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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Herzog" data-source="post: 5190601" data-attributes="member: 25696">My feelings on psionics are mostly based on isolated incidents. I deal with psionics in two campaigns, one which I'm DMing and one in which I am a player. The one in which I DM has up to now resulted in the least 'troublesome' experience.That is, the player in question has up to now not caused any incidents that caused me te re-evaluate the addition of psionics to the campaign.In light of my experiences in the other campaign, I tend to attribute this to the relative inexperience of the player in question with Psionics. I hope, however, that the problems in the other campaign are the exception to the rule... In the other campaign, the DM regularly voices his frustration with the various Psionic abilities of the PC, as do the player of the Warforged Fighter, and as I did myself when I was playing an artificer. The incidents that cause this frustration:-The Psionicist (Shaper) uses Touch Sight to trump any and all forms of invisibility employed by our opponents.-The Psionicist uses psionic Vigor to have a seemlessly unending supply of temporary hp (in other words: preemptive self-healing)-The Psionicist creates astral constructs that are of equal strength of the Warforged Fighter or better. While the same could be said for some summoned monsters, normal anti-summoning precautions (such as protection from evil) don't work on these since the are not summoned, but created, requiring a dispel magic/psionic to get rid of-The Psionicist (Shaper) gets Fabricate as a lvl 4 power, while even the Artificer (a class build around crafting things) needs to obtain it as a lvl 5 infusion. In other words: he outfights the fighter(or outsummons the summoner), outheals the healer, outcrafts the crafter, and all this with no (appearent) drawbacks. Now, I realise: yes, this is kind of an anti-psionic rant. However, since I have also seen a psionicist working with no power-issues whatsoever in a party, I'm guessing it's a matter of an optimised build in a group that may not always choose the most optimised combinations. However, the fact that this is possible, and the issues that arise, suggest to me that in designing the psionic rules, the designers looked at the various types of psionics possible, giving them certain advantages and disadvantages relative to eachother, but (IMO) took insufficient time to evaluate how these abilities related to arcane or divine equivalents, leading to several situations where psionics is, without a doubt, better, in an area where the arcane/divine class should excel!In other areas, (like self-buffing and self-healing) the ability is, indeed, limited to the psionicist himself instead of applying to the entire party, but seen from the point of the character this is not a restriction.  In conclusion, my experience with psionics is that, although it seems like a nice addition to a campaign world, other players may find themselves in situations where the psionicist is better at things their own character specializes in, and this could lead to dissatisfied players.</blockquote>

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