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Hello Dakkaites... Before the Eldar players start yelling at me, I just want to point that I don't asolutely think the Eldar dex need any nerfing... Beside 2 very good units (Seer council and Warwalkes) Eldars have only units that need very clever tactics to be used effectively... still, I think that the Runes of warding are somewhat unfair. They simply make impossible any use of psykers, and what could be epic fights between the minds of the farseers and the enemy, simply doen't happen, cause nobody is going to use a psyker if runes of wording are on the table, or, at least, use it only in the direst circumstances, given the fact that you are going to peril almost 50% of the times.

So I propose to give them at least a limited range ( 18" or 24") but I think they'd best to be considered as a psychic hood with 24" range...

Cheers...

Yes, they need nerfed.

No, now is not the time. Eldar are putridly bad. Let them hang onto something.

 DarknessEternal wrote:
Yes, they need nerfed.

No, now is not the time. Eldar are putridly bad. Let them hang onto something.

I knew this was going to happen

Personally I'd be OK with it as long as you tacked on the added text "for any 5th or 6th edition army which has a rune of warding on an allied Farseer".

The fourth-edition armies kind of need this crutch at times.

The real reason for it, though, is to make psychics matter again - not to balance them against something or other. My gaming group more or less stopped taking psychers when all I had was a craftworlder army.

While I agree that Runes of Warding are OP, and pretty much does ensure that Eldar players rarely have to face enemy psykers, I'd rather just wait until their codex gets redone. I'm sure it will get nerfed significantly unless Matt Ward writes the book.

Just make it Shadows of the Warp, but with a longer range,like 18", and get rid of perils on anything over 12, thats the real killer.

I agree that RoWard are a little bit OP. However, with fluff in mind, Eldar are all natively psykers and have latent racial abilities that no other race would because of that. I like them the way they are. Then again, being an eldar player, I may be biased.

 Mahtamori wrote:
Personally I'd be OK with it as long as you tacked on the added text "for any 5th or 6th edition army which has a rune of warding on an allied Farseer".

The fourth-edition armies kind of need this crutch at times.

The real reason for it, though, is to make psychics matter again - not to balance them against something or other. My gaming group more or less stopped taking psychers when all I had was a craftworlder army.

Fortunately I never faced allied eldars (I feel the allied farseer is somewhat a... "not so enjoyable" tactic), only my buddy's Alaitoc/Yianden list (he plays an avatar and limited seer council so absolutely not OP) ... still my dual sorcerers are totally useless, and unless I tailor the list against him (which I would seriously like to avoid) it's becoming pretty boring...
What if I offer him an extra Mastery level in exchange for runes working like Shadow in the warp with an enlarged range? Do you think it could be a good/balanced trade off?

 punkow wrote:

 Mahtamori wrote:
Personally I'd be OK with it as long as you tacked on the added text "for any 5th or 6th edition army which has a rune of warding on an allied Farseer".

The fourth-edition armies kind of need this crutch at times.

The real reason for it, though, is to make psychics matter again - not to balance them against something or other. My gaming group more or less stopped taking psychers when all I had was a craftworlder army.

Fortunately I never faced allied eldars (I feel the allied farseer is somewhat a... "not so enjoyable" tactic), only my buddy's Alaitoc/Yianden list (he plays an avatar and limited seer council so absolutely not OP) ... still my dual sorcerers are totally useless, and unless I tailor the list against him (which I would seriously like to avoid) it's becoming pretty boring...
What if I offer him an extra Mastery level in exchange for runes working like Shadow in the warp with an enlarged range? Do you think it could be a good/balanced trade off?

Hoesntly the eldar of such a hard time in the rest of the field they really need this power to gain a small edge. It maybe boring for you, but are you really losing because you cant cast powers?

 punkow wrote:
still my dual sorcerers are totally useless, and unless I tailor the list against him (which I would seriously like to avoid) it's becoming pretty boring...

If you can't dominate a straight Eldar army with CSM just because you're down sorcerers, the problem is you.

Given the nerf to psychic hoods, and the change in Psychic powers all around, yes, they should be nerfed.

That said, the Eldar book as a whole is built extremely tightly to the game mechanics of 4th edition and as a result is largely hopeless in 6th edition, and Runes of Warding are one of the few things keeping them in any sort of useability in 6th ed.


Once Eldar get redone for 6th, I'll be surprised if the Runs of Warding don't get nerfed. Until then, no reason to kick them while they're down.

I am one of those 'horrible' players who has an allied farseer with RoW. I play dark eldar so i have no access to psykers or any good psy-defense so i dont see why i wouldn't take a doomseer with RoW. I am just so sick of those greyknights hiding behind na building, passing a psykic test and saying ''Oh, we can shoot through walls with our psycannons....'' or each and every grey knight being able to blow up my archons head.

I'd put a bit of money on the people who are butt hurting about this the most are spacewolves (JoTWW) and grey knights, two top top tier armies. You dont here tyranids, the people truely effected, complaining do you? Well...there used to it.

 cormadepanda wrote:

 punkow wrote:

 Mahtamori wrote:
Personally I'd be OK with it as long as you tacked on the added text "for any 5th or 6th edition army which has a rune of warding on an allied Farseer".

The fourth-edition armies kind of need this crutch at times.

The real reason for it, though, is to make psychics matter again - not to balance them against something or other. My gaming group more or less stopped taking psychers when all I had was a craftworlder army.

Fortunately I never faced allied eldars (I feel the allied farseer is somewhat a... "not so enjoyable" tactic), only my buddy's Alaitoc/Yianden list (he plays an avatar and limited seer council so absolutely not OP) ... still my dual sorcerers are totally useless, and unless I tailor the list against him (which I would seriously like to avoid) it's becoming pretty boring...
What if I offer him an extra Mastery level in exchange for runes working like Shadow in the warp with an enlarged range? Do you think it could be a good/balanced trade off?

Hoesntly the eldar of such a hard time in the rest of the field they really need this power to gain a small edge. It maybe boring for you, but are you really losing because you cant cast powers?

 DarknessEternal wrote:

 punkow wrote:
still my dual sorcerers are totally useless, and unless I tailor the list against him (which I would seriously like to avoid) it's becoming pretty boring...

If you can't dominate a straight Eldar army with CSM just because you're down sorcerers, the problem is you.

Actually I'm not losing.... I usually win by a fair margin... It's not about winning, it's about having fun. When you have sorcerers and you simply can't use them, it becomes pretty boring.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to nerf an army that absolutely doesn't need a nerf, I'm just trying to make the "psychic battle" more dynamic.

 punkow wrote:

 Mahtamori wrote:
Personally I'd be OK with it as long as you tacked on the added text "for any 5th or 6th edition army which has a rune of warding on an allied Farseer".

The fourth-edition armies kind of need this crutch at times.

The real reason for it, though, is to make psychics matter again - not to balance them against something or other. My gaming group more or less stopped taking psychers when all I had was a craftworlder army.

Fortunately I never faced allied eldars (I feel the allied farseer is somewhat a... "not so enjoyable" tactic), only my buddy's Alaitoc/Yianden list (he plays an avatar and limited seer council so absolutely not OP) ... still my dual sorcerers are totally useless, and unless I tailor the list against him (which I would seriously like to avoid) it's becoming pretty boring...
What if I offer him an extra Mastery level in exchange for runes working like Shadow in the warp with an enlarged range? Do you think it could be a good/balanced trade off?

You are playing CSM. Your sorcerors should have no problems. Try looking around your armoury until you find a very cheap piece of wargear that negates the effect of ROW. ROW will cause problems for everyone except CSM and Eldar themselves.

You mean the familiar? I remember you that (unless I'm missing something) you have to repeat all the dice, and not only the high ones... and with an average of 11-12 on 3d6, you are still facing about 1/4 chance to peril and get a wound...

Bingo.

Bingo what? the chance to repeat the test changes very little actually. Btw this is matter for the tactics forum... Here I'm trying to discuss ways to make the runes more fun...

With Runes of Witnessing or a Familiar your risk of suffering an unfavourable result decreases to around 25% which is not far from the risk without them and without Runes of Warding.

Essentially, what I am saying is that the foundation or reason for suggesting the change is unfounded. There are certain situations where it is merited, it may for instance not be very cool in a match between Eldar and Tyranids since Tyranids have no access to Familiars.

However, if you house rule ROW I think you should find a decent compensatory house rule for some other part of the Eldar codex since ROW is one of few good things Eldar have left.

how the 25% chance to peril is the same to the usual 5,5 % is beyond me....
Btw I'm suggesting to make them like Nids shadow in the warp with 18" range but also grant an additional Mastery level. This could be somewhat balanced and funny? This is the question

An additional mastery level is a very expensive thing. While I do think Eldar Farseers should be able to go up to ML3, a single ML should cost about 25 points on it's own.
I'm more of a mind suggesting that if you give him a buff to some part of the army that's not very good. The Farseer is one of few units that are actually good - Runes of Warding or no Runes of Warding.

Ordinarily you have 3 chances in 36 which is 1 in 13 which is about 8,3% chance of failure. With Familiar and Runes of Warding your average roll is 10,5 meaning that two rolls of which one must be a success gives you just under 74% or so success chance - which is pretty damned good. Not guaranteed, mind you, but still not something to cry about.

If you'd like to discuss what Runes of Warding could become under the assumption that the rest of the codex got a bit of a buff, well that's a different story.

 punkow wrote:

Actually I'm not losing.... I usually win by a fair margin... It's not about winning, it's about having fun. When you have sorcerers and you simply can't use them, it becomes pretty boring.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to nerf an army that absolutely doesn't need a nerf, I'm just trying to make the "psychic battle" more dynamic.

So you already win and want to win harder. Congratulations, this is a totally valid and warranted reason to change a rule.

The question is how should it be nerfed? Should your opponent get to DTW for it at the start of his turn? Should it only work one round per game, or only after certain requirements are met? Should it only affect a certain radius like Shadow of the Warp (this is how I feel it should work). Should it only work against psychic powers that affect the Eldar and not Blessings?

Runes of Warding does not need to be nerfed. Look at what a farseer brings to the table before suggesting something like that. Sure, they've got awesome spells. But do they have awesome combat abilities? Can they take Terminator Armour like a Rune Priest or Njal or a Space Marine Librarian can? Do they have access to power weapons or even force weapons? Can they hold their own in any kind of close combat?

No, they can't. The Runes of Warding would be useless at a range of 24 inches because at those ranges the farseer would get exactly one turn of spell casting before being engaged in close combat and most likely killed. Farseers don't belong anywhere near combat. They are a support caster. Forcing them to come foreward by limiting the range of ROW would get them dead really quick. The farseers only saving grace is that they can go in a unit of Warlocks and take a bike. Other than that, they've got nothing. Limiting the range of ROW is suicide for an already dying race.

It will undoubtedly be removed or watered down when the Eldar get a new codex.

Right now any LD10 psyker (which is nearly all of them) still has a 50% chance to get his power off, which is the same chance as a psyker within 24" of a SW rune weapon, and almost the same chances as all psykers had when within 24" of a psychic hood all through 5th edition. And psykers were certainly not useless in 5th.

The chances of Perils are ~40%, and go down substantially if you've got a Spell Familiar or Runes of Witnessing, so Chaos and Eldar are the two armies best able to deal with it. Even Tyranids aren't that badly off, given that their pile of psykers are still going to be throwing tons of powers, and all have multiple wounds (the big guys having 6 each).

Seriously, there's no need for this. If you really can't deal with only a 50% successful casting rate against your buddy, take the darn familiar. If you STILL can't deal with it, then yes, offering to let him have his runes with an 18" or 24" range AND giving him a free Mastery level might be a reasonable inducement for him to accept your house rule.

Well... so it's not such a popular idea... Actually it's true that making the farseer "differently good" doesn't solve the balance issues with the Eldar codex, so maybe I'd better drop the idea...

 DarknessEternal wrote:

 punkow wrote:

Actually I'm not losing.... I usually win by a fair margin... It's not about winning, it's about having fun. When you have sorcerers and you simply can't use them, it becomes pretty boring.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to nerf an army that absolutely doesn't need a nerf, I'm just trying to make the "psychic battle" more dynamic.

So you already win and want to win harder. Congratulations, this is a totally valid and warranted reason to change a rule.

If you think that people try to make house rules only to win against their buddies, why do you come in the "proposed rules" Forum???

 DarknessEternal wrote:
Yes, they need nerfed.

No, now is not the time. Eldar are putridly bad. Let them hang onto something.

RoW needs to be nerfed when Eldar get a new codex(which would hopefully buff a lot of other things to make up for it)

Make it simply 24" and id be fine. However, the new codex needs to come first. Also, it should impede non-eldar psychic powers as fluff wise the runes would not differentiate between any non-eldar power. Between DTW and a 24"bubble you should have adequate psychic defense.

Alternately you could do 12"*mastery level. Stronger farseers would have stronger runes. Hopefully this edition sees Eldrad at mastery 4 to match Ahriman and farseers able to get up to 3. At 48" it has limits, but is most of the board depending on position. It would make farseers have more mutability depending on powers needed and protection level desired.

It also doesn't work against 5 of the army's, ( tau Templars daemons d eldar and necrons) so it is circumstantial.

fireworm21 wrote:
It also doesn't work against 5 of the army's, ( tau Templars daemons d eldar and necrons) so it is circumstantial.

With the obvious exception of crons and DE those armies are some of the least played in 40k, so your point is moot.

RoW wasn't a big issue... till everyone and their mother could whore out a farseer for their army. Yes, it's powerful. Yes, it's fluffy. No, it shouldn't changed right now. Yes, it'll be changed with the new book.