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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Arkhandus" data-source="post: 5191263" data-attributes="member: 13966">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.</blockquote>

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