Can someone please help me figure out how to regulate Smite? Basically, we are fighting an enemy who is using Smite against the marines and our Librarian who basically feels guilty using a pushed Smite because people just sigh and think in their head, "did anyone play-test this game before they printed the book?" We think it is overpowered because it does about the most possible damage as a half action and AOE. Something's wrong here.

Pushed? They will be constantly generating Psychic Phenomenon and Perils of the Warp. That can go bad quickly. If it wasn't for our group allowing fate pointing Perils of the Warp rolls our psyker would be dead now from the relatively few times he used it. Also, if pushed it will have a massive radius, meaning it can hit friendlies as well.

Fettered Smite is not that impressive (ok, later on it becomes equivalent to a standard attack, and then finally a little better), and Unfettered it isn't quite so hideous.

 The answer is exactly what you said, you just fate point it if something goes wrong. We are all rank 2 and our Librarian pushed a smite and killed 3 Chaos Space Marines in one go where everyone else was struggling and dying. It was just one of those things where we were all like, wait a second, this is messed up. We are using a grid and the radius is not massive. It is quite easy to control actually. 

Some fixes we are considering…

1. Pushed Smites are focused on one enemy. (makes it less AOE and so whole groups of enemies don't get hit by it. It would mean that you have to either get the benefit of huge damage or AOE)

2. No Fate Pointing pushed Smites. (makes it more risky)

3. Re formulate the damage amount. (this my encourage the Librarian to use other powers once and a while)

Any other ideas you guys have?

You can't fate point psychic phenomena. Its not a test.

That said, it can be mitigated by other talents fairly effectively. Still, the off chance it does happen, there are some spectacularly bad things that can happen.

Also, I personally recommend rolling those tests in secret, if only to fudge them.

Also, spacing. enemies like Chaos Space Marines don't really all need to be within 2-5 meters of each other. They can handle themselves. They should be advancing upon the sons of the false emperor through cover and proper spacing, with the confidence of a thousand campaigns governing their tactics.

Thanks for the info about Fate points!

They can't really handle themselves when 3 get caught in a Psy 6-7 Smite. Usually, two of them will die. That's crazy!

Point is just I don't think its unreasonable that a small band of chaos space marines would assume spacing of 10-15 meters. They got weapons with plenty of range. Obviously, indoors this may be an issue, but at those ranges the party may be in peril as well.

 Regardless, I don't think 3 CSMs should be able to be killed in 1 shot by a Rank 2 Librarian. True, they would probably be spaced out, but it doesn't always allow that considering they were in a hallway within a space station.

 Let foes that aren't the primary target dodge. The Librarian still gets to nuke a guy, and your encounter isn't borked by one shot. If you need to fluff it, just say that they note the blast heading in their general direction and dive for cover.

EDIT: I don't have my copy of the rulebook in front of me. Can Smite be dodged normally? Anyway, evasive maneuvers used by enemies can really extend their longevity.

The problem with dodging smite is the size of the blast. In a tight environment, it would be pretty rough. Fortunately CSMs would have a fairly significant move rate (should be enough if they're even 1-2m away from the target).

Yes, you can dodge Psychic attacks like anything else. With explosions, your Agility Bonus has to be enough of a distance to get out of the blast radius. I once used this to have a Chaos Marine with his back to a wall (and no room to the sides) dodge FORWARD and past a Multi-Melta blast. :P

And yes, you get a nice area, but it has to be centered on one target creature. You can't place it in between to hit the largest number of targets. It isn't exactly a 'Blast' effect either. it is more like chain lightning. you can dodge the bolt coming at you but might not have to move out of the area. Unlike other powers it only hits 'creatures' so inanimate objects won't be hit either. 

 Yeah, Smite is arguably the most broken thing in Deathwatch (I'd certainly second that either no-one at FFG playtested a Librarian with Smite or they have a very over inflated view of what Librarian's should be able to do).

Posters here have already made great suggestions on how to handle it in game, but sadly it only becomes harder to balance as the Librarian goes up psy level (pretty soon they do blasts so large the primary target generally can't dodge, dealing 50+ damage a time).

In the end we rewrote the power as the following, to make it fit more closely with the tabletop version:-

1d10 + PR E, Semi Auto, Warp Weapon

(The semi auto is based on the way black crusade does shooting psychic attacks, basically just like a semi auto weapon, you get 1 additional bolt for each 2 degrees of success, and enemy reactions dodge 1 bolt for passing and 1 bolt for each degree of success).

It is a much weaker power, but more fitting for something a character starts with.

Naviward, I love your idea but I think the spell would be a little weak. I think it should be more like the Plasma gun type level so we would be more in favor of…

d10+3*PR, Pen=PR Semi Auto, Warp Weapon, Half Action

I think this works quite well and scales well. Compare it to some of the shooting combos and close combat combos at the respective rank and renown items. We are going to play-test this for a while and see if it works. I am not sure if it says somewhere but we are allowing 1 offensive spell per turn. Any thoughts on any of this?

BY far and away the most broken power is the one that lets you take control of multiple characters. If used pushed it means a GM has to aim to make an encounter about 3 times harder than it would otherwise: The LIbrarian takes control of about a 1/3 of the enemies, tieing up another 1/3, leaving only a 1/3 for the players to deal with.

Smite is downright piffiling compared to that.

afterimagedan said:

I would be careful about giving too much of a bonus times the PR, as at base level this is alright (although it is better than a bolter is to start with, which is already pretty powerful, starting marines can't have a plasma gun after all) but once the psy ratings start to go up it gets over powered quickly. 

A good comparison would be a mid rank 5 librarian vs other marine. The rank 5 psyker can push and have the talents to make the perils not that big a problem. 

This means that damage would be 1d10 + 30 (avg 35) warp weapon with a target roll of around 110 (WP 60 + 5*PR), with an average of 4 bolts.

Compare this to a lascannon,  5d10 + 10 proven (3) (avg 39) pen 10 with a target roll of around 60 (BS 60).

Already this power is better than a las cannon, is easier to hit with and does more damage over the course of the shots, is harder to dodge and can effect multiple opponents. Sadly it's one of the real problems with the system, as the PR increases there is an exponential effect on most powers, causing them to break rather quickly.

I would at the very least go for d10+(2*PR) and then play test it.

The part about only having 1 offensive psychic power a turn is covered in the errata, page4. All psychic powers that target an opponent gain they attack subtype and you can only use I action with the attack subtype a turn.

I'd be interested to hear how the playtesting goes and whether the players like this new version of the power.

borithan said:

I'd say that smite has much the same effect, as blast 10 sections of the battlefield disappaer each round. That said, as you rightly point out, compel is just as broken. It's another power that gets exponentially better up the psy ratings. It really should have just effected 1 opponent, which would still have been very useful.