Well, the Elemental Mastery will just make them get even on that part, since the psion has it from the start, and Arcane Fire, I never really realized why this ability is seen as so powerful?
Arcane Fire (Su): The archmage gains the ability to change arcane spell energy into arcane fire, manifesting it as a bolt of raw magical energy. The bolt is a ranged touch attack with long range (400 feet + 40 feet/level of archmage) that deals 1d6 points of damage per class level of the archmage plus 1d6 points of damage per level of the spell used to create the effect. This ability costs one 9th-level spell slot.
It's available at 17th level (18th for a sorcerer) earliest.
It allows you to do *at most* 14d6 to a single target using a *9th* level slot (which could do things like Meteor Swarm or Time Stop or Shapechange or Gate). With a 2nd level slot you do 7d6 as opposed to the 12d6 from Scorching Ray, tho this is fair given the high range and no energy resistance trouble.
It's a good ability for sure, but especially the sorcerer can use damaging spells instead, it's better for the wizard I think, who can then neglect offensive preparations to a degree, which is the bigger advantage of this ability. It's still a weak attack in relation to the power used to fuel it.
Then there is Spell Power, a good ability, since it let's you scale spells even further (caps are still a hindrance, however), but compare this to Overchannel/Talented, which the psion can
exceed the power level of their powers with (not only the manifester level). With powers like Astral Construct you can do something, which is more than just a higher manifester level, an 11th level psion can manifest the equivalent of a 7th level power this way already, altho the highest they can learn is 6th level still, using the right powers, of course!
Anyways...
So far, in all games I have played, I have seen only one person aim for the archmage, and that was a 3.0 wizard. I have considered it for my sorceress, but realized, that the price to get there will be too high for too little benefit (for my character specifically).
But that aside, yes, PrC options are better for arcanists (much like their spell options) right now, for the sole reason, that there are more books on them. At least in 3.0 there was a lot of stuff for psionic characters on the WotC site, I can only guess that this will be true for 3.5 also (they already started adding stuff there, so this is not that much of a stretch
).
Bye
Thanee