The description for psycannon bolts in IHB (pp191) gives the bonus of +5 to criticals, double damage (after armour and toughness) against psykers/Demons/warp entities, Holy-classed damage, and ignores psychoc/warp-generated armour/protective fields.

The description for the Malleus psycannon in Ascension (pp 139-140) describes "psycannon bolts" as ignoring all protective benefits from psychic powers, the Increased Toughness trait from the Daemoic trait, confer the Auto-Stabilised trait, and if the user has a psyker rating, add that as bonus damage/

These are sort of different benefits, for the same item, are they not?

There's a few differences. firstly, Ascension deals with the actual Psycannon while IH uses Psycannon-bolts in regular bolters - after all, there was no psycannon in the IH. Other than that, I dare you to take a look at forcefields in the IH and Ascension. Ascension retconned quite a few things from other sources.

The impression I got from the Psycannon bolts in IH is they are superb bolt rounds - for ordinary bolt weapons. That said, I'm leaning towards having them be the standard ammo for Malleus Psycannons and combining the traits of both.

I hate retconning... what is this, Star Trek?

I guess I'd also lean combinig the rules for both... as nothing is ever overkill in 40K.

Don't call it Retcon then. Bugfix, Improvement or Update sound so much friendlier when it comes to realizing that something that was written by others (the IH was the last work of Black Industries before the license was given to FFG) doesn't fit the present writers' ideas.

Cifer said:

No, it wasn't. Disciples of the Dark Gods was written before the DH rulebook was released, with playtest manuscripts arriving the same day that BI announced they were closing. FFG edited and published it, but it was still written under Black Industries.

@N0-1

Most interesting.

@Topic

Having re-read the actual entry in the IH, I believe I've solved the mystery: The IH psycannon bolts are essentially the watered-down version of the true ammunition used in a psy-cannon. They build upon the same principles (psy-active materials), but they're not quite the same.

So, is there consensus that the aformentioned description of psycannon bonus is stronger/more powerful in Ascension than in the Inquisitors Handbook?

The bolts in the IH are a special, lesser, ammo type for standard Bolters.

The Psycaonnon is a heavy weapon that is by no means standard and requires specific ammo.

They are not the same thing. I see no conflict with the two items.

ImperialOne said:

I'd say they are about the same for non psykers against psyker or daemonic targets, a slight edge for the real thing but not much. Against normal humans or wielded by a psyker the actual psycannon dominates. And it's a much better weapon due to full auto as a half action and of course the full auto itself unless you're using RT rules.