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Made in us
Lone Wolf Sentinel Pilot





A few corrections. Only astropaths stand before the Emperor and become soul-bound, the act of which permanently blinds the psyker.

You seem to be confusing the psychic power system in Rogue Trader with the one from Dark Heresy, the two of which deal with very different types of psykers. The former are astropaths, whereas the latter are sanctioned psykers.

More powerful psykers are instead given extremely intense training while on the Black Ships. Success in this training earns them a sanctioning brand that identifies them as both a psyker, and one considered strong enough to protect themselves.

Sanctioned psykers have far more versatility in their psychic abilities than an astropath, but the act of soul-binding is a much stronger form of protection. Thus, as an astropath, your abilities are strongly focused on communication, divination, and mind-control, rather than body manipulation or throwing around warp fire. In general, astropaths are respected, if avoided, members of society. Sanctioned psykers, on the other hand, tend to be extremely feared by common people.

While anyone technically can use psychic powers, the act of doing so when you're not born as a psyker will almost always involve dealing with tne entities of the warp to make pacts for power. This is considered sorcery and unlike psykers, which have all sorts of constraints on them, sorcery is outright banned.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2013/10/11 20:34:11


 
Made in us
Lone Wolf Sentinel Pilot





Messages can't be sent between star systems in any meaningful time frame without astropaths. If your GM is allowing interstellar communication the way Star Trek does it, then that's not how things work in 40k. Radio communication would take hundreds, if not thousands of years to reach its destination.

That said, Rogue Trader really isn't a game about a couple of guys with guns bashing down doors. You're all insanely wealthy with connections to dozens of different Imperial organizations, noble houses, and planetary corporations, with a massive starship run by tens of thousands of people as well as various holdings that might require upkeep, or be at risk from rival factions or houses. As an astropath, you shouldn't be some powerhouse killing machine. You should be probing enemy ships, locating which of a planet's dozen different archaeological sites are real xenos ruins as opposed to the local barbarian hordes, interrogating prisoners as you read their minds, keeping tabs on all the happenings back in the rogue trader's holdings and be the first to know if something might threaten them.

In fact, the supplement The Navis Primer has a bunch of new shipboard actions for astropaths to take during ship combat. Things like taking control of an enemy ship's turret, causing fires to spark up on nearby ships, deflecting an incoming shot. Some pretty cool stuff. But I will say that for someone not familiar with 40k, playing an Astropath is going to be really hard.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2013/10/12 05:05:52


 
Made in us
Lone Wolf Sentinel Pilot





I'd also recommend talking to your GM about not making everything combat-based. Astropaths are very interesting social classes, but if you're only going to be fighting orks, then I'd start looking into some more heretical powers to assist more directly. A few corruption points never hurt anyone.
 
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