Could be intesting indeed, but should be limited to just some very matching occurances.

The current implementation of the psyker is a mess. The powers fluctuate from being incredibly useful to rubbish and the implementation of being a psyker itself is a awkward scale of measuring how you want things and when. The whole strength of the character system seems to be to let you create varied characters, unless you want a psyker which is then turned into a series of strange checks you need to be paying attention to at all times to make sure that your qualifying for the powers you want. Before we get into powers themselves let’s have a look at creating a psyker itself.

The selection of the psyker elite advance is designed around playing as an Astra Telepathica to mystica (as the default choice). This makes you a trained and sanctioned psyker picking up the default set of skills. Firstly there’s the problem of making a career have stat requirements (mystic page says 35 WP while the psyker elite advance requires 40WP). This would be fine under point buy but it seems pretty clear that the game offers dice rolling as its default option given the way homeworld stat bonuses only really matter when your rolling dice (since all of them are +5 to two stats and -5 to one).

This has resulted in a character creation system which can arbitrarily lock off character options because of your dice roll. This can be okay if its specific talents or the like but you cannot play a psyker if you don’t get a 40 in the WP stat. Maybe the mystic overrides this stat requirement though and that’s what it’s there for.

The next problem is that this default setup of Astra Telepathica into Mystic means your actively hurting yourself if you want to go into certain tree powers. Each psychic discipline tree requires Willpower and another stat. As a mystic you get cheap willpower, perception and intelligence. This allows you relatively easy access down the Divination (Perception) and Telekinesis (Intelligence) trees. If you want to go into Biomancy, Pyromancy or Telepathy you are actively harming yourself by becoming a mystic (the obvious go-to option for being a psyker) since the requirements of Toughness, Agility and Fellowship are all very expensive for a mystic.

This leads to the assumption that specific roles are setup for specific psyker trees. A Chirurogen psyker would be good at Biomancy and Telekinesis thanks to their cheap toughness and intelligence or a Heirophant psyker would be good for Telepathy or Biomancy with cheap fellowship, toughness and willpower to make them an overall good psyker.

The problem is that the sanctioned trait has been removed from being a general idea you can attach to a character by inserting the Astra Telepathica background and now you must play a rogue psyker if you want to be someone who is using a tree other than the two the Mystic is good at. This may seem like wanting to purely save xp but as a psyker you really need to. You need so many different things to be capable with the rest of the party particularly with the surprising frequency of stat loss effects in this game.

You need Willpower + Discipline Stat to begin with. You need the incredibly expensive Psy Rating (Psy Rating is more expensive than increasing your least optimised stat). It costs 3500xp to get from PR1 to PR5 for example. You also need to buy powers themselves. This is in addition to covering all the things your powers don’t do to keep up with the part: you need all the usual defensive stuff any of the other party members need like agility or toughness (might combine with a power). You also need appropriate combat skills if you don’t have those already (WS or BS if you’re not in a combat discipline and the combat powers themselves are lacklustre given how they tend to come with a risk attachment). This all racks up to a lot of costs and that’s before even beginning to think about what skills and talents you need to be purchasing.

Now I get to the issue of actually using psychic powers. The idea behind them is that you do something big but it comes with a big risk. The risk is pretty brutal for a psyker, particularly if they push their power to change their percentage to cause a perils from 10% (doubles) to 90% (not doubles). Funnily enough this 10% chance is identical to Dark Heresy 1e where your roll of 9 to peril was still a 10% chance. Adding pushing is a fun idea but there is little benefit to +2 PR at the moment given the lacklustre powers.

The reward should ideally be to create a big change and create a bigger effect than one can cause by doing something safely. That means if I point a gun and shoot someone I should be doing less than a psyker using an offensive power to do the same simply because there is no inherent risk of that action through me. I feel I need to explain this before I start explaining why I think highly or poorly of powers because it’s not about the power itself, it’s about the power being a valid choice compared to doing something mundane. The only other factor that is involved in this is a matter of resources. A psychic power gets a risk because it does not require a resource to be on the character. In the previous example it is a gun and bullets to be able to perform that action.

This means that the high risk ability does not need to completely overriding because it comes with the attached bonus of not needing a ‘thing’ can be a value of the power itself. The problem is if that power is solely based on you not needing to have a ‘thing’ on you then the risk needs to be very small. Unfortunately the current system does not allow you to scale the risk between 10% and 90% chance of perils. It is a purely low or high scenario and the results are purely random with little ability to mitigate outside of using rerolls. This means that powers are virtually never valuable enough to operate purely on the scale of not needing a ‘thing’ unless that item is particularly valuable in and of itself.

I will go through an example in detail first (picking a combat one because it’s easy to equate) before I go through a bunch of powers:

Smite, Biomancy (100xp, 40 WP). For its requirements and cost it’s very easy to grab and as a result is something you just pick and don’t really think about. It’s essentially just like picking up a rank 2 skill given the 40WP requirement comes along with the requirement for being a psyker. It does 1d10+PR damage with Pen 1, RoF: PR and range is 30 * PR. It also costs 3 AP so your whole turn is spent on it.

Looking at this from a rank 1 perspective it is virtually useless. 1d10+1 damage Pen 1. It’s a bad laspistol (Range 80, RoF 1, Damage 1d10 + 3 for Overcharge) and firing the weapon means you can spend more of your AP on multiple shots, aim or other actions rather than committing 3 AP to use it like Smite. You do more damage even if you count the Pen 1, longer range and more actions. Looking at it the only advantage is the power not needing you have a gun so it’s useful if you get put in prison and need to break out or trying to be concealed and the person you’re trying to kill is virtually defenceless anyway. Essentially you buy this power then forget about it to get lower down the Biomancy tree because it’s only remotely useful in niche situation.

Looking at it with PR 5 (roughly rank 5 I would figure if you’re trying to build a relatively functional and fun character) is a bit different but still not really impressive. Smite (Range 150, RoF 5, Damage: 1d10+5 Pen1). What makes the power really fancy is the high RoF that keeps getting higher as it advances but it’s not impressive because it costs 3 AP to use it. The power has promoted itself to a lasgun now. A Lasgun(Range 160, RoF 2, Damage: 1d10+5 with Overcharge). Smite does have pen 1but if the lasgun uses 3 AP on the attack it gets 6 shots which is more than psychic power and slightly longer range. Again, Smite’s only advantage is that you don’t need to be carrying a lasgun on you. This is particularly important as by rank 5 you can very easily be carrying around much better equipment and weapons than a lasgun and it has costed you virtually nothing and you’re not at risk when firing it.

The only thing I have not talked about is how the psyker might use Push to help the power with +2 PR. A psyker with PR1 can push to PR3 meaning the smite (Range 90, RoF 3, Damage: 1d10+3 Pen1). It now does as much damage and has the same RoF as the laspistol with Pen 1 and slightly more range. You also automatically cause a perils so you can pretend you have a laspistol.

Doing the same with the PR 5 is a bit better bringing it to PR 7 meaning Smite(Range 210, RoF 7, Damage: 1d10+7 Pen1) gets a big range boost and hits the threshold where RoF starts to become hard to actually use up all those extra hits but it still has more than the lasgun. Damage 1d10+7 Pen 1 is definitely more than a lasgun but its only just keeping up with something like a Boltgun or a hot-shot lasgun which do not come with the automatic perils of the warp problem.

EDIT: This is all before I start pointing out that any time your pushing your getting a -20 to actually trigger the power so while the numbers go up the actual chance of anything positive coming out of it is decreased.

Yeah, something needs to be changed for sure. I would not mind changing Ap cost of most psychic weapon equivalent attacks to more resemble what they are representing. 3AP for smite is just as abusive as the 1/2 and 1/3 and 1/4 RoA stuff we see in armoury.

Scaling is at 1d10+2*PL for damage might put it in a better place, although it would truly be frightening at Rank 7+ or so.

Possibly also you could do 1d10+PL+Tb damage since it is biomancy. This would also almost certainly not get quite so high later and be higher earlier, which is pretty good. Another possibility would be Wb instead of Tb if you prefer.

Yeah, something needs to be changed for sure. I would not mind changing Ap cost of most psychic weapon equivalent attacks to more resemble what they are representing. 3AP for smite is just as abusive as the 1/2 and 1/3 and 1/4 RoA stuff we see in armoury.

Scaling is at 1d10+2*PL for damage might put it in a better place, although it would truly be frightening at Rank 7+ or so.

Possibly also you could do 1d10+PL+Tb damage since it is biomancy. This would also almost certainly not get quite so high later and be higher earlier, which is pretty good. Another possibility would be Wb instead of Tb if you prefer.

This would be a bad idea to tie stats into the scaling damage. Stats are cheaper to advance than PL is particularly if the stat is one of your role's cheaper ones. Therfore it would start high and scale even further since the stat is going to be benefiting you in other areas.

The whole idea behind adding different stat restrictions to powers was to make it harder for the psyker to just dump all their xp into 1 stat. They now have to spread it out but unfortunately the powers are all a huge mess and they dont have anything to do that doesn't put them at huge risk but play a worse version of the other classes.

What if powers scaled according to characteristic bonus but were capped by PR?

Yeah, something needs to be changed for sure. I would not mind changing Ap cost of most psychic weapon equivalent attacks to more resemble what they are representing. 3AP for smite is just as abusive as the 1/2 and 1/3 and 1/4 RoA stuff we see in armoury. Scaling is at 1d10+2*PL for damage might put it in a better place, although it would truly be frightening at Rank 7+ or so. Possibly also you could do 1d10+PL+Tb damage since it is biomancy. This would also almost certainly not get quite so high later and be higher earlier, which is pretty good. Another possibility would be Wb instead of Tb if you prefer.

A PR7 SHOULD be frightening. And as you run the risk of a 2d10+7 effect, it is only fair I think.

If you push, you could get this frightening effect also with PR5 +2, but your risk goes up --> would fit nicely.

Powers themselves now. I'll start with Biomancy

Smite I covered in detail above.

Influence

It blows my mind this power exists. It replaces any skill with this power and gets a +5 per PR. ANY skill to influence another person. Turns out the psyker may as well not buy skills any more. It costs 100xp, practically nothing and it uses a willpower skill check. Every psyker is always going to be constantly bumping their willpower to max and often keep their PR going up when they can. That means they are guaranteed to be the best talky character in the game and it simply comes down to a case of the party checking if they have multiple Adeptus Astra Telepathica backgrounds to make sure there are plenty of spare rerolls to go around while the psyker just shoves his face through every conversation.

Enfeeble

Seems reasonable although its worthless until you have PR 2 and can actually start flipping their toughness and strength down by 10s. By PR 6 the power starts getting very out of hand dropping a target by 30 points. It seems designed just to a boss so everyone can do more damage to it. It gets very dumb by PR10 when you drop targets by 50 essentially just targeting and instant killing anything thats not a supernatural entity. Again this is just showing off the crazy scaling issues. I guess that works out.

Life Leech

This power is legitimately hilarious. It seems entirely built around the players hiring some thug or no-name NPC to be wondering around with them for the psyker to just tap life leech on whenever they need to take a test and then sustaining that power forever. The is one of those powers thats pretty useless until your PR 4 where your getting a full +10 to every stat so theres that downside atleast. By PR10 its a +25 to every stat but your probably rolling around with 80+ by then at least so its not a big deal at all. Also as it reads currently it provides no bonus with PR 1.

Haemorrhage

For being one of the bottom powers of the tree its kinda terrible. In concept it sounds cool and doesn't really get too much of a benefit from high PR (except for if your not in melee or something but you still need to be pretty close for the bonus to work) and lets you theoretically drop a horde of guys. Except you need to keep casting and therefore keep risking perils. Why would you want to do that exactly? I mean for any kind of multikill scenario you either need to have the group carefully split up their attacks (which is bad idea since focus fire is important) or your just killing mooks. Weak power that is something that drastically needs to be improved.

Shape Flesh

The fluff part of it seems to imply that it does very little until you have PR7 to make big changes. Essentially the power just needs to be split into 'be someone else' or 'mimic someone' since those are the two real stages your shooting for. Make yourself look different or make yourself look like a specific person. I think the requirements of it should be brought down a bit because going to the 'copy someone else' phase at PR10 seems a bit harsh (thats 13,500xp to get PR1 to PR10 for reference).

Endurance

Your basic heal then. The funniest part about this power is it actually gets more exhausting to the psyker the more powerful he is. A weak psyker can walk up to someone and heal him and only gets 1 fatigue. A PR10 psyker can walk up and heal and it gets him 5 fatigue. The fatigue needs to be relative to the amount of targets hes healing. Seems like the power is designed to be used before bed time anyway.

Warp Speed

This is only to be useful for specific psykers who dont get agility cheap enough to want to improve. Even still by PR10 your getting 50 agility out of it so thats pretty funny. Guess it means you dont need to bother improving it beyond 50 if your going down the biomancy tree. Its 500xp for it which seems expensive for its worth particularly when you look at Iron Arm.

Iron Arm

This power is silly. Its another power where your hurting yourself as your get more powerful by making the agility penalty increase. You want to be having atleast 50 agility before picking this up as with PR 5 your already dropping it by 25 agility for the toughness and strength. Super wierdly situational. I would make the agility penalty a little less hampering as the PR10 issue gives you -50 agility is still present. I guess the idea is to active iron arm and warp speed together to cancel out the penalty for the cost of 2 AP per turn? I don't know, seems like a bad idea overall.

A PR7 SHOULD be frightening. And as you run the risk of a 2d10+7 effect, it is only fair I think.

If you push, you could get this frightening effect also with PR5 +2, but your risk goes up --> would fit nicely.

As I pointed out though its not frightening. Your barely more than a lasgun. Who cares?

What if powers scaled according to characteristic bonus but were capped by PR?

That doesn't do anything since we are already just capped by buying PR to enhance your powers.That just reinforces the issue of being a psyker requiring you to have done the work figuring out what the 'right' role is for the two trees you want to get.

I would call 1d10+7*2 frightening enough. On average it has 20 damage of which maybe 7-8 are soaked.

Much better than a lasgun.

With a PR10+ Push 2 this would be 1d10+12*2 --> a hit that quite well can one-hit-slay a target

You raise a lot of good points, kingcom. On the topic of characteristic requirements, though, I don't think there's a problem:

The 35 WP for a Mystic is a suggested value. They suggest that you won't like the role if you have less than that, but it's not a requirement.

For Elite Advances, it specifically states that prerequisites aren't used if a starting role gives you an Elite Advance for free. It would only matter if you were trying to take a Psyker advance as a non-mystic, in which case it wouldn't take you long to buy the required Willpower advances.

I would call 1d10+7*2 frightening enough. On average it has 20 damage of which maybe 7-8 are soaked.

Much better than a lasgun.

With a PR10+ Push 2 this would be 1d10+12*2 --> a hit that quite well can one-hit-slay a target

Where are you getting the X2 from? As in your saying that it should always be psy rating X2 for the damage scale?

That just makes the push still not very useful as raw damage is worse way to kill things than to negate/buff stuff to crazy levels. I mean you could do 1d10+24 or you could just reduce their strength and toughness by 50 (PR10 *5) and have them just pop.

Also that damage makes push pretty unappealing for how big the risk is.

Linear scaling damage doesn't work particularly well in general when your not doing the same with other types of things next to it. Theres going to constantly be weird jank in the numbers which stop it being useful. To make powers work they could just have the default + PR as normal but then fiddle with each power's specific numbers to make them work. Give each power a reason for being useful much like in previous games. Take the Doombolt from Black Crusade. Its damage is nothing amazing particularly at low level but it has Pen 8 right off the bat. It is THE power to use when you go up against an armoured target (I know about molten beam I was using an example).

This would be a bad idea to tie stats into the scaling damage. Stats are cheaper to advance than PL is particularly if the stat is one of your role's cheaper ones. Therfore it would start high and scale even further since the stat is going to be benefiting you in other areas.

The whole idea behind adding different stat restrictions to powers was to make it harder for the psyker to just dump all their xp into 1 stat. They now have to spread it out but unfortunately the powers are all a huge mess and they dont have anything to do that doesn't put them at huge risk but play a worse version of the other classes.

On the contrary, by scaling on several stats you force diversification of xp spending. Characteristic advances are already capped and limited to a certian pace fo advance and you can bet that a psyker will be maxing WP for at least a while. But if you have Smite be something like 1d10+PL+Tb you get some of the damage boost GauntZero wants (and I agree is sorely needed) at low levels without quite as much crazy damage as PL*2 will be at high levels. Psykers will advance PL. But T is expensive, and of course it wouldn't be T scaling for each power. Telepathy attack would scale with PL+Ib perhaps.

If you want a more moderate solution you could even go with 1d10+Wb or 1d10+PL and then have the Pen scale with Tb or the like. Pen is not nearly so good as damage given its situational value.

What if powers scaled according to characteristic bonus but were capped by PR?

The idea is to address the lack of viability, not add more cost without more gain.

A PR7 SHOULD be frightening. And as you run the risk of a 2d10+7 effect, it is only fair I think.

If you push, you could get this frightening effect also with PR5 +2, but your risk goes up --> would fit nicely.

I agree, it should be. I also agree that I want push to matter, especially given how risky the current tables are.

On the subject of the other powers:

I agree Influence is broken silly good.

Life leech is a cool concept but needs a rework, agree.

Hemorrhage is UP. perhaps make it scale with wounds? A target with more than one wound ought to bleed more. I would love to see it increase wounds to critical wounds, that would be interesting if it could be made both worthwhile and not OP.

Shape Flesh does scale too slowly.

Endurance begs to be fettered I think, and is totally a bed time power.

Iron Arm and Warp Speed are wonky and need to be reworked, I totally agree.

The current implementation of the psyker is a mess. The powers fluctuate from being incredibly useful to rubbish and the implementation of being a psyker itself is a awkward scale of measuring how you want things and when. The whole strength of the character system seems to be to let you create varied characters, unless you want a psyker which is then turned into a series of strange checks you need to be paying attention to at all times to make sure that your qualifying for the powers you want. Before we get into powers themselves let’s have a look at creating a psyker itself.

The selection of the psyker elite advance is designed around playing as an Astra Telepathica to mystica (as the default choice). This makes you a trained and sanctioned psyker picking up the default set of skills. Firstly there’s the problem of making a career have stat requirements (mystic page says 35 WP while the psyker elite advance requires 40WP). This would be fine under point buy but it seems pretty clear that the game offers dice rolling as its default option given the way homeworld stat bonuses only really matter when your rolling dice (since all of them are +5 to two stats and -5 to one).

This has resulted in a character creation system which can arbitrarily lock off character options because of your dice roll. This can be okay if its specific talents or the like but you cannot play a psyker if you don’t get a 40 in the WP stat. Maybe the mystic overrides this stat requirement though and that’s what it’s there for.

The next problem is that this default setup of Astra Telepathica into Mystic means your actively hurting yourself if you want to go into certain tree powers. Each psychic discipline tree requires Willpower and another stat. As a mystic you get cheap willpower, perception and intelligence. This allows you relatively easy access down the Divination (Perception) and Telekinesis (Intelligence) trees. If you want to go into Biomancy, Pyromancy or Telepathy you are actively harming yourself by becoming a mystic (the obvious go-to option for being a psyker) since the requirements of Toughness, Agility and Fellowship are all very expensive for a mystic.

This leads to the assumption that specific roles are setup for specific psyker trees. A Chirurogen psyker would be good at Biomancy and Telekinesis thanks to their cheap toughness and intelligence or a Heirophant psyker would be good for Telepathy or Biomancy with cheap fellowship, toughness and willpower to make them an overall good psyker.

The problem is that the sanctioned trait has been removed from being a general idea you can attach to a character by inserting the Astra Telepathica background and now you must play a rogue psyker if you want to be someone who is using a tree other than the two the Mystic is good at. This may seem like wanting to purely save xp but as a psyker you really need to. You need so many different things to be capable with the rest of the party particularly with the surprising frequency of stat loss effects in this game.

You need Willpower + Discipline Stat to begin with. You need the incredibly expensive Psy Rating (Psy Rating is more expensive than increasing your least optimised stat). It costs 3500xp to get from PR1 to PR5 for example. You also need to buy powers themselves. This is in addition to covering all the things your powers don’t do to keep up with the part: you need all the usual defensive stuff any of the other party members need like agility or toughness (might combine with a power). You also need appropriate combat skills if you don’t have those already (WS or BS if you’re not in a combat discipline and the combat powers themselves are lacklustre given how they tend to come with a risk attachment). This all racks up to a lot of costs and that’s before even beginning to think about what skills and talents you need to be purchasing.

How about a skill/talent for each discipline? Discipline Mastery sound good?

On the contrary, by scaling on several stats you force diversification of xp spending. Characteristic advances are already capped and limited to a certian pace fo advance and you can bet that a psyker will be maxing WP for at least a while. But if you have Smite be something like 1d10+PL+Tb you get some of the damage boost GauntZero wants (and I agree is sorely needed) at low levels without quite as much crazy damage as PL*2 will be at high levels. Psykers will advance PL. But T is expensive, and of course it wouldn't be T scaling for each power. Telepathy attack would scale with PL+Ib perhaps.

If you want a more moderate solution you could even go with 1d10+Wb or 1d10+PL and then have the Pen scale with Tb or the like. Pen is not nearly so good as damage given its situational value.

You already have a big diversification of spending as disciplines tend to only cover one specific skillset that you need to bump the stat up for anyway AND have to spend it on psy rating. This is my complaint, that you have a huge xp tax to do your thing. If your going into biomancy your going to be picking a role that gets cheap toughness so you can keep maxing it out until your I in the clear at least. Pick a hierophant, cheap toughness and willpower, this problem is now gone and you just have a bigger tax for the psyker to keep advancing in his field. Given the way the current powers are set up you want hit about 60 strength and toughness and close the same for agility to keep your numbers solid and boostable(through the two +stat powers) in the future.

Adding each stat to the actual act just means your forgettting even further about xp as you are essentially directed to max out your stat alongside willpower which means your getting even less diversified. If you start splitting things up further and adding multiple stats to the same discipline then the player is just going to ignore abilities even further and pick his WP + Stat to max out.

How about a skill/talent for each discipline? Discipline Mastery sound good?

I'm not entirely sure what this is going to do or what problem its solving.

Adding each stat to the actual act just means your forgettting even further about xp as you are essentially directed to max out your stat alongside willpower which means your getting even less diversified. If you start splitting things up further and adding multiple stats to the same discipline then the player is just going to ignore abilities even further and pick his WP + Stat to max out.

Actually, I am not imagining that they would all be maxed out, but rather giving psykers buffs that cannot feasibly all be maxed out. My suggestions go hand in hand with being additions. I do not suggest only 1d10+Tb for smite because it would exacerbate the very problem you suggest a weakness I agree is already present. Rather, add it as an additional scaling feature. This at once provides improved performance, build diversity, and fla vour while also achieving the goal of giving psykers more bang for their massive pile of spent xp bucks.

In short, I suggest more because it creates choice, but I in no way wish to increase xp cost for current (inadequate) power levels. Making flat, near-zero numbers scale 1:1 with new characteristic bonuses is a buff even if you spend 0 additional xp.

How about a skill/talent for each discipline? Discipline Mastery sound good?

I'm not entirely sure what this is going to do or what problem its solving.

I think the suggestion was meant to be that instead of buying powers individually from each tree you would merely buy a talent which would grant you access to the entire discipline.

If so I kind of like it but would honestly just prefer decreased xp cost across the board for all powers and for Psy Rating. I feel like much of the xp sink is that like other classes you require a key characteristic or two to perform, a key skill or two, and a selection of talents, but then you also have to buy powers and Psy Rating for xp. At the very least some of the powers are not considerably different from requisitioning weapons from a game balance perspective. yes, they are different. Yes they have advantages. But from a matter of character potential, xp efficiency, etc. they are pretty equivalent. Making them cost xp is necessary, but reducing the costs to more palatable levels would alleviate much of the problem.

As an example, perhaps make Psy rating cost 100 xp base multiplied by previous level and cap its advance to not exceeding character rank. Similarly, make the powers be a flat 100 or 200 xp. The prerequisites, quantity of powers, and required characteristic numbers are limit enough.

Obviously you can disagree about the specific numbers. No problem, but the principle stands; decrease the xp black hole to a more workable level.

Actually, I am not imagining that they would all be maxed out, but rather giving psykers buffs that cannot feasibly all be maxed out. My suggestions go hand in hand with being additions. I do not suggest only 1d10+Tb for smite because it would exacerbate the very problem you suggest a weakness I agree is already present. Rather, add it as an additional scaling feature. This at once provides improved performance, build diversity, and flavour while also achieving the goal of giving psykers more bang for their massive pile of spent xp bucks.

In short, I suggest more because it creates choice, but I in no way wish to increase xp cost for current (inadequate) power levels. Making flat, near-zero numbers scale 1:1 with new characteristic bonuses is a buff even if you spend 0 additional xp.

I'm not understanding this clearly so perhaps you can explain to me like this. What is the damage for Smite under your change?

As an example, perhaps make Psy rating cost 100 xp base multiplied by previous level and cap its advance to not exceeding character rank.

Its almost as if rank advancements and limiting skill/talent/power selections to it were a good way to go about doing this...

I'm not understanding this clearly so perhaps you can explain to me like this. What is the damage for Smite under your change?

I have kicked around a few ideas in this thread, and smite is actually just an example, something similar ought to be done to other "weapon equivalent" powers, but my suggestions would be something along the lines of:

1d10+PL+Tb

1d10+PL; Tb Pen

1d10+PL; 1/2Tb Pen

1d10+Wb; Tb Pen

1d10+Wb+PL

etc.

This is in contrast to the existing:

1d10+PL; Pen 1

or in contrast to the suggestion I have seen elsewhere of:

1d10+PL*2

Of course you can also balance around RoF and range but those are probably fine. I would decrease AP cost to attack with it, but then I am a fan of reducing all attacks to 1AP for the most part and letting RoF or special qualities govern limits on how many AP you can spent and what your final max RoA would be. This is a separate if related concern, however.

Other powers could be balanced in a similar fashion. I could imagine Pb pen being added to assail to represent targeting weak points, for example, or even a caveat that different projectiles might add bonuses to Pen or damage at GM discretion to encourage clever use.

I have kicked around a few ideas in this thread, and smite is actually just an example, something similar ought to be done to other "weapon equivalent" powers, but my suggestions would be something along the lines of:

1d10+PL+Tb

1d10+PL; Tb Pen

1d10+PL; 1/2Tb Pen

1d10+Wb; Tb Pen

1d10+Wb+PL

etc.

This is in contrast to the existing:

1d10+PL; Pen 1

or in contrast to the suggestion I have seen elsewhere of:

1d10+PL*2

Of course you can also balance around RoF and range but those are probably fine. I would decrease AP cost to attack with it, but then I am a fan of reducing all attacks to 1AP for the most part and letting RoF or special qualities govern limits on how many AP you can spent and what your final max RoA would be. This is a separate if related concern, however.

Other powers could be balanced in a similar fashion. I could imagine Pb pen being added to assail to represent targeting weak points, for example, or even a caveat that different projectiles might add bonuses to Pen or damage at GM discretion to encourage clever use.

Yea and my point is that by integrating the toughness into it too your encouraging the player to max out their toughness too to get the most out of their powers given its super useful to protect yourself and its cheaper than buying psy rating.

Combat for other classes work with 2 stats, WS/BS and Str or Pen . Agility gets slotted in their for the strength sometimes. With psychic powers you therfore need 2 stats (WP + something) and Psy Rating xp tax helps to make the psykers ability to not worry about being unlucky with influence rolls and being able to use multiple types of powers keeps it going. Add 3 stats + PR seems excessive.

The solution is to reintroduce overbleed. Give each power an additional effect that is applied if you score X DoS or greater. This would improve effectiveness at higher levels overall.

If you combined this with removing the penalty to your Focus power test when Pushing, it would also make Pushing a lot more viable.

Problem woth this is, if you fetter your powers you get a bonus on the roll currently.

That means, that overbleed would indirectly push your powers...

Problem woth this is, if you fetter your powers you get a bonus on the roll currently.

That means, that overbleed would indirectly push your powers...

Maybe remove the completely nonsensical penalty for pushing your powers then?

I really think it is ok as is, just PR scaling should be improved so that a higher PR matters a little more.

I really think it is ok as is, just PR scaling should be improved so that a higher PR matters a little more.

Pushing makes it harder to use a power. That is really nonsensical. 90% perils chance to increase your fail rate. For me to want to do this the damage would need to be astronomically higher.

A 'risk' should come with a 'reward' not a 'penalty'.

A 'risk' should come with a 'reward' not a 'penalty'.

Exactly. There is almost no reason to Push, as it is currently more difficult and more dangerous to do so. Simply removing the focus test penalty will make Pushing more viable.