Question RE: Psionics

[Pax]

I'm sure I could hunt down the answer with much downloading and reading of errata, etc, etc,.

But asking here might be much faster, as well as beig more conducive to general laziness!

Now, the question is this: WTH is up with Table 1-2 in the Psionics book?!?!?

Seriously;how ould you, for example, calculate the Psionic points for a 10th levelPsion, with a 20 in their governing attribute?

What about the same Psion, at 11th level?

...

It looks on the surface, to ME, like by going up a level, eventually you stop getting a bonus unless your attribute also climbs ... that's nuts!! A 20 attribute is worth a bonus for the first 10 levels, but when you hit 11th level, it's worth nothing, all of a sudden? OTOH, if those are points gained PER LEVEL .. then truly-high attributes would be ABUSIVE for a Psion to have.

Someone, please tell me what I'm getting wrong, here ...

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

If you give me your email address (send it to pbelcock@hotmail.com) I'll send you a file that makes it all easy.

It's a chart contained in a Microsoft Word document.

And Pax, you're wrong

 

[reiella]

Yep ya wrong hehe.

Like the table for Bonus Spells per day in the PHB, you get each item for a given stat up to your given level.

20 ab 10th level psion gets a bonus 3+3+5+7+9 power points, and the same at 11th.

PsiHB p 8, right column, 3rd paragraph: "The points are additive, thus, a 5th-level psion with a score of 18 in his key ability has 1+3+5 = 9 bonus power points. Likewise, an 8th-level psion iwth a score fo 15 in his key ability still gets the 1+3=4 bonus power points granted from earlier levels."

 

[Pax]

If you give me your email address (send it to pbelcock@hotmail.com) I'll send you a file that makes it all easy.

It's a chart contained in a Microsoft Word document.

And Pax, you're wrong

Well, I *knew* I had *something* wrong there, lol. Also, as amazing as this may sound to you -- I don't HAVE Microsoft Word on this machine, just Notepad and Write.

Reilla: thanks, much obliged; I *thought* that was probably the way it workded, but couldn't for the life of me FIND a passage taling about Table 1-2 very clearly, or in fact much at all.

Even that way, a high attribute at high levels can be ... on the edge of cheese. I've been tinkering with end-stage (2th level, just this side of Epic) characters, and for the Psion, the governing attribute easily reaches 32. A 19th level psion (ECL +1 race 8) with a 32 governing attribute gets nearly HALF of his per-day points, solely from their bonus.

*shrug* But if that's the way it works ... *sigh* ...

I may have to house-rule it to give PP's commensurate with how many spells of each level you would get, multiplied by the base cost to manifest a psionic power of that level, and see which vrsion (original, or mine) gives MORE ... and use the OTHER one.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Pax, I'm going to tell you this as a fellow psionics player. You don't want to go down that route. Psions get way too few power points. They get about half of the equivalent as mages do. Furthermore, if you have a high stat, you actually get less of a bonus than a mage does.

At www.montecook.com you can find a d20 supplement called If Thoughts Could Kill. It's written by the author of the Psionics Handbook, and has fixes for the PsiH's most notorious issues, such as MAD, low power points, few powers known, etc.

 

[Staffan]

At low ability levels, psions get bonus power points for stats that equal what a spellcaster would get if you converted him to power points. However, at higher ability scores, where a spellcaster would start getting two bonus spells instead of just one, psions just get two more power points instead of the equivalent of one more power.

For example, a 10th level seer with Wisdom 16 would get 1+3+5 bonus power points, the equivalent of one 1st, one 2nd and one 3rd level power. A 10th level sorcerer with Charisma 16 would get one 1st, one 2nd and one 3rd level bonus spell.

On the other hand, a 10th level seer with Wisdom 24 would get 3+5+7+7+9 power points - equivalent of one 2nd, one 3rd, two 4th and one 5th level power. A sorcerer would instead get two 1st, two 2nd, two 3rd, one 4th and one 5th level power. The psion sort of trades in all the second bonus powers he should get for one bonus power of one level higher (in this case, one each of 1st, 2nd and 3rd level for one 4th level power). If the bonus power points had worked just like the bonus spells, the seer would instead get 2+6+10+7+9 power points - he "loses" three points.

In other words, the psion has it bad enough already when it comes to daily oomph, especially when you consider that a 10th level psion's regular power points per day work out to a spell progression of 13 0th level powers, 4 1st, 2 2nd, 2 3rd, 2 4th and 1 5th. A wizard would have 4/4/4/3/3/2 and a sorcerer would have 6/6/6/6/5/3.

Heck, even if the psion uses all his power points on his highest level spells, he can only do four of them per day (with enough for a 4th level spell afterwards) - sure, one more than the sorcerer, but the sorcerer has four more 4th level spells, not to mention six each at level 1-3. This is especially nasty because the sorcerer's spells remain useful a lot longer than the psion's powers, especially the damaging ones (the sorcerer's fireball does 10d6 damage at 10th level, the psion's Whitefire does 5d4).

But, you say, the psion can put out HUGE number of low-level powers per day! Not really. The 10th level psion, with 43 PP, can manifest 14 2nd level powers per day. The sorcerer can cast 20 2nd level powers. The only levels where the psion can output more per day than the sorcerer are 0th and 1st (56 and 43, respectively, whereas the sorcerer has 32 and 26).

Oops, this seems to have turned into one of my rants about how psionics got the shaft again...

 

[Pax]

Oops, this seems to have turned into one of my rants about how psionics got the shaft again... [/B]

Wow.

Well if it's any consolation, you've converted me. Now I'm going to retool the blasted thing to a table which DOES give them the same bonus as a normal spellcaster, and I might house rule the base PP of the Psion and Psychic Warrior classes to more closely mirror what the core classes get for spell progression.

Y'see, I've yet to find a group that will USE the Psionics rules; the GMs're all afraid it'll be unbalancingly munchkin (hah!), so noone's yet let me TRY the classes ... so obviously, the true SHORTAGE of PP never occurred to me. Silly me, I *trusted* WOTC to have balanced it appropriately to the core classes, or else to have OVERpowered it.

Not to have UNDERpowered it. Looks like someone used a preemptive nerf-stick on the Psion, to -forestall- claims of munchiness. 8P

Then again ... WOTC seems predisposed -against- point-buy systems in general; the point-buy system for character attributes, if you use their guidelines ... the attribute ranges you can get from it at "normal" power level are 1-2 points low ACROSS THE BOARD compared with what you'd get rolling the dice the normal way. So it may be more of the same ... a misconception that point-spending-based versatility increases the power HUGELY, and nees to be reigned in severely as a result. 8P

 

[spunky_mutters]

Pax: I think you're on the right track. There are fewer PPs granted because it DOES increase versatility greatly. Being able to spend freely does need to be compensated for.

Compare the Wizard and the Sorcerer. Sorcerer gets spells 1 level later than the Wizard, and gets to know less spells in total in exchange for the versatility of cast-at-will. If you take psionic powers as being the next step in versatility you can see why they have one more level of penalties, if you will, to compensate for the increased utility that they can make of what they have.

 

[Staffan]

Compare the Wizard and the Sorcerer. Sorcerer gets spells 1 level later than the Wizard, and gets to know less spells in total in exchange for the versatility of cast-at-will. If you take psionic powers as being the next step in versatility you can see why they have one more level of penalties, if you will, to compensate for the increased utility that they can make of what they have.

The problem is that when compared to a sorcerer, the psion has several levels of penalties: less oomph per day, multiple ability dependency, lower-quality damage powers, and vulnerability to psionic attacks (psionic combat is a liability, not an asset). They also know slightly fewer powers than a sorcerer knows spells (a 10th level psion knows 7/4/3/3/2/1 powers, a sorcerer knows 9/5/4/3/2/1) but on the other hand they get some spell effects via feats (Inertial Armor = Mage Armor) and some powers are more flexible than the equivalent spells (Animal Affinity vs. Bull's Strength/Cat's Grace/Endurance)..

They do have two abilities that slighty mitigate against these (better skills, and can use powers in armor - mind you, they don't get any armor proficiencies), plus that they get access to certain powers at a lower level than arcanists (mostly mind-affecting stuff), but I still think they come out behind.

IMC, I have removed psionic combat (I am adding a 2nd level single-target stunning power and a 5th level mind blast equivalent), and I'm using the "Secondary disciplines" and "Power scaling" optional rules from If Thoughts Could Kill. It will be interesting to see if that makes psions worthwhile.

 

[spunky_mutters]

I have no great love for psionic combat, and I think you raise some good points Staffan. I tend to err on the side of caution when modifying class features. It's always easier to bump things up if it isn't working out for your players than it is to take it away.

I think there are a lot of options for developing psions, so I would worry about game balance issues if I house rule to make their lives easier.

I'm always interested to hear what works for people, though.