Psionic Rules problem?

[DizzyKungFu]

One of my players seems to have found a big way to exploit the psionics system. Here is the scenario:

Assume you have a 12th-level psion (savant) with a 20 Con and 90 power points. Now assume that in one round the psion manifests psychofeedback for 7 pp, leaving 83 pp. The next round, the psion uses the psychofeedback effect to dump 72 pp into his Con modifier as a free action, increasing it from +5 to +41! With the remaining 11 pp, he manifests disintegrate, and whatever it hits will have to make a Fort save with a DC of 1d20 + 47 (a minimum DC of 48!!!). This means that if a psion is willing to dump their entire points for the day, they could easily single-handedly slay a 20th-level fighter or a nightcrawler (for examples)!

Am I missing something? Should I allow this? I don't want to cheat the player, but neither do I want him to totally be able to negate any one single, powerful foe that I choose to throw against them. As a DM, I sometimes like using a single, big and powerful opponent that the PCs have to work together to beat, and this could totally negate that.

Please help with your input/advice! Thanks!

 

[Garrett]

Punish the offenders.

Theres not much you can do about it if you play by the rules. hes "allowed" to do that. but in such a case, let him do it (in fact put him in a position where its too tempting to do it). then punish him with some psychic combat later on. A mind with 0 pp is undefendable, so all psionic attacks increace the regular DC by +8. he'll be eating floor in probably a round or two. especially against a gang of Illithids.
Afflict him with some of the groovy psionic diseases/parasites.
On top of that, someone killing off high powered NPC's is sure to draw the wrath of said NPS's friends.
Theres a ton of things you can do to keep people from abusing the rules.
No mercy for exploiters!

 

[Dr_Rictus]

Well, he's going to be really embarrassed if he misses, or if the nightcrawler was an illusion or something. Come to think of it, he's going to be even more embarrassed by the fact that nightshades of all kinds are immune to disintegrate.

More to the point, though, to put this in perspective, all your scenario allowed the psion to do is dump all of his power for the day into making sure that one saving throw gets failed. That's a nice effect, sure, but it ain't worth your entire day's worth of power. Hit most things with two or three save-or-die powers and they're nearly as likely to die, for only a little more time and a lot fewer power points.

 

[whatisitgoodfor]

Another mean thing to do would be have a Hench-Monkey with maxxed out Bluff.

All of the sudden in an important fight, the psion finds out that he just wasted all his PP to kill the wrong BBEG.

 

[Apok]

Ah, yes, the psychofeedback for massive damage/DC's is the ubercheese tactic of the psionic classes. It's especially nasty for a psywar who has a Mind Feeder weapon with a high critical threat range, since he can dish out insane damage and potentially regain all of his power points.

My only suggestion is to house rule psychofeedback to limit the ammount of pp's they can burn per round.

 

[Jeremy]

What's worse? A psychic warrior with a mind feeder weapon. Say he crits (necessary to activate the feeder property), suddenly he has 30-50 temporary power points he can dump directly into strength via psychofeedback. If he crits while hyped up on that, he'll have enough temporary power points to continue it for sometime, at no cost to himself.

 

[DizzyKungFu]

Thanks for the ideas, but in my game there are many instances where the PCs know a big baddie is alone or can isolate him/her/it. Plus, my players are smart and would definitely consider "hit and run" tactics to take out one big bad guy as a partial victory, then escape to safety to fight another day (when the psion has his pp's back).

No, sorry. What you're talking about are really just tricks and "DM conniving" to escape the real problem. These things would wear thin after a while, and become obvious to experienced players. I would much rather make a custom ruling of my own, rather than resort to my game desending into silliness. Has anyone else experienced this problem and come up with a solution/custom rule that works well?

 

[Spatzimaus]

There are a few psionic powers that let you dump a lot of points at once. Psychofeedback is just the most notorious, although I've never really found it to be very useful in practice. Psions just don't get enough PPs.

There are also a few other psionic powers that instantly negate the One Bad Guy (tm). You think a high-DC Disintegrate is nasty? Go read Mass Cocoon again. No save, no SR, no spells with components, blocks ethereal travel, can't be dispelled, lasts 2 hours per level, and envelops anything within a 10' cube. And, it has more HP than my Psion does with a nice Hardness too.

It's not even limited to psionics. There are plenty of high-end Arcane spells that work well against one target (Forcecage, Maze, some of the Power Word spells). You cast them, one bad guy is out of the fight. For most of those, you don't even need to worry about pumping up save DCs.

Is this a problem? Well, in the same way that a Wizard who blows all his firepower in one combat is. Look at Disintegrate's drawbacks. If I can survive one attack thanks to a high touch AC, or a miss chance due to Displacement, concealment, cover, illusion, anti-magic, etc. then that Psion is pretty much hosed. It's not metagaming; when confronted with high-level spellcasters, I KNOW I'll be attacked with many of these types of spells, so I'll be prepared for it.

From the sound of it, though, you don't want it to be possible for a Psion to blow his entire PP quota for one massive attack. Unfortunately for you, 3E has plenty of save-or-die, touch-and-die, or just-die spells, and those are going to be just as damaging in the long run. It's just how high-level magical combat goes.

Forget this "massive save DC" Disintegrate. Just cast Schism, and then throw two normal Disintegrates each round at the guy. That d20 save DC will eventually work for you.

 

[Kraedin]

If it really bothers you, why not just change psychofeedback? Put a cap of 1 power point per round per ability score per manifester level, or something like that.

 

[DizzyKungFu]

If it really bothers you, why not just change psychofeedback? Put a cap of 1 power point per round per ability score per manifester level, or something like that.

AH! This is the type of stuff I'm looking for! What does everyone else think of this custom rule? Or does anyone have an even better suggestion?