Does a Psyker in Ascension get additional Minor and Discipline powes when he raises his Psy above 6, like he does in DH when he raises his Psy?

Since you buy the special ascended powers separately, I would say that you do.

I personally would say no. You're not buying Psy Rating 1-6; which were the talents that allowed you to pick out new powers. I'm mostly basing this on the way The Psyker's Gift trait has been described for the Interrogator and Inquisitor... But, if you're interested in an official ruling, ask FFG.

-=Brother Praetus=-

Actually, I find it ambiguous as to whether PCs can get Psi ratings above 6... the "Psy Rating+1" advance is listed as a talent and there are no talents for 7+,

To expand on that, my initial reading of the "Psy Rating+1" advance was that it catered for those people entering the Ascended psyker career from odd careers, e.g. people who'd taken the transition package that enabled them to become a psyker, and thus may have low ratings and no previous psker career to pick up level 2, 3 etc from. And since it's only an advance that allows you pick the talent equal to current level +1, then, well, like I said, there's no talent for 7.

If the designers intention was to limit PC Pskers psi rating to 6, then that might go some way to explaining the psyker balance issues some people have mentioned.

Would also explain why there are no rules for what powers are aquired with 7+ if the intended limit is 6.

Unless I'm missing some really obvious section of Ascension where it explicitly says that PCs can achieve psi rating 7+ of course, wouldn't be the first time. If so, could someone kindly point me at the page no?

Oh another thing occurred to me. Inquisitors with "The Psykers Gift" can purchase "+1" psker power rating by spending xp any time they like, they don't need a specific level advance in the way that Primaris Pskers do.

So if level 6 isn't the upper limit, what's to stop an Inquisitor quickly becoming a vastly more powerful psyker than an equivalenty experienced Primaris Psyker.

If 6 is the upper limit, then this isn't a problem of course. Hm, except that a character who was new to psyker powers in Ascension, via "The Psykers Gift" or that transition package that allows them to become a psyker (apologoes, too lazy to look up) could advance their new found powers more quickly as an Inquisitor than as a Primaris Psyker?

Any problems can be fixed by GM fiat of course, I'm just curious as to what was the design intent here.

Hopefully an errata will explain these psy +1 rules a bit more.

The ruling I would go with is that the +1 psy rating talents does not grant any powers. As per "psykers gift" there are options to buy powers as well, and my argument is that it is tougher develop your psychic potential that late in your career. If you have not purchased all your previous careers psy rating you are of course open to buy them still, no matter how many psy rating +1 you have.

I would also allow "psykers gift" as an ascended talent option for all ascended careers under the same conditions as for Interrogators and Inquisitors. As a GM you may want to consider limiting how often they can purchase a new +1 psy rating.

My players are not so far in the character development that I have had a chance to see how these rules balance out, but these are the thoughts I have done so far.

I suspect there is no explicit psy 7 rating because a psyker may enter the career with less than psy 6, an Psychic adepts or character who has taken Nascent Psyker or whathaveyou could have a very low psy rating, but still enter the career.

The Inquisitor Psychic advances are explicitly Elite Advances, that is, subject to GM approval. though it would be odd if you got more than one per rank. I would be surprised if an errata cleared that up.

Also the Burning princess, at Psy 14 would vastly outstrip any PC Psyker if you were capped at Psy 6, and that would be no fun at all.

Some clarifications from FFG:

Rule Question:
Greetings, I'm a big fan of Dark Heresy, got all the books and love them.

I have a question regarding pychic power rating in Ascension: simply put, can PCs achieve power levels over 6? and if so, is there an upper limit?

The reason I ask is that I'd assumed the answer was no - the advance of "pychic power rating +1" for Primaris Psker is listed as a talent increase, and in the listing and descriptions of talents, 6 is the highest.

I'd assumed the wording of "+1" was to cater for players new to psychic powers via one of the transition packages, who wouldn't have an old career with lower levels to purchase advances from.

Higher than 6, there are no rules for what powers would be gained per advance, and the ability of Inquisitors with "The Psykers Gift" to purchase levels with xp and no specific level based advance would mean that they could easily overpower Primaris Psykers, which seems inconsistent.

As a GM, levels over 6 seem to present some challenges with regards to balance too, but that's another story.

But lots of people on the forums seem to be assuming no upper limit, hence my question.

Greetings Steve!

When you purchase the "Psy Rating +1" advance beyond Psy Rating 6 you simply raise your psy rating value by +1 for the purpose of calculating the effects of powers and other abilities that may use it's value. You do not gain any additional powers when going above 6.

Feel free to restrict this advance in your game if it causes undue power escalation. Some GM's play Ascension with a style that calls for dozens of enemies to be slain at once, while others run more investigation themed games. Some Ascension abilities might cause your game a problem if you allow your players to take to many of them.

Let me know if you have any more questions!

Mack Martin
Associate RPG Producer
[email protected]
651.639.1905

Thanks for the swift reply, much appreciated.

I've one supplementaty question (er, well 2 maybe...)

1) is it correct to say that Primaris Pskers are currently limited to 10 Psi Rating? (enter career with 6 maximum, career advances of +1 at ranks 10,12,14,16 gives 10)

2) should there be some kind of limit (or level dependent progression) to the max Psi Rating that an Interrogator or Inquisitor with "The Psker's Gift" can acheive? Currnently it reads like there isn't - if they have sufficient XP then they can buy levels at will (possibly overtaking a similarly ranked Primaris Psyker?)

Apologies for the questions, I'm usually ok house ruling on things if I understand the "design intent" of the writer, but it's not clear to me in this instance.

thanks again and best regards,
Steve.

1) Psy Rating 10 would mathematically be the cap for the Primaris Psykers Psi Rating.

2) Advances may only be taken once unless otherwise allowed by your GM and Elite Advances are no different. There are some exceptions but those are clearly defined on the charts (such as Sound Constitution). So it is unlikely that an Interrogator or Inquisitor with the Psyker's Gift will go higher than Psy Rating 6 or 7.

Hopefully that clears things up!

Mack Martin
Associate RPG Producer
[email protected]
651.639.1905

Somehow, I'm losing faith in the customer service here. The way it's presented by Mack, there's no incentive for a Nascent Psyker to go for The Mind's Eye Opens and Inquisitor with Psyker's Gift anymore since the highest psy rating they'll achieve is a whopping two.

@Quiller

Oh another thing occurred to me. Inquisitors with "The Psykers Gift" can purchase "+1" psker power rating by spending xp any time they like, they don't need a specific level advance in the way that Primaris Pskers do.

So if level 6 isn't the upper limit, what's to stop an Inquisitor quickly becoming a vastly more powerful psyker than an equivalenty experienced Primaris Psyker

Yes, an Inquisitor could gain more raw power. However, the only thing he'd manage would be to become phenomenally dead. Manifesting powers with that many dice without the Primaris-only rules for fettering seems pretty suicidal to me. Further, gaining Psy levels and ascended powers as an Inquisitor is twice as expensive as gaining them as a Psyker.

Cifer said:

Actually, I'd be curious to see if you agree, but my reading of the response to the mails I got was the Psy Rating increase and purchase of Ascended Psyker Powers for Inquisitors was an elite advance, and therefore only selectable once.

This would mean an Inquisitor who came from the Sanctioned Psyker career would have a max psy rating of 6 from the previous career +1 for the elite advance giving 7, and a max of one ascended psi power. Which, sounds reasonable no?

Actually, I'd be curious to see if you agree, but my reading of the response to the mails I got was the Psy Rating increase and purchase of Ascended Psyker Powers for Inquisitors was an elite advance, and therefore only selectable once.

Firstly, there's nothing about elite advances that indicates they can only be taken once. On the contrary, the point of an elite advancement is that it defies ordinary advancement rules and is generally granted solely at the GM's discretion - but this is kinda countered here by it being granted by the book. But yes, Mack indicates that it should only be able to be taken once.

This would mean an Inquisitor who came from the Sanctioned Psyker career would have a max psy rating of 6 from the previous career +1 for the elite advance giving 7, and a max of one ascended psi power. Which, sounds reasonable no?

No. Consider that to have that ability, you give up the possibility of halving any corruption or insanity you gain, a truly powerful ability for a Radical Sorcerer or a Malleus Daemonhunter. For a single psyker die and one ascended power at two times the price the Primaris has to pay and without the option to fetter or push? Meh.

More to the point, what about the previously mentioned Ex-Nascent? Psyrating 2 and an Ascended power he can't even use? Yeah, that's an incentive...

@Cifer

I take your point that you don't think it's reasonable, but I was still pleased that Mack's anwser is consistent, and answers my worry that an Inquisitor might have the potential to become a more powerful psyker than a Primaris; at least with this clarification it's clear that Inquisitors can only achieve very limited pyker ability (psi rating 2 for nascents) unless they are an ex-Sanctioned (in which case the limit is a decent 7), and could never achieve the potential of a Primaris(10).

This seems a fair balance for an RPG where the aim is some sort of balance across the players' abilities - it doesn't cater for a Ravenor/Eisenhorn, but that's fair enough.

As for the nascent who then purchases his +1 to reach a cap of 2, well I guess the ability to buy an ascended power was aimed more at the ex-Sanctioned Psyker rather than him, as you pointed out, probably better to spent the xp on something other than a power he can't manifest.

And yet again: When allowing the Inquisitor unlimited advances, the balance is achieved in three other ways. Firstly, their powers are way more pricey than those of Primaris Psykers, with a single Ascended Power being equivalent to four peer talents. Secondly, they have to spend their special class ability to get it. And thirdly, they don't get access to Fetter and Push, the first being vital to high power levels. I don't know about your group, but in mine, the other players would look at me with a friendly expression of "Have you gone mad?" if I wanted to regularly manifest powers without a safety net for 10 or even more dice. Statistically, every single power manifested at this level will evoke a phenomenon - perhaps more than one. It's powerful, but quite self-regulating.

As for the nascent who then purchases his +1 to reach a cap of 2, well I guess the ability to buy an ascended power was aimed more at the ex-Sanctioned Psyker rather than him, as you pointed out, probably better to spent the xp on something other than a power he can't manifest.

So you're putting both 1500 XP (more if you want to buy a power as well) and your special class ability into this and all you're getting is a Psy Rating 2? Doesn't seem exactly balanced to me when you compare it to the other two abilities.

Hey, I only posted the clarifications to try to be helpful to forum users, I didn't make the rulings

I agree with you, with the rules as they are currently, the Psyker's Gift special ability really only makes sense for a PC coming to Inqusistor from the Sanctioned Psyker career - he can pick up a +1 psy rating and an Ascended Power (at some considerable cost as you point).

You can always house rule it to work as you suggest, and I'll be interested to have a look if you write it up. For my group I think I'll stick with the rules as Mack has described, but purely because I think Inquisitors get plenty of toys to play with without being imba psykers too