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This is something that's cropped up recently and I'm interested to see what the consensus position here on Dakka is; do you roll for traits and powers, or just pick them?

For me personally, rolling for traits and powers is one of the silliest design decisions GW have made in a while, and that competition is a fierce one. I don't use "generic" characters, they all get names and personalities and so forth because the background and aesthetic of the IP is what keeps me invested despite other factors, and from what I've seen over the years it's not that uncommon a thing to do; in that context, having a Librarian who forgets and remembers powers at random or a commander who goes from being an infiltration specialist to a siege warfare specialist from one game to the next seems, to me at least, bonkers. And usually that's not an issue, most people I've gamed with seem perfectly happy for both of us to just pick the ones we want(doubly so when they realise I'm picking fluffy powers and they've gone Divination ), or if they'd rather follow the RAW they've at least been polite about it. As I mentioned above though, recently on a couple of occasions with entirely different people, they seem to have been actually offended by the very suggestion; one outright refused to play me because "I don't play with people who try to cheat!" o_0

So, yeah; have I just been inordinately lucky so far in who I've played and in the wider world picking rather than rolling is some monstrous faux pas?

Agreed that it's silly that there is not some generic list of meh to moderate abilities that you can properly choose from. Fearless (or Stubborn), Infiltrate, some bubble within 3" of an Objective, Discard an additional Obj card at the end of each turn. Things to represent the most basic of variation between 3rd Company Captain and 8th Company or 1st Company Captains for instance. Not asking for the world there, since even the strongest should be weaker than what you get on Personal or Command or any of the other tables.

However! Since that rules isn't there, I expect my opponent to roll for their stuff if that is the requirement. If you want a specific, use that character and build a list around it. Counts-as is perfectly fine and my 3rd Company Captain of the Ultramarines uses the rules for 2nd Company Captain. But, my Lugft Huron uses his trait despite it being nearly the most useless thing in the game for any build I make with that army. We use what we get.

I completely agree. I would have preferred them as optional upgrades for your warlord, and same for psychic powers.

Choose warlord, roll for psychic.

Personally I don't think there really is a "fair" way to do it; rolling for them is stupid for the reasons described in the OP and still creates unbalanced games since you can get useless traits and powers while your opponent doesn't, and picking them is broken, since obviously you can just pick the best ones, which is still more beneficial for some people than others since not every codex is on an even footing.

The second GW started letting you choose them in the form of special characters they gave up any reason for them to be random. What is upsetting about random traits is it makes it hard to make a homebrew character and represent their fluff in some way by their trait.


As for choosing psychic powers. That's not so cut and dry. I don't like it being random, it's dumb, they should just have point lists relative to the unit taking them. Still, choosing is a bit strong, has more effect on the game than warlord traits imo.

Sometimes in narrative campaigns, I will have characters that keep the same powers throughout the campaign- but are generated randomly the first time.
I would never dream of asking an opponent in a friendly pickup game at the FLGS to allow choosing of abilities... I'd have serious reservations about playing someone who asked as well.. The whole time I would just be thinking "what are they up to and what are they trying to pull here?"

I try to select a warlord who will have a predetermined trait, so I can plan for it. Otherwise, I just roll. I used to ask my opponents to do the house rule thing where you roll the dice and pick the table afterward (to at least mitigate the suck) but that got really tedious trying to explain what I meant every game.

I don't mind just outright picking Warlord Traits, as it really adds an extra level of character & story to an army's leader.
Psychic Powers? Absolutely not. The randomness is the only thing keeping them from being completely broken.

The one time I played against an opponent who insisted on allowing the outright choosing of specific powers, (a Marine player who wanted Invis for his oh-so-cleaver Centstar), my Daemons just laughed themselves silly.
He got his Invis sure, I had my LoC w/Boomstick + Precog, and every single augment and hex I could dream of! On top of out gunning him in WC's by a good deal.

In the end, he never got his Invis off once, and he ended up "enjoying" an entire Tzeentch army that was almost entirely covered by Cursed Earth/Forewarning & led by a LoC that re-rolled everything.

There are many tournaments in my area that let you choose your warlord trait upfront, but you keep it through the entire tournament.

Brining that back to friendly games, we use this method for campaigns and Apoc battles all the time. for normal sized games, I leave it up to my opponent, as the warlord trait can make a list super fluffy.

Psychic powers are 100% rolled every time. I would never let my opponent choose.

I did play a game once, where we chose each others psychic powers, that was not that bad actually.. neither of us had really powerful traits, and I got to use abilities I rarely ever rolled for (like pyromancy).


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh! I also played another game where you had every psychic power available (that you could roll for), but you could only ever use a power once for the entire game.. That was actually kind of fun! Made some really tactical psychic decisions.. like.. when should I actually cast invisibility..

I'm in the "would never consider asking" camp. There are exceptions, though. I fairly often play test-matchups for upcomming tournaments, testing difficult matchups. In that case I will often want to test my list if I do not get "invisibility", or whatever crucial power.

The main person I play against and I have come up with what we feel to be a kind of "interestingly fair" way when it comes to Warlord traits.

If we have the cards handy, we each draw one Warlord trait card from the other's stash and then we draw one ourselves.

It gives us a better shot at getting one we like/could use and nobody can claim that you might have 'stacked the deck'.

I would infinitely prefer just letting people choose their warlord traits for the reasons mentioned about (fluffy list, doesn't make sense that commanders' abilities change every game, needless extra rolling). I would be a little hesitant doing that for a competitive game because there are a couple powers that are top tier (especially the ruins CS one, with how most boards are set up in 40k). But in general I like the idea.

I may wind up suggesting what Grizzy said for our next FLGS tourney and do it so you can pick your trait but have to keep it for the entire tournament.

I'm fine with choosing warlord traits but psychic powers without modification can't be chosen. The balance on them is to far apart and comes down to three or four powers

 Yodhrin wrote:
This is something that's cropped up recently and I'm interested to see what the consensus position here on Dakka is; do you roll for traits and powers, or just pick them?

For me personally, rolling for traits and powers is one of the silliest design decisions GW have made in a while, and that competition is a fierce one. I don't use "generic" characters, they all get names and personalities and so forth because the background and aesthetic of the IP is what keeps me invested despite other factors, and from what I've seen over the years it's not that uncommon a thing to do; in that context, having a Librarian who forgets and remembers powers at random or a commander who goes from being an infiltration specialist to a siege warfare specialist from one game to the next seems, to me at least, bonkers. And usually that's not an issue, most people I've gamed with seem perfectly happy for both of us to just pick the ones we want(doubly so when they realise I'm picking fluffy powers and they've gone Divination ), or if they'd rather follow the RAW they've at least been polite about it. As I mentioned above though, recently on a couple of occasions with entirely different people, they seem to have been actually offended by the very suggestion; one outright refused to play me because "I don't play with people who try to cheat!" o_0

So, yeah; have I just been inordinately lucky so far in who I've played and in the wider world picking rather than rolling is some monstrous faux pas?

While I agree with the sentiment wholeheartedly...the ability to just pick would be absurd given how powerful many are and how tailored they could. That said, the rest of 40k has probably already passed that bar, but whatever.

But if you could just pick psychic powers, you'd just get armies built around abusing the everloving snot out of them, and in fact with characters where such is already possible (or nearly so), we see exactly that kind of abuse.

Now, granted, some of this is a problem with particular traits or powers having something broken fundamentally, like Invisibility, but others aren't so bad in generalist TAC armies but are utterly broken in armies specialized around them.

I think in general, the idea of Warlord Traits was something the game could have done without and solved the dilemma that way (and half the time I play I don't even bother with them), while Psychic Powers are a whole other batch of worms. If you do simply get to pick, they'd better than a points cost attached like they used to in older editions, and a hefty one.

I would say always roll, as that is what the rules say. It is silly from a fluff standpoint, but, especially with psychic powers, some of them are too good to just be able to have automatically. If you want guaranteed invis all the time, just play CSM/Daemons and take Be'lakor. Or take Tiggy and roll on Telepathy, you will get Invis most of the time, without actually breaking the rules.

Really what needs to happen is that all of the powers and warlord traits need to be more balanced so that no matter what you roll, you will usually get something decent but not OP. Of course, this is GW, a "model company, not game company", so it will never work that way, but we can dream...

 ZergSmasher wrote:
I would say always roll, as that is what the rules say. It is silly from a fluff standpoint, but, especially with psychic powers, some of them are too good to just be able to have automatically. If you want guaranteed invis all the time, just play CSM/Daemons and take Be'lakor. Or take Tiggy and roll on Telepathy, you will get Invis most of the time, without actually breaking the rules.

Really what needs to happen is that all of the powers and warlord traits need to be more balanced so that no matter what you roll, you will usually get something decent but not OP. Of course, this is GW, a "model company, not game company", so it will never work that way, but we can dream...

I agree tentatively, I think the warlord traits are not so game changing that picking them would change the course of the game. psychic powers are another beast. Invisibility alone breaks the game, and there are other powers that to strong to be picked at a whine. O, how I cry for 5th.

I agree wholeheartedly with letting people pick warlord traits, since there are really only a few decent ones and the rest are just garbage. Either way though, they're not that game-changing (which is why I'm fine with picking them).

Psychic powers are harder. It used to be okay in the early days of 6th, but now I feel like it does more harm than good. It's really stupid, but that's what we get in this era of "Models Workshop."

In-house I wouldn't be opposed to something like "roll for powers, but you can give up a roll on the table to add +/- 1 to the result". Considering that pick-up play is pretty much dead though, you can kinda do whatever you want since it's way less likely that you'll be playing strangers nowadays.

Hmm. See, I find the balance aspect a weird objection, because when talking about 7th Ed 40K it seems like a fairly arbitrary place to draw the line. As someone already pointed out, if you really want to make some monstrous Stinking Bishop cheesebuild around particular psyker powers there are already mechanisms in place that allow you to do that entirely within the rules, yet most people will, albeit often reluctantly, still agree to play such armies.

When you factor in all the other issues with the game; ally shenanigans, +20%-free-points Formations, mental Detachments laden with USRs and bonuses, the drastic power differentials between codices etc etc, it just seems bizarre that folk will suddenly become not only obstinate but indignant at the suggestion my Iron Hands Librarian should be allowed to pick two thematically-appropriate powers like Endurance and Objuration Mechanicum, or my 13th Company Rune Priest should be allowed to pick Gateway like they had in the original EoT supplement rules.

Outside of tournaments so laden with unofficial FAQs and rules adjustments they're barely running the same game anymore, looking for balance in 40K is a road to nowhere IMO, so rejecting anything for that reason seems odd.

 Yodhrin wrote:
Hmm. See, I find the balance aspect a weird objection, because when talking about 7th Ed 40K it seems like a fairly arbitrary place to draw the line. As someone already pointed out, if you really want to make some monstrous Stinking Bishop cheesebuild around particular psyker powers there are already mechanisms in place that allow you to do that entirely within the rules, yet most people will, albeit often reluctantly, still agree to play such armies.

When you factor in all the other issues with the game; ally shenanigans, +20%-free-points Formations, mental Detachments laden with USRs and bonuses, the drastic power differentials between codices etc etc, it just seems bizarre that folk will suddenly become not only obstinate but indignant at the suggestion my Iron Hands Librarian should be allowed to pick two thematically-appropriate powers like Endurance and Objuration Mechanicum, or my 13th Company Rune Priest should be allowed to pick Gateway like they had in the original EoT supplement rules.

Outside of tournaments so laden with unofficial FAQs and rules adjustments they're barely running the same game anymore, looking for balance in 40K is a road to nowhere IMO, so rejecting anything for that reason seems odd.

The game is already so unbalance why would we want to make it more unbalanced?

 Xca|iber wrote:
I agree wholeheartedly with letting people pick warlord traits, since there are really only a few decent ones and the rest are just garbage.

There are some game-changing warlord traits. Master of ambush, Ld on a lower number, mass scout from an eldar book, fear on 3d6 form a sm book - brutal against orks, 2+ sieze from a harlequin book, making an opponent roll 6+ for reserves and yourself 2+ from a renegade book, etc.

I think the best system would be to simply cut out the psyker powers that are complete gak so even though you do roll on a random table, no power is absolutely useless and they're all perfectly viable.

Freytag93 wrote:I would infinitely prefer just letting people choose their warlord traits for the reasons mentioned about (fluffy list, doesn't make sense that commanders' abilities change every game, needless extra rolling). I would be a little hesitant doing that for a competitive game because there are a couple powers that are top tier (especially the ruins CS one, with how most boards are set up in 40k). But in general I like the idea.

I may wind up suggesting what Grizzy said for our next FLGS tourney and do it so you can pick your trait but have to keep it for the entire tournament.

It surprisingly works out the majority of the time. I will caveat saying that our local shops have a very mixed set of terrain. So if you pick the stealth ruins, move through cover ruins warlord trait, which is SUPER good on a ruin heavy field. You might play 1 of 3 games with ruins.. the rest might be a desert theme with more LOS blocking or swamps that offer much intervening cover but no explicit ruins.

Definitely try it out, we like this method a lot for our tournaments. Me personally I usually take either move through cover bubble, or reroll 1s bubble. Both benefit the armies I play =)

We roll for them.

I'd like to pick them, but it seems wrong when some are vastly better than others. My Necron HQs would love being able to pick Fearless (and the rulebook one would also save me 15pts on Phylactery), most of my armies would want Stealth (Ruins) and Move Through Cover. In fact, if we picked them, I suspect that trait is the only one you'd ever see (our table has a lot of ruins...).

Also, it would render several detachment bonuses (the ones that let you reroll your warlord trait) useless.

Finally, I don't like the idea of that sort of thing because I'd hate to be reliant on being able to pick my warlord trait, when I'd be unable to do it except in my group.

If you are going to roll pyromancy, yeah, I'd probably let you pick. If you had a nifty theme that you wanted and it seemed cool, sure. Hell, I'd love to take crush from telekinesis cause I love the image of a dude crumpling a battle tank with his mind, even if it is a terrible power, but Chaos says no. Endurance? No. Endurance on Iron Hands, automatically? HAHAHA ahaha! GTFO.

Same deal with warlord traits. Want to run ld bubble trait on marines cause he's a great leader or +1 BS on your ork warboss cause he's da shootiest dere is? No worries. If you're picking master of ambush or conqueror of cities, again, GTFO.

 koooaei wrote:

 Xca|iber wrote:
I agree wholeheartedly with letting people pick warlord traits, since there are really only a few decent ones and the rest are just garbage.

There are some game-changing warlord traits. Master of ambush, Ld on a lower number, mass scout from an eldar book, fear on 3d6 form a sm book - brutal against orks, 2+ sieze from a harlequin book, making an opponent roll 6+ for reserves and yourself 2+ from a renegade book, etc.

Ah sorry, I should have specified I was talking about the ones from the BRB.

The codex-specific ones already have ways of "picking" them by taking special characters, so I wasn't really thinking about that. All in all though, it's kinda a moot point since the game is so poorly balanced that any "solution" that works will be almost entirely dependent on who you're playing and where (and sometimes when). A lot of it comes down to just negotiating extensively with your opponent and deciding what you both want to do... anything else is just asking for a bad time, unfortunately.