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.

The rules of fear are incredibly robust and completely unessecary to change. They are down right torturous as it is. High handed GM tyranny doesn't make for a good game, and most players will just stop coming to your game if you are a ****** intentionally.

With that said, I appriciatte your input everyone. I took out Fettering, and read the Errata. I brought in all of the limitations that the Errata introduced and in a single game session the character was noticably challenged more. He had to decide between defensive poers and fighting the fight. When he switched and did something spectacular, he got shot a lot. He took his damage and almost went down. I compeltely content now.

Happy GM

There's a sort of "fettering light" rules in Disciples of the Dark Gods (IIRC), which work quite well. It was a Talent called Psychic Supremacy, that let you discard 1 single 9 from your power-roll. This will let you have some semblance of control, at the expense of power.

Then Ascension came along and made these rules completely obsolete

what is his willpower, remember he has to check that before every power roll. Or have we been doing this wrong?

what is his willpower, remember he has to check that before every power roll. Or have we been doing this wrong?

When manifesting Psychic Powers, Willpower isn't important, only the Willpower bonus is. Each psychic power has a power threshold, and the Psyker can roll a number of d10 up to his Psy Rating plus his Willpower Bonus to try and match or exceed the Power Threshold.

...And since they're playing Ascension, it's not entirely unreasonable to assume the Psyker in question will have at LEAST a Willpower bonus of 12, though you could potentially get a WPB of up to 24. Even at 12 though, that enough to fetter the power and STILL cast every single minor Psychic Power without fail, and a fair number of major psychic powers with a half-decent chance of overbleeding them.

I can't stand Ascension, personally... Once players reach that point, it becomes an absolute nightmare for GMs. Not only does combat balancing become absolutely impossible, but you have to throw absolutely ridiculous enemies at your PCs in every single battle to have a hope of hurting them. Plus, balance becomes impossible on a mission-wide level too, when your players literally outrank everyone and can pretty much do whatever they want. When your players are still Acolytes, it become reasonable to put certain limitations in place to keep a game on the rails, but once those limitations are gone, keeping a story together becomes ridiculously difficult.

Actually from my perspective You should not think of how to screw up the psyker, instead giving a few buffs to Your other PCs and just throw something more dangerous at them. By buffing I mean make some of them go through bio-forging or trans-gen grafting, make one of them discordant or untouchable, have them a few implants etc.

The only problem with ascension that I see is that FFG tried to make a group of acolytes ascend into a group of super cool superhero-like team where everybody was supposed to have some unique super-power, unfortunately failing at that because of bad balancing -- Psyker OP in everything, Assassin OP because super dodge, Interrogator and Judge suck at what they're supposed to be best (fellowship) and so on.

It is understandable that You have issues with it, the only thing is that You can and IMHO should just try to balance Your characters out so that noone is getting super-powered or disabled-like, if that means damaging some aspects of Psyker like permanent characteristics damage or improving Your other PC by a bit then so be it. Of course that is much harder than just tell Your Psyker Player to kill his character but that is what You should do as a GM in my humble opinion.

Actually from my perspective You should not think of how to screw up the psyker, instead giving a few buffs to Your other PCs and just throw something more dangerous at them. By buffing I mean make some of them go through bio-forging or trans-gen grafting, make one of them discordant or untouchable, have them a few implants etc.

The only problem with ascension that I see is that FFG tried to make a group of acolytes ascend into a group of super cool superhero-like team where everybody was supposed to have some unique super-power, unfortunately failing at that because of bad balancing -- Psyker OP in everything, Assassin OP because super dodge, Interrogator and Judge suck at what they're supposed to be best (fellowship) and so on.

It is understandable that You have issues with it, the only thing is that You can and IMHO should just try to balance Your characters out so that noone is getting super-powered or disabled-like, if that means damaging some aspects of Psyker like permanent characteristics damage or improving Your other PC by a bit then so be it. Of course that is much harder than just tell Your Psyker Player to kill his character but that is what You should do as a GM in my humble opinion.

double post

a untouchable can make life very hard for any psyker. The raise of all the target numbers and the like making their powers much harder to use. p 38 of the radical's handbook is where you can get some ideas how to create such a NPC.

a untouchable can make life very hard for any psyker. The raise of all the target numbers and the like making their powers much harder to use.

Untouchables/Pariahs are troublesome for Psykers, but has already been discussed they're hardly perfect answers, due to powers like Fling which a Pariah has no defense against. There's also telepathic psykers which can simply mind control the Pariah's allies into killing him for him. Or. You know. A bolter to the face. A Telekinetic Psyker is a nightmare to beat in combat, seeing how they can increase their armor, nullify solid projectile and explosive weapons, and, if they're clever about it, mitigate the damage from melta, flame and plasma weapons (and if they're TK/Pyro they can actually nullify almost every damage type in the game, while still being juggernauts of destruction).

Though I'll at least grant that such a Psyker is going to be mainly good at fighting and not a whole lot else, since he'll have had to put forth a shitton of talents to reliably pull off some of these tricks.

How about raising the stakes?

There are bullets that ignore shields (Shield-breaker Rounds), tanks that can level him, use a MP Las Cannon (like my group against CSMs), and worst of all the Power Stakes of Witch Hunter Rykehuss (in addition to their own damage they deal 1d10 damage extra for every point of Psy Rating the target has).

Seriously, if anybody in my group creates a hab-block destroying murder-psyker and goes on a spree i will unleash the PDF, IG and =I= on him.

The reason why such psykers behave is because that is done in the 40th millenium to deal with them. Or they constantly run and hide.

How about raising the stakes?

There are bullets that ignore shields (Shield-breaker Rounds), tanks that can level him, use a MP Las Cannon (like my group against CSMs), and worst of all the Power Stakes of Witch Hunter Rykehuss (in addition to their own damage they deal 1d10 damage extra for every point of Psy Rating the target has).

Seriously, if anybody in my group creates a hab-block destroying murder-psyker and goes on a spree i will unleash the PDF, IG and =I= on him.

The reason why such psykers behave is because that is done in the 40th millenium to deal with them. Or they constantly run and hide.

Don't forget the Adepta Sororitas, and some of the more anti psy chapters like the Black Templars. Or if even that is not enough: Unleash hell Khorne!

Gm: "I'm sorry Bruce, but Khorne has enough of your sh*t and he's comming to kill you."

Bruce: "Cool!"

Gm: "Sigh."

Might I suggest that the stronger a psyker, the brighter his soul's presence in the warp.

And there are things in the warp that will be drawn to him. Enslavers, daemons, weird life-sucking entities you make up... the bigger he is, the harder he is likely to fall. There can be no good end for a psyker in 40K -- either they're so weak that they die immediately, or they're so strong that they will attract the scariest of enemies.

using a person that is a untouchable,( a person that makes psy powers much harder) found in the Radical's handbook page 38. The are immune to psy powers directed at them and add 10 to all psy checks within their wisdom bonus area them. The wisdom is 30 bonus is 3 or 3 meters. That and they really creep out psykers as well as other people.

I can't stand Ascension, personally... Once players reach that point, it becomes an absolute nightmare for GMs. Not only does combat balancing become absolutely impossible, but you have to throw absolutely ridiculous enemies at your PCs in every single battle to have a hope of hurting them. Plus, balance becomes impossible on a mission-wide level too, when your players literally outrank everyone and can pretty much do whatever they want. When your players are still Acolytes, it become reasonable to put certain limitations in place to keep a game on the rails, but once those limitations are gone, keeping a story together becomes ridiculously difficult.

Funny, even at 40 000xp, my ascension players where still challenged by simple cultists and corrupted PDF. Strategy and organisation are the real things you must put against ascended players.

But indeed, the psyker is a pain in the *ss.