Hello all! I have lurked on these forums for about a year now, as long as I have been running a DH campaign, and I have decided to post because I do need help. I have trouble makeing challanging scinarios for the party, as it seems like the psyker is vastly OP. Perils doesnt seem to balance anything because the psyker is least corrupt one in the group (we have nearly ascended and hes at 20) So without further ado...

1: Templar Calix: Wow, what a class. Why would any psker not take this? A large amount of high level skills (step aside, wall of steel, counter atack, armour of comtempt) become availible early, and you trade INT for WS.

2: Soul Killer: Arguably the best damaging power in the game, this power just rolls through every kind of bad guy, and is undogeable. Makes every high level boss a chump, unless they are a pariah (not all that common in the 40K)

3: Tainted Psyker: If a psyker takes the Sourcery talents they get benifits of just +1 psy rating, and no corruption. Not even an increase in Psychic pheanomenon. Seems like a safe bet, and with a certain background package, their mind can't be read.

4: Chamelion: A minor power that cause -30 to hit? Combined with a certain biomancy skill that allows flight, mooks are at -40 to hit with shooting. Again, no wp saves even.

So thats the psyker I deal with, basically flys around, is nearly unhittable with ranged, kills everything easily with soul killer, and has buffed up psy rating equil to the class that focuses on Psy rating, and has Seal Wounds, which makes him immune to being whittled down. Oh, and inspiring arua means NPCs HAVE to say nice things about him, just to rub it in, lol. Frankly I need help to challange this guy, as he makes the rest of the party look useless. The game generally goes like: let the psyker fly in a kill all the bad guys while they shoot back ineffectually. My other players are getting bored, so help please!

PS the party is just getting ready to ascend, to give you an idea about power level.

Thanks!

Hi Sazabi, welcome to the forums. No offense but it sounds like your player has cherry picked through several books and may or may not be 'conveniently' forgetting the rather serious drawbacks to his chosen path.

1. I have no problem with the Temple Calix. It takes away many of the tactics/social skills the psyker would have gotten and replaces them with combat skills. A little cheasy? Yes. But it allows for more of a 'Star Wars'-esque kind of psyker, and is not in itself game breaking.

2. Soul Killer has a threshold of 25, which requires a lot of dice to be rolled, which means he runs the risk of psychic phenomena. It is also a full round action, which means your psyker can do nothing else that round. If your psyker is using a focus power test to reduce the dice that need to be rolled then he reduces this power to once every other round. Also, Soul Killer is a Telepathy power, which means that EVERY TIME your psyker uses it on someone who has twice his insanity or corruption score, he muse make a WP test or gain 1d10 insanity/corruption points (ref: DH core book, pg 179)

3. Yeah, but with a +20 to psychic phenomena ans perils of the warp being a malefic psyker is dangerous (ref: Disciples of the Dark Gods, pg 119), this applies to . Being a sorcerer is also like having an huge 'kill me now' button taped to the sorcerer's forehead which lights up the instant anyone finds out about what he does. Just wondering... What is your player's Inquisitor like?

4: Chameleon only gives a -20 to BS tests (ref: DH core book, pg 165) and where does it say flying gives an extra -10 to hit? Ways to solve the fact he is hard to hit are to have his enemies use aiming and autofire. Both of which will offset Chameleon's -20.

Since your Psyker is sustaining two powers (Chameleon and Shape Flesh) All of his other psychic tests are at -8, which means that Soul Killer now has a threshold of 33, even with a WP bonus of 7, a successful Focus Power check and two levels of Power Well your player still requires four dice to get it off reliably. Which means he has a 4 in 10 of triggering one psychic phenomena and almost a 1 in 4 of triggering more than one (ref: DH core book, pg 161 "When the Psyker rolls a 9 on any of the dice used to manifest a power, they will invoke Psychic Phenomena and must roll on table 6-2: Psychic Phenomena, page 162, once for each 9 rolled.") with a +20 to the roll. And if any of those Psychic Phenomena invoke a Perils Of The Warp, the roll on the Perils table is at +20. AND, according to page 119 of DotDG, all of this happens even if your psycher did not use any bonus dice from the Sorcerer talent, it happens JUST FROM having the talent.

So there you go, your psycher is pretty much fixed. Powerful, yes, but he shouldn't outshine the rest of the group any more.

I'm not all that versed in the rules to be honest but one possibility, provided you haven't already tried this, could be to throw a powerful psyker enemy at him: a rogue psyker, a daemonhost, a chaos sorcerer or an Eldar warlock - or if you want to be really mean...set him up against an Untouchable.

Sazabi said:

Seems like every 6 months or so, we have a new GM come in who feels that the Psyker is unbalanced, overpowered, yada yada yada....

Sorry to say it guy, but you have to have take the time to READ the rules on how Psykers work, and NOT to go with how your player tries to explain it. That's your first mistake.

The other guy made some good points... I will try to just add to that, not copy him.

1) Simple. If you're playing more as lots of abilities as a Psyker, then you play the scholastic one. Lots more abilities, which gives a lot more flexibility. Some key abilities, like Favoured by the Warp are available much earlier, and you can get to a Psy rating 6 instead of 5 pre-Ascension.

3) If the Psyker has this package, then he had better have a radical or at least a moderate Inquisitor, or he will find himself on a very short leashe. No Puritan will put up with that (wild and random uses of psyker ability) ... so the simple fix is to be sure that the player who is going to be your Inquisitor when the group ascends is going to use that leashe. This is something the other guy did touch on, I just expanded it a bit. This may go as far as Mind-Cleasing your Psyker in game if need be.

Be very, very careful to keep your Psyker honest. I have seen some players who get in the habit of not rolling the dice they need to when trying to activate their powers. Remember that stacking abilities cost a lot extra to activate another ability. Adding a second ability increases the Threshold by 4. Adding a third by 8, and if your guy tries to add a 4th then its 16. And remember that 4 abilities is the limit. If he forgets to roll at the higher cost, don't let him skate by, too bad, you just dropped all your other powers.

I've seen Psykers who skate by on GMs. Usually it's something small, like activating Unnatural Aim and then trying to use it on the same turn.

One more thing. A lot of these abilities have been erratted. Seal wounds for example is now a 20 threshold to activate, not a 10. If he's maintaining a lot of abilities, and trying to get that one off on a Psy rating of 5, and then if he's doing it all the time, and you're not watching his rolls it's your fault for letting him do it.

Do the math: he's a Templar, and not ascended so his max Psy rating is 5. Most players will have this WP at 60 by this point if not higher. So 5d10 +6, trying to get a 36 or higher to Seal Wounds (3 other abilities maintained so +16 to a base of 20). Oh wait you said the Guy's a Sorceror, right? So this will let him roll an extra die... but the threshold goes up 2; now he's rolling 6d10+6 trying to get a 38. The averages should activate it, but in doing so he has 6 chances for a 9 to be rolled, with a bonus to the chance to get phenomena to happen. Remember also, that the Rules as Written does NOT allow a reroll for this roll... this is not a test like other player's abilities. Even with Favoured by the Warp, with 2 rolls at +20, about half the time he's going to end up on the BAD table. Remember that EVERY time a player rolls on the BAD table he gains a CP, Armour of Contempt not withstanding. Sooner or later, if run correctly, the player's going have some major issues, requiring Fate Point burns. Once that happens, then he'll be controlled... because he may become too scared to do anything.

Which is the way it should be.

One last point. This is a roleplaying game. In the 40k universe Psykers are some of the most down-trodden of individuals. No one (except sometimes another Psyker) trusts them. If a player displays his powers wantonly, without restraint, people living day to day will have nothing to do with the party, Inquisition or no. Doors get slammed in their faces, people run away... think the Salem witch trials of the 1600s. Remember too the simple fact, mentioned in the Core book. The player's party members may become their executioners. You HAVE to keep your player honest on this one. This one little thing, when forced to roleplay the issues, makes having the machine-gun Psyker a liability for the group, not an asset. Now this changes slightly in Ascension, as a Psyker has gained some controls on his abilities, but by and large the general populace still doesn't trust them.

Denmar1701 said:

The threshold don't go up by 2 for psykers that pick it up.

Welcome aboard Sazabi.

Just wo quick ones from me.

1. You can't use psychic powers while you are on fire (thanks Catachan over in the 'Why all thr Ascension Hate Thread' for that).

2. Good Role Playing. In 40K, psykers who behave this way are usually the BAD GUYS. He is asking for some Wytch-Hunters to come and kick his arse, and they're not going to care when he claims to be 'sanctioned'. Wytch-hunters routinely use psy-canons, flamers, wytch cages, and wytch stakes. How pissed off are the rest of the party going to be when posse after posse of these freakazoids keep turning up to turn them all into ash chanting "Burn the Heretic, Purge the Unclean!" just because he is a show off? Even Eisenhorn had some of these guys after him and he was conservative compared to this guy.

jpomz said:

Pg. 168, Radical's Handbook so states that any arcana that duplicates an existing discipline or power has its threshold increased by 2.

Denmar1701 said:

For arcana duplicating it. Not the powers themselves. Very important distinction. I remember reading it in a thread.

Old thread, but anyways. All of the above, plus:

Your Psyker-Player seems to be the Munchkin-Type, he's picked all the skills and traits that make him more powerful instead of the ones his Character would choose and could logically aquire. Maye he'd be better off playing Aberrant or Exalted, but as you have settled to playing DH, here's some things you might want to discuss with him roleplay-wise.

Templar Calix strikes me as the Jedi of 40k, upright, noble, walking in the light. Sorcery seems to be the vilest, most feared craft a human being can possibly ever learn (if I'm not mistaken, I only know Sorcery from the Radical's Handbook). Why on Terra would a Templar Calix want to be a sorcerer? A player wanting those extremes should at least come up with a very convincing story about the how and why.

Same for different branches of Major Psychic Powers. It's hell for Psykers to gain enough control over their abilities to survive Sanctioning, let alone master one of the Major Disciplines. Your Psyker seemingly has at least one Telepathy Power and one Biomancy Power, meaning he has either Mastered one Discipline and moved on to the next or he (again) picked through the Powers, which IMHO should absolutely not be allowed.

I played with a munchkin type like that once (not as a GM), always wanted more, more, more, talented in combining seemingly harmless effects for imba impacts, and on top the hell of luck with the dice. Never was happy with the kind of RP the rest of the group wanted to play, dialoge, atmosphere and the like, quit in the end. Maybe you should have a talk with the player about what he and what you do expect from roleplaying, about what being a psyker really means, what he thinks his Character is like, psychologically, not by the rules. And if you find that it's not the thing he's interested in, you should maybe consider having him play a different character (or, hell maybe Exalted, for real).

Just my two cents.

It can have the threshold increased by 2 if the sorcery talent was what got him soul killer.

As for being a Templar word of his display of power could reach the masters and they decide he is shaming the Templar name.

My favorite method for messing with psykers is a good old demon pact