Background:
Tech Thralls are criminals, which are made servitorlike, with some consciousness left, as a punishment. see Tech-thralls on GW . They fit to the other rejects and would give us the opprtunity to play something mechanicus-reject like.
Playing Concept:
I see the tech-thralls as slower, medium health, highest toughness trooper with the twist of shooting their mechanicus weapons with their toughness. So, they lose toughness if they fire their ranged weapons and get more vulnerable. They have to seek always strategic positions to fire and are slow to change them.
Personalities:
The redeemed sinner: Always praising the omnissiah and bidding for salvation.
The stubborn criminal: Still a lower criminal who hates his job, but everytime he wants to say something heretical he is censored by his overridden mind
The suffering machine: Much like the med-station servitors who always complaint
Skill-Trees:
Barage fireing, slow moving Battlestation, with higher Fowerpower
Slow moving Melee tank with extreme toughness
Slow moving Monster killer Sniper
Ranged Weapons:
Radiation weapons which poison the enemies, similar to burning
Galvanic weapons which shock the enemies and staggers them
Laslock weapons with low fire rate, put high damage
Melter with short range, extreme damage and extreme toughness drain (similar to plasma, but short range and no exploding)
This is actually really cool, like the skill trees sound like they’d be a blast to play. That second personality kinda reminds of Mr Torgue from Borderlands 2 as well lmao.
The thing with Tech Thralls is that they are severely limiting the scope of what they can bring.
It’s the same issue with Skitarii, where its limiting the scope of what we can bring with a generic named “Tech Adept” with GW vetted custom lore
Is it, though?
In Warhammer 40K: Mechanicus, you have quite the wide variety of Skitarii units. You could easily use those as a blueprint.
There is an assassin type, a raw melee type, a ranged type and a mixed type.
But making it Skitarii would mean limiting it to Skitarii things.
Where making it more vague with Tech Adept or such name would let them introduce Skitarii things, and even a Skitarii branch, but also branches inspired by, for example, Electro Priest, Acuitors and such themes
How about a Tech Adept or even a low level tech priest with a tech tree focused on being a powerful solo armed to the teeth or have combat servitor minions as well as buffs for minions and team mates.
Please don’t limit a Mechanicus character to a Servitor level archetype. Even most Skitarri wouldn’t be eligible for the independent deployments without an Alpha squad leader that we go on.
A disgraced Tech Adept is easily the best option for a Mechanicus character. They can use all the weapons that Skitarri or Tech Thralls can use and much more, and additionally their disciplines could easily be made into parts of the class tree (Secutor for melee, Mrymidon for ranged, Dominus for some kind of buff build, maybe has some usable servitors or something).
Imagine having four on your team, one is a crazy combat cyborg, another drops a turret, another who is almost like a psyker but not, and then a stealthy stabby boy who’s stealth ability lets him bleed enemies around him a ton. There is a lot more you can definitely do with the Tech Adept.
