Hey all I'm new to the forum. Wanted to say hello and also share.

I'm new to Dark Heresy RPG. I've played D&D for over 12 years and Warhammer 40k minis for about 3-4 years and I'm pretty excited to play Dark Heresy.

Anyhow I play with about 3 other guys, a Tech Priest, Imperial Guardsman, Assassin, and I chose an Imperial Pysker. I usually always play the brusier/tank role so I thought I switch it up and play someone a little more squishy.

Does anyone else play a pysker?

I'm currently a Neonate 2nd level I guess you would say, it's a lot of fun. I have 3 minor powers so far:

Unnatural Aim, Spasm, and Healer.

Does anyone know of any good minor powers they would recommend picking up?

Welcome aboard, chief. I've got a few personal favourites.

Call Item has a ludicrously low threshold, can be manifested quickly and can be used to circumvent pesky security measures like strip-searching and auspexes.

Fearful Aura, while a very unsubtle power, can be utterly devestating against random mooks. Just make sure to warn your fellow acolytes before manifesting it so they don't shoot you.

Knack is an easy way to get +10 to a skill check. Any skill check. As long as it's not combat related.

Lucky is fantastic. Why spend a fate point when you can risk being consumed by the warp instead?

Resist Possession is usable as a Reaction, and gives you another shot at avoiding becoming a daemonhost.

Sense Presence is for those who like having a good idea just what's waiting for them around the corner.

Wall Walk's usefulness is very dependant on the situation you're in, but is potentially invaluable.

Weapon Jinx means not only allows you to try and jam an enemy's gun but also shuts down any mechanical devices within 50m for 1 rounds. This can have a boatload of unforseen consequences, especially if you have a tech-priest in your cell.

Snidesworth said:

Guns ARE mechanical devices, I've always assumed that they wanted to give flavour to the power rather than allowing first level psykers to shut down tanks.

Well, it's only for 1 round. So a tank would stall, a data-slate would stop responding and a tech-priest would be left without the function of all of his bionics for a few seconds.

I'd recommend against the Weapon Jinx. A lot of consequences come from it. Reminds me when I still playing 100% rules and it shut down the tech-priests lungs/arms/legs/face (He has a respirator built in, instead of a jaw). I slipped him notes, since he was way behind the party, and nothing could be heard from him. Took a while to realize (he was behind cover) for the Psyker to realize, "Oh ************************************." The techpriest nearly died.

Great suggestions Snidesworth. I've been looking looking at that Call Item and Fearful Aura. I'll need to pick those up, as well as Resist Possession which is going to be a must have.

On a side note playing with a Tech Priest is sheer comedy. He won't let me heal him..... So he went unconcious and I threaten to heal him... Ahhh good times.

Anyone have any good suggestions on when I get to the major disciplines. I've looked at a few that I liked such as Psychic Blade, and Divine Shot.

Regarding minor Powers I'd Recomend White Noise. It's fairly useful for sneaking about and masks both mundane and psychich means of detection. Call Item is seconded, and has many aplications which makes it quite useful. Resist Posession is a must. Before selecting though any Major or Minor Powers or settiling on a discpline I'd first talk with your GM to make sure you are on the same page regarding each Power. This may make some otherwise unactractive powers more actratice or vice versa depending on your GMs interprtation of them. Its also good to OK such things with him/her as soon as possible so you can start thinking of what direction you want to go in.

All of the disciplines have their stregths and uses, I personally lean to Telkines & Telepaths as they seem to have the broadest scope insofar as application is concerned but I can see the draws of each disipline, it really all depends on your character his/her persona/personality an drole within the cell.

You might as well play the bruiser/tank...

here are the 4 skills psykers dont get compared to a guardsman (+10 and +20 skill bonuses removed for convenience)

here are the talents that you wont get:

if you take the psyker prestige class out of the inquisitors handbook, you get ALL the guardsman talents that involve melee weapons as well. Most of the weapon training talents that you dont get arent really worth it. Your heavy weapons are your powers, which will all do more than almost every heavy weapon except for las cannon in terms of damage.

so, as I learned after doing a rough comparison... there is not a really good reason to play a guard when psyker is so much better, EXCEPT for the extra hitpoints (to which arbitrators/assassins with reaper get more than guards anyway, so still no reason to play guard)

and your strength and toughness ups start at 250 , so as a bruiser with less hp but ability to heal himself, your not exactly at a huge disadvantage.

so effectively, aside from the cleric (which is overpowered anyway, and not too many people play them in my neck of the woods), your strength rating is second only to guard, and toughness is same as guard.

you can be the super tank and sage at the same time.you wont be lugging the big guns around, but you really dont need to anyway.

linearblade has a point, actually, you probly shouldn't even play Dark Heresy If you play Hero's Unlimmited instead and go with the pre errated Ancient Master and also take Tai'Chi Chuan and then use Abilities from Mystic China you'll have little reason to play anything else, I aslo like to take Pao Chi as a second Art and you're a MA Chi Gung Monster. Or even better you could play De Profundis and write about how much more of a badass you are than the rest of the cell/party/team ect., hell that way you won't even need a GM...

Snidesworth said:

You completly missed my point. Guns ARE mechanical devices, that weapon jinx doesn't shut down every gun in range means something. It means that the person who wrote the power realised that having a minor power with a low threshold that shuts down everything in range is too powerful, so weapons require a willpower test and is limited to one per use of the power. It also means that the rest is there for flavour, not for stalling tanks, shutting down artificial hearts and freezing men in power armour

Guns are mechanical devices, the only real difference between a weapon and a fan is the game mechanical importance of them working. Would you say someones legs is more like a fan or a gun in mechanical importance? Anyway, when asked on the old BI boards the ruling was (from the designers of the game) that any bionics are protected by the flesh or some other rationalization to the effect that important stuff works anyway.

Play it as you like but tech priests going offline is a house rule and allowing the power to disrupt anything "important" without WP test is overpowered.

You're partially right regarding 'Weapon Jinx' th 'rest' is not their for flavour but was in fact a seperate (Major Power) that got combined with Weapon Jinx for some reason and made it to publishing. To maintain ballence and the intent of the game design they should be seperated, but it wasn't 'flavour text' but a Major Power that accidently (?) got tacked on to a Minor Power and published.

Simply treating the power as if it said that one mechanical device malfunctions on a WP test works just as well, and makes more sense IMO.

Or you could keep it as just one 'man portable' weapon, to avoid pausing the Titan, or Sentinle, or Rhino ect. 'Mechanicle Device' could be taken OOC, limmiting the size would help keep the power 'minor' STummers, Auspex, Vox Casters / Thieves ect seem fine the Refinery's Power Source not so much.

That's the way i've been playing it. Obviously it takes more than a minor power to take out a titan, the rationale would simply be that the titans size and complexity makes it more than one device for the purposes of disabling. Not to mention that no titan would even fit in the range of the power. A few hundred psykers with jetpacks could do it, but that would be silly.

The same goes for tanks and other large and/or complex stuff.

linearblade said:

^^^ Very interesting points!

I don't own the Inquisitors Handbook yet... Just ordered off of Amazon. I was under the impression that I would try just try and hang out in the backgroud and let our guardsman melee and blast away with his shotgun. But now I'm starting to rethink my strategy.

linearblade said:

You're overlooking two important factors - it isn't just what abilities you get (most career paths have access to most skills and talents at some point), but when you get access to them, and how much those abilities cost. Different skills and talents (and degrees of mastery) cost different amounts for different career paths, and become available at different times.

Certainly, at rank 8, everyone pretty much has access to the majority of skills and talents... but until that point, some people will recieve some skills and talents earlier and/or cheaper than others.

The Metallican Gunslinger alternate rank is a good example of this - it essentially gives out no ability that isn't already available to a Scum or Assassin at some point in their career path... but it gives them out at rank 1, so you can buy them from the very start rather than having to wait... however, in exchange for getting those abilities early, you pay a higher XP cost than you would normally to get hold of those abilities...

Jonas_Leman said:

I have played a psyker and the minor power I found being the most useful, or at least the one I used the most, is Chameleon. As soon as bullets och laser beams started to fly I used it and it saved my butt from being hit several times (you rarely enconter someone with a BS above 45, so that -20 really makes a difference). The +30 bonus on Hide-checks is also handy when the situation calls for stealth and infiltration.

I also used Fearful Aura with great effect on several occations, and Sense Presence is another one I can recomend getting.

I normally used Distort Vision.

Makes you invisible and creates a copy of your image so in combat if your fighting someone of something that can't detect you your will never get hit. Even if they try to attack you they go after the fake image instead... I probably will pick up that Chameleon power in the near future. Right now my concealment checks are pretty low so I'll just take my lost......

Anigus said:

Just read the new rules from the errata and Chameleon is by far a better power now.....

Jonas_Leman said:

With the errata it's "only" -30 to attack you, with any kind of detection that does not rely on vision (thermal goggles, psyscience etc.) it does nothing. A far more balanced power now than when it was impossible without psyniscience and -30 with.

Important post I just read there...

Distort Vision seemed rather insane for a Minor Psi power...

But I think I will still get it, for those times someone decides to take it all out on the psyker - its not like I have the the TB or the Wounds to withstand it.

Right now I have: Fearful Presence and Deja Vu and then recently Sense Presence. Soon I will get Psi Rating 2, and get 3 more.

I would love to hear how you use Fearful Aura... I tried once, and the guy had an insane Willpower. I mean I need to make sure that none of my fellow acolytes gets affected as well.

I looked at becoming master of a Dicipline, but decided that I will be a story for after we retire these charachters - With focus on Telepathy and a will power of 51, and a single instance of Powerwell - its a starter of 8, with 2 dice its 17 average... enough for most powers - only that Dominate is hard still, but thats rather okay. I don't feel its worth to take the less cool powers in Telepathy to gain mastery, and miss some of the coool powers in Telekenesis...

I have some powers that I try to avoid: Forgettable, since we have an assasin and a scum that has that talent - and I see this with Psykers.... they often just have psychic solutions for others could do - not much, but its there...

...Idless

Uh, just reread the Psy Rating talents... I falsely assumed that all gave just minor powers, but no, I will get up to three powers in my dicipline... mastery, here I come...

Idless said:

That brings up an interesting question. Could Distort Image and Fearful Aura be used together?

That would create a copy of yourself, because it mimics everything you do. According to the rules: Distort Image range is up to 10m from yourself. You could project this Image through a closed door into a room and freak out ususpecting enemies?

Also Touch of Madness seems like a power that could be super effective against low willpower enemies as well.