RULES - Primarch and Legion

[Doctor Perils]

For the "unexpected" rule, you should probably say that "In the movement phase, they must move towards the closest enemy unit", or Hit and Run would be useless. Also, having to move towards the closest enemy unit seems like a massive disadvantage to me...

[Grifftofer]

Ok. So something that has come up in the last few days is the issue of Primarch Psykers (I'm discussing rules etc with AO108 and Kel). I say it's an issue because of the massive variance in utility and power of the powers, both in general and within single tables. This means that a Psyker can get lucky and have just the right combination of powers to become functionally invincible or getabsolutely noting useful and be relegated to the sidelines (this is a relative scale, a Primarch is almost always going to to be useful for beating heads).

 

I know that some tables of powers are worse than others, but the problem for me is that this variance is almost impossible to account for when working out a Primarch's points value (even Forgeworld haven't locked it down yet). Consider a Biomancer Primarch who rolls Enfeeble and Haemorrhage, he will be quite potent in a number of situations. But compared to the same Primarch who has rolled Iron Arm and Warp Speed, he might as well not be playing :P

 

My solution (see I have a point beyond just ranting), is that instead of rolling for their powers Primarch Psykers should be assigned fixed powers, which are the same in every game they play. They may not represent the full extent of their psychic prowess, but rather those abilities that they use most commonly or mesh best with their personalities. I've suggested this possibility to both AO108 and Kel, but I wanted to get all of your opinions on the idea. I feel that it would help level Psykers out so they don't get random spikes in power, which will in turn make them easier to cost and balance.

[AlphariusOmegon108]

Problem with this is the meta of the BoTl. We are completely FILLED with null zones, pariah characters and other things. Psykers are not near as powerfull in the BoTLverse as in the normal 30kverse rule wise. Do consider this, I will leave it to other people to decide, but psykers really do not have as much power in this verse balance wise as in 30k (and the recent addition of the Sisters of Silence doesn't help much)

[Kelborn]

Agreed with Griff.

 

I always intended to limit Andezos potential by giving him three specific powers. Nothing more, nothing less. No rolling dices on a table or something similar.

 

Magnus of course would be an exception as he is THE mightiest psyker Primarch of them all but I would recommend the other psyker Primarchs to consider Griffs proposal.

Edited November 5, 2016 by Kelborn

[MikhalLeNoir]

Hmm. I can understand AO's point but it could be that the psykers who are not so potent will be solved as soon as inferno is going to be released.

 

But i agree with Grifft, that it would be better to lock them up. As far as I can see, all pariah primarchs have locked powers which resemble their nature. Alternative would be to let the pariah primarchs roll on a table for powers. Makes point calculating easier.

Edited November 5, 2016 by MikhalLeNoir

[Grifftofer]

Problem with this is the meta of the BoTl. We are completely FILLED with null zones, pariah characters and other things. Psykers are not near as powerfull in the BoTLverse as in the normal 30kverse rule wise. Do consider this, I will leave it to other people to decide, but psykers really do not have as much power in this verse balance wise as in 30k (and the recent addition of the Sisters of Silence doesn't help much)

I do see your point. I just don't feel that Pariah vs Psyker should be the default assumption. Of our 18 Legions we have 4 Psyker Primarchs and 4 Pariah Primarchs, the Legions connected to those are of varying levels of potential (not all of them take strongly of that trait). Admittedly that is more than in the canon-verse, but that still leaves us with 10 BotL Legions who have average to low levels of Psykers and no Pariahs, unless they take specific allies (Sisters are going to be part of the Talons of the Emperor army list by all indications). I just don't want us to get to the stage where if you take Lorgar/Alexos/Icarion anyone else might as well leave their Primarch at home because they will get trashed regardless of points difference.

 

Now if I were to take a quick stab at the various Psykers and suggest some powers that feel to me as though they'd be appropriate, but not too much of a combo. I don't believe that any of these is an overly bad selection, but equally none will allow the users to become all powerful.

Andezo

• Perfect Timing (Some of the Predators manifest this power to see into the spectral realm, much as Andezo does. So it feels appropriate.)
• Smite (Andezo has no ranged weapons and uses his Bio-lightning to attack at range.)
• Enfeeble (It feels in keeping with Andezo to weaken his foes before he strikes with a killing blow. It also lets Andezo be not physically huge and still be able to Instant Death marines.)

Alexandros

• Warp Blast (Unique power provided by his armour.)
• Forewarning (Combos nicely with his Sire rule and fits with the idea of protecting those under his command with his powers.)
• Misfortune (The only real offensive power in the table, I thin it would be more Alexandros taking absolute advantage of every slight misstep, rather than actually cursing the enemy.)
• Prescience (The archetypical see into the future power. He knows exactly what will happen a and how to take advantage of that.)
• Precognition (This power is specifically called out as being part of Alexandros's repertoire and even though its a big force multiplier it kinda fits with him. Plus he is the warmaster and has the highest cost of any Primarch (so far) with only a mediocre statline.)

Alexos

• Iron Arm (Alexos is all about improving himself and his sons, so it was  either this or Warp Time and AO108 wanted Iron Arm) [How would you feel about having Hammerhand instead AO? It would still let Alexos hit like a truck at S10, as well as enhancing his unit some. But without the pesky side effect of making him immune to everything of S5 and lower.]
• Life Leech (Sucking the life out of his foes to empower himself feels very in keeping with Alexos and gives him a way to build back up after being wounded.)
• Haemorrhage (A nice way for him to pick the sergeants or vexilla out of a unit before charging. Also, causing the target to bleed explosively from every orifice feels pretty chaos.)

Icarion

• Banishment/Cursed Earth (Depending on when in the Crusade/Insurrection timeline we are. Icarion's long experience of fightin against daemons means he knows exactly how to weaken, or strengthen, them.)
• Prescience (Pretty much the same reasoning as Alexandros can be applied here for Icarion.)
• Scriers Gaze (Alexandros has a rule that lets him take 2 Warlord traits. Icarion does not, but he can make up for that lack somewhat by using Scriers Gaze for reserve manipulation.)
• Precognition (Similar reasoning as for Alexandros. Except that with a 3+ save he is much more vulnerable to less elite units, even though the 3++ makes him slightly stonger vs elite attacks.)
• Misfortune (Exactly the same reasoning as Alexandros and none of the other Sanctic/Malefic powers felt appropriate.)

 

As you may have noticed all the above Primarchs have 1 more power than their Mastery Level would indicate (I'm guessing a bit with Andezo). This is partly to offset the fact that they have no real options/variety in their powers, but also due to the fact that they don't gain the advantage of the Psychic Focus to gain the Primaris Power of their discipline.

[AlphariusOmegon108]

I like it. Hammerhand not so sure about though.. Alexos uses part of his power to melt away like dark mist, so idk.. I think Iron Arm is fitting personally.but if hammerhand does help his attached unit.. that could work actually

 

And why does Icarion have to have prechosen powers? He is the freaking main traitor.. or will he get a traitor profile?

Edited November 5, 2016 by AlphariusOmegon108

[simison]

Where's the telepathy?

[Grifftofer]

I may have forgotten that Alex could take from telepathy :S His rules weren't in front of me as I did it, so apologies.

[Grifftofer]

Ok. So a couple of minutes checking the 40k rulebook. I'd probably swap Misfortune for Dominate as his non-buff power, and then swap probably Prescience for Mental Fortitude, because the defending people feels closer to his core than making them shoot/hit better. And him being able to rally allies with a charismatic yell just feels right for the Warmaster.

[bluntblade]

If the shout's a thing, I think it should be called We Are His Shield.

[MikhalLeNoir]

Didn't alexos melt away as daemon? You could implement iron arm in his daemon form to show how strong he evolved

[bluntblade]

I think Alexos' daemon form should be free from metal, mostly. His daemon form's a triumph of deranged biological science and ritual sorcery, right?

[MikhalLeNoir]

Yeah. But AOs arguments are thst he melts away from the hit and is near undestructible. So he choose iron arm. But i thought he gains this.powers not before he becomes a daemon.

[Demus Ragnok]

Yeah. But AOs arguments are thst he melts away from the hit and is near undestructible. So he choose iron arm. But i thought he gains this.powers not before he becomes a daemon.

Is griff dealing with the pre daemon or post daemon powers.

 

They should be somewhat different.

[MikhalLeNoir]

I think pre daemon.

[bluntblade]

Dafthead here managed to forget this is the Primarch rules thread

[Grifftofer]

 

Yeah. But AOs arguments are thst he melts away from the hit and is near undestructible. So he choose iron arm. But i thought he gains this.powers not before he becomes a daemon.

Is griff dealing with the pre daemon or post daemon powers.

 

They should be somewhat different.

 

I honestly didn't really think about the daemon/pre-daemon thing. I only put in the alternative for Icarion because it made no sense for him to have something to hurt Daemons when he's on there side, but it does for the period before when he was still fighting them.

 

Having said that I think that having some of the powers change as the Insurrection progresses sounds like an interesting idea and allows you to show some character development in the characters battlefield role on the tabletop. As well as in the fluff.

[Grifftofer]

Ok. So this is a topic that I have brought up previously (can’t remember where/when, but nevermind) [EDIT: Apparently it was here over a year ago ] and with Hesh’s return and push into the Beta and subsequent phases of Insurrection I’d like to do so again.

 

Primarch Psykers

I have an issue with how Primarchs generate psychic powers. I think it’s too variable in terms of power level and often leads to situations where the Primarch ends up with powers that are just plain broken when used in combination on a model with their statline (and debateably on other models too).

 

For those of you who aren’t so crunch minded currently all Psykers have access to certain disciplines each of which has a table of 6 powers. A psyker can roll on the tables it has access to a number of times equal to it’s Mastery Level. Each roll is made after the other so you can see how you roll before picking where the next roll will be. If the Psyker rolls a power it already has it must roll again until it gets a power it doesn’t have. Further each discipline has a Primaris power which can be taken instead of the power rolled. The Last thing is that if a Psyker generates all of its powers from a single discipline it gets a thing called Psychic Focus, which then gives it the Primaris power of the discipline they generated their powers from.

 

Now for lower level Psykers this isn’t much of a problem, they have a couple of chances to get the power that they want and if they don’t they work around that by using the power they did roll. For higher level Psykers (such as Primarchs can be) the issue of being able to almost guarantee getting the power(s) you want can be a real issue. Why is this an issue? Because in most of the disciplines there are powers that become even more effective on a Primarch than on a normal Psyker. There are two(three) main powers left in the disciplines that cause me to judge Psykers perhaps more harshly than many, simply due to the potential of getting these powers.

 

The powers in question are Iron Arm (& Warp Speed) from the Biomancy discipline and Precognition from the Divination discipline. I’ll start with Precognition as it is a simpler example.

• Precognition grants the Psyker the ability to re-roll all to-Hit, to-Wound and Save rolls. On a regular Librarian this can turn them into a one man blender able to take on threats that would normally be beyond them such as big automata or Praetor level characters. For a Primarch who can already take on the biggest things in an enemy force it makes them absolutely insane. A Primarch with this power will have an effective 1/36 chance of taking a wound against non-AP 2 weapons and between a 1/4 and a 1/9 chance of suffering a wound from something that is AP2. This is after the attack actually make it through their other potential defensive measures (such as high WS, T, Fear etc).
• Iron Arm grants +3 to Strength and Toughness as well as the Smash special rule, Warp Speed gives +3 Initiative and Attacks as well as Fleet. For both of these it is less the special rule and more the stat changes that are the problem. +3S&T makes even the weakest Primarch S/T 9! And Warp Speed makes the slowest Primarch I8 and A7. Alone these are both problematic due to their ability to seriously skew any combat completely towards the Psyker, the fact that they can be combined to create an epic powerhouse is beyond crazy.

The simple fact that any of these exist means that a Primarch who has access to them must be balanced with their potential in mind, which means they will either be weaker than they should be or they run the risk of being seriously overpowered should they generate these powers. The specific reason I chose these powers is because they are blessings, which are hard to prevent from going off without some serious investment. Pariahs only reduce the chance of them being successful when within 12” and once manifested they remain in play for a whole turn meaning that they can be used when outside of that range and then still be used if the model is charged next turn. The other thing is that you very rarely have modifiers that affect the Deny Roll against blessing powers so normally you are only denying on rolls of 6 where the enemy needs 4s (or 5s if within 12” of a Pariah) to successfully harness warp charges.

 

My solution to the above is to give each Primarch a number of fixed powers that remain the same each game thus skipping the variability and letting us keep a tight rein on what they are capable of either by not giving them certain powers, or by adjusting those powers that would otherwise be too much on a Primarch. This is an approach that I’m currently following in my work on the Warmaster’s Triumvirate AU and I’d like to show an example of how it would work with two examples:

• Pacha is a big and burly Primarch who towers over his fellows and using his powers to boost his formidable physical prowess as well as manipulating the flora nearby to trap enemies or slow them down. He is also not a particularly strong psyker, being only Mastery Level 2 or about as strong a Legion Librarians can be. Now in order to represent Pacha’s mastery over plant manipulation I chose two powers from the Geokinesis discipline in Angels of Death and re-named them to fit with Pacha’s skills better. Chasm became Entombing Roots and Land quake became Encroaching Vines. Finally, I decided that a Biomancy power would fit best for his self-enhancement and picked Endurance as it seemed like a nice fit and didn’t cause any really big balance swings IMO.
• Elsu is a fairly average Primarch who uses his psychic powers to make himself into a swift, aggressive and deadly killer (kind of a mix of Corax and Angron). Now because Elsu’s niche is all about using psychic powers to make himself king of the hill the natural choice would be to go into Biomancy and try to get all the buffing powers. I didn’t think that would be easy to balance so I made a compromise. I started by giving him Warp Speed and Life Leech straight from the normal discipline. Then rather than giving him Iron Arm with its potential to make him S/T/I9 with A7 I thought that the Hammerhand power from sanctic would let him hit hard, but would leave him with the weakness of still being quite poorly defended against return blows. The last power that really felt like it would fit was Precognition, but given how it would buff everything I didn’t think it worked with the aggressive, but fragile, character I had written so far. However the re-rolls on his offense would work very well as without them he would be still somewhat weak offensively (S6 with no Shred or other wounding enhancers). So I simply plucked out the re-rolls for saves, which means that the power is less good than normal for Elsu, but it doesn’t make him functionally immune to certain opponents.

As you can see I took some liberties with the powers but I feel that in doing so I have used the Primarch’s psychic powers as an extension of their personality and a way to help encapsulate their styles in a way that the random generation method simply cannot do. I also thing that by picking the powers I have limited the potential for a Primarch to be able to become an unstoppable monster that crushes all opposition.

 

Hopefully this post helps you guys understand my position and maybe explains why I think that this alternative method will lead to rules that fit with the characters they are supposed to represent more fully. Obviously I’m happy to answer any questions you might have and I’d love to hear what you have to say on the matter.

[Hesh Kadesh]

I certainly agree with this aspect from a cursory read through.

 

I've never been a fan of the concept of a random Dice Roll, and then having the Loremaster (access to all) or Choosing becomes broken.

 

Imagine if there was a character who literally could go Super Saiyan with their Psychic properties, rolled Biomancy and ended up with Enfeeble, Lifeleech and Haemorhage? Their entire shtick is missing.

 

Selecting Powers or having them all known leads to the issue of a character just choose the most powerful one, in favour of the one which fits the theme: say for example a Lightning McQueen who goes up against an Opponent with a lower Initiative natively, so he choose Iron Arm instead.

 

With the designated powers, this removes that randomness.

 

I coukd hineslty say that I wouldn't mind extending that process out to all other named Psykers in game: Henasohn is a Telekine, who I want to give certain powers to making him essentially walking artillery: assail, shockwave and maelstrom, rather than telekine dome, or bunny hopping around the battlefield.

 

The added bonus is that we can rename the powers to be more fitting.

 

This has my full support, and I'd like to pass along the suggestion that it is extended to other named characters as well.

[simison]

I have no qualms about instituting set Psychic powers.

[Chief Captain Redd]

I am in full support of this, both with primarchs and named characters.