Why Psionics is broken and what to do to fix it

[Thanee]

I wasn't commenting on the known spells thing... I was commenting on the multi-spell/multi-power thing.

You were commenting my commont on the known spells thing, though. Just trying to stay on topic.

I have already come to grips with the fact that the sorcerer is the poor cousin.

That's a common misconception, yeah. Most people (judging from these boards) who play Sorcerers for some time realize how powerful spontaneous casting is (in most campaigns at least).

Bye
Thanee

 

[PallidPatience]

Many NPCs are smart enough to ready an action to smack you when you start to manifest.

If the NPCs are tactically unintelligent versus one type of attack, that type of attack will dominate. If it happens to be psionics, your psion will be awesome. Do they defend themselves regularly from arcane and divine magic?

 

[Psion]

You were commenting my commont on the known spells thing, though. Just trying to stay on topic.

I was interested in the specific statement, not the general topic. If you are making the case that there are powers that drink in several spells, you should recognize their are spells that drink in several powers as well.

There used to be more. And really, the sorcerer got screwed in 3.5 on this score, with spells like emotion and symbol getting parsed out into several spells.

That's a common misconception, yeah. Most people (judging from these boards) who play Sorcerers for some time realize how powerful spontaneous casting is (in most campaigns at least).

That spontaneous casting is powerful is not the point under debate for me. What is is that the sorcerer pays perhaps too dear a price for it, when stacked up against the other spellcasters.

It didn't take people much time to notice how good a deal the PHB II is for sorcerers. Nonetheless, I would not hesitate to allow it, nor do I hesitate to allow sorcerers to take PRCs that are not net zero gain for the sorcerer.

 

[Valor]

Well I hate to say it but your arguments don’t make any sense to me. While I can understand a bit of frustration about the Psion being a very versatile character, I do not see how that is a “Broken” aspect of Psionics. If anything it is the hallmark of Psionics. The only thing I can think of is maybe a sense of unfairness. While a Wizard is all about the massive preparations a Psion is about going on the fly. That aspect alone would give the Psion an upper hand in most situations, especially when the Wizard didn’t have any knowledge about what he is walking into. But at the same time the Sorcerer can do the same thing to a degree. While Even this is balanced out with the number of powers/Spells each knows. And yes this is a MASSIVE balancing factor. Where as a Wizard knows possibly unlimited power, and sorcerer knows 53 spells. A Psion knows 36 powers, and a Wilder knows 11. I am truly sorry but if you can’t see the impact this has on class balance well then I don’t think you truly understand how caster classes work.

As for Psionic powers being too good…well ok I can concede that there are some powers that ARE really good. But most of there powers are only really effective in a narrow field. While yes there are a number of good buff powers to take keep in mind that if a character stacks up on buff well its more power he wont have for fighting and its less time he will be contributing to the fight other then in the meat shield capacity.

As for certain powers being too good…well I don’t see how. Most of these have Arcane or Divine counterparts and the ones that don’t are again trademark discipline powers that are not really accessible to all Psions or Widers. Specifically you mentioned the Astral Construct power. Well have you actually read what it does? Ok I agree it is a bit high on the stats for their challenge rating, but that is comparing them to what? I mean there are equally more powerful monsters with the same if not lower challenge rating. And the limit of only one or two if you spend alot of time in a prestige class it’s a big check for the abuse of this power. While the only powers I can think of that are really powerful well they have magical counterparts that do the EXACT same thing. So if you’re trying to say that these overpower full powers are too powerful cause they mirror magical abilities well…that’s a mute point no?

Since when are Psionics hard to counter? Well I guess you could argue that since there is no Psionic counter spelling that countering them outright is no possible. But I mean other then those nasty nasty spell components Psionics are subject to the same rules for casters for doing powers. Give them a bit of damage and then its concentrations check time. Not to mention DISPEL, I would have thought that one being obvious.

As for Psions having high damage potential…this is a joke right? I mean its such a blatant lie that it seriously makes me wonder if we are all talking about the same Psionics. It is numerically impossible (as long as you follow the rules), that a Psion dishes out more potentially damaging powers then a Wiz or Sorcerer. Arcane or even Divine caster have a massive monopoly on high damage effects. I am not sure where this idea came from but wherever that was, it was clearly from Someone who was not fully informed. The Exact same can be said for those who think Metapsionic feats are too powerful. Most if not all are direct copies from magical version and even then only one can be used at a time with the exception of using ONE feat on ONE power. This says nothing about Psionic Focus, which makes it near impossible for some one to do more then one or two Metapsionic powers in an entire fight.

Wildstarsearch I hate to say it but your 17th level character is maybe just a bit underpowered. Epic character non withstanding, characters in their High levels are well, the best there are. I mean They are meant to do thing like this. In fact I think I would be very disappointed in my character didn’t do stuff like that at such high levels. Such things are normal.

Thanee my hat is off to you. You have maybe hit in my mind the one reason that Psionics might be considered to be unbalance. The bundling of similar powers in one. While sometimes this is just a simple augmentation for more targets. But often as is the case with Dominate it’s the grouping of whole families of powers into one power with a stiff augmentation to get different results. While I can really understand why this can be considered unbalanced at the same time it only makes sense. With the way augmentation works, I think these powers would be “Broken” if they were not augmentable in these ways.

Valor

 

[Dwarmaj]

Yes a Psion can go Nova and burn through a bunch of points quickly, but the party as a whole generally pays for it later.

You guys also seem to be overlooking a couple of major issues.
Psionic powers generally don't auto scale. It's been brought up a couple of times, seems to keep getting ignored. A 10th Wizards lightning bolt does 10d6 and uses a 3rd level slot. A Psion manifesting a 3rd level energy bolt does 5d6. He can increase the damage to 10d6 by spending more points on it.

Also, there is no Heighten Power feat. So all of those heavily augmented low level powers are stopped by globe spells and are treated as low level powers verse turning or absorption.

Oh, @wildstarsreach
You spent 126 power point just to buff up for a single encounter? How many encounters per day do you guys run. You should have about 230 (14th Psion with 28Int) power points and can only keep that up 1-2 times. You'll be pretty useless for the 3rd and 4th encounters for the day.

4Psion/3Wiz/10Cerebremancer is < 17th Psion
Sure you gain a lot of low level spells, but you loose out on high level powers, points, feats, and augmentation limits (unless you have Practiced Manifester).

P4/W3/C10 (228psp with 28Int)
Gain Spells levels 1-7, 7,6,6,6,6,4,3,2
Gain Scribe Scroll
Gain ability to use arcane wands/staves, scrolls
Has 14 manifester levels and 13 caster levels (easily dispelled by a 17th caster)
Taking Practiced Manifester does help, but uses a feat (not something this character has a lot of)

P17 (326psp with 28 Int)
Has 3 bonus Psionic/MetaPsionic feats
Has 3 8th and 1 9th level power
Has 17th level Manifester level

The dual caster or caster/manifester classes look good at first glance, but generally aren't as powerful as a straght caster or manifester.

 

[Tikiman]

Typical combat
Rd 1: Temporal acceleration of 15 points for 2 rds, quickened action
Sub rd 1-1: Schism
Sub rd 2-1: Vigor of 85 temp HP
Rd 1 action, cast Mirror image 39 PP expended
Rd 2: Temporal acceleration of 15 points for 2 rds, quickened action
Sub rd 2-1: Dragon prophecy full round
Sun rd 2-2: Energy adaptation
Rd 2 action, cast Stoneskin
Rd 2 Schism, mind thrusting or energy ray 30 PP expended
Rd 3: Temporal acceleration of 15 points for 2 rds, quickened action
Sub rd 3-1: Inertial Armor to max
Sub rd 3-2: Force screen to max
Rd 3 action, Finger of death
Rd 3 Schism, mind thrusting or energy ray 57 PP expended
Rd 4: Do whatever helps the party most

By this time the fighters are hurt but my psion is fresh and buffed. He has a temporary action point (Eberron game) to help hit any target that he may not have hit, AC is 33, the creature if the get into melee will miss fairly often and plenty of temporary hit points to soak up damage.

126 PP expended and the character is protected and putting out quite abit of damage to help the party and will give out a lot more in round 4-6, Very few combats against even the toughest monsters go longer than that.

I'm confused. If you're spending 50% plus of your PP, how are you keeping up for the 3-5 encounters you said your DM throws at you? And how are you putting 17pp into Vigor? As a 17th level Cerebremancer your highest ML should be 14. If you're using Overchannel are you taking into account the Xd8 damage you should be taking every time you use it? You may want to double check all your abilities to make sure what you're doing is legal. Pay very close attention to you manifester level.

And in general, this tactic is reffered to as 'going nova' and stems from a pushover DM. If you are able to regularly do this your DM isn't enforcing those 3-5 encounters. You need to voluntarily stop metagaming and softcap your PP expenditure at 20% (+10% for every CR the encounter is above your level) per encounter. A swift M's Disjunction will also deflate your character. There are also tactics such as; false encounters (illusions), an ambush where you are the first target, and throwing enough minions at you before hand so that you don't have 50% of your PP by the time you get to the boss. Heck, an evil cleric with Antimagic Field could woop your booty.

The problems you're having are something I've seen and delt with dozens of times. They stem from two things. The first is Temporal Acceleration. DM's who cant challenge there players with multiple encounters fall like kobolds to TA. Remove that power from your character and see how things work out. The second is that your DM is a complete and total noob. He doesn't dispel you. He doesn't ambush you. He doesn't target casters first. Has he ever used a save-or-die effect on you (you seem to be begging for a Finger of Death). I've seen mobs in DDO with better tactics then him. Whoever is DMing needs to brush up on the rules more before they try running high level games.

Oh, and could you please post all of your feats (and your discipline)? This post is begining to gain a familiar odor to it. A regular on the WotC Psionics forums loves to post problems such as this, but when you ask him to actually give you the character he refuses (because if you build it yourself you find it has somewhere around 20+feats). While your at it, could we get a list of your magic/psionic items as well?


And about Psionic damage being so overpowered due to versatility, I have to ask, is direct damage really that big of a problem at higher levels? When your group cleric could be casting Implosion I really don't see how 17d6+17 energy damage is a big deal.

 

[Storyteller01]

We made the house rule that you can increase the effect by spending points, but this increase doesn't include the saves or PR/SR penetration augmentation. For us, it tends to balance out; you can do more damage at higher levels, but it requires the same effort to dispell regardless of your level.

We also brought back the heighten power and equivalent feats from the 3.0 psionics. You can augment SR/PR penetration and save DC's, but you'll pay more for it.

tends to put everyone on equal footing. Your damage output increases over time, all casters need feats to make sure the DC's aren't too low.

 

[takasi]

One suggestion I have for psionics is to treat manifestations more like invocations, soulmelds and binding magic and less like the traditional Vancian fire and forget.

First, give a psion his level in power points multiplied by some balancing factor. Next, to reflect a true mana point system, add a regenerative factor. The end result is a per encounter, rather than per day, limitation.

For example, a 10th lvl psion would get 10 plus an ability score bonus, perhaps for a total of 12. Multiply this by a factor of 5 for example to get a total of 60 points. A psion could use these 60 points for one encounter, and they will not regenerate by a factor of 12 every minute.

Thoughts?

Of course this would require playtesting to determine what the right multiplier and regenerative rate would be, but I think it would go a long way in limiting what many find frustrating with psionics (whether they are playing beside them or fighting against them): damage potential unrivaled by other classes when all points are expended and power are augmented. No party wants to go up against a boss that can spam the maximum lvl spell/power for that CR for the entire encounter. There has to be a trade off similar to magic.

 

[Psion]

While a cerebremancer is intriguing to me as a character is some ways, I can't see how it would be overpowering. I think the mystic theurge is the ultimate swiss army knife class, but the cerebremancer lacks that so much because there is more overlap between arcane and psionic. Coupe that with the traditional MT weaknesses related to caster/manifest level and access to high level spells, it's not all you are claiming.

IME, most campaigns of the level the OP is speaking of are rich on high SR creatures. Lacking the levels and the higher level SR-defeating spells seem to be a potentially common handicap.

 

[Rerednaw]

I'm confused. If you're spending 50% plus of your PP, how are you keeping up for the 3-5 encounters you said your DM throws at you? And how are you putting 17pp into Vigor? As a 17th level Cerebremancer your highest ML should be 14.
...You may want to double check all your abilities to make sure what you're doing is legal. Pay very close attention to you manifester level...

Tikiman, you beat me to it.

If the purpose is to compare apples to apples, I agree that we need a few more facts.

Character write-up? (Full stats, items, spells/powers known, etc.)

And since the rest of the party seems to be suffering such a disadvantage, how about posting the stats of other characters in the party? Even one would help.

I do agree with Tikiman on the topic that your DM does not appear to know how to handle a buffed caster. You Dispel them. Target them with no or Fort-save effects. Heck, I'd have some enemies poison the party's ale at a tavern if it came to that. I'm sure your party has a few enemies by level 17.

At 17th level your party should be facing near-epic challenges.

The point of going nova was also well made. For whatever the reason, your DM does not run the typical number of encounters.

There are several very long threads that deal with this subject on the official wotc boards under Psionics. (It's in the stickied index.)