Celebrim
Legend
Well designed
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1) This is often overlooked, but they are the only D&D psionic system that doesn't feel like a variant magic system. The flavor is spot on and its very difficult to recapture it.
2) They are much better balanced than is generally understood. Not having psionic ability gave you inherent protection from psionic attack. A psionic character gained (or didn't) some nifty abilities, but they opened themselves to getting pwned hard by powerful psionic monsters.
Poorly designed
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1) While some of the powers scale appropriately with level, a few of the powers (energy control) are just outright broken and allow the psionist to do things that just have no parallel anywhere else in the rules.
2) The psionic powers were massively random. By design, virtually no characters would be psionic, and those that were psionic began the game with something between a severe handicap (few points, weak powers, utterly pwned by any monster with psionics) and earthshattering power (many points, many useful powers).
3) Psionic combat is ultimately boring, not only for the participant, but for the party as a whole. While it feels right, in practice what feels right translates to is a subsystem where everyone else stands around doing nothing where the psionic with more points (usually, a monster) destroys his ultimately helpless foe. As someone else pointed out, often having psionics amounts to little more than a death sentense the first time a psionic monster is encountered.
I've often half-wanted to have a psionic subsystem in later editions just for the wacky bizarre arcaneness of it, even though I personally detest psionics even as a concept. Even though I never had a psionic character in 1e, I always dutifully rolled for my chances, hoping to get lucky twice and have some sort of demigod character.
There is something enherently cool about its complete lack of balance and about there existing rare random people with bizarre talents that are not dependent on class or experience or any of D&D's metagame concepts. Of course, with that coolness though comes all sorts of problems.
-------------
1) This is often overlooked, but they are the only D&D psionic system that doesn't feel like a variant magic system. The flavor is spot on and its very difficult to recapture it.
2) They are much better balanced than is generally understood. Not having psionic ability gave you inherent protection from psionic attack. A psionic character gained (or didn't) some nifty abilities, but they opened themselves to getting pwned hard by powerful psionic monsters.
Poorly designed
---------------
1) While some of the powers scale appropriately with level, a few of the powers (energy control) are just outright broken and allow the psionist to do things that just have no parallel anywhere else in the rules.
2) The psionic powers were massively random. By design, virtually no characters would be psionic, and those that were psionic began the game with something between a severe handicap (few points, weak powers, utterly pwned by any monster with psionics) and earthshattering power (many points, many useful powers).
3) Psionic combat is ultimately boring, not only for the participant, but for the party as a whole. While it feels right, in practice what feels right translates to is a subsystem where everyone else stands around doing nothing where the psionic with more points (usually, a monster) destroys his ultimately helpless foe. As someone else pointed out, often having psionics amounts to little more than a death sentense the first time a psionic monster is encountered.
I've often half-wanted to have a psionic subsystem in later editions just for the wacky bizarre arcaneness of it, even though I personally detest psionics even as a concept. Even though I never had a psionic character in 1e, I always dutifully rolled for my chances, hoping to get lucky twice and have some sort of demigod character.
There is something enherently cool about its complete lack of balance and about there existing rare random people with bizarre talents that are not dependent on class or experience or any of D&D's metagame concepts. Of course, with that coolness though comes all sorts of problems.
It wasn't just the part in the PHB - the rules for psionic combat in the DMG were barely comprehensible and a bit insane, and the amount of space spent on them was staggering for a subsystem most groups would never use.
