Mind's Eye and Mind Probe and more

By BrotherSurge, in Rogue Trader Rules Questions

Hello intrepid explorers.

Me and my fellow co-GM have had some trouble interpreting the rules for a few psychic techniques.

1) The wording of the tehnique Mind's Eye states the following:

This technique allows the psyker to increase the range of all his Telepathic communications (with the exception of Astro-telepathy) by a factor of 10.

I interpret this wording to be read as all powers listed under the Telepathic Communication Techniques tree, including Mind Scan, Psychic Scream and Terrify. He argues that it's just "communication", i.e. the abilities that deal directly with sending images, words, sounds etc.

2) We both have trouble finding rules on how to sustain a single psychic power. For the technique Mind Probe do you have to make a new opposed Willpower test each turn? That is, you have to make five tests to really penetrate your target's thoughts?

3) The Astropath's special power Protection of Soul Binding is a bit unclear. For the additional d10, do you roll a d100 + d10 + d10 and choose which of the d10 you want to discard? I.e a roll could look something like this: d100 roll of 40 + d10 roll of 9 or + d10 roll of 2, which makes the choice on the Psychic Phenomena table either 49 or 42?

For the last one, no. Remember, a d100 is just a d10 with slightly different numbers on it, and a d100 is when both dice are rolled.

What it means is, I think, that you can roll 3d10, and chose the two you want (basically, the two that result in the least worst result).

Alternately, something that would work pretty much the same would be to roll 2 lots of d100s, so you get two full results (say, a 65 and a 10) and you can pick which of those you want.

Yeah? So, you can actually choose which of either the "tens" or the "ones" digit you want to replace with that extra d10? That's pretty pwn, if I may say so.

For the record, our group uses "d100" (ten sided) dice with 10-00 increments printed on them ;) Which we often refer to as d100.

1) I'd agree with your interpretation. After all, screaming at someone is still communication.

2) The sense I get is that it requires a new opposed Willpower test each round, with the psyker getting the usual +5 bonus per Psy Rating, since it's also the Focus Power test. That would mean if you do it at unfettered or push strength, you'd be risking phenomena each round, though I see no reason why the strength couldn't be varied from round to round (for example, start at fettered, and in later rounds proceed to unfettered or push strength if things go well in the first few rounds).

3) My interpretation is you roll 2d10 (one 'tens' die and one 'singles' die), then a third d10, and optionally use the number shown on the third die to replace either of the other two. Just hope you don't roll all 9's!

BrotherSurge said:

Yeah? So, you can actually choose which of either the "tens" or the "ones" digit you want to replace with that extra d10? That's pretty pwn, if I may say so.

For the record, our group uses "d100" (ten sided) dice with 10-00 increments printed on them ;) Which we often refer to as d100.

That's how I'd interpret it, yea. Otherwise, just altering the "units", and not the "tens", would be fairly weak, as it wouldn't change what result you got the majority of the time.

And yea, bound psykers are meant to be fairly gibbery-monster-proof, otherwise every other astropath out there would cause localised storms or summon daemons every time they sent a communication, which, given the background/fluff, would seem not to be the case.