[mayegelt]

Having played 6th edition for a while (probably just over a year) and now on to 7th, something I didn't realise just found me...

When you generate your psy powers you of course roll for them and you can substitute 1 for a primus... I knew this.

HOWEVER what I didn't realise is that you have to generate the powers 1 at a time, and on rolling that power you decide at that point if you want to substitute it. Then roll your next and so on, of course if you roll the same power again you are stuck with it.

Wonder how many other people were like me and just ended up rolling 3 dice for a ML3 psyker and discarding the worse one of the bunch.

 

[Ork Mad]

i'm pretty sure it was like that in 6th edition too (though i may be mixing that up with fantasy...) but i find that everyone i play with rolls them all at the same time, probably just to save time setting up

 

[Mossy Toes]

HOWEVER what I didn't realise is that you have to generate the powers 1 at a time, and on rolling that power you decide at that point if you want to substitute it. Then roll your next and so on, of course if you roll the same power again you are stuck with it.

Wonder how many other people were like me and just ended up rolling 3 dice for a ML3 psyker and discarding the worse one of the bunch.

That's something I had to gently remind most people I played against in 6th...

 

[NathanJD]

That is correct, one at a time. 7th did bring one oddity though related to psychic focus.

It is illegal to of picked the primaris and to have psychic focus. So you get the following situation:

A ML2 psyker rolls scrier's gaze on the first roll and swaps it for the primaris (prescience). The psyker now CANNOT roll again on divination as this would give him psychic focus and as a result, cause an illegal state because the primaris was swapped for. Which is explicitly disallowed.

So, rolling one at a time is even more important than before. The impact is, if you are going for a specific power, do NOT swap for the primaris, even if you plan on bailing from the tree after you roll it. By swapping for the primaris you remove your last role as a chance to get the power you want. Which, we all know is invisibility .

 

[mayegelt]

As said, something I had been playing for a while and I was taught by friends who were playing who were taught by the gaming group we were playing at...
Seems odd no one had picked up on this, unless it is a house rule of something that they got you to roll all at once and no one mentioned it.
More strange is that this is also how it was / is played at the local GW store.

 

[Ork Mad]

That is correct, one at a time. 7th did bring one oddity though related to psychic focus.

It is illegal to of picked the primaris and to have psychic focus. So you get the following situation:

A ML2 psyker rolls scrier's gaze on the first roll and swaps it for the primaris (prescience). The psyker now CANNOT roll again on divination as this would give him psychic focus and as a result, cause an illegal state because the primaris was swapped for. Which is explicitly disallowed.

So, rolling one at a time is even more important than before. The impact is, if you are going for a specific power, do NOT swap for the primaris, even if you plan on bailing from the tree after you roll it. By swapping for the primaris you remove your last role as a chance to get the power you want. Which, we all know is invisibility .

just so you know, even if you do swap your first roll for the primaris power you can still roll further on that table, you just cannot swap for the primaris (though if you do roll all your dice on one table you can't swap for a primaris power anyway, unless you're chaos) edit: actually i'm not quite sure about this but the relevant rules are quoted below

from the rule book:

Remember though, that the Psyker cannot have the same power twice - if he chooses to substitute his first power for the primaris power, and then chooses to generate another psychic power from the same discipline, he cannot further substitute powers from that discipline

and i think that, from the way the rule book is worded specifically the "if the psyker has chosen all his powers from the same discipline", you have to pick what disciplines you'll roll from before you roll any dice:

if a psyker has chosen all of his powers from the same psychic discipline to gain Psychic Focus, he will already know that disciplines primaris power and so cannot substitute any of his randomly generated powers

 

[NathanJD]

You certainly do not have to pick all your disciplines beforehand.

"Generating psychic powers", paragraph 3 spells out the order in which you generate a single power:

1) Select a tree.
2) Roll a d6, consult the chart. You now have this power.
3) You may now swap this power for the primaris.

Then, in paragraph 4, you are told the repeat this process for each power you generate. This includes picking a psychic tree each time.

To your other point, yes, you can continue to roll on a tree after picking the primaris. However this will cause an illegal state if psychic focus is obtained with that roll. It's a bit confusing that the "can not swap for the primaris" restriction is applied retroactively after you have obtained psychic focus. It's a terrible rule but it's there.

 

[mayegelt]

TBH if you had 3ML and rolled your first power on divination, get a rubbish spell so trade it for primus, then roll again and get the another one you didn't really want, so try your 3rd for the spell you want then it is your own fault you missed out on the free spell I guess.

Personally I have never been happy with the whole random spells thing in these games. You would have thought that if you are taking your army to war that you would know "This guy here can blow up tanks with lightning with his mind... That guy over there can throw fireballs to burn down woods." In the same way that you wouldn't bring the guy with the lascannon to be the guy in charge of killing loads of grunts while putting the guy with the heavy bolter in charge of taking down a titan.

 

[NathanJD]

Yeah @mayegelt, I'm pretty sure my gaming group is going to house rule it as such.

I despise random power generation as well. At least in 6th you could limit what you could roll by being a level 1 psyker and therefore not able to roll warp charge 2 powers. Now with this restriction gone in 7th, you are fully at the mercy of the d6.

Even worse is they piled more uncertainty onto psychic powers with the new way to generate charge. Previously I had 2 ML 1 psykers in my guard list with a 87% chance to cast prescience each. Now it's all but impossible to cast it with both. Instead I'm left with ~55% to cast prescience with a single psyker vs an opponent with none of his own. If I'm facing even a single ML 3 psyker that chance goes down to ~35% (probably a little higher as my math was a bit rough). Also the chance to perils is greatly increased. I'd rather my inquisitor warlord didn't take needless wounds. So yeah, no thanks. I like reliability in my lists. That's why I play armies with tons of redundency, dice and re-rolls.

I've pretty much abandoned psychic powers for orders, priests and the liber heresius. Long live undeniable buffs on Ld check!

 

[w0lfgang7]

Personally I have never been happy with the whole random spells thing in these games. You would have thought that if you are taking your army to war that you would know "This guy here can blow up tanks with lightning with his mind... That guy over there can throw fireballs to burn down woods." In the same way that you wouldn't bring the guy with the lascannon to be the guy in charge of killing loads of grunts while putting the guy with the heavy bolter in charge of taking down a titan.

I despise random power generation as well. ... I like reliability in my lists.

Both QFT!

With random powers one is NOT a warlord, but merely a mobster with whatever they happened to scrounge up for a skirmish.

IMHO, bound armies should be able to select both powers and warlord traits (instant, legitimate reason to remain bound vice going unbound). Logic, and fluff of warlords actually being able to think, use foresight, and make good, tactical decisions, means that being able to pick powers makes sense. Whereas in an unbound army of unlimited codices it would make sense that random people happened to group together on the battlefield, so unbound armies ought to be at the mercy of the random d6.

 

[mayegelt]

The trouble is some spells in some decks are clearly trash or fillers. Going in the way back machine for WFB the skaven deck had 13 spells you drew from cards (no rolling there), but in general everyone wanted only a couple of the spells as the rest generally sucked. Throwing a greyseer around the board with skitterleep was bad, however Curse of the Horned Rat what killed enemies and turned them into Skaven was nutty, Plague was also insanely powerful vs Knights.
Same goes in 40k now. People would stack Prescience, Precognition, Invisability, Sacrifice, Incursion, Iron Arm or things like that if they could choose.

Giving a buyable option of Loremaster (like in WFB) might be a good answer as you pay some PTS and you know the whole lore. But make it only available to ML3+

 

[Mossy Toes]

Giving a buyable option of Loremaster (like in WFB) might be a good answer as you pay some PTS and you know the whole lore. But make it only available to ML3+

Closest we have to that now is Be'lakor--Telepathy Loremaster. Tigurius isn't half bad for getting what you want, though...