Psionics: Balance and Integration

[Thanee]

Some powers/feats, which should be considered (some have been named already):

Energy Missile & Energy Stun --> 1:1 DC increase must be changed to 1:2, of course; also EM should be augmentable for additional targets and not have those automatically.

Energy Powers in general --> Might be reasonable to make the character choose one type of energy when learning the power, they allow a bit too much in terms of flexibility.

Dispel Psionics --> Should be completely non-augmentable and a Greater version added instead; both should be 100% equal to the arcane/divine variant.

Psionic Dominate --> It is way too easy to dominate a non-person. Should not be possible at all prior to 15th level.

Schism --> Well... there was a reason why they changed Haste.

Metamorphic Transfer --> I'd just ban it and use Assume Supernatural Ability from SS instead.

Overchannel --> Not sure, what to do with this one; it's cool from a flavor perspective, but the way the whole system works, allowing to manifest powers of a level higher than what you can cast normally on a regular basis seems pretty tough (though, the same can be said about Metamagic Rods, which are kinda broken, too ). The Wilder at least has some non-neglectible disadvantages to compensate for that power.

Quicken Psionics --> While Metapsionics do work a bit different to Metamagics, it still seems wrong to allow the spontaneously manifesting Psions to use this (spontaneously), but not the spontaneous spellcasters; this could, of course, also be changed on the spellcaster side with some house rule.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Rystil Arden]

Overchannel is fine because it cuts down on Metapsionic feat use at the same time if they use Talented, and otherwise they take a decent amount of damage each time.

 

[Bront]

The problem is that normal summon monster is terrible.

That I will agree with. Augment Summoning feats made them somewhat more worthwhile (+2 to hit, +2 dmg, +2 HP per HD), but it takes 2 feats to get to.

That's something I might fool around with on the mage side, not sure if simply adding an extra HD (or more depending on the level) to summoned creatures balences them out more, or over/ups them, or what.

I think locking the energy type and needing a feat to get an extra one is a good idea, not sure if locking all of them, or making each power chosen individualy is better, but that's better for flavor too.

I understand ultimately that there are tons of ways to throw off the balance. One of my players has had some realy bad experiences with unbalanced Psionics (Wilder using Mind Stab, another rough power being it's a scalable 1d10 1st level power, even with a will negation save), so I want to go into this with my eyes wide open.

Thanks again for all the input, keep it coming.

 

[Rystil Arden]

That I will agree with. Augment Summoning feats made them somewhat more worthwhile (+2 to hit, +2 dmg, +2 HP per HD), but it takes 2 feats to get to.

That's something I might fool around with on the mage side, not sure if simply adding an extra HD (or more depending on the level) to summoned creatures balences them out more, or over/ups them, or what.

I think locking the energy type and needing a feat to get an extra one is a good idea, not sure if locking all of them, or making each power chosen individualy is better, but that's better for flavor too.

I understand ultimately that there are tons of ways to throw off the balance. One of my players has had some realy bad experiences with unbalanced Psionics (Wilder using Mind Stab, another rough power being it's a scalable 1d10 1st level power, even with a will negation save), so I want to go into this with my eyes wide open.

Thanks again for all the input, keep it coming.

Mind Thrust is actually rather weak, thanks to being Mind-Affecting and Will Negates, but its a good backup power to have in case you ever fight something that you're sure will fail the Will save. My PCs were once very very disgusted with the Telepath NPC who manifested 3 Mind Thrusts for 17d10 damage each only to have them all do absolutely nothing.

 

[KarinsDad]

To my mind Astral Construct would be OK if they were hedged out by Protection from Evil like summoned critters. The fact that they can walk through that arcane defence without having any comparable generally-available weaknesses is a problem when considering all their other benefits. I've not seen them in play extensively though, so take that with a pinch of salt!

It is not Protection From Evil that prevents Constructs (and other psionic powers).

It's Lesser Globe of Invulnerability and Globe of Invulnerability.

A Wizard or Sorcerer with this spell is almost immune to psions in the Magic = Psionics settings.

Every psion is forced to take offensive and defensive powers all over again at high levels just to get past these spells.


Btw, I play a psion and although I have Astral Construct, I only pull one in about one combat in three or four. Part of the problem is (like Summoned Creatures) the short duration, but the other issue is making yourself a target by concentrating on the power for an entire round.

 

[gfunk]

It is not Protection From Evil that prevents Constructs (and other psionic powers).

It's Lesser Globe of Invulnerability and Globe of Invulnerability.

A Wizard or Sorcerer with this spell is almost immune to psions in the Magic = Psionics settings.

This is a great point that isn't often brought up. Even if a 20th level Psion is manifesting 9th level Astral Constructs, augmented to 20 PP, they are worthless in the face of the globe
spells. As KarinsDad also pointed out, globe spells prevent a lot of broken powers like energy stun, energy missile, and the like.

 

[Thanee]

Overchannel is fine because it cuts down on Metapsionic feat use at the same time if they use Talented, and otherwise they take a decent amount of damage each time.

It's ok with damage powers, yes, or other powers, which augment in a linear way (there it's simply added "caster level" and totally fine). But the problem arises, once you look at the powers, which augment to higher versions of itself (i.e. Astral Construct, Suggestion/Dominate, powers like that). Then it basically allows to manifest powers of a higher power level than what you can normally manifest on a regular basis. This would translate into a 10th level Sorcerer being able to cast 6th level spells, for example. The damage is just not enough of a balancing factor for this kind of power IMHO, especially it's not a limiting factor at all for powers used outside of combat (pretty much completely neglectible then).

Bye
Thanee

 

[Rystil Arden]

It's ok with damage powers, yes, or other powers, which augment in a linear way (there it's simply added "caster level" and totally fine). But the problem arises, once you look at the powers, which augment to higher versions of itself (i.e. Astral Construct, Suggestion/Dominate, powers like that). Then it basically allows to manifest powers of a higher power level than what you can normally manifest on a regular basis. This would translate into a 10th level Sorcerer being able to cast 6th level spells, for example. The damage is just not enough of a balancing factor for this kind of power IMHO, especially it's not a limiting factor at all for powers used outside of combat (pretty much completely neglectible then).

Bye
Thanee

Well, at least for the Gnome Shaper of my example who did indeed use Overchannel to summon higher version Astral Constructs, this didn't cause a problem.

 

[Thanee]

That can very well be. There are many factors influencing the effectiveness of the powers. Many of those are also highly campaign-specific.

In general psionics (or all rules for that matter) can or cannot be unbalanced (under- or overpowered in relation to an "average" rule) in any given campaign.

There certainly are some rules out there, which are more often unbalanced than not. Identifying those can only be a good thing and what I at least am speaking about are examples of rule pieces, which in my opinion are fairly likely to be unbalanced in any given campaign.

Specific examples from specific campaigns really do very little to "prove" anything, but give some small hints at least (so they are far from useless, even though many people here on the board seem to overvalue the usefulness of such specific examples, especially without having any knowledge of the accompanying campaign framework; this is also often a cause for the opposite, where people take specific examples as a base to argue, that a rule is broken, which then often was a result of a completely independant factor).

Anyways... it worked fine in your campaign, which is great, but it still *could* cause problems in a majority of the campaigns. That's what I meant (didn't really explain that in detail, admittedly ), when I listed it up there, that it *could* cause problems (not that it inevitably will do so) and so should be monitored with a bit of suspicion in mind at least.

Bye
Thanee

 

[KarinsDad]

It's ok with damage powers, yes, or other powers, which augment in a linear way (there it's simply added "caster level" and totally fine). But the problem arises, once you look at the powers, which augment to higher versions of itself (i.e. Astral Construct, Suggestion/Dominate, powers like that). Then it basically allows to manifest powers of a higher power level than what you can normally manifest on a regular basis. This would translate into a 10th level Sorcerer being able to cast 6th level spells, for example. The damage is just not enough of a balancing factor for this kind of power IMHO, especially it's not a limiting factor at all for powers used outside of combat (pretty much completely neglectible then).

Actually, OverChannel is over rated, especially at low level.

We have two players playing a psion in our group and both of us took OverChannel and the DM allowed us to revise our characters after two weeks because none of us were familiar with psionics and both of us got rid of it.

OverChannel can be pretty nice, but I think it is only useful at mid to higher levels. At low level, there are several problems with it:

1) The extra hit points of damage. With D4 hit points, a character just cannot handle many D8 damage situations.

2) The avoidance of problem #1 means taking Talented. So yes you can boost powers, but at the cost of two feats. That's pricey, even at mid or higher level. There is another way to avoid problem #1 and that is to use Vigor. However, this solution eats up PP faster and it takes an extra round to complete.

3) A problem with OverChannel that is not often remembered is the PP cost. A first level human psion with a 16 Int that uses OverChannel/Talented uses up 2/3rds of his points manifesting a single power. I am currently running a 6th level Psion and it is very easy to run out of PP in a given day. I cannot imagine how much faster I would run out of PP if I OverChanneled my powers.

4) Finally, a well designed Psion has to be more well tuned than a Sorcerer. There are just too few powers and feats available (I have no idea how people run Wilders ). Using up two feats and losing out on so many other versatile options is hard to justify, at least for me. If you take OverChannel/Talented, you give up a range of other abilities.


OverChannel is nice, but it is not uber. IMO.