So hypothetical question.

You have a starting group and a librarian pushes with basically every smite on hordes or rebels(not a big challenge), always causing psychic phenomena,and in a couple cases actually causing injuries to fellow members and in one case actually causing a death(saved by fate point).

How do you handle the situation?

Aluwin said:

If your group is okay with the Librarian's actions, then there really isn't much of a problem. Sooner or later (probably sooner) they'll all be insane/corrupt/eaten by a Demon Prince. Just make sure everyone knows what the risks are. If they're still okay with the Librarian risking a fight with a DP just to kill a few extra heretics, that's their call. My group would probably knock their Librarian in the head a few times if he needlessly put them at risk like that, but yours may be different.

Why is it that everyone thinks a Daemon Prince is a big deal and pushing is too hazardous because of it? My librarian summoned one when he pushed a focus power test to blow up a chaos dreadnaught with his force sword. The Daemon Prince went, attacked a pile of times, got parried once, dodged once, blocked by an Iron Halo once, and missed once. After doing zero damage his turn next turn I killed him outright with a pushed smite. Even if I hadn't rolled well, no one else had gone that round, and the Assault Marine in TDA with a Thunder hammer and storm-shield would likely have done a similar number on the DP. Even at low ranks they are not an insurmountable foe, but by mid to high ranks they are really quite tame. The Bloodthirster we killed was quite scary, but the DP either needs to be buffed by the GM or people need to stop pretending that he is a major deterrent, because he isn't. Now, getting swallowed by the Warp without any roll to resist, that is rather bad and a guaranteed fate point loss I suppose...

Just to point out in case you don't know, perils of the warp and psychic phenomena aren't skill checks, so you can't fate point to reroll them. If you don't realise that pushing becomes alot less nasty. and The daemon prince isnt the bad one, its "your character is instantly annihilated by the warp"

As for the other characters, if any character were endangering the rest of the group then they would likely earn censure from the watch captain, either in the form of req or renown penalties. ROB has rules for such penalties for things like surrendering and helping xenos. I am sure that negligently hurting team members should be in that list if it is not

Aluwin said:

This is already covered in the mechanics - insanity and corruption. The more your librarian causes phenomena, the more he is going to deteriorate until he won't want to risk pushing anymore at all. So let the player feel all big and mighty as he descends towards inevitable mental breakdown or worse...

Out of mechanics, it's already handled by how the other players react - they don't seem to care, so just leave it.

If however the librarian is 1-shotting all of your mission bosses, then throw more of them in, or give them psy powers to fight back with, or even psy shielding. Or here's a thought - throw some blanks against him!

Togath said:

The OP said his group was a starting group, so no Iron Halos or multiple Reactions. A smart GM would have the DP take out the LIbrarian first (since the DP isn't stupid) and more than likely your Rank 1 Librarian would be burning a FP to stay alive after one round.

Narkasis Broon said:

I agree with this!

Surely endangering the rest of the Kill Team so recklessly would not be great for morale, and since the Librarian doesn't seem to have much regard for the safety of his fellow Battle-Brothers, I'd give the group a Cohesion Point penalty and let the rest of the KT handle the situation from there.

Ebon.

When a DP is summoned they automatically attack the psyker that summoned it. Should your Librarian be unfortunate to roll 83-100 theres good chances he will die, 83-86 he is possessed by a daemon and wakes up somewhere later after having his body do some horrible **** that endangers or even causes failure of the KT mission(s). If he is so unfortunate to get a 100 on his Perils of the Warp, remember there's a 50% chance a DP is summoned in the psykers stead.

on that note, if a psyker does get a 100 for POW, is it possible to Burn fate points in order to live, or do they die outright?

Well as mentioned in another threat, my rank 2ish kill-team ended up with a Perils DP in the last session. A total of 4 Fate Points had to be burned and it was a 6 man kill-team.

I can see how the default Daemon Prince might be easy enough to dispatch with a higher ranked KT. First of all, apply Marks of Chaos if you feel like or roll up randomly. Secondly, DPs come in different flavours. Give the beast double Wounds or an additional level on Unnatural Toughness and a Rank 4 KT will struggle. Thirdly, you'll have trouble Smiting the DP without Pushing given its WP of 75. Pushing means renewed chances for Perils. Good luck with that, the DP in my game was dispatched by a Pushed Force Sword attack which would have caused the Libby to get sucked into the warp and be subjected to experiments for a few weeks. A fate point was burnt to avert that.

So the answer to "Librarian always Pushing!!!" is indeed: let the team as a whole understand the risks. If they are okay with that, then let the chips fall where they may.

Perils of the Warp is the only real counter-balance to a psyker's might. Don't be limp-wristed about this, GMs.

Alex

Stannis Ravensight said:

Certain death is definitely what fate points are for as far as I am concerned. Enforcing perils is crucial, and you want to make them burn a fate point when this happens for certain, but on the other hand it seems unreasonable to have a irrevocable character death from one perils roll that could in fact be the first such roll ever for the character and might even be from a normal, unfettered use of a power. The warp is fickle and dangerous, but fate points are how PCs get to experience the danger of the setting without running the risk of rerolling every session. The Assault Marine in my game is out of fate points due to bad luck and some poor choices both, but I kinda look forward to him becoming a dreadnaught if he goes out in a blaze of glory again. He is over 80 renown, rank 7, and has the champion advance from RoB, so I figure he is a good candidate for it.

I have a level 7 Lib and he loves to push and we have fought Daemon prince after Daemon prince you need to really just make sure what he does really impacts the game and make sure your Npc take notice of this foul action.

And If hes just pushing to endanger your squad like pushing smite at cultist or at simple creatures just to see if he can hit the tables then kick them out of the game.

Also make sure to explain the whole push thing read the passage in the book to them so they understand that they are dabbling into the far reaches of the warp

This is to Stannis my overpowered tactical marine.

That is only cause Chris is a "nerp derp" and i made the house rule of that is if a lib hits 00 he can burn a fate point to re-roll the pearls.

Honestly its crap he should die instantly and i roll to if see if a Daemon prince comes.

Kasatka said:

I've done psy checks against my librarian when he's interacting with power psykers. if he fails to beat their psy rating, he gets a sort of feedback and/or mental anguish. I've only awarded one Insanity point off of this as he tried to interact with one of the more powerful tyranid psykers.

Commissar Mcballin said:

Out of curiosity, are you using original weapon stats or the ones from the errata? If a Daemon Prince errupted from the warp in one of my games I'd expect him to chop my team's Librarian up pretty quickly with his Preternatural Speed, Thunder charge, 3-4 attacks that have felling attached to them...and if you use a Daemon Prince from anything but the core book this is exacerbated pretty quickly. I'm just wondering, as I use the errated weapon stats, which means my adversaries stay standing a lot longer than they did when I used the original RAW stats.

As others have said though, the next thing to remember is Daemon Princes only show up on 91-99. On 00 the psyker blows up (and might be replaced by a Daemon Prince). On 83-86 you make a -30 WP test or disappear for 1d10 weeks after being violated by daemons. On 56-58 you swap bodies, potentially with one of the enemies.. On 31-38 the psyker is out of combat for 1-10 rounds. Most of the perils things add a bunch of corruption points to the psyker, many others stop him from using powers for extended periods. If you enforce perils enough, eventually the player will have to spend tons of xp cleaning their soul, turn to chaos, or get killed.

Charmander said:

Well, DPs have a lousy init but otherwise you are right. You didn't take my dice-rolling into consideration. When I had the DP appear and he attacked the libby, guess what I rolled? 98, 95, 93 in that order. I did use fate points for re-rolls though on roll 1 and 2. On reroll 1 I hit and the attack got parried. On reroll 2 I rolled and 80 and missed. Now that's epic luck.

Charmander said:

That's what you get for pushing or not expending fate on a double roll when casting Unfettered. It gets much better after being able to re-roll on Psychic Phenomena though. Unfortunately.

Anyway in RT you can burn Fate to save your skin if the enemy would blow up the PCs vessel. So I yes to burning Fate to save your skin here too.

Alex

ak-73 said:

I certainly don't have a problem burning fate- that's a pretty heavy price to pay for using a power. There aren't a lot of things that can earn you new fate in DW.

Lucky for me the psyker in my group is very conservative and tends to only use his powers when they would create some kind of turning point, and has only pushed on a couple of occasions when he felt the group was in real trouble.

I play a libby too. Recklessly pushing one's powers does not show mastery of the psychic power. A Librarian is a marine first and a psyker second, and will be expected to behave like one. Otherwise he is no better than any other psyker, and will fall quite quickly to the predations of the warp. On the battlefield, psykers usually meet their end by a bullet to the head administered by a commissar.

As the others have mentioned enforce the perils, not to mention fatigue levels if necessary. If the players escape with their lives, they'll have to spend hard earned XP to scrub their souls and mind clean. The rest of the team will feel the pinch of not having enough XP to purchase a talent/ etc and will have a chat with the libby bout his behaviour.

Personally IMO, all armours would have some sort of recording video log function sorta a kinda black box used in planes. Have the DW captain/ Chief libby go through the vid logs and impose a restrictions/ penalties on said player. You may wish to refer to RoB for penalties on renown as well (endangering the kill team).

Have you tried telling other players bluntly that their 'team mate' just opened a portal to the warp, through which a demon was let loose into the world. Perhaps what is actually happening in 'game world' has not sunk into the player's imaginations properly. Once the rest of the team realise what is happening and really think about it, they should probably be demanding the libby go and spend some time with the Chaplain!

A humorous thought, if a bit unfair, every once in a while, make the decision to forgo having the Libby roll Psy Phen/Perils, themselves, and simply say "take 1d10 Energy damage, not reduced by armor or Toughness." I know he's not a Nid psyker connected to the Hive Mind, but the same idea can happen if he is Pushing, which I might describe as drawing in more power than is safe at a time. If he wants to push, and doesn't feel that the side effects are enough, then maybe getting a headache with one hell of a nosebleed, will be fine, he's down some health, and did what he wanted. Granted, I know he could easily have up to 30ish Wounds by Rank 5, so even 10 wouldn't hurt so bad, but many weapons are 1d10+#, and they let you have armor and Toughness (how Marines mitigate damage), which this doesn't, and it could happen again, which could hurt in the midst of combat. Hopefully, the personal damage, even the threat of personal damage, will show him not to always push, so that he doesn't need more powerful persuasion (Insanity and Possession?). If he's too active, you might have him attract some Enslavers, and see how he and the group fare against them, while their Librarian becomes a Gate.

I do agree, having a psyker who refuses to play like that power is dangerous can be annoying. I agree with others above that, in between missions, a higher-ranking Marine, say the W.Cap, Chief Librarian, or Chaplain might need to have a chat with the character, and inform him that his antics are not appropriate. If it doesn't change, perhaps they will dismiss him, and force him to return to his Chapter, where his brothers can recondition him to not be a tool. Granted, that would be the end of the character, in this game, but the threat of such, if not the act itself, could be enough persuasion.

I think Phenomena are there to reveal the presence of a psyker to others, others who have been raised not to trust, or even like psykers. While the Libby's brother Space Marines would certainly know of his gift, and even come to expect its use, repeat sightings of phenomena would reveal to them that his control is weak/slipping, which opens a doorway to much worse things. If such doesn't seem to bother him, or if he actively invitses them, that is bad. Such signs should be more than enough to cause them to confront their brother, and, if that isn't enough, inform their superiors of his slip to Chaos; rampant and wanton use of psychic power is a sign one does not fear it, and that's what Choas wants to pray on. Perhaps he'd even make a very good Chaos Sorcerer of Tzeentch.

I play i Liberian as well, and i say: Pushing powers are a LAST RESORT!

The group should take some action to stop him from being reckless... causing unessesary destruction is more akin of a Chaos Sorcerer than a liberian.

I haven't played a lot of psykers but have seen a bunch in games I've been in. Frankly, regular pushing is asking for trouble. Maybe not straight away, but you can't reroll the perils table. I wouldn't have a problem with a Librarian burning a fate point not to die from one of those results. Interestingly, the Black Crusade equivalent specifically disallows burning Infamy to survive that 00 result. And if the Librarian has gained the +10 to the perils rolls from becoming a conduit for the warp, that 1% chance of instant death has become an 11% chance every time Perils rolls around.

In game, I wonder if the rest of the killteam realise the danger they're being put in each time the Librarian pushes. A lot of psychic phenomenon and perils results are more dangerous to those nearby than to the psyker that triggered them. On the flipside, they may value the sheer power of the Librarian above their own safety and souls. Perhaps a slide into heresy as they alter mission reports to make the Librarian appear less dangerous than he is...

It's not going to be easy for the other players to confront the Librarian IC on this without metagaming (and I question the appropriateness of doing so OOC - the Librarian's PC may be playing his character true to form and that should not be discouraged).

The other PCs would need Psyniscience and probably FL Psykers to know that some of the phenomena are "extreme (barring summoning a daemon). They'd need to know that the Librarian was taking risks above and beyond necessary. They'd need to know or suspect he was doing so intentionally, not that it was a normal byproduct of using powers. Or they'd need to consult with another Librarian about it. That's a lot of IC knowledge especially since most characters won't ever have Psyniscience or FL Psykers.

Kshatriya said:

I call shenanigans! you don't need to be a trained psyker to know that the pictures and statues crying blood is a really bad thing! And remember we are discussing the world of 40k here where just the suggestion of being corrupt can lead to serious censure.

rest assured, marines have been there and done that so to speak and they would have a pretty good idea if every time said libby pulled out the emperor's tarot something spooky happened that the libby was a bit out of control.

Kshatriya said:

In fairness, a lot of these psychic phenomenon are *very* obvious. Most space marines as experienced as your average DW recruit are going to have had some experience with psykers and their powers. Between their own chapter's librarians, Imperial Guard battle psykers, astropaths and enemy sorcerors and witches they've surely seen enough to get *some* rough idea of strengths of effects. Yes, a character without the relevant skills won't know anything in detail but logically I do not believe they should be totally ignorant in this case for the above reasons.