Hammerhand is a psyker power that grants natural weapons and upgrades you strength 4 times. this in it self is quite alot of damage if your psyker haves an average strength (30+). Burning fists (i think its called) makes your unarmed attacks deal 1d10+SB energy damage thus removing double armor bonuses from unarmed attacks and increasing normal damage.

Now consider these two powers combined! they are both sustainable so both can be active without too much penalty. This is (sorry for the choice of words) a shitload of damage from a psyker. And im not even including that this psyker could be Templar Calix advance to make him better in melee combat.

I have one such psyker in my group and frankly he's steamrolling anything i throw at this group (yes he alone). I tried using a sniper to deal some damage and scare him a little, but he's got sealwound and Regeneration so he shrugged it off pretty easily.

Have anyone else ever experienced this combination? Is it something you think should be taken into the Errata to somehow balance it betterm or is it just fine?

Bassemandrh said:

Oh really?

While sustaining two powers, all your power rolls suffer a -8 penalty. Now, neither of these powers have a particularly high threshold, but even still, he's going to have a hard time maintaining them, and an exceptionally hard time manifesting anything else.

The above ESPECIALLY holds true for Regenerate, which has a hefty threshold. I can't see anything except a quite high level psyker manifesting and maintaining that cocktail of powers in combat. He', whs also going to have to try pretty hard to pull off a seal wounds. The whole thing is a recipe for Perils.

Furthermore, it takes the psyker 2 full rounds to get these powers in place, making him basically indisposed for the first two rounds of combat.

Note that he still cannot parry, in spite of having the Natural Weapons trait.

Also note that by branching across multiple disciplines, the character is putting off his discipline mastery, which is an extremely powerful ability.

In summary, this is a powerful combination, yes, but it also has a number of significant drawbacks. Let the player have his fun with this little combination. It's not as broken as it seems at first glance.

If you are attached to putting the fear of GM into him, I would suggest:

-An enemy with T 50 and Unnatural Toughness. Should soak up a good portion of the damage he's doing.

-Someone with decent WS and a shield. Chances are, unless he's Templar Calix, he doesn't have multiple attacks per round, and the +20 to parry should absorb a lot of the hits.

-Webbers and Autoguns

-If you're really peeved at him, an Untouchable

Thanks for the Reply its much apreciated. Your ideas for "countering" him are interresting, but i was trying to show how devastating this combination is. Hammerhand is power roll 15 and Burning fist is 10 so sustaining these for a long peroid of time may be harder than first anticipated but they last for 10 rounds. That means he will have to use 2 rounds on a roll of 15 and 14 (the penalty for sustaining 1 power is 4) and can wreak havoc for the remaining 8.

In my case this psyker is Templar Calix and have 3 attacks per round. he was also quite lucky with his strength roll and got 40+ strength from the begining. so a T50 enemy with unnatural trait would soak 10 points of damage. my psyker however deals atleast 17 points of damage per attack with a potential of dealing 51 points of damage in 1 round. that means he would be able to kill at Charnel demon in 2 round if not 1 with some average damage rolls.

Now before burning fist armour could help, but his attacks are no longer primitiv, thus against amoured targets his chances will be much higher.

I know it takes alot of time to get Discipline mastery, but since you only need to use 1 of your 12 possible powers to get Burning fist the remaining 11 powers can go into biomancy so you get mastery over biomancy and thus reducing the threshold of those spells by 5.

i can follow the idea of using webbers, as i think makes the target helpless (?) ubt im not certain.

Bassemandrh said:

Not quite, on that first part. Remember that the only way to branch out into a new discipline is when you go up a psy-rating. If, as you said, the player is a Templar, and assuming a WPB of 5, He'd, by my count, be able to get a maximum of 8 biomancy powers.

Psy Rating 3 gives him his pyromancy power

Psy Rating 4 gives him his first biomancy power

Psy Rating 5 (max for savants) gives him 3 more biomancy powers.

Then, by my count, he has four more psychic powers available. 2 from Templar. 1 From Savant Warrant. 1 from Perceptor Savant.

Assuming I haven't made a mistake, taking his combo should bar him from discipline mastery.

As for the Webbers, the key is not so much helpless, which he would also happen to be, so much as immobile, unable to hit people 20m away with those fists of his.

assuming you could choose powers from any discipling when you bought one for 200 exp, may have been wrong

Bassemandrh said:

Not so. You have to have already taken a new discipline (and selected the individual power) to purchase powers from that discipline with XP as advances. I've done a quick check of the career paths, and without breaking out my IH to check, it appears The Boy Named Crow has it correct.

If he's not a Templar Calix then he has the option of playing the Scholar route, but I haven't checked that to see if it's possible to buy enough powers to have both burning hammerhands of awesomeness alongside discipline mastery.

I kinda just assume Hammerhand and Burning firsts would just add together to be 1D10 + (SBx4) E Damage since both of them turn you hands into D10 damage. I don't think it is to crazy since he does have to be in close combat probably not a lot of wounds either. I still would prefer a chain sword.... I will parry your fists with my rending sword of doom!!!

I would either make a houserule making the two powers mutually exclusive, or simply take the player aside and tell him that his advanced state of cheesiness is a problem.

Alternatively, a shift from combat to investigation might highlight the character's seemingly inability to do anything put pummel stuff to death.

There's plenty of foes that would give him pause. Engaging at range with bolters should work, the dude with the giant burning hands being number one target for whole squads of enemies...

"Shoot the one with the bloody giant burny hand that's charging from cover! Ignore the hive-scum!"

Half a dozen Tearing bolt shells later...

... you get the idea.

Even mooks can defeat this sort of tactic. Mooks and the like, easily taken out by a party shooting from cover, could just spread out and waste him. He can only kill one person a round, even with three attacks if they're spread out. Bolters, or even shotguns, fired at semi-auto would be scary.

Other options include Khornate Daemons, and scary melee types. If he gets cocky and goes toe-to-toe with Genestealers, he'll find himself either eaten or a mother-to-be. I mean, hell, a pair of Orks could do him in. Sure, he'll kill one, but the other would charge him and cut him in two.

His powers are very powerful, yes, but he may suffer from being something of a glass cannon.

.... and what would happen if this psyker's foe parried his melee attack with a power weapon? Assuming that you, the GM, count 'unarmed combat' as melee (and I don't see any reason why you would not), a successful parry against this psyker with a powerfield equipped weapon would mean a 75% chance that the psyker's 'weapon' is destroyed.

Lop off a hand or two and ask your psyker to come up with a new way to stack damage.

Aethilgar said:

Ummm... Hammerhands means Biomancy. Biomancy should also mean Regenerate. Once all wounds are recovered, lost limbs and organs begin to grow back. Of course, parrying such an attack with a power weapon is still a good way to still slow down the psyker version of Evander Holyfield... Though, the more powers involved, the harder it gets to activate them.

-=Brother Praetus=-

Brother Praetus said:

Quite true; if the psyker has regenerate he will be able to grow back a lost hand or arm 'eventually'. Regen is a full round action that must first heal wounds taken at d5 per round. After all wounds are healed, then the psyker may begin to regrow lost limbs at an unstated rate. I imagine that it is not fast. Keep in mind that there are/could be additional penalties both 'sudden limb loss' (see critical damage) and for having lost a limb. It would not be out of the question for a GM to inflict a stunned state, give levels of fatigue, or cause bleeding. Either way, a psyker stacking hammerhand and burning fist could be completely removed from combat (or even killed, were the GM in a bloodthirsty mood) by a single parry and would likely give the psyker pause in the future.

To be honest, just get a Force Sword... they rule. Templar Calix with a Force Sword rules in melee, and doesn't need any combat powers. Add in some divination powers to avoid damage, as well a for investigating, some telepathy for investigating... well... ****.

I think the rules say force fields do not destroy natural weapons but I'm not sure where it is stated.

nope it was something else preventing natural weapons from being destroyed this way... you can't parry with natural weapons

It's not that unusual. Consider that it's fairly trivial for a Psyker to have a 60 WP by, say, the end of the 4th rank. Now you have Psychic Blade doing 1d10+(2xWP) damage with Pen (2xWP). That's a 1d10+12 hit with pen 12, not to mention it tests to hit off Willpower and not Ballistic Skill which means you're going to be hitting pretty dang often. On a decently armored opponent that's going to hit a whole lot harder than Hammerhand+Burning Fists. Truly epic munchkins can even burn their WP to 70 with Cellular Control, pop Regeneration to counter-act the persistent damage, and go to town. Not impossible considering the gravely imbalanced Corpus Conversion.

Or if you want to cause mass destruction to lighter armored foes, go for Force Barrage. At Willpower 60, that's 6d10+36 damage. A less impressive number than it first seems, because all armor points and toughness points will (I assume) count six times just as they would for an auto burst.

Why, with the fact that Psychic Blade only takes a single sustained power, a Psyker wouldn't even have trouble dishing out other Powers with modest Thresholds. Seems like it would work just fine with Swift and Lightning attack too. They could even carry a physical weapon if they wanted to parry since Psychic Blade doesn't require a free hand.

The salient point is this: yes, a Psyker properly munchkin'd can absolutely wreck faces, especially in melee combat. The first counterpoint is their relative fragility; Psyker's don't get a single "cheap" Sound Constitution advance, there is the ever-present threat of Perils, and their dodges/parries aren't too hot either. The second counterpoint is more thematic. You, as the GM, can counter anything the player's might ever be able to throw at you if you feel it is abusive. The real issue is when this character starts outshining all the other players to the point that they stop having fun. If you see this happening, it's the appropriate time to take the player aside and be firm. "Listen, I know you're playing by the rules, and this combination is quite effective. But you're beginning to take the spotlight away from your friends and fellow players, so I'd like to ask you to tone it down a bit." Theoretically your player isn't a sociopath and will listen to this.

In my opinion, being a good GM has very little to do with rules adjudicating and much more to do with maintaining the most entertaining game balance. Engage other player's with challenges that play to their strengths: negotiating, investigating, a sniper in a balcony etc. Manage the difficulty apace with your players, so that a party full of power-gamers faces more intimidating combat threats. And remember that most people play these games for fun and satisfaction, your player's aren't your enemies, they're your partners in a collaborative story.

My $0.02

The player has Biomancy, right? Maybe convince him/her to try a more proactive healing role.

Ok, here is something that doesnt match. To be a good psyker you need a lot of mental characteristics and skills, and to be a good figther a lot of physical ones. This means that your player has a lot, but I mean A LOT of experience. If it is so, well then he had owned to have a high level character.

Now, he is an assassin so I will assume that his physical stats are the highest, and he is also a psyke, so I will like to think that his WP is pretty high too. If you want to give him a challenge, you should confront him against a NPC who is great in Fellowship and Manipulation. You can also try a NPC psyker that is good with mind manipulation. He may have the streght to kill everthing in front of him, but he must want to kill it first. Confront him by twisting or changing this will. Try to put him against his Inquisitor or his party members, I dont know... try something fun. There are some deamons (some kind of high level daemonets, look for them in the Creatures Anathema) that their power is to make PC gain Corruption Points. In Dark Heresy is pretty complicated to kill a PC, due to Faith Points and so... but is really easy to make them go mad or corrupted. Try that.

Keep rolling and have fun!!!