As all of you aware no doubt aware, once a Psyker has mastered a discipline they receive a -5 to all Thresholds, this along with the Focused discipline Talent can make some supposedly major powers alot easier to manifest to the point where they become a no brainer choice over similar minor powers, making the choice of choosing the minor powers a wasted choice.

Some examples for you,

Divine Shot, Threshold is 15, Mastered takes that down to a 10, when combined with Focused Discipline, it will require only a 8 to manifest. This is equal to Unnatural Aim, now baring some specific situations, which is better OVERALL?

Another example, Seal Wounds over Healer, Not only is Seal Wounds better in term of reaching the Threshold, by having an effectively lower Threshold, it gains overbleed as well, not to mention it being only a half action as well as healing more damage.

This only makes it more likely that players wanting more "efficent" characters choose minor powers that have no corresponding Major power making the character in question spring these major powers from nowhere as they have had no experience with the lesser version.

Now i full understand that in some cases the major power should be flat out better, nor am i saying that once assigned to a discipline that they should have a -5 Threshold adjustment for mastering a Discipline. But something that i think would help the situation is having the them benefit form Focused Discipline, as a minor thing, being associated with a Discipline will have with the in character justification of some powers also.

I do not believe minor psychic powers need; nor should, be categorized within the psychic disciplines. They are minor powers for a reason.

-=Brother Praetus=-

Discipline powers have a disadvantage in that once you pick a discipline, taking powers from another discipline will hurt your character in the long run because you have to spend more xp to master the first. Minor powers have no such problem. For example while unnatural aim is a bad choice for a diviner, it is still useful for psykers of the other diciplines. Healer is a bad choice for a biomancer, but could be useful for a pryo.

Besides discipline powers are focused into a single area* while minor powers are all over the place.

*Though I'm not sure how lightning fits into biomancy.

Shockwave said:

Seal Wounds has had its Threshold increased to 20 in the errata.

As for minor powers, I'd allow people to assign them to a Discipline and gain the usual Discipline benefits (but not count towards earning Mastery) provided they fit. Sense Presence goes to Divination, Touch of Madness into Telepathy and so on. Perhaps I'd attach a small XP cost to this. I'd need to give it more thought.

I had taken the -5 bonus to threshhold checks to apply to minor powers as well ... thus an individual might well choose a minor power over a major when he can expect a much better overbleed, with corresponding results. This encourages the continued used of minor powers and the feeling that you did not waste your xp in pervious levels.

For example: The minor power Fearful Aura has a threshold of 7. After taking Focused Discipline and the -5 in mind the check becomes 0. For every ten points by which you exceed your threshold you increase your fear rating by 1. By the time you're doing this you'll probably be rolling 3d10, plus your WP bonus which will certainly be 4 or better. Thus you'll almost certainly get two raises, increasing your fear rating to 4; terrifying enough to shatter minds. The drawbacks being it effects anyone looking at you - friends and foe alike.

Using the major power counterpart Terrify, we have a base check of 13, reduced to 6 by the methods mentioned. Assuming his end roll results in a 20 (reasonable enough with 3d10 and a WP bonus of 4) he may effect 4 people and his overbleed of 14 points impose upon them a +20 modifier for their roll on the shock table. The benefit of using this over the other is that you may target it and it needn't depend upon the enemy seeing you.

Following that line of thought it appears as though both of the powers have their place in the game, dependant upon the situation.

Additionally, minor powers will be easier to sustain, meaning you may keep them up longer and sustain more than one at a time.

Jack of Tears said:

What about psykers who take powers from multiple major diciplines ?

It is possible for a scholar with more than 50 willpower to get 10 powers in their primary discipline and a few powers in a secondary one. But they won't be able to take "psychic power" enough times to get 10 powers from the secondary discipline without having more than 70 willpower.

Besides if you feel that you wasted your xp by buying minor powers, that means you didn't plan your character well. That isn't unique to psykers, so why should the solution be uniquie to them ?

Bilateralrope said:

One could say that in the case of minor powers once you've reached psy rating 3 or 4 you receive the -5 associated with specializing in a discipline. (only applied to using minor powers here) This reflects the fact that no matter whether you specialize in one discipline or not, you have mastered your use of the warp enough to make the use of minor powers - almost - routine. (that is, as close to routine as one can get when utilizing the warp)

Bilateralrope said:

Because psy powers are unique to psykers, as is the fact that xp they spent on minor powers - which they need if they want to be useful to the party - feels outright wasted when those same powers become obsolete once they hit a certain level. It is like spending all your money on a bb gun to scare off dogs when one day someone comes by and gives you a .45; suddenly you feel like all the money you spent on that bb gun was a waste ... sure it scared off the dogs sometimes, but now it's just sitting in a shoe box gathering dust.

Like someone else said - why bother using minor powers when you can bring major powers down to the same threshold? And buying minor powers you know you'll not have access to when you specialize in a different discipline is outright metagaming.

I already consider minor powers to be associated, this association is only relevant once mastery or focus-type talents are acquired however.

Jack of Tears said:

Jack of Tears said:

Additionally spontensiouly being able to heal the most critical of wounds where before you could not even heal a paper cut strikes me as a bit off.

Now i'm not saying that you should apply the -5 to the threshold of such grouped minor powers, not should they count for mastering the discipline. All i am merely suggesting is that they benefit from Focused Discipline (First on arrives at Rank 6) so that these minor powers continue to have a use later on in the Pskers career.

Jack of Tears said:

I'm amused that you used a gun analogy while claiming that the powers situation was unique to psykers, isn't it pretty much the same situation with all the weapon use talents. So you now have know how to use a bolt pistol, are you really going to be using that Laspistol? oh you still need to warm soup. If you play from low level to high level characters they are going to end up with some redundant skills, sure they were useful at the time but now less so. ( I would estimate most character have would at least 300 points of wasted skills.)

Yes with obsolete minor powers the psyker could pick up more points of obsolete stuff, considering that they basically get an entire chapter of unique abilities to buy (and will get more as more source books are realeased.) I can't find myself to sympathic to them

Seriously if someone is willing to avoid using the powers they want to be using with that character until they can get the higher power version, just so they can have that extra 300 exp they really are too concerned about character optimisation. Yes you may not purchase the lesser power you think your unlikely to use in the near futurw in the hope of picking up the supped up counterpart, (The GM sends you to investigate a cargo ship, you may hold on the animal controlling route.)

The evil part of me thinks the solution is to compile a list of all the redundant powers and make them pre-reqs for ones which replace them.

McGonigle said:

Ah, but you can buy a better las pistol, you can't buy back the xp you've effectively lost once your minor powers become obsolete.

I think it's an issue of minimum difficulty. Applying a -5 to regular powers will drop the lowest of them down to the level of some minor powers. Applying -5 to most minor powers will drop their difficulty to almost nothing. Basically the minimum difficulty for a power should probably be in the 6-9 range. Dropping it below that may cause balance issues.

As for wasted xp - tough. There are plenty of talents that end up being useless in the late game and the player had a choice - he could have bought something else. A few hundred xp here and there over the course of a character's career doesn't make that much of a difference. This isn't DnD 4ed.

Jack of Tears said:

I see there being two parts towards manifesting a power:

1 - Pull the required energy from the warp.

2 - Manipulate the energy so that it does what you want.

Jack of Tears said:

Worrying about wasted XP is also metagaming.

Jack of Tears said:

I was refering to the Talents required to use them, once you get Pistol Training (Bolt) you also can't get back the exp you spent on Pistol Training (Las) or Pistol training (SP) and while I admit I haven't looked though all the weapons in all the books I have yet to see any Las-pistol that is better than a bolt pistol. Or on the same note once you get Melee weapons training (Power), the exp you spent on Primitive and chain weapons is useless.

Okay the Las/primitive training could come in handy with any situation were the player have their equipment taken from them, but that's like saying minor powers are still useful if the GM ever puts you in situation where you can't use any major powers for X reason.

There's also something similar with alot of the Tech-priest 'magic' powers, Lumien Shock rapidly falls to the point it's below par in melee very rapidly and any decent way of concealing a weapon renders it completely worthless. With Lumien Charge being only slightly better. (Which is a shame since they are both really fun powers image wise.)And the only thing saving Feric Lure and the first levitation ones is they are pre-reqs for the later power.

I wasn't so much concerned about "wasting experience" Getting Healer and then latter on getting Seal Wounds is i feel a natural progression. Just like going Las>Bolt is a natural progression, the differnce being your Training in Las is still usefull to you (Personally, i think being able to use Las is very good as a back up) where as healer is no longer useful, unless for some reason you can use only one dice to manifest your power, and that will be alot rarer than needing to use a Las weapon after learn to use a Bolt weapon.

And maybe there should be prerequisites for the Major Powers... IF you get to claim a discipline related bonus.... I feel a new project...

I think *some* powers should be discipline related, but I personally am in favour of having psykers with one single area of expertise- two at the most. (perhaps telepathy/telekinesis and one other) since in the fiction, all psykers seem to have some degree of telepathy.

Shockwave said:

Well, I think that Healer will always be useful, even if you have Seal Wounds, due to the lower difficulty. If the PC has only taken a few wounds or if time is not an issue, it may be preferable to use Healer because you will only have to roll one dice, reducing the chance of being sucked into the warp.

I have eight of the telepathy powers, but I still find myself using my minor powers more often. I have been known to use Fearful Aura to clear crowded market places when we were trying to chase down a local assassin (what? I only have 49 corruption). Terrify wouldn't have worked for that situation. I had the option of compel or spasm when a sniper was on a rickety scaffolding, and I took spasm. Having him flop around meant he fell and didn't get the extra umph for resisting a suicidal command. Distort Vision is a better choice than See-Me-Not when you need to have people chase a false you instead of them standing infront of the door.

Even though I have many "redundant" powers, I still use my minor powers alot. Lowering the threshold on these would make my character have an extreme advantage over the other players. I am already rolling just one die for most of the minors, and if it weren't for the GM saying that you have to roll at least one die to manifest a power (I am not sure if this is a real rule or a house rule) I wouldn't have to roll at all. I am all about rolling as few dice as possible, since dice seem to hate me. I have already caused the party to fall unconscious in the middle of a firefight, had to fight a deamon out of my head, set off an earthquake which caused half a squad of arbiters to fall to their deaths (while manifesting float no less, I love irony) and recently burnt my last fate point when I got sucked into the warp with a little burping noise.

Lowering the threshold of these powers would tempt me to be evil. My next two purchases are going to be Psychic Power. When I get mastery of telepathy, I am counting on it not working for fearful aura. Imagine this scenario. Threshold 7 reduced to 2, Power Well and Discipline Focus Telepathy giving me +3. My willpower bonus is 7 (yes, I blew alot of exp there. sigh), so I have +10 to beat a threshold of 2. If I roll anything over a one, I have an rank 3 aura of fear. And if I use two dice... that just seems a bit too much for me to resist.