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 Vaktathi wrote:
Would a progressively more difficult cast value help?

First time it goes off on a 5, next time it goes off on a 6, third casting requires a 7, fourth an 8, etc.

Armies with two or three psykers will probably never have much of an issue, concentrating Smite against a big scary target is still powerful but more difficult, and the power remains useful. It's not something I've personally seen armies built around or abusing much around my neck of the woods.

Yeah, I suggested something along these line in a different thread.

I think this would be the way to go.

Azuza001 wrote:
A bigger issue is the lack of good spells to cast. Smite is simply a useful spell, vs gaze of the emporer which could be as low as 2", or terrifying visions that lower leadership on a unit that may or may not need to take a leadership test later that turn. Psychic barrier is awesome, but you cast it once then that's it for truly useful, go to spells. All you have left is smite. Heck, gaze doesn't even have the range of smite, it's really not reliable.

So maybe the problem is not smite, it's the fact that you only cast other spells once and half of the options are not that good.

Maybe chapter approved will give us new spells to replace smite with. That would be cool.

I was thinking the same thing before when I mentioned a rule of one. We'd need, or at least like more spells to choose from to keep things interesting. After playing AoS I had expected Psyker Powers to do more. I have not read any of the powers in any of the released codex books so I have no idea what is in there.

Aos spells and 40K powers are roughly aligned as effects, with the difference that AoS has some really big casters with theyr own spells (spells in AoS depend on the model, not on the faction) and those can be nasty.

My problem with Smite spam is that the only way to counter it is to have more psykers to deny it. Of course if you play a horde army you can put screens of Conscripts or Gaunts in front of your more valuable units but armies like Eldar or Space Marines don't really have any sort of counter to it besides just spamming even more psykers, which seems stupid to me. Having to spam even more of the same unit to counter a certain tactic is never good for game health.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 warhead01 wrote:

Azuza001 wrote:
A bigger issue is the lack of good spells to cast. Smite is simply a useful spell, vs gaze of the emporer which could be as low as 2", or terrifying visions that lower leadership on a unit that may or may not need to take a leadership test later that turn. Psychic barrier is awesome, but you cast it once then that's it for truly useful, go to spells. All you have left is smite. Heck, gaze doesn't even have the range of smite, it's really not reliable.

So maybe the problem is not smite, it's the fact that you only cast other spells once and half of the options are not that good.

Maybe chapter approved will give us new spells to replace smite with. That would be cool.

I was thinking the same thing before when I mentioned a rule of one. We'd need, or at least like more spells to choose from to keep things interesting. After playing AoS I had expected Psyker Powers to do more. I have not read any of the powers in any of the released codex books so I have no idea what is in there.

From a Death Guard player: DG codex ranges from awesome (Miasma, Blades of Putrefaction) to good (Putrescent Vitality) to situational (Curse of the Leper, Gift of Contagion) to crap (Plague Wind). I believe it's the same for most other codices out there.

 Arachnofiend wrote:
Love all these Guard players who aren't bothered by smite spam.

Heh, yeah. An attack that both autohits and autowounds is not that far off from a bolter round, except it's more expensive. And has a chance to kill the user. And it's more expensive pointswise.

Guard isn't bothered because it got numbers.

If your smiting basic guardsman or conscripts, I feel you're doing it wrong.

What they should do is remove psychic focus all together.

First and foremost psykers should be able to manifest any power they know, it doesn't matter if it's been cast already by another psyker.

Second, powers should not stack with themselves for effects. So no piling on The Horror for a cumulative -5 to hit and leadership, you would have to target multiple units.

Third, each time you try to manifest the same power after the first (including smite) it's a -1 to your psychic test. So it jjst gets harder and harder to manifest the same power instead of flat out not allowed.


Now you prevent weird crazy stacking of buffs/debuffs.
You will see more variety of powers being cast.
You will see less spam of any given power and more variety in powers. Even the dirt cheap little psykers will be reduced in number because if all they know is smite then it will become near impossible to cast smite very quickly when thats all they are casting.

No, don't remove psychic focus. Make it apply to smite, as well. Done. You get one smite. Done.

Martel732 wrote:
No, don't remove psychic focus. Make it apply to smite, as well. Done. You get one smite. Done.

Thats dumb. It's as bad if not worse than 7th editions psychic batteries.

Some armies are meant to be psyker heavy. And they should be. Tzneetch deamons should be bringing pink horrors. But why would you ever bring more than 1 if only 1 can cast smite? What happenes to TSons when their sorcerers who only know smite are a part of every unit?

Gutting the psychic phase is not the answer. Making it scale appropriately is.

 Lance845 wrote:
What they should do is remove psychic focus all together.

First and foremost psykers should be able to manifest any power they know, it doesn't matter if it's been cast already by another psyker.

Second, powers should not stack with themselves for effects. So no piling on The Horror for a cumulative -5 to hit and leadership, you would have to target multiple units.

Third, each time you try to manifest the same power after the first (including smite) it's a -1 to your psychic test. So it jjst gets harder and harder to manifest the same power instead of flat out not allowed.


Now you prevent weird crazy stacking of buffs/debuffs.
You will see more variety of powers being cast.
You will see less spam of any given power and more variety in powers. Even the dirt cheap little psykers will be reduced in number because if all they know is smite then it will become near impossible to cast smite very quickly when thats all they are casting.

This, combined with the very very cheap psykers having a "baby smite" could fix the psychic problems all together. Bot for the ones that are OP, and the ones that suffer more from it like Thousand Sons.

Spartacus wrote:
Every game mechanic and unit can be balanced by points

Thats's not true. How are you going to balance area buffs with points? How much should a re-roll to-hit cost if it can be avaliable to any unit? Besides, how can you balance smite spam if it's only good against elite armies?

If the problem lies within cheap mini-psychers that cost ~30 pts, the best solution is to make them peril on a 1.

 Lance845 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
No, don't remove psychic focus. Make it apply to smite, as well. Done. You get one smite. Done.

Thats dumb. It's as bad if not worse than 7th editions psychic batteries.

Some armies are meant to be psyker heavy. And they should be. Tzneetch deamons should be bringing pink horrors. But why would you ever bring more than 1 if only 1 can cast smite? What happenes to TSons when their sorcerers who only know smite are a part of every unit?

Gutting the psychic phase is not the answer. Making it scale appropriately is.

I would argue that armies should not be designed around spamming a poorly designed pyschic power in order to do all their damage. A part of this is certainly being limited to Index and BRB abilities rather than having a codex (hopefully CA will fix some of these issues), but Tzeentch demons should have more to them than just Smite spam, and TSons should still be a SM/CSM army, just with more psychic support than usual.

Allowing armies to just spam all their powers willy nilly is certainly not the answer. Chaos does not need to be casting a dozen warp times a turn on their Malefic Lord Spam. Nids do not need to be Catalysting every unit in their list every turn.

The mortal wound mechanic it's definitely not that bad IMHO, the only problem are the undercosted malefic/primaris.
BTW another super easy solution would be adding a fourth basic stratagem... 1cp: on a 2+ counter a smite

 Marfuzzo wrote:
The mortal wound mechanic it's definitely not that bad IMHO, the only problem are the undercosted malefic/primaris.

I would actually argue the opposite. Primaris Psykers are very reasonably costed, given that they have no tricks or other abilities - all they do is try to cast one psychic power per turn.

(Compared with casters who cast multiple powers, have auras, have rerolls, have better stats, have invulnerable saves etc.)

The only issue is that Smite is apparently too strong a power when spammed.

Smite is just too good to be a spammable power that everyone gets. It leads to balance problems and it is boring because it is just better than most other powers so those don't ever get even used. Such ubiquitous basic power should not deal mortal wounds.

 Marfuzzo wrote:
The mortal wound mechanic it's definitely not that bad IMHO

As many people pointed out, the problem with Mortal Wounds is the way they scale.

Smite some Ork boyz ? Kill 12pts of models.
Smite some Primaris Inceptors ? Kill 86pts of models.

IMO, Smite should just be a kind of psychic flamer. Deal 1d6 wounds (not mortal) or 2d6 on a 10+.

 Crimson wrote:
Smite is just too good to be a spammable power that everyone gets. It leads to balance problems and it is boring because it is just better than most other powers so those don't ever get even used. Such ubiquitous basic power should not deal mortal wounds.

I don't think it dealing mortal wounds is the problem.

The problem is that it's probably the most efficient source of mortal wounds.

You would expect it to be the opposite - with smite being either unreliable or only doing 1 mortal wound each time (maybe d3 on a 10+ or something). As it stands though, virtually all the once-per-turn powers are actually worse at dealing mortal wounds than Smite.

For example, let's compare Smite and Gaze of the Emperor.
- Gaze of the Emperor is cast on a 6+ (so it's already harder to cast than Smite).
- Gaze requires you to extend a line 2d6" from the Psyker (so not only is the distance completely unreliable, but even on the best roll possible you have to be 6" closer than you would for Smite)
- Gaze hits friendly models (so if you try to screen your Psyker, you're probably going to kill your own models in the process)
- Gaze only hits models touched by that line (and, since the average length of the line is 7", you're really going to struggle to hit many models at all)
- Of those few models hit, they only suffer a Mortal Wound on a 4+

Or you could just Smite them - which is easier to cast, far more reliable, doesn't hit friendly models and can be cast at a much greater distance.

Anyway, one of these powers is limited to one casting per turn, apparently for reasons of balance. And it's not Smite.


if Smite worked like Gaze of the Emperor, I don't think anyone would complain if it was spammed.

Gaze of the Emperor is a sniping tool - completely different than Smite.

Are things like artillery fire against these psykers not a viable counter?

M.

 vipoid wrote:

I don't think it dealing mortal wounds is the problem.

It kind of is for basic power that should be usable against variety of targets. MWs are disproportionately powerful against expensive elite stuff and pretty meh against cheap trash.

The problem is that it's probably the most efficient source of mortal wounds.

That however is a bigger problem.

 Infantryman wrote:
Are things like artillery fire against these psykers not a viable counter?

M.

Can't target Characters unless they're the closest model, applies to indirect fire weapons like artillery as well, and with no blast templates you can't even attempt to fudge it that way.

Pandabeer wrote:
From a Death Guard player: DG codex ranges from awesome (Miasma, Blades of Putrefaction) to good (Putrescent Vitality) to situational (Curse of the Leper, Gift of Contagion) to crap (Plague Wind). I believe it's the same for most other codices out there.

Mostly agree with this, except Plague Wind against max ork mobs, gaunt swarms or conscript blocks of 50 is downright amazing considering how easy it is to cast. Not OP, but certainly a auto-take against these armies.

 Infantryman wrote:
Are things like artillery fire against these psykers not a viable counter?

M.

Won't be viable unless the psyker is the closest unit to the firing artillery, which if that happens the player did something stupidly wrong. Are there artillery in the game that can ignore this? (genuine question)

Currently snipers are the only units capable of targeting cheap smiters effectively.

The only armies that get any decent snipers are SM, IG, and Eldaar. Not really fair for the rest of us.

Tyranid biovores can mess up psykers hiding behind screens pretty well. When their attacks miss they drop spore mines near the target that can move on their next turn and bomb anything within range.

Marines get the 3 vindicator stratagems that can kill psykers too, but it’s a lot of points and firepower in one basket.

I agree with those saying the problem is the points cost.

The issue is that a 30 point model shouldn't do 1.8 mortal wounds per turn - often making their points back or considerably more with a single cast.

If psykers were 60-70 points I am not convinced they would be spammed as much. Or if you were it would be with some material risk.

 Primark G wrote:
Smite is a good game mechanic in that you can wound enemy units that would otherwise be untouchable.

That's the definition of a BAD game mechanic. Elite armies are already pretty much garbage in 8th and smite further punishes them.

Smite was meant to be the answer to 2++ rerollable deathstars. (which is no longer really a thing in 8th, barring a few units ... Magnus lol)

Back before 8th launched, it was very openly suggested via FB and warhammer community that sources of mortal wounds would be rare to compensate for the auto wounds that they would cause.

 GI_Redshirt wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
No, don't remove psychic focus. Make it apply to smite, as well. Done. You get one smite. Done.

Thats dumb. It's as bad if not worse than 7th editions psychic batteries.

Some armies are meant to be psyker heavy. And they should be. Tzneetch deamons should be bringing pink horrors. But why would you ever bring more than 1 if only 1 can cast smite? What happenes to TSons when their sorcerers who only know smite are a part of every unit?

Gutting the psychic phase is not the answer. Making it scale appropriately is.

I would argue that armies should not be designed around spamming a poorly designed pyschic power in order to do all their damage. A part of this is certainly being limited to Index and BRB abilities rather than having a codex (hopefully CA will fix some of these issues), but Tzeentch demons should have more to them than just Smite spam, and TSons should still be a SM/CSM army, just with more psychic support than usual.

Allowing armies to just spam all their powers willy nilly is certainly not the answer. Chaos does not need to be casting a dozen warp times a turn on their Malefic Lord Spam. Nids do not need to be Catalysting every unit in their list every turn.

My suggestion would not allow for "dozens of warp times". or the spamming of a single power.

Again, each time after the first the warp charge cost increases by 1. (or a -1 to your roll... the same thing). 6+ to smite. 7+ on the second smite. 8+ on the 3rd. Not only does it become harder and harder to make it work, by the end it also causes a peril. It would force players to use more variety in powers to keep the casting reliable but also make it so all those powers are usable more than once. The dirt cheap smite only psykers would only be so good because they end up screwing themselves by making their only power nigh impossible to cast.

 NurglesR0T wrote:
Smite was meant to be the answer to 2++ rerollable deathstars. (which is no longer really a thing in 8th, barring a few units ... Magnus lol)

Back before 8th launched, it was very openly suggested via FB and warhammer community that sources of mortal wounds would be rare to compensate for the auto wounds that they would cause.

Except 0-X choices aren't a thing anymore, so if I have one I have as many as I can fit in whatever limit I've been imposed.

M.

Here's the fix:

Rule of one for smite.

Then unlimited "Smite Lite" - D3 ST6 AP-2 wounds.