Ideas for telepathy powers?

By Nigh7gaun7, in Dark Heresy

I need a few ideas for new telepathy powers, if anyone has some to contribute.

My group and I have the habit of expanding a school whenever a new style of psyker appears. Biomancy got a bunch of goodies when two biomancers (healer and berserker) showed up in one campaign, pyromancers got ideas from everybody even when no one was playing one (people just love fire for some reason...) and telekines are always a favorite. But telepaths and diviners have been ignored thus far. And I am now playing our first telepath.

I came up with a few ideas on my own but I'm interested to see what some of you guys might come up with.

As a side note, does divination suck or is it just me? I'm really reluctant to go into a school that both relies heavily on the gm and, having been a gm myself rather often, creates more work for the GM.

Divination seems fine to me. It really enhances a Psyker who focuses on non-Psychic combat (especially guns), and it provides nice investigative abilities. If a player uses it on someone non-important, just say something like "you percieve that the person is mostly normal, with his share of faults and sins as well as a degree of redeeming value." I'd actually say Telepathy makes more work for the GM, since he then has to find ways to make sure that you don't just read an important NPC's mind, whereas Divination just lets him drop hints for the most part.

No new ideas for Telepathy at the moment. I'm sure there are some, but it sort of has the bases covered in the main book + DotDG.

As a side question, does Soul Killer cause any visble effect? I assume it does because it's Explosive damage, but it doesn't make sense to me that wiping out their soul causes their torse and head to explode.

One idea I had was Mind Wipe, where a psyker can rip memories from his target. But I'm not really sure how to stat it out.

Logocancy....anything to do with the logokine John Grammaticus from the horus heresy book 'Legion'? He has some subtle but absolutely block-rockin powers. Although...can't think of any off the top of my head!

snufkin said:

Logocancy....anything to do with the logokine John Grammaticus from the horus heresy book 'Legion'? He has some subtle but absolutely block-rockin powers. Although...can't think of any off the top of my head!

Yes, the discipline I wrote up is entirely based upon his powers. Check it out.

Minor powers:
Limb possession(telepathic)
Threshold-7
Effect- The psyker possesses the victim's limb (generally an arm). The psyker may use the limb as if it was his own. The psyker can't see, or use any sense other than touch via the limb.

Telepathy powers:

Brain Burn
Threshold-15
Effect- The attacker makes a resisted willpower against the target. (with a +10% per psi score) By every 5% the attacker gets under causes a wound to the head, and each 10% under is a fatigue level. Non psykers get a +20 to their roll. If the psyker rolls a 100 on his attack his power back lashes, and must make an unresisted attack on himself.


Telekinetic powers:

Head Bang
Threshold-15
Effect- The target takes 1d5 points of damage ignoring armor, but not toughness to the head.

Thats cool Lightbringer. Have you put it online somewhere? I'd love to see it.

And to Jack of tears: I wasn't moaning! Just being a trainspotter lengua.gif

snufkin said:

Thats cool Lightbringer. Have you put it online somewhere? I'd love to see it.

Thanks, Snufkin! What you're seeing there is an FFG forum exclusive: my computer skills are so feeble that this is the only place I can reliably post my stuff. Although I'm happy for anyone to pinch it and put it on their site if they want! happy.gif

An idea I had for a cool telepathic power is based on the Tasp used by Nessus the Pierson's Puppeteer in Larry Niven's Ringworld . Essentially, the idea is to directly stimulate the pleasure center of someone's brain. I could see this being using in two different ways: 1) overstimulation would completely immobilize the person for some period of time, and 2) by slowly increasing the person's exposure to it over time, you could essentially get them addicted to the stimulation to the point where they'd be willing to comply with your instructions.

Obviously, you could accomplish the same results through different means, which is why, to some extent, telepathy is telepathy. But, this would be an interesting twist and could lead to some interesting roleplaying encounters.

Cool idea, Rheist. Actually, the "Harlequin man," nemesis of Inquisitor Jaq Draco in the Inquisitor trilogy uses a device that has the same effect against Draco's Callidus assasin, Meh'Lindi, on the basis that Imperial Assasins are inured to pain, but not pleasure.

Lightbringer said:

Cool idea, Rheist. Actually, the "Harlequin man," nemesis of Inquisitor Jaq Draco in the Inquisitor trilogy uses a device that has the same effect against Draco's Callidus assasin, Meh'Lindi, on the basis that Imperial Assasins are inured to pain, but not pleasure.

Yes, indeed. Carnelian is his name IIRC.

The other thing I thought about this was...when using a power like that, you're on a fine line between the kind of telepathic manipulation that *most* people would say was OK when done in aid of an Inquisitorial investigation/mission, versus the kind of stuff you'd expect from a Slaanesh cultist.

We use house rules in my game, and when I told my GM about this idea, he said, "Yea, you could do that, and after you did it a few times, you might start getting bonus dice for those rolls, but the thing you should worry about is who those bonus dice would be coming from."