Which Psionics rules do you use?

[Scion]

I like the pet rocks myself but the main problem is that you are supposed to pick one of your character traits. That means that you get better at something you were already good at most of the time. With familiars you can pick something you want, or a cool creature, sometimes both. Pet rocks just dont do much, and you arent able to choose something you are bad at, so very odd.

I think spatula was a bit brief and overly harsh to 2nd ed psionics I've played every incarnation of them up from when they first appeared.

Mainly, 2nd psionics had a lot of variable powers which were very cool. If a character really wanted to get a power that would generally only be gained at a higher level (a popular one to say is disentegrate) is possible, but the risks are so huge as to make this pointless most of the time.

At 3rd level (earliest to be able to use disentegrate 1/day with good stats) the character could use it once per day only, and if they rolled above the con -# then it failed, if they rolled a 20 then they had to save against the power themself at a -5 penalty or be disentegrated, and even if they got the power off the target still got a save. Hardly overpowered

Sorry for the mini rant, I think that the final 2nd ed version of psionics was great. It had incredible flavor and the few broken parts (and there were, but then there were broken parts for every class at that point) were easy to fix, usually by just adding a word or two here and there.

I have big hopes for the next psionics handbook! Anyone know an exact release date?

 

[fnork de sporg]

If a character really wanted to get a power that would generally only be gained at a higher level (a popular one to say is disentegrate) is possible, but the risks are so huge as to make this pointless most of the time.

At 3rd level (earliest to be able to use disentegrate 1/day with good stats) the character could use it once per day only, and if they rolled above the con -# then it failed, if they rolled a 20 then they had to save against the power themself at a -5 penalty or be disentegrated, and even if they got the power off the target still got a save. Hardly overpowered

Yes, but i know that many groups did not run it as such. Apparently the unusualy and I guess not explained as well as it couled have been nature of the psionics system lent it self to house rulings and plain misunderstandings taht, I think, helped give oldskool psionics such a bad rap. Of course I'm mostly working from secondary and after-the-fact sources, so I could be wrong.

 

[Scion]

I know what you mean, but then almost everything was in a similar boat in 2nd ed

The main big bad I saw was a nonweapon proficiency from some suppliment. It was crazy, basically if you made your check you automatically got your power score. I've had quite a few people point to that and say that was one of the big reasons psionics were overpowered.

My counterexample was that useing incredibly and obviously broken things from some suppliment is definately not saying that it is overpowered. Would you give a fighter a proficiency that would allow him to make this check, automatically hit, score a critical and all for the low, low cost of rolling a die that you cant fail except by rolling a 20 on the d20? hmm..

Anyway, I have commented too much about things that arent important on this thread..lol.. just another plug saying that the 2nd edition spells and powers psionic system was very nice. Plus a hope that the new psionics book will be good. ::crosses fingers::