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I've been thinking up ways to bring the runaway Psychic phase into line. The primay culprits seem to be Daemonology, the unreasonable vulnerability of Psykerless armies and the ability of psiker spamming armies to completely drown non spammed psykers in DtW dice and disabling them completely.

I'd prefer to avoid banning Daemonology altogether and artificial caps seem too arbitrary, but one easy way to limit it to saner levels would be to restrict access to it- if Pink Horrors and Heralds are denied access to Daemonology summoning spells would be limited to HQ choices that aren't nearly as spammable and the risk of Perils of the Warp would be moved from expendable models to far more important ones.

This is of course contingent on having some sort of limitation on FOC spamming and unbound armies.

There should also be some kind of limitation on the number of warp charges a model can channel per turn, ML*2 sounds reasonable.

Deny dice spam could be mitigated by limiting the number of DtW dice to the number of warp charges the opponent generated (or maybe to 2-3 times that number if you feel that is too harsh on psiker heavy armies).

As for psykerless armies, one way of doing it would be giving them DtW dice in some manner fitting to their faction-
Warp Warding Devices: Controlling player receives +1 DtW die per Necron Lord, Overlord, Destroyer Lord, Cryptek and Gloom Prism in the army.
Faint Warp Presence: Any Tau unit containing living Tau (piloted vehicles included, but not drones or non-Tau living models such as Kroots) automatically receives an extra DtW die for any DtW attempt against psychic powers cast on it (if no dice from the army's DtW dice pool has been assigned to the attempt then it counts as a DtW attempt with 0 dice and thus be rolled with a single die). This ability also works during the Psychic phase of the Tau player's own turn.
Poweful Faith: Controlling player receives +1DtW die per non-vehicle unit in the Sisters of Battle codex.

Thoughts?

I think some new psychic defence wargear may also be in order.

But overall this seems to be rather reasonable to stop the absurdity of Tzeentch armies doubling in size every turn if you slip up in chewing through an ocean of pink.

I'd be careful with limiting deny dice due to how inefficient they are. They're overpowering for maximum psyker dice spam armies because they can totally afford to throw six dice at every one of yours. Other armies can if lucky, deny a single WC1 power if they throw everything at it.

 Kain wrote:
I think some new psychic defence wargear may also be in order.

But overall this seems to be rather reasonable to stop the absurdity of Tzeentch armies doubling in size every turn if you slip up in chewing through an ocean of pink.

I'd be careful with limiting deny dice due to how inefficient they are. They're overpowering for maximum psyker dice spam armies because they can totally afford to throw six dice at every one of yours. Other armies can if lucky, deny a single WC1 power if they throw everything at it.

Indeed.

The limit on DtW dice would scale with the number of warp charges available to the casting player meaning the limitation I suggested will not restrict the number of dice available to psyker light armies but would limit the ability of psyker heavy armies to completely drown the opposition in DtW dice thus making a sane number of Psykers useless against them.

How about we scrap the Psychic phase and just move back to 5th Ed version of Psychic rules? Much more sensible, fluffy and simple to use, with less random.

So you mean scrap the BRB powers, deny the witch, and mastery level system?

 Deadshot wrote:
How about we scrap the Psychic phase and just move back to 5th Ed version of Psychic rules? Much more sensible, fluffy and simple to use, with less random.

The goal here is to fix the 7th edition psychic system without unduely punishing psyker heavy armies, not abandon it altogether.

Honestly, all this agonizing over the Psychic Phase is just pathetic. Is it because it's new? Is it because there has to be something to complain about? Probably the latter.

Think about it, if I bring no combat units, and my opponent brings loads, then I'm not going to have much of a good contribution in the combat phase am I? Should we therefore limit the number of combat units a certain army can take? Of course not. I've just got to make up for my bad combat phase elsewhere. Fantasy has had a Magic phase for as long as I've been playing and, in the current edition, Magic is extremely powerful. If you don't take Wizards, you're in for a tough time but, at the very least, you can try and make up for the lack of magic elsewhere. I.e. those 250 points you've not spent on a Wizard could be used for more shooting or whatever.

Yes, some armies can't take Psykers, but Tau can't take combat units. They make up for it elsewhere. If you can't take Psykers, deal with it, make up for it elsewhere.

The only reason the Psychic phase appears broken is because of summoning. Because of one tiny facet of the phase, people are, in their ignorance, just screaming "cheese" at it. That's like saying the shooting phase is broken because Riptides are good at shooting, or whatever. Allow no more than one successful summon per turn, and have done with it, and stop complaining.

It's also important to do it in a way that would be well received by other players, hence the emphasis on fluffy DtW bonuses to psykerless armies.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 The Shadow wrote:
Honestly, all this agonizing over the Psychic Phase is just pathetic. Is it because it's new? Is it because there has to be something to complain about? Probably the latter.

Think about it, if I bring no combat units, and my opponent brings loads, then I'm not going to have much of a good contribution in the combat phase am I? Should we therefore limit the number of combat units a certain army can take? Of course not. I've just got to make up for my bad combat phase elsewhere. Fantasy has had a Magic phase for as long as I've been playing and, in the current edition, Magic is extremely powerful. If you don't take Wizards, you're in for a tough time but, at the very least, you can try and make up for the lack of magic elsewhere. I.e. those 250 points you've not spent on a Wizard could be used for more shooting or whatever.

Yes, some armies can't take Psykers, but Tau can't take combat units. They make up for it elsewhere. If you can't take Psykers, deal with it, make up for it elsewhere.

The only reason the Psychic phase appears broken is because of summoning. Because of one tiny facet of the phase, people are, in their ignorance, just screaming "cheese" at it. That's like saying the shooting phase is broken because Riptides are good at shooting, or whatever. Allow no more than one successful summon per turn, and have done with it, and stop complaining.

Even Tau aren't helpless in the assault phase, but psykerless armies for all intents and purposes are helpless in the psychic phase.

Moreover, Psyker light armies (say a marine force with a librarian or two) are in some ways even worse off when facing psyker heavy armies as all the points they sunk into their psykers are worthless due to DtW spam by their opponent.

In case you didn't actually bother reading the original post (which is a distinct possibility given you own), what I suggest will have very little affect on most armies, it would just prevent summoning/DtW spam abuses and give psykerless armies a measure of protection.

 Kain wrote:
So you mean scrap the BRB powers, deny the witch, and mastery level system?

Yes. Go back to personalised codex powers. Those with updated 6th Ed codexes can simply pick their powers from the permitted table.

Codex Space Marines can have their 5th Ed powers back, seeing as the BRB stole a number of them (Smite, Vortex of Doom and Gate of Infinity).

Mastery Levels can stay, as we had them already, just not in name.

Deny the Witch should go imo. Average joe doesn't get to block Vortexes of Doom or roiling flames of the warp with his willpower.

 Deadshot wrote:

 Kain wrote:
So you mean scrap the BRB powers, deny the witch, and mastery level system?

Yes. Go back to personalised codex powers. Those with updated 6th Ed codexes can simply pick their powers from the permitted table.

Codex Space Marines can have their 5th Ed powers back, seeing as the BRB stole a number of them (Smite, Vortex of Doom and Gate of Infinity).

Mastery Levels can stay, as we had them already, just not in name.

Deny the Witch should go imo. Average joe doesn't get to block Vortexes of Doom or roiling flames of the warp with his willpower.

The problem with 5e personalized powers is that they were both rather underwhelming for most armies, and heavily favoured certain armies who had vastly better powers than others.

The Eldar and Space Wolves had powers that took a giant dump all over the Tyranid and Guard powers.

Iron Arm and Prescience at least gave the two something that could compare to Jaws of the World Wolf and Fortune.

In addittion, personalized powers still exist, it's just that Imperial armies don't have them.

Rather I'd have both co-existing because certain psychic techniques are likely to be universal.

I would however, get rid of any but the unfluffiest of restrictions on BRB powers (so mostly just centred around the Sanctic/Malefic dichtonomy).

And your belief making it real is a big part of 40k. It's not just an Ork thing, but everyone can do it to some extent.

It's also tied into the psychic defence mechanisms of many armies.