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Make no mistake, I wuv the psycannon.  AT LAST a decent gun that characters can use!  A S6, 3 shot, AP4 gun that ignores the saves you usually always get.

However i doubt there is a weapon in the game that creates as many rule problems for the simple reason, they TAKE AWAY INVULNERABLE SAVES which are never supposed to be taken away.  In the past there was no need to say (for example) that  Necron Wraiths have a 3+ armor save and a 3+ invulnerable since the invulnerable bit included the armor bit.  But with the psycannon, technically Wraiths get no save.  nor do turbo bikes, models in cover or a few other units.  Yet daemon princes, possesed marines and blood thirsters do.

Clearly something is wrong.

So I propse the following profile

S3, AP1, 3 shots (36" if stationary, 18" if moved), DOUBLE STRENGTH AGAINST DEMONS

Now you have something that fits the idea of a psychic gun since normal armor is useless.  Against demons it really comes into its own, splattering all but a few.  Sure they get their 5+ invulnerable saves but who cares!  that's what the 3 shots are for!

It could use some tinkering, maybe S4, though that means a S8 3 shot gun against defilers and possessed tanks... too much?  Maybe S4 +2 S against demons?

The Incinerator would get the same profile but with a flamer template.

How about, S6, AP4, 3 shots
AP1 vs demons (including vehicles)
They still get their invulnerable saves but lose their armor saves plus it's more effective vs demonic vehicles.

"They still get their invulnerable saves but lose their armor saves plus it's more effective vs demonic vehicles."

Again, you've actually made it harder to kill Daemons with it. Why bother with AP1? Only two types of daemon have armour saves, the rest all just have Invulnerable saves, and now you're allowing them against the Psycannon.

Your initial problem Kyoto was that the Psycannon was taking away saves that it shouldn't have been - think of a way to fix that that doesn't involve making daemons more resistant to its abilities.

BYE

I had actually forgotten about this topic


HBMC: The reason I suggested that psycannons can ignore armour saves for daemons is that it seems to me that in most cases such armour isn't really "metal" or "ceramite" anymore, but actually made out of the same stuff the daemon is now.

Take for instance possessed and daemon princes. Most fluff I've read for daemon princes indicates that their armour either becomes part of them or becomes some kind of symbiotic/parasitic lifeform that's daemonic in nature. While possessed may not neccessarily bond with their armour, it's in most cases where they don't they end up losing parts of it (arms, legs, can't wear a helmet, holes where tentacles pop out of, etc).

Khornate daemons in the meanwhile seems to have their armour built out of warp stuff (at least, I haven't read any stories of khornate daemons scavanging metal before a battle and then discarding it afterward). So it seems reasonable to me that while the armour they have mimics armour from "normal space," against the psycannon it's just as effective to be wearing the brass loincloth as it is to be wearing a paper bag to defend against water balloons.

I hope this doesn't take things too OT, but this is sort of a pet-peeve for me.  I think that GW royally messed up with having the following saves: armor, invulnerable, cover, none.  That's it.  Then, all of a sudden we have weapons that ignore invulnerables - not just invulnerables, but all 'invulnerables'.

The easier fix is to pick 3 or 4 types of invulnerable saves, and codify them: foe.g.:  field, daemonic, rune, dodge, cover.  Then, for any unit or model that has an invulnerable, it is listed as one of the above.  Then you can make a weapon like the Psycannon that ignores 'daemonic' saves.  The rest are obviously still legit.

I mean, seriously, we could all handle a wee little bit of complexity to the rules, and really, how much harder is this to do??

Sorry for the rant, it just seems that we keep trying to patch the existing rules that have a fundamental flaw a little deeper.

I keep saying that with a handful of people from this board, and about a week, we could probably edit the 40k rules, fix 99.7% of the langauge problems, and we'd have a stellar ruleset...and I'd do  it for free