Hmmmmm. . . .
GuardianLurker said:
I do, however, wonder about this. A "Wild Talent", by definition, is a psionic character, albeit one with no training and a few powers or abilities, with those abilities mostly arising without conscious control or direction.
For me, this would seem to suggest that Wild Talents are better represented by primarily allowing them access to Feats, where the same psionic potential can be expressed in a number of subtle ways, rather than by giving them access to powers, which have always seemed to require concious control and growth in my mind. And while I don't dispute the additional power inherent in the psionic feats, I have always regarded the Psionic powers as being the primary resource of the psionic classes.
I agree whole heartedly. My wild talent feat, though weak allows access to psionic feats for just that reason. A feat is, to me something inate that you are good at naturally rather than a learned response. Psionic Wild Talents should have access to psi-feats. Since those feats only come along once every 3 levels, it will not prove to be unbalancing.
Given that a "Wild Talent" houserule must, of necessity, deprive the psionic classes of some of their uniqueness by allowing an otherwise non-psionic character access to one or more of psionic skills, psionic powers, psionic feats, or psionic combat modes, and also (of necessity) increase the utility of the non-psionic character by granting him access to abiltiies he would not otherwise have, what abilities can we give a "Wild Talent" that minimize both the decrease and the increase?
The power of a psychic character comes from his ability to manifest powers at will and to participate in psychic combat.
Psions and Psi Warriors have a relatively small selection of powers to choose from, so giving a wild talent access to more than one or two would undermine psychic character classes.
Wild Talents should not gain access to psychic combat because it requires too much focused psychic energy. Wild talents simply don't have the mental discipline or training (let alone mental strength) to engage in psionic combat. With 1 or 2 PP a wild talent would be brain fried in a matter of rounds against a skilled psion in psionic combat. For this reason I propose that Wild talents retain most of their non-psionic bonus to saves. For every psionic feat a non-psionic character takes his non-psionic buffer is reduced by 2 to represent the character becomming more sensitive to psychic energy. Sure, a monk can take Wild Talent, Psionic Fist, and Inertial Armor; but he's sure goning to be hurting when he goes up against an illithid who gets initiative over him with a mind blast. Additionally, psionic feats require PP. With low PP the monk wild talent above can either retain the Inertial Armor, do and extra D4 damage, or manifest their Talent.
Like Attack and Defense modes, I believe that wild talents should not have access to the psionic only skills. Skills require training and instruction. Wild talents do not receive such training, and therefore should not have special access to the skills.
If a character takes too many psionic feats, just throw in more psionic monsters. Allow wild talents to be infected by psionic diseases. Throw in a mindstorm or two. I'm sure that the constant stunning attacks, loss of control and other maladies will convince your Wild Talent that he should multiclass into a psychic character class just to beef up his defenses against all of the nasty things that he can now see with his heightened sensitivity.
All that being said, I believe that Wild Talents are very cool. It is a great way to introduce psionic powers into your campaign without overloading the system. Wild talents who like what they see can multiclass into psions or psi-warriors after a level or two if they like, and still have 1 or more extra PP and powers to show for the investment of a feat. That's more than a straight Psion or Psi-Warrior would have by standard progression, so the feat is not wasted if the character takes a psionic class.
By only, oh, four days! 
