On Psychic powers & Attack rolls

By Darth Smeg, in Dark Heresy House Rules

While some powers require a test to hit in addition to the powerroll, others do not.

I'm thinking only of the direct damage dealeing "shooting" powers here, like Bio-lightning and Force Bolt.

So why are these treated differently? They cost the same XP to aqcuire and are mostly equivalent to ensure a Psyker gets his X-Bolt regardless of his chosen discipline.

Biomancy: Bio-Lightning. Threshold 14, damage 1d10 + WPB (E). Hits automatically. Overbleed adds bolts, which all hit automagically.

Pyromancy: Fire Bolt. Threshold 11, damage 1d10 + 5 (E). Requires a WP test to hit. Overbleed adds bolts, each bolt needs a new WP test to hit.

Telekinetics: Force Bolt: Threshold 13, damage 1d10 + WPB (I). Requires a WP test to hit. Overbleed adds damage.
Telekinetics: Force Barrage: Threshold 21, damage 1d10 + WPB (I). Requires a WP for each bolt.

Telepathy: Soul Killer: Threshold 25, damage 1d10 + 2*WPB (X) Ignores Armour. Hits automatically.

So why do these act differently? Why does the Biomancer hit all his targets with no chance of error, but the Pyromancer has to concentrate and will likely miss half the time?

Would it be a good idea to harmonise these, and either require all these "shooting" powers to require a WP test, or this test superflous? I dislike excessive dice-rolling, and the Psyker here already needs to actually succeed on his powerroll.

Thoughts?

Well, we stumbled about this too. In our imagination this is cause a fireball that starts at your hand and flies to the enemys has to be proper "aimed" though other powers work pretty much like a mind controlled homing missile, i. e. Soulkiller. But still this ansmwer cant be used on every power for I think a Lightning bolt has to be proper aimed too though.

We tried some houserules, one of it was that shooting powers that require a test to hit can cause RF on their damage roll while the others cant. This was a risk-reward approach but still the other powers were stronger.

I would say make them all roll for hit so that a fighting psyker has not only focus on WP and maybe WS for his force sword. later on these powers can get pretty neat but to make them auto-hit is still kinda cheap if a veteran soldier still can fail on his point black shot. Psykers are no perfect human, they can get distracted on the battlefield too and it should not be that easy for them to hit. They have already so many boons, this one is unnecessary in my opinion.

Perhaps. But a sensible Psyker is careful with his power-dice, and will not use too many of them. And even with a decent power-roll with significant overbleed, a normal (ie not over-munchkined) Psyker will not be out-damaging his Peer the Guardsman with a decent heavy weapon.

Considerer Twinky, our friendly sanctioned Telekine. He has a few 1000 XP under his belt, his WP has reached 50, and he has achieved Psy Rating 3 (Rank 4).

He has the Force Bolt power, with a threshold of 13.

At this poing he can choose between rolling 2 or 3 dice for a 79% or 96,5% chance of successfully focusing the power and a 19% or 27,1% of triggering a Phenomena, respectively.

If he succeeds, he must now make a WP test to hit, reducing his chance to succeed from 79% or 96,5% to 39,5% or 48%, depending on his chosen # of power dice.

So if Twinky is careful with his power, he has less than 40% chance to hit his target with a 1d10+5 bolt, which has a 19% chance of causing a phenomena. (And as 25% of Phenomena turn into a Peril, that makes this a 5% of a Peril, which gives CPs and other nasty side effects).

If he decides to throw caution to the wind, he still has less than 50% chance to hit, but a much greater chance of blowing himself up.

Yes, he can use Invocation to improve these odds, but at the cost of manifesting only every alternate round (and he will not be able to manifest in the first round)

Compare with Guardsman Bob, which at Rank 4 can easily have a BS of 50 and a lovely heavy weapon or a bolt gun.

Heavy Stubber: Full Auto @ Short Range gives a target value of 80, with an average of 3,5 Degrees of Success, meaning 4-5 hits each doing 1d10+4.
Bolt Gun: Semi Auto @ Short Range gives a target value of 70, with a 50% chance of scoring 2 hits, each doing 1d10+5.

With no real risk, every round.

Yes, Psykers can become very powerful, but this is not the way to fix it. IMHO.

Darth Smeg said:

Perhaps. But a sensible Psyker is careful with his power-dice, and will not use too many of them. And even with a decent power-roll with significant overbleed, a normal (ie not over-munchkined) Psyker will not be out-damaging his Peer the Guardsman with a decent heavy weapon.

That is one point. A psyker can be undected but a Guardsman has to carry a friggin heavy weapon to compare?

But yes, in your low-mid level example they are roughly even up but when the psyker gets his experience he has WAY MORE potential than the guardsman will ever have and this does not even require some munchkin behaviour. Also later on you will recieve talents that make perils a joke. The current psyker in our group is ATM level 7 and roughly rolls less than 4 to 5 power dices. He might be a lucky one but this campaign is goin on for nearly two years now and the only real peril he rolled was a minor deamon incarnation on his first power roll ever. Since then there was nothing more than a slight breeze etc.

At the point where the Psyker is also experienced and can diversify his powers he will become a utility powerhouse packed with awsome offensive and deffensive capabilities.

I agree that some psycic diciplines are on pare on level 4 with the other carackters, mainly the fightning orientated ones, though utilitie diciplines like telepathics, telekinetics or biomancy will easily catch on and then become the boss killer of the group… soul killer much?

Darth Smeg said:

Yes, Psykers can become very powerful, but this is not the way to fix it. IMHO.

They not just can, they will. It depends on their starting dicipline but in the end they will have serveral diciplines because at some degree it makes no sense to learn just another attack that does roughly the same. Also they have a friggin attribute advance bonus. They only need WP, you might go with Int or WS if you want to diversify but it is not needed. You can compensate for Everything with your Psycic powers, literaly everything in this setting. This renders the Psycer a Jack-of-all-Trades but this is not balanced like in most games where you are limited. You can still become a master in every field.

Our Psyker was not heading to min-max but ATM he is boss in social play, in combat and in investigation. With Invocation some tests become laughable easy for the great impact they have and perils were never that dangerous and even beneficial sometimes. That is another funny thing, you can roleplay some perils as a benefit… and then some **** went crazy and with his ultimate luck he recieved unnatural WP…

So yes, I am totally fine if the psyker is weaker in the beginning than a full combat orientated class like the guardsman for he can easily beat the guardsman later on in combat and has the ability to get a much wider variety. He can do everything and for that he should pay, even if it is such a minor thing like actualy roll for hitting stuff with powers that later on can ignore TB or Armor or generate more ROF than a heavy anti-infantry weapon…

I'll start by saying I DO agree with some (most) of your points, and yes, Psykers can become superpowered godlike beings that are good at everything.

But I think you're being a little unfair in your generalizations. Schollar get Favoured by the Warp at Rank 6, Militants at Rank 8. There's going to be a whole lot of play going on before you hit those ranks (especially 8), and until then you'll take your warp lumps an like'em.

And as for the comparison, they're not "roughly even up". The Psyker is shafted, there is no comparison. And the guardsman doesn't need to lug around a friggin heavy weapon (but what guradman doesn't?), as I pointed out a boltgun or decent quality SP weapon (which Rank 4 gun-bunny acolyte doesn't have one?) will do just as well.

Compare:

39% chance of hitting once a round, dealing 1d10+5

with

Full Atuo: 80% Chance of hitting, average of 4-5 hits each round, dealing weapon damage (most likely with +2 from Mighty Shot) for some 1d10+6.

or


Semi Auto: 70% Chance of hitting, averaging 2-3 hits each round, dealing weapon damage (most likely with +2 from Mighty Shot) for some 1d10+6.

Case in point, my Assassin ran around with a .54 Tranter from day 1 (95 thrones, Common), and got Mighty Shot at Rank 3. By that time his BS was 50%.
Thats 1-2 hits at 1d10+7, 2 Pen without any special ammo. Every round, no disasters.

The Psyker is left with his base WP value, and can get no modifiers from Range, equipment or other Talents. The Shooty fellas get all of these, and tell me a Rank 8 Assassin will ever miss? But your Rank 8 Psyker is unlikely to have more than 60 WP at most, which means 4 of every 10 shots will miss, no matter how powerful he is. That's just too much whiff factor for me.

Well, in the End we argue from two different points and your arguments are quite legit. My approach is to balance the psyker for late game, your appraoch is more kind of balance for early to mid game. Also we are mostly comparing them in combat. So the Psyker might hit less than a dedicated sniper-assassin (which I am okay with) but at that points he might beat the assassin on social play evertime. He might read others minds to gather valuable information or manipulate them to follow them into the akolythes hideout where they can interrogate them or what ever. So SOME of his powers may lack behind absolute combat specialists but with that he is stronger in other aspects and if you ask me, that is was a "Jack-of-all-trade" is about. In every Rulesystem I know such a character is s balanced by being decent in every aspect but will never acend to a master. A psyker can become such a jack of all trades very fast, but he problem is, he can become a master in every field simultaniously.

The problem I can see here is that the developement of a Psyker is not forseeable. With an Assassin or Guardsman his choises are quite limited. They get BS or WS and some decent Weapons, thats it. Maybe some TB and SB with Skills like interrogation and MAYBE knowledge like War or so… but thats pretty much it. A psyker on the other hand might start quite limited but in the end envolves into a demi-god, simply because he cant spend XP on stuff that would not make him OP.

And a WP 60 Psyker might fail 4 of 10 shooting attacks… but he can fear away hundreds of enemys, can levitate, can become invisible, can boost its TB, can make ppls Head explode, can heal every fellow akolythe full to max HP with one power, You can make your enemys soul burn, shoot better than a sniper or fight in melee like a young god. You can cath projectiles or even dodge bullets before they are fired You can cast force barrages and annihilate an antire squad while fighting with a psycic blade. You can domiate people and scan their mind… your possibilities are unlimited…

And when the trade off is that you only hit 6 out of 10 times… i think the psyker would be still OP.

That's a good point. You're describing a Psyker in one of our campaigns pretty accurately.

I think the biggest culprit is the versatility of the minor powers. They're too good, many of them. But at the same time you don't get any Discipline powers until Rank 4 if I recall correctly, so I guess they have to be.

All in all I prefer the Only War rules, but as we've not switched and converted to these, I'm stuck trying to balance what I've got.

I'll have to think long and hard about which way to fall on this, but I'm pretty sure I want to treat all the discpilines the same. I don't really see why Bio-lightning should be different in its aiming than force/fire bolt.

Darth Smeg said:

I don't really see why Bio-lightning should be different in its aiming than force/fire bolt.

Well I believe the writers thought of it like modern games portray electrical weapons or damage. You shoot in in one direction and because it is electricity it will connect to something… though this electricity does not connect to other obstacles, just enemies.^^

On your system-switch I have to say I never made good expirience with that. Lots of changes and things that have to be discussed and might not work. To import full auto or lightning attack rules from black crusade into dark herey might be quite easy, but deep impact changes like psi-powers may cause a lot of trouble.

In my opinion most problems with psykers occour because there were no agreements with the GM at the beginning of the group. I never allow psykers in mine and if I would they had some restrictions. For example they should be focused on developing into niches that have not been filled by other group members, also they shall expect a lot of control and some diviner checks for their corruption. For a normal human it is a acceptable if he is gettin a bit insane etc. but for a psyker it should not be. Though that depends of the mentaltiy of your group and common agreements.

Going off on a tangent here, but it would be interesting to explore the option of letting each Discipline be governed by a different attribute. So Willpower would no longer be the only characteristic a Psyker would ever need.

For example, Biomancy might require Toughness tests to successfully control, whereas Divination would use Perception. Psy-rating adds a bonus to the Focus Power test, as pr Rogue Trader to Only War.

This way it would require a real effort to master more than one discipline.