Hey everyone,

I want your input on my view of the current Psychic system.

Problem: The current system costs way too much xps for the psyker to be able to do anything else. Hence killing most utility from him.

What i did: I left the system as it is, except for the Psy Rating.

Base Psy Rating: Willpower Bonus /2, round up. (So average psyker PR 2 (40 WP/2), even a WP 70 psyker will only have 4)

Sanctionned: +1 PR

It can be raised as a stat, using Willpower / Psyker aptitudes. Max +5 (+1 per upgrade)

What do you guys think?

tbh, the current XP system poses the same problem for anything else. With how psykers can select aptitudes, though (they basically get one for free via RAW), you can pretty much get your entire tree and main attribute for cheap, in comparison to other acolytes, and retain a lot more utility in the process.

I agree that Psykers are required to pay a lot of experience for their claim to fame, possibly too much. However, I have mixed feelings about your proposed change. Experience is a very important gate to the Psyker playstyle. For example, no other class can pay experience to open a portal entire kilometers away, or melt someone's face off with ammoless Melta beams. Psykers are arguably only as good as their powers. When you make their powers very cheap, suddenly they're good at everything for a fraction of the experience that other characters would pay. Additionally, Psychic Powers are not gated by Influence like physical equipment is, so one could say that the only thing stopping Psykers from dominating everything is experience. Psykers are expensive to play but bring a lot to the table. I would rather leave the costs as-is, but I'm open to second opinions.

As an aside, I think Psykers are justified in their extra Aptitude/experience discounts. There are entire branches of enemies and items that are allergic to (read: super-effective against) Psykers. Just as well, Psykers have non-standard Game Over conditions in the form of the Psychic Phenomena/Perils of the Warp table. Psykers also have to juggle their experience between Characteristics, Skills, Talents, and Psychic Powers instead of just the first three like everyone else. Without that extra Aptitude as sort of a bribe, players don't scale nearly as well as their peers that don't have to buy any powers.

Good point. But in our campaign, we dont use influence and prefer Roleplaying it. And i think the ammo point is kind of balanced with the Perils of the Warp. Can't use it too much. Even maybe less. And on top of that, you cant actually fire 2 shots of a psychic power, but with a weapon, its something else, you can easily get 2 weapon shots, if not 3, and for much less xps.

One of the other dangers of Psychic Powers is that they stack with physical weaponry in addition to potentially replacing them. Take for instance the [Warp Speed {Psychic Power}]. Normally, it's gated by PR 5 and some Characteristics. Drastically reducing the cost of/increasing the availability of PR increases makes Warp Speed attainable much sooner. And then players not only have a very strong Psychic Power comparatively early on, those players can begin to snowball quickly. Warp Speed is an extreme example, but several Psychic Powers scale pretty hard with PR and can be combined with normal tactics.