I've picked up a lot of the 3.5 complete books through used book stores for pretty cheap, but that's one I do not have, largely because I've never played a psionic PC. Of course I've had some insane, psionic githyanki looming in my current campaign, so had pondered picking that up. That bad?
Comments regarding CPsi include "Wow, they didn't even know how psionics works," "Wow, did they even have an editor," and "Wow, did they just ask the people making it to ensure psionics can never touch wizards and clerics?"
Example: The lurk class. It's designed as a sort of psionic assassin, only as a base class. Ignoring the huge faults in it mechanically, such as a skill monkey with only 4+ skill points and no innate trapfinding, we come across two big problems.
1) Lurk DC for all their abilities is 10+int modifier. That's it. No +class, no +1/2 class. Just 10+int modifier. And that's for ALL their abilities. See the problem there?
2) The Lurk is described as having the reach ability. It's listed
more then once. Only the ability itself is never explained. WotC eventually answered what it does: Nothing. It was cut. Only they
never removed it from the lists and tables.
Example: Practiced Manifestor. They took the practiced spellcaster feat and changed one or two words. Ok, but here's the problem: the feat says "Does not increase your powers per day."
Uh. What?
Powers per day?
Oh good grief, they really did just
literally copy-paste Practiced Spellcaster and replaced the words.
Those are just three examples of CPsi really screwed up editing wise. There's a
lot more. Now include the fact that most of the feats are all
the same thing - add x weapon to your mind blade. Thanks. We couldn't get just
one feat that says that? You had to make 4? Oh hey, look, you made a feat for each and every racial ability to add 3 more uses per day.
That couldn't be just one feat? - some really, really iffy fluff on the new classes, and the fact that, of the three new base classes, two were originally ONE class that was split because
it didn't suck enough, the "errata" that only exists to nerf psionics to the ground (Oh yes, psionic powers now
suffer from DR. That makes sense. That's something that all spellcasters have to deal with. Oh yes, the psionic variant of
summon x can now summon
only one. That makes sense. That's something that all summon x spells have. Right?), and, to top it all off,
more then half the material was recycled...
...actually, to condense it all into one sentance: Despite being the ONLY other fully Psionics book that was ever released in 3.5, pretty much all psionics fans have completely disowned it.
)
