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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Psion" data-source="post: 2011279" data-attributes="member: 172">The Psychic's HandbookThe Psychic's Handbook introduces a new system for psychic powers and characters for use with d20 System rules, and also includes notes and material which allow use of the book with d20 Modern. The book is written by Steve Kenson (author of the widely regarded Mutants & Mastermind, and one of my own favorites, the Shaman's Handbook, among others) and published by Green Ronin as part of their Master Class series of character oriented game supplements.The book is written to 3.5 (and Modern) standards. The book is not written assuming the use of the existing psionics material.A First LookThe Psychic's Handbook is an 80-page perfect-bound softcover book priced at $16.95.The cover of the book is illustrated by WotC alumni artist Todd Lockwood, and depicts a cloaked man with a moon-like mark on his hand, against a rather gothic looking backdrop including a moon matching the mark on his hand. The art is up to Lockwood's usual high standard.The interior is black and white and is illustrated by Drew Baker, Jonathon Kirtz, Kent Burles (a fast favorite of mine after green Ronin's Testament and Monsters of the Mind), and James Smith III. All the authors display great talent in this work.A Deeper LookThe book is arranged into four chapters: the Psychic (defining new classes), Psychic Skills, Psychic Feats, and Psychic Campaigns. My usual approach is to run down and evaluate the various chapters of a product in the order presented. As is sometimes the case, I feel that in that it is best to overview the system in general first.The system of psychic powers represented in this book is fundamentally what enthusiasts would call a "feats and skills" based system, i.e., it uses skills and feats as the basis for the power system instead of using separate systems such as the d20 System magic system does.Green Ronin has done their homework in conceiving this product. Skills & Feats systems for supernatural powers have been discussed on various gaming message boards, and various authors such and Ken Hood and Steve Miller have put forth versions of such systems on websites and ezines (like the now defunct D20 Weekly). Similar systems have even appeared in d20 products such as Star Wars' force system and the psionic system for the Shadowforce Archer setting for AEG's Spycraft. But never has a major d20 publisher taken it upon themselves to make such a system for general d20 System fantasy or d20 Modern. Until now.The system is fundamentally similar to those in Star Wars and Shadowforce Archer: A number of "enabler" feats (in this book, called psychic talent feats) when purchased, allow the character to purchase a number of psychic skills, which actually accomplish the supernatural effects. In many cases, the skills function like ordinary skills (albeit achieving extraordinary results) in that ranks contribute towards rolls related to tasks with the skill. In other cases, the ranks are used indirectly, such as to determine the duration of an effect.One common similarity with both of the aforementioned products is that in many cases, you generate a total and compare it to a table under the rank to derive effects, which means that for those skills, having the book (and referring to it) is pretty much a necessity. However, it is superior to the table-happy Star Wars force system in this aspect in that it does not do this for saving throws. Instead of using a table, it simply uses half of the characters ranks plus ability modifier to set save DCs, which is consistent with the scaling of saving throws typical to the d20 System and does not require a table reference.The system does use some common modifiers for most skills for mass and familiarity, where appropriate.The psychic talent feats include clairsentience, dimensional shift, psychic weapon, psychokinesis, psychometabolism, psychoportation, and telepathy. All but dimensional shift and psychic weapon allow access to multiple psychic talents. (It's also interesting that these five feats that allow multiple talents are exactly the same as the five psionic disciplines used in AD&D 2e psionics that are available to starting characters.)  In addition, all of these require the psychic ability feat to take in the first place, but also allows access to a few basic psychic skills.Using psychic skills costs strain. What exactly strain cost is largely a matter of GM choice. As a default, it is nonlethal damage. However, the campaigns chapter allows you to choose other ways of assessing the cost of strain, such as applying it as HP damage, ability damage, XP costs, or a newly created pool of "psychic energy points." This allows the GM to tweak the feel and impact of psychics on the campaign.Note above that the psychic talent feats only allow access to the psychic skills. They don't make them class skills. That's where we segue into chapter one, which introduces psychic classes.The Psychic is the central class of the book. The class is a 20 level core class, that starts out with the psychic ability feat, and a bonus psychic feat (which is probably a psychic talent feat to allow access to some psychic skills.) To pay for all those skills, the psychic gets 6 skill points per level base, and all psychic skills are treated as class skills. The class is a moderate BAB class with a good will save and d6 hit die.Beyond first level, the only real class ability the psychic gets are additional bonus psychic feats.The class presentation has all the expected trimming such as discussions of relations to other classes, typical roles, basic strengths, a starting character package, and so forth. The class also includes a discussion of multiclass characters, sample psychic characters in low, middle, and high level versions (as other Master Class books), and a contrast with d20 System psionics. Oddly, the book does not presume that you will be using one or the other, as I suspect will most often be the case.Also as with other Master Class books, this chapter includes a number of prestige classes supporting the subject class of the book. In this case, the classes include the beatmaster, firestarter, ghost stalker, psychic adept, and [/i]psychic healer[/i], all of which have class abilities which focus the psychics abilities towards a more specific pursuit.There are also two classes that don't directly support the psychic class.The mind hunter is a prestige class specializing in hunting and fighting psychics, probably most appropriate for settings in which such characters are regarded with suspicion or hatred.The modern psychic details an advanced class version of the psychic to facilitate the use of psychic abilities in d20 Modern. Unlike the core class psychic (and typical of supernatural classes in d20 Modern) characters cannot start in this class and must have certain prerequisites before entering it. The class itself receives a bonus psychic feat at every even level. This is a bit odd for a d20 Modern class which typically allows an ability at every level, but one might consider the good allotment of skill points and all psychic skills as class skills to be a sort of class ability in its own.Unfortunately, the modern psychic has the most editing problems. The class lacks a HD designation, as well action points, reputation and defense bonuses that are required for d20 Modern classes. Further, the class has an even number of skill points, which is a little out of line with the convention that skill point per level in d20 Modern is odd, accounting for the bonus skill points that humans receive. (There is already a web enhancement out on the Green Ronin site which addresses all of these problems except for the skill point problem.)The skills chapter is where the system struts its stuff. The skills generally resemble what would be spells or powers elsewhere in the d20 system. The potency varies in some cases according to the total of a roll or the ranks, but generally, the more potent the skill effect, the more strain it costs. The powers are pretty typical for what you would expect for psychic powers, such as domination and mind reading for telepathy, powers to drain life and abilities for psychometabolism, and so forth.Some skills require that you be in mental contact by use of a skill of the same name to use. This, along with the five basic psychic talents, shows a lot of homage or inheritance from AD&D 2e psionics systems.The feats chapter includes the aforementioned psychic talent feats along with a number of other feats useful to psychic characters. Similar to core D&D, there are metapsychic feats (which boost the capabilities of psychic skills at an additional strain cost) and item creation feats. There are also a number of other psychic feats that let provide the psychic character with bonuses as well as let them acheive other effects more specific than those provided by psychic skills (such as flight or curing diseases.)The fourth chapter, psychic campaigns, provides a variety of material that provide additional options as well as techniques for integrating it into campaigns and variations in the presented rules. This includes rules for psychic phenomena, eavesdropping, psychic equipment, as well as campaign material such as psychic factions and ideas for how to work psychic powers into a game.ConclusionsThere are those out there who, for whatever reason, been pining for an alternative to the official psionics systems. I am not one of those, but you know who you are, and I imagine you will be pleased with what you see.As mentioned, I saw a lot of 2e psionics in the basic ideas of this system. To it's credit, however, this system doesn't seem to have near the abusability and seems much more playable.The psychic class seems to me to have a slightly flatter power curve than most spellcasting and psionic classes in the d20 System, which is to say that it is slightly more potent at lower levels (albeit at the cost of nonlethal damage that spellcasters don't suffer), but doesn't seem to reach the same sort of apex of power at higher levels. The class also seems a little more customizable. A psychic skill with low skill ranks will correspond approximately to a low level spell, and a maxed out skill a high level spell. So by choosing your skill ranks, you pretty much pick the potency of your class abilities.I would not want to use this class alongside the existing d20 spellcasting classes, but it might fit well alongside more subtle variants like Kenson's own witch (from the Witch's Handbook.) I would feel more compelled, however, to use this as a d20 Modern supplement, where I think the feel the book conveys is a bit more appropriate.Overall Grade: B+ -Alan D. Kohler</blockquote>

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