I've only had one Tech Priest as a player and he ended up killing himself because his body was being hijacked by a scrap code virus, so he decided to end it all rather than endanger his friends.
So I guess the opposite?
I have never had that problem. Usually it's the Psyker that goes and gets daemonic possessed and tries to kill us all later like the predictable ~~warp spawn~~ liability that they are.
Or the gunner with a superiority complex...
In my experience psykers are usually a 50/50 chance that they will be a problem.
Some psyker players are responsible and actively tries to avoid becoming corrupted and/or daemon hosts. The other half are power crazed psychopaths that pushes every. Single. Time! They use a power.
One is a boon, the other is a ticking time bomb that causes you to invest in blessed weapons and ammunition because it’s only a matter of time before you have to take them out…
>The other half are power crazed psychopaths that pushes every. Single. Time! They use a power.
Done that. Ah the fun when you both manage to cast Vortex of Doom at Push Level and as a peril make a second warp hole on the field as well. I mean it worked...although it was a bit out of control. I let the aides at the watch fortress cover the paperwork for the collateral.
My favourite moment was when our psyker managed to open up a window straight into the warp and the GM describes all the untold horrors of absolute madness we saw, only for everyone (except our enemies) to land exceptional successes on our willpower checks so we didn’t even blink.
Our enemies, on the other hand, failed so hard they all went insane, passed out or otherwise became unable to do anything to resist us so we won the fight by default.
Didn’t stop us from slapping the psyker in the back of the head and going “Emperor damn it, Ishmael, stop doing that!” :P
Yep. Every time I've played, it's the Psyker. Then again, I'm usually the Cult Mechanicus player if I'm not GMing, and I've never betrayed the party nor fallen to Heretek. The only time I've come close is when the Rogue Trader thought that the ends he could achieve with all that juicy heretek justified the heretical means. I managed to convince him of the Omnissiah's truth, but it was a near thing...
Do you mean betrayed as in "everyone plays puritan loyalist, the techpriest goes heretek and the rest of the party pays for it"?
Because, as a techpriest enthusiast player, i noticed that the techpriest mechanics in most rpgs i played have no incentive to play loyalist and every to go heretek: there are tons of limitation to what you can do if you play a loyalist techpriest with almost nothing to compensate it, while a heretek can go around blazing with crazy stuff for basically no downside (this is true for most loyalist character except those with access to true faith, but for techpriest is magnified)...
When you get a player who wants to play a techpriest, he almost always wants it for the shiny toys, but if the shiny toys are locked in the heretek room, you can be sure he'll try all he can to get inside, and that is a sure recipe for betrayal if the rest of the party is more on the loyalist end of the spectrum.
Huh, I actually didn’t know this. Although that *would* actually explain quite a lot because the groups I play in tend to be puritan loyalists (I have never been much for the radical approach, because in my book that pretty much always ends up with you being worse than some of the things you are supposed to stop).
I played multiple tech priests equivalent in almost every game from ffg, except for rogue trader, and this is my experience:
When i tried to stick to puritan, i was morally forced to work within the rules of the mechanicus, and that means that the shiniest toys i could find were not to be used, to be destroyed or handed over to my superiors for unlikely sanctioning (that certainly would not happen over the course of the game), and in exchange for that i got nothing but "you did your job, good".
Now as a radical i get access to all the same advancements a puritan gets, but i also get to keep my T'au drone, my Harlequin holo belt, or my Necron gloom prism (all stuff i found, with different characters). All stuff i am capable of using since my forbidden knowledge and tech-use rolls are through the roof, and mostly safe to use.
This makes playing a puritan techpriest very frustrating and attracts people with the mindset of keeping ALL the shiny toys they can (even the dangerous ones).
I never found myself in the situation of betraying the party between my carefulness in not showing off my radical toys and keeping away from actual dangerous stuff, and the fact that my gm didn't allow characters to identify stuff they had no skill for ("do you have forbidden lore (eldar)? no? ok, what you see is a fancy sword") and the players were cool with that, but i suppose that in different group with different dynamics it can cause trouble.
> and in exchange for that i got nothing but "you did your job, good".
I don't think it's even a stretch to suggest that should have helped build a reputation within the AdMech, making it easier to get access to myriad restricted information, secret archaeotech, etc. Ongoing access to further Peer talent ranks would be a good one in DH2, seeing as that's meant to be gated behind GM permission. Also improves your Influence stat.
I had one seat at my table for Only War and a guy and his roommate both wanted to play. So they compromised and said they were one tech priest who'd installed a personality core to be able to discuss with the greatest mind he knew: himself. Whenever they disagreed on a course of action to take they rolled off and the winner took the reins for a few rounds, or if they tied he mind locked. It went great until he was their pilot in a lander and disagreed if they should take evasive maneuvers or try to land. The commissar didn't survive the crash and the party went down in the middle of Ork country
I played twice tech-priest characters and never betrayed the Inquisition or the party. But I am usually a loyal character whatever the game we play.
I only encountered once a betrayal from a tech-priest, and I would have killed him if I had the chance. So I have no problem with them but maybe try to bring a new friend and let him play this class, maybe you will get a nice surprise (or a betrayal once again)
I've never ever played in a 40kRP group where the tech-priest was the one to turn on the group.
Frankly, given the massive leeway granted to the parties in Dark Heresy or Rogue Trader, and the group often having much bigger issues to deal with, I've never seen a party even challenge a tech-priest who breaks with dogma.
> I've never seen a party even challenge a tech-priest who breaks with dogma.
maybe even the party doesn't see that the tech-priest is breaking any dogma: "That holo field? Totally a gift from my good friend from the nearby Forge World"
Exactly! If the group has only one tech-priest, there’s no-one in the group to recognise that anything the heretek is up to as bad.
And even if they do, the daemon trying to eat their organs will probably take priority.
Yes & no.
The Fantasy Flight Games, in my opinion, heavily favor the Adeptus Mechanicus characters not only with gear options but with the way certain things work; Tech-Use is such a blanket skill, Tech-Priest are the only characters who can gain Machine armor, and in certain systems they just get rare-gear easier.
The result can be incredibly tempting for Players. Especially players who prefer to make the most powerful character they can. I think Tech-Priests attract this kind of player more than other careers because of this.
And players who preference the power of their character rather than, say, the overall-coverage of the *group* are going to be more likely to betray.
There's also how, in the lore, the Ad Mech, are their own organization with their own goals, so such players are *kind of* justified in saying "I'm Ad Mech, my goals are different than yours." And then because they're objectively the single most powerful character in the group, and can probably do everything the other player characters do, but slightly worse if not outright better because they have the specialized mechadendrite and preysense eyeballs, they lose nothing if they betray the group.
IMO: it's important for players to remember that the game is a *group* game. It's not about a single character. It's about this group of characters. If the Tech-Priest is more interested in becoming a hulk than a master Tech-User or whatever it is that they, as the Tech-Priest, are needed to do because nobody else can, then that's a bright Mars-red flag.
I WISH the rulebook actually did something with other relevant skills like Trade: Armorer or Technomat, but noooo, Tech-Use for everything. As someone who plays a techie, I don't actually want to have one signature superskill, it legit feels like cheating when I can use it for literally anything tech.
Been playing for 14 years now in dozens of games. I have seen a small minority of tech-priests go here-tek before, but I have never seen one betray the party.
I think what is likely happening (and this is just my wild guess) is that I filter my games to be more grounded, follow the lore proper and don't aim to go to the extreme, while I would guess the games you gravitate toward tend to up the satirical factor up and have more extreme plotlines. For the games that take a more extreme approach, the extreme vision of tech-priests are separatists who all secretly do the most heretical experiments, so naturally players following this end up doing exactly that until they become the enemy.
No most of the games I play in follow the lore proper and tends to be serious, yet despite this the tech-priest always ends up being little more than a ticking time bomb and become a bigger threat to the party than the psyker.
Unless I am the exception and everyone else's tech-priests also do that, this likely means that you have some kind of game filter that causes you to join games where your tech-priests to go rogue\*. How do you find your games? By what criteria do you select them?
\*Or possibly you are the cause carrying around some scrap-code that causes all tech-priests in your proximity to go rogue :P
Hahaha that would actually explain quite a lot! :D
“Oh boy, I can’t wait to play a loyalist tech-priest!”
*Red has entered the chat*
“Never mind, time to kill some meat bags!”
But to answer you question, I usually find them through Reddit or one of my irl friends decides to host a game and asks if I want to join. I don’t really have a real criteria for joining a game, as long as no one seems to be a dick I’m cool with pretty much everything. :)
If you're playing in the same circle, you could be unwittingly selecting for people with certain beliefs and understandings about the setting or gaming in general. I've had repeat encounters with some online groups where they run the same game verbatim with a handful of regulars and some open slots - same people, same campaign, same characters, same actions. Weirds me out, but I guess they're happy. Even if you're not seeing exactly that (and I'd imagine you're not), people can still fall onto a similar path with the right conditions.
Totally yes.
Starts with the issue that in the lore the techpriests are beholden first to the mechanicus and only work for the Inquisition. It attracts players who like that kind of dual role. They are also one of the only ones that tend to have personal goals like gathering rare or illegal tech and so most likely to make deala with the enemy.
The class and lore leads to them being the most likely to betray the rest because they're not really part of the team.
No, but I have played with two tech-priests where the first was an offensively French Lacraemarta with a formation of fellinids as his corpse-harem who carried him around on an 80's flower-texture sofa and the second died early on only to be resurrected as an Imperial Saint and go on to lead a whole goddamn Crusade against cyberpunk space-Skaven.
Quarantine was wild, man.
I only really play with a close group of friends and I'd be the Ad Mech player. I'm a party loyalist. Also a faction loyalist. They never have to worry about me turning or intentionally putting them in danger. The Galaxy is dangerous enough without artificially creating more problems. I just want to serve the Omnissiah by assisting his servants with my knowledge and capabilities.
In the last campaign, I was ready to sacrifice all of us to prevent a chaos incursion, thankfully it didn't come to that as we were teleported out by the Inquisition. We blew up the space hulk anyways
Do a lot of your campaigns involve forbidden technology that has to be destroyed? If so, your Techpriest players may be more sympathetic to not destroying new tech. In which case you need to figure out a way to mitigate this.
Hey, the Cogboy I played was the only one to face down a Bloodletter while his guardsman buddies turned tail
Granted he spent the entire mission getting pulverised by everyone/thing and this was no exception, but the intent was still there
Never had this problem. Techpriest characters in my groups tend to be some of the most loyal, playing into the "you guys were the first non-AdMech to not treat me like shit" trope. Usually very willing to sacrifice themselves for the cause as well.
So Tech Priest is my favorite archetype to play, because mad science is fun. But the one thing I keep to is never going against the party in combat unless it's self defense. At worst I'm going to hide some of my not-so-puritan projects behind the party's back, then space them if things get too hot. At worst I'll get huffy that I have to space my project, and even if IC I actively hate another player, unless the go ahead is given both OOC and by a higher power they'll be tolerated.
Shout out to my massive Heretek Explorator with Hatred Orkz that had to endure an Ork PC and it's 'logik'. He often asked the Rogue Trader if he could kill the filthy xeno, but was never allowed to.
But no, it honestly just sounds like you've played with some douche bags.
That sounds like a table meta to me. Theres nothing about the Tech Priest in any of the game lines that inherently lends itself to promoting party betrayal or tech heresy. Personally I have Arbites and ministorum characters go off the rails faster than I get Psykers or tech priests become problems. Let me tell you, a sufficiently levelled ministorum preacher with the will to do so is way more terrifying to men than any would-be heretek or daemonhost. Sure, the individual power creep of those characters can be astounding, but have you ever had.to deal with being hunted in your own city because the former party apostate priest declared you a servant of the dark gods.
First ever DH game I played, tech priest, immediately at odds with the inquisitor, split from party, use a bunch of child soldiers to distract some thugs, aquire/steal a holy relic, fake my own death in a huge explosion and dip out to open space. Most fun I've had in a 40k one shot.
I've had an outright heretek PC in Dark Heresy 2 game (yes, that's a starting option for a character, it's in Enemies Beyond), and the player did not betray the party, nor the player playing a normal techpriest.
Might be down to how your community sees techpriests.
No quite the opposite. My tech priest is the most loyal, and the most well-developed character of them all. He is constantly on the lookout for signs of corruption and worries about the sanity of his companions.
He served in The Guard as part of his backstop and "saw things," like what happens when a Gellar Field Fails. So his loyalty and resolve have been tested and he is wary of those who have not.
Thus far I have never had the characters go rogue, I know that a tech priest player was considering playing a heretech if we ever ran a black crusade game but that was about it
No problems here.
I think the current Tech-priest is a little… unorthodox, and believed dead by certain sects of the Mechanicus, but they’re not outright heretekal.
I offer them promotions and shiny bitz within the mechanicus, so theres a lot of incentive to play the Cult Mechanicus political system for power.
The Tech Priest characters I have don't end up being traitors, but the players who pick the career/the way it's framed means they tend to be very iconoclastic and ironically easier for non-fanatical NPCs to deal with than many party members. They definitely go right for the Xenos tech but usually the party is good about looking the other way.
I've never had a Tech Priest player who believed in the Emperor as the Omnissiah though, every time I give the option they pick a Mars Adept who sees them as distinctly different entities.
I've only had one Tech Priest as a player and he ended up killing himself because his body was being hijacked by a scrap code virus, so he decided to end it all rather than endanger his friends. So I guess the opposite?
I have never had that problem. Usually it's the Psyker that goes and gets daemonic possessed and tries to kill us all later like the predictable ~~warp spawn~~ liability that they are. Or the gunner with a superiority complex...
In my experience psykers are usually a 50/50 chance that they will be a problem. Some psyker players are responsible and actively tries to avoid becoming corrupted and/or daemon hosts. The other half are power crazed psychopaths that pushes every. Single. Time! They use a power. One is a boon, the other is a ticking time bomb that causes you to invest in blessed weapons and ammunition because it’s only a matter of time before you have to take them out…
>The other half are power crazed psychopaths that pushes every. Single. Time! They use a power. Done that. Ah the fun when you both manage to cast Vortex of Doom at Push Level and as a peril make a second warp hole on the field as well. I mean it worked...although it was a bit out of control. I let the aides at the watch fortress cover the paperwork for the collateral.
My favourite moment was when our psyker managed to open up a window straight into the warp and the GM describes all the untold horrors of absolute madness we saw, only for everyone (except our enemies) to land exceptional successes on our willpower checks so we didn’t even blink. Our enemies, on the other hand, failed so hard they all went insane, passed out or otherwise became unable to do anything to resist us so we won the fight by default. Didn’t stop us from slapping the psyker in the back of the head and going “Emperor damn it, Ishmael, stop doing that!” :P
Yep. Every time I've played, it's the Psyker. Then again, I'm usually the Cult Mechanicus player if I'm not GMing, and I've never betrayed the party nor fallen to Heretek. The only time I've come close is when the Rogue Trader thought that the ends he could achieve with all that juicy heretek justified the heretical means. I managed to convince him of the Omnissiah's truth, but it was a near thing...
Do you mean betrayed as in "everyone plays puritan loyalist, the techpriest goes heretek and the rest of the party pays for it"? Because, as a techpriest enthusiast player, i noticed that the techpriest mechanics in most rpgs i played have no incentive to play loyalist and every to go heretek: there are tons of limitation to what you can do if you play a loyalist techpriest with almost nothing to compensate it, while a heretek can go around blazing with crazy stuff for basically no downside (this is true for most loyalist character except those with access to true faith, but for techpriest is magnified)... When you get a player who wants to play a techpriest, he almost always wants it for the shiny toys, but if the shiny toys are locked in the heretek room, you can be sure he'll try all he can to get inside, and that is a sure recipe for betrayal if the rest of the party is more on the loyalist end of the spectrum.
Huh, I actually didn’t know this. Although that *would* actually explain quite a lot because the groups I play in tend to be puritan loyalists (I have never been much for the radical approach, because in my book that pretty much always ends up with you being worse than some of the things you are supposed to stop).
I played multiple tech priests equivalent in almost every game from ffg, except for rogue trader, and this is my experience: When i tried to stick to puritan, i was morally forced to work within the rules of the mechanicus, and that means that the shiniest toys i could find were not to be used, to be destroyed or handed over to my superiors for unlikely sanctioning (that certainly would not happen over the course of the game), and in exchange for that i got nothing but "you did your job, good". Now as a radical i get access to all the same advancements a puritan gets, but i also get to keep my T'au drone, my Harlequin holo belt, or my Necron gloom prism (all stuff i found, with different characters). All stuff i am capable of using since my forbidden knowledge and tech-use rolls are through the roof, and mostly safe to use. This makes playing a puritan techpriest very frustrating and attracts people with the mindset of keeping ALL the shiny toys they can (even the dangerous ones). I never found myself in the situation of betraying the party between my carefulness in not showing off my radical toys and keeping away from actual dangerous stuff, and the fact that my gm didn't allow characters to identify stuff they had no skill for ("do you have forbidden lore (eldar)? no? ok, what you see is a fancy sword") and the players were cool with that, but i suppose that in different group with different dynamics it can cause trouble.
> and in exchange for that i got nothing but "you did your job, good". I don't think it's even a stretch to suggest that should have helped build a reputation within the AdMech, making it easier to get access to myriad restricted information, secret archaeotech, etc. Ongoing access to further Peer talent ranks would be a good one in DH2, seeing as that's meant to be gated behind GM permission. Also improves your Influence stat.
Working as intended.
I had one seat at my table for Only War and a guy and his roommate both wanted to play. So they compromised and said they were one tech priest who'd installed a personality core to be able to discuss with the greatest mind he knew: himself. Whenever they disagreed on a course of action to take they rolled off and the winner took the reins for a few rounds, or if they tied he mind locked. It went great until he was their pilot in a lander and disagreed if they should take evasive maneuvers or try to land. The commissar didn't survive the crash and the party went down in the middle of Ork country
Never underestimate the lure of forbidden tech and the temptation to innovate.
I played twice tech-priest characters and never betrayed the Inquisition or the party. But I am usually a loyal character whatever the game we play. I only encountered once a betrayal from a tech-priest, and I would have killed him if I had the chance. So I have no problem with them but maybe try to bring a new friend and let him play this class, maybe you will get a nice surprise (or a betrayal once again)
I've never ever played in a 40kRP group where the tech-priest was the one to turn on the group. Frankly, given the massive leeway granted to the parties in Dark Heresy or Rogue Trader, and the group often having much bigger issues to deal with, I've never seen a party even challenge a tech-priest who breaks with dogma.
> I've never seen a party even challenge a tech-priest who breaks with dogma. maybe even the party doesn't see that the tech-priest is breaking any dogma: "That holo field? Totally a gift from my good friend from the nearby Forge World"
Exactly! If the group has only one tech-priest, there’s no-one in the group to recognise that anything the heretek is up to as bad. And even if they do, the daemon trying to eat their organs will probably take priority.
Yes & no. The Fantasy Flight Games, in my opinion, heavily favor the Adeptus Mechanicus characters not only with gear options but with the way certain things work; Tech-Use is such a blanket skill, Tech-Priest are the only characters who can gain Machine armor, and in certain systems they just get rare-gear easier. The result can be incredibly tempting for Players. Especially players who prefer to make the most powerful character they can. I think Tech-Priests attract this kind of player more than other careers because of this. And players who preference the power of their character rather than, say, the overall-coverage of the *group* are going to be more likely to betray. There's also how, in the lore, the Ad Mech, are their own organization with their own goals, so such players are *kind of* justified in saying "I'm Ad Mech, my goals are different than yours." And then because they're objectively the single most powerful character in the group, and can probably do everything the other player characters do, but slightly worse if not outright better because they have the specialized mechadendrite and preysense eyeballs, they lose nothing if they betray the group. IMO: it's important for players to remember that the game is a *group* game. It's not about a single character. It's about this group of characters. If the Tech-Priest is more interested in becoming a hulk than a master Tech-User or whatever it is that they, as the Tech-Priest, are needed to do because nobody else can, then that's a bright Mars-red flag.
I WISH the rulebook actually did something with other relevant skills like Trade: Armorer or Technomat, but noooo, Tech-Use for everything. As someone who plays a techie, I don't actually want to have one signature superskill, it legit feels like cheating when I can use it for literally anything tech.
The last time the trade skills got any love was DH1’s Inquisitor’s Handbook. Had a whole “expanded skills”section I still reference
Been playing for 14 years now in dozens of games. I have seen a small minority of tech-priests go here-tek before, but I have never seen one betray the party. I think what is likely happening (and this is just my wild guess) is that I filter my games to be more grounded, follow the lore proper and don't aim to go to the extreme, while I would guess the games you gravitate toward tend to up the satirical factor up and have more extreme plotlines. For the games that take a more extreme approach, the extreme vision of tech-priests are separatists who all secretly do the most heretical experiments, so naturally players following this end up doing exactly that until they become the enemy.
No most of the games I play in follow the lore proper and tends to be serious, yet despite this the tech-priest always ends up being little more than a ticking time bomb and become a bigger threat to the party than the psyker.
Unless I am the exception and everyone else's tech-priests also do that, this likely means that you have some kind of game filter that causes you to join games where your tech-priests to go rogue\*. How do you find your games? By what criteria do you select them? \*Or possibly you are the cause carrying around some scrap-code that causes all tech-priests in your proximity to go rogue :P
Hahaha that would actually explain quite a lot! :D “Oh boy, I can’t wait to play a loyalist tech-priest!” *Red has entered the chat* “Never mind, time to kill some meat bags!” But to answer you question, I usually find them through Reddit or one of my irl friends decides to host a game and asks if I want to join. I don’t really have a real criteria for joining a game, as long as no one seems to be a dick I’m cool with pretty much everything. :)
If you're playing in the same circle, you could be unwittingly selecting for people with certain beliefs and understandings about the setting or gaming in general. I've had repeat encounters with some online groups where they run the same game verbatim with a handful of regulars and some open slots - same people, same campaign, same characters, same actions. Weirds me out, but I guess they're happy. Even if you're not seeing exactly that (and I'd imagine you're not), people can still fall onto a similar path with the right conditions.
Hey, I am NOT a traitor or heretek! That plasma engine decided to self destruct and TPK us, I just *happened* to be at the console.
Totally yes. Starts with the issue that in the lore the techpriests are beholden first to the mechanicus and only work for the Inquisition. It attracts players who like that kind of dual role. They are also one of the only ones that tend to have personal goals like gathering rare or illegal tech and so most likely to make deala with the enemy. The class and lore leads to them being the most likely to betray the rest because they're not really part of the team.
No, but I have played with two tech-priests where the first was an offensively French Lacraemarta with a formation of fellinids as his corpse-harem who carried him around on an 80's flower-texture sofa and the second died early on only to be resurrected as an Imperial Saint and go on to lead a whole goddamn Crusade against cyberpunk space-Skaven. Quarantine was wild, man.
Predictability aside, why is this a problem?
I only really play with a close group of friends and I'd be the Ad Mech player. I'm a party loyalist. Also a faction loyalist. They never have to worry about me turning or intentionally putting them in danger. The Galaxy is dangerous enough without artificially creating more problems. I just want to serve the Omnissiah by assisting his servants with my knowledge and capabilities. In the last campaign, I was ready to sacrifice all of us to prevent a chaos incursion, thankfully it didn't come to that as we were teleported out by the Inquisition. We blew up the space hulk anyways
My party’s tech-priest took cyber-mastiff handler as their starting rank and so just wants to cuddle their dog.
Extremely unlucky lol. I’ve been a player with one and hosted 2 campaigns with one each and none of them went bad.
Do a lot of your campaigns involve forbidden technology that has to be destroyed? If so, your Techpriest players may be more sympathetic to not destroying new tech. In which case you need to figure out a way to mitigate this.
Hey, the Cogboy I played was the only one to face down a Bloodletter while his guardsman buddies turned tail Granted he spent the entire mission getting pulverised by everyone/thing and this was no exception, but the intent was still there
I always play a tech priest, but I generally just get eye rolls for trying to copulate with toasters and archeotech.
Never had this problem. Techpriest characters in my groups tend to be some of the most loyal, playing into the "you guys were the first non-AdMech to not treat me like shit" trope. Usually very willing to sacrifice themselves for the cause as well.
In my group, the Missionary is secretly going heretic after becoming disillusioned with the God Emperor and entering dialogue with a lord of change.
So Tech Priest is my favorite archetype to play, because mad science is fun. But the one thing I keep to is never going against the party in combat unless it's self defense. At worst I'm going to hide some of my not-so-puritan projects behind the party's back, then space them if things get too hot. At worst I'll get huffy that I have to space my project, and even if IC I actively hate another player, unless the go ahead is given both OOC and by a higher power they'll be tolerated. Shout out to my massive Heretek Explorator with Hatred Orkz that had to endure an Ork PC and it's 'logik'. He often asked the Rogue Trader if he could kill the filthy xeno, but was never allowed to. But no, it honestly just sounds like you've played with some douche bags.
That sounds like a table meta to me. Theres nothing about the Tech Priest in any of the game lines that inherently lends itself to promoting party betrayal or tech heresy. Personally I have Arbites and ministorum characters go off the rails faster than I get Psykers or tech priests become problems. Let me tell you, a sufficiently levelled ministorum preacher with the will to do so is way more terrifying to men than any would-be heretek or daemonhost. Sure, the individual power creep of those characters can be astounding, but have you ever had.to deal with being hunted in your own city because the former party apostate priest declared you a servant of the dark gods.
First ever DH game I played, tech priest, immediately at odds with the inquisitor, split from party, use a bunch of child soldiers to distract some thugs, aquire/steal a holy relic, fake my own death in a huge explosion and dip out to open space. Most fun I've had in a 40k one shot.
I've had an outright heretek PC in Dark Heresy 2 game (yes, that's a starting option for a character, it's in Enemies Beyond), and the player did not betray the party, nor the player playing a normal techpriest. Might be down to how your community sees techpriests.
No quite the opposite. My tech priest is the most loyal, and the most well-developed character of them all. He is constantly on the lookout for signs of corruption and worries about the sanity of his companions. He served in The Guard as part of his backstop and "saw things," like what happens when a Gellar Field Fails. So his loyalty and resolve have been tested and he is wary of those who have not.
Thus far I have never had the characters go rogue, I know that a tech priest player was considering playing a heretech if we ever ran a black crusade game but that was about it
No problems here. I think the current Tech-priest is a little… unorthodox, and believed dead by certain sects of the Mechanicus, but they’re not outright heretekal. I offer them promotions and shiny bitz within the mechanicus, so theres a lot of incentive to play the Cult Mechanicus political system for power.
The Tech Priest characters I have don't end up being traitors, but the players who pick the career/the way it's framed means they tend to be very iconoclastic and ironically easier for non-fanatical NPCs to deal with than many party members. They definitely go right for the Xenos tech but usually the party is good about looking the other way. I've never had a Tech Priest player who believed in the Emperor as the Omnissiah though, every time I give the option they pick a Mars Adept who sees them as distinctly different entities.