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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dandu" data-source="post: 5518753" data-attributes="member: 85158">A poorly played wizard is inferior to a well played psion. However, a well played wizard is generally held to be superior to a well played psion.How well played was the wizard? Did he spend all of his time casting Fireball, or did he prefer Planar Binding and Magic Jar?A Sorcerer with the Energy Substitution feat and spells such as Orb of Fire, Acid Breath, and Melf's Unicorn Arrow is in roughly the same situation, and they're far from broken.Blasting is in general a suboptimal use of resources for casters (there's a reason why so many people ban Evocation at the drop of the hat) so having a capable blaster isn't broken. Unless you're dealing several thousand damage per spell.Speaking of which, did your group enforce the "THOU SHALT NOT SPEND MORE POWER POINTS ON A POWER THAN THINE MANIFESTER LEVEL" commandment in the XPH? Because not knowing that rule leads to a lot of misconceptions about the power of psionics.Experienced players like myself and the optimizers of Brilliant Gamologists (many of whom are from the old Gleemax Charop forum) generally agree on two things.1. Psionics is powerful, but not broken.2. Arcane magic is more capable of wrecking a game like nothing else.Not that you can't break the game with psionics, but you can do it much easier as as wizard. There's actually a thread on Gleemax dedicated to debunking the belief that psionics is overpowered entitled "<a href="http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/18833134/Myth:_The_XPH_is_overpowered" target="_blank">Myth: The XPH Is Overpowered</a>". Quite the interesting read. They even address some of the the things you brought up, such as:"Myth 6: Energy powers are overpoweredAnswer:  While there are four versions of every energy power, one for cold,  fire, electricity and sonic each, the fact is that no matter which  version you use, you are still using an energy type, which many  creatures become immune to in later levels. While the Psion does have  the versatility of 4 options, fire, cold, electricity, and sonic, the  two strongest, fire and cold, are also the two most commonly resisted or  immune. Electricity is another that is a common immunity, and sonic is  balanced by decreasing the damage per die. The option of Force powers  tends to halve the damage output of the Energy powers, and comes in much  fewer choices.Some argue that the fact that Psionic characters  can decide on the fly what energy to use is unbalanced, but the problem  with this argument is that the Psionic classes suffers from extreme lack  of options. They have very few choices for powers. The Psion only stays  slightly ahead of the Sorcerer until later levels, when the Sorcerer  has more spells known than the Psion has powers known, and the Wilder  has even fewer than that. By giving this flexibility, it keeps the Psion  from being a "one trick pony" and making their limited options entirely  useless in the wrong situation. The wizard can counter this by  preparing new spells (given enough time, granted), but the Psion does  not have this option."Now, I can't vouch for Bacris' optimization cred personally, but Khan the Destroyer seems to agree with him. Khan the Destroyer is, incidentally, the <a href="http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19869366/The_most_powerful_character._EVER." target="_blank">guy who created Pun-Pun</a>.</blockquote>

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