Murrdox wrote:insaniak, can't you just concede that there was some careless writing when defining what a "Psychic Unit" is?
Yes, of course I can. That's been my point from the start.
The rules for singular Pskyers are written from the perspective of the model itself, in a vacuum, not joined to any units.
Correct. Hence the problem.
Honestly your incredibly narrow definition of what a "unit" is was likely not in the writers' heads at the time.
What 'narrow definition'?
A unit is a unit. There's no tricky wordplay going on here. 'Unit' as a descriptor has been in use for the entire lifespan of the
40K game. If whoever write the psychic rules was unaware of what the word means, there's something seriously
wrong in the design studio.
insaniak, your "interpretation" of the RAW here basically breaks the Psychic phase, ...
'My' interpretation doesn't break the psychic phase. The psychic phase rules are broken.
We are told that powers are cast by psyker units, but we are not given any way to determine what happens when a unit contains non-psyker models, or any way to separate non-brotherhood psykers within a unit.
It should be fairly obvious that Games Workshop did not intend for Librarians joined to Tactical squads to suddenly be incapable of casting a Psychic Power because they no longer could as a "Psychic Unit".
And that should have been obvious enough for someone in the design studio, when they were working on these rules, to stick their hand up and say 'Uh, hey, guys? What about when a psyker joins another unit...?'
The likely intention, as I have pointed out several times, is that when they wrote '...unit with the psyker, psychic pilot or Brotherhood of etc rule.' they actually
meant '...
model with the psyker or psychic pilot rule, or unit with the Brotherhood rule.'
But this is not apparent from the actual rules. We're left to figure out for ourselves if we're supposed to ignore the multiple references to units, or if
GW actually
did intend for psykers to be neutered when joined to units (which isn't entirely implausible, as I mentioned earlier). Or if they are supposed to be able to share their Perils with non-psykers they have joined, which is the other interpretation of this mess.
So if someone reads this thread, ignores the people pointing out that the rules as written are borked but that the way people are undoubtedly playing it already based on how last edition worked is probably what was intended, and proceeds to try to convince their playgroups that the psychic phase rules are broken, then that's a
good thing, because the psychic phase rules
are broken, and people should be aware of that. Because
GW should be accountable for the standard of their work.
The point of YMDC as I understand it is to HELP people UNDERSTAND the rules of the game, and to resolve rule disputes to PLAY the game.
Yes and no. As outlined in the Tenets thread,
YMDC has room for both 'How You Would Play It' and 'What Do The Rules Say' style discussion. The question asked at the top of this thread was about what the rules actually say.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Hollismason wrote:It's not vague. They insist that a unit with a model that has the psychic ability is not a unit with a psychic special rule.
Who's 'they'?
Because I've insisted no such thing. My argument all along has been '
...if you go by the interpretation that all models in the unit need the psyker rule for the unit to be considered a psyker unit.' ... because that's one of the common interpretations.
I personally think one model in the unit is sufficient... but that breaks the psychic phase worse than the 'all models' interpretation does, because it leaves you with the entire unit being able to cast psychic powers even though most of them aren't psykers and having to figure out how to distribute Perils results.
So either one model with the psyker rule is enough to call the unit a psyker unit, in which case the psychic rules are just completely whacked, or all models in the unit need the psyker rule for it to be a psyker unit, in which case psyker characters joined to non-psyker units can't cast powers.
The third 'interpretation' (that we should consider the psyker to be a separate 'psyker unit' distinct from the unit he has joined) is
IMO probably what was intended, but has no basis in actual rules.
My statement is that any rational person or reasonable person who approaches the rules will not find the rules to be vague if they approach them with the knowledge that they are not meant to be interpreted to a malicious ends and the writer is not writing the rules maliciously.
And the counter argument is that this is nonsensical. A vague rule is a vague rule. It is no less vague just because you choose to ignore it and play the game in a way that makes sense to you.