I have been running a RT campaign for about a year, with a couple breaks in the middle. It was the first time playing RT both for me and the Group and I ran pre-gen adventures, aside from a side-quest. We all had a great time and the games turned out quite balanced, both in the encounters and in the mechanics.

The greatest difficulty for me was handling the Astropath character, so I’m going to share a bit of my experience hoping it can be useful. My player, being smart, focused its character on mind-controlling powers: the result was that she could see through any rouse and lie and that she could easily have any enemy leader shot himself before any fighting could start, or possess her way through the whole chain of command and do it herself. I needed to balance this clearly overpowered class with the rest of the game without punishing or nerfing it.

Here’s my suggestions:

· Remember that even Astropaths are seen with suspicion by regular folks. Any use of the powers in civilized situation such as shopping in a market or discussing with custom authorities is likely to be met with hostility, ranging from expulsion from the premise to a frenzied torch-wielding mob.

· And peers of the party do act in the same way as them: Rogue Traders, Inquisitors, Admirals and generally any rich or powerful NPC will reasonably have its own Psyker at his side when meeting or running into the party. One of the very few house-rules I made was to introduce a mechanism similar to a counter-spell for Psykers.

· Also, there are a few items from both RT and DH that gives a degree of protection against Psyker powers. It would be realistic for a quite powerful NPC to have one, especially one that expect such a danger.

· Have the player stick to their character background and personality. If the Astropath is a religious zealot it wouldn’t be very fitting of her possessing a pious Cardinal to access the Temple relic chamber.

· Puppet-master leave the Astropath body unconscious and vulnerable. Take it into account when she use it in the middle of a firefight without getting cover first.

· Errata 1.4 made an important change to Mind control by giving it a short duration.

What have been your experiences and what are your suggestions?

point 1) if you piss off my astropath, i will not relay your call for help. deal with the encroaching "enemy of the week" yourself. i might get hurt myself? well, you put me through so much misery, its worth it.
point 2) well this one is not actually anything new. and that counter spell exists. it is warp-sorcery, and considered grounds for treason for any inquisitor. so be careful with that.

point 3) they exist. and remember: once the players defeat the enemy, they will be able to loot the items. watch out for this.

point 4) scratch a fate point away for clearly violating the faith. wait how he reacts. another good way, is to drop 1d5 of Corruption and/or insanity on the mindswapper. reasoning is the unfamiliar madness of the mind he encounters.

point 5) i think this is self explanatory.

most important to me, has become the rigorous application of the perils of the warp table. i call them "**** happens" and "big **** happens" for a reason. first game, first psyker action double 00'S. groupp dead, and any psyker using his powers unnecessarily was handled by the group / players, not me.

a big thing about the fear of psykers is that they ARE dangerous to their allies. dont expect players to be cautious about psykers, if you dont put them in a position to be afraid of it.

in short: i think the existing mechanics for dealing with psykers are good enough and need no tweaking, if they are applied correctly.

On 11/11/2018 at 2:59 PM, Horpi said:

point 2) well this one is not actually anything new. and that counter spell exists. it is warp-sorcery, and considered grounds for treason for any inquisitor. so be careful with that.  in short:

i think the existing mechanics for dealing with psykers are good enough and need no tweaking, if they are applied correctly.    

Agreed, but where did you find the rules for counterspells? As I said, it is the only houserule I implemented because I couldn't find any RAW on the books.

that is a good question. i sometimes mingle the systems myself. i am not sure if it was in a Dark Heresy expansion.... might take a while to find it again

Depends on the other party. I just don't see many possibilities when it's both worth the effort for someone like RT's retinue (i.e. with "screw you" money), but at the same time not very dangerous. This should work most of the time, but less than pretty consequences are IMHO too likely to try something as aggressive as this without being in a deep trouble already.

1. Imperial loyalists? High risk of getting officially spanked, raising to almost certainty if the subject is aware of what happened and survives (thus freaks out, and once the first priest or zealots passing by manages to discern the words… ‼FUN‼ ). Also, there are paranoia, wards, blessed stuff… Null fields and psy jammers may be exotic stuff for truly important people, but there's +20 from Hexagrammatic Wards that's only Very Rare, and +10 from Resistance (Psychic Powers) that's common enough to be in many packages. The harder are tests, either the more they fall, or the more psyker Pushes through them.
2. Underworld? Risk of getting spanked un-officially (they may be not all that faithful, but they have to deal with variety of witches and heretics now and then, thus learn how) and/or word getting out. Also, warp tainted charms or weird xenotech are not out of question. Also, remember that Inquisition is an intelligence agency among the other things, and keeps an eye on these people.
3. Heretics? High risk of running into highly resistant (and highly irritable) Khornate or a warp-dabbler who isn't new at these games. Either way, major risk of Insanity and/or Corruption from "touching" the unclean.
4. Possessed? Extreme risk of Corruption, possession, etc. And they aren't all floating and chain-wrapped daemonhosts…
5. Aliens? It depends, but with Eldar it probably won't work and only annoy them, Orks tend to WAAAGH! at a drop of a hat and are not new to dem silly Warp fings, etc. Significant risk of Insanity or Corruption from alien mind.

Also, uninvolved 3rd party always may notice (and pretty much anyone with Psyniscience usually have both vested interest in Warp phenomena and a way to handle these). And then there are things like Footfallen having Psyniscience +0 just because they live too close to Warp Storms.

On ‎11‎/‎13‎/‎2018 at 2:51 PM, Sergeant Unclepear said:

Agreed, but where did you find the rules for counterspells? As I said, it is the only houserule I implemented because I couldn't find any RAW on the books.

Bit of a late answer, but Tome of Fate has some chaos sorcery which can be used to mess with enemy psykers. One of them even allows you to change the target of a psychic attack to a target of the 'interrupting' psyker's choice...