Er, we cannot just give an undefined Psychic Power a value and call it good. That breaks the entire concept of the points system. To be able to put a points cost to a power, it would need to have exact and specific details on what it is and does. If you are trying to say that the Beam of Power would now be considered a Psychic Power, that would not change it's value in any way, as it does not change how it works or how well it works.
I guess I wasn't specific enough. It's not that a Warlock costs 259, it is that the Psychic Powers that a Warlock has is valued at 259. Same with Tzeentch Magi. In fact, that value of 259 is really the average of the costs of a Warlock's three powers, since the Warlock is limited to one power per turn. I can go into details on how that value is determined if need be.
That said, I really don't think that replacing the Beam of Power with some other ability is the way to go. It is really his signature ability. Perhaps it could be weakened a bit, but not too much. Let's see what we can do.
I decided to look back at my copy of Renegades (Epic 2nd edition) and see if we could save any points by regressing PM back to those stats, but his stats there are nearly identical. The only difference is that Renegades says that PM can "attack buildings" with the Beam, whereas NetEpic says he "Destroys Buildings". I suppose we could reduce "Destroys" down to "Damages". Doing that would drop one modifier from *2 to *1.5, bringing the cost of the Beam to 2126 and his model cost to 2314. [Company cost: 2915] While this is a bit better, it still seems rather high.
Looking at the stats, the TSM really stands out. At a -6 it is tied with being the strongest TSM in the game with the Plasma Destructor, Plasma Annihilator on maximal, Eldar Tremor Cannon (under certain circumstances), and the Zoanthrope (at 25cm range) being the ONLY other weapons with TSM of -6. Even the Volcano Cannon only has a -4. While I do feel that the Beam is supposed to be one of the strongest weapons in the game, dropping it to a -5 would mean that while it would be below the named weapons above, it would still be stronger than everything else in the game. Dropping the TSM by one point to -5 would adjust the TSM modifier from *7 to *6, which adjusts the weapon cost to 1823, the total model cost to 2011, and the formation cost to 2535. [Including the adjustment above.]
The next thing that I'd recommend reducing is the Penetrating. [Heck, I'm already cheating on the modifier for this value as I'm treating the Beam as a Titan weapon.] If we reduced the Penetrating value from +3 to +2, that modifier would be reduced from *2.5 to *2, this would reduce the weapon cost to 1458, the model cost to 1646, and the Formation cost to 2075, including both adjustments above.
The only other thing that I'd consider reducing is the Range. If we drop that from 100cm to 75cm, the range modifier drops from *2 to *1.5, the weapon value is 1094, model cost is 1282, and formation cost is 1615, including all adjustments above.
While the TSM or Penetrating could be reduced even further, doing so would run the risk of making the Primarch less unique. At 1615 he is a bit more than twice the cost of a Lord of Change (note the cost increase on that model as well), and significantly more than every other Greater Daemon except Bubonis. This might be the right spot for him.
_________________ Net Epic Coordinator
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