Maybe just too old...

By Cynr, in Dark Heresy

Posted at

Bombernoy said:


Clearly we do have different play styles, I mean, I would love to play frodo, the character who essentially gets to look at everyone else and say "I OWN YOU". And since the original LotR post had levels, I assumed that was part of your issue, mea culpa. But even in the fact that you thought I meant if you didn't play like me you were wrong shows we don't see eye to eye. I think a good gm and players usually work out the rules without much issues, if there are problems they work around them. I mean, sure DH has flaws, but all systems do if you look hard enough, and aside from psyker, dh is actually one of the harder ones to really break. Also, I'm not allowed 2d6 in monopoly, and I only get to start with half the money, some people complained about balance issues and how I was always winning lengua.gif .

A good GM and players can work out the issues with the rules... but they shouldn't have to. The fact that people can fix a fault in a game through house ruling or just ignoring the issue doesn't change it from being a fault. Certainly people can and will have fun with the Ascension rules. But those people would have had fun whether the rules were balanced or not. For someone who wants to have his Magos character actually contribute equally to a session as the psyker, these rules are useless.

Again: You can always unbalance a balanced game if that's your thing. Balancing an unbalanced one means there was a game design failure.

A better example from Lord of the Rings would be this: what if one of the players thought "wow, elven archer! That sounds cool! Master with the bow, graceful and athletic" etc etc. Fell in love with the Legolas concept. But upon starting play discovered that the archer class, while not bad, paled in comparison to Aragorn's ranger class or Gimli's fighter one. If in the fight with the Uruk hai he managed to kill 2 bad guys while the others killed 25 each. He starts to look at his character sheet and think why am I here? I'm slowing down the group. I'd be better off killing my character and coming back as a ranger...

Actually, maybe that's what happened to Boromir...

Posted at

The Hobo Hunter said:

Having a sanctioning brand doesn't mean having a big Inquisitorial =][= stamped on your forehead plain for all to see and verify that you are in fact a conduit to the Warp. And last I checked, formal banquets didn't require their guests to strip down before entering. It could quite easily be on the palm of your hand, your chest or back, your buttocks, and so on. Besides, a skillful biomancer could probably sculpt that image off his flesh, and a powerful telepath could 'hide' it from the eyes of others through influencing their minds.

Military psykers often are given handlers, (the Primer orders 4 soldiers at any given time ready to shoot him), but by the time one reaches the upper echelons of the Savant Militant path, they're usually high advisors giving orders to generals and the like, or commanding small units of psykers themselves.

This is before we even reach the Inquisitorial service the PCs are in. I'm sure a Primaris psyker who accompanies an inquisitor is able to throw off the shackles of his bodyguards. It's quite possible that no-one beyond the Inquisitor and his cadre/cell (depending on what scale we're talking) know the individual is a psyker at all. It shouldn't be too hard for a psyker given free reign by his master to roam the streets like any other indidividual, provided they weren't already being hunted.

I doubt anyone would bother with branding, if they then went on to place it somewhere no one would ever see it. What would be the point? Of course, that's ultimately up to the GM.

In my games, my rule is that the sanctioning brand will always be placed somewhere obvious, difficult to disguise (usually the face) unless the player buy the Unremarkable talent in chargen. In which case he can opt to have the brand placed somewhere concealable.

Of course, this probably doesn't stop a biomancer from removing his brand, but that should be perceived as a grave sin, easily punishable by death if found out.

Posted at

FYI: to become a Vindicare Assassin, you have to permanently remove a Fate Point (this is done AFTER the initial boost from becoming and Ascended PC).

But yeah, next time that I run a campaign and someone chooses the Assassin or Psyker, I'm going to set it straight to ALL the players that these two classes are potentially far more powerful than the others. Thus, they also will have more complex roleplaying potential. I will be expecting MORE from a player who chooses these classes than from the others.

I'm not necessarily PENALYZING them: just setting it straight that there will be more expectations from those character types, especially in-game fluff wise.

Posted at

The psyker in my group blew himself up last session. Not once. Not twice. But three times. He burned two fate points over the session to live, before finally giving up and accepting that he just wasn't ment to be.

That's complex roleplaying potential for ya. ;)

Posted at

Slaunyeh said:

...before finally giving up and accepting that he just wasn't ment to be.

partido_risa.gif That is almost...poetic. So...beautifull. "Alas! Clearly the Fates have ruled against me! Let us now end this march of misery!"

Posted at

Slaunyeh said:

The psyker in my group blew himself up last session. Not once. Not twice. But three times. He burned two fate points over the session to live, before finally giving up and accepting that he just wasn't ment to be.

That's complex roleplaying potential for ya. ;)

I had the same sort of thing happen. Even with Favoured by the Warp, the psyker's two rolls were 78 and 85... then turned himself into a daemonhost! I let him burn a Fate Point to "win a battle for his soul" (in lieu of the Scholastica Psykana Failsafes and dying), take Corruption Points for the taint it caused and left him in a coma for the rest of the adventure. The very next adventure he had two roll both over 80 and then ended up with Cataclysmic Blast, which did enough damage to make him burn another Fate Point to survive death again and destroyed all his clothing and gear... and here, I was trying to figure out how to get the Rosarius (from the House of Dust and Ash adventure) from him since he walks directly into gunfire and fries targets. "Overpowering" but Fate has a way of leveling the field. Too bad they already are in their first Ascended Rank and he doesn't get the freebie Fate Points (he is now down to 2 where everyone else has 4 or more.)

More power dice or Pushed powers means many more rolls on the Phenomena chart and even with Favoured by the Warp, the chance of rolling on the Perils of the Warp chart are roughly 1 in 8.

As a side note, this is the second player running a psyker. The first player was shot and killed by the guardsman in the very first adventure when he rolled Daemonic Mask on the Psychic Phenomena, gained a Fear Rating of 1 and was promptly shot at point blank range at full-auto. My guardsman player felt bad later when he actually was read the complete rule for Daemonic Mask and realized that it was just "as passing phase." (When it happened I only gave him a description of what he saw.)

For all their power, they are still the only class that can kill themselves outright with bad luck dice.

-Cynr

Posted at

back to the original question...no you are not to old, im 17 and in highschool and i dont mind the fact that ascension is overpowered, it wont stop some people i know from being an adept and going psyker or mechanical in the end and being more usefull than either half of the time.