irdeggman said:
Hmmm, how about the "official erratted" versions? Still as potential game breaking?
Dandu said:
Rules wise, the XPH takes precident over the Complete Psionic because it was published after it, just like the MiC takes precedent over the XPH as far as the Torc is concerned.
You mean CPsi comes after XPH. Either way, the astral construct change is the most-ignored stealth-nerf around, and turning the
torc into a more limited
cognizance crystal is probably the second-most, so if someone's using the
torc in-game, it's much more likely to be the XPH version and not the MIC version. I've actually seen several tables allowing both versions to coexist as lesser and greater torcs, as well.
The removal of the torc brought the number of psionic gamebreakers down to 4-5 rather than 5-6, but there are still way to get infinite PP.
Incidentally, you failed to address my point questioning how straightforward the Bestow Power/Earth Power/Torc trick was since it requires you to dig through two source books, one of which isn't a psionic book, for broken material. (Which, incidentally, is the same amount of books you'd have to go through for the Nightmare trick.)
Sorry about that. Once again, the issue isn't how hard the trick is to put together, but rather how easy it is to identify and possibly stop. Lots of tricks and builds use many books, yet some of them are very straightforward and some of them aren't. The first time you saw a Nightmare, was your first thought "Hey, with
planar binding I can become nigh-invulnerable through
astral projection!"? The first time you saw
bestow power, was your first thought "Pay 3X PP, get 2X PP? I bet I can lower that cost!"? The second is more likely than the first.
Let's compare two combos on more even footing, usage-wise, than the nightmare/bestow power pair. Assume for a moment that you want to nova and use up all your resources in one round to kill something. As a psion, you look around for things that would let you do that, picking up the
synchronicity and
affinity field powers and the Psicrystal Affinity feat. Manifesting
affinity field and sharing it with your psicrystal, and then manifesting
synchronicity, gives you unlimited standard actions to empty your PP pool with. As a sorcerer, you look around for things that would let you do that, picking up the
arcane fusion and
greater arcane fusion spells and several metamagic feats including Sanctum Spell, as well as the ACF that lets sorcerers metamagic normally. That lets you use the standard
greater arcane fusion loop which casts all of your 7th- and lower-level spells in one action.
Now, as a DM looking through a player's sheet for potential gamebreakers, here's what you see. The psion has a power that lets him share any effect with creatures in range, a psicrystal he can share that power with, and a power that gives him an extra standard action which can be shared through that field. The sorcerer has an ability letting him use metamagic normally, a metamagic feat enhancing his spells if cast within a certain area, and a spell that lets him cast two lower-level spells at once. Which one of those screams "potential for breakage" and which screams "interesting but okay combination of abilities"?
Both tricks use the same number of books, satisfying that requirement. I would point out, however, that if you're looking at number of books the much wider variety of arcane stuff to choose from means a much wider variety of gamebreakers, which also reinforces my point--by becoming familiar with the XPH and CPsi and a handful of other powers and feats you can shut down 99% of psionic tricks, while to do the same for arcane magic you have to know backwards and forwards any book that has an arcane spell, feat, or PrC.
