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Personally, I feel psychic powers peaked in 8th/9th Edition. They were straightforward to understand. They felt powerful when you executed them, but they had major risks and enemy psykers can make them unreliable. Both Deny the Witch and Perils from the Warp also worked well both crunch-wise and fluff-wise. Now in 10th Edition, Psykers just feel like glorified special shooters that are bad against a small minority of units. I haven't played any edition before 8th, but from what I read, 1st and 2nd Edition psychic powers were way too long and complicated. 3rd-7th Edition were alright but could also be often clunky.

Here's a summary of the different psychic phases by Gemini:

Psychic powers in Warhammer 40,000 have undergone more mechanical re-inventions than almost any other part of the game. They have shifted from a "mini-game within a game" to a dedicated phase, and finally into integrated abilities.
1st Edition

In the first edition, 40k was more of a narrative RPG than a competitive wargame.

[*]The System: Psykers had a "Mastery Level" (1 to 4) and used Psychic Points.
[*]How it Worked: Each power cost a certain number of points to manifest. If you had the points, you could use the power.
[*]Flavor: There were dozens of niche powers (like "Telekinesis" to move objects or "Molecular Agitation" to heat armor). It was complex, slow, and flavor-heavy.

2nd Edition: The Card Game (1993)

[size=16px]This edition is famous (or infamous) for the Warp Deck.

[*]The System: Psychic powers were resolved in a dedicated phase using a deck of cards.
[*]How it Worked: Players drew cards to create a "hand" of Warp energy. You spent cards to cast spells, while the opponent could play "Nullify" cards to cancel them.
[*]Risk: This was the first time "Perils of the Warp" became a major threat—drawing the wrong card could literally suck your psyker into Hell.

3rd, 4th, and 5th Edition: The Leadership Era (1998–2012)

GW simplified the game significantly during this "middle age." The dedicated phase was removed.

[*]The System: Powers were treated like special wargear or weapons.
[*]How it Worked: To use a power, you simply took a Leadership Test (roll 2d6 under your character's Leadership stat).
[*]Deny the Witch: Interaction was low; unless you had a specific item (like a Psychic Hood), you usually couldn't stop an enemy power.

6th and 7th Edition: The Psychic Phase Returns (2012–2017)

The "Psychic Phase" was reintroduced, bringing back high complexity and "Psychic Deathstars."

[*]The System: Players generated a Warp Charge Pool by rolling dice and adding the total Mastery Levels of their psykers.
[*]How it Worked: You threw a handful of dice at a power to try and get "successes" (usually 4+). The more dice you threw, the more likely you were to cast it, but the higher the risk of rolling double 6s (Perils).
[*]The Problem: Armies like Eldar or Thousand Sons could generate so many dice that their opponents literally couldn't play during that phase.

8th and 9th Edition: The Standardized Phase (2017–2023)

GW kept the dedicated phase but removed the shared dice pool to make it faster.

[*]The System: Each psyker could attempt a set number of powers per turn.
[*]How it Worked: You rolled 2d6 against a "Warp Charge" value (e.g., Smite required a 5+).
[*]Deny the Witch: Every enemy psyker within 24" got a chance to roll 2d6 to beat your score and "deny" the power. This made the phase highly interactive but still time-consuming.

10th Edition: The Integrated Approach (2023–Present)

The current edition removed the Psychic Phase entirely.

[*]The System: Psychic powers are now just keywords on a datasheet.
[*]How it Worked:
[*]Attacks: "Smite" is now just a ranged weapon profile with the [Psychic] tag.
[*]Buffs: Abilities like "Shield of Sanguinius" are now passive auras or abilities triggered in the Command Phase.

[*]The Keyword: The [Psychic] tag itself doesn't do much by default, but other units have rules that interact with it (e.g., a unit might have a "4+ Feel No Pain against [Psychic] attacks").

Purely for how dangerous they’re meant to be to all parties?

2nd Edition, hands down. Perhaps a little too powerful if you got lucky with your randomly drawn powers, but my god they hurt!

Also somewhat tempered by having to get enough power cards to be able to cast them.

Overall the system itself, which frankly sums up all of 2nd Edition? It was flawed, but really good fun.

Kinda strange that you correctly describe the difference between 3-5 and 6/7 but lump them together in your poll
Personally I liked 8th/9th. It needed a diversification of the damage spells but other than that I liked how straightforward it was.

Total dislike for the 7th edition Version. Bloat for the Bloat god, random game breaking spells, psykers reduced to batteries for you Main psyker and deny the witch was basically useless in all but fringecases (or if you had any Boni to it? Not sure, I didn't have any)

You have 3-7 all together in the poll, but break it out into 3-5 and 6-7 in the post.

I preferred the 3-5 era. There was some randomness and risk vs. reward, but you could pick powers and plan for them in your army. And while strong, not the broken highly random mess of 6-7.

I’ve never been a fan of “let’s play a mini game” era of powers, both 2nd with cards and the dice pool editions.

 Calbear wrote:
by Gemini

Why would I bother to read a synopsis you couldn't be bothered to write?
That said, I never ran into psychic powers much (main opponent was 'nids and I never ran psykers), but I liked the idea of the 8e Psychic phase, if only because it reminded me of the magic system of WHFB. Main complaint would've been that only certain units could do Deny the Witch - I'd've liked to see that be something where everyone (or nearly everyone) could attempt a DtW as a hail-mary, but you would need actual psykers/anti-psykers to effectively DtW.

10th Edition has the most accurate representation. Psykers that hit the battlefield (or at least, the kinds of battlefields we see in-game) are competent at their jobs. They shouldn't be randomly failing to fire lightning or make a shield. If the lightning isn't strong enough to pierce the chitinous hide or the shield is broken by a Lascannon, that makes sense, but it shouldn't just have a random chance of failing to go off.

The historical Deny The Witch is also pretty disconnected for most powers. Maledictions it makes some sense, but Blessings or Witchfires? Are there any lore snippets where that happens?

It's also got the benefit of simplicity and building it directly into the statline. 8th-9th had powers with some janky rules, and they usually just boiled down to Mortal Wound spam. Meaning a GUO is just as likely to survive an Astropath's Smite as a big squad of Gretchin. And an Astropath's Smite would generally be the same strength as a TS Sorcerer's Smite.

10th Edition has the most accurate representation. Psykers that hit the battlefield (or at least, the kinds of battlefields we see in-game) are competent at their jobs. They shouldn't be randomly failing to fire lightning or make a shield. If the lightning isn't strong enough to pierce the chitinous hide or the shield is broken by a Lascannon, that makes sense, but it shouldn't just have a random chance of failing to go off.

This, but with an asterisk. I don't find psychic tests/failing to cast powers in general to be particularly fluffy. Deny the Witch possibly even less so. And just having powers activate/resolve in the phase that they're relevant is hugely preferable to weird minigames or janky things like having to wait until after the movement phase to use something like Wings of Blood.

So in in a lot of ways, the basics of how and when psychic powers are resolved are better in 10th than in any other edition I've played.

The asterisk is that, even though 10th handles those aspects of psychic powers well, I also have to deduct points for:

* Not being able to customize my dudez by choosing powers. This is mostly a consequence of the designers deciding they didn't want to have to design around wargear prices.

* Powers often being a bit less flavorful than in the past. Eldritch Storm in past editions was a shooting attack, but it also let you roll a scatter die to spin enemy tanks around. Now it's just a suped-up grenade launcher. Mind War and the harlequin equivalent used to let you roll off vs enemy Leadership stats making them really good into stupid brutes while also limiting their effectiveness against your opponent's most valuable characters. Now it's just a mediocre short-ranged sniper rifle. Etc.

* While I'm glad psychic tests are "gone", they kind of still exist for any psychic power that has a chance of failing to go off.

I'm harsh on 5th edition, but it was my first edition and *may* have had the best balance of decent psychic mechanics and fluffy psychic powers/customization of all the editions I've played.

Going forward, I'd like to see a system that doesn't have me randomly fail to use my powers (psychic tests) but also allows me to either customize my available powers or at least allows psykers a variety of effects to choose from.

3rd-5th easy & simple

choose 1 or 2 powers (for marines, eldar and thousand sons had the ability to use more) before the game, simple LD check use them in the phase they correspond to-

support power in the movement phase, shooting power during shooting, close combat power during close combat.

I've honestly never cared for the Psychic phase in any edition.

 Nevelon wrote:
You have 3-7 all together in the poll, but break it out into 3-5 and 6-7 in the post.

I preferred the 3-5 era. There was some randomness and risk vs. reward, but you could pick powers and plan for them in your army. And while strong, not the broken highly random mess of 6-7.

I’ve never been a fan of “let’s play a mini game” era of powers, both 2nd with cards and the dice pool editions.

Sorry about that. I fixed the issue.

OT: An issue with balancing psykers is that only some factions have access to them. Of the 24 40k factions, only 16 have direct access to Psykers. That's ⅔. A few factions like T'au and Adeptus Mechanicus could have Psychic units lore-wise, but GW never made psychic units for them. Necrons used to have C'tan powers, which were effectively psychic powers but far better (but specialized). Sororitas and World Eaters didn't have psykers, but they did have special anti-psychic units that can still deny powers. Still though, it would suck for your opponent to deploy a powerful psychic unit. And you can't do anything about it besides hopefully kill it before it wins the game.

Another issue with representing 40k psykers is that some of them like Weirdboyz or Astropaths, are seen as walking timebombs who are a major liability to their team. While others like Farseers and Chief Librarians are seen as masters of the warp who never falter in key moments. So game designers have to keep all this in mind when designing how psychic powers work.

Personally, I feel psykers should mainly be utility units. Blessing some units while debuffing others. Maybe big-name psykers can deal AOE damage. But an issue with 10th Edition is that psychic attacks are mechanically almost identical to regular attacks. Why take a Primaris Psyker when you can just take a Heavy Weapons Squad instead and do more or less the same thing? The Weapons Squad also won't deal reduced damage to anti-psychic enemies. Future psykers should be more like 9th Edition chaplains.

Sorry, Calbear. I'm going to politely but strongly disagree with pretty much everything you just said.

 Calbear wrote:

OT: An issue with balancing psykers is that only some factions have access to them
...
Still though, it would suck for your opponent to deploy a powerful psychic unit. And you can't do anything about it besides hopefully kill it before it wins the game.

This is a really weird attitude that I've never understood and can only guess stems from Deny the Witch being a thing for several editions. Being psychic is largley just a matter of fluff. Not every army needs to have a unit for every single niche that some other army has. Tau don't need to have a beatstick melee unit. Daemons have precious little shooting, but most people just chalk that up to being the nature of the army. Eldar don't have swarm units. GSC don't have Monsters. Orks don't have snipers.

Not every army needs to have a magic dude just because some armies have magic dudes. Is this just a leftover sentiment from the days of 6th and 7th when we were all encouraged to play the mana battery minigame to deny poorly balanced powers?

Another issue with representing 40k psykers is that some of them like Weirdboyz or Astropaths, are seen as walking timebombs who are a major liability to their team. While others like Farseers and Chief Librarians are seen as masters of the warp who never falter in key moments. So game designers have to keep all this in mind when designing how psychic powers work.

This is a really easily solved problem though. If only a small minority of psykers in the game are supposed to be ticking timebombs, then put timebomb rules on those units datasheets. Don't make the timebomb mechanic the default when it's a rule that should really only apply to a few units.

Personally, I feel psykers should mainly be utility units. Blessing some units while debuffing others. Maybe big-name psykers can deal AOE damage.

I don't feel like you should have to be famous to be allowed to hurt things with your brain powers. It's probably easier to find a niche for a given psyker unit by focusing on utility. After all, anyone can carry a gun around and blast the enemy, but not everyone can confound the enemy's aim with illusions or bend fate to let their friends land hits more often. But for those psykers whose main thing is blasting the enemy? Let them blast the enemy. Zoanthropes are basically just psychic artillery, and that's fine. Sometimes the main reason you bring a warlock is to use his Destructor. And who among us would deny a wyrd boy the opportunity to conjure the foot of his god that it might krump a bunch of 'umies?

So focusing on utility is maybe an okay rule of thumb, but there's no need to make it taboo to let a psyker be a source of offense if it fits their fluff, fills a niche, etc.

But an issue with 10th Edition is that psychic attacks are mechanically almost identical to regular attacks. Why take a Primaris Psyker when you can just take a Heavy Weapons Squad instead and do more or less the same thing? The Weapons Squad also won't deal reduced damage to anti-psychic enemies.

Generally speaking, there's nothing wrong with psychic attacks basically just being guns. It can be neat when they have some extra flavor going on (see my last post about Eldritch Storm and Mind War), but sometimes you just want a powerful gun. I'd be miffed if my Thousand Sons psykers were suddenly incapable of tossing some witchfires at the enemy, but I don't need those witchfires to be elaborate, complicated rules.

Now, if primaris psykers are providing a form of shooting to the table that is so similar to what heavy weapons are providing, and if those units don't have any other meaningful contributions to distinguish them from one another, then the problem is one of niche protection. That is, the issue is that the designers made two units that do the same thing; not that one of those units necessarily needs an elaborate, flashy version of its gun to be useful. The modern warlock's Destructor has a cute rule where it gets stronger when he hangs out with other psykers, but past versions of the power have just literally been a heavy flamer-esque shooting attack. Both versions are fine.

Future psykers should be more like 9th Edition chaplains.

In what sense? I don't think we want all psykers to be melee buffers that make battleshock even less relevant.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

10th Edition has the most accurate representation. Psykers that hit the battlefield (or at least, the kinds of battlefields we see in-game) are competent at their jobs. They shouldn't be randomly failing to fire lightning or make a shield. If the lightning isn't strong enough to pierce the chitinous hide or the shield is broken by a Lascannon, that makes sense, but it shouldn't just have a random chance of failing to go off.

This, but with an asterisk. I don't find psychic tests/failing to cast powers in general to be particularly fluffy. Deny the Witch possibly even less so. And just having powers activate/resolve in the phase that they're relevant is hugely preferable to weird minigames or janky things like having to wait until after the movement phase to use something like Wings of Blood.

When a psyker in a novel attempts to cast a power, they gather their will and attempt to force an unnatural event - the pouring of warp energy into realspace. At no point has it ever been described as something they just automatically do. The 40k RPGS go into a huge amount of depth on how difficult it is to actually cast powers, even when fully trained and experienced. Eldar psykers get the cheat of using runes that make it comparatively easier to do without side effects, but it's still not automatic.

So I'm not sure where you get this idea that it's 'not fluffy' for someone to need to make a psychic test, or be capable of failing to cast a power. It's baked into the setting that this is something challenging to do and there are bad consequences even when cast - see the Dark heresy psychic phenomena table where gravity goes haywire, or things freeze suddenly etc.


Non psyker Deny the witch however is definitely a mechanistic answer for armies that don't have psykers to oppose enemy psyker casting. But psykers duelling and dispelling each other's powers (effectively casting a power to disrupt a casting power) is also baked into the setting.


I'd be interested so where you've found the information that 40k psykers automatically cast powers at will with no chance of failure or bad effects?

Now you could argue that a 2D6 roll is possibly too HIGH a chance of failure %wise, in that most psykers have a much lower chance of these issues than this (even a 12 on 2d6 is too high for perils), but that's not the same thing as there being no challenge at all. But this is even worse in 10th because many imperial powers especially have hazardous, which is a 1 in 6 chance of being dangerous, which is also far too high. But then so is hazardous on plasma weapons, there's no way they overheat that often, they wouldn't be an effective weapon.

But failing to cast a psychic power and failing so badly reality warps or you are possessed by a demon, are all separate conditions. And they all definitely happen. You could also make the argument that battlefields disrupt the immaterium due to the concentrated amount of emotions, increasing the risks of casting (just as the shadow in the warp prevents casting altogether) compared to doing it under ideal conditions.

There are plenty of ways you can find to increase the difficulty of casting powers, but I've never seen anything that reduces the difficulty to automatic success.

It’s also very hard to hit someone with a sword when they’re also trying to stab you.
Should melee have a chance to not go off? Or is that just something that’s accounted for in the normal attack process?

 JNAProductions wrote:
It’s also very hard to hit someone with a sword when they’re also trying to stab you.
Should melee have a chance to not go off? Or is that just something that’s accounted for in the normal attack process?

They're not equivalent, because the effects of missing with a sword aren't an AOE, or cause your arms to turn into snakes. A single similarity doesn't map over to the whole thing. Diogenes is holding a plucked chicken. They're also at different parts of the process - casting a psychic power is the equivalent of your mind instructing your arm to swing, your brain casts swing sword and your body responds. Someone on mind altering drugs could easily 'fail to cast' swing sword, thinking they have but their arm not getting the instruction. Not the same.


With the current mechanics where many ranged powers have multiple shots, it is a poor approximation because those shots are part of a single casting, so if you fail the casting you fail ALL the shots, not just a couple that didn't roll 3+.


My argument was also about the notion that it's 'not fluffy' to need to cast. As far as I can see from the background of almost 40 years of 40k, that has never been true.

Background and simulation vs gamism and the resolution level of the game are also separate things. The setting makes it clear that you do need to cast powers, but whether the game plays at a resolution where that's important, or how closely it attempts to simulate that, are subjective.

They didn't use perils of the warp in EPIC due to resolution level. But again, it is still entirely fluffy for psychic powers to need to be cast.

 Hellebore wrote:

When a psyker in a novel attempts to cast a power, they gather their will and attempt to force an unnatural event - the pouring of warp energy into realspace. At no point has it ever been described as something they just automatically do.
...
I'd be interested so where you've found the information that 40k psykers automatically cast powers at will with no chance of failure or bad effects?

You misunderstand me. I'm not saying that using psychic powers is easy or that it happens reliably without a ton of training and effort. But psykers also pretty much never just straight up fail to use their powers when they try to do so. Maybe there's a big blind spot in my Black Library novel reading experience, but I'm not sure I've ever read a scene where the librarian goes:

"Okay, gang! I'm shooting some lightning.... Oops. Nope. Almost had it. Hrmm... This never happens to me, I swear. Just give me a few more tries..."

Now, they might mess up when shooting the lightning such that their nose starts bleeding. They might get some full blown perils of the warp type effects in extreme cases (though major perils tend to only happen when the psyker is pushing himself especially hard.) But they never just fail to make the power happen. And this is probably largely because the psykers who actually have datasheets are with very few exceptions extremely powerful and/or ancient and/or well-trained individuals who can be counted on to throw their powers around in a fight relatively reliably. A farseer or even a librarian are not some human rogue psyker strugglign to learn the basics of his powers.

Non psyker Deny the witch however is definitely a mechanistic answer for armies that don't have psykers to oppose enemy psyker casting.

See, and I'm not sure why armies necessarily need to be allowed to counter eachothers powers. People seem to generally be okay with tau not having a lot of melee punch to answer World Eaters with. They lean into the strengths they do have instead.

But psykers duelling and dispelling each other's powers (effectively casting a power to disrupt a casting power) is also baked into the setting.

Sincere, non-combative question: Can you give me some examples of that? I've read a lot of black library books, and the only examples of a psyker stopping another psyker's powers that come to mind are:
1. I *think* there's like two-sentence moment in Lords of Excess where a chaos psyker stops a GSC magus from using her powers. Although the chaos psyker was also sort of implied to be a telepathy specialist iirc, so there could be a sort of Charles Xavier using telepathy to shut down mutant powers thing going on there.

2. There's a bit in the first(?) Ahriman novel where two characters basically have their mental forms (beast-like representations of their minds/souls) duke it out. Which you could maybe interpret as them constantly denying the witch at eachother, but I'd argue it's more comparable to something like a pair of farseers casting Mind War at eachother.

And they all definitely happen. You could also make the argument that battlefields disrupt the immaterium due to the concentrated amount of emotions, increasing the risks of casting (just as the shadow in the warp prevents casting altogether) compared to doing it under ideal conditions.

Thing is, even if that's true, that just isn't what seems to happen in novels or even codex fluff. Psykers don't just fail to shoot lightning because the warp is extra spicy or what have you. They might hurt themselves/wear themselves out because the mental effort that goes into making powers go off is more intense, but psychic tests to make powers go off is a poor mechanical representation of that. I've advocated plenty of times on here for psyker mechanics where psykers accumulate "heat" or "stress" as they cast and basically need to go easy on the powers for a while to give themselves a chance to cool off or else risk perils.

There are plenty of ways you can find to increase the difficulty of casting powers, but I've never seen anything that reduces the difficulty to automatic success.

Not to be pedantic, but 4th edition warlocks just always had their powers on constantly, no psychic test required. In 10th edition, force weapons and witchfires of most stripes tend to go off automatically. I think the Grey Knight version of Veil of Tears was constantly active back in the day. And then there are all the "totally not psychic" effects we've seen throughout various editions.

There are a couple of things here that I think are discussing different things.

Protagonists in novels rarely fail to do anything, but it doesn't mean for example that we should auto hit with chainswords. I would argue that many of the examples in novels are plot armour, rather than accurate representations. The background in the rulebooks since at least 2nd ed, absent of protagonist protections, describe the ability for psykers to disrupt enemy powers and for powers to not be automatic. This also appears in great detail in the 40k RPGs, which I would highly recommend a read as they're great sources of a lot of detail. Even a named character that appears in one of the 40k RPGs needs to make casting tests and can get perils.

Psykers can definitely fail to manifest a power, not just have issues if they cast poorly.

The warlock powers in 3rd-4th are examples of resolution and gamist needs overriding simulation rather than an example of how inuniverse psykers don't need to cast.


Eisenhorn (as a protagonist psyker) still runs into casting issues and iirc has some duels. Ravenor in his novels does a lot of duelling. I've not read Ahriman but apparently he has a psychic duel with a grey knight, here is an excerpt link: https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/18ng959/psyker_duels/

This thread lists a range of books that go into psychic usage in 40k novels:
https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/1pzd18y/which_books_goes_into_detail_about_psykers_and/



the thing about perils of the warp in novels, is that they only occur for plot relevant reasons. Obviously they aren't going to have ahriman fail his tests in the crescendo of an epic battle. The likelihood of that uninterrupted success though isn't that high, but the survivorship bias makes it look that way.

But no one is the protagonist in 40k TT battles and no particular story is being told that requires the actions to happen in a certain way for plot.

Take Ahriman's duel in that novel, you can't replicate it in 40k, not even close. But that doesn't mean he should autohit with his transmogrifying blast, instead of 2+s. That duel is basically where he didn't roll a 1 once because plot. Similarly, Uriel Ventris and Captain Titus have appeared in many stories failing to die. Should they be immune from death on the TT? they've never even been incapacitated on the battlefield to count as a TT casualty.


The best argument I can see is that named characters by dint of surviving up til now, have shown they have a lower chance of failing to cast. But that isn't the same thing as all psykers in 40k have no problems casting.



EDIT: The comment you make about armies not necessarily being allowed to counter each others power seems at odds with your dislike of vehicles being immune to small arms, or aircraft being immune to non AA weapons though.