In my experience, players like to pick biomancy and telekinesis or pyromancy as their secondary discplines. Divination tends to be given a wide birth due to it essentially having a lot of powers subjective to the GM giving details out, and telepathy is just not seen as all that useful in most situations for a similar reason.

What is your experiences with powers being taken?

I personally like telekines with a dash of divination thrown in

Personally I think that Divination and Telepathy are the only disciplines worth taking. Everything else is combat oriented and the books are full of different kinds of weapons to kill people. Divination and Telepathy are the ones that separate psykers from mundane characters. ok, biomancy has a some self transforming stuff which is useful.

I was really disapointed when reading through the psychic disciplines. Black Industries chose the easiest and least imaginative way out. ' You hurl bolts of psychic energy/fire/bio-lightning/whatervercrap. The damage ranges from minimal to extreme. Most creative.

Maybe I'm bit too harsh, but I think the whole psyker thing could have been done so much better.

tuomorinne said:

I agree. This is why I chose Telepathy: it allowed the most sublte ways to add to a creepy mood.

I mean, hell, I just started using Projection: AMAZINGLY POWERFUL. With a bit of cleverness, Telepathy has a lot of potential, even inside of combat.

A quick review:

Biomancy:
Very usefull but some of its effects are very alien and might be misunderstood (burn mutant)

Divination:
Very good, very usefull for a acolyte cell but the knowledge gained can be very corrupting and dangerous

Pyromancy:
Boring, get a flamer

Telekinetics:
Use the force Luke...but way better as the discipline that should not be namend

Telepathy:
Arch typical but very good, again, be carefull what or who you read (evil GM laughter)

I agree our first Psyker was a flamer, he was actually a psyker whose insanity was showing as a bit of pyromaniac, but we found really that a flamer was just as effective most of the time, without all those nasy drawbacks of you nkow, turning into a demon and killing everything around.

Currently my psyker is a Diviner/Telepath and I like it. Divination is nice in that it helps in investigations AND it has some decent combat assists inside it. Telepathy is nice for invetigations, but Idon't go to deep into it. The rest I just take a good helping of minor psychic powers. I don't use my powers all too often, due to the possibly nasty side-effects, but they do come in very handy durning interrogations and investigations.

Telepathy has drawbacks in the mind ****** side effects though. I am not sure I would risk it, although the powers are quite interesting. I quite like biomancy for its enhanced healing abilities if you have no other healers.

Most of the fighting stuff is fairly mundane, although I do like the holocaust power because its very characterful, it used to exist back in 2nd edition 40k too.

Most psychic powers seem to be designed with confrontation in mind, and so are good on direct battles. Probably better for enemies than allies though. With the sheer amount of decent shooting and combat weapons available in dark heresy you simply don't need to have shooty powers.

The fighting powers, you can really get away with just one. Probably the telekinetic storm which is just like having a heavy stubber.

The psyker in the group I run is a pure Diviner.

Coupled with minor powers like weapon jinx, chameleon, wall walk and white noise, she's a highly effective stealth operative.

I always advise my gun totting friends playing Psykers to go Divination. The sight of a Psyker using Divine Shot with a Rocket Launcher is one a GM does not forget in a hurry.

I how ever went a pure Biomancy Character, designed around a 13 year old girl, who used Shape Flesh, and Hammer Hand, but was mainly a healer. She was there for the Role Play effect of the character, which is always amusing to see...Especially when you party members reel in shock of a 14 year old girl with Fear Rating 2, Strength Bonus 20 and Crow Wings.

I don't like the trade off of Psychic powers to the Perils of the Warp though. A slim chance, but I have had a fellow party member turn into a Daemon Host the second time he used a power.

well i agrred with the other pyro is pretty easy to replace by a flamer and divine and telepathy are the 2 whit the most unique effects both a good telekinetic can do a lot of very usefull action out of combat. forget the combat oriented talent for a sec and look more on the others one ..

Flint : a low level a player can use it to creatute a very good distraction to send guards in another direction, you can make a pile of crate to fall to block the way or crash on an enemy. whit more level when the player can overbleed easyly the threshold (14) you can easyly lift more and more wht (whit a bonus of 4 one over give a possibility of 40kg for 2 step ove 60kg for 3 over 80kg) that give you the possibility to send one of your friend up and reach a windows or to brutaly push someone out of your way (and yes is realy look like star wars but is usefull you can use a crate to trigger mine) (dont be confuse whit telekinesis wich is easier but you cant use it on living )

Precision telekinesis: ok now the real fun start, the exemple of pull the pins on grenades like magneto in x man 2 is a good exemple of what you can do. other you can trigger mine if you dont have crate, you can move small objet whit accuracy to pick them unoticed, or place a tracker on someone or something you can reach without been discover, you can neutralise security device at range (10m) if you a done observation and succed to see a guard using is pasword on the security control panel of the door you can use it to open cliking at distance on the good keys , you can use a more direct approche and just tears the video cable of the security camera, you can eject clip on enemy target, you can trigger the door command place in the other side of secrity door if you can see it ........

has a secondary discipline those 2 powers can do a big difference in how your player act

psychic blade can do a good door openner too

another concept you have to keep in mind is if divination and telepathy are more powerfull and give a better range of opportunity, they are more dangerous to the psyker. is clearly indicated that been in contact whit another mind can transfert some personality trait of the target into your mind. at the end that can push you directly into heresy, or madness and you become the evil ones.

so far is only pyromancy i consider a less effective choice but if you use your imagination you can do a lot with it too .....become a firegod in a primal backward planet where your power grant you a divine aura (or a devil one lol ) blinding flash is usefull if you are out of flash grenade...

personaly my spyker is telekinesis and telepath (i love the tric show yourself use by Eisheinhorn in is trilogy)

the other psyker on my group is biomancer ,, he play the healer task in the group and the guys going in a poison gas room to open the door blocking your progression (tks to cellular control)

i hope that can help you