How is this power at all balanced? One of my player's psykers can do 200+ damage on a push. Am I missing something? Sure he will basically auto Perils of the Warp,.... but who cares when you just fried a daemon prince?

Are you keeping in mind the rules for psychic storms? More specifically, that each hit is resolved separately for the purposes of deducing toughness and armor from the damage, that the psyker is capped to a number of hits equal to effective psy rating and that it may be dodged like full-auto gunfire?

With that said, yes, force storm is rather good. However, it's lack of penetration and special qualities means it's large initial damage is somewhat devalued. Not to mention that it has as a prereq the rather worthless force bolt. Which, interestingly enough, does +2 rather than +3 per psy rating. Whether this is a typo or intended I don't know, but I suspect it's the former. So, if you already kept the above rules in mind, or problems persist regardless, talk to you player. See if they'd be alright with decreasing the damage with a paltry 1 point per psy and see if that works out. If nothing else, you can tempt them with easier math

Yeah, we were tracking that. If you figure an effective psy rating of 9 or 10 on a push with child of the warp its insane: Figure every one of those hits is d10 + 30. And with a WP of 60 he is getting a LOT of hits. So, even if you dodge 3 of them thats a silly amount of damage. At d10 +30 damage, armor and toughness gets irrelevant.

I might just have to GM fix it?

In that case I'd suggest reducing the damage to 1d10 +2 per psy rating. I'd also suggest talking to your player if he keeps pushing with it, just mention you have an issue with that much raw damage being thrown about so casually.

From personal experience playing my little wytch, Psykers that push too often tend to... self-correct... any potential imbalances after not too long.

Sure, I understand that pushing is risky: but I am not too happy that one good push downs a daemon prince in the mean time.

OK, serious answer time.

Yes this power is horribly over-powered. From memory it is the only psychic power that has the Psychic Storm "rate of fire". Pushed at a psy rating of 10 it is pretty much a full-auto las-cannon in effectiveness.

How to fix it? I would also go with reducing the damage to +2 per psy. Makes it more on par with say a reaper autocannon that way. Still a very potent power, but not overwhelmingly so.

Question, given that this power has a ROF equal to a full auto capable weapon, could it be used to suppressive fire an area?

Even with starting psyker you can push up to PR 8-9 (10 if you buy PR+1 with starting xp) and unleash 6-7 bolts (50-60 WP+40-50 for PR + 10 for psy focus), effectively destroying anyting that stans in your way (the fact that you have auto-phenomena and 55% chance to cause perils doesn't count). I also think that +3 is a typo.
Suppressive fire with force storm is overkill but in times of need I think it coul be done.

ShadowRay said:

Reverend mort said:

Auto-phenomena and more than 50% chance of Perils isn't exactly what I'd count as a consequence to be ignored, but alrighty

I agree with you, but using something like Warp Lock you could use it once per session, with pretty much no risk.

It's only once per session, but that's probably enough to flatten anything your GM throws at you.

I think the problem is the psy rating scaling.

Each point of psy rating adds half a hit, 3 damage per hit, 10m range and 5% more chance to succeed on the focus power test.
The low pen is a serious problem at psy ratings 2-4, low level non push, making the attack comparable to a legion bolter, but all parts of the attack increase with psy rating.

Considering it was this very power that broke Ascension Psykers, one has to wonder whether it's just the nature of force storms to not be tamed by game developers with a mind for balance...

Hmmm, I personally find it to be fine, altough I can definately see why you'd have problems with it.

The way I've always gone is that if you need to push a power to make it 'broken' then it is generally ok. 55% of causing perils, with at the very least some minor effects from the warp phenomena table means that you are not going to be using it very often if you wish to have a character last more then 1 or 2 sessions.

One major thing to consider is the fact it does have 0 pen so while it is really good at wiping out non armoured people, it does get significantly worse against armour. Although 1d10+30 is usually enough to put a rather massive dent in most things do not forget to use cover especially as even flakboards etc almost take a third of the damage out immediately, on top of whatever armour/toughness the character using the cover has.

Also, I'm fairly certain your psyker would have significant difficulty with a daemon prince, or at least any of the greater daemons in the book . Also don't be afraid to send the occasional psyker back at them, using psychich hoods and other powers. Any thing that has either Blood God's Contempt or similar is also a good choice. Or terminators. Terminators tend to work fine (specially Librarian termies ).

If you still feel you need to adjust the power, then the best adjustment was already suggested by Rev Mort in that you simply need to make it +2 as opposed to +3 per PR. Although the other option is to simply wait out the psyker to explode, which won't take very long if they keep pusing powers.

Reverend mort said:

Auto-phenomena and more than 50% chance of Perils isn't exactly what I'd count as a consequence to be ignored, but alrighty

I wrote it kinda wrong, It was meant to say something like "we might all exploe from this, but look what I can do". The Unbound push system is mainly why I'd try to get Mark of Tzeench ASAP, because Bound psyker can push more efficiently (only +4 max instead of +6 but only +10% on phenomena roll instead of +30^). With favored by the warp and warp lock you can push much more often.

ShadowRay said:

Reverend mort said:

Auto-phenomena and more than 50% chance of Perils isn't exactly what I'd count as a consequence to be ignored, but alrighty

I wrote it kinda wrong, It was meant to say something like "we might all exploe from this, but look what I can do". The Unbound push system is mainly why I'd try to get Mark of Tzeench ASAP, because Bound psyker can push more efficiently (only +4 max instead of +6 but only +10% on phenomena roll instead of +30^). With favored by the warp and warp lock you can push much more often.

Nimas said:

I dont think you understand. That is just the damage *per hit*. Since it operates at full auto, every DOS = one more hit. With an average roll you are looking at about 7 hits. Like I said, 200+ damage is easily acheivable. We did some mock battles to test it. The psyker was able to kill our Khorne beserker character 5 times in a row in one shot..... It was not even close.

EDIt: I am nerfing it to +2 damage on the push. Hopefully that will be enough.

SneakySly said:

I'd maybe change the damage on force bolt and force storm to +3 per psy rating on force bolt and +2 per psy rating on force strom to actually make force bolt usefull, and keeping force storm manageable.

I'd actually change it to just 1d10+Psy Rating - Doom Bolt is the power for taking out armoured opponents, Force Bolt + Force Storm should be more for mooks and other low-power opponents, since it's still as powerful then as an average gun (more so if you push and get 1d10+10 full-auto).

MILLANDSON said:

1D10 +10 with no pen is not really greatly useful for an effective psy rating of 10 though. Even against mere mortals in flak it's going to take several hits to kill them. (Assuming 10 wounds, 3 toughness and 3 AP)

And at psy rating, say 3-5 it's comparable to an autogun (such as a base autogun at psy3 and a with manstopper rounds at psy5), with extra accuracy due to the +X to WP test from psy rating.
It's pretty much why would you bother territory. It costs XP, and a focus test with a 10% chance of phenoms for an autogun.

Maybe full auto psy powers are bad ideas as the focus power test is almost a formality at psy ratings?

SneakySly said:

I am aware that it is a full auto power. What I was trying to say is that if you use cover you can greatly cut down the amount of damage output that said power does. And also please remember that every single time you try and do this, you are having a massive risk to the psyker using the power. I honestly think if you have something at PR of 10, it SHOULD put a hole in most things (it plinks off greater daemons, and termies are generally fine).

Remember if you're intending to push this ability, you'd better **** well not be using any sustained powers due to the increased chance of perils. This means you're greatly cuttiing down on the defensive ability of the psyker. Basically you're making a glass cannon that has a tendancy to shatter itself.

Another point is to look at it more from a roleplaying aspect. Is the psyker that suicidal that they push often. The psyker I play will only push in one of 2 circumstances. If its an emergency, or if there is some more background type event, i.e a truly hated enemy appears, someone the PC has been trying to kill for a long time or caused some form of humiliation to the PC.

Again, yes it can be a truly fearsome power due to its scaling, but every sinlge terryifying cast comes with a great chance at suicide. I feel this trade off is fine.

last time I pushed a power, my psyker got possessed by a greater demon and the adventure ended...