Imagine af psyker...

56% in Will Power

Having the power, Projection

Having the Power, Psychic Blade

Being locked up, protected - then making a projection and fly into a room with a 1d10+10 Pen 10 weapon, 66% chance to hit on an aim, and wounds not being an issue, and absolutly positively killing every last heretic in the room!?

....Idless

I sure hope the Psyker in question is a Seer so they know to project themselves into this speciffic room armed for psy-war...

I would probably reward the player for coming up with this strategy if the situation played out well and was "good story". That said, I would have already required some skilled detective work prior to this to have access to the information required to set up such a hit. And information of this nature goes stale faster than room-temperature dairy products. If they managed all this groundwork then bravo to the players.

Naturally any "big bad" that is aware that powerful psykers are potentially after them would take whatever precautions are within their power to protect themselves against such attacks. Psy-dampers, hexagramic wards, an "Untouchable" bodyguard or maybe just the simple expedience of having several surgical-copy body doubles.... "No, you did not kill me back in that factory on Ambulon. You killed a very expensive body double. Do you have any idea how much that pisses me off?! Now DIE you simpering lackey!"

That leaves mooks or perhaps lieutenant level baddies that would be reasonably vulnerable to this sort of thing, and they are easy enough to replace without destroying months of plot development. Heck, it might even ENHANCE the story by adding new complications further down the line. Immagine the fun that could develop when some Ordo Hereticus Inquisitor's team of acolytes starts poking around investigating some rather brutal "wytch slayings" in the area!

Idless said:

I'd vote having one or the other. I don't see how you can use the Projection AND Psychic Blade both at once, but obviously arguments can be made attacking my train of thought. Especially with the first sentence of Psychic Blade and how it sounds being so difficult to control and use and having that in another power only using sheer willpower apparently using something that requires all thought and control to use it... hmph. I think it's a little too far for a normal psyker, but a Primaris maybe? Maybe I'm just thinking into it too much.

Still a pretty badass idea, don't get me wrong. I'd just worry about other Psykers attacking your mind's projection (if using the Burning Princess or such) if your GM would allow you to do such a thing.

I wonder when exactly the first would come up with this idea...

Since the "astral forms" allows for such TELEPATHIC powers (and this is one) I would allow it.

But remember, that in the 40K universe (at it was writte as a side note for this "astral form") walking "out of body" is a dangerous thing. Allow him this fabulous trick once, as a reward for being a clever player (you should always reward this!).

The next time he is doing it, role dice behind a screen. If he is "overdoing it", let him have an an encounter with some astral predator of the warp. Perhaps an Unclean Spirt, an Astral Specter or even a "Lesser Daemon" Profil.

If you want to give it over to the die, how about rolling a d10 for every combat round he spends outside of his body? (role 5 d10 after each 5 Rounds / 30 Seconds). Five or more nines show that something nastie came around and have a look at him. "How many nines mean trouble" should be a question about the area he is in.

This is a "quick and dirty rule", not play tested. I think, if you toy with the numbers of nines needed to "attracted something" you will be fine. Keep in mind to lower the number (or forget about dice altoughther) if the area is rather open to the warp (certain places on certain worlds, a site of a cult rite etc). If the think isn´t showing up while he is "in the warp", it could come for him...following him unseen...waiting for a chance...

Idless said:

The Projection power says "A Projected Psyker may use any other Telepathy Discipline powers he possesses." However, Psychic Blade is Telekinetics Discipline power so its a definite no-go ruleswise. If you are hellbent on doing some major projected psychic massacre you can, however, use Soul Killer (DotDG p.30) with Projection for a juicy 1d10+2*WPB damage, ignoring armor. However, as Soul Killer is Telepathy Discipline power you would be subject to Closer Than Flesh rule so better make sure the Heretics ain't too Insane or Corrupt or you'll end up like them in no time. Even with 56% WP you are bound to fail a few times when rolling once for each attack in room full of Heretics...

Idless said:

His name is Inquisitor Gideon Ravenor.

LuciusT said:

I see what you did there.

Yeah well... it's also my character, if I take 1 more advance in will power...

Yes got almost all Telepathy

Yes got one Telekine ability, The Blade...

51% will power, as of now...

..but yeah, very Ravenoresque

...Idless

100 points to Polaria - this concept fails due to the incompatibility of disciplines.

Cifer said:

Ditto. I also like the idea of combining it with Soul Killer. But like Polaria said, then it all comes down to how much you are willing to risk to pull it off.

Sister Cat said:

True if you go with the errata, but again in the Ravenor novels Inquisitor Ravenor is throwing around TK like wild while using Projection. If the idea of the game is to be able to duplicate the novels to a certain degree, than I think it should be allowed. Sure, it's deadly powerful... but anything the PCs can do the NPCs can do too.

LuciusT said:

Okay. I am sorry to say I haven't had the pleasure of reading the Ravenor books yet, so I will take your word for it. With that in mind, though, that would be nasty to the nth degree. I would hate to see what some rogue psyker could do the player-characters with that combination. Can you say 'large quantities of bloody gore?'

Sister Cat said:

Ultimately, if it were to come up in my game and based on Ravenor, I would rule that a psyker using Projection essentially creates a version of himself (without gear) with the Incorporeal trait. Anything that happens to the projection also effects the psyker's body. So they can effect and be effected by the same things as an Incorporeal creature. Nasty, yes... if you don't have anything that can effect it.

My Psyker's shining moment was done using something similar (with more luck than I ever had before).

She used Astral Projection to enter the Command Bridge of a rogue mercenary battle ship and possess a goon.

First, she had him use the controls to open the airlocks in ALL storage bays, sucking out hundreds of soldiers into space. Next, she forced the guy to pull out a gun and blast the communications panels.

When the Bridge security tackled and subdued this guy, she left his body and possessed another guy, who also drew a gun and shot up the ship's sensor controls and a bunch of other important consoles.

So, in essence, and a bit of risk, a mid to high level telepath was able to single handedly bring an entire goon battleship into chaos and disarray preventing the bad guys from being able to stop the acolytes and their small army of arbitrators from boarding and taking it with little effort.

It was pretty awesome, but I'm sure that sort of thing should never happen. Ever.

Necrozius said:

Why not? Psykers are terrifying for such reasons.

You were checking to roll 9's on your power manifestation right? You could have, with a spectacularly bad roll, have been sucked into the warp and destroyed in one turn.

Polaria said:

I have a player in my group who does exactly this. With Willpower of 63 he's pretty nasty, especially as he is insanely lucky with his power rolls and any Psychic Phenomena or Perils of the Warp rolls. The closest we came to something nasty happening was when he rolled a reversal and nearly blew his own head off with Soul Killer, but a Fate Point later and he just winked out of time for a few rounds instead! In contrast the poor Diviner in the group cast one power, spent three fate points trying to fix it, and still ended up summoning a daemon that proceeded to burn him and one of his companions to death before disappearing back into the warp!

Soul Killer is a pretty lethal power when used by a Telepath with a high WP. The few limits it has on use, the high threshold and the risk of Corruption and Insanity aren't something my groups Telepath really worries about! Especially as Insanity Points gives him more of a reason to act as crazy as he has from the start, and more Corruption will mean he can take that tempting Tainted Psyker rank he's set his eyes on.

Gideon Ravenor was also a very high level psyker AND had psi boosting equipment in his chair (including eldar wraithbone).

DH doesn't distinguish between innate psychic power difference despite it being integral to the setting. I wrote up a list of psychic levels using Abnett's Greek system that I posted here over a year ago:

www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp

To better represent the gradation of psykers in the Imperium. Unless a character had Ravenor's raw talent and boosting items I doubt they could replicate his actions. He also had plot on his side (which PCs don't, otherwise there would never be a risk that they'd die).

Hellebore

Hellebore said:

Here I must disagree absolutely. The PC's are the heroes and main characters of their story. Even heroes and main characters are a risk of death but the plot is always on their side. That's what Fate Points are for.

PCs can be killed by a perils of the warp, Ravenor never was, nor were any of his people. PCs run the risk of failing a test, characters in books only fail if the author wants them to. No author is going to write their character dying because a psyker got possessed by a daemon doing a routine scan of the surrounds because they need to sell their book. But the rules that people playing RPGs use says that a PC can.

So I stand by the assertion that PCs in an RPG are not protected by plot, they don't get to choose if they pass or fail at things and failing things can get them killed. A character in a novel only dies if the author chooses to write them dying. A player does not have that kind of control over their PC. Characters don't have unlimited fate points either (and in many games they don't exist at all).

A PC is the hero of the story, but the story is also a game and unlike a novel a game is not controlled by the player.

Hellebore

Hellebore said:

Again, I respectfully but absolutely disagree with you.

The game is controlled by the GM working in collaboration with the players. The GM, in collaboration with the players, decides if and when characters die, get possessed by daemons or are otherwise removed from the story. The GM decides if the characters pass or fail at things and the GM decides if failing gets them killed. The rules serve the game, keeping everyone on the same page and with a clear idea of what their characters are capable of. The random factor of the dice help keeps the game exciting, introducing the element of the unexpected and forcing both players and GM to improvise and adapt. That does not mean that the rules and dice control the game. The GM is always free to ignore a dice roll or overlook a rule in the best interests of the game... of the story... of everyone having fun.

Which leads to the lack of threat that characters are actually mortal. Why should characters have wounds, need armour and roll dodge tests if the GM can just say 'you survived because you are the hero?'. The players no longer feel that their characters can die and if they do die, get pissed that the GM let them die. At least if the DICE kill the characters it's not the GM's fault but if the GM takes on ALL the responsibility of the game and starts playing god with the rules then it IS their fault.

Yes the GM can intervene at any time, but simply ignoring the rules and dice results all the time stops it being a game. You might as well play free form. If the GM regularly changes results all the time then there IS no random factor and the game has become a novel being written by the GM. If the players get the impression that their characters won't die from falling off a habspire because the GM is always saving them then they won't feel a need to be careful. Unless the GM punishes players for not playing the way they want them to play and rewards them for playing the game the way the GM wants it played.

An RPG is a choose your own adventure and you can die in those. I would never play in a game that was railroaded to the point that all I was doing was moving my character along a predetermined path set out by the GM, where I died only at X and any other situation was glossed over. The players need to be responsible for their actions, not told what to do. The rules are there precisely to provide consequences for player actions, not to be ignored by the GM because it doesn't suit his vision for the game.

So I will reitereate. A Player does not have the power over their character to determine when they die, or if they die. They can't declare in the middle of the combat 'my character gets missed by all those bullets that were supposed to kill him and is now fine'. They can burn a fate point to avoid dying from those injuries, but if they have no more fate points left then unless the GM intervenes and ignores the rules, they will die. But by ignoring rules and dice results that everyone else has seen and known you have crippled any authority the game rules have which means if it happens again the precedent will be there for the GM to ignore it again.

You then set up situations where some players think the event was unfair, others don't and the GM has to decide if they ignore it or not. Not everyone will agree with the GM's ruling so you just produce antagonism between them and some of the players.

Your position makes the rules irrelevant, the GM can just decide if an enemy hits the players or not. If you don't want the players killed in the following scenario then you just make all the enemies miss them, why bother rolling their attacks.

Hellebore

Hellebore said:

I think you missed the part where Lucious stated that the story in an rpg was a collaborative effort between the players and GM. He said that, when all are in agreance, X will happen to a character. If everyone agrees then X character dies because Y character shot him. If none agree that X character would die because Y character shot him,. then he doesn't. The rules exist, as Lucious pointed out, as a base-line for mutually coming to these conclusions. It's not the GM saying X is dead because Y shot him and everyone can go to hell. Everyone has to agree otherwise the game and story will not work -the rules simply give everyone a base-line to work from and help everyone come to the same agrement as to how the story will turn out. If X character is shot by Y character and the Rules say X dies because of it and no one challenges the narration or the outcome, then X is dead. If X character is shot by Y character and the rules say X is dead because of it, but the players all say that it doesn't make sense that X should be dead for that and the GM finally agrees, then, guess what, X wont die. If only the player of X disagrees with the outcome, then the majority vote would come in as X being dead and everyone might agree his player might need to distance himself a bit from that character.

That said, the PC's are the main characters and certain things will happen to them and considerations made based solely on that premise. After all, no matter the rule system, it's commonly accepted that if the players all spent close to two hours making characters for a game and then, 10 minutes into the first session of a grand story that the GM spent the better part of three months concocting, the entire team is slaughtered because the dice went wonky on everybody, then it's okay for the GM to "fudge" the dice for the sake of the groups fun and the story. In other words, despite what rules and the world say, PC's in RPG's have plot armour otherwise the story could fall apart from the git-go (and that's usualy no fun for anyone involved). Of course, too much armour and the fun and believability of the story will get sucked right out. The same is true of any story, however, and I'd hazard a guess that a lot of the dreck that comes out of BI would be a hell of a lot better if there was less plot armour on the main characters.

In other words, and to reword a throw away comment Hellebore made earlier: "No bad author is going to write their character dying because a psyker got possessed by a daemon doing a routine scan of the surrounds because they need to sell their book." A good one will not hesitate to do such if it made for a good story and, hell, I'd actually buy that BI book! Now that would be interesting unlike most of the Marty-Stue dreck I keep stumbling across.

Wow, so much there to deconstruct but one big thing leaps out at me...

Hellebore said:

What do we mean by "game?" After all an rpg is not like most other games. There are no winner or loser. There is no inherent antagonism or competition between players, including here the GM as a "player" of the game.

For me, the purpose of an rpg is to tell a collective story... whether it's an action-adventure story, a horror story or a mystery-thriller (usually for me all of the above) the goal is for everyone to have fun and tell an good story. A good rpg is a shared story, with all the players (GM included) working together to create an interesting, exciting and ultimately fun experience for everyone involved.

For me, the rules take a distant second place to the story. The rules, as I said, provide guidelines and a framework which defines what a character can do, can do well or can do poorly. The rules also help resolve the age-old argument of "I got you, no you didn't" seen in any child's game of make-believe (and let's face it, that's all an rpg is when you take all the fancy books and dice away). However, we're not children and we can agree not to have that argument.

Consequence, fairness, acting in character and one player not dominating everyone else... these things aren't provided by the rules. They are provided by the agreement, often unspoken, between the players saying that everyone is here to play a certain game, to tell a certain story, in a certain way and, above all, everyone is here to have fun.

Other people will disagree with my position here, and that's fine. It's a wonderful debate... a game in itself and as long as everyone has fun, that's what counts.

Graver said:

The way you've described it, it seems like 'narrative-by-committee'...

Yes, the game has at its heart an agreement and some degree of trust between players and GM... but I don't agree with the way you've defined that agreement.

When I run a game - any RPG - the common understanding between my players and I is thus: the players control the fate of their character through their choices and their deeds. I control the fate of their characters through the consequences of those choices and those deeds. The trust is important because this wouldn't work without it - I need to be able to trust that the players will commit themselves to the nature of the setting (not necessarily the story; noteworthy difference there), and more crucially they need to be able to trust that I won't abuse the considerable degree of control I have. That doesn't mean I won't kill or maim characters - I have and I will - but rather that the situations that brought about those deaths are appropriate ones.

The players make the decisions; their characters must live with or die from the consequences of those decisions. Yes, the storytelling is collaborative... but they're the players, each controlling a single character. It is only fitting that the control they have over that character's fate is the same as the character would have were he real.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

Nail. Head. Bam.

Ya, when you boil it down, narrative-by-committee is about the way i do view RPG's and the way i run them. I hadn't always but in more recent years (the past 7 or so) that's been the way I and my group have been falling. It seems to be the heart of what we all were after and, in the end, we're out to experience a story. I want my players to be in control of the story, to have a say in what it's about ands what we do, the same if i were a player. I, as a GM, am just here to make the story happen (and, to a great extent, come up with the premise and kick-start my players imaginations, the lazy bastards) but that's just me. We all have our own takes on what role playing is and isn't, what we bring to a session, and what we want to take from it. Some want to experience what it would be like to live a certain kind of life. Some want to see what would happen if person X gets mixed up in situation Y. And others want to be tactically and mentally challenged. it's all valid. I come from the middle statement and that tends to be where most of my group sits as well. I reckon you come more from the first statement, but, in the end, and back to the debate, no matter your stance on what an RPG is and who to run/play it, in the end, the PC's are all central to the plot and tend to receive some preferential treatment for that position to insure there is a plot and that said plot is a good one or at least fun. I'd hate to see the game where that wasn't so...