This is what I was about to recommend. Now I don't have to.
Pathfinder 1E Pathfinder Psionics (from Dreamscarred)
- Thread starter Angellis_ater
- Start date
This is what I was about to recommend. Now I don't have to.
Angellis_ater
First Post
Hi! First of all, sorry for not being here for a while, we've been knee-deep in discussions and brainstorming. We've defined the major changes we want to do and I'll summarize them here, but before we do that, allow me to state some of our intentions.
A. We have now finished the "Open Design" phase of the project and we will move into producing the "Open Playtest Alpha" material.
B. The Alpha material will be roughs, without any layout or images used. They will be posted at our website (and we will make posts here whenever this happens) free for download and perusal. We will then collect people's opinions.
C. After having done the Open Playtest, we will move into "Beta" stage. This will be our preliminary release, the "as we see them being finalized" design. This will be one collected PDF available, free for all, to download. Comments will be appreciated, but, as Paizo did, we will focus on certain areas so as to get the most out of the playtesting phase.
D. While "taking in" the reports from playtesters we finalize the Psionics Handbook and release it. It will first be released as a PDF with all the shebang (we are aiming at an early 2010 release, Q1 if possible).
E. Once we finalize the PDF and release it, we will put the book into Print, either via Print-on-Demand (and thus via Amazon) or into Distribution.
MAJOR CONCEPTS
The Psion
* We are adding a Generalist Psion, who instead of access to special power lists gets abilities that allows them to "weave" powers together.
* Each Devotion will get special abilities, akin to what Wizards/Sorcerors have in PFRPG. These will include in-combat abilities, but also out-of-combat abilities. Most will be tied to Psionic Focus
The Wilder
* There will be three builds of Wilder - the standard, a more "leader" kind of Wilder and a more martially inclined Wilder.
* Enervation will always be the same chance, regardless of what level of Wild Surge you use. Some feats will be able to lower this too.
* Wilders can "push themselves" even further than Psions, thus manifesting ONLY with their Wild Surge, but with an associated negative effect dependant on their build.
The Psychic Warrior
* There will be two major builds and a "general" one. The bestial warrior and the devoted warrior. The bestial warrior focuses on the shapechanging effects of the Psychic Warrior and turning into a freakish meld of beast-traits, while the devoted warrior focuses on "calling" weapons, armor and other such "tactical" manifesting.
The Soulknife
* We are imagining three builds for this class - based primarily on "weaponry" choice. Two weapons, weapon+shield or two-handed weapon.
* At different levels, the Soulknife can either dedicate himself to a single path or spread out and pick up a little from each of these three paths.
In General
* We will be adding more feats to increase variety, including Mindblade ones.
* We will rebalance some of the old feats to make them viable.
* We will add Autohypnosis as a skill and make Psionic Focus a part of this skill in general.
* We will retain the old system of power levels, power points, augmentations, "the metacap" and so on. You will be able to use almost any and every book with our system.
Questions?
A. We have now finished the "Open Design" phase of the project and we will move into producing the "Open Playtest Alpha" material.
B. The Alpha material will be roughs, without any layout or images used. They will be posted at our website (and we will make posts here whenever this happens) free for download and perusal. We will then collect people's opinions.
C. After having done the Open Playtest, we will move into "Beta" stage. This will be our preliminary release, the "as we see them being finalized" design. This will be one collected PDF available, free for all, to download. Comments will be appreciated, but, as Paizo did, we will focus on certain areas so as to get the most out of the playtesting phase.
D. While "taking in" the reports from playtesters we finalize the Psionics Handbook and release it. It will first be released as a PDF with all the shebang (we are aiming at an early 2010 release, Q1 if possible).
E. Once we finalize the PDF and release it, we will put the book into Print, either via Print-on-Demand (and thus via Amazon) or into Distribution.
MAJOR CONCEPTS
The Psion
* We are adding a Generalist Psion, who instead of access to special power lists gets abilities that allows them to "weave" powers together.
* Each Devotion will get special abilities, akin to what Wizards/Sorcerors have in PFRPG. These will include in-combat abilities, but also out-of-combat abilities. Most will be tied to Psionic Focus
The Wilder
* There will be three builds of Wilder - the standard, a more "leader" kind of Wilder and a more martially inclined Wilder.
* Enervation will always be the same chance, regardless of what level of Wild Surge you use. Some feats will be able to lower this too.
* Wilders can "push themselves" even further than Psions, thus manifesting ONLY with their Wild Surge, but with an associated negative effect dependant on their build.
The Psychic Warrior
* There will be two major builds and a "general" one. The bestial warrior and the devoted warrior. The bestial warrior focuses on the shapechanging effects of the Psychic Warrior and turning into a freakish meld of beast-traits, while the devoted warrior focuses on "calling" weapons, armor and other such "tactical" manifesting.
The Soulknife
* We are imagining three builds for this class - based primarily on "weaponry" choice. Two weapons, weapon+shield or two-handed weapon.
* At different levels, the Soulknife can either dedicate himself to a single path or spread out and pick up a little from each of these three paths.
In General
* We will be adding more feats to increase variety, including Mindblade ones.
* We will rebalance some of the old feats to make them viable.
* We will add Autohypnosis as a skill and make Psionic Focus a part of this skill in general.
* We will retain the old system of power levels, power points, augmentations, "the metacap" and so on. You will be able to use almost any and every book with our system.
Questions?
So what you are proposing for encounter-based psioncs goes something like this:
POWER POINTS
Power points per level = (2 x manifester level) + bonus points
Bonus points = key ability modifier
Power points from all psionic classes are pooled together.
You can “recharge” your pool of power points once per encounter per class as a full-round action. Doing so allows the manifester to regain 1 power point, plus 1 power point per two class levels beyond 1st level (2 power points at 3rd level, 3 power points at 5th level, and so forth).
REGAINING POWER POINTS
(My addition for consistency.)
You must rest for at least 15 minutes after each encounter (see definition of rest) in order to regain all of your power points. If you don’t rest for at least 15 minutes, you start the next encounter with the number of power points that you had at the end of the previous encounter.
(Perhaps you must rest at least for 1 hour per day, as normal. The rest periods could be poolable.)
NOTE: This would be an interesting variant for spellcasters. However, you would probably have to convert to spell points for the same effect (possibly dividing them into arcane spell points and divine spell points--since spell/power points = (2 x spell/power level) – 1).
POWER POINTS
Power points per level = (2 x manifester level) + bonus points
Bonus points = key ability modifier
Power points from all psionic classes are pooled together.
You can “recharge” your pool of power points once per encounter per class as a full-round action. Doing so allows the manifester to regain 1 power point, plus 1 power point per two class levels beyond 1st level (2 power points at 3rd level, 3 power points at 5th level, and so forth).
REGAINING POWER POINTS
(My addition for consistency.)
You must rest for at least 15 minutes after each encounter (see definition of rest) in order to regain all of your power points. If you don’t rest for at least 15 minutes, you start the next encounter with the number of power points that you had at the end of the previous encounter.
(Perhaps you must rest at least for 1 hour per day, as normal. The rest periods could be poolable.)
NOTE: This would be an interesting variant for spellcasters. However, you would probably have to convert to spell points for the same effect (possibly dividing them into arcane spell points and divine spell points--since spell/power points = (2 x spell/power level) – 1).
Angellis_ater
First Post
Hi Fans!
We are in the middle of the rewriting process right now and we stumbled upon something that we cannot quite decide on - me and Jeremy being on opposite sides of this.
Knowledge: Psionics - should we keep it, or should we scrap it?
Keeping It: It makes Psionics feel different from Arcane and Divine Magic, there are loads of specific "psionic" things, from orders, myths, creatures, symbols, manifestations and so on that isn't like anything Arcane or Divine.
Scrapping It: Someone with Knowledge Arcana can identify spell effects and auras, regardless of the source, why not just add Psionics to Arcana and have it be all about the mystic forces of the world? Do we need ANOTHER skill, where Pathfinder is cutting down on skills?
We want YOUR opinions about this, so help us decide where we are going with this. Take a chance to influence design!
We are in the middle of the rewriting process right now and we stumbled upon something that we cannot quite decide on - me and Jeremy being on opposite sides of this.
Knowledge: Psionics - should we keep it, or should we scrap it?
Keeping It: It makes Psionics feel different from Arcane and Divine Magic, there are loads of specific "psionic" things, from orders, myths, creatures, symbols, manifestations and so on that isn't like anything Arcane or Divine.
Scrapping It: Someone with Knowledge Arcana can identify spell effects and auras, regardless of the source, why not just add Psionics to Arcana and have it be all about the mystic forces of the world? Do we need ANOTHER skill, where Pathfinder is cutting down on skills?
We want YOUR opinions about this, so help us decide where we are going with this. Take a chance to influence design!
Alzrius
The EN World kitten
I say keep it.
Making Knowledge (arcana) also cover psionics really pushes the image that psionics is another form of magic. I think the two are different enough to warrant another Knowledge subset, even if you have full transparency between the two.
It's also worth noting, I think, that Pathfinder kept all of the existing Knowledge skill subsets. I can't remember the last time anyone took Knowledge (architecture and engineering) or Knowledge (nobility and royalty), but those two are still there, albeit shortened to Knowledge (engineering) and Knowledge (nobility). If they're still in the game, Knowledge (psionics) definitely should be.
Making Knowledge (arcana) also cover psionics really pushes the image that psionics is another form of magic. I think the two are different enough to warrant another Knowledge subset, even if you have full transparency between the two.
It's also worth noting, I think, that Pathfinder kept all of the existing Knowledge skill subsets. I can't remember the last time anyone took Knowledge (architecture and engineering) or Knowledge (nobility and royalty), but those two are still there, albeit shortened to Knowledge (engineering) and Knowledge (nobility). If they're still in the game, Knowledge (psionics) definitely should be.
Voadam
Legend
I say ditch it.
I consider psionics conceptually simply a third classification of power sources for magic: arcane/divine/psionic. I consider it as different from arcane and divine as they are from each other. The fact that psionics uses points and feats does not change that, arcane after all includes both Vancian casters and the warlock.
I want a more condensed skill list (which pathfinder partially delivers), not a broad but nit-picky one with few skill points to go around.
I consider psionics conceptually simply a third classification of power sources for magic: arcane/divine/psionic. I consider it as different from arcane and divine as they are from each other. The fact that psionics uses points and feats does not change that, arcane after all includes both Vancian casters and the warlock.
I want a more condensed skill list (which pathfinder partially delivers), not a broad but nit-picky one with few skill points to go around.
pawsplay
Hero
Knowledge (arcana) already covers sects and magical disciplines, including clerical ones. Knowledge (dungeoneering) already covers aberrations. That doesn't leave much left for psionics.
Having Autohypnosis as a skill does have some interesting results. In PF, cross-class skills are at full rank, so a character who decides to learn Autohypnosis, Acrobatics, or Use Magic Device is much more able to cross traditional class boundaries with no greater cost than a -3 relative skill rotal. So I would be careful about what you package into it.
I might be more inclined to make Psionic Focus something that takes time, with in-combat recharging requiring a psionic Concentration Check. I still like the idea of the generic use of Psionic Focus being to allow you to refill your psi points tray from your daily reserve.
While there are some good uses for encounter recharging, I'm usually inclined to avoid them if some other rationing system is plausible.
Having Autohypnosis as a skill does have some interesting results. In PF, cross-class skills are at full rank, so a character who decides to learn Autohypnosis, Acrobatics, or Use Magic Device is much more able to cross traditional class boundaries with no greater cost than a -3 relative skill rotal. So I would be careful about what you package into it.
I might be more inclined to make Psionic Focus something that takes time, with in-combat recharging requiring a psionic Concentration Check. I still like the idea of the generic use of Psionic Focus being to allow you to refill your psi points tray from your daily reserve.
While there are some good uses for encounter recharging, I'm usually inclined to avoid them if some other rationing system is plausible.
StormingMarcus
First Post
Quoting Pawsplay, I'd ditch it.
If transparency is the rule, I think there's no need of another skill, given that Path is reducing the number of skills condensating them.
BTW, have you never thought about making some alternate spellcasters with spellpoints (I know there's something in UA, but it might be Pathfinderized or rethought)? Points are SO much better than vancian casting!
If transparency is the rule, I think there's no need of another skill, given that Path is reducing the number of skills condensating them.
BTW, have you never thought about making some alternate spellcasters with spellpoints (I know there's something in UA, but it might be Pathfinderized or rethought)? Points are SO much better than vancian casting!
You forgot the "IMHO."
Similar Threads
