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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jessica" data-source="post: 6702462" data-attributes="member: 6796107">Master of Puppets: Playing a PsionPsionic classes are oft-maligned as being boring to play, being too complicated and having no role in the sword & sorcery world of D&D. Now, the third point is something I can’t change - if you feel like this, then you’ll either have to refluff or play a different class. But the first and second points are things that I will try to change your mind about.The complaint that the class is boring to play has everything to do with power selection. I will come to that in my next point.Now, about complexity. The controller role is already quite a difficult role to play effectively - you need to identify the most dangerous target(s), possibly before it has even had a chance to act, and use the right countermeasure to deny it its actions. If you fail, that might result in a very bad round for your party. Without intimate knowledge of the Monster Manual, you’ll just have to hope that you’re correct in your assessment more often than not. But when the hulking ape that you’ve just immobilized suddenly starts to shoot eye-rays at you, you feel pretty silly.Now add psionic powers to that: at-will powers that do different things depending on the amount of power points you spend on them. Most powers have comparable but bigger effects when you augment them (for example, slow turns into immobilize), so that removes some of the complexity. But you’re still faced with nine different ways to use your powers (three powers that can each be augmented with one or two power points). And that’s not counting daily powers and powers from your race, theme, paragon path and epic destiny!So you see why playing a psionic controller effectively can be a bit of a challenge. Fortunately, there are two ways to mitigate this.<ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Power selection. Not all psion powers are as difficult (or as good) as others. So if you’re just starting out, you can’t go wrong by selecting powers that you (or this handbook <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> ) think are good and focusing on those powers first. In other words: when in doubt, spam Dishearten. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Retraining. When you feel comfortable with the class and the power point system, you can start to diversify your power selection. That’s where the retrain rules come in. Unless you’re very comfortable with your current at-will powers, there’s nothing wrong with swapping one power for another every time you gain a level. You might be surprised by how a power that’s mediocre on paper might turn out to have some less-obvious, but awesome uses! This also combats the boring aspect: since you have such an enormous selection of powers (for example, the level 7 powers aren’t necessarily better than those from level 1 and 3), you actually have to spend a lot of time playing a Psion to become bored with the class. </li> </ol>Note: this goes a little against the general rule of power optimization, which states that you should pick the best powers available at every level. But since there are only a few real stand-outs among the Psion’s powers and a lot of other good stuff, there’s certainly something that can be said for sacrificing a little optimization for more fun.</blockquote>

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