John Cooper
Explorer
COMPLETE PSIONIC
By Bruce R. Cordell and Christopher Lindsay
Wizards of the Coast product number 953677200
160 pages, $29.95
Complete Psionic is the latest of the hardcover "class books" from Wizards of the Coast, following Complete Adventurer, Complete Arcane, Complete Divine, and Complete Warrior. This one, obviously, is geared for the psionic classes from the Expanded Psionics Handbook - the psion, psychic warrior, soulknife, and wilder, although it provides several new psionic classes as well.
The cover is the typical "make it look like a magical tome" design so popular with Wizards of the Coast books, but cover artist Raven Mimura is given a 3½" by 4½" area in the middle of the book to provide a painting. He uses the space to give us a not-quite-human (judging from the claws growing out of the tips of his fingers) soulknife wearing a chain shirt. It's a nice painting, given the size constraints; Raven was forced to rely upon just a series of colors in the background instead of any kind of detail, but the end result looks rather nice.
Interior artwork consists of 6 monochromatic drawings (at the chapter beginnings) and 58 full-color illustrations by 9 different artists, plus three full-color maps by cartographer Kyle Hunter. The artwork was pretty good for the most part. My favorites include Ron Spencer's soulbow on page 38 (the "arm outstretched towards the viewer" perspective is difficult to do well but he does it well here, plus I liked the buckle-on shin guards over her boots and the texture of her leggings at the hip), Ralph Horsley's illustration of the dazzling energy power on page 48 (very intricate body armor and facial structure on the dromite, and the look on the bear's face is priceless), William O'Connor's zerth cenobite on page 44 (very intricate design pattern on her skirt and arm-bands, and I'm intrigued by the scissors tucked into her belt), and Warren Mahy's depiction of the energy ray power being used on page 64 (another well-done dromite, but I especially like the transdimensional bubble effect around the enemy he's fighting). The pieces I didn't particularly like stemmed mostly from the depictions not meeting the authors' written descriptions, like the flayerspawn on page 31 having four tentacles coming from her neck, apparently, and still having a very humanoid face (the Illithid Grapple feat description states very plainly that once you gain your fourth tentacle, "the lower half of your face transforms to resemble that of an illithid"), the planar embrace illustration on page 94 lacking the silver halo around the figure's head, and the glyphs around the sibyllic guardian on page 135 being blue-green instead of red. Also, the maps, while functional, are either very difficult to read (the numbered room listing on the right of the Lodge Luminous map on page 152 blends illegibly into the background) or "generic" (the Psigate map on page 118 has none of the rooms numbered, no room descriptions, and no indication of where in the 35+ rooms the psigate actually resides! - for my money, I'm going to guess it's on the left side of the circular room in the middle of the map).
Complete Psionic is laid out as follows:
Likewise, a good chunk of the new powers are just psionic versions of spells from the Player's Handbook, with the power description being little more than "As [spell name] (PH page number), except as noted here." I would have thought a little more effort would have been required. Then there are the specific powers that have problems, like Urge Extermination, which costs 17 power points and affects creatures with up to 90 hit points. Okay, so far so good. However, the "Augment" section states the following: "For every additional power point you spend, you can affect a creature with 10 more hit points. For example, if you spend 20 additional power points when manifesting urge extermination, you can affect one living creature with 110 or fewer hit points." Nobody bothered to double-check the math, apparently: if it's really +10 hp for +1 pp, then you'd only need to spend an additional 2 power points to affect a 110-hp creature. I also really dislike damp power, a 2nd-level power that automatically decreases the next energy attack to affect you to its absolute minimum value. Thus, that 10-die fireball will only deal 10 points of damage to you, never mind the fact that it does, say, 39 points of fire damage to everybody else. Worse yet, manifesting damp power is an immediate action, so you don't even have to worry about planning ahead; just crank it out when needed, no matter whose turn it is. I find it difficult to believe that nobody involved in the creation of Complete Psionic saw this as a particularly bad idea.
Some of the new psionic items seem a bit off to me, too. Consider the skin of ectoplasmic armor, which grants a +8 armor bonus (like full plate armor), imposes a +2 maximum Dexterity bonus on the wearer (just like full plate), has a 10% lower chance of arcane spell failure than full plate does, and causes no reduction in speed at all. Full plate armor costs 1,500 gp, is bulky, takes a decent length of time to don and doff, and is susceptible to rusting. Skin of ectoplasmic armor has all of the benefits of full plate (plus more!), not all of the disadvantages, and only costs 3,000 gp. Compare this to the 64,000 gp you'd have to shell out to get a +8 armor bonus from a pair of bracers of armor, and it's time to start selling your stock in the magic company that produces bracers of armor, because I doubt they'll be in business for much longer. Back on the space-wasting front, it looks like the various stacked psionatrices could have been condensed into one entry, considering how much of each entry is a repeat of the previous ones.
And then, we come to the stat blocks. Here's what I found reading through Complete Psionic once; I recommend making the following changes:
I'm going to jump ahead to my final rating for Complete Psionic, and give it a very low "3 (Average)." Arguments could certainly be made to drop it into a "2 (Poor)" category, but I think it just squeaks by out of that rating. because some of the material in the book is actually pretty good; it's just a shame that more of it isn't.
Of the four new classes (and I found it kind of odd that the erudite (variant psion) was kept in the last chapter instead of in the first with the other three new classes), I kind of liked the lurk and erudite, and while I wasn't as fond of the divine mind or ardent - I'm still trying to wrap my brain around the concept of "divine psionics" - I can at least see where the authors were going with them. With these new classes, it's now technically feasible to run an all-psionics campaign and not have any of the "core class" slots go unfilled. (I'm still a bit mystified as to why they didn't just create classes based on the healing aspects of the cleric - arguably the most important class feature if you're trying to "cover" what a cleric does in-game - rather than try to shoehorn psionics into a divine structure, though. I also wonder why the argent's and divine mind's mantles - the psionic versions of cleric domains - aren't uniform in the numbers, and levels, of powers they provide. Compare the Good and Evil mantles, which provide one power each of levels 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, and 8, with the Communication mantle, which has powers of levels 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 4, 5, and 9. Seems kind of odd, doesn't it?)
Some of the prestige classes are pretty neat; I know if I was running a soulknife character I'd be eager to start taking levels in soulbow, as the ranged aspects of the prestige class seem like a very natural progression. The zerth cenobite seems pretty cool, too, and I always thought that monks and psionics went together like peanut butter and jelly, seeing as how each deals with focusing on perfecting either the body or the mind - why not go for the "whole package deal?" Plus, several of its powers are really interesting, like the ability to pop forward (or "pop" an enemy forward with a blow) in time.
Many of the new powers - at least, many of those that aren't just psionic versions of Player's Handbook spells - seem very interesting. I was amused, though, to note that there are no fewer than two separate powers that allow you to blow up an enemy's head. Did one of the authors watch "Scanners" one time too many or something? I also liked several of the new psionic items, with the ethereal reaver topping the list - what's not to like about a +2 longsword whose adamantium-with-inlaid-platinum pommel and hilt exist only on the Material Plane, but whose blade extends into the Ethereal Plane as well? Finally, I enjoyed the playful nod to the tirapheg (arguably one of the strangest monsters ever to "grace" any edition of the (A)D&D game; tiraphegs showed up in the AD&D 1st edition Fiend Folio) in the new synad race, who look human but can sometimes be seen with two insubstantial, featureless heads on either side of the creature's true head. (I'm not thrilled with the name "synad," however, given that the "snyad" is a type of gremlin - or at least it was in earlier editions of the game - and there's plenty of opportunity for confusion between the two.)
Still, I don't think I can recommend Complete Psionic to the casual reader; get it if you're a psionics enthusiast who's likely to make some use of the new powers and whatnot, but unless you can get a really good break on the price, I wouldn't spend thirty dollars of my hard-earned money on it. (Of course, in the interests of full disclosure, I received a free review copy from Wizards of the Coast.)
By Bruce R. Cordell and Christopher Lindsay
Wizards of the Coast product number 953677200
160 pages, $29.95
Complete Psionic is the latest of the hardcover "class books" from Wizards of the Coast, following Complete Adventurer, Complete Arcane, Complete Divine, and Complete Warrior. This one, obviously, is geared for the psionic classes from the Expanded Psionics Handbook - the psion, psychic warrior, soulknife, and wilder, although it provides several new psionic classes as well.
The cover is the typical "make it look like a magical tome" design so popular with Wizards of the Coast books, but cover artist Raven Mimura is given a 3½" by 4½" area in the middle of the book to provide a painting. He uses the space to give us a not-quite-human (judging from the claws growing out of the tips of his fingers) soulknife wearing a chain shirt. It's a nice painting, given the size constraints; Raven was forced to rely upon just a series of colors in the background instead of any kind of detail, but the end result looks rather nice.
Interior artwork consists of 6 monochromatic drawings (at the chapter beginnings) and 58 full-color illustrations by 9 different artists, plus three full-color maps by cartographer Kyle Hunter. The artwork was pretty good for the most part. My favorites include Ron Spencer's soulbow on page 38 (the "arm outstretched towards the viewer" perspective is difficult to do well but he does it well here, plus I liked the buckle-on shin guards over her boots and the texture of her leggings at the hip), Ralph Horsley's illustration of the dazzling energy power on page 48 (very intricate body armor and facial structure on the dromite, and the look on the bear's face is priceless), William O'Connor's zerth cenobite on page 44 (very intricate design pattern on her skirt and arm-bands, and I'm intrigued by the scissors tucked into her belt), and Warren Mahy's depiction of the energy ray power being used on page 64 (another well-done dromite, but I especially like the transdimensional bubble effect around the enemy he's fighting). The pieces I didn't particularly like stemmed mostly from the depictions not meeting the authors' written descriptions, like the flayerspawn on page 31 having four tentacles coming from her neck, apparently, and still having a very humanoid face (the Illithid Grapple feat description states very plainly that once you gain your fourth tentacle, "the lower half of your face transforms to resemble that of an illithid"), the planar embrace illustration on page 94 lacking the silver halo around the figure's head, and the glyphs around the sibyllic guardian on page 135 being blue-green instead of red. Also, the maps, while functional, are either very difficult to read (the numbered room listing on the right of the Lodge Luminous map on page 152 blends illegibly into the background) or "generic" (the Psigate map on page 118 has none of the rooms numbered, no room descriptions, and no indication of where in the 35+ rooms the psigate actually resides! - for my money, I'm going to guess it's on the left side of the circular room in the middle of the map).
Complete Psionic is laid out as follows:
- Introduction: A half-page description of what's in the book (prefaced with a fiction blurb), followed by a half-page sidebar describing swift and immediate actions yet again
- Chapter 1 - Classes: Three new 20-level character classes: the ardent (a psionic cleric equivalent), the diviner mind (a psionic paladin equivalent), and the lurk (a psionic rogue equivalent)
- Chapter 2 - Prestige Classes: 8 new prestige classes of varying lengths: the anarchic initiate (chaos-based wilder), ebon saint (shadow-based infiltrator), ectopic adept (astral construct creator extraordinaire), flayerspawn psychic (psionic who draws upon her illithid heritage to become more and more like a mind flayer), illumine soul (psionic positive energy channeler), soulbow (ranged attack soulknife), storm disciple (yet another storm-based caster, this one psionic), and zerth cenobite (temporal-powered monk)
- Chapter 3 - Feats: 68 psionic feats, 4 generic feats, 8 host feats (you host a psionic entity in your body), 9 illithid heritage feats, and 7 metapsionic feats, for 96 new feats altogether
- Chapter 4 - Powers, Mantles, and Items: 129 new psionic powers, 30 mantles (kind of like cleric domains, each with a granted power and a number of psionic powers), 7 psionic weapons, 2 psicrowns, 6 crystal masks, 6 psychoactive skins, 11 psionatrices, 4 psionic bands, 8 "miscellaneous" psionic items, and 3 psionic locations (which grant temporary psionic enhancements to those who travel to them and do whatever triggers the enhancement)
- Chapter 5 - Constructs and Creatures: 9 levels of the "basic" astral construct, 8 variations of astral construct (each with 9 levels), the ectoplasmic swarm (of psionic spiders), 4 elemental stewards, larval flayers, shadow eft, sibyllic guardian, and the spectral savant template
- Chapter 6- Character Options: A new psionic race (the synad, who looks human but has three minds), the Six Hidden Houses (rather like the different Houses in Eberron, but with a psionic focus), psionic racial classes for duergar, githyanki, githzerai, half-giants, and thri-kreen (so you can play these races without Level Adjustments, actually running one from 1st level), the Diamond Knights psionic guild, the erudite (a variant psion), epic psionic characters (ardents, divine minds, erudites, and lurks). 5 updated epic psionic feats, and a rule about psionic NPCs hoarding their power points instead of throwing everything they've got against the PCs
Likewise, a good chunk of the new powers are just psionic versions of spells from the Player's Handbook, with the power description being little more than "As [spell name] (PH page number), except as noted here." I would have thought a little more effort would have been required. Then there are the specific powers that have problems, like Urge Extermination, which costs 17 power points and affects creatures with up to 90 hit points. Okay, so far so good. However, the "Augment" section states the following: "For every additional power point you spend, you can affect a creature with 10 more hit points. For example, if you spend 20 additional power points when manifesting urge extermination, you can affect one living creature with 110 or fewer hit points." Nobody bothered to double-check the math, apparently: if it's really +10 hp for +1 pp, then you'd only need to spend an additional 2 power points to affect a 110-hp creature. I also really dislike damp power, a 2nd-level power that automatically decreases the next energy attack to affect you to its absolute minimum value. Thus, that 10-die fireball will only deal 10 points of damage to you, never mind the fact that it does, say, 39 points of fire damage to everybody else. Worse yet, manifesting damp power is an immediate action, so you don't even have to worry about planning ahead; just crank it out when needed, no matter whose turn it is. I find it difficult to believe that nobody involved in the creation of Complete Psionic saw this as a particularly bad idea.
Some of the new psionic items seem a bit off to me, too. Consider the skin of ectoplasmic armor, which grants a +8 armor bonus (like full plate armor), imposes a +2 maximum Dexterity bonus on the wearer (just like full plate), has a 10% lower chance of arcane spell failure than full plate does, and causes no reduction in speed at all. Full plate armor costs 1,500 gp, is bulky, takes a decent length of time to don and doff, and is susceptible to rusting. Skin of ectoplasmic armor has all of the benefits of full plate (plus more!), not all of the disadvantages, and only costs 3,000 gp. Compare this to the 64,000 gp you'd have to shell out to get a +8 armor bonus from a pair of bracers of armor, and it's time to start selling your stock in the magic company that produces bracers of armor, because I doubt they'll be in business for much longer. Back on the space-wasting front, it looks like the various stacked psionatrices could have been condensed into one entry, considering how much of each entry is a repeat of the previous ones.
And then, we come to the stat blocks. Here's what I found reading through Complete Psionic once; I recommend making the following changes:
- p. 21, Embersage Fenwillow, female halfling wilder 7/anarchic initiate 4: +1 pyrokinetic light crossbow attacks should be at +12 ranged, not +11 (+8 BAB, +1 size, +2 Dex, +1 magic weapon bonus).
- p. 26, Jaed Catt, male human lurk 6/ebon saint 2: He should have 10 lurk augments/day, not 9/day (lurk level + Int bonus = 6 + 4 = 10). (On a side note, who in their right mind names their kid "Jade Cat?)
- p. 29, Giles Stoneforge, male dwarf shaper 5/ectopic adept 5: Initiative should be +2, not +3 (+2 Dex). He has 7 feats (4 + 3 bonus), but he should have 8 (4 + 4 bonus). "Skill Focus (sculpting)" should be "Skill Focus (Craft (sculpting))." Skills should include Appraise +3 (+5 stone/metal items), as he's a dwarf.
- p. 32, Zeth'Rin, female human telepath 5/flayerspawn psychic 3: Skills should include Diplomacy +5, Disguise +14 (+16 acting), and Intimidate +5 (all due to a +2 synergy bonus from her ranks in Bluff).
- p. 39, Nathara Teng, female human soulknife 5/soulbow 1: Her "Senses" line lists Listen +10, but that's missing from her "Skills" line (and +10 is too high a value for her not to have bought ranks in the skill). However, it looks like she spent 50 out of 45 skill points already, even without purchasing any ranks in Listen. You'll have to delete the Listen +10, and drop down a couple of the other values as well. A good place to start would be in both Hide and Move Silently, where she apparently spent 10 points each - which, of course, is illegal for a 6th-level character to have done. (I'm going to guess that the authors and developers all forgot about armor check penalties, as well.)
- p. 42, Dante, male human divine mind 7/storm disciple 5: Power Points/Day should be 36, not 40 (base 14 [Divine Mind 7 = 7, Storm Disciple 5 = +3, and thus 10th-level Divine Minds get 14 power points/day], +20 for having a +4 Wisdom bonus, and +2 from the Wild Talent feat; 14 + 20 + 2 = 36).
- p. 46, Keziah the Repudiator, female githzerai monk 6/zerth cenobite 5: Missing Improved Unarmed Strike as a bonus feat (which she would have gained as a monk).
- p. 120, 1st-Level Astral Construct: With 1 HD, BAB should be +0, not +2. Grapple should be -2, not -1 (+0 BAB, -4 size, +2 Str).
- p. 120, 2nd-Level Astral Construct: With 2 HD, BAB should be +1, not +3.
- p. 120, 3rd-Level Astral Construct: With 3 HD, BAB should be +2, not +4.
- p. 120, 4th-Level Astral Construct: With 5 HD, BAB should be +3, not +5.
- p. 120, 5th-Level Astral Construct: With 7 HD, BAB should be +5, not +7.
- p. 121, 6th-Level Astral Construct: With 10 HD, BAB should be +7, not +9.
- p. 121, 7th-Level Astral Construct: With 13 HD, BAB should be +9, not +11.
- p. 121, 8th-Level Astral Construct: With 16 HD, BAB should be +12, not +14.
- p. 121, 9th-Level Astral Construct: With 19 HD, BAB should be +14, not +16.
- p. 122, Agile Loper, 7th Level: Trample damage should be 1d8+18, not 1d8+12 (trampling deals 1½ times Str bonus, 1½ times 12 = 18).
- p. 122, Agile Loper, 8th Level: Trample damage should be 1d8+21, not 1d8+14.
- p. 122, Agile Loper, 9th Level: Trample damage should be 2d6+24, not 1d8+16 (besides the 1½ times the Str bonus deal, there's also the fact that a 9th-level agile leaper uses 2d6 as the base damage for its slam).
- p. 124, Amber Tunneler, 7th Level: With 13 HD, BAB should be +9, not +11.
- p. 124, Amber Tunneler, 8th Level: With 16 HD, BAB should be +12, not +14.
- p. 124, Amber Tunneler, 9th Level: With 19 HD, BAB should be +14, not +16.
- p. 125, Anathemic Carapace: The "Smite" description should state "of at least 7th level" as it isn't until 7th level that anathemic carapaces gain the smite ability.
- p. 127, Emerald Gyre: The creature's write-up doesn't include the "Celerity" description (which emerald gyres gain at 4th level).
- p. 128, Iridescent Serpent (all 9 levels of them): Slam damage should be "plus 1d6 energy" instead of "plus 1d6 cold" as cold is just one of the four possibilities of the types of energy an iridescent serpent can manifest with its slam attacks. Likewise, the "Strategies and Tactics" section of the creatures' description also uses cold exclusively, although the Ectopic Form (Iridescent Serpent) feat on page 52 states the extra damage is of the same energy as its energy resistance.
- p. 129, Ectoplasmic Swarm: Distraction Fortitude save should be DC 13, not DC 14 (10 + ½ HD + Con modifier = 10 + 4 - 1 = 13).
- p. 130, Elemental Steward, Arctine: 30 feet ≠ 4 squares! Speed should either be "30 ft. (6 squares)" or "20 ft. (4 squares)" - my guess is the former. Energy ray attacks should be at +3 ranged touch, not +2 (+2 BAB, +1 size, +0 Dex).
- p. 130, Elemental Steward, Emberling: Ref should be +5, not +4 (+3 as a 3-HD (fire) elemental, +2 Dex). Energy ray attacks should be at +5 ranged touch, not +4 (+2 BAB, +1 size, +2 Dex).
- p. 131, Elemental Steward, Geodite: 30 feet ≠ 4 squares! Speed should either be "30 ft. (6 squares)" or "20 ft. (4 squares)" - I could see it going either way for this one.
- p. 132, Elemental Steward, Tempestan: 30 feet ≠ 12 squares, either! Speed should either be "fly 30 ft. (perfect) (6 squares)" or "fly 60 ft. (perfect) (12 squares)." Energy ray attacks should be at +6 ranged touch, not +5 (+2 BAB, +1 size, +3 Dex).
- p. 133, Larval Flayer: Fort should be +1, not +2 (+0 as a 2-HD aberration, +1 Con). Ref should be +4, not +5 (+0 as a 2-HD aberration, +4 Dex). Tentacle attacks should be at +7 touch, not +6 (+1 BAB, +2 size, +4 Dex with Weapon Finesse).
- p. 134, Shadow Eft: This one is problematical. The creature's AC line reads "AC 20, touch 14, flat-footed 23" - which is impossible, as you can't have a higher AC value when flat-footed that you do when not. Since they didn't bother to list the AC breakdowns at all in this book - a very poor decision, by the way - there's no way to determine how much, if any, natural armor a shadow eft has. So, we'll revert to algebraic notation and call that value "X." Therefore, the shadow eft's AC should be 10+X (-1 size, +1 Dex, +X natural), its touch AC should be 10, and its flat-footed AC should be 9+X (-1 size, +X natural). I guess it's left up to us to determine how much natural armor a shadow eft has. While mine is certainly not the final word on the subject, here's my recommendation: a Large skeleton from the Monster Manual has a +2 natural armor bonus, and shadow efts are made primary of bone (and "solidified shadow"), while the cerebrilith from the Expanded Psionics Handbook, a Large outsider with bony protrusions covering its body, has a +15 natural armor bonus. If we "guesstimate" the shadow eft as falling about halfway between the two, we get around a +8 natural armor bonus. This translates to AC 18, touch 10, flat-footed 17; that's what I'd go with until we hear further word from Wizards of the Coast.
- p. 135, Sibyllic Guardian: Initiative should be +7, not +6 (+3 Dex, +4 Improved Initiative).
- p. 136, Sample Spectral Savant, male human telepath 11: Grapple should be "-" instead of +5, as incorporeal creature's can't grapple. Also, they shouldn't have "weight," as incorrectly mentioned in the "Typical Physical Characteristics" section on page 138.
I'm going to jump ahead to my final rating for Complete Psionic, and give it a very low "3 (Average)." Arguments could certainly be made to drop it into a "2 (Poor)" category, but I think it just squeaks by out of that rating. because some of the material in the book is actually pretty good; it's just a shame that more of it isn't.
Of the four new classes (and I found it kind of odd that the erudite (variant psion) was kept in the last chapter instead of in the first with the other three new classes), I kind of liked the lurk and erudite, and while I wasn't as fond of the divine mind or ardent - I'm still trying to wrap my brain around the concept of "divine psionics" - I can at least see where the authors were going with them. With these new classes, it's now technically feasible to run an all-psionics campaign and not have any of the "core class" slots go unfilled. (I'm still a bit mystified as to why they didn't just create classes based on the healing aspects of the cleric - arguably the most important class feature if you're trying to "cover" what a cleric does in-game - rather than try to shoehorn psionics into a divine structure, though. I also wonder why the argent's and divine mind's mantles - the psionic versions of cleric domains - aren't uniform in the numbers, and levels, of powers they provide. Compare the Good and Evil mantles, which provide one power each of levels 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, and 8, with the Communication mantle, which has powers of levels 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 4, 5, and 9. Seems kind of odd, doesn't it?)
Some of the prestige classes are pretty neat; I know if I was running a soulknife character I'd be eager to start taking levels in soulbow, as the ranged aspects of the prestige class seem like a very natural progression. The zerth cenobite seems pretty cool, too, and I always thought that monks and psionics went together like peanut butter and jelly, seeing as how each deals with focusing on perfecting either the body or the mind - why not go for the "whole package deal?" Plus, several of its powers are really interesting, like the ability to pop forward (or "pop" an enemy forward with a blow) in time.
Many of the new powers - at least, many of those that aren't just psionic versions of Player's Handbook spells - seem very interesting. I was amused, though, to note that there are no fewer than two separate powers that allow you to blow up an enemy's head. Did one of the authors watch "Scanners" one time too many or something? I also liked several of the new psionic items, with the ethereal reaver topping the list - what's not to like about a +2 longsword whose adamantium-with-inlaid-platinum pommel and hilt exist only on the Material Plane, but whose blade extends into the Ethereal Plane as well? Finally, I enjoyed the playful nod to the tirapheg (arguably one of the strangest monsters ever to "grace" any edition of the (A)D&D game; tiraphegs showed up in the AD&D 1st edition Fiend Folio) in the new synad race, who look human but can sometimes be seen with two insubstantial, featureless heads on either side of the creature's true head. (I'm not thrilled with the name "synad," however, given that the "snyad" is a type of gremlin - or at least it was in earlier editions of the game - and there's plenty of opportunity for confusion between the two.)
Still, I don't think I can recommend Complete Psionic to the casual reader; get it if you're a psionics enthusiast who's likely to make some use of the new powers and whatnot, but unless you can get a really good break on the price, I wouldn't spend thirty dollars of my hard-earned money on it. (Of course, in the interests of full disclosure, I received a free review copy from Wizards of the Coast.)
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