Hellebore wrote:
the space marine deatchment is giving me hope for the craftworld seer detachment giving more psychic shenanigans.

And hey, look. an instance where the psychic keyword actually has a positive effect. I know some people here will be happy to see that change.

 PenitentJake wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
the space marine deatchment is giving me hope for the craftworld seer detachment giving more psychic shenanigans.

And hey, look. an instance where the psychic keyword actually has a positive effect. I know some people here will be happy to see that change.

I would have been very happy...

Had it been a universal change, and not something that only applies to marines, who already have 7 detachments, plus the detachments are in their supplement, for those that have them.

 JNAProductions wrote:

 PenitentJake wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
the space marine deatchment is giving me hope for the craftworld seer detachment giving more psychic shenanigans.

And hey, look. an instance where the psychic keyword actually has a positive effect. I know some people here will be happy to see that change.

I would have been very happy...

Had it been a universal change, and not something that only applies to marines, who already have 7 detachments, plus the detachments are in their supplement, for those that have them.

Why does Psyker get complaints about being a Keyword that only gives penalties, but Monster doesn't?

 Hellebore wrote:
Probably legacy from most of the game's history where a psyker was a thing that did things, rather than a keyword that denotes when an anti weapon kills you easier.

With the psychic powers being special rules or weapons, a psyker isn't really anything now. I understand why mechanically, but I can see how it just makes psykers look boring.


Also agree on the universal application, but my original post was hoping that the seer council got similar given they don't seem to be interested in universal.

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
Probably legacy from most of the game's history where a psyker was a thing that did things, rather than a keyword that denotes when an anti weapon kills you easier.

With the psychic powers being special rules or weapons, a psyker isn't really anything now. I understand why mechanically, but I can see how it just makes psykers look boring.


Also agree on the universal application, but my original post was hoping that the seer council got similar given they don't seem to be interested in universal.

Which is why Psychic abilities/weapons should be notably better than non-Psychic counterparts, or cheaper, or something.

Look at Assault Intercessors. Their Power Weapon? 4 attacks at S5 AP-2 D1.
Strike Squad's Nemesis Force Weapons? One less attack, but S6 AP-2 D2. And it's on every member of the squad, not just the Sergeant (which is probably why there's one less attack).

 Wyldhunt wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:

Which is why Psychic abilities/weapons should be notably better than non-Psychic counterparts, or cheaper, or something.

Look at Assault Intercessors. Their Power Weapon? 4 attacks at S5 AP-2 D1.
Strike Squad's Nemesis Force Weapons? One less attack, but S6 AP-2 D2. And it's on every member of the squad, not just the Sergeant (which is probably why there's one less attack).

This is one of the things that irks me when people claim there's nothing making a psyker special this edition. The special thing is that they get to *do the thing* in the first place. Most marines aren't shooting lightning or manipulating time or putting up force fields. Librarians are.

I don't feel like psykers are less cool because I don't have to roll 2d6 and ask my opponent to please deny the power before I shoot lightning or bend time this edition.

sambojin wrote:
What would the Dakka community think if the Thousand Sons detachment had one small but useful sentence added to their detachment rule?

"Prosperine Kopeshes and Tzaangor Blades count as [Psychic] attacks in this detachment."

 PenitentJake wrote:
So when a Librarian with the Leader keyword has two abilities, nothing is special about either of those abilities because they are psychic. If the character were not psychic, the only difference would be that GW would have to figure out different fluff for whatever rule would be there in its place.

Now certainly, if the Librarian has one Leader power (not psychic) one personal power (not psychic) AND an additional power (psychic), then yes, that character IS actually getting something special, or at least something in addition to a character of equivalent points could be expected to have.

But I think the biggest thing that prevents psychic powers from feeling special is the lack of choice.

Yes, a psychic weapon profile will be stronger than other weapon profiles, and it can sometimes be used in addition to other weapon profiles... But it still is just another weapon profile... Which is a thing that every unit has. An actual psychic attack power would be something that was not a weapon profile. It would be something in addition to a weapon profile, which was possessed only by other psykers.

And it wouldn't be assigned by default to all models of the same type; it would be selected from a list of other powers which were neither weapon profiles nor datacard abilities, but in addition to them. This would mean that if you had two Librarians of the same type in your army, they could serve different tactical roles because their powers would be chosen rather than assigned.

sambojin wrote:
What would the Dakka community think if the Thousand Sons detachment had one small but useful sentence added to their detachment rule?

"Prosperine Kopeshes and Tzaangor Blades count as [Psychic] attacks in this detachment."

Would that work for you? It gives the detachment an obvious identity (not CoM-lite), allows for a few cool uses for underused units (Scarabs and Tzaangor), but doesn't really overpower them because the detachment rule is still pretty bad.

Would a unit of S6/S7 Termies or Tzaangor help too much, or not enough? Reroll 1's or +1 to-wound in melee isn't that big on either, but it's a nice chipper boost. It's not saying "don't take Magnus", but after you take 1-2 units of either Scarabs or Chickens, you'd be hard pressed into having the points too. And less cabal points and shooting psychic for the effort.
(And honestly, even at peak performance, they're like 300+pt Powerfist side-grades on Termies, or 1 200+pt medium melee unit with good OC)

We already do a bit of melee, but this does other melee, and other OC. Yeah, there's Mutas, but they don't do psychic.

Would that one sentence addition change it into an ok'ish detachment? Just a different way that you can play your army, with not-very-used troops (that aren't bad, they're just not good at anything for the points, even with the MFM update). So, a potential second style of play might be handy, rather than CoM "now only three-quarters as good" edition.

It's like they didn't know we didn't have that many psychic attacks (just heaps of rules that make it feel like we did). But if we could have a few more in this detachment (melee, but we don't have that other than Magnus or DPs usually), would that work for you?

It just "feels" a lot better, with that sentence. And adds a tonne of build options, that you never would have taken before. Almost like it's TSons "could try and do melee/ OC" edition, which is a good thing I think.

 PenitentJake wrote:
Inside this spoiler tag is my response to Wyldhunt's response to my. disatisfaction with 10th ed psychic rules; that disatisfaction was mentioned in this thread because the new marine librarian detachment fixes some of my biggest problems with 10th's psychic rules, but by doing so only for Marines, it actually makes 10th's psychic system (or lack there of) fell even worse, because now it's an inadequate system that only applies to second-class armies. I hid it in a spoiler because it is hell of a long response, and the argument is a tangent from the main discussion.

I hope some people still read it... But then sometimes I feel like people ignore my posts even when I don't hide them, so whatever.

Spoiler:

 Wyldhunt wrote:

 PenitentJake wrote:
So when a Librarian with the Leader keyword has two abilities, nothing is special about either of those abilities because they are psychic. If the character were not psychic, the only difference would be that GW would have to figure out different fluff for whatever rule would be there in its place.

See, that's the thing. Something being psychic in nature doesn't really matter 99% of the time. Nor should it.

Respectfully, you are wrong. When one use a weapon, they pull a trigger, and if they aimed properly, someone dies. Somebody with a different gun still pulls the trigger, and if they aimed properly someone dies. When someone uses a psychic power, they take the substance of another dimension, the stuff of daemons and nightmares into themselves, and if they can control it, they can shape into one of several possible effects, one of which MIGHT be shooting lightning across the field. The first two examples are things that any human, from a guardsmen penal trooper to a chaptermaster can do, but the third is a thing that only one in a million can do, and those one in a million are hunted and exterminated when they can't be controlled, because if their power goes wrong, it can destroy worlds or summon horrors into existence.

Given the similarity of examples A & B, using similar mechanics to represent those actions makes sense. But the third example, being so profoundly different from the first two, should not be resolved using the same mechanics. It should FEEL different because it IS different. If you treat it the same way as a gun, it just feels like a gun. But it isn't. The lowliest Grot or Ogryn can use a gun. There is nothing special about them. Hell, they exist in our modern world that's how boring they are. Why would you want a potentially cataclysmic event, a supernatural force shaped by the will of a one-in-a-million creature to be treated and resolved in the same manner as something that you or I good do in the real world after taking a a trip to the local sports store with zero training?

THAT is the thing doesn't make sense here.

I think part of our difference of opinion here is that you are coming at the psychic rules as if you're designing a game from scratch, and your goal is to make it as easy to play and efficient as possible to reduce mental load.

I am looking at the 40 years of game that came before 10th and trying to figure out how to make something that is a byproduct of one of the most unique, thematic and disturbing elements of the game feel as significant as it is in the fictional world of the game, and I believe that if a player has insufficient personal capacity to deal with that mental load, they should simply play another game, since catering to that lowest common denominator would make the game so simple that it is boring to people who DO have that personal cognitive capacity and are only interested in hobbies that provide opportunities for them to use it.

If that sounds elitist, sue me. If I wanted to play checkers, I'd just play checkers, not try to make 40k into checkers.

 Wyldhunt wrote:


If someone has a forcefield, it doesn't generally matter whether said forcefield is coming from a gadget on their backpack or from some mind magic.

It does though. Because using the forcefield is something a child could do. Press the button, forcefield on. Press again, forcefield off. You do not need to be a librarian to use a forcefield. You don't even need to be a soldier. And if something goes wrong with the forcefield? What's the worst that can happen? Whereas if something goes wrong with a psychic power, it could lead to the death of a planet. Do we sacrifice thousands of people with forcefields every day to maintain the Astronomicon? Are forcefields a theme of the game? In D&D, class features are different than skills in many ways- you have to hit an experience threshold to qualify, they are unique to a class so they are exclusive, where even the lowliest NPC has access to skills. The reason you don't hear anyone say "Oh, just replace class features with extra skill points" is that D&D players know that would be boring as feth.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

The end result is generally the same

In previous versions of the game, psychic powers weren't just about end results though. Missions sometimes required psychic actions, so they could be game hooks; psychic powers were chosen, so they helped define a character; they could be augmented in different ways as the character gained experience, so that even two identical powers might not operate the same way when used by two different Legendary Characters who chose to study different facets of the same power as they grew;
the inclusion of a psyker in an army has the narrative potential to affect the composition of the other army or the campaign- look at the psychic apocalypse rules from 3rd ed Witch Hunters or the Crusade rules for Grey Knight daemonic adversaries; look at the Agendas that deal with thwarting psychic powers in various ways.

There is a whole ecosystem of Lore-based, in universe interactions around psychic powers, and you can't represent that ecosystem of interactions properly when the mechanics used for a psychic power are the same as the mechanics for a gun.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

(setting aside anti-psychic fields for a moment).

Why? Because the inclusion of anti-psychic fields complicates your argument to the point where it no longer holds water?

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Adding extra mechanics to make them "feel special" just kind of strikes me as overcomplicating the rules for basically no reason.

No, it's because in the Lore, they ARE special- that's why they have to feel that way. There aren't entire organizations designed specifically to hunt people who use guns or forcefields or hide in shadows. There ARE organizations that exist purely to hunt, exterminate, capture and control psykers. Why? Because psychic powers ARE special. Psykers ARE special. THAT'S why they need to feel that way.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Having an X% chance of your psychic "gun" not working isn't fluffy for most psykers in the game, doesn't lead to interesting choices, and doesn't make the psychic "gun" feel special. At least not to me.

No, perhaps not. But having an x% chance of your psychic gun working is only ONE of the interactions within the ecosystem of possibilities available when psykers are properly supported. In previous editions, you might take a psyker not because you liked their psychic gun, but because they could (in addition to using that psychic gun) talk to the dead, allowing them to retrieve intel from an enemy that they killed in close combat as part of a Crusade Agenda. And deciding to do that and collect XP rather than stand on the objective to get VP IS an interesting choice. And with those XP, you might want to choose between making your Psychic gun stronger, or getting an extra power which isn't a psychic gun, but maybe a movement boost. Or maybe you don't take an additional power, or make your gun stronger... Maybe you make it harder for other psychics to nullify your gun. Again, pretty interesting choice, right?

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Now certainly, if the Librarian has one Leader power (not psychic) one personal power (not psychic) AND an additional power (psychic), then yes, that character IS actually getting something special, or at least something in addition to a character of equivalent points could be expected to have.

See. This is bizarre to me. A librarian shooting lightning and bending time doesn't feel psychic enough, but if he can shout orders or give a squad a scout move or whatever in addition to that, suddenly his psychic powers are acceptable.

Because, again, psykers in the lore are characters who can do weird things with warp energy IN ADDITION to being able to use guns (like every other person can) or forcefields (like any other person can) or hide in shadows (like any other person can).

 Wyldhunt wrote:

But I think the biggest thing that prevents psychic powers from feeling special is the lack of choice.

I find it interesting that whenever the topic of powers not "feeling special" comes up, people almost always come back to this. I feel like the way psychic powers work is fine and what people actually miss is the ability to customize their character's power selections. Which. Totally get it. Fully agree. But can someone tell me why people always seem to conflate the psychic system with power/wargear customization? Those are two very different things. (Not trying to pick on you here, Jake. Just perplexed by how often this seems to be the case.)

Well, ask yourself how you add that customization (with which you agree) back into the game without a psychic system of some sort. Again, people managed to convince me that we didn't need a psychic phase if the rules were well written enough. But how do you do this? Lets say we want six possible psychic powers (GW always liked six, because a could be randomized using the ubiquitous die type if players wanted to roll for powers rather than choose). So let's say two of those powers are attacks, one is a leader datacard ability, two are persoanl buffs and one is a debuff.

Using current mechanics, how do you pick them? Where on the datasheet do you write the choices? Because two have to go with the other weapon profiles since that's how they're represented... but then on the back of the card, you'd have to write that you could only take one of those attacks, and only if you didn't take any of the four powers that aren't listed with the weapon profiles. The other four options all have to be listed in the unit rules section of the datacard, but you'd also have to indicate that they only one of them can be used, and only if neither of the weapon profile powers are used.

Or, would having a table of psychic rules SEPARATE from the datacard be an easier way to reinsert the customization (which you 100% agree with) back into the game?

Especially given that having the separate table of rules ALSO facilitates organizing thematically related powers into "disciplines" so that psykers could not only choose powers from a table, but choose which table to choose from. And that becomes important when we pull Crusade back into the mix, because choosing an extra power from a discipline that you already know is a different Battle Honour than choosing a power from a new Discipline... One which actually communicates elements of a psyker's personality: the guy who knows three powers from one discipline is a specialist, where another who knows a single power from each of three disciplines is a generalist. The former studies from the same region or group of people, while the later probably has to travel or have a larger network of teachers.

Good mechanics don't just resolve things on the battlefield- they express and create narrative. This is why they sometimes need to be more complex than the bare minimum required to resolve an action on the table in the moment.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Yes, a psychic weapon profile will be stronger than other weapon profiles, and it can sometimes be used in addition to other weapon profiles... But it still is just another weapon profile... Which is a thing that every unit has. An actual psychic attack power would be something that was not a weapon profile. It would be something in addition to a weapon profile, which was possessed only by other psykers.

I mean, this historically hasn't necessarily been the case. Look at the powers from 7th edition. When you're telekinetically hurtling rocks at people, it has a statline that makes you think someone is flinging rocks around.

I skipped 7th, so I don't know if it was one of the editions with a psychic phase or not, but either way, that power in 7th a) might have caused perils, b) could be dispelled by other psychics, c) could be used in addition to a conventional weapon d) could ONLY be performed by a psyker, e) could be a trigger for reactive strats or actions that are not triggered by conventional attacks, g) may have failed (and yes, like you, I don't think this option is all that interesting... But it does differentiate psychic stone throwing from gunslinging) and h) was chosen from a list of other possible powers which may have included buffs and debuffs in addition to attacks, leading to interesting and meaningful choices that include an opportunity cost.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Sure, sometimes you have Eldritch Storms spinning vehicles around or Jaws of the World Wolf doing weird initiative tests.

Unless it's 10th, because the rules in 10th aren't complex enough to allow either of those things to occur, which is the whole point of the discussion.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

But sometimes you're just a pink horror tossing a shooting attack at the enemy.

Except no, you're not because of the 8 reasons I listed above, and claiming otherwise is disingenuous.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

I'm not any less impressed by a librarian shooting melta beams around and protecting himself with a kineshield just because you can get similar rules from a meltagun and iron halo.

Well the fact that you don't see the fluff/lore difference between something achieved by a piece of technology and something achieved through sheer force of human will is your mental failing, not mine, and the fact that you will settle for expressing the two in the same way despite these profound differences demonstrates your laziness, not mine.

And there's no logical in-universe reason why the Librarian using those powers shouldn't ALSO be able to use the equipment in addition to the powers, but in the current system it tends to be either/or. You're a captain? Great. You get an Inferno pistol and a halo. You're a Librarian? Great. You get a meltaray and a kineshield. Woo hoo- now you're both functionally identical, despite the fact that you're different in the lore and represented by different models- nothing special about either one of you.

But at least Wyldhunt doesn't have to learn or remember any extra rules, which is great, because that's the only metric by which a game's mechanics should be judged- how few and simple they are. Who cares how reflective they are of the phenomenon they are attempting to simulate? Who cares whether or not the reflect themes of the fictional universe they represent?

 Wyldhunt wrote:

And it wouldn't be assigned by default to all models of the same type; it would be selected from a list of other powers which were neither weapon profiles nor datacard abilities, but in addition to them. This would mean that if you had two Librarians of the same type in your army, they could serve different tactical roles because their powers would be chosen rather than assigned.

Right. Customization. Which we agree would be nice, but the fact that two librarians know how to do the same things doesn't make those things any less psychic in nature.

Perhaps not, but it does make the unit less interesting because it can only function in one assigned way, which is just as negative (if not more) than feeling less psychic.

What does make it feel less psychic is the lack of the other seven characteristics I mentioned above. Other than redundancy, what's the point of a chapter having multiple psykers when they all do the same thing anyway? You seem to like "easy to use" and "convenient" so much that you are willing to accept the "boring" part. I'd rather have to commit ten pages of text to memory and have an interesting army and game, than being able to play with minimal effort at the cost of my units all feeling identical and the game not feeling like it reflects the phenomena that it's mechanics are supposed to evoke. I am willing to exert effort in order to achieve fulfilling entertainment.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

We don't need psychic tests and deny the witch roles and extra phases of the turn that make timing awkward because this movement power should really have just happened in the movement phase and this melee power could really just be handled in the fight phase and so forth.

As I said before, I can live without the dedicated phase if the rules are written well enough. But Deny the Witch? Look, SoS, SoB and Cullexus assassins exist: Deny the Witch is a part of their identity. Without Deny the Witch, why do we need them. If a psychic attack is just another gun, why is there an Ordo Hereticus?

And while I can live without the dedicated phase, it's existence was another way to differentiate effects which were psychically created and those which were not. A Harlequin runs faster than a Marine so one move 6" and one moves 8". Now if the marine has a power that gives them an extra 2" move, and that is executed during the movement phase, it can be reacted to by other models in the same way they react to movement, and kinda just feels like that marine is a better runner than other marines. They are functionally identical to the Harlequin, rather than feeling like a marine with a psychic power.

But if it happens in the psychic phase, then it can't be reacted to in the same way as movement, and specialized units who have particular reactions that are only triggered be psychic activity now have a better cue- both the psychic and the denier feel like they are doing something that other units can't do. It makes "Running Faster" into something that feels supernatural because it's represented on the table in a way that isn't the same as what basically amounts to an advance move, which every other unit in the game can already do.

Now before I wrap this up dude, I want to apologize for the places in this post where my passion for the subject got the best of me, and my tone shifted far enough that some of what I wrote might have sounded like a personal attack. If you and I were having this discussion face to face, you'd hear the tone of my voice and know that I wasn't trying to start a fight... I agree with 90% or more of what you post in these forums, and I think you're always pretty damned respectful when you post. Your opinions on the current state of psychic rules actually shock me precisely because our points of view on so many other elements of the game do line up well. A better, bigger man might have edited out the parts that crossed a line, but I've already put wAY too much time into this post to do that, so I hope you'll accept an apology after the fact. Cheers!

 Wyldhunt wrote:
@PenitentJake: Psychic response below

Spoiler:

 Wyldhunt wrote:

A lot of your post boils down to the sentiment here that special powers have cool fluff, so therefore they need to have more complicated game mechanics to make them feel sufficiently dramatic.

Sort of? I suppose you could reduce it to that?

It's more that I think mechanics should, in some way, represent the phenomenon they are meant to express. So for example, you look at a psychic power that confers a ranged attack, has more in common with a mundane weapon than it does with a different psychic power which confers an invulnerable save, or provides an aura. Despite the difference in effect, I believe that these three powers have more in common with each other than each of them does with other similar non-psychic effect. Because for me, what defines a power as psychic is it's "psychicness" not the specific effect that psychicness produces.

That may sound overly philosophical or whatever, but the warp is a theme that permeates the game, and psychic abilities are a part of that theme. I want psychic powers to feel different from weapon profiles because the Imperium could not exist without psychic navigation and communication. Sure, a ranged attack is a ranged attack effect wise, but one of those ranged attacks is empowered by the some phenomenon that allows humans to travel faster than light, or is literally the stuff of daemons, and its psychic nature means that it has more in common with other psychic phenomenon than it does with other ranged attacks, even if a particualr psychic effect IS a ranged attack.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Basically, I think you're overly impressed by this one particular bit of fluff and letting that cloud your judgement on game mechanics.

Oh, I'm down right obsessed with psychic phenomenon as a foundational theme of 40k; I think you're not obsessed enough with it. Warp travel can't happen without it. It had a huge impact on how and why the Heresy played out, entire factions exist because of it and it's thematically foundational to the game in a way that archeotech, or martian tech, or tryranid bio-tech aren't.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

At the end of the day, a librarian shooting fire from his fingertips is basically just a flamethrower 99% of the time.

Is explained in more words above: No, at any time of day, 100% of the time, psychically shooting fire from your fingertips has more in common with putting up a psychic forcefield, or psychically conferring a stealth aura the does with shooting a flamethrower, because the latter is not a psychic effect, while the other three are. The effect is but one element of a psychic power- certainly the element that has the greatest impact upon the game, which is why many people do believe it makes sense to treat a ranged psychic attack like a mundane ranged attack, a psychic invulnerable save like one generated by tech and any other power like a datacard ability instead of finding a way to treat all of those things like psychic powers. And I'm not in any way suggesting it has to be complicated, nor am I suggesting that it should be done as it has been in any previous version. It just has to feel like all of those widely varied psychic powers are actually psychic powers rather than feeling like two are weapon profiles, one is a save and the rest are datacard abilities. One of your suggestions, which will get to below, gets us 80% of the way there.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

I acknowledge that there can be merit in making an effect "stand out" using a subsystem, not because it improves the gameplay directly but because it can add to the player experience. In the same way that well-designed graphics in a video game can make that game more immersive.

Well there it is right there: that's really all I'm trying to say, and I personally don't believe the current system isn't great because I don't think it does that. So if you can acknowledge that, heck that's great.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

However, the way that past editions did this struck me as more unfluffy than fluffy much of the time. While some random unsanctioned human psyker might be at risk of perils'ing hard enough to kill himself and take the local hab block with him, that's just not a thing you generally see librarians and farseers and chaos sorcerers doing.

Past editions certainly weren't perfect either and never claimed otherwise. And perils of the warp as per the mechanics of 9th ed (double sixes) isn't something that generally happens. The mechanics ensure that it's the type of thing that happens only 2.78% of the time. But you see, by having a game where the Perils effect exists creates the design space for a psychic debuff that makes enemies more likely to be affected by perils, or a way for the Psyker to risk more in the casting for a greater effect- perils on double anything rather than just 6's.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

If you're trying to recreate a battle from a BL novel,

I'm not. And in fact, I think the idea that this is what rules should do is a bit of a problem, because I think most Black Library writers get it wrong; I think their stories should be more in line with the game, not that the game should be like the stories. Black Library is not 40k; it's the novelization of 40k. It's BASED on a true story... But it is NOT the true story. I don't even consider BL to be fluff.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Ahriman suddenly exploding and killing his nearby allies would feel really out of character.

Well Ahriman isn't just a run of the mill psyker, but don't you think that it makes more sense to give guys like him and Eldrad and Mephiston or whoever immunity, rather than ditching the whole Perils and Deny system with the un-intended consequence that Joe-bob the Rogue psyker who discovered his power 3 days ago can also never suffer Perils or be Denied?

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Similarly, I struggle to think of novels where a librarian is suddenly unable to shoot lightning from his hands because another psyker is denying the witch.

Yeah, but see I think that's a flaw in the novel. I think Black Library authors should play more often than they do to remind themselves that these things DO happen in game, and should at least occasionally happen in books. We'll get into why right after this quote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Denying the witch just isn't a thing psykers are regularly doing to each other in the lore. Nor are librarians regularly failing to shoot lightning in general (i.e. failed psychic tests).

Do you think that if Joe-Bob the Rogue psyker how discovered his powers three days ago casts lightning on Ahriman that it's unfluffy for Ahriman to deny that? Because if you do, in order to make it happen, you need Deny the Witch or something like it. Again, the system exists to provide the design space for effects to occur when they should and to not occur when the shouldn't. A well designed system would make named Psykers, Crusade Psykers of Legendary rank, Chief Librarians and equivalents never suffer Perils and would not allow their powers to be denied by psykers of lesser rank; regular Librarians or Warlocks and Crusaders of Battle Hardened Rank should occasionally risk Perils... Say about 2.78% of the time. Joe-Bob the Rogue Pysker, mortal cultists and green or Blooded Crusaders should suffer perils more often and should expect Librarian level psykers to have a shot at Denying and named Psykers to be immune to them.

That's far more fluffy than "Nobody Perils and Nobody gets Denied" which is what we have.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Failed psychic tests, deny the witch, and perils just didn't really represent the lore very well. I'd be open to a system that *does* represent the lore better, but for now I'd rather be rid of unfluffy mechanics that make it clunkier to resolve effects.

So yes, agreed on failed psychic tests- get rid of them. And no, implementations of Perils and Deny may have felt unfluffy, the lore concept of both Perils and Deny are fundamental principles of psychic ability- especially Perils. They are important enough that a flawed system is better than now system. If perils isn't possible, why does the Hereticus exist?

 Wyldhunt wrote:

You don't sound elitist. You just kinda come off as a dick in this post. But I'll refrain from taking further jabs as I respond to the rest of your post.

Fair. Trying to do better this time.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

You can easily design missions for 10th that require psykers to perform actions. We just don't have that in matched play because it's not a good one-size-fits-all mechanic. See: the Ritual from 9th edition. This isn't a problem with how psychic powers work in 10th. It's a desire to add specific secondaries or missions to your games.

True, but again the more robust the psychic system is, the more design space we have to make those missions interesting. Like maybe in a certain zone of the board (ie. proximity to one of the objectives) Perils are more likely to occur for non Chaos psykers to represent the fact that the objective is a powerful chaos relic. Or maybe if you pick up the objective, you can more effectively Deny the Witch. Those mission interactions are easy in a game system where the mechanics for Perils and Deny exist, but in a system where the don't exist, the mission has to contain all the rules.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

psychic powers were chosen, so they helped define a character;

We've already agreed that character customization was nice and that we'd both like to see it come back.

We did, and it wasn't the only thing we agreed on, nor will it be the last. That's why I'm surprised that you come across as "Status quo is fine"

 Wyldhunt wrote:

But choosing your psyker's powers is a different topic from how those powers work.

Mostly. But as soon as you offer a suite of choices to each faction. you might need more design space than "Well, unless it's a weapon profile, a save or a datacard ability, we can't do it."

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Not familiar with how this was handled before, but I know that weapon powers can be modified through weapon upgrades in modern Crusade.

Weapon upgrades modify a specific weapon's stats. Psychic Mastery, due to the diversity of psychic power effects can't really do that, so instead it manipulates the system that governs the use of powers- you know an extra power, you can use an extra power per turn, that sorta thing. This made it feel very different from weapons upgrades, so it was really cool when a Psyker might take some weapon upgrades and some Psychic mastery upgrades.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

I can't comment on 3rd edition much as I never played it. Are you making the case that psychic powers today should work the way they did in 3rd edition Apoc? Because if so, that's a more specific conversation that I can't really engage in.

Psychic Apocalypse was a rule that allowed an army fighting Witch Hunters to include a free Psyker so that the witch hunters had a witch to hunt. There were powers it could be given, and statlines, and FW even made a model based on the artwork for the unit. There was also a mission, and it was particularly suitable for a game against someone using the Psychic Apocalypse unit, but they could be used in regular missions as well.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

What agendas involved thwarting psychic powers? Was it just an agenda you succeed at for denying the witch? That sounds about as interesting as the agendas that gave you xp for casting powers. Not my cup of tea, personally.

Sadly, some of them were that simple. But again, having a system opens design space. Perform this action on an objective that you control. Thereafter, units within range of this objective receive +1 to Deny rolls is a cool example of a fluffy Agenda that could only exist in a system that includes Deny rules. It's been a while since I looked at my 9th ed books, but next time I do, I'll keep my eyes open.

There is a whole ecosystem of Lore-based, in universe interactions around psychic powers, and you can't represent that ecosystem of interactions properly when the mechanics used for a psychic power are the same as the mechanics for a gun.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

(setting aside anti-psychic fields for a moment).

Why? Because the inclusion of anti-psychic fields complicates your argument to the point where it no longer holds water?

Because the things that meaningfully interact with psychic effects like that are few and far between. We're mostly talking about:
* 1 type of assassin
* Sisters of Silence
* Depending on the edition, sisters of battle.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Now you can make a case for wanting those units to have more potent anti-psychic rules than they currently do, but we probably don't need a universal subsystem that impacts every army with a psyker just to support the gimmick of a 1.5 factions and an assassin. Just like we don't need a universal subsystem for admech doing computer stuff.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

I think this is all addressed above. We agree that customization is good. There's nothing stopping 10th edition from having psyker-related actions, agendas, or objectives.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Just make powers a wargear option. Preferably the same way it worked in 3rd-5th where you just pay points for whichever powers you take, but you could also just make it a free swap between one of several options at the start of the game if wargear points are off the table. So at the start of the game, my farseer can choose one of the following: Guide, Doom, Eldritch Storm, etc.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

You could complicate it from there with strats if you wanted, but that's getting more detailed than necessary for this discussion.