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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Robichaud" data-source="post: 4455273" data-attributes="member: 56369">Jinx goes over the marching order and watch shift plans, gives his stubbly chin a scratch, and then nods. "Agreed. In large part. Only thing I have to add is that it might be an idea to swap me or Will out with Phelan in the marchin' order - so he'll be in the center, able t'reach pretty much everyone in case we end up fightin' in cramped quarters. I'll be happy to trade places - ah'm more effective from the back ranks, at any rate."He grins, somewhat.[sblock=OOC]Sorry. Tried to get a post in before the weekend, but was thwarted by the table crash.I'm quite familiar with the rules and issues surrounding the 3.5 psionic rules; feel free to ask any questions you may have. I'll try to link to relevant power descriptions and rules whenever I use them.This isn't really the place for a debate about balance, but I feel I must point out that I've never found psionics to be very unbalancing. Energy Missile is indeed on the borderline of being broken in the early levels - it's the five targets for a 2nd-level spell equivalent. But in general, psions and other arcane classes are neck-to-neck when it comes to the amount of havoc they can wreak. The biggest difference lies in their resource management; psions, kineticists especially, can "nova" fairly easily - keep up a very high damage output for a few rounds, tossing overchanneled powers left and right, rolling bucketsful of dice. Very impressive to see happening, really, and in large part responsible for the reputation of brokenness.It is in fact broken, if your campaign is set up in such a way that the PCs can get away with only facing one or two significant encounters per resting cycle - thereby avoiding the down side of the psion going nova, which is the insane rate at which you burn PSPs. The trap inexperienced psion players fall in is nova'ing too much early on and becoming PSPless dead weight for the rest of the day; the trap inexperienced DMs dealing with psions fall in is letting them get away with it. Which is not to say that the DM has to throw the recommended standard four encounters per day at the party, just that he has to keep the PCs conscious of risks and resource management.When playing, I try to pace myself, unless I'm absolutely dead sure that not going all-out will lose the party a fight. That's half the fun of playing a psion; ending up wondering whether your kicking too much ass too early has just spelled the doom of the entire party. :>On a more practical level, ie. one pertaining to the current adventure:For your tactical considerations, at this and the next couple of levels Jinx will probably mostly be a "glass cannon" - using <a href="http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/psionicFeats.htm#psionicShot" target="_blank">Psionic Shot</a> in combination with <a href="http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/energyRay.htm" target="_blank">Energy Ray</a> or a simple crossbow to do a fair amount of damage at range - though mostly on alternate rounds, since gaining psionic focus is a full-round action, and at this level, often more than that. Anything bigger than a rat getting into melee range will probably end up killing him.[/sblock]</blockquote>

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