New to BC Humans

By JayDako, in Black Crusade

Okay I have played a Khorne Berserker for one session a few years ago. I know someone that is talking about making a BC game, so I figured I would throw together some characters. Right now, I am trying to figure out the psyker. I have never made one before and I am kinda lost. Any way I can get some help here in figuring out how to make one? I know that sounds dumb but I think best when able to bounce things back and forth with people.

Also, if someone could send me the discord link that Gregor talks about, that would be great since it is expired now. No way to find it.

Edited by JayDako

Hi Jay,

are looking for some ideas for the backgrounds or "stat and powerbuilds" for a psyker? I might be able to help with the first, but not with the latter (I suck at it, big time!) :)

What specifically are you looking to try and figure out?

Was just looking into making a psyker in BC rules that would be fun and not complete trash. Too used to D&D pathfinder where, if you don't build correctly, you are worthless and wasted your points. Also I got into the discord so I may just stick to talking there.

On ‎08‎/‎07‎/‎2017 at 10:00 PM, JayDako said:

Was just looking into making a psyker in BC rules that would be fun and not complete trash. Too used to D&D pathfinder where, if you don't build correctly, you are worthless and wasted your points. Also I got into the discord so I may just stick to talking there.

Black Crusade isn't so restrictive.

Quick points to start with:

  • As a human, you are at a stat and tech disadvantage against the Chaos Space Marines. In return, you get better starting talents and more XP.
  • Do not think this ever levels the playing field. If you give a chaos marine a fair fight, you will lose. Equally, if you want to play in a fashion which supports 'fair fights' (a pathfinder dungeon crawl of 5 x good guys go into a dungeon to beat up 7 x bad guys because the latter group have fangs and randomly generated treasure), then you really, really want a chaos marine.
  • Where humans excel is in giving an exceptionally unfair fight. The Quick and The Dead gives you a slight edge in initiative, but far more important is your ability to be sneaky and politically savvy. Size (Hulking) may not confer bonuses to hit a Chaos Marine due to the Black Carapace, but it still confers every other bonus and penalty (faster move and - specifically - penalty to stealth tests). An apostate with a decent investment in social skills, bulked up starting infamy and Excessive Wealth can easily requisition a reinforced grenadier company of competent mercenaries, and is best suited trying to achieve military objectives that way. A legion bolter may be better than a 'normal' bolter but an autocannon is better than either, and perfectly suited to a smart sniper.
  • Rule #1: Unbound Psykers pushing their powers will do horrific amounts of damage. Hopefully at least some of this will be to the enemy.
  • If you specifically want to be a psyker, you can aim yourself at any alignment (except Khorne) but ultimately you'll get the most bang for your bucks with Tzeench. Tzeench alignment gives you access to Forbidden Lores that give you a second function as the sorcerer/daemonologist, which means that you can try forging daemon weapons for your group if you're feeling especially lucky, suicidal, or both (rule of thumb: make sure you've got someone in the vicinity who can take the daemon you're summoning in a straight fight!). Plus the Tzeench Gifts of the Gods are good for psykers and the tzeench powers are pretty **** nasty. If you can reach the point of having Bolt of Change, you can remove some really big things with it - a lot of psyker powers have Felling , which is good for putting Chaos Marines in their place.
  • As an unbound psyker, you are taking a risky character - pushing a power, especially with a few Psy Rating boosting talents and powers, can rack up a truly, truly horrific psy rating very quickly, and your psy rating is used to calculate the damage of a lot of powers. The ones which are D10+PR damage are okay, but the ones which are D10xPR increase in lethality insanely quickly.
  • Because psychic powers are fairly expensive and often have prerequisites, you're probably best off focusing on a single discipline (telekenisis, biomancy, whatever)
  • However, Psychic Phenomena are annoying, and Perils of the Warp unutterably scary. Whilst it's a D100 roll, it's not a stat check and a fate point won't let you reroll it. It's quite easy for a combat psyker to kill himself and a fair chunk of his party.
  • Fettered psychic powers will not kill you, but limit your effectiveness - they're best used for the 'subtle' powers - often telepathy and slaanesh - that support you doing nefarious things (these are not the droids you're looking for) rather than flinging tanks around.
Edited by Magnus Grendel