kamikazelocks

[Asuryan]

I think what he is trying to say is the unit is already one of the most durable in the game with a 2+ rerollable save when in a seer council. That's what i took it to mean. And I am one to agree the Seer council doesn't need to be boosted they are already hard to deal with.

as Anggul said

The issue with Jetseer Councils isn't the base Warlock rules, it's Protect and Fortune that make them nigh invincible. Change the Warlock stats to fit the fluff and make it so that they can be used well as leaders for Guardians, not just part of the silly deathstar, then change the powers so that deathstar can't be made.

I think it's important to remember that one of the implications of the fluff is that using psychic powers in combat is really different from the typical psychic sorcery that Eldar engage in. Calling on the Warp in combat situations, under stress, is very different from casting runes in the safety of your sanctum in the heart of your Craftworld.

So, yes, even though Eldar are masters of the psychic arts... if you have the balls to toss psychic powers around in the middle of combat, there's a chance that your brain is going to be eaten by a daemon, whoever you are.

This makes no sense as all the other races have the same issues of casting psychic powers in battle as the warlock does but the warlock has the added disadvantage of being leadership 8 and only one wound. Also Warlocks are described as being battle psykers (at least in the last codex, given by they had no chance of failing and their powers were always active).

Pretty much Anggul nailed it on the head, just wanted to add my 2 cents

[SON OF ROMULOUS]

not everything in the game needs to be ld8 though... Their ld8 and 1 wound because they aren't farseer's They are a lower level of psycher. and cost wise you pay alot more for a primaris psycher then you do for a warlock.. to get them to ld9 would you pay more points? Right now they are costed for their abilities and points. if your going to start making them better then their costs will go up.

[Dave Mcturk]

unless i am mistaken they are the only psycher with ONLY one wound ?

ork warpheads have two wounds and get to re-roll their powers every turn. also they get to use the 'mob rule' for the spell so even if they 'fail' and take a wound [and dont die first time around!]- their 'power' still goes off.

i apologise if i tend to brainstorm on this site; but it is useful to get varied opinions.

we are considering changing perils of the warp to 1:1 being a perils with IV style saves allowed, and failure means the psycher [all psychers - not just warlocks] lose one mastery level [they dont DIE] ;throwing over leadership would no longer cause perils - just a failure of power. Everyone likes to house rule differently. But our opinion is that psychers shouldnt just DIE if they mess up.

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not everything in the game needs to be ld8 though... Their ld8 and 1 wound because they aren't farseer's They are a lower level of psycher. and cost wise you pay alot more for a primaris psycher then you do for a warlock.. to get them to ld9 would you pay more points? Right now they are costed for their abilities and points. if your going to start making them better then their costs will go up.

the leadership value of psychers is irrelevant to this rule debate. ALL psychers currently suffer a perils wound on a 1:1 or 6:6, even if they still 'auto-power' [as ORCS usually do].

as a 1:18 chance of dying [or going into a brain coma for the remainder of the game - if you prefer] - its the game mechanic that I am really questioning, not really the intrinsic value of warlocks - which are actually very useful in lots of configurations.

[John Bower]

So, let me get this right, Eldar have several rather OP units as it is (the only jetbikes with a 3+ save and that moves in the assault phase whether it attacks or not, not to mention those Warp cursed Wave Serpents with their dumbass ignores all cover 60" shield blast that get spammed to hell), but you want to make another unit OP too, by letting them 'not' die to perils like other psykers have to, erm, frankly no. Just NO. Rules are fine for the cost, they are a buff unit that buffs pretty well any other unit they join heavily, hard to pick out due to LoS. I'll tell you what, yeah, you can do that if my IG sniper gets BS 7 and kills your psyker on a straight 6 to hit with no look out sir allowed when he hits anyway, how's that?

[Asuryan]

So, let me get this right, Eldar have several rather OP units as it is (the only jetbikes with a 3+ save and that moves in the assault phase whether it attacks or not, not to mention those Warp cursed Wave Serpents with their dumbass ignores all cover 60" shield blast that get spammed to hell), but you want to make another unit OP too, by letting them 'not' die to perils like other psykers have to, erm, frankly no. Just NO. Rules are fine for the cost, they are a buff unit that buffs pretty well any other unit they join heavily, hard to pick out due to LoS. I'll tell you what, yeah, you can do that if my IG sniper gets BS 7 and kills your psyker on a straight 6 to hit with no look out sir allowed when he hits anyway, how's that?

So your main issue with Eldar is spam and Netlists? because while the jetbikes do have the 3+, Dark eldar jetbikes have the 2d6 assault move (not sure what their save is) and Dark Eldar and Demon jetbikes have so nice special attacks when they move/turbo-boost over units with the Demon's having 2 wounds apiece. And waveserpents are not that bad until you face the Netlists that field as many as possible.

Also if we changed the rules for perils then it would help other psykers not just Eldar and it wouldn't make another op unit. Warlocks are not that great as they only go in jetbike squads, both guardian squads or the artillery squad. You are right that these changes would make the seer council even more cheesy but they are already super cheese so whats the harm and it would give the other 4 squads a dedicated sergeant.

[Dave Mcturk]

So, let me get this right, Eldar have several rather OP units as it is (the only jetbikes with a 3+ save and that moves in the assault phase whether it attacks or not, not to mention those Warp cursed Wave Serpents with their dumbass ignores all cover 60" shield blast that get spammed to hell), but you want to make another unit OP too, by letting them 'not' die to perils like other psykers have to, erm, frankly no. Just NO. Rules are fine for the cost, they are a buff unit that buffs pretty well any other unit they join heavily, hard to pick out due to LoS. I'll tell you what, yeah, you can do that if my IG sniper gets BS 7 and kills your psyker on a straight 6 to hit with no look out sir allowed when he hits anyway, how's that?

two wrongs dont make a right.

fyi. our house rules have made the serpent shield ONE use only. a reduced it to a torrent weapon from 60" range.

and i guess from your tone you dont play with ELDAR. imo the units they BUFF; with their completely random powers; are nothing exceptional. the 'seer council' being broken - is an easy fix as well - get rid of 'battle brothers' in the allies matrix - in fact while you are at it just make ALL allies 'allies of convenience' and that will sort out some tau nonsense as well.

i have to be perfectly honest and say I NEVER even bother using the warlock powers - most of them do a warlock unit no good whatsoever - QUICKEN - probably being the exception - but that ONLY works if they are all on foot !,

if somebody seems to be making hay with their warlocks then they are either incredibly lucky [warlocks DIE 1:18 and still fail powers 11:36] or you are letting them get away with murder - a t4 4+ save without farseer buffs [again expensive and random] is nothing to write home about].

and yes I agree with your assessment of sniper fire, a precision hit with a 6 with a 6 for conversion shouldnt allow any look out sir malarky. equally well a highly trained sniper in a stationary fire position should do better than 50:50. in this respect imperial snipers, eldar sniper Illic and elite pathfinders are no better than KROOT.

[Anggul]

So, let me get this right, Eldar have several rather OP units as it is (the only jetbikes with a 3+ save and that moves in the assault phase whether it attacks or not, not to mention those Warp cursed Wave Serpents with their dumbass ignores all cover 60" shield blast that get spammed to hell), but you want to make another unit OP too, by letting them 'not' die to perils like other psykers have to, erm, frankly no. Just NO. Rules are fine for the cost, they are a buff unit that buffs pretty well any other unit they join heavily, hard to pick out due to LoS. I'll tell you what, yeah, you can do that if my IG sniper gets BS 7 and kills your psyker on a straight 6 to hit with no look out sir allowed when he hits anyway, how's that?

No-one wants to make them OP, we want to make them good. As it is, they aren't worth their points. Exploiting the rules to make a silly deathstar does not count. As I said in my previous post, fix Fortune and Protect so the deathstar can't be made, and make the Warlocks themselves worth their cost.

One unit in a codex being overpowered doesn't mean another unit in the codex should be underpowered. I would change the Serpent Shield too.

They should have some way of resisting Perils because other psykers have multiple wounds so they can survive perils at least once. The exception is Brotherhood of Psykers, and units with that rule still have multiple wounds because the whole unit is the psyker. That's why they just had passive powers they didn't have to test to cast before, because a single wound psyker is going to die too easily. Right now they really aren't reliable enough to be worth taking. They could be really useful with Guardians and Wraithguard as they're supposed to be, but they fail to cast their powers so often with such mediocre leadership (for a psyker) that your opponent just has to wait for them to almost inevitably do so then decimate the unit they were supposed to be protecting. Also for the purposes of fluff.

[John Bower]

You're forgetting that when they had a single 'power' they didn't roll to cast it only did one thing, it now has a choice of malediction/blessing, I'd rather they had buffed Banshees a bit. Back in 5th they were a good CC unit, with their weapons able to butcher termies with a small amount of luck. Now they are even less worth their points than warlocks are. I've not lost many warlocks to perils, certainly no more than I've lost Orks to accidental 'ead bangers on themselves. Come to that, I've lost my ork weirdboy on a few occasions to various mishaps. How about that? Make them Ld10 but give them a random humped off into the warp if they so much as fail a psychic test....?

[Anggul]

You're forgetting that when they had a single 'power' they didn't roll to cast it only did one thing, it now has a choice of malediction/blessing, I'd rather they had buffed Banshees a bit. Back in 5th they were a good CC unit, with their weapons able to butcher termies with a small amount of luck. Now they are even less worth their points than warlocks are. I've not lost many warlocks to perils, certainly no more than I've lost Orks to accidental 'ead bangers on themselves. Come to that, I've lost my ork weirdboy on a few occasions to various mishaps. How about that? Make them Ld10 but give them a random humped off into the warp if they so much as fail a psychic test....?

I agree, Banshees are now rubbish, and need fixing. Again though, it shouldn't be a choice between certain units. It's testament to GW's incompetence at rules writing that only some units are brought into line, and it's even expected by this point.

Warlocks are considerably more controlled than Ork Weirdboys or indeed any other battle psyker in 40k, and the Eldar have the technology to make Ghosthelms so there's no reason they wouldn't give them to Warlocks as well as Farseers. Obviously they would have to work differently as they would have no more Warp Charges to expend, but they should at least have some kind of protection. I don't mind them costing more points if they become usable and more fluffy. As it is, they fail their tests too often and immediately die to perils. Not exactly a good representation of the formidable psychic prowess of the Eldar, and not much use as leaders for Guardians.

[John Bower]

Does 85 points sound reasonable then? That's the cost of a Warphead.... And as I say, he still dies more often than Warlocks and is less useful on the field.