Is the Psion class balanced?

[irdeggman]

I don’t know what the big deal people are making about being grappled is. In general, yes there are exceptions, this only comes into play when in melee. Wizards don’t generally get into melee – it doesn’t play to their strengths. Neither does it play to a psion’s strengths either, but they do have an option of attempting to be a melee style character – at some severe prices. On the other hand so can wizard, via careful use of spells with similar prices, the expenditure of spells for buffing, etc.

I see having a focus as a definite asset. But in order to take advantage of that asset the psion must take a feat pretty much for any specific benefit (e.g., speed of thought, psionic weapon, power penetration, etc.) 1 feat per special benefit. This will definitely eat up those extra feats the psion gets much like metamagic and item creation feats will eat up those extra feats a wizard gets. Nothing is for free, everything is based on choices.

For example using greater psionic weapon (minimum of 10th level for straight class psion due to BAB prerequisite) – adds an extra 4d6 to your next attack. Note this says next attack it does not state it lasts for a round – so the reading would be that it applies to the next attack roll. A rogue can use his sneak attack benefit anytime the conditions are met but if he is invisible (and no other conditions are met) his first attack benefits from being invisible his next and subsequent ones (if he has multiple attacks) does not.

Using greater psionic weapon expends your focus. It normally takes a full round to regain it, unless you have psionic meditation (minimum of 4th level character due to rank prerequisites) which makes it a move action. Regaining psionic focus generates an AoO.

Gain Psionic Focus: Merely holding a reservoir of psionic power points in mind gives psionic characters a special energy. Psionic characters can put that energy to work without actually paying a power point cost—they can become psionically focused as a special use of the Concentration skill.

If you have 1 or more power points available, you can meditate to attempt to become psionically focused. The DC to become psionically focused is 20. Meditating is a full-round action that provokes attacks of opportunity. When you are psionically focused, you can expend your focus on any single Concentration check you make thereafter. When you expend your focus in this manner, your Concentration check is treated as if you rolled a 15. It’s like taking 10, except that the number you add to your Concentration modifier is 15. You can also expend your focus to gain the benefit of a psionic feat—many psionic feats are activated in this way.

Once you are psionically focused, you remain focused until you expend your focus, become unconscious, or go to sleep (or enter a meditative trance, in the case of elans), or until your power point reserve drops to 0.

 

[Jackelope King]

This is going in circles. You're bringing up things which have already been discussed. I take it that since you're now ignoring my recent points, you're conceding all of them, thus making a strong case for psionics being balanced.

Assuming the spellcasters have those or have them available.

Psions automatically get the equivalent of Stilled Spell and (most of) Silent Spell and Eschew Materials for FREE for every power they manifest for ZERO extra cost.

Advantage: Psion

And as I and others have said, traditional spellcasters get the equivalent of FREE POWER POINTS with EVERY SCALABLE SPELL they cast for ZERO EXTRA COST. They may not all reach level 20, but that does not excuse the fact that they get a MASSIVE BENEFIT for their PRIMARY PURPOSE for ABSOLUTELY FREE.

I have played psions and I have run psions. You do not seem to grasp that psions may get a few minor feats for free while traditional casters, relative to psions, get a HUGE ability (free augmentation) that plays DIRECTLY towards their PRIMARY STRENGTH of the class (spellcasting). A way to look at it is that the traditional casters have to budget their spell power, while psions are free to spend willy-nilly. As a result, psions have much more flexibility in what they spend their power on, while traditional casters have to stay within certain bounds, and as a result they get certain "discounts" on their abilities.

Major Advantage: Traditional magic.

Ok, here is where you haven't gotten the correlation and the point that Scion never mentions. A Psionic focus is not a drawback. It's an advantage.

Spell casters can cast spell. Psions can manifest powers.

So far, even.

Psions have a focus that they can use for a lot of things. Spellcasters do not.

You consider that focus a limitation because it can only be used once before it has to be reacquired.

I consider it a MAJOR advantage because you can use it to do things that no spell caster can do without a spell.

You can up weapon damage with it, you can increase manifester level with it, you can seriously penetrate power resistance (equivalent to getting two arcane feats for one psionic feat), you can walk up a wall past an opponent and get behind him, you can move faster with it, etc., etc., etc., etc.

All these things you can do combat after combat after combat (or even out of combat) and the only limitation to most of them is that you are limited to once per combat shy of using up actions to get it back.

Look at the feats that are only 3 times per day (e.g. Sudden Empower). Psions can use their special overpowered feats (like Overchannel which no spell caster can do) dozens or more times per day. Not 3. They can use feats like Speed of Thought thousands of times per day. Spellcasters cannot take a feat to up their speed by 10 (shy of going into the broken XPH book and taking Wild Talent or a psionic race before they take Speed of Thought).

Considering Psionic Focus to be a limitation is like considering Turning Undead to be a limitation because you can only do it so many times per day.

And that is the flaw in the focus is a limitation point of view. It totally ignores all of the wonderful things that a Psion can choose to do with a focus and totally concentrates that he is basically limited to once per combat for those wonderful things.

So what you're saying is that a psion can spend a feat and actions to do what traditional casters can do with a single spell low-level spell (hint: the cost of a spell for a characters is less than a feat). And you believe this to be broken.

Huh.

You think that a much more limited way to gain access to a small number of "spell-like affects" which you have to pay feats for which you effectively have to use once per combat without spending even more feats while traditional casters can just do it normally with one spell, one action is broken.

Iiinnnnteresting.

Yes, it allows a psion to do many interesting things from the flexible platform of feats rather than spells. HOWEVER, all of those options are USELESS unless you spend more feats to speed up the regaining focus, otherwise most of your psionic feats are a menu of options you can select from once per combat.

I do quite like psionic focus. I like the flavor it provides. But I'm under no illusion that this is "broken".

No, he does not have to know. He can guess. He has a CHOICE.

The spell caster does not.

Advantage: Psion

You still fail to recognize what guessing costs. If a wizard guesses and misses the mark, he loses a spell slot. If a psion guesses and misses, he just lost a HUGE CHUNK OF PP.

(Heh. Read that out loud. "He just lost a huge chunk of pee pee." Sorry. I amuse myself sometimes )

You fail to recognize that all this power that psions have at their command costs a LOT, especially when you're flushing it down the drain "guessing". You suggest that psions have no problem flushing more of their already poor stamina down the drain, but in my experience psions don't have this luxury.

Only the energy type portion and then only one energy type PER feat. Not the extra damage. Not the change which saving throw is used.

Major Advantage: Psion

He can do more without a feat than the arcane caster can do with multiple feats.

I concede this point: you have proven to me that psions have an advantage when it comes to traditional magic in the limited area of elemental direct damage. Now how about that stamina problem, or the higher relative costs of psionic options than traditional options, or the massive feat drain that psions experience to utilize psionic focus effectively, or the complete lack of illusory and necromantic powers, or the lack of effective answers to Gate, Disjunction, True Strike, Magic Missile, Scorching Ray, Protection from _____/Magic Circle Against ______, Wind Wall, Scry, Shapechange, Shadow Evocation/Conjuration, Wall of Force, Telekinesis, Prismatic sphere, Rope Trick, Create Undead, and Blasphamy/Holy Word, or the free spell power, or the drain on character actions in combat, or the...

However, considering that you have thus far ignored many of my arguments leveled at your position, I will assume that you have conceded those points by your silence (presumably because you weren't aware of the associated costs you had not seen in your earlier look at the system), thus concluding that psionics are, in fact, not broken. I thank you for your assistance in demonstrating this, sir, and wish you a good day.

 

[Eloi]

Psionics Not Broken

(Plenty of snipping here)
...psions may get a few minor feats for free while traditional casters, relative to psions, get a HUGE ability (free augmentation) that plays DIRECTLY towards their PRIMARY STRENGTH of the class (spellcasting). A way to look at it is that the traditional casters have to budget their spell power, while psions are free to spend willy-nilly. As a result, psions have much more flexibility in what they spend their power on, while traditional casters have to stay within certain bounds, and as a result they get certain "discounts" on their abilities.

Major Advantage: Traditional magic.

(snip)
..most of your psionic feats are a menu of options you can select from once per combat.

I do quite like psionic focus. I like the flavor it provides. But I'm under no illusion that this is "broken".

(snip)
...all this power that psions have at their command costs a LOT, especially when you're flushing it down the drain "guessing". You suggest that psions have no problem flushing more of their already poor stamina down the drain, but in my experience psions don't have this luxury.

I concede this point: you have proven to me that psions have an advantage when it comes to traditional magic in the limited area of elemental direct damage. Now how about that stamina problem, or the higher relative costs of psionic options than traditional options, or the massive feat drain that psions experience to utilize psionic focus effectively, or the complete lack of illusory and necromantic powers, or the lack of effective answers to Gate, Disjunction, True Strike, Magic Missile, Scorching Ray, Protection from _____/Magic Circle Against ______, Wind Wall, Scry, Shapechange, Shadow Evocation/Conjuration, Wall of Force, Telekinesis, Prismatic sphere, Rope Trick, Create Undead, and Blasphamy/Holy Word, or the free spell power, or the drain on character actions in combat, or the...

(snip)
..thus concluding that psionics are, in fact, not broken. I thank you for your assistance in demonstrating this, sir, and wish you a good day.

I've read the five pages of the thread, and I do agree: the conclusion is that psionics are not broken.

 

[KarinsDad]

This is going in circles. You're bringing up things which have already been discussed. I take it that since you're now ignoring my recent points, you're conceding all of them, thus making a strong case for psionics being balanced.

...

However, considering that you have thus far ignored many of my arguments leveled at your position, I will assume that you have conceded those points by your silence (presumably because you weren't aware of the associated costs you had not seen in your earlier look at the system), thus concluding that psionics are, in fact, not broken. I thank you for your assistance in demonstrating this, sir, and wish you a good day.

I don't conceed jack.

Your assumption here is incorrect. Basically, I am busy right now and do not have the time to answer every one of your points.

I'll get back to this tonight, but I'll start a new thread.

 

[IanB]

Perhaps a minor point, but I think +4 to spell penetration rolls that is on all the time is far preferable to a +8 that I can only use once per fight without spending time trying to get my focus back and that also presents me with an opportunity cost in losing other actions I could take by spending that focus (or passive abilities that only function while focused.)

I know my first impression upon seeing the power penetration feats in the XPH was 'blech.' I haven't seen anything in play yet that has caused me to change my mind about it. (Yes, we have multiple games with psions.)

Sure, the psion might get +8 on one spell roll one round. If he wants to do it again the next round, he has to have spent a feat on psionic meditation, at a total cost of 3 feats, or 2 feats on psicrystal affinity and psicrystal containment, at a total cost of 4 feats. On top of that using the focus on power penetration precludes using it for DC enhancement or a metapsionic power, again, unless more feats are spent.

Meanwhile, the wizard can cast 2 regular spells and 2 quickened spells in the same time, all of which get +4, and while he's also spent 3 feats to get there, spending a spell slot on quicken spell is much more attractive an option to me than spending a spell slot to shore up a weakness. He also doesn't have the requirement to make a concentration roll to gain his focus back, thereby taking extra attacks of opportunity and being subject to other modifiers to skill checks, etc.

I don't see an advantage here, I see a disadvantage, and a pretty strong one at that, except in narrow cases where the SR of a foe is significantly out of whack for the group's level.

Feat slots are, in my opinion, the most precious resource a character has. It is the same problem that Psionic Endowment/Greater Psionic Endowment have when stacked next to Spell Focus (although really that one is much worse, since at least with Power Penetration the psion gets double value. Psionic Endowment only has the advantage of not being school-dependent, which is not that much of an advantage.) Passive bonuses are generally stronger in the long run than active ones, unless the active ones are really aggressively designed.

 

[Caliban]

Perhaps a minor point, but I think +4 to spell penetration rolls that is on all the time is far preferable to a +8 that I can only use once per fight without spending time trying to get my focus back and that also presents me with an opportunity cost in losing other actions I could take by spending that focus (or passive abilities that only function while focused.)

I know my first impression upon seeing the power penetration feats in the XPH was 'blech.' I haven't seen anything in play yet that has caused me to change my mind about it. (Yes, we have multiple games with psions.)

Sure, the psion might get +8 on one spell roll one round. If he wants to do it again the next round, he has to have spent a feat on psionic meditation, at a total cost of 3 feats, or 2 feats on psicrystal affinity and psicrystal containment, at a total cost of 4 feats. On top of that using the focus on power penetration precludes using it for DC enhancement or a metapsionic power, again, unless more feats are spent.

Meanwhile, the wizard can cast 2 regular spells and 2 quickened spells in the same time, all of which get +4, and while he's also spent 3 feats to get there, spending a spell slot on quicken spell is much more attractive an option to me than spending a spell slot to shore up a weakness. He also doesn't have the requirement to make a concentration roll to gain his focus back, thereby taking extra attacks of opportunity and being subject to other modifiers to skill checks, etc.

I don't see an advantage here, I see a disadvantage, and a pretty strong one at that, except in narrow cases where the SR of a foe is significantly out of whack for the group's level.

Feat slots are, in my opinion, the most precious resource a character has. It is the same problem that Psionic Endowment/Greater Psionic Endowment have when stacked next to Spell Focus (although really that one is much worse, since at least with Power Penetration the psion gets double value. Psionic Endowment only has the advantage of not being school-dependent, which is not that much of an advantage.) Passive bonuses are generally stronger in the long run than active ones, unless the active ones are really aggressively designed.

Psions have there share of SR ignoring powers. In 3.5, spell resistance is nowhere near as big an obstacle as it used to be. My sorcerer hasn't bothered to pick up the spell penetration feats because so few of his attack spells allow spell resistance.

As such, I don't see this as an advantage or disadvantage.

And in practice, psions have been far more difficult to challenge than wizards and sorcerers in my home campaign.