Editing Dark Heresy Second Edition (section)

=== Elite Advances ===
Elite Advances are special bonuses that can make your character absurdly powerful, but each one either has steep requirements to actually acquire or comes with a bunch of undesirable effects to go with it. In any case, they all open up extra talents that only characters with those advances can use. 

*'''Inquisitor''': That's right; if you play your cards right, you can be a full-fledged Inquisitor in-game. 
**Experience Cost: 1000 XP
**Minimum Influence Requirement: 75
**Also requires GM approval/some kind of action that makes another Inquisitor inclined to promote you
**Instant Bonuses: Peer (Inquisition) Talent, Forbidden Lore (your choice) Skill, Leadership Aptitude
***While the Inquisitor isn't ''entirely'' the designated protagonist of a given warband, he is arguably the linchpin that holds it all together. His unique talents mainly emphasize a much wider use of Fate Points, including the ability to outright cancel any Insanity/Corruption gain, modifying subtlety, granting another character an extra Fate Point, or even asking the GM for a little extra insight into his current situation. With the Jack/Master of All Trades talents, he's guaranteed to be able to do a little bit of everything. Good luck saving enough XP to buy all those cool talents, though. 

*'''Psyker''': You know them, you may or may not love them, but your mindbullets have to come from someone. Taking the Adeptus Astra Telepathica background with this Elite Advance is strongly advised- mostly because it comes with the Sanctioned Trait and will make you that much less likely to be lynched for being a witch. Mutually exclusive with Untouchable, for obvious reasons. 
**Experience Cost: 300 XP, or free with Mystic Role
**Minimum Wlllpower Requirement: 40 
**Instant Bonuses: Psyker Aptitude, PR 1 (2 if Sanctioned), 1d10+3 Corruption Points (if not Sanctioned), can buy psychic powers and PR advances

*'''Untouchable''': The flip side of the Psyker, complete with a set of anti-Psyker abilities befitting his unique nature. While this makes them excellent at foiling witches and Daemons, their soulless nature makes them awful for social interactions and they can't benefit from the good effects of psychic powers either. Never take one with a Psyker in the party unless you want a lot of trouble. 
**Experience Cost: 300 XP
**Instant Bonuses: Resistance (Psychic Powers) Talent, Fellowship halved for tests (reduced to 1 when interacting with anyone with a PR or Psyniscience), unable to benefit from friendly psychic powers or anything else that calls on the Warp, ignores effects of all non-Perils psychic phenomena, and gains 30+ bonuses on all tests to resist Perils effects.
***The rules here are quite different from those depicted in fluff (notably the Eisenhorn and Ravenor novels). In Dark Heresy if you're playing an Untouchable you can rather easily get excellent Deny the Witch bonuses and even grant Deny the Witch to allies standing close (which is rather useless considering how hard it is for most other characters to get good Willpower) as well as a +20 to their dodges against psychic powers, but this is still limited by their Reactions (so you're not immune to psychic powers: you have a chance of resisting the first one targeting you each turn, and this will also remove your normal defences). However, if you're willing to invest a lot of XP into countering psykers (and already have WP 55+), you can gain an aura (typically with a 5m or 10m radius) in which psykers have their psy rating reduced (potentially to zero). As such, you aren't a shield against psykers that your allies can hide behind, but you are a perfect way of shutting psykers down in melee. Of course, this will require multiple (10+) expensive, often single-attribute Rank 3 talents to pull off, so it isn't something you'll get at character creation!
***Untouchables were expanded upon in the Enemies Beyond sourcebook, where they got access to a few new talents that make them better against daemons, as well as even more bonuses against psykers.

*'''Sister of Battle''': (Introduced in Enemies Within) When you need a whole bunch of heretics burned yesterday, a Sister of Battle is who you turn to. Their faith in the Emperor grants them near-miraculous abilities that inspire their fellow Acolytes even as they purge anything that looks that it might be heretical. 
**Experience Cost: 750 XP
**Minimum Influence Requirement: 50
**Minimum Willpower: 40
**Adepta Sororitas background only
**Instant Bonuses: Peer (Adepta Sororitas) and Weapon Training (Bolt) Talents, Scholastic Lore (Tactica Imperialis) Skill, Willpower Aptitude, get Adepta Sororitas power armor and Godwyn-De'az bolt pistol (those can be acquired by a character with Adepta Soraritas background without the Sister of Battle elite advance, but it would be highly unlikely to succeed in doing so without the use of an Inquisitor's influence, and even then it's only about even chance, typically)
***Remember how the Adepta Sororitas background makes you gain Insanity Points when you would normally gain Corruption? As it turns out, a lot of the SoB unique talents actually require you to have a minimum Insanity score and even get stronger as you accumulate Insanity points. In WH40k, "crazy" is just another way of saying "faithful". 

*'''Astropath''': (Introduced in Enemies Beyond) A more specific path for a psyker, this not only requires the Telepathica Background, but this also requires the Psyker Advance, and in exchange they gain extra protection from warpy stuff and a focus on telepathy with their special powers.
**Experience Cost: 300 XP
**Instant Bonuses: Soul Bound (which always leaves the character blind) and Unnatural Senses equal to their Willpower Characteristic (this can be increased though talents later). The fact that Astropaths are sensing things through the Warp seems to imply that they aren't necessarily constrained by the limits of the material world - like walls!