[OOC] The Fate of the Cursed (WH40K Renegade Space Marine RP: ALWAYS OPEN)

[Barrett]

@Sarpedon
Hmmm... And which side are you on? The right one or the wrong one?

[Sarpedon]

@Roosan Why, the correct one of course. There's a distinctive "F" sound in that word.

[Jb]

Do Astartes even have Lieutenants? I didn't think it was a rank in the Spess Mehreens.

On another note, I'll get a post up soon.

[agentmanatee]

@JbcoolOir chapter was decided to have lieutenants, but differently from like the Imperial guard a lieutenant is a Captains named succesor and seconnd in command

[Barrett]

@Sarpedon
Good man, I'm glad we're both on the side of correctness.

[Sarpedon]

Oh, well that makes me feel fuzzy inside. I just have to change his accent in my head.

[BCTheEntity]

At long last, I've finished up Valius Rooke's character sheet. I'm mentioning it in the thread because, whilst I did go over everything that wasn't his biography on the Sunday, it doesn't appear to have been noticed, and I've not had an opportunity to complete his bio and certain other parts of his character sheet anyway up until now. @agentmanatee, @Sarpedon, @Jbcool, take a looksee, and just tell me if he's alright. Two important things to note:
1. His brain no longer has a crystal coating, since upon further reading, the crystal exoskeleton apparently comes from a Librarian's Mucranoid Glands, which Rooke obviously doesn't have any more, but wouldn't affect the brain anyway even if he did. I can re-add this if desired, but I feel that, under the circumstances, it might make more sense for him to not have it, so just take the above into consideration about this;
2. Yes, he does have a very large number of weapon and gear options. My justification for this is that, as a Techmarine of several centuries focused on rapid self-advancement, he'd take whatever opportunities he had to attach as much stuff to himself as possible, which obviously includes large amounts of weaponry, in his case the largest guns he could get his hands on. I entirely understand if he's got "too much", as it were, and I'm perfectly willing to tone it back as much as is needed if desired.

EDIT: Oh, and since I'm asking for @Jbcool's attention anyway, don't forget to make your post in An Unholy Mass, friend.

[agentmanatee]

@BCTheEntity Immediate red flag, he nearly beat a full space marine in combat when he was NINE??!!! Thats the shit legendary people like Asmodai of the DA have done... that needs to go I'm sorry, at 9 and un-modified? I need too read the rest but that is just... give me justification, please, or at least try

[Sarpedon]

@agentmanatee IIRC it took a section-plus of chaos cultists to beat a badly-wounded-and-dying space marine tied up so he could vaguely aim his guns at them.

[agentmanatee]

@BCTheEntity OK, read the bio, and I do still think you need to tone down the 'nearly killed' part. 'Injured seriously' is understandable, but nearly killing a full grown marine as a 9 year with a self made autopistol? Unless he was a true protigy(which you have not made him out to be) the weapon was most likely a one or small number of shots and hastily made weapon. He was 9, it is not going to be as good as a professionally machined autopistol.

ALSO, THE WEAPONS, are indeed WAY to much. 2 bolters, a lascannon, a plasma cannon, atomizer cannon, all of which are held up by mechatendrites? Just... no. ONE Lascannon can be held by a space marine, same with Plasma nd atomizer, ONE! They are just too damn big! Most tech harnesses have a flamer and a plasma rifle equivalent, even for forge masters. We are not so powerful a chapter for this to be even REMOTELY possible.

Look at your Superiors, you should not be MORE powerful than them, and CERTAINLY not more so that the chapter master.

What you have makes him better than a DREADNOUGHT who only has ONE of those weapons!

That needs to change, immediately. The rest is LARGELY ok, just generally? Tone it down a bit. We are not unltimate heroes of the Imperium or Chaos lords, even the chapter master isn't crazy. He just needs to be made more realistic in general, you really should run things by me BEFORE writing thwm on youe sheet. As is... some may consider him a Mary Sue... but I am willing to let you eedit it as you appear to be a fine writer. Please, fix what I mentioned though. And generally, backstory needs to be toned down just a bit

Also, fixing the plasma overheating problem entirely is... too much, the admech have been trying to do that for centuries to no avail, 50 years? Alone? Just no, he could have improved it somewhat. The best criticism I can give is look at the chapter master aand captains. If you are doing shit/toting weapons/being more amazing than them, why aren't you in charge? If your more powerful than all your superiors, something is generally wrong

[BCTheEntity]

@agentmanatee@Sarpedon All fair enough. I've addressed each point below:
1. I've edited "nearly killed" to just "badly injured"; I was aiming for Rooke's ability to evade the Marine being a combination of having a map that the Marine didn't necessarily possess, setting up a lot of traps (albeit mostly-flimsy ones) in anticipation of the fight, and the Marine not making the challenge literally impossible by instantaneously bullrushing a nine year old boy faster than he could react until he was done being nice. The autopistol and injury dealt was meant to basically be sheer dumb luck, in that not only was Valius in the right place at the right time to acquire the gun, but he surprised an opponent who could otherwise have easily dodged the attack, and then just happened to be aiming the weapon in an appropriate location to cause a relatively severe injury, since aiming for the chest or head would've just had the bullets bounce off of the Marine's ribcage or skull, most likely. Keep in mind that fights against unarmed and unarmoured Space Marines are sometimes used by chapters as part of the Aspirant Trials, and that beating them at the relevant ages is... absurdly difficult, I recall, but not, I believe, completely impossible, especially when the trial isn't specifically to draw blood.
2. Yeah, I figured the weapons were too much. Taking into account what's been said, I've reduced them to just the atomiser and breaching augur on his harness, and the hand-held power axe, which should all be manageable for a single Techmarine. If not, do tell me so.
3. Now, "tone the backstory down a bit"... that's a very vague request which I fear translates to "rewrite most of what you've written", understandably annoying when it's ten thousand plus characters long, and I'd honestly prefer that you be a bit more specific when you ask me to "tone it down". Given that the player characters are highly skilled and superhuman soldiers who are generally more accomplished than their peers, I don't feel like the majority of what I've written is necessarily over the top, and if we compare and contrast the feats of many high-level Space Marines in canon material to what we've got, I might almost suggest that some other PCs are lacking in significant feats; after all, you'd expect highly decorated war officers to have done quite a lot to get to their current position. Just a thought. That said, I won't be able to make any changes to backstory until tomorrow, since it's late for me, but if anything in particular sticks out like a sore thumb, do mention it.
4. Plasma overheat problem is reasonable enough, and I'll edit that to be less significant. Addressing your comments about his apparent skill, though, and adding on to what I said above, one's position isn't necessarily defined solely by feats, in real life or 40K. Maybe you're the most accomplished fighter in an army without peer, but haven't been promoted to an officer position because that entails a skillset or mindset you don't have; similarly, whilst perhaps Valius' technological accomplishments are quite significant, maybe the way he does things or the way he thinks isn't quite what's needed to be a Master of the Forge, thus a possible reason why Constantine ended up being preferred for the position over him, having a more suitable mindset and skillset and etcetera. And so on, and so forth.

[agentmanatee]

@BCTheEntity Yea sorry for the vagueness, the backstory is largely fine othet than the early stuff and stopping the plasma overheating stuff. Really, once you have fixed everything else it should be good

[agentmanatee]

@BCTheEntityAlso, yes I get that, but lets NOT be the greatest techmarine of all time! More unorthodox and perhaps slightly more talented than the forge father is fine, but solving millenia long problems in 50 years is... reidiculous. And while skills may not be relvant to rank as much, GEAR and WEAPONS are. You should not be able to outdakka a Dreadnought, but if once this stuff is fixed you should be good to go

[agentmanatee]

@BCTheEntity Alright, it seems good to me now. @Sarpedon Any further critiques?

[Sarpedon]

@BCTheEntity keep in mind, the Warp Skulls are a relatively young chapter, and even their parent chapter aren't going to sacrifice their best senior marines to supervise the new guys. Yes the leadership of the chapter is relatively experienced, but they aren't quite the ancient, grizzled veterans you seem to be thinking of. "Tone it down" is kept vague to allow you creative freedom for this sort of thing, but the general idea is that yes, your character is powerful, because they've been picked to help lead a whole fucktonne of spess mahreens, but they haven't been around for fuck-off centuries like some chapters have, so being some kind of super-space marine doesn't quite make sense.

Also, on the note of feats. Feats are pretty well exactly why you get promoted, especially in the military. Someone runs up on a machine gun nest and rofl-stomps it while missing an arm and a leg to medevac their buddies? They get a medal, and some officer who's retarded(and they're all retarded, except the ones that used to be NCOs and even some of them get retarded if they drink the koolaid) goes "promote that man, it's good for pr" and now you've got an operator running the show until his take-no-shit-and-give-no-fucks attitude and tendency to send everyone home at noon gets him busted back down. You totally get promoted for being a badass, it just doesn't always stick because badassery doesn't always equate to good leadership, like you said. I don't remember where I was going with that, though...

[BCTheEntity]

@agentmanatee With regards to plasma stuff specifically, keep in mind that A. he could easily have been working on that for a couple hundred years or more, and only got to resolve it as a project once he had greater AdMech resources to hand, and B. the AdMech in general is heavily inclined to not solve problems with Imperial technology, since their philosophy basically dictates that once they've discovered everything there is to discover, they'll be out of a job. As far as I see it, the fact that Valius is so heavily inclined to research and build at the rate he does is extremely abnormal within the Imperium, and it's not really looked to as a sign of following the Omnissian creed like a good Mechanicus should, never mind his more recent madness and loss of interactivity with others.

@Sarpedon True enough. To be fair, the larger proportion of Valius' R&D would have been done with the Raven Guard and Deathwatch, which have been around for fuck-off centuries. In-story, at least so far as I'm aware, the Warp Skulls are only fifty years old, so pretty much every veteran and upward should be an ex-Raven Guard, unless I've gotten that disgustingly wrong somehow.

[Sarpedon]

@BCTheEntity Medeis was selected by the raven guard specifically as a recruit for the warp skulls, so he's probably the most junior of their veterans. Psychic strength alone is why he's the chief librarian, and not steve.

[agentmanatee]

ALRIGHT, lets nip this in the bud, I am going to read through your bio again, looking at anything that feels too... ridiculous you know? One moment

[BCTheEntity]

@Sarpedon That's a fair enough assessment, but I'd assume his placement as Chief Librarian wouldn't have been possible if he'd been inducted into the Warp Skulls at a later date, such that a Chief Librarian was already in place. This actually ties into something else I'd like to say about the relatively small number of advancement opportunities available to a Space Marine compared to members of a real life army - I couldn't say exactly what ranks there are that a standard Astartes can aspire to off the top of my head, but as far as I'm aware, it's focused enough that even becoming the leader of a squad of ten is rather difficult, and moving up to Company Captain and Chapter Master is obviously nigh-impossible without being absurdly skilful, and perhaps lucky enough to survive beyond your predecessor's death where relevant; this is even more exarcerbated in more restricted aspects of a chapter, namely the Librarians, Chaplains, and Techmarines, the latter in particular having exactly one position to ascend to from the basic rank and file under normal circumstances. I, uh... forget the point I was making with this, but basically, ascension through ranks is difficult for an Astartes, and only somewhat less so when there's a Lieutenant position one may aspire to fill in any given chapter.

[Sarpedon]

@BCTheEntity Marines ranking up happens by seniority, as I understand it. You get put in a squad, and then when your Sergeant gets killed his 2IC takes over and the person who is the second-most-senior becomes his 2IC, so it's not necessarily a matter of having no room for advancement, it just happens slower than in an organization where the turnover is higher. As for librarians, there are multiple levels for them to aspire to, they start out as little more than magical book-keepers, and then get put in charge of progressively more important books as they grow in power and experience. I assume chaplains and techmarines also have their own chains of command they can ascend, you just don't hear about it because it doesn't involve murderfucking aliens or heretics with big fuck-off gunswords.

And Medeis totally could have been Chief Librarian, even if Steve joined up first. Things normally go by seniority, I assume, but the thing about the chain of command, is that those higher up can dictate downward, so if the Chapter Master says "Fuck you steve, you numpty motherfucker, you're not in charge of the library no more" obviously someone has to be. Just because something usually happens, doesn't mean it always happens, that's something I've very recently been coming to terms with.