2e Psionics vs. 3e Psionics?

[RangerWickett]

I never played 2e Psionics, except for one wild talent that cropped up, using the rules in Skills & Powers, when the party got attacked by a mind flayer. I gave all the PCs a % chance to have a latent psionic ability be activated by the Illithid's mind blast.

The party's fighter had a war dog that got a wild talent. Some sort of photosynthetic ability to generate light.

Anyway, due to my lack of experience with 2e psionics, could you fill me in on how it differed from 3e. I know 2e was unbalanced, but how did the whole discipline/devotion/science thing work? Was it kinda like Monte Cook's alt.bard's spellsongs?

Did 2e psionics have more flavor than 3e? What were the problems with its balance, and so on? Fill me in.




Hmm. The psionic template for a dog. I can't believe I neglected to convert that doggy to 3e.

 

[Zarrock God of Evil]

Well, first and foremost 2E psionics had PSP (Psionics Strength Points) and 2E psionic powers had no levels - only (as you mention) devotions and sciences - later The Will and the Way introduced High Sciences. Your PSP depends on the characters wisdom, constitution and intelligence scores (as well as a roll of 1d6 every level plus those respective modifiers - basically!).
The 2E Power Progression Table lists Total Disciplines (Telepathy, Metapsionics etc.), Total Sciences, Total Devotions and Defense Modes. A 1st level psionic had 1 discipline, 1 science, 3 devotions and 1 defense mode for instance.
All Powers have a Power Score (for example Wis-5), which you needed to roll below on a d20 roll. Special effects happened on rolls of 1, 20 and your Power Score. Then each power had an Initial Cost and an Maintenance Cost.

The big problem with the old psionics (apart from being a completely new system that tagged awkwardly to the core) was the balancing of powers. The prime example was Disintegrate, which cost 40 PsP and had a Power Score of Wis-4. Theoretically a 3rd level psionicist could activate this power (albeit with difficulty and would then burn most of their PsP and risk a 5% of backfire - what happens on a roll of 20 in this case).
The system wasn't usable in the new edition because it would be next to impossible to balance the old psionicist in 3E...

-Zarrock

 

[Dinkeldog]

The good thing for flavor was the concept of pre-requisites. You couldn't take the Teleport Other science unless you knew how to Teleport yourself. That gets a little lost in 3E.

The bad thing is that there turned out to be a few ways where things got badly unbalanced. 5th level characters were able to do things that wizards had to be 12th level to do, for example. Psionic combat was also really no better in 2E than in 3E.

Having said all that, I'm playing with the 3E system with the changes in ITCK.

 

[Dalamar]

The problem with 2E as I see it (I haven't played, just read the books) was that it was supposed to be handled balancedly by the players. It had many places for a munchkin to deploy, like being a psionicist with a wild talent (this wasn't disallowed in any part of the rules).

I think that the 2E could be converted to work in 3E with much work and though.

 

[Psion]

The big problem with the old psionics (apart from being a completely new system that tagged awkwardly to the core) was the balancing of powers.

There is that. With the exception of a few powers that had level prerequisites, most of the powers were available to you at low level, and there were not enough divisions of powers. After you got the power, you level didn't matter much. If you had the power, it was as good at 3rd level as it was at 20th

Further, many of the powers and attack modes surmounted normal defenses like magic resistance. Does that demon have magic resistance that is making the battle challenging for your party? No problem. Call in the psionicist.

Some powers even didn't allow saves; they just required a modified attribute check. This check did not depend on the target's level or your level.

Finally, psionics were entirely to beneficial in terms of stealth. You could attack someone and never worry about retribution because they could not identify the culprit.

Skills & Powers came out with a version that fixed some of the problems... for example, it made it so level was more important to the psionicist. However, it was broken in other ways. Unless you where overwhelmingly more powerful than your opponent, it was suicidal to engage in psionic combat.

Further, the way that they corrected the "too stealthy" problem was to require you to "open" any minds that you wanted to affect with a psionic attack, which was very obvious to the target. This gutted powers like psionic invisibility.

I used psionics in 2e, but I retooled it extensively. Many of the changes I used look very familiar... for example, I used a convention like the psionic/magic transparency rules in the 3e psionics rules. When I heard they where going to do this, I thought to myself that psionics might actually work in 3e. And it does.

I think the mechanics have a different feel than 2e, but I think that I prefer a functional system vice one that gives me a metagame sense of difference. There are still enough fundamental differences between psions and mages -- ones that are sensible in the game -- to make it worthwhile. My players certainly notice the difference when they fight psions.

 

[Zappo]

Psion summed it up well (as is to be expected ). The biggest problem was that the powers weren't organized in levels, and therefore you could get even the most powerful powers at very, very low levels. Even the few powers with level requirements didn't go past 10th IIRC. Disintegrate at 3rd is an example, but there are many more.

Then there's the "no defense" problem. There was basically no easy way to counter psionics. A great number of powers, even extremely powerful ones, didn't allow a saving throw. You did have to make a power check, but once you pumped the key stat high enough there was no problem. Other psionicists could defend, but any other character was toast. For example, Invincible Foes would make the target convinced that he was at 1 HP, and he would immediately faint should he take another damage. And it had no save - kinda like Harm, if you want, but at a distance, usable many times, and totally undetectable.

Which brings to the third point. No flashy eyes, no noise, no anything. In the first days of the 3e psionics, people complained about the x-man like effects, but the undetectability of psionic use was one of the main factors that made them broken. You could dominate the king during a party and noone would notice.

Then, of course, there were a few powers that were broken all by themselves. One allowed time travel without restrictions - made a blunder? Go back and tell yourself. Another absorbed all damage from energy attacks and could be used "as a free action" in response to, say, a fireball. And another absorbed physical damage AND allowed you to send it back with a touch. So, you could take 500 damage from a dragon, and while it wonders how the hell you're still alive, you can attack it and deal it 500 damage in one blow. Etcetera, etcetera...

It's noteworthy that the only three things I've ever had to ban from my 2e campaigns were all psionic powers (one was the physical damage thing above, another was the time travel one, and another was... can't remember. Prolly something that blew up cities, or let you use ten powers per round, or made you immortal, or something like that). I've always been very lenient in allowing things, but there's a limit...

 

[Sigma]

I'd also chime in and say that on top of being not very well balanced, they were a bookkeeping nightmare. As mentioned, psionics didn't merge very well with the core rules and they resulted in a huge bookkeeping chore to use. You had to calculate MTHAC0's and MAC's (as if regular THAC0 wasn't bad enough) for telepathic attacks, every power had to be looked up to determine the power score, power point cost, maintenance cost, and the effect of a 1, a 20, or a Power Score.

 

[Sir Osis of Liver]

2e psionics weren't all that bad, they were a vast improvement over 1e psionics thats for shure. As stated they did require restraint on the part of the player and dm to keep things from getting out of hand. I played psionisists several times and they stayed fairly even with the rest of the party, power wise.

the biggest disapiontment in the 3e rule, in my opinion, is the lak of a wild talent system. In a campaign were you don't want to have psionics main stream or if you want to have it be a new power wild talents are the best way for slow intergration. I can't see telling players that they are only allowed one or two levels in psion or phychic warrior though. I also feal that using the psionics as a nother type of magic causes it to loose some appeal, although for balance reasons it my be nessisary, maybe in my capaign i'll add the template from wild spellcraft to all psionics, that would certainly make them bold and different.

 

[Eryx]

2nd Ed psionics worked if you were playing a Dark Sun campaign, as everything (from the guy in the street, to the monsters, to the random cactus in the desert) had psionics.

I've not yet had a chance to try out 3rd ed psionics yet, as no one wants to play one and I've yet to introduce a psionic monster.

I've not read too deeply into 3rd ed psionics but they seem a little more balanced than the old system.

 

[Ialdabode]

A very intelligent player could find ways to abuse the abilities in such a way to become massively powerful at low levels. I can't give any examples offhand, but one of my players had a rather potent psionicist near the end of our 2e days that ripped through almost everything.

Like 3e, 2e psionics rules forced you to choose a discipline as your primary and I believe you picked a secondary one as well. You were basically free to choose what powers you wanted, but you had to follow some kind of a basic rule (something like twice as many devotions in a field as sciences).

Originally psionic combat involved tangents and a number of funky, crazy, impossible to properly use rules. Skills and Powers streamlined this, but perhaps too much so, as psionic combat began to (and continues to) be a bit stupid as an actual combat choice.