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Your psyker must have a level of dice assigned to it matching its mastery level? You can then use your generated warp charges to distribute to what power you want to get off?

That's even worse than what the OP was suggesting though

Or you could roll 2 d6 to get the warp charge

v0iddrgn wrote:

(quote truncated for brevity)
So, what you're saying is that it is important to you that you cast multiple powers per psyker per turn? This is the problem with 40K right now. It has become "Space Magic 40,000" instead of the Warhammer I we grew up with. Preference, many players, like yourself, prefer to buff your armies with super powers over using tactics and strategy that doesn't solely rely on said powers.

I thought I was saying that going from d6+3 power dice for the detachment as a whole to d3+1 power dice per Shadowseer for a total of 3d3+3 is a pretty significant buff for me, if every psyker were guaranteed to get off one power a turn most of my armies would become much better.

I'm going to walk through the math of a hypothetical Tzeentch summon-spam list to explain what I mean here (this isn't a real list, this is a thought experiment). In 1,000pts we've got four ML3 Heralds and four 17-model ML3 Pink Horror units. If everyone's rolling on Daemonology we get three to four instances of each power, and eight of Summoning.

In current 40k this army's got twenty-four Mastery levels and gets 1d6 more randomly for an average of 27.5. When casting on a 4+ we need two dice to have a 75% chance of getting Sacrifice off, and the maximum (6 dice) give us a 65% chance of getting Summoning or Incursion off. Sacrifice on two dice is giving us a 2.7% chance of Perils, Summoning/Incursion on six dice is giving us a 26% chance of Perils.

If we're lucky and we get four instances of Sacrifice we're making on average four attempts at Sacrifice and three at Summoning each turn. If we use this to summon ML2 Heralds of Tzeentch and ten-model Pink Horror units we're generating an average of 7.9 more Mastery levels worth of Daemons and getting about 0.9 Perils results a turn, with no Warp Charge left over.

By comparison these twenty-four Mastery levels are getting 8d3 random dice from your system, for an average of 40. When casting on a 3+ two dice give us an 88% chance of getting Sacrifice off, and our odds of getting Summoning off are 60% on four dice, 80% on five dice, and 90% on six dice. Since we can't lend dice between units the units that are casting Summoning have an average of a 75% chance to get the power off. If four units know Sacrifice and the other four are just casting Summoning we're getting an average of 10.2 more Mastery levels worth of Daemons and getting about 0.9 Perils results a turn, with about twelve Warp Charge left over.

So you're giving me more and safer summoning with more dice to spare for Cursed Earth and extra offensive powers.

You haven't even gotten rid of big OP powers; a Farseer with only d3+3 Warp Charge to work with casting on 3+ is still getting Invisibility off 94% of the time.

Also if you really want to force me to use GK Strike squads' Warp Charge to cast powers with them I'm going to need a Sanctic primaris that isn't terrible.

One of the biggest problems with psychic phases are not witchfires or maledictions, but blessings. Don't get me wrong there are some strong WF/MDs out there, but they often pale in comparison to invisibilty or veil of time, which you get no benefits to denying.

Here's a system of the top of my head.
Take the ML of the caster and subtract it from an enemy psyker ML. For every ML on the enemy psyker, he gets 12 inches of which he can attempt to deny at +1. The enemy psyker may not be reduced below 12" for a +1 to deny.

For example A lvl 1 psyker casts veil of time, a lvl 2 psyker is within 12", the lvl 2 psyker denies on a 5 plus.

However this stacks on higher mastery level
For example a Lvl 3 psyker is within 12 inches of a level 1 psyker, he denies on a 4+. However at 12-24 inches he denies on a 5 +.

Adamantium Will gives a 6" bubble and +1 to deny blessings, this effect would also stack on psykers to give both benefits.

Things like Psychic hood could either increase range or +1

Tyranids Shadow of the warp could be changed to act like adamantium will, with the benefit of causing casters to perils on doubles, or auto perils if they are already periling on doubles.

Sorry for any incoherence, didn't have much time to type this.

Since you mentioned it, no that is a bad way to do SiTW.

SiTW should cause enemy psykers to suffer a -1 penalty to dice used to harness warp charges.

When you only harness on a 5+ instead of 4+ you need to roll more dice to reliably cast a power which in turn ups the chance of perils. It's simple and accomplishes what SiTW used to do.

That being said, a psyker should always be able to deny for any unit targeted within 12". That means if you cast a buff on a friendly unit that is within 12" of an enemy psyker that enemy psyker can try to deny that buff as though the power was a malediction being cast on it. Psychic hoods can increase that range to 18"

Again, it's simple and it allows psychers to not just act as power batteries for whoever got the good powers, but also as units you strategically place to act as defenses in the psychic phase.

Could try the way we do it where I'm at, we base it off a leadership.

So it's your Pyker phase, we made it so you can case the number of spells as your mastery, no double casting a spell and its cast on a leadership roll modified by the warp charge needed to cast is.

So warp charge 1 is -1 to you ld 2 charge is -2 ect ect.

Then to deny you need to "fail" a leadership test.

So to cast force fo example, I need to pass a Ld test by rolling 9 or lower, to deny you need to roll a 10 or higher. If you are with in 12 inches of an enemy payker, you add+1 to your deny roll.

Works pretty well, makes it easier to get off easy spells and harder to deny them, but harder to get off the hard spells and easier to deny them so it makes them more meaningful when you get it.

Personally, I think the entire psychic system is poorly integrated into the game; shooting and close combat have long been well-defined, but psychic ability has often dramatically changed with each edition.

I think the game would benefit from some of the following:

Mastery Level (ML) is treated like a WS or BS skill "To Hit"/Manifest a psychic power (7 - ML is needed to roll on a D6 to manifest). Powers that currently require multiple Warp Charges (WC) could provide a penalty to the roll. Perils could happen on a natural roll of 1. Optionally, a natural roll of 6 followed by a natural roll of 6 could make it Unstoppable - can't be countered. Another option would be that natural roll of 6, followed by a natural roll of 1 would allow the power to work but psyker suffers perils (mirrors the 2 or 12 leadership test from previous editions).

Psykers could then also have some sort of notation for the number of Psychic powers they can use in a turn -either matching the old Mastery Level limitation or simply coming up with a new value altogether. Perhaps it would be possible just to use the current "Attack" line the model has (though I wouldn't advise it).

Also, each model would gain a psychic save (Ps?). Normally, this would be a 6+, mirroring "Deny the Witch". Psychic hoods, mastery levels and whatnot could modify this value. Optionally, you could also allow a sort of Psychic AP (PsAP) system that can reduce or negate these saves via powers, mastery level difference, wargear and so forth.

For this particular conversation, I think it would be wise to put limitation that a given model can only be under the effect of ONE blessing (the most beneficial) and ONE malediction (the most detrimental) at a given time. They don't stack, and you can't have half a dozen effect on a model at once.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, if I'm reading some of the arguments here right, pooling Warp Charges between several models shouldn't be allowed. You can't, for example, take a squad of guardsmen and combine their Lasguns into one Lascannon-like shot, and no matter how many grots with clubs you send against an enemy, they will never fight as effectively as an Eldar Avatar of Kaine.