Favoured by the Warp - Newbie Psyker

By malleable2, in Dark Heresy Rules Questions

So I am new to DH, and am making a Psyker. I have read some posts about important Talents and Skills a Psyker should take, and the most important one seems to be Favoured by the Warp.

As an Imperial Psyker I can take it at Rank 6 if I go the Scholar route and Rank 9 if I go the Militant route.

I was planning on going Militant and taking the Templar Calix alternate career path, so I'd have to go to 9th level to get Favored by the Warp? Sounds kind of late in the game.

Is there any way to get it sooner?

Mal

Malleable said:

So I am new to DH, and am making a Psyker. I have read some posts about important Talents and Skills a Psyker should take, and the most important one seems to be Favoured by the Warp.

As an Imperial Psyker I can take it at Rank 6 if I go the Scholar route and Rank 9 if I go the Militant route.

I was planning on going Militant and taking the Templar Calix alternate career path, so I'd have to go to 9th level to get Favored by the Warp? Sounds kind of late in the game.

Is there any way to get it sooner?

Mal

You could ask your GM about taking it as an Elite advance at Rank 6; Templar Primus , for 300 or 400 xp. That would probably be your best bet on the matter.

Also, something to remember, Templar Calix is an alternate career RANK , and does not exclude you from purchasing advances from Rank 5-8's advancement schemes once you reach the XP levels associated with those ranks. I've seen a couple people interpret it as replacing all future rank schemes, and not just Rank 4. The titles differ only because once you are within the order, your positional rank is typically no longer the same as a psyker who might be assigned to service with the Imperial Guard.

Oh, and though Intelligence is not generally seen as important for a Psyker, take advantage of the cheaper advances pre- Templar as much as possible.

-=Brother Praetus=-

Sorry if this seems kind of uncharitable, but yeah it is late in the game. Which is exactly where it should be.

As a Militant psyker to trade increased mastery of the warp and increased finesse/affinity with the Immaterium in order to focus on more martial pursuits. Basically this is a balance choice by Fantasy Flight Games, the trade off you make in order to be able to swing a sword for instance. Scholar route doesn't even get Swift Attack or Lightning attack at all, for example, which are characteristic talents of the militant path and also Templar Calix. So lamenting that Favored by the Warp, one of the Scholar path's signature talents, only comes late for the militant path... well.


Just saying. You can always ask your GM but if I were him, I wouldn't give it to you early. Both for balance reasons since Templar Calix are already some of the most broken of combat classes, and moreover for thematic reasons, since this kind of delicate control doesn't really come along with the Savant path.

Indeed its more balanced towards late game play - Psykers are often largely glass cannons, you have some of the most fundamentally game changing and amazing abilities at your disposal, but they can go horribly horribly wrong.

I'd speak to your GM about if he will allow you to fate pheno rolls; its not strictly allowed by RAW as its not a test but I have yet to meet a GM that does not allow that. It essentially gives you ability to make use of Favored by the Warp as long as you actually have fate at your disposal - which tends to make everyone happier than a psyker freely rerolling after a bad pheno/perils. As others have stated, Templar Calix is already incredibly potent.

Thanks guys. I didnt see any method of getting it sooner, but the way people talked about it it sounded like something I wanted to get as soon as possible. Before my group shoots me after I dump corruption points on them after a bad perils.

I will see if my GM thinks this is something I can purchase earlier.

Mal

Just gotta be careful about how you swing your powers about. Especially if you're going Templar Calix, many of your most commonly used powers will be Sustained. My personal advice is to try your best to preempt fights and make an Invocate roll to get your powers running. That way you don't have to roll many dice, and there's a smaller chance of Perils. And remember that when rolling dice to Sustain powers, you cannot manifest Phenomena, and as such you can go ahead and roll your full dice pool for them.


Favored by the Warp is amazing in that it reduces the chance of Perils by a factor of four, yes. I did some math on the forums regarding this a while back. But with sparing play, and a small amount of luck, your psyker can live a long and productive life. Hope you have a great game.

You could always discuss with your GM the possibility of using the fettered rules from Ascension, something that makes a lot more sense to me for basic powers.

We put it in after a statistically unlikely 3 Daemonhost results in a total of about 25 power uses. Thank the emperor for Resist Posession and a WP of 59.

Player of mine wants to go Templar Calix (or Templar Aquil in our case, given we don't play in the Calixis Sector). Only issue is where they are in the campaign kind've precludes the necessary sabbatical to become part of that order, so I'm not sure what to do here.

BYE

H.B.M.C. said:

Player of mine wants to go Templar Calix (or Templar Aquil in our case, given we don't play in the Calixis Sector). Only issue is where they are in the campaign kind've precludes the necessary sabbatical to become part of that order, so I'm not sure what to do here.

BYE

You have 4 choices here:

- Ignore the sabbatical requirement and let him take it mid-mission.

- Find some way for him to have the training. Maybe allow for enough downtime, maybe.have someone show up who can give him similar training wherever they are*.

- Simply tell him no.

- Tell him no unless he can come up with a good way to satisfy the sabbatical requirement.

*The trainer might come with a cost. It could be obvious (the trainer is someone they want to purge. Killing him means no training, leting him live means more heresy), it could be subtle (the training is corrupting the psyker, but you only give hits. You don't issue any CP/IP until it's over) or it could be a mix of the two.