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Expanded Psionics Handbook Play Use?
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<blockquote data-quote="Perun" data-source="post: 1606149" data-attributes="member: 6037"><p>I have a psion (kineticist) in my RttToEE game, and he is one very powerful character. Even the other players are starting to express some concerns about his power.</p><p></p><p>I house-ruled Energy Missile (+2 PP gives you +1d6 and +1 DC), Dispel Psionics (+6 PP and you can dispel check becomes d20 + manifester level, up to 20), and the Improved Manyshot feat.</p><p></p><p>From what I gathered so far, the psionics and magic systems are only superficially similar, but work in a vastly different ways. This leads to certain extremely powerful combinations that standard spell-slot-using casters cannot exploit. </p><p></p><p>I'm mainly referring to the fact that a spellcaster can use his higher-level spell slots to cast lower-level spells (and this is only rarely useful, really), while a manifester freely uses his PP pool to manifest powers of any level. This gives them unmatched versatility, and pushes the sorcerer (a core class!) far, far in the background.</p><p></p><p>As a not-really-that-extreme example, consider the 11th-level psion. He gets Piosnic Disintegrate (a spell/power that, with the exception of SR, there's no effective counter-measure), and deals 22d6. And he has a minimum of 122 PP, allowing him to manifest it 11 times, before (practically) running out of PP. A wizard could do it once, maybe twice (if he's a specialist). He would still have all of his lower-level spells, but you can't compare that with the sheer destructive effectiveness of Disintegrate (it's a non-typed, all-affecting destructive power). A sorcerer has to wait till he's 12th level, and then he can cast about three 6th-level spells.</p><p></p><p>Now, don't get me wrong. I like the idea behing the XPH, and I find it the vast improvement over the PsiHB. The races are interesting, the classes are nice. It's just that dsigners just let a number of unneccessarily weird and powerful feats and powers to crawl in (a 8th-level psion with Overchannel, Talented, and Maximise Power (that's three out of his 5 feats, 6 if he's human) can routinely manifest Dispel Psionics with a dispel check of 30 for 9 PP (he has a base of 58 PP, plus modifier), the wizard has to wait till 11th level to do the same, and the sorcerer till 12th level). These, along with the flavour features that have mechanical uses (like the no components thing -- a feature that allows psions to manifest powers while paralised, held, bound, pinned *and* gagged) can put them signifficantly ahead of their spellcasting counterparts.</p><p></p><p>I believe that XPH provides an excellent supplement for a campaign, if you decide to run a psionics-only campaign.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Perun, post: 1606149, member: 6037"] I have a psion (kineticist) in my RttToEE game, and he is one very powerful character. Even the other players are starting to express some concerns about his power. I house-ruled Energy Missile (+2 PP gives you +1d6 and +1 DC), Dispel Psionics (+6 PP and you can dispel check becomes d20 + manifester level, up to 20), and the Improved Manyshot feat. From what I gathered so far, the psionics and magic systems are only superficially similar, but work in a vastly different ways. This leads to certain extremely powerful combinations that standard spell-slot-using casters cannot exploit. I'm mainly referring to the fact that a spellcaster can use his higher-level spell slots to cast lower-level spells (and this is only rarely useful, really), while a manifester freely uses his PP pool to manifest powers of any level. This gives them unmatched versatility, and pushes the sorcerer (a core class!) far, far in the background. As a not-really-that-extreme example, consider the 11th-level psion. He gets Piosnic Disintegrate (a spell/power that, with the exception of SR, there's no effective counter-measure), and deals 22d6. And he has a minimum of 122 PP, allowing him to manifest it 11 times, before (practically) running out of PP. A wizard could do it once, maybe twice (if he's a specialist). He would still have all of his lower-level spells, but you can't compare that with the sheer destructive effectiveness of Disintegrate (it's a non-typed, all-affecting destructive power). A sorcerer has to wait till he's 12th level, and then he can cast about three 6th-level spells. Now, don't get me wrong. I like the idea behing the XPH, and I find it the vast improvement over the PsiHB. The races are interesting, the classes are nice. It's just that dsigners just let a number of unneccessarily weird and powerful feats and powers to crawl in (a 8th-level psion with Overchannel, Talented, and Maximise Power (that's three out of his 5 feats, 6 if he's human) can routinely manifest Dispel Psionics with a dispel check of 30 for 9 PP (he has a base of 58 PP, plus modifier), the wizard has to wait till 11th level to do the same, and the sorcerer till 12th level). These, along with the flavour features that have mechanical uses (like the no components thing -- a feature that allows psions to manifest powers while paralised, held, bound, pinned *and* gagged) can put them signifficantly ahead of their spellcasting counterparts. I believe that XPH provides an excellent supplement for a campaign, if you decide to run a psionics-only campaign. [/QUOTE]
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