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Ok so as you probably all know, if you choose either the malefic or sanctic daemonology trees for your psychic powers, and you arent a daemon (or grey knights for sanctic), then for any doubles you roll... you get perils. Harsh.

Basically means if youre not a demon army, you wouldnt choose daemonology. Which is fine, from a fluff perspective anyway, and i have no problem with that.

However... if gw dont want other people using the trees, why not just say "only chaos demon armies can select powers from daemonology malefic" or something.

Would it actually be overpowered for other armies to use the malefic (or sanctic) powers? Id think the only army who could abuse it as much as demons can is eldar... and even then i dont see why it would be unbalanced. Not very fluffy maybe, depending on how you "forge the narrative".

So im just wondering what you guys think. Is it just a fluff thing, or would having access to it without the extra perils actually be unbalanced?

it's basicly because these powers are useable just considerably more dangerous except for deamons with their intrinsic connection to the warp, or grey knights exceptional purity.

Eldar can use demonology safely. See: Ghosthelms.

Niiru wrote:

However... if gw dont want other people using the trees, why not just say "only chaos demon armies can select powers from daemonology malefic" or something.

Because they do want people to use daemonology, and because they think that everyone plays the game as a narrative, they don't see the risk of perils as something that would discourage people from making use of it.

Because mechanically, theyre very powerful (summoning free units is a big deal), and so there needs to be some risk/reward thats more than normal powers.
GW wants people to use these powers (thats why theyre available to pretty much every psyker in the game), but there's a risk involved.

But if thats the case, why isnt it overpowered for demons? As they get all the rewards but no risk. And eldar with ghosthelm, apparently.

Niiru wrote:
But if thats the case, why isnt it overpowered for demons? As they get all the rewards but no risk. And eldar with ghosthelm, apparently.

It is overpowered for daemons. Thats why they're one of the best armies in the game.

 CrownAxe wrote:

Niiru wrote:
But if thats the case, why isnt it overpowered for demons? As they get all the rewards but no risk. And eldar with ghosthelm, apparently.

It is overpowered for daemons. Thats why they're one of the best armies in the game.

oh lol. I actually thought that demons were often fairly low-tier. Or at least, used to be

No, they are up there with the Eldar and Tau.
Then come the Space Marines and Necrons.

It can be quite dangerous to cast these spells, but they are also really powerful.
And any army has access to it, so I don't really see the issue.

Kangodo wrote:
No, they are up there with the Eldar and Tau.
Then come the Space Marines and Necrons.

It can be quite dangerous to cast these spells, but they are also really powerful.
And any army has access to it, so I don't really see the issue.

Any army can use the tree, but for most armies theres no point as you roll perils so often its more likely your psyker will die instead of actually summoning anything.

I just wondered if this was purely for fluff reasons, or if it was a matter of balance. Turns out its a bit of both, I guess.

The chances for Perils of the Warp are okay.
16% on 2D6
44% on 3D6
72% on 4D6

And when you get Perils, you have around 30% chance to survive it (assuming Ld 10 and assuming I did it correctly.
So that brings the chance of losing a wound on:
11.2% if you roll 2D6
30.8% if you roll 3D6
50.4% if you roll 4D6

Conclusion:
Don't try to roll Vortex of Doom if you spend quite some points on your Psyker.
Don't summon stuff if you're not a Daemon and do not try to transform your Psyker into a Daemon,
So keep it to WC1 spells for which you only roll 2D6 and you should be quite safe.

Unfortunately you need to roll 6-7 dice for a decent chance of casting the 3WC summon powers so you're almost guaranteed to perils on it (you actually are if you rolled 7+ dice)

Eldar can use ghost helms to not suffer the wound loss from perils but still suffer the special effects of perils.

Kangodo wrote:
The chances for Perils of the Warp are okay.
16% on 2D6
44% on 3D6
72% on 4D6

And when you get Perils, you have around 30% chance to survive it (assuming Ld 10 and assuming I did it correctly.
So that brings the chance of losing a wound on:
11.2% if you roll 2D6
30.8% if you roll 3D6
50.4% if you roll 4D6

Conclusion:
Don't try to roll Vortex of Doom if you spend quite some points on your Psyker.
Don't summon stuff if you're not a Daemon and do not try to transform your Psyker into a Daemon,
So keep it to WC1 spells for which you only roll 2D6 and you should be quite safe.

Yeh this is correct, but only for non-daemonology lol. I think all the summon powers are 3 charges, so to be guaranteed a cast you need to roll 7 dice. So with non-daemons you'll always get a perils. And not everyone has Ld10.

Question: Does rolling a perils on swapping out a Psyker for a Lord of Change actually matter? You're removed from the table anyway.

 McGibs wrote:
Because mechanically, theyre very powerful (summoning free units is a big deal), and so there needs to be some risk/reward thats more than normal powers.
GW wants people to use these powers (thats why theyre available to pretty much every psyker in the game), but there's a risk involved.

The problem with that approach is that applying a random risk to an overpowered rule doesn't balance it. It just makes it overpowered when it works, and rubbish on random iterations.

This is the problem with GW's choice to return to random psychic powers without keeping all of the powers at an equivalent power level, instead of having them chosen for an appropriate points cost.

changemod wrote:
Question: Does rolling a perils on swapping out a Psyker for a Lord of Change actually matter? You're removed from the table anyway.

it's arguable that you need the psyker to be alive so you can fufill the whole effect (though this is ideology coming from other games like card games)

 CrownAxe wrote:

changemod wrote:
Question: Does rolling a perils on swapping out a Psyker for a Lord of Change actually matter? You're removed from the table anyway.

it's arguable that you need the psyker to be alive so you can fufill the whole effect (though this is ideology coming from other games like card games)

Well the BRB says that, even if you take perils and the model gets wounded or died, as long as you did the successful warp charge rolls and the power wasnt denied with "deny the witch", then the spell is still successful.

If it's successful, then the lord of change appears. Just means the psyker got removed in a much more painful way.

This is how the rules seem to read anyway.