Idira is an Unsanctioned Divination Psyker inWarhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader, and one of the first companions to join your crew. As an Unsanctioned Psyker, Idira has earlier access to stronger psychic powers, but has an innate five percent chance to trigger psychic phenomena and perils of the warp, regardless of the current veil degradation level.
This can be troublesome, but it can also present a unique opportunity to embrace the chaos, as Idira gains access to a few talents that make her stronger during these effects. Below, we’ll take a look at several of the best overall talents to choose for Idira as you level her up.
7Mind Siege
Enemies that have failed a Willpower resistance test against any of the psyker’s psychic powers will suffer an additional +6 mental damage every time they suffer mental damage until the end of combat.
Divination Psykers can focus on support, damage, or a combination of the two, making them a versatile psychic school. For damage-focused builds, Mind Siege is one of your strongest options. By simply causing an enemy to fail a Willpower resistance test, they will continuously take bonus damage every time they are hit with mental damage.
This is fairly easy to accomplish with a number of Idira’s abilities, like Sensory Deprivation or Mind Rupture. Plus, you’re able to make these tests even easier to pass through other talents that we’ll look at later, like Weak Body, Weak Soul or Mental Breach.
6Weak Body, Weak Soul
Expose Weakness also reduces enemies' Toughness and Willpower by -9 for 1 round.
Weak Body, Weak Soul is an Operative talent that reduces the defensive stats of an enemy that has been Exposed. This talent has a variety of useful effects, from increasing the damage you deal to that enemy to making it harder for them to pass Toughness or Willpower-based resistance tests.
This will, in turn, allow Idira to take advantage of Mind Siege more often, while also allowing allies to have an easier time inflicting resistance tests or simply dealing damage to enemies affected by Expose Weakness.
5Stabilising Factor
The first psychic power used each turn increases veil degradation by 2 points less. If this talent reduces the effect on veil degradation to less than 0, veil degradation is instead decreased by 1.
Stabilising Factor is an essential talent for all Psykers in Rogue Trader, and especially Unsanctioned Psykers like Idira. As characters use psychic powers during combat, veil degradation will increase, which can lead to psychic phenomena and even perils of the warp, if you aren’t careful. Stabilising Factor essentially reduces the chances of these effects occurring.
However, because Idira always has a chance to trigger these effects, even keeping veil degradation low with Stabilising Factor won’t save you. Because of this, we recommend taking Idira out of the party if you won’t no possibility of perils of the warp triggering.
4Mental Breach
Enemies that have taken damage from the psyker at least once suffer a -20 penalty to all resistance tests against the psyker until the end of combat.
Mental Breach is another great talent for increasing the chances of an enemy failing their resistance tests. In this case, damaging an enemy with any of Idira’s abilities will inflict them with a whopping minus 20 to all resistance tests.
While this will greatly improve Idira’s ability to deal damage through Mind Siege, this debuff can also benefit your other party members when they attempt to inflict an enemy with a resistance test. Cassia’s Navigator abilities especially stand to gain from Mental Breach.
3Advice And Guidance
The first time in combat that an ally becomes the target of the psyker’s psychic power, this ally gains +10 to Weapon Skill and Ballistic Skill until the end of combat.
Advice and Guidance is a decent support talent that buffs allies when Idira targets them with her psychic powers. As a Divination Psyker, Idira gains access to quite a few useful buffs like Presience or Foreboding. This talent will then grant allies a secondary buff on top of these effects, increasing their damage with melee weapons or guns for the remainder of the fight.
While not flashy or build-defining, Advice and Guidance is a consistent and easy to use talent that is almost always useful, providing a bit of extra damage during short or long fights.
2Weak Hearts
Enemies, currently inflicted with blinded, stunned, immobilised, or prone effects by the psyker, suffer +10% more damage.
Weak Hearts provides a nice damage bonus against enemies that are already at a disadvantage through a variety of different debilitating effects. The easiest way to achieve the conditions necessary to grant Weak Hearts' damage bonus is through Sensory Deprivation.
This Divination Psyker ability costs one AP, can be used every round, and always inflicts blinded on the target. If the target also fails to pass a Willpower resistance test, the negative effects of blinded will be increased, and they’ll have to pass another test to remove blinded. Weak Hearts synergizes with Idira’s other talents and abilities that force resistance tests, making every part of her kit stronger.
1Power Conduit
After triggering psychic phenomena or perils of the warp the first time each turn, the psyker’s next psychic power costs -1 less action point.
As an Unsanctioned Psyker, it’s only a matter of time before Idira triggers psychic phenomena or perils of the warp. While this usually presents a massive risk to your party, either by reducing momentum, reducing stats, or summoning powerful enemies, a few of Idira’s talents, like Power Conduit, actually make her stronger in these situations.
Psychic phenomena trigger quite frequently, especially if you have another Psyker in the party using their psychic abilities. This means that Idira can consistently gain the bonus from Power Conduit, regularly reducing the AP cost of her psychic powers by one.
