feelings and thoughts on Psionics

[Ahnehnois]

One of my first characters was a 2e psionicist. I dug the mechanics, the sense of being different and the flavor of mental powers. I tried the 3.0 version, but found it too much like magic and had some balance issues. the XPH revisions were good to some extent, but I ended up revising my magic rules based on them rather than trying to do the rules as written.

I've been quite enamored with the Psychic's Handbook system, although I had to write some satisfactory classes and tweak the skills quite a bit.

I like the skill based approach. Psion powers should be thematic and intuitive. For instance, a wizard might learn Fireball but not know any other fire spells. A psion who can do one thing with fire should be able to do several related things. Psionic powers should also be limited by fatigue, if at all. That is to say, the idea of having a set reserve of energy distinct from anything else (as mages do) doesn't work for me; a psion who can think should be able to use powers in some capacity until he is truly disabled.

On the whole, I think many classic archetypes (seer, telepath, mystic, etc.) are very well represented in fantasy; I don't find them as out of place as some people do, and I try to make them an important part of my game world using whatever mechanics I can find.

 

[Dandu]

What would be examples of Tier 2 classes that would (with the same build) do all of things I mentioned the psionicist does?

Sorcerer.

Here are some builds.

 

[Herzog]

Sorcerer.

Here are some builds.

As far as I can tell, these are nice sorcerer builds.

I feel to see, however, how they support your statements. I assume this is because the sheets lack a spell list. Is it possible to list those as well?

 

[Dandu]

Sorry, I forgot that the spell list isn't displayed by default on TTW. What you do is look under the Skills list for a small checkbox that says "Display spells and powers" and select that so the sheet will display a spell list.

These builds aren't quite the equivalent of a Shaper, but I'm sure you can swap around a few spells and feats until the equivalent forms. For example, sneak the Blindsight spell into the builds that don't have Mindsight (Or just summon monsters with Blindsight/Blindsense/Scent), throw in Fabricate instead of Persistent Image, etc. For self healing, False Life, Vampiric Touch, and Ruin Delver's Fortune can all supply temp HP, and the Divine Companion ACF actually provides real healing.

If you want to work with something that isn't level 20 (reasonable; the psion probably wasn't either) here are a few lower level builds to tinker with.

 

[irdeggman]

I like the 2e psionics if diffrent to magic feel of things as per many a DnD novel. This I feel you cant really get now, what do you think?

Which 2nd ed version? Pre Skills and Powers/Way of the Psionicist (from the revised Dark Sun rules) or not? The revision rocked the older pretty lame in comparison, IMO.

You can very much get the feel of teh novel treatment if you follow what it says in the Expanded Psionicist Book. Every power has a display (auditory, mental, material, olfactory, or visual), this in itself gives a very, very different "feel" to psionics. Many DMs/players ignore this part and treat it as "color".

The entire pp system makes it very different than magic in itself, especially the augmentation part.

 

[irdeggman]

In my opinion psionics in 3.5 is balanced if the DM is applying the rules and paying attention.

If the DM is not noticing, a tricky player can take advantage of him (easier to do with psionics than others because of the difference in the rules).

For balance with other classes:

There are no psionic classes that can know or learn every power out there. They all have a limited number of known powers and don't get to do research to expand the list to know more than their limit.

The no more the pp = ML rule must not be forgotten.

The psionic focus must always be kept in mind - too many people forget it.

There are few powers that have a range of greater than medium.

Astral constructs can be pwerful but don't forget the rule on number of pp spent equals ML also Complete Psionic changed the rule so that a psionicist can have no more than 1 astral construct in existence at once. {Many people hate this rule, but if you feel that astral constructs are more powerful than summoned creatures then it is important to keep it in.}

 

[Herzog]

Ok, it may seem like I'm nitpicking here, but looking at the sorcerer builds this one jumped out at me:

-The first sorcerer build (Ozymandias, Sorcerer/Archmage) has, as one of his 9th lvl spells, Timestop.

Regardless of how powerfull people find this specific spell, I noticed our 'trouble' psionicist has the psionic equivalent of that: Tempral Acceleration. A 6th lvl power, wich gives you 1 round of additional time (instead of the 1+1d4 rounds) and needs additional power points (4 per round) to gain additional rounds (which our psionicist currently cannot provide, so the 'damage' is limited) and has the drawback that the psionicist is shaken for 1 round afterwards ( a minor inconvenience at best)
The psionicist can use this power at 11th lvl, while the sorcerer has to wait until lvl 18. True, the sorcerer will have more time once he get's to lvl 18, but that's not helping him on lvl 11-17, when his buddy the psionicist already is manifesting that power.

Again, this feels like nitpicking (even to myself) but it's also an example of the way psionic powers become available in relation to arcane spells, and how that may give psionicist an advantage.

 

[Dandu]

Regardless of how powerfull people find this specific spell, I noticed our 'trouble' psionicist has the psionic equivalent of that: Tempral Acceleration. A 6th lvl power, wich gives you 1 round of additional time (instead of the 1+1d4 rounds) and needs additional power points (4 per round) to gain additional rounds (which our psionicist currently cannot provide, so the 'damage' is limited) and has the drawback that the psionicist is shaken for 1 round afterwards ( a minor inconvenience at best)
The psionicist can use this power at 11th lvl, while the sorcerer has to wait until lvl 18. True, the sorcerer will have more time once he get's to lvl 18, but that's not helping him on lvl 11-17, when his buddy the psionicist already is manifesting that power.

Diet Time Stop isn't more unbalanced than what other tier 2 casters get so why begrudge the psion something interesting?

 

[Arkhandus]

I like psionics in D&D, but have always had a few quibbles with them. 2E psionics were my favorite, but some aspects of them were just odd or overly clunky. It was fun and different to play a psionicist back then, and made things more interesting. Many powers were just neat to have but not especially potent, and very few were actually powerful in any way (most were quite limited and finnicky, plus you had to keep paying for them during each increment of their duration until you dropped them). Psionics were included in the entries of appropriate monsters in the 2E monster books (at least in the later printings that I saw, I never saw the early 2E printings).

They were reasonably limited and the worst you could do was have a 3rd-level or higher psionicist with Disintegrate, but even then he'd be blowing through Psionic Strength Points so fast that he'd be ganked by a goblin or something in no time. Even the most talented psionicist (18 Con, Int, AND Wis) would only have 58 PSPs at 3rd-level, so he could manifest a single Disintegrate (40 PSPs) before he'd be resorting to weak little Devotions like Ballistic Attack. He'd have to roll a 14 or lower on 1d20 first for the power check, and otherwise he'd lose 20 PSPs for nothing and be incapable of another Disintegrate attempt for awhile. An average psionicist might have 16 Wisdom as his only high score, giving him 44 PSPs at 3rd-level and a power check of 12 or lower needed to activate Disintegrate (or a 15 Wisdom, for 40 PSPs total at 3rd-level and a power check of 11 or lower necessary).

Sure, it was pretty powerful for a 3rd-level character to have Disintegrate, but it was pretty much the only exploit in the book, IIRC (and the target got a save versus death or disintegration to negate it, and they could block it altogether with an Inertial Barrier or Minor Globe of Invulnerability or similar spells and powers). The other powers are fairly weak in combat (though there were a few decent ones). A mediocre chance to Disintegrate one enemy per day was nice, but when it was just about the only thing you could do for the day, it wasn't that great.

My experiences with them in play (one with Disintegrate, the others without, some of them played by me and some by others in the group) wasn't that bad in 2E. My ninja did more than the psionicist when we fought a dragon (somehow!), and while my psionicist in another game managed to disintegrate a chunk of a massive golem or somesuch, there was still a whole lotta golem left for us to fight after that 8-foot-cube was disintegrated. I only really got the one chance, as it saved against my first attempt and I was running on empty after the second attempt.

My drow psionicist in another game (House Oblydra or whatever, the only House in Menzoberranzan even suspected of having gained mental powers somehow) got killed by the party's treasonous (of course!) drow rogue after said rogue repeatedly passed every save against my powers of mental domination and disintegration and such (well, he faileda gainst Domination once, but then passed his second save against it before I could do anything further to the traitor, and anyway Domination was so expensive to maintain that I would've run outta juice in a few more rounds). Well, to be more accurate he nearly killed my psionicist, THEN strapped a metal helmet to my psionicist's head so he couldn't manifest any powers (yeah, there was just such a restriction in 2E!) and tied him up, THEN sold him to a hungry mindflayer, who ate my psionicist's brain. -_-


ANYHOO, I do like the Psychic's Handbook version in how its mechanics better fit the flavor of psionics and how one would expect a psionicist to develop their powers. But I haven't had the chance to see it in play to really gauge its effectiveness and balance.

3E psionics were too much like magic, but at least they maintained a few differences. But provided too many power points at the middle and upper levels. Still, it wasn't too bad, and it was reasonably close to balanced at many levels, at least. The power point costs and requirements of psionic/metapsionic feats was good, and they were rightly treated as just another kind of power that, as such, had a cost to use. 3E psionic characters were very limited in their number of powers learned, and further restricted by their ability scores, which made sense given how psionics skirted one or two minor limitations of spellcasting.

3.5 psionics regained a bit more differentiation, but at the expense of becoming more exploitable and broken (plus it negated the extra differences by emulating even more magic spells and items to close the gap in differences). 3.5 gave them even more power points and took away the cost for psionic feats while reducing the cost of metapsionic feats, while introducing a stupid new psionic focus mechanic that made it harder to use any psionic or metapsionic feats without actually costing anything. The psionic 'nova' tactic was made even more viable and potent in 3.5. Too many psionic powers got beefed up too much in 3.5. Crystals got WAY overblown in 3.5 psionics, whereas they played only a tiny part in earlier editions (Empower and one or two other Metapsionic powers in 2E, for example, while 3.0 came close to bringing it too far with the abundance of crystals in psionic items and the kinda lame psicrystal idea; wheee, pet rocks!).

Soulknives were changed from a cool prestige class to a wierd and slightly weak base class with no powers and a wonky design (they're supposed to be assassins and other aggressors, manifesting their aggression into physical form as mind blades, not tanks; why so many HP and so few skills, especially without the right proficiencies for a tank?). Wilders were added rather than just implementing a 3.5 wild talent mechanic, probably best handled through feats and skills, but not the lame Wild Talent feat that was printed in 3.5. More-powerful prestige classes were added in 3.5 psionics.

Though it was a general trend in 3.5 to up the power level of many classes, spells, items, feats, and stuff in newer books outside the core rules. Just as the 3.5 core rules jacked up some stuff that really didn't need any jacking up in the first place (or which just didn't need quite so much of a boost) while weakening others that were fine before. Still, 3.5 psionics weren't too bad, just not as good as 3.0 or 2E psionics in terms of balance and flavor. Eberron and the 3rd-party stuff did make psionics more cool or give it better flavor, but also tended to follow the 3.5 philosophy of ever-escalating power to some degree.

I like Dreamscarred Press' psionics material, and I'm glad they're the ones working on Pathfinder's version of psionics, but I hope they don't overpower it relative to Pathfinder's already-more-powerful core material. Their 3.5 psionics material was good but suffered from the same power-escalation factor that was pervasive throughout 3.5.

 

[Eldritch_Lord]

First off, yes, he has overchannel.

Second, I believe he's using the Temporary Hitpoints from Vigor to fuel that overchanneling. (Not sure about that, I'd have to check)

Some specific replies:

That's 50 temporary hit points at lvl 10, and no cap. False life gives you a maximum of 20 thp.

So you're all level 10, then? Okay. Assuming this guy uses a max-augmented vigor and then overchannels a power, that's 22 PP down; he can do that 4 times in a day, possibly 5 if he has a 20+ key ability score, so he ends the day with 50-3d8 temp HP and has manifested 4-5 powers. Woohoo. If he uses the minimum manifestation of vigor to cover overchannel, that's 17 PP each, so he can do that 5-7 times.

1) To do the above, he's spent the equivalent of 4 5th-level and 4 6th-level spells in the former case or 5 3rds and 5 6ths in the second case, and he's done for the day. A sorcerer at 10th level has 3 5ths, 5 4ths, and 6 of each lower level, plus bonus spells; if Vancian casters could augment their spells, the sorcerer could spend all 3 5ths, all 5 4ths, and 5 2nds to match the psion (though he'd actually come out ahead, as Vancian spells auto-scale) and still have all of his 3rds, all of his 1sts, and a 2nd left. If you just look at what the psion can do, yes, it looks great. If you look at how often he can do it, you can see that he doesn't have nearly the stamina of other casters.

2) False life is a 2nd-level spell; in the above examples, he's using it as a 5th level spell to get 50 THP or a 3rd to get 25 THP. If it's manifested as the equivalent of a 2nd-level spell (3-4 PP) he gets 15-20 THP, so it's roughly equivalent.

Regardless of how powerfull people find this specific spell, I noticed our 'trouble' psionicist has the psionic equivalent of that: Tempral Acceleration. A 6th lvl power, wich gives you 1 round of additional time (instead of the 1+1d4 rounds) and needs additional power points (4 per round) to gain additional rounds (which our psionicist currently cannot provide, so the 'damage' is limited) and has the drawback that the psionicist is shaken for 1 round afterwards ( a minor inconvenience at best)
The psionicist can use this power at 11th lvl, while the sorcerer has to wait until lvl 18. True, the sorcerer will have more time once he get's to lvl 18, but that's not helping him on lvl 11-17, when his buddy the psionicist already is manifesting that power.

Again, this feels like nitpicking (even to myself) but it's also an example of the way psionic powers become available in relation to arcane spells, and how that may give psionicist an advantage.

Arcane casters never gain the ability to raise the dead, so does that make them inferior to divine casters? No, it just means they're good at different things. One of the things psionicists are very good at is getting more actions and mucking around with time, so they get temporal acceleration, schism, time hop, and so forth.

If you really want to compare the two, take a look at their relative advantages. The psion is superior at blasting, transportation, and the action economy, and that's about it; also, in general the psion focuses on the specific and short-range while the wizard focuses on the general and long-range. The psion doesn't get easy access to things like protection from [alignment], blink, protection from arrows, and the rest of the usual buff suite, and in some cases can't access them at all. He doesn't get any good control spells like Evard's black tentacles or debuffs like feeblemind. He doesn't have many ways to get through PR like the wizard has assay resistance; he doesn't have many divinations, if any at all; his only summon is astral construct, whereas the wizard can eventually summon or call any outsider or elemental he desires and take advantage of all their SLAs.

In summary: Yes, psions have things they do very well relative to other casters, so if they're focusing on what they do well, of course they're going to look good, just like a Batman or God wizard is going to own entire combats by himself and CoDzilla will buff up and outshine two or three fighters.