Psions, underpowered? Your experience?

[Caliber]

Grr ... its late and I don't feel like correcting my post.

Basicly, I agree. Psions are cool. Night.

 

[Roland Delacroix]

They suck wet farts out of dead pidgeons.

Always a joy to see other Cerebus fans on the boards. Good points too.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Mindfeeder weapons are kind of twinky.

A savant must be 6th level to use Cone of Sound, but I know what your meant.

 

[Plane Sailing]

An 8th level egoist that I threw at the party gave them terrible trouble. For the big fight he buffed himself thusly:

Claws of the Bear
Polymorph self to Troll form (reach, bear claws got bigger, more str and armour)
Animal Affinity - boost Str
Animal Affinity - boost Con
Duo-dimensional hand (overall his claws did 2d8+8 with a crit on 17-20)
Schism (the schismed mind manifested Body Adjustment each round as necessary from a power crystal to keep him going).

With a ring of counterspelling(dispel magic) to help keep his buffs in place he was a holy terror who killed one of the PC's before making a run for it.

One of my current players is an 8th Savant, and in his support role he probably saved lives last night with his inertial barrier on the party tank. His powers are

4th Inertial Barrier

3rd Cone of Sound, Dimension Slide

2nd Concussion, Animal Affinity, Body Adjustment

1st Featherfall, heat metal and some others I don't remember at present.

He now has a 20 Con, which he normally boosts with Animal Affinity, and he triggers Concussion powers as his most common form of attack (DC15, typically +6 or +7 on the roll so he gets them free a little over half the time). His Dex is pretty good, and also gets boosted by animal affinity, to help with ranged attacks.

(nb we houseruled concussion to be a ranged attack (not ranged touch, merely ranged) but with no saving throw and able to attack objects. We liken it to a psychic hammerblow. He could have achieved the same effect by using burning ray)

On the other hand, another player dropped out of the game. He had a Monk1/Seer6, and he felt cheated because the sorcerer could make more powerful "Booms" than he could, and he would just fall further and further behind. Forget the fact that he had deliberately opimised his character for AC (Wis armour from monk, Inertial armour feat, Dex bonus, expertise, tumbling... he had the highest AC of any character and was the one who was least often in serious danger of dying). So he optimised heavily for one thing and then bitches because he can't be as good as the Sorcerer who is still wandering around in (roughly) AC13. Tough life eh?

(although seers get it a bit rough in terms of 9th level powers - their only choices all suck up xps to use!)

Cheers

 

[Michael Tree]

Always a joy to see other Cerebus fans on the boards. Good points too.

I was wondering if anyone would get the reference.

 

[Tempuswolf]

If you can swing it, take Polymorph Self as a 4th level power or Metamorphosis as a 5th. Psionics doesn't require any components, so a psion could polymorph himself into a sparrow (for flight and incredible size and Dex bonuses to AC), a rock (for ubiquitousness and unobtrusiveness) or a girallon or stone giant (for sheer physical power) and still manifest powers freely.

But if your physical stats get lowered when changing into another body type, wouldn't you be unable to manifest some powers? For example, if you did change into a low STR & CON sparrow wouldn't you be unable to manifest your Psychometabolic and Psychokinetic powers?

 

[Michael Tree]

But if your physical stats get lowered when changing into another body type, wouldn't you be unable to manifest some powers? For example, if you did change into a low STR & CON sparrow wouldn't you be unable to manifest your Psychometabolic and Psychokinetic powers?

Use the secondary discipline rules from ITCK. My telepath who used this trick had Psychometabolism as a secondary discipline, so he used his Charisma stat for those powers instead of his Str.

Constitutions typically don't vary as much, and he didn't have many psychokinetic powers anyway.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

That egoist combo is very popular. One question... did he have trouble hitting targets?

 

[Henry]

What's your point? (Psi), can you find a psion that can Detect Magic? I didn't think so. Besides, I sure can find a wizard that can manifest Psychofeedback. A Wizard/Psion.

In the end, it's all the same. Just different dice. Flavor is really the only thing that separates the two. I don't dislike psionics. I just don't see it as better or worse than magic.

Actually, I can find a BUNCH of psions who can detect magic - under the default rules, psionics and magic are transparent, and they can detect magic the same way they detect psionics.

I also don't think psionics should be better or worse than magic, but as written in the PsiHB, they are MUCH worse than magic, for in my opinion unnecessary reasons. In fear of making them too powerful, almost every power is trumped by its equivalent magical effect.

ITCK by Bruce Cordell is a major step to make psions playable, rather than making them necessarily be the one-hit wonders they currently are compared to other classes.

 

[Galfridus]

I've had a psion PC in my game for about a year now and have found it to be a viable class.

I started off using straight psion rules, then switched to the ITCK variant psion and the ITCK upscaling house rule. The variant is more of a flexibility-booster than a power-booster, IMO.

The PC in question is a Savant who's currently 8th level. He has several powers which have been used to devastating effect: Mind Blast, Negate Psionics, Concussion, Control Body, and Inertial Barrier (which pretty much saved the entire party last session). None of this would be significantly different if I hadn't adopted the ITCK rules.

Control Body is a very unpleasant power that you don't hear much about: think about running the evil wizard through all the fighter's threat zones before having him stand motionless to take some more damage -- and that's if there's no handy cliff nearby.