The Conclave

Hey guys,

I've been working on some revised rules for Psychic Powers which I'm hoping to use in my INQ28 games (and which will likely be adopted for the INQvitational as well.)

My goal was to increase the "weirdness" of Psychic abilities, but also to make them a little more useful.

There's three main things I've done:

1. Nullification works differently, based on a suggestion by Marco. Casting a power requires dedication and focus, whereas a nullifier has to react quickly to nullify, putting strain on his powers. As a result, a nullifying psyker takes the negative modifer, rather than a casting psyker. Also, if a psyker nullifies multiple powers in one turn, it takes a strain upon his psychic ability, forcing him to halve his willpower each time, just like a parry attempt.

2. I've incorporated Psychic Phenomena and Perils of the Warp tables, heavily based on Dark Heresy.

3. I've used Goldeneye's mechanic to allow Psykers to take "Psychic Recovery Tests", allowing them to focus and restore lost Willpower.

I've included the rules in a PDF file here, and would appreciate feedback. In the psychic phenomena and perils tables especially, there are a lot of placeholders, because I wasn't sure what was appropriate. Please chime in! I would appreciate the feedback.

Linky-dink (http://z1.ifrm.com/2/150/0/p1025379/Psychic_Powers.pdf).

Mostly looks good to me, but a couple of issues:

QuoteAn enemy psyker may spend actions attempting to nullify persistent powers which are currently in effect. He takes a Willpower test and, if he is successful, the ability immediately ceases to function.

I know this is basically lifted from the rulebook, but I houseruled this for being completely ridiculous. As written, it's possible to nullify the Warp Strength an opponent is using on the other side of the board for no more than passing a simple Wp test. (Which as most psykers have a high Wp, is pretty unfair)

As such, I treat it as an opposed test between the two psykers, both treating it as ranged (where it's the distance to whatever effect they're trying to cancel/maintain). Whoever gets the better pass/lesser fail wins - in the case of a draw, the sustainer wins.

This makes much more sense to me - it is a bit daft if a Wp 67 Interrogator with only Detection gets a two in three chance to negate the terror aura of the Wp 85 Zeta-level Primaris psyker who can invade a mind in a dozen and one different ways (and who also happens to be half a table away).

EDIT: Damn it Marco, read the post properly! Edited for stupidity.

I'm not saying these are perfect, but to counter your point, I would guess that a Psyker couldn't nullify Warp Strength from across the board because they're not "directly affected" by the power.

Taking your concept, it would seem to run something like:

1. Caster successfully passes power.
2. Nullifier must pass a willpower test by a greater margin than the Caster did.
3. If the Nullifier succeeds, the power fails, otherwise the power succeeds.

However, a Caster won't ever be casting on full willpower really, with the difficulty of a power affecting their Willpower. This means the Nullifier (technically) has an advantage - though obviously they could have a lower willpower.

1. Caster successfully passes power.
2. Nullifier must pass a willpower test by a greater margin than the Caster did. (Treating it as a ranged ability, with the distance to the Caster as a modifier)
3. If the Nullifier succeeds, the power fails, otherwise the power succeeds.

Hmm, I'll give that a think - thanks for that.

It might be worth asking PrecinctOmega if he'll post the Inq2.0 psychic power rules as they worked really well in the playtest games that I was involved in. I forget how they worked, but they may provide some ideas you can use...

I liek these rules, they make psychic powers a lot more interesting to use.
The psychic phenomena are very interesting and you really don't want to suffer from the perils of the warp which are not too dangerous to be used at all.

Quote from: Molotov on January 02, 2012, 09:51:34 AMI'm not saying these are perfect, but to counter your point, I would guess that a Psyker couldn't nullify Warp Strength from across the board because they're not "directly affected" by the power.

Ah. If that's the way you're interpreting it, then it's all pukka.

We only ever took that rule restriction to apply to immediate nullifications - and now I think about it, I'm not entirely sure why. That said, I do quite like it, psykers getting into mental battles where they try to disrupt one another's focus.

Quote2. Nullifier must pass a willpower test by a greater margin than the Caster did. (Treating it as a ranged ability, with the distance to the Caster as a modifier)

I wouldn't necessarily say to the caster, as it seems more appropriate to have it targeting the effect, but ranged nullifications does put things on a bit more of an even footing.

(And I've just bloody realised something about the Summer Conclave. I could have nullified that sodding Blinding Flash! That's what I get for being sleep deprived though, I guess.)

~~~~~

As far as the psychic phenomena tables, I've been looking at the dice rolls (on which note, the phenomena table has no 73 or 74), and I've suddenly wondered if there's any particular reason the tables cannot be combined?

I'd suggest that if you can conjure up another couple of effects, you could have 15 phenomena at 5% each,
(Sum total of 75% of the table) and then 12 Perils at 2% each (24% of the table) with the final 00 for Etheric Assault.
This would neaten the percentages a little (while keeping the 75%/25% ratio of phenomena to perils) and simplify it down to just one roll.

For suggestions for phenomena (you have 12 at the moment), you might simply want a couple of fairly harmless ones. The fact is, failed risky actions (~35% depending on speed) are a bit more common than rolling a 9 in Dark Heresy (you'd need to be using 4 dice for about the same chance, which is quite a lot), and there's quite a lot of harmless but freaky stuff on the DH Phenomena tables.

As an alternative suggestion, you could have a fully loaded table, but have it that the psyker has to pass a Wp test (I'd suggest at half Wp) when they get a Risky Action. If passed, something freaky but trivial to gameplay happens (you could have a "minor phenomena" table for suggestions - this could be rolled on, but perhaps players might have ideas about their psykers having "trademark phenomena"). If failed, then you start on the Major Phenomena.

To be honest, thinking about it, I prefer the latter suggestion.
In any case, you might find that without a bit of a chance for "Bloody hell, it's freezing in here, what did you do?" the Phenomena could have a bit too much effect on the game.

In other news, I'd also suggest "Void looks Back"would be better as a Nv test and "The Earth Protests" as either a Strength or Initative test.

Personally I'm moving psychic powers back towards the WFRP/Rogue Trader systems - tiring the user as they use their "points", reducing some of the randomness by allowing psykers to overpower their attempt to activate or nullify a power...etc...

Things like the perils of the warp and such however I've moved to special rules for Wyrds however - The Imperium at least shouldn't suffer much from them - the psykers which aren't powerful enough, strong enough of will and with iron control to resist casual daemonic influence are soulbound to The Emperor or killed after all.

Now of course less casual influence is still always a possibility - they got Horus after all - but to my mind that shouldn't be a random event.

Marco: Many of your points are entirely valid, and I'll likely include almost all of them into the second draft.

Heidfeld: I'm not sure you make your first paragraph explicit enough.

As to the second point, I'm not sure I entirely agree. Whilst, yes, the Imperium does send the vast majority of its psykers to the Golden Throne, it's been a long-standing part of the fluff that the warp can claim even the most skilled psykers. Even the Eldar can be prone to it, and with their long lives and rigid control, you'd think they'd be better-protected than Humans. Plus, consider the long-standing concept of the Imperial Guard Commissar executing the sanctioned psyker who falls to Perils?

If this is just something where we have differing concepts of the 40k universe and we're never likely to agree, then fine - we each have our own 40k in our heads, and there's nothing wrong with that.

The randomness of "the perils" makes a certain degree of sense in a battle game but much less so in a persistant RPG - especially where a player's primary character (or only character) is a psyker.

The original fluff suggests that psykers are relatively safe as long as they're either soulbound or strong enough themselves not to require it (notes include that any Inquisitor who's psychic is strong enough - the rest don't get that far)...
I would also suggest that Humanity are actually a more psychic race than the Eldar – at least in potentia – Humanity are nascent while the Eldar are mature, all Eldar are psychic to some degree but (ignoring the reincarnation of the Shaman) The Emperor is the most powerful psyker in the galaxy and, while they never make it to adulthood, no other race has psykers with the potential power of a human Alpha Grade.

Of course the idea that any psyker can be a door to the horrors of the other side is certainly there but it's balanced by the rarity of such events (if perils of The Warp happened half as often as they do in 40k then the Imperium would have been wiped out a long while ago rather than encompassing 90+% of the galaxy...)
Consider that, even if you assign a very small chance (for the sake of arguement roll a D1000 and only suffer perils on a roll of 666, a 0.1% chance) the choir of the Astronomicon and navigation around The Imperium would be all but impossible. Ten thousand (or tens of thousands depending on source) of psykers, even at a 0.1% chance, leads to a lot of work for the Custodes.

Rather than making it random I feel it's better to make it plot...
...Or a player choice.
I'm still working on the points system for my own games so I don't have firm numbers as yet - but one consideration is that psykers draw their power from the warp, whereas the Rogue Trader and WFRP systems gave characters with psychic abilities (or magic) a large reservoir and very slow regeneration I'm going the other way – with little reservoir and a number of points they can safely use (draw and spend combined) each round it's relatively simple to maintain sustainability, relatively simple too to hold something in reserve... it's also relatively simple to find one's self in a position where just a little more is required, where the lives of the player characters and their followers hinge on a psyker pushing the boundaries of what he or she can safely maintain... Of course they could hold back, they could restrict themselves to what they can safely handle – but they can push themselves a little bit, right?

At present I'm working on the basis that every point used (drawn and spent) over a psyker's limit "burns" their WP (it will recover at a rate of 1 point per hour where activity is below a certain threshold), each draw where the usage limit is exceeded requires a WP check, if passed the psyker draws what they want, if failed they'll additionally draw enough to fill their reservoir (I'm not certain how I'm going to work it given the many potential power usage, nullification, defences...etc. possible in a round but I want to do the same, emptying the reservoir, with expenditure).
The aim is to make pushing the envelope by small amounts tempting but large amounts painful however things change somewhat should the psyker reach 0 WP.
True Wyrds have unusually large reservoirs, meaning that they're potentially incredibly powerful but, as they're uncontrolled, particularly dangerous.

Sanctioned Psykers have a low limit, adequate for most, mundane, day-to-day tasks but insufficient for more explosive, battlefield uses, they therefore exceed their limits more often than more powerful psykers – the soulbinding ritual however grants them an additional pseudo-WP pool which they tick off before burning their own WP. Given sufficient rest and recuperation between exertions they're pretty safe (though sufficient R&R is seldom a common commodity on the battlefields of the 41st Millenium).

I think that psychic powers are always dangerous to use, but in mundane, relatively stress-free circumstances very little will go wrong. When a psyker has enough time to prepare mind and body and lots of support it will be very safe. However, when more stress is introduced, such as on a battlefield or when simply hurried, more will go wrong, leading to the odds for problems we see in games, after all, noone wants to play throguh an hours-long ceremony used for sending a message or something like that.

Quote from: Dolnikan on January 04, 2012, 04:43:21 PM
I think that psychic powers are always dangerous to use

Quote from: Dolnikan on January 04, 2012, 04:43:21 PM
in mundane, relatively stress-free circumstances very little will go wrong.

Quote from: Dolnikan on January 04, 2012, 04:43:21 PM
When a psyker has enough time to prepare mind and body and lots of support it will be very safe.

(Emphasis mine)

Consider the number of psykers in the Imperium, the number on Holy Terra alone - not only the Astronomicon but the Scholar Psykana, the various psykers of the Inquisition, the Librarians of the Imperial Fists, the numerous Sanctioned and Primaris Psykers stationed there and the any psykers which may be there on pilgrimage...
If psychic powers were always dangerous then the entire planet would probably have been ravaged long ago... As I say, even a 0.1% risk becomes significant when it's being taken constantly by hundreds of thousands of people.

That is correct, however, psychic choirs are often attended by special agents and servitors which will kill psykers who even show a sign of a mishap. The odds for a full incursion from psychic malfuntion in a trained psyker will be very low, most of the time they will simply suffer horribly. And a 0.1% risk remains immensely high. Most tasks performed by psykers wold be virtually safe, only when stress is introduced or harder tasks are performed will a psyker actually fail dramatically.
One of the reasons why psykers are hunted down is that they can serve as a gateway for the warp. Training vastly reduces the risk of this and in most circumstances it will be quicly stopped by the aforementioned 'guards'.

I think when we say "always dangerous", we mean the percentage risk is in the same kind of sense as driving a car is always dangerous. Individually there is little risk, but when we look at the accident statistics for the whole country/world, it is obviously a dangerous activity overall, and it can go wrong even when driving a mile to the shops on quiet roads in good weather.

The side effects of a psyker losing control can however be much more serious than a car driver losing control. Hence, even if a psyker is less likely to crash than a car driver (which I'm not necessarily saying they are, as they are feared for a reason), it can be thought of as more dangerous simply because of the scale of a failure.

Quote from: Dolnikan on January 05, 2012, 02:34:24 PM
That is correct, however, psychic choirs are often attended by special agents and servitors which will kill psykers who even show a sign of a mishap. The odds for a full incursion from psychic malfuntion in a trained psyker will be very low, most of the time they will simply suffer horribly. And a 0.1% risk remains immensely high. Most tasks performed by psykers wold be virtually safe, only when stress is introduced or harder tasks are performed will a psyker actually fail dramatically.
One of the reasons why psykers are hunted down is that they can serve as a gateway for the warp. Training vastly reduces the risk of this and in most circumstances it will be quicly stopped by the aforementioned 'guards'.

Matthew Farrer's book Blind by the3 Black Library deals a lot with a Astra Telepathica Choir station.  Each high level Astropath is always accompanied by a "Villifer".  The Vilifer's job is to shoot any psyker that has succumbed or possibly be succumbing to the warp. 

The Villifiers seem somehow attuned to their master and their state of mind, but almost like Servitors.  They never speak or participate, and simply follow behind silently.  Laspistol in hand, bound by a purity seal.

Intersting book, and it made me want to do something with Vilifers for Dark Heresy or INQ.       

Quote from: MarcoSkoll on January 05, 2012, 03:13:32 PM
I think when we say "always dangerous", we mean the percentage risk is in the same kind of sense as driving a car is always dangerous. Individually there is little risk, but when we look at the accident statistics for the whole country/world, it is obviously a dangerous activity overall, and it can go wrong even when driving a mile to the shops on quiet roads in good weather.

The side effects of a psyker losing control can however be much more serious than a car driver losing control. Hence, even if a psyker is less likely to crash than a car driver (which I'm not necessarily saying they are, as they are feared for a reason), it can be thought of as more dangerous simply because of the scale of a failure.

My original point was that Perils of the Warp were not the best way to describe that type of risk, if for no other reason than that the story suffers if, halfway through the book the principle character swerves to avoid a cyclist, pitches the front wheel into a ditch, rolls the car and is killed.

QuoteThings like the perils of the warp and such however I've moved to special rules for Wyrds however - The Imperium at least shouldn't suffer much from them - the psykers which aren't powerful enough, strong enough of will and with iron control to resist casual daemonic influence are soulbound to The Emperor or killed after all.

Now of course less casual influence is still always a possibility - they got Horus after all - but to my mind that shouldn't be a random event.

If you have a Perils of the Warp table which kicks in on a percentile dice roll then it becomes arbitrary and from a story point of view arbitrary is bad. Fair enough if someone pushes the limits all the time or if hostile forces are working against them but I'd just rather not see that as down to luck. So, with the exception of True Wyrds (The Psychic equivalent of Trashcan man) I limit the perils to player choice or plot.

Of course a story tends to not involve a protagonist who dies in a stupid accident. However, our games already involve many things where it comes down to chance and not to the story how a character ends up. For instance, plasma weapons which are known to overheat disastrously. In a book you'll never see a member of the main cast being killed by his own exploding weapon. In the game this can happen and can be fun.
BEing hit or missed by weapons fire is already arbitrary, the whole game is because it is based on randomness(dice rollls)

One of the hallmarks of the 40k games is the perils of the warp. In a narrative sense, characters can do certain things regularly without calling daemons down upon themselves. You need only look at Ravenor, Eisenhorn and the like. Despite what we say, the players aren't "collaborating to create a story" - they are playing a game, and creating a narrative to go alongside the game.

Inquisitor is not a persistent RPG in the same sense as, for example, Dark Heresy. I would argue that the games set in the 40k universe are crystallised, concentrated versions of that universe. In a mundane, stress-free environment, powers might be easy to use - but then we don't play this game to experience mundane, stress-free environments.

Myself, I'd rather have a table involving psychic phenomena, and then create skills that allow certain psykers the ability to lessen the danger (for example, allowing characters to re-roll risky actions, or re-roll perils, or, or...) - These sorts of things would allow you to represent the sort of skilled psykers represented by Patience Kys, for example.

Still, this clearly becomes something that is down to personal interpretation. I like the idea of psychic powers being "weird" and "dangerous", because it makes the 40k universe more weird and dangerous. If you don't like it, that's fine. I'd be interested to see the rules you're intending to use in your own thread.

I'll try to get a revised set of notes up this weekend.

Quote from: Dolnikan on January 06, 2012, 04:43:54 PM
For instance, plasma weapons which are known to overheat disastrously.

Again, I've returned to the Rogue Trader Sustained and Maximal settings on Plasma weapons... The idea that the Ad Mech are dumb enough to put the safety valve on the same side of the weapon as the operator is rather idiotic IMHO.

The reason for the introduction of the overheating rules (in what? 4th edition?) was that people kept forgetting the cooldown period and firing heavy plasma guns on maximal every turn... As things like that are easier to contend with in a game like Inquisitor there really is no need to have "Gets Hot" rules.
Of course there's no reason to have them in the current 40k either - the rule was there to balance the Plasma weapons without the cooldown but Eldar plasma weapons (now known as Starcannon) lost their "gets hot" rule long ago - Imperial plasma weapons could also lose their "gets hot" rule just as easily but momentum has gathered behind the explanation that the AdMech are idiots.
In the same way momentum has gathered behind the idea that Psykers are all just about to explode, that the dangers of psychic ability are as significant as implied in the 40k rules...


From my own perspective Inquisitor is the game where the players are involved in creating the narrative - more so to a degree than in a persistent RPG - the rules are more flexible in an Inquisitor game, the rolls of the dice mere suggestions.

Again, I prefer to have the sort of factor which "perils of the Warp" represents as a tool for plot rather than a random event - its not that they don't exist but they won't throw an 800A/F spanner into the Plasma Reactor of my plotline when I don't want them to.

Quote from: InquisitorHeidfeld on January 09, 2012, 01:30:54 PMThe reason for the introduction of the overheating rules (in what? 4th edition?)

3rd edition. 4th edition had a very nasty version that was later changed back for 5th.

QuoteAs things like that are easier to contend with in a game like Inquisitor there really is no need to have "Gets Hot" rules.

Except that Inquisitor was written alongside 3rd Edition, not 1st or 2nd, and the canon had changed - the Adeptus Mechanicus no longer fully understand how to maintain and build such ancient technology. (It's not that they build them with the plasma vents pointing at the user, comedic exaggeration or otherwise).

QuoteEldar plasma weapons (now known as Starcannon) lost their "gets hot" rule long ago

Did they ever have one? I don't know whether they had recharging or stuff before 3rd Ed, but the 3rd Ed codex was explicit that they didn't overheat, and 4th edition didn't list gets hot either.

Also, not a great comparison, as the starcannon is a vehicle (or pseudo-vehicle, like the weapons platform or wraithlord) weapon, and plasma weapons don't overheat on vehicles anyway (extra cooling systems, apparently).

~~~~~

Overall, I know you're sold on the Rogue Trader canon, but not all of us got into the game that early, or are even necessarily that old!

It may only have been in the interim between the 3rd Ed release and the Codex release but the plasma "gets hot" rule was certainly applied to the Eldar Plasma Cannon (I believe the first instance of the Plasma Cannon as a man portable weapon replacing the Heavy Plasma Gun coincided).

The difficulty with the AdMech not being able to maintain Plasma tech is that (IIRC) Ryza are supposed to be brilliant at it... If you allowed all Imperial Plasma weapons to upgrade to Ryza (again IIRC) Pattern which ignored the "gets hot" rule, if the points cost was low enough then they'd all be Ryza pattern.
The rule exists for game balance and is then (somewhat dubiously IMHO) supported by the fluff whereas in Narrative games we don't have to worry about the game balance in the same way...


However, the question of my preference for older fluff is not the point at issue.

The randomness of a "Perils of the Warp" table is the point I question.

I contend that such perils should be a matter of plot or player choice rather than random factors. It is worth noting that the original rules (published at a time when "Perils of the Warp" was a part of 40k) have only Risky action and Psychic Overload effects, both of which are relatively tame. Perhaps an indication that the rules created for game balance in 40k were not required in the Narrative setting.

Many things have not been included in the main rules of Inquisitor. I think that was not because the authors didn;t think that it would fit in but because they couldn;t put all that in the rulebook. Added to that was the amount of time on their hands.
Most of these perils of the warp aren;t earth-shattering, instead they serve to make psychic failures more interesting. After all, failing at using psychic powers which draw on the realm of chaos itself should not only have a single, predictable effect like losing willpower, with some bad luch the abyss will stare back, and even give a handshake.

The Warp may be the Realm of Chaos in some respects but in the same respects it is also the Realm of Law...
The Immaterium follows rules, warp travel  and psychic powers would not be possible without them - nor would the Chaos gods... And psychic abilities aren't sorcery, The Thousand Sons were excommunicated because their sorcery touched on the powers of Chaos, drew power from them but psykers do not work the same way.

Bad things can happen to psykers but, again, I prefer to keep those bad things plot driven or a matter of Player choice. The Warp is a big place and the chances of any given psyker running across something particularly significant in such a wide terrain are too small to be sensibly described within game. One could perhaps suggest that particularly interesting psykers attract attention like moths to a flame and that's why Elrad Ulthuan's las pistol has more wear from smacking Bloodthirsters on the snout than from actual use but why would the psyker you're dealing with be particularly interesting compared to the billions of others in the Imperium?


And please don't involk Nietzsche so badly out of context, he's misunderstood enough as it is.

Quote from: InquisitorHeidfeld on January 10, 2012, 01:29:14 PMbut why would the psyker you're dealing with be particularly interesting compared to the billions of others in the Imperium?

The characters in Inquisitor are, pretty much implicitly, important and/or fated.

If a psyker is going to be interesting, one who is an Inquisitor, who serves an Inquisitor or who will one day battle with the Inquisitor is going to be a lot more worthwhile to corrupt, disrupt or even kill (if their fate involves something the warp entity involved finds unfavourable).

One thing I will add - while I'm not yet sure how much narrative weight these effects might have, I'm deliberately reserving final judgement on that until such a point as I've had a chance to try them myself.

I agree with Marco that the characters in Inquisitor are already interesting, and when they clash you have multiple interesting persons fighting. And there might be many psykers in the universe, but there are even more daemons and other nasties in the warp.

I'm sorry for abusing Nietzshe in the way I did, I realize that it is taking things outof context but I used his words as a wayof putting things. The famous quote has after all become a bit op a cliché in discussions about the warp.

Quote from: Dolnikan on January 10, 2012, 06:26:57 PM
And there might be many psykers in the universe, but there are even more daemons and other nasties in the warp.

I'd disagree with that...
The Imperium consists of millions of worlds, a population of trillions and billions* of psykers. While there are legions of daemonic entities serving the four great powers they are not innumerable...
Enslavers and other, non-daemonic, entities almost certainly outnumber the daemons but even so the Psykers still outnumber them IMO.

*I can't recall the incidence of psychic ability, it's been quoted in the past but I can't think where.
However, working on the basis of a Marine Chapter of a thousand I do not believe one would be unreasonable to expect a single Chief Librarian (obviously, he's the Chief after all)... A pair of Epistolaries doesn't seem excessive, four Codicers maintains a simple Hierarchy and, at least in terms of the thousand marines is still a relatively small number... For the sake of argument I'll assume that Lexicani are Company level assets so that gives us seventeen or 1.7%
Now it's not a huge number but it means that, on a Hive World, with each Hive running to, say, twenty-five billion people and a dozen hives... That gives you one psyker for every man, woman and child in the USA... On one planet. (Admittedly most of those wouldn't actually be on the planet, the Black Ships will have taken most of them away and killed a few (or more than a few) but you're still dealing with mind-boggling numbers).
Of the three-hundred and odd planets in the Gothic Sector of Segmentum Obscurras the Fortress and Hive Worlds alone would contribute billions of psykers to the total – and IIRC the Gothic Sector doesn't even contain any Civilised Worlds where the percentage is likely to be even higher due to improved screening and organization.

Quote from: InquisitorHeidfeld on January 11, 2012, 01:55:29 PMHowever, working on the basis of a Marine Chapter of a thousand... so that gives us seventeen or 1.7%

I have to disagree in return. Aside from the fact that the chapter headquarters are outside the normal thousand marine limits and that we're starting with a set of individuals that is not representative of the human mean, that's entirely like saying "Crude oil must contain percentages X, Y and Z of these length hydrocarbons, because those are the percentages we want them in". Which, of course, is not true.

A fortress monastery will have a great many serfs and guards who would have been genetically suitable but who could not be implanted due to the Codex Astartes limit.
When you start to consider those in the numbers, and the fact that psychic recruits (due to their rarity) would prove preferential for implantation, the percentages don't look anything like 1.7%.

In fact, personally I believe it's not so much about screening their recruits, but screening the Blackships for anyone who could be Marinated. (And yes, I did mean to say marinated). Not that they'd hugely publicise that...

QuoteI can't recall the incidence of psychic ability, it's been quoted in the past but I can't think where.

"The Inquisition" lists Delta and above at one in a billion births.

I used that to come up with my own theory about the Assignment being based on logarithmic rarity (http://www.the-conclave.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=716.0), which eventually yielded figures that would be about 15,000-20,000 psykers of Iota or above on a 7 billion planet like Earth. Or ~750,000 in your hiveworld example.

Overall, assuming an average 10 billion humans on each of the million planets (you might push it to 20 billion, but eventually you have to start to wondering where all the food comes from - soylens viridians, rat burgers or manure-grown fungi can't breach the laws of thermodynamics, and it's all ultimately limited by solar input), that's a quadrillion humans, with about 2.5 billion reasonably "powerful" psykers, in the entire Imperium.

That is billions, but not <carlsagan>billions and billions</carlsagan>... and the warp wouldn't be that dangerous with that many nasties.

It's possible that the instance of psykers on Astartes Seed Worlds is higher than the average but I would doubt it's so significantly higher as to provide that sort of variation.
The Aspirants receive the first implantations before the onset of puberty (with the exception of the cannon breaking Chapters) which is when the majority of psykers first manifest – so as there's not way to tell until that point whether a child will be a psyker we have to assume that the instance of psykers at that stage is close to the norm for the Imperium as a whole (excepting the slight variance as mentioned above).
Of course as Neophytes manifest as psykers there will be significant wastage – those too weak to become Librarians (and must be soulbound to The Emperor), those unable to control their powers and therefore requiring execution...etc but in addition to that, among those psykers who would normally survive to adulthood, there will be an additional wastage from those whose abilities rebel against the various conditioning therapies which are part of the creation of a Marine.
Now being a Neophyte Astartes is a "career" with a very high attrition rate anyway, mostly a fatal attrition after the onset of puberty, and psykers have the added complication of having to deal with everything their fellows have to do as well as the training required by their own psychic abilities. Imagine, given the fatality rate resultant from the implantation of The Catalespean Node, the trouble a psyker would have trying to maintain control of their abilities which simultaneously learning to sleep in half of his brain at a time...

Hive World populations is an interesting point – Hive Worlds do support populations far in excess of that which their own surface area and stellar output would normally allow. They're reliant on Agri-worlds to do so and it's noted that Hive Worlds which find themselves isolated from that lifeline, either by Warp Storms or by siege suffer horrendous depopulation incredibly quickly.
Hive Worlds are able to partially circumvent the Laws of Thermodynamics by importing a very significant portion of their energy and water needs.
Now, of course, it seems someone forgot that logistical challenge during the Third Armageddon War...
But given that the Earth could, theoretically, support a population of two-thousand trillion* on approximately 1800 kcal per day without reliance on imports it would not be beyond the bounds of possibility for a Hive World (the job of which is, in effect, to generate population) to hold ten times that. In practice it's probably less than 5% of that... but still it's a vast human resource.

Of course the problem with this sort of argument is that very few of the writers of 40k fluff have any real concept of the numbers they're dealing with (Abnett's apparent assumption that two meters equaled six feet not withstanding).

One in a million is a useful trope to express rarity, but suggesting that one in a million of an emergent psychic species is a psyker is... I can't find a single congenital defect which even close to a one in a million risk... to take an extreme example for want of better data its probably something like the chances of carrying a child to term with its brain outside its skull...
However, even given that incidence we're dealing with an empire encompassing 90 billion stars (more than 90% of the galaxy, the galaxy containing approximately 100 billion stars), while not all of those stars have planetary systems and while not all of those planetary systems include anything but dead rocks, even after terraforming activities.
If even one tenth of the stars are under Imperial Control, if even one tenth of those have planets and one tenth of those with planets have populations... even at one in a million you're still looking at psykers equivalent to ninety planets' populations – ten billion per planet (on average) that's nine hundred billion psykers.


* Energy intercepted by the earth per day = circa 1.5x10^22 Joules (3.6x10^18kcal)

A recessive trait could easily only show in one in a million people, even is one in every thousand carries it. The problem of using librarians to calculate the percentage of psykers gives huge numbers of them. As you said, more than a few per cent. If this would be the case the black ships could never have the capacity to transport and process the huge numbers of psykers and Terra would be too small a planet for even a part of the psykers.

Recent estimates say that there would be about ten billion planets in the galaxy of the right size to support life, about half a billion of those would be in the habitable zone. Owning just a million of these of course is quite an accomplishment but leaves space for plenty of others. I would guess that most planets won't even have been discovered yet by the Imperium, there are just so many.

The people at GW have indeed shown that they don't understand the numbers involved in the background. For instance, a hive world with a population of just fifty billion would in an emergency be capable of sending billions of soldiers to battle, when they mobilize in the way the soviet union did in the second world war. With such numbers of defenders it will be nearly impossible to take the planet in the way often depecited by GW, using forces brought in from space with the small amount of ships and their given sizes usually employed in the background.

There are many such examples which show that using the numbers GW has given us are almost completely useless. A billion is a very small number on a galactic scale, even a hundred billion is less that the population of some planets.

Quote from: InquisitorHeidfeld on January 12, 2012, 02:21:45 PMHive Worlds are able to partially circumvent the Laws of Thermodynamics by importing a very significant portion of their energy and water needs.

You can't circumvent Thermodynamics. But, Hive Worlds are not a closed system. The Imperium, however, more or less is.

Agri-worlds will have a high energy production, but only a small population (likely measured in millions rather than billions). Hive worlds might have hundreds of billions of mouths to feed, but very little energy production. You can therefore talk in terms of averages.

As it is, with seven billion people we still have major world hunger problems. If we improved our approach to the problem (which would require sacrifices not everyone would want to make), then we could sustain more. 10 billion is probably somewhat conservative as a figure, but it could be argued back and forth, so I'm only looking to be vaguely accurate.

QuoteBut given that the Earth could, theoretically, support a population of two-thousand trillion* on approximately 1800 kcal per day

Energy intercepted is wildly different to usable energy. Most reflects back into space due to Earth's albedo, some of it maintains global temperatures, there's inherent inefficiencies, you'd have to remove the oceans (which would mess up the climate so much that we, and all food sources, would be dead) and everyone would have to live underground in near darkness, because you couldn't afford to waste a single square foot of land or more than the merest trickle of light.

I can imagine worlds that try and push self-sustaining to that kind of level (the idea is intriguing), but it's definitely not the norm.

Going back to 2nd Edition, the Black Ships would direct the most stable of the powerful psykers to those branches of the Imperium that needed them - the Scholastica itself, the Inquisition, and the Chapters of the Astartes. So the Librarians are recruited from the Imperium at large, not just the Chapter Worlds...

QuoteA recessive trait could easily only show in one in a million people, even is one in every thousand carries it.

A recessive trait isn't the same as an emergent one though (and even so I can't find a congential defect with anything close to a one in a million risk).
To say that Humanity is an emergent psychic race based on a one in a million incidence is like saying that we're an emergent amphibious species due to the incidence of webbed toes (incidence of webbed digits is significantly higher than one in a million) or that the entire of humanity has ginger hair and that anyone who isn't is just a statistical anomaly (incidence of red or ginger hair is also greater than one in a million, and that's globally).

QuoteRecent estimates say that there would be about ten billion planets in the galaxy of the right size to support life, about half a billion of those would be in the habitable zone. Owning just a million of these of course is quite an accomplishment but leaves space for plenty of others. I would guess that most planets won't even have been discovered yet by the Imperium, there are just so many.

The Imperium covers 90% of the galaxy, following lines of stellar density. It doesn't control every planet within its territory of course but it's constantly trying to expand so the easy ones (the ones requiring little or no terraforming) are going to be snapped up pretty quickly.
As I said above, just one tenth Imperial control (9 billion stars), one tenth planets (900 million planets) and one tenth populations (90 million planetary populations) with a one million to one incidence of psychic ability still leads to nine hundred billion psykers (assuming an average population of 10 billion/planet).

QuoteYou can't circumvent Thermodynamics. But, Hive Worlds are not a closed system.

Bang to rights there... Apologies, I misspoke.

QuoteEnergy intercepted is wildly different to usable energy.

Of course - the numbers used provided an extreme limit rather than an expectation of future population growth  ;)

Quotethere's inherent inefficiencies, you'd have to remove the oceans (which would mess up the climate so much that we, and all food sources, would be dead)

I can imagine early, heavily terraformed Agriworlds "paving over" the oceans so that planting can occur above while the water becomes available for irrigation systems without those annoying losses to evaporation and indeed, if I remember correctly the maps/diagrams of Necromuda published as part of the Confrontation background had effectively done the same (though they'd done it with sludge and ash and the myriad pollutions of the Hive.
However in most cases it would be a lot easier to simply make use of the oceanic surface to capture energy and convert it into sugars and protein - algal mats and so forth are a relatively efficient means of converting stellar energy into "food", harvested and processed into protein mass they would also provide a reasonably low volume, high density means of shipping the "food" to elsewhere. Of course Agriworlds are also reliant on imports, huge volumes of their global carbon and numerous other chemicals leave the planet (in the form of the sugars, starches and proteins they produce) every year and without imported fertilizers, lime...etc their growth medium would very quickly become useless.

QuoteSo the Librarians are recruited from the Imperium at large, not just the Chapter Worlds...

The problem with that is that almost all of the psykers carried by the Black Ships are too old to accept the implantation required to become Marines and if Librarians aren't implanted and trained like the rest of the Chapter there's little point in not simply attaching Primaris psykers from the Schola to Marine Chapters - if nothing else the latter would save the Chapter from the difficulties involved in training a burgeoning psyker.
The Blood Angels and a few other fluff-breaking Chapters can use those selected from the Black Ships because they have those "devices" which make an adult into a Marine, implanting, conditioning and training them in a very short period of time but the Dark Angels (for example) draw their psykers unknowingly from their seed worlds and have to deal with people like Two Heads Talking who manifest as psykers after they've been implanted and begun training.
Yes it's not impossible (and indeed its hinted at IIRC) that the family line of Two Heads Talking was likely to produce psykers (he was IIRC from a line of shaman (not in the Starchild sense)) and that lines like that are preferred by the Chapter, which would cant the distribution somewhat but it's still insufficient to explain the jump from one in a million to one thousand seven hundred in a million (the 1.7% I quoted earlier).

As a matter of fact, recessive genetic disorders which are rare will receive very low selective pressure and for that reason only genetic drift can take them from the gene pool. Most people carry a few such alleles, but they will almost never encounter a mate carrying another copy of it.  Of course the better known disorders are not that rare, but then again, it helps being more common to attract some attention.
An emerging trait can easily be extremely rare. New traits will always start out immensely rare and will slowly become more prevalent, if they offer an advantage or by chance.

If it is regulated by a signgle gene(I make this assumption to simplify matters a bit, with more regulatory genes would just be a lot more difficult but the basic idea would remain the same.) The gene would have to be recessive because a dominant trait would not emerge in the way it does all over the galaxy, by chance the number of needed mutations would be far too high because it is very rare for a psyker to procreate.

This recessive gene would have started out being immensely rare, only a single copy being present. It has since then spread slowly through the population until the first psykers started to emerge. Being a psyker is quite a selective disadvantage in the Imperium, psykers have a far lower chance of procreation than normal humans. The gene is lucky enough to still be spreading through the population despite its very small overal negative fitness effect. However, if we assign even a small positive effect to the heterozygote, such as being more lucky than usual or anything like that, it will suddenly have an evolutionary advantage and will spread through the population without humanity having to be lucky.
To be emergent psykers even have to be rare, otherwise there would be far more homozygotes who are removed from the genepool by the Imperium. In that case the negative effect of the homozygote starts to have a greater fitness effect than the heterozygote.

If psykers are as common as 1,7% Hardy-Weinberg tells us that about 13% of all people carry the psyker gene. Right now I am too lazy to do the rest of the calculations but they will probably show that the number of psykers should be continually decreasing. A possible reason for the high proportion of psykers in the space marines could be that their geneseed carries something which makes psykers far more common, perhaps even displacing the non-psyker gene with the psyker gene. It could also be something else. The space marines are based on the primarches who are based on the Emperor, who is quite a psyker himself.

All this of course depends on one fatal error I made, trying to insert some logic into 40k.

I am sorry for not writing as clearly as I should, I missed sleep tonight.

Quote from: InquisitorHeidfeld on January 13, 2012, 10:46:05 AMA recessive trait isn't the same as an emergent one though (and even so I can't find a congential defect with anything close to a one in a million risk).

I estimated conscious psychic control at more like one in hundreds of thousands, rather than millions. (Given that the one in a billion figure refers to exceptionally powerful psykers). There are going to be a lot more latent psykers who don't realise their potential.

And there are genetic conditions with about that kind of rarity. Pentasomy (An individual with five sex chromosomes) is about one in a hundred thousand.

QuoteTo say that Humanity is an emergent psychic race based on a one in a million incidence is...

...to say that the percentages are small, but statistically increasing.

To say that one in a million can't mean a psychic race isn't that different to saying the Earth isn't home to intelligent life. Intelligent (even sentient, in its literal meaning) organisms are outnumbered by many more orders of magnitude than six by the unintelligent ones, despite all Terran flora and fauna having the same abiogenetic origin.

Quote(incidence of red or ginger hair is also greater than one in a million, and that's globally).

Bugger, I thought I was one of less than seven thousand people with red hair. I am no longer unique.

Why would almost all of those psykers be too old? The Black Ships take EVERY psyker they can find, from babes in arms to nonagenarians. Further, on a normal Imperial world, there will be more young active psykers than old ones as the witchhunts won't have found them yet. So I'd assume that a Black Ship would contain a large number of young psykers (5-25, assuming those younger are mostly latent) and a few older ones (shamens, witch-women, that sort of thing). A quick detour to the nearest Chapter World every half-dozen sectors would seem to me to be enough to provide the Chapters with what they need. And thats before suggesting that perhaps Psykers accept the implants better (being closer in many ways to the original Primarchs), or that the process might be more closely observed for Psykers, as they are a rarer and more powerful resource, or that the Librarium includes a number of Brothers who are not combat-able, but provide psychic support and record keeping.

As for the idea that humanity should be losing its psychic tendency - the Warp is pushing humanity towards psychic ability. Why? Who knows. The Starchild, or the Chaos Gods, or even that old classic, a C'Tan Did It, or some combination of all of those and more (Eldar, Old Ones, Dark Age gene-altering, Fate). Personally, I go for the all those and more - humanity's future is a battlefield between gods.

Let's start trying to pull together conclusions from this lot (if for no other reason than it's starting to get confusing to try to put together arguments to, and respond to arguments from, three people simultaneously).

For a start we can all agree that the 1.7%, Librarians as a portion of a Codex Chapter is far in excess of the galactic average – especially given that they would represent the most powerful psykers rather than the totality.
Originally of course a Chapter's Librarians weren't explicitly psykers so I think we'd be safe to conclude that the source of those numbers was one of the writers posing the question of how many Psykers would be reasonable to ensure a Chapter's self sufficiency without reference to the Galactic norm (another incidence of not understanding the numbers).

Now how this comes about is another matter.
To assume that it's down to Geneseed is to misunderstand what Geneseed is.
Geneseed is grown in the Progenoid glands of a mature and fully implanted Marine, the Progenoids store up Geneseed which is then used to grow the zygotes which, after implantation, develop into the organs which make a Space Marine. (Which, incidentally, makes the idea of the Tyrant Guard being made from Space Marine DNA erroneous, a Space Marine is genetically unchanged by the implantation (perhaps that's different with the "instant Marine" Chapters)).

However we know that the incidence of a gene is not equivalent to the incidence of the trait for which that gene codes and, to my knowledge, Psykers express around puberty therefore we may conclude that it's possible that the Psyker gene is "activated" by hormone levels (low or high, a particular balance...) so it is possible that the actions of the growing zygotes, the accompanying drug, hormone, hypno...etc therapies or some other factor in the early life of a Marine increases the chances of the Psyker gene expressing.

The expression of the gene before puberty would, to my knowledge, be incredibly unusual... but incredibly unusual is not necessarily a bar to that as a solution. The Black Ships need only provide seventeen thousand psykers to the Marine Chapters per generation to fulfil that 1.7% "requirement" and with (from previous assumptions) 900 billion to choose from that's far from unachievable.

I still prefer to think of Seed World psykers as the norm but that's based more on the aesthetics, rather than the practicalities, of the matter.


If the incidence of the Psyker gene is higher than the incidence of its expression (ie: If all psykers have the psyker gene but not all people who have the psyker gene are psykers) that provides answers to two other issues. For a start, the psyker gene can be passed on by non-psykers but more importantly it means that there is no hard and fast method for identifying a psyker.
At a certain power level it would be reasonable to assume a sort of call and responce check by another psyker but below that level, those psykers who "cannot channel enough to light a candle" migh well be missed. Their capacity is minimal, insufficient to pose a danger perhaps... But just perhaps they have hair-trigger neck-hairs (they're telepathic and just strong enough to pick up a "killer intent" from someone near them), maybe they're a little less susceptable to industrial accidents...etc.
Suddenly there is a positive evolutionary pressure, below notice but still present, toward psychic ability...

And that's assuming that psykers of the Schola remain celibate - I'm not aware of anything saying they must.



I would still say that the "Perils of the Warp" must, by necessity of numbers, be too rare to be governed by an arbitrary roll in a game like Inquisitor.
The "specialness" of all Inquisitor characters (focus of the story therefore must be special) should (IMHO) manifest itself through the plot rather than a lucky (or decidedly unlucky) dice roll.
However, my conception of the 40k 'verse is based on older background (eg: totally ignoring Tyrant Guards  ;) ).

Quote from: InquisitorHeidfeld on January 16, 2012, 01:33:55 PMWhich, incidentally, makes the idea of the Tyrant Guard being made from Space Marine DNA erroneous, a Space Marine is genetically unchanged by the implantation (perhaps that's different with the "instant Marine" Chapters).

While I don't think it's necessarily the intent, it's easily explained.

- Firstly, Space Marine candidates themselves are genetically superior to just any Tom, Dick or Harry, by virtue of being 10 year old badasses who can take on tests set in the vein of those that the Primarchs took.
- Secondly, one can assume that geneseed, as organic and self-growing machinery, has its own genetics.
- Thirdly, given all the other genetic mashing the Tyranids do, dealing with a genetic chimera (of sorts - I know that's not strictly what a genetic chimera is, but it's a close enough term) like a Space Marine would be absolute child's play.

Yes, except that they already do all sorts of modifications, adrenal sacks, hive mind synapses...etc. The sorts of modifications which supposedly set a Tyrant Guard apart were already well within their capabilities and many were already in place.
;)