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Tsagualsa wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:


You already see that with primaris, which unless I'm mistaken, tend not to have any versatility and incredibly specific loadouts and roles, in contrast to how marines used to have a variety of options.

On the other hand, Primaris have a nonsensical proliferation of micro-differentiated wargear like their half-dozen variant bolt rifles, or stuff nobody asked for, e.g. heavy bolt pistols.

Stuff like the heavy bolt pistol usually just comes down to gw trying to make everything "primaris" +1 over "standard" Astartes equivalents. A primaris "heavy bolt pistol" is better than a "normal" bolt pistol, a primaris "bolt rifle" is better than a "standard" bolter, a primaris "plasma incinerator" is better than a "standard" plasma gun, etc, etc. It's just straight power creep. No idea why we need all of the weird variations of each, though.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

Tsagualsa wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:


You already see that with primaris, which unless I'm mistaken, tend not to have any versatility and incredibly specific loadouts and roles, in contrast to how marines used to have a variety of options.

On the other hand, Primaris have a nonsensical proliferation of micro-differentiated wargear like their half-dozen variant bolt rifles, or stuff nobody asked for, e.g. heavy bolt pistols.

True, it's like GW really can't decide if they want to streamline the game and complete it's transition to a mass battle wargame (hence limited loadouts), or keep the granularity in equipment as in previous editions (hence the sheer glut of bespoke rules, equipment and strats).
They really need to commit to one.
I don't know who's writing the rules, but I can tell they aren't experienced. Must be that "hire for enthusiasm" policy they have going.

Indeed. Not only does that glut of almost-identical stuff make it more difficult to remember what your - and of course also your opponent's - army does on the tabletop, it also greatly increases the likelyhood of broken/degenerate interactions with other rules that e.g. give global boosts to all bolt weapons. The possible combinations between wargear, army-wide rules, stratagems and so on increase geometrically, to the point where you just can't test or predict all possible interactions.

One day I will know how this happened.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
They probably will remove wargear costs, and it will suck, but at the same time they appear to be drastically cutting down on options (which also sucks) so it balances out I guess?

The sad truth about the options is that the game has gotten so big and bloated that it has out grown having a detailed list of squad upgrades; 40k is closer to a mass battle game than a skirmish game, and in mass battle games you tend not to have huge upgrade lists.

You already see that with primaris, which unless I'm mistaken, tend not to have any versatility and incredibly specific loadouts and roles, in contrast to how marines used to have a variety of options.

No because A they will still play favourites with some armies and mid 10th they will change the paradigma and armies will start getting options again, and then every army which has an old style book will have tons of fun waiting for the 11th ed update. And the fact that we are talking about it right now, in 9th ed is something I find very funny.

 vict0988 wrote:

What powers are you thinking of?

Witchfire: Tzeentch’s Firestorm has a warp charge value of 6. If manifested, select one enemy unit within 18" of and visible to this PSYKER and roll nine D6. For each roll of 6, that enemy unit suffers 1 mortal wound. If the result of the Psychic test was an unmodified 9+, that enemy unit suffers 1 mortal wound for each roll of 5+ instead.

Is that too complicated?

Yes. Just reading that caused my eyes to glaze over, and I'm sure that's one power out of many.

Making something random doesn't make it balanced, though GW has believed that for 30 years so why change?

Point costs are supposed to help players have something approaching an even playing field. That's it. If players want to have a lop-sided scenario, they can then decide among themselves to do that.

Where it becomes a problem isn't so much the competitive min-maxing but the casual game where both players try to choose a decent list only to find one effortlessly wipes the floor with the other.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

What powers are you thinking of?

Witchfire: Tzeentch’s Firestorm has a warp charge value of 6. If manifested, select one enemy unit within 18" of and visible to this PSYKER and roll nine D6. For each roll of 6, that enemy unit suffers 1 mortal wound. If the result of the Psychic test was an unmodified 9+, that enemy unit suffers 1 mortal wound for each roll of 5+ instead.

Is that too complicated?

Yes. Just reading that caused my eyes to glaze over, and I'm sure that's one power out of many.

Making something random doesn't make it balanced, though GW has believed that for 30 years so why change?

Point costs are supposed to help players have something approaching an even playing field. That's it. If players want to have a lop-sided scenario, they can then decide among themselves to do that.

Where it becomes a problem isn't so much the competitive min-maxing but the casual game where both players try to choose a decent list only to find one effortlessly wipes the floor with the other.

If you mean rolling dice to achieve an outcome is "random" you've basically rule down out the entire game. There's 2 points of failure on the power, the psychic test and then a probability distribution over the 5+'s on the wounds. It's not what I'd define as random in the context of this game.

If it was "cast value 7, roll d3 and one of these 3 things happens" yes, that's random.

Psychic powers always seem a bit boring as they were historical game changers. I understand why people might not want such a swingy, random phase but at this stage the psychic phase is immersion breaking in how lacklustre it is. May as well just have a "psykers of the 41st millenium are too precious to have in the frontlines" fluff and scrap the whole thing other than for some specialised characters and factions designed around it maybe

Dudeface wrote:
If you mean rolling dice to achieve an outcome is "random" you've basically rule down out the entire game. There's 2 points of failure on the power, the psychic test and then a probability distribution over the 5+'s on the wounds. It's not what I'd define as random in the context of this game.

If it was "cast value 7, roll d3 and one of these 3 things happens" yes, that's random.

But why is it random? You pay points for something, and sometimes it works. Where is the skill in that?

Also, why roll many dice if one will do the trick? As people upthread pointed out, a lot of these outcomes could be boiled down to "if you activate the power, you inflict two wounds."

Dice made their way into wargaming in an effort to simulate unknown factors and teach commanders to cope with the unexpected, but GW has taken it to the illogical extreme, and often simply uses lots of dice in weird ways to obtain the exact same outcome while making it seem different.

Re-rolls are a superb example of this. What they do is simply shift the probability, which you could do by other less time-consuming means. GW's default solution to working out game balance is basically "roll more dice and don't blame us!"

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

What powers are you thinking of?

Witchfire: Tzeentch’s Firestorm has a warp charge value of 6. If manifested, select one enemy unit within 18" of and visible to this PSYKER and roll nine D6. For each roll of 6, that enemy unit suffers 1 mortal wound. If the result of the Psychic test was an unmodified 9+, that enemy unit suffers 1 mortal wound for each roll of 5+ instead.

Is that too complicated?

Yes. Just reading that caused my eyes to glaze over, and I'm sure that's one power out of many.

So Witchfire powers should not deal a random number of MWs? Why? How do you feel about weapons with random numbers of shots or Damage?

Making something random doesn't make it balanced, though GW has believed that for 30 years so why change?

I don't really think balance is the goal, I think Witchfire psychic powers would just get boring if they deal X+1/2/3 MW.

Witchfire: Tzeentch’s Firestorm has a warp charge value of 6. If manifested, select one enemy unit within 18" of and visible to this PSYKER. That enemy unit suffers 1 mortal wound. If that unit includes 6+ models it suffers 1 mortal wound. If that unit includes 11+ models it suffers 1 mortal wound.

Witchfire: Wrack and Ruin has a warp charge value of 6. If manifested, select one enemy unit within 18" of and visible to this PSYKER. If that unit is wholly on or within a terrain feature it suffers 2 mortal wounds. If that unit is a BUILDING it suffers 3 mortal wounds.

Is this the kind of design you're looking for? I don't know how you could make powers more simple.

Old powers were like this:

Vortex of Doom is a witchfire power with the profile below. If, when using this power, the Psyker fails his Psychic test, he automatically suffers Perils of the Warp.

Range 12"
S D
AP 1
Type Assault 1, Blast, Vortex

Vortex: A weapon with this special rule is a Destroyer weapon and uses a blast marker of some type (e.g. blast, large blast, massive blast, etc). Place the appropriate marker, roll for scatter and apply damage. For determining Wound allocation, always assume the shot is coming from the centre of the marker, in the same manner as a Barrage weapon.

The marker for a Vortex weapon is not removed from play after damage has been resolved. Leave it in play on the tabletop. The marker is impassable terrain as long as it remains in play.

At the beginning of every subsequent player turn, the marker scatters 2D6" (use the little arrow if you roll a Hit!). If a double is rolled, the marker is removed from play instead. Any unit under the marker’s new location is hit. Apply damage as described above.

Where is the skill in that?

40k should not be a game of pure skill, randomness can be fun and can give the underdog a chance to win.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

Dudeface wrote:
If you mean rolling dice to achieve an outcome is "random" you've basically rule down out the entire game. There's 2 points of failure on the power, the psychic test and then a probability distribution over the 5+'s on the wounds. It's not what I'd define as random in the context of this game.

If it was "cast value 7, roll d3 and one of these 3 things happens" yes, that's random.

But why is it random? You pay points for something, and sometimes it works. Where is the skill in that?

Also, why roll many dice if one will do the trick? As people upthread pointed out, a lot of these outcomes could be boiled down to "if you activate the power, you inflict two wounds."

Dice made their way into wargaming in an effort to simulate unknown factors and teach commanders to cope with the unexpected, but GW has taken it to the illogical extreme, and often simply uses lots of dice in weird ways to obtain the exact same outcome while making it seem different.

Re-rolls are a superb example of this. What they do is simply shift the probability, which you could do by other less time-consuming means. GW's default solution to working out game balance is basically "roll more dice and don't blame us!"

Have they ever said they take or retue responsibility for roling dice or asked not to be blamed? I think they understand that people like to have some different ways to get to the same end result, variety is spice of life etc.

Beyond that I don't think they care how they get there overly.

 vict0988 wrote:

40k should not be a game of pure skill, randomness can be fun and can give the underdog a chance to win.

That is like saying a win in sports because someone got the runs pre event or slipped on the map is a good thing, for the person who spent months investing in to training . Or that your car can suddenly combust giving the chance for people behind you to get a show while stuck in traffic, is a good thing, that should be implemented in to army design.

But the main problem is that random ain't equal to random in GW games. A lascanon doing d6 wounds is very very BAD, especialy when GW knows it is bad, and updates lascanons for other factions to do 3d+3 wounds and you have to wait for years for a fix. Sometimes the fix does not happen. Also random often makes the powerful factions better. Because they are either able to smooth the curve or even shift it in their favour , or the random effect is so powerful that when spamed it always gives the army the edge. A marine tank with its odd dmg rolls, is not "giving the marine chance to win", it makes him lose, if he is foolish enough to take them.

Dudeface wrote:


Have they ever said they take or retue responsibility for roling dice or asked not to be blamed? I think they understand that people like to have some different ways to get to the same end result, variety is spice of life etc.

Beyond that I don't think they care how they get there overly.

I don't think they even care where they are going, and yes, they are aware that there a bunch of people who think convoluted mechanics are neat for their own sake. I'm just not one of them.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

Dudeface wrote:
If you mean rolling dice to achieve an outcome is "random" you've basically rule down out the entire game. There's 2 points of failure on the power, the psychic test and then a probability distribution over the 5+'s on the wounds. It's not what I'd define as random in the context of this game.

If it was "cast value 7, roll d3 and one of these 3 things happens" yes, that's random.

But why is it random? You pay points for something, and sometimes it works. Where is the skill in that?

I think a particular issue with psychic powers (and their equivalents) is that the designers have confined themselves entirely to Mortal Wounds.

In the past, psychic attacks worked like weapons. e.g. one might have 24" Assault 4 S6 AP4 - which you would then resolve like a normal weapon. So you'd generally have hit rolls, wound rolls, and saving throw rolls (some of these might be bypassed if the power works like a flamer or if its AP is high enough but you get the idea).

Now, though, all psychic powers use Mortal Wounds - which don't need to roll to hit or wound and don't allow any saving throws, save for FNP.

In other words, the designers have chosen to use a mechanic that negates almost all the rolls that used to exist . . . only to then add a bunch of new rolls instead.

Surely we might as well just go back to having psychic powers as weapon profiles? At least then we might get a little more variety, rather than four hundred marginally different ways to inflict ~d3 mortal wounds on an enemy unit.

Failing that, perhaps psychic powers should be closer to AoS and lean more towards inflicting different debuffs, with the mortal wounds being more of an extra than the main focus for most powers?

Honestly, though, the entire psychic phase seems like something that could be largely cut from the game. Not the powers per se but rather the idea of having a dedicated phase, when there's no tactics, resource-management or other meaningful decisions to be made. You roll 2 dice and hope for big number. Possibly your opponent rolls 2 dice and hopes for bigger number. Not that I'd want to return to the abomination that was 7th, but it feels about as tactical as Ludo.

 vipoid wrote:

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

Dudeface wrote:
If you mean rolling dice to achieve an outcome is "random" you've basically rule down out the entire game. There's 2 points of failure on the power, the psychic test and then a probability distribution over the 5+'s on the wounds. It's not what I'd define as random in the context of this game.

If it was "cast value 7, roll d3 and one of these 3 things happens" yes, that's random.

But why is it random? You pay points for something, and sometimes it works. Where is the skill in that?

I think a particular issue with psychic powers (and their equivalents) is that the designers have confined themselves entirely to Mortal Wounds.

In the past, psychic attacks worked like weapons. e.g. one might have 24" Assault 4 S6 AP4 - which you would then resolve like a normal weapon. So you'd generally have hit rolls, wound rolls, and saving throw rolls (some of these might be bypassed if the power works like a flamer or if its AP is high enough but you get the idea).

Now, though, all psychic powers use Mortal Wounds - which don't need to roll to hit or wound and don't allow any saving throws, save for FNP.

In other words, the designers have chosen to use a mechanic that negates almost all the rolls that used to exist . . . only to then add a bunch of new rolls instead.

Surely we might as well just go back to having psychic powers as weapon profiles? At least then we might get a little more variety, rather than four hundred marginally different ways to inflict ~d3 mortal wounds on an enemy unit.

Failing that, perhaps psychic powers should be closer to AoS and lean more towards inflicting different debuffs, with the mortal wounds being more of an extra than the main focus for most powers?

Honestly, though, the entire psychic phase seems like something that could be largely cut from the game. Not the powers per se but rather the idea of having a dedicated phase, when there's no tactics, resource-management or other meaningful decisions to be made. You roll 2 dice and hope for big number. Possibly your opponent rolls 2 dice and hopes for bigger number. Not that I'd want to return to the abomination that was 7th, but it feels about as tactical as Ludo.

My issue with the psychic phase is not everyone has psykers. So if you don't have psykers of your own you have to sit through another phase (so even longer turns) where you watch your troops get killed with nothing to really do.
The Magic Phase worked in WHF because everyone had some sort of caster or casting equivalent. Even if you had no casters, you can still dispel.
It doesn't really work that way in 40k, and I think it's worse off for it.

But yeah, the fact that it only deals mortal wounds is kind of lame. Compare it to magic in Fantasy, where the attacks had an actual strength value, a damage type (usually magic, but could be flaming or even just normal) and you had a lot of buffs and debuffs to play with. A lot more interesting than "lol, I rolled big number on 2 dice, you immediately take casualties with no saves"

 vipoid wrote:
Honestly, though, the entire psychic phase seems like something that could be largely cut from the game. Not the powers per se but rather the idea of having a dedicated phase, when there's no tactics, resource-management or other meaningful decisions to be made. You roll 2 dice and hope for big number. Possibly your opponent rolls 2 dice and hopes for bigger number. Not that I'd want to return to the abomination that was 7th, but it feels about as tactical as Ludo.

You have a limited number of attempts to manifest or deny powers each turn and you only get one command point re-roll in the psychic phase.

Balancing powers is way easier than in systems with more freedom like WHFB where you could throw up to 6 dice at a power.

I think the conclusion people came to at the end of WHFB's life was that the best idea was to just throw 6 dice at the biggest baddest spell and hope that you rolled two 6s so your opponent couldn't interact with your magic phase and the effects of the biggest spells ignored all saves (even the ones specifically designed to prevent damage from spells). For more complicated systems to work out I think they need more testing and theorising than I would trust GW to do. I really love the current psychic phase mechanics.

Denies were rather soul-crushing in some editions, if you have 1 psyker vs 1 psyker now then generally the psyker manifesting will get to manifest two and deny 1 so you're likely to get off a good amount of powers while your opponent has to make hard choices, but even if it's 1 psyker against 2 because denying requires rolling above it's not completely hopeless unlike in previous editions where the Primaris Psyker could just pack up and go home when he faced 3 Grey Knight Strike Squads.

GW can also still achieve some bigger effects by combining powers, like having a power that boosts the range of future powers until the end of the phase, a power that makes the next spell go off automatically at the minimum casting value and then a power that is really strong but has an unreasonably high casting value of 10+. Limiting the design space of damage dealing psychic powers to just mortal wounds seems like a mistake to me as well, but the amount of powers that were effectively useless because they did not have AP3 in previous editions was also rather high if I remember correctly.

Yes, but then it gives priority to armies that have A been give low casting lvls on their powers, and GW decided to not cut their attempt per phase to cast B GW decided to either give the faction a super caster and/or buffs to casting powers. Which now means that with one power per turn, and some of them being crucial to the entire army working properly a single 1ksons sorc, can stop the entire GK army from functioning just by virtue of GK having crazy high cast values, no-rolls, while the reliance on psychic power only got bigger for the faction.

Karol wrote:
Yes, but then it gives priority to armies that have A been give low casting lvls on their powers, and GW decided to not cut their attempt per phase to cast B GW decided to either give the faction a super caster and/or buffs to casting powers. Which now means that with one power per turn, and some of them being crucial to the entire army working properly a single 1ksons sorc, can stop the entire GK army from functioning just by virtue of GK having crazy high cast values, no-rolls, while the reliance on psychic power only got bigger for the faction.

I don't see how you can get around some powers being stronger than others or why that is inherently a problem.

You can have super casters in any psychic system, I don't understand what makes it especially bad in the current system.

What power is essential to GK?

How about psychic powers, should they cost points?

 vict0988 wrote:

You have a limited number of attempts to manifest or deny powers each turn and you only get one command point re-roll in the psychic phase.

Limited manifests were managed in past editions, without needing a dedicated phase.

 vict0988 wrote:

Balancing powers is way easier than in systems with more freedom like WHFB where you could throw up to 6 dice at a power.

I think the conclusion people came to at the end of WHFB's life was that the best idea was to just throw 6 dice at the biggest baddest spell and hope that you rolled two 6s so your opponent couldn't interact with your magic phase and the effects of the biggest spells ignored all saves (even the ones specifically designed to prevent damage from spells). For more comp

As I said, I have no wish to return to 7th's aping the worst elements of WHFB's magic system.

However, as it stands, the psychic phase in 8th/9th seems to exist merely to give the illusion of choice.

Yes, you have limited casts, but you also have limited powers. And since every power costs 1 cast, there's almost always an obvious best choice.

Further, while different psychic powers have different cast values, it makes little difference because there's nothing you can do to influence them. You can't throw extra dice like you could in 7th, so all you can do is hope to roll well. There's no skill or strategy involved.

To my mind, if GW really, desperately want a psychic phase, it would be better to roll a number of d6s (based on the number of psykers in your army, similar to 7th), and then subtract the casting values of psychic powers to cast them but without rolling additional dice. e.g. if you roll 15, then you can cast a number of psychic powers with a total power level of 15 or less. It's a rough outline, obviously, but it would add a resource-management aspect, whilst also keeping a degree of randomness, whilst also making casting values more impactful.

Otherwise, if every model is just going to cast on an individual basis anyway, you might as well just go back to them casting powers in the relevant phase like in editions prior to 7th.

I would give both players a random number of casting / dispelling dice, an additional casting die for each psyker and an additional dispel die for each psyker and unit that states that it gives such die.

The latter distinction is important, as it would cover a lot more than just psykers and would represent the warp being influenced either by faith or other esoteric means.
So ethereals would give a dispel die because of their faith in the Greater Good. Crypteks would give a die because of their weird tech.
Imperial Priests would give a die because of their faith in the emperor.

You get the idea. The aim is to give the armies without psykers some level of defense against psionics and something to do during the psychic phase instead of removing their models.

One of the good aspects of the WHFB magic phase was the resource management aspect. You had a limited number of dice to work with, so you had to choose.
Granted, 8th ed sort of screwed that over with the level 1 wizard bomb and irresistible force, but the idea was solid at least.

Fortunately, in 40k I don't think there's a irresistible force equivalent? I'm pretty sure high rolls just give you stronger effects rather than an auto-pass, so investing more dice to cast (and conversely, more dice to dispel) shouldn't be as overbearing as 8th ed magic. Perils would balance out that anyway; higher chance of success and extra effects, higher chance of perils.

 vipoid wrote:


Honestly, though, the entire psychic phase seems like something that could be largely cut from the game. Not the powers per se but rather the idea of having a dedicated phase, when there's no tactics, resource-management or other meaningful decisions to be made. You roll 2 dice and hope for big number. Possibly your opponent rolls 2 dice and hopes for bigger number. Not that I'd want to return to the abomination that was 7th, but it feels about as tactical as Ludo.

I'm probably showing my age, but to my mind the only point of psychic powers are to produce non-kinetic effects. In the 40k environment, blasting people from afar is commonplace, so another death beam with a more convoluted firing sequence is simply a waste of time.

The true value to psychic powers was teleporting or enhancing a unit in some way. That puts it outside the realm of "just another big gun" and required some tactical skill to exploit it properly.

When I looked at building a magic system for my fantasy rules, I recognized that each school of magic had to have a "zzap!" spell, but what was more impactful were unit-enhancing spells, and that is where most of the design space went.

In 40k terms, having a psychic power that turns Imperial Guard into melee monsters for a round would at least be tactically interesting.

As a sidebar, one of the oldest "streamlining" methods for 2nd ed. 40k was for both players to agree not to take psykers. In every single game I played, that question was asked for that reason. If no one took any, you immediately cut out out a ton of time spent shuffling, dealing and playing with cards. I would say that one advantage of having a phase is that both players can agree to skip it by not taking any.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

 vipoid wrote:


Honestly, though, the entire psychic phase seems like something that could be largely cut from the game. Not the powers per se but rather the idea of having a dedicated phase, when there's no tactics, resource-management or other meaningful decisions to be made. You roll 2 dice and hope for big number. Possibly your opponent rolls 2 dice and hopes for bigger number. Not that I'd want to return to the abomination that was 7th, but it feels about as tactical as Ludo.

I'm probably showing my age, but to my mind the only point of psychic powers are to produce non-kinetic effects. In the 40k environment, blasting people from afar is commonplace, so another death beam with a more convoluted firing sequence is simply a waste of time.

The true value to psychic powers was teleporting or enhancing a unit in some way. That puts it outside the realm of "just another big gun" and required some tactical skill to exploit it properly.

When I looked at building a magic system for my fantasy rules, I recognized that each school of magic had to have a "zzap!" spell, but what was more impactful were unit-enhancing spells, and that is where most of the design space went.

In 40k terms, having a psychic power that turns Imperial Guard into melee monsters for a round would at least be tactically interesting.

Yeah, I think there should be a lot more buffs and debuffs than just damaging spells. It should make the psychic phase a little more interesting.

 vipoid wrote:
Yes, you have limited casts, but you also have limited powers. And since every power costs 1 cast, there's almost always an obvious best choice.

Good point, Necrons lost their choice with C'tan powers as well because the named ones know 2 and cast 2, which I think was a bad design choice. How much would giving most psykers an extra power help?

Further, while different psychic powers have different cast values, it makes little difference because there's nothing you can do to influence them. You can't throw extra dice like you could in 7th, so all you can do is hope to roll well. There's no skill or strategy involved.

You have to choose between the more powerful and easier power. The CP re-roll also means you have to evaluate which ones are most worth spending a CP re-roll on and use those first while juggling the possibility of denies and trying to get your opponent to waste those somehow.

Otherwise, if every model is just going to cast on an individual basis anyway, you might as well just go back to them casting powers in the relevant phase like in editions prior to 7th.

It'd be harder to keep track of which units have manifested and denied powers, so I don't agree with that. The ability to boost Movement instead of having move twice effects would be the only upside of changing back to the old system as far as I can see.

Psykers being able to cast any spell from their designated school could be more fun than "you have these auto-includes and you will pretty much always want these ones to pass and don't care as much about the others".

But equally, you are in danger of creating an extensive game in a game which some factions/builds don't get to participate in.

Dai wrote:
Psychic powers always seem a bit boring as they were historical game changers. I understand why people might not want such a swingy, random phase but at this stage the psychic phase is immersion breaking in how lacklustre it is. May as well just have a "psykers of the 41st millenium are too precious to have in the frontlines" fluff and scrap the whole thing other than for some specialised characters and factions designed around it maybe

I don't find mine to be lacklustre, but my army naturally leans into it. If it were any stronger I'd auto-win games. Some people go so light that I see why they might feel that way. Loyalist psykers in general don't do much worth writing home about - at least not when they're opposite me.

Gone are the days of the invisible biker horde, surely.

vict0988 wrote:

Spoiler:

Karol wrote:
Yes, but then it gives priority to armies that have A been give low casting lvls on their powers, and GW decided to not cut their attempt per phase to cast B GW decided to either give the faction a super caster and/or buffs to casting powers. Which now means that with one power per turn, and some of them being crucial to the entire army working properly a single 1ksons sorc, can stop the entire GK army from functioning just by virtue of GK having crazy high cast values, no-rolls, while the reliance on psychic power only got bigger for the faction.

I don't see how you can get around some powers being stronger than others or why that is inherently a problem.

You can have super casters in any psychic system, I don't understand what makes it especially bad in the current system.

What power is essential to GK?

How about psychic powers, should they cost points?

Yes, Yes, Yes and more Yes!

Racerguy180 wrote:

vict0988 wrote:

Spoiler:

Karol wrote:
Yes, but then it gives priority to armies that have A been give low casting lvls on their powers, and GW decided to not cut their attempt per phase to cast B GW decided to either give the faction a super caster and/or buffs to casting powers. Which now means that with one power per turn, and some of them being crucial to the entire army working properly a single 1ksons sorc, can stop the entire GK army from functioning just by virtue of GK having crazy high cast values, no-rolls, while the reliance on psychic power only got bigger for the faction.

I don't see how you can get around some powers being stronger than others or why that is inherently a problem.

You can have super casters in any psychic system, I don't understand what makes it especially bad in the current system.

What power is essential to GK?

How about psychic powers, should they cost points?

Yes, Yes, Yes and more Yes!

i miss points for powers.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

Dudeface wrote:
If you mean rolling dice to achieve an outcome is "random" you've basically rule down out the entire game. There's 2 points of failure on the power, the psychic test and then a probability distribution over the 5+'s on the wounds. It's not what I'd define as random in the context of this game.

If it was "cast value 7, roll d3 and one of these 3 things happens" yes, that's random.

But why is it random? You pay points for something, and sometimes it works. Where is the skill in that?

Also, why roll many dice if one will do the trick? As people upthread pointed out, a lot of these outcomes could be boiled down to "if you activate the power, you inflict two wounds."

Dice made their way into wargaming in an effort to simulate unknown factors and teach commanders to cope with the unexpected, but GW has taken it to the illogical extreme, and often simply uses lots of dice in weird ways to obtain the exact same outcome while making it seem different.

Re-rolls are a superb example of this. What they do is simply shift the probability, which you could do by other less time-consuming means. GW's default solution to working out game balance is basically "roll more dice and don't blame us!"

Where is the skill?

1. Positioning - getting the psyker to within 18", still be protected, and have the target visible
2. Target selection - understanding the limitations of your powers that can and can not target the closest and how those relate to the objectives you need to score since your removal potential is limited.
3. Managing resources ( Thousand Sons ) - knowing your goals for the phase and available cabal points to cast spells in the right order and to use cabal abilities in an appropriate sequence - also dependent on secondaries.

I feel like this psychic phase has more skill required than any previous edition and if not an equal amount.

If you're just bringing a single psyker to push a buff then surely there's not much thinking involved and you're just dealing with the risk / reward cost.

This thread seems to want to focus on the one single spell that has a bit more rolling than usual and it's just their attempt at creating something to can have a huge swing potential. I think it's literally the only spell out there like it. The design of the spell allows me to adjust my cabal spending to try and push on it as hard as I can to get the best result possible. Whether or not it's worthwhile is a calculation you have to make in the moment.

So you like points for psychic powers, how about similar things like Necron Powers of the C'tan and (C)SM Chaplain prayers or things like Necron Transcendent C'tan Fractured Personality or Drukhari Combat Drugs. Should the design goal be that all these cost 0 pts and then add pts as it turns out during playtesting and post release that some options are auto-takes when they're free or should some options be deliberately stronger at the cost of points like a thunder hammer vs a power sword?

 vict0988 wrote:

Good point, Necrons lost their choice with C'tan powers as well because the named ones know 2 and cast 2, which I think was a bad design choice. How much would giving most psykers an extra power help?

It would be something, at least.

Though, I also think things are hampered by the fact that only Smite can be attempted multiple times per turn.

 vict0988 wrote:

You have to choose between the more powerful and easier power. The CP re-roll also means you have to evaluate which ones are most worth spending a CP re-roll on and use those first while juggling the possibility of denies and trying to get your opponent to waste those somehow.

Except that, as above, you rarely have that much choice to begin with.

What's more, why would you take an expensive power in the first place if you're not going to risk casting it? The odds are the same each turn, so I don't see how delaying would help in any way. Maybe if there was a proper resource-management system...

As for the CP reroll, tying it to the psychic phase at all seems very generous.

In terms of denies, once again I'm really not seeing the strategy. Most of the time, you're wholly reliant on probability, so you'll throw them at a power your opponent has succeeded on with a low roll. In other words, you're waiting for your opponent to randomly roll bad. So that you can randomly roll better. We're not exactly in Sun Tzu territory.

 vict0988 wrote:

It'd be harder to keep track of which units have manifested and denied powers, so I don't agree with that. The ability to boost Movement instead of having move twice effects would be the only upside of changing back to the old system as far as I can see.

People seemed to manage well enough in past editions. It seems no more difficult than remembering which units have already shot in the shooting phase.

 vipoid wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

It'd be harder to keep track of which units have manifested and denied powers, so I don't agree with that. The ability to boost Movement instead of having move twice effects would be the only upside of changing back to the old system as far as I can see.

People seemed to manage well enough in past editions. It seems no more difficult than remembering which units have already shot in the shooting phase.

It's pretty easy to remember who has shot in the shooting phase, it might be a little harder if you did it across every phase of the game instead of the shooting phase though

Eh, HH uses the "cast in appropriate phase" psychic system, and it doesn't seem to confuse anyone. Not even the 1ksons players, who obviously cast a lot.