Lucky states that "any time before you end your next Turn, you may re-roll any one roll of your dice (including Damage rolls).
May a Psyker use that power to re-roll on table 6-2 Psychic Phenomena? I am assuming that it may be used to re-roll a casting roll to avoid rolling a 9 in the first place.
I, as GM, would answer "those are not your dice, they are mine. Re-roll your power dice instead", thus keeping the letter of the law unbroken.
StopWithTheInvalids said:
Lucky states that "any time before you end your next Turn, you may re-roll any one roll of your dice (including Damage rolls).
May a Psyker use that power to re-roll on table 6-2 Psychic Phenomena? I am assuming that it may be used to re-roll a casting roll to avoid rolling a 9 in the first place.
I would say that you could not use the Lucky power to re-roll its own casting roll, since you need the casting roll to "go through" to activate Lucky in the first place. But if your casting roll comes up with a 9, you could use it to re-roll the psychic phenomena table roll, hoping to avoid getting 76-00.
If you activate Lucky successfully without getting a 9 on the casting roll, in my opinion, on your next turn you can try to manifest another psychic power and use Lucky to re-roll a 9 if you get one on your casting roll. Since the player rolls the casting roll, it is the player's own roll and can be re-rolled. The casting roll is not GM's roll, or it would be rolled by the GM in the first place. It might be argued that Psychic Phenomena table roll is a roll for the GM to make, but you would not want to use your Lucky re-roll for it anyway. The chance of getting a 9 again on the casting roll is only 10%, while the chance of hitting 76-100 again on the Psychic Phenomena table and getting Perils of the Warp is 25%.
Actually, I play a psyker and I never use a psychic power without first using Lucky. I still have 2000 xp to go before I get Favoured by the Warp...
Graspar said:
I, as GM, would answer "those are not your dice, they are mine. Re-roll your power dice instead", thus keeping the letter of the law unbroken.
If you check the description of Favoured by the Warp talent in page 115 of DH Core Rulebook it states that "whenever a Power Roll triggers Psychic Phenomena, you may roll two dice on that table and take the more favourable result."
Since the "you" in that description is the owner of the talent = the character = the player, the psyker's player is supposed to make the rolls on the Psychic Phenomena table, with or without Favoured by the Warp. It clearly was not meant to be done by the GM and (apart from house rules of course) there is no reason why Lucky could not be used for the Psychic Phenomena rolls.
Yes there is, it would be stupidly overpowered to allow a minor power to stand in for the high level psyker talent "favoured by the warp". And the stacking would be even worse, imagine getting two re-rolls of your phenomena. That's a 1% chance of getting perils instead of the normal 25, and perils is about the only game mechanical balance against psyker powers, already a somewhat broken career.
Also, there's the fact that invoking powers and failing to control them is a player action that they excert control over, the phenomena is by definition something that happens once they loose control. To me that's a more important distinction than the somewhat rules-lawyery approach to pick specific wording apart from a book so poorly edited that the errata is up to double digits.
Graspar said:
Yes there is, it would be stupidly overpowered to allow a minor power to stand in for the high level psyker talent "favoured by the warp". And the stacking would be even worse, imagine getting two re-rolls of your phenomena. That's a 1% chance of getting perils instead of the normal 25, and perils is about the only game mechanical balance against psyker powers, already a somewhat broken career.
Also, there's the fact that invoking powers and failing to control them is a player action that they excert control over, the phenomena is by definition something that happens once they loose control. To me that's a more important distinction than the somewhat rules-lawyery approach to pick specific wording apart from a book so poorly edited that the errata is up to double digits.
You should just say that all-the-above there is your own house rule that you use to limit psychic powers and the Psyker career , which, in your personal opinion, is overpowered.
I could, rules lawyer grade RAW strictness is certainly on your side. But the main point is not to limit psykers, the point is that they can't control what the warp does when they mess up, only if they let it get out of control and do anything at all. Hence, re roll power die instead if you already have a lucky manifested.
Instead of arguing the wording in one line of text from a poorly edited book, why not an argument as to why stuff should work like your interpretation?
We're having this situation in game.
I'm pushing for not being able to use lucky to get out of the 9, that's like buying your way out of flaws, which is bad. It only comes up on 1 number, you have to live with it. Lucky is to do with instances that involve an element of chance or doubt and you are pushing it your way. Very Mage, I realise.
How is this broken?
Round 1: Psyker uses lucky, which carries risk of getting a 9.
Round 2: Psyker uses another power, protected by lucky.
Round 3: Lucky protection disappears if not used,
The odds of this tactic working to the psyker's benefit while in combat seems really low, and out of combat somewhat dubious. Am I missing something?
Lucky is to do with instances that involve an element of chance or doubt and you are pushing it your way. Very Mage, I realise.
Wasn't your point that it doesn't work on phenomena rolls which happen to be the purest example of a completely random event in the entire 40k universe?
Also, I agree with Aureus. A psyker would need to spend one round (and a half action in that round and a possibly phenomena-laden roll) for Lucky, and another round for the power he actually wants to manifest. In combat, that's pretty lethal, especially when you want to use it for a power that merely prepares yet a third action like Precognitive Strike.
Of course I've told all my psykers "You can use as many powers per turn as you wish, so long as you have the actions to support them and only make one attack. However, if you plan on using more than 1 per turn, you may not use any protections against mishap except fate points, soul-bonding, and anything I specifically approve". In addition, each power after the first has the "phenomena" range extended down by 1 (so first power triggers on a 9, second on an 8 or 9, third on a 7, 8, or 9, etc) I'd allow lucky actually, as this still allows a psyker to go "all out" and put themselves in great danger of burning out their fate and still ending up with severe problems.
I do make soul-bonding much more powerful in my games, but it curtails the psyker much much more than the book rules do.
I would have to agree, first and foremost, that you can't use Lucky to do anything about any Phenomena that occur as a result of activating Lucky, regardless. However, that being said, you can do stuff about next round's psycher power.
I would not allow a direct reroll of the Phenomena roll, for reasons stated above. However, I see nothing against the rules about using Lucky to reroll the psychic dice. However, bear in mind you roll each die individually - Lucky would only be useful to reroll a single psychic die. However, that'd be all you need to wipe away a Phenomenon, provided you don't roll a 9 a second time and don't go ahead and continue rolling more dice.
I'm one to lean towards "the warp will not be denied" line of thinking but then again, using the Lucky power (which has warp risks of it's own) to avoid Perils is somewhat of a waste. You spend an entire turn setting up Lucky and then use a power the following turn where you burn Lucky to avoid a bad outcome. You've effectively spent two turns to use one power, and still risked the warp twice because the reroll can still turn up 9s.