Hi everybody,

I know this whole Psyker overpowered/underpowered thing has been discussed alot already, I a still going to add my 0.02€ to this.

BTW, my english is not that good, so I am going to apologize in advance for any offenses against the english language commited in this post...

If a Psyker Character uses his powers, he may roll badly and something goes very wrong, which is fine per se, but the Player often did nothing wrong (the power is desperately needed, he only used 1 dice and invocation etc) and then you have to decide: let the adventure pretty much go of the rails or to fudge the dice. This is especially strange if the Psyker is sitting somewhere safe and uses his powers to inform their boss about the most recent development via telepathy e.g. and then gives the rest of the party a lot of Corruption Points because he rolled badly and the average WP is pretty low.

So I came up with following:

Trait: Sanctioned Psyker

As the original Trait + You can use the Powers of the Warp in relative safety if you use the procedures and the training given to you during your cruel training to achieve Sanctionite status. Make an Invocation Roll. If you succeed you not only gain the usual bonus on your power roll but also a -25 Modifier to a possible roll on the Psychic Phenomena table. This only applies if you use no more than 1 dice during your power roll. Afterwards you gain 1 point of Fatigue from the stress of channeling the Warp in such a manner.

Now the psyker has a choice, spend an extra round and gain fatigue and mostly no overbleed, but no Perils of the Warp. Or if he already has fatigue he can go for the minor risk of rolling one dice without "doing it safe" and hope to not roll a 9, or he can go all out crazy and roll all his dice for that desperatly needed firestorm against that nearly unkillable Slaught.

If something pops up from the Warp now and devours the party at least there was a bit of choice involved not only bad luck.

What do you guys think? To powerful for your taste?

It seems needlessly complicated to me. There already are several aids to psychich powers:

• Invocation Skill: add your Willpower Bonus to your power roll a second time (with a +10 to the skill test with a psi-focus)
• Power Well Talent: add 1 to your power roll each time you take the talent
• Corpus Conversion Talen: take damage to increase your power roll (although after the errata I can't see anyone using it)
• Favoured by the Warp Talent: roll twice for Psychic Phenomena and take the better result
• Discipline Focus Talent: gain +2 to power rolls from a specific Discipline
• Discipline Mastery: when you've learned 10 powers in a discipline you reduce all those powers PT by 5
• And also you do not need to roll all your power dices at once, just roll them one after the other until you meet the PT

It is, after all, only a 10% chance for every die you roll that something might happen, and then there's only a 25% chance that you'll get Perils of the Warp, and if you have the Favoured by the Warp talent you get another chance to avoid Perils of the Warp. The odds are really not that bad, and the looming threat of Perils of the Warp is a great way to create tension and excitement anyway.

EDIT:

Oh, and of course the psyker did something wrong when he rolled a 9 on his power roll; he tried to control the warp! To quote page 163 on Perils of the Warp: " The warp is a dangerous and unpredictable entity and every time a Psyker draws from it he risks insanity, death and ruin. " The world of Dark Heresy is not a friendly place, after all.

Well of those aids, only Favoured by the Warp does anything in regards to a roll on Psychic Phenomena and that Trait reguires a lot of XP for the Psyker before he can get it regularly. Similar with Psychic Supremacy (Ignore the first 9 rolled) from Disciples Of The Dark Gods, you can play a long time before getting anywhere near this. And there is no real choice involved. Once you get those Traits you always use them for safety. I (obviously ) like the concept of giving the player the choice: Go for the Fatique (-10 on all rolls afterwards) and be safer or call directly on the Warp, no Fatique but a small risk of things going very wrong. And usually (my Psyker had a TB of 2 now he got 3) the Fatique goes up pretty quickly when there is no time to rest or meditate, so pretty soon its down to resting (or not using your powers for a while), risking Perils or dropping unconscious from to much Fatique.

xenobiotica said:

It is, after all, only a 10% chance for every die you roll that something might happen, and then there's only a 25% chance that you'll get Perils of the Warp, and if you have the Favoured by the Warp talent you get another chance to avoid Perils of the Warp. The odds are really not that bad, and the looming threat of Perils of the Warp is a great way to create tension and excitement anyway.

While that is true, even if you "Play it safe" with my method, you can still get very annoying (and stylish) Psychic Phenomena but no Perils. Sneaking around in an heretic stronghold and getting an Banshee Howl was pretty .... inconvinient

Perils of Warp is the result of playing with forces you ought not to be messing with. I don't see any need to further water down consequences of his actions.

Whizzer said:

It's not just Favoured by the Warp that helps you avoid Psychic Phenomena. The other stuff I mentioned will increase your power rolls, and the less dices you have to roll to reach the PT, the less likely you are to roll a 9.

Heh, yeah I can imagine that wasn't the best time for a Banshee Howl, but I feel that perils of the warp is a great touch to psychic powers, and I myself wouldn't want to play around them, as it were. But to each his own, if you like your method I don't see any reason for you not to use it, as long as everyone in the game agrees. Fatigue is hell to drag around all the time, but don't forget that every psyker has their own way to avoid perils of the warp: fate points. =)

I agree with xeno.

If I read this correctly what your saying is, if a player only uses one dice for his power roll and uses Invocation , he can apply a -25 to any phenomena roll, but gains a level of fatigue. In principle sounds fine, avoids a lot of the nastier perils if all your trying to perform is a minor effect. As Xeno reminds us though there are several talents which add onto power rolls or reduce thresholds, so there’s an opportunity by less scrupulous players to just min/max there abilitys, but all down to your players really.

Personally though, if the Psychic phenomena table is causing you grief just dump it. Rather than letting a table tell you what happens next, make it up yourself. Look at what the Psyker was trying to do, the reasons he was doing it, how many dice he rolled, how many 9 came up and make up a phenomena that somehow fits the story better, without derailing it.