Are all characters assumed to have Rank 1 in skill? So with your first advance do you buy Rank 1 or Rank 2 in a skill?

Everyone starts at Rank 1, yes.

If your background gives it to you, your at rank 2 otherwise everything is rank 1.

If your background gives it to you, your at rank 2 otherwise everything is rank 1.

This. Bearing in mind, Rank 1 is actually just a fancy name for "Untrained".

In contrast to the former Untrained, it gives only -10 though.

-15 would be more appropriate in my eyes.

Considering they're very open areas of competency, instead of specific skills, I'd disagree. If the skill lineup was closer to what it used to be I'd definitely agree, but with how open each skill is, I'm pretty happy with a minor penalty.

I think it is a little too easy, given that you get it "for free".

It is a field you are improvising in, as you never had any training or deeper experience with it.

Given that even the attributes are 5 higher in average than in DH1 and are more flexible to increase, this is quite a change towards DH1 penalties. A bit too much.

Especially critical with Psyniscience, which really shouldnt be available to non-psykers at all.

Maybe non-Psyker AAT characters can be the exception - but all others shouldnt be able to get it even on rank 1.

I'm okay with Psyniscience being usable untrained - psychic power isn't foreign to people - it's related to the connection everyone soul has to the immaterial. It does seem that -10 isn't enough though for using it untrained.

I'm very confident I've seen cases of mundane Inquisitors being able to pick up on warp phenomena, in some Black Library material. The specific novels don't come to mind, but I think it's Abnett stuff. It's not too ridiculous for The Warp to be a scientifically observable phenomenon, to some extent. Remember all humans are warp sensitive to a minor degree.

But I still would differ between an Inquisitor and the common guy from your average joe's neighborhood.

Because at the moment, if you are a psyker (you do not even need to use your powers), and you walk along a street in a hive, EVERYONE has the chance to detect that you are a psyker. Good luck to you.

CHances are even around 20% I would say, PER PERSON.

Are they going to be dedicating the effort to scan over every single person they encounter, though? It's ridiculous to assume all these hive dwellers have nothing to do but carefully examine every single person they pass for warp taint.

I'm very confident I've seen cases of mundane Inquisitors being able to pick up on warp phenomena. It's not too ridiculous for The Warp to be a scientifically observable phenomenon, to some extent. Remember all humans are warp sensitive to a minor degree.

Yes the warp is "a scientifically observable phenomenon" but a psyniscience test is used to obtain very specific information the fluff doesn't support that non-psykers should be able to obtain.

Think of it like this: an ambulance with howling sirens drives by a PC at full speed, but just out of sight of the PC. Assuming the PC is sufficiently familiar with the sound of the siren to identify it as an ambulance, is sufficiently familiar with the Doppler effect under local conditions and is sufficiently bright to use all of this information on the fly, then the PC may be able to say something fairly accurate about what made the sound and how fast it was going. Given time and the relevant technological assistance pretty much anyone could do the same, likely with even greater accuracy.

But with psyniscience even a PC who has no way to know what makes the sound of the sirens, who has no idea what the Doppler effect is, or is even aware that ambulances exist... Can divine that it was a siren going at X Mph. Or, well, the PC can do the equivalent with warp related stuff.

Warp Nature lets the PC determine psy ratings, the identity of daemons (I'm guessing that's a typo & should say nature, by the way, considering how extremely unbalanced it would be if any old psyker could command daemons with a successful psyniscience roll), and identify any number of warp phenomena in the PCs immediate vicinity.

Warp Positioning lets a PC locate and track warp phenomena.

I'm all for giving PCs a chance to observe more or less subtle inexplicable physical/realspace effects whether they're caused by the warp or not, but the observe skill already covers that. Indeed, the basic difference between psyniscience and observe, seems to be that observe covers realspace while psyniscience covers the warp.

Exactly this.

And currently 1 out of 5 average joes can do that. Great.