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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Arkhandus" data-source="post: 3685328" data-attributes="member: 13966">It's only related to the level of the power; you can Overchannel a power of 3rd-level or lower (such as Energy Ray) without taking any damage from the Overchannel, if you use the Talented feat and expend psionic focus for it.  It doesn't matter how many effective manifester levels you Overchanneled for; the Talented feat is based on power level, not manifester level.I think that's what you were asking about?  At least the first part.Breath of the Black Dragon has a more-useful area of effect, though somewhat smaller (how often do you find a bunch of enemies lined up in a thin row so you can hit them all with a Lightning Bolt or similar effect?  How much more often do you have to face enemies who are spread out more widely?).Energy Bolt is just a bit more efficient than it should be, though.  Keep in mind though, in order to avoid the Overchannel damage with Energy Bolt, you have to spend a feat on Talented, and also expend your psionic focus each time you use it, both of which carry opportunity costs.When you Overchannel for Breath of the Black Dragon, you could be applying a metapsionic feat to it or something else, rather than just boosting its damage through augmenting.  It still carries the same opportunity cost, but it just might be more effective (though it does result in you taking the Overchannel damage unfortunately).  You could be taking a metapsionic feat instead, and expending your psionic focus to apply that to BotBD instead of Talented for Energy Bolt.(you can't expend your psionic focus for both benefits on an Energy Bolt, so it becomes a choice between: take Talented and use Energy Bolt at full power without taking extra damage myself, or take a metapsionic feat and use Breath of the Black Dragon at a little more power or across an extra-large area of effect, but suffering a bit of damage from Overchannel with the BotBD)You could, for example, manfiest BotBD augmented only by 1 point to 12d6 damage, and also apply Empower Power to make it 12d6+(12d6x0.5) damage (similar to 18d6 in effect).  Or you could do the same but with Enlarge Power instead of Empower Power, doubling the range that your BotBD cone will reach out to and affect (so you'd blast a 110-foot long, and 110-feet wide at its end, cone of acid that deals 12d6 damage).</blockquote>

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