Playing my first psyker here, a sneaky level 4 telepath masquerading as an Imperial Guardsman. Obviously, causing PotW on a regular basis will hinder his cover, so what are all the options I can take to reduce the chance of getting it, or the severity of it afterwards?

Any other "pimp-my-psyker" type tips appreciated too

- Get favoured by the warp as soon as you can. Then you can chose the less noticable phenomena.

- Limit when you use your powers.

- When rolling for a power, don't use any more dice than you need.

The whole Worp phenomena angle defines what a psyker is and does - to take either part of that away from him makes the character less than he was.

That said, if you're looking into going all "superspy", it might be time to holster the warp powers for a bit and rely on your other skills to get you through; saving the big guns for when they are really needed.

Forgot to mention, I went with Templar Calix from IH to represent the fact that my Psyker is a former Guardsman. And it seems the earliest you can get Favoured by the Warp, if you go the "battle-psyker" route, is Rank 8, by which time the game is over.vThat also seems to be the earliest that you can get psy rating 5, and I don't see Psy Rating 6 anywhere.

I am already being very limited with my power use and relying on my guns and "big-dumb-guardsman" act but still, perils of the warp can mess things up a bit. To make this more difficult, I'm hiding my nature from my party (only the GM knows I'm a psyker) and making them forget the walls weeping blood isn't a psyker power. Thus why I am looking for ways to avoid Perils.

I am already being very limited with my power use and relying on my guns and "big-dumb-guardsman" act but still, perils of the warp can mess things up a bit. To make this more difficult, I'm hiding my nature from my party (only the GM knows I'm a psyker) and making them forget the walls weeping blood isn't a psyker power. Thus why I am looking for ways to avoid Perils.

You do realize that the correct response to finding out someone's a psyker who has obviously been hiding the fact is to shoot him, don't you?

Bilateralrope has given the best advice. Other then what he'd said, the only sure fire way to avoid the perils is to not use the powers. If you use your powers, there will always be the chance it will all go wrong. Such is the life and fate of a psyker.

The best thing your character can do when PotW manifest is to blame them on someone else. If you are in the middle of a warzone it's easy enough to blame the enemy. But if not, have the psyker take the time to size up the other Guardsmen and find one who will be a good mark. One who is a little odd, who keeps to himself, or has an odd tic. The PotW show up, blame that guy. It may help to plant some evidence before hand. Though, if the psyker has the right powers he could get the mark to confess.

Well I asked this because I saw a thread a few days ago that had a number of useful tips on avoiding or mitigating PotW and had no luck tracking it down again. Ah well, c'est la vie

Nigh7gaun7 said:

Ah. There's part of it- if you go scholar-psyker you can get psy 6, as they focus upon raw psychic ability and mental skills as opposed to the necessary physicality of a battle-psyker. I can't quite remember if you can get Favoured earlier without an elite advance, but my gut says you can (books hidden away downstairs+late night answer+early start tomorrow= I'm not about to go look it up now), again, on the scholastic-psyker route (if it is possible). If you insist on going th battle-psyker route, then the only way I can think of to gain Psy Rating 6 is to go sorcerer (using elite advances, and I guess strictly speaking it would be Psy 5 (6), assuming you waited until Psy 5 to do it). Not a particularly sensible and survivable way of doing things, but given that you've been hiding your psychic abilities from even the other party members, well, in for a penny, in for plutonium...

Favoured by the warp sort of mearly delays the inevitable, it doesn't stop you from manifesting something, just what you manifest has a chance of being less horrible.

If you want to avoid it, roll less dice, if you only need a 5-6 to get something off, roll 1 dice and have a chance of failure, rather than a chance of POTW which is fine in 'less than critical' situations. Doesn't come off just try again.

The other abilities you want are-

Power Well, +1 to power rolls (it can be taken a couple of times)

Discipline Focus, +2 Power Rolls of a certain Psy Discipline

Invocation, double WP bonus + it can be augmented with Foci = a must for a major power being used in a non-critical situation with the minimum of dice

Eventually you will get Discipline Mastery, which reduces power tests by -5 on the Psy Disciple, which means you virtually discard 1 dice and take the '5' average it would net normally.

Other simple ways are just to be quite reserved with manifesting anything, if its easier to just stab someone, blow a hole through their head, run them over with a truck or chuck a grenade- do it. Otherwise you'll literally get a couple of POTW every time you play and chances are, give the rest of the group some extra corruption and insanity points they probably dont appreciate at the very LEAST, at the very worst you get possessed, summon a daemon and someones arse gets wrecked.

I think essentially if you want to play a Psyker for any length of time, play smart, be humble and conservative rather than doing it because you can, dunno about other GM's but I'm a complete prick to my groups psykers 'because I have to be', not because I dislike them. You ain't chucking magic missile and sleep here buddy, you're tapping into the warp directly and I play it rules as written, you take your chances with the roll fully understanding the consequences...

If you want to be a discreet psyker, I recomend not using Invocation checks when you risk detection. After all, when you've spent time chanting and dancing mystically, blaming the walls weeping blood on someone else is a tad more difficult.

Also, try to get a good decieve skill

Have you talked to your GM to see if you can get "Discipline Mastery" from DotDG as an elite advance? You can discard the first 9 you get if you use half your power die.

The best route, I would say, is to use sustained powers. They only need to be manifested once, and then sustained ten rounds later. And sustainment rolls can't trigger phenomena.

However, there are only a few sustained powers subtle enough in effect to be used in this way.

I'd rule otherwise on triggering phenomena ... sustaining a power should be no less dangerous than activating one ... at least IN combat ... outside of combat I'd be more forgiving. (otherwise it would be so great a headache you'd be putting a lass canon to your head within the first hour of play)

Nigh7gaun7 said:

So you want all the benefits of being a psyker, and none of the limitations or as few as possible?

Gotcha.

Nothing I have to say will be of any value to you. Also, don't complain if/when you manifest and your cell purges you with flame for being an unsanctioned psyker.

TheFlatline said:

No, not so much. The thing is that all the other players in my group right now are pretty inexperienced, so to make things a little more challenging for myself I'm playing a psyker who's been ordered by his Inquisitor to watch the rest of the party on their missions. Not particulrly trying to powergame here and if you read the thread you'd see that I've not been using my powers very much. I was just curious as to what ways there were to limit phenomena that I wan't aware of.

But thanks for being a ****.

Yeah, I'm afraid there's not much in the game to help. I created a houserule in my game that if you can cast a power without rolling any dice you can do so, but that only really works for Minor Powers and usually requires an Invocation, so it's not too subtle (for example if you have a willpower of 51 you get +5 to your casting roll, plus another 5 if you invocate = 10, which is enough on its own to cast most minor powers without rolling any dice). So far I've found it balanced and realistic.

Another tidbit worth mentioning is the Soul-Bound trait from the core rulebook. (Pg 332)

It's a quite potent ability for minimizing the impact of perils. It essentially allows a third die to be rolled on the perils table, then any one discarded. Unfortunately, there's no way for a PC to get it, barring elite advances, and, depending on how your GM interprets it, you may not be able to get it without going blind.

Perhaps not the most low-impact choice, but still, thought I'd mention it.

Purchase the Power Well talent a few times.

"When manifesting powers, you gain a +1 to your manifesting rolls. You may purchase this Talent multiple times. Its effects are cumulative."

Available at Savant-Militant or Scholar Arcanum levels of Imperial Psyker. And generally well worth the investiture of a couple hundred XP to buy each time.

-=Brother Praetus=-

Don't manifest casually. Use powers when necessary. When you do so, go all out (if the overbleed helps). Roll five dice once rather than three dice four times. Devastate the enemy with one or two powers and let the rest of the group clean up. No half measures. Perils of the Warp can be bad, but so are critical hits and taking four rounds of automatic weapon fire without heavy armour. The safest thing you can do is end a conflict quickly, before you have much chance of getting hurt or before you need to make multiple psi power rolls.

All the above are great suggestions for dealing with PotW under the rules as written, but at a meta-level the way the rules handle PotW is part of why I don't like them and don't use them.

I fell in love with the 40K setting through the fiction, mainly the Eisenhorn and Ravenor trilogies (plus short stories) by Dan Abnett, though I've read other authors as well, including Graham McNeil, Ian Watson, Sandy Mitchell, etc. I don't think the rules on PotW are true to the fiction. When Psyker's make ordinary use of their powers, such as when Gregor Eisenhorn compels an enemy to step out of cover or when Patience Kys pins an enemy to a wall with her telekinesis, there's no significant risk of PotW AT ALL. And, if you think about it, Psykers would not truly be effective if that weren't the case. How would they have ever gotten through their training or grown to adulthood if the risk of a PotW attack was as pronounced as the rules make it out to be?

That's not to say that there isn't a place for PotW. For example, you see it when Eisenhorn does a powerful auto-seance and several of the assisting Psykers succumb and demonic manifestations pop out into the materium. And, to me, that's where a PotW attack belongs: when the Psyker is doing something unusual and incredibly powerful, so that it would be highly likely to attract the attention of the denizens of the Warp. But "normal" level uses of telepathy, telekinesis, and other Psi powers should not carry any significant risk of a PotW attack, with one exception. If there are some special circumstances (e.g., a demonic incursion is already in progress in the area where the Psyker is located, the Psyker is in close proximity to a cursed or demonic object, etc.) that would have to be part of the plot and setting of the particular campaign, then I can see where even an ordinary use of Psi could bring on a PotW attack.

Rheist said:

That's what my houserule tries to emulate. It isn't great, but it allows psykers to use the simplest powers regularly without unbalancing the game too much. Because it still usually requires a invocation it isn't too useful in combat and it doesn't allow them to throw around death attacks at will.

An easy solution for Potw would be having the psyker make a willpower check when a 9 is roll and for every 9 that is rolled it make it a more challenging check. So if you are rolling two dice with a 50 willpower not to much to worry about, but as you increase the number of dice rolled for the psychic power the worse it could become.

ex.

roll of
8 + 5 +9
Just a test against base will power

7+9+9
willpower -10

4+9+9+9
willpower -20
and so on

just and idea

My players (I have two powerful psykers in my group) really don't worry about Perils of the Warp. Yes, its there and potentially very bad, but so is not regenerating your wounds or not firebolting those nasty dudes. There's all sorts of nasty stuff in DH. The party's rule of thumb is that as long as the Fate Points you save by effective psychic power use leads the Fate Points you've burned because of Perils of the Warp everything is good.