Rule Clarifications

This sub-forum will help to clarify any rules or other things that might come up in game. Feel free to ask about anything if you want to double-check how something works or how a certain rule will operate in our Black Crusade games.

To start with, it appears that instant failure when manifesting psychic powers on a roll of 91 or higher appears to be a rule in all of the 40K systems except for the new Dark Heresy 2nd Edition. I'll be applying this rule going forward.

Sounds like a good one. Even tho I've done literally everything I can to oppose this fact, Psy powers are supposed to be unreliable at the best of times. That's why they are so powerful.

Even for all I've done, I down to one 'ace' by the time we finished that last fight. And that ace was warplock, which is a last resort since it knocks me out of the fight. I was pushing my luck, which is as it should be.

As a follow up to another point that came out of our last game, I haven't found anything that specifically says that the Focus Power test that is used when channeling a Force weapon or using the Psychic Hood to nullify an incoming power is any different from the Focus Power test when manifesting an ordinary psychic power. Therefore, you can choose to fetter down to grant a greater chance of success when performing either of these actions. I will also treat that any Focus Power tests performed when channeling a Force weapon or using a Psychic Hood as being performed at the Bound level. However, this does mean that rolling natural doubles on the Focus Power test could trigger psychic phenomena just like when using any other psychic power.

In addition, I'm going to apply a general rule regarding offensive psychic powers and degrees of success across to using Force weapons (sorry Skits). Basically, your degrees of success when performing a Focus Power test is capped by the Psy Rating that you use for the test. This gives some incentive to push when channeling a Force weapon as there is a chance that you'll get extra damage. Pushing still runs the risk of phenomena and perils but that's par for the course. Capping the degrees of success at your psy rating is currently in place for all offensive psychic powers (Bolt, Barrage, Storm, etc) and I'm looking to apply it across to Force weapons.

As for Psychic Hoods, I'm inclined to tweak things a little. You can choose to modify the Focus Power test depending on if you fetter or push your psy rating. When you choose to use a Psychic Hood to nullify an incoming power, you declare your psy rating to determine your bonus and then compare it against the attacker's psy rating. If your chosen psy rating is lower than the attacker's chosen psy rating, you suffer a -5 penalty to the Psychic Hood test for each point of difference. If your chosen psy rating is higher than the attacker's chosen psy rating, you inflict 1 point of damage (not reduced by Toughness or Armour) to the attacker per excess point of psy rating. For want of a better phrase, you deny the witch so hard that you give them mental whiplash.

The changes to Focus Power tests on Psychic Hoods and Force weapons are a combination of extending existing rules and a little bit of house rules. Let me know what you guys think and if that sounds reasonable.

Wow good work. I had some balancing comments but the second half addressed them all pretty well. I'm all for it.

Sounds good to me. I have a funny feeling that the capping force weapon extra damage to psy rating number of dice is already a thing that exists that I'd forgotten about, but remembered a few nights later and went "...oops?" So yeah.

Oops. XD