My group and I were at a difference of oppinion in regards to the Talent Psy Rating 1. We disagreed on when you figure out the minor powers that you get based on your Willpower Characteristic Bonus. Some of us thought that you get your Psy Rating 1 Talent before you spend any of your experience points on advancements. Others of us thought that you can figure out the amount of Minor powers you get after you have spent your advancements. A Character has a 47 Willpower rating which would give him a +4 bonus which in turn would give 2 minor powers. If they spend their experience points to up their Willpower to a 52 then they would have a bonus of +5 which in turn would give 3 minor powers if you can get your powers after your advancements or only 2 minor powers if you get your powers before you spend your experience points. If I can get any thoughts on everyone's oppinions that would be much appreciated.

A Psyker gains Psy Rating 1 before any points are spent on advances, there is no way to get 3 minor powers at creation. Even if you roll a 20, are a void born or mind cleansed, and buy the Living Nightmare background package, and thus start with a Willpower of 50, you still have to spend 300 experience points. Though your GM might allow for background packages to be bought "before" any points are spent on advances, if you will.

I would have to say that they only get the 2 minor powers for the willpower bonus and dont get anymore free ones until they buy psy rating 2. He can still buy more minor powers with xp if they are still available in his current profile, but advancing his WP to a +5 bonus doesnt incur free powers.

I agree with my esteemed colleagues. Talents gained during chargen are most certainly aquired before spending any starting xp. If in doubt, you can refere to the character creation chapter and the list of character creation stages.

As for background packages... that's a bit more up in the air. I'd say it's a GM call. I can see arguements for and against.

xenobiotica said:

Agreed, if and only if the background is considered part of the 'starting' character, which some people see only because that experience "...does not count as an Advance for the purposes of increasing your Rank,..." Otherwise it's 'sorry Charlie you're short of will to get your magic number 3 pill, make do with the duo.'

Arbentur said:

wait, does that mean if I have bought Living Nightmare background package for 300xp, and spent 100 on some other random talent, I would need to get 400xp more during play to get from Sanctionite to Neonate?

]N[ said:

Xp spent on background packages do not count towards which rank you are, only xp you spend on skills, talents, and charactaristic advances, so yes, you are not a Neonate until you've gained and spent 400xp more, you will always have spent a total of 300xp more to reach a new rank than someone who has not bought a background package.

]N[ said:

Exactly what xenobiotica said. But at this time the only xp you'd have to 'earn' to make Neonate is what you spend on backgrounds. So for your example of buying Living Nightmare and some random talent, the talent would count and put you at 100 on the rank chart. Find yourself a background worth 400 or if your GM is really nice and lets you purchase multiple backgrounds totaling your 'starting 400 points' then yeah you could consider yourself with just an ounce more wiggle room depending on what skills you got versus another person that didn't buy the package when you top off at the final rank.

xenobiotica said:

Oh, interesting! Where is this writte in the rules? Never found it. Would make a big change to my guys since some of them bought a whole lot of contacts.

Schwarzie said:

In the Inquisitor's Handbook under the heading using background packages.

Schwarzie said:

Well maybe not. The comment in question is in the Inquisitors Handbook on page 26 and specifically mentions not being part of your rank advancement. In the contacts section it makes no mention of their cost not being part of the rank advancement...so it would be more of an individual GM call on that one. One could see it either way really.

xenobiotica said:

You might get 3 minor powers when you have a starting Willpower of 45 and if you roll the Hypno-doctrination on the Sanctioning Side Effects table as well as a 55-58 , 71-74 or 98-99 as Divination. This would mean a starting Willpower of 50 or 51.

You could, however, argue that the Divination increases the Psyker's Willpower later as the Divination table is on stage five of character generation while you get the Psy Rating 1 talent during stage four. This would mean that you have only a Willpower of 48 when you get the Psy Rating.

If you follow this system, a Mind Cleansed Guardsman with a starting Willpower of 45 and the Mara Landing Massacre background (WP 50) who rolls the Minor Mutation on the Divination table and Wyrdling on the Minor Mutation table would get 3 minor psychic powers as he gets the talent after the experience points have been spent on the background.

Supergerm said:

The divination ritual takes place when an acolyte enter the service of the Inquisition, so the psyker has almost certainly already got psy rating 1. And as for Hypno-doctrination, I assume a psyker receives his psy rating before the sanctioning process, that's why he was taken on one of the Black Ships, because he had psychic powers and needed to be sanctioned.

Now the guardsman on the other hand could, I have to admit, get 3 minor powers from psy rating 1, but do think the odds are against anyone trying to create such a character.

Yeah, it's one out of 100000 Mind Cleansed survivors of the massacre.

Supergerm said:

When dealing with the probabilities involved, 100,000 is a really small number. First, only about 10% will roll a 20 in 10 rolls, so we're down to 10,000, then only 1% of those will roll a 1 to receive a minor mutation from their divination, so it's now only 100, and finally, only 10% will get the mutation Wyrdling from the minor mutation table, thus giving us the number of 10, if we're talking probability. But even though it's up to the player, I don't think many would place a 20 on Willpower, hoping to be one of the 0.1% who will start with Psy Rating 1. =)

(I think those calculations are correct, but even if they're not, the number would be really small)