I am stuck,

I run a game that many of us are really enjoying, but we have a scale problem. My group's Psyker is completely unkillable, **** he is unchallengable, while everyone else is struggling. Normal mobs are a standard challenge for all the rest. They will overcome them and only take minimal damage, buuuuut that is if they even get an action before the gets all scary and makes them all run away, or Force barages them into heresy paste. I tried to put something in that might be able to challenge him, the Herald of Korn from Ascension, but it whacked the party mates on its way to him, before he spanked it like a small misbehaving puppy.

I thought I was the only one annoyed about it, but one of the other players stopped coming for a few sessions, and when I reached out to him, he tells me that he, "doesn't want to drive a half hour and sit in my living room to watch the Psyker be awesome for 5 hours". Now its hurting my game. Perhaps I am running his rules wrong, or not running his powers right. I am at a loss. The only thing I can think of is to just not allow people to play Psykers anymore.

Please help.

DC GM

Just play the campaign without any fights. Good old-fashioned police work - interviewing witnesses ( any one of them - a good Imperial citizen ) , collection of evidence s. Discussions with senior representatives of the Inquisition , maybe.

I don't have experience with this system - but have had power gamers in many campaigns.

Best ways I have found to control it as a GM are:

1 - Forced Power Inhibitor : Introduce an effect into the scenario. The Warp is being veiled more in the area and you set a limit to the power levels, the Inquisitor putting a 'psych collar' on him because (s)he is worried the warp is taking control of the character and he will take damage when using higher level abilities, or maybe the target is a blank that is immune to psyker powers (which of course the psyker finds out after over extending himself and then needs the group to rescue him).

2 - Personal Challenge : Introduce an opponent to keep the psyker busy, or a puzzle, or some sort of psychic battlefield that he fights in the mind or warp or astral plane or whatever so it has meaningful impact on the game, but doesn't diminish what the rest of the team needs to accomplish in the 'real' world.

3 - Baby Sitter : Kind of a variation of #1. Introduce a NPC either sent by the Inquisitor, or from local law enforcement, cooperating/competing Inquisitor, etc. This NPC makes it their business to keep the psyker under control. Hey, break the law and wind up on a Black Ship - I don't care who you know Could be a pain in the arse for the whole party, or just have a particular hatred for psykers.

4 - Corruption : Not sure if the system has something like this in place already, but in Star Wars there were Dark Side points you got for doing evil things. Do something similar. Every time he uses a major power award a 'warp point'. Once he reaches 10 points, have him roll a percentile dice (or however you choose to scale it) and if he rolls under, he is taken by the warp and becomes and NPC villain. The party then has to stop and perhaps redeem him - if they don't just kill him.

5 - Non Combat Based Adventure : Sure his powers are awesome in a fight, but how is he at hacking a data pad, or sneaking into a mansion, or pretending to be a socialite to gather information, etc. Make adventures that are less hack and slash, and more of a spy thriller type event. Have a car chase, shuttle fight, etc. I doubt he has the skills needed to do much in those situations - so he will have to rely on the party to 'carry' him.

6 - New/Revised Character Time! : Talk to the player, and let them know that their character is dominating the game, and not in a good way that is fun for the group. Ask him to voluntarily take a hit and lose some powers (you can work it into the story even). Alternatively, the Inquisitor has a special mission that requires his talents, and his character is pulled from the team for a while. In the meantime, ask the player to roll up a junior psyker or new character to join the team.

Just some variants on ideas I've used in the past to keep the campaign from centering around one person, hope it helps.

Have some enemies weaken the veil, so he triples the chance of Phenomenon when using his powers.

Make the enemies so brutally insane (80+ points) that they're immune to fear.

Hatred (Psykers.)

Put your acolytes on a hyper-loyal planet where the slightest hint of non-purity gets you the Emperor's Mercy. (A bullet to the head.)

Resistance (Psychic Powers.)

Daemonic Entities capable of out-Psychicing him.

A side-quest type thing where a bad guy has put a price on the head of any Psyker. (For use in his... Experiments.)

Have a read through this thread for some ideas .

You are probably missing a few crucial restrictions in the rules, which to be fair are quite clunky

Having said that, high-level psykers ARE very powerful, so perhaps you've just "outgrown" the ruleset? What Rank are the players?

A few things, in no particular order, based on what you've written.

Fearful Aura affects his friends as well as his foes. If he's using it all the time, his "friends" will probably have "words" with him as their insanity racks up

Force Barrage has a relatively short range. Even a high-level psyker is unlikely to get this higher than 50 or 60 metres. There are MANY regular ranged weapons which will deal out atrocious damage to a poor psyker while staying comfortably out of his range. Autocannons, Mulitlas, Hunting rifles, etc. Catch Projectiles is a Reaction and cannot be cast on the same turn as another Psychic power, so this can really mess up a psykers day.

And EVERY time he rolls a power, there is a chance of Phenomena and thus Perils of the Warp. Nota that Favoured by the Warp allows you to roll twice on the Phenomena Table, but NOT Perils. Every 8th Phenomena will thus be a Peril, which AUTOMATICALLY cause 1 Corruption Point, in addition to whatever result you roll on the Perils table. You REALLY need to enforce this, as it's the only limiting factor on Psykers. They must ALWAYS roll dice, and every 9 is a potential Corruption Point.

And of course, all his might is completely useless once he meets a Blank. Or a Slaught.

This reminded me of another "stunt" I pulled on my group , after receiving some inspiration from Graver.

Basically it involves sending the group on a "clean up" mission after another Psyker caused some mayhem in a populated zone. As the Book of Judgement states, witnessing a Psychic phenomena is a capital offence. Basically, the Imperium doesn't take the risk of contamination, and purges those who has "seen too much". And it's the Inquisition which handles this "clean up".

It kinda messed with the players to realise that every time the Psyker in the party made statues weep or frost appear, the Inquisition had to spend the time and money to go around murdering innocent civilians.

What Darth Smeg said.

My group has 1 tolerated whitch that loves to throw fireballs. Not a healthy idea on a feudal worlds, with all those wooden buildings, forests and highly superstitious townspeople.

Plus you can throw in rival Inquisitors, overzealos whitchhunters, warriors of Khorne wearing his collar (makes you immune to psychic powers), aliens that have no mind of their own (Genestealers are a *****), ....

Honestly, just use the Fear Aura against his companions, they are effected as well.

And don't forget that weapons can shoot up to twice their range without penalty. A simple shotgun can go up to 60 metres without penalty and put a hole into him before he gets the chance to barrage anyone. A Hunting rifle at 250+ metres is even better.

Remove the fettered rules from the game.

Frenzon, or deriatives there-of, should be fairly common among certain groups as well. A delightful side effect of combat drugs is often immunity to fear and pain.

Have a read through this thread for some ideas .

You are probably missing a few crucial restrictions in the rules, which to be fair are quite clunky

Having said that, high-level psykers ARE very powerful, so perhaps you've just "outgrown" the ruleset? What Rank are the players?

A few things, in no particular order, based on what you've written.

Fearful Aura affects his friends as well as his foes. If he's using it all the time, his "friends" will probably have "words" with him as their insanity racks up

Force Barrage has a relatively short range. Even a high-level psyker is unlikely to get this higher than 50 or 60 metres. There are MANY regular ranged weapons which will deal out atrocious damage to a poor psyker while staying comfortably out of his range. Autocannons, Mulitlas, Hunting rifles, etc. Catch Projectiles is a Reaction and cannot be cast on the same turn as another Psychic power, so this can really mess up a psykers day.

And EVERY time he rolls a power, there is a chance of Phenomena and thus Perils of the Warp. Nota that Favoured by the Warp allows you to roll twice on the Phenomena Table, but NOT Perils. Every 8th Phenomena will thus be a Peril, which AUTOMATICALLY cause 1 Corruption Point, in addition to whatever result you roll on the Perils table. You REALLY need to enforce this, as it's the only limiting factor on Psykers. They must ALWAYS roll dice, and every 9 is a potential Corruption Point.

And of course, all his might is completely useless once he meets a Blank. Or a Slaught.

Okay I like where you are going with this.

First of all, I haven't found any rule which limits to one power a turn. Now it does say that you cannot use two manifest actions as your standard actions a turn He only uses a power a turn, but he also uses a catch projectiles or the one which makes you always at extreme range a bunch which make hitting him difficult. I would love to go home and tell him he gets 1 psychic power a turn, whether its a reaction or not... where is that said?

Furthermore, he is powerful, as he has just gotten the XP nessecary to ascend into Inquisitor, but won't until we get back to Tricorn for his ceremony. Also most of the time he uses his powers "fettered" out of the Ascension book which completely nuliffies the Phsychic Phenomina.

DC GM

Have a read through this thread for some ideas .

You are probably missing a few crucial restrictions in the rules, which to be fair are quite clunky

Having said that, high-level psykers ARE very powerful, so perhaps you've just "outgrown" the ruleset? What Rank are the players?

A few things, in no particular order, based on what you've written.

Fearful Aura affects his friends as well as his foes. If he's using it all the time, his "friends" will probably have "words" with him as their insanity racks up

Force Barrage has a relatively short range. Even a high-level psyker is unlikely to get this higher than 50 or 60 metres. There are MANY regular ranged weapons which will deal out atrocious damage to a poor psyker while staying comfortably out of his range. Autocannons, Mulitlas, Hunting rifles, etc. Catch Projectiles is a Reaction and cannot be cast on the same turn as another Psychic power, so this can really mess up a psykers day.

And EVERY time he rolls a power, there is a chance of Phenomena and thus Perils of the Warp. Nota that Favoured by the Warp allows you to roll twice on the Phenomena Table, but NOT Perils. Every 8th Phenomena will thus be a Peril, which AUTOMATICALLY cause 1 Corruption Point, in addition to whatever result you roll on the Perils table. You REALLY need to enforce this, as it's the only limiting factor on Psykers. They must ALWAYS roll dice, and every 9 is a potential Corruption Point.

And of course, all his might is completely useless once he meets a Blank. Or a Slaught.

Okay I like where you are going with this.

First of all, I haven't found any rule which limits to one power a turn. Now it does say that you cannot use two manifest actions as your standard actions a turn He only uses a power a turn, but he also uses a catch projectiles or the one which makes you always at extreme range a bunch which make hitting him difficult. I would love to go home and tell him he gets 1 psychic power a turn, whether its a reaction or not... where is that said?

Furthermore, he is powerful, as he has just gotten the XP nessecary to ascend into Inquisitor, but won't until we get back to Tricorn for his ceremony. Also most of the time he uses his powers "fettered" out of the Ascension book which completely nuliffies the Phsychic Phenomina.

DC GM

AHA! Ascension, there we have it... first of all, you brought this unto yourself by using ascension (yep, I'm all but fond of that book ).

Then again if you're playing Ascension, it's not unlikely of the enemies of your players having Anti-Psyker weapons. Especially fellow Inquisitors calling a favor from the Officio Assassinorum in the shape of a Culexus

Other then that, Snipers. He can't react if he does not notice the shot. Mines are not that easy to dodge as well. Oh, and Hallucinogen-Grenades or simply setting him on fire.

If everything else fails, talk to the player about retiring his character. If it starts being unfun for the group as a whole, well, that's bad. Like, really. In fact worse then any Warp-Incursion I'd say.

Also, read the FAQ/Errata. Psykers really can only cast 1 power per turn.

Spamming powers you say? Sounds like someone is abusing his gift from the god emperor. Thats sure to attract 1 or 100 witch hunters.

Ah. Ascenscion.

Well. That book is COMPLETELY broken, and I ran away and hid under a rock for a few weeks after reading it. Now we use onle very small parts of it, and house-rule the rest. See my sig for more info.

As for the one-power-per-round, I refer you to the Errata, a very important piece of rules.

The fine Errata states, on page 9:

Are there stats for a culexus assassin? if so, use that. (pariah psyker killer ftw!)

Or have a sniper shoot at him from half a mile away when he has his guard down.

Necrons and lots of them...

Have them find a mysterious xeno artifact that scans teh psyker and out comes an npc evil clone of his character (wich only has beef with his character) - see how he handles that.

Are there stats for a culexus assassin? if so, use that. (pariah psyker killer ftw!)

Or have a sniper shoot at him from half a mile away when he has his guard down.

Necrons and lots of them...

Have them find a mysterious xeno artifact that scans teh psyker and out comes an npc evil clone of his character (wich only has beef with his character) - see how he handles that.

Yes. Culexus is in ... one of the RT books, I believe. Might be Core, but not sure.

Since they're going into Ascension ... psybolt ammunition is not necessarily out of the question for well-connected elites. Look at the Blood of Martyrs and Daemonhunter armory sections. Or Radical's Handbook.

Or, hey, witch-lances. Inquisitor's Handbook (Inquisition section) I think - bonus damage against psykers and sets them on fire.

Also, if he's so powerful, any enemies aware of them are going to prioritize him as a target. He'll probably be a priority target anyways - psykers are pretty much the top of the priority list. This means that he will be focus-fired. He can't dodge like a Temple Assassin, so even if he is aware of them and successfully dodges the first two guys (if he's got the bonus dodge reaction talent), the third, fourth, and fifth (and so on) attacks can't be dodged. A dozen guys focused on hosing him down with gunfire while there are a few more to keep the rest of the party busy and unable to help him, plus a set of well-hidden snipers taking full advantage of their vastly superior range.

Remember, a halfway decent sniper-type is going to have no range penalty, probably reduced or no penalties for called shots, and be taking his aimed shot from several hundred meters. With a silenced/equivalent weapon, and probably he's going to both be well-hidden and have cover. If he's got buddies, they can alternate aiming and firing, so a full-action aimed shot is heading downrange for every two of them. Alternatively, feel free to swipe the spotter comrade stuff from Only War ratlings.

Throw Kharne the Betrayer at him? Kharne loves to butcher him some Psykers. I even made a profile for him, on a challenge from a friend of mine, that you could use (WS 85, and able to throw out 6 Best Quality Force Weapon attacks per round seemed about right).

P.S. Don't actually throw Kharne the Betrayer at your party unless you hate all of them. But some kind of Khornate daemon that's highly resilient to Psychic powers could work just as well.

[...]

P.S. Don't actually throw Kharne the Betrayer at your party unless you hate all of them. But some kind of Khornate daemon that's highly resilient to Psychic powers could work just as well.

Why not? Khârn is actually a pretty cool guy, once you get to know him.

Eh, Kharne isn't enough! Use Angron himself! OR JUST USE THE LITERAL MANIFESTATION OF KHORNE!

Or have rocks fall.

I suggest ignoring the fear reactions in the rules and having armed people react like they do in real life: Screaming and full auto fire.

I suggest ignoring the fear reactions in the rules and having armed people react like they do in real life: Screaming and full auto fire.

No, because then players will argue that they should get to do that when they encounter fear effects.

Put them somewhere where using powers is a really bad idea. Such as during a warp transit. Use of psyker powers is an astoundingly bad idea in that situation.

Or assign them a unit of Sororitas (for example) to work with. The first time the psyker trips phenomena, much less perils, it's riddle him with bolter rounds while setting him on fire and dismembering what's left.

If he's too blatant with power usage and uncaring about phenomena/perils or exposing civilians to psyker activities, (a) the Ordo Hereticus will be displeased (meaning the Witchfinders will be eying him, and if something draws a Witchfinder's eye, it's automatically guilty of something and therefore shall be tested and probably burned), and (b) the Adeptus Telepathica might require he undergo review, purity testing, and assorted other exhaustive tests and examinations, and investigate him and his power usage thoroughly. The Telepathica might require an alteration to his psy-warding if he's too profligate with power use, and such a change would be instead of killing himself on a fatal perils, killing himself on any perils.

No, because then players will argue that they should get to do that when they encounter fear effects.

[...]

And then you tell them no.

Honestly, anyone gripped by fear should be controlled by the GM until he snaps out of it, doing fear-related things, including knocking over oil lamps, emptying a clip uncontrollably, or just leg it.

I suggest ignoring the fear reactions in the rules and having armed people react like they do in real life: Screaming and full auto fire.

No, because then players will argue that they should get to do that when they encounter fear effects.

Oh, I'd totally let them. What I wouldn't let them do is pick their targets. Roll for whom you actually hit with that BS skill, boy-o...including your own party.

No, because then players will argue that they should get to do that when they encounter fear effects.

[...]

And then you tell them no.

Honestly, anyone gripped by fear should be controlled by the GM until he snaps out of it, doing fear-related things, including knocking over oil lamps, emptying a clip uncontrollably, or just leg it.

Yeah otherwise players get "creative":

Gm: "ok Bruce, Steve, John and Mike, after seeing a keeper of secrets and 6 daemonettes manifest before your eyes, your acolytes are overcome with fear and utter terror!"

Bruce: "I shoot wildy around! into the group of daemons with my stormbolter loaded with psy-bolts."

Gm: "groan"

Steve: "hey daemonettes are hot chicks man, i'm not afraid of them, i run up to hug and kiss them!"

Gm: T.T

Mike: "my character had his eyes closed!"

Gm: "oh for pete sake..."

John: " My character is secretly a Khorne worshipper! So instead of fear i suffer the effects of hatred and frenzy towards slaaneshi daemons!"

Gm:" whaaaa? you are an ecclesiarch priest!"

John: "so? BFTBG baby!"

Gm: *facepalms*

Don't forget that psychic phenomena are not a Test and thus cannot be rerolled with a Fate Point.

Don't forget that psychic phenomena are not a Test and thus cannot be rerolled with a Fate Point.

He mentioned this is Ascension, which means the Psyker's probably not even getting Phenomena, thanks to fettering.