Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Scion" data-source="post: 2688121" data-attributes="member: 5777">Just 5? ok <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Saying that psychic reformation is borderline overpowered because it can be used to get rid of less useful feats seems a bit misleading. Two characters of identical class, race, etc who have chosen feats slightly differently should be of a roughly equivalent overall powerlevel. If one chose feats very, very poorly and the other chose exceedingly well this would not be the case. That is of course their perogative, but having the option to fix the problem, with a pretty serious price tag also, seems more of a 'convenient' factor instead of 'overpowered'. Limited wish could be used to gain the same effect.Dispel psionics is worded poorly but taking into account the wording of the power itself and the wording of the augmentation it should be plain enough that it means the maximum augmentation bonus and not giving an actual straight bonus to the roll. Reading it purposefully in a poor way and then claiming that the power itself is broken seems rather silly. Poorly worded sure, but if one reads the rest, especially the part in parenthsis, it is clear what they were trying to say.Temporal acceleration takes over 19pp in order to come close to matching the power of a single time stop. While time stop is incredibly poweful temporal has extra drawbacks. It may still be considered to be too strong at higher levels, but it is still much weaker than time stop.The -6 manifestor level on schism along with its other inherant limitations (can only take purely mental actions and such) make it pretty weak overall. In some builds which are trying to maximize the amount of powers total manifested in a certain period of time it can be useful, but overall it is generally better for a psion to 'not' get it and pick up something else instead. Having a different choice will tend to make for a better character overall. -6 manifestor level means much shorter range, difficulty getting past SR/PR, 3 power levels lower manifested which means lower saves, etc.Energy missile goes from no bonus to save up to a pretty good sized bonus to a save. However, it is incredibly limited in how it works (small area, targetted, elemental damage, etc) along with being outdone in a lot of other ways (such as spells/powers which deal damage but do not allow a save.. such as polar ray.. polar ray is a pretty horribly underpowered spell, but in several ways it is actually stronger than energy missile at equivalent cost). The potential bonus to a save comes from these limitations plus it is a specialist only power (or a psion who spends a feat). Those are not insignificant costs and all they get you is some extra direct elemental damage. Which, at higher levels when the save becomes high, is generally pretty worthless anyway. Horrid wilting is insanely better at equivalent costs, even with its lower save, for example. Or one could compare with spell focus, in a way. Spell focus grants a +1 all of the time to a school of spells vs spending a feat on energy missile to get between +0 and +8 to a single power only. Not a great direct comparison, but an interesting side by side view. Smaller bonus to many or a potential larger bonus to one.Focus is a huge balancing factor for psionics. If you want to use many powers that require focus, especially at levels before 10 or so, requires spending about 3 feats (psychic meditation, psicrytal affinity, psicrystal containment) since some of the checks might fail. Even with all of these it basically makes psions take the same amount of time to use meta feats as the sorc (standard + move either way, it just costs the psion more along with the psion only being able to use one at a time and needing to make a check).Dimension slide is a power which takes you a very short distance (about the same as a single move or a double move at high manifestor level) which takes 9pp to use as move equivalent (so still giving up your move either way and costing as much as a 5th level power) and is psychic warrior only. I fail to see anything overpowered here in the least. Useing a valueable power known slot along with a pretty good amount of pp in order to basically what you could have done with the movement from the action anyway... ouch.Astral construct is made for combat only vs summon monster which can be used in combat but can also be used in a lot of other areas as well. Along with the summons generally having more abilities along with abilites that the astral construct cant even hope for. They really are made in different ways with different goals in mind. If one wants to complian that fireball is underpowered because it doesnt do as much cold damage as cone of cold (say when they are both doing 10 dice of damage) is pretty silly, doing something similar for the other guys is along the same lines of silly.Dispelling buffer is a decently high level power that doesnt do anything unless someone tries to dispel your effects. Even then, all it does is give you a bit of a boost when resisting this dispelling (+5). 11 pp a couple of times a day in order to be able to hope your abilites are slightly harder to get rid of isnt exactly a powerhouse of doom.Many spells have a bit of scaling, in that they start off at so many dice and then go up to some other amount where they cap out. Psionic powers start off at their cap but some can have extra pp put in to get more dice.Psions are just as fragile as any of the other d4 class's. Just because one person had whatever circumstances, in this case independent of class, that allowed them to not get effected as much does not mean that the class is the reason. If a particular dm is playing towards making one class more powerful than the others that is more the dms fault than anything else. A fighter wont do very well in a skill based game and a bard will likely have a harder time in a stealth based, no talking, hack and slash game. Eh, I dont really feel like going into more, or even into more detail on what I have said here. More than 5 anyway. Like I have said, it is best to go to the experts if there is an issue. Getting a few calls from people who have little to no experience can provide a few interesting ideas now and then, but if you want real meat you have to talk with people who know their stuff the best.Although much of this entire discussion comes down to 'psions are good at some things that others are not so good at and worse at other things that others are good at' more than actual imbalances. Caster types tend to follow certain overall guidelines of what they will be able to do well and what they are able to do poorly, if you can point to a 'poorly' class and say they are doing it worse than another class that does not mean that the other is doing it 'too well'.Going back to the original list however I would have to say that metamorphosis has the same problem as polymorph. They both do bad things when compared to other parts of the overall d&d system. Although since polymorph can be used on someone else that makes it 'much' more potent.Greater metamorph does some things that shouldnt really be allowed, and it is just too powerful.. but then, since it costs exp each time it is still much weaker than Shapechange in my opinion.For fission, your duplicate doesnt have your magical equipment. I know this may not seem like a big deal on the surface, but try it sometime.. you have basically just given yourself a major achiles heel which is going to destroy you if you arent quick about it <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />For hostile empathic transfer you have to have already taken a lot of damage for it to even be useful, and then your opponents have to be vulnerable to mind effecting, and you have to be pretty close to them.. for a psion this just spells out death. Since its save doesnt increase with extra pp that makes this power start off somewhat useful and then drop off quickly as creatures are able to make the save more reliably.Anyway, I'd still suggest that the other board is consulted with any issues that may arise. They are much more likely to have directly applicable experience and actually be able to help. From my experience on this board they are generally unhelpful with such things, unless you get lucky about it.</blockquote>

Verification