Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Runes of Witnessing - The Great Debate


An interesting debate came up during a recent game when I unfortunately rolled 26s and a 3 for my Psychic Test.

I've always played it as - I discard the highest roll when making the test - in this case, I discard a 6 when making my test, so in fact I casually pass the test without melting my brain. My opponent, who, mind you, used to play Eldar, was adamant that my Farseer still suffered Perils of the Warp, and that in fact, Runes of Witnessing is not taken at all by many Eldar players for this reason.

If this is true, that means your Seers, while having a better chance to get a power off, will also have a higher risk of suffering from Perils, with a double 1 or 6. This is really something that hurts the tactical proficiency of Eldar in 5th edition, especially with all that anti-psyker wargear out there, it seems even our own wargear is acting against us.

This is a very confused Iggy asking all you Eldar players out there - is this clearly a case where you suffer a Perils of the Warp, or do you discard one of your 6s and breathe a sigh of relief?


- Iggy

4 comments:

Michael Hogan said...

Due to the wording in the FAQ about Runes of Witnessing and Runes of Wording "...(do not do this is the Farseer has already suffered such an attack [Perils of the Warp] because of the LOWEST two results being double 1 or double 6)", I would say that you only take Perils on the lowest two. I could be mistaken. This is just my point of view.

Ad Astra said...

I always take runes of witnessing on my generic farseer and of course Eldrad comes with them. I need my powers coming off as close to 100% as I can, especially in 5th with the new codexes just to try and stay in the game. Units like a seer council need to get fortune off, etc. I look at it this way- if I suffer a "perils" is it really going to hurt me? What are the odds of it on 3d6, and then my ghosthelm not negating it, and then a 4+ invul save (perhaps even with fortune alrady up as the power still goes off with "1") only to take a wound- I have one or two more. Still and interesting debate. A counter is to just take embolden in your seer council warlocks if running such for the re-roll- psy powers are a LD test so you can do it, but I counter that by saying the warlock power is better spent on mass destructor spam...

Dverning said...

The key phrase is from the Eldar Codex, page 26, RoWitnessing: "You must use the lowest two rolls."

Combine this with BRB, page 50, Perils "If the *result* of a Psychic test...".

Thus the number of dice originally rolled doesn't matter, only the number checked for the result. As the highest is removed prior to this, you would not take a Perils in the case mentioned. So while RoWit will increase your chance of Perils, it doesn't make it a huge chance.

Iggy said...

Good points all around, it's not a serious or indeed Game-breaking debate - especially since the only risk apparent is taking one wound, and I guess I should be asking: does that really matter?