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Hypothetical:

Psykers can pick any power according to their ML, but they have a budget, and each power costs points on that budget.
Same for Warlord Traits (Have multiple?)

I know this can be abused depending on how much each power costs, but maybe introduce taxes on top to limit spammability and force extra psykers as tax? I.E Tigurius picks invisibilty and iron arm, but a point tax on this combo prevents it, forcing a change of loadout.

.This isn't fully formed and only hypothetical, but I think this has potential/

You imply that the "psychic budget" will be separate from the normal points budget, why not simply make the powers cost points.
Eg: 10pts for Smite, 50 for Invisibility etc.

However there would have to be limits, perhaps only one power can be bought, the rest have to be randomised as usual.

I like the idea in theory. A couple thoughts:

* Putting a points tax on certain combos is going to generate a lot of extra work for you and a lot of extra complication for the player. There are tons of possible combos that will vary in power level depending on the powers involved, the psyker involved, and so on. Rather than coming up with ways to penalize problematic powers, why not make sure those powers are reasonably written to begin with? So instead of coming up with different penalties for taking Invis with Shrouded or with Sanctuary or what have you, why not just rewrite invisibility to something less problematic?

* Why create a separate budget for warlord traits and psychic powers rather than just having them be purchasable with points? This would also give you an easy way to partially balance out problematic powers. Worried someone will make a bit of a death star with Endurance? Price it at 50 points (or whatever), and suddenly it becomes less of a problem. Some powers, like invis, are just to good to handle with points (either it's too expensive to ever use or else it's priced low enough that people are willing to make problematic death stars with it).

*The usefulness of various warlord traits differs a lot depending on the warlord in question. A Sisters of Battle army with Conqueror of Cities appreciates the warlord trait. A dark eldar army with that same warlord trait, however, gets a significantly larger boost as they're more likely to be using cover saves in the first place and can no hop between terrain without their vehicles being forced to make dangerous terrain tests. So with that in mind, I might suggest getting rid of the generic warlord trait tables from the main book and possibly redesigning some of the codex specific trait tables to include a few of the removed main book traits. The idea here is that you can customize what traits are available on a codex-by-codex basis, thus preventing particularly abusive combos.

Ultimately the logistics of these proposals is the downfall to it.

WL traits are not as useful depending on which game your playing and which WL you have.

For instance, I would not pay a single point for any WL trait in the actual Tyranid Dex.

The same goes for powers depending on the army and the armys composition. The points cost will never be balanced if your only ever costing it for the worst offenders.

I really wish the phycic phase changed, this is how my and my store i game at messed around with it once, worked out pretty well

Pick the number of powers as normal in 7th ed.

To cast you need to make a leadership test, with the warp charges acting as a negative modifier. IE warp charge 3 is a -3 to roll, ect ect. Primas has no modifier.

Then, to deny the witch, you need to "fail" that same leadership check.

For example, im LD 10, i cast a warp charge 3 spell, i need to make a leadership check of 7 or less. i pass.

To deny you need to roll a 8 or better, a higher level mastery adds to it 1 per level.

You can cast the number of spells as your master, still perils on double 6.

This system makes it easier to cast easy spells, and harder to counter them, while at the same time making the hard spells harder to cast, but easier to deny, or break their concentration. Its worked out pretty good,

The problem with buying powers is that many of them aren't worth having. The weak ones are there to balance out the strong ones. You need more and/or better psykers to try for the better powers unless you want to rely purely on a limited dice role. Buying powers bypasses all of the need to load up on psykers to guarantee the power you need for your particular strategy. Can you imagine how bad deathstars will be if you could get the exact powers you need with only a single psyker? And it'd always be cheaper than fielding multiple psykers to give you greater odds of rolling those powers.

The whole psychic phase is too strong already. It overshadows the entire game when either player focuses on it. It's also the source of most of (if not all) deathstar lists. It's about time it got toned down, buying the exact powers you want (and avoiding the trash ones) doesn't do anything to help this.

The psychic should be balanced so that it's only a small part of your army strategy (alongside HQ selection, troop composition, flier/superheavy/knight list weighting etc). If you focus too much on psychic shenanigans it should be handicapping you in other areas of the game like not having enough points to field enough troops to be competitive and going along with nerfing deathstars into the ground.

Demantiae wrote:
The problem with buying powers is that many of them aren't worth having. The weak ones are there to balance out the strong ones. You need more and/or better psykers to try for the better powers unless you want to rely purely on a limited dice role. Buying powers bypasses all of the need to load up on psykers to guarantee the power you need for your particular strategy. Can you imagine how bad deathstars will be if you could get the exact powers you need with only a single psyker? And it'd always be cheaper than fielding multiple psykers to give you greater odds of rolling those powers.

The whole psychic phase is too strong already. It overshadows the entire game when either player focuses on it. It's also the source of most of (if not all) deathstar lists. It's about time it got toned down, buying the exact powers you want (and avoiding the trash ones) doesn't do anything to help this.

The psychic should be balanced so that it's only a small part of your army strategy (alongside HQ selection, troop composition, flier/superheavy/knight list weighting etc). If you focus too much on psychic shenanigans it should be handicapping you in other areas of the game like not having enough points to field enough troops to be competitive and going along with nerfing deathstars into the ground.

Then the psychic powers should be rewritten so they are balanced.

 JNAProductions wrote:

Demantiae wrote:
The problem with buying powers is that many of them aren't worth having. The weak ones are there to balance out the strong ones. You need more and/or better psykers to try for the better powers unless you want to rely purely on a limited dice role. Buying powers bypasses all of the need to load up on psykers to guarantee the power you need for your particular strategy. Can you imagine how bad deathstars will be if you could get the exact powers you need with only a single psyker? And it'd always be cheaper than fielding multiple psykers to give you greater odds of rolling those powers.

The whole psychic phase is too strong already. It overshadows the entire game when either player focuses on it. It's also the source of most of (if not all) deathstar lists. It's about time it got toned down, buying the exact powers you want (and avoiding the trash ones) doesn't do anything to help this.

The psychic should be balanced so that it's only a small part of your army strategy (alongside HQ selection, troop composition, flier/superheavy/knight list weighting etc). If you focus too much on psychic shenanigans it should be handicapping you in other areas of the game like not having enough points to field enough troops to be competitive and going along with nerfing deathstars into the ground.

Then the psychic powers should be rewritten so they are balanced.

Fair point. If we're rewriting a bunch of powers, however, and also making powers purchasable, I kind of feel like we may as well rewrite the psychic system entirely while we're at it. In which case, the conversation in general changes dramatically.