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2015/11/29 17:33:10
Subject: Black crusade character generation, what impact does low intelligence have?
I'm completely new to RPGs, but I've always wondered what it would be like. Now that Fantasy Flight had a sale on some of its RPG books I finally cracked and got myself the black crusade book. Half hoping I can convince my friends to give it a shot, but if not, I figured it would still be nice for some extra chaos lore.
I'm in the process of making a character for the first time and I rolled the stats and pride and so on.
So I went with the renegade archtype and got martial prowess as pride, regret as failing and legacy as motivation. Here's the Character background before I come back to my question (longish):
Spoiler:
With that, I tried to build his background around those things and I came up with a storm trooper that grew up in service of the imperium, going thorough all the harsh training and all. So fiercely loyal following orders without question, but still young with only a year or two in actual field duty. Enough to have seen some shady stuff but not enough to question his loyalty yet. Stuff like killing loyal soldiers and citizens due to possible corruption, not bothering to listen to his victims, believing his orders to be genuinely benign and necessary.
But on some mission on a daemon world he gets hit by a freak warp incident and ends up on some renegade controlled world in the screaming vortex all of a sudden. After while he realizes he can never go back. Too far to make it back conventionally and even if he were to somehow make it back, they would accuse him of being tainted and shoot him on sight. Yet all he know to do is fight. And so he becomes somewhat of a lone ranger, honing his skills, but over time he realizes that everything he was told by the imperium was a blatant lie.
The people there were free to live their lives as they saw fit, without immediate consequences. Sure, it wasn't a life of luxury, but they were able to act on their own free will. It sure wasn't any worse than what he knew and it worked. Certainly not the horror stories he was fed by his superiors. The misery caused more by virtue of being outcasts and being forced to live in poverty than because of the oh so malevolent gods. On the contrary, they were happy to help provided proper rituals were followed.Those that would commit atrocities seemed to always have gone off the deep end...fanatics......not unlike the ecclesiarchy. And so he started to explore the imperium from a different perspective.
Coming to the startling realization that, the imperium were the bad guys all along, brain washing people by the billions. How many innocents had he killed just to cover up their deception? All for a god that is no god at all, a mere symbol abused by the scourge of mankind, the lords of terra, to rule over humanity in the sickest empire history has ever witnessed. The only way to save humanity is to burn it all to the ground and start anew, they have done it before...they will again. Of course he can't do it alone, nor does he have to. The gods of ruin will gladly aid him. But he is no fool. He has seen enough fools loose focus and become mere puppets to the their gods, but not he. The dark gods may e forces of nature, but they can be used as tools just like any other weapon as long as you keep your head.
So why did I post all that? Well along with my rolls, I ended up having a character that only has 23 INT XD. To me that say he's basically dumb as a rock. So I'm wondering if my background makes any sense at all. Or even if it makes any sense to have a legacy that likely goes beyond your lifespan with a guy that can't even spell legacy.
Or am I getting it all wrong? I managed to get 51 WS, wich also seems odd to me for somebody with such low intellect. So maybe 23 isn't as bad as I think it is in this system?
2015/11/29 23:27:12
Subject: Black crusade character generation, what impact does low intelligence have?
Language and literacy skills are based on Intelligence. Most of the Lore skills are as well. The former two things rarely come up, because you are almost always reading Low Gothic... but if you want to read or speak High Gothic, Techna-Lingua, a variant dialect of Gothic or a Xeno language? That's an INT test.
The Lore skills (Common, Forbidden, Scholastic) are far more important, being able to deduce information about targets based on signs of their presence. "Look at those marks on the wall!" (Guy passes his Forbidden Lore: Xenos test rolling against his INT) "Only a Tyranid bio-form has claws that can do that!"
A 23 INT is not "dumb as a rock" but it does indicate someone that is not particularly bright nor particularly creative in their thinking. It is about average for an Imperial citizen, as a matter of fact (who are largely ignorant peasants). You can make up for this shortage by buying a 5-point advance to your INT at various points, but you'll never be Einstein... barring a Gift of Massive Intellect from your Patron Power.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2015/11/29 23:29:45
It is best to be a pessimist. You are usually right and, when you're wrong, you're pleasantly surprised.
2015/12/01 14:50:47
Subject: Black crusade character generation, what impact does low intelligence have?
Thanks for the answer. I guess I could just say that he's fuelled by a certain impotent rage against the imperium and that leads him to be a bit shortsighted and singular. failing to use the imperium against itself and rather focused on destroying what he can. Having a bit of a short fuse, will then likely lead him down a path of khorne eventually.
