In a perfect world with FFG published programs to aid in character creation and play each power could rely upon a mean of Willpower and whatever characteristic was most appropriate. I want to Shape Flesh? Roll against Willpower + Toughness / 2. One can dream.

At any rate, something I think would be lore friendly but perhaps meet a lot of rejection here would be psykers starting with all the powers in their discipline. However , the powers would need to scale, somehow, perhaps with psy rating, to represent weak psykers being ineffectual at the more grandiose uses of their warp manipulation

I say this because in every instance of a Black Library book I've read that has psykers in it they don't use one thing over and over again. Most of the time they seem to have control over some "field" of things that they use differently depending on the situation. Eisenhorn used telepathy to alter and strengthen his interrogation, pick up on people hiding things, force foes to make mistakes in combat. Ravenor was crazy strong and used divination and telepathy in more ways than I could explain here. Patience Kys was a telekine who used her abilities in a multitude of different ways.

Having psykers have "powers" that they have to purchase, while much easier to write, feels incredibly lore-unfriendly to me.

Can I just say that I agree with all that was written here, even the disagreements?

The Psyker rules were one of the very few things I liked about the Old Beta (along with Influence, subtlety and the HW, Origin and Role scheme), and I believe a revamp to the system would be great.

That said, indeed the idea of more flexible psychic powers would definitely be the way to go, I always prefer when the game tends more towards roleplaying then strict rules.

I might be a little difficult to implement, though.

The biggest issue is it allows a fairly creative and lenient GM. People who rely on hard rules would probably struggle with such an abstract approach.

Sadly, while a lore friendly psychic system would be fantastic, it seems like it would require a lot of GM effort to make it work. Having played a bit of the older Mage RPG, which had exactly the type of system you talk about, it suffered from inconsistent abilities between uses and variable power levels that made it difficult to really understand what you could and couldn't attempt to pull off.

Personally I'm quite happy with fixed powers for those that want it, then maybe a side bar explaining how to handle a 'narrative psyker' if the GM wants to run the game that way (especially as by it's very definition a narrative psyker requires less rules).

Sadly, while a lore friendly psychic system would be fantastic, it seems like it would require a lot of GM effort to make it work. Having played a bit of the older Mage RPG, which had exactly the type of system you talk about, it suffered from inconsistent abilities between uses and variable power levels that made it difficult to really understand what you could and couldn't attempt to pull off.

Personally I'm quite happy with fixed powers for those that want it, then maybe a side bar explaining how to handle a 'narrative psyker' if the GM wants to run the game that way (especially as by it's very definition a narrative psyker requires less rules).

I see your point there, and the side bar is not a half bad idea, but as a long time WoD GM, I may be a little partial here. ^^

Sadly, while a lore friendly psychic system would be fantastic, it seems like it would require a lot of GM effort to make it work. Having played a bit of the older Mage RPG, which had exactly the type of system you talk about, it suffered from inconsistent abilities between uses and variable power levels that made it difficult to really understand what you could and couldn't attempt to pull off.

Personally I'm quite happy with fixed powers for those that want it, then maybe a side bar explaining how to handle a 'narrative psyker' if the GM wants to run the game that way (especially as by it's very definition a narrative psyker requires less rules).

I see your point there, and the side bar is not a half bad idea, but as a long time WoD GM, I may be a little partial here. ^^

Absolutely. A good GM can work wonders with a system like the Mage one. As an average GM myself (and often forgetful and sleepy), I like having fixed powers to run in the game as well.

There is certainly room for both camps in the game.

I took one look at nWoD Mage and I knew somone else was going to have to run it. It's too much that can happen.

I've run (oWoD) MtA. Or tried to anyway.

It get's tricky when your group is a mixed bag of physics majors and philosophy majors

I took one look at nWoD Mage and I knew somone else was going to have to run it. It's too much that can happen.

I've run (oWoD) MtA. Or tried to anyway.

It get's tricky when your group is a mixed bag of physics majors and philosophy majors

I would just like to say that I feel you, bros. =)

To address the issues in the 1st beta;

- To much risk, which is unavoidable. Reduces the potency of the powers, even when casted mildly

- Unsanctioned/Sanctioned needed fleshing out

- Influence, the only 'broken' power I can think of.

1) All psykers perils less when casting under their psy rating. I.e. casting 2 under a psykers max rating means double 1's and 2's do not perils. Double 9's always perils!

2) Sanctioned Psykers get; Perils roll is 3D10 (Pick lowest 2 die) + psy rating. Lower chance but still the potential to Have A Bad Day ™

2b) Sanctioned Pyskers active ability (fatepoint) is to spend it to negate a perils. 'The Emperor protects' (Doesn't work when pushing)

3) Unsanctioned Pyskers can push for D5. They have wild power, potential to be much higher but it could be same/worse.

3b) Unsanctioned Pyskers active ability (fatepoint) is to spend a fatepoint to ignore the increased chance of perils when pushing.

4) Influence - To simply add; This power can affect a number of additional people equal to every psy level above the first. (Otherwise the +5/psy lvl you get is dwarfed by the +10 you get for casting it under your max psy rating. The roll itself IS the focus power rolled (which substitutes the normal social skill rule, meaning the modifiers for the focus power rule apply). This way you keep all rules unchanged (good!) whilst making it worthwhile to both under & overcast this power. High level power = 'You do not want to sell me those death sticks, you want to rethink your life'. I don't feel the power is overpowered because, well, Perils is horrible.

5) Assume of course all psykers are hated. Unsanctioned psykers being Humanities greatest threat and persecuted as such (GM guidance - otherwise the game will turn into Pysker fun power team time)

I also liked the first betas psychic rules better.

The powers need some work (especially divination) and some interesting powers could be integrated, where other too similar powers should bemerged.

Also, the scaling by PR needs some love to balance it out.

I would like to get rid of these restricting trees though.

Tom Cruise mentioned some interesting alternatives.

I could also think of having to chose a discipline whenever you increase your psy rating.

This way you gather "Tiers".

With Psy rating 4 you could have unlocked Pyromancy Tier 3 and divination Tier 1.

Psy powers would each belong to a Tier instead of a tree (similar to talents).

Some discipline-less lower psy powers could also be added like in the days of old.

I like the idea to tie certain disciplines to different characteristics, and to use different phenomena table for different disciplines.

I took one look at nWoD Mage and I knew somone else was going to have to run it. It's too much that can happen.

I've run (oWoD) MtA. Or tried to anyway.

It get's tricky when your group is a mixed bag of physics majors and philosophy majors

I would just like to say that I feel you, bros. =)

We had great fun with it, but some of this discussion it spawned were... unreal.

...and probably heretical

A lot of good ideas being thrown around here. I certainly think there is merit in trying to make the psychic powers come off more than just WP. Too often I've seen psykers just max WP and use it to cover all the other parts of the game more effectively than other classes can.

On the other hand (and I have nothing agenst psykers needing more than one stat) we could get some disciplines needing hard to get cheap stats or the discipline using Willpower being overused.

Agreed on the former - the latter is simply a matter of balance. I really, really liked the fact in Black Crusade that a lot of powers used tests on things other than just Willpower - toughness or perception tests for appropriate powers (such as biomancy and divination respectively) just feel right.

Nothing says every power in a discipline has to use the same stat, or that each test has to be the same difficulty. If Biomancy mostly powers off toughness, but telekenisis off willpower, for example, then you'd think a psyker's default attack would be Telekinetic, not Biomantic. However, if one focus power test is Challenging (+0) and one is Easy (+30)....even with your shoddy and expensive-to-improve toughness, the latter is looking more tempting again, isn't it?

Also, as per black crusade, the odd power which uses for its focus power test either your Corruption or Insanity would be cool.

I did like the discipline-specific phenomena.

I say this because in every instance of a Black Library book I've read that has psykers in it they don't use one thing over and over again. Most of the time they seem to have control over some "field" of things that they use differently depending on the situation. Eisenhorn used telepathy to alter and strengthen his interrogation, pick up on people hiding things, force foes to make mistakes in combat. Ravenor was crazy strong and used divination and telepathy in more ways than I could explain here. Patience Kys was a telekine who used her abilities in a multitude of different ways.

True, but that's a matter for describing the powers in such a way as to make them generic and adaptible.

I wholeheartedly support broad disciplines which I put experience into (in the same way I like a 'stealth' skill rather than concealment and silent move and shadowing ), and I would like to see psyker disciplines broadly the same - here is the discipline, here are some examples of what you can do with it and their respective difficulties.

Having Pyrokenisis as a discipline and having one of the applications amongst many being - throw a 'fireball' as an offensive attack, focus power difficult X, damage Y and blast Z per degree of success, makes narrative sense.

That said, it's a matter of game balance drawing a line between "any pyrokine can do anything you can imagine with fire" - which then makes your psychic disciplines a crutch for every other ability in the game that you don't have*, and the other extent, where you divvy the discipline up into abilities so much that as a psyker progresses, he gains such powers as "Fireball I", "Fireball II", "Fireball III", "Slightly Different Colour Fireball III" and "Fireball IV"**

* One of the classic D&D Wizard problems to my mind

** The other classic D&D Wizard problem that annoyingly it manages to suffer from at the same time .

Maybe shapeable attacks?

Where you can use (DoS or WPB or PR or some combination thereof) tobuy from a selection of effects, like Psychic Blast/Barrage/Storm, penetration, adding some multiplier of PR to damage, stuff like that?

I haven't thought this through at all, but... could it work?

Maybe shapeable attacks?

Where you can use (DoS or WPB or PR or some combination thereof) tobuy from a selection of effects, like Psychic Blast/Barrage/Storm, penetration, adding some multiplier of PR to damage, stuff like that?

I haven't thought this through at all, but... could it work?

I think this is one of the best ideas for implementing some flexibility without using a more Mage-like rule system.

You could have, for example, Telekinetic Blast, and require, say, -10 for the roll for Barrage and -20 for Storm.

FATE has a similar mechanic. For every change to the basic use of Powers, you take an additional -1. Extend the range, -1, affect an additional target, -1, add an aspect, -1. I'm familiar with Legends of Anglerre, but I've heard Dresden Files has a more in-depth magic system.

Okay, lots of ideas here, which is good. Sorry in advance for not commenting on them individually.

RE: Different "casting stats", I wouldn't go too wild with it, and I'd limit it to mental stats, with eventual requirements in physical stats for the more taxing stuff.

RE: More flexible powers - personally I rather liked the Black Crusade take on it, where the deeper you went into the Discipline tree, the more specialized the powers got. Any Telekine can assail someone with force, but it takes specific training to precisely manipulate things, and another specific training to forge this basic attack into something better than just generally pushing/pulling people with an unfocused wall of force. I think this creates nice balance between the more open system and psychic disciplines feeling like a random grab-bag of loosely related spells.

RE: Balancing the risk and reward factor of psychic powers. I really like the idea that messing with the Warp is never entirely risk-free, and I'd rather balance it out with powers being more rewarding than by mitigating that risk. I generally believe the original DH1 system had it right, except for details that made the system overpowered quickly, and I feel the old beta system got the risk aspect right, but was too stingy with the rewards and thus felt too weak.

More flexible powers - personally I rather liked the Black Crusade take on it, where the deeper you went into the Discipline tree, the more specialized the powers got. Any Telekine can assail someone with force, but it takes specific training to precisely manipulate things, and another specific training to forge this basic attack into something better than just generally pushing/pulling people with an unfocused wall of force. I think this creates nice balance between the more open system and psychic disciplines feeling like a random grab-bag of loosely related spells.

Agreed. I have to say that - the issue of 'playing the bad guys' (which some people like and others don't - aside, Black Crusade is the one I've liked the most, rules- and concepts-wise.

Balancing the risk and reward factor of psychic powers. I really like the idea that messing with the Warp is never entirely risk-free, and I'd rather balance it out with powers being more rewarding than by mitigating that risk. I generally believe the original DH1 system had it right, except for details that made the system overpowered quickly, and I feel the old beta system got the risk aspect right, but was too stingy with the rewards and thus felt too weak.

Again, agreed. I've no issue with Psykers being powerful, but my concern with DH (especially ascension) and its successors was always with Mid-level and high-level powers being available with the risks curtailled, not with uber-powers being too powerful.

A psyker throwing everything into a pyrokinesis power, loosing control and burning out several rooms of a building is cool (it happened during Joyous Choir, and actually saved the acolytes, albeit at a cost of the psyker spending the rest of the mission in a medicae facility!). Getting to fling your powers without a risk of mishap pushes psychic ability back towards "crutch for anything" superpowers.

Early DH psykers in games we've played tended to be terrified of actually using their abilities. They mostly were around for psynicience, forbidden lore (warp) and an above average resistance to fear and insanity. The powers were more like 'in case of emergency' options...

The original DH psychic system made basically one big mistake - tying power variables to Willpower Bonus rather than Psy Rating, which let psykers decrease casting risk over time while the rewards kept scaling up regardless of the actual PR used to focus.

Then, the whole system went to pieces when someone copy-pasted the power levels rule from RT into Ascension, not taking even a minute to consider the differences in the underlying system, and topped this cake of brokenness with a thick icing of Unnatural Willpower for psykers. Hello, never having to deal with phenomena again when you pass the most difficult powers on your WPB alone and then safely roll 3-5 dice just for overbleed!

There was also the small issue of rolling multiple dice and summing them up being generally more bothersome than checking the results of a percentile die, but that's more a matter of preference than balance.

Okay, lots of ideas here, which is good. Sorry in advance for not commenting on them individually.

RE: Different "casting stats", I wouldn't go too wild with it, and I'd limit it to mental stats, with eventual requirements in physical stats for the more taxing stuff.

RE: More flexible powers - personally I rather liked the Black Crusade take on it, where the deeper you went into the Discipline tree, the more specialized the powers got. Any Telekine can assail someone with force, but it takes specific training to precisely manipulate things, and another specific training to forge this basic attack into something better than just generally pushing/pulling people with an unfocused wall of force. I think this creates nice balance between the more open system and psychic disciplines feeling like a random grab-bag of loosely related spells.

RE: Balancing the risk and reward factor of psychic powers. I really like the idea that messing with the Warp is never entirely risk-free, and I'd rather balance it out with powers being more rewarding than by mitigating that risk. I generally believe the original DH1 system had it right, except for details that made the system overpowered quickly, and I feel the old beta system got the risk aspect right, but was too stingy with the rewards and thus felt too weak.

I don't think I have much to add this conversation right now, I'm quoting this post just to confirm that I believe this might be the best way to move forward with psychic powers.

I confess that what I would love most would be an approach closer to MtA, but I don't think it would mix very well with the WH40K DH OW rules, sadly.

That said, Black Crusade is the only WH core book I haven't read. It looks like I should get to it...

Biomancy is governed by Toughness.

"BY THE POWER INVESTED IN ME BY MY CALLUSES, I HEAL YOU!"

I posted a while back about having each power divided into fettered, unfettered and pushed based on what the power does. Unfettered are all of the narrative uses and only invoke perils risk when used in combat. Unfettered powers are all specifically useful for combat or very obviously combat useful. Unfettered powers also always utilize Psy rating for their effects. Pushed powers are all powered up versions of unfettered powers that increase numbers or add additional effects. This allows plenty of story use for psykers (I had a lot of fun making up cool divination powers, like being able to roll Psy rating to say your character is not surprised by a new revelation and gets +10 due to planing for it. I also themed all of the powers. Divination is knowledge, biomancy is mastery of the body, telepathy is mastery of the mind, telekinesis is technology and control, and pyromancy is destruction and creation. I'd really prefer that FFG use some creativity on the powers, but maybe they're stuck not being able to make up new things.

I'm assuming you meant to write "fettered" for all of the narrative uses.

Maybe shapeable attacks?

Where you can use (DoS or WPB or PR or some combination thereof) tobuy from a selection of effects, like Psychic Blast/Barrage/Storm, penetration, adding some multiplier of PR to damage, stuff like that?

I haven't thought this through at all, but... could it work?

I think both of these are good ideas. Turning Fettered, Unfettered, and Pushed into "Normal use, Combat use, Emergency use" seems to me to strike a good balance between giving options and giving too many options.

I also like the idea of being able to "spend" success for different things. (it reminds me a lot of how psionics work in D&D or magic in l5r). That said, I don't know if DoS are reliable enough to really be a good customization mechanic. It'd be a shame to be like "Oh, I want to use the AoE effect of Telekinesis! Oops, I only just suceeded, so instead of punching everyone with my mind, I punch one guy."

"BY THE POWER INVESTED IN ME BY MY CALLUSES, I HEAL YOU!"

Biomancy is governed by Toughness.

This is why I prefer to stick with Willpower.

It doesn't matter if you're tough, strong or fast to use your powers. Psychic powers are the domains of the Will. It makes no sense that just because a guy can take a few punches and run for a long time he will be able to exert more control over the bodies of others.

It might be interesting to mix Willpower with other attributes, such as understanding a divination or related uses, but not for the main power use, IMHO.

I think both of these are good ideas. Turning Fettered, Unfettered, and Pushed into "Normal use, Combat use, Emergency use" seems to me to strike a good balance between giving options and giving too many options.

I also like the idea of being able to "spend" success for different things. (it reminds me a lot of how psionics work in D&D or magic in l5r). That said, I don't know if DoS are reliable enough to really be a good customization mechanic. It'd be a shame to be like "Oh, I want to use the AoE effect of Telekinesis! Oops, I only just suceeded, so instead of punching everyone with my mind, I punch one guy."

I also agree with you there, but I'd keep the original names, as they have more of a WH40K feel.

And this is the reason why I suggested penalties, instead of DoS. DoS are great for overbleed, though.

It doesn't matter if you're tough, strong or fast to use your powers. Psychic powers are the domains of the Will. It makes no sense that just because a guy can take a few punches and run for a long time he will be able to exert more control over the bodies of others.

I can totally see where you're coming from here. I think it definitely takes a much more abstract view of the characteristics for this sort of thing to be believable. Something I think is fairly positive, but not something the current rules system really supports or suggests.

Like, Toughness works really well for Biomancy if you see it less as just a measure of how much raw punishment you can take, and more the limits you can push yourself to, and your control over biological processes in general. Same goes for Fellowship affecting Telepathy. As a stat measuring raw social ability? Makes absolutely no sense. As a stat measuring your ability to manipulate and understand others at a fairly basic level? Seems to make a whole lot more sense.

I think it's worth widening these definitions for the sake of making Psykers a lot more engaging to build and play. As it stands, when advancing characteristics, there's not much incentive to do anything but pile on the Willpower.

It doesn't matter if you're tough, strong or fast to use your powers. Psychic powers are the domains of the Will. It makes no sense that just because a guy can take a few punches and run for a long time he will be able to exert more control over the bodies of others.

I can totally see where you're coming from here. I think it definitely takes a much more abstract view of the characteristics for this sort of thing to be believable. Something I think is fairly positive, but not something the current rules system really supports or suggests.

Like, Toughness works really well for Biomancy if you see it less as just a measure of how much raw punishment you can take, and more the limits you can push yourself to, and your control over biological processes in general. Same goes for Fellowship affecting Telepathy. As a stat measuring raw social ability? Makes absolutely no sense. As a stat measuring your ability to manipulate and understand others at a fairly basic level? Seems to make a whole lot more sense.

I think it's worth widening these definitions for the sake of making Psykers a lot more engaging to build and play. As it stands, when advancing characteristics, there's not much incentive to do anything but pile on the Willpower.

I think the idea of widening the definitions is great but, just like you said, it does not fit with the other aspects of the game, that are much more literal.

The closer I can think of is using Will + other attributes, but that would just overcomplicate the game, I believe.