Okay, since I was assured by aethel that this wouldn't be a breach of forum etiquette, I thought that I would post to see what peoples' opinions were about the relative power of the various Psyker Grades. The catch is that I'm not modelling this in Dark Heresy but rather a completely different game system. I'm not going to be posting game mechanics, just the concepts that are attached to them, because I really do feel that would be too much for a Dark Heresy forum. As the, in many ways, de facto official board for "40k RPG," though... ? Well, you see the point.

What I do want to make clear from the outset is that this is not an inherent criticism of Dark Heresy , nor am I saying that it is bad. I just wanted psykers to have a separate feel than they do in Dark Heresy and wished to explore how to achieve that in my game of choice.

H'okay, onwards with a tweaked version of the original post over on Dark Reign .

The "problem..."

After years of procrastination and just having things mulling around since the first rewrite of some psyker rules, I've finally gotten around to putting it on paper. Anyway, one thing that still gets me is dealing with the relative power levels of the psyker Grades. First port of call was, of course, Dark Heresy , but I'm not finding it that helpful. While it has a number of concepts that echo my own thoughts, it doesn't quite "get it" in terms of how I've seen psykers working in 'fluff.'

T.S. Luikart and Lightbringer offered up an article over on Dark Reign that tied Grade to the efficacy of the psyker, which is also something that hit a wrong note in my mind.

The simpler system in Inquisitor skirmish wargame doesn't help either, having the same broad limitations. And the wargame... Yeesh.

Yet there are elements in all that can be useful.

Put your money where your mouth is...

So, it might seem like I'm griping about what I see as the deficiencies of one aspect of a system that some/many/whatever people love, so what would I see put in its place. To be fair, and as above, I'm not really talking about changing Dark Heresy but rather coming up with a separate system as an alternative. (And I'm sure that it could be converted rather easily over to Dark Heresy for those that want to do it, but again this is actually for another game system entirely.)

Anyway, back to the chase. I'm not really proposing anything radical. Psykers would be defined by a number of "traits" (for want of a better term) that would vary between psykers of various Grades and abilities. I've tried to keep this as simple as possible while still maintaining what I perceive as the true flavour of psykers. (For those seeing no difference, then fair enough. I'll have to see your arguments to see the validity of them, but to me the difference is in intent .) Those "traits" would be:

• "Warp Tap." ("Warp Faucet" for the Americans amongst us.) If the connection to the warp is a portal, then this is the size of a portal. For low powered psykers it is but a trickle, while for the higher Grades it is a raging torrent (or even limitless). You can draw beyond your Warp Tap, but to do so engenders Taint ( q.v. ).
• "Threshold," or "Tolerance." Psykers seem to have a different tolerance to the use of their powers and what might be construed as "safe," and one that can increase (or decrease) during their lifetime. (Primary psykers have a higher also arguably have a higher tolerance.) Using abilities within the Threshold are generally safe unless something nasty happens (critical failure or narrative determination). Outside of this range, though, and you engender Calamity and Taint. Threshold is, relatively, always set low (relative term) in order to encourage the psyker to go beyond it—meta-gaming, yes, but not unreasonable meta-gaming since it is a "carrot" rather than Dark Heresy 's "stick".
• "Taint." When a psyker goes beyond their Threshold they engender Taint in the long term, and Calamity immediately. Taint is the long road to damnation, with high Taint beginning to engender more permanent effects (?possession? open warp portal? still deciding...) unless you buy it off. You buy off Taint with disadvantages such as insanity, mutation, or premature ageing. (Taint is obviously similar to Corruption, but is handled in two different ways. I'll expand if you feel that it is necessary.)
• "Calamity." The immediate effect of taint, similar to "Psychic Phenomenon" (cf. Dark Heresy ). Indeed, I'll be pilfering some of the descriptions that are less "you get sucked into the warp and die."
• "Recovery Rate." The speed at which your Treshold recovers. Continued use of psyker abilities beyond Threshold is permissible, but engenders automatic Calamity, but once it is below that level the "soul is recovered sufficiently" to enable the "safe"l use again.

It might sound a bit crunchy, complex and book-keeping heavy than Dark Heresy , but that's not something that I mind personally and, to be fair, I don't see it as overtly problematic for a psyker player character since that is a part of the character that they adopted. (Of course, you've also got to trust that the player character is going to fairly keep track of all this.)

And now the "balancing act"/relative powers bit...

First off, the issue of the quotations around "balancing act.&quopt; I will say it here and clearly: I'm not concerned about the premise of game balance insofar as it requires a psyker character to balance out with, say, an Imperial Guardsman, or an Adept, to use the Dark Heresy terms. I'm referring to "balance" as it pertains to the relative power of different Grades of psykers and, separately, to what level might be achieved to engender the desire of the player to go beyond their Threshold.

Not sure how to structure this, so I'll just jump right in...

Grade "Power" Relativity

I've got a number of means of measuring the "power" of a psyker: Warp Tap and Threshold. The Warp Tap, for want of a better term, is definitive for the Grade since it determines just how much energy you can channel through your soul. Low Grade psykers are those that have a limited choke to the warp, while the higher Grades (such as Alpha) can have a much, much higher Tap.

I'm just going to be using representative numbers here so that we can relate it to any game system, but my inclination was to suggest that the "average Imperial psyker" (itself a contentious topic) had a Threshold of 12-13, and a Tap of around 3-4. To put that in perspective, "mind reading" would require 3-4 "points" so the average psyker would be able to use that kind of power about 4-ish times before they face the decision of whether to tap into the warp and engender Calmity/Taint. On the other hand, "possession", or "waring" to use the Ravenor term, costs around 10 "points." Thus a lower Grade psyker could not easily achieve what a high Grade psyker might be able to do, unless they are willing to draw from the warp and thus engender Calamity/Taint ("To draw to deeply from the aethyr is to risk madness, death, and, worse, the loss of ones immortal soul.").

Threshold is something that I see being related to Grade, but not hugely so. I see Threshold increasing with Grade, but also in other ways (e.g. experience). Tap and Threshold do not, however, increase equally. If Tap were to geometrically increase (say x2), Threshold would arithmetically increase (say +2). The idea is to keep the Threshold low enough to always having the psykers pushing their boundaries, to be continually tempted to use the warp. Similarly, powers are not restricted by Grade, so if a psyker learns a more powerful discipline, then to use it they are going to have to push themselves beyond the limits of safety (and sanity).

Anyway, the point . How much more powerful is a Gamma from a Delta? Or Beta to a Gamma? How do you think that this might be represented in the Tap/Threshold scheme?

The Meta-Gaming Issue...

Actually, I was going to get into this but have changed my mind. We'll see what the response is to the first bit before going down this route.

To those that have taken the time to read through this, thanks. For those that have taken the additional time to reply, then double thanks!

Regards,

Kage

Does this mean I now get to be the authority on what is allowed on the forum and what isn't?

Keeping in mind that the world would end before I actually decided to use something other than the official rules as the baseline for something as big as psychic powers...

I really like where you are going with this. Your take on the measures of a psyker's ability to use the warp is a great framework. (And I actually like lots of crunch in a game system.)

Looking forward to reading where this goes.

aethel said:

I just needed one person to give me the go-ahead, then they could be flayed alive by the moderators rather than the fool who merely followed their advice.

aethel said:

I cannot argue with that. Each to his, or in your case her, own.

aethel said:

Well, as always the goal is to engage people in discussion. In this case the goal was specifically to engage people in discussion about their interpretations on the relative power of psykers of the different Grades. While it is possible for me to progress forwards with this system without referring to the Psyker Grades or Psyker Class, these are for me pretty fundamental parts of the background on psykers. And while it is fairly easy to assign values to the different "traits" that I mentioned above, I really don't want to go down the route that Dark Heresy (reasonably) took, or even the efficacy-based model of T.S. Luikart.

So, to slightly readdress the questions, how about these?

1. What, given your understanding of 40k and Dark Heresy , is the average grade of an Imperial psyker? (This is to differentiate it from the average Grade of humanity, or those that don't really actively control their abilities. I'm talking actives rather than latents or those that don't control access to their "gift.")
2. In terms of "balance," how many times can a psyker reasonably use their abilities without incurring something "bad?"
3. In your opinion, if you were to increase your suggested "average Psyker Grade" by one level (Epsilon becomes Delta, Delta becomes Gamma, etc.) how much more powerful would they be? That is, if their ability to access the warp is defined by, say, the value "10" what would the higher Grade be able to do?

I understand that these are wide open questions subject to a great deal of interpretation. I also understand that GW's style of writing and tendency towards hyperbole makes it even more difficult. That's why I'm just asking for your own interpretation. Even just an estimate of the "average psyker Grade" and how it varies between that and the next grade—whatever you determine it to be—would be as equally valuable.

So what do you say?

Regards,

Kage