Any thoughts on what happens when someone uses the Minor Psychic Power of Endure Flames, which makes the user immune to Flamers and normal fire, and is attacked by Pyromancy (obviously Holocaust isn't an issue). It seems ridiculous to let someone to shrug off attacks from a Discipline by using a Minor Power.

Cynical Cat said:

Why? It's making you resistant to fire, and pyromancy is (while warp-spawned in origin) the manipulation of fire. Endure Flames seems to be an ideal power for Pyromancers to have in case of accidents or overenthusiastic conflagrations anyway. Given that the same effect is part of the Molten Man package deal, it seems like a double-standard to have Endure Flame not affect pyromancy powers but Molten Man to protect against such abilities (unless you feel that it's appropriate for a character currently made of fire to be affected by fireballs).

1) Endure Flames is a minor psychic power with a difficulty of 8 compared to Molten Man which is a Discipline power with a difficulty of 27. Molten Man is much harder to learn, requires a greater investment of resources to learn, and far more raw power to pull off. Also, game balance wise, no other minor power gives anywhere close to that level of protection from a Discipline, nor in my opinion, should it..

2) With say Firestorm a pyromancer can do more damage than a plasma or melta gun, which are also heat based attacks. If it's just about blocking heat, pyromancy should be equal to or trump plasma and melta weapons.

Cynical Cat said:

Molten Man does far, far more than Endure Flames, though - it's an extremely potent destructive power in additional to the heat resistance it provides. Endure Flames only confers the protective benefit... but the protection they provide is the same, with only personal opinion to distinguish that specific effect (that is, the rules treat them identically, and there is nothing in either power's text to indicate that they should be subject to different rulings). Depending on how valuable you consider the rest of Molten Man to be, I'd say that it's entirely reasonable to consider the protective effect alone to be the same.

Cynical Cat said:

Plasma and melta weapons (like las weapons, which are also influenced but not negated by Endure Flames and Molten Man) are not solely heat-based, though, and damage is not the only indicator of how powerful a heat source is (Firestorm may burn fiercely and sear flesh and bone, but Meltaguns vapourise armour plate and produce considerable amounts of nonionising radiation as part of their effect), while the damage dealt by Plasma and Las weapons is as much concussive/kinetic/explosive force as thermal energy.

Obviously we disagree on Molten Man. It does give benefits besides protection but the difficulty of obtaining the power, the difficulty of the power, and the resource investment to acquire it is enormously higher.

Yes meltaguns can slag materials. So does pyromancy. It's nonionizing radiation is simply the mechanism of transfering heat to the target. Pyromancy does that with the warp.

The kinetic energy component of lasweapons is minimal compared to their heat effects and the explosive component is completely based on heat transfer. Plasma weapon kinetics are also minimal (it's hot gas) and it explosive affects are again the consequence of dumping a whole lot of heat into its target very quickly.

On top of that pyromancy has a warp based component which everything that is specifically mentioned by Endure Flames lacks.

Cynical Cat said:

Of course it's a difficult power to obtain and use... because it effectively brings together the effects of several powers in one neat package (well, two powers - Endure Flames and Burning Fist - and an assortment of power-equivalent effects, but the point still stands). The effect of the flame-resistance element is exactly the same as that for Endure Flames, and there is nothing in the text to suggest that they should be treated differently in any way, unlike the difference between Firestorm and Holocaust, where the latter specifically states that it overcomes all immunities.

Cynical Cat said:

Does that mean that Hammerhand should ignore toughness and armour, as it contains a warp-based component that mundane unarmed attacks lack? Excusing certain effects from resistances simply because they're psychic in origin (not nature - a fire started by a pyromancer is still a fire, it won't stop burning if a Null walks past, any more than an object dropped from a height with telekinesis ceases to crush things it lands on because those things are Nulls) is, IMO, a poor and flimsy precedent to set, especially as we already have a very clear example of 'warp-flame' (the effect of the Holocaust power) which overcomes said resistances, as opposed to flame simply conjured and manipulated through interaction with the Warp.

I think it schould protect you from all kinds of flame, except of course Holocaust. However it only protects the psyker...nothing said about his equipment. If he has any ammo with him make that explode. Or damage the surroundings to take him out (exploding cars, buildings burnig down, smoke inhalation...endless possibilities against which he can not protect himself with the power).

Let him protect himself all he wants, if you think a bit outside the box and outside of direct damage you can still get him.

And now for something different: all over this thread you mention how hard it is to learn/obtain powers (Molten Man most often) but I have not found any part of the rule system where something like that is mentioned. So am I missing something or is this fan-created? If it is fan-created could you either give me a link or summarize it for me? Thx!

Endure Flames addresses damage caused by all sorts of heat based weaponry and attacks EXCEPT psychicly charged attacks. It treats plasma weapons differently than flamers, for example. Why is that? Plasma and melta weapons delivering more heat energy to the target ? That's not an unreasonable assumption , but it's an assumption. The combusting gases in particularly hot fires are a plasma so if that's the case then logically hot enough flames and high powered pyromancy attacks should at least be treated the same way plasma weapons are. Endure Flames quite reasonably has limits included in the description but those limits specifically fail to address pyromancy. Molten Man suffers from the same problem, but wraps the character in flames capable of slagging ceramite body armour and logically it provides enough heat protection to survive his own fires.

As for Wooky's question Endure Flames is a Minor Psychic power and Minor Psychic Powers are easier to obtain (Psykers start with them, you get them free everytime you increase Psi Rating, there are many Extra Minor Powers advances, they cost less xp than buying Discipline Powers, you aren't required to know the Discipline before you can purchase a power and so on) than Discipline Powers which you only start getting when you hit Psi Rating 3 and more than 2000xp spent.

Cynical Cat said:

And what brings you to the conclusion that psychic flame is inherently or fundamentally different from normal flame? That it needs to be considered seperately or specifically mentioned in order to be resisted?

It's fire. That it sprang into existence because of the will of a psyker is, IMO, fundamentally irrelevant to the matter. A plasmagun's blasts have more in common, in my opinion, with the substance of stars (high-temperature part-ionised hydrogen gas) than with mundane 'fire', and similarly the blasts from a Meltagun are demonstrably more focussed and intense than an inferno (the fact that they can boil straight through virtually any subtance with little difficulty makes this abundantly clear, represented by it actually having a Pen value, unlike every Pyromancy power - the flames of a Pyrokine can burn the flesh with ease, but they don't tend to be quite as effective at melting plasteel plates). But Pyromantic effects just produce flames, with all the properties of mundane fire - as with all psychic powers, the influence of the warp is there to subvert and manipulate natural laws, in this case allowing a flame to ignite and burn without an obvious fuel source, allowing it to be directed and controlled by the psyker's will... and only Holocaust (which is specifically described as different) is anything other than mundane heat and fire...

Pyromancy demonstrates far more extraordinary abilities than say plasma. It ignores physical law in burning without fuel. It can generate far more heat and destructive effects than hand held plasma or melta weapons. Incinerate ignores armour and toughness totally. Firestorm dwarfs both melta and plasma weapons in raw destructive power, even factoring the armour burning effects of melta weapons.

And you failed to address the issue of hot enough fires are plasmas. Endure Flames clearly treats different kinds of heat sources differently with its different rules for las weapons, flamers, meltas, and plasma weapons. Pyromancy is further removed from mundane fire in the amount of heat it can generate in how it behaves (warp fed, needs no mundane fuel, etcetera) than heated ionized gas and heated and ionized gas (plasma) gets different treatment.

Psychic powers are not always, working by changing the root of physics in a local area, but could equally be because fire is called fire and look like fire, thats the nature of the warp, unpredictability, and that theres not always a reason.

Psychic powers are after all the lack of certain physics.

Just to throw in my 2 thrones on the issue.

I think the reason for Endure flames only partially working against Plasma and Melta weapons stem from the obvious. These types of weapons are not Flame/fire. In the description of the power, Endure Flames makes the user immune to fire and Flame weaponry. That basically says to me that flamers do squat and anything that is based on fire (including pyromancy) does squat to the psyker... It may not be "fair" to the pyromancer but then again psychic powers aren't fair to the common man anyway.

I don't see the issue here personally. But if you really feel uncomfortable about it have it act as though pyromancy powers are melta/plasma weapons, half the damage before armor reduction, or you could go more complex and have a psyker with the Endure Flames power going force an opposed Willpower check between himself and the pyromancer to see if it does dmg or not.

Hi fellows.

Whilst this is NOT an official ruling (saving that for the actual rules and erratas!), allow me to chime in with my thoughts:

For Pyromancy, it is all mostly fire, fire, fire, except for the powers Incinerate and Holocaust.

For the Endure Flames and Molten Man powers, all pyromancy powers (with the exception of Incinerate and Holocaust) and any other psychic powers involving heat or flame are counted as fire (and thus, the Psyker is immune).

Incinerate does damage like a Melta weapon with regards to Endure Flames and Molten Man.

Holocaust sweeps aside the protection of Endure Flames and Molten Man, and inflicts full damage.

Thanks for clearing this up!