My psionics house rules for the XPH

[Nifft]

Your Penetration feats (among others) are probably too powerful. [...] In general, I think you've gone too far in the other direction. I can't imagine Psions very often expending their focuses under your rules.

I think you're right, especially in combination with my proposed Metapsionic modification. If I left Metapsionics alone, then the additional "maintain Focus" feats would be good, but you'd still have a lot of very good reasons to burn your Focus.

I'd rather just have flat Power Penetration +2 / Greater Power Penetration +4 than their crazy +4/+8 (expend Focus) versions.

Thanee: Good catch on Dispel Psionics. Here's my idea on Augmentation:
- Normal: You make a level check, just like dispel magic of 1d20 + manifester level (max +10).
- Augmented: For +6 power points, your manifester level check is 1d20 + manifester level (max +20).

-- N

 

[Thanee]

Yeah, that would be how I'd do it too, if I had to use the book.

Bye
Thanee

 

[DonAdam]

Here are some powers that I have serious issue with:

-All the energy powers the energy powers are just flat out better than an evoker's options. Choosing energy type at the time of casting is ridiculous, and the differences among energy types are also horrible (with psions out there with sonic energy powers, castles are useless).

-Swarm of Crystals- no save!

-Mind Thrust- holy, holy crap. That's alot of damage.

Thanee caught the dispel thing. Absurd.

Edit: Forgot Overchanneling/talented. Even more ridiculous.

 

[Thanee]

Mind Thrust seems alright, tho, as it affects only a single target.

Swarm of Crystals is only a 15' Cone, which limits it quite a bit, too. It's surely very good, but I don't think it's completely out there (like some of the other stuff).

The whole thing, however, seems so unbalanced... it's really disappointing. I actually had some hope, that the revised psionics would be good, but while they are a lot better than the 3.0 rules, they are still not very well done.

Anyways... some stuff from the feats section:

Metamorphic Transfer!
I don't even want to think about the possible abuses of this one!

Psionic Meditation, especially combined with Quicken Power (and for an even worse effect add Schism to the mix for 3 powers per round), just doesn't fit into the 3.5 environment.

Bye
Thanee

 

[DonAdam]

Mind Thrust is enough to drop most rogues with a single shot, and can easily bring a fighter down to less than half.

Metamorphic Transfer we didn't even consider allowing. As soon as you have the power, you can start using a form that grants ethereal jaunts (like the thought eater).

On a side note, not something that's broken but something that's funny, is that the one-legged temporal filcher has a 40 foot speed.

 

[Thanee]

Mind Thrust is enough to drop most rogues with a single shot, and can easily bring a fighter down to less than half.

It's Will negates, tho. I really think it's ok.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Plane Sailing]

I was thinking about the break points for empowering or maximising Mind Thrust, and was interested to note that a 20th level psion could risk 20pp to either do 160 damage maximised or 27d10 damage empowered (effectively 148 damage) will ST 18/19?+abil mod to negate.

Against a low will save type (fighters, rogues) this is a pretty killer power!

 

[Plane Sailing]

An idea that I might toy with is something to make the disciplines of powers in the generic list more significant... perhaps give psions a bonus +1 caster level when manifesting a power which belongs to their discipline (or perhaps doing something with the pp cost - giving them 1 "bonus pp" to use in augmenting powers within their discipline for free, for instance)

 

[Thanee]

At 20th level a failed save often means certain death.
I'm pretty sure there is a lot nastier stuff a psion (or any caster) could do to a victim of a failed save, compared to 160 damage.

Well, one way to make the discipline powers stand out more is - what I wrote above - to disallow picking from those lists with Expanded Knowledge (the book is broken enough as is, better to downgrade, than to upgrade even more ). The powers on the lists are often above average already as well, so don't really need another powerup.

Oh, and one complete other thing... the Shapechange type power (Greater Metamorphosis?) should be house ruled the same way Shapechange was errata'ed (funny they didn't include it, probably they havn't read the errata or forgot about it - I fully expect to see this in the upcoming errata anyways).

Bye
Thanee

 

[Staffan]

-Swarm of Crystals- no save!

-Mind Thrust- holy, holy crap. That's alot of damage.

Mind Thrust is single-target and has a save that negates the damage. That's pretty harsh. And Swarm of Crystals uses d4s for damage and has a really crappy range/AoE.