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I was reading the IG WD release and was wandering "wow it dose look like commissars care for there troops", then this got me thinking about black librarys commissars they care a lot about there troops as well, so this got me thinking, so this is the question do any commissars not care for their troops and prefer self-preservation over selflessness?

(also on note any commissars join chaos?)

Cheers to all comments.

Obviously some will care and take great pride in their troops, others will treat them as meat for the grinder.

Chaos Commisars? *Looks around for Fluff Nutters*

I'm gonna say they are as likely as a Fiend of Slaneesh settling down and having a nice house with his nice kids and his/her Husband, Skarlbrand, who has gone to anger management, and overcame his issues.

So no. And same goes for Chaos Grey Knights. You know who I'm talkin' 'bout.

Since commisars are normal human beings they can and will be corrupted. It is just comparatively unlikely. Most of the time, when a regiment or warship turns renegade, the commisars are killed.
The first duty of a commisar is to make sure that his regiment fulfills it's obligations to the god emperor. Some might think that being nice, cuddly and friendly are the most ideal way to achieve
this goal. If it works, good for them.
Others prefer the lash, knowing that there are few other ways to keep a bunch of stonecold killers in line than to constantly show mercyless strenght.
Both ways are vallid but when in doubt fear is probably better than admiration because a hard commisar will always be respected while a soft one might become the
laughing stock of his regiment.

At least until they get into battle and someone tries to run away..

then it's double the 'oh crud' factor as 'mr nice' raises a smoking bolt pistol in your direction, and politely suggests that you turn around and shoot the enemy...

Ascalam wrote:At least until they get into battle and someone tries to run away..

then it's double the 'oh crud' factor as 'mr nice' raises a smoking bolt pistol in your direction, and politely suggests that you turn around and shoot the enemy...

Commisar Hugs begs to differ.

IIRC Commissars used to have rules that allowed them to shoot their own troops as a means of err... discouraging them from trying to run away.

Indeed. That rule was awesome.

darkslife wrote:Indeed. That rule was awesome.

I do remember correctly then. They take all the fun things away.

Howard A Treesong wrote:

darkslife wrote:Indeed. That rule was awesome.

I do remember correctly then. They take all the fun things away.

That rule still exists.

Summery Execution; it is what allows the Commissar's unit to re-roll failed morale/pinning tests, but in order to re-roll you have to kill the Squad leader(whoever has the highest Ld aside from other commissars; and you must kill the sgt and re-roll; there is no choice), once there are no more Squad leaders, he starts executing random troopers

The Gaunts Ghost series has several examples of bad commisars. Also in the series, chaos forces under the command of a warlord named sek develops his forces like the imperial guard complete with commisars

I get the impression that most Commissars are ruthless donkey-caves who treat their troops as cannon fodder while guys like Yarrick and Cain are the exceptions.

Pretty much.

Political officers aren't known for being understanding or pleasant, generally

I also think that the cuddly commisar would have more trouble doing his duty when the time came. If he actually cares about the guys he's leading, it's a lot more difficult to execute him for a momentary lapse. You need to be one hell of a hard ass to execute a friend.

Unless the cuddly commisar weas acting all along, and IS a hard ass

Commisars are there for the good of the unit, whatever they need to get the job done.

Desert Raiders, about a Talleran unit, the commisar is understanding and tries to hold together a regiment that would rather kill each other. He is nice and supporting until the men do start attacking each other. Then he brings out the chainsword and lops off a few arms.

They get the job done, the ones that can do it nicely are just lucky.

A cuddly commissar? Do want! *cuddles*

Bad comissars do exist. And even cuddly comissar will start do summary execution, what deserve a summary execution is at their discretion (Gaunt and Hark are good examples, I'm talking Hark before he willingly joined the ghosts)

Technically (at least as far as the IG goes) a Commissar cannot "abuse" his power, becuase he is more or less the final authority and the voice of the Munitorum on the battlefield.

now that out of the way... I always tended to go for the 2nd edition (which seems to have been resurrected a bit in 5th) idea of the Commissar: a heroic badass and imposing figure who exemplifies all the qualities in a warrior a human trooper should aspire to. His role is primarily inspirational on the battlefield as well as to watch for (and deal with) disloyalty, subversion, poor morale, incompetence, and all that. And if inspiration fails, if he cannot make his charges behave as they ought to, then he will resort to fear by any means necccessary, up to and including summary execution. and as brutal as it is, it is also neccessary when you consider the sort of enemies the IG can face (Daemons, psychic aliens and other alien horrors, etc.)

In this view I am not thinking of Comissars as being the gun happy "blow their heads off at the slightest twitch" cariacture (or rather parody) they have become or is emphasized by games and such. There are Commissars like that, but I don't think they are actually training them into that as the first response. At the same time, they aren't training them to be Ciaphas Cains or Ibram Gaunts. Or even Yarricks. Those are exceptional figures, people who can both lead by example but also have an inexplicable yet intense charisma about them that means they don't really need to rely on execution (except as a psychological motivator, perhaps.) A Commissar is to be respected, even feared, but not liked. Empathy gets in the way of his duty. And at the same time, rampant killing of his own men simply hampers their ability to do the job. A Commissar needs to also be a judge of men, even a bit of a psychological expert - he has to know when they will break, waht might make them break, as well as to know what sorts of levers to use and when to use them (again including the threat or act of execution. Summary execution IS one of the tools in his arsenal of course.)

What i described is mostly the Commissarial ideal. expecting them all to be that way is not realistic. Some will probably be something akin to that - a good many of the Commissars you see in the Imperial Guard oriented novels (non Abnett) are that way, IMHO. They can still be imperfect, and make mistakes, but they aren't total psychopaths either. But it is inevitable that at least some (and quite a few probably) will be mentally incapable or inflexible of meeting those standards - they may replace judgement with rigid adherence to the rules and/or zealous fanaticism, and may be insecure (or just blinkered) enough to use summary execution as their crutch at the slightest sign of cowardice or doubt. Even here you will have varying degrees of "zealous psychopath" but these are the category that will come closest to what you might think of as "abusing their power" - although it is more properly "misusing their power".

I don't think a commissar can abuse there power by blaming people. It there job to balm people.

Abusing there power might look like forcing IG to shine there shoes or things like that.

Cain is a power abusing commissar, using it, and his his heroic status to the best treatment whenever possible.

Kommissar Kel wrote:

Howard A Treesong wrote:

darkslife wrote:Indeed. That rule was awesome.

I do remember correctly then. They take all the fun things away.

That rule still exists.

Summery Execution; it is what allows the Commissar's unit to re-roll failed morale/pinning tests, but in order to re-roll you have to kill the Squad leader(whoever has the highest Ld aside from other commissars; and you must kill the sgt and re-roll; there is no choice), once there are no more Squad leaders, he starts executing random troopers

Awesome, I thought it had been dropped.

Howard A Treesong wrote:

Kommissar Kel wrote:

Howard A Treesong wrote:

darkslife wrote:Indeed. That rule was awesome.

I do remember correctly then. They take all the fun things away.

That rule still exists.

Summery Execution; it is what allows the Commissar's unit to re-roll failed morale/pinning tests, but in order to re-roll you have to kill the Squad leader(whoever has the highest Ld aside from other commissars; and you must kill the sgt and re-roll; there is no choice), once there are no more Squad leaders, he starts executing random troopers

Awesome, I thought it had been dropped.

Not at all.

its what makes power blobs so difficult to get rid of. Stubborn and can reroll their Ld test.

I think most commissars abuse their power.

CoI wrote:I also think that the cuddly commisar would have more trouble doing his duty when the time came. If he actually cares about the guys he's leading, it's a lot more difficult to execute him for a momentary lapse. You need to be one hell of a hard ass to execute a friend.

You've never seen "the nice teacher" when they're truly, truly, truly pissed off have you?

At least with the mean/strict ones you kind-of expect it. With commisairs, I expect that the mean ones would get shot first.

I remember Codex: Catachans had this rule: "Oops, sorry sir!"
I miss that rule.

CoI wrote:I also think that the cuddly commisar would have more trouble doing his duty when the time came. If he actually cares about the guys he's leading, it's a lot more difficult to execute him for a momentary lapse. You need to be one hell of a hard ass to execute a friend.

There is a diffrence between respecting and likeing people, and being friends with them. I respect and like my staff, if i didn't i could not work with them. I would not call them friends though, and would not want to for just that reason (not shooting them, but you know what i mean.)

I've recently been rereading the Cain books an in them there are several cases of Bad commissars.

In Duty Call, Amberly Vail entourage contains a former commissar rescued from a penal legion. he was ther because he lost it during a battle and executed most a squad for failing to salute an officer, there was an incoming artillery barrage at the time.

In Cain's last stand it mentions in passing a commissar who became a traitor. However it also points out the reason this doesn't happen more oftern is because commissars are failry high on the target priority list if you planning a mutiny.

Commissars are never allowed to get too out of control as they self regulate (like the Inquistion) I think it is in the traitors hand that a tribunial is held in which charges are brought against Cain.

Like its been said a commissar is just a guy in a fancy hat, they get given a goal and like all people try to achive that goal in the best way they see fit. For some that will be shooting people for others it will be the cuddley approach all depends on the commissar in question. You have to take into take into account the background a Commissar from a certain type of world may have a different point of view to another and I know they are all trained in Scholums but there are a number of them and I can't imagine they are all indentical.

IIRC Hark is quite trigger happy when he first joins the ghost and guant has to reign him in and flat out tells him he's not allowed to execute people without his say so.

IMO Guant's policy not executing people isn't because he is cuddley it's based on his guilt for tanith dying, there are several cases in the book of him executing people. IIRC he shoots several soldiers for stealing medical supplies and beating up Dorden. He is forced to extend the policy to the vervunhive members as to do otherwise would cause splits in the regiment.

Harriticus wrote:I get the impression that most Commissars are ruthless donkey-caves who treat their troops as cannon fodder while guys like Yarrick and Cain are the exceptions.

I wouldn't say they're a-holes. Ruthless? Sure, most commissars are ruthless. But they do what they do for a reason, and that reason is to ensure discipline in an army unit-- most of them don't do it just for the "fun" of it. Overdoing discipline gives bad results, too, and I think most Commissars know this. Being overly harsh (IE summary execution of a tenth of a regiment) is only for the most extreme of situations (Cain actually considered doing that to the valhallans when he first met them, and said that in that case it was certainly justified even in his view, but it didn't fit his reputation so he didn't go with it)

<-- my commissar abuses his power.. hehe

But seriously, leadership- the quality an individual posseses to take action, lead and influence others towards a common goal... I would imagine that the "good" ones follow the 14 traits of a good leader; Justice, Judgement, Dependability, Initiative, Decisiveness, Tact, Integrity, Enthusiasm, Bearing, Unselfishness, Courage, Knowledge, Loyalty, and Endurance.

Think of the billions upon billions of personalities in the 40K universe though... they'll have their individual quirks, ambitions, traits, yadda yadda

Just my two cents worth

Melissia wrote:I wouldn't say they're a-holes. Ruthless? Sure, most commissars are ruthless. But they do what they do for a reason, and that reason is to ensure discipline in an army unit-- most of them don't do it just for the "fun" of it. Overdoing discipline gives bad results, too, and I think most Commissars know this. Being overly harsh (IE summary execution of a tenth of a regiment) is only for the most extreme of situations (Cain actually considered doing that to the valhallans when he first met them, and said that in that case it was certainly justified even in his view, but it didn't fit his reputation so he didn't go with it)

Power corrupts. Absolute power turns you into an a-hole.