Many organizations within the Imperium employ psykers. The Imperial Guard's use of sanctioned psykers is well known, and it is not unheard of for the Adeptus Arbites to make us of sanctionites as well.

As written, however, such psykers within the Beta have no choice but to be rogue psykers.

An option to buy Sanctioned as an Advance rather than tying it to the Adeptus Astra Telepathica only would be most welcome.

EDIT: Crap, the title should be "No Option to Buy the Sanctioned Trait?"

The Sanctioned Psykers of the Imperial Guard (and everywhere else) come from the AAT and are seconded to those other organizations. If they don't come through the AAT for initial training and Sanctioning, then they are indeed rogue psykers.

Odd note: being a Sanctioned Psyker has usually given some protection from Perils, while here it does nothing other than save you from gaining Corruption Points when you purchase the Psyker trait. How odd!

The Sanctioned Psykers of the Imperial Guard (and everywhere else) come from the AAT and are seconded to those other organizations. If they don't come through the AAT for initial training and Sanctioning, then they are indeed rogue psykers.

That's how I read it as well. However, I somewhat agree with Plushy that it's not the best way to handle it. It basically means all starting psyers are pretty much the same unless they want to eat their big plate of Corruption and bear the deadly stigma of an unsanctioned witch.

It also has a side effect of making the AAT background useless for anyone who doesn't want to be a psyker now or later on in the career, because the sanctioning takes the place of the background boon. In fact, the whole background is written with the assumption that yes, you are a psyker if you belong, yet there are options to not be a psyker and still hail from AAT - why?

Proposed solution: add Sanctioning to the Mystic role, introduce another background boon for AAT.

Not sure I'd say remove Sanctioning from AAT. The ability to make unsanctioned psykers, without spending extra xp at chargen, is kinda nifty.

Perhaps they should just provide some variable options with each of the backgrounds? It'd be nice if there were options for slightly more variation anyway.

Give Adeptus Astra Telepathica something like Resistence: Psychich Powers. This allows Psykers from the AAT to be better prepared to handle enemy psykers, and allows non-Psykker AAT characters to be better against them. Keep in mind that the AAT has handlers as well as sacntionites.

Roll Sanctioning into Mystic. If you want to play a Wyrd, buy the Elite Advance.

But what if you want the characteristic/skill advance costs?

Besides, shouldn't we be arguing for the benefits of having "X or Y" options in the homeworld/background/role choices?

I do not think sanctioning belongs in thy mystic role. If you want to play calixis templar you could go AAT + warrior and buy the psyker elite advancement. Forcing all psykers to be mystics is not the way to go. Also taking the mystic and some other back ground, like outcast, would make an interesting wyrd.

Further more, AAT gives the player psyscience which is a psyker only skill (cant advance beyond rank 1 without psy rating). So in general AAT requires that the player is a psyker for the player to enjoy the full benefit of AAT.

If AAT should be open to non-psykers it should be through options, like psyscience and sanctioning if psyker, something else if not.

Sanctioning could be offered as an elite advancement for 300 xp, so it is possible to make a sanctioned mystic psyker that is not from AAT:

The argument works in reverse just as well, however!

Someone wishing to play a wyrd could be an Outcast - Desperado, and then buy the Psyker advance. Or he could do as you said, and go Outcast - Mystic,

The thing is, it doesn't work in reverse. While your "interesting Wyrd" works two ways, my "Guard psyker" is doomed to either ignore his Guard background or be a wyrd.

And non-psyker AAT characters should be more viable. It's odd to me that for such a more open-ended character creation system, there is exactly one way to make a loyal psyker.