So I was doing some calculations. Important values are in bold. I know this kind of stuff has been done before, but I think this illustrates pretty well the perils of giving Unnatural WP to Psykers (IMO - the peril of giving easily obtainable Unnatural Characteristics to any player character - this is just an extreme example). Anyway, this pits a max rank Primaris Psyker against one (or more!) Lord(s) of Change.

Rank 16 Primaris Psyker, originally a Scholar-path Sanctioned Psyker. He got lucky and started with 50 WillPower (only needs 45 if he uses the Judged By Your Peers Transition Package). Boosts it to 80, gets Unnatural WP*3.

6 Psy from Sanctioned Psyker, +4 from Primaris. Push for a total of Psy Rating 13.

Power Well (2) = +2, Discipline Focus +2 and WP Bonus 24 = +28 to focus power roll.

Disipline Mastery gives Force Barrage Threshold 16.

Focus Roll: 13d10 + 28 - 16 = 25 to 142 overbleed value

/5 = 5 to 28 extra bolts, +24 from WP Bonus

29 to 52 bolts total.

80 WillPower and using the IHQ rule of +10 per 'past normal' unnatural trait gives 100% accuracy.

Each doing:

1d10+24 - 7 (Daemonic Toughness doesn't work against psychic powers)

Which is 18 to 27 damage per bolt

576 to 1431 wounds total, which can be split between targets

Divided by 180 (Number of wounds Marabas has)

Gives: 3.2 to 7.95 dead Lords of Change

This basically means that a max rank Primaris Psyker with a moderately lucky starting willpower, and some correct choice of talents and powers, when pushing, HE KILLS THREE, AT MINIMUM, TO NEARLY EIGHT, LORDS OF CHANGE, EVERY ROUND.

Now I appreciate that this doesn't take into account the LoC's scheming and influence, nor psychic phenomena, but it should be noted that this power is equally silly against other opponents (something like 21-62 Dire Avenger Exarchs every round) and fettering the power doesn't change the outcome much either (like 2 bolts fewer at minimum).

Yes, it is by now fairly well known that Force Barrage is completely degenerate when used by Ascended Psykers with Unnatural Willpower. I drew my own calculations earlier to demonstrate that it is essentially and by far the most powerful offensive psychic technique in the game, even when compared and contrasted to Ascended Powers. Further it is essentially impossible to dodge, even for people with the Temple Assassin trait, due to the overwhelming number of projectiles it generates. Things get even better when you use it as a Master Sorcerer Inquisitor Psyker who has obtained 1 Psy Rating at each Ascended rank and selects the Ritual Trial (+10 WP) Transition Package.

Living in ye olde England I am yet to be blessed with the arrival of Ascension but have read with interest the posts on the book. Despite the negatives I have not been fazed in my faith in FFG and my desire to own it. This post concerns me because if accurate, and I have no reason to doubt it isn't, then the example given highlights the absurdity of the balancing issues.

Fortunatelty the psyker in our group is still rank 5 and given his level of corruption and insanity with any luck he won't make it to the giddy heights of slaying Greater Daemons like Gretchins caught sunbathing.

I also do not have Ascension yet so I have to ask:

1) Does a Lord of Change have the Psyniscience skill?

2) If yes, how likely will it pass a Very Hard (-30) Psyniscience test?

3) Do they have any protective psychic powers, that would help?

Iacton said:

1) Yes. It has a total of 65 (45 per, psynisciance +20), so he has a 35% chance of negating all the overbleed launched at him... that is if he was stupid enough to let the psyker get that close and launch a psychic power at him in the first place... which might all be according to his plan...

2) 35

3) This fella has all minor psychic powers, all discipline powers, all ascended powers (except for two witch and daemon hunty ones), all minor arcana, and all major arcana.

Beyond that, while this dose illustrate the sick destructive power one psyker can have, an Inquisitor can out do that easily.

An inquisitor with 70 Influence, Peer (Navy), Good Reputation (Navy), Fel 50, command +20, can call in an Exterminatus (Unique -70, 1 Time use +20 = -50) 20% - 38% (70 + 10[peer] + 10[good rep] + [0 - 18 depending on how many DoS is scored on the command check] - 50 [difficulty modifier]) of the time or, if he really needed it done, could "burn" 1d5 pts of Influence to automatically succeed in calling it in. His damage output would then be 1d10 + Everything Dies. I'm not a whiz with math, but I think that might be a hair more then the psyker's.

"1) Yes. It has a total of 65 (45 per, psynisciance +20), so he has a 35% chance of negating all the overbleed launched at him... that is if he was stupid enough to let the psyker get that close and launch a psychic power at him in the first place... which might all be according to his plan..."

Force Barrage without Overbleed is more than enough to kill him anyways; the true bulk of the damage comes from the user's WP Bonus.

"3) Beyond that, while this dose illustrate the sick destructive power one psyker can have, an Inquisitor can out do that easily.

"An inquisitor with 70 Influence, Peer (Navy), Good Reputation (Navy), Fel 50, command +20, can call in an Exterminatus (Unique -70, 1 Time use +20 = -50) 20% - 38% (70 + 10[peer] + 10[good rep] + [0 - 18 depending on how many DoS is scored on the command check] - 50 [difficulty modifier]) of the time or, if he really needed it done, could "burn" 1d5 pts of Influence to automatically succeed in calling it in. His damage output would then be 1d10 + Everything Dies. I'm not a whiz with math, but I think that might be a hair more then the psyker's."

Sure, and the Inquisitor can also be a better Psyker than the Primaris. Furthermore, there is nothing preventing a Primaris with sufficient influence from calling in an Exterminatus. All other things being equal with respect to Influence (which they for the most part are) Psykers are gods amongst men (true to the fluff, though the balance is completely out of whack).

Graver said:

How long will it take to call an exterminatus on the planet? 1 round?

I beleive the OP was simply pointing out not the imbalance between character but the imballance between the PC and the enemy with a Primaris Psycker even able to think about taking on a LOC.

I would think however that a primaris surviing a duel with the LOC is unlikelyas it will most certainly get the on him!

Lasers said:

If anyone can kill a planet, why are you worried about lesser things? There doesn't need to be combat balance because personal combat isn't that important to ascension. After all, if it comes down to it, the whole damned planet could be killed on any of the PCs word. What's important is problem solving, and killing a hundred daemons with your mind might not solve the problem or might even make it worse depending on what the problem was and the repercussions that arise from how the PCs deal wit it.

Balancing who's good at combat or what could be done in personal combat is about as important in ascension as Tech-Use is in the core of Dark Heresy. It's a versatile thing, it will do a lot, and some are just plain better at it then others, but in the end, one character being a god at it while everyone else doesn't know a screw-driver from a multi-tool isn't that big of a problem to the whole of Dark Heresy Core as there's a lot more going on then mucking with some technology. Granted, if you were looking to run a game that really focused in on Tech-Use and technology, one where the success or failure of each mission hung on how well they were able to cobble machines together or repair various vehicles, then you'd need to make sure all the characters had Tech-Use or some other skill and/or talent combination that allowed everyone to contribute in the major tech-use scenes. The same goes for ascension.

Because of the power involved, personal combat is no longer a major deciding factor in most things. It's, at best, a small stepping stone to the solving of a problem, but a minor one at best. If, however, you decided that you wanted personal combat to be a major part of your game, then it'd be up to the GM to make sure all the characters were able to contribute meaningfully to it, just like if mucking with machines were the manor focus of the stories.

@Mrakvampire; no, not 1 round. In this situation, it would start at 2 rounds doing 1d10 + a whole lot of things die and continue for 1dwhyroll rounds finnaly stopping when everythings wounds = everything's dead. I still think that'll out-damage the psyker using force barrage.

This might not be of much note, but an Inquisitor is reliant upon the tools and capacity of others to call in that Exterminatus.

A Primaris psyker, butt-naked, can fry a Lord of Change. An Inquisitor can't pull that off (unless he's a psychic inquisitor, in which case consider him to have the abilities of the primaris but turned up to 11). In short, an Inquisitor is going to be delayed in his ability to nuke a planet, and certain people are always going to be very angry that he does so. A Primaris psyker can lift a finger and make something explode. By himself. Instantly. No sector-wide repurcussions unless someone very powerful notices him. Hell, no psychic phenomena if he's powerful enough to contently fetter it.

Also, another thing to note: Despite the LoC having Daemonic, he also has Unnatural Toughnessx3 IIRC. That takes the psyker's damage output down a little, but I'm pretty sure he can still manage a single LoC pretty confidently.

The Hobo Hunter said:

He doesn't. Read the entry.

We're talking a Rank 16 character here and not only that but a Rank 16 character who could be easily described as an Alpha level psyker if you compare her to The Burning Princess.

I don't see the problem here. Everything I've read of Alpha-level psykers suggests they should be able to blast greater daemons back to the warp with a flick of the wrist.

What if the Lord of Change acted first in the round and activated See Me Not? Chances are good that the Lord of Change would get enough overbleed to give the Psyker a -30 to -60 on the willpower test to resist. If our Psyker fails to resist the power, next round Lord of Change manifests Soul Killer and gets two levels of Overbleed (easily doable with a Psy Rating of 9 and a WP bonus of 16.) Lord of Change hits our Alpha Level Psyker with 3 automatic hits for 1d10+32 X. Psyker's head and torso explodegame over.

Alright, maybe our Psyker passes that test. Game over for Lord of Change, fair enough.

What if the Lord of Change uses the Warp Lightning power from Radical's Handbook? 9 attacks with a 72 BS each one potentially inflicting a crippling energy critical on our Psyker. If he wants to, Marabas can increase the Threshold of Warp Lightning by 4 to make all of those criticals hit the head. Let's assume that our Psyker has a toughness bonus of 5 and let's say only 5 of our bolts hit. Assuming only a moderately damaging salvo of 2 one point criticals and a 2 pt. critical we have a blinded Psyker with a -20 on all tests for the next round (The reading of Warp Lightning is a little dodgy so I can't say whether those criticals stack as normal or if they're applied separately. Let's say they don't stack for some reason.)

Our Psyker can't use Force Barrage, because she's blind (she automatically fails all BS tests.) So she...what else has she got? This is a fun little hypothetical situation. Anyone care to continue this?

The Hobo Hunter said:

Orbital lancing then? Really, the psyker has about as much chance of easily frying a Lord of Change as any Throne Agent has of being able to directly contact a naval vessel which happens to be in orbit and getting their orders executed and results seen in 30 min or less. That is to say, it's all about incredibly optimal circumstances which never happen. In most any circumstances, the psyker will be, at the very least, a mewing spawn of chaos (and that's if they're nice to him... after all, how many toughness10 could a WP optimized psyker hope to pass) before he could even think of shredding 10 Lords of Change at once... and that's assuming they're all standing around and politely let him go first even though they knew he was coming in the first place and decided not to bring in the 100 some-odd lesser daemons to throw down as well...

In the end, the psyker has crazy damage potential, but what dose that really accomplish in a realistic sense and not an incredibly abstract and optimized situation that exists in a void? At this level, strait raw damage output in and of it self is simply not that important and if that's all you're looking at, orbital lancing, orbital bombardment, and exterminatus all beat any psychic power. It's only when you bring other factors into play (time, location, situation, etc) that some options begin disappearing -but so dose the possibility of a psyker's ability to summon up that raw damage and usefully apply it to something that matters. In some situations, it'd be great, in others, overkill, and in yet more, the psyker might never get the chance. In some situations, a good orbital lancing would be great, in others, a bit of an overkill, and in yet others, the characters might not get the chance to call it in and have it preformed.

Paradigm said:

Derp. Turns out that's just a super daemonic TB. My bad; carry on chaps.

Ferau said:

This is easily done at lower levels, not just Rank16, by the way. As soon as you hit Unnatural WP *2, you trivialise combat. As soon as players stop feeling threatened, where's the challenge? It's no good just waving your hand saying "well, personal power doesn't matter because the game is supposed to be about intrigue and influence at these levels." Then, why bother having rules for combat in the first place, or enemies with high level stats/abilities? Why not just say "ascended characters automatically win at combat, forever. This game is now about influence, if you want combat, play something else"?

This also completely fails to address the yawning cavern of power between the classes. Granted, the psyker is supposed to be powerful, but at a risk - that's, for me at least, the whole point of Psykers . That all becomes moot as soon as he becomes ludicrously powerful for NO cost whatsoever. He may not win against a single LoC - especially one who is clever about using his influence, and own psychic might (as you pointed out), but what about EVERY OTHER SINGLE ADVERSARY IN THE ENTIRE GAME? Also, what about the other characters? Anything that can even come close to challenging the psyker is going to destroy all the other characters. No other character can even come close to this level of destruction - not even the no-influence-combat-monkey-Vindicare. At no cost, and they still get influence talents. What do the other players do when it comes to fighting the demon? Are they supposed to just sit back and have a nice cup of tea and a chat while the Psyker deals with yet another unrelenting horde of enemies singlehandedly, hoping he wins? Giving this level of power to only a single player class over every other, with no adversary in the entire game that can challenge it properly, is madness. Crow Father? Yawn. Widower? What, another one?. Haarlock? Hah, gimme a break. Suspense? All gone.

By the way, force barrage is a WillPower test, not a Ballistic Skill test, but let's say you've got a hard-ass DM. Inferno. Or tempest. Heck, just use lift to gain Fly(24) to run away and the LoC won't be able to catch you in range of any of his abilities.

The real problem I see is not in the powers themselves, nor the high WillPower Bonus. It's multiplicative effects (Force Barrage stands out because WPB gives you more bolts, more range AND more damage) stacking on top of multiplicative bonuses to the relevant stats. You end up getting a ridiculous exponential power curve which massively outstrips every other power and character in the game. The weird thing is that the psyker is not obviously supposed to have this kind of power, because some of the really good ascended powers don't work this way.

In other words, the main fixes to these problems are going to be changing psychic powers to have more stable damage potentials by making them additive rather than multiplicative, or even fixed (number of bolts = psy rating is probably a good place to start for Barrage).

I think my solution is going to be to scrap the Unnatural Characteristics from the careers, except maybe one at rank 16 for each character.

"Orbital lancing then? Really, the psyker has about as much chance of easily frying a Lord of Change as any Throne Agent has of being able to directly contact a naval vessel which happens to be in orbit and getting their orders executed and results seen in 30 min or less. That is to say, it's all about incredibly optimal circumstances which never happen. In most any circumstances, the psyker will be, at the very least, a mewing spawn of chaos (and that's if they're nice to him... after all, how many toughness10 could a WP optimized psyker hope to pass) before he could even think of shredding 10 Lords of Change at once... and that's assuming they're all standing around and politely let him go first even though they knew he was coming in the first place and decided not to bring in the 100 some-odd lesser daemons to throw down as well...

In the end, the psyker has crazy damage potential, but what dose that really accomplish in a realistic sense and not an incredibly abstract and optimized situation that exists in a void? At this level, strait raw damage output in and of it self is simply not that important and if that's all you're looking at, orbital lancing, orbital bombardment, and exterminatus all beat any psychic power. It's only when you bring other factors into play (time, location, situation, etc) that some options begin disappearing -but so dose the possibility of a psyker's ability to summon up that raw damage and usefully apply it to something that matters. In some situations, it'd be great, in others, overkill, and in yet more, the psyker might never get the chance. In some situations, a good orbital lancing would be great, in others, a bit of an overkill, and in yet others, the characters might not get the chance to call it in and have it preformed."

You do realize Preternatural Awareness by a pimped out Psyker gives him a bonus of nearly 300 to his Initiative right (and that's on _average_)? The LoC gets greased before he has a chance to do _anything_.

"We're talking a Rank 16 character here and not only that but a Rank 16 character who could be easily described as an Alpha level psyker if you compare her to The Burning Princess.

I don't see the problem here. Everything I've read of Alpha-level psykers suggests they should be able to blast greater daemons back to the warp with a flick of the wrist.

What if the Lord of Change acted first in the round and activated See Me Not? Chances are good that the Lord of Change would get enough overbleed to give the Psyker a -30 to -60 on the willpower test to resist. If our Psyker fails to resist the power, next round Lord of Change manifests Soul Killer and gets two levels of Overbleed (easily doable with a Psy Rating of 9 and a WP bonus of 16.) Lord of Change hits our Alpha Level Psyker with 3 automatic hits for 1d10+32 X. Psyker's head and torso explodegame over.

Alright, maybe our Psyker passes that test. Game over for Lord of Change, fair enough.

What if the Lord of Change uses the Warp Lightning power from Radical's Handbook? 9 attacks with a 72 BS each one potentially inflicting a crippling energy critical on our Psyker. If he wants to, Marabas can increase the Threshold of Warp Lightning by 4 to make all of those criticals hit the head. Let's assume that our Psyker has a toughness bonus of 5 and let's say only 5 of our bolts hit. Assuming only a moderately damaging salvo of 2 one point criticals and a 2 pt. critical we have a blinded Psyker with a -20 on all tests for the next round (The reading of Warp Lightning is a little dodgy so I can't say whether those criticals stack as normal or if they're applied separately. Let's say they don't stack for some reason.)

Our Psyker can't use Force Barrage, because she's blind (she automatically fails all BS tests.) So she...what else has she got? This is a fun little hypothetical situation. Anyone care to continue this?"

Well that's assuming the LoC gets a chance to act which he surely does not. The winner in this match up comes down to who acts first, and the pimp Psyker _always_ does. Also hitting with Force Barrage is not a BS Test in DH, it's a WP Test, which is a large part of what makes it so deadly.

EDIT: And yes, as Paradigm has noted, Force Barrage's fundamental problem is its exponential scaling; this needs to be fixed, with the power depending more on Psy Rating (and Ballistic Skill) as per RT.

Doesnt FB have a really low range and soem of the other powers have a much greater range than it.

Problem with psykers has always ben thier small range and lack of ability to stop hordes of bulltes coming at them.

A man in armour ignores small incoming bullets, however a psyker using say Catch Projectiles (or whatever its name is) can only stop s many bullets ( and thats not to mention explosives etc ).

he cant have his defense up all the time and a sniper will easily kill him via range.

Now that said a LOC doesnt just walk down a nice field, shout out "hey you Primaris Psyker! Over here!". He comes at you with long range, then medium range, then short range spells all the while you are fighting off a zillion other leser demons. Thats why a LOC or a Bloodthirster etc are soooooooo powerful cos you need to use them right!

The Lord of Change also has Force Barrage.

That is all.

Lasers said:

Lasers said:

Alright, I stand corrected on the mechanics of Force Barrage. I'd still rule that the Psyker can't target what he can't see, but the point is moot. Paradigm is correct that at these levels of power, the discipline used isn't really the issue.

At this point though, we're just going to have to agree to disagree. I see what the OP is saying, and it is a very astute mechanical breakdown of what happens when you have Psyker run roughshod over your game. In any case, the fun is lost at this point. It has all come down to accounting and rule lawyering. I'll go back to lurking the forums as is my custom.

"Doesnt FB have a really low range and soem of the other powers have a much greater range than it.

Problem with psykers has always ben thier small range and lack of ability to stop hordes of bulltes coming at them.

A man in armour ignores small incoming bullets, however a psyker using say Catch Projectiles (or whatever its name is) can only stop s many bullets ( and thats not to mention explosives etc ).

he cant have his defense up all the time and a sniper will easily kill him via range."

Force Barrage has a range of up to 270 meters; this is comparable to the longest ranged heavy weapons in the game.

Further, the Barrier Ascended Power makes the Psyker effectively immune to bullets/impact damage and highly resistant to most other forms of attack. There is also Flameshroud which is effectively an equivalent vs heat weaponry. Then there is the horde of defensive abilities that apply penalties to enemy BS Tests, bonuses to his Dodge, Toughness, Armour, make him invisible, etc...

"The Lord of Change also has Force Barrage.

That is all."

And the Psyker's Preternatural Awareness grants a higher Initiative bonus than the LoC's, so guess who wins?

"Alright, I stand corrected on the mechanics of Force Barrage. I'd still rule that the Psyker can't target what he can't see, but the point is moot. Paradigm is correct that at these levels of power, the discipline used isn't really the issue."

It does matter. Telekinetics and Divination are necessary for a truly top tier psyker since that's where most of the truly degenerate powers are concentrated.

The LoC will always, ALWAYS beat the psyker in turn order because he will always surprise you no matter what power you use, he has an int of 99 and is a master of plots, the only way you're going to swing at it first is if it wants you too, and if it does, well you're probably dead anyways. At least after reading the flavor text and looking at his stats thats the way I took the LoC, you may have a gm who's nice enough to let you get into a fight with an LoC who is unaware, but in my opinion that shouldn't happen(Bolded to make it clear that it is my opinion and not fact).

Bombernoy said:

So if the GM arbitrarily plays the LoC as a villain you will never defeat, he is a villain you will never defeat? I kinda thought that was a given.

Lasers said:

Okay, fair enough, but same principle; there's the underlying idea/principle that the GM will arbitrarily put the LoC at a decisive advantage.

On the GM putting the LoC on an advantageous footing, of course he would. It's not arbitrary, it's treating the LoC how he should be. He's a genius, described as a criminal mastermind and a master of plots -in fact, they are created from lies, conspiracies, and plots, it's all they are. If the GM just left him standing in the middle of a cave waiting for a psyker to come along for a proper showdown, then the GM missed the bus completely on what those things are all about. Not placing them in an advantageous position would be a grave injustice to what they are. Just read up on the one presented in ascension. He would play very dirty indeed.

And the psyker, even in the unrealistic showdown situation, wouldn't necessarily go first. The LoC has Preternatural Awareness as well. Anything the psyker can do, he can do as well (and more). Granted, the psyker gets a higher bonus to add, but the LoC could be running about with a bit more overbleed -you can be guaranteed that he pushed with full dice as he don't care about phenomena (9's are is friend and increase his overbleed after all ;-) ). Still, it's a bit of a pointless exercise as the original math was done in a complete vacuum and you would never meet an LoC under such conditions unless the GM as completely fallen asleep. In the end, all those numbers really don't mean much in the game proper.

I seem to recall this exact discussion about Holocaust... (and psykers in general... but that seems to have worked it self out when things stopped being hypothetical and began actually being real in-game accounts of what happens when the psyker isn't in an ideal vacuum any longer...). Granted, they're still hell on wheels, but they don't seem to be as atrocious as some of the earlier vacuum damage numbers were making them out to be. Noting happens in a vacuum (and not that space vacuum, wise-ass ;-p ), not all stats will be optimal, perfect, or close to it, things don't hang around waiting for you to get the drop on them, tings can fight back, etc. And I think if I say anything more, all I'd be doing is repeating what I've already said.