Actually, the psyker stats would not need to be double statted. Navigators and Astropaths represent those psykers whose raw power eclipses the Sanctioned Psyker of DH. I also thought that I saw something detailing how Ascension would contain similarly powerful psykers for DH.

Not the psykers themselves, but any new talents, powers or abilities that are presented as psy powers.

Peacekeeper_b said:

Except that the details for Ascension seem to suggest the porting over of the RT psyker system to DH, meaning it would be one system that was the same from then on.

MILLANDSON said:

Didn't sound that way to me in the D6 Generation podcast; seemed more like elements (like the fettered, unfettered and pushed concept for psy rating) were transferred across, and that the powers included in Ascension will be distinctly more powerful (and more expensive) than those already in the game... but it's still the same system as in Dark Heresy.

Generally speaking, the Rogue Trader psychic power system isn't actually that dissimilar to the Dark Heresy one in terms of power - the Rogue Trader system is simply more controllable (as is appropriate for Astropaths), allowing a finer balance of risk and reward (use more of your psy rating, better odds of success and greater effects, but higher risk of side-effects; use less of your psy rating, smaller odds of success and weaker effects, but lower, or even non-existent risk of side-effects). Rogue Trader tends to lack some of the high-powered effects as well - no Astropath can produce a Force Barrage like a Sanctioned Psyker can - as well as the diversity of power provided by minor powers and the relative ease of obtaining new powers and mixing-and-matching powers from multiple disciplines.

So far, the psychic system is one of the few things about Ascension that looks like I'm guaranteed to enjoy it. It would appear from the D6G interview that Ascension will merge the two by using the base Dark Heresy system (which I enjoyed far more than RT's system), but add an appropriately modified version of the fettering ability from RT (which was the one part of RT's psychic system I really enjoyed).

Personally, I thought that DH's 'roll any dice up to psyrating' approach covered the fettering ability well enough on its own, but I suppose this isn't exactly mangling the entire existing system so it can't be too bad.

H.B.M.C. said:

Ha ha.. I'm laughing with you, not at you. That comment amused me a lot. I felt the same way when I first cracked open RT. It is definitely a different approach than I was used to, this combination of open endedness and rules for the effects of the story. I like it now that I've finally wrapped my head around it.

Personally, I think the GM's kit adventure is a nice guide to understanding how the designers were envisioning the game be run. (Now of course that doesn't mean you have to run it that way, but it helps to understand where they're coming from.)

I agree that the new approach to the psychic system in ascension is a major point of my interest.

I've always maintained that the 1 in 10 chance of something nasty happening on every psychic power use is way too high for them to ever be useful, especially as the Sanctioned Psykers are the ones at the top of the tree and considered to be 'stable' in their control and didn't need to be bound to the emperor. Though given the way my dice have rolled 9s lately I suspect that the Emperor doesn't like my Xenos forcesword. Especially as I wind up making two rolls on the perils table with the GM deciding which takes effect.

I thought the fettered system showed more promise but the DH conversion rules were very poor so it will be interesting to see how this works when the book comes out in a month or two.