evilamericorp said:

It's also the case for Blast weapons. Without trudging through the rules looking for a specific line hidden away in a paragraph somewhere, it would likley be safe to consider that to be a standard determiner.

There are some Psychic Powers which state what location they effect; Soul Killer from Radical's Handbook applies any critical damage simultaneously to both the head and body on the Explosive table. It also ignores armor unless warded. In the case of a Force Weapon , presumably the extra damage is channeled into the location wear the weapon struck.

-=Brother Praetus=-

The easiest way to do it would be to class psychic powers that do damage as "attacks," and reverse the WP roll just like WS or BS. That was most likely the intention. I'm just saying that I doubt the line you are talking about exists, and that the psychic power section especially, and the book as a whole, feel like an unfinished product. The examples don't line up with the rules, some rules reference other rules that don't exist, and there are glaring grammatical errors on almost every page. The interpretation itself isn't the problem, it's the fact that I have to change the rules as written just to be able to play the game.

Agreed, the rules around Force weapons are obscure and cloudy at best, and require house rulings on a number of ambiguities.

1) Force Weapons should read something along the lines of as a free action use a psychic power (i.e. not read Focus Power Test, it skips a bunch of stages) that give +1d10 per degree of success.

3) As written, you make a focus power test, but do not power level. A GM must decide whether they want to standardise it with the rest of the psychic powers, or use quasi-RaW and lock it at Unfettered. Obviously,the only benefit to Pushing (and downside to fettering) is the 5xPR bonus to the Focus Power test. However, I don't like the idea of pushing on opposed rolls. If I'm having PP/Potw, I don't want any additional chance of whiffing the power. To be honest, I don't see much point using Force Weapons above Fettered. Sword already perform as well as Power Swords at PR4, and going by all the pre-written material, Power Fields won't do bugger all to Tyranids (please note the limited scope of this statement). Fettered gives (a starting Librarian) ~55% chance of doing up +5d10 damage. Unfettered only gives +5% (again, at starting). In terms of risk, I would only consider Unfettering on a Force Weapon at PR8. Pushing is contentious because of the discrepancy in point 4...

2) Opposed tests, as written, don't subtract DoS from the other roller. They are just used to determine who wins. In this case, if the Librarian scored 4 degrees of success and his opponenent scores 1, the Librarian does +4d10.

4) Pushing. Discrepancy between the example and the text. The rules text tells us it's +3. The Example tells us it's +3 because that's the willpower bonus of the Librarian in the example (I'd also like to point out that a PR4 Librarian with a Willpower bonus of 3 is likely under the very watchful eye of the Ordo Hereticus/Malleus...lame-ass). Again, a GM must pick. Going by the example, an advanced Librarian can push for a WP bonus of 6? That's double the texts +3. Furthermore, the Librarian in only receiving a +10 bonus and not +20 (5x4PR). Shoddy.

Furthermore, discussion of Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader isn't really all that great. Deathwatch should be self-contained and work of the book. Using those games for context to get to the Rules as Intended is great, but if that is even necessary, it devalues Deathwatch as a standalone product.

Any activity that draws psychic energy from the warp should have the chance of phenomena/perils unless it explicitly says otherwise. The fact that your making a focus power test implies that all the benefits and drawbacks of such a test are present unless it states the contrary.

Benefits = being able to choose the power level

Drawbacks = being able to trigger negative effects

At least that's the way our group interpreted the rules.

EDIT: And as far as hit location is considered, you already have the hit location for force weapons dictated by the actual attack of the weapon.

Cuagau said:

This is one of the biggest problems I had. It's like they went through several revisions to the Psychic Powers rules, but didn't take out all the references to rules that didn't make it into the final product.

The Focus Power Action states that all Psychic Powers should have at least one action subtype (attack, movement, melee, defense, etc.), but not a single one does. This would lead me to believe that damaging powers were meant to be included in the rules as "attacks" and therefore use the same rules as ranged and melee for hitting body locations (which they currently have no rules for), and also for things like righteous fury.

Bunad said:

That wasn't the issue. How do you determine hit location for Smite, or any other regular Psychic Power? The only rules for determining hit location in the book say that you need to have a WS or BS roll to reverse the digits of.

Well... do you feel capable of rolling two d10?

Howdy!

Asked the folks that wrote the game a few questions about psychic powers and got the following responses from Ross Watson. Hope these help a bit as I saw some mentioned on page 1 and 2 of this thread.

Q.) Is Willpower bonus or a flat +3 added to Psy Rating when using a power with push? (The Push description says + 3 but the example mentions WP Bonus. p.185)

A.) The rule is +3 to Psy Rating (the example is in error).

Q.) There is no mention of Focus Power test difficulties in the rules for it, but in the examples on page 185 and 186 it mentions +10 for Push and +0 for Unfettered. Does Fettered require a test at -10, or do they all use +0 and the examples are erroneous?

A.) All focus power test difficulties (unless stated otherwise) are Challenging (+0). The examples are in error.

Q.) Does Righteous Fury work with Psychic Powers? In the righteous fury rules on 245, it seems to indicate that it only happens due to weapon damage. However some powers (Avenger and Smite mainly) function like ranged weapons. Does Righteous Fury work with all Psychic powers, none, or only
ones like the 2 I mentioned here?

A.) Psychic Powers can score Righteous Fury (assuming that they are being used by a PC or an NPC with the Touched by the Fates Trait).

Q.) Just for verification - Where the damage is listed as 1d10xPR, is that 3d10 for a PsyRating 3 character, or 1d10x3?

A.) 3d10.

My GM and I have talked about Righteous Fury a few times and we agreed that we're going to go back to the DH method of just rolling an extra d10 for damage as opposed to the damage of the weapon again. Best argument for the single d10 I could come up with was a starting Rune Priest pushing with Living Lightning. 6d10 damage with a possible further 6d10 damage for each 10 rolled on the damage dice. I mean, it would explain why the Inquisition leaves Fenris alone, but seems a bit excessive...

bmaynard said:

Thanks for that, clears up a lot of the issues of developer intent. Did you get any indication whether or not they were planning on putting out any sort of errata document?

That I didn't ask about, but I'm hoping they do.

As many questions and errors as we've seen so far would seem to warrant a fairly extensive one though, so it's probably just a matter of time in assembling one.

However, does the second "attack roll," by way of Focus Power test, provoke Psychic Phenomena? I mean, how much would it suck to Smite someone unfettered only to get righteous fury and turn into a demon prince? By that 'logic' every time you Righteous Fury on a Pushed power, you generate an automatic PP.

I just think that with the bonkers amount of d10s librarians can throw around, especially with Blood Angels getting RF on 9's, psychic powers should be except from RF, or at the very least, have their own way of handling it.

However, does the second "attack roll," by way of Focus Power test, provoke Psychic Phenomena? I mean, how much would it suck to Smite someone unfettered only to get righteous fury and turn into a demon prince? By that 'logic' every time you Righteous Fury on a Pushed power, you generate an automatic PP.

As long as your weapon can't jam on a Righteous roll, presumably your powers can't peril either.

Other than that, I'll probably be keeping the Righeous Fury off the powers as well. They're truly deadly enough as they are and with the amount of dice thrown, multiple RF are almost assured.

Cuagau said:

I think I'm going to play it as only needing to confirm by rolling under the WP needed for the initial roll, without the chance to cause perils. Psychic powers are already risky enough to cast without chaining psychic phenomena on a lucky roll.

You can only ever activate Phenomena/Perils on the initial activation of a power. Sustain checks and any checks after a power is activated ignore Phenomena/Perils.

bmaynard said:

It looks to me that they are doing something similar to how they worked the Rogue Trader errata. There's a stickied thread for FAQ and Errata, eventually they will compile what they can into a V.1.0 errata file. This took about 6 months with RT , if I'm remembering right. Of course, the RT thread took a little longer to get started originally, as well. We'll see.

-=Brother Praetus=-

This came up in Google search, so to Necro the thread, this was put into the errata.

DH phenomena happened too often. The following lines skewed too hard the other way, now it happens far too little or it's way too easy to reduce the "bad things happen" chance to effectively zero. Not very 40k.

What I'm curious about is if you do trigger RF do you roll each die separately or do you roll 7d10 again?

For example you get 8 levels of success, your target only gets 1. You roll 7d10 and get 10,4,5,8,6,10,5. Do you roll 2d10 again or do you reroll the entire pool?

You only reroll dice roll of 10.

You only reroll dice roll of 10.

Why only one of the 10s? Doesn't the Force Weapon effect count as one damage source and so should be rerolled as a whole?

I forgot these were in Errata I shall copy/paste them here:

I forgot these were in Errata I shall copy/paste them here:

Force Weapons (page 155):

The following sentence should be added to the description of Force Weapons section:

“The Focus Power Test to channel psychic force through a Force Weaponcan be made at any of the three psychic powers’ power levels (see page 185), and has the same chance to generate Psychic Phenomena/Perils of the Warp (see page 186-188). The additional damage dealt by channelling psychic force through a Force Weapon is Energy for the purposes of determining Critical Damage.”

Psychic Powers and Righteous Fury (page 186):

add the following section to the Psychic Powers in Deathwatch section preceding the Perils of the Warp (page 186):

“Psychic Powers that deal damage can benefit from Righteous Fury (see page 245).

When a chance for Righteous Fury occurs, the attacker re-rolls the Focus Power

Test using the same modifiers and power level as the original Focus Power Test to use a psychic ability.

If the original test was an Opposed Willpower Test, the defender re-rolls Willpower using the same modifiers as the

original Opposed Willpower Test. The roll to confirm Righteous Fury does not generate Psychic Phenomena or Perils of the Warp.”

So by these rules it seems that it is possible that RF might come out higher/lower than previous roll or be completely resisted.

Ah cool, so you roll get RF, then do another Focus test, and then go with that degree of success. Ad infinitum until you stop rolling 10s. That makes much more snse.