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Ummm..... I think I just fixed the rules debate about psychic shriek .

I would agree that you have to roll to hit with psychic shriek, however, I don't think it matters.

In the wording for psychic shriek it says the "target unit" suffers the effects of the power, not the unit that has been hit by the power.

ergo, if I get the power off, I can roll either 1 or 100 dice, and not matter what numbers come up, it will hit because of the wording, therefor rolling is useless, the same way that rolling to see if a S10 weapon penetrates armour 10.

am I right, or wrong?

Either. Both. Probably.

To bad it says under the witchfire rule it's says witchfires need to roll to hit. So if you don't hit the power has no effect.

This is brought up in every debate concerning Psychic Shriek, so this thread will proceed down the usual path.

Dman137 wrote:
To bad it says under the witchfire rule it's says witchfires need to roll to hit. So if you don't hit the power has no effect.

I'm largely playing devil's advocate, but...

Whoah, whoah, whoah. Witchfire powers absolutely say they must roll To Hit, but where does it say the power has no effect, specific to the case of Psychic Shriek, if the To Hit roll is unsuccessful?

Dman137 wrote:
To bad it says under the witchfire rule it's says witchfires need to roll to hit. So if you don't hit the power has no effect.

I'm going to need a rules quote for the second ssentence I see that rule no where.

How Psychic Shriek works RaW (and most likely RaI) is just like a focussed witchfire. You roll zero dice to hit (as that many dice is all you have permission to roll) thus in effect auto missing. Then you resolve the effect which cares not for hits just, as you have pointed out, that the unit is a target.

 Mr. Shine wrote:

Dman137 wrote:
To bad it says under the witchfire rule it's says witchfires need to roll to hit. So if you don't hit the power has no effect.

I'm largely playing devil's advocate, but...

Whoah, whoah, whoah. Witchfire powers absolutely say they must roll To Hit, but where does it say the power has no effect, specific to the case of Psychic Shriek, if the To Hit roll is unsuccessful?

When you roll to hit if you hit whatever your firing hits, if you miss then no effect, just like everything else. It is treated as a shooting attack and that's how shooting works


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If people can't read rules and try to hard to over think simple things, they can always go and play age of sigmar since they like being childish

Dman137 wrote:

 Mr. Shine wrote:

Dman137 wrote:
To bad it says under the witchfire rule it's says witchfires need to roll to hit. So if you don't hit the power has no effect.

I'm largely playing devil's advocate, but...

Whoah, whoah, whoah. Witchfire powers absolutely say they must roll To Hit, but where does it say the power has no effect, specific to the case of Psychic Shriek, if the To Hit roll is unsuccessful?

When you roll to hit if you hit whatever your firing hits, if you miss then no effect, just like everything else. It is treated as a shooting attack and that's how shooting works

That's not how the rules work. You only roll to wound if you hit as the to wound roll tells you it is required. Some other effects are triggered off hits (either by saying they are or replacing the to wound step which itself is dependent on hits). However effects that just require you to select a target are triggered regardless of a successful to hit roll. The 3d6-ld wounds effect is just such an effect.


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If people can't read rules and try to hard to over think simple things, they can always go and play age of sigmar since they like being childish

No need to be insulting. Particularly as you clearly haven't read the relevant rules and have instead taken a line out of context and tried to apply it to a situation it does not apply to.

It literally says in the rules for witchfires that you must roll to hit.

Dman137 wrote:
When you roll to hit if you hit whatever your firing hits, if you miss then no effect, just like everything else. It is treated as a shooting attack and that's how shooting works

"To determine if the firing model has hit its target, roll a D6 for each shot that is in range."

Pray tell, how many shots does a Psychic Shriek have, so that we can determine how many dice to roll?

Then please tell me how we follow the shooting rules that follow a roll To Hit to determine whether or not the power cannot or can be successfully resolved.


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Dman137 wrote:
It literally says in the rules for witchfires that you must roll to hit.

It does, but we have no way to know how many To Hit rolls are made. And what effect does a failed To Hit roll have on a power that simply affects the target unit without needing to roll To Wound etc.?

[MOD EDIT - RULE #1 - ALPHARIUS]

I am not debating that you have to roll to hit, however, that roll doesn't matter because it just says target unit, not a unit that has been hit.

I did not know this has been brought up before, I though I was special.

Can't we just link the many, many threads about this and be done with it? There's no new information. There isn't some magic hidden loophole that everyone amazingly missed. The horse is undeniably dead so let's stop beating the poor thing.

Dman137 wrote:
[MOD EDIT - RULE #1 - ALPHARIUS]

You're plainly losing your cool and firing off abuse at people over an internet forum discussing the rules of a game of toy soldiers.

if you don't hit you don't get to do the 3d6 test. And since it doesn't have a weapons profile, you roll 1 dice

Dman137 wrote:
if you don't hit you don't get to do the 3d6 test. And since it doesn't have a weapons profile, you roll 1 dice

And do you have rules to back that up, or is that just your opinion on how you would play it?

Well it's unbelievable that people still need to ask questions that have already been discuses to a very long end, and if you want to play it the way we're you don't hit and play with your friends like that then sure, do it whatever way you want, but the vast majority of people that play at events play were you need to hit before any effect takes place.


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show me a rule that says you don't need to hit, and that the effect still happens


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This is a dead horse, and you will get knowhere just like all the other threads before this one, so it's a pointless statement you made when coming up with this thread.

Dman137 wrote:
Well it's unbelievable that people still need to ask questions that have already been discuses to a very long end, and if you want to play it the way we're you don't hit and play with your friends like that then sure, do it whatever way you want, but the vast majority of people that play at events play were you need to hit before any effect takes place.

So in fact what you're claiming is not at all what the rules say, but just how you think the rule should be played, and how you claim it is played by most people, right?

show me a rule that says you don't need to hit, and that the effect still happens

1. "Similarly, a witchfire power must roll To Hit, unless..."

2. "To determine if the firing model has hit its target, roll a D6 for each shot that is in range."

3. "Roll 3D6 and subtract the target's Leadership - the target unit suffers a number of Wounds equal to the result. Armour and cover saves cannot be taken against Wounds caused by Psychic Shriek."

Notice how between steps two and three we get stuck, because Psychic Shriek has no number of shots, and how we're simply told to resolve the power without it saying a successful To Hit roll must be made? Sure it's your opinion that a single To Hit roll be made. It's your opinion that if the To Hit roll is unsuccessful the power cannot be resolved.

But the rules are inconclusive. So don't get pissy and lash out at people for pointing out a hole in the rules. If you have to comment at all, simply share what you think as your opinion and leave it at that. There's no need to be rude, especially on the internet, and more paticularly not when you're slinging mud over the rules of a game of plastic toy soldiers.


For the record though I agree it should require a successful roll to hit, and think it's a shame the rules don't actually state that clearly

Dman137 wrote:
Well it's unbelievable that people still need to ask questions that have already been discuses to a very long end, and if you want to play it the way we're you don't hit and play with your friends like that then sure, do it whatever way you want, but the vast majority of people that play at events play were you need to hit before any effect takes place.


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show me a rule that says you don't need to hit, and that the effect still happens

That's not how rules work. Firstly you've entirely made up the no profile means 1 assertation. If you believe that lets say I Psychic Shriek an Imperial Knight. No profile so roll 1 dice to hit. If I hit roll 3d6-ld no profile so Ld is 1. That generates 3d6-1 wounds but the IK doesn't have wounds therefore 1 wound, that's one very dead Imperial Knight. You really believe that is how it works?

But lets ignore that for a second and go back to your second point where does it say you don't have to hit? Easy in the Paychic Shriek rules it requires the target unit to take 3d6-ld wounds, not a hit unit. No mention of the effect being triggered by or caring at all about hits, since you have no permission to check for hits before doing the 3d6-ld wounds why are you checking for hits?

Further more if you do roll a single dice to hit and then hit with it how do you resolve that hit? What Strength and Ap is it resolved at? Note how the 3d6-ld wounds does not replace a to wound step so if you hit you absolutely must roll to wound. So do we make up more numbers for that too?


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For the record though I agree it should require a successful roll to hit, and think it's a shame the rules don't actually state that clearly 

Why when GW has made it abundantly clear that this sort of power isn't supposed to roll to hit. When you have other examples like the Harlequin power that has 2 effects that is increasingly incompatible with the roll to hit approach (do you roll to hit once and apply both effects or roll to hit for each effect individually). Or things like focussed witchfires which could mix with precision shots to give 2 chances to pick out the intended target clearly against the intention of the rules.

Also read the whole paragraph the much vaunted "must roll to hit" line is in and you can clearly see it is a contextual line. A reminder that by default mind bullets don't auto hit and require LoS etc like a normal shooting attack.

Also the consistency of people with this approach is baffling. They don't set missing profiles in other situations to a default 1, like my Psychic Shriek vs Vehicles example above or Enfeeble cast on a Vehicle. No one suddenly says well that vehicle must be T1 as we have a T modifier we must apply and no profile to apply it to. What do is say no profile no effect. Which would mean in this case you'd have no roll to hit and just carry on with the 3d6-ld effect...

damn im sorry. Jeez, I didn't know that the topic was covered already.

Yeah, Witchfires are all sorts of broken in the current rules, and that has been hashed out fairly thoroughly since 7th edition was released.

It's a pretty good idea to discuss the psychic phase with any new opponent before the game, to make sure you're both playing the same game... because there are various different viewpoints floating around on just how it's all supposed to work.



I'm going to lock this one down, as it's unlikely to go anywhere new, and this topic invariably just winds up with people calling each other names.