Hello Guyz,

One question to you.

What do you think are the currently most unbalanced Psy Powers and why ?

Please name the 3 psy powers that are the most overpowered and the 3 that are the most underpowered in your opinion.

GZ

Overpowered: Influence (which is a Biomancy power why. BTW) and Telepathic Link (to versatile as it stands).

Underpowered: Most of the Divination discipline. Not that they're necessarily underpowered but they are all too focused on giving minor bonuses to combat. Divination needs more of a investigation slant.

Only powers my players have used are Telepathic Link and mind wipe. The one using it has been using telepathic link non stop, it basically runs rough shot over social interaction.

Only powers my players have used are Telepathic Link and mind wipe. The one using it has been using telepathic link non stop, it basically runs rough shot over social interaction.

I also think it should be divided into "Telepathy" and "MInd scan" / "Mind probe" again.

Only powers my players have used are Telepathic Link and mind wipe. The one using it has been using telepathic link non stop, it basically runs rough shot over social interaction.

I also found that Telepathic Link was used constantly, especially to back up Inquiry/Interrogation tests. I don't mind that too much, but even I thought it was just too easy as it stood. I much prefer the older Mind Probe version where if you wanted to lift answers out of someones head, you needed to put some effort into it.

Agreed, Telepathic Link is way too versatile, especially considering Mind Probe was really expensive and had a lot of prerequisites.

Influence is okay imo, because to really be equivalent to a social character, a psyker with influence needs all of the social talents as well (at which point he might as well have rolled a character with high fellowship and be done with it). Influence is good for convincing a single guard to let your friends into the gouvernor's palace to attend the dinner party, but you can't use it to sway the angry mob like a dedicated social character can.

Also, while they may not exactly be underpowered, I really don't like pretty much the entire Pyromancy discipline. Cauterise seems a little unspectacular for being tier 3 and costing 300xp, and spontaneous combustion, flame breath and sunburst are basically 3 iterations of the same power, which just seems bland and uninspired (especially considering their descriptions are still beta 1, i.e. a spray and a nova power)

Spontaneous combustion can be much more imo.

It allows you to set something on fire - much more precise than flame breath or sunburst.

You could ignite a spark in a promethium canister, in a grenade, in a bolter shell, in a plasma weapon...interesting possibilities...

I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned the Unholy Trinity of Spam yet. Crush, Hallucination and Horrify are all excellent with taking out opponents with a single successful use and the psyker can spam them infinitely on Fettered level because their effects are still very good with 1/2 PR too.

Also, a tanky psyker can use Fire Shield to mess up his enemies big time: for each hit he causes PR energy damage on the attacker, ignoring armor and TB .

Maybe the new fatigue mechanic could be used with the one or other power instead of making physical damage ? Crush ?

Maybe the new fatigue mechanic could be used with the one or other power instead of making physical damage ? Crush ?

The problem is not with the physical damage. Crush causes Snare (renders you Helpless, good luck with fighting enemies while you have that condition); Hallucination causes, well, Hallucinate (see an example in my Beta playtesting thread); and Terrify makes you roll on that awesome Shock Table.

Maybe the new fatigue mechanic could be used with the one or other power instead of making physical damage ? Crush ?

The problem is not with the physical damage. Crush causes Snare (renders you Helpless, good luck with fighting enemies while you have that condition); Hallucination causes, well, Hallucinate (see an example in my Beta playtesting thread); and Terrify makes you roll on that awesome Shock Table.

Far as I can tell, the only problem with Hallucinate is you had a bad experience with it in playtest. It's a crap-shoot... could be funny, could be deadly. If there is a problem it's with the Hallucinate table, not the power.

For Crush, I do wonder... since the power can't be sustained, does the Snare effect last for more then one round? I think no, but nothing in the description says so.

Terrify... maybe +10 per PR on the Shock table is a bit much. Otherwise, practically speaking not much worse than Pinning... maybe not as good.

Ultimately, none of these impress me much because all of these are effects that can be achieved without psy powers.

^The problem is that the psyker can spam those powers with impunity. Yeah, maybe Hallucination is a crap-shoot, but use it in every round and sooner or later you will have the better results.

And Snare is up until you break it. It is in the quality's description. Doesn't make much sense in relation of Crush, but it can't be helped I guess .

^The problem is that the psyker can spam those powers with impunity. Yeah, maybe Hallucination is a crap-shoot, but use it in every round and sooner or later you will have the better results.

And Snare is up until you break it. It is in the quality's description. Doesn't make much sense in relation of Crush, but it can't be helped I guess .

Which brings us back to a question one of my playtesters asked me... how often can you retry a psychic power? It seemed to him there ought to a limit... a cool-down period in his words... between using the same power. Not sure if it's a good idea but...

As for Snare... this is a case where I think we need some clarification of the rules. If one were to apply logic (try it, it won't hurt much) than since the source of the Snare effect has ended, then the effect has also ended. It applies equally to a webber... if something dissolves the web, the effect ends.

^The problem is that the psyker can spam those powers with impunity. Yeah, maybe Hallucination is a crap-shoot, but use it in every round and sooner or later you will have the better results.

And Snare is up until you break it. It is in the quality's description. Doesn't make much sense in relation of Crush, but it can't be helped I guess .

Which brings us back to a question one of my playtesters asked me... how often can you retry a psychic power? It seemed to him there ought to a limit... a cool-down period in his words... between using the same power. Not sure if it's a good idea but...

This would definitely improve psychic powers for me. Too many of them can just be spammed every turn at fettered. I'd much rather they went the route that they did things that where difficult to do any other way, but that it's risky and has downside (cool downs, self fatigue, self damage, corruption, stuff like that).

Answer the original question:-

* Influence - Why play a dedicated social character when you can just have this power plus all the other great psychic stuff too),

* Precognition - Outside of combat, why not just cast this before every check that every character makes (even if you are strict with the timing, you'd still be doing it far too often), it's not even like failing is a problem, just keep trying until you pass.

* Dominate - Because of the over powered +5PR system, added to the fact that most of the time the psyker will have a higher willpower (it'll be their primary stat after all) it's all to easy to nullify a single powerful opponent, causing the game to increasingly because boring and unbelievable as every powerful enemy has to have anti psy/null stuff to last more than a round of combat. Needs to be at least -30 to the psyker to make it fair.

Personally don't think any of the powers are so underpowered that they'd need to be increased in power.

^The problem is that the psyker can spam those powers with impunity. Yeah, maybe Hallucination is a crap-shoot, but use it in every round and sooner or later you will have the better results.

And Snare is up until you break it. It is in the quality's description. Doesn't make much sense in relation of Crush, but it can't be helped I guess .

Which brings us back to a question one of my playtesters asked me... how often can you retry a psychic power? It seemed to him there ought to a limit... a cool-down period in his words... between using the same power. Not sure if it's a good idea but...

As for Snare... this is a case where I think we need some clarification of the rules. If one were to apply logic (try it, it won't hurt much) than since the source of the Snare effect has ended, then the effect has also ended. It applies equally to a webber... if something dissolves the web, the effect ends.

Why not impose 1 fatigue on a psyker for each time he tries to use a psy power ?

Thats should slow spamming down.

Not a bad notion... though it calls out for "minor" powers which you can spam out. Things like thought sending, minor telekinesis (moving a cup) and pryokinesis (lighting a lho stick) ought to be fairly easy and not too taxing (Sure, a player could get creative in their use of such minor powers... but that doesn't bother me). However, for major powers I like the idea of a limiting factor... and fatigue might be a good one.

Those sorts of minor powers should really just be free to anyone with access to the relevant discipline. Just keep them narrative with little to no effect on the mechanics.

Dominate definitely.

In our OW game our psyker started the game with dominate, and then heavily invested in PR up to 5. Then it was easy to dominate 3 ork nobs at a time, to stop them from moving, and even bash each other heads (even bonus +20 for suicidal action, unsuprisingly wasn't enough).