For Nail - The Psion

[two]

"For those of you that insist on DMs being forced to run a certain style of campaign, you are wrong. You only have to threaten the players with a day with a lot of encounters. Keeping things uncertain and interesting is the DMs job. What you are advocating is that the DM only have 1 or 2 encounters a day. Anything more is "unrealistic". That's boring. Sorry. In my experience, you get long days and you get short days. Sometimes, nothing happens, and at others, you get snowed under. The very threat of being snowed under will keep most casters in line. The others that don't usually gets eliminated fairly quickly"

This doesn't really answer anything or convince me of anything.

I'm not advocating anybody run their campaign a certain way.

I'm certainly not advocating that every campaign have X number of encounters per day, where X is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 200.

What I am saying is that, in many current and past campaigns, the vast majority of combat-heavy days involved 1-2 encounters, perhaps 3. Majority, not all. That's it. That's a historical fact. It's inarguable. It's true.

Which means that, in these campaigns, a class that excells at, well, 1-2, perhaps 3 encounters a day would have done extremely well -- disproportionatly well.

The last thing I want to do is ANYONE telling me how to run my campaign, if it's using 1-2 encounters a day, 5 a day, 10 a week, 1 a week, whatever.

That's why I don't want Psions around, because they may force me to do something I might not necessarily want to do.

You say 1-2 encounters a day is "boring." That's you. I've played in campaigns like this in the past, and they were anything but boring. That's a historical fact as well. So that claim really doesn't get you very far.

Also, note, that it's not enough to keep the PC's guessing about the number of combats per day. If you have 2 encounters in a day, but perhaps 3-4 more are threatening (but don't materialize), it doesn't matter. The Psion can just burn all the power points up quickly. 90% of the time it's the right choice. The other times, the Psion needs to use psionic-equivalent scrolls, wands, and items to keep useful. The point is, unless you really DO often have 3-4 combats a day, you are not really limiting the Psion that much. "Threatening" only gets you so far, after all. A threat ignored doesn't change behavior, after all.

 

[KarinsDad]

Ok, I just have to throw in my two cents before going to work for 3 hours and then getting off by my management to go see Star Wars (and then get the rest of the afternoon off, it's a tough job, but somebody has to do it ).


Psions are powerful.

But, this 3 to 4 encounter nonsense is just that for a challenging encounter. Nonsense.

In a challenging encounter, it tends to be one encounter, sometimes two. Not 3. Not 4.

One or two.

This has repeatedly happened in our game since first level. I have an 8th level psion now, but just last week when she was still 7th level, she burned through all but 6 of her PP in a single combat (out of 56 PP).

In this particular combat, she had already used up 21 PP that day, 7 PP for Inertial Armor that morning, 7 PP for Interial Armor that afternoon, 7 PP for Thicken Skin just before the encounter.

Now granted, this was nearly 40% of her PP before going into combat, but even if she had not done that (i.e. buffing herself 24/7), she would have basically been limited to two encounters instead of one.

Again, not three, not four.

And, I am fairly conservative with my PP once in combat. I do a lot of 1 PP Entangling Ectoplasm type powers and she often uses her Psionic Meditation / Psion Weapon combo, especially against low AC foes (stunned, prone, flanked, etc.).

However, crap happens in combat and I am often forced to use more PP. For example, Empathic Transfer to heal a seriously wounded ally. Or, Dimension Door to get out of a serious jam.

All in all, I suspect that many in the "psions are broke" camp has not played them. It's hard to not use up most of your PP in a single encounter. For example, at 7th level, she could use up all of her PP in 8 rounds. Most of our combat run more than 8 rounds.


Anyway, I'll add more to this discussion later on this evening.

 

[two]

Ok, I just have to throw in my two cents before going to work for 3 hours and then getting off by my management to go see Star Wars (and then get the rest of the afternoon off, it's a tough job, but somebody has to do it ).


Psions are powerful.

But, this 3 to 4 encounter nonsense is just that for a challenging encounter. Nonsense.

In a challenging encounter, it tends to be one encounter, sometimes two. Not 3. Not 4.

One or two.

This has repeatedly happened in our game since first level. I have an 8th level psion now, but just last week when she was still 7th level, she burned through all but 6 of her PP in a single combat (out of 56 PP).

In this particular combat, she had already used up 21 PP that day, 7 PP for Inertial Armor that morning, 7 PP for Interial Armor that afternoon, 7 PP for Thicken Skin just before the encounter.

Now granted, this was nearly 40% of her PP before going into combat, but even if she had not done that (i.e. buffing herself 24/7), she would have basically been limited to two encounters instead of one.

Again, not three, not four.

And, I am fairly conservative with my PP once in combat. I do a lot of 1 PP Entangling Ectoplasm type powers and she often uses her Psionic Meditation / Psion Weapon combo, especially against low AC foes (stunned, prone, flanked, etc.).

However, crap happens in combat and I am often forced to use more PP. For example, Empathic Transfer to heal a seriously wounded ally. Or, Dimension Door to get out of a serious jam.

All in all, I suspect that many in the "psions are broke" camp has not played them. It's hard to not use up most of your PP in a single encounter. For example, at 7th level, she could use up all of her PP in 8 rounds. Most of our combat run more than 8 rounds.


Anyway, I'll add more to this discussion later on this evening.

I'm honestly not sure how helpful of an example this is. Is it typical for a Psion to burn 40% of their power points BEFORE getting into the first combat of the day?

Is this really a viable and good tactical strategy, or one that you just like to use, or one specific to the PC in question?

What would happen if, instead of buring up 40% of those power points, they were instead used in the first few rounds of combat to do bunches of damage to the enemy (best defense is a good offense theory).

Why doesn't this Psion wear some light magical armor (mithral chain, mithral buckler) instead of using Intertial Armor/Thicken Skin? Why doesn't this Psion want to use the great advantage of being able to wear armor?

In general, I'm wary of these sorts of specific (and unusual?) examples.

 

[Nail]

It's hard to not use up most of your PP in a single encounter.

IME, both DMing and as a fellow player, I've yet to see the psion run out of power poitns and be sorry for it.

Add the data point to the over-all set, please.

Generally, when the psion is low on PP, all the arcane/divine casters have run out of their higher level slots as well. ...So everyone wants to rest, not just the psion.

Moreover, in the high-level game we play, the party commonly teleports to a safe location to rest. So having the bad guys ambush them while resting is problematic. (Before you hit that reply button, please note: I said "problematic", not impossible. No "the DM should change styles" comments, please.)

The arguement that "psions run out too fast, and that's their limitation" problem doesn't hold water, IME. It's simply not a limitation.

 

[Nail]

In a challenging encounter, it tends to be one encounter, sometimes two. Not 3. Not 4.

Could you explain this a bit more? What is the "it" you are refering to? I'm unclear on your point.

 

[Nail]

What is so broken about psionics?

Thanks for the thread, Caeleddin.

Here are my concerns, born out in play (using 3.5e):

• Psions can manifest too many high (or highest) level powers.
• In order to challenge the psion, you must have 2-4 combats per day (and one of those encounters had better include someone with a Dispel Magic/Psionics).
• Psionic powers, psionic monsters, and psionic items require fundamental changes to other campaign magic-users.
• Psions get many feats for free: Eschew Components, Silent Spell, Still Spell, Heighten Spell, Empower Spell, and Energy Substitution (all energy types).
• Many Psion powers are either out-of-balance or have no non-psionic effective counters.
• Psions are ugly.

....okay, maybe that last point isn't legitimate.

 

[Thanee]

Could you explain this a bit more? What is the "it" you are refering to? I'm unclear on your point.

"Running out of PP" I think.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Nail]

Ah. Got "it".

There were just too many "its" in the post; I got turned around.

 

[two]

old haste parallel

Another link to the old 3.0 "haste" debate.

There were those that thought 3.0 haste perfectly balanced because if a spellcaster did the Haste+Spell_of_your_choice on the first round of battle, and cast 2 spells per round after that, the spellcaster is "using up their spells twice as quickly as if they had not cast haste." Which people then claimed made it balanced (somehow).

My standard reply to this is: killing the enemy 2x as fast by using 2x as many spells in the same amount of time is far more advantageous than not. When you kill the 3 giants quickly via haste+spells, they don't have a chance to do as many full attacks; don't get to damage your fighters as much; don't drain away Clerical healing spells as fast; etc. Not to mention, the battle is over more quickly, conserving all the other party resources: bard spells, cleric spells, druid spells, etc. etc. Meaning, if the battle is over in 4 instead of 6 rounds, that's 2 rounds of spellcasting the cleric didn't have to do; 1-2 precious spells the bard didn't cast. Etc. Pretty obvious, and pretty obvious to the 3.5 revision team as well.

So, the question is, if a Psion DOES use up all their power points in, for example, 1 battle: what does that mean, exactly?

a) The Psion was incredibly wasteful and wanton in their use of power points.
b) The encounter was very, very difficult, and the power points had to be expended to save the Psion, kill the enemies, rescue party members, etc.

As long as you are not incredibly inefficient, using up all your power points in one single battle isn't a bad thing. The ABILITY to do so isn't a disadvantage, to be sure. After all, if it was a Wizard instead of a Psion in the battle, perhaps the party suffers a TPK (it was the Psions' ability to max everything out that saved everyone's rears).

My point: if a Psion isn't being wasteful and does manage to use all their power points in one battle, the party better thank their lucky stars they had a Psion around. Else they might very well all be dead (the encouter was very, very, very tough).

 

[Shadowdweller]

Regarding the whole 'encounters per day' thing, let's keep in mind that combat isn't the only PP sink, or spell sink.

As Thanee pointed out:

But they do not have a complete lack of out-of-combat utility, there are quite a few good utility spells in their list, too.

A typical party may very well only have one or two encounters per day. But are they likely to have only one or two CHALLENGES?

I.E walls to be climbed. NPCs to be impressed. Ominous-looking doors to be wary of. Traps to be sprung. Mazes to navigate. Items to experimented with. Itches to be scratched.