I have a quandary for Rogue Trader players/GMs; how do you make combat psykers for RT? Now, I know I am probably overgemeralizing, but whenever I think of an Astropath, I envision an elderly man or woman with wasted eyes, gaunt build, one foot in the grave, and being burned like a candle at both ends. If I wanted a character for Rogue Trader who was more of a trained battle-psyker, what's the best way to go about it? Should I build a slightly higher level Imp Psyker from DH, or build a DH Guardsman/RT Armsman, and pay out the backside for the Psy Rating? I want a character with some staying power, but also with decent psychic might, maybe carrying a decent gun, and either a power sword or force weapon. I don't particularly want a wasted occular set, nor a twitchy, muttering-to-himself psyker; more the cocky, confident guy who also has psychic powers that the Imperium refuses to have. Suggestions?

First of, i'd say your image of an astropath is decidedly wrong. What were those astropaths of yours before they became old and frail and burned out? You seem to consider an astropath as a end of your career job. Imo, it's something you get into after surviving the black ships and stay in.

If you look at the powers available to astropaths there's some combat oriented in there (mainly telekinesis but also telepathy with puppet master and such). However they'll never be able to do battle physically like all other characters can (so no swords/pistols really).

So if you want to stay in the RT system you really only have one option: tainted, with a roll of 51-55 (if you pay 200 xp you can choose your mutation), maybe combined with the Perilous Choice lineage for a total PR of 3. Then get elite advances to up the psy rating or work out an elite advance package with your gm so you can buy psyker advances whilst still progressing in your chosen career.

Or you could just make a DH psyker at half the xp the other chars start with. Then keep gaining xp at half their rate and just progress as normally for a DH psyker. (RT pretty much doubled all xp expenditures so that system should keep you very nicely balanced with the rest of the party, especially as rp xp will add at normal rates just like for the rest of the party).

Last but not least: you could use a system like the one bobh uses in his PbP in which you are allowed to retcon your character's pre-RT career. If you then take eg. Imperial guardsman or assassin then you'll be more then able to conduct close combat along with still getting psychic powers like a normal astropath.

As for choice of swords: is there a question really? Force weapons of course. If you hit and roll halfway decent on your opposed WP test you're likely to kill most opponents with a single hit. Even tanks can be dead in a single stroke (and really as long as you do 1 damage that's enough to invoke the force properties) if you roll good.

Badlapje said:

You could very easily be right, but so much of the stuff I have seen or read often reflects a character aged before their time, being burned like a candle, as messages they never composed bounced through their minds, on to the next one, and they convert health to power psy often, to boost their signal strength, in the absence of a full choir. These "regular" astropaths (no Ascendant) often seem frail, withered and weak, old before their time; not so much the end of their career, but one whose career choice was ultimately fatal, though vital. They have one foot in the Empryean, and the other in the grave. Even the pic of their Ascendant is painfully gaunt, with skin stretched over bone; a man not likely to wage a fight without his mind as the weapon.

Badlapje said:

I could easily like Tainted, if I didn't have to worry about aspects of the crew freaking. While I often play characters with secret powers in other games, this isn't the type I'd want to be here, and if the Missionary, the Astropath Ascendant, or any other Emperor-fearing, slightly rule-abiding person would kill me for not being "sanctioned", that wouldn't be worth the trouble. I'd probably rather play a character from Dark Heresy, leveled up to catch up with characters from Rogue Trader, possibly an Imperial Psyker who was attached to a regiment of Guardsmen on loan to the Dynasty, who managed to be of enough use to get a position with the party, rather than NPC fodder for the PCs to throw at planets. If he rolled one of the less stupid Sanctioned options (maybe Hypnoindoctrination, so he can have his hair, eyes, teeth, and wits), he could easily dress to blend in with others, and use his various powers to much great effect (maybe focus on Tepelathy, to read minds when bargains are hammered out, but with a bit of Telekinesis or Pyro, for "firefights"). If he is IP, he also gets to pay for his powers as normal, rather than as Elite Advances. It might be a little harder to give him the "I was with the Guard" feel, but much of RT CAN be less combaty, and more intrigue/empire-building/thinky, so that could easily pay off.

Badlapje said:

The ways this site could benefit from a post edit option

venkelos said:

Hit the report to moderator button on one of your posts. Go up to the address bar, replace "reportar" with "editar". Fine!

ever tried playing a temple calix scholastica psykana? (inq handbook) its basically a psychic assassin! i play a high lvl diviner one, and he seriously kicks ridiculous amounts of ass!

You can't make a combat Astropath without special GM dispensation; you'd need the Templar package from the Inquisitor's Handbook to get your Weapon Skill high enough to be good enough with weapons for it to matter.

That being said, you really just need to pick the Telekenisis discipline ASAP; if you take Transubstantial Initiate, then you can pick it up at lower ranks than normal. Since it gives you additional armor via TK powers, you can have a very high damage reduction total which stacks with power armor. If you pick Divination as your 3rd Discipline, there are some additional combat buffs you can purchase as well.

Now, if you don't mind going flame weapons, then you'd be set then and there, since Transubstantial Initates can purchase flame weapon training, and it doesn't use Weaponry or Ballistic skill. If you GM let's you take some of the other flame weapon talents as well, you can essentially run around like a psychic Ecclesiarch, purging all in the Emperor's name with His power and holy flame.

For that matter, if you're canny about your starting Homeworld and Career Path, you can do some useful things in close combat (granted, WS increases are always something you'd pay through the nose for, but starting at, say Death World, and going up through Unnatural Origin {False Man or Tainted}, Criminal {Judged and Found Wanting}, then taking Synthetic Muscle Grafts (or Subskin Armour) as your "free" implant/augmetic).

Hell, if you're prepared to sink the XP into it during character creation, a psyker-assassin is pretty easy to build (Crusade {Warrior} instead of Criminal {Judged and Found Wanting}, Darkness {Dark Secret or Warp Incident}, even Witchborn {Proven to be Pure}.

Once you're at that, it's pretty trivial to use your starting Acquisition for, say, Power Armour, or a Good Quality Refractor Field (or Common Conversion Field) to keep you alive until you can get that Force Weapon you always wanted.

In terms of fluff, even keeping to that pertaining to Astropaths as opposed to specially trained battle-psykers, I can think of at least one example (from Eisenhorn, iirc) of an astropath described as "a large, burly man in early middle age, who grew an impressive moustache, as if to compensate for his baldness", which is a pretty good thumbnail description of a stereotypical Victorian/Edwardian strongman. Granted, it does go on to describe how the stresses of his job eventually leave him drawn, sallow and slightly wasted (even to the point of 'tache droop), but since it does not suggest he was fresh from the Scholastica and the Black Ships, and he had been given a more exhausting schedule than normal in Eisenhorn's service, it does suggest that buff warrior astropaths are possible.

I'm currently building a Psyker-assassin using the DH ruleset (I find the Techniques are very Astropath-geared and prefer the DH system anyways) and find it none too difficult. Minor Powers help an enormous amount, with things like Space Slip and Chameleon, getting Sprint is nice (GQ Bionic Heart or GQ Bionic Legs are easy ways to do that without using up an Origin path option), investing your acquisition in an Eldar Holosuit makes you beastly if you have a half-decent agility. For weaponry, I'm a HUGE fan of Kineblades, if your GM will allow you to bring them over. Otherwise, trying to get powers like See Me Not is important, since WS is irrelevant when you get to make a Coup de Grace on a completely unaware target.