Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
White Dwarf Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Nest
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
EN Publishing
Twitter
BlueSky
Facebook
Instagram
EN World
BlueSky
YouTube
Facebook
Twitter
Twitch
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
For Nail - The Psion
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Scion" data-source="post: 2310331" data-attributes="member: 5777"><p>Enervation is one of those big weaknesses I was talking about that people dont usually consider. Fairly easy for the caster types to do but the psion has very limited defenses and no real counterpart.</p><p></p><p>For a 4th level spell an auto d4 negative levels hit the psion right where he lives, his pp total. Each negative level kills enough pp to manifest his highest level power, which for the example above means about a 50/50 chance of simply ending the encounter (the psion was already very low on pp) and with a metamagic rod of empower or maximize (maximize being the obvious favorite here, although the 25% chance of 6 negative levels is definately interesting) would have meant the psion was doomed.</p><p></p><p>With the power word: Blind that would've meant the end for the psion as well. The construct would have only gotten a single attack rather than a full attack (I am still fuzzy on the range everyone was at, if the wizard had been farther away and outside of the range of the power this encounter would've gone very differently as well).</p><p></p><p>132 hp for a 16th level psion is definately a good amount. 41.5 on average from levels means 90.5 from other things. Assuming psionic body and all psionic feats (a bonus with a penalty built in) and human means 20 hp from that, so 70.5 from con, which means about a 20 con. Sounds like this guy is pretty rough and tumble, lots of resources put into getting more hp. (of course any character could have gotten improved toughness for +16 hp and not had the restriction of only being able to get psionic feats, assuming that version of toughness is available)</p><p></p><p>Even if the mage was counting on direct damage though the spell he chose is a poor one. It is kindof nice if facing a horde of weak opponents with your buddies in the middle, but if they are weak enough for this spell to matter then they probably arent a huge threat anyway and there are still other spells which would work much better (like slow for instance, not in damage dealing but with dealing with a large number of weaker foes).</p><p></p><p>With the contingency an extra 6d12 hp is pretty nice in a flash.. this guy is completely wanting a dispel cast on him, I think that really would've brought him down to 'fish bait' level right away.</p><p></p><p>All in all, it looks like the mage just choose the wrong spell for the occasion. It happens, but accidentaly trying to go up against a characters strength (in this case a bunch of resources dumped into actually having hp) doesnt make the character broken. Just like tossing a will save spell against a guy who normally has a low will save but who dumped a bunch of resources into making it his best.</p><p></p><p></p><p>As for the rogue, I am just not sure what he is doing. He mainly just stands there and tries to look pretty. More or less I just discount his entire presence in the battle (how is he getting sneak attack by the way? shouldnt be any surprise, he isnt invisible, he might even be too far away, etc) He seems a bit distracted and ineffective <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink ;)" data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> Maybe he is primarily skill based instead of combat based, which does happen.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Mainly it just sounds like the npcs had no effective gear, had no defenses, had the wrong spells prepared to be effectively offensive, but were great at keeping the psion there. Poor rolling for the bad guys and good rolling for the good guys tipped the balance in favor of the psion who could've been killed by slightly different rolling several different times in the encounter or by slightly different spellcasting by the opponents.</p><p></p><p>Overall, given that the psion still nearly died even with all of this in his favor I dont think it shows anything either way. A fighter type character would've performed exactly the same given the same conditions, most character types who put in for a good amount of hp would have in fact.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Still though, I am confused by how the construct managed to do what he did. I went through the numbers above and unless the psion was rolling 'really' well for his construct I still dont see it doing what it apparently did. (well, rolling very well, being able to get full attacks each round somehow, getting crits, enemies having low con scores and no items to help with it, etc) It is apparent that these 3 guys would've been destroyed by any competant fighter type.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Scion, post: 2310331, member: 5777"] Enervation is one of those big weaknesses I was talking about that people dont usually consider. Fairly easy for the caster types to do but the psion has very limited defenses and no real counterpart. For a 4th level spell an auto d4 negative levels hit the psion right where he lives, his pp total. Each negative level kills enough pp to manifest his highest level power, which for the example above means about a 50/50 chance of simply ending the encounter (the psion was already very low on pp) and with a metamagic rod of empower or maximize (maximize being the obvious favorite here, although the 25% chance of 6 negative levels is definately interesting) would have meant the psion was doomed. With the power word: Blind that would've meant the end for the psion as well. The construct would have only gotten a single attack rather than a full attack (I am still fuzzy on the range everyone was at, if the wizard had been farther away and outside of the range of the power this encounter would've gone very differently as well). 132 hp for a 16th level psion is definately a good amount. 41.5 on average from levels means 90.5 from other things. Assuming psionic body and all psionic feats (a bonus with a penalty built in) and human means 20 hp from that, so 70.5 from con, which means about a 20 con. Sounds like this guy is pretty rough and tumble, lots of resources put into getting more hp. (of course any character could have gotten improved toughness for +16 hp and not had the restriction of only being able to get psionic feats, assuming that version of toughness is available) Even if the mage was counting on direct damage though the spell he chose is a poor one. It is kindof nice if facing a horde of weak opponents with your buddies in the middle, but if they are weak enough for this spell to matter then they probably arent a huge threat anyway and there are still other spells which would work much better (like slow for instance, not in damage dealing but with dealing with a large number of weaker foes). With the contingency an extra 6d12 hp is pretty nice in a flash.. this guy is completely wanting a dispel cast on him, I think that really would've brought him down to 'fish bait' level right away. All in all, it looks like the mage just choose the wrong spell for the occasion. It happens, but accidentaly trying to go up against a characters strength (in this case a bunch of resources dumped into actually having hp) doesnt make the character broken. Just like tossing a will save spell against a guy who normally has a low will save but who dumped a bunch of resources into making it his best. As for the rogue, I am just not sure what he is doing. He mainly just stands there and tries to look pretty. More or less I just discount his entire presence in the battle (how is he getting sneak attack by the way? shouldnt be any surprise, he isnt invisible, he might even be too far away, etc) He seems a bit distracted and ineffective ;) Maybe he is primarily skill based instead of combat based, which does happen. Mainly it just sounds like the npcs had no effective gear, had no defenses, had the wrong spells prepared to be effectively offensive, but were great at keeping the psion there. Poor rolling for the bad guys and good rolling for the good guys tipped the balance in favor of the psion who could've been killed by slightly different rolling several different times in the encounter or by slightly different spellcasting by the opponents. Overall, given that the psion still nearly died even with all of this in his favor I dont think it shows anything either way. A fighter type character would've performed exactly the same given the same conditions, most character types who put in for a good amount of hp would have in fact. Still though, I am confused by how the construct managed to do what he did. I went through the numbers above and unless the psion was rolling 'really' well for his construct I still dont see it doing what it apparently did. (well, rolling very well, being able to get full attacks each round somehow, getting crits, enemies having low con scores and no items to help with it, etc) It is apparent that these 3 guys would've been destroyed by any competant fighter type. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
For Nail - The Psion
Top