Can this be used and a weapon fired in the same round? My players have been treating it this way but I saw mention that a psychic power counts as the attack. I read the focus power part of the book a couple times and do not see where it means you can not do UA and fire in the same round.. UA is a half action focus test, so the players have been arguing that you treat this the same way you would treat the half action aim.

I don't believe it can, unlike the power "Divine Shot".

Check the errata, half action powers can't be used on the same turn as half action attacks, meaning you have to cast it on one turn, fire on the next.

On the up side, this does mean that you can use it and a half aim with a full auto burst.

I had not seen that in the errata, thank you people.

I just did some number crunching about unnatural aim (errata changes it to a simple +30) when using single shot weapons:

- If your BS (after all modifiers other than UA*) is 30, alternating between UA and firing will give you the same number of hits per round as just firing each round. Increase it and UA does worse than not using it.

*Including having a half action aim before the shot.

- If the character in question can successfully do a full action aim across turns (half after casting UA, half before firing on the next turn) then the break even point remains at 30.

This calculation ignores:

- Ammo use, increased damage with DOS, weapon jams, and fate point rerolls, all of which would benefit UA.

- Enemies dodge chance, psychic phenomena, which favour not using it.

Unnatural aim looks rather useless. It might be useful for a low BS character using an accurate basic weapon*, but for everything else the numbers say that it sucks. Even for the accurate basic weapon, I'd stick with half action aims and get more shots off, instead of risking character death or a TPK Daemonhost from perils of the warp.

*My calculations include the +10 from accurate. So if this character doesn't have a lot of serious penalties to his BS he is an idiot. If he doesn't, he should still switch to a different weapon.

The way they had told me it worked they were using it instead of the half action aim before their shot.

I use UA, I fire my weapon with a +30, my turn is done.

I always found it odd because it just seemed op to have a auto +30 for the most part with the whole low threshold aspect of the power.

scscofield said:

That is how I interpreted it until I saw the errata.

Quite frankly I didn't think it was that unbalanced to begin with. Sure the first times it was usually the rank 1 psyker with UA and his laspistol, which was wholly underwhelming (and maybe be think of a house rule to make single shots a bit better). WIth shotguns it was more than decent, but only at PBR, and then bonuses were capped at +30 anyway so you didn't get a benefit. And FA is off so you can't combine it without using 2 rounds anyway.

SO that boils down to post-errata Accurate basic weapons which basically means the errata unbalanced the power slightly and then nerfed it.

Eh I would keep it as it is. I don't alow half action aim+ 2d10 extra damage for Accurate weapons anyway (that requires Full action aim). Thus I would allow the power pre-errata.

Friend of the Dork said:

Actually, the Bonuses are capped at +60. When I saw your +30 I was confused because I knew I had seen 60, so I checked my .PDF, that said 30, checked the Errata quick, found nothing, checked my actual book and saw 60, I must have an Erratad book or something. So, if It was missed max bonus is +60. Making PBR with a accurate weapons that much more dangerous. Or Full Auto that more deadly.

Also just to check, are you house ruling the No Accurate damage bonus on Half Aim? Checking the errata all it says is a single shot benifiting from the Aim action. Just curious on that last part.

UA used with a good quality Las rifle (accurate) is pretty good though. My first Psyker had this and could dish out decent damage at long range.

Oops, Meant Long Las, not Las rifle.

Donte said:

Actually, I was talking about the rules pre-errata (before any errata was made). At which point +30 was maximum and full-auto was therefore much weaker at PBR, and Accurate rifles were just easy to hit with and not damage-dealers.

Since they changed that they must have felt they needed to change UA as well as it could be considered OP together with accuate rifles.

My house rules says to get more than one extra die from accurate you need a Full-action aim. This is because I feel Sniper rifles should be just that, and not quick killers in normal combat. Half action=+1d10, Full action +2d10. In normal rules, half action can get you +2d10 which means barring dodge it is a decent tactical assault weapon.

First off, no you cannot use a power, which counts as an attack, on the same round you fire the weapon. But look at the rule carefully. I think you'll find that it states the ability lasts until the end of your next turn.

UA isn't really that powerful...unless you've built a psyker up who can fire 2 autopistols on full auto the next turn, then look out!

It's not that hard really... 35 BS, 35 Agi, Abidextrious (rank 3), 2 weapon ballistic (rank 5). Unless I'm, miscounting something somewhere, this will result in at least a 75 to hit with 2 guns... that's heinous.

I think my GM was happy I went templar and not gun-bunny.

Because Templar Calix is much less munchkin =P

But yeah, UA is fairly underwhelming. Then again its a minor power so I don't think its power level is wrong. Minor Powers shouldn't really be your bread and butter, but they come in useful in some cases.

For example, situations where you have plenty of set up time and want your first strike to be devastating and sure to hit (ambushes), or in various plot-related scenarios where you might be desperate not to miss with Chekov's Gun. Of course, very expensive ammunition (Tempest Bolt Shells, Psycannon Bolts) also fall into this category.

In summary, Unnatural Aim may not be sufficient for you to create a "build" around it, but it has its uses. If you're aiming for a sniper-concept psyker, Divine Shot seems more appropriate anyway. Though I confess I'm really not sure how that works when it comes to DoS and Accurate weapons.

At Last Forgot said:

Even in some of those situations lucky would be the superior power to use. Because even +30 don't do much good if you roll real high.
Then a reroll is just better.

My Sage has the lucky power ans uses it a lot for situations in which I need to succeed. In combat as well as out of it.

Hmmm another minor point issue my players had, they say if they make the thresholds of their powers without rolling they do not have to roll. I made them roll anyways to see if they got a 9, my reasoning was even if your attack bonuses in BS were high enough to make it autohit you would still need to roll to see if the weapon jammed.

In the current rules, you must always roll one at least a single die when manifesting powers. The reason is exactly as you've stated, even if the psyker is guaranteed success at beating the threshold, they must still roll to see if phenomena and perils result.

In DH Core, the wording is "they then make a Power Roll by rolling a number of dice up to their Psy Rating (typically 1-6)". This seems to support the "must always roll at least one die" interpretation. Furthermore, in my time on the forums it has been my impression that overwhelming consensus has it that at least one die must always be rolled.

scscofield said:

The rules state one die must be rolled. Mainly for that chance of warp incursion.

As for an 'auto-hit' many games have adopted that a 96+ still misses. The extra percentage is good for things like concealment or called shots.