Casting psychic powers with multiple psykers

This has been a bit tricky in our group. We usually use etc clarification but thats clearly not raw.

Rbr states that "no unit can attempt to manifest the same psychic power more than once per psychic phase." Thats well and clear.

But then: "Select Psyker and Psychic power..." This is where problems start.

A shadow council unit where only one spirit seer knows invisibility and others don't can now use other not so important seer to cast invis in order to protect the one with invisibility. It does not say that the power selected has to be from the same Psyker selected. (Might be rai but not raw). Throw in farseer with runes of witness and it gets even more bizarre.

I'm not interested in your opinions on RAI but more about how you see RAW would be. I'm not native English speaker so I'm a bit confsed by this.

I think you're reading something into it that's not there - the sentence is sequential so you select the psyker to cast a power and once you've done that you select the psychic power to cast - they only have a certain selection of psychic powers and can't choose to use one they don't know.

Think how you'd read it if the sentence were written the other way round - 'Select psychic power and psyker - that has a completely different meaning, which would be that there is a pool of psychic powers and any psyker can cast one of them. That's not how the psychic phase works and psykers can only cast powers they know.

BRB wrote:

Unless you have 0 warp charge points remaining, select one of your psyker units, then nominate a psychic power known to that unit that you wish to manifest.

Edit: autocorrect....

In which case you'd need to refer back to how you deal with units of multiple characters. It comes down to how you interpret the term 'that unit'. I personally see it that an independent character remains a unit in its own right for these purposes (as it does in kill point games for example) and therefore couldn't choose a power it doesn't know itself, regardles of it moving with and operating as part of a single unit for other purposes.

Not sure about the issue presented, but I would look very carefully at the rules for Perils. It's been a little bit since I looked at it, but I remember the wording allowing you to have a perils effect affect anyone in the unit...not just the one who cast the spell...and possibly not even a psyker.

The_Burning_Eye wrote:

In which case you'd need to refer back to how you deal with units of multiple characters. It comes down to how you interpret the term 'that unit'. I personally see it that an independent character remains a unit in its own right for these purposes (as it does in kill point games for example) and therefore couldn't choose a power it doesn't know itself, regardles of it moving with and operating as part of a single unit for other purposes.

Then why can't that multi IC psyker unit cast two shriek if they are treated as own their units?

Vasara wrote:

The_Burning_Eye wrote:

In which case you'd need to refer back to how you deal with units of multiple characters. It comes down to how you interpret the term 'that unit'. I personally see it that an independent character remains a unit in its own right for these purposes (as it does in kill point games for example) and therefore couldn't choose a power it doesn't know itself, regardles of it moving with and operating as part of a single unit for other purposes.

Then why can't that multi IC psyker unit cast two shriek if they are treated as own their units?

I can't provide a definitive answer to that because I don't think there is one - the concept of 'unit' is treated two different ways in the rules but they aren't specific as to when each interpretation applies. We know that IC's give up a kill-point for being destroyed in games like purge the alien, despite being part of the unit 'for all rules purposes'. I don't have my rulebook with me to check the psychic phase section to see if it deals with the matter of a psyker IC joining either another psyker IC or a psyker brotherhood. I'm assuming it doesn't cover it, but it still seems like a huge stretch of the imagination to claim that a psychic brotherhood should be able to cast a power known only by an independent character that's joined the unit (or that similarly an IC should be able to cast a power known only to a different IC simply because they're walking around together at the time).

I don't think there's any doubt how any TO or FAQ would rule here, and I don't think there's enough leeway in the written text to justify concluding that it can be done.

It may be worth checking the section on generating and casting powers to see if there's anything that covers what powers psykers can cast (call me naiive but there might very well be something that says psykers can only cast the powers they've generated).

There is:
ITC used in LVO and Adepticon :ITC FAQ

And ETC: ETC FAQ

ITC doesn't mention anything about the problem in the OP. ETC has solved it in another way via rules change.

ITC is made by (i think) native english speakers whereas ETC is greatly effected by non native Enlish speakers.