Warhammer Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader Pre-Release Thread [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Dodo1610]

New Devdiary

 

[lightbane]

TBF non-trained/rogue psykers are quite weak compared to "proper" psykers like Astropaths in RT. Also, being a rogue psyker means you're both hunted down by Daemons AND the Inquisition, so you're literally one bad roll from getting a game over no matter what. Not much to enjoy unless you enjoy savescumming.

 

[Spectacle]

TBF non-trained/rogue psykers are quite weak compared to "proper" psykers like Astropaths in RT. Also, being a rogue psyker means you're both hunted down by Daemons AND the Inquisition, so you're literally one bad roll from getting a game over no matter what. Not much to enjoy unless you enjoy savescumming.

If Owlcat wanted to go that route they could easily give the rogue trader psyker some special ability to get around those problems. Perhaps a unique alien artifact that both shields you from the warp and enhances your powers. CRPG protagonists do not need to be balanced with all other character options the way generic tabletop characters should be.

 

[Salvo]

Hard Mode: pariah gene protag

Wait that's us

 

[Humbaba]

New Devdiary

Thank god they shilled out for a narrator instead of the usual russkie patois.

If Owlcat wanted to go that route they could easily give the rogue trader psyker some special ability to get around those problems. Perhaps a unique alien artifact that both shields you from the warp and enhances your powers. CRPG protagonists do not need to be balanced with all other character options the way generic tabletop characters should be.

If Owlcat wanted to shit on the lore and just give the PC an OP mcguffin sure.

 

[Orud]

New Devdiary

Are they using music from the 'The Lord Inquisitor' fan film? Even if not, it definitely sounds inspired by it.

 

[Sykar]

Always liked this one:


I hope they can add something similar to this to an area.

 

[Peachcurl]

Hard Mode: pariah gene protag

Wait that's us

I think there are tabletop rules for Blanks, would be cool to have. At least for a companion. A rogue trader being a blank brings all sorts of problems, not the least of them the impact on his leadership role.

 

[Vermillion]

TBF non-trained/rogue psykers are quite weak compared to "proper" psykers like Astropaths in RT. Also, being a rogue psyker means you're both hunted down by Daemons AND the Inquisition, so you're literally one bad roll from getting a game over no matter what. Not much to enjoy unless you enjoy savescumming.

People are mostly bitching because they're secondaries that "know" that Dark Heresy Ascension Psykers are OP City killing level entities and want to be able to do everything with "their" character like in the notoriously poorly balanced pathfinder/3.5. They ignore that Tabletop early game Psykers are basically a WAI player griefing tool where any time you use your powers above fetter you risk a party wipe or instant character death. So you end up like Spectacle and start theorizing ways on how you can have your cake and eat it to.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, even on tabletop, with all the equipment and special powers that the different careers could acquire; the only thing the Psykers had over them was the ability to do it all at the cost of exploding into a greater daemon if they failed poorly enough. Even if you aren't rolling perils, Psykers had a pretty high fail rate for their abilities when fettered or could rapidly become useless or detrimental with increasingly worse psychic phenomena rolls. Being a psyker is a fast track to character retirement due to corruption and insanity, same with Navigators.
Every ability a Psyker has, a different career can do it more consistently and SAFELY. Even mindbullets can be matched with heavy weapons and demon killing by a Missionary/Sister of Battle. From a gameplay standpoint any of the classes/characters I mentioned would have just as many if not more "active abilities" the only difference being what visual effect plays when you use it. This is a universe where you can walk around with a gun that rips open a hole in the fabric of reality to instant gib an enemy. "Martials" aren't lacking like in dnd.

 

[mediocrepoet]

the only thing the Psykers had over them was the ability to do it all at the cost of exploding into a greater daemon if they failed poorly enough.

That sounds pretty awesome. What's the downside?

 

[lightbane]

People are mostly bitching because they're secondaries that "know" that Dark Heresy Ascension Psykers are OP City killing level entities and want to be able to do everything with "their" character like in the notoriously poorly balanced pathfinder/3.5.

A shame then that both Astropaths and Navigators are quite weak in comparison with these and other psykers from other games.

hey ignore that Tabletop early game Psykers are basically a WAI player griefing tool where any time you use your powers above fetter you risk a party wipe or instant character death.

I would agree with that for all psykers especially DHeresy ones, but the Astropaths from RT are much safer by design. In exchange, they're much weaker and don't get any fun powers anytime soon.

Every ability a Psyker has, a different career can do it more consistently and SAFELY. Even mindbullets can be matched with heavy weapons and demon killing by a Missionary/Sister of Battle.

I would argue that a proper Astropath can still be a combat beast by mindcontrolling multiple targets at once, shooting mind-bullets non-stop and so on, but it is much more difficult to accomplish compared with the other games. Astropaths here are support, and Rogue Psykers are too unreliable and with weaksauce powers to boot.
Of course you could try to learn Chaotic powers to "compensate", but I'm not sure if that was an option in RT.

the only thing the Psykers had over them was the ability to do it all at the cost of exploding into a greater daemon if they failed poorly enough.

That sounds pretty awesome. What's the downside?

Total Party kill and players angry that they wasted their time.

 

[Parsimonious cook]

Wyches:

 

[Vermillion]

That sounds pretty awesome. What's the downside?

You need to take the daemonhost elite advance if you want to play AS the daemon.

I would agree with that for all psykers especially DHeresy ones, but the Astropaths from RT are much safer by design. In exchange, they're much weaker and don't get any fun powers anytime soon.

Yes well, our resident powergamer doesn't want to be support, so they're not going to be interested in Astropath abilities anyways. So that leave rogue psykers who are both warp-spasm prone and don't get good mind bullets until mid-late campaign.

I would argue that a proper Astropath can still be a combat beast by mindcontrolling multiple targets at once, shooting mind-bullets non-stop and so on, but it is much more difficult to accomplish compared with the other games. Astropaths here are support, and Rogue Psykers are too unreliable and with weaksauce powers to boot.

True, but my point has always been to disabuse the notion that only Psykers will have fun options. Anyone can throw down some hallucinogenic grenades and have the enemy shoot each other or spasm on the ground in horror. A Gun focused character can just grab a heavy stubber and drop 10 hits of 1d10 damage on a character when the avg enemy had 15 HP and heavy stubbers are early game equipment for rogue trader. Once you level your career some, you can start sharing the overkill damage with any valid enemy in (iirc) 45* cone, or you can play around with automatic grenade launchers and RPGs. You can enjoy the latter even with a garbage ballistics skill so long as you're willing to pray to the scatter gods. If they implement jumpjets or other equipment, then suddenly your melee rogue trader has the equivalent of demonic charge to airdrop on any bastard they want. Mechanicus can just load up on extra limbs all equipped with a gun and become a walking turret, or they can full Adam Jensen in melee while flying around with grav fields.

 

[Sykar]

A Mechanicus RT would be awesome, too and I would most definitely play one too for a playthrough or two depending on how many builds you can make out of it.
But the fun part of Psyker is that you are skirting on the edge of insanity. The only Warhammer game that at least somewhat attempted this to my knowledge is Inquisitor: Martyr with the Warp Heat mechanic for the Psyker which at high levels starts killing you because continued use of psychic power in that state damages yourself, not to mention you summon gazillion daemons and warp anomalies to hunt you down. Pretty fun gameplay for me to balance that and an interesting resource mechanic since you can build your Psyker to deal incredibly high damage at the highest level of Warp Heat while slowly dying and evading anomalies and combating more daemons which btw give no experience or loot, so they are truly just making your life more miserable at times at the worst moments when you down on health and suppression, which means you are susceptible to all forms of CC, which can end deadly quickly if you get knocked down or stunned for example. Even a slow can end deadly at that stage.
I would like to experience that in a proper RPG instead of a guilty pleasure Hack&Slay.
Hell, why not be a former sanctioned Psyker that was left for dead but saved by the RT's mentor? The WH 40k is vast and stranger things than that can happen.

 

[Orud]

Meh, melee.

 

[Sykar]

Meh.

 

[Yoomazir]

Wyches:

View attachment 30457

Some call them whyches, I call them waifus.

 

[Vermillion]

Wyches:

View attachment 30457

Some call them whyches, I call them waifus.

I call them commodities.

 

[Storyfag]

Wyches:

View attachment 30457

Some call them whyches, I call them waifus.

I call them commodities.

I call them Xenos to be terminated.

 

[Koolz]

New Devdiary

Are they using music from the 'The Lord Inquisitor' fan film? Even if not, it definitely sounds inspired by it.

both have poor composition. It's not the arrangement it's the composing, it's not the composing it's the orchestrating...
Who cares what I think bring on 40K!

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Meh.

Pfft, big ass chancellor and he cannot even afford proper earthing in his Empire.

 

[Sykar]

He was earthing Luke.

 

[ChildInTime]

A Mechanicus RT would be awesome, too and I would most definitely play one too for a playthrough or two depending on how many builds you can make out of it.
But the fun part of Psyker is that you are skirting on the edge of insanity. The only Warhammer game that at least somewhat attempted this to my knowledge is Inquisitor: Martyr with the Warp Heat mechanic for the Psyker which at high levels starts killing you because continued use of psychic power in that state damages yourself, not to mention you summon gazillion daemons and warp anomalies to hunt you down. Pretty fun gameplay for me to balance that and an interesting resource mechanic since you can build your Psyker to deal incredibly high damage at the highest level of Warp Heat while slowly dying and evading anomalies and combating more daemons which btw give no experience or loot, so they are truly just making your life more miserable at times at the worst moments when you down on health and suppression, which means you are susceptible to all forms of CC, which can end deadly quickly if you get knocked down or stunned for example. Even a slow can end deadly at that stage.
I would like to experience that in a proper RPG instead of a guilty pleasure Hack&Slay.
Hell, why not be a former sanctioned Psyker that was left for dead but saved by the RT's mentor? The WH 40k is vast and stranger things than that can happen.

Yeah, what's the problem with being a sanctioned psyker? Not like they all get into the inquisition or whatever. And if the idiot devs only allow the MC to be the 'buffer' of the party, lol...

 

[Peachcurl]

Yeah, what's the problem with being a sanctioned psyker? Not like they all get into the inquisition or whatever.

I think a good chunk of the inquisition would consider a psyker working for a rogue trader to be non-sanctioned.

(Of course, that doesn't prevent the psyker from being trained like a sanctioned psyker anyways? And the charter / warrant concept allows for pretty much any exception from the rule you might ask for, so there's that...)

 

[Storyfag]

Yeah, what's the problem with being a sanctioned psyker? Not like they all get into the inquisition or whatever.

I think a good chunk of the inquisition would consider a psyker working for a rogue trader to be non-sanctioned.

(Of course, that doesn't prevent the psyker from being trained like a sanctioned psyker anyways? And the charter / warrant concept allows for pretty much any exception from the rule you might ask for, so there's that...)

Since all rogue traders posess official Imperial documents regulating their trade, perhaps a sanctioned psyker could be employed by one in some capacity. Leased by a friendly planetary governor or whatnot. It's not like rogue traders don't already have navigators and astropaths in their employ...