Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Hi Dakka,

Got into a debate with a GW employee who was adamant you don't have to roll to hit for focussed witchfires (discussing the Tyranid Maleceptor and why I didn't want to buy it)

They argued that as it's focussed you don't have to roll to hit, you simply pick the model to do 3D6 Ld test.

I argued that you do have to roll to hit since other than picking the model you have to follow normal witchfire rules

pg 26, Focussed Witchfires:

"They follow all the normal rules for witchfire, but you can choose the specific model in the target unit that you want the power to affect."

pg 25, Witchfire

"Witchfires are shooting attacks... a Witchfire must roll To Hit"

Who was right in this instance?

That's a VERY hotly debated topic.

A thread on this was closed yesterday. It mainly spiralled into talk about Psychic Shriek which has the same problem.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/621079.page;jsessionid=8095EE32BC05D2ADBA64BA208486BBA0

There was also a poll (that was also locked, as people didn't read and kept on arguing rules ):

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/622116.page

But from the results you can see opinion is pretty evenly split.

Until there is an FAQ for rule rule change, you won't get a answer everyone agrees on.

This is the way, I've interpreted it,
First i look to the psychic phase

"Manifesting Psychic powers sequence"
1. Select Psyker and Psychic Power.
2. Declare Target.
3. Take Psychic Test.
4. Deny the Witch.
5. Resolve Psychic Power"

Then i look to the witchfire rules

"Witchfire powers are shooting attacks"

So i go to shooting attacks

"Shooting Phase Sequence
1. Nominate Unit to Shoot.
2. Choose a Target.
3. Select a Weapon
4. Roll To Hit. "

Then I look at the individual rule and try to resolve it,

"is a focused witchfire power with a range... The target must take a leadership test on 3D6."

Now I work the order:
I start at the psychic sequence,
Select my psyker> I declare my target> >take the psy test>>deny witch[power goes off]>Ressolve power>
Power is focused witchfire, the target must take a leadership test
so i enter the shooting sequence
Nominate my psyker to shoot>choose my target>
(at this point i return to the psy power as i have my target)> Target must take a leadership test
And then i finish resolving the power and then exit the sequence.

For arguments sake i could continue through the shooting sequence without interrupting it to ressolve the power,
(things get a bit funky)
Nominate my psyker to shoot>choose my target>roll to hit[hit failed]>roll to wound[no wounds]>allocate wounds[no wounds]>
exit shooting sequence-return to psychic sequence>target must take a LD test[i still have a target both from the shooting sequence and the psychic sequence]>
>finish resolving power

In both cases the outcome of the "to hit roll" doesn't matter

The only way i can see this being wrong is if after failing to hit, that means the psychic power fails, I cant find any rules to support this, all i found is
" a witchfire power must roll To Hit," but after rolling to hit, i still have my target, from, as i already stated, two separate sequences psy and shooting. If this is wrong,
if i missed something, please post it up, site rules supporting your claim, and lets see if we can finally put this dam thing to rest. =D

I can't begin to understand why there is confusion, it seems absolutely clear to me that you must Roll to Hit, and if it misses then the psychic shooting attack fails.

p.27 of the BRB makes clear that both Witchfires and Focused Witchfires must roll to hit. 'Similarly, a witchfire must roll to hit' and '[Focussed Witchfires] follows all the normal rules for witchfire'.

Are people genuinely believing that because a Witchfire doesn't necessarily have a To Wound component, that makes the To Hit become irrelevant? Are they genuinely believing that GW deliberately took effort to write in all the lines about 'must roll to hit' whilst also knowing that it would entirely irrelevant? Are people genuinely believing that because the Witchfire rules on p.27 don't explicitly say that missing the target results in failing the psychic test, but simply leaves it at 'must roll To Hit' without saying what happens either way, the To Hit roll becomes irrelevant?

Guess what, nor do the actual Shooting rules on p.32 of the BRB explicitly say that failing To Hit causes the shooting attack to fail. Seriously. The Shooting rules do not state that not rolling the required To Hit roll results in a miss and consequently a failed shooting attack. If you're going to argue that a Witchfire which is stated as needing to roll To Hit, doesn't need to hit, then you necessarily tie yourself to arguing that a normal shooting weapon likewise must roll To Hit, but doesn't need to hit to work.

 God In Action wrote:
I can't begin to understand why there is confusion, it seems absolutely clear to me that you must Roll to Hit, and if it misses then the psychic shooting attack fails.

Well for starters at no point does it ever say how many dice you roll to Hit.

Assault 3 is straight forward.

1 dice is a guess.

But all this was addressed in the thread linked above. I don't see there being much new added here sadly.

I wanted to post to the poll, but this will do.

I assume that the intent was to have the 3d6-ld to be the to hit roll, e.g. a roll of 9 vs ld 10 would indicate a miss.

One To Hit roll per manifestation, since a single roll is the minimum that it could be in order to fulfil the requirement of needing To Hit, but nothing in Witchfire powers which lack a shooting attack profile define taking multiple To Hit rolls.

Also, there already exists a type of psychic power which don't need a To Hit roll, which of course is Malediction. If Psychic Shriek or Psychic Overload did not require a successful To Hit roll then they could have been listed as Maledictions.

 God In Action wrote:
One To Hit roll per manifestation

But of course, no rule says that. It's a guess, it might be logical guess, but a guess all the same. This was also brought up in the first page of the thread listed above.

Fair. Yes I see now. My understanding is technically a RAI interpretation, and an absolutely strict RAW interpretation would mean that Witchfires which do not define the number of To Hit rolls to take, cannot be used as they are broken. Just as an incomplete shooting attack profile of S4/ AP5/ Assault ? would not be usable.

To argue that, since such a description of a Witchfire power which is incomplete for failing to define the number of To Hit rolls, the RAW requires no To Hit roll is necessary seems however to be technically house ruling a broken rule in favour of the player using the power as much as requiring a single To Hit roll would be a house rule in favour of the player suffering the psychic power.

So I believe that RAW, powers such as Psychic Shriek or Psychic Overload cannot be used. Deciding either in favour of no To Hit or a single To Hit roll would be a house rule. However, the RAI is pretty clear from the explicit wording of the Witchfire rules which states at length the need for a To Hit roll, that the more conservative house rule of requiring a single To Hit roll should be preferred. This would be the minimum change available in order to fix a RAW broken power.

Well in addition to that, if you look at the standard shooting rules, a miss doesn't actualy do anything.
It simply doesn't generate a hit. And a Hit then allows the roll for a wound.

So we have no rule that says a hit means you get to resolve a power. In a similar respect, there are no rules on what to do with a miss. No rule says don't resolve the power if you miss, it just happens to work out that way on attacks that have a profile.

So you have no rule saying how many dice you roll to hit, not rule saying to discount the power on a miss, and no rule telling you what to do with a hit.

This was the main arguements from the thread in a nutshell.

So you either skip the To Hit stage comepletly and just resolve, or you roll to hit with a single dice and resolve the power on a hit (which requires at least 3 invented rules to do so, number of dice, what to do on a hit, what to do on a miss).

Of these two options, opinion was split pretty evenly by those that voted.

Maybe I missed it, but in the other thread I didn't see discussion of why GW would so explicitly put emphasis on needing to roll To Hit if the RAI wasn't that a To Hit roll must always be taken (and be successful) if the power is to be successful. GW rules seem to treat their readers as having a measure of a prior assumptions which are (to their mind) minor and obvious, such as that if a rule says roll To Hit, then a miss means a failure and ceasing all further steps.

Otherwise it's as if GW spent time saying that To Hit must be rolled, without the intention of intending a successful To Hit roll being to a be necessary step in the chain.

 God In Action wrote:
Maybe I missed it, but in the other thread I didn't see discussion of why GW would so explicitly put emphasis on needing to roll To Hit if the RAI wasn't that a To Hit roll must always be taken (and be successful) if the power is to be successful.

No one but GW can answer that sadly. Who knows?
We can't say for sure what the RAI is.

The poll showed pinion is split on how it should be played. A clear indication that RAI is unknown.

The vast majority of Witchfires do roll to hit, if this is an exception or not they should have been more clear.

God in Action,
While no one here will be able to inform you why the Authors believed this was a good idea, because we are not the Authors themselves, for speculation sake I would like to highlight the following:
There are two things one has to consider when they look over the formatting of the Rule book itself, 'multiple writers' and 'hack and paste.'

The fact there has been many hands working on this one book, while most Codex's or Supplements have a sole Author, does increase the possibility of a Rule being mis-penned. In this case it is entirely possible that a completely different Author worked on the contents of these Psychic Powers while a different Author was responsible for the 'Must roll To Hit' instruction. Without proper communication between the two, the outcome could very well be a whole bunch of Psychic Powers which can not obey the 'To Hit' instruction as the Author that wrote them did not take it into consideration.

The second is the 'hack and paste' job that Game Workshop does whenever it 'updates' an Edition. This is when the "editor" simply takes passages from previous editions and reuses them in the new, something Game Workshop has repetitively done in the most sloppy way imaginable. This is far more harder to catch when it happens, again because Game Workshop has been doing this for decades so you have to look back many Editions to even see if is occurring, so I will use a more recent example: Vertical Movement. These Rules used to be part of 6th Edition's Rules for Ruins, but now they control every vertical movement in the game... even though they only function when applied to Ruins. The mis-match may have occurred for similar reasons, just several editions ago and never fixed....


Automatically Appended Next Post:
From all the debates around these things, it is obvious the Authors should not have created a 'psychic shooting attack' dependent on the default Rules for shooting.

Focussed Witchfires do highlight the problem the most, as many Steps in the default sequence are being 'ignored as irrelevant' or to be Resolved by some other method which better fits the Power in question. This is not because we are informed to do so by some Advanced Rule, but 'Universal House Rule' that has been more or less agreed on just so the game can proceed without breaking. This is such an extensive problem, and has been for a few Editions now, that I wonder if there is even one Focussed Witchfire that does function within the default shooting sequence.

Lacking that, is there even one which gives us specific permission to replace / ignore steps in the sequence?

 grendel083 wrote:
Well in addition to that, if you look at the standard shooting rules, a miss doesn't actualy do anything.
It simply doesn't generate a hit. And a Hit then allows the roll for a wound.

So we have no rule that says a hit means you get to resolve a power. In a similar respect, there are no rules on what to do with a miss. No rule says don't resolve the power if you miss, it just happens to work out that way on attacks that have a profile.

So you have no rule saying how many dice you roll to hit, not rule saying to discount the power on a miss, and no rule telling you what to do with a hit.

This was the main arguements from the thread in a nutshell.

So you either skip the To Hit stage comepletly and just resolve, or you roll to hit with a single dice and resolve the power on a hit (which requires at least 3 invented rules to do so, number of dice, what to do on a hit, what to do on a miss).

Of these two options, opinion was split pretty evenly by those that voted.

Skipping the To Hit stage completely is actually the more cumbersome of the two approaches. It goes directly against a clear directive in the rules (Psychic Shriek is specified as witchfire which they emphatically point out "must roll To Hit") and winds up changing Psychic Shriek from a witchfire attack that rolls to hit into one that autohits. The witchfire rules make it clear that only witchfire that use Templates automatically hit. We are missing any rule that states that witchfire that lack a profile automatically hit or skip To Hit. The overall problem is that one side is trying to make the "missing profile and missing critical info" justification for a buff (automatically hit) without that buff being specifically granted by GW. The term for that is Easter Egging.

However, there is a straightforward and elegant solution!
All you need to do is change Psychic Shriek to read . . .



And the power is able to resolve as witchfire without bending any rules, making up any fictions, or relying on house rules that give you permission to skip unresolvable steps. Moreover, since GW made it abundantly clear that we have to roll To Hit, this elegant and simple solution agrees with the obvious RAI (to resolve as witchfire). This fix is the most elegant and least weighty of any of the proposed solutions, requiring only the addition of a clause that we find numerous examples of in the case of attacks that wound versus against Leadership rather than Toughness. Moreover, it makes sense that such a clause could be dropped off by the rule writers who could have wittingly or unwittingly handled that as just assumed knowledge. Most importantly, this approach does not Easter Egg.

In the case of a controversial rules issue like Psychic Shriek where there is a mess and not a 100% clear solution, the least you can do is to avoid Easter Egging.

col_impact wrote:

All you need to do is change Psychic Shriek to read . . .

Spoiler:

Psychic Shriek is a witchfire power with a range of 18". Instead of a To Wound roll, roll 3D6 and subtract the target’s Leadership – the target unit suffers a number of Wounds equal to the result. Armour and cover saves cannot be taken against Wounds caused by Psychic Shriek.

You could also change it to read...

Your solution still doesn't cover the number of Dice needed to roll to hit.

And it's not easter egging. You should be carefull of implying that, it WILL cause offence.

If a unit misses with all their shots, do they go into the Wound stage with no dice? Or skip it?
The allocating wound stage with no wounds caused? Run through it or skip it?

The intent of this rule is unclear. The poll proved this.
The intent could well be that it effectively hits automatically. This isn't the same as trying to get an advantage out of loophole in the rules (or easter egging).

 DeathReaper wrote:

col_impact wrote:

All you need to do is change Psychic Shriek to read . . .

Spoiler:

Psychic Shriek is a witchfire power with a range of 18". Instead of a To Wound roll, roll 3D6 and subtract the target’s Leadership – the target unit suffers a number of Wounds equal to the result. Armour and cover saves cannot be taken against Wounds caused by Psychic Shriek.

You could also change it to read...

Spoiler:

Psychic Shriek is a witchfire power with a range of 18" that automatically hits. roll 3D6 and subtract the target’s Leadership – the target unit suffers a number of Wounds equal to the result. Armour and cover saves cannot be taken against Wounds caused by Psychic Shriek.

col_impact wrote:
Yes indeed you could. And you would be adding a line that obviously buffs Psychic Shriek and would be blatantly Easter Egging, so thanks for making my point very clear.

Again, accusing people of easter egging really is no way to behave in a forum.

Unless you can prove the intent of the rule, and that people are trying to go against that to gain an advantage, you really shouldn't throw that word about. You're basically acusing someone of cheating for playing a rule the way they think it should be played.

The poll showed opinion is divided on how it should be played. Unless you're the person that wrote the rule, your opinion is no more valid then the next person.

 grendel083 wrote:
Your solution still doesn't cover the number of Dice needed to roll to hit.

And it's not easter egging. You should be carefull of implying that, it WILL cause offence.

If a unit misses with all their shots, do they go into the Wound stage with no dice? Or skip it?
The allocating wound stage with no wounds caused? Run through it or skip it?

The intent of this rule is unclear. The poll proved this.
The intent could well be that it effectively hits automatically. This isn't the same as trying to get an advantage out of loophole in the rules (or easter egging).

What you are saying is that by GW NOT telling us what to do with missing profile that they mean to ACTIVELY communicate that we are to treat them as hitting automatically, when they already specified that only witchfire with Templates hit automatically.

You are very much trying to buff something based on missing rules and are contradicting rules made elsewhere (that specifies witchfire with Templates as being the only case of witchfire hitting automatically)

col_impact wrote:
What you are saying is that by GW NOT telling us what to do with missing profile that they mean to ACTIVELY communicate that we are to treat them as hitting automatically, when they already specified that only witchfire with Templates hit automatically.

You are very much trying to buff something based on missing rules and are contradicting rules made elsewhere (that specifies witchfire with Templates as being the only case of witchfire hitting automatically)

Spoiler:

a witchfire power must roll To Hit, unless it is has the Blast special rule, in which case it scatters as described in the Blast special rule, or it is a Template weapon, which hit automatically.

I'm saying I know GW's intentions as much as you do.

I can not say for certain if it needs to roll to hit or not. Neither can you. We can only give our opinion.

And thanks to the poll, there isn't a majority that believes either way.

The rules simply arn't clear enough. You may believe that you are correct, but there's an equal chance you're not. So think about that before you accuse everyone that doesn't agree of Easter Egging (Also had you have looked closely to the poll, you'd notice the main people you were arguing don't even use this power. They were simply trying to get the rules right, not look for an advantage).

col_impact wrote:

 DeathReaper wrote:

col_impact wrote:

All you need to do is change Psychic Shriek to read . . .

Spoiler:

Psychic Shriek is a witchfire power with a range of 18". Instead of a To Wound roll, roll 3D6 and subtract the target’s Leadership – the target unit suffers a number of Wounds equal to the result. Armour and cover saves cannot be taken against Wounds caused by Psychic Shriek.

You could also change it to read...

Spoiler:

Psychic Shriek is a witchfire power with a range of 18" that automatically hits. roll 3D6 and subtract the target’s Leadership – the target unit suffers a number of Wounds equal to the result. Armour and cover saves cannot be taken against Wounds caused by Psychic Shriek.

Yes indeed you could. And you would be adding a line that obviously buffs Psychic Shriek and would be blatantly Easter Egging, so thanks for making my point very clear.

Please stop saying that I am "blatantly Easter Egging" I am not.

It is very rude to insinuate that I am "blatantly Easter Egging" when I am not.

Everyone - argue the issue, the points, and leave the insults and accusations out.

Thanks!

But it's quite obvious that changing Psychic Overload to be an automatic hit is interpreting a rule with a clear advantage gained. The inclusion of a To Hit roll in the Witchfire rule very clearly demonstrates the intention of there being a chance to miss. Taking away that chance to miss is very clearly interpreting to gain a benefit. In order to claim that interpreting the power as an automatic hit is not against the intended spirit of the Witchfire rules, you'd need to claim that the entire inclusion of the requirement to roll To Hit was accidental on the authors' part. That is a far larger assumption than the assumption involved in the solution of 1x To Hit roll per manifestation.

If interpreting Psychic Overload as an automatic hit were not to be as a gained advantage, you would need to show that there was no evidence of an intended chance to miss in the rules. Whilst those rules are RAW broken and don't specify what exactly the chance to miss or hit should be, they nonetheless do spell out that there is an undefined chance in there somewhere.

 God In Action wrote:
But it's quite obvious that changing Psychic Overload to be an automatic hit is interpreting a rule with a clear advantage gained.

It is a more advantageous interpretation, yes.
That doesn't mean it's wrong.

The intent of the rule could be that it doesn't need to roll to hit, it could be that it does. It's simply not clear enough.

You could choose to play it as the least advantagous way, there's nothing wrong with that if that's what you want to do. But I would recommend you don't throw accusations at those that believe it should be played the other way. Hopefully you can see how divided opion is by these 3 threads.

It's true that an advantageous interpretation doesn't make it less likely to be true, but it does require greater scrutiny. The rules aren't perfectly clear, I agree, as proven by the split of opinion. But I also think that the heavy emphasis on To Hit rolls as being a part of all Witchfire powers is evidence of an intention to require a To Hit. So, with scrutiny, we have to weigh up: what's more likely, a To Hit roll is required and the authors assumed that we'd know it was one roll per manifestation, or the power is an automatic hit and the authors failed to describe any sort of automatic hit within the Witchfire rules?

 God In Action wrote:
we have to weigh up: what's more likely,

That you'll have to discuss with your opponent or TO. As you can see, there's no consensus among the online community.

Personally I think no To Hit roll is needed, but I never play Psychic Shriek so I'm happy with what mu opponent believes.
I prefer proper Orky powers

'Eadbanger however has the same propblem as all other Focused Witchfires with no profile.

Gee, this got heated fast, uhm ok lets see here:

 God In Action wrote:
I

Guess what, nor do the actual Shooting rules on p.32 of the BRB explicitly say that failing To Hit causes the shooting attack to fail. Seriously

This statement isn't correct
5th step of the shooting sequence
" 5. Roll To Wound. For each shot that hit, roll again to see if it wounds the target. The result needed is determined by comparing the Strength of the firing weapon with the majority Toughness of the target unit."

Most of the things you wrote have little to do with my reply, im not saying the "a To Wound component, that makes the To Hit become irrelevant." Please show me how my interpretation doens hold up GiA

 God In Action wrote:
I

Are they genuinely believing that GW deliberately took effort to write in all the lines about 'must roll to hit' whilst also knowing that it would entirely irrelevant? Are people genuinely believing that because the Witchfire rules on p.27 don't explicitly say that missing the target results in failing the psychic test, but simply leaves it at 'must roll To Hit' without saying what happens either way, the To Hit roll becomes irrelevant?

My post clearly says none of these things, I am saying that before the roll to hit is made a witchfire, like shriek, is designed, by GW, to ressolve its ability. a simpler way to think of it is, just how you have on hit affects, shriek is an "on target affect", rules as written the phrase "the target takes" is no different that "the targeted model/unit takes." If a rule says "the hit model must take an initiative test," you do this action as the model is hit, in the same way "the targeted model must take a leadership test" you do this as the model is targeted.

The number of shots, argument seems to be a bit silly to me, as the psychic power is effectively the weapon, and as there no indication of a "number of shots" the power can be considered to be a single shot, that affects all witchfires without weapons profiles tho, and i feel like that arguement has little to do with this particular issue.

 grendel083 wrote:

no rule says that. It's a guess, it might be logical guess, but a guess all the same. This was also brought up in the first page of the thread listed above.

Incorrect
"Just like when shooting a weapon, a Psyker must be able to see the target unit (or target point) and cannot be locked in combat if he wishes to manifest a witchfire power.
Similarly, a witchfire power must roll To Hit, unless it is has the Blast special rule, in which case it scatters as described in the Blast special rule,
or it is a Template weapon, which hit automatically"
One power, one roll to hit, unless it states otherwise or it has a weapon profile[see the lines before the quoted rule in the BrB,sorry i cant site pg numbers i have the E book version]

If someone could please tell me how my interpretation is incorrect, its the 3rd post in this thread, id really appreciate it.

 grendel083 wrote:

 God In Action wrote:
But it's quite obvious that changing Psychic Overload to be an automatic hit is interpreting a rule with a clear advantage gained.

It is a more advantageous interpretation, yes.
That doesn't mean it's wrong.

The intent of the rule could be that it doesn't need to roll to hit, it could be that it does. It's simply not clear enough.

You could choose to play it as the least advantagous way, there's nothing wrong with that if that's what you want to do. But I would recommend you don't throw accusations at those that believe it should be played the other way. Hopefully you can see how divided opion is by these 3 threads.

Playing it that it skips the roll to hit goes DIRECTLY against the rules. Take a look at the actual rules.





I am sorry but going directly against the rules is not a tenable solution if we want to play a game where we follow the rules. Skipping the To Hit roll is not justified by the rules.

 God In Action wrote:
But it's quite obvious that changing Psychic Overload to be an automatic hit is interpreting a rule with a clear advantage gained. The inclusion of a To Hit roll in the Witchfire rule very clearly demonstrates the intention of there being a chance to miss. Taking away that chance to miss is very clearly interpreting to gain a benefit. In order to claim that interpreting the power as an automatic hit is not against the intended spirit of the Witchfire rules, you'd need to claim that the entire inclusion of the requirement to roll To Hit was accidental on the authors' part. That is a far larger assumption than the assumption involved in the solution of 1x To Hit roll per manifestation.

If interpreting Psychic Overload as an automatic hit were not to be as a gained advantage, you would need to show that there was no evidence of an intended chance to miss in the rules. Whilst those rules are RAW broken and don't specify what exactly the chance to miss or hit should be, they nonetheless do spell out that there is an undefined chance in there somewhere.

Ok first my interpretation isn't technically an automatic hit, the order of operations has the spell resolve prior to the "to hit roll,"
if you can show me how that interpretation is incorrect please do.

Your second sentence completely ignores my first post, and doesn't really seem to be adding anything other than arguing for arguing sake.

As you have said "The inclusion of a To Hit roll in the Witchfire rule very clearly demonstrates the intention of there being a chance to miss"
I could easily say,"The inclusion of the word Target in the Shriek rule very clearly demonstrates the intention of the being no chance to miss.
Taking away no chance to miss is very learly interpreting the rule to nerf it"
See that kind of statement doesnt really work...=S

" In order to claim that interpreting the power as an automatic hit " I'm not making that claim.

"If interpreting Psychic Overload as an automatic hit were not to be as a gained advantage,
you would need to show that there was no evidence of an intended chance to miss in the rules."

That sentence I don't understand, please rephrase it

SaJeel wrote:
Gee, this got heated fast, uhm ok lets see here:

 God In Action wrote:
I

Guess what, nor do the actual Shooting rules on p.32 of the BRB explicitly say that failing To Hit causes the shooting attack to fail. Seriously

This statement isn't correct
5th step of the shooting sequence
" 5. Roll To Wound. For each shot that hit, roll again to see if it wounds the target. The result needed is determined by comparing the Strength of the firing weapon with the majority Toughness of the target unit."

Most of the things you wrote have little to do with my reply, im not saying the "a To Wound component, that makes the To Hit become irrelevant." Please show me how my interpretation doens hold up GiA

 God In Action wrote:
I

Are they genuinely believing that GW deliberately took effort to write in all the lines about 'must roll to hit' whilst also knowing that it would entirely irrelevant? Are people genuinely believing that because the Witchfire rules on p.27 don't explicitly say that missing the target results in failing the psychic test, but simply leaves it at 'must roll To Hit' without saying what happens either way, the To Hit roll becomes irrelevant?

My post clearly says none of these things, I am saying that before the roll to hit is made a witchfire, like shriek, is designed, by GW, to ressolve its ability. a simpler way to think of it is, just how you have on hit affects, shriek is an "on target affect", rules as written the phrase "the target takes" is no different that "the targeted model/unit takes." If a rule says "the hit model must take an initiative test," you do this action as the model is hit, in the same way "the targeted model must take a leadership test" you do this as the model is targeted.

The number of shots, argument seems to be a bit silly to me, as the psychic power is effectively the weapon, and as there no indication of a "number of shots" the power can be considered to be a single shot, that affects all witchfires without weapons profiles tho, and i feel like that arguement has little to do with this particular issue.

 grendel083 wrote:

no rule says that. It's a guess, it might be logical guess, but a guess all the same. This was also brought up in the first page of the thread listed above.

Incorrect
"Just like when shooting a weapon, a Psyker must be able to see the target unit (or target point) and cannot be locked in combat if he wishes to manifest a witchfire power.
Similarly, a witchfire power must roll To Hit, unless it is has the Blast special rule, in which case it scatters as described in the Blast special rule,
or it is a Template weapon, which hit automatically"
One power, one roll to hit, unless it states otherwise or it has a weapon profile[see the lines before the quoted rule in the BrB,sorry i cant site pg numbers i have the E book version]

If someone could please tell me how my interpretation is incorrect, its the 3rd post in this thread, id really appreciate it.

SaJeel - I appreciate that you have a more polished argument and we should address it. First things first, we need to shut down the "Skip the To Hit" solution as having no rules justification and being untenable, or else the thread gets polluted and defocused.

Meanwhile, SaJeel, clarify what you do in your solution on successful To Hit rolls.