Psions and mind control: how often do you hit?

[bgaesop]

Psions have a lot of cool mind controlling powers. I can think of a million ways to use them for roleplaying, they fit my character concept perfectly, and they seem like they have the potential to be really fun in combat. There's only one problem, though.

Take the level 3 at will Betrayal, for instance. You control someone's mind and make them smack their teammate. Awesome, right? But how often does it work? You have to roll once to hit the person whose mind you want to control, who then has to roll again to actually smack their teammate. That's twice the opportunities to miss, and if either roll misses the entire attack is pointless. And how often do monsters have good basic attacks, anyways? I actually don't know on that one. It seems like it could be fun to have in case you actually manage to get Orcus to smack a wraith, but for the most part it just seems like the odds of it doing anything are too low to be worth using. At least with stuff that Dominates you get to keep them from doing anything, even if they don't hit anyone.

Is that how it works out? People who've played Psions, how does it end up going for you? Do you use it all the time, hold it for the aforementioned Orcus scenario, or just never use it at all?

 

[Stalker0]

Someone did an analysis on these kind of powers a while back and did find them pretty lacking for exactly the reason you've stated.

the counterpoint is that the primary attack of monsters can often do things a players attack cannot...though I could always see adding a +2 attack clause or something of the sort.

 

[bgaesop]

>though I could always see adding a +2 attack clause or something of the sort.

By this do you mean making the power read "make a basic attack with a +2 bonus to hit"? Because if so, the Psion powers I've read already do that, only it's +Cha. Or did you mean in addition to that?

And how lacking? So lacking as to not be worth using ever, or only certain circumstances, or just not ideal in a minmaxing sense?

 

[Aulirophile]

Well, Skirmishers do a lot of damage. That is their whole job. Brutes do a lot of damage when the hit, they generally have a lowish +hit, but this adds +cha to the attack roll, which is a 4+ boost. The actually hit slides them, so you can force grant CA some of the time, so 6+ to the hit.

Yeah, that strikes me as a pretty good power. And controllers should always optimize for +hit anyway. And Will is the lowest average NAD of all monsters who aren't solos. Would this be useful against a solo? Not so much.

So wait till you see something do a lot of damage with a single attack, then use this power on that monster.

 

[Aegeri]

Actually some of what you said is no longer true. Monsters attacks have far improved with the new damage expressions and general design in MM3. In addition brutes now have +5 vs. AC accuracy, so aren't as chronically inept at hitting the broad side of a barn anymore. These powers aren't quite as useful though as others, but you can use betrayal to trigger defender marks as well for a further immediate interrupt attack.

 

[babinro]

These kinds of attacks are extremely weak while at the same time being very fun. The monster attack against its friend should either automatically be successful, or have some significant benefit to compensate (such as a hit means they critical their friend who was in no way prepared for that kind of an attack).

 

[Kingreaper]

Monster basic attacks can be rather effective.

Getting a bodyguard to mark his ally, and give him ongoing damage, while taking damage due to being marked himself, is fecking awesome.

Managing it four times in a row, combined with ghost sound to make it sound like the monster is announcing his betrayal, was epic fun