This all started when a player that is playing a psyker expressed a desire to basically become Count Dooku at some point. The problem was, of course, that he had gone for pyromancy, and there's not that much force lightning going around the WH40kRP books.

So I offered to set about converting Pyromancy into electromancy, or what then ended up becoming Teslakinesis . It made sense, since Pyromancy is primarily damage-based, it does Energy Damage, and I could convert flame effects to shock effects fairly easily.

After a few hours of work, I finally finished this: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1yLliRCIzfoUlFEUHVySDVXZDA/edit?usp=sharing

I recommend downloading it in order to have everything display correctly.

I would love any and all feedback. In particular, I'd like to hear whether the nerf to Lightning Bolt/Barrage/Storm is warranted (preserving "Five Degrees of Success or more" across the board, rather than reducing it). I didn't want for each power to be objectively better than the preceding one, but I'm still not sure if it's a good change.

Mind making the background image a little more transparent? Struggling to read the text overlay...

For electrical source, do you count static electricity as a viable source? If so, bring a roll of carpet and cheap trainers.

I'd also consider adding to some of these powers the Haywire or shocking qualities, as surely the abilities of electricity would have some shorting effects on various pieces of power armour?

These are just initial thoughts.

If you might add additional Haywire or Shocking I would reduce some damage like the 5 degree of success thing. Imho Psypowers should be either utility/buff/debuff, damage or some sort of hybrid.

In that regard It should cause less raw damage than lets say the real pyromancy but offer some other strong qualities to make up for it. Stunning for example can be extremely strong and haywire is just brutal against any technology.

So instead allowing 1d5 ignoring damage allow the haywire quality after 5 DoS. Some Fatigue in addition to the stun seems to be rather cruel though. And NO such DoT mechanic! Stunning alone is just crazy, even more with a -20 test. For that 5 DoS are just to easy to get and it kinda is overkill on the Lightning Storm if you are willed to push it.

First of all, thanks for both of your input, it really helps more than I can say when it comes to going through the powers again. Peer review is important for any project.

Mind making the background image a little more transparent? Struggling to read the text overlay...

For electrical source, do you count static electricity as a viable source? If so, bring a roll of carpet and cheap trainers.

I'd also consider adding to some of these powers the Haywire or shocking qualities, as surely the abilities of electricity would have some shorting effects on various pieces of power armour?

These are just initial thoughts.

First, what are you viewing it with? Someone else said the same thing, but it displays fine to me in Word. I don't think I can tweak the transparency much, and the transparency is completely lost when displaying on Google Docs anyway.

Secondly, no, I wouldn't consider *basic* static electricity an exposed electrical source. Static electricity is virtually everywhere, all the time. Under the right circumstances, if a player is crafty, if the static electricity is strong enough to produce an actual spark, I'd allow it, such as charging himself up with static electricity and touching someone, making a spark, and initiating the power with that spark.

But as a general blanket rule, no, basic static electricity is not enough. Either way, bringing with you a lamp-light with a broken headlight is probably easier than hauling a carpet around, anyway. Honestly, this goes for Pyromancy in general, too; sure, you CAN use Manifest Flame, but why would you, when you can bring with you an Auto-Torch or a Gas-lit Lantern.

As for Shocking and Haywire, I know. However, almost all of the powers already have Shocking, or an effect almost identical to Shocking. Haywire I judged much too strong, capable of taking out huge pieces of machinery, creating "dead zones". Even a small dead zone on a Baneblade or Defiler could be enough to completely incapacitate it, which is why I ended up only giving Haywire to one of the higher-end powers (in a 3m radius).

I think I will add "All of these powers may interfere with various technological devices or electric appliances depending on the strength and nature of the power and the object struck, at the GM:s discretion" to the initial description of the school, to highlight that even though the powers do not have Haywire, they could still result in cogitators shorting out and servitors keeling over.

If you might add additional Haywire or Shocking I would reduce some damage like the 5 degree of success thing. Imho Psypowers should be either utility/buff/debuff, damage or some sort of hybrid.

In that regard It should cause less raw damage than lets say the real pyromancy but offer some other strong qualities to make up for it. Stunning for example can be extremely strong and haywire is just brutal against any technology.

So instead allowing 1d5 ignoring damage allow the haywire quality after 5 DoS. Some Fatigue in addition to the stun seems to be rather cruel though. And NO such DoT mechanic! Stunning alone is just crazy, even more with a -20 test. For that 5 DoS are just to easy to get and it kinda is overkill on the Lightning Storm if you are willed to push it.

It's a conversion of the Pyromancy powers, and the Fire Bolt/Barrage/Storm puts the target on fire upon 5, 4 or 3 (respectively) Degrees of Success. (Compared to many other powers, though, Pyromancy actually does pretty low damage by itself).

Being "On Fire" forces you to do a (free) Challenging (+0) Willpower Test (and continue to be on fire) or to do nothing except run around as a Full Action. If he manages the Willpower Test, he can take a Full Action Agility Test at -20 or remain on fire, taking 1d10 Energy Damage, ignoring Armour.

Characters with the Machine Trait gets to add their Armour Points to resist the damage.

In a nutshell, my changes have actually nerfed these powers, requiring 5 Degrees of Success across the board (because I hated how each step up was an objectively better power), and I have reduced the damage to 1d5, but on the other hand made it ignore Toughness on top of Armour; also, the Machine Trait does not protect against it. This I mostly did for thematic reasons and keeping down on bookkeeping.

Also, the target, if they are being shocked in this fashion, no longer needs to make the Willpower Test, nor will they waste their round running around. They "only" need to pass a -20 Toughness Test.

1d5 ignoring Toughness/Armor is not that much weaker than 1d10 ignoring Armour.

The average roll on a 1d5 is 3 and the average on a 1d10 is 5,5. Now given that the most average Toughness is 3 we have an average damage of 3 for the 1d5 and and 2,5 on the 1d10. With increased Toughness this gets higher, even more so with the potential of ignoring Machinery Armor.

Also skipping the WP Test might seem nice but the -20 Toughness test is actually worse than the -20 Agility one. Even more so for you also receive 1 Point of Fatigue in both cases. But the test, to extinguish a fire, can be altered by many factors like the terrain you are on an the assistance of your teammates. My Tech-Priest had a bad habit of catching fire for some time (Until he mostly ignored the damage^^) and organized a fire-extinguisher (also handy for a lot of machinery work in the field) helping him a lot. The -20 Toughness is just you - alone. And it has the power to keep you in a NONSTOP Stunlock.

Also, imho, Stun is much worse than catching fire. My current Arbitrator is running around with a Power Maul and the greatest boon of that weapon, aside from being a power weapon, is its stunning quality. It is such a big boon that helps against so many foes on a reliable way, making them prime targets for the team after they are stunned.

Wasting your turn because you run around because you burn is bad but having no action and reaction for granted, without the chance to roll a +0 WP test, in addition with every WS/BS attack on you being a routine +20 one is even worse.

1d5 ignoring Toughness/Armor is not that much weaker than 1d10 ignoring Armour.

The average roll on a 1d5 is 3 and the average on a 1d10 is 5,5. Now given that the most average Toughness is 3 we have an average damage of 3 for the 1d5 and and 2,5 on the 1d10. With increased Toughness this gets higher, even more so with the potential of ignoring Machinery Armor.

Also skipping the WP Test might seem nice but the -20 Toughness test is actually worse than the -20 Agility one.

Even more so for you also receive 1 Point of Fatigue in both cases. But the test, to extinguish a fire, can be altered by many factors like the terrain you are on an the assistance of your teammates. My Tech-Priest had a bad habit of catching fire for some time (Until he mostly ignored the damage^^) and organized a fire-extinguisher (also handy for a lot of machinery work in the field) helping him a lot. The -20 Toughness is just you - alone. And it has the power to keep you in a NONSTOP Stunlock.

Also, imho, Stun is much worse than catching fire. My current Arbitrator is running around with a Power Maul and the greatest boon of that weapon, aside from being a power weapon, is its stunning quality. It is such a big boon that helps against so many foes on a reliable way, making them prime targets for the team after they are stunned.

Wasting your turn because you run around because you burn is bad but having no action and reaction for granted, without the chance to roll a +0 WP test, in addition with every WS/BS attack on you being a routine +20 one is even worse.

I may change the powers to be a Challenging (+0) Toughness Test instead of a Very Hard (-20) Toughness Test.

It wasn't intended to be nerfed in damage. Let's recap: "This I mostly did for thematic reasons and keeping down on bookkeeping."

Well, in that regard I consider this a straight upgrade to pyromancy to be honest. Same damage and more utility.

How do you figure? Characteristics vary wildly depending on enemy, but on average, it is my experience that opponents more often have high Toughness than high Agility. And I would think that succeeding on both a Willpower and Agility Test in the same round would be objectively harder than succeeding on a single Toughness Test of the same difficulty. If you see an issue with that logic, you'll have to walk me through it, because I'm just not seeing it.

Yes, but it is about the assistance. To overcome stunning, you have to test alone, to extinguish fire anybody can help you. (You can also stimm a stunned one but that is something I would consider to be more rare). In terms of fire any party member can assist you, granting you a +10 per party member if you take the assistance rules for this vague description of the fire effect. Also in my experience the AG is mostly roughly equal to To or it is either high AG or To.

All tests can be altered by the environment and what is going on. The regular Pyromancy skills have the power to keep you in a NONSTOP state of On Fire too, so I'm again not seeing it. Like I said, the necessary Degrees of Success are even higher now than before.

If you are stunned, you are stunned. Your team-mates can slap your face, it wont help you. If you are burned your team-mates can try to extinguish the fire and it helps you. Every test can be modified - by RAW, for fire it is intended, for stun it is not. Here I do not count gear that would help you on fire or stun, only the test alone.

The Shock effect is leagues and bounds worse, since it gives a blanket Challenging (+0) Toughness Test, or be stunned - with no ruleswise way out of it - for a number of rounds equal to your Degrees of Failure. This is precisely why I didn't simply apply the Shocking Special Quality to the weapons, and instead created a shocking effect similar to being on fire.

Well, 5 DoS are not that hard to come by as a Psyker, at last when you start to receive unnatural WP and really only have to boost one characteristic in terms of combat prowess.

I think that's the one issue I can actually see, the +20 bonus and the lack of a Reaction.

I may change the powers to be a Challenging (+0) Toughness Test instead of a Very Hard (-20) Toughness Test.

At last this is making it less severe for without that change it would have simply been a plain better Flame effect. Still I consider the Electro build more viable than the Pyromancy, though that could simply be explained by the pyromancy being rather weak in comparison to other psycic schools.

PS: I have trouble reading over the "watermarks" too, so not much feedback about the powers in that area.

This all started when a player that is playing a psyker expressed a desire to basically become Count Dooku at some point. The problem was, of course, that he had gone for pyromancy, and there's not that much force lightning going around the WH40kRP books.

Technically there's Neural Storm out of Tome of Fate, being a Biomancy power. Because really, lightning as a psychic power makes sense being a bioelectrical discharge and thus under the umbrella of Biomancy.

Now if you wanted to make a power chain based on it, it being a Psychic Barrage allows you to complement it with a Psychic Bolt and Psychic Storm to create a equivalent of the pre-existing Fire/Force variants. Two new powers and put Neural Storm in between them. Though you'd probably want to rename it, and give the actual Psychic Storm variant the "Storm" part.

As for the work you've already done, more or less mirroring another discipline and just changing the "element" per se, seems rather boring and uninspired to me.

This all started when a player that is playing a psyker expressed a desire to basically become Count Dooku at some point. The problem was, of course, that he had gone for pyromancy, and there's not that much force lightning going around the WH40kRP books.

Technically there's Neural Storm out of Tome of Fate, being a Biomancy power. Because really, lightning as a psychic power makes sense being a bioelectrical discharge and thus under the umbrella of Biomancy.

Now if you wanted to make a power chain based on it, it being a Psychic Barrage allows you to complement it with a Psychic Bolt and Psychic Storm to create a equivalent of the pre-existing Fire/Force variants. Two new powers and put Neural Storm in between them. Though you'd probably want to rename it, and give the actual Psychic Storm variant the "Storm" part.

As for the work you've already done, more or less mirroring another discipline and just changing the "element" per se, seems rather boring and uninspired to me.

In this case, we settled on the manipulation of pre-existing electrical currents.

So while these could all definitely be sorted under Biomancy, you could likewise argue that some of the Pyromancy powers could - after all, you are exerting influence over the building blocks of the body to manifest flame.

Same goes for a lot of powers throughout the lines. Psykana Malifica from Edge of the Abyss doesn't even have a proper Discipline, and the various powers could be sorted throughout the various disciplines, and so on and so forth.

The intent was always to change the Pyromancy Discipline's element, so the fact that it's boring and inspiring to you doesn't really matter.

I might end up completely replacing Lightning Barrage with Neural Storm, though. I don't like the tiered structure of the powers, where the next basically mirrors the preceding one and just adds +something. Breaking the tiered structure with a functionally different psychic power would make me a happy panda.

I ended up doing a major remake, changing the nature of the the Lightning Strike, Shock and Storms in particular, but also removing the exposed electricity rule for thematic reasons, thus also removing the now-redundant Manifest Voltaic Current power.

Instead I introduced two new Special Rules that felt more in line with what I wanted to achieve.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1yLliRCIzfoTlc2SzNkTjdmVDQ/edit?usp=sharing

Like last time, you'll have to download it for it to display properly. Google Docs really doesn't like formatting things properly.

Like last time, you'll have to download it for it to display properly. Google Docs really doesn't like formatting things properly.

Well, downloading the file and opening it with OpenOffice screws the thing up though I can read it. Looking at it in Google Docs it it looks okay only the watermarks are annoying as hell for you cant read it.

google says the file doesn't exist

Fgdsfg has basically disappeared from these boards for the better part of a year, so I'm guessing that finding the file will be pretty much impossible at this rate. (Their profile is inaccessible and most likely purged, so I'm guessing they left under decidedly inauspicious circumstances.)

He got banned after some controversial comment (even though in jest, and baited by another member) in 1 of the threads on the DH2 forum.

That said, I know Cogniczar has him on Skype so maybe you can reach him that way.

He got banned after some controversial comment (even though in jest, and baited by another member) in 1 of the threads on the DH2 forum.

That said, I know Cogniczar has him on Skype so maybe you can reach him that way.

Sorry to hear that, hope you can reach out to him.