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For me, the issue with Psykers isn't as much that "Smite is too good" or Psychic Focus (though I consider Rule of One mechanics hacky and "fake balance" so to speak), so much as that Psyker powers are innately pass-fail and make games swing too heavily on a small subset of rolls.

Suppose I have a unit of 10 Guardsmen shooting with FRFSRF at another unit of 10 Guardsmen. I get 40 shots, 20 hit, 10 wound. I can approximately expect about 6-7 or so dead casualties, with +- 3 being well within the realm of reasonable distribution. If instead of rolling 40 dice, I were to roll a single die to determime if everything or nothing hits...that wouldn't exactly make for compelling and balanced gameplay, now would it? (Incidentally, Starfleet Battles had the exact same issue. You had the option to fire Photon Torpedoes in a "Narrow Field of Fire", where rather than rolling a to-hit die for each torpedo, you made a single to-hit for all of them. The coinflip nature combined with the sheer frontloaded damage of a Photon Torpedo led to Amarillo Design Bureau banning NFF for tournament play).

With the current Psychic System you:

• Roll 2d6 to cast. You either pass or fail. If you fail, you cannot attempt to cast the power a second time.
• Roll 2d6 to deny. You either pass or fail. If your opponent rolled really high to cast, you might as well not bother trying to deny. Of course, if you have a "Deny on 4+" Stratagem, you're in luck. However, "Does This Unit Warptime" has a much sharper cutoff versus "do I get 8 more Lasgun hits" or so.
• Then you resolve the effect.

My proposal for fixing the Psyker system, is rather than it being a "2d6 >= Threshold" system, it's "Roll XD6 to cast, XD6 to deny" (not too unlike 7th, minus the battery wonk of that system), but rather than it being "must roll at least a certain number of successes for an effect", it would be "Successes to Cast Minus Successes To Deny = Result." (The "casting as a Degrees of Success" being not too unsimilar to Kings of War)

So say Smite is "Does a Mortal Wound for each Success." I have a Psyker that has Smite 6, so that Psyker can roll 6 dice to cast it. The Psyker rolls four 4+s, so would do 4 Mortal Wounds to a target unit. However, your opponent has Deny 4, and rolls two 4+s. Thus, the Psyker ends up only doing 2 Mortal Wounds instead.

Contrast with, say, Magnus rolling a 9+2 for 11, doing 2d6 Mortal Wounds, then requiring a 12 to actually Deny. With a "degree of success" system, even if you fail to completely deny, you can still weaken the effects somewhat.

You could do something similar with other powers. Rather than Warptime being "May Move a second time", Warptime would let a target unit move forward 2 inches for each 4+ rolled. Da Jump would let you teleport 18" away from an enemy, and each additional success lets you appear 3" closer. Null Zone's radius would depend on the number of successes, as would the length of a Blood Lance.

Likewise, rather than all the permutations of Smite (casts Smite on one die, only does 1 damage with Smite, etc), you could have casters use less or more Smite Dice as appropriate. So while a Marine Librarian would be Smite 6, a Warlock might be Smite 3 while Magnus is Smite 12.

I think "normalizing" the Psyker phase is a far better way to go about balancing things rather than relying on these assorted caps and modifiers.

Not for me. I have to say the psyker phase is simple and not confusing at the moment, and should stay that way. It's nothing like the dreadful nightmare of 7th, etc.

An interesting system but in practice will probably become really annoying, and likely to end up as 7th's all or nothing where you either have loads of Psykers or none at all beacuse just one is far too unreliable to be much use.

You've also given no indecation of how it would work for abilites liek Prescience which is +1 to hit rolls, or Doom which is re-roll failed wounds against a specific target. If it's "re roll X dice for each success" then these two powers, and those like them, will have just become worthless.

 Imateria wrote:
An interesting system but in practice will probably become really annoying, and likely to end up as 7th's all or nothing where you either have loads of Psykers or none at all beacuse just one is far too unreliable to be much use.

You've also given no indecation of how it would work for abilites liek Prescience which is +1 to hit rolls, or Doom which is re-roll failed wounds against a specific target. If it's "re roll X dice for each success" then these two powers, and those like them, will have just become worthless.

I imagine Doom could become "reroll 1s, 2s, 3s..." for each success. Something like Dark Guidance I would need to think more on. In theory, it could be considered an "advanced" power, and you suffer a -1 to all your casting rolls for it.

7th's issues included random powers, the whole "pooling" system, and the creation of powers like Invisibility or Summoning, where you could dump your army's collective Warp Charge into the power, get 5 or so successes, and your opponent now needs to roll five 6s to deny or else the power goes off at full effect. "Four 6s is the same as zero" so to speak. The key would be rebalancing powers to not be so "all or nothing" of course.

Incidentally, Perils would be "1 Mortal Wound for each 1 beyond the first" or so. Something relatively simple to track IMO. If Advanced Powers are a thing (at -1 to cast), then it would therefore be "every 1 or 2 beyond the first."

What about da jump? How would that work?

pismakron wrote:
What about da jump? How would that work?

In the original text. You appear 18" away, each success lets you appear closer.

It's an interesting idea and I kinda like it.

I do think it'd be cool

The other day my gaming group was discussing psychic powers the discussion ended up a whether when a psyker dies should they blow up or not.

My thought was as they're dying they lose control over their mind and are overcome with the power of the warp leading to blowing up. I said you shouldn't roll for a 6 like a vehicle but everything in 3" take d3 mortal wounds. We actually might house rule it.

Definitely better than the current system.

Like Elbows and Imateria mentioned.

The current system is quite easy to understand, quick to play and the powers seem to be balanced around this mechanic.
There would be a complete rework of the powers in whole necessary, to adjust them to another system. I dont think this will happen in the near future.

Me as a tyranid player would favor a system, where i would be able to cast some powers more than once, but i also need a system which is fast. I got THAT LOT of stuff to do in all other phases.
With your proposal, the psychic phase would get more complicated, like it was in 7th or even worse, because you have to count, compare and take maybe some more modifications into consideration (for example splitting casting / deniing dice, combining multiple psykers for denie etc).
And with a system like this, it would fast get binary again i guess. Just with other combinations of units/powers.

I like the current incarnation of the psychic power system. Psychic Focus is an ugly and gamey rule, sure, but it acts as a failsafe against degeneracy, which is good.

This sounds similar to the 7th system, which was widely disliked. With the 8th system, pretty much the only complaint I've heard is that Smite spam is too good, especially against elite armies.

I can see a potential problem in the pass/fail dichotomy without an in-between when the effects are profound, but that's also an inherent feature of a dice game. 40 Guardsmen shooting may result in a fairly reliable number of wounds, but one lascannon won't. A single passed or failed save can make or break a game, as can a charge roll, a roll to determine starting player or to seize, a roll for game length etc. I don't see how psychic powers are any different there.

Also, Smite already has degrees of success, as do many other psychic powers. Roll 5-9, get 1-3 wounds, roll 10+, get 1-6 wounds. Dealing six mortal wounds is way more successful than dealing one.

Love this idea, it sounds alot more fun and balanceble. The current smite phase is lame.
What enemy unit would you compare to when trying to vounter da jump though? The closest intended unit?

The reason I never had psykers in 7th and before when new phase came up was that I didn't want to add an extra ~1 hour more to the game. It may sound cool on paper but by your system now you'll roll 6 dice for smite instead of 2-3.

Hmm. I like it conceptually.

PROS
+ Degrees of success, especially if your'e more consistently able to get powers off to at least a limited extent, is preferable to my Warlocks failing roughly every other power they attempt to cast.

CONS
-While the added complexity isn't *that* great, it is still a bit slower/more complicated than "roll 2d6, and see if you pass."

-You would have to Figure out how to scale up quite a few powers to represent the degrees of success. Doable, but you have to watch out for making a power not wothwhile if it barley passes and not broken if you roll too well.

-The psychic phase is considered mostly fine right now other than smite spam (which may or may not be fine per the new beta rules).

OTHER
/ While people are comparing this to 7th, it seems like it would avoid most of the annoying pitfalls of that edition. If I understand the proposal, you aren't taking the time to hem and haw over how many dice to gamble on each power, your opponent isn't trying to decide how many dice to deny with. You just have "Power: X Dice" as a piece of "wargear", and your opponent has "Deny: Y Dice", and then you both roll and count your 4+.


Hmm. What would you think of the following?
*Give all powers an "easy mode." Easy mode either has a really low WC or else works automatically. (Because other than certain human psykers, no one in the 41st millenium is fluffed as regularly failing to do cool psychic stuff mid-battle).
*Give all powers a "hard mode." If you generate enough successes, you get the bigger flashier version of the power.

So instead of having to scale up for each degree of success, you just have to see whether you got the "little" version of the power or the "real" version of the power. Requires slightly less calculation/comparison and gives you a slimmer range of "statuses" to keep in mind. I don't have to remember that Doom is letting me reroll 1's and 2's but not 3's or higher; I just have to remember whether I got Big Doom off or Little Doom.

So powers might look like...
Smite
1+ Successes: Do d3 mortal wounds to the closest enemy unit within 18".
3+ Successes: Do d6 mortal wounds instead.

Doom
1+ Successes: Reroll to-wound rolls of 1 against target enemy unit.
3+ Successes: Reroll all failed to-wound rolls against target e nemy unit.

Warp Time
1+: Move target unit within 18" 3".
3+: Move (and optionally advance) target unit within 18" as though it were the Movement phase.

Wyldhunt wrote:
While people are comparing this to 7th, it seems like it would avoid most of the annoying pitfalls of that edition. If I understand the proposal, you aren't taking the time to hem and haw over how many dice to gamble on each power, your opponent isn't trying to decide how many dice to deny with. You just have "Power: X Dice" as a piece of "wargear", and your opponent has "Deny: Y Dice", and then you both roll and count your 4+.

Correct. A Warlock might get Smite 3, a Librarian Smite 6, Magnus Smite 12, etc.

It's very "set in stone" for that reason. The "degrees of success" is also meant to fix a situation that happened in 7th that was:
-Army pools its dice (10 or so) into Invisibility. Gets five successes.
-If the opponent wants to Deny, the opponent must roll five 6s. Rolling 4 is effectively the same as rolling zero. The odds are so miniscule that it's not worth bothering.

A similar scenario can happen with: Orks and Da Jump, Magnus and Smite, etc. They have powerful powers with high thresholds, yet they get good casting modifiers. If you successfully Manifest, odds of Denial are negligible (if not impossible).

Wyldhunt wrote:
Hmm. What would you think of the following?
*Give all powers an "easy mode." Easy mode either has a really low WC or else works automatically. (Because other than certain human psykers, no one in the 41st millenium is fluffed as regularly failing to do cool psychic stuff mid-battle).
*Give all powers a "hard mode." If you generate enough successes, you get the bigger flashier version of the power.

So instead of having to scale up for each degree of success, you just have to see whether you got the "little" version of the power or the "real" version of the power. Requires slightly less calculation/comparison and gives you a slimmer range of "statuses" to keep in mind. I don't have to remember that Doom is letting me reroll 1's and 2's but not 3's or higher; I just have to remember whether I got Big Doom off or Little Doom.

So powers might look like...
Smite
1+ Successes: Do d3 mortal wounds to the closest enemy unit within 18".
3+ Successes: Do d6 mortal wounds instead.

Doom
1+ Successes: Reroll to-wound rolls of 1 against target enemy unit.
3+ Successes: Reroll all failed to-wound rolls against target e nemy unit.

Warp Time
1+: Move target unit within 18" 3".
3+: Move (and optionally advance) target unit within 18" as though it were the Movement phase.

So like what 8th Fantasy did, as well as several 7e 40k powers (ex: Flickerfire, Eldritch Storm, Telepathic Summons). Maybe. The big question of course is how to implement Denial with such a system. If you make it "beat casting value" like 40k, Fantasy or AOS, you still skew the system in favor of the overcharged values since you probably want to roll high anyway.

Plus I imagine you could stack "Doom" tokens on a unit to track it. Tau have been doing the same with Markerlights for awhile.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Gitdakka wrote:
Love this idea, it sounds alot more fun and balanceble. The current smite phase is lame.
What enemy unit would you compare to when trying to vounter da jump though? The closest intended unit?

I imagine that would work like it currently does. You select a unit capable of Deny and use that unit to Deny.

Ok I'm gonna ask you the same question I ask everyone that puts forth a rule change

Look at the current rules, to cast a power roll 2d6 if you roll higher then the needed value the spell goes off, opponant can deny on 2d6 if they roll higher.
Vs
What you propose

Which on is easier to explain to a new person?

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Ok I'm gonna ask you the same question I ask everyone that puts forth a rule change

Look at the current rules, to cast a power roll 2d6 if you roll higher then the needed value the spell goes off, opponant can deny on 2d6 if they roll higher.
Vs
What you propose

Which on is easier to explain to a new person?

Note for both that Java has an inclusive floor but an exclusive ceiling. Hence "+2" on results of Rand.nextInt(0,6)

Old System:

int manifestSum = Random.nextInt(0, 6) + Random.nextInt(0, 6) + 2; if (manifestSum >= manifestThreshold && opponentDenies) { int denySum = Random.nextInt(0, 6) + Random.nextInt(0, 6) + 2; if (manifestPower >= denySum) { power.resolve(); } } else { power.resolve(); }

"If Cast and if != deny, then resolve."

New System.

int manifestSum = Random.intStream(manifestDice, 1, 7).filter(r -> r >= 4).sum(); manifestSum -= denyDice > 0 ? Random.intStream(denyDice, 1, 7).filter(r -> r >= 4).sum() : 0; if (manifestSum > 0) { power.resolve(manifestSum); }

Sum of manifest - sum of deny = power.

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Ok I'm gonna ask you the same question I ask everyone that puts forth a rule change

Look at the current rules, to cast a power roll 2d6 if you roll higher then the needed value the spell goes off, opponant can deny on 2d6 if they roll higher.
Vs
What you propose

Which on is easier to explain to a new person?

Assuming they're a reasonably intelligent individual? Both are pretty easy.

I do give a slight edge to the current system, but "Roll the number of dice listed on the sheet, and each 4 or higher is a success. Then, your opponent rolls a number dice listed on their sheet, with each 4 or higher removing one of your successes. Then, look at your sheet and compare the number of successes to the sheet to see what you do." is about as easy as "Roll two dice and try to equal or beat the value. Then, your opponent rolls two dice and tries to beat your value. If you score high enough and he doesn't beat it, look at the sheet and see what your power does."

Edit: MagicJuggler, that doesn't actually help. It looks really confusing for both.

Hmm, while this is the kind of system that I like, I think it's one of those things that wouldn't fit into 40k well because it's not how anything else in 40k works.

Put another way; I'd be all for it if 40k used opposed rolls for everything else, because it wouldn't be added complexity, it'd just be a core mechanic being applied to psychic powers. Opposed rolls is something I've wanted in 40k for ages, as they're good for making a game feel like you're both getting to do something rather than just waiting for your opponent to let you roll saves (if you even get any).


Also, I really wouldn't use Java to demonstrate the two systems; the second one actually looks MUCH more complicated written in Java because the first two lines are packing in so many different operations (including some kind of shorthand closure that must be new since the last time I used Java, which was admittedly some years ago). :p

Why should psychic powers be any more involved than shooting or melee? Really, most psychic powers should be resolved via D6 not 2D6 roll, with no hradiant of success (or at least, beyond the pseudo-blast rolls of D6 for # of hits).

At worst, units would just need a Psychic save value, use leadership or somesuch to resist powers - if at all.

 Stormonu wrote:
Why should psychic powers be any more involved than shooting or melee? Really, most psychic powers should be resolved via D6 not 2D6 roll, with no hradiant of success (or at least, beyond the pseudo-blast rolls of D6 for # of hits).

At worst, units would just need a Psychic save value, use leadership or somesuch to resist powers - if at all.

Not all powers are direct damage or debuffs. A critical issue from 6th onwards has been the discrepancy in stopping Psychic attacks vs buffs, despite the latter being more dangerous in general. 1 in 6 chance to deny a Smite in 6th, no chance to deny Forewarning cast on Screamers. Deny bonuses apply versus Pyromancy attacks but not versus, say, Invisibility. 8th has similar issue where the difference between getting a unit to Jump/Warptime/shift from 3++->2++ has more weight than a few Mortal Wounds, and Smite gets progressively easier to Deny.

GW uses "Fake Balance" to hide a kludgy system.

I agree with Stormanu that psychic powers are not really an exception to Shooting or Melee. They are one of 3 unit to unit interactions and would be better served by using a similar resolution method not a even more different one.

The new more open ability to Deny is good in 8h. In particular because it allows you to try to shut down buffs as well.

If you want to add the complexity and book keeping of a gradient of effects via degrees of success you have to justify that complexity and explain why THIS facet of unit to unit interaction deserves it and the others do not.

I like the idea of more powers having conditions like Smite currently has, a level to cast, and a higher threshold for a more powerful version.

Needs to be kept reasonably simple though just for the scale of the game.

Perhaps some abilities gaining extra range, more hits, higher strength etc - no need to say which version you want as WHFB used to do, just roll and see what you get

 Lance845 wrote:
I agree with Stormanu that psychic powers are not really an exception to Shooting or Melee. They are one of 3 unit to unit interactions and would be better served by using a similar resolution method not a even more different one.

The new more open ability to Deny is good in 8h. In particular because it allows you to try to shut down buffs as well.

If you want to add the complexity and book keeping of a gradient of effects via degrees of success you have to justify that complexity and explain why THIS facet of unit to unit interaction deserves it and the others do not.

You could theoretically attempt to Deny buffs in 7th. It was extremely inefficient but the option was there. In 8th, since Denial requires beating a caster's roll, denial can become impossible when casting mods apply.

Is it really bookkeeping if the degrees are linear? When you shoot, you roll XD6, and each Y+ is a success. When you cast, you do 2d6 then 2d6 then result. I am proposing that Psychic powers work more like Melee or Shooting if anything else.

 MagicJuggler wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
I agree with Stormanu that psychic powers are not really an exception to Shooting or Melee. They are one of 3 unit to unit interactions and would be better served by using a similar resolution method not a even more different one.

The new more open ability to Deny is good in 8h. In particular because it allows you to try to shut down buffs as well.

If you want to add the complexity and book keeping of a gradient of effects via degrees of success you have to justify that complexity and explain why THIS facet of unit to unit interaction deserves it and the others do not.

You could theoretically attempt to Deny buffs in 7th. It was extremely inefficient but the option was there. In 8th, since Denial requires beating a caster's roll, denial can become impossible when casting mods apply.

Is it really bookkeeping if the degrees are linear? When you shoot, you roll XD6, and each Y+ is a success. When you cast, you do 2d6 then 2d6 then result. I am proposing that Psychic powers work more like Melee or Shooting if anything else.

If i cast 3 buffs on 3 units and each of those buffs have 3 different potential effects (or better/worse versions of the same effect) due to degrees of success then yes. Its book keeping to keep track of which version of each buff those units have. Currently its a simple toggle. They have it or they dont. What your proposing could have 2 psychic heavy armies tossing about buffs/debuffs in every psychic phase and would definitely create more book keeping where there currently is not.