In February of last year, I spent a thread creating a 'Rogue Trader' character, a Mr Harmon Siegmund, back in
this thread. As I said in that thread, I enjoy creating characters, and I found that it was kind of a neat way of pseudo-reviewing the game and showing the mechanics of the system. I'm therefore going to repeat the process with Dark Heresy, and then probably Deathwatch also. Now the intro is done, here goes nothing.
STAGE I: Home World
Going strictly by the rulebook order, and generating everything that has a table randomly, the first stage of creating an Acolyte (the term that Dark Heresy uses for Player Characters), is rolling a D100 and determining what type of world the Acolyte is from. Unsurprisingly enough, the Acolyte is from an:
Imperial World. This gives the Acolyte a few bonuses, and penalties, specifically:
-5 On Forbidden Lore tests
Common Lore (Imperial Creed), Common Lore (Imperium), Common Lore (War) , Literacy and Speak Language (High Gothic) are all Basic skills.
All the preceding are based on the Int(elligence) characteristic. In addition, the Acolyte gets +3 to their Willpower
STAGE II: Generate Characteristics
Going strictly by the rulebook order, I get to roll 2d10+20 (thanks to the Imperial World generated above) for each characteristic, this gives:
WS: 32
BS:30 S:27 T:33
Ag:40 Int: 30 Per:33 WP:34 Fel:36
Although the bonus from earlier boost the WP up to 37
STAGE III: Determine Career Path
Yet another D100 roll, this time on a table determined by your Home World. Interestingly enough, the random number gods decided that this Acolyte would be an Imperial Psyker. As with the Home World, this determines a few more drawbacks and benefits for the Acolyte. To whit, the following starting skills:
Speak Language (Low Gothic)
Psyniscience
Invocation
Trade (Merchant) or Trade (Soothsayer) - I chose the former
Literacy
and then the following Starting Talents
Melee Weapon Training (Primitive)
Pistol Weapon Training (
SP) or Pistol Weapon Training (Las) - I chose the latter this time
And now the following gear:
Axe or Sword (I choose Axe)
Staff
compact stub revolver with 3 bullets or compact las pistol with 1 charge pack (I chose the latter, to go with the las talent)
knife (psykana mercy blade)
quilted vest
tatty robe (Poor Quality clothing)
book of Imperial saints or deck of cards or dice (deck of cards was the pick here)
Psy-focus
Sanctioning Brand
Being a Psyker, I also receive some minor psychic powers (The acolyte is Psy level 1). I get to choose 2 of those due to my willpower bonus. I've decided on these two:
Inspiring Aura and Sense Presence
I also have to roll to find out what the side effect of my Imperial sanctioning was. It turns out that the Acolyte has pure white hair, endures terrible nightmares and has an unfortunate tendency to gibbering. This results in 1d5 Insanity points (in this case 3) The sanctioning process adds 3d10 to the characters starting age, in this case, I'm adding 13 years.
STAGE IV: Spend Experience Points, Buy Equipment.
Despite the name, the first part of this stage is rolling for starting wounds. I end up with a less than impressive 10 wounds.
Next step is rolling Fate Points, of which I have 2.
Now, I get to figure out my starting income, which turns out to be the princely sum of 53 Throne Gelt
I also have 400 xp to spend on upgrades and advances
Needing a little protection, I spend 50 of my Thrones on a Chain coat as some form of armour and save the 3 for later.
As to the xp, I decide to spend those immediately on advances. First of all, Simple Characteristic advances in both Willpower & Perception, boosting both of those stats by 5.
This leaves me with 200xp to spend on the Sanctionite skills and talents for the rank advances. I decide to purchase the Awareness skill, and the Hatred (Daemons) Talent. That leaves me with no more xp to spend, and so it's time for a natural progression to
STAGE V: Bringing Your Character to Life
This is mostly the non-mechanical aspects of fleshing out the character, and as such are much more subjective then the earlier stages. This is usually done more free-form and spit-balling with a
GM, but here I'm just going to answer the questions posed and roll on tables presented. So it's a mechanistic approach to a non-mechanistic section.
The first step here is to pick a Gender. I decide that this pistol-wielding Psyker should be a female. The next step is to roll and see what kind of a build she has. This woman is Well Built, clocking in at 1.8 meters tall, with 80kg of weight.
Next roll is age. Our female Psyker is considered mature, being 43 years old (this includes the modifier for her sanctioning mentioned earlier)
Our next roll is for coloration, and it seems the Psyker is a tan blond with piercing gray eyes. She might even be attractive if it wasn't for the taint of the witch about her.
Yet another roll uncovers that our Psyker has a devotional scar as a quirk of her appearance.
Next it's time to figure out the past. We know this Acolyte was born on an Imperial World, but that covers a multitude of sins. Exactly what kind of Imperial world are we talkign abotu here?
Well, according to the mighty die roll, it's an Agri-World, so diet may have been pretty decent, this would explain her well-builtness...
One more roll about the past is the Divination, which gives some prophetic insight about the character, and perhaps the odd mechanistic bonus as well.
I roll
"The wise man learns from the deaths of others," which boosts this humble acolyte's intelligence by 3.
Now it's an attempt to flesh out the Acolyte's personality. first off with here
NATURE
A series of questions here. The first one is the type of personality the Acolyte displays. I select from one of the examples given, just for this exercise, and go with Melancholic.
The next question is how did the Acolyte meet the Inquisitor. It's not much of a stretch to assume that this psyker was abducted on one of the infamous Black Ships, and once her talents had been honed, she was automatically seconded to the Inquisition form the Adeptus Astra Telepathica. Thus, she is with the Inquisitor by force, an arrangement she tolerates as she knows the alternative is being fed to the Golden throne. this neatly answers the next question, as it's clear the Inquisition means 'life' to her.
As to what she will sacrifice, well, her life is already effectively forfeit, so she'll sacrifice that gladly, and most of her soul, though she won't take the path of the radical and consort with the hated warp entities known as daemons.
The next question, what does the Acolyte desire? Simply that her life will continue and that she can harden her mind against the warp's insidious influences. As to what she hates? Other than daemons, it is the omnipresent threat of corruption that her psychic curse represents that is the thing that our Acolyte most hates and most fears.
NAME
At last, our Acolyte gets a sobriquet to call her own, so I don't have to keep referring to her as the Acolyte, or the Psyker, but instead by her given name. I decide she's going to have a name composed of an Informal nickname as well as a real name composed of a Low Gothic forename and a High Gothic surname. Rolling on the charts gives us the name of 'Gold' Ethinia Meta.
I have to say, with a name like Ethinia, I'd rather go by the nickname also!
So that's Gold Meta, psychic servant of the Emperor and Acolyte of the Inquisition, for whom the Emperor's work of rooting out Heresy is quite literally as important as her own life. I will say, I think I prefer the approach taken in Rogue Trader towards character generation, the 'Origin Path' flowchart seemed to allow the characters to grow more organically through the process than the approach espoused here in Dark Heresy. As a result, I find my Rogue Trader character more compelling. It's possibly because of the 3 core role-playing games I find Dark Heresy by far the least interesting. I also can see how much lower level the characters are in this game compared to Rogue trader, which just makes it seem like their lives will be even more nasty, brutish and short, which while flavorful, doesn't appeal to me as much from a role-playing perspective.
It doesn't help that I have zero interest in playing a psychic character. I would probably have fudged the rolls a little working with an actual
GM and coming up with a party for an adventure. Deathwatch will be coming soon, as my inspiration to this thread was listening to the interview with the Deathwatch writer on 40KRadio show 7 (I'm working my way through the archives...) and the Deathwatch approach sounded so much cooler... I just felt I needed Dark Heresy for the trilogy to be complete. I plan to proof read and edit all three of these characters into something resembling a coherent dakka article someday.
