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But then there's also a thematic issue: why is anyone in 40k scared of psykers when they don't do anything special? Why is a third of the Inquisition dedicated to stopping some guy from having the equivalent of a plasma gun strapped to his forehead? Why is there a Culexus or Sister of Silence? Because we need to stop this daemon-crazed sorcerer from... giving Sustained Hits 1 to his squad oh no!

It's very disjointed.

You're not wrong, but the current paradigm has clearly decided that they are just plasma guns strapped to your head...

The threat is more in terms of possession and warp gateways caused by being an unrestrained psyker, not necessarily because you can plasma gun someone. Until they decide that psykers should be unique from other mechanics, they're just going to be that.

IMO they should have a spectrum, from auto low power to pushed high power but also overclock and fumbled.

ie the risk of psychic powers is you lose control, but only if you're overcharging them and can't handle the juice. That can result in triple the output, or a daemonic incursion.

 Hellebore wrote:


Go back 5 editions and buff/debuff abilities were usually ONLY found on psykers. There were no mundane buff abilities like them, giving psykers a utility function in the game that was not equivalent to anything else. The ranged and melee attacks overlapped but the buffs didn't. That's changed now and the difference between psyker and non psyker abilities has narrowed considerably.

In the current paradigm, there really is no difference between how a unit gets its rules, whether wargear, skill, psychic or abstract gamification. the outcome is the same.

Very well put

in the current landscape of 40k where every unit has a special rule and every character gives out some sort of buff in either an aura or as part of being attached to a unit - the niche of pyskers is diluted considerably. That unit having a buff (whatever the source) of being able to reroll hits would have been a power in previous editions, you had to cast - at a cost and risk - now it's just an auto ability with no counter play or risk.

I think psykers need to be redesigned entirely, which realistically in the current ruleset is not possible.

I think the scary stuff with untrained psykers is more for RPGs than wargames - the wargame sort of assumes the psykers on the battlefield are "safe" in some way - soul bound to the Emperor, highly trained, naturally gifted or relying on latent fields rather than the true warp.

So not having crazy warp rifts and stuff is probably fine for the wargame level. But it does take away some of the flavour of the game, for sure.

 Da Boss wrote:
I think the scary stuff with untrained psykers is more for RPGs than wargames - the wargame sort of assumes the psykers on the battlefield are "safe" in some way - soul bound to the Emperor, highly trained, naturally gifted or relying on latent fields rather than the true warp.

So not having crazy warp rifts and stuff is probably fine for the wargame level. But it does take away some of the flavour of the game, for sure.

issue is that it'd be hard to make a rule for opening warp rifts a) fun b) interesting c) not incredibly annoying if you don't want it to happen

great flavor, but a million issues in practice

I'd love a rule where a weirdboy has a non zero chance of going critical and turning himself into a vortex grenade that moves randomly across the battlefield.

 StudentOfEtherium wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
I think the scary stuff with untrained psykers is more for RPGs than wargames - the wargame sort of assumes the psykers on the battlefield are "safe" in some way - soul bound to the Emperor, highly trained, naturally gifted or relying on latent fields rather than the true warp.

So not having crazy warp rifts and stuff is probably fine for the wargame level. But it does take away some of the flavour of the game, for sure.

issue is that it'd be hard to make a rule for opening warp rifts a) fun b) interesting c) not incredibly annoying if you don't want it to happen

great flavor, but a million issues in practice

Everyone needing to own a Daemon Prince in 7th just in case was certainly not ideal.