I'v been reading a bit on this forum and I have noticed that people are calling Psychers overpowered. I can see how that could happen with some of the powers (but I havn't tried them), but I am also starting to wonder if I have missed something in the rules.

From what I can see a Psycher has a fair (although not that large) chance of getting a phenomenon when using powers, which has a small but fair chance of becoming a peril, which has a fair chance of totaly screwing over the entire group (expecially if in a firefight). Sure, all of them have to happen at the same time so the rist is not that great, but just how long do psychers last with these rules? Or am I missing some save or something that they can make against these effects?

Or, if playing a psycher, should you simply accept the fact that sooner or later, your gonna blow

Firstly, many groups consider Focus Power rolls to be sufficiently test-like that they allow Fate Point use - so as long as you've got FPs left, it's relatively unlikely you'll blow up the group.

Secondly, there are a few options which can minimize perils - Power Well and Discipline Mastery lower the number of dice you have to roll to get a good chance of manifesting successfully, Favoured of the Warp lets you reroll phenomena.

Thirdly, Ascension psykers get the ability to use RT's Fettered Strength powers - manifesting powers with fewer dice, but not having any phenomena at all.

Fourthly, there's also the point that phenomena are often of a " Everyone around you is screwed" variety - so the psyker has the power, but everyone gets the drawback, with the psyker often being the one best-equipped to handle it due to his high WP stat and defensive talents.

In general, though, it's not that much of a problem until the group reaches Ascension level.

Ah, fate points, forgot about those! I saw Favored of the Warp on the other talents, my main concern was how not to blow up before that. Thanks!

But with fate points it becomes another story, at least as long as you try to keep powers to a minimum after you run out. Then again if you decide to tempt fate then its your own fault if a deamon munches your face of.

Not sure of the exact ruling but I do not allow FP's for Power Focus rolls simply because it is not specifically listed as a "Test" and FP's affect Tests. We have playing this way from the beginning without any problems. It is actually funny when the psyker blows a roll and changes the whole situation (i.e. picks up everyone and drops them, summons a daemon in the middle of combat and of course blames the evil heretics!)

Once the psyker gets Favoured by the Warp, the odds of catastrophic failure drops sharply. You basically need two rolls back to back greater than 75 and then a higher roll for Perils of the Warp.

-Cynr

Cynr said:

Same here,

Once our Psyker got his hands on the Favoured by the Warp Talent, he changed radically, from stressed out freak to living god. In the last year, the worst thing the Warp has thrown at him, is a cold feeling between the shoulder blades. All the while, everything he looked sideways burned to a crust.

Meatpuppet said:

The psyker in our game has mastered Pyromancy but depending on the location (usually bases, on ships, etc.) I let him go wild and turn on the fire suppression system if things start to burn. On a cruiser, the automated systems dropped the bulkhead doors and turned on CO2 extinguishing systems, which tends to suffocate people.... /evil GM grin

There are always reasonable ways to control unreasonable situations in role playing.

-Cynr

Cynr said:

Nicely done! I'm not very enamored of the Pyro Discipline. My ImpPsy went Telekine, took unnatural awareness (watch out for those ambushes and trigger-happy, scared Acolytes...), psychometry, and is going to delve into some Telepath abilities (Mind Scan, Telepathy and Projection). All the other players are now joking around about my Void-Born ImpPsy Jedi LOL

Especially at high levels, it's almost un-deniable that Psykers are overpowered. That's probably why the designers let Inquisitor's get some of their own Psyker on. Powers open up a whole world of possibilities that aren't available to normal characters. Astral Projection, full mind-control, enough armor pen to hack through a plasteel bunker, and the -only- decent method of healing in the game. Fortunately, it's a roleplaying game, and so a great deal of what makes a character "good" or "memorable" isn't tied up in any number. But, having said that, let's use way too many of them in the following exchange.

Most of the scaryness that goes into Perils of the Warp is in their randomness, and difficulty in quantizing the danger. The chances of a Peril are very low once you factor in FotW, and the truly awful perils are even less common (counting Psychic Mirror, Dark Summoning, Cataclysmic Blast, Mass Possession, Daemonhost, and Warp Feast). Cataclysmic Blast included for it's equipment destruction. Mass Possession causes an average of (22.5)(1-(WP/100)) Corruption which for a PC w/average (40ish) Willpower is 13.5 and nothing to sneeze at, when spread over your group you might as well have all comitted blood sacrifice in the name of Khorne. Daemonhost is a VH Willpower Test, but in most cases must be failed three times (Once for Resist Possession and once for spending a fate point), meaning the chance of failing is only (1-WP/100)^3 or about 21% on a WP 60 Psyker, lowering it's total Peril probability to 2.16%. Essentially the last 4 are always horrible (9.16%) and the first two are situationally bad when already in combat or low on health (10% times some factor, maybe 1/2, gets smaller the higher your level, the more PC's there are, the more RP focused your game). Then only 14% of Perils are game wreckers do any real degree.

The Favoured of the Warp talent nerfs the probability of Perils by (1/4). Effectively, it changes the requirement from rolling a single 4-sided die as a 4 ( an easy 25%) to the more complicated "roll a die. If it is a 4, roll again. If this is a 4, Peril. Thankfully the sequential nature simplifies the combinatrics). Basically you have a 1 in 4 chance to roll your second die, with a 1 in 4 chance of a Peril. This lowers it all the way to a (1/16), just 6.25% of Phenomena become Perils down from 25%. Holy wow.

Of course a Phenomenon only manifests on a roll of 9, a 10% chance if 1 dice is rolled, 19% chance for two, 27.1% chance for three. The probability isn't as unforgiving as some people think for multiple dice... rolling 3 times as many dice doesn't quite increase your chance of a Phenomenon by 3 times. For N dice rolled, it approximates the function N*(10^-N)*Sum(9^(N-1)) with the Sum from N=1 to N->N. It's not quite precise. However, between Invocation and the grossly overpowered Corpus Conversion it's rare more than 2 dice will ever be rolled. So... with FotW and two dice, there's about a .168% chance that something very nasty will happen. Less than 2 out of 1000 manifestations. If only one dice is rolled it's down to .0885%, less than 1 in a 1000. Sweet mathematical vindication to use only 1-dice for anything but sustaining powers.

Dunno about you, but I like those odds. Sure you're a time-bomb. But even if you cast 10 1-dice powers and 10 2-dice powers in a session, there's about a 2% chance you'll do something awful. Even then, about half the time, you're the one bearing the full brunt of the suck. You're more likely to name an exact card and suit, and then draw it out of a shuffled poker deck, than you are to toast your party in a given session.

So would you play a psyker if you knew that you'd need to roll a d100, and if you got a 99 or 100 before the session began, everything dies?

'Cause I sure would.

At Last Forgot said:

So then, how would you nerf the Favoured by the Warp talent to make the odds a bit more significant ?

For myself, I was thinking of making the second roll final. This way a psyker who decides to reroll his psychic phenomena, has to take the second result even it's worse than the original one.

Haha, liked the quote, thanks a bunch. As for your suggestion to lower the reduction of FotW, ordering the rolls and making the second one "final" wouldn't actually increase the chance of having a Peril. Rolling two fours on two four sided die is pretty clearly a (1/4)(1/4)=1/16 chance, only one outcome gives the two 4's result out of 16 possible. If you think about it... you have a 3/4 chance of not needing the reroll, 1/4 chance of wanting to use the reroll. So let's assume you roll that "4" on my representative 4 sided die, a 25% chance (since perils come at 76-100, 25 out of 100, 1/4 probability). There is no distinction between a 100 or a 76. That means you have a 1/4 chance of needing a reroll, which will have a 1/4 chance of again rolling a 4. Still 1/16, 6.25%.

The only thing your alteration would change is increasing the chance of the "less favorable" Psychic Phenomena which barely ever manage to be more than an irritation anyway. You can bet if the character rolls under 76 on his Phenomena roll he's not gonna roll again to try and get a lower one and risk being forced to take his second roll, whether it be a Peril or no.

If you're really interested in reducing the effectiveness of Favored of the Warp, you need to fool around with modifiers. Maybe it gives a static -XX to your dice rolls on Phenomena table. For argument, let's say -10. That means you get Perils on a roll of (86-100), down from 25% to 15%. Still very appealing. Or get even more creative and have it increase your rolls by a flat number, like +10, and keep the reroll. Still takes the chance down, from 1/4 to (35/100)(35/100) or about 1/8. There are tons of ways to fine tune that talent.

Ultimately I don't think that Perils of the Warp are the best crank to turn to balance Psyker's out.

I still say the number one talent that needs to be revised for Psykers is Corpus Conversion. A paltry 2 Wounds gives another +WP to your Power Roll, more or less negating the need to ever roll more than one die. Biomancy really points out the flaws... A character could have Regeneration active and essentially Corpus Convert at will. On average you'd get the health back for three burns every two turns. Or just use Corpus Conversion to rack up three or four Sustained powers, roll your max number of dice and maybe burn a CC to renew them since you're unafraid of Perils when refreshing Sustained powers. A turbo-boosted Telekinetic Shield for maybe 4 Armor, a Psychic Blade with 1d10+12 damage at 12 Penetration, Regeneration, and Sculpt Flesh yourself some wings. Why not?

As an alteration, maybe each use of CC would hit them with a few points of Toughness damage. Another solution is to make it 1d5 wounds instead of a flat 2. The first option of course prevents using huge stacks of Corpus Conversion in a short time. The second puts the fear of the Emperor into the player; sure, burning CC three times could do only 3 damage. But it'll average at 2.5 a burn and might peak higher (much higher in fact, the combinatrics are somewhat tedious but the chance of rolling a 10 or above on 3 die would be about 19% (feel free to check my math here I kinda just bashed it out carelessly) ignoring all Armour and TB. This puts any moderate-level psyker who hasn't sunk a ton of points into Sound Constitution just one solid hit from mangled, making it less of a "sure thing" with almost zero risk.

Perhaps even a higher priority would be to clarify the wording in some of the powers... ala "Constrict" which says the target "MUST" spend a full round action to test toughness against your force choke. Just spam it on the big baddie and chuckle as your party rips him to pieces.

All this being said I love Psykers. They're my fav. I just feel like they're less of Timebombs and more of a very complicated game of Russian Roulette, with 1000 barrels with which to smite your enemies but just a few that point right back at your own face...

On a side note, a Reliable Lasgun has more than double the chance of jamming on every single shot you fire than the Psyker I described above getting a game-altering Peril in an entire session. Makes you think.

Thanks for your elaborate response At Last Forgot.

After reading your post, I am considering adding a +10 to the reroll (which would be final). I feel this way the player will think twice before rerolling.

As for your grievances, you better check out the 16 page Dark Heresy errata found here I think you will be pleasantly suprised.

Glad you liked the post, Meatpuppet. I have an awful tendency towards walls of text.

Vis a vis errata, some of my more major grievances were indeed addressed. Constrict seems perfectly balanced now. Psychic Blade is a little more restrained, you'll have to use some delicate maneuvering and I always like changes that encourage thoughtful play. Glad Projection was cleared up too. But ye Gods! A permanent point of Toughness lost for every time you use Corpus Conversion, for fewer points of bonus on average than before (WP at least 60). That seems pretty **** harsh to me. You go from wanting to blow it every Manifest to putting it on the same tier as burning Fate points, an act of pure desperation and nothing else assuming you have any long-range intentions for your characters. And what happens when you burn a permanent Toughness point for a paltry +1 bonus to your Power? It smacks of overreaction. It takes it from bread and butter to delicious arsenic, which you would only consume in order to laugh at your enemies as they consume your flesh and thusly poison themselves. An average character would get maybe 20 or so uses out of the Talent, ever, before being so squishy they'd probably retire.

Think about it this way. If there were a talent in melee combat that increased your chance to hit by 15% (a number I just made up, Discipline Thresholds average near 18... (18-5.5)/18 is about 70%... but I knocked it down for the WP bonus contribution, Power Well, and because... well, averaging this "improvement chance" is nearly impossible). Now imagine this Talent ate a point of your Toughness every time you used it. Would anyone? Even better, what if it were a completely variable bonus of 2d10?

Don't get me wrong, I think abilities like that are hilarious and awesome (last time I ran a d20 campaign I introduced weapons for the campaign final boss which could be popped for an automatic critical once a fight, but did some pretty serious damage to the wielder if the hit wasn't a kill shot. At least three of my PC's ended up taking dirt naps for at least some portion of the final battle, and to a man, their reactions were maniacal laughter and flipping the bird. Those kinds of abilities are super fun). Regardless, you shouldn't take a staple ability and render it essentially useless. Nerf it and introduce another talent to cover those ultimate Pyrrhic victories.

Moving past CC, when fine-tuning FotW or indeed any Talent or Ability to your own preferences, a good guideline is to think of modifiers. Does a Talent, albeit an expensive one, merit the reduction of a significant threat by a factor of four? Two? A flat 10% reduction? Maybe think along the lines of the Resistance series of Talents. FotW is more expensive, and should be commensurately more powerful, but it's also used more often e.g. every time the Psyker rolls a 9 somewhere. For example, I bet Resistance (Poison) won't come up more than once a session on average but FotW would activate a lot more. A reduction factor of 2 seems reasonable-ish to me. Taking 25% Peril Chance to 12.5% is still a great value, well worth taking for the price. Even just a 10% reduction will be snapped up by terrified Psykers.

Personally, I think it was just fine to remove Corpus Conversion. Cause let's face it, that's what they did with that errata. Psykers are power enough already.

With the errata to 'Corpus Conversion' it makes me very glad that I never wasted the experience on getting the Talent for my Pyker.

As for being a walking time-bomb that has blown up a group a time or two, I never had serious repercussion, that a little mind-cleansing couldn't fix.

one major thing to consider that seems so many forget is that Psykers dont have to use their powers.

If they think its a bit to risky, then pull out the las pistol instead of the psy bolt, or the auto rifle instead of the barrage power.

Gods knows i love using my guy, only on 9 insanity/corruption, 4th rank and drops powers left right and center. only used one fate point to avoid something that was on the over 75 scale. but it did give him nightmares for a while seeing a possible future of himself and what Could have been were it not for the fickle hand of fate