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 alextroy wrote:
That was only true during 8th and 9th Editions. Back in the 3rd-7th Editions, you did make a Psychic Test to gain the ability to make a Shooting Attack with your psychic power.

Tyranid psykers didn't need to make a psychic test to make shooting attacks (in 3rd and 4th, we do not talk about 5th and 6th).

Psychic Powers in general have been screwy in the last edition.

They are more powerful then they've ever been.

In all previous editions, blanks have been immune to Psychic attacks.

Not anymore!

I'm a soulless psyker assassin... and my only defense against [psychic] is that I get a crummy Feel No Pain against the attacks im supposedly immune to.

Should Grey Knights have to make a test to stab people with their swords? They're all Psychic weapons, unless replaced with their gakky CCW.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
Psychic Powers in general have been screwy in the last edition.

They are more powerful then they've ever been.

In all previous editions, blanks have been immune to Psychic attacks.

Not anymore!

I'm a soulless psyker assassin... and my only defense against [psychic] is that I get a crummy Feel No Pain against the attacks im supposedly immune to.

When a psyker tries to mess with your soul directly, a blank should be entirely immune.
When a psyker throws a boulder at you with their telekinesis, a blank should have no special protection.

Yeah agree, blanks should be immune to psychic abilities. But a psychic fire ball is still a fire ball if you take away the psychic part.

 Tyran wrote:
Yeah agree, blanks should be immune to psychic abilities. But a psychic fire ball is still a fire ball if you take away the psychic part.

So why don't we define precisely what the 'psychic' part is adding to the attack?

Then, to use your example, the psychic-immune model could disregard the psychic buff to the attack but could still potentially be affected by the non-psychic aspect of the fireball (or bullet or blade or whatever the psychic buff is being applied to).

 Tyran wrote:
Yeah agree, blanks should be immune to psychic abilities. But a psychic fire ball is still a fire ball if you take away the psychic part.

What if it's psychic "witch-fire" made up of the warp?

There's too many caveats.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:

 Tyran wrote:
Yeah agree, blanks should be immune to psychic abilities. But a psychic fire ball is still a fire ball if you take away the psychic part.

What if it's psychic "witch-fire" made up of the warp?

There's too many caveats.

Then it depends how strong the blank is.

A Culexus could, reasonably, suppress pure warpfire in an area around them, only getting a little toasty.
A weaker blank, without the gear of a Culexus, might not be touched directly by the fire but the heat would cause damage anyway.

And here's the thing-a Librarian has Smite as their psychic attack. Is it warp lightning? Fire started by psychic might, but otherwise normal? Hurling large rocks and debris?
We don't know. That's true for most psychic powers.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:

 Tyran wrote:
Yeah agree, blanks should be immune to psychic abilities. But a psychic fire ball is still a fire ball if you take away the psychic part.

What if it's psychic "witch-fire" made up of the warp?

There's too many caveats.

Yes, in which case you go for the most general and least restrictive one and don't try to make someone immune to a whole weapon class that has too many caveats.

 Tyran wrote:

 Lathe Biosas wrote:

 Tyran wrote:
Yeah agree, blanks should be immune to psychic abilities. But a psychic fire ball is still a fire ball if you take away the psychic part.

What if it's psychic "witch-fire" made up of the warp?

There's too many caveats.

Yes, in which case you go for the most general and least restrictive one and don't try to make someone immune to a whole weapon class that has too many caveats.

And that's why you'll never see him take the field.

 Jidmah wrote:
I think they should stick with having different powers for different psykers.

I disagree, because...

 Jidmah wrote:

This allows multiple psykers in an army to fulfill different roles, even without bespoke army rules.

Letting EVERY army's psykers choose a power from a list does the same thing, AND it's YOUR DUDES.

See, the problem with assigned powers is this: Let's say I'm running a first company, all terminator army and I want three psykers... Guess what? They're all the same. I like the phobos psyker model and I want to run two... Why shouldn't one have access to a utility power while the other is on offense?

I’d like options to return for all models.
Not just psykers.

I think, if most all characters got a couple of ability options, letting Psykers choose at the start of the game instead in list building would be a nifty boost to give them.

 PenitentJake wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
I think they should stick with having different powers for different psykers.

I disagree, because...

 Jidmah wrote:

This allows multiple psykers in an army to fulfill different roles, even without bespoke army rules.

Letting EVERY army's psykers choose a power from a list does the same thing, AND it's YOUR DUDES.

See, the problem with assigned powers is this: Let's say I'm running a first company, all terminator army and I want three psykers... Guess what? They're all the same. I like the phobos psyker model and I want to run two... Why shouldn't one have access to a utility power while the other is on offense?

My suggesting is that each faction has a small list of powers (1 offense, 1 defense and 1 utility, and with a respective point cost) while individual datasheets have their current bespoke powers, and you have the option of exchanging the psyker's bespoke power with one from the list.

I like the idea that psykers have specialized roles, but I would like to also have the option for more flexibility while still retaining the option for specialized powers.

Maybe let the psykers change their chosen power with a strategem, so you are never stuck with a power that's no longer needed in a game.

 PenitentJake wrote:
See, the problem with assigned powers is this: Let's say I'm running a first company, all terminator army and I want three psykers... Guess what? They're all the same. I like the phobos psyker model and I want to run two... Why shouldn't one have access to a utility power while the other is on offense?

I guess I didn't properly explain myself. What I was saying is that termiantor librarians shouldn't have the same powers as phobos librarians. I'm not opposed to either having more than one set of powers to chose from.

Cherry picking automatically puts all librarians in direct competition for the most efficient way to get access to offensive, utility and debuffs powers, which is why global list of psychic powers are bad.

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 Tyran wrote:
My suggesting is that each faction has a small list of powers (1 offense, 1 defense and 1 utility, and with a respective point cost) while individual datasheets have their current bespoke powers, and you have the option of exchanging the psyker's bespoke power with one from the list.

If you charge points for those, they are essentially the same as enhancements. I don't think GW will be able to balance them properly though, as - just like enhancements, just like psychic disciplines in the past - 90% of them tend to either be auto-takes or a waste of space. There also always is the issue that the value of certain abilities varies widely depending on who is casting it. "this unit gains a 5+ FNP", for example, has a completely different value when cast by a neurotyrant, a norn emissary or a brood of zoantropes. Judging from how GW has handled this for enhancements, it will always be way to expensive to give a power to anyone other than psyker who has the most synergy with it - defeating the whole point of creating faction powers in the first place.

How about something like this for ALL magical armies/characters. All psykers of those factions come with a build in ability, the same they do now. Then the faction would have a set 3-6 , as long as it is not 2 it should be okey, powers that any psyker could use instead of their build in abilty. those basic 3-6 power would be just that, basic. But some models/units/factions would have an ability to empower the ability, but in order to do that you would have some limits. No same empowered ability twice per turn and to empower you would have to fullfill some sort of condition. The condition would/could be different on a per model per faction basic.
So , to not use GK, an ork Wierdboy could use the tellyporta to make an ork unit move faster, but then the orks he is with wouldn't be able to use their unit ability (unless the rules stricktly said it was so, for example for orks it could be that ork psychic powers do not cancle out the units special rule, if the caster and unit happen to be in melee. For eldar farseers it could be the reverse etc). Then the Wierdboy could try to cast the empowered tellyporta, but that would require him to have X number of wounds/orks withing Y" (or half the number at double the range for each ork in melee). Casting an empowered tellyporta would mean that other ork psykers of the faction would not be able to cast the same power. And of course there would be exeptions like some eldar "storm seer" special character being able to cast an eld.storm after it was already cast or empower it for free.

"psychic" weapons could be the same. They would have a regular mode or they could get empowered, when a specific set of conditions were fullfilled.

And if GW really wanted to go crazy and let us play with psychic reactions, like those in Horus Heresy.

Why would casting da jump affect a unit's ability at all?

I mean, the abilities affected here are sticky objective and bomb squigs...

Maybe its going full white knight, but I increasingly quite like 10ths design, and am worried about any return to the past, which is likely to be worse.

I don't think a pool for all psykers is a good idea for the reasons Jidmah says. I'm equally suspect GW can come up with 2 never mind 3 powers of equal value if you are going to lock them to specific characters. I'd rather GW made one good set of rules for a Farseer than try to make 3.

Which I think is my issue - and this is perhaps an issue for the game in general. I think Psykers (and characters in general) should be fairly powerful. What seems to have happened to quite a lot of them is they've been given inconsequential abilities - and then GW has had to make them cheaper and cheaper to try and justify taking them. (Okay they aren't all at DG levels, but give it time).

But being say just 50-60 points doesn't really make a weak psyker any more interesting. Nor would a pool of equally weak abilities. Not a psyker but you could make a Succubus 10 points, and I guess at that it would be an auto-include upgrade for Wyches, but it would still be bad and boring.

Had this thought when looking at the Cabal of Chaos detachment a few weeks back. I realise that's really the "Daemon Prince" detachment - but you feel like you should be able to take a bunch of regular psykers and make a shooting list. But its all very... meh. None of the CSM psykers are especially interesting "as psykers" - and +1 S to shooting is a questionable buff anyway.

 Jidmah wrote:

 PenitentJake wrote:
See, the problem with assigned powers is this: Let's say I'm running a first company, all terminator army and I want three psykers... Guess what? They're all the same. I like the phobos psyker model and I want to run two... Why shouldn't one have access to a utility power while the other is on offense?

I guess I didn't properly explain myself. What I was saying is that termiantor librarians shouldn't have the same powers as phobos librarians. I'm not opposed to either having more than one set of powers to chose from.

Cherry picking automatically puts all librarians in direct competition for the most efficient way to get access to offensive, utility and debuffs powers, which is why global list of psychic powers are bad.

Not so much in the new paradigm of characters being really locked down in what units they can join.

Which librarian you have will depend on what other units you want, otherwise they’re super vulnerable.

You might still have some variety in which librarians can access which powers (e.g. Phobos maybe can have stealthy ones but terminators not), but some crossover is by no means unreasonable.

 Jidmah wrote:

I guess I didn't properly explain myself. What I was saying is that termiantor librarians shouldn't have the same powers as phobos librarians. I'm not opposed to either having more than one set of powers to chose from.

Cherry picking automatically puts all librarians in direct competition for the most efficient way to get access to offensive, utility and debuffs powers, which is why global list of psychic powers are bad.

I suppose that makes sense; if units get choices in their powers, that's what matters to me. If you'd rather offer each psychic unit its personalized choice of 3 abilities rather than just have six powers that any psychic unit in the dex can choose from that's fine. Or, for a dex that has LOTS of psychic units, maybe you could have two tables, one for units A,B and C and one for units X, Y, and Z. Whatever. Like I said, what's important to me is that units get choices so that not every Terminator Librarian will have the same powers, because IF all Terminator Librarians must have the same power, that makes the game boring.

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 Tyran wrote:
My suggesting is that each faction has a small list of powers (1 offense, 1 defense and 1 utility, and with a respective point cost) while individual datasheets have their current bespoke powers, and you have the option of exchanging the psyker's bespoke power with one from the list.

If you charge points for those, they are essentially the same as enhancements. I don't think GW will be able to balance them properly though, as - just like enhancements, just like psychic disciplines in the past - 90% of them tend to either be auto-takes or a waste of space. There also always is the issue that the value of certain abilities varies widely depending on who is casting it. "this unit gains a 5+ FNP", for example, has a completely different value when cast by a neurotyrant, a norn emissary or a brood of zoantropes. Judging from how GW has handled this for enhancements, it will always be way to expensive to give a power to anyone other than psyker who has the most synergy with it - defeating the whole point of creating faction powers in the first place.

I just had a couple of guys over from my narrative crusade group last evening. At some point we were discussing which enhancements would fit the narrative of each players "main character" for our current Nachtmund crusade. None of those guys besides me has ever played in an organized event, two have never played a pick-up game with a stranger.

For every single detachment across four armies (DA, CSM, DG and nids) there rarely were more than two enhancements which were considered to be good or OK by at least one person, and at least two which everyone agreed to be utter garbage and not worth talking about even from a narrative point of view.
To put into perspective, I'll give you an example of what this group considered to be good:

Needle of Nurgle - 25 pts
PLAGUE SURGEON only. Each time the bearer uses its Tainted Narthecium ability, you can return up to D3 destroyed models to the bearer’s unit (instead of 1).

From a competitive point of view, this is a never-take enhancement. Paying 75 points to resurrect models which are 19 points a piece is just not a good deal. Just bring another squad of 5 plague marines instead.
In our crusade, lethality is a lot lower due to a higher narrative focus, crusade rules and agendas, plus it might be worth keeping an experienced unit alive a bit longer. Or you just want to play a plague surgeon no matter what, and this at least makes him do something.


I see no reason why this would be any different for powers. Even if it would be possible to balance those powers in theory, what's the point if GW clearly is unable to do so?

It's also worth noting that boarding action absolutely won't be giving you the same powers as regular games would. It already remove the weak powers some psykers have today, and for good reason.

 Jidmah wrote:
Why would casting da jump affect a unit's ability at all?

I mean, the abilities affected here are sticky objective and bomb squigs...

Because GW wants to limit and avoid rules stacking, I am thinking of core rules and the future. And I bet you that at some point there would there be an army, where psychic power + unit rule would end in some insanity. I don't know psychic power of GSC psyker does 3d3 or 2d6 hits and the unit has a some sort "once per game" rule that turns hits in to dev wounds and GSC playstyle turns in to up&downing 3 units and blowing up stuff. Which I know would be nerfed (vide GK librarianx3 bombs), but it is better to not have problems, then need to nerf stuff in the future. Also if GW wanted they could do some sort of if X joins Y the rules works in the spell description. It could even be faction specific thing. Lets say orkish powers go big (lore) when orks are in melee, so in melee psychic powers use doesn't turn off the ability , but your are not going to up&downing horde of flash gits. And Eldar could get the reverse, when the seer has time to cast stuff (lore) the unit stuff works, but in melee it generaly doesn't. But for warlocks or a special "melee" farseer it does. It is all about rules mechanics and how they stack in reality, with a sprinkle of "lore".