Stray Thoughts on Focus Power & Psykers

By Simsum, in Dark Heresy House Rules

I'm not entirely happy with the way Focus Power and Psykers in general works in DH. Failure and the consequences of failure are, I feel, too random. And - assuming they dare - Psykers are too free to spam powers, I think.

The concept of 'Fettered' powers doesn't really address those issues, and even if it did, I'm not really feeling that either.

I should mention that we've already changed the subsystem. In a nutshell, we've turned the Psychic Disciplines (and True Faith) into Skills, with Skill Ranks kind of standing in for Psy Rating. I wont bother you guys with the details, but I thought I should at least mention it.

We've also adopted the Fatigue System from Living 2.3:

  • An actor's Fatigue Threshold is equal to their Toughness Bonus + Willpower Bonus.
  • When an actor's Fatigue Level exceed one of their Characteristic, that Characteristic counts as Fatigues, and any activity involving the Characteristic takes twice the normal time to perform.
  • When an actor's Fatigue Level exceed their Fatigue Threshold, they fall unconscious from exhaustion.
  • Actors recover from Fatigue at a rate of -1 Fatigue Level per Hour of rest or non-strenuous activity.

I'd like to encourage moderate usage of Psychic Powers, partly by making sure Psykers won't get eaten by the Warp the very first time they try to use a power at the table, and partly by making it increasingly dangerous to spam powers.

- Like I said, though, this is just stray thoughts for now. But I'd thought I'd post them before they crystallise into an element in our very homebrewed take on Living 2.3, just in case someone else around here shared my feelings.