1) Besides actually being a psyker, how does one get psychic powers? Much like Eisenhorn and the like. Elite advances could be a way, but that can't be the only one.

2) Would you allow a player to buy-off a negative aspect of their homeworld? For example, after a sufficient amount of time out of a hive, might a hiver be OK without a ceiling?

Having psychic powers is what makes you a psyker. You can't get psychic powers and not be a psyker. Technically, Adepts can get low-level powers at the highest Ranks, though it makes little sense IMO.

Alternatively, you can learn sorcery. Which is sort of bad for your soul.

I would let player's buy off their acolyte's negative background traits. A lot can happen in an acolyte's service, and I see no reasons why a Feral Worlder could not eventually become accustomed to technology, a Hive Worlder getting over agoraphobia, or a Void Born spending enough time planet-side to regain lost bone and muscle tissue.

The IH also gives you an option if you don't mind rolling on the "Oops" table every time you use it...

I'm not sure how to handle the cost and time needed to remove the negative traits, but I'm sure I'll figure it out someway. As far as psychic powers go, I can see them as Elite Advances, but very costly ones. I don't see why a non-psyker should be the only one to have them. Besides, the core book mentions Traits and certain drugs can make a non-psyker psychic, but when you go the traits, you find the psyker traits. Kooky.

TalkingMuffin said:

Because being a psyker is what lets you have psychic powers. It is a gene with which you are born. It's not a skill like juggling.

Moreover, being a psyker is a curse. It is not something any Emperor-fearing citizen of the Imperium wants to be.

To the point. Yes, a non-psyker can acquire psychic powers. By becoming a psyker, that is, a Nascent Psyker (see IH), someone whose psychic power has awaked late, is uncontrolled, and therefore is astonishingly dangerous. This is a death sentence, because the Imperial forces will try to kill you (and will eventually succeed).

Being a psyker means being a gateway to Hell. Psychic powers are not DnD spells, and Telekinetic Barrage is not Magic Missile. Dark Heresy is a horror game.

This is why I think that the best DH players are Call of Cthulhu players. They don't ask, "man, why do I have to lose Sanity to cast Bind Dimensional Shambler?" Because it's totally not in genre.

I apologize for the rant.

As someone mentioned, the drug Spook can grant a temporary psychic power. It's also highly, highly illegal for this very reason. While there are no mechanics for it, I suspect that prolonged Spook usage could awaken latent psychic powers. That said, having psychic powers and not being a sanctoned psyker means that, if discovered, you can expect two things: a ride on one of the Black Ships or death. It's why the Nascent Psyker elite package is a death sentence for any character that takes it. You can theoretically go rogue and abandon Imperial service, but then that's the same as retiring the character. Your only hope as an unsanctioned psyker is to hope that your Inquisitor is radical enough and inclined to help you train you to control your powers without sending you off on a Black Ship cruise.

As for Adepts learning psychic powers, it's a debate that's come up before. The way I see it either their mastery of the human mind has unlocked a psychic potential in a far less obvious fashion that the a nascent psyker (though they're still unsanctioned and susceptible to Black Shipping or purging) or you swap in the Sorcery talents from Disciples of the Dark Gods and say that they're learned sorcery by studying forbidden tomes (which is even worse than being an unsanctioned psyker should you be discovered).

bogi_khaosa said:

Apologies, why not in game mechanics terms?

Because firing it off may cause the walls to weep blood and your own allies to die in a huge radius.

I'm not pushing for my players to have "powerz", but I love the idea of unbridle and unwanted power. I like cool mixed with the horror. Let's be honest, losing sanity and such is part of the setting, but we don't rp to get screwed-over. So, here's the question: Why is being a nascent psyker a death sentence? If you're very valuable to your master, they may insist that you're trained to be a psyker and kept (as suggested above). Also, what if you DO take a ride on a Black Ship? Why can't your character return after learning to control his power? The catch is, how? Mechanically, do you just let them take psychic powers to reflect that they're now psykers?

TalkingMuffin said:

Well, for unbridled and unwanted power, there is no better elite package then the Nascent Psyker.

As for why it would be death sentence -because that's the party line. Of course, this dose not mean that it is automatic and applies to everyone in all situations. Legally and officially, the character is an abomination who should be bagged, locked up, stuffed full of torpor, and shipped off to Terra asap. Failing that, they need to be killed before they doom everything. Any deviance from that is criminal and for an Inquisitor to allow such deviance is a truly radical action indeed. However, seeing as how those fellas are also known to summon demons, raise the dead, and all forms of other major no-no's, an Inquisitor could conceivably allow a nascent Psyker to remain in his or her service. However, like employing daemons to do your dirty-work, that is something that said Inquisitor would most definitly not want to let out of the closet for all the Inquisition to see least he be next on the pyre.

On the whole sanctioning front, it's for the most part a bit outside the scope of a game or story unless the whole group is to be bound for Terra. Assuming that the nascent character is of the extreme minority that survives the tests (a crap-shot at best) and doesn't turn into emperor kibble, the travel to Terra and sanctioning process seems to take in the average of 10 years (psyker characters get an additional 1d10 years added to their age and that's after it being average for them to have been taken to the ships at puberty... so the wait for a Black Ship, travel to and from terra, and the sanctioning looks to average out at a decade or so).

On the outside chance they survive, once complete, the psyker will belong to the Adaptus Astrotelepathica and very well will be assigned or rented out to duties somewhere else entirely where they feel the new psykers talents are best needed or where ever the latest kick-back is coming from. They could end up on a core world in Segmentum Solar, somewhere in the vast gulf of Segmentum Ultima or any where else but the tinny little sliver of space that is the Calixis sector doing Emperor only knows what for the Astrotelepathica or their new owners, whom ever they may be. It would take a hell of a lot of work for the character's Inquisitor to keep tabs on the character throughout the entire process (in the very slim chance they survive) and then know/dictate what happens to them afterwards before it happens and is too late. Once a person boards a Black Ship, barring incredibly inconceivable coincidences, they will never be seen again by anyone who knew them. So, if a character was able to return from whence he came to those who knew him after 10 years, it would be like winning the lottery. Sure it can happen, but the odds are stacked pretty strongly against it.

Rules wise, a copious amount of elite advances would cover it i reckon though it'd be easer to just say the one in a billion chance wouldn't happen to any of your characters and leave it at that. Or, if you don't want to be arbitrary and this happenes to a PC, have them roll 9d10 and if they all come up 9's, there character will be seen again in a decade or so. Else, they're gone forever to what ever fate awate those who board the Black Ships...

Graver, having your PCs shine as the most important people of the story isn't "arbitrary", it's good storytelling. I would tell, at the very least, the PC would burn every Fate Point they have and then have to earn them back. Hell, this may not ever happen, so it's not even an issue...yet. If it does, we'll see. That mentioned, you make perfect sense and I dig the view and as I'm still learning the 40K universe, it's always good to get the skinny on how things should be. I'm still confused as to how Eisenhorn's a psyker of any power, unless he's a total psyker, which begs the question as to why he's not more capable. Eh, no biggie. The game kicks ass.

TalkingMuffin said:

Eisenhorn was taken by the Black Ships as a child. He was recognized as a psyker of some potential by the Inquisition, removed from the Black Ships and taken to the Scholum to be educated. His psychic powers were trained as part of his education. At the age of 19 he was promoted to the rank of Interrogator and became a full Inquisitor at the age of 24. In short, he was raised from childhood to be an Inquisitor psyker. He is not more powerful because he reached had reached he only had the potential to reach a certain level of power.

From a Dark Heresy game standpoint, Eisenhorn is would be an Imperial Psyker whose player decided against buying a Psy Rating greater then 3 for role-playing reasons. In my campaign, I would have suggested the Legatine Investigator alternate rank for him. Obviously, his campaign achieved Ascension level play very quickly or his GM rejected the (absurd) idea that playing an Inquisitor was beyond the scope of a game about the Inquisition.

Huh, that's cool. Thanks!

Of course, it would probably have made more sense if I hadn't been trying to write it while being constantly interrupted by a young child. Kinda lost control of some of those sentences...

TalkingMuffin said:

Thants all I wanted to do, give you a baseline undertanding of why others mentioned "death sentence" for you to work from. :-) Glad my trying to wake up and get coffee in me ramblings gave you some insight into some of the possible hows and whys of the universe.

I was wondering if a scion from a powerful noble house should erupt, would they be tracked back to Terra and allowed to return home, provided they pass the Sanctioning? I can see things like that being very rare, but when there are billions upon billions of people, it's more than possible, especially in the sense of a PC. Of course, a noble's family may hide them...

TalkingMuffin said:

I expect the noble house would disown them, if not completely erase them from the family records, for the heinous crime of being born a mutant-witch. It is also possible they would try to hide their mutant spawn and raise them to use their abilities secretly for the house's advantage.

Given the prevailing attitudes concerning psykers, I would see it as an unusual event for a noble-born sanctioned psyker to be welcomed back into the fold with open arms. However, it's a very big galaxy...

I guess I'm not seeing them that way, at least among those "in the know". Of course, the only fiction I've read is "Eisenhorn" and being a psyker's not that bad. At least socially; Eisenhorn goes through them like Q-tips!

LuciusT said:

how do you know eisenhorn ever even went to the black ships he never said as much and im sure he would have at least mentioned it in the books and yes he was a weak pysker i think thats why they let them go seeing as most inquisitors have some latent level of psyker period thats why they have a good retinue anyways. nonethless in the book it nearly killed him to burn an evil book and i think the type of power u are talking about is like burning an entire planet. go with the nausent (sp?) psyker trait its what your looking for and if thats not enough make some sorceror powers.

Weak psyker? Eisenhorn- hardly. According to Hereticus he's a high-end Delta (IIRC- it's the passage reflecting on just how scarily powerful Ravenor has become). And given the fact that he still has natural sight, we know he hasn't been Soulbound. Only the exceptionally strong get away from their training without that (those who are too weak to warrant it generally become fodder for the Throne).

Ok, I'll grant he's weak compared to, say an Astartes Librarian, or an Astropath, or one of the Guard's Alpha Primaris psykers, but those are all scarily powerful (admittedly, most astropaths have rather limited uses for their power, but that doesn't make them weak, merely inflexible).

And logically, Eisenhorn either was taken by the Black Ships (although not necessarily all the way to Terra- it is theoretically possible that sanctioning can be done elsewhere, and in fact it makes more logistical sense to have a number of other locations in which to sanction people than merely old Terra) or he's an unsanctioned rogue. I would have thought that an unsanctioned rogue psyker holding full inquisitorial rank is more worthy of mention than an inquisitor who had been taken by the Black Ships and sanctioned.

maybe but honestly dont you think he would have some adverse affects to the sanctioning? i havent heard of any other than the whole not being able to stand untouchables something that honestly annoyed me because he never got to be with the woman he loved though cant help it im a sap for romance in the 40k bloodsoaked universe.

ThenDoctor said:

Not being able to stand untouchables is more because there's an untouchable involved than anything else - most people (all of whom have some psychic presence, but whose psychic aptitude is rarely more than a particular knack for understanding people, being somewhat lucky, or something similarly minor and inconsequential) are generally more irritable and intolerant in the presence of an untouchable, and for psykers, this general dislike is magnified into instinctive loathing and even physical discomfort.

As for Eisenhorn's being sanctioned... the character wouldn't make sense if he wasn't. For most of his early career, he ascribed to the Amalathan philosophy, espousing the status quo and the maintenance of the Imperium as it currently exists (as opposed to, say, the Recongregator ideology, which seeks to tear down and rebuild percieved weak or corrupt elements of the Imperium). If his chosen philosophy is one of maintaining the status quo, him being an illegal, unsanctioned psyker seems entirely contradictory to that. It doesn't necessarily have to have any obvious deleterious effects on a person; of those listed on the table in the rulebook (which are, obviously, not the only possible effects), a few are only psychological scars, which a man of sufficient strength of character and willpower (which Gregor Eisenhorn possesses, as he is quite a capable telepath, even if he's not as potent as the likes of Gideon Ravenor) would be able to conceal without difficulty.

As for not mentioning the Black Ships... Psykers in general don't like mentioning them. They aren't the kinds of places you want to remember, and those Psykers deemed useful and potent enough to Sanction have their memories of what happens aboard the Black Ships removed anyway (as mentioned in Purge the Unclean).

Gregor Eisenhorn is a Psyker in service to the Imperium. The assumption in such a case should always be that the character was collected by an Adeptus Astra Telepathica Blackship and Sanctioned as a servant of Him-on-Terra. Psykers in Imperial service who are not Sanctioned should be considered the exception, and the reason that they're an exception should be explained.

Alright i see where you're coming from its just never really struck me that he would have gone becuase he honestly never struck me as powerful enough to bother with because as i say again it took nearly all his energy to burn a book.

ThenDoctor said:

In theory, all psykers get picked up by the Blackships, and in practice, the majority are. Those who aren't powerful or stable enough to be useful are sacrificed to fuel the Golden Throne. Those who're powerful enough to be useful, but not stable enough to be reliable or sufficiently safe are Soulbound to make them better able to resist external corruption and wield their powers in relative safety, becoming Astropaths (who are sanctioned as such). Those who are powerful and stable enough to go without being Soulbound - the smallest of these three groups, which don't account for those who are simply too dangerous to be allowed to live - are sanctioned as legitimate and lawful psykers in the service of the Imperium.

"Not powerful enough to bother with" sits quite a bit lower on the scale, beneath even those deemed worthy only of being sacrificed...