Astropaths and Wyrdling

[nick012000 0]

If an Astropath takes the Wyrdling mutation as the benefit of the Tainted background, what happens? Does he have Psy Rating 3 (because taking Psy Rating multiple times increases your Psy Rating), Psy Rating 2 plus the Talented Talent (from getting a redundant Talent), or his choice of the two? It says he gets two psychic powers of his choice from one Discipline; can they be psychic powers of any level, or only the 100xp powers? If he picks powers from a discipline other than Telepathy, does he get that Discipline, or does he only get the powers? Does he get the Basic Technique of the Discipline he chooses to recieve the powers of?

[St. Jimmy 0]

Rules-as-written it looks like someone who already has a psy-rating and becomes a wyrdling:

Increases their psy rating by 1 (Takes the next available 'Psy rating X' talent)

Gains two psychic powers from a discipline they already have access to.

No idea what happens if they've already maxed out one of those, maybe give them Sorcery?

[ReaperOfTheLost 0]

They way I took it was similar.
It seems pretty clear in the rules that an astro path can increase his psy ratting to 3 at start. This is assuming that the text is not time sensitive, meaning that your character is created all at once and not in a specific order. If you were to enforce a rigid timeline your character would not have become an astro path until after the taint. I guess this could be interpreted that rule only applies if your character had a psy ratting before the taint. However your character's inital psy ratting does not necessarily need to originate from any astropathic training, and infact astropaths are chosen from those already possessing strong psychic potential. You could then argue that your psy ratting was present from birth and then would apply to being upgraded. This is of course is a lot of over thinking on my part and I say you just go with the 3 and have fun.
 

As far as taking techniques it seem reasonable to be able to choose 2 from any of the disciplines, since this is not coming from any formal training, but a mutation or other unnatural force. With this same logic this does not count as having trained the discipline so you would essentially be locked out form the other powers until you purchased another discipline.
 

I also like to enforce prerequisites, meaning that you can't just take the last technique but any of the ones you take for "free" you must at least meet the rest of the prerequisites. This seems to balance things in most cases but it gets a bit tricky if you choose all your powers from telepathic since you could potentially still get some really powerful techniques. In this case I would just use your own discretion. I'm a totally sucker for a good story, so if a player can come up with a really compelling story on how they learned/used this really awesome power I'll usually just let them take it as long as its in the interests of good role-playing and not powergaming.
 

There's one last tricky thing I've found wit this combo, and that's when it comes time to buy the next level psy ratting. I don't know if this seems obvious but I've gotten into arguments. I don't let the astro player with wyrdling purchase the normal psy ratting 3 talent, I make them wait till psy rating 4. They've said that this negates the bonus at that point but I just tell them they still get to spend the xp on something else. I don't know, any thoughts on this.
 

[Little Dave 0]

I'd agree they get the next psy rating talent. Buying the psy rating to 4 would require the Psy Rating 4 talent, and so they would have to wait until that became available in their career.

[St. Jimmy 0]

Makes perfect sense. The talent isn't named 'Psy Rating +1' after all. It's like getting 10% to a skill at creation. You have to wait until +20 unlocks to improve it further.