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Ran into a weird rule thing and want to get everyone's take on it.

The way I and everyone else I've met (but one) plays Psykers is you can keep casting with a psyker until you have attempted to manifest all of the powers he knows or you run out of dice to try. If you still have dice left, another of your psykers can attempt to manifest and so on.

Today, my opponent pointed out a line on page 22 of the BRB: "The number of psychic powers a Psyker can use each turn depends on his Mastery Level." This line is immediately followed by unhelpful fluff and this apparent restriction is never mentioned again anywhere in the rest of the Psychic Chapter.

This would imply that a mastery level 2 Librarian who knows 2 Biomancy powers, plus Smite (the primaris), plus Force, could only activate 2 of these powers in a given psychic phase. While restrictive and annoying, this limit doesn't become prohibitive until you consider the behavior of the Librarius Conclave.

In a Conclave, one Libby does all the casting while having access to all the powers known by the conclave, but harnessing warp charges on a 3+ or 2+. Since the best librarian outside of Tigirius is only Mastery Level 2, this means that the entire Conclave would only get to cast 2 powers per turn, with all the rest of the powers being unusable (unless you subscribe to the elastic "end of phase" interpretation that is).

Since I don't think the point of the formation was to make Librarians worse, this strikes me as being badly in need of FAQing / House Ruling, but I wanted to get everyone else's take on it to see if it's been run into before.

This is a common issue. The most recent thread on it is here:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/658118.page

nickh wrote:
oday, my opponent pointed out a line on page 22 of the BRB: "The number of psychic powers a Psyker can use each turn depends on his Mastery Level." This line is immediately followed by unhelpful fluff and this apparent restriction is never mentioned again anywhere in the rest of the Psychic Chapter.

This would imply that a mastery level 2 Librarian who knows 2 Biomancy powers, plus Smite (the primaris), plus Force, could only activate 2 of these powers in a given psychic phase. While restrictive and annoying, this limit doesn't become prohibitive until you consider the behavior of the Librarius Conclave.

Okay, it depends on the his Mastery Level, but it is not limited TO his Mastery Level. Do you notice the difference?

Depending on it is not necessarily a limit for it, it just defines the greatest variable. Mastery Levels are the most varied thing a Psyker has access to. Thanks to Focus, unless you deliberately gimping your character, you have access to ML+1. If you have a Force Weapon, that's also ML+1. If you take advantage of Focus and have a Force Weapon, it's ML +1+1.

Have fun Casting, you Witch!

 chelsea_hollywood wrote:
This is a common issue. The most recent thread on it is here:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/658118.page

Ah hah! Very helpful! Thank you!

Charistoph wrote:
...

Have fun Casting, you Witch!

If you pick Ahriman you can cast up to 16 powers. Roll 4 witchfires (biomancy and telepathy primaris are 100% certain 'rolls') get the primaris from tzeentch from psychic focus and tripple-cast all of them.
Finally, force to top it of.

Extra heresy!

DaPino wrote:

Charistoph wrote:
...

Have fun Casting, you Witch!

If you pick Ahriman you can cast up to 16 powers. Roll 4 witchfires (biomancy and telepathy primaris are 100% certain 'rolls') get the primaris from tzeentch from psychic focus and tripple-cast all of them.
Finally, force to top it of.

Extra heresy!

I keep saying to myself, 'what angle do I want to come at Chaos from?'

This.

So now I wonder, since all armies regardless of relationship share psychic dice, which army generates them the cheapest, point wise?

To help further explain. Lets say we have kid called Little Jimmy. He gets pocket money. It would therefore be true to say Little Jimmy's picket money depends on his fathers Salary. This does not even remotely imply his pocket is the same as his father's salary. It is likely to be hugely less. Though it could be more if say Jimmy's mum is a Billionaire and divorced and pays Jimmy 5% more picket money than his father earns purely to humiliate the father (a hugely less likely but still possible outcome). Hence X depends on Y does not enable us to determine X for a given value of Y. The statement is functionally useless and as is often pointed out most likely only there due to a copy and paste fail from the previous rulebook or being kinder is merely there as a contextual line telling you that higher mastery means more powers as opposed to more powerful powers (Smite is yhe same whether cast by a lvl1 or lvl4 psyker).

 Jimsolo wrote:

DaPino wrote:

Charistoph wrote:
...

Have fun Casting, you Witch!

If you pick Ahriman you can cast up to 16 powers. Roll 4 witchfires (biomancy and telepathy primaris are 100% certain 'rolls') get the primaris from tzeentch from psychic focus and tripple-cast all of them.
Finally, force to top it of.

Extra heresy!

I keep saying to myself, 'what angle do I want to come at Chaos from?'

This.

So now I wonder, since all armies regardless of relationship share psychic dice, which army generates them the cheapest, point wise?

Probably Eldar.
100 pts for Farseer (ML 3), 70(?) pts for Spiritseer (ML 2), 35 pts for Warlock (ML 1). And Warlock Councils generate Warp Charges equal to the number of Warlocks in the unit, not the unit's Mastery Level.

Weirdboyz can make a lot of cheap warp charges with their Waaagh! Energy Rule. A 70 point Weirdboy can make 3 warp charges. Unbound Weirdboy army would be rather funny.

DaPino wrote:

Charistoph wrote:
...

Have fun Casting, you Witch!

If you pick Ahriman you can cast up to 16 powers. Roll 4 witchfires (biomancy and telepathy primaris are 100% certain 'rolls') get the primaris from tzeentch from psychic focus and tripple-cast all of them.
Finally, force to top it of.

Extra heresy!

Chaos casters are forced to roll at least half of their spells on the Tzeentch table, so if you get boon of mutation... no 4 witchfires

Upto half, not at least.

My buddy's GK librarian managed to get 5/6 powers off in one phase a couple games ago.

Yeah, it's likely eldar. Tzeentch heralds cost 95 for a lvl 3, but a single one is 45. Ahriman surrounded by 5 or 6 lvl 3 tzeentch heralds would run you minimum 705 pts.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Wait, that means tzeentch is most charges/point... Doesnt it? 95 for 3? 31.3 pts per mastery level, roughly?

What about Inquisition. Can't they get a WC for 18 points still?

AncientSkarbrand wrote:
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Wait, that means tzeentch is most charges/point... Doesnt it? 95 for 3? 31.3 pts per mastery level, roughly?

No a single Zoanthrope wins at 50 pts for 2WC

Jeez, 18 points is pretty insane... If that's still the case I doubt anything is a cheaper warp charge battery than that. Kinda shows you points are fethed up, since making any other model a lvl 1 costs 25...

2 Warrior Acolytes and a Psyker in a Henchmen squad is still 18pts/WC I believe.

 FlingitNow wrote:
2 Warrior Acolytes and a Psyker in a Henchmen squad is still 18pts/WC I believe.

Hmm. I think a better question might be which faction/detachments get you the most warp charges per point while remaining battle forged.

Still Inquisition as the only tax is an inquisitor (25 pointsbase) and you can make him a Psyker if you want...