My main issue is that at higher levels of power, Psykers are not only powerful, but can annihilate armies without any risk of Psychic Phenomena. No Phenomena when fettering powers, which can still easily tear apart multiple battletanks etc with Holocaust or similar. Sure, being able to do this is cool... but I'd like to have some risk.

If the psyker can see the battletanks, it's at least likely that the tanks can see him. Which means they were rather sloppy, because that psyker should have been a stain on the ground for several rounds while he was still out of psy-range, but within battle-cannon range.

Apologising for the rule by telling people that grown ups ignore the rules anyway doesn't absolve said rule of being bad.

If a character can reasonably attain a level that allows him to produce hundreds of points of damage in one attack AT WILL, it doesn't matter what it's aimed at, whether you are a 'grown up' and can ignore the rules or not. That rule is not well thought out. It doesn't matter what fixes were applied by players, context or anything. A character in the game can produce enough damage to destroy whole armies at a time, multiple greater daemons, multiple eldar exarchs or whatever.

It is not well written. If you seriously think that a mortal being like a human psyker SHOULD be able to put out that much damage, well, there isn't much else to talk about.

Man I dislike apologists. If something isn't perfect don't try to bend over backwards to try and make it look perfect.

This is a result of a combination of many parameters producing an emergent behaviour not seen beforehand, or it was done deliberately because the designers wanted a full level primaris psyker to be able to produce insane amounts of damage at will.

I personally can't imagine the designers deliberately created the ability for a PC to do this.

Hellebore

"Man I dislike apologists. If something isn't perfect don't try to bend over backwards to try and make it look perfect."

This above all else. Broken is broken, and the quality of a system or ruleset is judged in substantial part by its RAW, mechanical balance, enough said.

Lasers said:

I agree, Hellebore's point was that I was trying less eloquently to make in my last post in this thread. Sometimes mistakes are just mistakes. It's better to admit a mistake and get it corrected, than make increasingly ridiculous excuses for why it's 'not a mistake'.

One of my players refers to a certain section of the audience here as the Apologistas. A classic example of their fervant refusal to accept FFG ever err is when someone (Lightbringer I think?) spotted, as did one of my players, that the fluff story in the recent errata add-on to Ascension seemed to be missing a page as it made a sudden inexplicable narative jump. Certain posters quickly rushed to explain it wasn't a mistake, that the story was clearly meant to be like that, Lightbringer (iirc) posted back politely he didn't think so, and then Ross Watson came on a day later to confirm it had indeed simply been a page missing and it had been corrected. Classic. Not a big deal in itself, everyone makes mistakes once in a while, but it does go to show no mistake by FFG is so obvious, or incontestable, that someone here won't argue it's not a mistake and that thing is better for it.

There was a fix/toner put in place for Force Barrage/Force Bolt. It looked pretty good. Someone should throw it in the house rules section so it's easier to find.

Fix/toner reposted at your request 6kilgs.

Alexis

*smiles*

bluntpencil2001 said:

I could have sworn that the whole fettered, unfettered rules were stated as being optional for the GM to include... Weren't they?

Necrozius said:

Paradigm said:

You're also not taking into account that by rank 16, the psyker has manifested dozens, perhaps even hundreds of times, and probably has gotten some pretty f*cked rolls. Two bad D100 rolls could easily destroy a rank 15 character if he's out of fate points.

I don't see a problem here with the Psyker end of things. It should be that way. And pushing will sooner or later suck you screaming into the warp, or god forbid, shunt a daemon into you. A rank 16 psyker should be on the godly scale of things. Tabletop, he's dangerous enough to shift the outcome of entire battles.

No, the problem that *I* see is that they created stats for the fricking Lord of Change.

I appreciate the approach white wolf took to antidiluvean vampires: If you stat it, they will kill it. Period. If you don't want PCs to kill something, don't bother trying to stat it.

Call of Cthulhu addressed this by saying that even if you "kill" some of the uber-bad guys, they still reform a couple minutes later, and you get to do it all over again.

So maybe you don't actually kill the Lord of Change. Maybe you drop-kick him back into the warp, and he returns 10 minutes later REALLY ticked off. Probably with a host of demons.

TheFlatline said:

Minor point, but they didn't create stats for the Lord of Change. They created stats for a Lord of Change. A single, specific, named example of its kind. While it may be inherently representative (to some extent) of the sort of abilities possessed by other Lords of Change, their individual power is not uniform amongst all examples of this type of Greater Daemon.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

Fair enough. I still have a problem with creating stats for something that you have no intent for the PCs to ever be able to kill, regardless of the power level.

Creating a stat for something means you expect the PCs to kill it. Probably easily at some point or another.

TheFlatline said:

Thing is, though, Greater Daemons are defeatable - they do, afterall, appear in the wargame as creatures which can be defeated. I don't know where the assumption that Greater Daemons should be completely and utterly unstoppable comes from, because nothing I've ever read has suggested that.

Now, stats for Tzeentch, that's a different matter.

Yes but they exist in the TT as command units. I do not know about you, but I do not often lose my super command units to peons. I can honestly say the number of times I have lost an HQ to less than a squad of "normal" troops is not as many as losing an HQ to an HQ. Even in the recent reprinting of Blood Angels Red Dwarf issue, the Sanguinor is who takes out the CSM HQ.

So take the rpg stats with a grain of salt that fits your campaign style, as GMs it is what we do.

I cannot say that I agree or disagree with the sentiment that they should not be statted. I just think as a GM you have to think on your feet "when" statting such things if you intend to use them; or not; as a vehicle for your story plot.

Alexis

*smiles*

Cailieg said:

Well that's OK, then... because the PCs aren't peons, especially not at Ranks 9+. As was noted during the webchat with Ross Watson and Sam Stewart the other day, an Ascended Dark Heresy character sits at about the same power level as a Deathwatch character... so I think it's safe to assume that Ascended characters are more than just random men, women and cyborgs dragged off the streets.

Fair enough, twas only playing Devil's Advocate. But if you wish to point that out, I agree. Especially if one of the PCs took Inquisitor. Inquisitor Such and Such and his Retinue is actually a HQ in existence for both WH and DH Armies.

As I said I neither agree nor disagree with the sentiment about statting them.

But I will always take any published baddies stats with a grain of personalization salt.

Alexis

*smiles*

Cailieg said:

Generally, any antagonist that gets published stats is probably weaker than you intend, possibly by a great deal. So I fully agree with you to take any baddie stats with a grain of salt.

Part of this is because no publication is future-proof. I remember for a while there Rifts was coming out with book after book that upped the insane power levels of PCs, until they maxed out with Atlanteans. I stopped paying attention around then. What was a badass years earlier is rather anemic at that point.

Another part of this is a general underestimation of what a party of PCs are capable of accomplishing. Granted, as opposed to, say, D&D, this is a little more difficult to judge in DH, but I've found that enemies that should constitute a good fight or even a tough fight get breezed through because I can't think of all the options my PCs have available to me.

Likewise, if I think of a unique approach to a conflict that the PCs aren't ready for, they can have incredible trouble with a handful of weak foes. I'm famous for my handful of orcs in D&D killing level 10 parties, simply by playing them intelligently.

All in all, perhaps an individual lord of change shouldn't be tough in a stand-up fight. It might even be safe to say that once ascended PCs get within line of sight of the Lord of Change, he is pretty much dead. The real conflict & challenge will be getting within line of sight of the bugger.

My rule of thumb is generally "whatever you think the PCs can handle, they can handle 25% more of"