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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Falling Icicle" data-source="post: 1783037" data-attributes="member: 17077">Psions have alot of drawbacks that your DM is overlooking. First, Psions are Power Point hogs. While a Sorcerer's or Wizard's spells scale in power for free, Psions actually have to pay for it. For example, a 10th level Sorcerer casting Fireball does 10d6 damage, while a 10th level Psion casting a 3rd level power would only do 5d6, unless he was willing to pay an extra 5 power points for it! This is an enormous drawback for Psionic characters that cannot be understated.Granted, Psions have even more flexibility than Sorcerers, but in order to fully utilize their potential, they must rapidly burn up their power point reserves. Sorcerers have a great deal more staying power. If you were to convert a Sorcerer's spells per day into the equivelent Power points, without even taking into consideration their free scaling of damage and effect, you will find the Sorcerer and Wizard both have an enormous advantage in this area. Psions can shoot off more high level effects than Sorcerers or Wizards can, but then they quickly find themselves out of power. Sorcerers, on the other hand, are the DnD spellcasting equivalent of the Energizer bunny, they keep going and going and going... In all my years of playing 3rd edition, I have never, ever, so much as once, seen a Sorcerer completely run out of spells after 5th level. Not once.A Psions advantage is in flexibility, whereas Sorcerers and Wizards are more efficient. Another thing to keep in mind, is there are many, many more spells available to Sor/Wiz than Psions. And Arcane spells tend to be quite powerful, too. Psions are also forced to specialize in a Discipline, and their selection of powers is very limited even compared to a specialist Wizard.As far as casting in armor, which alot of people bring up as an "imbalance," I must point out that Divine spellcasters have this advantage too. Components are another thing where Psions have an edge, but in my years of playing I have rarely ever had a problem with a magic user and components. Just don't get grappled, or have a silent dimension door or teleport handy in case you do, and you're fine. Most of the time components are not a big deal. Expensive material components are something that Psions don't have to deal with, but they tend to have experience costs instead. So it comes down to $ vs exp. I'm not sure which is worse, honestly.Metamagics are another interesting thing to compare. Psions have to expend their focus to use any metamapsionic feat. This is an enormous disadvantage. For one, it means they lose access to some of their other abilities that only work while you have focus (such as Up the Walls), and it also means they have to spend a Full Round action to regain their focus. Additionally, it makes it so that a Psionic character can only use one Metapsionic feat on a spell. Whereas a Sorcerer or Wizard of sufficient level can stack multiple metamagics on a spell, Psions are limited to one per casting, and as I said, must find the time to spend a full round action before they can buff another power. Yes, Psions can get a feat to make this a move action, but that's one feat that could have been spent on something else.Another thing to keep in mind is that just being a Psionic character makes you vulnerable to alot of things that other classes never have to deal with. The Psionic book is full of feats, weapons, and powers designed to screw over Psionic characters exclusively. You rarely ever see something designed to hurt Mages or Clerics, on the other hand. And since your sadist DM has designed a world where everyone hunts Psionic characters, I'm sure these things would be very common in his campaign.In short, Psions tend to be very good at what they do, but they have a much smaller niche than spellcasters. They are very, very specialized, and while they can equal or even exceed spellcasters in their chosen specialy, they simply do not have the vast library of powers and resources available to spellcasters. They seem to be very well balanced to me, and I think that nerfing them further would be nothing short of insanity. They have plenty of disadvantages already!</blockquote>

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