Why Psionics is broken and what to do to fix it

[Tsuul]

Problem:
Ok, the argument is that spell caps need to be added to psionics in the same manner that they are implemented for arcane/divine.
Brainstorming:
Implement replacement powers higher level as seen in arcane and divine will be needed as well

Wait, that's what augmenting does. But augmenting has the hamstring that it doesn't raise the actual level of the power.

Solution: Listen to your DM.

Jaden actually doesn't do that much damage and I don't complain about his abilities often, but we have two other players (who plan on DMing) who don't like psionics. However, if you look at the rest of the party you'll see we have a somewhat "optimized" group to compare him with.

<snip>

I think the biggest problem is that the other 2 DMs don't like the flavor (rather than the mechanics) of psionics and no amount of balancing is going to convince them otherwise.

 

[Marcus Smythe]

Double Posting is the Devil

 

[Marcus Smythe]

I mispoke. At 17th lvl he can do it 25 times with psionics. He can also augment it, essentially giving him metamagic without taking any feats.

He's also a cerebremancer with practised spellcaster and manifester. He could actually disintegrate almost 40 times per day, if he decided to do use his wizard spells and the heighten feat.

Okay, weve established sufficient nukes from the psion that, assuming all he does is nuke, he can nuke all day. 22d6 save for 5d6 every round for any reasonable day.

77 damage assuming an average roll and a failed save. 154 damage save for 30 assuming maximize.

Is 154 damage per round good at 17th level in your games?

(Proposition.. the pro-psionics crowd is always going about this the wrong way. We should try, for arguements sake, assuming that Psionics was the baseline, and then argue that arcane casting is broken by comparison, based on the things arcane casters do better than Psions. For half credit, repeat the process but with Divine casters)

 

[Someone]

Nah. I (we) agreed that some powers need to go, but on he other hand actually like the power point system. Others just don´t. In my experience no amount of discussion is going to change that, most of the threads at this point just continue in a O RLY? sequence or a flame war, once everything that had to be said it´s said.

 

[Tikiman]

Jaden actually doesn't do that much damage and I don't complain about his abilities often, but we have two other players (who plan on DMing) who don't like psionics. However, if you look at the rest of the party you'll see we have a somewhat "optimized" group to compare him with.

Actually, the rest of your party is far from optimized. Most of your melee characters are toting a +4 weapon at best. Those same melee characters are also multiclassed with semi-melee classes. You have a Cleric/RSoP and an Artificier in your group. As I and Marcus Smythe have stated, if they're getting outdone by a psion, they're just not trying. Both of these characters could be tweaked in a fashion that would easily quintuple their power.

As for Jared, he's got a whole list of advantages. He seems to have the largest pile of magical items in the group. And he's one of the highest level characters in the party. And he seems to be taking the largest number of non-core spells (Orb of Force and Assay Spell Resistance are both questionable). Temporal Acceleration, while not itself overpowered, is more powerful than most of the spells the rest of the group has.

Compare Jaden with Rasael (straight wizard).

Good idea. Lets see, Jaden is a level higher. This level is extremely important because if Rasael was 1 level higher he'd be 2 spell levels ahead of Jaden (and he'd have lvl 9 spells like Timestop). If Jaden were one level lower he would not have 7th level spells/powers. Jaden has more/better gear. Jaden has more non-core spells of questionable power level. Jaden has wisely selected feats that all synergize with each other while Rasael has a random smattering of feats. Jaden's feats are all 'definitely worth taking' (especially Prophecy's Hero) while several of Rasael's feats are iffy (Still, Silent, Heighten). It looks like you have one character who was built by someone who knows the system well while the other was a wizard built by someone who usually plays fighters. And what is up with the 'Lord Jaden, Templar of the Silver Flame' thing? It appears as if Jaden is the only member of the party who hasn't died (a couple times) and has accumulated miscellaneous bonuses due to that.

Lack of components: enemies cannot grapple, silence or use other means to stop the psion.

Redied actions against casting/manifesting would stop him. Unless you had both Silence AND grappling, an arcane Dimension Door would let him escape. Rasael can escape from a Silenced Grappled situation right now with a Silenced Teleport (or with a Silenced Dimension Door, 700gp for a scroll). A grappler with an Antimagic field would keep them pinned (Stick of Antimagic Field [single use, use activated, 3300gp]). Psionic Restraints can prevent manifesting (pg 175 of the XPH, cost ranges from 1k to 24k). Blinding him would prevent him from targeting anything. Many Cloud spells could occupy him for a round or two and force him to DDoor into unknown territory.

Wonky abilities: Temporal Acceleration and schism are two that stick out in my mind

There are many ways to 'deal with' Temporal Acceleration. Dispel Magic, M's Disjuction, Timestop, readied actions, false encounters (illusions, show up and look scary with minions but teleport away), scrying (don't fight them when they are at 100%), and 3-4 encounters after the TA incident will work wonders. If you don't feel you should have to 'deal with' the power, remove it from his character. I personally like to attach a 10xp/round gained cost to it so that players don't abuse it and instead save it for TPK situations.

Just likes spells - only better!: Detect thoughts is better, mage armor / force screen, energy adaptation, energy ray...they all seem better than comparable spells.

For some reason, I think a Telepath should have a better version of Detect Thoughts then a bat-poo flinging wizard (5/6 of psions have to take a feat to get it). Mage Armor and Force Screen only get better if you spend more resources on them, so saying they are better is like saying that an Empowered Fireball is better then a regular Fireball. Energy Adaptation is better, but it's also self only, can't block 12pts/level, and can't hold a candle to Energy Immunity (which lasts 24 hours btw).

As for energy damage powers like Energy Ray, I will state once again that A) Arcane energy damage generally blows chunks (notice how Raseal stopped at the level 4 Orb spells), B) Psionics 'overpowering' of energy damage simply makes it useful mid to high levels, and C) compare a 13pp Energy Ray to a Finger of Death.

And now lets turn the tables and compare Invisibility to Cloud Mind. Finger of Death and Crystallize/Decerebrate. Magic Missile/Orb of Force and Concussion Blast. Summon Nature's Ally VIII (for 1d4+1 Dire Bears) + Animal Growth vs. Astral Construct + Ecto Protection. Each caster class simply has some things they do better then others. For psions, that happens to be self buffing, direct damage, and mental effects. In exchange they give up things like any ability with illusions and fewer/weaker save-or-die effects.

Of course, now that I've confessed, I'm sure several people will quickly tell wildstarsreach that it's the DM's fault.

Well... you've got one well built caster (the only offensively well built character) in a high level game (where casters reign supreme) with low magic items (where casters reign supreme) that allows non-core material (where casters reign supreme). That player doesn't feel sufficiently challenged. Given that he's apparently famous enough to have earned the title 'Lord', I'd suggest making him the focus of your villains attacks. Engineer some encounters so that something in them is specifically designed against him. Have all of your enemy casters memorize with him in mind. I'm not saying you should kill him, just scare the bejezuz out of him every now and then.

Really, it isn't that bad, I think the OP can be a worry wart sometimes. I think the biggest problem is that the other 2 DMs don't like the flavor (rather than the mechanics) of psionics and no amount of balancing is going to convince them otherwise.

I would like to thank you for coming onto this forum and informing us of this. I apologize for calling you a noob, but I still feel it was warranted given what I was told. I still can't believe you let him buff for 4 rounds though.

Has nobody noticed that this character is actually 50% psion, 50% wizard? He's got exactly the same caster and manifester level. He has level 7 powers and level 7 spells. And yet, after all of that, everyone just keeps saying 'yeah, psions are overpowered'.

Edit: wildstarsreach, the two threads referenced above are the threads I was talking about a few months ago.

Well, unfortunitly, Wildstarsreach doesn't listen to anyone who disagrees with him. At least, not until you smack him around a bit and call his DM a noob. That'll get you a response.

 

[Thanee]

So, if you accept that the 1-level lag is balanced vs. Wizards, ...

Yes, I accept that.

...then by the same logic it must be balanced vs. Psions...

And I very much do not accept this!

Since when did Psions have to prepare their powers in advance?

...which means you should be comparing a Sor 10 (9/5/4/3/2/1) to a Psi 9 (0/5/4/4/4/2), which is a bit closer. If you don't compare it this way, you're claiming that Sorcerers are far weaker than Wizards, because they're being penalized for nothing.

They are 'penalized' for their spontaneous casting ability. Psions are not.

2> Again, this assumes the Psion ALWAYS picks spells of the highest possible level. Which, as I've mentioned, isn't always true.

Only in 95% of the cases? Ok, I will give you those 5% and gladly declare, that they are not really a relevant factor.

Take that 10th level you mention; for my Shaper, what four 5th-level powers would he want at that point?

Well, there are constantly (slow, but still) coming more powers for Psions in various supplements. Yes, they have a weaker selection and I often pointed that out already. That's definitely one of their main disadvantages right now. But their selection is far from bad.

I can say from experience, my Sorcerer never felt stifled by the known-spell limit, but my Psion does.

Then you can never really have played a Sorcerer, if you havn't felt this extremely harsh limit on their known spells. Really.

I'd put read magic and mage hand into that group, too.

Not really. They are no more than nice to have, but absolutely not necessary.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Tikiman]

Proposition.. the pro-psionics crowd is always going about this the wrong way. We should try, for arguements sake, assuming that Psionics was the baseline, and then argue that arcane casting is broken by comparison, based on the things arcane casters do better than Psions. For half credit, repeat the process but with Divine casters

Going Nova: This thread from the Psionics forums details how a wizard (with sufficient non-core material) can nova for an average of 72,819 damage. In a single round. And it ignores energy resistance. I think a core+Faerun only build still nets you over half of the effect.

Summoning/Polymorph: This thread is a detailed guide for druids looking to be a CoDzilla. Reports indicate that a single round of summoning can produce melee combatants more powerful, damaging, tougher, and more useful then an entire group of fighters. You can also WildShape into animal form and achieve the same effect. Or you could do both and take out an entire army (seriously, there were posts of druids storming entire castles solo). You could even become a competent offensive caster and put the average wizard/psion to shame.

Breaking the game: Ropetrick has to be one of the most disruptive spells to gameplay, especially given its level. It basically gives the players 100% control over how often they fight, even in the middle of a dungeon. This spell alone makes going nova possible despite your DM's best efforts (short of banning the spell, which seems like a very popular choice).

And if I had a link I'd show everyone Pun-Pun; a 100% legal character build no sane DM would allow because it literally has infinite stats. Infinite str, con, wis, int, hp, spells, saves, AC, you name it. I think they're still trying to figure out some way to kill him. The Psion can achieve this at an earliest of level 13 while the wizard can do it by level 5.

Illusions: A psion rarely gets an illusion like effect, and when they do it's pathetic in comparison (eg Invisibility versus Mind Blank).

Save-or-Die effects: Psions get fewer to chose from, and almost all of them are either [mind-affecting] and/or living target only. Many of them don't actually kill the target either, they just disable it.

Prestige Classes: Wizards have book after book of full caster prestige classes. All of them give power without taking much in exchange (which is why you almost never see a wizard 20). The Archmage grants some of the benefits that people think make Psionics overpowered (only better). In comparison, Psionics has far fewer PrCs, and only one of them grants 10/10 manifester progression.

Counterspells: Psions cannot counterspell at all. However, with default transparency in effect the Counterspell option under Dispel Magic specifically grants wizards the ability to counterspell both spells and powers.

Stamina: While the Psion can have a larger impact for fewer encounters, in a game where the DM enforces 3-5 encounters a day the wizard will have more overall impact.

Getting allowed into games: Nobody ever says 'you can't play a wizard' unless it's a weird campaign thing (I loved DarkSun). However it's not at all unheard of for DM's to ban psionics because of something that happened years ago, in editions far far away. Even if you provide a solid argument and promise to not make an overpowered character many of those DM's won't budge.

Metamagic: Want to metamagic for free, ignoring those pesky spell slot requirments? Try a metamagic rod. Arcane/Divine only.

Utility: Wizards can own every spell in every book. Lower level spell slots, at higher levels, can be completely devoted to useful spells like Invisiblilty and Fly, while a Psion has to consume some of this univeral PP pool to achieve the same effect. And did you know that a wizard can leave spell slots open and fill them in later in the day? (PHB, pg 178)

Being a generalist: All Psions must specialize. In order to learn powers another specialist could use they must take Expanded Knowledge (and can never get 9th level specialist powers this way pre-epic). Wizards on the other hand have the option of specializing, and there are no 'specialist only' spells.

 

[Thanee]

And if I had a link I'd show everyone Pun-Pun; a 100% legal character build...

The current version (with the Divine Minion template) is actually not legal.

But that creature (Sagguth or whatever) is pretty nuts for sure. Game designers should be able to do better than that.

Anyways, there are certainly many truely broken combinations of various sources out there for most classes (casters/manifesters being clearly in the lead there because of the vast amonut of options they have).

Bye
Thanee

 

[JonnyFive]

thanee, semi-off topic question, where did you find the spellpoint system? the only one that i know if is outa UA, and it specificaly says that spells do not scale w/o additional points.

 

[Thanee]

That one and you are wrong there... here's the quote:

Spellcasters use their full normal caster level for determining the effects of their spells in this system, with one significant exception. Spells that deal a number of dice of damage based on caster level (such as magic missile, searing light, or lightning bolt) deal damage as if cast by a character of the minimum level of the class capable of casting the spell. Spells whose damage is partially based on caster level, but that don’t deal a number of dice of damage based on caster level (such as produce flame or an inflict spell) use the spellcaster’s normal caster level to determine damage. Use the character’s normal caster level for all other effects, including range and duration.

It only does so for spells, that deal dice of damage (as has been noted) ... all other spells scale freely!

Bye
Thanee