Ken Hood's Alternate Psionics

WizWrm

First Post
Does anyone use Ken Hood's skills and feats psionics system? If so, how did it work out? How well did you think it was balanced? (especially concerning the classes) Did it turn out to be an interesting addition, or a set of clunky new rules? How about flavor-wise? Did it alter your game significantly?

Any comments or opinions would be welcome.
 

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I briefly played a psionicist with Ken's rules in a campaign a year ago. I needed another character while the party was split up.

The system has a definite sci fi feel to it, but for us this was fine as both myself and the DM have issues with the 3E Wotc system. It was a Planescape game so the otherworldly flavor worked fine.

To be honest, I think the system may be underpowered, at least when compared to a spell casting class. You have to make skill rolls to activate some of the feats/powers/skills, (of course some skills are essentially psionic powers). And if you fail to activate them, you have to wait, sometimes minutes if I recall, to try again.

On the plus side, no power points and no psionic combat modes. That alone was leaps and bounds better in my opinion.

If the situation in our game lasted longer I would have been happy to continue to play my psionicist, if only to get a better feel for all the differences.

You just have to accept before you begin that it is very much different in feel and mechanics.
 
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Yeah, I was definitely looking for something other than "WotC Vancian Magic: Part 3!" which is how I found this in the first place. The setting Ken Hood designed this for feels almost Dune-ish, which itself has so much mysticism and Arthur C. Clarke "tech = almost magic," that I figured it could probably work in pseudo-fantasy. Though I'm not so sure about all those required ranks of Knowledge (physics) and such.

I think I agree with you in that it does seem a bit overly difficult to use; especially the extreme DCs for things like Mind Blast (you need a 25 on your skill check to force a Will save DC of 10 against Wisdom damage).

Gellion said:
Never used them. But they look cool.

Yeah....maybe I'll try it out here on the PbP boards first, to see them in action.
 

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