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I'm just reading through the rule book for the first time and I've just finished the psychic phase part.

Man, what an overly complex set of rules.

Hopefully 8e will trim it down.

It was fine where it was (cast when the power will work), but having just 1 phase makes dealing with DTW easier.
If a Psyker can shoot and also zap away, keeping track of the shooting part in the shooting phase also makes sense.

So, the 7th ed way having a special psychic phase is swings and roundabouts. I like it, as it is tidier than before, but the way they did it is messy.

I like it as a simplified magic phase from fantasy, and IMO it's not that complex after a game or two (especially since a lot of armies wont have psykers)

1) player 1 rolls a dice to see the minimum sized pool for each person (lets assume 3)
2) both players add a number of dice equal to their total mastry levels on the board ( lets say player 1 has "2" and player to has none)
3) player 1 can roll any number of dice from his pool to cast a spell, needing to meet or beat the spells cost by rolling that many (or more) 4+'s, double 6's are bad.
3.5) player 2 needs to roll 6's equal to or greater than player 1 had successes on his spell (say player 1 "succeded" with 2 dice, player 2 would need 2 or more 6's to stop the spell)


there are other modifiers, but the core Idea isn't to complex methinks?

 Brennonjw wrote:
I like it as a simplified magic phase from fantasy, and IMO it's not that complex after a game or two (especially since a lot of armies wont have psykers)

1) player 1 rolls a dice to see the minimum sized pool for each person (lets assume 3)
2) both players add a number of dice equal to their total mastry levels on the board ( lets say player 1 has "2" and player to has none)
3) player 1 can roll any number of dice from his pool to cast a spell, needing to meet or beat the spells cost by rolling that many (or more) 4+'s, double 6's are bad.
3.5) player 2 needs to roll 6's equal to or greater than player 1 had successes on his spell (say player 1 "succeded" with 2 dice, player 2 would need 2 or more 6's to stop the spell)


there are other modifiers, but the core Idea isn't to complex methinks?

Agreed, the BRB does a terrible job of explaining it though.

It's more complicated than it needs to be and the psychic phase is only half the problem.

The process of obtaining individual powers is confusing. Remembering who has what can be a pain. The quantity of disciplines and powers is beyond excessive. The overall balance between disciplines and specific powers is horrible. The balance between those armies with and without psykers is horrible.

The entire psychic element to 40k needs an overhaul. Not just the actual rules to cast and deny powers.

Imagine rolling to set off lets say, psychic shriek, with 4 dice.

First you roll for extrawarp charges
Then you roll to set off the power
Then you roll leadership
Then they roll saves
Then they feel no pain

Now take into account what happens if they try to deny or you peril.

They roll to deny
Now you roll the peril
Now you take a leadership
Now you see which power is lost
Now you take your invuln
Now you take your FNP

Congrats, one action took 10 dice rolls

Now imagine doing this 7 times for a psychic army.

The psychic phase is a mess. It needs to be massively simplified, but also the powers need to be somewhat reworked.

My preferred approach would be something that is fairly simple and automatic with no stupid tables to reference.

A model can harness Warp Charges up to their mastery level safely (No Test).
They can harness 1 more than their mastery level but take a wound if they do.
They can harness 2 more than their mastery level but are removed from play if they do.

Psychers would pick one psychic discipline to know (They would know all of the powers).

If you correctly cost the number of warp charges for powers this would be a fairly good system, and much, much simpler than our current system. Resulting in faster games with less paperwork.

Also, one thing that would improve any system is to prevent the stacking of blessings.. A unit should only benefit from 1 blessing at a time.

tag8833 wrote:


Also, one thing that would improve any system is to prevent the stacking of blessings.. A unit should only benefit from 1 blessing at a time.

You take that back!!!!

 Jaxler wrote:
Imagine rolling to set off lets say, psychic shriek, with 4 dice.

First you roll for extrawarp charges
Then you roll to set off the power
Then you roll leadership
Then they roll saves
Then they feel no pain

Now take into account what happens if they try to deny or you peril.

They roll to deny
Now you roll the peril
Now you take a leadership
Now you see which power is lost
Now you take your invuln
Now you take your FNP

Congrats, one action took 10 dice rolls

Now imagine doing this 7 times for a psychic army.

To be fair, this combination of factors - multiple psykers having Shriek, target unit having Invulnerables, target unit having Feel No Pain, and the Psyker having Feel No Pain, doesn't come up very often. The FNP is rarer than the target having Invul saves, but many good targets for Shriek don't.

To the original poster and the topic at hand, everything will seem complicated from the book at first. But after a few games, and after you see a more condensed, concise version of the rules presented in Cheat Sheets [such as you can find on this very board], you'll find that it's not that hard to learn.

And unless you run a Psyker-heavy army, you'll probably only have a single psyker, if that, so you'll have only 3 or four powers to deal with [and likely only 1 or 2 actually cast on any given turn].

Blain87 wrote:

Man, what an overly complex set of rules.

Lol, not really. You should have seen Fantasy's magic system.

The psychic phase is pretty simple. About the only way it could get simpler is if it went back to how it was in earlier editions, when it was just "take a Ld check, if you pass the power goes off. If you roll box cars you Perils" No ability to stop enemy powers unless you had a Psychic Hood, which likewise was just "Take a Ld check, if passed the power is stopped".

The little bit of extra complexity made psychic powers actually interesting, and a dynamic phase of the game instead of the frankly boring system it was before.

Its really no more complex then any other phase, and the good news is its only as complicated as your list makes it. You can if you want to completely opt out of that phase. Nobody makes you take psykers, unless you're playing Grey Knights. Its really the only phase most codices can just give a pass on if they don't want to bother. You can't do that with moving, shooting, or even assault. Not even Tau can really opt out of the Assault phase because eventually its going to happen. But if you don't want psychic powers, you don't have to do them.

I play Grey Knights and the psychic phase is the most important phase. And believe me, you do not want to just make things go back to the old way of casting psychic powers. With all of our Ld10 stuff, we'd pretty much be able to nuke everybody with impunity in the psychic phase without the limiters of risking perils or running out of warp charges. We'd just cast the powers when we wanted to, and there would be far less ways of stopping the powers.

The psychic phase as written is mostly fine; it looks harder than it is. The complexity at the moment comes from the psychic-discipline bloat (there are thirty-odd disciplines in the game, they could probably get away with six or seven) and inconsistent rulings on how Witchfire powers interact with the shooting rules.

What we really need is a set of checks on the ease of casting powers; more blank/pariah-type effects, give all psykers psychic hoods, fewer spammable Brotherhood units to reduce psychic-dice-bloat, and set up ways to control/punish Summoning.

Frankly, summoning should be a limited availability discipline. Not just a blanket "everybody can do it!".

I would actually like them to take away the randomness of generating powers in the first place and make powers something you either purchase access to, or just purchase powers individually.

Like for the generic disciplines, put a point cost besides each power. A level X psyker can purchase up to X powers from the disciplines he has access to, and each power would list a point cost.

So yeah, maybe anybody could take summoning, but the power costs 30 points! Maybe you just wanna take Forwarning instead for 5 points...

Less randomness would make it less luck dependent on getting the good psychic power or getting stuck with a crap one.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Frankly, summoning should be a limited availability discipline. Not just a blanket "everybody can do it!".

I would actually like them to take away the randomness of generating powers in the first place and make powers something you either purchase access to, or just purchase powers individually.

Like for the generic disciplines, put a point cost besides each power. A level X psyker can purchase up to X powers from the disciplines he has access to, and each power would list a point cost.

So yeah, maybe anybody could take summoning, but the power costs 30 points! Maybe you just wanna take Forwarning instead for 5 points...

Less randomness would make it less luck dependent on getting the good psychic power or getting stuck with a crap one.

Hear hear.

(You could also delete the 'must have exactly seven powers per discipline' requirement. Cut a bunch of the padding.)

Its kinda annoying needing to bring 9 mastery levels just to mostly guarantee I get the powers I need for my GKs(GoI first, VoD 2nd).

Being able to just pay 5-10 points for a guaranteed psychic power would make it more skill based. Less about me getting the right power and more about using it correctly.


No more stupidness of games that become kinda swingy. Like the game I got 3 copies of both VoD and GoI(boy that was fun!), or then the last game I had when I only got 1 copy of GoI and 3 copies of Purge Soul

They added unnecessary rules that complicate the phase without adding any depth.

It's a poor and overly simplified port from 7th edition fantasy, which was not a good psychic system to begin with.

The problem is that it doesn't add a layer of tactical depth to the game, it just clutters it up.

It is way too one sided. The defender should have more of a chance to stop psychic powers from happening, and on the other hand, the caster should be able to rely on casting spells more than just simply rolling a 4+.

The psychic phase should be implemented more like the 8th ed. Fantasy system IMO. It would bring more balance and be less one sided.

Before everyone loses their minds, let me explain.

Take 2d6 add them together, thats how many warp charges you have. This maxes out at 12, although this could be increased at higher points games. The defender gets the best of the two. This eliminates one sided psychic games where one opponent has like 30 warp charges and the other has none.

The casting value of the spell is increased. So a low level psychic power would be maybe 6 or 7, but a high level one like invisibility would be 24 or something. You cast the psychic power with as many dice as you want, up to 6 dice, and then add your psychic mastery level. If that equals or beats the casting value, the spell goes off. The same is true for the defender, he must equal or beat the casting score in order to stop the psychic power.

You do not need a psyker in the army to stop psychic powers, but you do not benefit from adding your mastery level. Having a rule like adamantium will would add +1 to the chance to stop the spell.

This creates a dice management system in the game which adds a layer of depth. It's all about reading your opponent and trying to decide which powers are useful to get off and which powers must be stopped at all costs.

I'm not necessarily against being able to choose powers instead of rolling for them, but that means that all spells must be equal in value and usefulness or be balanced by the points cost attributed to that power. I simply do not believe that GW has the ability to balance psychic powers that way. In addition, who in their right mind would not take invisibility if they could automatically take it.

This would require a heavy reworking of the psychic disciplines.

Or we can go back to 2nd edition dark millenium rules and use the random cards, hoping to fish energy/dispel or total power cards to manifest those..

I still have those cards safe somewhere

 Brutus_Apex wrote:
They added unnecessary rules that complicate the phase without adding any depth.

It's a poor and overly simplified port from 7th edition fantasy, which was not a good psychic system to begin with.

The problem is that it doesn't add a layer of tactical depth to the game, it just clutters it up.

It is way too one sided. The defender should have more of a chance to stop psychic powers from happening, and on the other hand, the caster should be able to rely on casting spells more than just simply rolling a 4+.

Thats not really true. The defender has plenty of chances to stop offensive powers if he himself brings psyker. If you do not spend points on psyker, you are making yourself more vulnerable. Its a conscious choice. And if you are Tau... Well thats a deliberate weakness in exchange for shooting phase dominance.

You do not need a psyker in the army to stop psychic powers, but you do not benefit from adding your mastery level. Having a rule like adamantium will would add +1 to the chance to stop the spell.

Umm, thats currently how it works. As long as you are being targeted. Which again, makes sense. It should be significantly harder to stop your opponent casting a blessing on his own troops than if he's casting a malediction on yours.

I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to making it more like 8th edition Fantasy, but I still like the "each mastery level adds a dice to the psychic pool" aspect. That way there is actually a benefit to having a bunch of psykers, as makes sense. Psykers in the fluff are horrifically powerful. If you have a bunch it should reflect that in some way.

Thats not really true. The defender has plenty of chances to stop offensive powers if he himself brings psyker. If you do not spend points on psyker, you are making yourself more vulnerable. Its a conscious choice. And if you are Tau... Well thats a deliberate weakness in exchange for shooting phase dominance.

Not all armies have access to a psyker though, and you shouldn't need to ally yourself with another army to shore up weaknesses in a game. All armies should be able to stand on their own without relying on any other army. I don't consider relying on pure 6's as a viable defence against a psychic power.

Umm, thats currently how it works. As long as you are being targeted. Which again, makes sense. It should be significantly harder to stop your opponent casting a blessing on his own troops than if he's casting a malediction on yours.

I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to making it more like 8th edition Fantasy, but I still like the "each mastery level adds a dice to the psychic pool" aspect. That way there is actually a benefit to having a bunch of psykers, as makes sense. Psykers in the fluff are horrifically powerful. If you have a bunch it should reflect that in some way.

I understand thats how it works. I was saying that if the rules were changed to the type of psychic phase I was suggesting, then Adamantium Will would add to the roll of the dispel dice.

Adding dice to the pool based on number of psykers is exactly why there are issues with this psychic phase, and why there were issues with 7th ed. fantasy. It's a very poor rule in my opinion. It becomes all or nothing. Nobody wants to sit there while being bombarded by psychic power after psychic power that you can't do anything about.

Putting a cap on the number of Warp charges reduces psyker spam and forces the player to decide which powers are important to get off and which ones aren't. It forces the player to make hard decisions rather than just spamming psychic power after psychic power.

A huge issue with 40K right now is spammability of broken combos. This should be heavily reduced IMO. That includes the shooting phase.

And yes, psykers in 40K should be horrendously powerful. Thats why we should see less of them, not more. Adding to the power pool based on number of psykers exacerbates this issue.

Every army can take psykers in their faction except for Tau and Mechanicus(and I guess Imperial Knights). But that is a deliberate weakness. And you can always ally in if you want to cover it.

Its ok for some armies to have no psychic protection. Just like its ok for some armies to not really have any effective shooting. As long as its all balanced by other areas.

If I play my Grey Knights vs Tau. I have tons of psychic powers and buckets of dice. He basically has nothing. Thats ok, because its almost the same story in the shooting phase. I have no long range guns, no massed AP2 shooting. The Tau have buckets of that though.

Well, there's actually quite a few armies that don't have Psykers.

Dark Eldar, Tau, Mechanicus, Imperial Knights, Black Templars, World Eaters, Khorne Daemon Kin, Sisters, Necrons.

I understand that lacking in psychic powers is a weakness of these armies that should theoretically be made up for in other ways. However, it's my opinion that in a game where many armies have no access to a specific element of the game (in this case psychic powers), then there should be some kind of balancing element.

In my experience with Warhammer fantasy 8th ed., even having a single lord level caster could easily change the outcome of the game despite that every army (except Dwarfs, and even they had vast amounts of magical defence) had access to magic and magical defence.

I feel that psychic defence is even more important in a game where the psychic phase can be even more one sided.

Psychic power should be a huge bonus to whoever wields it. Eldar and Grey Knights should have a huge advantage over other armies, but not to the extent that currently exists.

Blain87 wrote:I'm just reading through the rule book for the first time and I've just finished the psychic phase part.

Man, what an overly complex set of rules.

Hopefully 8e will trim it down.

It's not a complex set of rules. Once you've read and truly understand any sub-set of the 40K Rules, you realise ithey simple and that the only challenge is remember that specific sub-set of rules along with all the rest. I used to think the same thing - 'Damn the Psychic Phase is complicated!" - but then I started playing more and more with people who brought Psykers and eventually brought Psykers myself by which time the Psychic Phase was easy as pie and not complicated at all.


And I agree with what Brutus_Apex said - at least some armies that lack psychic shenanigans should have strength in other areas. Ah.... my beloved Space Teutons could use some love to make up for no psykers

Also Sisters and Necrons right? No psykers there. (Or did the Crons get even more heretical by adding witches to their codex while I wasn't looking?)

Also Sisters and Necrons right? No psykers there. (Or did the Crons get even more heretical by adding witches to their codex while I wasn't looking?)

Indeed, I knew I forgot a couple.

GW thinks Adamantium Will is a lot better than it is. Also the Necrons need the Pariah unit back, with the blank-aura rule off the Sisters of Silence and the Culexis.

The problem with your approach as outlined (I never played 8th) is that it may seem fair when your army has 1 or 2 psykers, it isn't fine when you play a pysker heavy army like Thousand Sons, Grey Knights, or Eldar.

The problem with these armies is also not fair as Thousand Sons are the only army that truly suffers from the negative aspects of spell casting because the GK and Eldar can get around perils so easily.

The whole system needs to change.

As mentioned, it's not fair against the armies that don't have psykers and simply giving these armies a piece of wargear to add deny the witch dice isn't fair because that wargear then becomes obligatory. There needs to be a balance between those who have and those who have not. I think the current rules honestly do that system justice fairly well. Against low psker armies, it's balanced, against high psyker armies you have enough tools to truly stop the terrifying spells but not enough to nullify the entire phase, as you shouldn't, because the high psyker army is already at a disadvantage due to the cost of psykers in the first place.

The problem is really just the bulk of disciplines and powers available in the game and the numerous rules those powers use.

IMO, what they need to do is remove almost all the disciplines that exist today. Replace them all with a single offensive discipline and a defensive discipline that all armies share.

Make the defensive discipline focus more on providing more deny the witch dice or rerolling saves.

Make sure every army gets a limit 1 'latent psyker' special rule for 5pts that allows them to become a level 1 psyker with the defensive discipline. This way armies like Necrons, Dark Eldar, and Tau have some option to help against the psychic phase beyond just the current deny the witch rules that they have.

You could then give every army their own new discipline that they can use on top of the 2 in the book. If your army is especially psyker dependent like Chaos Daemons for example, they would still get only 1 discipline, but they would get a primaris power on top of that discipline in line with Tzeentch, Khorne, Nurgle, Slaanesh (or Space Wolves, Dark Angels, Ulthwe, Biel Tan, etc).

That way we remove the bloat, armies still have additional options to call their own which can have slightly more character added with 1 additional spell. Armies without psykers can get a little extra 'oomph' in the psychic phase with the latent psyker rule.

The only thing left after this is to remove the randomness. Let players choose whichever powers they want. Since the list of powers is so limited, and we will retain the limit of 1 psyker using 1 power only once (unless you have wargear to get around this like Ahriman), you should be fine.

As long as GW doesn't do something stupid like they usually do by pushing the power creep to the max for whatever new loyalist army comes out next, we should be good to go.

I'm not sure if I understand what you're saying.

Why would putting a hard cap and increasing casting values of psychic powers not benefit psykerless armies? I'm not sure why you think that having 30+ warp charges vs. 1d6 worth and only being able to stop offensive spells on a 6+ is more balanced than what I am proposing.

Thousand sons don't have parils protection, but should they? I mean they are all about change, chaos and raw power. The Eldar and Grey Knights on the other hand are all about discipline. The thousand sons should have truly devastating psychic ability at the risk of parils, Eldar and Grey Knights on the other hand should be less powerful but have more control. If they don't play like that on the table top, then to me that seems like more of a failing of the codex's than the core rules.

Adding a psychic defence lore to armies that currently have no psyker access is very unfluffy and seems needless if the psychic phase was done right to begin with.

The problem with your approach as outlined (I never played 8th) is that it may seem fair when your army has 1 or 2 psykers, it isn't fine when you play a pysker heavy army like Thousand Sons, Grey Knights, or Eldar.

Well you have access to more powers for one, that is one of the benefits. Most low level psykers like Justicars and Warlocks only know one or two spells anyway. If hammerhand for example cast on a 5+ all you need to do is roll a single die if you want to attempt to get it off, or two if you really want it badly. The average roll of 4 on a single die plus 1 for your mastery level equals 5 so the unit would benefit from hammer hand.

In addition, for every psyker you have you can get another warp charge on a d6 roll of 6. So the more psykers you have in the army, the more chances you have to get an additional die at the beginning of the phase. In 8th this was called channeling.

Also, If you fail to match the casting value of one of the psychic powers you lose concentration and cannot attempt to cast anymore with that psyker. At least with several psykers you can still attempt to cast psychic powers even if one fails.

I'm not usually one for randomness in games. I hate that warlord traits are rolled on for example. In the case of the psychic phase specifically, I feel like randomness is in keeping with the lore. The Warp is not something that can be relied on, and it takes a huge amount of power to wield it.

I really think reducing the disciplines down to two really just eliminates a lot of the flavour and coolness of the psychic phase. It seems boring to me.

One problem with the Psychic Phase that most people seem to ignore is that Blessings and Maledictions are super powerful meanwhile Witchfires are close to useless. As a Thousand Sons/Tzeentch Daemon player, it always grinds my gears when someone complains that they had not defense against my psychic powers. Out of all the powers I cast, a good 90%+ are witchfires because that is my armies shooting, the only shots a Tzeentch Daemon army has beyond witchfires is flamers and exalted flamers, which isn't much. Meanwhile that Tau or Eldar player is shooting my with impunity and much higher reliability that my shooting in return. If they system was fair, each unit would need to roll a 4+ in order to even pull the trigger, and if you wanted to roll more dice to get a higher chance to shoot than another unit would give up their chance to shoot.

Another thing most complainers about Psychic Powers forget about is just how much a warp charge costs. The going rate is 25 points per charge, there are some cheaper ones (11th blue horror, 11th pink horror, stupid imperium cheap guy, a herald in the one formation) but on average it is 25 for a charge. A true psychic army will have 20 charges at 1850 so they are spending 500 points in just mastery levels and even then only half of the time do those actually work.

TLDR: Blessings and Maledictions deserve the hate that they receive. Witchfires need huge buffs to even come to the same power level as normal shooting (Shriek being an exception, but that is just a consolation prize for not getting Invisibility).

 Brutus_Apex wrote:
I'm not sure if I understand what you're saying.

Why would putting a hard cap and increasing casting values of psychic powers not benefit psykerless armies? I'm not sure why you think that having 30+ warp charges vs. 1d6 worth and only being able to stop offensive spells on a 6+ is more balanced than what I am proposing.

Thousand sons don't have parils protection, but should they? I mean they are all about change, chaos and raw power. The Eldar and Grey Knights on the other hand are all about discipline. The thousand sons should have truly devastating psychic ability at the risk of parils, Eldar and Grey Knights on the other hand should be less powerful but have more control. If they don't play like that on the table top, then to me that seems like more of a failing of the codex's than the core rules.

Adding a psychic defence lore to armies that currently have no psyker access is very unfluffy and seems needless if the psychic phase was done right to begin with.

The problem with your approach as outlined (I never played 8th) is that it may seem fair when your army has 1 or 2 psykers, it isn't fine when you play a pysker heavy army like Thousand Sons, Grey Knights, or Eldar.

Well you have access to more powers for one, that is one of the benefits. Most low level psykers like Justicars and Warlocks only know one or two spells anyway. If hammerhand for example cast on a 5+ all you need to do is roll a single die if you want to attempt to get it off, or two if you really want it badly. The average roll of 4 on a single die plus 1 for your mastery level equals 5 so the unit would benefit from hammer hand.

In addition, for every psyker you have you can get another warp charge on a d6 roll of 6. So the more psykers you have in the army, the more chances you have to get an additional die at the beginning of the phase. In 8th this was called channeling.

Also, If you fail to match the casting value of one of the psychic powers you lose concentration and cannot attempt to cast anymore with that psyker. At least with several psykers you can still attempt to cast psychic powers even if one fails.

I'm not usually one for randomness in games. I hate that warlord traits are rolled on for example. In the case of the psychic phase specifically, I feel like randomness is in keeping with the lore. The Warp is not something that can be relied on, and it takes a huge amount of power to wield it.

I really think reducing the disciplines down to two really just eliminates a lot of the flavour and coolness of the psychic phase. It seems boring to me.

Like I said, I didn't play 8th so I'm basing my understanding of it on your 2 sentences provided. But if there is a cap on warp charges and you can hit that cap relatively easily, what sense is there in a Thousand Sons army to take more than 2 sorcerers? Or even one if they use several rubric and sehkmet units? I think armies with more psykers should have a stronger psychic phase because, at least with Thousand Sons, you pay a significant price to field them. At that price, I would expect a lot better chance than an additional charge for every 6 I roll. The method you outline makes it seem like there would be substantial diminishing returns once you've gotten enough psykers to hit the theoretical cap of warp charges and at the cost of a psyker in a Thousand Sons army there would never be any justification to go beyond that. You kind of just make it so every army that can take psykers takes enough to hit that cap. Especially since most psykers are HQs and can fill roles beyond just psychic batteries in many cases.

The costs of psykers should be the balancing factor to keep high psyker armies in balance against those with few. Those with none would need help, thus my latent psyker idea. It may be unfluffy, but short of droping the price of crucible of malediction down to 5pts so it was an always take piece of wargear, there's not much else you can do.

Now as for removing all the disciplines and losing some of the coolness of the psychic phase, I think that's a small price to pay in favor of the psychic phase changing to be the shortest phase in the game imo. If players with half a dozen psykers didn't need to roll a bucket of dice and remember a list of randomly generated spells every phase it's a win in my book. I feel that giving everyone the same 2 disciplines + 1 unique discipline + 1 free power to be enough variety and fun.

The overall rules are ok. The powers and exploitation are awful.

It astounds me that GW took a system they'd already decided was fatally flawed (the 6th/7th ed. WH magic system) and ported it into 40k. Not only that but they doubled down on it by having so many more armies that have units that can generate dice.

Not only that, the Deny the Witch rules are just stupid. Needing a base 6+ to deny a single 4+ success and also having to deny every success rather than just enough to cancel out the warp charge required makes denying powers far too random. That means there simply aren't enough meaningful tactical decisions to make in the Psychic phase.

Nothing short of a complete overhaul is required to fix it, IMO. There are far too many Disciplines, too many broken powers and playing against a Daemon or GK army is just mind-numbingly boring when they have to go through a 20+ dice phase every turn. I'd rather see the various unit-based psykers get passive abilities due to their psychic nature and leave the actual powers for the more powerful psykers, assuming those powers are more balanced than they currently are.