Rae ArdGaoth said:
I believe the feat has changed enough that my original no vote doesn't really apply anymore. Bront's proposal of Psionic Reserve (which I think is very well balanced) has given me a good reference point to judge this feat by: I think it should produce about 1pp/level.
Someone: Can you explain exactly what your original purpose with this feat was? Did you mean for it to be used in combat or out of combat? Can you maybe go into more detail with the "ominous humm" reference?
The "hummmm" was the starting point; for some gamers thinking in game terms when you're reading a book or watching a film becomes a natural thing. Trying to come with a way to do the special effect in the game was a natural thing (it becomes a running gag in the webcomic), and I considered several possibilities. Themost obvious was Create sound, which can produce a very mean and ominous hummm on it's own. Speaking in terms of my own character, he has both Create and Control sound, so the intensity, tone and volume of hummms he can produce is great.
However, the sound suggested accumulating power, and there are not a lot of means of doing that in the SRD psionic rules, or for that matter a way to tie psionic energy with LEW background. I thought that a way to partially offset the psion's main weakness (lack of power points) and relate it with the elemental towers would be great, as long it wouldn't build in the psion's existing main strenght, the ability to manifest many many high level powers and do it very quickly. If you see character optimizations based on psions, they'll include feats like Overchannel and powers like Schism and Temporal Acceleration: both allow you to manifest more potent powers and do it very quickly.
In terms of game design, an ability that mends a weakness is less powerful than other that builds on existing strenghts; that's why Practiced Spellcaster gives a huge bonus to caster level. The psion's weakness is agreed to be that he has very little staying power compared with roughly equivalent characters (like wizards or clerics and specially sorcerers). So I believe that a featthat improves that weak point would look powerful in paper, but won't be so powerful in game terms.
I thought that a way to make him save a bit of each power at the cost of time would be the way to do so: if the psion manifest high level powers, the benefit he gets from the feat becomes comparatively small, and spending one round and psionic focus (both precious in combat) would forbid it's use when you need to spend many power points in a short span of time. So you can summarize the feat as this: some power points, as long you don't do what psions do best. Sound has nothing to do with it (except that it survives in the form of creating a display of your choice)
The main dificulty is to determine how many power points should the feat grant, and balance it for all levels. A fixed quantity like the feat Bront proposed recently would do it much more easily, but I believe it's rather dry in terms of flavor.
