Do you give out psionic treasure?

[Rystil Arden]

While we are on it, what are the rules with regards to learning new powers as a psion. I always found them a little confusing. It says that you can "meditate" to learn new powers, but is a little hazy on how many you are allowed to learn. It seems to imply that you can't know more than your ordinary limit, but that seems to negate the idea in the first place!

Anyone?

You can't learn more than your limit. Only the extremely-powerful erudite from the Dragon Magazine preview of the XPH can do that. The erudite can learn an infinite number of powers, the psion is strictly limited by the chart.

 

[Saeviomagy]

That makes him into little more than a spell point using magic user, and takes some of the fun out of playing a psionicist, in my opinion.

OTOH, it avoids the game-destroying insanity that usually accompanies allowing psionics into a gameworld that isn't specifically written to cater to them.

Inevitably in such a case, the psionicist is far, far, far more powerful than he should be, simply because there exist no defenses against him.

To me, that's far more important than one player who feels that different should equal fun without any more thought to it.

 

[Heathen72]

You can't learn more than your limit. Only the extremely-powerful erudite from the Dragon Magazine preview of the XPH can do that. The erudite can learn an infinite number of powers, the psion is strictly limited by the chart.

So what is your 'limit?' is that equal to the number of powers you automatically obtain when you go up a level. In which case, are you required to unlearn those in order to learn a new power? It seems pretty pointless to me.

 

[Heathen72]

Inevitably in such a case, the psionicist is far, far, far more powerful than he should be, simply because there exist no defenses against him.

I'd disagree that far, far more powerful is the case. Slightly more powerful, perhaps. The GM just has to pay attention to applying the pros and cons of the situation - such as ruling that there are no psionic items to be found in this world etc. But in a situation like this, where the PC is unique in the game world, sure, why not. I get a little bored when everything has to be utterly balanced. And there are plenty of ways for a good GM to ensure game balance outside of the 'rules'

 

[Arkhandus]

Obviously, Saeviomagy last saw psionics used in a 2E AD&D campaign with 'Psionics Are Different' style used, and someone playing a 2E psionicist with Disintegrate at 3rd-level or something. {:^D Last time I saw it in 2E, yeah, one of my friends played a 10th-level psionicist who kept Disintegrating small chunks from the colossal golem we were fighting, whom none of the magic-users could affect because of golemic immunities and Magic Resistance, but then, we wouldn't have survived the encounter if not for him gradually disintegrating the golem's head and torso.

As for 3.x psionics, a psionic character only learns as many powers as they get automatically, based on their class' level progression chart. They cannot unlearn old powers to replace them with new ones. That's part of what balances a psion's flexibility compared to sorcerers and wizards, the fact that psions are even more limited in powers known and so they have to choose and apply creatively. I dunno if the Expanded Psionics Handbook has any feats or whatnot to learn new powers (I haven't bought into 3.5 yet, my 3.0 books serve me well enough so far), but as someone mentioned, one of the Dragon Magazine issues featured some XPH-related materials which included the Erudite psionic class. ......Let's see, the issue was 319, May 2004, the Dark Sun issue. The Erudite can learn many more powers.

The meditation description just described how they learn their new powers each level, just as a sorcerer gains new spells as inspiration or something. It was just flavor text. Each time a character levels up in a psionic class, they learn new powers as appropriate if the progression chart shows them as having more powers known at that level.

 

[Evilhalfling]

The XPH is great, If you are actually using psionics you should upgrade.
Psiwarriors did the best, and many psions became blasters, but the change from those cahins of similar powers to a single ability you could spend more points on is just wonderful.

I give out very small amounts of psionic treasure, but there is always some with psionic monsters. And after the players tangled with a lair of Blues they were most happy with the tattoos they recovered. In the game I ran with a PC Psion there was a little more, but as it was a low level game and the low level items suck, there wasn't much.

It is sort of a blind spot that I have used very few psi items, not actually owned by Psions.
AS for Amy Kou'ai' s problem I would agree that if there was no other psionics in the world you should definatly be using the psionics is differernt rules.