Opinions of Expanded Psi-handbook

[Piratecat]

Plane Sailing, I just reminded myself of this fact the hard way. In KidCthulhu's game, my psiwarrior just blew 70% of all his power points on one major battle -- which turns out not to have been the climactic battle we thought it would be! Darn it. When we play tonight and face all the monsters we missed last game, I'm going to be rationing out my power points veeeery carefully.

 

[Henry]

A few minor rebuttals...

The new Psi-warrior is NUTS. At 7th level he can get a touch attack that does 50 points of damage on a will save for 1/2 and he heals that much damage????? And by 11th level is a 90 point damage touch attack.....

Compare that to what he could do enhanced with several psionic power-buffs, and a good weapon... Or compare to what an optimally designed Fighter or Barbarian of that level can do every round ALL DAY.

As a 1st level power they can enlarge themselves.. and at low-mid levels they can enlarge themselves 2 class sizes! So A 1/2 giant, who can weild large weapons, gets enlarged and his 2 handed sword is now considered a GARGANTUAN WEAPON.

I don't see that 3d8 is too obscene, though it is on the powerful side, I'll admit. He's also at -2 to hit and -2 to AC, as well.

And the Wilder, who possessing 1/2 a brain burns a feat to pick up the ability to summon astral constructs... With the ability thusly to produce summoned creatures 1 or 2 levels higher than rationality would indicate.

That's not a huge issue to me, because of (A) the rarity of summoned creatures in the party as it is, and (B) the enervation chance that means that for every two or three times per game this is tried, there is a GOOD chance of burnout.


THEN, a couple of agreements...

Telepaths, the ability to belt out 3 spells a round.

One of which is six levels low, but I do agree on this point. If they took pain to fix this in 3.5, it should have STAYED fixed.

Kineticists, with a "Fire Platform" capability that would put any mage to shame.

I would have liked to see the variable element effects as feats, true. The ability to spit out ANYTHING from cold to fire to acid to sonic to electricity is WAAAY too flexible without additional cost - say, each psion chooses an element type to be familiar with, and they must take a feat per element type after the first one chosen. It's not like they don't have the extra feats to use, and it's not like they energy types aren't worth it.

 

[Nifft]

If psions are slightly weaker than (arcane) spellcasters with their powers overall, it's fine, but if they are about equal, they are somewhat overpowered

Are you a paid shill for the Waterdeep Party?

-- N

 

[Plane Sailing]

Plane Sailing, I just reminded myself of this fact the hard way. In KidCthulhu's game, my psiwarrior just blew 70% of all his power points on one major battle -- which turns out not to have been the climactic battle we thought it would be! Darn it.

Our party is hacking its way through a fey-infested wood to attempt to tackle and evil druid - we fend off an initial attack from skirmishes then we have to face a huge attack by "the wild hunt". The cleric casts her prayers and all her buffs, my sorcerer buffs her ranger cohort, everyone goes for broke - and we win!

Then a couple of hours later we get attacked by the druid, his spriggans, his direbear, his spiders and his half-orc barbarian (who has freedom of movement so *he* isn't bothered by the huge entangle spell). Did I mention that this attack started off with an entangle and a glitterdust on top of the party? Poor cleric is pretty much out of spells, fighters are getting a bit ragged. Good job I'm a sorcerer with tons of spells. Druid flees in confusion thanks to yours truly so we continue to track him before he can rally his allies.

This leads us via a stone circle to faerie, where we find druid buffed up and waiting for us. With his new buddies (huge earth, air, fire and water elementals). Cleric is whimpering, she hasn't even got orisons left. One of our PC fighters is down, the other fighter is in bad shape and my cohort will go down on his next blow. My sorcerer still has plenty of spells left (once sorcerers pass 8th level they ROCK!) but we're pretty much all out of magical and healing support... we had to halt in mid-combat

Our party is all around about 9th-11th level at the moment, and the "number of spells per day" gets very significant for caster types when there are several multi-round melees in the one day. Non-sorcerers use up their capacity very quickly if they're not careful.

No-one has used a psionic character yet, but my bet is that with augmentations they are able to burn their power even more quickly if they're not careful - as it seems you've been doing!

At least it improves the feeling of desperation in the fight, eh?

Cheers

 

[Thanee]

No-one has used a psionic character yet, but my bet is that with augmentations they are able to burn their power even more quickly if they're not careful - as it seems you've been doing!

Yeah, with the ability to manifest every power at maximum level, they can do that just fine!

With great power comes great responsibility (even for oneself)!

Bye
Thanee

 

[Thanee]

Are you a paid shill for the Waterdeep Party?

*scratches head* Hmmm?

Bye
Thanee

 

[Psion]

With great power comes great responsibility (even for oneself)!

This is more true than you know.

I mean why waste a few power points when the fighter has things well in hand. I think as a psion, you should try to focus your power where you are needed. You can't afford to spend lots of points counting coup like Legolas and Gimli.

 

[Thanee]

This is more true than you know.

Darn telepaths...

I mean why waste a few power points when the fighter has things well in hand. I think as a psion, you should try to focus your power where you are needed. You can't afford to spend lots of points counting coup like Legolas and Gimli.

Yeah, probably even more than spellcasters. Even with my sorceress I cannot just use up spells at every opportunity. If the opposition is almost defeated or doesn't look that powerful at all, I normally stop casting.

Bye
Thanee

 

[ph0rk]

it is pretty unbeleiveable how quickly one can run out of power points; in a recent session I was able to go from 47 to 32 before combat even began. One decent damage spell and a pair of summons were about all I could manage afterwards, along with a mindlink and detect hostile.

Of course, using talented and overchannel doesn't help much with power point conservation....

 

[ForceUser]

XPH seems like an improvment over the old book. The new and redefined psionic races are especially cool. I look forward to using it extensively.