It seems like every other career has a role to play but what about astropaths? They have no particular skills to help with guns or scanning or raising morale and their psychic powers have no effect on that scale. Are they supposed to just sit back and enjoy the show?

Why would you need particular skills to shoot? Anyone can fire the weapons on a ship, it's just a Ballistic Skill test.

As for what they can do other than that, well.... entirely depends on the character, how advanced it is (rank-wise), what elite advances they have, all sorts. Not all careers are inherently designed to participate in ship-to-ship combat, as lots of them wouldn't normally. Say... Seneschal? What about Navigator? Astropaths are hardly alone, and that's because, normally, they'd be in their rooms waiting for the fighting to finish.

MILLANDSON said:

Seneschal- Can rock on the lock-ons or augurs, or can deceive crew for morale. Also very good at the put your backs into it action.

Navigators- Same even untrained compared to most classes.

I'm with efidm. There isnt really a lot to do as an astropath in ship-to-ship- you say fire the guns but no doubt the arch-militant or someone with a better Bs will want to be doing that...

^^^ Most of that above assumes first rank characters to be fair. I'm sure at higher ranks Astropath's have more to do.

Gibber Incomprehensively when the communing with his holy carcass on Terra?

Leg it to the latrine and peek outside when the disagreement is over?

Switch on a leisure vox system, turn it to 11 and attempt to drown out the astropathic choir with a sample of the Noise marines Best of Album M40-M41?

There's a very simple answer: Psy-abilities. Especially the Divination powers are quite practical in a space combat...

Sensors go off scrutinize which you get at 2nd rank. If you have a good fel, or int ask your GM if you can take command or tech use as an elite advance. Divination powers are excellent at sjip combat as well. Aid actions are your friend as your roll is free any way, and if you fair you didn't harm anything. (Ships get a number of rolls based on crew skill plus the PCs rolls.) So command, and tech use are get skills to pick up.

Cifer said:

Minimum Rank 3 for that, isn't it? You start with the telepathy discipline, which isn't much help in a starfight.

Hold fast - willpower test (willpower is cheap for them) - reduces morale damage.

That ability sounds very useful.

Thought so as well, then I noticed the little prerequsite: Air of Authority or a similar talent.

Cifer said:

You can pick up Air of Authority on the origin path (the Renown entry); so long as the GM is allowing Motivation as a free row, it's available to anyone.

alexkilcoyne said:

Astropaths can buy the Scrutiny skill as early as level 2, so I'd say that they have the potential to do the same.

Yup, but perceptions not a cheap stat for them, nor is it usually one of the Astropath's higher ones.

Cifer said:

Would telepathy count as a similar talent ?

Air of Authority - The characters attitude inspires people around him.

Telepathy - Those around the psyker are inspired by him playing around inside their head.

alexkilcoyne said:

That doesn't really matter. Many PC's can't buy Scrutiny until much later anyway, which means that most characters will have to attempt lock-on and active augury on only half their perception, which will more often be much lower than an Astropath's full Perception (I mean all characters start out with AT LEAST 27 in all their stats, and that means that they have to have rolled a REALLY BAD case of double 1's). In fact, the only thing saving most PC's poor perception and lack of the Scrutiny skill from the start is usually the Explorator or someone else proficient in Tech-Use to be able to "Aid the Machine Spirit" in order to provide that needed boost to Detection, for any active augury or lock-on to succeed.

Also, neither lock-on nor active augury are necessary actions, they are most likely just cases of potential bonuses to other more important rolls. Sometimes these bonuses might be needed, and if you don't have any other character with decent perception and scrutiny, this is a niche that the Astropath could fill quite nicely (if not being supremely good at it).

So it doesn't matter if Per is a cheap stat for them. And I disagree when you say that Perception won't usually be one of the Astropath's higher characteristics. Remember that Psyniscience is based on Perception. So the top three stats of an Astropath would most likely be Willpower, Perception and perhaps Intelligence. (wouldn't be very optimized to treat either Willpower or Perceptions as "dump stats" if you play an Astropath)

alexkilcoyne said:

Mr Adventurer said:

Psyniscience is also used for the Focus Power test of every single Divination power - an array of abilities significant for any Astropath wanting to have an impact in ship combat...

They have the second best Scrutiny progression in the game, beaten only by Voidmasters. In fact, they even get to Scrutiny +30 before Voidmasters, and can much more easily spare a Talented slot for Scrutiny than Voidmasters, since they have more of them.