Psychic Warrior and Concentration Check

[Halma]

Currently I am playing an elf psy_war/cleric. I noticed that the concentration check for becoming Psionically focused is DC 20, is a full round action, and provokes AOO's.

With the old system most of the Psionic feats were automatic as long as you had at least one power point remaining. The expanded Psionics was very much needed and I am enjoying the entire book. But I guess my question to you all is... Is this fair that the DC is 20 to become Psionically focused? The full round and Aoo's is cool with me just seems a little ridiculous for a DC 20 concentration check. Currently my Character is 5th lvl, and has 8 in his concentration skill total, because of low Constitution. Normally before a battle or at the start of the day it would be best to take 20 to become psionically focused. I have discovered you can only use your Psionic feats once in any combat, more specifically psionic weapon. If I miss my target it would be stupid to spend the time to become PF again in the round, because I have a very low chance to become PF again. Wouldn't it be better if PF was set to DC 15 instead, full round action and incur AOO's?

What we have done as a House rule is to come up with a Feat so that either the PSW or Psion can spend one point to become PF, with a Move action, but still incurring a AOO from this expenditure. We call this "Feed the Focus". With using this feat we stated that in order to spend the point to become PF you have to have 1 point left after the expenditure. So you could only do this if you had 2 power points in your pool. The use of this feat will be greatly diminished around 10th lvl Psion or PSW, because the concentration checks will be much easier to make. But the fact that you can take a move action instead of a Full round seems to keep this feet useful for quite sometime.

What are your opinions on this feat? Also what do you think of the DC 20-concentration check for PF?


Thanks guys,
Halma

 

[Kabol]

There is a feat - Psychic Meditation i beleive - allows you to become Focued as a move action with out AoO. So you Expend focus - attack, Hustle - regain focus. so you can expend your focus once per round , but it will eat up your PP.

As for gaining focus - DC 20, to me is a good DC. Psycic Focus feats are HUGE - and the DC20 makes sure its not Hella over-powered.

<Edit> Just FYI - Old psyonic feats where not automatice - you had to spend PP every tiem you used them - old psychic weapon added +1d4, as a cost of 1 PP for each swing

 

[Scion]

you can make a dc 15 concentration check to make a check that would normally provoke an aoo, so that is one way around that.

The feat described earlier works to some degree though, allowing the psychic warrior to use hustle in an attempt to gain focus and still make a full round action.

For a houserule though, I prefer scaling checks to try to do this instead. DC 20 = full round to regain, DC 25 = standard action, DC 30 = move action, DC 35 = free action. Along with making the meditation feat instead give a +5 boost to this check.

Oh, and before many feats did work automatically. Going to needing to expend focus seems like an interesting idea that just doenst work properly. Maybe it will become useful after some minor changes, perhaps.

 

[Spatula]

He's probably referring more to the feats (and there were many) that required a PP reserve, rather than an expenditure (Speed of Thought, Psychic Inquisitor, etc.).

The DC of 20 is fine by me, given the power of most of the feats that require you to spend your focus. As your level increases, regaining your focus moves closer and closer to being an automatic check (since rolling a '1' on a skill check has no special significance). If that's not good enough, there are already several feats to boost your Concentration bonus: Skill Focus (flat +3 to Concentration), Narrow Mind (+4 for checks to regain focus), Psicrystal Affinity w/single-minded trait (flat +3 to Concentration, and you can pick up Psicrystal Containment later on in order to start a fight with 2 stored foci).

And of course, Psionic Meditation lets you attempt to regain your focus as a move action.

If I were going to allow a feat that let you spend PP to auto-regain your focus, the cost would be more than 1 PP. But I would rather leave the current system as-is.

 

[gtJormungand]

from Kabol
There is a feat - Psychic Meditation i beleive - allows you to become Focued as a move action with out AoO.

The Psychic Meditation feat does allow you to focus as a move action, however, doing so still provokes an attack of opportunity.

From the srd
PSIONIC MEDITATION [PSIONIC]
You can focus your mind faster than normal, even under duress.

Prerequisite: Wis 13, Concentration 7 ranks.

Benefit: You can take a move action to become psionically focused.

Normal: A character without this feat must take a full-round action to become psionically focused.

 

[Staffan]

He's probably referring more to the feats (and there were many) that required a PP reserve, rather than an expenditure (Speed of Thought, Psychic Inquisitor, etc.).

As I understand it, feats that used to require a PP reserve now require having psionic focus, while feats that required spending PP now require spending psionic focus. Some exceptions, sure (like Inertial Armor that became a power instead), but that's the basic idea.