Greetings all,

I've noticed that, in many topics where psykers are brought up, they usually tend to be the sort that lean towards Telepathy/Divination/Biomancy. Obviously it's hard to stay subtle when you set the building and some 30 square miles of the surrounding areas ablaze or pick up forks and knives with your mind to jab them into your opponent but surely there is a calling for the Pyro and the Telekine out there.

As already noted in the rulebook, Pyromancy is pretty much a one-trick pony - you can burn people in ten different ways. Yay.

Any other disciplines, however, have quite a lot of uses, although I'm missing a Hover/Fly variant of Telekinetics.

I'd say that since Dark heresy is based on Warhammer 40.000, and wargamers tend to be fascinated by fictional (and some times real) spectacular violence, Pyromancy and Telekinetics or Biomancy probably see the most use. It let's your character be able to be inhumanly violent in different ways.

But that's just my prejudice

I've got a single guy in my group who's a psyker. Suprisingly enough he's not really decided to take a single path for a discipline, instead he's focused more on the minor powers. Though he has mentioned a time or two of choosing to take up the Biomancy path, mabye Pyromancy.

My group has a Telepath, although he may be heartbroken by the erratta to a certain power from that disciple which gives you an utterly awesome sword.

I'll be joining this group with either a melee Biomancer (kind of like a Jedi who likes to grow extra sets of legs for fun and profit and would rather have a Power Fist than some stupid sword) or a shooty Diviner (gun kata! ...and utility).

Said Telepath player mentioned something about a designer admitting that they intentionally made Pyromancy boring and lavished love on Divination because normally the fire-based casters have all the fun and divination-type stuff is boring. It worked! Although Molten Man in DotDG is certainly lots of fun as well. Also, Telepathy + Demolition skill is a great way to blow stuff up if Pyromancy is too straightforward for you, which is neato.

Hodgepodge said:

While that is a reasonable distillation of what I said, the ability to set souls / spirits on fire is not an ability to be entirely dismissed.

Oh, and that erratta for that utterly awesome sword was always part of the original write up, it was left off for reasons unknown.

The editor was probably a closet Telepath. Trust not the witch!

Holocaust is a rather fun ability, yes. It's hard to resist the idea of daemons being a little scared of you rather than the other way around. (Especially since Molten Man lets you basically turn into one of them on top of that). Also, Burning Fists is quite fun once you combine it with a dash of Biomancy.

Honestly most of the psykers in my games prefered minor powers. Easy to pull off, and less likely to get you eaten by the warp.

Dalnor Surloc said:

Chickens. Chickens the lot of them!

Havn't they heard the motto of the SAS: Who dares, wins ?

I was scared off of telepathy by the double edged sword of how hard it is to use (usually an activation + a WP contest.. not that I mind since PC's could also be on the receiving end), and the high chances of becoming insane and corrupt with much use. The Closer Than Flesh rules just made the risk/reward ratio not worth it to me, since I play characters for the long haul.

I'm curious how telepathy has worked out for others?

Can't really judge. The only player to go with a telepath in my game got so corrupt so fast from making deals with daemons that he only once ever encountered reading a mind more corrupt than his own. He usually caused corruption and insanity with his telepathic contacts rather then receiving it.

aethel said:

Dark Soul. Get it as fast as you can, along with any other talents that boost your defences against insanity points. I wonder if there is a way for Psykers to get the Rite of Pure Thought, talent?

Insanity points tend to matter very little with that one. (Said the Techpriest with over 50 insanity points )

In our games the telekine are the most prevailing. I believe this is due to the balance between offensive / defensive and somewhat utilitarian aspects of the powers. Specifically though the minor powers get a hefty work out as players by the mid tier can easily only use a single die to activate many powers.

Two psykers in my group for all the campaigns. Both by same player.

Number one, Leman the Mind-Cleansed Pyromancer. I had his family a group of heretics, whom experimented on him to make him a Psyker. Grabbed by the Inquisition, he quickly filled the role of his family. He quickly became so corrupt after finding a daemonsword that latched onto him he went bonkers and killed a few of his team-mates.

Number two, Martin Luther the Telepath. So far, he's been good with his powers, but has been chancing it of late. I'm really awaiting the day where he goes overboard like he did with Leman, causing me to roll a horrible Perils. For his use though, he simply has been using Minor powers, and waiting for a good telepath power (we roll for them to ensure random) and simply has boosted melee combat through the roof.

@Varnias Tybalt

I wonder if there is a way for Psykers to get the Rite of Pure Thought, talent?

You might want to take a look at the Scourge the Heretic novel...

Insanity points tend to matter very little with that one. (Said the Techpriest with over 50 insanity points )

Er... no. They matter still exactly the same - you merely don't have any emotional derangements. The Flesh Is Weak, Hallucinations, Delusions and others are still quite capable of ruining your day.

Cifer said:

Oh I've read Scourge the Heretic. The thing is, Rite of Pure Thought is just a talent. It doesn't say that it would have any implications on someone with a psy rating (yet, at least). The "Techpriestifiation process" isn't really explained in great detail.

As for insanity, it is the emotional derangements that tend to ruing things when you have amassed a lot of insanity points. And although over 50 is a pretty high number, he's not likely to recieve any more due to the Rite of Pure Thought. His disorder is a Delusion (namely the "Righteousness" delusion). But it won't pose much of a problem, since he's an Inquisitor now. Even if an Inquisitor suffers from delusions of righteousness, there's not a lot of people around to question his mental state (and he would certainly not be the first Inquisitor to be convinced that his own cause is just).

Im quite pleased with how he turned out. The perfect radical Inquisitor, insane enough to believe that anything he does is righteous, but outwardly cold and logical all the time. Still I had to fudge his insanity a bit to include night terrors along with his delusions (for narrative purposes) once he became an NPC instead of a PC.

I feel sorry for his acolytes though.