• NOW LIVE! Into the Woods--new character species, eerie monsters, and haunting villains to populate the woodlands of your D&D games.

Why Psionics is broken and what to do to fix it

Marcus Smythe said:
Way too much material for me to respond to all at once, Thanee... but definitely food for thought.

:p :D

Hmm... that seems to be, ultimately, what it comes down to. No matter how you slice it, anything a Psion can do, an Arcane can almost certainly do better..

Ahem.

I sure hope you are kidding here... how many examples do you want?

Spontaneous manifesting (when you want to compare with the wizard)?
Manifesting in a grapple? While silenced? And wearing full-plate armor?
Choosing energy types for spells freely (yeah, some Archmages can do that, too)?
Dominate Monster at what 8th level? 10th?
(Not completely the same, but for the most important parts. This is a 9th-level spell and not a 5th-level spell for a reason.)

There are certainly many specific things, that arcanists can do better, and there are other downsides as well, but being able to 'almost certainly' do anything better is a huge stretch at best. From the things psions can do, a whole lot they do a lot better than any arcanist can ever hope (including the arcanists signature abilities, as defined by the DMG).

Bye
Thanee
 

log in or register to remove this ad

FrostedMini1337 said:
But it has to be taken in to consideration somewhere. The fact that if a psion wants to Charm and teleport(for example) he has to burn a feat, is a pretty big setback imo.

Here:

- weaker base to pick powers from, there simply are more spells out there
- more restricted by discipline lists (tho, since they have plenty more feats (bonus feats and non-dependancy on metamagic feats), this can be circumvented with Expanded Knowledge to a degree)

It's listed in the big list of advantages and disadvantages, I've tried to write together (hopefully fairly complete).


And thanks! :D

Bye
Thanee
 

Thanee said:
:p :D



Ahem.

I sure hope you are kidding here... how many examples do you want?

Spontaneous manifesting (when you want to compare with the wizard)?
Manifesting in a grapple? While silenced? And wearing full-plate armor?
Choosing energy types for spells freely (yeah, some Archmages can do that, too)?
Dominate Monster at what 8th level? 10th?
(Not completely the same, but for the most important parts. This is a 9th-level spell and not a 5th-level spell for a reason.)

There are certainly many specific things, that arcanists can do better, and there are other downsides as well, but being able to 'almost certainly' do anything better is a huge stretch at best. From the things psions can do, a whole lot they do a lot better than any arcanist can ever hope (including the arcanists signature abilities, as defined by the DMG).

Bye
Thanee

Hmm... I suppose I gave you that one for free. I meant in the sense of 'solving specific sorts of problems' not in the sense of 'different class abilities'

Im curious as to your thoughts on the second part of my post... that bit struck me like an epiphany, and I'm really wondering about peoples thoughts on it.
 

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

Note: I just realized that as per the core rules, the bonus psion feat can be just a generic psionic feat. IMG it's always had to been a metapsionic, psicreation, or 1 or 2 DM discretion feats. I'm not even sure if it's an offical house rule or we're all just dumb.
 

FrostedMini1337 said:
Note: I just realized that as per the core rules, the bonus psion feat can be just a generic psionic feat.

From the SRD:

" A psion gains a bonus feat at 1st level, 5th level, 10th level, 15th level, and 20th level. This feat must be a psionic feat, a metapsionic feat, or a psionic item creation feat."
 

Spatzimaus said:
From the SRD:

" A psion gains a bonus feat at 1st level, 5th level, 10th level, 15th level, and 20th level. This feat must be a psionic feat, a metapsionic feat, or a psionic item creation feat."

Right. That's what I said.
I'm saying that's bad mojo, because with it you can take Expanded Knowledge (among other things, and the main thing that balances psionics for me and mine is that you have to burn feat to achieve versatility)
 

FrostedMini1337 said:
Right. That's what I said.
I'm saying that's bad mojo, because with it you can take Expanded Knowledge (among other things, and the main thing that balances psionics for me and mine is that you have to burn feat to achieve versatility)

Well, you COULD.. or you could blow two feats getting a familiar and scribe scroll.. err.. I mean a Psicrystal and Inscribe Power Stone. Both incredibly useful, both things that a Wizard gets as class features, and enough to put you back at 1 or 0 feats for 1st lvl...
 

Marcus Smythe said:
Im curious as to your thoughts on the second part of my post... that bit struck me like an epiphany, and I'm really wondering about peoples thoughts on it.
I agree. If the DM sets up a game that plays to the strengths of one class to the expense of another class, then certainly the former will seem overpowered in comparison to the latter. Personally, I tend to think that Psionics is somewhat underpowered, but then I tend to allow quite a bit of planning time, as I tend to think that forcing them through the meat grinder (so to speak) is uncharitable and un-fun. They tend to enjoy finding the information and working out how best to use it to their advantage, and I tend to prefer and encourage such strategic play. Of course, I also limit some spells /powers a bit - including pushing up a couple levels those that raise dead, so that they are not as negligent with their mortality.

The psion is good for the unexpected situations, while the wizard (its true comparative class when comparing the two systems, not the sorcerer as some have suggested) is best when the party has time to prepare, to scout and plan.
 

Marcus Smythe said:
Hmm... I suppose I gave you that one for free. I meant in the sense of 'solving specific sorts of problems' not in the sense of 'different class abilities'

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

Im curious as to your thoughts on the second part of my post... that bit struck me like an epiphany, and I'm really wondering about peoples thoughts on it.

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
 

Marcus Smythe said:
Well, you COULD.. or you could blow two feats getting a familiar and scribe scroll.. err.. I mean a Psicrystal and Inscribe Power Stone. Both incredibly useful, both things that a Wizard gets as class features, and enough to put you back at 1 or 0 feats for 1st lvl...

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

Bye
Thanee
 

Into the Woods

Remove ads

Top