In my opinion (as a role player) Librarian psychic abilities are restricted far too much in with regards to chapters, I feel as though the player should be able to choose the chapter he/she wishes to role play without being pigeon holed into playing a character mechanically a certain way. As an attempt to homogenize the class into something more flexible for role-playing purposes I will make most psychic abilities fall under the general abilities list and restrict only the most iconic chapter abilities like blood boil. I may simply make the chapter psychic abilities available to all librarians with an increased cost so that librarians of the chapter that the ability comes from will still benefit from cheaper experience costs. A librarian may only take abilities from another chapter list up to rank 3 .More librarian changes to follow

A simple multiplier will be applied as follows.

If the ability comes from the librarians home chapter then the cost is the same as listed. If the librarian chooses an ability from a different chapter then the cost is multiplied by 1.25.

So do you just not like the flavor of the Chapters each having their own abilities that make them unique or is this more of the somewhat prevalent "My favorite chapter(Space Wolf's) aren't uber enough" mentality, or do you actually like the idea of everyone having access to all but one or two powers?

Personally, I think this kind of broad based concept where everyone should be equal, which seems to have spawned from the MMO (4E) world, is boring, and in the context of Space Marines, diminishes the role and importance of the Chapter. A Space Marines Chapter should be all pervasive and truly mark out the differences between two different SM's, especially those of the same specialty. When you start taking away what makes each Chapter unique, be it psychic powers or squad/solo mode abilities, talents/traits, etc, you start diminishing the point of the Chapter selection. Yes, the people who are playing the game should be able to role play those differences, but having mechanical differences goes a long, long way in aiding the less fanatical players at the table and helps the veteran players, and the 40K nuts all to be able to see why their Chapter is special to them. Space Marine Chapters are supposed to be different and unique. That's why we all have those we love and those we hate.

ItsUncertainWho said:

I wouldn't be as critical of it as you are. I would just say that in 40K DA and SW librarians and so on all have their unique powers which largely happen to be their respective powers in DW. I do not understand why the Ultramarine powers are not Codex powers though. Perhaps to not diminish the value of the Ultramarine psyker from a game pov but "realistically" shouldn't those have been included in some Codex Grimoire along with Might of the Ancients, GoI, etc?

Alex

Once answer to this, that I have not yet decided to use but am considering. Is some xp cost to allow any player to learn a chapter specific power/skill of another player. Maybe something like two or three times the experience.

This represents the marines willingness to share/show off their abilities and doesn't seem too far out of the norm. While SM can be secretive about there abilities they also seem to think that every other chapter should "do it the right way" in other words their way. If one marine came to another and asked to learn from him, I think the marine being asked would be happy that his fellow marine was finally seeing sense.

The inverse of this is that they really shouldn't want to ask for training much, but being the the DW one makes allowances for behaviors and interactions outside the normal coarse of marine life.

Btw character death, especially of the leader, should cause a hit on Cohesion. See Aliens.

Alex