Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Messageboard Golem" data-source="post: 2008143" data-attributes="member: 18387">Let me start off by saying I have to judge the new "psionics" system by the other material out for 3e and by the 2e psionics system.   In 2e, psionicists recieved even at higher levels a small number of powers compared to the number of spells a wizard or priest recieved.  Most spells scaled based on level.  In exchange for not having this psionicists recieved the ability to scale these powers at the cost of spending more PSP's.   In 3e psions recieve a comparable number of powers to the number of spells a sorcerer recieves.  Most spells still scale in 3e.  Powers in 3e have nearly no scaling based on level, and only by taking upgraded powers can an individual power give the appearence of scaling.  This leaves a psion with the choice of having a far fewer number of powers, with a faked ability to scale them, or a wide range of powers, most of which will be worthless in most situations (Unless you like spending adventures beating on normal rodents with a 10th level character).   In 2e a psionicist could be liked to a rogue.  A rogue would not win a toe to toe fight against a fighter, a psionicist would not win a spell vs. power fight against a wizard.  For the rogue and psionicist to be their most effective they had to strike unexpectedly, otherwise they were greatly overmatched.  Psionic powers had no telltale signs of their use until it was to late.   In 3e a psion loses the option of striking unexpectedly because of powers now give some display that will generally warn anyone in the area, including the target.   In 2e a psionicist required 3 prime requisite stats which aided in using their powers.   Even if these were at the minimums for the class the psionicist was able to perform as well as a wizard with similar stats.   In 3e a psion in order to match the potential of a sorcerer with a single high stat in their single prime stat requires all 6 stats to be that high.   This means only a powergamer can be as effective as a normal sorcerer.   In 2e a psionicist was as effective in their own way as any other class.   In 3e a psion is only at their strongest against another psion and then they are given an additional vulnerability because the psion they are facing is at their strongest.   After talking with the auther, Bruce Cordell, by email I was left with the impression that he did not use psionics in 2e and had never even read the book.  His justifications for how things turned out were disappointing to say the least.   When I asked why the powers were made into 10 levels with no scaling he answered that in order to balance things it had to be done that way to begin with, and it would seem sneaky change it to be similar to what existed before after doing that.   My response here is that while it may seem sneaky, it would also make the powers a versatile enough to be effective because as the system is where sorcerers have scaling spells they only need to learn once, psions must take multiple powers to have appear to have a single one that scales.   When I asked why psions were so crippled against non-psionic characters Bruce responded that it was because of how unbalanced psionicists were in 2e and he also gave the example of how strong mindflayers were still in 3e.   The first part of his response here I take as evidence he did not read and understand the 2e psionics handbook, and the second part my response to is the mindflayer is a monster that is meant to be feared.  Maybe fighters shouldn't be able to use weapons because of how powerful giants are with them?  Maybe wizards shouldn't have spells because of how powerful liches are?  Maybe rogues shouldn't be able to sneak and hide because of how strong invisible stalkers are?  I won't bother mentioning where this line of thinking would leave us if it was used.   Overall, as you can probably guess, I'm extremely disappointed in the book.  This is the first TSR product I have ever considered a waste of money, hopefully future products will not be at the poor quality of work.</blockquote>

Verification