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Just pick the one you want GEEEEZ.

Your superiors spent a lot of time customizing the small army and scrutinizing every detail for the mission only to place everything in the hands of a commander who gets slightly better at close combat but refuses to bring a close combat weapon.


If 6th edition wants to leave things to chance, have it pertain to the mission itself.

I think the only comment needed for this is

Rant over ??

:p

Sign me up!

While we're at it, could we go back to having to purchase your psychic powers rather than randomly rolling on a table? I would really, really like to roll on pyromancy one of these days but the primaris is awful and only half the powers are any good.

That's how I always thought it should be. It's a bit like "I'm a great commander/general/farseer/ect. I wonder what part of my brain I'm using today?"

Agreed, for some fluffy missions i think its ok to have it random (i.e an incompetant commander gets put in charge etc) but overall its pretty dull having to roll.

I have a house rule where if you are using the traits from the BRB, you can roll the dice first and then pick which table you would like to use.

Well this system just shows what your commander or psyker knows. It's not like "I SUDDENLY know how to use prescience" but "I know how to use x and now you know it also". Just some nice old-school rpg rolling

 SRSFACE wrote:
Sign me up!

While we're at it, could we go back to having to purchase your psychic powers rather than randomly rolling on a table? I would really, really like to roll on pyromancy one of these days but the primaris is awful and only half the powers are any good.

Because we want every Eternal Warrior chapter master to have Furious Charge while in the enemies deployment zone, or the ability to score? >.>

And every GUO and Daemon Prince to have Iron Arm?

HiveGuard wrote:
I have a house rule where if you are using the traits from the BRB, you can roll the dice first and then pick which table you would like to use.

I like that idea actually!

I find that warlord traits are kind of dumb because they never get used but every once in a while its a decent one!

HiveGuard wrote:
I have a house rule where if you are using the traits from the BRB, you can roll the dice first and then pick which table you would like to use.

My gaming store/group uses that too.

Crazyterran wrote:

Because we want every Eternal Warrior chapter master to have Furious Charge while in the enemies deployment zone, or the ability to score? >.>

And every GUO and Daemon Prince to have Iron Arm?

Obviously some more thought would have to go into it than simply reworking it in such a simple manner, but then again, it'd still be way more balanced than the current system that's in place.

Had too many games that went something like this:
opponent: "LOL, I got the warlord trait where you need 4+ to bring your reserves onto the battlefield! Screw your flyers!"
me: "I have... preferred enemy space marine. And you are playing Dark Eldar. Fantasmal."

 SRSFACE wrote:

Crazyterran wrote:

Because we want every Eternal Warrior chapter master to have Furious Charge while in the enemies deployment zone, or the ability to score? >.>

And every GUO and Daemon Prince to have Iron Arm?

Obviously some more thought would have to go into it than simply reworking it in such a simple manner, but then again, it'd still be way more balanced than the current system that's in place.

Had too many games that went something like this:
opponent: "LOL, I got the warlord trait where you need 4+ to bring your reserves onto the battlefield! Screw your flyers!"
me: "I have... preferred enemy space marine. And you are playing Dark Eldar. Fantasmal."

Agreed. Currently the random system means you occasionally have killer combos and your opponent has.... jack all. The whole game is about finding broken combos and exploiting them (ok, only if you're WAAC), why do we randomize this one? Why do we get to customize every part of our own down to which weapon each squad sergeant has and then the commander of the whole force is some random idiot foisted on us by chance/the will of higher headquarters?

I'm okay with rolling for it, but if it's completely useless in the current match, i'd say reroll it. But if we could pick our warlord trait, we'd probably see alot more ridiculous combos, such as some CSM players always taking Master of Infiltration and huge blob squads or just nasty combat squads. That's just me though.

And with picking psychic powers: Iron Arm Slaanesh Lash princes. 2D6 S7-9 shots each turn and assaulting right after? How about no. I enjoy my Slaanesh princes but that would be extremely broken and Flying Circus would be absolutely brutal.

Every time I face daemon princes, they always seem to have iron arms anyway. If I could also get that with any reliability, only having psyker level 2's, then I'd at least have a chance to fight back against it.

There are also a lot of interesting psychic power combinations that never see play that aren't overpowered, simply because the chances of you getting them are too risky to chance rolling that way.

Personally I think the entire Psychic stuff right now is a huge, huge mess and needs a total overhaul. I just think it's silly on the same logic as warlord traits your psykers magically forget large portions of their brains for battles. If it worked on a points buy system so you could guarantee you'd get the powers you want but you'd just have to pay for them, I'd love it. Make Iron Arms cost like 50 points (on top of additional mastery levels!) for montrous creatures as they are already super strong and super tough, but maybe less so for those two-wound T4 librarians. It'd also make tables that are loaded with useless witchfire powers but have a couple diamonds in the rough (Pyromancy!) much more attractive.

Okay, so by the time you add psychic powers and warlord traits, you'll be at 400+ points on a T5 4w monster, and effectively screw over a full codex where psychic powers and large creatures are what they have going for them, and buffing armies like Tau and Eldar further. If this ever happens I may as well shelve my Daemon army or use them only for fantasy because they'd be the biggest joke since the Dark Angels codex

How many psychic powers do you typically take on your Daemon Princes? Imagine if you only had to take the one you wanted, even if it was at a premium. Truly worse things have happened to balance. Plus 1) it doesn't buff Tau as they don't have any psychic powers. Plus 2) Eldar have 1 totally obnoxious power unique to them so it wouldn't help/hurt them any more than Space Marines/Tyranids/etc. If they had to PAY for Prescience other than say "Nah I didn't like that roll", well would that be the worst thing in the world?

Besides, I am just kicking up some dust because I think the system currently in place is really stupid and broken. I dislike when dice rolls that occur before the game even takes place end up having a disproportionate effect on the outcome of the game than any dice rolls actually made in the game. I am not saying "OH MAN IT NEEDS TO BE THIS WAY!" or even my ideas on how to go about changing it are the best, so I don't think you need to get all dramatic and claim you might as well throw away your army.

If they have to pay for their psychic powers, you're allowing everyone to choose what they want, which can be completely broken. Ever played against a screamerstar? Paying for Forewarning is cheaper than a 4th herald, and would make it more broken than it already is. Cheaper to buy on a herald than a daemon prince? Sweet, I'll just throw it on a herald and have him cast it on the daemon prince. It's not fixing anything, and if someone's build relies on paying for psychic powers then there's a problem right there. I just don't really see it solving anything since princes would just pay for ML1 and iron arm. Or a psyker would just pay for as many levels as it needed to cast powers. Plus the powers being rolled before deployment is good because it gives you time to think about it before dropping all your stuff onto the table.
I realize I sounded arrogant, I'm sorry, I didn't mean for it to sound that way

Having random powers or traits doesn't make the crazy combos not broken though. It just makes the whole game even more broken: "Oh hey, you rolled for some awesome combo of powers, what will I get?! Oh... Nothing useful at all." That's not addressing a broken imbalance of powers, that's just the designers making it worse and then throwing their hands in the air. GW must like that design style of random traits or powers precisely because then they feel they don't have to put any effort into balancing them out, figuring out appropriate costs, etc.

Deployment time rolling is too late to build an army around the traits or powers that interest you, which really takes out a lot of the fun and strategy.

The worst part is GW would probably say random powers are forging a narrative or something like that. But the random powers and traits actually cripple your ability to build a narrative. I used to have a really strong narrative play style and matching background around my Librarian and his rampant use of the Vortex of Doom with some supporting Sternguard. Now he's just some blank generic dude with random, largely useless powers, and am pretty close on dropping that former linchpin of my army out of it entirely.

Excluding some cases where it at least fits in thematically, like Orks, or Chaos mutations, random powers and traits are absolutely detrimental to the game's balance, strategic depth, and narrative play.

 l000babyseals wrote:
If they have to pay for their psychic powers, you're allowing everyone to choose what they want, which can be completely broken. Ever played against a screamerstar? Paying for Forewarning is cheaper than a 4th herald, and would make it more broken than it already is. Cheaper to buy on a herald than a daemon prince? Sweet, I'll just throw it on a herald and have him cast it on the daemon prince. It's not fixing anything, and if someone's build relies on paying for psychic powers then there's a problem right there. I just don't really see it solving anything since princes would just pay for ML1 and iron arm. Or a psyker would just pay for as many levels as it needed to cast powers. Plus the powers being rolled before deployment is good because it gives you time to think about it before dropping all your stuff onto the table.
I realize I sounded arrogant, I'm sorry, I didn't mean for it to sound that way

Haha, no worries man! I didn't take that from what you wrote and I hope I didn't come across as someone who thinks I'm the end-all-be-all of game balancing. Internet, and all. Lack of speaking, lack of verbal, social cues sometimes makes communicating way harder than it needs to be.

I just think that's a problem with balance of power of certain psychic abilities rather than if there was a points-for-power type of a format. Because at the end of the day, psychic powers are essentially Wargear in the sense they are extra things, extra abilities, extra stats or ways to debuff enemies or straight up "weapons." It'd be kind of dumb if, say, for devastator squads, you rolled a D6 per guy carrying a heavy weapon to determine their loadout, you know what I mean? It's why people generally agree that Divination is the best psychic discipline, because it's got the best primaris power and therefore you can plan a strategy around having it. Even though there are some great other powers on the tree, it's almost like people forget they are even there because taking the sure thing you can plan for means you can expect a steady game from your army.

The way it is currently, do you think it's balanced? I personally think some sort of points per power scheme would go a long way toward making them balanced, or maybe reintroduce a Major/Minor powers thing like they used in previous editions. Because right now, two daemons players could be playing against each other and player A rolls Haemorrhage, swaps it out to Smite, rolls Haemorrhage again, and then rolls Warp Speed, while the player B rolls Endurance, Iron Arms and Life Leech.

Assuming the loadout was the same in terms of type of daemon and chaos artefacts and stuff, Player B is gonna be super happy and has a much deadlier model than player A does just because random dice said so rather than strategy involved in planning an army. Kind of stupid.

I get what you mean with random dice rolls, and I entirely agree with you on the face that the randomness is going to leave one super happy and the other less than optimal. I'm more looking at it from the flip side of psychic heavy armies, like daemons. If I could pay for what I need from the psychic tables, I could end up with multiple super jacked creatures right off the bat, with iron arm, warp speed and endurance and only paying for what I need. If I was running fateweaver, I would definitely buy the best powers from each chart I can roll on. I like the randomness because the rolls can change how a unit will play slightly, and require a bit more thought onto how he can use the powers effectively.

If I could change it, it wouldn't be to buy powers, but be similar to fantasy. Roll your mastery level in dice all at once. If a double shows up, you can take the power it rolled/swap out for primaris as normal, and pick one of them of your choosing. Plus if they're all rolled at once, you get more choice as to which you'll swap out for the primaris rather than rolling a worse power when you already swapped it out.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
In regards to the topic, I say we already have a way to pick our warlord trait: Use a named character that comes with it :p
Otherwise, house rule like, one reroll on the chart, or if it's useless for the game you rolled/army you're facing, allow a reroll

I dont know about you guys but I'm glad my Tyrant always turns jungles nearby him into carnivorous ones.

Even in cities. And deserts. And blizzards.

>:[

 Iechine wrote:
I dont know about you guys but I'm glad my Tyrant always turns jungles nearby him into carnivorous ones.

Even in cities. And deserts. And blizzards.

>:[

Wait, this is actually a thing? XD that sounds awesome

We're currently testing something similar.

Anyone who could potentially be the Warlord can buy one or more warlord traits at +25 pts a pop. Actual warlord gets his first one for free. Traits are chosen during army list construction, not random. No more than one instance of a particular trait allowed per army.

Thats a lot of cheap ouflanking there blackfang

I'm running a 40k event tomorrow where players are able to choose their warlord traits. Having such a rule forced me to actually like, look at the full table in detail for the first time - and there are definitely some primo choices on it that are going to be spammed a fair bit for 25pts

 Dakkamite wrote:
Thats a lot of cheap ouflanking there blackfang

I'm running a 40k event tomorrow where players are able to choose their warlord traits. Having such a rule forced me to actually like, look at the full table in detail for the first time - and there are definitely some primo choices on it that are going to be spammed a fair bit for 25pts

Like I said, no more than one instance of a particular trait is allowed per army. So you get 1 outflank trait plus maybe another 1 if your codex also has its own version.

Want to see a bunch of 30-strong outflanking boyz with 5+ cover and fnp for free?

Chaos can do evil things with that and Master of Deception.

Or going up against mahreens and choosing PE:SM.

Why dont you roll dice for what armies you get to pick? yupp rolling for WL traits are pretty muffed

 koooaei wrote:
Want to see a bunch of 30-strong outflanking boyz with 5+ cover and fnp for free?

Ummm... yes?