psychic action = manifesting?

[N.I.B.]

I've heard from different sources that performing a psychic action supposedly takes up a casting of psychic powers. Is there any support for that in the rules of the game? As I understand it, performing a psychic action usually disallows you from casting any psychic powers at all. But the Maleceptor's imperative gives you expressive permission to do both, so we're fine. But some says an action takes up a cast. I've had an opponent trying to force this on me, but he couldn't find any support in the rules for his claims. Also, apparently Bristol GT and Newcastle GT use this 'interpretation'.

[mrdodo]

Well this is a quote from the rulebook:


"While psychic actions are not in and of themselves psychic powers, they function in much the same way. For all intents and purposes, when a unit attempts a psychic action, this is treated the same as if they were attempting to manifest a psychic power"

"If the PSYKER unit can attempt to manifest more than one psychic power in its Psychic phase, you can then attempt to manifest those, one at a time, as described above. The number of psychic powers each PSYKER unit can attempt to manifest in its Psychic phase is listed on its datasheet"


Since it says for all intents and purposes this means it is considered 1 of your casts, at least that's what I think after rereading all the stuff. (English is not my main language, so don't take my reading as gospel)

[N.I.B.]

Thanks, that must be the passus they lean on, I can see the reason behind the interpretation.

Note that a PSYKER can still only attempt to perform one psychic action in their Psychic phase instead of attempting to manifest any other psychic powers.

[dkng]

God bless Mal’s SI

[N.I.B.]

Yeah but that would cap it at max 3 castings popping the strat for extra cast, including an action . I've seen several battle reports with top players doing the full 4 activations.

[dkng]

May 12, 2022 13:56:48 GMT N.I.B. said:

Yeah but that would cap it at max 3 castings popping the strat for extra cast, including an action . I've seen several battle reports with top players doing the full 4 activations.

Why?
From Mal SI:
If that unit has the PSYKER keyword, performing a psychic action does not prevent it from manifesting psychic powers.

It doesnt say the action counts as a cast.

[infornography]

GW and their vague wording of things at it again. We once again have an RAW vs implied RAI interpretation.
I would say RAW that no, it does not take a casting because there is nothing that explicitly says it does. However I can see a way of reading the sections MrDodo pointed out that might be interpreted that way. It isn't explicit probably because the rules say you use a psychic action OR use powers, but Malceptor's ability explicitly allows both and the vague way the things were worded can be read as an intent that it count as a casting, however I feel this reading is ignoring the fact that it is an either or proposition normally. A Psyker normally cannot cast spells AND do a psychic action even if it counts as a casting. Without anything explictly stating that it counts as a spell, and the normal case being pretty clearly defined, I would say no, it does not take a casting.

[piersonsmuppet]

May 12, 2022 6:34:59 GMT mrdodo said:

"While psychic actions are not in and of themselves psychic powers, they function in much the same way. For all intents and purposes, when a unit attempts a psychic action, this is treated the same as if they were attempting to manifest a psychic power"

This is an incomplete posting of the rule, and is missing the part that actually explains the meaning.

For all intents and purposes, when a unit attempts a psychic action, this is treated the same as if they were attempting to manifest a psychic power, and as such triggers any rules that interact with manifesting a psychic power

A unit's Cast limit is not a rule triggered when/while a unit manifests a power, it is checked prior to manifestation. The wording is very clear that a psychic action does not count as a Cast attempt since the action is only treated as a psychic power when/while it is being manifested. 

Making a Psychic action count as a Cast could be a good limiter for a Malceptor, but we are talking a game-wide errata for one model. Has GW done this in the past? Going this route, they should just change Psychic Actions to take a Cast and have no other limiter, then rebalance the WC for the actions.

[nbmraptor]

I can see this being argued both ways, hopefully they clarify it in the FAQ

[hivefleetkerrigan]

Check with a TO before playing for now I think. I'm on the RAW you get 4 casts but it feels sleezy so I'm not going to do that in friendly games.

[LordPathos]

Oh I get it! It doesn't count as a cast because it is not a psychic power, but it can be affected by rules that interact with manifesting powers. I'm assuming something like "powers cannot be manifested due to x". Maybe like a Sister of Silence ability or something.

[yoritomo]

FAQ is out. Psychic actions count as a cast power.

[bigbadbalou]

Sooo... there is no rule at all that says that you can't cast psychic powers if you do a psychic action? Honestly thought there was...

But...hemm.... ok... so... the Maleceptor's imperative saying that a psyker performing a psychic action does not prevent it from manifesting psychic powers... Is now meaning that it is specifically doing nothing at all? I mean, it stills permits to advance/fallback and action, or action and shoot... But that faq is literally contradicting the 3rd points of that imperative word for word...

[Bohxim]

Iirc there were psychic actions for secondary objectives that psykers could perform that prevented casting of spells. But been a while since I used those so I may be mistaken

[piersonsmuppet]

May 13, 2022 13:48:29 GMT bigbadbalou said:

Sooo... there is no rule at all that says that you can't cast psychic powers if you do a psychic action? Honestly thought there was...

But...hemm.... ok... so... the Maleceptor's imperative saying that a psyker performing a psychic action does not prevent it from manifesting psychic powers... Is now meaning that it is specifically doing nothing at all? I mean, it stills permits to advance/fallback and action, or action and shoot... But that faq is literally contradicting the 3rd points of that imperative word for word...

Straight from the Core Rules:

A PSYKER unit from your army can attempt to perform a psychic action in its Psychic phase instead of attempting to manifest any psychic powers.