Why Psionics is broken and what to do to fix it

[Zimbel16]

My group and I had a discussion before our game on Wednesday. It came up, Does anyone think that they could beat my character in a straight out fight. No one thought that they could. Our Warforge paladin/Cleric/Exorcist of the silver flame whom I thought would have been the most dificult opponent even thought he would lose.

This is not an uncommon experience for high-level major spellcasters. Even worse from their point of view, you've focused on defense.

Granted that I have worked at building within the rules an effective character, but when everyone thinks that you have the power character, it makes you think about the class being broken. This may be accentuated because the character is a Psion/Wizard/Cerebremancer with effective levels 14 Psion/13 Wizard and CL/ML of 17/17.

Over the last two sessions, we had 5 encounters, with no rest inbetween, a single dragon, 5 dragons, 2 dragons, multiple giants and a colossal carrion crawler. We are nearing the end of the age of wyrms campaign. In our last encounter, all but the Wizard and my Psion had been downed or chased off by the colossal carrion crawler. The Wizard and I spent 10+ rounds flying, being invisible, greater blinking and spelling this creature to death. My Psion has 20 PP left and a half dozen spells of which 3 are magic missile.

When I can out last most of our party and still have some reserves left, albeit small, after 5 encounters, there must be something wrong. We still don't have time to rest either. I can't put my finger on. The problem may be more that I have this combination of classes that support each other. The Mystic Thurge is not a fair comparison since they have to have 2 stats to cosider each with bonuses. The Cerebremancer, Psion and Wizard only have one.

I'm not clear as to what's wrong; from the above description, your PC is roughly around the power of the party Wizard, which is about right. You're a major high-level spellcaster focusing on defense - you, very simply, will survive things that other PCs can't dream of surviving. Both of my previous high-level spellcasters (Magister (from Arcana Evolved), Sorcerer) had simular issues, and they weren't even focused on defense.

Inversely, you can think of it this way: if it weren't for your PC, you likely would have had a TPK (Total Party Kill). Most groups consider a TPK a bad thing.

In any case, if you think your PC is too strong, I'd ban your most powerful 1-2 psionic powers, until you think that you're close in power (Temporal Acceleration would be my top canidate). Although Thanee may be correct on Psions being too powerful, it's easier to ban (or modify) a power or two than to re-balance a class.

 

[Thanee]

@ Thanee Right, I'm saying to me and the people I play with these are HUGE setbacks to us.

Absolutely. They are huge drawbacks. That's why I tend to list them or mention them in such a comparison, because they do have quite an influence.

There are a few advantages, though, that are also pretty huge.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Marcus Smythe]

Ok. Then I think, I see where the issue lies.



Of course, when we only look at the core rules for the concepts, i.e. sorcerer vs wizard, that's the primary distinction between the two:

Wizards are almost unbeatable (in terms of overall class power) in an environment, where they know what challenges they are going to face. Of course, they also need to know the right spells, which is more likely for them as for sorcerers, for obvious reasons.

Sorcerers (specifically, sorcerers with a good, versatile spell selections; themed sorcerers, which many people like to play for roleplaying reasons, are obviously much weaker, but shouldn't really be considered here, since they are basically limiting themselves by choice) can instantly react to any challenges that present themselves. In some cases they won't have an optimum response, but in most cases (from my experience at least) they do have a good response.

Here the comparison in spells is not against the spells known, but spells known vs spells prepared, which is a much smaller amount suddenly, and which is why the sorcerer easily wins out here. Also, once the wizard starts to use up spells, the number of different answers slowly diminishes, while the sorcerer usually keeps all options for the whole day, except some higher level ones eventually.

Spontaneous casting is *very* powerful. IMHO the most powerful ability (apart from spellcasting itself) in the game. Obviously, the designers also thought so, otherwise the sorcerer wouldn't lose so much against the wizard (i.e. bonus feats, delayed spell levels, etc).

And once they reach decent levels, sorcerers know *enough* spells to have answers to almost any situation. Not the perfect one, but a good one. It's universally agreed upon (from observation of similar topics) that sorcerers become too powerful too fast if they would gain much more spells known than they do. A little more would probably be alright, though.

And that brings us back to the aforementioned issue. (Tell me if my deductions are wrong.)

You compare psions with wizards, and you compare them in a way, where you treat (probably not even intentionally) wizards as having a great spell selection useful for whatever comes up against them prepared all the time. You think about a situation... then you think about what a wizard could have prepared to solve it. There's almost always a perfect solution available. That's where you came from, when you said, that arcanists are always superior up there (the part I misinterpreted a little ).

Of course - in theory - the wizard will be able to solve every situation in a pretty much perfect manner. But that's pure theory. In practice, they cannot prepare ahead for every possible situation, and they often won't know ahead of time what's going to happen. And often, they will find their spell selection that they prepared to be somewhat lacking. If that is not the case... then wizards are being prefered by the environment (playing style, whatever), which lets them appear more powerful than they really are (unless one limits the observation only to those cases, but that's not the whole picture then), and sorcerers appear weak, because they are robbed of their advantages in such an environment.

Bye
Thanee

-nods- And if your used to playing in (what I would consider) highly GM focused/controlled games (also likely very heavily combat focused), then your perception of the Sorceror as approaching the Wizards power makes more sense, as compared to the more frequent perception of the Wizard as being clearly superior.

Most of my play experience was classically in more 'sandbox' rather than 'railroad' games.. and in a Sandbox game, the Wizard rules supreme over other Arcane, or Psion style, casters. My current game is alot more Railroad, and I probably do slightly out-perform the Wizard in the party (though its hard to measure.. hes a Wizard/Fighter/Arcane Knight hybrid, focused on dual wielding, dual wanding, negative levels/status effects/necromancy. Ill say this. I envy the HELL out of Innervate and Alter Self, not to mention the 'shuts down other team' casts like Evards and Color Spray. He envies my raw 'point and click' ability to remove single foes from the battle map at will. We completement each other WONDERFULLY... but hes the problem solver, I'm Railgun Gandalf)

Hmm.. how do the War Mages and Shadow Blades stack up in your game?

(And, personally, I belive that the Psion IS strictly better than the Sorceror.. though the Sorceror can come close, and I think the PHB2 variant that trades its familiar for metamagic without full round casting times is a heckva treat. Combine with Practical Metamagic and stand way back..)

 

[Tikiman]

I don't plan on closing this thread but I am banging my head against a wall that I and a few who comment see but the vast majority think that there isn't a problem.

As has been stated several times, the problem you're having is that you have a well built character in a group of people who are of average builds. It sounds as if though you simply know the system better then the rest, and that's a powerful factor in the hands of a caster. All of you are playing within the rules, but you're using those rule to their fullest. Everything about your character seems carefully chosen to enhance his power while other characters appear to have let a d20 decide what feat they chose at that level (or even worse, they chose them for flavor reasons ). And you have feats/spells that are of questionable power level, and are clearly more powerful then what your comrads have chosen. The solution to this problem, as has already been stated, is to remove some of his more powerful attributes until he's on par with the rest of the party. Temporal Acceleration, Practiced 'blah', and Prophecy's Hero are all candidates.

And again, your character is 50% wizard, 50% psion. If he's overpowered it must be due to both of these characteristics. The only reason you can do half of the stuff you're doing with psionics is because you have those wizard abilities to back you up.

What you're seeing isn't a problem with the psionics system in particular. It's a problem with your specific character in your specific group at your specific gaming table.

There are simply too many factors which skew the results, like personal preferances, commoness of certain classes (i.e. Psions aren't used in most campaigns, the results are therefore automatically skewed towards Clerics, Druids and Wizards, since they are in the Core rules), specific broken abilities/spells/powers/PrC/etc, which don't say anything about the classes that use them themselves, house rules, specific character choices, player experience, DM experience, playing styles, etc.

The poll specifically gets around these problems. Classes that did not recieve many votes (such as the Artificeer) were specifically called out as not getting many votes. Psions got plenty. And the poll wasn't 'compare class X to class Y' it was just 'rank class power on a scale of 1-10'. The poll covered 30 different threads, which covered multitudes of different DM's, tables, players, styles, houserules, books allowed, etc. The average experiences real players have had with the psion indicate that it's power is close to, but a smidge short of the wizard. The guy who summarized the polls even confessed to an anti-psi bias. If you want to mathematically test the limites of either class, that's been done time and time again on the Psionics forums in the Myth threads. Wizards, due mostly to metamagic rods and non-core books, can* win every contest (again, nothing is more powerful then a properly prepaired wizard). As I linked earlier, the king of a Nova is actually a mage (who can dish out ~73k in one round, or 2k dmg to multiple targets with just a swift action if he's not trying to blow up the world). I think the best a Psion could do was around 10k.

Oh, and all links to the WotC forums are currently not working because of convention traffic (well, you have to register to see the forums).

*note that I'm saying a wizard 'could' do this, not that every wizard can. There is some spell in a non-core book that lets the caster spend up to an hour in quite contemplation as a standard action (used to be a 2nd ed spell). Combine that with leaving spell slots open and a wizard can 'spontaneously' cast any spell in his spell book. A Silenced DDoor/Teleport (feat or rod or class ability) can get a wizard out of a Silenced Grapple situation (in fact, the mage in wildstarsreach's party can do this). There are material's and PrCs that can allow a wizard to cast in Full Plate with no negative effects. As you stated, Archmages can use any energy type (including Acid, which Psions can't), or you can get feats that let you do that, or you could just take one of the several feats that allow your spells to ignore energy resistance (and even immunity to some degree). 5 out of 6 psions have to take a feat to get Dominate, while any wizard of any level could try to cast Dominate Monster from a scroll (I think a UMD build can do this as early as 10 with no chance of failure). Again, I'm not saying that all mages can do all things better then psions, but when you get into build vs. build, the wizard is always capable of outdoing the psion (sometimes he has to use a backdoor, such as using powers that don't allow saves to compete with psions pumping out high save powers). In exchange for this, nothing is more gimped then a poorly prepaired mage. Player skill is very important when playing a wizard, while the psion is much more 'noob friendly'.

(including the arcanists signature abilities, as defined by the DMG)

Do you mean the ones on page 132? I've read that and I don't understand what you mean. A wizard built to do those things is still the king of artillery, utility, items, and telling people what to do.

Did the Complete Psionic add a lot of Save or Dies the only ones I can remember are Decerebrate, Microcosm, Assimilate, Crisis of Life, and Disintegrate(Psionic) and Recall Death, with Disintegrate being the stupidest power ever. Crisis of Breath also counts, I guess.

Complete Psionc added a couple of save-or-die type effects. One of them is like disintigrate but it only targets critters with 3+ int. Another mimics the petryfying gaze attack of a Medusa. The only one that actually forces the target to instantly die cannot be taken by a Psion pre-epic (lvl 9 mantle power). You are correct in the notion that Psions have weaker save or die effects than mages. To make up for that they're raw damage capabilities are stronger (though a well prepaired mage can still win that contest with non-core material by about 60k damage).

In all, Complete Psionic did more harm to psionics then help, and smacked you with an editing error at leats once every 3 pages. It's widley considered the worst of the Complete books (average rating 4/10). I sent mine back.

Well, when your wilder has Schism, Time Hop, Temporal Acceleration, and the silly power from Races of Destiny (? The one that lets you take your action as if you had readied it, so you can act at pretty much any single point in the initiative count),

I'm slightly confused here. Anticipitory Strike lets you shift your initiative around, but only after you've taken an action (cannot be used while flat-footed, all player are flat-footed until their iniative come up). It's like Delaying, but a swift action. You cannot use this power to go more then once in a round btw. Synchronicity is a power that is poorly worded, and can therefore become broken. Much like Temporal Acceleration, it's common advice to pull it from a character if they're found abusing it. The thing to remember is that it doesn't grant you any extra actions, so if you use it in the 1st round to go twice, you don't get an action in the 2nd round, and can't use any immediate actions until the 3rd round.

 

[Thanee]

-nods- And if your used to playing in (what I would consider) highly GM focused/controlled games (also likely very heavily combat focused), then your perception of the Sorceror as approaching the Wizards power makes more sense, as compared to the more frequent perception of the Wizard as being clearly superior.

I would actually say, that both are highly useful. They both have their advantages and disadvantages, which is also why I say, that both are about equal in power (sorcerer slightly lower maybe, but not much). I've played both often enough. And I've played them in campaigns were planning was possible, and in others were things were more hectical. I think I have seen a large portion of the whole picture with my own eyes already, so to say.

Most of my play experience was classically in more 'sandbox' rather than 'railroad' games.. and in a Sandbox game, the Wizard rules supreme over other Arcane, or Psion style, casters.

I wouldn't call that 'railroad', that's such a negative term, and also falsely applied here.

You can have that effect, which you mean there, without forcing players along a certain route (i.e. railroading).

Hmm.. how do the War Mages and Shadow Blades stack up in your game?

I do not only play in one game.

War Mages - only seen one in play so far (where I am the DM) and he is very useful (even the 1st level Evocation spell of choice... naturally: Tenser's Floating Disk has been mighty useful ). Overall, I think the class is weaker than a sorcerer, though, because they are a bit too focused.

Shadow Blades - don't even know what that is...

(And, personally, I belive that the Psion IS strictly better than the Sorceror.. though the Sorceror can come close, ...

They might appear to come close, but that would be in one specific situation, so to say.
Take the very same characters and put them into a very different situation, and that psion will likely have it much easier to adapt most likely. Do that with lots of situations, and we have a clear winner.

...and I think the PHB2 variant that trades its familiar for metamagic without full round casting times is a heckva treat. Combine with Practical Metamagic and stand way back..)

Metamagic Specialist is great. But losing the familiar hurts. And they have no bonus feats. They also need some metamagic feats to use with that, and then they have pretty much no feats for *anything* else.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Thanee]

If you want to mathematically test the limites of either class, that's been done time and time again on the Psionics forums in the Myth threads.

These sorts of comparisons, and I have seen numerous of them, pretty much always are flawed. It's usually pick spell X or broken combination of weird stuff Y. Most often they use damage as a point of comparison, thus limiting the comparison to such a small fraction of the whole, that it becomes meaningless. None of those will win against a fighter or warlock in a straight damage/day comparison, BTW. It's simply pointless IMHO.

As for the poll... how many total votes did the Psion get, and how many the Wizard?
How many voters had both a Psion and a Wizard in the game and voted Psion (or Wizard)?

(Suppose the latter isn't even answerable by the information available, but the first should.)

Bye
Thanee

 

[Zimbel16]

And how many feats would the wizard have to use up to gain spontaneous casting (from their whole spells known)? 10? 20?

Bye
Thanee

That depends on your definions; if the "spells known" list for the wizard for the purposes of spontaneous casting is equal to the spells/day that they currently can prepare, perhaps 5 (?) Don't get me wrong; I think that spontaneous spellcasting is pretty wonderful, but the most critical thing about making spontaneous spellcasting work well is to limit the spells you can choose from on that particular round. See Arcana Evolved for an alternate take on spontaneous spellcasting (slightly weaker spells on average, large list to choose from, small list prepared at any one particular time).

On the other hand, if it's the size of their spellbook (with standard spellbook rules), I'd accept any non-countably infinite set of feats. (Mostly because I'd love to see someone try to min/max such a set of feats).

 

[Zimbel16]

Player skill is very important when playing a wizard, while the psion is much more 'noob friendly'.

Interesting; I'd suggest the opposite. A Psion typically can't alter their powers known list, so a player who really isn't familiar with the game can easily get stuck with a bunch of weak powers. A Wizard making the same sort of bad choices can rectify that relatively easily by scribing more spells in their spellbook.

 

[Zimbel16]

As I linked earlier, the king of a Nova is actually a mage (who can dish out ~73k in one round, or 2k dmg to multiple targets with just a swift action if he's not trying to blow up the world). I think the best a Psion could do was around 10k.

Fun, but a little silly. After all:
1) Either way, the opponent is dead. Damage beyond whatever kills your opponent is just wasted effort.
2) It's trivial to do far more total damage in a single round with a single action, and a single spell or power. How? Opponents: Plenty, all size fine, 1 HP each (not a swarm), no defenses worth mentioning. Packed as close together as possible with their face (1/2' cube), in a place where the spellcaster can take advantage of the full volume of the spell (probably in the air). Spellcaster makes a concentration check, and casts any 60' cone spell that does at least 22 points of damage (Cone of cold does nicely, assuming a reasonable damage roll or Empower or Maximize - Energy Cone may not need that help if augmented sufficiently, with a good energy chosen). Each opponent dies at -10 HP, thus taking 11 points of damage each (regardless of save). Since roughly 450,000 creatures have been hit, You're talking about roughly 5,000,000 points of damage in a single round. Note that if you give the opponents more HP, you can actually deal more damage

 

[wildstarsreach]

Psion vs Sorcerer vs Wizard

All have same BA and saves

Psion
Has built into most powers the ability to augment to current ML with DC's increased, he spend for the output as he chooses
Does not have Imprint stone or psycrystal affinity to start
Imprint stone equivalent to scribe scroll
Psicrystal affinity equivalent to summon familiar
Has bonus feat to start
Doesn't require Verbal, Somantic and Material components for manifestations
Can choose to manifest powers of any known that is similar to spontaneous casting
Can make a concentration check to keep manifestations from being known that anything has happened, nothing in spell casting That I know can keep a spell from being seen
Powers involving energy damage utilize 4 different types choosen at time of manifestation.
Has several defensive powers that defend against 5 different types of damage with 1 manifestation

Wizard
Free Scaling of damage, no ability to do reduced damage
Doesn't have Heightned feat
Doesn't have Still Spell Feat
Doesn't have Silent spell feat
Doesn't have Enchew materials feat
Has scribe scroll and summon familiar
Greatest selection of effects for spells
Must prepare spells in advance
Must prepare damage spells from known list, each spell has specific type, needs feat(s) to change to different energy type
Defensive spells typically defend against only one kind of attack

Sorcerer
Free scaling of damage, no ability to do reduced damage
Doesn't have Heightned feat
Doesn't have Still Spell Feat
Doesn't have Silent spell feat
Doesn't have Enchew materials feat
Has summon familiar
Can spontaneously cast spells from any known spells
Greatest selection of effects for spells though there is a limit to spells know, greater than the Psions powers known
Must cast damage spells from known list, each spell has specific type, needs feat(s) to change to different energy type
Defensive spells typically defend against only one kind of attack

I'm just putting out the comparison