Hello

Very quick question. Many of the "standard" psyker attacks from the more militant schools in DH such asBio-lightning, Fire bolt and Forcebolt don't say anything about penetration.

Do these powers therefore have a penetration of 0? This seems to be rather pants. After all you don't even get major psychic powers until rank 4 (IIRC).

Lets assume that our johhny Psyker is Rank 4, has a willpower of 50 (go him!) and has just got his first attack power. Most of them do D10 +WP, or 1D10 +5 for our guy. Now most of your party will be packing something beyond laspistols by this point. Boltguns are doing 1D10+5, pen 5, tearing, chainswords do 1D10 +5 (assuming average str bonus) tearing, pen 2.

Against anything with armour, our psyker is going to be doing very little damage. Which is fine if you are playing your psyker as a telepath or somesuch, but a battle-psyker seems to have very little hope of hurting things in armour.

example, Rank 4 savant militant does 1D10+5 damage to a rank 1 guardsman wearing a guard flak. guardsman has armour 4, toughness 3. Psyker is doing 1D10-2 damage.

Just doesn't seem very dangerous.

I am of course aware of the utterly deadly nature of the more potent psychic powers such as holocaust and pschic blade but there seems to be nothing in Between. Pyrokinetics for instance go from "lightly warm" to "annihilate building" with not much in between.

So, my query, is there a penetration mechanic that i've overlooked or has anyone houseruled this to make the lower level attack powers useful against people wearing more than lingerie?

They are indeed Pen 0, unless it specifically says otherwise. The trade off becomes that when a Psyker ability has Pen it either can gain ludicrous amounts (ie: Psychic Blade), can flat out ignore it (Holocaust), or can do so much bloody damage it pushes past soak.

If your acolytes are running around with boltguns and chainswords by rank 4 than you are certainly getting more geared than any group I've played in I'm not really sure how you are grouping discipline abilities into 'lower level attacks' or not, since they are all of the same purchase price. There are ones that are better for flat out damage than others, that's just largely going to be a fact of life. If someone has picked Biomancy they are probably going to be getting Seal Wounds which is an amazing healing ability (and/or Regenerate, which is ALSO an amazing healing ability), and surprise surprise, Biomancy isn't the most militant school. Bio-Lightning may deal fantastic damage against armored targets, but its also an ability that doesn't have to be readied nor does it have to be actually carried around. If the Psyker wants to deal with an armored target they are not a walking damage powerhouse as a Biomancer, *but* they are a psyker still - they can spasm it (fall over, yay), constrict it (suffocate it, yay), blood-boil it (fatigue, yay) - and if DoTDG is open to Psykers than Agony and Drain Vigor are amazing as hell for indirect abilities.

As for the Fire Bolt situation - Fire Bolt has an obnoxiously long range for a Psyker ability. Seriously, look at it. 100m? Most abilities are almost 10-15m range ones, and the ones that multiply range by WPB still require your WPB to get to 10 to equal that. That's seriously long range for a Psyker. Combine that with a low threshold (11) and low Overbleed (5), you can quickly begin to launch several bolts at once at a target. Within Pyromancy however you have Fire Storm, which is essentially a middle finger to anything and everyone you throw it at (this can scale way too god damned high), Holocaust, and a free Flashbang. Hell, if he wants to be a Biomancing bastard, there is nothing saying that he can't use Hammerhands and than next round manifest Burning Fist. 1d10+4xSB damage non-primitive? Yegods. Feral world psykers love it. Incinerate also bypasses TB/AP, but it is a bit of a trickier one to use.

Similarly for Force Bolt. You do 1d10+WPB+1 damage for every 5 overbleed past 13. 13 is rather low so you can get some extra points. Is this ungodly? No, but Force Barrage is. Psychic Blade is. Push is (you can knock out most targets way too easily).

So if your battle-psyker wants to be a battle-psyker than .. Let him go for abilities that are less subtle and more powerful. In some cases you may want to tone them down a bit (Force Barrage/Firestorm) and what not; but manifesting all over the place is generally not going to be healthy for him and the group. If he wants to make *every single attack* via manifest, sure, he can. But when you speak of the other acolytes having things like Boltguns or Chainswords if they can have access to him whats stopping him? Hell, its not like buying Psyker abilities costs money at all, and if he actually goes down the Militant path (the other path is more scholarly) than he gets a variety of abilities that improve his fighting potential (just looking at first rank of the tree, Savant-Militant, he gets Cleanse and Purify, Crippling Strike, Crushing Blow, Frenzy, Hard Target, Iron Jaw. Next rank he gets TWW:Melee and Ranged, Battle Rage, Crack Shot, Dead Eye Shot, Hip Shooter, Mental Rage, Nerves of Steel and Swift Attack). God help you if he decides to do something like Hammerhands + Forearm weapon mounting, or TWW:Melee + Psychic Blade + Flame Pistol + Cleanse and Purify. And god help you *all the more* if your Battle Psyker decides he actually wants to be a Battle Psyker and take up a Force Sword as a Templar Calix.

..

This now makes me want to play a feral world psyker with hammer hands and forearm weapon mounting. ****.

I have a psyker in the game i run atm (cross over Dark Heresy/Rogue Trader) and he is death on a stick with his forcesword. He has mostly gone biomancy so bloodboil is nice but bio-lightning is effectively useless against the foes he comes up against. He has used it a few times but even with a chunky psy rating of 5 it is piddly compared to anything else the group uses.

You've kinda hit on what i meant with firestorm and holocaust. Both are area attacks, you can't take down a single guy with them unless he is standing alone and not near anything you don't want broken. I missed the nice range on firebolt but again, about the same as a rifle and no penetration.

Basically it doesn't seem to make sense to take one of the basic attacking powers (i call them basic as they have a lower threshold than something like holocaust, i.e. you can use them earlier when your Psy rating is lower) when packing an bolt/hell/anything -but-lasgun will do the job better. It certainly doesn't seem worth it when you consider that your gun isn't doing to accidently throw you across dimensions into hell.

To be clear, i'm not slamming psy powers in general, i think most of them work a treat. Its just the more basic point and shoot powers that seem under powered to even a fairly moderate pistol. And given the risk of throwing them about, it seems rather pointless taking them.

Think of it this way: you are never unarmed. Never.

Alex

Indeed, the whole "you are never unarmed" is a huge deal; it becomes a little bit less extreme of an advantage when everyone has things like Quick-Draw that let them automatically whip out their weapon, but there are always going to be situations where the PC's cant cart around their big top weapons and armor. A psyker cannot be effectively disarmed without extraordinary measures.

Psyker abilities largely are NOT meant to be a replacement for weapons, because as said if you start throwing them around willy nilly than this will create issues. Using a weapon willy nilly creates little issues beyond attracting attention and expending ammo. Its relatively hard for many direct Psyker damage ability to equal up to, say, a long-las or a hunting rifle (especially when you factor in things like unnatural aim), or a Psyker who decided he wants to carry some heavy equipment combined with divine shot. Is this a bad thing? Not at all. For the few abilities that don't deal a whole ton of damage, there are abilities that count as the heavy weaponry for Psykers; things like the previous mentioned Force Barrage, Fire Storm, Holocaust.etc.etc. These are not subtle nor are they targeted (well, Force Barrage is, but yeah), they just turn anything you are against into helpless goo.

Biomancy is largely not dealing with ranged attacks, so, yes, he doesn't get the complete package of being able to do everything. Biolightning kind of sucks, yes, but the other abilities he gets is great. Throwing lightning from your hands is great thematically. If this is an actual legitimate issue let him pick a new power or buff it up by letting it ignore armor or something like that, but I am somewhat wary as I'm starting to feel like the character may be treating him like a "jedi" style. Though this may just be because of my mental connections of "death on a stick + throwing lightning". I just look at it as a free weapon the character may not be by any easy means disarmed from, and much like the guns, not all guns/abilities are created equal. If he wants a huge damage ranged attack to go with his huge damage melee attack, he has to go into another discipline. Or grab a gun. Really not hard to get wrist mounting or pistol gripped weapons, and god help you if he decides to do something like pistol grip a hunting rifle or las gun. Or pack a Carnodon to use with his Lightning Attack.

Keep in mind though as just a bit of advice on keeping the Psyker somewhat leashed, if he has a Force Sword the whole Force Sword special effect may not clash with disallowing an attack, but its still a Manifest - so he cannot use it if he manifests another power that round. :3 This can get important for things if he decides to dip into the Divination fields for Free Action +WS/+dodge manifests.

I think the terms for Psykers is not "disarmed" but rather "decapitated" or "disemboweled"

Just wanna chime in it's not clear if AP or even TB applies to all powers, but I find they are pretty ok. Fire Bolt is not significant but with some overbleed the damage is decent. In fact an enemy Psyker with PSI 5 managed to actually damage our own psyker quite a bit with this power (he was too far away to use anything better.)

Bio Lightening is either a bit weak but a a sure shot (auto hit, no dodge etc.) or overpowered (if you don't allow Armor and/or TB).

Force Barrage is as noted extremely potent for high WP psykers and creatures.

But of course neverf forget that Psykers are not limited to their Powers for attack, they have the possibility and training to use deadly weapons as well as the rest. In fact out own uses Bolt Pistol, Autoshotgun, Force Sword, Power Blade, you name it. That combined with Stormtrooper Carapace, Regeneration and Seal Wounds makes a truly formiddable enemy. He uses Bio-LIghtening sparingly, but it has occasionally been effective against creatures with cover/high dodge skill etc. or Hordes. And I like the cool thematic "Emperor Palpatine" force lightening effect.

Compared to the weapons available to PCs when my biomancer reached late game, bio lightning isn't really that weak. We all had las or SP weapons, except for one player who had been gifted a bolt pistol (and ammo for it) by the Inquisitor.

An Armageddon does 1d10+ 4 damage, pen 3 if you have man stoppers. My lightning was doing 1d10+6. That means that if the target had 3 or more armour, the Armageddon only dealt 1 more point of damage. But it could miss or be dodged. The bolt pistol did have a greater punch to it, but only gets 2 hits at most. So I never felt like I was doing less damage on the turns I attacked. Though we didn't have many long range fights, so the low range wasn't a problem.

I was doing less damage overall than them. Not because my attacks were weaker, but because I had to keep casting Seal Wounds.

In melee, lets just say that the Inquisitor gave my psyker a force staff.

Does being hit by a fire bolt count as being hit by flame, and thus require an agility test to avoid catching fire?

Psychic powers can be dodged in Deathwatch. Isn't this in the DH errata as well somewhere?

ckenp said:

Yes

bogi_khaosa said:

I haven't seen the errata myself either.

I go by the general rule of if the Psy attack is automatic (such as Bio-Lightning), then the player cannot dodge, but neither does he have to worry about Righteous Fury.

If he has to make any kind of attack roll (WP or BS, Force Bolt for example), then it can be dodged, but the user can can make fury rolls as appropriate.