Picking Warlord Traits and Psychic Powers

[xedoc]

Just thinking out loud, but is there any disadvantage or detriment to players choosing their psychic powers and warlord traits rather than having to roll randomly?

 

Game wise:

1. Choosing warlord traits lets you optimize your army lists and take advantage of the trait. For example, for an All Ravenwing Army, taking Rapid Maneouver trait really helps. 

 

2. It also helps in your overall strategy. You'll now be able to support and complement your strategy by choosing the warlord trait that most benefits it. If I run a Deathwing Army, getting Courage of the Lion is actually useless because all are Fearless

 

3. Similar with psychic powers, you can build lists and tactics based on the powers you chose and how to best use them.

 

Fluff wise:

1. It lets you give the warlord better identity. If you're warlord is Belial, I doubt he's very good at Rapid Maneouver.

 

2. Psychic Powers are known by the Psykers; learned, trained and developed their powers on certain disciplines. I find it hard to imagine that a Librarian would use random powers. The situation would dictate what known powers he has to use.

 

I feel these two aspects of the game have a lot of potential to directly affect the armies and tactics used. 

 

My analogy here would be with card games like Magic, Hearthstone or Pokemon. You choose the combinations and build your deck. And the only thing left to chance is whether you can draw the correct cards or not. 

 

So same here, create the army lists with all resources and leave to chance the dice rolls.

 

[Pigshead]

But surely if you are all Ravenwing you are using Sammael, and so you get his warlord trait, and with him being Eternal Warrior I don't know why you wouldn't have him as your warlord. Similarly if you go all Deathwing you are probably using Belial, who gets 'The Hunt' as his warlord trait. Unless of course your Deathwing list is unbound and your using a libby or something as your warlord, in which case I'll shut up.

As for psychic powers, I can't say I would be happy to let them be chosen by the player, as someone who has faced Invisible Grey Knights with Hammerhand and god knows what else buffing them, I can honestly say that would probably put me off playing. Sure, it would be nice to be able to pick something like Invisibility for myself, but I find the idea of Invisible Deathwing Knights attempting to trade blows with Invisible Grey Knights quite hilarious, and not in a good way.

Of course if you were doing something like a narrative campaign, and your opponent was willing to allow you to choose for youself, I don't see why you shouldn't do it. 

[Chaplain Lucifer]

If it random, keep it random. Choosing, especially when it comes to psyker power puts too much power on the hands of the army creator...

[Isiah]

But isn't that good? I mean you don't randomly pick units, weapons or wargear so why leave psychic powers and traits to chance?

[Cactus]

If they had individual points costs, as has been seen in past editions, that would be cool. I feel there's too much disparity in the psychic powers' power level for picking x powers from the list to be interesting or fun.

[SvenONE]

I think it would be better if you were able to do this.  

 

While randomness is a huge aspect of the game I think at a certain point the randomness becomes a crutch by a game developer under the premise of "replayability" or to keep a game system "fresh".  The randomness certainly helps a game's narrative, we've all been there when a chance in hell manages to go through.  That one plasma shot that brings down a flier, or that sargeant who manages to "dodge" (aka your opponent's failing a roll) and tying a Daemon Prince up for one more turn, or those times where Belial makes all of his armor saves AND passed 3 ID Invulns.

 

Randomness also changes how these new maelstrom games go.  I'm still on the fence because I've still found most games to be feast or famine where you or an opponent just runs up the score in 1 turn of good rolls and you're stuck with objectives you can't do (destroy gun emplacement or kill a psyker when you are playing against Necrons).

 

But that's the main game system, not the extraneous layers of the game that is Psyker Powers and Warlord traits.  While 7th edition BRB Warlord traits saw a bit of a facelift, there is still a pretty decent range of good and bad ones.  Our own book, and most others, have similar problems.  They are either all terribly boring or bland with 1 or 2 good ones in there.

 

Psyker powers have similar issues.  I can't tell you HOW many times I've rolled on Telepathy to get Mental Fortitude.  I agree with Cactus and Pigshead that there are some real good ones in there that in the hands of serious psyker armies would be really unfun for the rest of us.  But consider this: Think of all those games I spent the extra points on a mastery level only to roll on something like Mental Fortitude, take the primaris and get it again or get hallucination (the new one stinks) or Terrify against a space marine army.  Is THAT much fun? to have a psyker hq whose main draw is to cast powerful spells but before the game even started became marginally more useful?  I think this is especially case with the new system which in my opinion punishes low psyker level armies like ours which can generate a meager base amount of charges.

 

Then there's a matter of frequency of games.  Since 7th edition came out my playing has significantly decreased, my work hours became longer and my GWs hours became shorter with the 1 man operation.  So I can't manage to get to the store to play a reasonable sized game, 750-1000, 1250 might be pushing it.  So my hopes of trying out the Pyromancy tree are dashed when I roll fire shield or sunburst when I wanted to get Molten Beam for my deep striking terminator libby.  Guess I'll have to wait another month for the slim chance of that happening again.

 

My playing has increased with the release of the DE codex, and quite frankly I'm enjoying that as I'm NOT let down by the extremely fickle and quite honestly marginal gains of having a psyker in your codex.

 

I think with responsible design changes to the psyker powers (and warlord traits) could be tuned so that they favor different approaches to building your army.  Heck you could even make the argument that a player might be MORE inclined to purchase a wider selection of units if they knew that psyker powers/warlord traits could change the way their codex played within itself.  I don't think that is necessarily a bad thing.  Just because we play with dice doesn't mean we need to roll them for EVERYTHING.

 

I play with a few people I know well, a few people I know sort of well, and a lot of people I don't know at all.  In my experience MOST people like to play by the rules.  We know that no matter who we are playing, we're all coming from the same jumping off point.  So while I appreciate comments like "oh you can just get your opponent to go along with it" I find it easier said than done -- if you DO play with those types of people, great! It's nice to know there are close knit groups out there.  But for the public casual crowd barely able to find the time for a 2 or 3 hour commitment, there could be long periods of time before you get to enjoy that psyker power or warlord trait you've had your eye on.

[SnakeChisler]

From 5th to 6th the random Psychic powers change was a huge leap and one I believe took the game forward as did the psychic phase from 6th to 7th

 

You can argue that some of the powers are a bit poo but hey that's random for you and there are ways of negating bad rolling by dicipline selection.

 

Its no surprise though that competition builds tend to be built round Characters that select their psychic power and in the case of Eldar dis-cast Perils but that's a whole different argument.

 

What do I choose where

1st who am I playing and what are there strengths/weaknesses, there is no point rolling on the Telepathy discipline if your up against Necrons as the Primaris roles against Leadership 10 so look elsewhere.

Taking Necrons as an example I'd look at combat do I need Re-Rolls would Divination be worth it for the Primaris or does he have a shed load of warriors I can Burn with Pyromancy. I generally never look beyond the Primaris when selecting you have to get at least 1 useful power out of the mix.

Are you facing a Psyker heavy army ? if yes just pick Divination your not going to get offensive powers off so go for Buffs

I also run a double Librarian build which has a bit of redundancy in it so you can go out on a limb slightly but even then the go to powers are Pyromancy & Divination with Telepathy if I'm desperate.

 

Warlord Traits - Strategic always some of the selections are just too good to pass up a role on the table, -1 to your opponents reserves +1 to yours, Stealth in Ruins, Night Vision for your entire army the only naff ones seem to be pinning 3 units and infiltrate 3 non vehicle units and that's only coz I can scout most of the time or I'm running Mech.

[SnakeChisler]

On another Note Maelstrom we play it all the time the way to win is control 4 of the 6 objectives even with bad cards you'll generally come out in front.

 

Don't reserve loads of stuff you need to hit the ground running and be aggresive

 

Other ways to boost your chances are to use the Warlord traits for Maelstrom and pick divination for a chance of Scriers Gaze

 

House rule you can discard impossible cards - but only if they were impossible at the start of the game (ex kill a flyer - you've already killed 1 and there's none left to shoot at so tough)

[crimsonsphinx]

If you could pick your Warlord Traits, Azzy loses one of his abilities you pay for.  On another note, you also would see people picking the same handful.  I don't strictly have a problem with this though. 

 

With psychic powers, much like magic spells in fantasy, I have always had an issue where you pay for a wizard who knows a random spell.  Your heavy weapons guys don't turn up with a random weapon, so why should he turn up with a random spell?

 

If powers are costed appropriately, then its fair. 

[Prot]

If you could pick your psychic power, they'd have to change a great deal of the system. All you'd have is Iron Arm, Invis, and Prescience armies built around those abilities.

 

I agree with Lucifer it would empower the heavy psyker armies far too much. You'd see too much of the same thing over and over.

 

As far as warlord traits? Fluff wise I guess you have a point, but I use Azrael a lot and he chooses. It's not game breakingly good, that's for sure. But for psychic powers, fluffwise, let's remember how fickle the warp is supposed to be. A pure dependency on a single power within a discipline I think is asking for too much.

[xedoc]

SvenONE's post really encapsulates what I feel about being able to choose warlord traits and psychic powers

I agree that the current set of traits and powers are hedged at the extremes. Some are very powerful, most are practically useless. It wouldn't be enough just to allow the players to choose but a review and re-balancing of the traits and powers are needed.

Perhaps as mentioned, each mastery level and spell can be appointed a proper cost in points. After all, by right, the points value of a model determines how powerful it is.

Fluff wise, I'd say a psyker has trained in a set of disciplines and the randomness/fickleness of the warp manifests in harnessing its energy to cast the spell. He should be free to choose which powers he can use as long as its within the disciplines he has trained in.

As for the traits, its the same as the psychic powers. As is, choosing the traits isn't at all useful since you can already do that by using Azrael. But as mentioned you are already paying extra for that ability. Imagine for a moment, that Azrael is costed lower but with the ability to choose his warlord traits.

Another example is Belial; one of Deathwing's key offense is their assured deep strike (DWA), but if you can choose Brilliant Planning as Belial's trait, wouldnt it add another dimension to your tactics that you can hold a few forces in reserve and deep strike on turn 3, knowing you have a greater chance they'll come in because you get to +1 your roll. Fluff wise, I would imagine Belial to be a brilliant tactician and knows exactly when to hold off or go all out as the battle dictates.

[SnakeChisler]

You just need to look at the Comp builds to see how one dimensional it gets B'Lakor in the Chaos corner and Sevrin Roth in the Imperial and ooo look they both take invisibility and shrouding what a coincidence.

 

Personally think its a complete crock when it gets to that stage and not worth the effort to play

 

On the subject of Warlord Traits they need smoothing out some codecs have really OP ones (cough Tau cough) and we get a couple that are useful in the right situations.

 

If I could pick one it would be "For the Lion!" Furious charge on the Ravenwing Bikers combined with the Rad Grenade but you can't Sammael gets 6" more movement if he turbo's woopee doopee doooo  :(

[Prot]

Snake kind of echoed my thoughts, but it's the perfect example. Look at the competitive environement and there you have the result of letting someone choose an ability.