Is it just me, or are a lot of the psychic powers really boring and lame? Where's the biomancy powers of arm regrowing and turning your hands into claws? Where's the pyromancies for raining down hellfire upon your enemies and annhilating everything in the room? Where's telepathy to make someone selectively blind and deaf?

Where's all the neat minor powers like hovering and walking on walls?

Feels like half the powers are just subpar weapons.

I too feel your sense of "wha...?"

As a GM, I watched my players overcome some rather mundane obstacles with Minor Powers, and I'll be sad to see them go. Not everything requiring Psychic intervention is going to be combat...

I like the idea of the abilities the minor psychic powers conveyed, but I don't like the way they were implemented. Because Black Industries copied their Magic system from the WFRP 2nd Edition for Dark Heresy you ended up having a pool of cantrip 'spells' (minor psychic powers) for the initiate psyker/wizard and, as the character advanced, she had access to more powerful spells/powers in the arcane lores/psychic disciplines.

That structure fits a wizard well, but doesn't make too much sense for a psychic gifted with a certain ability (what exactly about being a Diviner would let you walk on walls?)

It would make much more sense if the minor psychic powers were distributed among the proper disciplines.

In regards to the biomancy powers: I think the healing was intentionally toned done quite a bit, since in DH 1 if you had a psyker, healing wasn't a problem (1d5 hp back every 6 hours, way more once he got the discipline power), whereas if you didn't or he chose another discipline, you'd be stuck healing naturally. And Medicae was definitely not equivalent to the amount a psyker could heal in the same time period (which makes sense, but it kinda restricted psykers to taking at least the minor healing power).

My biggest problem with the psychic powers right now, is why use them over a standard weapon which is safer to use? None of the powers feel important enough to bother with really.

True, you need PL 6 to get the same RoA on Smite as on a normal Lasgun, while the others are limited to RoA 1 regardless of what you do (compensated by higher damage, I guess) - although they scale with level, which weapons don't, you can simply upgrade to a boltgun instead...

I like the idea of the abilities the minor psychic powers conveyed, but I don't like the way they were implemented. Because Black Industries copied their Magic system from the WFRP 2nd Edition for Dark Heresy you ended up having a pool of cantrip 'spells' (minor psychic powers) for the initiate psyker/wizard and, as the character advanced, she had access to more powerful spells/powers in the arcane lores/psychic disciplines.

That structure fits a wizard well, but doesn't make too much sense for a psychic gifted with a certain ability (what exactly about being a Diviner would let you walk on walls?)

It would make much more sense if the minor psychic powers were distributed among the proper disciplines.

The minor powers are actually copied, almost verbatim, from their descriptions in Necromunda. While I agree that some of them belong to the disciplines, it was nice to have a set of tricks for your average, untrained wyrd to throw around.

I think the best solving of this problem would be 3-5 additional powrrs per discipline, including some cheaper ones which reflect beginner powers.

Would also be nice if most of the powers of DH1 find their way in some shape into DH2.

Right now the perils are a little too high. Anytime you roll doubles, and you add PR; it's not Phenomena that can trigger perils anymore, it's straight up perils. I won't deny that that IS very similar to way back in the first Dark Heresy, but it's way too unsafe, especially for what we get. The attack ones would also be nicer if they could benefit from things like ranged talents, especially since there's so many extra requirements statwise on the powers [This is in and of itself fine, just, they oughta be more usable in exchange]

Favored By the Warp helps a little, but you're still rolling perils, not just phenomenon ya know? Corruption gains right from the start, practically, even, 10% of the time. Are you, by the way, allowed to modify by UP TO, or is it straight "you have 5 WPb, that's +/-5 the end"?

Different charts per discipline is great stuff, but as you get more powerful you flat out start suffering more and more from your perils getting ever nastier. There should be some way to lower chances of perils, particularly if you're holding back. Only doubles above your base willpower score would probably be a bit TOO safe, especially since the characteristics can go way higher this time around, though.

Also why are they all mounted weapons? I know one gm who'd probably gleefully declare midway through a campaign if the acolytes were doing too well that you're a **** cheater, and he'll no longer tolerate you using vehicle weapons with neither heavy weapon training nor a vehicle to mount them on. Stupid, I know, but still, why mounted?

I'd like to focus a little on pyromancy here.

Cauterize is a 300xp minor power if I've ever seen one. It's fine, but not for 300xp.

Fire Shield is kinda nice, but once per turn for fairly little damage makes it questionable a purchase. Not to use; it's a fine thing to put up if you own it, but it's an easy thing to pass over purchasing. 1d10+PL-2 is not exactly too impressive until you're dumping PR6+ into it.

Flame breath is... Well it's uh... longer ranged than flamers? Far, far weaker though... so tradeoff, really I guess.

Inferno's rather short ranged - well most of the psychic powers are, especially with the increased weapon ranges now, but it's a fairly expensive [3AP], fairly inaccurate, easy to dodge grenade toss. Can hit hard later on though at least.

Molten Beam was hinging on the melta quality, but that's no longer "Ignore Armour", and it could use a boost.

There's not really anything that grants numerous attacks; even Smite's 3AP for... PL attacks, which basically means you've got a 1/3 perils-inducing laspistol early on, and even a PR 8 character's got to wonder if his hotshot wouldn't be a wiser choice; at least it can hit further.

Basically the attack powers are not always worth it, but even those that are relatively statistically sound are all just... uninspiring.

Also why are they all mounted weapons? I know one gm who'd probably gleefully declare midway through a campaign if the acolytes were doing too well that you're a **** cheater, and he'll no longer tolerate you using vehicle weapons with neither heavy weapon training nor a vehicle to mount them on. Stupid, I know, but still, why mounted?

To quote the book directly: "Mounted: These weapons are a natural part of a creature, such as claws or teeth, or are affixed on a vehicle or emplacement. Generally, they cannot be removed or transported without large, sophisticated equipment."

This just means psychic powers do not need a hand to be used, so you can carry an autogun, two swords or a paintbrush and tin bucket and still fire lightning from your eyes.

To be honest - the New perils table is what I like most.

Its pretty clear you can't play a combat psyker by just blasting away with a single power; that makes you just an inferior warrior or desperado. Fortunately many psi powers are very cheap in terms of experience. So I think the better strategy is to buy a wide range of them (in terms of effects and mechanics) and try and exploit the weaknesses of whatever enemy you're facing. For example, when facing someone who has a great dodge, use an "opposed willpower" attack to get around it (something a warrior or desperado can't do). When facing someone with a huge RoF, use the psi attacks that stun to cut their AP in half. When facing a group of minions, use a spray one. Psykers can easily carry a wide range of psychic weapons and switch between them at a moment's notice; don't look for the single magic bullet power.

Forewarning is also a very interesting combat power, IMO. It let's you play a "guard" role: you spend an AP to defend your team's Desperado or Warrior, freeing them up for more attack. In essence, this lets the group maximize the attacks coming from the single strongest combatant in the group: your 1 AP may contribute another 2 hits from a storm bolter wielded by the highest Ballistics skill in the group...its just not you pulling the trigger.

All of this is really only relevant once you reach psi power 3+, giving you both the ability to buy that range of psi powers and the power enough to make it matter. At level 1 and 2, you are definitely not going to be the strongest combatant. But then again, psykers have a wide range of noncombat uses too, so IMO it would be somewhat unfair to the other roles if they could do all their narrative tricks AND out-shoot the warriors and desperados right out of the gate.

Yeah, just made my first character, a Psyker Chirurgeon, and while I barely know what I'm doing even I find the Psychic Powers a bit meh...

Especially Biomancy, the power set I thought would make a good Psyker Healer, which only has ONE healing power deep in the tree and I can't even tell which Characteristic Prerequisite it's suppose to use!

I feel the psychic powers lacking and don't scale well with Psyker level. Aren't Psy Level 10's the Primaris Alpha plus level psykers and yet Heavy Bolters do more damage, more quickly, without risking your soul. And they are the ones that can potentially pose a threat to Titans. Or does it suppose to represent a lower more commonly reached level and true Primaris Alpha plus (army dominating, Titan destroying) psykers are reserved for higher still levels.

I was initially thinking that where the damage is (something + PL) it should be (something x PL) and limit purchases of Psy Levels to one per level and/or increase the XP costs. But that might still be unbalanced with the rest of the party in the higher levels.

Also the Influence Biomancy power looks like it should be a Telepath power instead. Reaching into someones mind is telepathy not Biomancy.

I was also thinking that maybe there should not be a maximum amount you can 'push'. Push your powers too much and your Daemon food.

Just some thoughts.

Please no scaling with *PL instead of +PL

That kind of scaling is way to fast.

I would agree to an improved version like +(2*PL) to make PL matter more.

As I understood, 10 should usually be the maximum a psykers level can be (besides special exceptions).

This meams for me, that a PR10 Psyker is an Alpha.

Above 10 would be alpha plus.

Is there really anything resembling a concrete idea of what the ratings mean, though? Some authors have Alpha psykers tearing apart titans, some have them as closer to what you see in DH. And IIRC there's one source that calls the EMPEROR an Alpha+ psyker.

It's not really worth comparing things to a rating system with no consistency.

I also think its not very consistent in the sources.

I, myself would have set an alpha at Psy Rating 10. That already is really powerful, left certain DH2 balancing problems in the psy powers aside.

The scaling indeed has to be tweaked and there need to be more psychic powers to give more possibilities.

But it should still scale reasonably.

I thought it might scale to fast to quick. That is why I said

But that might still be unbalanced with the rest of the party in the higher levels.

I can't quite remember the psychic scale, but Alpha was the top. And anything over Alpha was Alpha plus. Examples of Alpha pluses include the Big E, Malcador, and (if memory serves) some Alpha plus rogue psykers in one of the Eisenhorn novels (Hereticus I think).

Maybe there should be a degrees of success overbleed bonus? Some sort of bonus is needed for it to be worth it compared to a gun. Equal damage is not enough when risking your soul.

Note that the August 7 update to the beta tripled the damage from Burning (X) quality (it now starts at 3X) and increased the range for many of the pryro powers.

It mentions in Ascension becoming a Primaris psyker. So re-evaluating the psychic level I would say that level 10 and below are the Beta levels and over 10 the Alpha levels. Being Beta levels the damage does make more sense, though some are underpowered compared to equivilent weapons.

The new Burning (x) quality does help with most Pyro powers though Melta needs to be a bit better (IMHO). Maybe add PL to damage (for 2d10+PL; compared to 1D10+16 for a Meltagun).

I'm pretty sure that the Power Levels reachable by PCs are not remotely close to Alpha or Beta level.

Humans are considered psykers if they are Iota or higher. There is also Theta, Eta, Zeta, Epsilon, Delta and Gamma to cover the range of human psychic ability.

I think PL 10 is maybe Delta or low Gamma. PL 1 is probably Theta or Eta.

I suppose if we want a good FFG endorsed frame of reference, look at The Burning Princess in Ascension's adversaries section. She's stated to be alpha-level. PR 14.

Good memory...

Yes, if she is Alpha with 14, a 10 could be kind of beta at best.

Hmm

If 14 is Alpha level and 1 is presumably Iota (lowest level of psyker able to consciously use their powers), then 2-13 need to cover Theta, Eta, Zeta, Epsilon, Delta, Gamma and Beta.

Maybe say 1 is Iota, 2 is Theta, 3 is Eta, 4 and 5 are Zeta, 6 and 7 are Epsilon, 8 and 9 are Delta, 10 and 11 are Gamma, 12 and 13 are Beta?

Could be around that.

But thats more a rule of thumb, I dont think that they measure Psy-Rating Numbers fluff-wise