Here's a rundown of how psychic powers work now:
No more generating warp charges at the beginning of your turn. Yay. There's no reason to spam Pink Horrors for warp charges now.
Psykers can still cast as many spells as their Mastery Level. So my Level 2 Primaris Psyker can still cast 2 psychic spells (eh? I don't have a Primaris Psyker in my armored company). Instead of rolling a number of warp charges that you decide on, as in the old system where you roll a number of dice from your warp charge pool and try to get as many 4+ as possible to pull it off, you roll only 2 dice. You just need to beat the warp charge value for the spell you're trying to cast.
All Psykers can cast Smite, which has a charge value of 5 and deals D3 mortal wounds to the closest visible enemy within 18". Sweet. Mortal wounds? What's that? Uh, wounds that cannot be saved, whether the target is in cover, has armor or even has invulnerable save. If you roll more than 10 for the psychic test you deal D6 mortal wounds instead. Wow!
So basically, as an example, you have a level 1 psyker. You want to cast Smite. So you roll 2 dice. If you get 5+, you'll be able to pull that spell off. Otherwise, f you only get 4-, the spell doesn't go off and you move on to the next spell. I doubt you can cast the same power twice, like old times.
It seems Perils of the Warp is still there. So if you roll a double 6 or something, boom! Your psyker either gets dragged screaming into the Warp, or he explodes and turns into that which should not be named.
Deny the Witch is still here, with any enemy psyker within 24" having a chance to block a power. Their mastery level will dictate how many powers they can block per turn. I guess Adamantium Will and other stuff will help with this, but we shall see.
One last thing. Each faction will have its own psychic lore with a range of thematic powers. I dunno how to feel about this, but I guess we'll no longer be using the standard Divination, Telepathy, Telekinesis, Biomancy, Pyromancy, etc. :(
Hell yeah. Time to start adding Battle Psykers to my army. And then an allied Thousand Sons (according to the lore or story, they're still enemies of my Imperial Guard, but they're intervening for their own sinister motives against a common enemy...for example, the Death Guard).
I don't know if I want to cover warzones tomorrow, but I'll definitely shoot you guys up with the shooting phase on Sunday.
Edited: Thanks to Jesse Sinclair for bringing this up - apparently there's a rumor that you choose your psychic powers instead of rolling randomly for them now! Of course as Jesse says, it'll be stronger and weaker because while we'll always have the powers we need, the current ones will obviously be toned down. Apparently it might be based off the current Age of Sigmar model for psychic powers. Thanks, Jesse, for the info!
A separate rumour says that there is no more rolling for powers, you choose the ones you want. If true (and I find this believable since in AoS you don't roll randomly, and many of the AoS tables allow you to choose or roll at your discretion including the allegiance abilities) the psychic phase becomes both more and less powerful.
ReplyDeleteI say more because you always have the powers your list needs, and less because I suspect that the powers will get toned down (they did in AoS).
Either way, I'm looking forward to a more interesting and tactical Psychic Phase!
Oh, wow! Thanks for the information! I think you might be right there, if the rumor is true. It'll be sad that the current powers will be toned down, but I'm thinking that a lot of the psyker powers (I'm looking at you Tzeentch) are actually redudant, so there will be powers that will be favored over the others. Perhaps they'll have to tone them down to balance that out.
DeleteMy big hope (total wishlisting here) is that more factions get access to the Psychic Phase.
DeleteI think it would be cool if the C'tan used their powers in the Psychic Phase, using the same mechanic but representing them trying to re-write reality to their will. They wouldn't count as Psykers (so Shadow in the Warp wouldn't affect them) but you could still Deny the Witch, representing the Psyker trying to re-assert reality with their powers etc (or Sisters using the power of their faith to do the same).
I mean Perils for Tyranids is already described as them bursting a blood vessel instead of anything Chaos related, so I don't see why it can't represent a C'tan trying to break reality but instad having a seizure.
Tau could just straight up get Psykers. Just fluff it that the increased amount of Chaos in galaxy is finally starting to corrupt them (as a sop to fluff maybe they only have Lvl 1 Psykers because they are so new to it).
Hmm, actually now that you think about it, when they said each faction will have their own psychic lore with thematic powers, it suspiciously sounds like Necrons and Tau might actually have their own unique psychic powers. It sounds pretty promising.
DeleteLet's pray to the Emperor and hope He delivers!
The Four Armed Emperor always delivers. Muahahahahaha!
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