I’m a bit uncertain on how to interpret the rules on sustaining psychic powers, and especially what happens when you lose consciousness for a short while. Do you also lose the sustained power?

Take Regenerate for example. It completely removes all levels of fatigue on the psykers turn. But what happens if the psyker is knocked unconscious from fatigue just prior to his turn. Does regenerate drop immediately on unconsciousness or does it still take effect and brings the psyker back from sweet unconsciousness to the grim world of more pain?

As far as I can tell, the rules are not clear on this. My group discussed this during our previous session and we found argument both for and against it. So how do you guys play this?

Well, according to the rules, you can't do anything whilst unconscious. This would include sustaining powers, since no exception has been made for them. Therefore, falling unconscious would make all previously sustained powers cease. I mean, it's not as though you can concentrate and keep the warp energy flowing through you that causes the power to manifest going whilst being entire unconscious, right?

Right, I agree on the rules for unconsciousness. But since dismissing a sustained psychic power is also a free, but still an action, you can’t really do that while unconscious either.

Sustaining a power does not affect tasks like Logic or Awareness, or any other Int or Perception based tasks. It only affects other psychic abilities. There is nothing you can do to ‘lose’ a sustained power except failing the sustaining roll. You can be, shot, stabbed, possessed, beaten and be on fire. You still don’t lose any sustained powers. There is also the 10 turn duration. If the psyker needs to fully concentrate continuously to sustain a power, why aren’t that roll required on every turn?

The way I see it the psyker create a link to the warp that needs to be fueled with psychic power every 10 turns. The link stays open but the psyker needs to concentrate to access it.

Sounds like you've already decided on what you're going to do then.

Well, the player asking the question is not the GM and the playing group and DM is unsure on how to rule on this. Which is why the question was asked to the forum knowing that there are a lot of people out there with a finetuned knowledge of the rules and a sharp wit on how to apply them.

I personally have all sustained powers whenever the manifesting psyker drops, be it dead or unconscious. The only exception would be if they had a BAD peril of the Warp and accidentally summoned something that WANTS the power to keep going! In that case it is more like the Warp entity hijacking the power though...

Canon reasons for this too: The Imperial solution to a Psyker that loses control? Bolt Pistol to the head! Works almost every time it is tried!

There isn't anything specific in the rules which addresses the issue, so we come to the time-honored tradition of rules bandying and logic.

Under sustained abilities "there are a number of Psychic Powers that are worth 'keeping on' for an extended length of time. Powers that can be used in such a manner are referred to as sustainable... Sustaining a Psychic Power for an extended period of time is very taxing..."

That's basically all we have to go on, besides intuition. Power rolls to sustain are broken up into 10-round increments for two in-game reasons: to reduce the bog-down effect of constantly rolling to maintain your sustained powers (consider that since you don't activate perils and such, you can roll your full suite of power dice, and then imagine doing that every turn for every sustained power and adding them up to your newly increased Thresholds) and to reduce the frequency of truly awful luck (chance you will fail one of 10 easy tests is higher than chance you will fail one challenging one... simply more ways to fail (multiplicity of microstates for you math people)). Regardless it must be assumed that these Powers must be constantly maintained to some degree; they are not "buff" spells like a traditional RPG. e.g. Powers that can be -used- in such a manner, implying that even whilst they are sustained they are being actively employed by the Psyker.

Unconsciousness represents a body succumbing to overwhelming forces, wherever they came from. Your brain says goodnight because it has simply had more than it can handle. As your mind is the tool of conscious control in the Warp, you can obviously not exert the effort into sustaining a power any longer once the lights go out.

If the question were posed to me as a GM I would probably adjudicate based on each power. Some wink instantly out of existence, like Psychic Blade, which requires intense focused concentration to manifest and the forces necessary are greatly repellent and out of keeping with natural physics. Something more subtle and pervasive, such as Sculpt Flesh or Regeneration, would probably result in a slow fade. You aren't bringing something into existence, you're delicately altering something on a cellular level: nothing "unnatural" is happening in the sense of disobeying the laws of the universe, something "normal" is just happening much faster or in a more controlled shape. These energies you had marshaled and bound within your body will dissipate without your control but perhaps not instantaneously, even in the absence of the influx of Warp energy the changes have still been wrought.

You also must take into consideration that the precise-division of "rounds" and "turns" is a necessary lie; nothing can really happen this way. No one stands still and waits for the next action. Likewise whether your initiative is low in the order and thus you take enough Fatigue damage for you to pass out, or whether it is near the middle of the order and you get to remove some of it in time for the next load to roll in, arises only from a deliberate oversimplification. For example, I would probably allow one more round of effect, possibly reduced. You get knocked out with Regenerate, you taste dirt; your augmented healing tapers off but picks you back up with some of the Fatigue removed but not all.

Yes I realize this tact quite appreciably favors Biomancy but you can just deal with it =D

The rules in Ascension are a lot more clearer about sustaining. "If a psyker becomes unconscious or is killed any power he is sustaining end instantaneously"

I would agree with this as keeping the powerflow of the warp on is not something done without any attention.

But I also like At Last Forgot's idea of some residual warp energy that slowly fades away from the psyker as it is no longer actively kept there by the psyker's will.

Maybe something like having the power sustained 1 extra round for half the beneficial effect when you fall unconscious. So in case of regenerate, you heal 1d5 divided by 2 (round down) and you lose halve your fatigue instead of all.

I'm a fan of psychic powers cutting dead when conciousness does. Though that notion of a warp entity jamming open the faucet has it's appeal.

We have always played that they simply end. Look at the keyword "Sustained" which is a pretty active verb; kind of hard to be active when unconscious. True, the original rules may not have explicitly stated this, but using psychic powers is an active force of will over the immaterium, so it would seem rather obvious.

-Cynr