How do Psions compare to arcane casters?

[BryonD]

As has also been said numberous times already, but it's certainly fair to mention, that many issues also depend a lot on the playing style (part of that is the number of encounters per day issue already outlined).

Bye
Thanee

and I can agree with that

 

[Vurt]

I've been using the XPH pretty much since it came out, as my group tends to like the psionics flavor, so over the years we've put it through its paces.

In my experience, psions are somewhere near the top of the power curve. Better than sorcerers, but not nearly as versatile as wizards. And if they're trying to end a fight quickly, psions burn through their PP allotment FAST! So definitely, if you want to keep the psion's player challenged and interested, you have to make it a regular possibility that they will run dry, and force them into "PP-conservation mode" early.

That said, I would argue that the warmage is probably roughly equivalent to a kineticist. The kineticist can squeeze out a little more damage per round, but the warmage just keeps going and going and going... Certainly, I've found that the warmage outclasses non-kineticist psions in terms of raw damage output, so depending on what your players want to play, this may or may not be an issue.

To keep things sane, my house rules do include minor tweaks to energy missile (some of the energy conducts to other grappling targets, Save DC increases +1 per 2 PP spent), and if you allow Expanded Knowledge to be taken only once, it really cuts down on the cherry-picking of powers from other disciplines' power lists (do I take the feat at 5th and pick up energy missile or wait until 9th to grab psionic dominate?).

But yes, if you wish to include psionics in your game, you will likely need to tweak the rules a bit to suit your style of play. That said, however, this can be said for pretty much any other supplement that gets released. In my experience, for my group's play-style at least, psionics is most definitely worth it.

Cheers,
Vurt

 

[JustaPlayer]

10d6+10 is about 13d6 already.

Where did that funky math come in? I might give you being worth 12d6 but certainly not 13d6.

Anyway, in Merric's example the Psion can cast 11 energy balls at around 12d6 while the sorcerer get 17 at 10d6. But there is an important thing being missed here as well. The Psion is done. The sorcerer can still deal out more damage with lesser level spells like the previously mentioned magic missile.

Edit: it's really 11.8d6 and not 12d6

 

[Vurt]

Where did that funky math come in? I might give you being worth 12d6 but certainly not 13d6.

The average roll of 1d6 is 3.5, so an extra 3d6 averages +10.5, which I expect is how Thanee came up with that.

Cheers,
Vurt

 

[Thanee]

Where did that funky math come in?

Can't tell you a year, but it's been a long time ago.

The average of 3d6 is precisely 10.5 so 10d6+10 and 13d6 are within a half point of each other's average. That's the closest fit possible with full numbers.

Bye
Thanee

 

[shilsen]

I don't have any real experience of psionics other than having skimmed some of the rules and run one psionic NPC vs. the PCs, so take the following with a significant lump of salt:

I think a psion is horribly powerful as an NPC combat opponent, much more so than a wizard or sorcerer or any other core class. A psion who's in a knockdown drag-out fight with the PCs doesn't have the standard weakness of the psion as a PC (having to conserve resources in case they are needed later in the day), and can safely blow his wad as quickly and strongly as he can. Hence, I think the NPC psion would be far deadlier to the PCs than any other class of the same level.

 

[JustaPlayer]

Can't tell you a year, but it's been a long time ago.

The average of 3d6 is precisely 10.5 so 10d6+10 and 13d6 are within a half point of each other's average. That's the closest fit possible with full numbers.

Bye
Thanee

You are right. Chalk that up to fuzzy thinking at the moment. Now I feel like one of my friends who thinks the ave on a d10 is 5 no matter how you explain it.

 

[BryonD]

I don't have any real experience of psionics other than having skimmed some of the rules and run one psionic NPC vs. the PCs, so take the following with a significant lump of salt:

I think a psion is horribly powerful as an NPC combat opponent, much more so than a wizard or sorcerer or any other core class. A psion who's in a knockdown drag-out fight with the PCs doesn't have the standard weakness of the psion as a PC (having to conserve resources in case they are needed later in the day), and can safely blow his wad as quickly and strongly as he can. Hence, I think the NPC psion would be far deadlier to the PCs than any other class of the same level.

There is actually a side-bar in the Complete Psionic whcih recommends that enemy npc psionic characters should receive 1/2 pp to fairly represent them as persistent characters rather than one combat machines.

 

[JustaPlayer]

I think a psion is horribly powerful as an NPC combat opponent, much more so than a wizard or sorcerer or any other core class. A psion who's in a knockdown drag-out fight with the PCs doesn't have the standard weakness of the psion as a PC (having to conserve resources in case they are needed later in the day), and can safely blow his wad as quickly and strongly as he can. Hence, I think the NPC psion would be far deadlier to the PCs than any other class of the same level.

You are correct there but I think that is Metagaming on the DMs part. Even as a NPC I don't know that any rational forward thinking character would cripple themselves for another chance encounter perfore you could recover. Certainly that character may be placed there with the intention of you as a DM to have him die in the end. But to play the character as if he had the intention of dying.... *shrug*

 

[Psion]

I think a psion is horribly powerful as an NPC combat opponent, much more so than a wizard or sorcerer or any other core class.

I agree with Justaplayer here. I ran a variety of psionic opponents in my river of worlds games, and found them to be just as squishy as wizards or squishier.

If you're just about maxing out the blast damage, yeah. But I consider that poor DMing. I like to design my NPCs more like real people who have a purpose in life other than melting PCs, and whose existance at their current level can be justified.

The fact that many traditional defense and evasion abilities (teleport, invisibility) and other generally useful abilities (buffs a la animal affinity) are sorted into the discipline lists for psions mean that you have fewer choices when trying to design a psion adversary who will survive the fight. It's trivial for wizards.