Who's played Dark Heresy?

[Surrealistik]

I run my games by a mixture of direct purchase and requisition - but I definitely use the listed incomes as a benchmark of the kind of resources the Acolytes should have available to them.

Income is best thought of as spending money, not an woefully inadequate allowance for the equipment you need to do your job.

Again, look to the background. In the tabletop game, you can field Primaris Psykers, and they don't have heavy weapons options. Psykers are not expected to lug heavy weapons about, and a psyker asking for a heavy weapon of that calibre would raise the Inquisitor's eyebrows right off his face. Lascannons in particular, and other weapons of that stripe, are precious technological gems in the 40K setting: they should be issued only to heavy weapons specialists who are taking on the kinds of target that require them, not as personal sidearms for psykers working as sleuths for the Inquisition. This is confirmed in the crunch by their Very Rare availability.

As a DH GM, I certainly would not consider access to a man-portable lascannon - or in fact any heavy weapon, barring a heavy stubber - a given for a psyker at rank 7. In fact I would think it was pretty implausible. You may disagree, but I don't think my view is too peculiar among DH GMs.

Any Inquisitor worthy of the title who knows his Psyker agent is capable of one shotting anything without fail is going to give him the firepower he needs to do his job at an optimal level if the need is foreseen.

Because that is not the viewpoint from which these assessments are made. From the point of view of anyone who is not a melee specialist, it makes sense for them to carry the group's only lascannon if they want to maximise their individual killing power, but that is not the same as maximising the group's combat potential, which is what the Inquisitor is concerned with.

Want to maximize the group's killing power? Facing heavily armoured opponents? Give the Divine Shot Psyker his gun.

On top of that, the Inquisitor is played by the GM, and any GM who regards the Guardsman as "the psyker's personal mule" is ruining the game for the Guardsman player and thus a pretty poor GM.

Well that's what he is effectively; a heavy weapons caddy. I don't like it either; the Guardsman is one of the most underpowered if not the most underpowered career in the game overall.

This is a blind assertion that simply means nothing without the context of the improbable appearance of a high-powered heavy weapon.

If you can use Divine Shot to OHKO virtually anything, and your Inquisitor knows this, it's not improbable as a rank 7 Psyker.

You are in a 10 by 10 metre room with a genestealer. You have a stub pistol, and Divine Shot. One shot him.

Okay, I drop the useless stub pistol as a Free Action and Force Barrage him; or Push him, etc...

But I looked at the sheet you put up above and you hadn't done so, meaning you'd have to trade off some of those other goodies to get it (not to mention Specialist Weapon Training - Heavy (Las), which isn't even on your advance scheme).

Sure, swap out some Agil, or the more disposable stuff like Power Well. Done.

Telekinesis-ing the weapon around is a good solution, sure, but it does require the constant sustaining of a psychic power. I know that sustaining powers is fairly low-risk but if you're having to use it for something as mundane as carrying your equipment then it is something of a vulnerability. Not to mention the fact that presumably you are carrying things besides the lascannon, upping the weight even further.

You do realize that Precision Telekinesis is one of those powers you _want_ to sustain virtually all the time right? It's one of the best in the game.

1) You are free to play your game however you want, but the default rules are that the players have to buy their own gear.

Nope. There is _nothing_ in the RAW that explicitly says that the acolytes _have_ to buy their own gear; you're given salaries and prices, that's it.

2) What Inquisitor has the time to micromanage his acolytes? That's the whole point of the Salary rules. The Inquisitor gives you money based on your level of importance, which you are trusted to spend at the Inquisitor's best interests.

The Inquisitor isn't paying you; the rulebook explicitly says that's money you're making in your spare time: DH Core Rulebook, Pg 124

3) Until Ascension level, the default assumption is that you're not trusted acolytes who get whatever they ask the Inquisitor for. You're the Inquisitor's mooks, who do the work that isn't important enough for him to personally pay attention to. It's not a relationship where you get to ask pretty please for nice things, it's a relationship where he tells you to do something, and you do it with whatever he is nice enough to give to you.

Proof? Reference?

Also, if you're running around spamming psychic powers like you suggest here, one of two things is going to happen.

1) You are going to get burnt at the stake by the heretic-fearing populace at worst, and at best you're going to announce your presence to the entire planet you're on.

2) You're going to roll badly, trigger Perils of the Warp, and kill off your entire party and yourself. The chances of this happening increase as you gain levels.

I just spelled out how thoroughly unlikely a truly bad Perils actually is with Favoured of the Warp. Further, you only need to resort to that level of power in truly desperate encounters; for the most part, just use a Melta Gun or whatever with Psi 2 Divine Shot, or Precision Telekinesis.