Psionic Cantrips

Coredump · Sep 22, 2005

In the switch to 'Expanded', cantrips were dropped from psions. Are there any alternate rules available to bring them back?

Any ideas on how to implement them?

Any opinions about this being a good/bad idea?

Thanks

Spatzimaus · Sep 23, 2005

I miss the talents, in a way, but we got FAR more power points to compensate, enough that you could replace every old talent with a level 1 power and still come out ahead on spells/day. Unfortunately, the loss in powers known is a bit bigger of a deal, and many of the talents that were appropriate as a level 0 power (detect psionics, for instance) just feel underpowered as a level 1 power now. So, Psions tend to be missing a bit of low-level utility now.

The only change I'd make is to give more powers known at 1st level. They really don't need more powers/day.

Luthien Greyspear · Sep 25, 2005

Coredump said:
In the switch to 'Expanded', cantrips were dropped from psions. Are there any alternate rules available to bring them back?

Any ideas on how to implement them?

Any opinions about this being a good/bad idea?

Thanks

My players missed them too, so I came up with the following rule:

Psionic characters may manifest a number of 'free talents' per day equal to their primary stat bonus (Int for psions, Wis for psychic warriors), plus one for every level of power they are capable of manifesting. For example, a 5th level psion with a 16 Int can manifest 6 'free talents' each day: 3 for his Int bonus, and 3 for his access to 3rd level powers. These powers can only be taken from his 1st-level powers and can NOT be augmented in any way. They cost no power points to use.

So far, it hasn't been abused. The dedicated psion feels a little more comfortable taking detect psionics as a power, if only to check the treasure piles. The psychic warrior gets to shine a little more in combat as she uses hustle to get into position.