My friends were rolling up their characters for a new campaign im about to run, and one guy makes a void-born psyker with the living nightmare package. Well he has a willpower of 70 at rank 1 and thats including buying an advancement in WP. Is it even possible to assume he rolled right and got his rank 1, 400xp psykers willpower to 70? I could see 50 for sure , and that takes some luck, but 70? Can anyone please explain this? Thanks

Hmm i dont see it as possible.

20 base willpower + 20 assuming he rolled a 20 on starting stats (unless you witnessed him roll it, Id call BS as it is too much of a coincidence that he HAPPENED to roll max roll on the primary Psyker stat....) +5 for living nightmare (which costs him 300xp) +5 for stat increase (his last 100xp).

that gives him a 50 willpower.

we use a point buy system for our game with a max of 25 on any stat. spending 25 points +100xp for the +5 stat, I started with 50 willpower for my psyker. I could have spent another 250 for the stat bump or 300 for the living nightmare but that would only give me a max of 55.

It is NOT possible. Your player is either being sneaky/dishonest, or just bad at math.

Highest possible void born:

25 (start) + 20 (roll) + 5 (Living Nightmare) +5 (Advance) +3 (Divination) = 58

Highest possible at all, to the best of my knowledge:

30 (Darkholder start) +20 (Roll) +5 (Living Nightmare) +5 (Advance) +3 (Divination) = 63

I might be missing something, but I can't see how it happened.

(Beaten to the punch)

The Boy Named Crow said:

Well, aside from the Darkholder being a variant for the Void Born home world.

There is a sanctioning effect on the Sanctioned Psyker table which gives another +3 WP. I missed this when I working on stats in another thread and had it pointed out to me. So the absolute highest possible starting WP; before advances, is 61. With their first advance purchased we get 66 WP.

-=Brother Praetus=-

In our groups the dice rolls are either handed out by the ref or rolled in front of the ref who also watches the bulk of the cha-gen process.

The couple of times players have kitbashed a character at home and bought in scraps of paper as a character sheet other players realised the maths didnt add up. One player had his last character made for him to prevent any kind of jiggery pokery and is being watched when ever dice rolls are needed..

yea ill just have to have him explain in detail how it is he got that 70... im guessing it was just a case of BAD MATH SYNDROME, the worst kind.... (shutter)

Because we usually dont have the whole "cheating" happen in our games. Whats the point of learning the rules if you dont want to follow them??? Anyway sorry for ranting and thanks for the help!

Keep in mind that the "one" advance the OP talks about sounds like it might have been 2 advances (given a 400xp starting window, that allows both the 1st and 2nd Willpower Advances, at 100 and 250 xp respectively).

Thus, a starting Psyker could have a maximum of 30 (Darkholder) +20 (2d10 rolled) +5 (Living Nightmares) +3 (Sanctioning side effect) +3 (Divination) +5 (Willpower Advance @100 xp) +5 (Willpower Advance @250 xp) = 71 maximum.

Basically as a GM any player who starts out with a vital stat above 50. I have the player reroll the character in front of me, and I require that they have a full written background that fits in all of their cherry picked stuff. That said will is nice for a psyker, but as he advances it becomes far less important. A 50 will vs 70 will is only 2 points on power manifestation. Not very important when you are rolling 3 or 4 d10s to manifest.

Unusualsuspect said:

Except you seem to be forgetting that Living Nightmare , as a background package, costs you 300 of those starting 400xp. So, with both Living Nightmare and your simple WP advance, you've now spent your 400 starting experience.

-=Brother Praetus=-

@UnusualSuspect

Of course, getting that has a chance of... let's see... 0,0024% assuming standard generation mechanics (no allocating rolls). Personally, I'd consider that a little on the unlikely side.

@Dalnor

That said will is nice for a psyker, but as he advances it becomes far less important. A 50 will vs 70 will is only 2 points on power manifestation. Not very important when you are rolling 3 or 4 d10s to manifest.

Um... no. 70 vs 50 is 20% difference on making an Invocation roll that transforms those +2 into a +4 which are nearly equivalent to a new psy-die on average, except for not having chances of perils. It's also 20% less chance of not making fear checks or suffering Insanity or Corruption points. 20 points are huge.

(Let's just not have the debate about what happens when that psyker Ascends...)

Brother Praetus said:

Good point! You were right before.

Cifer: Stat generation seems to be one of the most commonly varied of houserules used - my own group allows a single reroll and stat allocation, and I don't think either house rules are terribly uncommon, let alone point buy. Also, while unlikely, it still isn't impossible. Besides, any tabletop gamer knows that something with a 1 in a million chance happens 9 times out of 10 (especially if the die rolling isn't visible)

Unusualsuspect said:

I typically try to know what I'm talking about. It doesn't always happen, but I put forth an effort.

Unusualsuspect said:

Stat allocation is a nice touch. I miss it sometimes. The reroll is also part of the standard characteristic generation that gets overlooked sometimes; page 23, last paragraph of Generating Characteristics . Also a nice thing, so long as that 5 you rolled doesn't give you the old double "one-fingered salute" on the reroll. That's always a fun situation to experience.

-=Brother Praetus=-

I allowed my players to allocate their highest rolls to their most important characteristics as it is basicaly stupid that gunmetallican gunslinger would have WS 40 and BS 36 if he spent his whole life shooting, or a mind-cleansed psyker to have higher fellowship than willpower because he simply rolled so. I choose like 2 main characteristics for each class and subclass, taking into consideration costs of characteristic advances for each career - those costing 100 at the first characteristic rank are considered most important - and simply let them be switched with highest rolls on other characteristics. Everybody is quite happy and it is somehow the most natural solution to generating characteristics.

Psyker player in my group begun with WP 50 as: he was mind-cleansed (25), rolled 17, divination with WP (+3) and had living nightmare (+5). But 70 is impossible. I don't know if I'd allow player to have more than 55 of a certain characteristic at the beginning.

Reilly said:

We if you let them pick their careers (i didn't with my campaign and i should have in hindsight, even if it's the only non random thing) they should do it after they roll stats, but obviously that forces them to either play a class (would be no problem to me as I like all of them and have bearly played) they don't have stats for or pick a class they don't want to play (The downside to making it too customisable is that it will swing heavily in favour of the mini maxers).

If I run another I'd probably let them roll a series of stat lines ( 3 or 4 ), that should average out the bad luck and then they can pick between the highest stat total and the stats they want for the character they want to play.

I also think that the GM should be a bit more forceful in character creation. Just because you rolled 40 WP (45 if the homeworlds right) doesn't mean you have to let them have living nightmare or other expensive and / or supposidly rare and dangerous backgrounds.

Wow. I'm a lot nicer to my PC's than a lot of people here. I more or less tossed the Characteristic rules out.

I have them roll 2d10 10 times, toss the lowest, and assign them as they like. I personally think that character creation is where the GM should be at their most lenient, allowing players the freedom to play the kind of character they want. I think it leads to some more memorable characters and ensures that everyone ends up having fun.

The Boy Named Crow said:

I concur. My technique is to let the players roll 2-3 sets of stats and then pick one of them. This ensures that they should get a reasonably balanced set of stats.

I am a very generous character creation GM and I cannot see it likely with my set up. But it could be done.

Like someone else in this thread I allow for a point buy system, players are given 120 points which they can then allocate to their stats. They are allowed to put no less than 2, no more than 20 in all stats save their primary which they can put 25 in.

I rarely start players with only 400xp using the fanmade Age and Experience charts for Terms of Service in a 0 sum system (meaning terms of service do not count towards ranking and are "background" but they are limited in other ways on how this xp can be spent. I did this to help "round out" starting chars.)

Assuming they luck out on sanction roll and divination, grab everything they can (Living Nightmare with their ToS xp, both advances with their starting 400xp) they can potentially hit a 76. More likely though they will sit in the 55-65 range.

It really depends on if the GM uses standard char gen or not. If he does then it is HIGHLY unlikely. If not it depends on if it is point buy, roll and point buy, roll and assign, roll and keep, roll columns and assign or any other variation some Game Master can have come up with.

But I could see a Psyker in my games starting like that, then immediately regretting it as my games entail alot more than power to kill/win and dice rolls, a player who spent that way would have forgone spending xp on skills that could be crucial to their success.

Alexis

*smiles*