Heavy Artillery: Psion vs. Wizard

D&D has always maintained that the sorcerer/wizard is (among other things) the heavy artillery of the group. Fireball, lightning bolt, etc. are staples of the game, something that nobody else can do as well.

At least, until now.

I love the Expanded Psionics Handbook. It's far and away the best version of psionics to date. But I'm afraid that it may be too good. I like allowing psionics, but I really prefer that the sorcerer/wizard remain the heavy artillery--and I just don't think that's possible anymore.

Compare the various energy powers (energy ball, energy bolt, etc.) to the offensive spells available to the wizard.

A psion (particularly a kineticist) can choose his energy type on a spur of the moment, allowing him to take advantages of weaknesses and exploit vulnerabilities. The wizard must know in advance to prepare for such, and the sorcerer's out of luck if he hasn't learned multiple spells.

The psion can choose which type of save to require (Fort or Ref), allowing him to take advantage of vulnerabilities. The wiz/sor cannot.

The psionicist can choose multiple options that do extra damage (+1 per die) or raise the save DC or ignore hardness. The wiz/sor cannot.

The psion need only take one or two offensive powers, because they're so easily customizable, and can focus all his other powers on utility and defense. To match that, the wiz/sor must learn many more spells.

The psion can blanket a field in offensive spells, pumped to his max damage. The wiz/sor only has a few spells of any given level.

It's true that if a psion blows his entire PP reserve like that, he's helpless later, whereas the wiz/sor will still have lower-level spells. But honestly, how often have you folks seen a psion or wizard run completely out of spells. It does happen, but not often.

Bottom line? Assuming both have the "standard" array of offensive powers, a kineticist psion can deal far more damage, with fewer spells, and with many more options, than a wizard or sorcerer of the same level. I'm not arguing that this makes the psion a better character, but it does seem to make him a better artillery platform. And honestly, that just doesn't entirely sit right with me.

So, am I missing something? Is there a balancing factor I'm just not considering? Or is it simply the case that the kineticist can, indeed, dish out more than the sorcerer? (And if so, am I the only one bothered by that? )

Thanee???? Where's your applause ?

I agree. Others may not.

Mouseferatu said:

So, am I missing something?

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Nope, I'm afraid not. It's the designers of the XPH, that have missed something, or rather quite a few things...

Is there a balancing factor I'm just not considering?

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If there is one, I havn't seen it yet. The disadvantages of psionics are very few and mostly minor. Focus is one thing (but compensated by better metapsionics and power focus/penetration), also mostly compensated by Psionic Meditation. No scaling (in most cases), but that is compensated by the lack of caps and augmentation, the cost of the latter is compensated by the flexibility (no fixed levels for slots just PP). Being able to blow out huge amounts of PP and thereby outperforming any other class is, contrary to popular belief, not a disadvantage, you are not forced to do so.

There are two things worth mentioning, that is, psionics are worse as party buffs and there are a lot more spells to choose from, when learning new ones, compared to powers. However, learning a single power for a psion is like learning two to half a dozen spells for a wizard. Effectively, a 20th level psion will have about as many "spells" available as a 20th level wizard who spent a lot of resources on those spells!

All in all, there is no real contest.

Bye
Thanee

I hope that with 4th edition, they will finally build magic and psionics with the same guidelines in mind and at the same time, that should make up for a lot of problems. And please, add some people with indepth knowledge of the current rules to the designer team.

Also even more distinction between magic and psionics would be nice. Most psionic powers are still just ripoffs of existing spells (often, as it is blatantly obvious with the Energy line, just improvements - well, it's newer, so it has to be better, I guess, or noone would buy it (which is certainly not true, however)).

The general idea behind psionics is good for sure (the augmentation system, if you see beyond its flaws, is a good idea, for example) and it is a lot better compared to the abysmal 3.0 version, but the execution was just sloppy and not very well thought through as a whole.

Bye
Thanee

Mouseferatu said:

It's true that if a psion blows his entire PP reserve like that, he's helpless later, whereas the wiz/sor will still have lower-level spells. But honestly, how often have you folks seen a psion or wizard run completely out of spells. It does happen, but not often.

Bottom line? Assuming both have the "standard" array of offensive powers, a kineticist psion can deal far more damage, with fewer spells, and with many more options, than a wizard or sorcerer of the same level. I'm not arguing that this makes the psion a better character, but it does seem to make him a better artillery platform. And honestly, that just doesn't entirely sit right with me.

So, am I missing something? Is there a balancing factor I'm just not considering? Or is it simply the case that the kineticist can, indeed, dish out more than the sorcerer? (And if so, am I the only one bothered by that? )

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The fact that a psion has to pay per damage dice cannot be ignored. If you have a 2nd level energy power and want to do 7 dice with it... yeah, you can do it. But you are paying the equivalent cost of a 4th level power.

Everything else you site is mere compensation for this fact.

In my campaign, and with the full agreement of the player who runs a kineticist, psions with energy powers must choose an energy affinity that they focus in, one that they are prohibited frorm using and two that cost two extra PP to manifest with. There have been no complaints about it and it seems to work fine.

Psion said:

Everything else you site is mere compensation for this fact.

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If so, it is the compensation for the compensation, so to say.

The augmentation cost is already the compensation for the flexibility that comes with the power point system. If with only 3 PP (the cost of a unaugmented 2nd level power) a 10th level psion could do the same as a 10th level sorcerer/wizard with a 2nd level spell, that would be quite silly considering how many of those a psion could manifest per day. Many, many more than any sorcerer/wizard.

This is exactly the reason for the augmentation cost (and the reason why there was no scaling in the 3.0 version also (tho the ability to augment came only later with the Malhavoc supplements)).

So why would you need to compensate for this cost twice or thrice? Is once not enough?

Bye
Thanee

Thanee said:

So why would you need to compensate for this cost twice or thrice? Is once not enough?

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In a word, no. You suppose that each such compensation is a one-to-one exchange in power, when in fact the free scaling of arcane casters is a significant boon in terms of endurance, and the supposed advantage of the psion's flexibilty with blast powers is not near the boon that you suppose.

Wizards and sorcerers have magic missile. It's a throw-away low level power that ALSO does not care what energy resistance it target has, and has the additional benefit of affecting an incorporeal target normally, AND has the additional benefit of not allowing a saving throw. And it scales with level. A 9th level sorcerer or wizard will be doing 5d4 per shot with these babies for the effective cost that a psion is paying for a 1st level power. If a psion wants to add 4 dice to a power, it would be costing them the equivalent of a third level power each. So in this one spell, arcane casters HAVE flexibility in terms of what they can affect with their powers, in addition to being able to use low level throw away slots to power it and leave room for the big guns at higher level.

So you claim that somehow this compensation is excessive, yet you fail to consider that arcane casters have a few tricks of their own up their sleeve that, in such light, make the supposed advantage of psions not so great a boon as you make it out to be.

Magic Missile comparison?

While I agree that in comparison with Magic Missile, the powers available to the Psion pale, I believe that is mostly because in comparison to most other spells of second level and less, also pale.

While there may be spells available that solve similar problems that may be applied (Acid Arrow, Flaming Sphere, or Scorching Ray) each comes with their own drawbacks and hinderances, and could therefore be also shown to be "weaker" choices than the magic missile. So comparing the psion's powers to MM seems flawed.

IMO, a 2nd level unaugmented power should be weaker than a 2nd level spell cast by a similar level arcane spellcaster. I also feel that when augmented as far as manifester level will allow, it should be roughly equivalent to the spell cast by the arcane spell user. This in order to compensate for the psion's vastly increased flexibility over both wizards and sorcerors.

*sigh*

When will people realize, that you simply cannot compare magic and psionics this way.

Magic Missile is a good spell, sure. One of the most potent 1st level spell even. At 9th level it is at the height of its potency. But how do things look at, say, 15th level? Is Magic Missile still so godly then? No, it's no more than a minor nuisance. Might be good in some specific circumstances, but in 95% of the cases, it's simply not very useful anymore. That is the power of scaling. It is limited. It has caps. It is great up to some point, but after that it falls down quickly. Powers do not have these limits. The low level slots will - at some point - never be highly useful anymore, and their usefulness will degrade more and more as the level advances (there are very, very few exceptions to this, like Divine Favor). Still nice and not something to throw away, but their real power is gone by then. Still the spellcaster is stuck with them and cannot use them in any other way. Unlike the psion, who can freely use the power points for higher level powers. That is the flexibility of psionics. And this is why psionics have a higher cost for a compareable effect.

One thing is very important when making such comparisons:

A fully scaled 1st level spell is not the equivalent of an unaugmented 1st level power.

Repeat.

A fully scaled 1st level spell is not the equivalent of an unaugmented 1st level power.

It is the equivalent of an augmented power of the same/similar (+/- 1) spell/power level and augmented to the corresponding manifester level (equal to the caster level). And yes, it does have a higher cost, and this cost is to compensate for the fact, that you can freely distribute your whole power reserve as you wish over the course of the day.

Scaling and augmentation are the two underlying systems. Both are different.

Scaling has slot limits and caps, but scales for free, making lower level slots useful to a degree.
Augmentation has a higher cost, since it does not scale for free, but a lot more flexibility in application and no caps.

At this point, things are about equal. Both systems have their inherent advantages and weaknesses and for each there are situation where one is better or the other.

However, this would require that spells and powers are interchangeable power-wise. That you can simply pick any power (or spell) of any level, remove augmentation, add scaling and put it into the other system and it should then work out fine. This is simply not the case. The Energy line especially is an extreme example of how some powers completely break out of the boundaries. Powers like Energy Missile are ridiculously overpowered. How can this power compare to any 2nd level evocation spell, please? Even Scorching Ray, a highly potent spell for sure, is almost a joke in comparison.

Also, this would require, that the classes are about equal, which is certainly not the case, unless you compare the psion with the wizard (bonus feats, spell/power level progression), which obviously doesn't work, since the wizard does not have spontaneous casting (which is more than just a minor advantage), which the psion gets on top of everything else, if you compare this class to the wizard. The sorcerer? One has to be completely unreasonable to not see the huge discrepancy between psion and sorcerer (and the sorcerer, while the class lacks something, certainly is not that bad ).

Sorry, but for all the love for the flavor of the psionics, which I can actually see how someone would like it, this simply isn't equal, not even close.

Bye
Thanee