How many psychic powers can a player or npc kick in a round? Is it just one regardless of the Action time for the power? Or can they do say a half action one and a reaction one in the same round?

Thanks.

You can only do 1 concentration action per round, other than that I dont think there are restrictions.

What is defined as a concentration power? Any psychic power?

nethru said:

Well all actions have listed what kind of actions they are and all psychich powers have listed what actions they are.

The vast majority of psychich powers are Concentrations. Do note that you can also only do 1 Attack action per turn and alot of psychich powers are both Concentration AND Attack powers so you cant fire off a Mind Probe and then shoot with your bolter.

You can only do one Focus Power action a turn, and since all powers require you to carry out a Focus Power action, you can only ever use 1 Psychic Power a turn.

Don't forget, however, that you can sustain a psychic power, while using a new one (though that adds a penalty to any rolls taken on the Psychic Phenomena table!).

As a side note, has anyone noticed how deliriously, insanely useful psyker greater minions are? Use them to push (and whatever else you want to slap on to boost it, such as a corpus-conversion boosted Gift of Tzeentch) one of the buffing powers, like Shattertime, Ecstatic Oblivion, or Inviolable Flesh (ew) for their master, and avoid reduction in psy rating or perils increase.

MILLANDSON said:

I thought in BC actions were limited by type, and the focus power action has no set type. So for instance I could let of Hatestorm power (attack action) and a Shatter Time (conc action) in the same turn. Please tell me that I have missed part of the rules, as this would have a great and good impact on the twin wielded force sword lightning attacking phenomenon.

Er... why not just have Shattertime on, and leave it on?

To clarify a few things (as I read them):

Subtypes: Actions can have subtypes, either listed with the action description in the combat chapter or in the power description of a psychic power. This includes things like concentration, attack, melee, ranged, or movement.

Subtype limitations: On your turn, you may not take more than one action with the "attack" subtype or more than one action with the "concentration" subtype. You may take another action with one of these subtypes as a reaction, even in the same round (Using Actions, pg. 234, last paragraph). Sustaining psychic powers doesn't count against the subtype limitation (same place).

Sustaining powers (pg. 208-209): This takes the required action from the power description, but doesn't count against the subtype limitations, and doesn't need any tests. Also, sustaining just one power comes with no additional risk or penalty. Sustaining more than one power reduces the psy rating for the sustained powers (but not others you might use, like Doombolt) and increases the roll on the psychic phenomenon table for any power.

Examples:

You could start Warptime (half action, concentration) and use Hatestorm (half action, attack) during your turn. You could also use Thought Sending (free action, no subtypes) during the same turn. You could not use Doombolt (half, concentration, attack) instead of Hatestorm, because it has the concentration subtype, and you already did an action with that subtype.

In the same round, as your reaction, you could use Precognitive Dodge (reaction, concentration), even though it has the concentration subytpe, because it's not during your turn (the same goes for any of the reactions in the following rounds).

On your next turn, you could sustain Warptime (free), start Precognition (half, concentration), and fire your bolter (half, attack). You couldn't use Doombolt instead of Precognition because that would be two actions with the attack subtype.

On your next turn, you could sustain Warptime (free) and Precognition (free), move (half, movement), and use Doombolt (half, concentration, attack) and use Thought Sending (free, none). Both Warptime and Precognition will suffer from reduced Psy Rating. Doombolt and Thought Sending will be at their normal Psy Rating, but if either of them causes Psychic Phenomenon, there will be an addition to the roll from sustaing multiple powers.

That's how it looks to me, at any rate. I hope this clears it up a bit. If anyone spots any flaws with this, please point them out for me.

Hygric said:

Looks about right to me, although at this time we dont know if its actually possible to do 2 x Lightning Attacks per round, when dual wielding, as the text for Swift Attack (mentioning Lightning Attack instead for some reason) and the text for fighting with two weapons are saying opposite things.

Im hoping that its not supposed to be possible to do 2 x Lightning Attacks.

Regarding Warptime and Shattertime, yes FFG screwed up again and made Psykers way better melee fighters than everyone else. These powers should probably be looked at unless the GM wants the psykers to rule the world even more than normal.

MILLANDSON said:

Where do you see this btw ? I havent stumbled upon this limitation.

Hatestorm takes a half action to sustain, so you couldn't do that and 2 lightning attacks in the same turn (on one character). However, I see no reason you couldn't sustain Shattertime and make two lightning attacks in the same turn (by the two-weapon rules, although as stated above there's some contradiction on these), provided

• you have Lightning Attack (and therefore also Swift Attack)
• you have Two Weapon Wielder (Melee)
• you are a psyker
• you have a high enough psy rating to purchase Shattertime, and have done so (this should take around 3k xp by itself, barring lucky Gifts)
• you have the willpower to successfully use Shattertime (it's a -20 test)
• you have the WS to hit with your attacks (Shattertime does nothing to help you hit) (you can get around some of this with Precognitive Strike, but then you need Perception and it only helps on the first attack)
• you have remained unaligned
• you have the weapons and/or talents to damage whatever you're attacking (armour pen, overcome toughness, whatever)
• you can get into melee
• you have the armour and/or toughness to survive suddenly being the center of attention
• you aren't incapacitated or killed by phenomenon/perils from Shattertime

If a character does all of that, then they *should* be a freaking killing machine, though possibly ineffective outside of combat (or at range). Their opponent could still dodge/parry at least one of the attacks, too. A better option would probably be having the psyker use Shattertime on the melee character before a big fight. Then both characters get to shine and do what they're best at.

I can definitely see where a GM might want to tweak this, but I think the problem is in Lightning Attack or Two Weapon Wielder as much as it is in Shattertime.

I see your tricked-out dual-wielding psyker of doom, and raise you one slavering Khornate Berserker with a brass collar. Here's your new blank character sheet.

I do think it's worth noting, however, just how many psychic powers have the Concentration subtype, and thus can't be used together on one turn. Furthermore, most of the powers that lack Concentration are balanced in some other way against multi-usage. Hatestorm, for example, affects ALL creatures with Frenzy, not just allies.

However, there is one thing I'm curious about... page 209 says that powers have listed the Action required to Sustain them (half, free, etc), but fails to specify whether this action is also considered to be of the subtypes of the original power. If it is, that would make it impossible to sustain Warptime (contentration) and cast Doombolt (attack, concentration) in the same round, though you could sustain Warptime and Hatestorm simultaneously. Can anyone please point out if I've missed somewhere that it frees sustained actions of subtype?

Doomaflatchi said:

Pg. 234, second column, first paragraph, last sentence.

Mijal said:

That'd do it. Thanks for the reference.

Mijal said:

As far as I can tell (and I might be wrong, or they might be contradicting themselves again), doing 2 x Lightning Attack is just a single half-action, that makes some sense since doing 2 attack actions would be illegal.

MILLANDSON said:

Darnit...I think I found the reference for this (sort of). Page 234 says you can take one full action or "two different half actions" (emphasis mine). Also, see the Ready action, where it specifically says you can declare it twice in one turn (if using it on different items).

Read that way, you couldn't focus two different psychic powers as half actions during your turn. The limit only applies to half actions, however, so you could focus (for example) Doombolt as a half, sustain a power as a half, use Thought Sending as a free, and Precognitive Dodge as a reaction. But no Warptime and Hatestorm started in the same turn.

Crate said:

It's also illegal because you can't perform the same half action twice in one turn - both half actions must be different.(page 234, under Half Actions). As all Psychic Powers use the Focus Power Action (which has different subtypes, and takes a different amount of time depending on the power, but is still the same fundamental action), you can't use two Half Action psychic powers in one turn.

Bolt of Change:

does the damage follow the psy rating of the spell or does it follow the actual psy rating of the psyker?

vogue69 said:

It's the overall Psy Rating (his psy rating plus any extra he may have from say push or some other means)

nethru said:

Correct. In all cases where a psychic power refers to Psy Rating as a means of determining range, damage, duration or various other factors, always use the adjusted Psy Rating that the psyker has at that specific moment. This means that effects derived from Psy Rating will be smaller when he uses a power Fettered, but stronger when he uses the power Pushed, compared to the 'baseline' values for Unfettered use.

in that specific power the text says: blah blah damage XD10 (where x is the psykers own psy rating)

vogue69 said:

And if you have modifiers to your Psy Rating (such as Fettered, Unfettered and Pushed), that is what your Psyker's Psy Rating is for that power.

MILLANDSON said:

this power ist absolutely mindboggling powerfull then.