Adding psionic class's to a campaign

[Nekron]

A player in my group recently purchased the 3ed psionics hand book and would like me to intergrate it into our current game. I would be interested in hearing the boards thoughts as to wether this will throw off game balance. How do the psionic class's stack up against the other standard class's? and should I expect any major balance issues?


"For honour"

 

[DWARF]

The Psionicist's were play balanced in combat against similar PC's and monsters. The problem was that since they run on power points that they can spend freely on high or low spells (with the differing costs of course), they can manifest their highest level powers a lot more per day than the other classes, at the cost of the little ones. So they were play-balanced in single combat situations. This leaves them drained though. Imagine if Sorcerors could add up lower spell levels (Like a level 1 splot and a level 2 slot) to use higher powers more often (like fireball). Sure, they'd be devastating in a single encounter if need be, but for the rest of the day they'd be nearly useless.

I find that the psion's are a little underpowered as such, since no player in his right mind is going to use all his high level powers in the first combat and drain his character right away, which the playtesting inadvertantly assumed.

What can be good for a group with a Psion is that they can be really good "pull yer butt out of the fire" characters. If things go unexpectedly bad in an encounter then the psion can use a bunch of his higher end powers and make a big difference at the expense of things further on.

 

[Nightfall]

Another good thing to try out is by Fiery Dragon Press. It's the Psionic Tool Kit. It's fairly decent if you've never used psionics.

 

[1StrangeFellow]

I've had the Psionics Handbook since it came out... and our group of six has never really used it - excepting a few villains that appeared once.

The main things you will have to sort out for your campaign world are issues of flavor rather than balance. A wizard will be able to do more to throw your world out of whack than a half dozen psionicists the way they have been 'balanced'. You will have to ask:

"How is magic regarded in my campaign world?"
"Is psionics viewed by the common person as any different than any other kind of 'magic'? For better or worse?"
"How do sorcerers, mages and divine spellcasters regard psionics?" (Each campaign world seems to have different means of integrating psionics into the campaign if the option is taken. For example: In Kingdoms of Kalamar, psions pretty much hide their powers and live in fear in several civilized locations, belonging to secret societies or getting wiped out by ambitious wizards. Overzealous wizards who are convinced that psionics can be analyzed and learned somehow like a spell want the secrets of psionicists - at any costs. Psionicists have other enemies as well.)
"How do psionicists regard arcane and divine spellcasters?"
"How commonplace are psionics items, classes and monsters?"

Those are the primary things you'll have to deal with by adding psionics to your campaign. Balance concerns fall far behind... psionics has been almost 'overbalanced' so that most psionics users will be drained of power points almost immediately after a tough encounter or two, or after a psionic combat that lasts for any length of time... and mostly useless unless 'munchkined' like crazy during character creation. The only balance issues you should worry about is tweaking the class to make it more viable if a player decides to take it. There are several different methods used to 'fix' psionics with houserules all over the net.

 

[Viking Bastard]

After some thought on the subject, I ditched the Sorceror class and renamed Psionics Sorcery. Gives Sorcery some real good flavour.

I just added some fancy blow-'em-up powers to the Psionic power lists and threw out Psionic combat.