Complete Psioinc...now we've had time...

[chaotix42]

Don't worry, a DC 5 is not too frightening.

It is when you're using your Wisdom score.

Do I win?

 

[Todd]

Don’t forget that Bruce had a co-writer on this one.

And just FYI for those that don’t know, but Bruce only wrote one “divine” class & it was a mix of both the Ardent & Divine Mind. The Erudite was the 3rd core class. His manuscript was then taken by the WotC development team and THEY are the ones who broke the Ardent and Divine Mind into two classes.

They are also the ones who nerfed the feats ... just look in the feat tables for most of Bruce’s original mechanics vs what Dev actually put in the feat descriptions. There were changes where feats were useable 3+cha mod times per day in the table but changed to 1/day by the dev staff, for instance, and much much more.

I’m with Razz in that the vast majority of threads & reviews I’ve seen have been mostly negative. They’ve far outnumbered the positive ones. The average I’ve seen review wise is about 4/10 ... and that’s about where I put the book too. Just about everyone has found some useable or even good stuff in it but there is a ton of crud too.

While admitting that I like the Ardent, some of the new powers, and the Soulknife PrCs and feats, I also have to say that there is little else that I find good in the book. The bottom line is that WotC messed up in many ways with the Complete Psionic. I’m resigned to that fact now but when the book came out I was flat out angry.

It’s the flavor stuff that still upsets me the most. The Divine Mind, Illithoid stuff, and Elemental stuff are the worst offenders. In each case they significantly change the thrust of what came before. It would be as if the Complete Arcane had included a class that worshiped Boccob for arcane spells, included feats that contradicted previous material on outsiders, and given Wizards new plant familiars.

In any event IMHO the Complete Psionic tried to be too much. It’s like a mix of a Complete Psi book and a Races of the Mind book all in a short page count. It also looks to me like there were “too many cooks in the kitchen” with all the writers, editors, & whatnot. You can still find flavorful ingredients but too many hands messed with the final dish.

 

[Graf]

Without disagreeing with your overall assessment....

They are also the ones who nerfed the feats ... just look in the feat tables for most of Bruce’s original mechanics vs what Dev actually put in the feat descriptions. There were changes where feats were useable 3+cha mod times per day in the table but changed to 1/day by the dev staff, for instance, and much much more.

Is there any evidence for this? (beyond the descrepancy in the charts and the assumption that BC wrote one of the charts)

 

[Taluron]

Where Astral Construct in its original form got broken was in conjunction with Temporal Acceleration. I've had psions in both my games use this tactic- they TA for 2 rounds (both have been happy to use Overchannel when necessary to be able to do this), and then each round during the TA they manifest an Astral Construct. One of the players specifically always had his AC's appear in flanking positions around a target enemy, whenever possible, and he usually chose to give said AC's the Trip ability for extra nastiness. And as if that's not nasty enough, TA is manifested as a Swift action, so even after the manifester comes out of Accelerated mode he still gets his regular actions for the round (often used by the flanker guy to Dimension Door away to a safe distance).

Now, TA can still let a psionicist get an Astral Construct without the hassle of a full-round manifestation, but you can't do the "flank and spank" trick anymore. This alone was enough of a nerf that the guy who liked to create flanking AC's in TA mode immediately used Psychic Reformation to exchange Astral Construct for another power.

A. This is a problem with Temporal Acceleration not Astral Construct.
B. You can do this with Time Stop (and any other spell that allows extra actions) and Summon Monster/Animal, Animate Object, etc but they have not erratta'd those.