PenitentJake wrote:

It's more that I think mechanics should, in some way, represent the phenomenon they are meant to express. So for example, you look at a psychic power that confers a ranged attack, has more in common with a mundane weapon than it does with a different psychic power which confers an invulnerable save, or provides an aura. Despite the difference in effect, I believe that these three powers have more in common with each other than each of them does with other similar non-psychic effect. Because for me, what defines a power as psychic is it's "psychicness" not the specific effect that psychicness produces.

And to me, an ability being psychic in nature is cool flavor text that should ideally interact with the small number of anti-psychic effects on the tabletop, but I'm more interested in the psychic effect feeling like whatever that effect is. So 8th/9th edition witchfire powers were often frustratingly restrictive in how they worked because the designers insisted on having them do mortal wounds. But like, if I'm fielding a Salamanders librarian and I just want him to shoot an avenger/fire blast at the enemy, that should probably just behave like a fire blast i.e. flamer.

I've been playing since 5th edition. Prior to 8th, psychic powers essentially being guns was pretty normal. And the most frustrating part about that arrangement was that sometimes the super powerful psyker randomly failed to shoot lightning for seemingly no reason. (Failed psychic tests.)

That may sound overly philosophical or whatever, but the warp is a theme that permeates the game, and psychic abilities are a part of that theme. I want psychic powers to feel different from weapon profiles because the Imperium could not exist without psychic navigation and communication. Sure, a ranged attack is a ranged attack effect wise, but one of those ranged attacks is empowered by the some phenomenon that allows humans to travel faster than light, or is literally the stuff of daemons, and its psychic nature means that it has more in common with other psychic phenomenon than it does with other ranged attacks, even if a particualr psychic effect IS a ranged attack.

Think about how crazy the science behind necron guns or even admech guns is. You could argue that archaeotech and the strangeness of xenos are both equally big parts of the setting, but I don't want to see Science Tests and Deny the Scientist rolls introduced to make them feel special.

Oh, I'm down right obsessed with psychic phenomenon as a foundational theme of 40k; I think you're not obsessed enough with it. Warp travel can't happen without it. It had a huge impact on how and why the Heresy played out, entire factions exist because of it and it's thematically foundational to the game in a way that archeotech, or martian tech, or tryranid bio-tech aren't.

I simply disagree. Warp travel also can't happen without admech tech. The imperium wouldn't have tanks or bolters without the admech. And I'd say that the anti-progress anachronistic tech of the setting is just as much a part of its themes and aesthetics as warp tech. but again, we don't generally need Science tests for chainswords and bolters to be satisfying. Respectfully, it really feels like you're letting the exotic, shiny nature of psychic effects steer you down a weird road.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

If you're trying to recreate a battle from a BL novel,

I'm not. And in fact, I think the idea that this is what rules should do is a bit of a problem, because I think most Black Library writers get it wrong; I think their stories should be more in line with the game, not that the game should be like the stories. Black Library is not 40k; it's the novelization of 40k. It's BASED on a true story... But it is NOT the true story. I don't even consider BL to be fluff.

That's a pretty wild take. To clarify, you're saying that the "real lore" of 40k is that a plasma gun will kill its wielder 1 in 6 times it's overcharged and that marines are regularly losing half a company in every battle because that's what happens on the tabletop? Not trying to put words in your mouth here, but I just can't get behind that at all. Every discussion of lore vs rules I've seen ends up with everyone agreeing that lore != rules, but I've never seen someone argue that lore != lore.

Well Ahriman isn't just a run of the mill psyker, but don't you think that it makes more sense to give guys like him and Eldrad and Mephiston or whoever immunity, rather than ditching the whole Perils and Deny system with the un-intended consequence that Joe-bob the Rogue psyker who discovered his power 3 days ago can also never suffer Perils or be Denied?

I think that the vast majority of psykers that can be found on the tabletop are competent at wielding their warpcraft and unlikely to explode or have their powers shut down the way perils and deny the witch have traditionally represented. Sorcerers, librarians, 'nids, maguses, etc. probably shouldn't be perils'ing or getting denied. Thus, it makes more sense to have a special rule for the couple of units that *should* be that dangerous with their powers. (Wyrd boys and...?)

So similarly to psychic blanks, the scenarios that call for special interactions are in the vast minority, so it makes sense to me to have those exceptions work to fit with the design of psychic powers rather than the other way around. It's like when we discuss Morale in the Proposed Rules section and someone points out that getting scared and running away really only makes sense for like, three factions and a couple specific units in the game. Thus why people have pitched making morale a special rule for those factions/units rather than a universal subsystem.

Do you think that if Joe-Bob the Rogue psyker how discovered his powers three days ago casts lightning on Ahriman that it's unfluffy for Ahriman to deny that?

That is kind of unfluffy, yeah. Or at least, not something that seems to happen often enough to need a special rule to reflect it. Psyker duels in 40k don't generally seem to be about two guys staring at eachother while nothing happens. It's about one guy throwing a lightning bolt while the other guy puts up a forcefield to stop it and counters by trying to mind crush his opponent. In other words, it's not about stopping powers from happening; it's about powers happening and each of them having to deal with that.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Failed psychic tests, deny the witch, and perils just didn't really represent the lore very well. I'd be open to a system that *does* represent the lore better, but for now I'd rather be rid of unfluffy mechanics that make it clunkier to resolve effects.

So yes, agreed on failed psychic tests- get rid of them. And no, implementations of Perils and Deny may have felt unfluffy, the lore concept of both Perils and Deny are fundamental principles of psychic ability- especially Perils. They are important enough that a flawed system is better than now system. If perils isn't possible, why does the Hereticus exist?

Basically, because perils happen off the tabletop. And usually to expendable, minor characters.

True, but again the more robust the psychic system is, the more design space we have to make those missions interesting. Like maybe in a certain zone of the board (ie. proximity to one of the objectives) Perils are more likely to occur for non Chaos psykers to represent the fact that the objective is a powerful chaos relic. Or maybe if you pick up the objective, you can more effectively Deny the Witch. Those mission interactions are easy in a game system where the mechanics for Perils and Deny exist, but in a system where the don't exist, the mission has to contain all the rules.

Some merit to this. The vast variety of psychic effects in the game makes it hard to write one-size-fits-all rules to interact with any/all psychic powers. Then again, core rules that have tried to do that sort of thing in the past have been kind of hit or miss. Remember the 9th edition secondary that just gave your opponent full points when he killed your librarian? And I'm not sure anyone ever loved the rules for the noctilith crown.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Not familiar with how this was handled before, but I know that weapon powers can be modified through weapon upgrades in modern Crusade.

Weapon upgrades modify a specific weapon's stats. Psychic Mastery, due to the diversity of psychic power effects can't really do that, so instead it manipulates the system that governs the use of powers- you know an extra power, you can use an extra power per turn, that sorta thing. This made it feel very different from weapons upgrades, so it was really cool when a Psyker might take some weapon upgrades and some Psychic mastery upgrades.

That sounds like it could be modeled with the current Crusade rules by having some crusade relics (or whatever they're called) represent psychic powers. Give a character the relic. It now has the following psychic ability: (insert some rules here.)

Psychic Apocalypse was a rule that allowed an army fighting Witch Hunters to include a free Psyker so that the witch hunters had a witch to hunt. There were powers it could be given, and statlines, and FW even made a model based on the artwork for the unit. There was also a mission, and it was particularly suitable for a game against someone using the Psychic Apocalypse unit, but they could be used in regular missions as well.

That sounds super fluffy but also terrible for pickup games. So it sounds like the sort of thing that would be better handled by a special mission's rules rather than some universal rules.

Part of the problem here is that when you said "anti-psychic field" you were taking only about Blanks, and I lumped Deny in with it, since it is an anti-psychic ability even if it's not a field. The rules for Blanks in previous editions integrated with the psychic rules. The rules for Blanks in 10th are not as good because there are no dedicated core psychic rules for them to integrate with.

And if we DO include Deny? That opens up fourth category of folks affected: all psykers. That takes the number of factions with the potential to interact with these rules to all but 3 I think? Drukhari (though not true if the Drukhari army in question includes Voidscarred Corairs, or if those Drukhari are part of a Ynarri army), Tau and Necrons. Custodes and Admech only interact with Deny if they bring some IA.

As mentioned above, I don't think deny has ever been a particularly fluffy mechanic. So I'm still kind of back on not needing a universal subsystem to accomodate a handful of exceptions.

Again, the rules for blanks didn't have a system of their own; they were interactions with the rules that governed the use of psychic powers. Blanks, much like Psychic Missions, Psychic battle honours, psychic Theatre of War rules ALL require a psychic system to interact with in order to provide universal ways to modify abilities that have radically different battlefield effects.

I mean, the culexus has always been a little wonky and kind of illustrates why I don't agree with this. Even in editions with psychic tests, etc., the culexus basically didn't interact with a wide variety of effects that were warp-based in nature and that he probably should have interacted with. He didn't particularly interfere with daemons shooting fire from their eyes or having invulnerable saves due to their esoteric nature. Depending on the edition, he didn't generally prevent a psyker from moving his squad around faster. I'm pretty sure his 8th and 9th incarnations only really interacted with psychic powers that targeted him specifically (or rather, prevented him from being targeted). Basically, there are just way too many effects that are supernatural in 40k but that would be cumbersome to roll psychic tests for every time they come up. So the culexus just ended up not interacting with a bunch of psychic effects despite there being a universal subsystem in place for him to interact with.

So again, I'm all for seeing revised culexus rules to try and let him interact with more psychic effects, but a return to the old system wouldn't really accomplish that.

And generally, I'm open to someone taking another crack at a psychic system (to support some of the concepts you've mentioned here, or for whatever other purpose.) However, I don't think going back to one of the previous systems is inherently better than what we have now. Except in the context of the lack of customizable characters. Which stinks but I'd argue is basically a different discussion.

Is it fair to say that your position is that the psychic rules of 10th could be improved, while mine is that they should be improved?

More or less. I think we're arguing different points. I'm definitely not trying to take the stance that the current system is ideal. If I were to try and summarize the points I'm trying to make:

A.) The current system works pretty well in the sense that powers work pretty smoothly and feel like the things they're representing. Shooting fire from your wizard staff feels like shooting fire from a flamer, and that's intuitive.
B.) Tied to point A, I don't think of previous systems as being "better" because I don't miss most of the elements that we gave up. Deny was frustrating and unfluffy. Failed psychic tests were frustrating and unfluffy.
C.) When people say they miss the psychic phase or what have you, I find that they almost always switch to saying that they just miss being able to choose powers. To my mind, customizable wargear (powers) and things like psychic tests, deny, a psychic phase, etc. are completely different topics. It's like saying you miss 5th edition style morale, and then when pressed, you say what you actually miss is being able to Go to Ground. They're only tenuously connected to eachother, and I find that conflation interesting/weird.

I do appreciate the more civil format of this post. Thank you.