Hello!

I'm a big fan of DH/RT games, but I must admit - Ascension is the worst book I EVER seen regarding game balance.

Unnatural Characteristics are being given to PCs like simple +5 to ability. Rank 10 Inquisitor has Unnatural Willpower (x2) already??? Assuming Imperial Psyker with Psy Rating 6 becomes Inquisitor, gains Unnatural Willpower (x2)...

Force Barrage will become total destruction power. And it's not munchkinism, you know. It is not even powergaming. Simple Psyker with Psy Rating 6, Willpower 70 will have each bolt deal 1d10+14 damage and on success will generate 14 bolts, each will have 80% chance to hit???

Enemies without Hexagrammatic Storm Troopers Carapace armour will be annihilated without even chance to survive.

This book is totally unbalanced.

It's the Epic Level Handbook for Dark Heresy. It's only unbalanced if A) Not everyone gets similar levels of cool new stuff and B) the GM doesn't understand he's got to kick it up a notch.

Once they Ascend, they aren't the guys sent to make sure the paperwork in Volghive is done right. They're the guys deciding if Volghive needs to be burned to the ground, and there's not a lot of people who can over-rule them. They are close to the ultimate power in the Imperium, and they should be badass.

Personal Prowess =/= Power.

Inquisitor can't single-handedly crush squad of tactical marines (even one should be CHALLENGE to him)

I'm deeply confused as to what you're complaining about.

Evilgm said:

I believe I can agree with you, but personally I would find not Epic but 'Overpowered' level PCs a bit boring in my campaigns, unless they consist of blasting entire armies or razing cities to the ground (but that reminds me of DW, rather than DH). I haven't seen the book yet but as of what they write here - lots of 14+d10 almost autohit blows - is definitely not for DH campaigns.

In DH I like investigations and plot-driven fights, not full-scale battles. Dunno about the others, though.

But claiming that Ascension is 'totally broken' - is a bit impulsive allegation, I am almost sure.

egalor said:

While I can see your pov, Dark heresy is not just a investigation game. Its also a combat game as well its both essentially, after all once you find the heretics and daemons generally you kill them (you might like to take a prisoner but still its violent bloody nastiness).

That was my point, it's not really, but it could be. It's all in how you want to play the game. Our game are usually 50/50 where the combat 50 is busting heretic skulls after we find them and subduing people for information. The investigation part generally consist of finding the skulls to bust.

Force Barrage definitely needs to be nerfed to reconcile with Ascension. It is way too strong for a basic Telekinetic technique, handily outshining every Ascended power in terms of sheer destructive prowess, dishing out hundreds to well over a thousand damage.

Lasers said:

It depends what kind of opponents you're fighting. FB's major flaw is its lack of Pen. While the +14 to damage certainly makes up for that a lot, the kinds of opponents ascended characters will be going up against will be far more powerful than your standard DH antagonists. A chaos space marine, for example, will be simply ignoring a lot of those attacks. At that point you want the guy with the big rifle to step up.

macd21 said:

It depends on how powerful your bolts are. They can ultimately get to a point where they each deal 32.5 damage on average , and that is something not even a Marine in Terminator Armour can shrug off, not to mention you'll also be firing upwards of 40+ of them.

1. If you don't like it, don't use it.

2. its the EPIC handbook for DH, what were you expecting?!? One of the player classes is a temple assassin, arguably one of the most powerful (human) single units in the War game. It shouldn't come as a surprise that the PC's can be WTF powerful.

3.The Antagonist section includes a Greater Daemon, if the PC's are awesome investigators but can't can't actually take it out, and there's a little note that says "* This bad guy is too powerful for mere ascention PC's, however our upcoming Deathwatch book contains dudes that will totally take it out" Then the howls of nerdrage would rend a hole in reality and summon Khorne himself into existence, thus ending the human race.

4. Adjust your play style, Ascension doesn't really seem to lend itself to the Adventure Party style play. Your Ascension level characters pull the strings and do the high level stuff, you can also play the little people as part of the low level investigations. When the big bad pops out, your Ascension characters turn up and turn everything into paste.

I agree with most of the replies here, OP. You seem to be attempting to evaluate the balance of Ascension within the context of Dark Heresy. If you put it like that, YES it's unbalanced. It's the epic level handbook of Dark Heresy for very high level / powerful characters.

FB is possibly in need of a nerf. I'm not going to say much else until I see it used. However, one mechanic doesn't break a whole book.

Dak Rogers said:

Broken Psykers then, not broken Ascension. Besides, when have Psykers NOT been broken?

*remembers the days when DH came out and the first posts on the forums were~This games broken, we're so weak we cant do anything wah wah wah~*

Nothing really changes i guess, some folks just gotta whine about something to validate themselves.

Velvetears said:

Near as I can tell, people who have been complaining about psychic powers in Ascension are complaining about things that happen routinely in all 3 of the Ravenor books and pretty much all of the Eisenhorn books as well. Psykers don't just dead or get possessed all the time - most the time they don't even trigger the sheen of ice, which is the most common psyker side-effect in those Inquisition novels. Usually only when a psyker is pushing themselves - which, it would seem, is exactly what the Fettered/Push, etc. system is intending to emulate.

And only extremely powerful psykers are really without risk, because when they're being careful they can only use half their psy rating... Meaning that unless they're very high rank they're unlikely to be able to trigger more extreme powers except while unfettered or pushing. And, at ranks where 1/2 still allows significant ower usage, having used their powers for so long, they darn well better be able to control them. It would stink to be sucked into the Warp everytime you try to levitate a dataslate even after practicing it for 100 years.

I just can't take anyone seriously who points at a power that is used almost non-stop in the Ravenor books, and say that it's broken and doesn't belong in an Inquisition game. It defies any and all comprehension. And Ravenor wasn't even the most powerful psyker IN the Ravenor books, for crying out loud.

A fettered Primaris is less broken then you think. Sure, they can't pull Perils, but guess what? They are at HALF of their total dice MAX when doing that. Meaning they have a **** hard time pulling out anything that needs more then 20+ threshold, depending on the build. Sure, a maxed out Willpower and Rating character might still have 4-5 dice, but that's still not a great chance of pulling off, say, an ungodly FB, or some of the new high powered stuff.

Actually Force Barrage's lethality depends primarily on the user's Willpower Bonus. As long as this is high, and you clear the threshold, it will hurt. A lot. Also, a fettered Psy 8 Psyker can easily and consistently clear a Threshold of 20.

Let's assume the Psyker has 8 Psy Rating, fetters at 4, and has 80 WP, with Unnatural Willpower 2x, Telekinetic Focus and Specialization, and Power Well 2:

22 (5.5 * 4 Psy) + 4 (Focus + Power Well 2) + 16 (8 WP Bonus * 2) = 42 on the Power Roll.

42 - 16 (Force Barrage threshold - 5 due to Specialization) = 26 / 5 = 5 increments of Overbleed 5

(5 + 16) * (1d10 + 16) * .8 =

21 * 21.5 *.8 = 361.2 average damage, with a range of 160 meters.

People keep missing the mark when they argue that a psyker is not broken.One, levitating things is not where the issue is coming in to play, I think most minor powers are fine with the new system, its when we get to major ones its a problem. Here's why its a problem, one, at max rank a psyker with willpower of 70(which is not what they will likely have, it will probably be higher) will get a WP bonus of 21, beating a threshold of 20 without a single die( They get unnatural willpower (x3) and you know they're going to take it.) Next up, at max rank, they will also be rolling 5 dice at unfettered. Average roll will be a 25, so, anything will a threshold under 45 they are more then likely going to be able to do no problems. Guess what has a threshold of under 45? Every power, including ascended ones, in the game. Even with unnatural (x2) and psy rating 8 you will consistently be able to beat a 34 which gives you almost every power there is. Show me the part in your silly little book where Ravenor stops time without breaking a sweat or where he creates flames of death that continually expand outword. Further, show me in the codex where a Primaris can do that without risk, you can't because it doesn't (powers referred to here is Inferno, which has a threshold of 32, which on the first turn will give 1d10 times 7 damage with a willpower of 70 and stasis shell, threshold of 24 with a likely 2 degrees of overbleed for a minimum 3 turns of duration.) Here, I'll list all the powers in ascended that a psyker will have a heard time reaching with the total of 32 being there average: Warp time it needs a 36.

Vaeron said:

Power balance between characters is less an issue in a novel than it is in a RPG. If Superman was a RPG, there would probably be a lot of complaint from Lois Lane's player about how underpowered her PC is...

Lasers said:

Average overall damage seems like a very poor judge of effectiveness, given that a T3 unarmored foe would be absolutely annihilated taking 18.5 wounds per bolt while a TB10 Armor 8 foe is only taking 3.5 wounds per bolt. Far more useful is the average number of hits (21 * .9, by the way, since Unnatural Willpower lowers the difficulty of a non-opposed test by 10, which effectively grants +10 to tests.) and the average damage and range of damage per bolt, which would be ~19 hits and ~21.5 damage (17-26).

Not saying the conclusion is faulty (it's a helluva power, especially with Unnatural Willpower), just saying that big numbers like 361.2 wounds is a lot less impressive against the sorts of foes an Inquisitor or Primaris Psyker is going to be sent to handle.

Edit: Hmmm, I could have sworn I saw the "Unnatural X treats tests as one step less difficult" somewhere... but I can't seem to find it in the core book or the errata... Regardless, the important point is unaffected either way.

"Average overall damage seems like a very poor judge of effectiveness, given that a T3 unarmored foe would be absolutely annihilated taking 18.5 wounds per bolt while a TB10 Armor 8 foe is only taking 3.5 wounds per bolt. Far more useful is the average number of hits (21 * .9, by the way, since Unnatural Willpower lowers the difficulty of a non-opposed test by 10, which effectively grants +10 to tests.) and the average damage and range of damage per bolt, which would be ~19 hits and ~21.5 damage (17-26).

Not saying the conclusion is faulty (it's a helluva power, especially with Unnatural Willpower), just saying that big numbers like 361.2 wounds is a lot less impressive against the sorts of foes an Inquisitor or Primaris Psyker is going to be sent to handle."

3.5 * 18.9 hitting bolts = 66.15 damage. That's STILL a lot of damage for a fettered, non-Ascended power; hell, it's a lot of damage period. In the meanwhile a Lascannon does a 'mere' 27.5 damage to the same target by comparison, and the Force Barrage only gets much, much better. Further, if the Psyker really needs to, he _can_ go all out, generating 1 additional bolt on average per additional Psy Rating he uses, to a maximum of 80.15 damage Unfettered. Of course, when a Psyker reaches his maximum power, the damage dealt per bolt is absolutely insane, 32.5 on average or 14.5 versus your example enemy, while he's tossing around ~36 bolts, each with a 100% chance to hit, and all of this at Fettered power.

Also, I'm sure you're right about Unnatural Traits adjusting difficulty modifiers. I think I've seen it in the IH.

Bombernoy said:

Bombernoy said:

Come on now. You don't have to be insulting. 'Silly books'? You mean the ones the game is based on. Ok, it's game tie-in fiction, that's fine. But Alpha level psykers are supposed to be scary. All you're doing is convincing me that's true. But fine. Lets play theoretical math-hammer.

Vindicare assassin. Has a relatively low BS, lets say 60. Exitus rifle with a range increment of 200m. He's a Vindicare. He's hiding and waiting for the world ending psyker to come into the 800m range. He has his trusty shield breaker round ignoring any psychic protections. Maybe the targets unaware. Maybe not. I'm going to say that Scary psyker isn't aware. Others are distracting him. So -30 for range. Wait, Peerless Marksmen negates that. +30 for target being unaware. +20 for aiming.

Now I'm sure there's more modifiers positive and negative I could add in here. But the psyker is going to get shot. Probably in the head. More than once. Each with a 2d10+4 pen 10 hit. And just in case the Vindicare can dodge an ungodly number of invisible Psychic attacks a round.

OR

Inquisitor. Somewhat experienced, as your Primaris is obviously higher than rank 9. 70 influence. Deeply involved with the Munitorium on multiple levels. So lets say Warmonger as well as Good Repuation (Navy/Imperial Guard). He needs a frigate to take down the world ending psyker whose leveling a continent with his flagrant displays of power. Maybe a regiment. So the use of a Naval frigate counts as very rare. That's a -20. Good reputation gives a +10. Warmonger gives a free reroll if needed. And there's a hapless cell of Acolytes on the ground being used as bait for the overpowered psyker. They'll probably agree with you though. We have the stats for a Naval frigate. The rules are: If it hits a character. They die. Orbital bombardment is a *****.

We can bring a regiment of Imperial Guard after just to be sure.

So sure. It's as broken as any of the resources other characters with the Ascension rules can bring to the 'fight'.

-Nathaniel