Psionics and Spell Points

[Cabral]

I starting up a campaign using spell points from Unearthed Arcana and I was thinking the shift of normal classes to spell points diminishes the Psionic classes. I was thinkng of making up for this with either a percentage increase to Psionic spell points or allowing some psionic feats that require expending psionic focus to just require that you be psionicly focused, and maybe a few that require psionic focus to always work ...

ANy thoughts?

 

[dvvega]

Personally I would give everyone the same number of points for their abilities and charged them the same as Psionic powers.

So a first level spell costs the same as a first level power etc.

This way you don't have to make any changes to the Psionic classes.

They get overchannelling and power boosting - so it will be okay.

D

 

[Cabral]

The spell point system does use the same costs as psionic casters. That's the problem. You've got the wizard who casts as a psion does. All casters get a boost in flexibility ... except for psychic casters.

here's the SRD for the Spell Points system

 

[Blaque]

The main issue I have is that wizards get a LOT of spell points. The ones who also loose out in the system are sorcerers, who have about as few poers as psionic classes, but don't get really all that many spell point sot play with.

Some ideas that I personally have thought of:
- Tone down the caster spell points per day. Though, I have yet to sit and do the math, how does a wizard in this system compare to a psion of the same INT on power points?

- Make it so that the various spells need to be augmented as well. Not just damage-dealing ones either. I'm of the opinion that proably the Cure spell chains should be made into first-level augmentable powers, for example, same iwth the SUmmon chains. Not sure if this helps at all, but it does make them a lot easier ot dispell, which is one of the issues that Astral Constructs atleast have.

- Really, now that I think on it, probably the best way is still make it so that the casters get spell points like the psions, complete with how their Ability scores and the levels int he class stack. That might help eleviate things a lot.

- Let the psionic classes have the exclusive access to psionic feats. So things like overchannel, psionic body,a dn whatnot are still something you need manifester levels or natural psionicness to use. Though, I'd let the spell pools and power pools stack overall. But that's cuase I like transparency when possible.

And stuff.

 

[Cabral]

Currently, I don't allow spell points to stack, but I am looking for a good way to allow them to. the main problem I have is taking a few levels of one class (sorcerer) to beef the reserves of another class, like paladin or ranger or gaining 1 level of another class solely for extra bonus spell points for an ability score.

I have considered, since I use the vitalizing option, to make all bonus spells based off of Con, but I don't really like that since it makes spellcasters tend be hale and hearty ...

 

[Blaque]

A way to tone-down dipping for abilty-bonuses I think is, once again, tyr to make the charts more like the psionic ones. For example, taking a single-level dip in psychic warrior is sorta "meh", since one level of psychic warrior only really gives you a couple power points, and whatnot. In order to get a justifyable amount of points for your other abilities, you have to dip a bit more then a single class level or two, more often then not, often not enough to justify the single-level dip.

And stuff.

 

[Cabral]

I think I'm going to go with seperate spell point pools but allow caster level to stack (similar to the magic rating in Unearthed Arcana)