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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.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 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.

 Jidmah wrote:

 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.

So I quoted both Tyran's suggestion and your response to it because I really like this suggestion. Providing a default power allows GW to lean into and define the unit's default role, while still allowing exceptions for those who find assigned powers to be limiting.

As for your response, I think the circumstance you describe- the auto-take power vs. the waste of space, I'd say odds of that decrease once you get away from pick-up 2k matched games.... And if I have a role on this forum at all, it's to continually point out that while 2k matched pick-up is one of the most popular formats, particularly among Dakkanaughts, the actual game is much broader than that narrow slice, and rules need to facilitate all the possibilities the game offers, from Boarding Action to Incursion to Strikeforce to Onslaught in both their Matched and Crusade variants in any of the battlezones, as part of stand-alone or campaign play, including escalation.

So yeah, that power that's a waste of space in a stand-alone 2k pick-up matched play game? I can guarantee you there's a narrative scenario where a 500-1k point Crusade force would just LOVE to put that power to use. And I'd further add that the old psychic battle honours from 9th were some of the coolest, fluffiest narrative upgrades in the game, but you need powers and tables to make them work. Being able to choose a power from a discipline that a psyker normally does not have access too is a wicked story hook... But without psychic disciplines, it can't be done.

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".

 Jidmah wrote:
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.

If this is true, why the hell are you worrying so much about what GW does to balance the game? Most narrative players I've met want really don't care about the steps GW takes to balance the game because the players have the capacity to balance the game themselves or because their asymmetric missions and Crusade upgrades unbalance even a balanced scenario.

Obviously people want some degree of balance. But in the context of a Crusade campaign played at home among friends, there is such a thing as "It's balanced enough James Workshop; no need to release points updates every three fething days and rules updates every god damned month. Can we please go back to 9th where Crusaders are legally allowed to ignore this crap?"

 Jidmah wrote:

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.

You've managed to pick 4 dexes I don't own so I can't speak to any of the dex based enhancements. Later, I might look at the Grotmas and Index enhancements for those factions and see what I can see, but I don't have the time right now, and I can illustrate some of the point with the example below.

 Jidmah wrote:

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.

Well, if the object of the game is to hold an objective, a tough unit that regenerates is better than two that don't, so I kinda dispute the premise that it's an automatic nope in competitive play. But we'll leave that behind for now, because it seems what you've done is combined the points of the enhancement and the unit that the enhancement is designed for in a discussion that is supposed to be about the enhancement.

And you really can't do that, because in a game without costed equipment, the point of costed enhancements is to give you a place where points can go when there aren't enough points left to buy a unit. So when is this an awesome enhancement? When your army is at 1975 points, it already includes a Plague Surgeon, and none of the other enhancements are 25 points.

But let's talk narrative now:

In my games, we're territory based, and one of our territories is a Medicae Facility. Now, if you claim a Medicae territory, you want to station a force there so that someone else can't swoop in and steal it without a fight. In my Sisters army, if I've got a Medicae territory, you can bet there's at least one Hospitaller in the army that's defending that territory, and there are probably more than one. And you can bet that any Novitiates unit stationed there will include a Medic operative, even though she has no effect on the 40k version of the unit.

What if you have two plague surgeons in your army and you want them to be different?

What if the mission is escort duty, and you have to get to an NPO type character in no man's land, have him join your unit and escort him off the board? He's a character, so a smart ass sniper with precision says, "Ha, they made it to the engineer, but he's not getting off the board if Snipey McSniperson has his way, muwahahaha... BANG! No victory points for you!"

"Ah ah ah, back that up homeboy: there's a doctor in the house, and not only is he bringing back the engineer, he's bringing back two of the meatshields you put down too."

What if you just have a wicked conversion idea for represent the Tainted Narthecium and you want to build it?

Now, you've said this is one your players consider good. Maybe a better exercise would be to tell me about the worst enhancement you can find, because I can do the exact same thing I did for Tainted Narthecium for any piece of gear.

The last thing to talk about is rules interactivity. Your Surgeon is going to be able to purchase four battlehonours over the course of its career. Do any of those synergize with the Tainted Narthecium to create something greater than the sum of its parts? Don't forget that there may also be opportunities for synergy with the Battle Honours not only of the Surgeon himself, but also with the battle honours of the unit you're attaching to.
.

 Jidmah wrote:

Even if it would be possible to balance those powers in theory, what's the point if GW clearly is unable to do so?

The point is that I can take two of a unit and they don't have to be identical, because that would be boring, dull and stupid. And if I AM super concerned about balance and efficiency and competitiveness so much that I WANT to double up on the same power, the existence of other options does not prevent me from doing that. This is the argument I always return to in the end: the reason that there is such thing as a garbage OPTION, is that being an option, you aren't required to take it, and if you don't it has no effect whatsoever on your army, so why remove it? I mean, sure, you can argue that IF it's removed, it could be replaced with a better option, but you don't seem to be saying that.

 Jidmah wrote:

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.

And it's ALSO worth noting that in 9th when 500 point games didn't have to be either Combat Patrol or Boarding Actions because 500 points was an option in the core mechanics, psychic powers worked fine and were far more fluffy than anything GW has done with them since. I don't mind 10th- there are some things about it I even like. But 9th absolutely was a better toolbox for GMs and Narrative Campaign players, in part BECAUSE of its psychic rules.

 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.

Blanks are a weird edge case. There are what? Three psychic blank datasheets in the game with two of them being sisters of silence? So they fall in this weird gap where they're not prevalent enough to warrant a whole subsystem to model their powers (I've seen people try to argue Deny the Witch should exist as a univeral mechanical purely so that the Culexus can use it), but also trying to give them a simple rule means giving them a really broad (probably weak) rule like we have now.

So it's a slightly tricky design challenge. FNP isn't great, but it does at least model the idea that psychic attacks are diminished around them without making them invulnerable to psychic units. That warpfire is going to burn less hot. That telekinetic boulder is going to have less force behind it, etc.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 vipoid wrote:

 Tyran wrote:
I don't really want to have to pass a psychic test for my Zoanthropes and Neurotyrant to do anything at all.

I don't want to have to pass a shooting test for my ranged unit to do anything at all.

The key difference here being that shooting is usually balanced out by a bit of a bell curve. Players generally seem to agree that they want some uncertainty in how effective their guns will be moment to moment. So we like rolling dice to see if that volley of bolters killed 10 gaunts or just 5. And units that put a lot of points into a very small number of shots (the railgun hammer head is a good example) tend to have a bunch of rerolls or other bonuses built in to help ensure they're succeeding most of the time because it feels bad when your expensive model fails to do the main thing you took it for.

When your bolters fail to wipe out an enemy unit, you probably have more guns floating around so you can keep shooting your target. Unless your dice are absolutely frigid, you'll probably end your shooting phase feeling like you made progress towards killing some enemies, and you'll probably feel like your gun's stats and your opponent's defensive stats were both factored into the results. When you want to zap the enemy with a psychic power (that you're only allowed to try once depending on the edition) and it fizzles out because of a 2d6 roll that you had no meaningful way to influence... It feels less like you shot at the enemy and missed/failed to do meaningful damage and more like your entire squad's guns jammed simultaneously.

 PenitentJake wrote:
If this is true, why the hell are you worrying so much about what GW does to balance the game? Most narrative players I've met want really don't care about the steps GW takes to balance the game because the players have the capacity to balance the game themselves or because their asymmetric missions and Crusade upgrades unbalance even a balanced scenario.

Obviously people want some degree of balance. But in the context of a Crusade campaign played at home among friends, there is such a thing as "It's balanced enough James Workshop; no need to release points updates every three fething days and rules updates every god damned month. Can we please go back to 9th where Crusaders are legally allowed to ignore this crap?"

Because this argument is, and always has been, BS. Balance affects casual games just as much as it affects competitive games, if not more.

Bad balance doesn't just change who wins. It creates a feeling of unfairness and destroys immersion which both makes the game less fun. Less fun for the person that got stomped and also less fun for the person that did the stomping. In a friendly game, tabling someone in turn 2 because your army is overtuned never feels right.
That's the reason why most people incorporated balance changes into their games even in 9th. It noticeably improved their game, made it more fun.

And to be blunt, a 10th edition crusade game played straight from a book is still head and shoulders above any competitive mission in oldhammer in terms of balance. Well, maybe except for the Armageddon crusade, but that campaign has been written with the sole purpose to makes games as chaotic as possible. You know, because the battlefield is literally being swallowed by the warp.

Also, don't you think its a bit hypocritical to tell narrative players to take care of balancing the entire game themselves, while at the same time you aren't even willing to think up three or four alternative powers for your narrative games?

I'm not going to go into the rest of the post, because you mostly misssed my point. We mostly agree and I don't want to nitpick on details. I explained my point a few posts ago, if you care, re-read that.

 Wyldhunt wrote:


Blanks are a weird edge case.

[FLUFF TANGENT]

What happens if a blank comes in contact with wraithbone?

[/FLUFF TANGENT]

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Blanks are a weird edge case. There are what? Three psychic blank datasheets in the game with two of them being sisters of silence? So they fall in this weird gap where they're not prevalent enough to warrant a whole subsystem to model their powers (I've seen people try to argue Deny the Witch should exist as a univeral mechanical purely so that the Culexus can use it), but also trying to give them a simple rule means giving them a really broad (probably weak) rule like we have now.

So it's a slightly tricky design challenge. FNP isn't great, but it does at least model the idea that psychic attacks are diminished around them without making them invulnerable to psychic units. That warpfire is going to burn less hot. That telekinetic boulder is going to have less force behind it, etc.

Gotta push back a bit here too, because you're dealing with two separate things here: blank immunity and Deny the Witch.

Blank immunity is just that: a rule on a blank's card that says "This character cannot be affected by psychic powers in any way" - no subsystem required. Blanks don't actually have Deny the Witch- that's a thing that Psykers do to each other, which means most armies had access to it because most armies had at least one psychic unit. The coolest thing about Deny the Witch was that while all psykers had it, some non-psykers also had it- like SoB, and if GW had kept the mechanic, it could have been expanded into other non-psychic armies to minimize concerns that those non-psychic armies were at a disadvantage against psychic forces. It was fluffy AF for all SoB to have Deny the Witchbecause of their role as the Chamber Militant of the Hereticus, but I always thought that Drukhari and Tau should have had a unit or two that could deny, and maybe a unit that was a blank to balance them against psychic armies without messing with

I think where the confusion comes in is that blanks ALSO have a power that makes psychic tests harder to pass when they are cast within a certain range of a Blank, but this is not a Deny the Witch ability- it's a modifier to the psychic test. If we wanted to bring THAT rule back, we would need to bring back a subsystem, because psychic tests no longer exist. But bringing back this rule isn't required for blanks to be immune to psychic abilities.

Blanks ALSO got a bonus to wound Psykers, and again, that wouldn't need a subsystem to bring it back either.

All of these levers- blank immunity, psychic test, Deny the Witch all created levers that designers could use to differentiate psychics. So some psykers could have extra powers in the past, other psykers could have extra Deny attempts and still others could have bonuses to psychic tests, and those means of differentiation were far more interesting than what we have now:

- Every unit has weapons, but one ranged and one melee weapon on each Psykers profile now have a couple extra USRs to beef them up, in exchange for having the Psychic Keyword.
- Every unit has a datasheet rule, but on a Psyker's datasheet, sometimes those rules have the psychic keyword.
- Every unit has saves, but psyker unit saves may have the psychic keyword and may be invulnerable or may specifically defend against mortal wounds.

And as a Crusader, the previous variations to psychic potency could easily be (and were) leveraged to create a whole class of Battle Honours, which no longer exists, while the current tools for distinguishing psykers from non-psykers (and from each other) are so basic and dull that they can't be leveraged to create a class of Battle Honours.

 Jidmah wrote:


I'm not going to go into the rest of the post, because you mostly missed my point. We mostly agree and I don't want to nitpick on details. I explained my point a few posts ago, if you care, re-read that.

Yes, you said:

 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.

And I replied:

 PenitentJake wrote:


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.

Now, you never replied to my suggestion about how in armies with A LOT of psychic units, you might have a few tables each of which may apply to some units. I mean, if you don't agree with global psychic powers, I've already said that I'm okay with each unit having choices... I just think that might be unrealistic for a faction like GK, Ksons or possibly even Eldar, where a couple of tables might achieve the effect you're looking for by proposing an end to global choices without GW having to come up with say, 45 individual, unique powers to give each of 15 psychic units bespoke choices.

Some of the stuff in your response to Tyran's suggestion seemed to contradict that agreement somewhat, which was why I responded to it. This line in particular:

 Jidmah wrote:

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?

Seems to contradict your previous statement that you're okay with offering each psychic unit a choice of bespoke powers... Especially when that might mean GW coming up with 30-45 individual powers for armies with many psychic units. I suppose it doesn't explicitly contradict the previous point- the part of Tyran's suggestion you were disagreeing with was probably just the global nature of the powers that can be swapped for each unit's bespoke power.

I think using Enhancements to illustrate why you don't like the idea of global psychic powers available to all psychic units in a given dex might have contributed a bit to my confusion about your consistency, and certainly, my strategy of attacking your analogy (Enhancements) rather than the thing you were analogizing (globally available psychic powers) contributed to your impression that I missed your point.

 Jidmah wrote:

Because this argument is, and always has been, BS. Balance affects casual games just as much as it affects competitive games, if not more.

Bad balance doesn't just change who wins. It creates a feeling of unfairness and destroys immersion which both makes the game less fun.

The degree of imbalance that you're talking about is greater than the degree of imbalance that I'm talking about. I think that yes, myself and other casual narrative players absolutely WOULD have issues with the degree of imbalance you're talking about here- I said as much in my post, and you even quoted me saying it, so I know you read it... And you're right that this would be another thing that we agree on.

But what I dispute is that the psychic system of 9th created the degree of imbalance that you're talking about. I mean, sure, every psychic table in 9th did probably have one power that was more useful in more situations than the others, and for competitive players who are looking for the thing that has the greatest utility in the greatest number of situations, that power might be an auto-take. Similarly, each table probably had one power that was a lemon in all but a few edge-case scenarios or a few especially beardy combo plays, and yes, among competitive players and even a great many casual narrative players, that option might be a never take.

The other four powers on a table always fell between those two extremes, and for the casual narrative player, these are the powers that have utility in enough cases, or can interact with other rules (particularly Psychic Battle Honours for Crusaders) that they are still worthy of inclusion and consideration, and many of them would be powers that I'd choose against particular opponents in particular battles.

Does that really create the kind of game warping imbalance that you're describing here? Because a table of six options containing one option that is more likely to taken by competitive minded folk and one or even two powers that most players probably wouldn't consider was never a big enough problem for anyone I've played with that they'd consider abandoning the whole system. And while I'd be okay with your proposed solution of bespoke choices of powers for each psychic unit, given how little tables of global powers actually impacted people's enjoyment of the game at large, it seemed a bit like a solution in search of a problem to me.

 Jidmah wrote:

Also, don't you think its a bit hypocritical to tell narrative players to take care of balancing the entire game themselves, while at the same time you aren't even willing to think up three or four alternative powers for your narrative games?

No, because taking balance into your own hands in a friendly, casual or campaign game boils down to adjusting the units that you bring. Coming up with alternate powers involves actually creating rules, each element of which would be judged by all the people playing. Again, some of the breakdown here is me responding to your analogy rather than the thing you're analogizing.

Players being responsible for their own balance in a Crusade campaign is as simple as setting games at fewer points than your roster to allow sideboarding, so that when you're up against an army that can't take out tanks, you have enough other units on your roster that you can swap out a tank or two for another infantry unit or two in order to ensure a more enjoyable game for you and your opponent. No need to invent rules or overcomplicate anything.

 PenitentJake wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Blanks are a weird edge case. There are what? Three psychic blank datasheets in the game with two of them being sisters of silence? So they fall in this weird gap where they're not prevalent enough to warrant a whole subsystem to model their powers (I've seen people try to argue Deny the Witch should exist as a univeral mechanical purely so that the Culexus can use it), but also trying to give them a simple rule means giving them a really broad (probably weak) rule like we have now.

So it's a slightly tricky design challenge. FNP isn't great, but it does at least model the idea that psychic attacks are diminished around them without making them invulnerable to psychic units. That warpfire is going to burn less hot. That telekinetic boulder is going to have less force behind it, etc.

Gotta push back a bit here too, because you're dealing with two separate things here: blank immunity and Deny the Witch.

I seem to have confused things by mentioning DtW. My point wasn't that DtW was the same as a null/blank's abilities. I was just giving an example of someone wanting to include a somewhat elaborate mechanic purely for the sake of supporting nulls/blanks (I forget which is which) even though there are barely any such units in the game.

I think where the confusion comes in is that blanks ALSO have a power that makes psychic tests harder to pass when they are cast within a certain range of a Blank, but this is not a Deny the Witch ability- it's a modifier to the psychic test. If we wanted to bring THAT rule back, we would need to bring back a subsystem, because psychic tests no longer exist. But bringing back this rule isn't required for blanks to be immune to psychic abilities.

Right. This. When people think of nulls, they're usually thinking of psychic effects sputtering out near Jurgen, etc. So simply making the psyker themself immune to psychic abilities/attacks doesn't really capture the fluff properly on its own. Having a Jurgen near the enemy should mean they stop levitating, their telekinetic shields go away, and the lightning bolt aimed past Jurgen's shoulder at his fellow guardsmen should fizzle. Making the Jurgen himself the only one immune to powers means that he only shuts down debuffs and attacks that target him.

But then trying to phrase a special ability to shut down nearby powers without having the potential for weird rules interactions is tricky. So it's hard to write rules that both fit the fluff but also don't require you design the whole game's psychic system around the possibility that someone opted to field a culexus.