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I wasn't sure if this should go in the Background or Proposed rules forum, so we'll see if it needs to be moved.

So a brief history with Eldar fluff:
Many Eldar feel the touch of Khaine and spend a few decades or centuries walking the Path of the Warrior as a Aspect warrior.
Some Eldar feel the pull to be Psykers and tred the Path of the Seer.
Not all Seers were Warlocks before becoming Farseers, but EVERY Warlock was once an Aspect Warrior. It is the touch of Khaine that makes them become a Warlock.

Let's step out of the Fluff now and look as some stats: EVERY Aspect Warrior is LD 9, yet for some reason Warlocks are only LD 8. WHY???
Is there something about walking the Path of the Seer that shakes their confidence? Are they like "I've seen things man! Terrifying things!"

Why are 30 man strong ork mobs LD 7 ?

 oldzoggy wrote:
Why are 30 man strong ork mobs LD 7 ?

Because once the fire caste lights up the skies with burning plasma, any "clever ork" (if there ever was such a thing) would turn tail before the might of the greater good.

It may be do to them being unsure of fighting without their old weapons or the extra stress for using psykers powers

edit nvm, not thinking straight

Every Guardian is Ld8 also, most of them were Aspect Warriors.

They're a different person when they put on the Aspect. That stuff doesn't remain when they take it off. When it does, they are Exarchs. Those guys are Ld 9.

Why are necrons not fearless / stubborn? Because the rules say so.

When someone complains, or questions something in a book that is the strongest currently..

It makes me sad.

I'm out of here, bye.

If you read the Path of the Eldar novel trilogy, or more specifically the Path of the Seer book, you'll actually get an idea for why this is. I'll try and explain from what I was able to gather from it.

Basically whenever Eldar go down the path of being an Aspect Warrior, they're in full control of summoning up their War Mask. A War Mask is almost like a split personality in their mind that remembers everything that happened in battle while also completely blocking these memories from them whenever they're on a craftworld, or not feeling the call of Khaine. It's a way for them to separate part of their memory from their active mind as the nature of how Eldar feel emotions would make it incredibly difficult for them to deal with everyday life remembering seeing some of their friends decimated around them and reflecting upon it on a daily basis. When they leave the Path of the Warrior and go to the Path of the Seer, the Seers actually train their minds to work in a different way.

While exploring the Path of the Seer they look to be able to look into and reflect upon their War Mask while also maintaining a normal level of consciousness in order to be able to learn the prescience require to interact with the Skein. The Skein is basically a giant connect the dots timeline of history that involves basically every possible outcome there can be from any given action. In order to remain as alert as possible those on the Path of the Seer don't hide themselves behind a War Mask when heading off to conflict but try to act alongside it, trying to master it becoming a part of who they are at any given moment, especially in battle so they can learn to master their emotions and everything else, so that while using prescience they won't lose themselves to Khaine's touch just from seeing the possible death of a friend. But there's also a downside to this.

Until they reach the state of being a Farseer or even a sufficiently trained Seer, they find themselves in conflict with their emotions during battle when they normally wouldn't have to deal with those at all. A War Mask completely blocks all emotion and keeps emotions from ever being associated with memories in the heat of battle in order to keep an Eldar from becoming too emotionally overwhelmed and bringing She Who Thirst's gaze upon wherever a conflict is taking place. Without the War Mask completely blocking off their emotions and active consciousness, they find themselves having to master themselves and their emotions while in environments that are extremely strenuous to any Eldar's emotional capabilities. If they fail at it, like the Farseer's journey they follow in the book, then it can be potentially deadly for them. For example, during the character's journey we're told about how while having her War Mask on she killed children before while on the Path of the Warrior. Thanks to the existence of her War Mask, she was able to block this from her memory (for the most part...). During a battle where she takes place as a warlock, she once again finds herself in the face of a child during a conflict to retrieve a chaos artefact that has tainted all of the humans it has come in contact with. She can't kill the child as she has direct access to the memories of her War Mask and starts to become overwhelmed with emotions allowing even more daemons to rush to the area as they're drawn to the powerful emotional capabilities of the Eldar. They win the day, and the resolution of the conflict actually allows the character to destroy the fear of the memory hidden behind her War Mask by following events through to their end.

So, TL;DR, Warlocks deal with having access to their emotions on the battlefield, while those on the Path of the Warrior don't. Reflect upon how Eldar emotion awoke Slaanesh in the first place, and you can see why the Ld value for the warlock may be a little smaller than aspect warriors.

 Galef wrote:
I wasn't sure if this should go in the Background or Proposed rules forum, so we'll see if it needs to be moved.

So a brief history with Eldar fluff:
Many Eldar feel the touch of Khaine and spend a few decades or centuries walking the Path of the Warrior as a Aspect warrior.
Some Eldar feel the pull to be Psykers and tred the Path of the Seer.
Not all Seers were Warlocks before becoming Farseers, but EVERY Warlock was once an Aspect Warrior. It is the touch of Khaine that makes them become a Warlock.

Let's step out of the Fluff now and look as some stats: EVERY Aspect Warrior is LD 9, yet for some reason Warlocks are only LD 8. WHY???
Is there something about walking the Path of the Seer that shakes their confidence? Are they like "I've seen things man! Terrifying things!"

Because once you abandon a path any benefits you received from walking that path are either completely eliminated or greatly reduced.

Furthermore, the meaning of Leadership for psykers is slightly different to other units, as other units can't be attacked by perils, therefore a warlock's vulnerabilities to perils could be what drags it's Ld value down?

I know them from 3rd ed and they were always LD 8.
They are casters but minor casters. Therefore, LD 8 seems to be justified.