People seem to have a problem with Psykers getting Unnatural Willpower (X). Hell, the way people are acting you would think that Psykers are handed Unnatural Willpower X2 as soon as the ascend from being generic Acolytes to being fully fledged Throne Agents. Yet a Psyker can not get Unnatural Anything until they reach at least 36,000 XP (the Only the Magos gets their first Unnatural (X) talent later than the Primaris Psyker). I don't know about you guys, but I have never seen a Psyker last anywhere near that long before being driven insane by their powers, corrupted beyond salvation or just shot by some guy with a gun and a grudge.

So when arguing what is broken or not, let's stick with what is a little more realistic. A Psyker likely starts with a WP of 35-37, assuming the Psyker has made it to 20,000 XP (well into their Ascended career, but only a little more than half way to Unnatural Willpower), and they maxed out their WP sat increases (Why wouldn't they?) The Psyker now has a WP stat of 65-72, depending on which Ascension they took, and a Psi Rating of either 6 or 7, depending on their path.

This allows the Psyker to roll 3 or 4 dice, adding 6 or 7 to the total rolled from their WP, and another 3-4 from Power Well and the like. Giving them a total of around 26.5-33. For free. This is still real **** scary, but even like this, congradulations, your Psyker just managed to surpass his buddy with a bolt gun. To tell the truth, I think people are focusing on TKs way to much. Upon reading the rules as written, I believe Diviners with Divine Shot are by for the most dangerous.

Imperial Psyker, that becomes Inquisitor gains Unnatural Willpower on the first Ascended Rank. Hahaha.

Moreover - Alpha level psyker is Psy Rating 14 (please read Burning Princess)

What does an Alpha level Psyker's Psi Level have to do with this discussion?

You are ignoring origins and background packages in the like which can easily and accessibly increase the Psyker's WP by 10-15. A psyker Inquisitor's transition package can easily increase WP by another 10 (Primaris by 5), then there's the advances, basic and Ascended: another 30. Even if we assume an average roll of 11, 80 WP is easily accessible at around the point you've mentioned. Furthermore, the Psyker Inquisitor gets Unnatural Willpower 2x _immediately_ (oops, I've been Ninjaed).

Also, if we're going for maximum damage output with a relatively 'low' WP Bonus at 8, there is Firestorm; Threshold 16, base damage 1d10+5, ignites enemies on fire, and each instance of Overbleed 5 increases its damage by 1d10. Assuming we can roll 4 dice Fettered:

5.5 * 4 + 8 + 4 (Power Well/Focus) = 34

34 - 16 = 18 / 5 = 3

So, 4d10+5 E Damage (average 27). in 6 meter radius, and you ignite everyone within on fire, with no need to make any sort of to hit roll, and all as a Half Action. Nice. If we have a specialization in Pyromancy, we can increase that to 32.5 average damage. That's a lot more than 'surpassing your buddy with the bolter.' That's almost surpassing your buddy with the MP Lascannon, whose attack isn't an area of effect, and requires BS tests. If we're using an Inquisitor Psyker, who has Unnatural Willpower 2x immediately, increase that damage to 43.5; what do you know? So early in our Ascended career, and already we're doing more damage than the Lascannon. Then there's Soul Killer, another favourite of mine that ignores armour completely: 2 bolts of 37.5 damage for a total of 75 damage (again, we don't need to roll to hit), or 3 bolts for 112.5 Damage total if we have a Telepathic specialization. While Divine Shot + heavy weapon is a great combo, it gets outclassed very, very quickly, as do the very best man-portable weapons hefted by the Psyker's peers.

Unusualsuspect said:

Not a **** thing, near as I can tell.

Lasers said:

What background packages grant 10-15 extra WP? The best that I know of is Living Nightmare which gives you a +5 to your WP. An Imperial Worlder gives you +3% while being Void Born gives you +5%, but at the cost of starting with two fewer wounds than an Imperial Worlder.

On Pyromancy vs. Divination. Who said anything about heavy weapons? You keep your 50M range power. Assuming we know each other exist, unless you you are actively trying to evade me, I will know where you are at all times (Dowsing); know what you are doing when I find you (Far Sight); and where I have to go to see you while being safely outside the range of your powers (Personal Augury); while I peg you with a lasgun from my aircar 35,000 meters up (or even just from down the street) every time.

Those were the powers used by the bane of our former group. He was an assassin we tried to catch for months. He had some pretty good skills and decent stats, but he never used anything but a basic lasgun, had no other special equipment and only had a psi rating of 3. Yet he was responsible for a trio of PC deaths and almost a dozen fate points burned. To be fair, he had a pair of fate points himself, so he ended up surviving the first two times we 'killed' him.

Ok, and what about Psychic Phenomenas? Or it was 'Oh it's GMs ruling, he won't get any bad results'.

1. He always succeded on Psyniscience rolls for Dowsing with several degrees of success? 500+ m means -10 on roll

2. Same for Personal Augury

PCs were wearing cloth armor? They dumped Awareness and Perception? Assassin somehow get the ability to fire from x4+ distance?

In my perception it is lame GM Deus Ex Machina

Mrakvampire said:

Now you are just being a troll, because that post supported your position, you knuckle.

Our GM always rolled in front of us. His Psychic Phenomena were rolled fair and square

1: If you fail, you get to try again. Which he only began once he became aware of our presence.

2: See above, he used Personal Augury at the start of a mission, and whenever the mission took a radical turn (such as the target escaping) if it failed, he tried again. If he saw our faces, he began looking for us.

Armor eventually doesn't matter if he always hits. Perception doesn't help you when he is 800 meters up the side of a cliff and waiting for you. Divine Shot means he hits any target he can see, no matter the range.

I'm not a troll.

I react on post regardless of their support of my position. If I find them ridicilous - I oppose.

About Divine Shot. I personally think, that it is impossible to fire a weapon beyond Exreme Range. With or without Divine Shot. It is very arguable desision of your GM that allows any weapon (even Infernal Pistol) to fire several km with Divine Shot only because you can see in scope a target.

Regarding Perception and cliff... Again, it is very arguable decision of your GM to disallow Awareness Test to detect sniper. He could simply state - 'Haha, he kills you because, I'm OMG very smart GM and came to you with great idea how I can kill you with lasgun'

And lasgun. Lasgun. I cry with bloody tears. 1d10+4 (overcharge for example), Pen 0.

Carapace armour (5-6 AP), Toughness 40 = Total reduction 9-10. It was looong killing I assume... :-)))))))))

I didn't mean individually. Living Nightmare and Mind Cleansed/Void Born each increase Willpower by 5. Then there's a Darkholder Voidborn (Radical's Handbook, Page 31) which grants +10 from its origin alone.

"On Pyromancy vs. Divination. Who said anything about heavy weapons? You keep your 50M range power. Assuming we know each other exist, unless you you are actively trying to evade me, I will know where you are at all times (Dowsing); know what you are doing when I find you (Far Sight); and where I have to go to see you while being safely outside the range of your powers (Personal Augury); while I peg you with a lasgun from my aircar 35,000 meters up (or even just from down the street) every time."

"Those were the powers used by the bane of our former group. He was an assassin we tried to catch for months. He had some pretty good skills and decent stats, but he never used anything but a basic lasgun, had no other special equipment and only had a psi rating of 3. Yet he was responsible for a trio of PC deaths and almost a dozen fate points burned. To be fair, he had a pair of fate points himself, so he ended up surviving the first two times we 'killed' him. "

You do understand that Pyromancy and Divination are not exclusive schools (you can learn Techniques from both), and that Firestorm was cited as an example of a power that quickly becomes devastating to the degree of a heavy weapon, right? From my own experience I acknowledge Divination is powerful; in fact, in balance it's one of the best if not the best school in the game, but that said, Divine Shot quickly finds more than its match in the powers I've mentioned with respect to sheer offensive prowess. In the case of Force Barrage and Soul Killer, which fires invisible bolts of force and soul slaying energy respectively at ranges comparable to a Heavy Weapon without the cumbersome bulk or noise, there are alternate powers not only far more devastating than the most powerful man portable weapon guided by Divine Shot, but also on average far more discreet as well. I promise you a Psyker that combines the intel gathering of Divination with the sheer lethality of Telekinetics/Telepathy (Soul Killer/Zone of Compulsion) will be far, far more deadly than one focusing exclusively on the former. Again, Divine Shot is good, but quickly outclassed.

Howw about a Magos with Toughness 70 (obtainable with enhancements and talents), Machine Trait on 4, Armour Plating, Unnatural Toughness x2 and Dragon Skin
Should such a character be afraid of anything less than a Meltagun, Assault or Autocannon?

TB 14
Armour Bonus 14

Santiago said:

That is perfectly fair as far as I am concerned (of course I totally disagree that Ascenion is broken now that I have read it in full, I think its awesome), a Magos at that level is only a step away from been the equivalent of a Dreadnaught! (is that what the massive enclosed power armour is called?(I dont mean Terminator Armour) and at that level the types of threats he would be facing would be things like melta guns, heavy weapons and so on.

Abhoth said:

Yeah, Dreadnought, you have it. I really don't see Ascension as broken. It's true, some classes are extremely powerful, but they should be. The Vindicare Assassin is the Imperium's last response when someone needs to be sniped. Imperial science and training can literally not create anything better. They better be powerful. I mean, a Cadre is fighting Sector-wide conspiracies and terrible horrors. Of course they're powerful.

Though I admit some older official stats, like the unfortunate Inquisitor stats in Disciples of the Dark Gods, have been made totally obsolete. That, or Inquisitors Wroth and Mesmeron really kind of suck stats wise.

Santiago said:

Anything less ? No. But if you mean to imply that such character is a match for a Psyker (whose powers are much, much, more), or could shrug off his attacks, that is patently wrong.

I have never understood how a class can be "broken." Any GM running the game should know the rules and classes well enough and plan accordingly, be that bigger, tougher baddies or more baddies or storylines that can be played through without combat (my group played the first writing contest adventure last year without firing a gun and succeeded.) No matter how the player builds his character the GM can tailor the game to fit and challenge him. Look at the post about the Vindicare Assassin and a dozen Dodge rolls... great, now meet my assault cannon and pray you roll enough successes in your Armour 3 black pj's!

If nothing else, uber class powers can also mean Uber Bad Guys! I think Ascension means that the RH is now my favorite book (used to just see it as a niche book for source info.) because my group plays a Puritan path. I am having fun building NPCs with the Ascension rules combined with the RH backgrounds and Alternatives. Group brought down some baddies and vaulted Chaos items of great power that some Radicals want to use to fight Chaos; do they give/trade the items or do they go to war with NPCs easily as powerful as they are??

Again, this is the endgame book taking characters from investigators and spies to Inquisitors and spymasters!

As always, GM's have the final say (just like the Temple Assassin rule.)

-Cynr

Cynr said:

I wish our group had gone down the path of hunting heretics, but the majority wanted to fight xenos and daemons. It'd be cool to be put in shades of gray where you have to consider taking out rival Acolytes to accomplish your goals.

Mrakvampire said:

On Divine Shot and range, lets go to the rules, shall we?

"... you automatically hit any one target you can see regardless of Range ."

He could see us, he could hit us, it was that simple.

In regards to perception and the cliff. Speaking from experience, if someone more than 100 meters away and you don't already know exactly where they are, you aren't going to see them, it is as simple as that. We were only allowed Awareness checks ahead of time if we had a chance to see him, and once the penalties got above -60, we didn't even have a chance to see him before he shot, no matter our roll. The Assassin was someone who considered us a grave threat (We did have the power of the Inquisition behind us), and it is not like he always got the on us, we even snookered him a few times. But with his skills at Divination, he almost always got to chose the field.

As to carapase armor. You go down the street wearing that while trying to remain incognito, or trying NOT to get arrested, see how that works out for you. The best we often had was a light flack coat or a mesh vest. While a few in our group were TB 4, most were only TB 3, and two were only TB 2.

Lasers said:

Ah, I thought you meant one that grants 10 or 15 by itself. And I don't have RH yet, I haven't had the money. :/

"On Pyromancy vs. Divination. Who said anything about heavy weapons? You keep your 50M range power. Assuming we know each other exist, unless you you are actively trying to evade me, I will know where you are at all times (Dowsing); know what you are doing when I find you (Far Sight); and where I have to go to see you while being safely outside the range of your powers (Personal Augury); while I peg you with a lasgun from my aircar 35,000 meters up (or even just from down the street) every time."

"Those were the powers used by the bane of our former group. He was an assassin we tried to catch for months. He had some pretty good skills and decent stats, but he never used anything but a basic lasgun, had no other special equipment and only had a psi rating of 3. Yet he was responsible for a trio of PC deaths and almost a dozen fate points burned. To be fair, he had a pair of fate points himself, so he ended up surviving the first two times we 'killed' him. "

You do understand that Pyromancy and Divination are not exclusive schools (you can learn Techniques from both), and that Firestorm was cited as an example of a power that quickly becomes devastating to the degree of a heavy weapon, right? From my own experience I acknowledge Divination is powerful; in fact, in balance it's one of the best if not the best school in the game, but that said, Divine Shot quickly finds more than its match in the powers I've mentioned with respect to sheer offensive prowess. In the case of Force Barrage and Soul Killer, which fires invisible bolts of force and soul slaying energy respectively at ranges comparable to a Heavy Weapon without the cumbersome bulk or noise, there are alternate powers not only far more devastating than the most powerful man portable weapon guided by Divine Shot, but also on average far more discreet as well. I promise you a Psyker that combines the intel gathering of Divination with the sheer lethality of Telekinetics/Telepathy (Soul Killer/Zone of Compulsion) will be far, far more deadly than one focusing exclusively on the former. Again, Divine Shot is good, but quickly outclassed.

And here I misunderstood you again, I thought you were saying that Divination wasn't worthwhile at all (I have had people tell me this, the Assassin I am sparring with Mrak about was actually based on one of my old characters XD ). I understand how powerful the other schools can be, I just feel that Divination is so often under rated by people.

I just want to say this about this conversation.

How the heck do you guys grok this information so darned fast. I'm still working on books released months ago!

I haven't finished the book yet but I can tell you this....

Yes, Ascension level characters are broken.

They are also the people tasked to go play footsie with a Bloodthirster .

After reading all of it, here's my final verdict on Ascension ...

Ascension, or better, parts of it, can surely be put to good use by a game master and a troupe of players who're trying to tell a new kind of story and who're all aware of what they're getting themselves into, IF you know how to deal with gross imbalance in your RPG system. Of course, no RPG needs to be balanced, that's what you've got your trusty GM for after all, but Ascension is really really out of balance here. What I did like very much though, in the same context, was the section on roleplaying and the burden of being the inquisitor. That section was written really well and sure helpful to many a GM and player still 'learning the trade'.

If you're a more or less newbie GM, inexperienced in handling game balance, individual player actions, and the progression of a good story every last one of your players and yourself could enjoy, AND some people in your group are gross munchkins and/ or powergamers or number-crunchers, then Ascension can really ruin your day. There's so much in this book that can be abused and min-maxed by a 'clever' player it really really hurts. So, make sure you have a good grasp of what's in there, make sure you really want a campaign at a power level this high (whatever power means in this context ) and keep a close eye on what abilities, packages etc. your players are striving to take for their respective characters. In the end, make sure everything is still roleplayed and your game isn't reduced to an epic-level campaign of truncheons and flagons.

I do believe this is a fair summarization of this latest supplement of DH, yet I still retain my opinion as stated on page one of the other Ascension-thead: Ascension for sure is the weakest book of the DH line thus far.

Peace out, keep roleplaying, and only use the dice when you must ...

Malefic Sorcerer

Good review, Malefic Sorceror.

Largely, I like the book. However, I am only into the third chapter, so my judgement shouldn't be taken seriously. I really have no concerns with the book other than the selection of daemons. I'm curious why they just had the daemon of Khorne and the Changer of the Ways. Surely they could include greater daemons of Khorne, Slaanesh or Nurgle. Given that there was such a great selection of foes in the Dark Heresy rulebook, it seems lacking not to have more greater foes. However, it doesn't matter so much as I am content to create my own (or more likely, not include greater daemons).

Cynr said:

A class is broken if it is unbalanced when compared to other classes at the same xp level. It would appear that the classes in Ascension are horribly broken - psykers and vindicaire assassins are far more powerful than most of the other classes. Some classes are terrible and are essentially an xp sinkhole. It doesn't matter if the GM is fully aware of his PC's abilities, because no matter what he does certain PCs will dominate the game while the rest sit back and watch. Put the players up against a squad of chaos marines, the psyker and the VA start pounding on them while the others take cover.

This can be offset by allowing other classes to shine in other areas - for example, no one expects a Sage to go toe-to-toe with a space marine. But Ascension fails to balance classes within the same niche. The VA is by far the best combat class, for example. The Magos is just a mess - he can't actually qualify for many of his abilities.

macd21 said:

Fixed.

I think it is in Dan Abnetts Damnation Crusade grapic novel, that a feral warrior encounters a space marine and is totally in awe. The marine states he is a warrior. The feral warrior asks "Which wars require warriors like you ?", and the space marine answers something like "Wars beyond your imagination."

This is probably the best premise for Ascension and Deathwatch. Just because Dark Heresy focuses on the "smaller" threats, think of all the stuff 40K holds that is more dangerous than an unmodified human could fight. Realistically, the overwhelming majority of 40k horrors are not in the scope of dark heresy...

Ok. Still Strom Trooper, Crusader, Desperado careers are about mere humans. That are simply ot of place in the Ascension, because they totally lag behind super-careers like Vindicare Assassin and Primaris Psyker. Why include such careers in book that focuses on destruction of greater daemons?

Storm Trooper is needed? Where? What is his role??? EVERYTHING he can do - Vindicare does 1000% better.

Mrakvampire said:

Then play a Vindicare. No one's stopping you.