Psyker Power 'Push' , overpowered?

By linearblade, in Dark Heresy Rules Questions

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if a muay thai fighter gets his hands around your neck draws you down and then kicks with his knee into the are are of your lower ribbs... they gonna break... it will lead to serious internal rupture maybe pierced lungs... maybe other critical areas will be damaged there is enough there right beneath your ribcage...

this is an impact of the thai fihters knee into your body ... therefore I used impact ... I was not relating to impact damage in game terms at this point...

(btw I know what "impact" is and also a bit of physics about it like kinetic energy,momentum/impulse and stuff...)

they measured the kinetic energy which was generated with a high tech dummy originally designed to be used in car crashes and the tech staff was trained for car crashes and they made the relation to car crashes and said this is... in numbers...about as deadly as a frontal car crash with 50 km/h

no thai fighter can deliver this deadly blow in a muay thai match because the opponent is blocking and guarding and that means the attacker cannot direct the blow in an ideal way ...

furthermore these are trained martial artists... especially kung fu and muay thai fighters and the lot repeatedly punch/kick/hit hard stuff with their bones (shin/knee for example of thai fighters) which hardens the bones... which again means the would take less damage then the average person (me for example and probably you)

although much of this knowledge is indeed taken from a movie(documentary) it is not taken from hollywood or whatnot movies if you're intrested maybe watch it yourself

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0775470/

I think the relevant scene is about nearly halfway through the documentary

and one of my best friends does thai fighting... my brother did... (and I had several other friends doing different kinds of martial arts altough I never did myself) so this is no nonsense and was not about game terms

personally I do not know what kind of forces and and how much of them are taking place during a carcrash and where it hits you and with what effect so this is just something I "heard from a documentary" and "hung onto it" granted

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The devil's in the details. In that specific case, I can see the comparison of effect being accurate. Mia culpa.

Sorry to go off on a tangent without asking the details first.

To return to the original topic, I don't find Push overpowered. Main villains get plot armor, high Willpower and Toughness, incapacitating a grunt that way is not really game breaking... especially not when compared against Psychic Scream which I do find to be pretty OP.

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Graver said:

DavidJones said:

Khorne-ucopia said:

DavidJones said:

The problem is not the ability. It is fatigue.

Fatigue sucks.

I realised this when I saw how a guy with a knife has almost no chance of injuring someone in armour. He is better off putting the knife down and punching him instead because after 4 or 5 punches the guy in flak armour goes down with fatigue.

It doesn't seem to matter how weedy you are or how heavily armoured the opposition is. Each successful hit on an unarmed attack inflicts a level of fatigue. I guess people don't box in the 41st Millenium because no boxing match would get out of the first round.

My advice is to ignore fatigue completely. If you players are crossing a desert or something, then use it. Otherwise forget about it.

I am pretty sure it is not just a successful hit, but the punch has to do damage for it to inflict fatigue. I don't have the book in front of me to check though

Well, the book says a successful hit. Doesn't say you have to cause damage. Easily cleared up with a house rule I guess, though the house rule I would prefer is no fatigue. Or, the alternative damage and healing system I am using myself.

A lot of house rules needed with DH. Sometimes I wonder how much it was playtested, and whether the playtesters were asleep. Fear was an early biggie for me. Just replaced the whole thing because it lacks gradation and is so arbitrary.

The setting and concept is the best thing about DH IMO.

The errata fixes the issue:

The Unarmed Combat section on page 197 should have the line “In addition, a successful hit also causes one level of Fatigue” changed to: “In addition, a successful hit that causes damage equal to or greater than the target’s Toughness Bonus also causes one level of Fatigue.”

Okay, that makes more sense.

Not sure how useful it is because you are pretty much always going to need Righteous Fury to do that much damage at D5-3, and that is not going to happen very often.

Is the errata on the forum?

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Scrub that. I found it.

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Cifer said:

What's more interesting is that stim is also a short-term plastic surgery: That friendly E7-Crit burning your face off and reducing your fellowship to 1d10? That's a negative effect to a characteristic from Critical Damage right there!

Would you mind if I put this quote in my signature ?

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So, we've strayed alittle off subject...

But perhaps Fatigue damage, except in the case of 10Tb super tech priests, not push, is what is over powered?

I think it seems like the amount of fatigue served out by this power is alittle excessive.. along with Psychic Shriek as well...

Anyone have better ways to deal with Fatigue or perhaps a better way of getting it? seems to be its given out like Penny candy on certain powers and certain critical hits... I mean, whats the relevance of getting 1d10 fatigue, when realistically most PC or NPC go down after 4?

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@BilateralRope

I'd feel honoured. cool.gif

@LinearBlade

I think it seems like the amount of fatigue served out by this power is alittle excessive.. along with Psychic Shriek as well...

Perhaps grant one fatigue for every two degrees and no basic success fatigue? Though this may be on the weak side again...