Me and some friends of mine just picked up 2nd ed BETA. One guy wants to play a psyker. During character creation he purchased the psyker elite advance and two powers (Influence and Smite). It takes 3 AP to manifest Smite. Description says that psyker also makes an attack. So, here's the question: does the psyker need to spend 1 more AP to make this attack or is it already included in those 3 AP listed above?

Also, is it possible to make more then 1 hit with the Smite? I'm just thinking... The RoF equals Power Level, but if psyker spends all of his action points on manifesting the power and making WP attack no matter what's his Psy Rating he can make only one hit with this Power. It doesn't really makes much sense to me, because when I read the description of Smite I imagine smth like jedi lightning and it should hit a couple of times at least (with the proper training and power level of course). Am I missing something?

AP 3 includes the attack itself, so the Psyker will have 1 AP left over after making the attack.

The Smite power is effectively a normal ranged weapon. Its RoF is the Psyker's Psy Rating (PR), so that's how many hits you can score at most. Per the rate of attack rules on page 201, a psyker with PR 2 would score 2 hits if he succeeded on the focus test by 2 or more degrees of success. Scoring more than 2 degrees of success does not add additional hits because of the RoF rules. Each hit would inflict 1d10+2E damage, pen 1.

So Psyker doesn't need to spend more action points to score more hits? Ri-i-ight, i got it now. So his effective RoF is his PR and that's it... Maybe I was reading the RoF rules wrong. Thanks!

Just have in mind PL not PR. Psyker can increase PL to twise his PR but hardening wp test.

In opposit he can drop PL to 1 making test easy, but limiting it by only one hit posability.

So Psyker doesn't need to spend more action points to score more hits? Ri-i-ight, i got it now. So his effective RoF is his PR and that's it... Maybe I was reading the RoF rules wrong. Thanks!

I've just spend 5 minutes trying to elaborate on that and slowly realising it's really not a very great mechanic.

Pretty much everything else in the system uses a Characteristic or a 0-100 value that functions exactly like a characteristic, as the base value for testing and/or for modifying non-test rolls.

And as an added bonus, it takes about 3 sentences to explain how that works in all necessary detail.

Is there any particular reason the Psychic sub-system is completely different, horribly complicated to explain & just generally feels wildly out of place and inconsistent with the over-all system logic?

- I'm not saying it's terribly complicated or anything, but it really fits like a child's mitten on bigfoot's feet in the rest of the system. Can't we come up with something better?

I suppose the obvious solution would be to "remove" the AP cost (that is, make it work like all other weapons: completely based off the RoF) and change the RoF to something like "PL -2". It would scale a little faster, but Smite could use a boost anyway.

Of course, if the RoF system is being changed, it's a moot point.

That said, I don't think the psychic power system in general is bad off in the beta (ignore the actual powers - just looking at the system)? In fact, I felt that it suited the rest of the system better than in any other edition of 40k RPGs.

Psychic powers do roll against a 0-100 value (usually Willpower, sometimes another one) - exactly the same as other tests. The only difference is the chance of Perils, and the decision for what you want your PL to be.

Am I missing something? What's so bad about the system?

Side note, in response to AlexxW: You cannot Push to twice your PR. You can push to PR+2.

You misunderstood me MagnusPihl.

The rest of the system is basically a Skill test based on Characteristic value with modifiers.

The Psychic sub-system is a Characteristic test with a modifier that itself is derived from Power Rating, and where the derived modifier gets used for things like RoA and Damage.

Don't worry, I do understand exactly how it works, and if pressed and given about 1/10th of the page space RAW uses I can even explain it clearly. But no wonder if people find it confusing on their first read, because it's a distinct break with how just about everything else in the system works.

I'll admit to being in a slightly weird sort of mental space, going on day 3 without sleep, but why can't the regular mechanics be used for the Psychic sub-system?

Take the Smite power, FX. Why not turn it into a Skill-like Talent with 5 tiers, from -10 to +30, where DoF are Phenomena and DoS is strength of the power (damage modifier or whatever) and AP are RoA?

I guess what I'm really asking is: why PR & PL? It doesn't seem like the most elegant mechanic in the world, and doesn't work like anything else does.

A skill-like talent? I'm not trying to be confrontational, but that seems exceptionally unlike anything else in the system. Why shouldn't a Lasgun be a skill-like talent, then? Should everyone have a Smite skill that only Psykers can improve? Does everyone get it at -10 (like all other untrained skills)? What sort of action is it to use?

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but it seems like that raises far more questions than it solves. You also lose a lot of flexibility (you can no longer get phenomena while also succeeding, for one).

I agree that PR/PL is separate from the rest of the system, but I don't think it's that big a deal. It's one number that serves a very specific purpose. The bonuses/penalties to Focus Tests for going below/above your PR are a little confusing, but the rest of the system seems pretty clean to me - much more so than any other iteration of the game.

If anything, I feel that the psychic system is almost (I'm torn here - I like generic systems, too) too similar to the rest of the system. Smite is basically a gun that you fire with WP instead of BS. The PR/PL mechanic is the only thing that sets it apart (and allows for some very cool risk/reward mechanics).

I just wanna check if I got it right... Essentially, when using the Power Smite (or any other ranged weapon with RoF, like an autogun or shotgun), players don't have to spend extra AP to try and hit more? Like, let's say we have a psyker has PR 3, so RoF of his smite is 3. Now he just needs to roll 3 successes to score three hits without spending more AP?

Because in example on how ranged attacks work (page 200) it says:

I just wanna check if I got it right... Essentially, when using the Power Smite (or any other ranged weapon with RoF, like an autogun or shotgun), players don't have to spend extra AP to try and hit more? Like, let's say we have a psyker has PR 3, so RoF of his smite is 3. Now he just needs to roll 3 successes to score three hits without spending more AP?

Because in example on how ranged attacks work (page 200) it says:

"He uses 1 of his action points to shoot, giving him a rate of attack of 4 shots

with the weapon’s rate of fire of 4. His Ballistic Skill is 67, and

with a roll of 12 he scores 5 degrees of success. The maximum

amount of hits he can score is limited to his rate of attack of 4, so

one hit is ignored. If he had spent 2 action points, his rate of attack

would have increased to 8 and he would have scored the 5th hit"

So, apparently it's possible to get more hits if you spend more AP on the attack even if those exceed RoF of the given weapon. Now, if psykers power works just like any other ranged weapon that means that it should be possible to score more hits by spending more AP, however the manifestation cost is 3 AP... It just confuses me really.

You're correct on every count, except the last.That's the part where I think psychic powers are unnecessarily different from normal attacks: You can't spend additional AP on them, because their AP is not decided by their RoF, but rather a static cost.

It could be easily solved by removing the static AP costs and instead rebalancing the RoF.

Mmmm, actualy i dont see limitation on spending aditional ap for raising up RoA for psychic powers. Like with 1/2 you can spend all 4 AP on attack and make it 2 RoA. Just with Smite you need to spend aditional 3 ap wich you very unlikely to have. it just like kvants - you can add AP needed for atack(1 with standart atack, 3 for smite) and add aditional RoF to RoA.

And yeh, befor we realised that Smite is 3ap our psyker was like miniac machinegun.

Normal attacks typically have a specified RoF, and you multiply RoF x AP to give the final RoA. IOW, the final RoA is a variable that the PC can increase by using more AP.

But for psyker attack powers (except Smite), you don't have a fixed RoF and variable RoA, you have a fixed RoA. So you can't spend more AP to increase the RoA. Smite is the exception; its weapon stat block gives a RoF like normal weapons, instead of a RoA. But since using it takes 3 AP, you effectively can't add more AP to it to increase the total RoA.

I agree the whole system is unnecessarily different. Instead of fixing RoA - which is different from how all other weapons work - they could've achieved the exact same impact by giving each psyker attack the "single shot" characteristic.

If anything, I feel that the psychic system is almost (I'm torn here - I like generic systems, too) too similar to the rest of the system. Smite is basically a gun that you fire with WP instead of BS. The PR/PL mechanic is the only thing that sets it apart (and allows for some very cool risk/reward mechanics).

Point taken on the Skill thing, but.. I'd love for the Psychic sub-system to work the same as everything else. To me it injects no flavour at all that it is mechanically different, it just makes it awkward. I mean, I'm sure the mechanics of the sub-system (again, as opposed to the individual powers) could be made to inject flavour/fluffiness. But to me that's really the job of the individual powers, and how and to whom they're available.

Speaking of that, though, I completely agree they're not terribly evocative. Same goes for the Tech-Priest stuffs, incidentally.