So, I am attempting a small undertaking, and have run into a wee problem. I have this ship I wrote up the fluff for, some time ago, for if I ever wanted to run my own "your party comes across the derelict Light of Terra, and it appears unclaimed. Do you want to undertake the arduous missions to claim it for your Dynasty?" scenario, called the Emperor's Deliverance. I have recently decided that the Deliverance will be an Oberon-class Battleship, one that has seen better days, and not in much better shape than the LoT, from Lure of the Expanse. Here's my problem:

Along with being a cheesy battleship, the Deliverance is carrying a prototype superweapon; a Psi-Lance. My fluff-plan is that the Deliverance was originally carrying a Nova Cannon (odd for an Oberon, which usually sports torpedoes), and after its initial mishap that mothballed it, the group of radical AM who took up the task of fixing it also took the opportunity to install their possibly heretical, prototype weapon in it, without telling very many people. They took out most of the components of the Nova Cannon, and filled in the spaces with the arcane structures that comprise the Psi-Lance, but left enough of the exterior fixtures to give the ship a passable appearance of still carrying the more conventional doomsday weapon, and added in the expected torpedo tubes to give it a more conventional configuration. The crux is that I wanted my cheese ship to carry the Lance, torpedoes (a staple of most Oberon-class BS's), some regular lances, macrobatteries, and fighter bays. That's 8 weapon emplacements, and only 7 spots to place them. If torpedoes weren't so limited in placement, even aboard the largest ships, I could fix it, but nothing Imperial other than stations seems to have keel slots, only one Imperial ship seems to have more than one prow slot, again, even at this scale, and the Nova Cannon had to be there, which puts the Psi-Lance there, too. Looking past the silly cheese elements, and just to the mechanical dilemma, how might I flub this?

My Thoughts:

1. Pull a bit of Orky cheese, and say that the one Prow slot is filled with a combination apparatus that can serve as either the Psi-Lance, or a torpedo launcher, much like the weapon on the Ork Battlekroozer (BFK, p.83). At the start of each turn, decide what it will count as.
2. Say the ship had two Prow slots, somehow, and the NC became the Psi-Lance, leaving the torpedo tubes in place.
3. Say they were able to "add" a second Prow slot, while removing the large Cannon, in place of a smaller Lance, and place the Lance in it.
4. Forgo the fluff that places a Nova Cannon at all, and implement the Lance in another slot that fires forward, perhaps Dorsal.
5. Ask the people here, who are better at this stuff than I am, and see what ideas they have.

If anyone can help, it would be much appreciated. Thanks.

For one thing the standard loadout for an Oberon is 2 launch bays, 4 macrocannons, 2 lance batteries. For another, if you're going to give your players one of the ultimate examples of the Emperor's Navy, why the extra shenanigans with the psi-lance and nova cannon? They'll already be able to tear through half of a battlefleet without it.

An idea that came to mind from your post for me is to go somewhat literal - the Psi-Lance is an augmentation to the Lance array. The way I would figure it is that the lances are basically giant laser deathbeams, with powerful focusing and power generation. The Psi-Lance would be an augment to that - the focusing technology has been modified so that it can channel psychic energy while still being robust enough to focus the standard energy for lance blasts. If I were statting it out, I would give players the option of firing the lance arrays in one of the modes per turn, as it takes time to adjust the focusing arrays from the standard power source to the "etheric arrays" that power the Psi-Lance.

The other option is one that played with for an astropath in one of my games. She went a much more beatsticky route with her character (lots of telekinetic powers) and wanted to use them in void combat. The solution I ended up having was to give her some options, listed below. The thinking was that the checks would be more difficult (-20 to -40 penalty versus psychic powers used at an individual level) because it was affecting a much larger area. I also required her to have her choir assist her, and any negative effects or really failed rolls would start eating into the numbers of her choir that were not drooling wrecks.

1) Force Strike: I never statted this out, because she adjusted her focus later in the campaign, but I was planning on basing the rules for this off the Ork Wierdboy tower entry from the Orky Tech selection in BFG. If memory serves its a random strength short ranged lance strike. I planned to allow her to extend the range by increasing the difficulty of the check.

2) Mass Telekinesis: This is one that I did use, although I did it as seat of the pants and not a written down ruleset. I allowed her to make a focus check with the above penalties to "nudge" items in void combat. The most common use for this was to give the Torpedoes their ship launched the ability to turn (since the astropaths were basically reaching out and telekinetically arcing their trajectory). I also allowed her to use it impact the maneuvering characteristics of nearby void ships (friend or foe) by basically lending their psychic force to push the ship to either aid its maneuvers or impede them. I vetoed a proposal to flat out move void ships with this system - they are just too frikking big, even for a choir. The final use for this, which I didn't come up with until later, was as anti fighter defense. My thinking on this is that it could be used to add to the turret rating of the originating ship or a nearby ally. If you have 13 astropaths channeling a telekinetic punch through the windscreen of the a Starfury, its going to render it combat ineffective, even if the pilot survives.

Errant said:

Errant said:

First of all, no where did I say it was a GOOD idea, just one that I had, some time ago. If I don't air the things out, maybe ask a question, and get some other people's input, they bug me at work, or some such thing. Had I a party running though RT, I wouldn't just let them have this; it would be the usual tedious, money pit operation of getting it, making it safe and secure, keeping it, holding it, and fixing it up. And nothing says such group would even WANT to keep it, based on its cost, a curse it seems to carry, and such. Originally, there was some fluff/BS story that I made to go with it, and so I am trying to iron it out, and see how it might work. What ship would someone put a shenanigan-cannon in? For the NPCs at the time, it made some good sense. The ship was designed to need minimal escort, and was big, powerful, and survivable enough to benefit from the weapon. It also became available, after the Deliverance first got mothballed, and left in dry dock for a century, or two. The Magos involved wanted to put their weapon in the most durable container they could find, during the window available to them, and an Imperial battleship was top of that list. Their dreams of bypassing the limits of ammunition stores by manufacturing a weapon that used an easily renewable resource, and one that took up considerably less space than a Nova Cannon and shells, or even a set of torpedo tubes, and their numerous missiles, while packing a comparable punch, seemed within their reach. As any RT will tell one, probably the biggest limiter with Nova Cannons and Torpedoes is that you eventually run out of shots, and have to pay out your ass to refill the magazine, if you can even find any available. Granted, in game, it isn't really expensive to the party, but in story, the ammunition is expensive, especially to people who aren't Rogue Traders (a.k.a. made out of money), such as slightly heretical Mechanicus, or the Navy, and they are also monumentally hard to make, with various worlds magically forgetting how to build various things, even after doing so for centuries. There are always more psykers, and them + food is a small investment of space. Numerous safeguards were enacted, just in case the worst happened, so they ran with it, rushing to finish before their unorthodox/heretical experiments came to light, and they were shot, or before Chaos found out, and tainted it. In the end, it took a fleet of Chaos ships, most of which felt the sting of the Lance, or bought it kamikazing into the Deliverance, to damage it, and drop their troops aboard, but the ship was lost for 2 millennia, and anyone who knew about it is long dead, or a mighty Chaos cheese, who hasn't done anything about it for inscrutable reasons only Chaos knows of.

That's why I said above "look past the cheese, to the mechanical portion of my problem". Without trying to rationalize if a ship should have a weapon similar to the Warp Lance psyker power from Deathwatch, I was trying to figure out how this ship might carry it. I'll take the credit for forgetting that the Oberon didn't carry torpedoes; while I don't remember considering the Retribution, over the Apocalypse, before settling on the Oberon, when I was quick-looking, I forgot that I picked it BECAUSE it didn't have them, thus a less dedicated prow weapon, leaving space for the Lance, and changed the fluff that it would have, but had a Nova Cannon, instead, and then got the tubes back, when the bulk of the cannon got pulled. Maybe I'll just get over the little love affair with torpedoes, and say that it had a NC, which it now doesn't, and has the Lance, which I need to re-hammer the stats out for, anyway. I want it nifty, but every time I even mention it, whether I explain how powerful it is or isn't (there have been several different ideas, or varying power and scope), people look past the whole rest of the post, and say "why do you have that ridiculous cheese on this screen, anyway?" It's sort of like when anyone else says "and then my party acted to salvage this battleship we found, likely the Light of Terra", and everyone is just "man that's awesome, a battleship", while when I did it, all everyone said was "NO players can EVER have a battleship, under any circumstances, and WHY IS THAT EVEN MORE CHEESY WEAPON THERE?"; it was the Deliverance then, too. Oh well, that's how it goes.

Any thoughts on the mechanical aspect of implementation? That could be for the weapon, or its placement. At present, I want something sort of like a Zoanthrope's Warp Lance power, though this is fueled by a Battle Choir (the kinds of psykers RT usually isn't allowed to have), and I was working on a premise of the Lance's Strength being the total number of psykers in the circuit, with the Crit as the PR of the most powerful psyker in, while their combined PR equals the Range of the weapon. In this way, both the number of psykers, and their individual strengths matter, and it doesn't make a super-cheese cannon (figure usual Str 4-6, maybe 8 on a great day (it's a super weapon, after all), Crit 3-6 (believable compared to the tables), and Range 13 (plenty of similar examples). There is a bit where they have to make checks, which opens the door to Perils (in the story, one of them called an Unbound Daemonhost, which is still on the ship, 2,000 years later), but I have to reconfigure that, too, as well as the alternative shield supplementation (when they aren't hurling volleys of warp blasts.

Any constructive input would be much appreciated. Thanks. And thanks Errant; it does help to have to go through these paces, sometimes, and reformat a bit here and there. The mechanic before this was ridiculous, and would have allowed for the Deliverance to one-shot numerous ships, which is not exactly what I am going for. i will gladly read through anyone else's, too, if they can do a better job of making it, while keeping it an upper-end weapon, worthy of Chaos having launched a fleet to try and destroy it.

Venkelos,

If memory serves, there is something waaay the heck back in the 40k fluff about a psychic Titan Legion (it was like the Legio Psykana or some such). I saw a reference to it ages ago, but I seem to recall that the whole point was that the Princeps and all of the crew were psykers, and that the Titan's weapons were psychically powered. I have not been able to find anything about it since, and this was back in the 90s or so, so my memories could be a bit off, but if I'm right than there's definitely a canon "justification" for a Psy-Lance weapon. Grant you, if there's not, who cares? One of my players has an entire array of characters between BC, DW, and RT that are all members of the lost royal family of Prospero. There's nothing in the canon about Prospero having a royal family (if anything the Thousand Sons ran the show), but she likes the egyptian-esque theme and it doesn't break the system, so we've run with it in our campaigns to much enjoyment for all.

On to the mechanics of the weapon itself (I can't really address the specific ship stats, other than to say I always loved the Oberon class and have considered making rules up for my group, given how ideal it would be for a Rogue Trader)...

I think the first step would be to get an idea of the relative power of the weapon, all mechanics aside. My impression was that you were looking for Nova Cannon level power, but I could be off. I'd probably rate the power level of voidship weapon systems as follows, in terms of raw damage output alone:

1. Nova Cannon
2. Torpedoes or concentrated Bomber strike
3. Macrocannon
4. Lances

Picking how nasty you want it to be will help with the mechanics, because it gives an end-point to the equation when working out average damage output of the system.

With that being said, I like the raw form of mechanics you mentioned involving a battle choir. It offers a few benefits as well as some vulnerabilities. Benefit-wise it means that by investing in more/better psykers the Explorers can up the power of their voidship, something that they could not normally do without new components. Vulnerabilities... well, a Battle Choir is going to be in a central spot (probably something like an Astropath cloister), and therefore susceptible to hit and run attacks. Also, botched rolls could wind up with gribblies showing up and nomming the psykers or the crew in general.

I'd suggest adding a "power level" mechanic similar to the psychic power system. Maybe have some ship-wide penalties from an equivalent to the "Perils of the Warp" table that the group has to roll if they screw up. I'd also suggest 1) adding a bonus to the test similar to the rules in ItS for a Choir, and 2) adding a relatively stiff penalty (-20 to -40) to the focus roll. Use the Focus Roll as the to hit roll - that way not only is a "pushed" Psy-Lance blast more powerful, but it's more likely to hit the target (and more likely to lead to highly amusing - for the GM anyway - nomming of psykers). This gives the group a choice - do they use the lance at a "fettered" level, but with heavy range restrictions and less likely to hit? Or do they try to push it to up the damage and hit chance, but run the resulting risks? The final suggestion I'd have mechanically is to use anything that would modify the roll to hit with a normal ship weapon also modify the focus test for the Psy-Lance, within reason. I could see ignoring something like the Evasive Action modifier, and also the positive modifiers related to ships sensors, since your Psy-Lance array is being aimed and fired with the minds of the Battle Choir.

I'd be interested to see what you come up with - if I don't find a use for it with my group, I *know* I'll find a use for it with some of their adversaries.