Revised Metamind

[KarinsDad]

One of my players wanted to play a Metamind, but of course, the core version is very lame. In fact, unplayable. I didn't want to change the core version a lot, but I did want to go with the same concept of a lot more PP, slightly less powers.

So, here is my version that I gave to my player as an option. I hope other DMs can use it.


Level 1, 10: no manifesting class gain.

Levels 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9: manifesting class gain.

Gain "Lesser Font" at 1st level, one round per manifester level. So, one round at Metamind 1. Two rounds at Metamind 2. One minute at Metamind level 10. But, the PP from the Lesser Font are limited to 1 PP per manifester level unlike the Level 10 Font which is PP limited only to what a PC can manifest in a single round (and it replaces Lesser Font at that point).

The rest of the class is the same.

The Metamind compared PP-wise and ability-wise with a same level Psion, this becomes (for a level 7 Psion taking Metamind at level 8):

8: 56 58, Lesser Font, lose one manifester level, i.e. - 2 powers, ~2 PP less for int, etc.
9: 82 72
10: 116 88, - feat
11: 147 106
12: 182 126
13: 224 147
14: 271 170
15: 317 195, - feat
16: 374 221
17: 239 250, + unlimited PP Font, lose one manifester level, - 1 power, a few less PP for int
18: 263 280
19: 294 311
20: 324 343

Note: These PPs do not include Int modifiers which are a few points higher for the Psion (due to one and eventually two higher manifester levels). Levels 8 through 16 include the max PP from the Lesser Font which is known. Levels 17 through 20 do not since the PP could be much higher each round.

As can be seen, he gains more PP every level (except 8). Level 8 is a dip, but that's the price he pays for entering the PrC. At level 9, it is only about one more max PP power per day. At level 16, it is nearly 10 more max PP powers per day. Course, most of those are in one encounter. And level 17 allows for some real PP power output. But still, this works much better than the Metamind in the book which is out and out not useable.

And, he still loses 2 feats and 3 powers to do so and manifesting levels for powers which make them slightly weaker, slightly less range, etc. But, the book rules are not balanced and nobody (who looks at the math) ever takes a Metamind. With my rules, it's feasible to take one. More PP, less feats, powers, and manifesting level is slightly weaker than a straight Psion.

Power to burn baby!

I think something like this is what it should have been in the first place.

 

[Nifft]

So he'd keep all the silly "Free Manifesting (useless) 1/day" stuff? Your player knows those are basically useless, right?

Honestly I wonder how much better the class would be if it required Psionic Body (instead of Psicrystal Affinity), cost two manifester levels (at 1st and 6th), and gave nothing but 8 levels of manifesting and a free Psionic Talent feat every level.

More power points than the Psion and tougher than the Psion, but fewer powers, boring feats, and lower manifester level.

Anyway. Your version looks balanced.

Cheers, -- N

 

[KarinsDad]

So he'd keep all the silly "Free Manifesting (useless) 1/day" stuff? Your player knows those are basically useless, right?

Useless??? Hardly.

I guess a DM could rule that "Free Manifesting" cannot be augmented, but that's not exactly called out explicitly. In fact, the opposite is implied:

This benefit applies only to the power point cost of an unaugmented power. Points spent to augment a power and an experience point cost (if any) must be paid as normal.

Mechanically, it is a bit of an annoyance keeping track of them. Personally, I'm going to tell the player that if he wants to, he can just throw those PP into his normal PP pool and not worry about it (this player, however, loves bookkeeping, and already has 3 or 4 Cognitive Crystals, so I suspect that he will just run Free Manifesting as written).

I agree that mechanically, it is unnecessary bookkeeping. But, the abilities themselves are not useless. Mechanically cumbersome, but not useless. Maybe you were looking for a different word.

And in fact, the player in my game purposely wanted the Free Manifesting because of all of the low point powers he uses. That one ability caught his eye to the point that he was contemplating the Metamind as written because of it (he had not done the math, hence, the reason I put together this revised version for him, when he saw how crippled the book metamind was, he was kind of glad I revised it).

If nothing else, Free Manifesting got the player interested in the Metamind and that alone meant it was not useless (they just wrote it up poorly).

I suspect that if I took Free Manifesting away, he would not be interested in the PrC as much. Leaving it in did two things: fewer changes to the PrC, kept my player interested. For my player, Free Manifesting is similar to free Cognitive Crystals.


He is playing a Shaper and he throws out 1 PP or 3 PP powers a lot.

Examples:

1 PP Entangling Ectoplasm (and of course, the 3 PP version, the 5 PP version, etc. as levels increase and opponents get bigger)

1 PP Astral Constructs to flank a foe (not to do damage, just to give flank bonus to a PC, this is especially useful against Large and bigger opponents because the AC just appears next to it, it does not need to go through a threat range and the AC can give flank bonus to multiple PCs)

1 PP Astral Construct for all kinds of things (walk through a room suspected of traps, fly to various places to pick things up, etc.)

1 PP Crystal Shard to disrupt a Mirror Image image (and if it hits the caster, everyone knows which one is the caster for the next half round until the caster can move again)

In fact, he more or less designed his PC to use low PP powers a lot. Part of his background encouranges him to not take a lot of (augmentable) high PP using powers and especially certain powers like Energy powers. I thought this was smart in that he can still Nova a little, but he designed the PC to self limit this so that he would not get in low PP trouble a lot. I run a fairly high combat level game (currently running Eyes of the Lich Queen which has ~40 encounters in it, many of them major) and the players are cognizant of conserving resources.

Here is his 6th level power list. I'll bold the ones where Free Manifesting works just fine because the power is rarely augmented: Astral Construct, Crystal Shard, Entangling Ectoplasm, Force Screen, Inertial Armor, Vigor, Knock Psionic, Levitate Psionic, Psionic Repair Damage, Share Pain, Swarm of Crystals, Dark Vision Psionic, Time Hop.

Most of his powers work just fine with Free Manifesting.

In the near future, he is planning on getting Schism where low PP additional powers will be used a lot. I know that literally according to the rules, Schism uses the PP reserve and Free Manifesting does not. But as DM, I'm ruling that the intent of Free Manifesting was for the manifester to fire off free powers, regardless of how he manifests them. So, the PC will be allowed (in my game) to Free Manifest with Schism (compared to other psionic combos, this one is pretty mild). Course, he still cannot use Schism for low PP ACs.

I think that was the intent and even if it wasn't, I'm positive the intent is to give the PC the equivalent of extra PP per day.

Anyway. Your version looks balanced.

Thanks. I was going for the exact same PrC with the fewest number of changes. I was looking for the flavor of the PrC where the player could actually remember the few changes and could still look up the PrC in the book without having to resort to some writeup somewhere that could get lost. I don't like totally heavily rewriting PrCs because I think it loses a lot. I prefer tweaking book writeups.

 

[Nifft]

(this player, however, loves bookkeeping, and already has 3 or 4 Cognitive Crystals, so I suspect that he will just run Free Manifesting as written).

There's really no answer to that -- if he like unnecessary bookkeeping, hitting the class with a holy design hammer of elegance +5 won't improve it for his purposes.

There are other ways to implement the bookkeeping which aren't unnecessary -- I had a version kicking around which gave daily free metapsionic uses -- no need to expend Focus or pay the cost, so the cost could be balanced but the ability still had uses -- and it made the "meta" part make sense, too. I could drag it out if you care. But you seem happy with what you've got, and if your player is happy, there's no sense in "fixing" stuff.

I too love 1-pp uses for psionics, which are important, given how few PP the Psion gets.

My favorite trick is Crystal Shard + Psionic Shot and eventually Greater Psionic Shot. (Also Point Blank Shot and Psionic Meditation.) Takes a lot of feats, but you basically got the effect of a Reserve feat, before those existed.

Cheers, -- N

 

[KarinsDad]

There's really no answer to that -- if he like unnecessary bookkeeping, hitting the class with a holy design hammer of elegance +5 won't improve it for his purposes.

Unnecessary??? You keep using words that don't quite seem to convey what you mean.

This is no different than charges from dojres. You use up a charge, you check it off. Do you consider checking off charges for a dojre to be unneccessary bookkeeping?

It is necessary to do the bookkeeping and check it off. It doesn't matter how the player gets the mechanics of using the extra power. Dojre. Cognizant Crystal, times per day, PP, etc.

Getting extra goodies per day (or per item) means checking off when those goodies are used. If one writes:

Fast Manifesting 1: 3
Fast Manifesting 2: 1

on the character sheet, it is just as easy to drop the 3 to a 2 on the sheet as it is to drop charges on a wand on the sheet of PP on the sheet or hit points on the sheet.

There are other ways to implement the bookkeeping which aren't unnecessary -- I had a version kicking around which gave daily free metapsionic uses -- no need to expend Focus or pay the cost, so the cost could be balanced but the ability still had uses -- and it made the "meta" part make sense, too. I could drag it out if you care. But you seem happy with what you've got, and if your player is happy, there's no sense in "fixing" stuff.

What you are selling is not Metamind. If you read the textual description, Metamind is all about PP.

My solution is all about PP, just like the version in the book (which did a crappy job of it).

You seem to want to change the concept of Metamind to do a lot of other cool stuff. If you want to do other cool stuff like you suggest, why not make up a PrC concept revolving around that? Why try to shoehorn Metamind into something it is not supposed to be?

I too love 1-pp uses for psionics, which are important, given how few PP the Psion gets.

My favorite trick is Crystal Shard + Psionic Shot and eventually Greater Psionic Shot. (Also Point Blank Shot and Psionic Meditation.) Takes a lot of feats, but you basically got the effect of a Reserve feat, before those existed.

Precisely. This was one path I suggested to the player, but he nixxed it.

 

[Nifft]

Unnecessary??? You keep using words that don't quite seem to convey what you mean.

From my perspective, he's choosing between more actual power points vs. a bunch of things that emulate power points, but require separate tracking.

Unnecessary in that the other things don't buy him much that he couldn't do anyway, and are more complicated (not more complex, just more complicated) than the alternatives. Craft Cognizance Crystal is IMHO a stinky feat, but it's cheaper than losing two manifester levels.

What you are selling is not Metamind. If you read the textual description, Metamind is all about PP.

That's true. I'm "selling" something that has the property your player expressed a desire in keeping (extra stuff to track) but also has a property which I find appealing (PrC ability does something you can't otherwise do).

But again, if your player likes the stuff I consider terribly inelegant, there's no reason to fix that stuff.

The only thing to fix might be his perception that everyone needs a PrC. It's common in the spellcasting world, because their PrCs are frankly overpowered (for Clerics and Wizards, not so much Druids). It's also common in the Fighter world, because as we all know, Fighters suck at high levels.

Psions do just fine without any PrC at all. And the Psionic PrCs are depressingly balanced when compared with their Arcane counterparts. (Slayer excepted, but even that's no great shakes compared to the Abjurant Champion & Knight Phantom.)

Why try to shoehorn Metamind into something it is not supposed to be?

Because as-written, it was so terrible, I felt no desire to keep anything except the name. The name is cool.

Cheers, -- N

 

[KarinsDad]

From my perspective, he's choosing between more actual power points vs. a bunch of things that emulate power points, but require separate tracking.

Unnecessary in that the other things don't buy him much that he couldn't do anyway, and are more complicated (not more complex, just more complicated) than the alternatives. Craft Cognizance Crystal is IMHO a stinky feat, but it's cheaper than losing two manifester levels.

More complicated but not more complex. You do realize that those are synonyms.

Yes, in the world of PP. Keeping track of different forms of PP in multiple different is slightly more time consuming. But, it's not complicated.

PS. He took CCC because for him it is cool.

That's true. I'm "selling" something that has the property your player expressed a desire in keeping (extra stuff to track) but also has a property which I find appealing (PrC ability does something you can't otherwise do).

First, what you were selling was "daily free metapsionic use". That has nothing to do with a Metamind.

Second, using more PP per day than a Psion can do without crafting items to do so IS "something you can't otherwise do".

Third, the player did not express a desire in keeping extra stuff to track. I said he loved bookkeeping, but by that I meant that he loves to keep track of all of the elements of his PC. He's into his PC and all aspects of it. Lots of players are not. I did not say that he loves to add new additional bookkeeping elements. So, we might be mis-communicating there.

He expressed a desire to gain ways to manifest more powers per day.

I think you are stressing the bookkeeping aspect of this out of proportion, just to support a POV that Metaminds should do stuff other than more powers per day. A POV which is not matched by the description of Metamind.

If you want a cool new PrC with MetaPsionic powers, call him a MetaPsionic. Don't call him a Metamind. You are bastardizing the original concept of MetaMind when you do that.

But again, if your player likes the stuff I consider terribly inelegant, there's no reason to fix that stuff.

True. But, it's not THAT inelegant. I think thou dost protest too much. It is no more inelegant than keeping track of charges on a wand or times per day for any other daily item or ability. Bread and butter stuff in DND.

The only thing to fix might be his perception that everyone needs a PrC. It's common in the spellcasting world, because their PrCs are frankly overpowered (for Clerics and Wizards, not so much Druids). It's also common in the Fighter world, because as we all know, Fighters suck at high levels.

Who said that he thought "everyone needs a PrC"? Now you are making stuff up.

Yes, he looked into PrCs. Yes, he expressed desire in Metamind. He wouldn't be an involved player if he didn't. He has not taken it. He might not take it (he is on the fence). If he does take it, it won't be until 11th level (after the 10th level bonus feat).

Maybe the only thing to fix might be your perception that feats (CCC)and PrCs (Metamind that can only get extra PP equivalent and not other cool abilities) suck if they are not abilities you yourself would play.

Because as-written, it was so terrible, I felt no desire to keep anything except the name. The name is cool.

Ah, so you threw out the concept. That's cool. I personally like the concept and was disappointed that the implementation did not match the potential of the concept.

You should call it something slightly else though if you are going to throw out not just the specific abilities, but the entire PrC concept as well. Just so people do not get confused.

Something like MetaPsionic Metamind.

 

[Nifft]

More complicated but not more complex. You do realize that those are synonyms.

They can be used thus, but they need not be used thus. Smart folks like us can also distinguish between them quite usefully. The game of Go can be quite complex, but is not complicated. Arithmetically intensive tasks like balancing accounting books can be very complicated, but are not complex. Now that you know the context, do you understand what I was trying to say?

Well, whatever. I feel attacked for trying to help you.

I think we're done here.

Ciao, -- N

 

[KarinsDad]

They can be used thus, but they need not be used thus. Smart folks like us can also distinguish between them quite usefully. The game of Go can be quite complex, but is not complicated. Arithmetically intensive tasks like balancing accounting books can be very complicated, but are not complex. Now that you know the context, do you understand what I was trying to say?

I always understood what you were trying to say. I just commented on the fact that you were not saying it appropriately (and are still not, the rules of Go are neither complex nor complicated, but the decisions in Go are very complex and complicated).

Complicated does NOT mean tedious or unneccessary or intensive. It means complex or difficult to understand.

Fast Manifest is not useless (or at least you have not illustrated how).

The bookkeeping on Fast Manifest is not unnecessary. It might be more tedious to do it via FM, but it is still necessary to do it is some way.

You seem to be using your own definition of words.

Well, whatever. I feel attacked for trying to help you.

Well, whatever. I felt your very first comment of "silly Free Manifesting (useless) 1/day stuff" was not trying to help. In fact, it felt lika a bit of an attack on my design right off the bat. You called them useless, stated it as a known fact, and then never once illustrated how.

It seems that you cannot tolerate a vanilla Metamind whose only gain is to get to use powers more often per day, and have attacked, my player's preferences, my keeping of FM in my design, and my lack of enthusiasm for your design comments.

I don't consider that help. I consider it criticism.

I think we're done here.

Agreed.

 

[Nifft]

Oooo! You can't leave such tempting material and expect me to leave it alone, though.

I always understood what you were trying to say. I just commented on the fact that you were not saying it appropriately (and are still not, the rules of Go are neither complex nor complicated, but the decisions in Go are very complex and complicated).

This is so marvelously instructive.

See, I didn't say "the rules of Go". I said "the game of Go". Scroll up and look right now. You even quoted that line, so you really have no excuse to get that wrong.

Regarding all the other earlier stuff, I really think you need to read more charitably. If you understand, don't play dumb. It's not going to improve your point -- and I'm not sure what psychological need it could possibly fill.

Well, whatever. I felt your very first comment of "silly Free Manifesting (useless) 1/day stuff" was not trying to help. In fact, it felt lika a bit of an attack on my design right off the bat.

I did attack it. But you didn't design that part, unless you are Bruce Cordell.

Ciao, -- N