Ordo chronus army for inquisition using the codex as an base for constructing them. Is it ok? If it is ok, do you have any tips?

mane11354 wrote:
I've been thinking about making my own Ordo chronus army for inquisition using the codex as an base for constructing them. Is it ok? If it is ok, do you have any tips?

Sure, I've tried to design the codex to be as flexible as possible, and you can always take unbound if a strike force lacks the exact combinations you need.

How do you envision the Ordo Chronus functioning on the battlefield? If I were doing it I'd probably use Ordo Xenos as a base, since they have all the extra toys and other unusual goodies which could represent strange equipment recovered from temporal investigations?

I've been thinking of doing a non-Ordo specific task force for general use, with guard/tempestus elites as the Chamber Militant, so there's more than one option, but I held off on doing it while I sorted the big three first. I haven't really thought much about other kinds of specialist detachment that might be worth including.


@Frozen Ocean:
I've got a rough idea for new Daemonblade rules, similar in style to the Daemonhost but not based on random abilities. Basically it starts as a +2 Strength AP4 two-handed melee weapon with Fleshbane, so pretty decent to start with. However once you hit three kills with it it becomes +3 Strength AP3 but gains Insidious Presence, which forces a test based on total wounds/hull points inflicted with a penalty based on game turn, roll under this total and you lose control, attacking the nearest enemy for the rest of the game. Five kills improves it further to +6 Strength AP2, and seven kills or more is Strength D, AP1, but if the bearer is out of control they will attack anyone (not just the enemy). In other words, if your inquisitor can control their combats well they've got a good chance of just having a beastly sword, but if they get swarmed you can expect them to go out of control quickly (since you can't choose not to attack iirc).

 Haravikk wrote:

mane11354 wrote:
I've been thinking about making my own Ordo chronus army for inquisition using the codex as an base for constructing them. Is it ok? If it is ok, do you have any tips?

Sure, I've tried to design the codex to be as flexible as possible, and you can always take unbound if a strike force lacks the exact combinations you need.

How do you envision the Ordo Chronus functioning on the battlefield? If I were doing it I'd probably use Ordo Xenos as a base, since they have all the extra toys and other unusual goodies which could represent strange equipment recovered from temporal investigations?

I've been thinking of doing a non-Ordo specific task force for general use, with guard/tempestus elites as the Chamber Militant, so there's more than one option, but I held off on doing it while I sorted the big three first. I haven't really thought much about other kinds of specialist detachment that might be worth including.

I was thinking about making thier relics and wargear something akin to stasis bombs, easier reserves because of timing, Maybe even allowing some units to deepstrike first turn etc.

I am currently thinking about everything. I can use ordo xenos until me or my friends have come up with something.

Do you want me to Pm you/reply to this thread when i have come up with something?

Ah you mean specific rules, rather than just how you could field them thematically? Of course I'm interested in any rules ideas, Ordo Chronos is one aspect of the Inquisition I wish there was more information about, but given that they're officially missing I don't suppose there's much hope unless we get a book set at a time (or several, that being their thing) when they were still active.


I'm more than happy for you to post ideas here if you want to use my codex as a basis, or did you want me to integrate them? Stasis weapons could make an awesome mechanic; given that officially they're gone it might be interesting to give them a Legion of the Damned vibe, showing up when they're needed, but never sticking around long enough to explain what's happened to them?

 Haravikk wrote:
Ah you mean specific rules, rather than just how you could field them thematically? Of course I'm interested in any rules ideas, Ordo Chronos is one aspect of the Inquisition I wish there was more information about, but given that they're officially missing I don't suppose there's much hope unless we get a book set at a time (or several, that being their thing) when they were still active.


I'm more than happy for you to post ideas here if you want to use my codex as a basis, or did you want me to integrate them? Stasis weapons could make an awesome mechanic; given that officially they're gone it might be interesting to give them a Legion of the Damned vibe, showing up when they're needed, but never sticking around long enough to explain what's happened to them?

i meant specific rules. I was tinking about making rules for them because i needed a good reason for my horus heresy models showing up in the present. My friends told me that ordo chronus existed so we had a plan to create them and using the horus heresy models as chamber militant. The legion of the damned idéa sounds good. But you can integrate them if you want but i can send you all the idéas i can come up with as i come up with them. Orod chronos is the most instresting ordo and it's a shame that they haven't been mentioned more or having rules.

If you have anymore ideas then you can send me a pm or write it in this post.

 Haravikk wrote:

 Frozen Ocean wrote:
The formatting is cool, though your placement of artwork is a little weird in places.

If you mean images that are aligned over to the right, this is because I've left space for fluff, but was too lazy to write any or find some place to copy it from

That makes sense. Perhaps you should put an empty "insert fluff here" box beside them to make this clear to readers?

 Haravikk wrote:

 Frozen Ocean wrote:
Why can't a radical Ordo Hereticus Task Force take a Daemonhost, but an Ordo Xenos one can?

I couldn't find much precedent for Hereticus using one, and Daemonhost weren't available in Codex: Witch Hunters, I could make them available again to Rogue Radicals, but it doesn't seem like something the Ordo Hereticus would be likely to accept, as no matter how powerful a psyker is, unleashing a daemon usually ranks as worse.

Creation of a Daemonhost is a shaky subject even for the Ordo Malleus (as are other radical practices like daemonblades and xenotech, to a degree). The point of a Rogue/Radical is that they don't follow the rules, and if their superiors found out about what they were doing they might end up being excommunicated for heresy. Such heresy is usually part of an individual Inquisitor's gradual corruption, no matter how well-meaning they were when they began. The rules being flexible on the individual level is one of the defining aspects of Inquisitors, I feel, so it's important that they have access to all manner of things that might not be allowed by their Ordo.

 Haravikk wrote:

 Frozen Ocean wrote:
I feel like the Pariah needs more of an edge compared to the Sanctioned Psyker. A Psyker with a Psychic Hood is not that much more expensive and is far more useful with the added bonus of not causing a Ld malus to friendly models.

The main benefit is that they're pretty cheap but you're probably right, as they're not really durable enough to run on their own. That said, it's worth noting that their Leadership penalty doesn't affect the Pariahs themselves, so when they join a unit the unit uses the Pariah's leadership, so they can work well with mobile units gone psyker hunting. I'll definitely have a think about it though, what about if they also had a Refractor Field like the Sanctioned Psyker?

It's a difficult subject. The Pariah is intended purely for protection from psychic power (and possibly Daemons), so that is the angle that should be explored most with their rules. But how? Would ripping the Psychic Abomination rule from the Culexus be too much?

 Haravikk wrote:

Actually the Hellrifle is current as of the latest official Inquisition codex, and was in the Grey Knights codex too I think. Hellguns have pretty much been abandoned in favour of Hot-shot las weapons, so I kind of liked the idea of re-imagining them as something slightly different.

I should have clarified my post after I looked it up. I had a feeling that the "daemon gun" was something I'd seen before, but I had to look up the hellrifle specifically because the hellgun is a lasgun variant. I meant that it wasn't your idea, it was introduced in 5th Edition. Still, the change from hellgun to hot-shot lasgun is something many people dislike, and I really don't think that the vanilla hellrifle is a necessary weapon for fluff or game mechanic. A return of the classic Inquisitorial Stormtrooper would be welcomed, I feel.

 Haravikk wrote:

 Frozen Ocean wrote:
Changes to the Plasma Siphon are great. It's an odd and unique weapon now rather than just a massive nerf to certain enemies. That said, the mechanic is a little off. Forcing Snap Shots is oddly worded because it works on models, which means models hit by it in a unit have to be singled out (which isn't too odd but I don't like it for some reason). Also, being able to force Snap Shots by simply hitting any model with a high BS blast could be very, very powerful. Would it work better as an invulnerable save, generating tokens for hits or wounds? Wounds would probably be better (counting both saved and unsaved Wounds), just so that the token generation scales with the Strength of the attacking weapon, as it should. This way, the Siphon could serve as a deterrent to shooting at your Inquisitor; if she or he survives the attack, their alien device will hit back hard.

Yeah, I've made a few attempts to re-write this to be simpler or more streamlined to do but it's tricky; I like the accumulating power aspect, but representing the actual drain on the target is fiddly. Anything that affects the unit specifically could be too powerful if the template only slightly touches the unit, whereas requiring some portion of the unit to be affected could make it very hard to apply. Per-model is annoying, though it's a relic so it's not like it should come up all the time. One alternative I had thought of was to add counters to the target for each point of energy drained, the unit must then re-roll this many 6's when rolling to hit with shooting attacks; this is a bit simpler, and not especially abusable as it's effectively losing one point of Ballistic Skill on a portion of your shots fired, the problem is how to decide which 6's to re-roll?

Simplicity is something that should be striven for in a ruleset. Debuffing enemies is a difficult thing to balance (especially per-model effects in units), which is why I favour basing the Siphon on the Inquisitor's defence rather than a drain effect on an enemy. Plus, as a debuffing tool, the Siphon would likely be used primarily to debuff the enemy's largest models/guns, which detracts from its purpose and theme.

 Haravikk wrote:

Thanks, these were another one I desperately wanted to be more like the fluff, as in the Eisenhorn books the Daemonhosts are incredibly powerful, whereas the older rules are just too unreliable to be of much use.
Applying the same idea to a Daemonblade is interesting, the current form is from the existing digital release. The big problem with Daemonblades is that the randomness is a bit like Warlord Traits; they make it very difficult to build your Inquisitor for a particular role, as most of the time I find that I roll abilities that aren't much use against my intended target, or that make my Inquisitor much better suited to a target he's going to struggle to get to. Using the same mechanism as the Daemonhosts would a bit, since you can risk disaster in order to get another chance at the ability you really wanted, but it still makes it a tough item to build around.

I have had another idea though; instead of one big table the Daemonblades could use say two or three small tables themed around different abilities such as character killing, monster killing or mass damage. The tables wouldn't be random, but instead you have two points to assign allowing you to unlock the first ability of two tables, or first two abilities of one table, with abilities starting relatively weak but becoming much more powerful and more unreliable as you progress, and the ability to earn more points for kills? It's definitely a tough area to get right, as too random makes it tough to use, which isn't as big an issue with the Daemonhost as it's fast enough to find something to hurt whatever powers your roll.

I much prefer this concept. It fits better with the theme of Daemon Weapons without being too powerful or too dangerous (remember that the ones wielded by the actual forces of Chaos aren't ever D weapons - not even the Murder Sword!), and it fits perfectly with the Radical Inquisitor idea of "more power = more risk". Randomness shouldn't be totally shied away from, though, since the Daemonblade abilities are all generally quite powerful. I like the idea of an entry-level Daemonblade being relatively safe to use, while the truly powerful ones come with greater risks. Again, though, bear in mind such relics as the Axe of Blind Fury; an Inquisitor's Daemonblade is meant to be "safe" (relative to a true Chaos relic) and weaker because of the wards suppressing the Daemon (those same wards that can be loosened to risk some more power). I underlined the bit that I really like.

As for the negatives, there could be a table (as much as I hate random tables, it feels appropriate when dealing with hostile entities outside of one's control, like daemons) that includes things like Unwieldy, while the worst results (e.g. the Daemon Weapon fail result; take a wound and reduce to WS1 I1) would be more likely the more powers are unlocked, or something. Could a "battle of wills" roll work, using the Inquisitor's Leadership against some sort of quantity that relates to the daemon's power?

As for the Ordo Chronos, they shouldn't be used just as an excuse to get Heresy models in. Most Heresy stuff can be explained in 40k as ancient relics, anyway.

 Frozen Ocean wrote:
Creation of a Daemonhost is a shaky subject even for the Ordo Malleus (as are other radical practices like daemonblades and xenotech, to a degree). The point of a Rogue/Radical is that they don't follow the rules, and if their superiors found out about what they were doing they might end up being excommunicated for heresy. Such heresy is usually part of an individual Inquisitor's gradual corruption, no matter how well-meaning they were when they began. The rules being flexible on the individual level is one of the defining aspects of Inquisitors, I feel, so it's important that they have access to all manner of things that might not be allowed by their Ordo.

True, I think I'll allow it then like you suggest. I'm also adding a specific detachment for Rogue Inquisitors (they can't be taken in any other) which will open up more access to Daemonhosts/Psykers, with lesser access to other units (particularly vehicles, and no Chamber Militant), hopefully this will give enough freedom while retaining some structure vs Unbound.

 Frozen Ocean wrote:
It's a difficult subject. The Pariah is intended purely for protection from psychic power (and possibly Daemons), so that is the angle that should be explored most with their rules. But how? Would ripping the Psychic Abomination rule from the Culexus be too much?

Thanks for reminding me, I completely forgot that the Culexus has been updated again! I ignored it because the old rules were a bit lacklustre but the new one is much more interesting. I could use a toned down version, e.g- 8" range, -2 Leadership and no Warp Charge on better than 5+? Probably increasing their cost to 50-70 points as the ability to strip Maledictions is pretty powerful, but very, very useful.

 Frozen Ocean wrote:
Simplicity is something that should be striven for in a ruleset. Debuffing enemies is a difficult thing to balance (especially per-model effects in units), which is why I favour basing the Siphon on the Inquisitor's defence rather than a drain effect on an enemy. Plus, as a debuffing tool, the Siphon would likely be used primarily to debuff the enemy's largest models/guns, which detracts from its purpose and theme.

Yeah, I've tried again to come up with a good way to make it work as both a drain and syphon at the same time but it just gets too complicated. I could add a third profile just for draining, so it's up to the player how they use it, but perhaps I'll focus on the syphon/release aspect, as while that doesn't interfere with an opponent's weapons directly, it turns their strength into a potent attack of your own; get reasonably close to an enemy with plasma weapons and you have a pretty nasty shooting attack for several turns.

 Frozen Ocean wrote:
As for the negatives, there could be a table (as much as I hate random tables, it feels appropriate when dealing with hostile entities outside of one's control, like daemons) that includes things like Unwieldy, while the worst results (e.g. the Daemon Weapon fail result; take a wound and reduce to WS1 I1) would be more likely the more powers are unlocked, or something. Could a "battle of wills" roll work, using the Inquisitor's Leadership against some sort of quantity that relates to the daemon's power?

Hmm, just had another thought, but what about two tables, one for boons and one for curses, each time you increase the strength you roll on both, adding the number of powers to the results. This would reduce the randomness for your first set of results to maybe two or three possibilities on each table, but open up the more powerful effects, especially with re-rolling duplicates. Part of the difficulty though of course is getting the table to fit on the page, I may need a full page for just the Daemonblade after all

I quite like the mechanic I mentioned with the progression to D, but it probably makes more sense in the Daemons book, especially on the Khorne side. So yeah, back to the drawing board again for now!

Long time since my last update! I've changed quite a bit, but I've been so bad at keeping track that I don't remember much of it, suffice to say it's lots and lots of tweaks throughout. Here's the main things I can remember:

• Ordo Xenos now have Codex: Deathwatch as their chamber militant. Unfortunately I still don't have access to this codex so I haven't modified the task force list much as I don't know what still makes sense to offer as options, or what the force composition should look like, so… yeah
  
• The Psyker Grade Delta Credo can now be applied to a Sanctioned Psyker, this allows a non-Psyker Inquisitor to bring a dangerously powerful sanctioned psyker to the field if they like. This is somewhat risky in that sanctioned psykers are not the most durable characters, unlike an Inquisitor that can be toughened up with lashings of wargear, but Wyrdvane Psykers can make them somewhat less explode-y.
  
• I've removed cavalry mounts and bikes from the list; my primary reason is that after changing some other stuff the options and entries didn't fit on pages, weak reason but then there have never been suitable models anyway. I might try to rejig some stuff to fit them back in though, as this list (like any good Inquisition list) is partially aimed towards conversion happy maniacs, so model availability isn't strictly and issue.
  
• I've split up the relics into four sections, so that now each Ordo has specialist relics, but there are also some general relics that any inquisitor can take. This includes a fun variant of a stasis bomb.
  
• I've simplified the Plasma Syphon a bit; it now just accumulates charge and fires it, no more penalty to enemy weapons as it's just too difficult to do both without ending up with a full page of rules for just one weapon.
  
• On which note, although I have yet another tweaked Daemonblade, I'm still not completely happy with it. On the plus side, the new relics format means I have a full page if I want to expand it to use a truly beastly table. I'm still leaning towards two tables; one for boons and one for curses, with each power making it more likely you'll get something stronger (but at the risk of a more serious curse).
  
• I tweaked the Ordo Malleus operative bonus, which is now Leadership on 3D6 removing the highest, to make it a bit more useful.
  
• The Pariah's effect is a lot more powerful now, but I'm unsure of the cost; they're still pretty easy to pick off, but can seriously ruin a psyker's day

I have been enjoying playing with the rules, particularly their flexibility. Tried playing with a Daemonhost and it did about as well as I had hoped; got two turns of absolute carnage then got greedy and it broke containment.

I don't have access to the Imperial Agents codex yet, so I'm not sure how that's going to affect me going forward, though it doesn't sound all that revolutionary so I don't expect it will affect me much.

So it turns out I uploaded the wrong file; I had another with a few further changes. I've also made some extra tweaks; for simplicity I've just uploaded this over v1.2, rather than uploading a new version, as managing multiple files seems to be what got me into this mess

Anyway, changes include:

• Daemonblade rules using my intended twin-tables; I knew I'd already done this, and here it is! Basically for each power you generate for the weapon you generate both a Boon and Curse, for each you roll one D6 with an additional +D6 for each power the weapon already has. So the initial two powers have a narrow range of Boons and Curses that will leave you with a decent melee weapon and at least one fairly minor penalty, but as you add powers the risk (and potential rewards) increase considerably. The Boon + Curse combo is intended to be read as a pairing, so you might roll Rotting Doom, which gives you a poisoned weapon that makes you easier to hit for example.
  You can generate further powers at the start of each turn, which means you can potentially end the game with 8, but you will guarantee that you get every single curse on the table, but one hell of a melee weapon (very likely granting psychic powers).
  
• I tweaked the Rogue Inquisitor detachment quite a bit; special units (Daemonhost, Lexmechanic etc.) are now all lumped together as a single 0-5, giving much greater flexibility, however the detachment can no longer take a Land Raider, which seemed a bit strange for a Rogue. I've also clarified that the Rogue credo does not count against the limit you can purchase, so you can (with a few exceptions) have the same inquisitor under both the rogue and non-rogue detachments. I've also changed the Victory at Any Costs rule to make it more of a gamble; it essentially grants re-rolls for both the unit making the Desperate Assault, but also all enemies that attack them, so it's a high risk gamble best taken when you're confident the enemy can't do much against you, or just for the hell of it in the final turn. Lastly, to take two or more vehicles in the Rogue detachment requires a Lexmechanic, which I feel makes sense as keeping vehicles intact would not be easy on the run. This means that the most a Rogue can have is a Valkyrie in most cases.
  
• I got a good look at a copy of Codex: Deathwatch, and as a result I've removed all of the chamber militant options for the Ordo Xenos Task Force as they're not relevant; it's a pretty neat codex with more than enough options as it is!
  
• I loved Ordo-specific warband options into the appropriate task forces; along with this change I've also restricted Drop Pods to non-Rogues as it was another option that seemed weird since Drop Pods for non-Astartes should be quite rare, and it doesn't seem like Rogues would be able to find ships able to launch and recover them anyway.
  
• The options changes meant I could re-add Cavalry Mounts and Bikes; operatives, savants and warbands (without Brutes) can choose between both, while Lexmechanics can only take Bikes (but can add Smoke Launchers if they wish). I've omitted mounts for Pariahs and Sanctioned Psykers for now; I figure they'd spook Cavalry Mounts, and I'm not sure how balanced access to Bikes would be, as the Pariah's anti-psychic bubble is very strong, so having it fly around the table might be a bit OP; of course they can still use a Rhino (or Drop Pod for non-Rogues), but it puts the minimum cost of mobility to 35 points which seems about right to me.
  
• Also I've added Inquisitor Greyfax; she's a little more interesting in my list as she's a Puritan Ordo Hereticus Psyker (which you can't normally do), with the Gun Master credo to reinforce her ranged accuracy. That she has no Force Weapon means she works out a bit more cheaply at 90 points, which makes her fairly good I think, as she is not worth more IMO (iirc Cadia puts her at another 60 points which is crazy), this gives a discount on this combo as she's not especially durable, plus she gets an interesting unique power and good Psychic defence.

I'm sure there are some other tweaks, but I'm not sure what they are; unlike Pages, iBooks Author doesn't have change tracking which makes it hard to remember what you did if you don't keep notes