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Personally, I feel psychic powers peaked in 8th/9th Edition. They were straightforward to understand. They felt powerful when you executed them, but they had major risks and enemy psykers can make them unreliable. Both Deny the Witch and Perils from the Warp also worked well both crunch-wise and fluff-wise. Now in 10th Edition, Psykers just feel like glorified special shooters that are bad against a small minority of units. I haven't played any edition before 8th, but from what I read, 1st and 2nd Edition psychic powers were way too long and complicated. 3rd-7th Edition were alright but could also be often clunky.

Here's a summary of the different psychic phases by Gemini:

Psychic powers in Warhammer 40,000 have undergone more mechanical re-inventions than almost any other part of the game. They have shifted from a "mini-game within a game" to a dedicated phase, and finally into integrated abilities.
1st Edition

In the first edition, 40k was more of a narrative RPG than a competitive wargame.

[*]The System: Psykers had a "Mastery Level" (1 to 4) and used Psychic Points.
[*]How it Worked: Each power cost a certain number of points to manifest. If you had the points, you could use the power.
[*]Flavor: There were dozens of niche powers (like "Telekinesis" to move objects or "Molecular Agitation" to heat armor). It was complex, slow, and flavor-heavy.

2nd Edition: The Card Game (1993)

[size=16px]This edition is famous (or infamous) for the Warp Deck.

[*]The System: Psychic powers were resolved in a dedicated phase using a deck of cards.
[*]How it Worked: Players drew cards to create a "hand" of Warp energy. You spent cards to cast spells, while the opponent could play "Nullify" cards to cancel them.
[*]Risk: This was the first time "Perils of the Warp" became a major threat—drawing the wrong card could literally suck your psyker into Hell.

3rd, 4th, and 5th Edition: The Leadership Era (1998–2012)

GW simplified the game significantly during this "middle age." The dedicated phase was removed.

[*]The System: Powers were treated like special wargear or weapons.
[*]How it Worked: To use a power, you simply took a Leadership Test (roll 2d6 under your character's Leadership stat).
[*]Deny the Witch: Interaction was low; unless you had a specific item (like a Psychic Hood), you usually couldn't stop an enemy power.

6th and 7th Edition: The Psychic Phase Returns (2012–2017)

The "Psychic Phase" was reintroduced, bringing back high complexity and "Psychic Deathstars."

[*]The System: Players generated a Warp Charge Pool by rolling dice and adding the total Mastery Levels of their psykers.
[*]How it Worked: You threw a handful of dice at a power to try and get "successes" (usually 4+). The more dice you threw, the more likely you were to cast it, but the higher the risk of rolling double 6s (Perils).
[*]The Problem: Armies like Eldar or Thousand Sons could generate so many dice that their opponents literally couldn't play during that phase.

8th and 9th Edition: The Standardized Phase (2017–2023)

GW kept the dedicated phase but removed the shared dice pool to make it faster.

[*]The System: Each psyker could attempt a set number of powers per turn.
[*]How it Worked: You rolled 2d6 against a "Warp Charge" value (e.g., Smite required a 5+).
[*]Deny the Witch: Every enemy psyker within 24" got a chance to roll 2d6 to beat your score and "deny" the power. This made the phase highly interactive but still time-consuming.

10th Edition: The Integrated Approach (2023–Present)

The current edition removed the Psychic Phase entirely.

[*]The System: Psychic powers are now just keywords on a datasheet.
[*]How it Worked:
[*]Attacks: "Smite" is now just a ranged weapon profile with the [Psychic] tag.
[*]Buffs: Abilities like "Shield of Sanguinius" are now passive auras or abilities triggered in the Command Phase.

[*]The Keyword: The [Psychic] tag itself doesn't do much by default, but other units have rules that interact with it (e.g., a unit might have a "4+ Feel No Pain against [Psychic] attacks").

Purely for how dangerous they’re meant to be to all parties?

2nd Edition, hands down. Perhaps a little too powerful if you got lucky with your randomly drawn powers, but my god they hurt!

Also somewhat tempered by having to get enough power cards to be able to cast them.

Overall the system itself, which frankly sums up all of 2nd Edition? It was flawed, but really good fun.

Kinda strange that you correctly describe the difference between 3-5 and 6/7 but lump them together in your poll
Personally I liked 8th/9th. It needed a diversification of the damage spells but other than that I liked how straightforward it was.

Total dislike for the 7th edition Version. Bloat for the Bloat god, random game breaking spells, psykers reduced to batteries for you Main psyker and deny the witch was basically useless in all but fringecases (or if you had any Boni to it? Not sure, I didn't have any)

You have 3-7 all together in the poll, but break it out into 3-5 and 6-7 in the post.

I preferred the 3-5 era. There was some randomness and risk vs. reward, but you could pick powers and plan for them in your army. And while strong, not the broken highly random mess of 6-7.

I’ve never been a fan of “let’s play a mini game” era of powers, both 2nd with cards and the dice pool editions.

 Calbear wrote:
by Gemini

Why would I bother to read a synopsis you couldn't be bothered to write?
That said, I never ran into psychic powers much (main opponent was 'nids and I never ran psykers), but I liked the idea of the 8e Psychic phase, if only because it reminded me of the magic system of WHFB. Main complaint would've been that only certain units could do Deny the Witch - I'd've liked to see that be something where everyone (or nearly everyone) could attempt a DtW as a hail-mary, but you would need actual psykers/anti-psykers to effectively DtW.

10th Edition has the most accurate representation. Psykers that hit the battlefield (or at least, the kinds of battlefields we see in-game) are competent at their jobs. They shouldn't be randomly failing to fire lightning or make a shield. If the lightning isn't strong enough to pierce the chitinous hide or the shield is broken by a Lascannon, that makes sense, but it shouldn't just have a random chance of failing to go off.

The historical Deny The Witch is also pretty disconnected for most powers. Maledictions it makes some sense, but Blessings or Witchfires? Are there any lore snippets where that happens?

It's also got the benefit of simplicity and building it directly into the statline. 8th-9th had powers with some janky rules, and they usually just boiled down to Mortal Wound spam. Meaning a GUO is just as likely to survive an Astropath's Smite as a big squad of Gretchin. And an Astropath's Smite would generally be the same strength as a TS Sorcerer's Smite.

10th Edition has the most accurate representation. Psykers that hit the battlefield (or at least, the kinds of battlefields we see in-game) are competent at their jobs. They shouldn't be randomly failing to fire lightning or make a shield. If the lightning isn't strong enough to pierce the chitinous hide or the shield is broken by a Lascannon, that makes sense, but it shouldn't just have a random chance of failing to go off.

This, but with an asterisk. I don't find psychic tests/failing to cast powers in general to be particularly fluffy. Deny the Witch possibly even less so. And just having powers activate/resolve in the phase that they're relevant is hugely preferable to weird minigames or janky things like having to wait until after the movement phase to use something like Wings of Blood.

So in in a lot of ways, the basics of how and when psychic powers are resolved are better in 10th than in any other edition I've played.

The asterisk is that, even though 10th handles those aspects of psychic powers well, I also have to deduct points for:

* Not being able to customize my dudez by choosing powers. This is mostly a consequence of the designers deciding they didn't want to have to design around wargear prices.

* Powers often being a bit less flavorful than in the past. Eldritch Storm in past editions was a shooting attack, but it also let you roll a scatter die to spin enemy tanks around. Now it's just a suped-up grenade launcher. Mind War and the harlequin equivalent used to let you roll off vs enemy Leadership stats making them really good into stupid brutes while also limiting their effectiveness against your opponent's most valuable characters. Now it's just a mediocre short-ranged sniper rifle. Etc.

* While I'm glad psychic tests are "gone", they kind of still exist for any psychic power that has a chance of failing to go off.

I'm harsh on 5th edition, but it was my first edition and *may* have had the best balance of decent psychic mechanics and fluffy psychic powers/customization of all the editions I've played.

Going forward, I'd like to see a system that doesn't have me randomly fail to use my powers (psychic tests) but also allows me to either customize my available powers or at least allows psykers a variety of effects to choose from.

3rd-5th easy & simple

choose 1 or 2 powers (for marines, eldar and thousand sons had the ability to use more) before the game, simple LD check use them in the phase they correspond to-

support power in the movement phase, shooting power during shooting, close combat power during close combat.

I've honestly never cared for the Psychic phase in any edition.

 Nevelon wrote:
You have 3-7 all together in the poll, but break it out into 3-5 and 6-7 in the post.

I preferred the 3-5 era. There was some randomness and risk vs. reward, but you could pick powers and plan for them in your army. And while strong, not the broken highly random mess of 6-7.

I’ve never been a fan of “let’s play a mini game” era of powers, both 2nd with cards and the dice pool editions.

Sorry about that. I fixed the issue.

OT: An issue with balancing psykers is that only some factions have access to them. Of the 24 40k factions, only 16 have direct access to Psykers. That's ⅔. A few factions like T'au and Adeptus Mechanicus could have Psychic units lore-wise, but GW never made psychic units for them. Necrons used to have C'tan powers, which were effectively psychic powers but far better (but specialized). Sororitas and World Eaters didn't have psykers, but they did have special anti-psychic units that can still deny powers. Still though, it would suck for your opponent to deploy a powerful psychic unit. And you can't do anything about it besides hopefully kill it before it wins the game.

Another issue with representing 40k psykers is that some of them like Weirdboyz or Astropaths, are seen as walking timebombs who are a major liability to their team. While others like Farseers and Chief Librarians are seen as masters of the warp who never falter in key moments. So game designers have to keep all this in mind when designing how psychic powers work.

Personally, I feel psykers should mainly be utility units. Blessing some units while debuffing others. Maybe big-name psykers can deal AOE damage. But an issue with 10th Edition is that psychic attacks are mechanically almost identical to regular attacks. Why take a Primaris Psyker when you can just take a Heavy Weapons Squad instead and do more or less the same thing? The Weapons Squad also won't deal reduced damage to anti-psychic enemies. Future psykers should be more like 9th Edition chaplains.