Psionic Focus

[SolidSnake]

Hey everyone, it's been a while! As I'm sure many of you have read the XPH numerous times and have many opinions on how and what should be done to fix it for your respective campaigns, I wanted to know what you savy guys thought of gaining a psionic focus.

To me, the idea is very appealing, much like the Void Point system in Rokugan (expending Void points enables you to do fantastic things), but there was a more stringent limitation on their usage. For instance you could only pick up 2 with 1 feat and could only use 1 at a time. Moreover you had to rest a full 8 hours to get them back or enter meditation for 1 hour to get a single one back (DC 15 concentration). It worked nicely as some feats needed void point usage and others didn't, so you could do a only a few "fantastic" things at any encounter. There were many feats that allowed you to use more than one at a time, and gain even more...I won't bore you with the details.

My question is more on the lines of how the system in XPH will translate into real playing. My concern is that you will have characters who are pressured into concentrating every other round to get psionic focus so that they can use their neato feats (Psychic warriors especially). A few people mentioned just bumping all the metapsionic feats by 2 pp unless the focus is used. This, to me, does not deny the player the ability to use the feat but makes it more enticing if he expends his focus to do so. Do you think it would be possible to extend this rule to all the feats or is that insanity for the purposes of balance issues?

My vision of how it should be done is much like the Rokugan way; wherein, it takes sometime to amass the focus, so having the focus on you should provide you acess to some of the feats (like Power penetration, raising the DC of your powers, moving faster...etc) and its expenditure should be even more greatly rewarded. I want to say that it should take 1 hour of meditation to get the focus back, so that its use is more judicious by my players, but I don't want to cripple any of the psionic classes. How do you think these two conflicting ideas can meet? I just don't want to see the following scenario every game:

Player: "Ok, I expend my psionic focus on deep impact, take a five foot step back, and use my MEA to charge up again. I do this until the creature is dead."

This may be an exaggeration, but I'm thinking everyone is going to be taking Psionic meditation (I think that is it) and pumping their skills into concentration.


What do you guys think? Is this a valid concern or am I just a crazy DM and I should just stop this insanity?

Thanks in advance everyone!!

 

[SolidSnake]

Anyone?

no thoughts on this eh?

 

[Darklone]

It's IMHO more a "problem" of the player if the abovementioned tactic seems to be "abused". Sure, D&D supports such a behavior... but it doesn't excuse it.

 

[Caliban]

I don't think it's really a problem. If they 5' step back and refocus everyround they are limiting themselves to a single attack at higher levels (and for melee types a single attack tends to do more than 2d6 damage), and at lower levels it's by no means certain that they will always make the DC 20 concentration check.

 

[SolidSnake]

I don't think it's really a problem. If they 5' step back and refocus everyround they are limiting themselves to a single attack at higher levels (and for melee types a single attack tends to do more than 2d6 damage), and at lower levels it's by no means certain that they will always make the DC 20 concentration check.

So, although the tactic could work at earlier levels, you are saying that it would not be as useful in higher levels...thus, there would be a balance with progression b/c of iterative attack bonuses. Interesting point.

Some people mentioned that Psionic meditation (take psionic focus as a move equivalent action) is almost a MUST for the PW, in order for him to take advantage of the psionic feats he has at his disposal...I.E. the feat is so good that all PW's should have it. Do you guys think that this is a problem? What I mean is that, should there be some variant that allows it to be class feature of PW/Psions. One the flip side, many people are saying that getting a feat tree is a normal part of DnD...an example is Whirlwind attack (something that requires many feats to achieve). I'm not sure yet which side I fall on, b/c I am leaning towards the fact that Psionic Focus is almost too good a feat not to have. What do you guys think?

 

[reiella]

So, although the tactic could work at earlier levels, you are saying that it would not be as useful in higher levels...thus, there would be a balance with progression b/c of iterative attack bonuses. Interesting point.

Some people mentioned that Psionic meditation (take psionic focus as a move equivalent action) is almost a MUST for the PW, in order for him to take advantage of the psionic feats he has at his disposal...I.E. the feat is so good that all PW's should have it. Do you guys think that this is a problem? What I mean is that, should there be some variant that allows it to be class feature of PW/Psions. One the flip side, many people are saying that getting a feat tree is a normal part of DnD...an example is Whirlwind attack (something that requires many feats to achieve). I'm not sure yet which side I fall on, b/c I am leaning towards the fact that Psionic Focus is almost too good a feat not to have. What do you guys think?

Nah I don't think it Psionic Medication is "too nice" or even required.
The belief that it is, comes from the concept/application of 3.0 PsyWarriors (in my opinion). PsyWars are now more about their powers than their feats.

Psions face a similar problem, going from MetaPsionic masters, to being around the same level as a sorcerer, but, they have "inherit" metapsionic in most of their powers in the form of augmentation, such that there may well be little reason/justification to need to use Metapsionics, except for perhaps Quicken. And Quicken just sucks slightly less for a psion than it does for a sorcerer now [ psions can prepay that fra ].

[ Fun sidenote, the Psionic Meditation combo can be "Required" becuase of stackability with Hustle. ]

 

[Particle_Man]

Since for my Psion, none of the feats I want either require me to hold a psionic focus or to expend one, the only use I have for it is a once per combat "Free take 15" when I manifest defensively. So I guess I am a counter-example to your fears of focus abuse.

I much prefer taking lots of Psionic Talent feats to get lots of Power Points.