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I played a game yesterday where my squad of Chaos Spawn that was running without a character got Psychic Shrieked.
Chaos Spawn's leadership is "-", so after trying to find a definitive answer in the rule book we decided that meant that we should roll 3D6 and jut have the Spawn take all of those wounds.

Helpfully I rolled 16, which meant an instantly dead Spawn squad.

Did we play that correctly?
Is there anything that sets this out clearly in the rule book?

On one of the first few pages it talks about zero level characteristics, usually represented by a -. That means the relevant number associated with it is a 0. Funnily enough, even with a character, the leadership of the unit is still 0, as you will have many 0's and only 1 9 or 10. Because the shriek says roll 3d6 and subtract leadership, that is a great way to take care of spawns.


EDIT: Just looked at the spawns profile. They have a leadership of 10, and an armor save of a '-'. So that means you played it wrong and lost the squad for no reason =\.

Mulletdude nailed it with his edit.
Though for other units with an actual LD of - or 0, they just take a whole pile of wounds.

I thought by adding a character you would use the character's leadership?

So when someone has a chapter master added to a bike squad, it makes them leadership 10 for psychic shriek, no?

It's not a Ld test which uses the highest Ld. It's merely 3D6 subtracted by the Squad's Ld. Is there a rule regarding multiple Ld values OUTSIDE of a Ld test? I can only think of Majority Toughness.

I think we might need a ruling on that. Generally it seems highest Ld is always used for things.

 Spellbound wrote:
I think we might need a ruling on that. Generally it seems highest Ld is always used for things.

Except it's not. Unless you have a rule saying otherwise? Highest LD is only a rule for LD tests.

Then it breaks the game because it doesn't tell us how to handle multiple leadership values in the target unit.

Do you go by precedent of highest leadership, as with leadership tests, with no rules to support it?

Or do you use majority leadership, like majority toughness, which also has no rules backing on two counts: 1) nothing talks about using majority leadership to cause wounds and 2) psychic shriek doesn't do a strength-toughness or even strength-leadership to cause wounds, it just subtracts a number.

I think you'll find most of the community prefers the first one, although I for one would LOVE to use the majority.

 Spellbound wrote:
Then it breaks the game because it doesn't tell us how to handle multiple leadership values in the target unit.

Correct.

Do you go by precedent of highest leadership, as with leadership tests, with no rules to support it?

Or do you use majority leadership, like majority toughness, which also has no rules backing on two counts: 1) nothing talks about using majority leadership to cause wounds and 2) psychic shriek doesn't do a strength-toughness or even strength-leadership to cause wounds, it just subtracts a number.

I think you'll find most of the community prefers the first one, although I for one would LOVE to use the majority.

I think you'll find the community varies pretty largely. Locally we use the majorit.y.