How would you do Trailblazer psionics?

[Ravellion]

I believe Trailblazer could do Dark Sun well. But Dark Sun needs psionics.

Specifically, I am thinking how to deal with the recovery of powerpoints (pp) when resting for 10 minutes. You could do it the same as for spells (pp spent on multi target spells are not recovered after a rest etc.), but because they are pp, the power in question could still easily be cast a few more times that day (maybe even with some casting of "rote" powers in between which are recovered after another rest anyway). Also, doing it this way seems like it would be annoying with bookkeeping, ironically making the pp system more bookkeeping-intensive than the regular system.

Therefore, I am also looking at the following options:
1) recover a fixed percentage of spent pp on a rest (half of what you spent, with 75% for 1 Action Point (AP) and 100% of what you spent for 2AP?)
2) recover up to a fixed percentage of your total on a rest (up to, say, half of your total, with 1 AP to raise this to 75% and 2 AP to raise this to 100% of your total pp)
3) Simply let psionics use the regular slot system. I am not dead-set against this, but pp do make psionics feel different, so I do believe this would be a sacrifice.

I was wondering whether I could pick your minds and see whether you see any advantages/disadvantages of the options I came up with, or maybe even have some of your own ideas on this.

 

[Ravellion]

Some Googling brought me to this thread in the Pathfinder forums:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/pathfinder-rpg-discussion/275022-pathfinder-trailblazer-other-3-75s.html

Looks like I have bitten off enough to chew on, as few people seem to have figured this out already. I'll let you know when I find something to be satisfactory.

 

[jedavis]

You could keep track of separate counts of spent powerpoints - those spent on rote, those on restricted, and those on ritual. Then, a rest recovers all of your rote points, all of your restricted points if you burn an AP, and up to one ritual's worth with an AP. It's a bit more bookkeeping, but not that much, and is faithful to TB's spellcasting balance without sacrificing psioncs' powerpointedness.

 

[Ravellion]

You could keep track of separate counts of spent powerpoints - those spent on rote, those on restricted, and those on ritual. Then, a rest recovers all of your rote points, all of your restricted points if you burn an AP, and up to one ritual's worth with an AP. It's a bit more bookkeeping, but not that much, and is faithful to TB's spellcasting balance without sacrificing psioncs' powerpointedness.

Yeah, that was my first instinct. Of course it still doesn't restrict ritual powers, but then neither did standard 3.5...

That leaves me where I still need to figure out a unified Psychic Warrior / Psion power list and unified power point progression. Yuck. I think I may better off using slots, because that power list will take too much work.

 

[jedavis]

Yeah, that was my first instinct. Of course it still doesnt restrict ritual powers. Of course so didn't standard 3.5...

Of course, I still need to figure out a unified Psychic Warrior / psion power list and unified power point progression. Yuck. I think I may better off using slots, because that power list will take too much work.

It's not a hard limit on rituals like TB is, but... it's better than nothing .

Hm. That sounds like overkill. Me, I'd keep the power lists separate, give psion full BmB and their normal list, and handle the PsiWar like the Bard (2/3 BmB and caster level bonuses at levels where they miss out), also with their own list. Then, to figure out readies and slots, you index into the BmB table, ready per normal TB rules treating psi lists as spell lists, and allow the instantaneous conversion of spell slots into piles of 2n-1 powerpoints for an nth-level slot. Such a scheme also (relatively) encourages caster / psion multiclassing, in the Trailblazer idiom. You could compensate for psi's increased versatility by providing them with no or fewer bonus readies / bonus slots than a wizard or sorc.

Ex:
A wizard 3 / psion 3 has BmB +6, for 4/3/3/2 spell slots (in the old 3.x NPC notation), plus some bonus from Int and 0/2/1/0 bonus wizard readies. He readies Energy Wall and Haste as his 3rds. Combat rolls around and he decides he needs the Wall, so he converts one of his two 3rd-level slots into 5 PP, which he then spends. That slot / those PP is/are written off as having been used for a restricted spell.

Actually, now that I think about it, converting TB to a full spell-point system would be pretty sweet and might fix a lot of crap with casters if you did it with the psionic augmentation rules. Each spell slot of nth level gets turned into 2n-1 PP. When you cast an nth level spell, it costs 2n-1 +a PP to cast (where a is some amount of augmentation chosen at casting time), and takes effect as if cast by a caster of level 2n-1+a, where 2n-1+a <= your BmB. PP spent on restricted / rote spells could then be easily marked down separately.

 

[Ravellion]

It's not a hard limit on rituals like TB is, but... it's better than nothing .

Hm. That sounds like overkill. Me, I'd keep the power lists separate, give psion full BmB and their normal list, and handle the PsiWar like the Bard (2/3 BmB and caster level bonuses at levels where they miss out), also with their own list. Then, to figure out readies and slots, you index into the BmB table, ready per normal TB rules treating psi lists as spell lists, and allow the instantaneous conversion of spell slots into piles of 2n-1 powerpoints for an nth-level slot. Such a scheme also (relatively) encourages caster / psion multiclassing, in the Trailblazer idiom. You could compensate for psi's increased versatility by providing them with no or fewer bonus readies / bonus slots than a wizard or sorc.

Ex:
A wizard 3 / psion 3 has BmB +6, for 4/3/3/2 spell slots (in the old 3.x NPC notation), plus some bonus from Int and 0/2/1/0 bonus wizard readies. He readies Energy Wall and Haste as his 3rds. Combat rolls around and he decides he needs the Wall, so he converts one of his two 3rd-level slots into 5 PP, which he then spends. That slot / those PP is/are written off as having been used for a restricted spell.

Actually, now that I think about it, converting TB to a full spell-point system would be pretty sweet and might fix a lot of crap with casters if you did it with the psionic augmentation rules. Each spell slot of nth level gets turned into 2n-1 PP. When you cast an nth level spell, it costs 2n-1 +a PP to cast (where a is some amount of augmentation chosen at casting time), and takes effect as if cast by a caster of level 2n-1+a, where 2n-1+a <= your BmB. PP spent on restricted / rote spells could then be easily marked down separately.

Hmmmm... on the fly conversion into PP... interesting, hadn't thought of that one. This must be the way to go if I want to stimulate Magic / Psionic multiclassing. Really the best way to go about it really.

However, I think I might want to scare people out of doing that for this specific campaign for flavour reasons (even though the sorcerer kings originally were Wizard/Psions, I think Dark Sun is improved by a clear divide between Psionics and Wizards - otherwise the cultural problems you would have casting arcane magic in town could simply be overcome by switching all slots to psionics.

Nevertheless, your solution is good, and will use it in a campaign where I intend to have a higher level of magic/psionic transparency. Fo Dark Sun, I like large differences between the two.

So, here is what I'll do: I'll give each class a BPB (Base Psionic Bonus) next to their BMB. I'll give all traditional classes 1/3 progression. If I allowed the Monk, I would give them 1/2 BPB. The Psionics classes get 1/3 BMB.

BPB will read off a table that matches with the Psion class for powerpoints and max powers known and max power level. The psychic warrior will indeed be given 2/3 BPB. This will give the psywars a little bit of extra power, but not much.

This means there is a very clear mechanical divide between Psionics and magic. Multiclassing between non-psionic and psionic classes has gotten the same boost as the regular Trailblazer has given to non magic classes and magic classes, but there is a disincentive to mix psionics with magic (and as I just said, this is my goal because of flavour reasons only).

 

[jedavis]

Hmmmm... on the fly conversion into PP... interesting, hadn't thought of that one. This must be the way to go if I want to stimulate Magic / Psionic multiclassing. Really the best way to go about it really.

However, I think I might want to scare people out of doing that for this specific campaign for flavour reasons (even though the sorcerer kings originally were Wizard/Psions, I think Dark Sun is improved by a clear divide between Psionics and Wizards - otherwise the cultural problems you would have casting arcane magic in town could simply be overcome by switching all slots to psionics.

Nevertheless, your solution is good, and will use it in a campaign where I intend to have a higher level of magic/psionic transparency. Fo Dark Sun, I like large differences between the two.

So, here is what I'll do: I'll give each class a BPB (Base Psionic Bonus) next to their BMB. I'll give all traditional classes 1/3 progression. If I allowed the Monk, I would give them 1/2 BPB. The Psionics classes get 1/3 BMB.

BPB will read off a table that matches with the Psion class for powerpoints and max powers known and max power level. The psychic warrior will indeed be given 2/3 BPB. This will give the psywars a little bit of extra power, but not much.

This means there is a very clear mechanical divide between Psionics and magic. Multiclassing between non-psionic and psionic classes has gotten the same boost as the regular Trailblazer has given to non magic classes and magic classes, but there is a disincentive to mix psionics with magic (and as I just said, this is my goal because of flavour reasons only).

Ahhh ok. I'm terribly unfamiliar with Dark Sun, my only exposure being that one issue of Dragon back in the 3.x days. Sounds like a good solution, then!