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So all the commentary on the imbalance of the psychic phase has got me thinking, and I came up with some house rules I'm planning on proposing for my group if we determine the psychic phase is just too crazy. I feel that these are simple and straight forward, and shouldn't be too crazy. And because i'm bored at work I thought I'd throw it out there for some feedback and opinions. Let me know what you guys think:

Manifesting Powers: Psykers can only manifest powers with warp charge totals equal to their Mastery Level + 1.

Psychic Overload: Any psyker attempting to manifest powers greater than their Mastery Level will peril when rolling any doubles, regardless of whether or not they succeed.

Deny the Witch: In order to Deny, the opposing player must nullify as many successes as necessary to bring the total number of successes below the necessary amount of warp charges. (Example: Player 1 rolls 4 successes for a Warp Charge 3 power, Player two nullifies two successes. The remaining two successes are now insufficient to cast the power).

Errata: Grey Knight Purifiers count as Mastery Level 2 for the purpose of taking psychic tests when casting Cleansing Flame (this rule is purely because this is their signature power and I wouldn't want them to be wary of casting it).

Please keep in mind that none of these have been play tested and exist solely in my mind right now.

The denial part that you have in there is an issue. Many armies that have just say... 1 level 2 Libby, would find it nigh impossible to roll a wc 2 or 3 power. Even against non psyker armies, the core d6 dice would be enough to deny a power that barely succeeded.

This also doesn't change the fact that if the other army is psychic heavy (and yours isn't,) they can still cast with relative impunity. You might find a moment where you have a chance to deny one thing, but then you're out of dice, and they still have plenty to go. In that same situation, it doesn't fix the matter that your one or two psykers will never get to cast a power, since your wc dice are outnumbered so badly.

I like almost all of you suggestions, except for Deny the Witch, which as posted before would be very difficult for some armies to pull off.

An alternative to your strategy would be to boost the number of Deny dice the opponent receives based on the Mastery Level of the opponent. i.e. if it's my turn and I have 10 Mastery levels, I generate d6+10 dice. The opponent would therefore get the same d6+5 (half of 10) Dispel dice, irregardless of the Mastery Level of his/her army. Would certainly compensate some armies without Psychic defense (Necrons, Orks, Tau, etc.), would never force you to take psykers, and would penalize those that have them in abundance.

Just my two cents

Cheers!

Good point guys, I'll bring it up to my group. I'm not 100% sure on DEny either mainly because I feel like a psyker heavy army should have an advantage over a non psyker army in the psychic phase, but I did want to make it a little easier for the army with less psykers to deny. Your posts did get me thinking though, maybe something like: Models with the Brotherhood of Psykers rule do not generate warp dice for the purpose of Deny the Witch rolls? I know that means armies like Eldar would be rather awesome for psychic purposes, but I feel almost like they should be, you know?

Either way, I really appreciate the feedback.

Eldar certainly would be a good example of an army that is very good at psychic stuff. Orks an example of an army that isn't as good at it and has more limited access. However, in terms of the game both armies (all armies really) should have equal opportunity to a given phase. Sure, Orks are better at assault than Eldar, but all Ork models and all Eldar models can assault. Therein lies the difficulty with the psychic phase, unequal opportunity. I think if you make the dispel dice dependent on the number of dice generated by the opponent army, that increases the opportunity without forcing an army to choose psykers.

Although, let's be frank, even an army that generates 30 dispel dice is going to need 12 dice on average to block a ML2 spell, while that spell can be reliably cast with only 4 dice. There is a great degree of disproportion in the current ruleset as is even for psychic heavy armies. Instead making 40K psychics the same mechanically as Fantasy would have been a better option IMO.

I initially thought that cancelling successes was the way to go, and it's how I understood the rules in the first place. It does make low psyker armies even more pointless though. I like the idea of having the ability to get more deny dice though. I think that a simple fix would be to have Adamantium Will give a deny dice rather than a conditional +1 to deny. You could even go as far as making a 'null mastery level' representing varying levels of anti-warp charge (mastery 1 through 3). This would give armies like Sisters the resistance to psykers that they should have by fluff, without having to fill up on allied psykers, which seems pretty unfluffy anyways.

I like the 'deny dice equals opponent mastery levels divided by two'. Though I'm sure a psychic horde would disagree. Maybe it applies unless your own mastery levels would be higher?