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As far as I can tell, the [Psychic] weapon rule serves almost solely as a keyword for resistances, like Sisters of Silence's 3+ FNP against anything [Psychic]. Similarly, the [Psyker] rule mostly seems to determine a unit's vulnerabilities, like [Anti-Psyker X+] attacks. With the Psychic Phase no longer existing as a bonus phase for some lucky armies, a psychic attack is now little more than a gun that works less well against some targets.

In aggregate, of course, you're better off with psychic attacks than nothing else. But in a meta sense, it's just a tad weird that flipping through your 'dex and confirming that your attack or character does indeed tap into the vast, reality-bending power of the Warp is almost always an "Aw, crap" moment.

I know that Thousand Sons' faction rule and stratagems synergize with the [Psyker] keyword. But I'm not aware of any other examples.

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I find it odd that units (like SoS or the Anti-Psyker Assassin) that lore wise (and old edition-wise) are immune to psychic powers only get a FNP save in the new edition.

 Quixote wrote:
I find it odd that units (like SoS or the Anti-Psyker Assassin) that lore wise (and old edition-wise) are immune to psychic powers only get a FNP save in the new edition.

Complete immunity would definitely be a "feels bad" rule, especially in melee. Grey Knight Paladins would be powerless against SoS Vigilators.

Lore-wise, you could explain psychic damage to psychic-immune models as some sort of splash damage from the conversion of psychic energy into mundane forms of energy. For example, a psychic beam attack doesn't directly hurt a squad of SoS, but it makes the air around them scorching-hot. It's similar to how a microwave oven doesn't heat up the bowl itself, but it heats up the soup, which in turn heats up the bowl. As for psychic melee weapons, like force weapons, I believe they still have a blade.

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Psychic weapons are, generally, more powerful than the equivalent non-Psychic weapons.

A Nemesis Force Weapon is S6 AP-2 D2 compared to a normal S5 AP-2 D1 power weapon, for example.

It's primarily a perception thing. Most psychic ranged attacks will be far better than any gun a character would wield, and most psychic melee attacks are upgraded version of normal ones like force weapon vs power sword. Since these attacks are so much stronger, there are niche resistances to them.

However, when you look at the profile, you just see the template, it doesn't SEEM to be stronger because it's psychic, but from a design standpoint it is.

 Tawnis wrote:
It's primarily a perception thing. Most psychic ranged attacks will be far better than any gun a character would wield, and most psychic melee attacks are upgraded version of normal ones like force weapon vs power sword. Since these attacks are so much stronger, there are niche resistances to them.

However, when you look at the profile, you just see the template, it doesn't SEEM to be stronger because it's psychic, but from a design standpoint it is.

That's part of my point. It's not a problem, really... just an observation. Attacks that have the [Psychic] rule tend to be powerful, and obviously it's better to have psychic attacks plus guns than just guns... but the [Psychic] rule itself is almost always a liability, since no special abilities are listed under the rule and no enemy units are especially vulnerable to psychic attacks.

In previous editions, being a psyker felt like it actually meant something, since it gave you access to a whole separate phase that not everyone could get (or even defend against). Now it's just two keywords whose primary interactions are with your opponent's anti-psychic rules.

As you said, it's a perception thing.



On a semi-related note, I'm looking at Fulgrim's datasheet right now and I see he's not even a [Psyker] like his brethren Magnus and Mortarion, despite being a daemon primarch (and not of Khorne). Is this rooted in Fulgrim's lore? Or does he lack it simply because he was given no [Psychic] attacks?

You'd think a being made of Warp energy would be just as vulnerable to a Vigilator's greatsword as a psyker.

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 Tawnis wrote:
It's primarily a perception thing. Most psychic ranged attacks will be far better than any gun a character would wield, and most psychic melee attacks are upgraded version of normal ones like force weapon vs power sword. Since these attacks are so much stronger, there are niche resistances to them.

However, when you look at the profile, you just see the template, it doesn't SEEM to be stronger because it's psychic, but from a design standpoint it is.

There's some truth to that but it becomes increasingly muddied as they add new and more powerful (non-psychic) weapons and abilities to every character.

Yeah the Warp Lightning is more powerful than a Bolter but it has the same stats as a Stormfire Plasma Gun. A Force Weapon is the same as a Latinius Relicblade (except it can get countered). Captain Tacticus can order his squad of space marines to get pretty much any buff that a psychic power could give. There's very little that's specially reserved for psychic abilities anymore, so rather than feeling like a superior version of a common weapon it feels like an inferior version of special weapon, that you're getting at a discount because it has the "psychic" drawback.

Even if your discounted psychic ability is a good value it doesn't change the (justified) perception that being "psychic" makes your thing worse than what other characters have. It's a good value because it's cheaper, not better.

Given their ubiquity and use, you could have the psychic key word affect invulnerable saves. Not remove them, but affect them.

You could just do a flat 'any critical success on an invulenerable save must be re-rolled if the attack had the psychic key word'.

Or you could have a number at the end and that's AP on Invulns - psychic1 = -1 to invuln saves.



The game has an overreliance on invulnerable saves as it is.

This is almost literally a complete reversion to Pre-8th Edition Psychic Powers. All the Psychic Powers that attacked back then were *roll to activate your Psychic Power* to *Gain a shooting weapon* which you then *fired like a normal weapon including To Hit*. Back then, some units had the ability to Deny the Witch or even be Immune to Psychic Shooting attacks. Now they have a FNP roll instead and no one can Deny the Witch.

3/4/5e didn't have the whole WHFB psychic phase thing but psychic powers still felt more distinctive than they do now.

Force Weapons could cause instant death on T6+ models. Witchblades could hit on initiative at S9. Mind War could snipe characters in units. Lash of Submission let you control the enemy. Jaws of the World Wolf could instantly gulp models. Psyker Battle Squads could reduce enemy Leadership. Guide and Fortune existed in a game with very few other rerolls.

Even most of the shooting spells went beyond the usual limitations of the army. No Tyranid gun was as powerful as the Zoanthrope's focused blast. The Weirdboy's big zap thing was likewise better than any ork (ranged) anti-tank. The Chaos Sorcerer functionally had a Heavy Bolter that was Assault 3 instead of Heavy 3, but even that was notable because there was no other regular infantry model with such a powerful ranged attack that could move and shoot.

So you did feel like psykers were capable of doing things that non-psykers couldn't. This wasn't always the best for the game (Lash was horrible) but it was better for the "feel" of psychic powers in the setting.

Just have to decide on the unique features of psychic powers and emphasise them.

ie, they can be summoned out of nowhere at anytime - useable outside normal turn sequence?

They use warp energy that is potent and can bypass conventional defence - affects invulns?


They are directed by the mind so don't really need to be 'aimed' - no roll to hit needed?

Yeah, I'm pretty sure the only place the [PSYCHIC] tag actually helps is in the Thousand Sons' Grand Coven Detachment, which can specifically buff Psychic attacks.

 Hellebore wrote:
Given their ubiquity and use, you could have the psychic key word affect invulnerable saves. Not remove them, but affect them.

You could just do a flat 'any critical success on an invulenerable save must be re-rolled if the attack had the psychic key word'.

Or you could have a number at the end and that's AP on Invulns - psychic1 = -1 to invuln saves.



The game has an overreliance on invulnerable saves as it is.

If you changed it so that mortal and devastating wounds ignored FnP but not invuls and then only allowed psychic attacks to reduce invuls that would secure a niche and make more sense fluff-wise.

Why would a krak grenade or exploding tank ignore invuls when an earthshaker shell or krak missile doesn't? That makes no sense, but for psychic powers to bypass forcefields and daemonic invulnerability is much more plausible. It shows why the Imperium actually does need psykers on its own side to fight Chaos which is something that often gets overlooked. (But is also not truly essential; Tau and Necrons can still overwhelm invuls with volume of fire, especially if equipped with high-S low-AP guns.)

 BorderCountess wrote:
Yeah, I'm pretty sure the only place the [PSYCHIC] tag actually helps is in the Thousand Sons' Grand Coven Detachment, which can specifically buff Psychic attacks.

The Librarius detachment gets buffs from having units with the Psyker keyword, but not the specific attacks having the psychic keyword.

-Guardsman- wrote:

 Quixote wrote:
I find it odd that units (like SoS or the Anti-Psyker Assassin) that lore wise (and old edition-wise) are immune to psychic powers only get a FNP save in the new edition.

Complete immunity would definitely be a "feels bad" rule, especially in melee. Grey Knight Paladins would be powerless against SoS Vigilators.

Surely this is the problem with making a physical weapon PSYCHIC, rather than it having an additional ability that's PSYCHIC?

For example, lets say you made a FORCE special rule that gives weapons +1S and 1d3 Damage.

GK Halberds could be S5 D1 base, but are then modified to S6 D1d3.

However, if a unit is immune to PSYCHIC abilities (which would include FORCE), then the aforementioned halberd would strike at S5 D1.

This would have an additional bonus in that it would feel like FORCE actually confers a decent buff to the weapon - rather than the keyword only existing as a detriment to such, with any alleged bonus being vague and poorly defined.

-Guardsman- wrote:

 Tawnis wrote:
It's primarily a perception thing. Most psychic ranged attacks will be far better than any gun a character would wield, and most psychic melee attacks are upgraded version of normal ones like force weapon vs power sword. Since these attacks are so much stronger, there are niche resistances to them.

However, when you look at the profile, you just see the template, it doesn't SEEM to be stronger because it's psychic, but from a design standpoint it is.

That's part of my point. It's not a problem, really... just an observation. Attacks that have the [Psychic] rule tend to be powerful, and obviously it's better to have psychic attacks plus guns than just guns... but the [Psychic] rule itself is almost always a liability, since no special abilities are listed under the rule and no enemy units are especially vulnerable to psychic attacks.

In previous editions, being a psyker felt like it actually meant something, since it gave you access to a whole separate phase that not everyone could get (or even defend against). Now it's just two keywords whose primary interactions are with your opponent's anti-psychic rules.

As you said, it's a perception thing.

Your feelings are valid. Presentation/perception is important to the gaming experience because it's how the "flavor" of the game and its fluff are conveyed.

That said, rules being psychic has pretty much always been a "bad" thing. In 3rd-5th and again in 8th/9th, a rule being psychic just meant that there was an X% chance of your special ability randomly failing to work with an additional Y% chance that your opponent's unit would keep it from working if you got past that first check. (This was every enemy psyker in 8th/9th and only certain units in 3rd-5th.) In 6th/7th, the situation was even worse because you often needed "psychic batteries" to reliably get a power off, and if you had significantly fewer psykers than your opponent, you just didn't get to use your psychic abilities at all that game. (A million deny dice vs a couple of casting dice.)

Throughout those editions, there have sometimes been faction rules or wargear or strats that increased your X% or lowered the enemy's Y%, but these were ultimately ways of mitigating the inherently negative nature of a rule being "psychic."

In 8th/9th when every witchfire was a form of mortal wounds, that created the perception that psychic powers were innately good at bypassing armor or invulns or whatever, but that was technically a result of the specifics of those powers; not of the psychic system itself. Nothing was stopping GW from writing an 8th or 9th edition power that did some S4 AP0 D1 hits to a target.

On a semi-related note, I'm looking at Fulgrim's datasheet right now and I see he's not even a [Psyker] like his brethren Magnus and Mortarion, despite being a daemon primarch (and not of Khorne). Is this rooted in Fulgrim's lore? Or does he lack it simply because he was given no [Psychic] attacks?

You'd think a being made of Warp energy would be just as vulnerable to a Vigilator's greatsword as a psyker.

Pretty sure Fulgrim uses magic to one-punch a knight in one of the HH stories, so this is an interesting choice. I guess the argument is that his abilities are more "daemonic" than "psychic."

Orkeosaurus wrote:3/4/5e didn't have the whole WHFB psychic phase thing but psychic powers still felt more distinctive than they do now.

Force Weapons could cause instant death on T6+ models. Witchblades could hit on initiative at S9. Mind War could snipe characters in units. Lash of Submission let you control the enemy. Jaws of the World Wolf could instantly gulp models. Psyker Battle Squads could reduce enemy Leadership. Guide and Fortune existed in a game with very few other rerolls.

Even most of the shooting spells went beyond the usual limitations of the army. No Tyranid gun was as powerful as the Zoanthrope's focused blast. The Weirdboy's big zap thing was likewise better than any ork (ranged) anti-tank. The Chaos Sorcerer functionally had a Heavy Bolter that was Assault 3 instead of Heavy 3, but even that was notable because there was no other regular infantry model with such a powerful ranged attack that could move and shoot.

So you did feel like psykers were capable of doing things that non-psykers couldn't. This wasn't always the best for the game (Lash was horrible) but it was better for the "feel" of psychic powers in the setting.

This is valid. However, as with mortal wound witchfires, this is *technically* more a matter of the individual powers themselves rather than the rules for psychic powers in general. Nothing stops GW from writing Mind War as a special ability with an opposed Ld roll-off, but instead they made it a shooting attack that awkward has to hit for some reason and curiously cares about how tough the enemy's body and armor are.


I'm not sure if it was someone on here or elsewhere, but one simple pitch for making psykers feel a bit more unique without having to overhaul their powers would be to simply given psykers access to a list of psychic abilities and let them choose which ones they cast each turn. So a farseer could choose between Fortune/Guide/Doom/Mind War/Eldritch Storm/Misidrection. A librarian could choose between speed-boosting his squad, shooting lightning, upping his physical prowess, etc. Basically, turn psykers into flexible generalists. This feels more fluffy, makes it feel like the psykers are actively making choices mid-combat, and makes it feel like the psykers have a whole toolkit at their disposal rather than just one preset trick that they stick to at all times.

 JNAProductions wrote:
Psychic weapons are, generally, more powerful than the equivalent non-Psychic weapons.

A Nemesis Force Weapon is S6 AP-2 D2 compared to a normal S5 AP-2 D1 power weapon, for example.

yeah, but the bolter isn't better then the regular one and the s6 ap-2 D2 seems impresive till you realise that it is all nemezis weapons, including the thunder hammers.

Karol wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
Psychic weapons are, generally, more powerful than the equivalent non-Psychic weapons.

A Nemesis Force Weapon is S6 AP-2 D2 compared to a normal S5 AP-2 D1 power weapon, for example.

yeah, but the bolter isn't better then the regular one and the s6 ap-2 D2 seems impresive till you realise that it is all nemezis weapons, including the thunder hammers.

Their Bolters aren't psychic, though.
And the fact that even the Hammers are just Power Weapons is not good. But pretending that a Power Weapon with extra strength and damage is bad because it has the Psychic keyword is laughable.

It's as bad of a handicap as having the Vehicle keyword in 6th and 7th edition. Zero carrot, all stick.

I mean. Pre-8th, being a vehicle meant that you were either immune to low-strength attacks or getting wounded on 6s in the case of AV10 things like raiders. That's quite the carrot.

You also had higher movement (movement was based on your unit type), couldn't be locked in combat unless you were a walker, and gained access to ramming and tank shock.

I think you're just trying to communicate that you feel like vehicles were in a bad place in those editions, but they definitely had carrots.

I think that the ability of the power to be cast by the wielder at will (literally), isn't focused on enough.

Psychic powers could be the real disruptor in the game by giving them strategem esque activation conditions, or at least the ability to activate outside the unit's standard activation.

For me personally, I'd like to see the following:

-Almost all characters (and a lot of units too) get around three options. One offensive, one defensive, one utility; chosen in list creation.
-Psykers' gimmick is that they choose at the start of the game, and can change which one they have selected midgame as well.

 JNAProductions wrote:
For me personally, I'd like to see the following:

-Almost all characters (and a lot of units too) get around three options. One offensive, one defensive, one utility; chosen in list creation.
-Psykers' gimmick is that they choose at the start of the game, and can change which one they have selected midgame as well.

I would enjoy this.

Alternatively (and I've pitched this more than once before), you could give psykers the ability to use more/stronger abilities in a single turn at the cost of pushing your psyker. So your librarian wants to put up a protective kineshield when your opponent shoots at his squad. He does so and accumulates 1 Stress. Then on his own turn he wants to shoot some lightning at the enemy for another point of Stress. He decides to really put his brain into it and use the stronger profile of his psychic attack, so that costs a third point of Stress. Then in the fight phase, he needs to finish the enemy off with his force stave which he psychically powers up at the cost of one more point of Stress.

Then at the end of the turn (or in his next command phase; whatever) he rolls a d6 and compares the result to the amount of Stress he's accumulated. Then he takes (Stress minus d6 result) mortal wounds. And then his Stress resets to 0 or gets reduced by X or whatever.

So you get the utility of a unit with flexible/numerous special abilities, the fluffy feeling of being able to "push" for more powerful versions of powers , and the risk that comes with drinking too deeply from the warp. Having gotten in a couple of games with my Thousand Sons post-codex, the option to push for more powerful is pretty satsifying (even if I'm still not a fan of psychic test.)