How would you feel about more psyker powers?

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**Backspacehacker**

AnomanderRake wrote:
Backspacehacker wrote:
Blndmage wrote:
What abou Tau and Necrons?

Tau have never gotten psyker powers and necrons get undeniable totally not psyker, but kinda are pysker powers from the ctan

Kroot Shamans. (I know, I know, not really Tau, but a quick and easy way to put a psyker in that army.)

This is true

**meleti**

Blndmage wrote:
What abou Tau and Necrons?

Tau continue to be shut out of any interaction in the psychic phase, as is tradition.

**Marmatag**

meleti wrote:
Blndmage wrote:
What abou Tau and Necrons?

Tau continue to be shut out of any interaction in the psychic phase, as is tradition.

And Tau continue to be a very good army regardless. The psychic phase, for everyone outside of Chaos & Eldar, is about patching weaknesses not dominating the opponent.

**meleti**

Marmatag wrote:
meleti wrote:
Blndmage wrote:
What abou Tau and Necrons?

Tau continue to be shut out of any interaction in the psychic phase, as is tradition.

And Tau continue to be a very good army regardless. The psychic phase, for everyone outside of Chaos & Eldar, is about patching weaknesses not dominating the opponent.

I’d say they’re an OK army. Tau won’t ever win a big tournament in this environment, but they can X-1. There are armies in worse positions right now.

The Tau psychic phase is nothing, though, as they don’t even get the options to deny via stratagems, relics, or warlord traits that some other armies get.

**The Newman**

I want more powers, but I do play Space Marines.

**Slayer-Fan123**

Marmatag wrote:
Xenomancers wrote:
Marmatag wrote:
Pretty much everyone but marines has a solid stable of powers to pick from already.

Tyranids:

1. Dominion. Grade: F. Situational at best, considering we would need to plan on our synapse creatures dying in the game, but, these are the guys that know the powers. Odds are if you're in range to cast this power on a unit, you'll be in range to provide synapse. Useless.

2. The Horror. Grade: B+. -1 to hit targeted to a specific unit. Solid power. Doesn't break the game, but also helps if your opponent has invested in one big thing that does a lot of shooting. Situational, but strong.

3. Catalyst. Grade: B+. 5+ feel no pain is an amazing power to have on-demand. Unfortunately doesn't stack with the feel no pain we get from hive fleet. A nice power overall. Everyone takes it for a reason.

4. Onslaught. Grade: C+. Gives mobility to squads that would be hampered by a -1 for moving and firing heavies / advancing and firing assault weapons, as it negates that penalty. Allows units to advance and charge. Situational, but nice to have sometimes.

5. Paroxysm. Grade: B. This is highly situational as not everyone will have assault units. But, it can be helpful if you've built an assault based tyranids army, and you want to charge a big deadly unit with your entire army. Helpful against custodes and knights specifically. If they phase out of the meta, so will this power.

6. Psychic Scream. Grade: B-. A weaker smite, with the slim chance of making a psyker lose a power. In general utility spells are better than damage ones for our power slots.

If you're wondering why none of these powers are A or A+ grade powers, it's because powers like Warp Time and Word of the Phoenix exist. If you add up all of the powers and count the true top 10% none of these will be in there. So they're not "A" powers.

I voted "Yes" because I would love to have an A grade power at my disposal.

Pretty accurate. I'd rate Onslaught a little higher though. It can turn some nonviable units into viable ones. Like a toxicrine. It's not warptime - but there are times it is as good as warp-time. paroxysm is extremely situational also so - I'd rate PS higher than it.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Don't need more powers - just need to buff the bad ones in each set of powers.

Space marines and GK come to mind instantly. Hard to imagine imperial gaurd have better powers than GK librarians. It is absolutely pathetic actually.

Warp time is flatly superior to onslaught at every single turn. There is literally never a scenario where you'd want onslaught over warptime. Paroxysm can bust a game wide open, now that it overrides the 2CP interrupt stratagem. But we're quibbling over the middling powers. Catalyst and the Horror are the stars of the show. The rest of the time you're most likely casting smite.

Grey Knights are a joke. A flat joke. Their powers are very, very bad. I wrote a review of their powers, and people who have never played against, or as, Grey Knights, took issue, but i stand by my ratings.

Apparently the moment you have access to Hammerhand the rest of your table doesn't matter per the Grey Knight defenders.

**Flamephoenix182**

Yeah I'm definitely game for more powers. I would like to see more variation on smite. Maybe GW could write a few powers that occupy the "smite" slot that a psykers all have, and allow you to swap smite out for them.

**Mr Morden**

meleti wrote:
Blndmage wrote:
What abou Tau and Necrons?

Tau continue to be shut out of any interaction in the psychic phase, as is tradition.

If they did the various cool client races which include powerful psykers rather than endless parade of battlesuits this would be covered.

**Marmatag**

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Marmatag wrote:
Xenomancers wrote:
Marmatag wrote:
Pretty much everyone but marines has a solid stable of powers to pick from already.

Tyranids:

1. Dominion. Grade: F. Situational at best, considering we would need to plan on our synapse creatures dying in the game, but, these are the guys that know the powers. Odds are if you're in range to cast this power on a unit, you'll be in range to provide synapse. Useless.

2. The Horror. Grade: B+. -1 to hit targeted to a specific unit. Solid power. Doesn't break the game, but also helps if your opponent has invested in one big thing that does a lot of shooting. Situational, but strong.

3. Catalyst. Grade: B+. 5+ feel no pain is an amazing power to have on-demand. Unfortunately doesn't stack with the feel no pain we get from hive fleet. A nice power overall. Everyone takes it for a reason.

4. Onslaught. Grade: C+. Gives mobility to squads that would be hampered by a -1 for moving and firing heavies / advancing and firing assault weapons, as it negates that penalty. Allows units to advance and charge. Situational, but nice to have sometimes.

5. Paroxysm. Grade: B. This is highly situational as not everyone will have assault units. But, it can be helpful if you've built an assault based tyranids army, and you want to charge a big deadly unit with your entire army. Helpful against custodes and knights specifically. If they phase out of the meta, so will this power.

6. Psychic Scream. Grade: B-. A weaker smite, with the slim chance of making a psyker lose a power. In general utility spells are better than damage ones for our power slots.

If you're wondering why none of these powers are A or A+ grade powers, it's because powers like Warp Time and Word of the Phoenix exist. If you add up all of the powers and count the true top 10% none of these will be in there. So they're not "A" powers.

I voted "Yes" because I would love to have an A grade power at my disposal.

Pretty accurate. I'd rate Onslaught a little higher though. It can turn some nonviable units into viable ones. Like a toxicrine. It's not warptime - but there are times it is as good as warp-time. paroxysm is extremely situational also so - I'd rate PS higher than it.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Don't need more powers - just need to buff the bad ones in each set of powers.

Space marines and GK come to mind instantly. Hard to imagine imperial gaurd have better powers than GK librarians. It is absolutely pathetic actually.

Warp time is flatly superior to onslaught at every single turn. There is literally never a scenario where you'd want onslaught over warptime. Paroxysm can bust a game wide open, now that it overrides the 2CP interrupt stratagem. But we're quibbling over the middling powers. Catalyst and the Horror are the stars of the show. The rest of the time you're most likely casting smite.

Grey Knights are a joke. A flat joke. Their powers are very, very bad. I wrote a review of their powers, and people who have never played against, or as, Grey Knights, took issue, but i stand by my ratings.

Apparently the moment you have access to Hammerhand the rest of your table doesn't matter per the Grey Knight defenders.

Essentially yes, once you abandon reason for madness, Grey Knights are awesome!!!!! Grand Master Nemesis Dreadnight with a Hammer + Hammerhand + the ridiculous warlord trait - for triple the hammer, and to super-wound things on 2s! What's that? You were genius enough to both bring a land raider & get it locked in combat? Gate of infinity to the rescue, bounce that sucker OUT!!! Nerf grey knights!!

The only cool thing about Grey Knights is that you can gate of infinity a land raider onto a piece of terrain that it normally couldn't get to with any measure of ease. of course this is prohibited from the rules, because a vehicle can't climb ruins, but you may as well lawyer the hell out of it, you are indeed playing Grey Knights. And at the end of the day, when your raider is perched sideways on top of a 2 foot tall terrain piece, utterly out of range to be meaningful and disembarking is effectively deep strike, you are actually really playing Grey Knights. GREY AF BABY

**Blndmage**

Blndmage wrote:
What abou Tau and Necrons?

What I ment by this was, if all the other armies are getting psychic powers, what do Tau and Necrons get as a balancer, or are they always and forever screwed? Do they get cool new ways to deny, or some other bonus, say increasing the result or forcing rerolls, some new mechanic tat forces perils, something! Being not present in the warp means targeting them might be way harder, they're not like blanks, who seem to invert the normal warp thing, whereas Necrons and Tau simply aren't there.

**AnomanderRake**

Blndmage wrote:
Blndmage wrote:
What abou Tau and Necrons?

What I ment by this was, if all the other armies are getting psychic powers, what do Tau and Necrons get as a balancer, or are they always and forever screwed? Do they get cool new ways to deny, or some other bonus, say increasing the result or forcing rerolls, some new mechanic tat forces perils, something! Being not present in the warp means targeting them might be way harder, they're not like blanks, who seem to invert the normal warp thing, whereas Necrons and Tau simply aren't there.

Depends. Sticking with old 3e-vintage fluff "blanks" are heavily implied to have been deliberately engineered by the Necrons in the first place, and bringing pack Pariahs as psychic defense coverage would be an answer.

**Creeping Dementia**

I think psychers are in a good spot right now, I'd personally leave them as is. The bad and very unbalanced editions of 40k and historically, WFB, were the editions when there was too much in the psychic/magic phase. I'd rather not open that can of worms again, Aeldari soup is already borderline as it is.
Having a bigger variety of powers, especially generic ones, opens up even more stacking of powers and buffs than there currently is and I think would be extremely hard to balance especially when some races have huge psychic potential, and others have none. Currently powers and psychers are influential, but not overpowered.
Maybe I'm just in the camp that got traumatized by the psychic phase in previous editions, which practically single handedly pushed me away from 40k for a few years.

**Backspacehacker**

So what about this as an idea, work with me, what if you were given the choice to take a pasyker power as a shooting weapon?

For example if you kept psy bolt, but psykers could take psyker only weaons like the fulmination one, assaly 2d6 but only str 4 or 3. Or being able to take a 'flamer' power.

**p5freak**

I want less psychic powers. Or they should be much harder to cast. Some combinations are ridiculous.

**Slayer-Fan123**

p5freak wrote:
I want less psychic powers. Or they should be much harder to cast. Some combinations are ridiculous.

Except it really isn't that bad since you're limited to one of each a turn.

**Tyel**

I didn't like it at the time, but I feel psychic powers need to go back to having a points cost like in 4th (Might have been 5th).

Right now a typical roster gets 6 spells. 2 are auto takes (if not you don't bother at all). Maybe a 3rd will be solid but situational. 2-3 will be mathematically inferior to the other options and never seen, especially since it usually makes more sense to double up on a key power in case that psyker dies early. Smite is a fine back up.

Rules wise its impossible to have 6 divergent abilities (plus smite) all be worth the same.

**CthuluIsSpy**

I'd rather they'd give more Deny the Witch options. Necron psy-defense, for example, is absolutely pathetic for a race that's supposed to be experienced in combating psykers, and Tau have no defenses at all.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Blndmage wrote:
Blndmage wrote:
What abou Tau and Necrons?

What I ment by this was, if all the other armies are getting psychic powers, what do Tau and Necrons get as a balancer, or are they always and forever screwed? Do they get cool new ways to deny, or some other bonus, say increasing the result or forcing rerolls, some new mechanic tat forces perils, something! Being not present in the warp means targeting them might be way harder, they're not like blanks, who seem to invert the normal warp thing, whereas Necrons and Tau simply aren't there.

That would be a neat rule, actually. It could be something like "low warp presence - The target has negligible presence in the warp, and as such is harder to manifest powers against them. -1 to cast psychic powers when targeting a unit with this rule."

Automatically Appended Next Post:

AnomanderRake wrote:
Blndmage wrote:
Blndmage wrote:
What abou Tau and Necrons?

What I ment by this was, if all the other armies are getting psychic powers, what do Tau and Necrons get as a balancer, or are they always and forever screwed? Do they get cool new ways to deny, or some other bonus, say increasing the result or forcing rerolls, some new mechanic tat forces perils, something! Being not present in the warp means targeting them might be way harder, they're not like blanks, who seem to invert the normal warp thing, whereas Necrons and Tau simply aren't there.

Depends. Sticking with old 3e-vintage fluff "blanks" are heavily implied to have been deliberately engineered by the Necrons in the first place, and bringing pack Pariahs as psychic defense coverage would be an answer.

Yeah, bringing back pariahs in some way would be great. I always liked the concept for them.

**p5freak**

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
p5freak wrote:
I want less psychic powers. Or they should be much harder to cast. Some combinations are ridiculous.

Except it really isn't that bad since you're limited to one of each a turn.

Yeah, casting warptime, prescience, diabolic strength, glamour of tzeentch, temporal manipulation and weaver of faith on magnus really isnt that bad

**Mr Morden**

CthuluIsSpy wrote:
I'd rather they'd give more Deny the Witch options. Necron psy-defense, for example, is absolutely pathetic for a race that's supposed to be experienced in combating psykers, and Tau have no defenses at all.

Tau shouldn't have Psy defences except client races - that's kinda the point?

The Tau don't understand or even really believe in "Mind Science" until they are confronted by it - being blunt (not blank) its very hard for them to deal with it.

**JNAProductions**

p5freak wrote:
Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
p5freak wrote:
I want less psychic powers. Or they should be much harder to cast. Some combinations are ridiculous.

Except it really isn't that bad since you're limited to one of each a turn.

Yeah, casting warptime, prescience, diabolic strength, glamour of tzeentch, temporal manipulation and weaver of faith on magnus really isnt that bad

And the odds of them all going off are how likely, again?

**CthuluIsSpy**

Mr Morden wrote:
CthuluIsSpy wrote:
I'd rather they'd give more Deny the Witch options. Necron psy-defense, for example, is absolutely pathetic for a race that's supposed to be experienced in combating psykers, and Tau have no defenses at all.

Tau shouldn't have Psy defences except client races - that's kinda the point?

The Tau don't understand or even really believe in "Mind Science" until they are confronted by it - being blunt (not blank) its very hard for them to deal with it.

...then give them client races? They have Vespid and Kroot, why not the Nicassar? Or some other psy-sensitive vassal of the Tau?
The fact that the Tau don't believe in psychic powers is kind of dumb, imo. How do they explain the capabilities of the Nicassar, a psychic race who serves them? Or the Eldar and humans, who they fight against?
I can understand them not believing in the warp or demons, because that has more to do with metaphysics and emotions and tend not to manifest that often, and as such a race who's into hard science might be skeptical of it, but the Tau should really know what psychics are because they encountered them several times by now. Even their scientists would admit that there are such things as psychic powers the first time they see the Nicassar use theirs.

**Crimson**

I think there should be more powers. Having only six, and half of them terrible is just lame. And in a bigger game it becomes a problem if you want to include bunch of psykers.

**Slayer-Fan123**

p5freak wrote:
Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
p5freak wrote:
I want less psychic powers. Or they should be much harder to cast. Some combinations are ridiculous.

Except it really isn't that bad since you're limited to one of each a turn.

Yeah, casting warptime, prescience, diabolic strength, glamour of tzeentch, temporal manipulation and weaver of faith on magnus really isnt that bad

Then MAYBE...just MAYBE...don't shoot Magnus? If they want to throw all their eggs in one basket let them.

**Mmmpi**

For Necrons, you could give Crypteks an upgrade that lets them DNW.

For Tau, client races would be a cool way to do it.

**Mr Morden**

CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Mr Morden wrote:
CthuluIsSpy wrote:
I'd rather they'd give more Deny the Witch options. Necron psy-defense, for example, is absolutely pathetic for a race that's supposed to be experienced in combating psykers, and Tau have no defenses at all.

Tau shouldn't have Psy defences except client races - that's kinda the point?

The Tau don't understand or even really believe in "Mind Science" until they are confronted by it - being blunt (not blank) its very hard for them to deal with it.

...then give them client races? They have Vespid and Kroot, why not the Nicassar? Or some other psy-sensitive vassal of the Tau?
The fact that the Tau don't believe in psychic powers is kind of dumb, imo. How do they explain the capabilities of the Nicassar, a psychic race who serves them? Or the Eldar and humans, who they fight against?
I can understand them not believing in the warp or demons, because that has more to do with metaphysics and emotions and tend not to manifest that often, and as such a race who's into hard science might be skeptical of it, but the Tau should really know what psychics are because they encountered them several times by now. Even their scientists would admit that there are such things as psychic powers the first time they see the Nicassar use theirs.

I agree I said give them Client Races previously.

The Tau see someting happening but seem to just assume its nonsense unitl they are confronted with it As I said they call it "Mind Science" but obviously are hampered by their own lack.

**p5freak**

JNAProductions wrote:
p5freak wrote:
Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
p5freak wrote:
I want less psychic powers. Or they should be much harder to cast. Some combinations are ridiculous.

Except it really isn't that bad since you're limited to one of each a turn.

Yeah, casting warptime, prescience, diabolic strength, glamour of tzeentch, temporal manipulation and weaver of faith on magnus really isnt that bad

And the odds of them all going off are how likely, again?

Its very likely almost all will succeed. Magnus gives every psyker within 9" the ability to re-roll any 1 on a psychic test, which includes himself, and he himself gets +2 to psychic tests when he has full wounds. He can cast three powers. Ahriman gets +1 to psychic tests. He can cast two powers. A tzaangor shaman can re-roll the first failed psychic test once per game. There maybe warlord traits, relics, stratagems helping even more, i dont know that. The numbers to roll are : Warptime (6), prescience (7), diabolic strength (6), glamour of tzeentch (7), temporal manipulation (6) and weaver of faith (6). There is another psychic power called gaze of fates (6) which lets you re-roll one dice later that turn. And the command re-roll is another possible re-roll.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
p5freak wrote:
Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
p5freak wrote:
I want less psychic powers. Or they should be much harder to cast. Some combinations are ridiculous.

Except it really isn't that bad since you're limited to one of each a turn.

Yeah, casting warptime, prescience, diabolic strength, glamour of tzeentch, temporal manipulation and weaver of faith on magnus really isnt that bad

Then MAYBE...just MAYBE...don't shoot Magnus? If they want to throw all their eggs in one basket let them.

Ok, just let magnus destroy half of the army.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pT59OhRzoE

**Slipspace**

The Psychic phase is the biggest mistake from GW in this edition alongside the complete removal of restrictions on army selection. The biggest problem is the complete lack of interactivity in the Psychic phase, For some armies, like TS, it's basically another shooting phase except your armour, Toughness and cover don't matter. Add to that, DNW is a bit of a joke unless you already have loads of psykers so getting a single Deny for Drukhari or Necrons is pretty pointless.

I agree with a previous poster: we should go to something that more resembles 8th edition WH's magic phase, with dice management and an element of unpredictability. At the moment if I'm playing Necrons I basically have to just bend over and take it from Tyranids, Eldar, Thousand Sons, even Space Marines. It's just so...dull. If GW were to introduce more powers I think they'd do well to give Smite the same restrictions as other powers while they're at it. For some armies the psychic phase is basically the Mortal Wounds phase and that's just frustrating to play against.

**Slayer-Fan123**

p5freak wrote:
JNAProductions wrote:
p5freak wrote:
Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
p5freak wrote:
I want less psychic powers. Or they should be much harder to cast. Some combinations are ridiculous.

Except it really isn't that bad since you're limited to one of each a turn.

Yeah, casting warptime, prescience, diabolic strength, glamour of tzeentch, temporal manipulation and weaver of faith on magnus really isnt that bad

And the odds of them all going off are how likely, again?

Its very likely almost all will succeed. Magnus gives every psyker within 9" the ability to re-roll any 1 on a psychic test, which includes himself, and he himself gets +2 to psychic tests when he has full wounds. He can cast three powers. Ahriman gets +1 to psychic tests. He can cast two powers. A tzaangor shaman can re-roll the first failed psychic test once per game. There maybe warlord traits, relics, stratagems helping even more, i dont know that. The numbers to roll are : Warptime (6), prescience (7), diabolic strength (6), glamour of tzeentch (7), temporal manipulation (6) and weaver of faith (6). There is another psychic power called gaze of fates (6) which lets you re-roll one dice later that turn. And the command re-roll is another possible re-roll.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
p5freak wrote:
Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
p5freak wrote:
I want less psychic powers. Or they should be much harder to cast. Some combinations are ridiculous.

Except it really isn't that bad since you're limited to one of each a turn.

Yeah, casting warptime, prescience, diabolic strength, glamour of tzeentch, temporal manipulation and weaver of faith on magnus really isnt that bad

Then MAYBE...just MAYBE...don't shoot Magnus? If they want to throw all their eggs in one basket let them.

Ok, just let magnus destroy half of the army.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pT59OhRzoE

Sorry but Magnus destroying "half the army" is an exaggeration. Go after the other parts of the army. He's a 400+ point model. There's a whole 4/5 you're choosing to not go after.

**Trimarius**

I'd also like to see a few more powers available, at least for the couple of armies that are all but forced to field multiple psykers and don't have access to multiple disciplines (granted, that's mostly just mono-god daemons and Tyranids at this point), if nothing else.

As it stands, I end up doubling up on powers or just accepting that I'm going to be chucking a bunch of smites pretty much every game when I run my nids, as every HQ you're likely to take is a psyker. 4+ psykers, some of which know multiple powers, really burns through the chart. Having two disciplines would at least give you the opportunity to choose.

Obviously a rebalance of the existing powers wouldn't go amiss, either. There are some truly head scratching comparisons within most of them.