Core Rulebook:
Skills:
1. When using a basic skill untrained, you have to halve your Characteristic:
- Do you round down (as per p96)
- Or do you round up (as per p182)?
--------- > Round up
-https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/6806-using-skills/
Psychic Powers
2. Checked and the errata and it reads as follows:
“Making a Focus Power Action is the psychic equivalent of a Standard Attack Action, and counts as such for purposes of determining what else a psyker can do in a round. Therefore, a psyker who uses a Half Action power cannot make another Half Action Standard Attack on the same round. A Psyker may manifest only one ability per Round with the exception of the Resist Possession power. A Psyker is required to roll at least one die to manifest an ability.”
Although the second sentence reads "Therefore, a psyker who uses a Half Action power cannot make another Half Action Standard Attack on the same round." The first sentence which equates the Focus Power Action (needed to use ANY and ALL psychic powers) with a Standard Attack action means that a psyker may NEVER, according to this errata, make any attack during the round in which they have manifested a Power.
I think the players who came up with this errata meant to simply 'nerf' the Super Powered and Game Breaking Unnatural Aim, which could have more easily and elegantly been handled by making the power a Full Action rather than a Half Action (although I'd still ignore that 'errata' as well. lengua.gif) What has been done though is they've made Precognitive Strike a completely useless power (unless you're only trying to get it for the Divination Mastery.)
With the new errata in effect Precognitive Strike becomes a Full Action Aim except the aim would not incur the risk of failure, or Perils. A Full Action Aim grants a +20 bonus to your next melee or ranged attack at the cost of essentially giving up the chance to attack that round. Under errata Precognitive Strike grants the exact same +20 Bonus, has a Threshold of 17, might incur a Perils of the Warp, Counts as a Standard Attack (thus turning a power that is listed as a Free Action into a de facto Attack which robs the psyker of an attack.)
However, to be fair I must point out that there are some advantages that might possibly make Precognitive Strike a little better than the Full Action Aim which are the following:
The +20 Bonus is to Tests 'Until the end of your next turn...' thus you gain +20 to Parries made and would still retain your single Reaction.
You may engage in another Half Action BEFORE you strike in the following round although besides using the Aim Half Action *which would net you a +30 to hit) I can fail to think of anything else you might want to do; unlike the Aim Full Action which requires you to immediately attack or loose the bonus.
Despite these advantages I still feel the Power gets a serious reduction in its usefulness then it previously held, but then again it might have been intestinally to turn one of the only combat applicable Divination Powers into a slightly better version of a basic Action anyone can perform.
Some other notes regarding this errata:
- Divine Shot unless itself under errata cannot now be used as there is nothing that states 'your next shot' nor reads 'until end of your next turn' nor is the power sustainable and thus 'ends' at the end of the round.
- The Biomancer Power Seal Wounds cannot be used in the same round that the Psyker Attacked thus greatly limiting its usefulness in actual combat. (But this is probably intentionally as its threshold was doubled under the errata.)
- The Telekine Power Catch Projectiles which is a Reaction must now be manifested a round before you expect to catch said projectiles OR must be used to before you attack, if you've attacked first or already attacked in a round you now may not use this Power which greatly inhibits its usefulness and seems counter intuitive.
- Any Power which is listed as a Free Action loses its 'versatility' as you must now either manifest a round before you expect to need it (if its sustainable) or must withhold from attacking in a round you might want to use it in as attacking would negate your ability to use that 'Free Action'.
I think this particular aspect of the errata was a bit 'knee jerk' and not particularly thought out as much as it could have been and its inclusion would cause far more problems in my games than it would fix or address. It seems very punitive to those who have chosen to play a psyker in an attempt to fix a problem that I am not even aware of (unless it’s just the game breaking überness of Unnatural Aim -- which should probably just be removed altogether from the game as it’s probably the single most abused occurrence in the entire system.)
Personal Addition:
So, as you can see this isn’t a question, but I thought the post was incredibly well thought out and bared at least addressing the points raised in the post in relation to how the errata changed how many of the psychic powers functioned.
https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/2543-dark-heresy-errata-20-release-10282008/
Minor Powers
3. 138. The Minor Power Resist Posession is cast as a Reaction, and reads:
"You create mental wards to shield your mind from the malign denizens of the warp. Any time in the next hour you may re-roll any failed Test to resist being possessed by a Daemon."
Can you use this power to save your sorry skin if you during your own turn invoked the Perils of the Warp and rolls Deamonhost?
"Daemonhost: The Psyker must immediately pass a Very Hard (–30) Willpower Test or be possessed by a Daemon and become a Daemonhost!"
--------- > Sure!
Telepathy
4. It says in p179 “Closer than Flesh” in the DH rulebook that if a psyker uses a telepathic power on a target who has twice his corruption or insanity points bad things could happen.
- The thing I'd like to discuss is, could you force this into unwilling victims? For example if psyker A has 20 corruption points and person B the" victim" would have 0, would the victim have to make WP checks to risk corruption if person A contacted him with a telepathic power.
-------- > Could be an interesting thing for a GM to adopt, but strictly speaking no.
- Also could you resist a telepathic communication attempt?
------- > See above.
- Would a mundane person even detect it? I would probably allow it in my games, but how other gm's see this is interesting.
-------- > You mean like hearing voices in their head? Yes.
-https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/4641-forcing-psychic-rot-on-unwilling-persons/?tab=comments#comment-38737
Playing the Game
The Role of Fate
5. One of the points in the Errata that I've been puzzling over for a little, is the note made about using a Fate Point to recover damage. Notably, the point that states it does not recover Critical Damage.
- Does this mean a character who is at critical wounds cannot use this power to recover?
------- > No
I have generally been under the assumption that a character who is Critically damaged cannot recover wounds until the critical damage has been dealt with (and indeed, most other healing abilities, including Medicae, recovery, Seal Wounds, Regeneration and Healer seem to support this).
- So what happens if a Critically damaged character uses this power to recover wounds?
- Does it just not work, dr do they somehow recover wounds while remaining Critically damaged?
------- > The latter.
- And on that note, if it is the "you recover wounds while keeping Critical Damage", if, for arguments sake, the character used multiple Fate Points to heal and got up to say... one or two wounds short of their maximum, are they counted as being lightly wounded or Critically Wounded?
------- > they are still suffering Critical Damage so the latter.
-https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/114183-fate-point-recovery/?tab=comments#comment-1215806
Injury
6. If you take permanent characteristic damage and go below the pre requisites of a talent you possess do you lose the use of the talent?
- If so, do you gain the XP spent on the talent back?
-------- > No, you don’t lose it.
Actually this was one of mine apparently that I came up with well after we'd passed core rulebook material, now that I remember
The Game Master
For Glory or Gain
7. Does experience spent on elite advances count towards rank progression?
--------- > I’d say no; these are outside their Career Path.
Again another of mine it seems.
Aliens, Heretics & Antagonists
Traits Descriptions
8. Does Unnatural Characteristics stack if they are of the same level?
Example: If I have a player with Unnatural Agility x2 and i use a drugs like "Ghostfire Pollen Extract" (p. 184 Inquisitor's Handbook) I will take Unnatural Agility x3 or it doesn't work?
-------- > “When two or more multipliers apply to a value, add them together to form a single multiple, with each multiplier beyond the first adding 1 less than its value to the first multiplier. Thus a double (x2) and a double (x2) applied to the same number results in a triple (x3, as 2 + 1 = 3).”
9. Conundrum that popped in my mind while designing psyker bad guy: assume that a character somehow gains Unnatural Willpower (the exact level of unnature is irrelevent), just prior to gaining a Psy level.
- Does the doubled (or tripled, quadrupled, etc) willpower bonus get taken into account when getting new psychic powers?
------- > Technically yes, but I’d recommend adjusting that quite a lot. DH1’s doubling for Unnaturals gets bonuses really large really fast. If you’re creating an NPC, just assign whatever values you feel work best and don’t worry about the doubling.
Mutations
10. I have an Imperial Psycher at Psy Rating 3. We finished an epic session last night and I've ended up having to roll a minor mutation at the beginning of the next session. Looking through them I saw that one of them, Wyrdling and one of the Major Mutations, Hellspawn give you a Psy Rating (1 and 2 respectively).
- How does this effect Psychers who have already surpassed the Psy Rating 1 or 2 that the mutation gives you?
--------- > It won’t change their psy rating.