Too powerful? What am I missing... (please help)

[Nail]

And here we see game balance!

Arguable. Still, I suspect we can agree on the following:

"Psions are different enough from other classes that a DM must significantly change his style to appropriately challenge them."

 

[IcyCool]

I'll weigh in with my limited experience on the matter. I have now had a Psychic Warrior, Soulknife, and Wilder in my games. The Psychic Warrior and Soulknife weren't bad at all, but the Wilder was wildly overpowered. I will freely admit that this is likely because in the several months worth of games that we played, she failed her enervation roll once, maybe twice.

She also took on a red dragon (old, IIRC, it's been a while) while she was 14-16th level range, and killed it. By herself (it was pointed out to me that several of her rolls were lucky for this to occur, and I don't disagree with that assessment). After that, the Wilder's player reigned in her powers and spent her time using Time Hop to do battlefield management so that she didn't outshine the wizard or warlock in the party.

The jury is still out as far as my games go. I urge you to read over the psionics rules, and try using a few psionic foes against your group. Your players have a lot of experience with psionic characters, so watch to see which tactics your players use, and then use those tactics against them.

 

[Slaved]

Arguable. Still, I suspect we can agree on the following:

"Psions are different enough from other classes that a DM must significantly change his style to appropriately challenge them."

I have never had a dungeon master need to any more than any other character nor have I had to do so for any game that I have run.

Each character build using any combination of abilities available to them needs to be taken into account for the game. I have not seen psionics to be any more special in this regard than any other class.

 

[irdeggman]

I don't have my copy with me - but did Complete Psionic "adjust" energy ray?

I know it put on some more realistic augmentation costs for powers and I thought that was one of them.

Also look at the "range" of most psionic powers - they are close to medium so a "ranged" encounter has a better chance of neutralizing the wilder (especially since the number of powers know and thus "options available" are real small).

 

[moritheil]

I feel like I must be missing something in the rules.

Here's the background:
I don't know psionics.
I DM for a group of fairly experienced players.
Two of them like psionics.

IMHO this was your first mistake: a DM should always know the rules at least as well as his or her players. Obviously that's not always feasible, but you should have been expecting things to go loopy at some point.

Everyone else is right in pointing out that the wilder is taking risks. Hold him (or her) to the downsides as well as the upsides and things should balance out in the long run.

FWIW, I don't think psionics have more of an inherent problem with "going nova" than a DSP cleric does. Judging from the boards, though, most people don't build clerics to go nova, so the first time they encounter this problem is when they bring in psionics, where the rules themselves are built to make it easy to dump all your resources into one encounter.

 

[KarinsDad]

At the same level a wizard's scorching ray would do 4d6 as a ranged touch no save so it doesn't seem that amazing.

The issue is one of how quickly each class can Nova. The Wizard is limited to two Scorching Rays (3 if he is an Evoker) and that's only if he has them memorized

For example, our group of 4 3rd level PCs fought a Young Green Dragon (68 hit points) on Saturday. Given a 3rd level Wilder vs. a normal Wizard with 2 Scorching Rays and 3 Lesser Orbs of Fire vs. a Warlock vs. a Sorcerer with 6 Lesser Orbs of Fire, the average amount of damage each round that can be done (assuming that the touch attacks hit) are:

Rounds    1    2    3    4    5    6    7    8    9   10
Wilder   22.5 22.5 22.5 
Wizard    14  14    9    9    9 
Warlock    7   7    7    7    7    7    7    7    7    7
Sorcerer   9   9    9    9    9    9

After Nova-ing, the Wilder, Wizard, and Sorcerer are out of power (except 0th level spells).

To do the same amount of damage, the Wilder used up all of his power in 3 rounds, the Wizard 5, the Sorcerer 6, and the Warlock 9. The Wilder does 67, the Wizard 55, the Warlock 70, and the Sorcerer 54.

Sure, they are all out of power (except the Warlock). For the Wilder, that's 33% of the Dragon's hit points per round. If the rest of the PCs could do that each round, the Dragon would be dead in one round. Even so, with a Wilder in the group, there's a good chance the Dragon would be dead in 2 to 3 rounds. The other classes cannot say the same.


The fact that the Wilder can destroy a powerful opponent so quickly also saves on other party resources like healing and other spells / charged items.


Edited to fix range and damage errors.

 

[pallandrome]

At third level, the psion you speak of can do that 5d6 attack, what, three times? That will range, usually, from 5-30 damage.

A third level barbarian can do 2d6+10 while he rages. That's 12-22 damage around 6 times. That is, comparable damage, more times a day. Then he can do 2d67 all day long.

so yeah, that doesn't make psionics broken

 

[Rystil Arden]

the average amount of damage each round that can be done (assuming that the touch attacks hit) are:

An Evoker will do 14 14 14 9 9 9 9, and 3rd-level is almost certainly the weakest level for Sorcerer out of any possible level (in fact, a level 3 Sorcerer NPC is quite possibly the wimpiest CR 3 challenge in existence) because she lacks level 2 spells. Also, remember that those three rounds of Surging for 2 each have a 10% chance of Enervation, for an expected value of 30% of an enervation per set. If you ignore the one round delay and merely factor in the PP loss multiplied by the chance of enervation, this is enough to prevent the third manifesting (heck, having less than 16 Cha or spending 1 PP somewhere else is enough to prevent the third round of manifesting).

 

[Slaved]

And, the Wilder's damage is 130 feet.

130 feet? The wilder is level 42?

I guess there is also the issue of the wilder knowing only 2 powers while everyone else knows a whole lot more.

Fighter 3, masterwork composite (+2) longbow, 18 dexterity, rapidshot, weapon focus, gives +7/+7 to hit for d8+2 damage for 13 damage on average if they both hit. This is at 3 times the range of the wilders attack before the chance to hit starts to go down, does not have the chance of turning the character off for a round, and is doable many more times a day. This guy is pretty specialized but then so is the wilder.

If the dragon had been able to stay about 40 feet off of the ground then the wilders attack power would have been completely useless and chances are good his other power would not have been helpful either.

 

[pawsplay]

If you really want to see a low level wilder cry, send him up against some shadows. An incorporeal miss chance on top of psychic enervation is a rough gamble, then there's the whole not having pp thing. Plus, the wilder is unlikely to have a high Str. Meanwhile, a psion is likely to have at least one force effect, clerics can turn, sorcerers and wizards have magic missile, barbarians have Str to burn, and rogues have high Dex bonuses.

Or how about drow, dragons, and other good SR opponents? There is a 1 in 10 chance of enervating, which is worse than nothing, and even if he doesn't, a decent chance at no effect at all.

Blink, obscuring mist, darkness, all can cause a wilder to have a bad day. As a PC, the last thing you want is to be put into the position of gambling.

How about minions? A single archer or wyrmling or something could ready to interrupt a wilder, which is also bad news.