I'm A Banana
Potassium-Rich
Am I the only person out there who actually likes that Psionics works, as a defult, not entirely different than magic?
The skill check system, with the example provided, seems to kind of inherit the problems from 2e: either you're nearly completely useless for a round, or you're WAAAAY overpowered for your level and the cost....and there's really not much of a way to affect it.
A feat system...well...that actually plays into what I would do.
I wouldn't do any truly drastic changes. Beefing up the power list is good, ESPECIALLY in giving them things that divine and arcane casters can't really do.
What I would do more though, is ditch psionic combat (Okay, so it's used against other psions -- whoopee, since the system is optional it's not an entirely very common thing to encounter another NPC psion at random, that you must defeat, is it?). Perhaps preserve the modes as individual powers, though.
Instead, replace it with a series of psionic feats. Much like a wizard, a psion could get a bonus feat every 5 levels, and it could be a psychic feat, including things that give you supernatural and spell-like powers. The real strength of the feat system is to give the psion basically free powers that are mostly always active. Stuff like Inertial Armor (where a mage has only Mage Armor). This needs to be expanded and expounded to make the psions truly unique. A mage is a learned master of craft and metamagic. A psion uses their psychic powers to automatically detect surface thoughts, or to be able to teleport with normal movement, or to gain permanent energy resistance, or the like. The feats are where you can put in powers that make the psion truly something wierd and different, because the powers are more *internal*.
The sub-disciplines are not that big of a deal -- you don't NEED all 6 ability scores to be good, you only need the ability scores to be good that you plan on manifesting powers from. This almost naturally creates a heirarchy of powers. Someone with the Default Array of 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8 would probably have their 15 in the ability they most wanted to use (so a Seer might put it in Wisdom), ranging down the line for powers that they'd enjoy having, and then the 8 would go in something they wouldn't mind loosing (Like Str, because he's a fricken' PSION, why'd he be up in the front?!)
Combine it with ability bonuses from level, and a stat-increasing item or two, and you can do all the powers of your primary ability, and get a smattering of powers from others, and probably have only one really lax school of abilities.
I like the visuals the psi-classes present, and I enjoy the balance in general, but they do need some diferentiation. More powers (though their prime virtue should always be that they can do this in armor, healing, protecting, or blowing up as they see fit -- the flexibility is really grand) would help that alot, and some good, effective psychic feats (call 'em class powers, if you want, the important thing is to have them selectable by psychic classes and pretty much no one else) would help neutralize the problem of weakness they have.
I really hope they wouldn't go in a drastically different direction with psionics. My group and I have used it since we started playing, and we've greatly enjoyed the tweaks made to the system so far.
The skill check system, with the example provided, seems to kind of inherit the problems from 2e: either you're nearly completely useless for a round, or you're WAAAAY overpowered for your level and the cost....and there's really not much of a way to affect it.
A feat system...well...that actually plays into what I would do.
I wouldn't do any truly drastic changes. Beefing up the power list is good, ESPECIALLY in giving them things that divine and arcane casters can't really do.
What I would do more though, is ditch psionic combat (Okay, so it's used against other psions -- whoopee, since the system is optional it's not an entirely very common thing to encounter another NPC psion at random, that you must defeat, is it?). Perhaps preserve the modes as individual powers, though.
Instead, replace it with a series of psionic feats. Much like a wizard, a psion could get a bonus feat every 5 levels, and it could be a psychic feat, including things that give you supernatural and spell-like powers. The real strength of the feat system is to give the psion basically free powers that are mostly always active. Stuff like Inertial Armor (where a mage has only Mage Armor). This needs to be expanded and expounded to make the psions truly unique. A mage is a learned master of craft and metamagic. A psion uses their psychic powers to automatically detect surface thoughts, or to be able to teleport with normal movement, or to gain permanent energy resistance, or the like. The feats are where you can put in powers that make the psion truly something wierd and different, because the powers are more *internal*.
The sub-disciplines are not that big of a deal -- you don't NEED all 6 ability scores to be good, you only need the ability scores to be good that you plan on manifesting powers from. This almost naturally creates a heirarchy of powers. Someone with the Default Array of 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8 would probably have their 15 in the ability they most wanted to use (so a Seer might put it in Wisdom), ranging down the line for powers that they'd enjoy having, and then the 8 would go in something they wouldn't mind loosing (Like Str, because he's a fricken' PSION, why'd he be up in the front?!)
Combine it with ability bonuses from level, and a stat-increasing item or two, and you can do all the powers of your primary ability, and get a smattering of powers from others, and probably have only one really lax school of abilities.
I like the visuals the psi-classes present, and I enjoy the balance in general, but they do need some diferentiation. More powers (though their prime virtue should always be that they can do this in armor, healing, protecting, or blowing up as they see fit -- the flexibility is really grand) would help that alot, and some good, effective psychic feats (call 'em class powers, if you want, the important thing is to have them selectable by psychic classes and pretty much no one else) would help neutralize the problem of weakness they have.
I really hope they wouldn't go in a drastically different direction with psionics. My group and I have used it since we started playing, and we've greatly enjoyed the tweaks made to the system so far.
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