Why Psionics is broken and what to do to fix it

[Taraxia]

I am a power gamer. I'm not unabashed about that. My style will take things to an extreme so that the rules will be tested.

I don't attack you personally. You, on the other hand under the guise of sarcasm attack Thanee. Yes, I have a jaded opinion since I have played all the editions of psionics. I admit that the system currently used is the best that TSR/Wotc has put out. That doesn't mean that there aren't problems. This is what I'm talking about. You state that my opinion is invalid since I have not played a straight psion.

I have a degree in Logic. Convince me of your argument, not your brow beating.

I have moved my opinion away from the dice limits. Someone presented me with a valid line of reasoning. You state that just that the opinions of other gamers must be right and I must be wrong. Give me logical reasons and I'm receptive. Attack me and no amount of convincing with that will change my mind.

In the last 6 months, during a typical session in which we have 2-4 encounters, my character typically uses maybe 4 spells. The Psion part is what is used for 95% of the combat. The last 2 sessions have been the endurance test.

The Psion part is 3 levels less than the party. This part alone keeps up with the party. Practiced Manifester was not added until 15th level.

You can apologize or not. Rude, sarcastic and blunt behavior will get nowhere with me.

If you have a degree in "logic" (by which you mean what, a math concentration?) then you ought to know that anecdotal evidence means very little in these sorts of situations. There are way too many variables in people's subjective experience for any single person's experience saying "Psionics is broken" to mean anything on its own.

When we actually analyze the situation we see that you have a highly optimized psionic build, while the other characters have highly nerfed builds with many wasted feats and poor class synergies. The fact that your character is the most powerful therefore has *nothing* to do with what you picked and everything to do with the way it was built. Therefore *your experience* does not outweigh the *many, many, many* arguments the people on this thread have put forward in favor of psionics being balanced.

Your only arguments in this thread have been your personal experience, the fact that "DMs think psionics is unbalanced" (which, if you've taken logic, you should know is an invalid _argumentum ad populum_, your assumptions about *why* DMs ban psionics notwithstanding) and a very few other points that have mostly been addressed. ("Free" Energy Substitution? Sure, as though energy damage is what really matters to spellcasters. No material components? Oh, scary, as though spellcasters are actually scared of losing their components pouch more than they are being melee'd or grappled. Etc.)

Look, dude. I've been in a campaign where the most powerful character, by a long shot, was the *bard*. Because the bard was being played by an experienced player looking for a fun challenge while the rest of the characters were played by high-school freshman tyros.

Does the fact that this bard was regularly outdamaging my fighter or my fellow player's sorcerer mean that bards are more powerful than fighters and sorcerers? I sure hope not. Does the fact that in a very recent one-shot I played, my knight character consistently outshone my friend's cleric character, mean that knights are overpowered relative to clerics? Hell no.

You're not arguing in good faith, wildstarsreach -- you came into this thread with a highly provocative and controversial assumption, that psionics is *obviously* broken, that DMs ban it because it's broken, and it therefore needs clumsy fixes to make it more like all other forms of existing magic. You should've expected people to react badly to that assumption and had arguments to defend it that went beyond personal anecdotal experience. To do otherwise is a failing in logic.

 

[takasi]

RE: Temporal Powers

Alot of people tend to forget that the time stop, etc. powers dont let you direct damage during them, anymore... your pretty much limited to summoning, leaving lingering effects, etc.

Mind you, that doesnt keep 'Time Effects' from being an I-win-button, but it does mitigate some of their power, and sets a slight tax on pressing the 'I win button'

A little off topic, but I'm starting to see this come into play in our games. Can you still target creatures with delayed spells?

Here is the post I was referring to earlier from Nifft that was...er...nifty:

"Maybe we could see a breakdown of...

- Access to magic item creation, types of items, and resources to create "situational" items (Wizard or Cleric wins by a long shot, but Sorcerer vs. Psion could be interesting);
- Points of ability damage each caster type can do, and how often;
- Points of HP damage each caster type can do, and how often;
- Number of save-or-die effects that can be done each day, at high DC, and at moderate DC;
- Available utility effects.

What do you think of that as an objective measure?"


Which was followed by this one from Marcus Smythe:

"...
One thing wed want to nail down early on is what exact books are allowed. While its certainly advantage:Mage the more we restrict it, if we dont, the outcome is going to be some nutso creation that would never appear in a game.

I personally suggest core+complete.

Potential Extra Categories:
Party Buffing
Dealing with Spell-Resistant Baddies (Undead, Golems, high-SR Crowd)
Mobility"

 

[IcyCool]

I personally suggest core+complete.

Potential Extra Categories:
Party Buffing
Dealing with Spell-Resistant Baddies (Undead, Golems, high-SR Crowd)
Mobility"

I'd suggest using Core only. Because if you can prove that psionics isn't broken compared to arcane in the core, then you'll have a pretty powerful card to play in your arguments. The only reason to use the complete books is to include the "I'm an evocation spell dressed as a Conjuration spell to ignore SR" Orb spells so that you can hold them out and say, "See how borken arcane magic is!?"

Start with Core, build out from there.

 

[takasi]

One last thing to bring up.

With an arcane/divine caster I can ready an action to damage them when they cast. With a psion I can't do this. Silent manifestation is a very easy concentration check and it bugs me to no end. Personally I'd like to see silent manifestation "nerfed" in my games, but I'd like to see what others have to say first.

Also, what house rules have players adapted for psionics in general? Why do you use them?

 

[Taraxia]

Here's something about the Sorcerer that most are leaving out. If a sorcerer uses a metamagic feat, it increases the time. From one action to full round and so on. Even heightened feat will make the spell a longer casting time. Expending your psionic focus is a paltry cost compared to this penalty.

Er, no. Unless you take feats, regaining focus is a *full-round action* in and of itself. That means that using a metapsionic feat turns a standard action into a standard action + a full round action. This is clearly a higher cost than turning a standard action into a full round action.

The sorcerer can spontaneously decide to metamagic a spell, and then metamagic it again and again as long as he has slots, never having to take any feat other than the metamagic feat itself. The Psion who only has the metapsionic feat must take *two rounds* every time he manifests a metapsionic'd power, using up a full round and drawing AoO's to regain focus. If he takes an *extra feat*, he can refocus as a move action -- which means that to keep on manifesting metapsionic'd powers he must refocus as a move action and manifest as a standard action, effectively increasing manifesting time to a full-round action. If he takes *two more feats* to get a psicrystal with a focus, then he gets two "free" metapsionic manifestations -- *assuming he starts out psionically focused and with a focused crystal* -- before he has to start refocusing.

This is not a "paltry" cost, and the fact that you refer to it as such is, again, a reason you are not arguing in good faith. If you've actually played a psion you should *know* that regaining focus is a pain in the arse and that whether or not you've expended focus is a very big deal. The sorcerer's unavoidable extended casting time is annoying, yes, but it predominantly nerfs the sorcerer next to the *wizard* (or, in some cases, next to the artificer who's got money to blow on spontaneously metamagic'd wands and scrolls), not the psion, who has to pay a very similar cost to use metapsionics.

And if it bothers you that much, just use the PHB2 variant rules for the sorcerer, giving up the familiar for the use of free metamagic. Now he's better than the psion, but the psion is in turn more flavorful, using his "familiar", the psicrystal, for what the sorcerer now does as a lone wolf.

 

[takasi]

Er, no. Unless you take feats, regaining focus is a *full-round action* in and of itself. That means that using a metapsionic feat turns a standard action into a standard action + a full round action. This is clearly a higher cost than turning a standard action into a full round action.

I think he's specifically referring to the comparison of augmentation vs traditional spellcasting.

Psions gain the following for free without taking any feats and without having to use higher level slots:

Silent Spell
Still Spell
Eschew Materials
Heighten Spell (partial)

A sorcerer get a few extra spells than the wizard, but in exchange for this he has to increase his casting time on metamagic spells (which he has very few feats to work with). The psion clearly has an advantage here. Overall I don't see the tradeoff or purpose of giving the psion all of these free feats. It seems as though they were designed with flavor in mind instead of mechanics, but that's just my opinion.

 

[Taraxia]

Okay, so know historian can really have an opinion since they did not experience it themselves. That will destroy the entire academic community. I can look at the numbers, use the part of that I have observed. I can make conclusions based the evidence I have. Again, you appear to have ignored me. I make a straight psion every level to replace the character if he is killed. This character from paper looks more broken than Jaden. I guess that a nuclear bomb prediction that it would set off the atmosphere during the Manhattan Project never came to happen.

...You do realize this is the stupidest argument ever, right, and makes me seriously question that "degree in logic"?

Historians have to rigorously check their theses against facts and records and the interpretations of other historians. That's why history is an academic discipline rather than a whole bunch of people venting their speculations into the air. What you're doing is the equivalent of saying, "I was totally well off and happy in the 1960's; my house was very nice, my job was great, and I loved the government; so all that social unrest is a myth". It's exactly the sort of thing historians are *warned about* when reading primary sources, and the reason historians don't just interview some guy who was alive back then and make his statements into a history book -- because *individual experience is biased and unreliable and has to be checked next to the facts and the experiences of others*.

As for the Manhattan Project thing... you also realize that in engineering, it matters very much that equations and plans on paper have actually been tested in real life, right? That we didn't just take some handwavy set of plans, build the first ever A-Bomb, and drop it on Hiroshima immediately -- that they had to *try it out first* to see if it worked? And this was based on physics and engineering principles that had already been firmly and logically established in experimentation many times before the actual Project started, as opposed to handwavy and subjective claims like "It sure looks like it'd make a big explosion to me!" by someone who'd only just read the plans and had no degree in nuclear physics.

Of course, this whole thing is stupid, since my own subjective experience is that when someone starts making grandiose comparisons between themselves and the entire academic or scientific community, they're probably wrong. But that's me.

 

[Marcus Smythe]

A little off topic, but I'm starting to see this come into play in our games. Can you still target creatures with delayed spells?

Here is the post I was referring to earlier from Nifft that was...er...nifty:

"Maybe we could see a breakdown of...

- Access to magic item creation, types of items, and resources to create "situational" items (Wizard or Cleric wins by a long shot, but Sorcerer vs. Psion could be interesting);
- Points of ability damage each caster type can do, and how often;
- Points of HP damage each caster type can do, and how often;
- Number of save-or-die effects that can be done each day, at high DC, and at moderate DC;
- Available utility effects.

What do you think of that as an objective measure?"


Which was followed by this one from Marcus Smythe:

"...
One thing wed want to nail down early on is what exact books are allowed. While its certainly advantage:Mage the more we restrict it, if we dont, the outcome is going to be some nutso creation that would never appear in a game.

I personally suggest core+complete.

Potential Extra Categories:
Party Buffing
Dealing with Spell-Resistant Baddies (Undead, Golems, high-SR Crowd)
Mobility"

I would probably rule that you could still target a creature with a delayed spell. By my understanding of delayed spell, it would check validity of target when the delay time is run, not at the time that the spell is set up. (Basically, the idea is that the spell checks for a valid target when it happens. Until the time of the delay has run out, theres no 'spell there' to check.)
Mind you, other rulings would also be possible.. that would raise the tax slightly higher, by forcing people to focus on spreads and the like, rather than target powers and rays.


As to my opinions on Niftys topics? Well, without creating a character, I'll put forward my opinions/observations on the topics...

- Access to magic item creation, types of items, and resources to create "situational" items (Wizard or Cleric wins by a long shot, but Sorcerer vs. Psion could be interesting):

Agreed, Wizard or Cleric. Sorcerors ability to use spells on his class list from items might let him buy scrolls, etc, to craft (unsure of ruling on this). Psions ability to Psychic Reformation into crafting feats and powers takes him past the Sorceror (if this power is allowed, many consider it problematic), but does so at a non-trival XP cost.

- Points of ability damage each caster type can do, and how often;
Psions only 'save for half' ability damage is Charisma, and while a decent power, is one that I often find very limited in utility.
Mages seem to have alot more ability to 'pick a target', though I'm not sure who scales better, here. Outside of Core+Complete, its Game-Over in favour of the Arcanists, but were not going out there.

- Points of HP damage each caster type can do, and how often;
Assuming the Core+Complete, and that both are optomized for something other than damage? Probably Psion in terms of Damage, with Wizard winning in Duration and Total Damage. Core+Complete, optomized for Damage? Hmm.. tougher call... but Psion probably still over Arcanist by a hair in crunch, with Arcanist more comfortably in the Damage per Day lead.


- Number of save-or-die effects that can be done each day, at high DC, and at moderate DC;

High DC? Probably Psion, since he can burn up to the 'top'. This will likely require a feat choice or proper selection of discipline. This ignores one-off mage tricks on an optomized DC racking wizard... which Im pretty sure wins.

Moderate DC? Wizard or Sorc. No contest. This is also kinda thrown off by the fact that Wizard SoDs tend to be strictly better, and of course the Arcanists get the special 'no save, just die' category.

- Available utility effects.
This one doesnt even BEAR thinking about. Availability in play will be determined by power selection and forethought, but overall availability? Arcane.


- Party Buffing
No contest. Note that Psion buffs self about as well (some argue better.. Id argue more broadly but with less focused power than an Arcane self-buffer), but the Wizard has it all over the Psion on party buffing.

Dealing with Spell-Resistant Baddies (Undead, Golems, high-SR Crowd)
Arcanist. Force Effects, Orbs, Assay Resistance, etc. Power Penetration and G.P.P. are lovely, if you want to blow two feats and focus on them.. but I dont think they compete with the above. Mind you, the Psion still has Crystal Shard for the SR crowd, and Concussion Missle (its like Magic Missile, but sucky!) for the Incorporeal Crew.. but even so.. nah. Arcane for the win, IMHO.

 

[Taraxia]

I think he's specifically referring to the comparison of augmentation vs traditional spellcasting.

Psions gain the following for free without taking any feats and without having to use higher level slots:

Silent Spell
Still Spell
Eschew Materials
Heighten Spell (partial)

A sorcerer get a few extra spells than the wizard, but in exchange for this he has to increase his casting time on metamagic spells (which he has very few feats to work with). The psion clearly has an advantage here. Overall I don't see the tradeoff or purpose of giving the psion all of these free feats. It seems as though they were designed with flavor in mind instead of mechanics, but that's just my opinion.

The ability to semi-Heighten for free is part of the point of psions. It's why they get so few powers known compared to spells known -- because their lower-level powers turn into higher-level powers. This is limited, though, as others have pointed out, and is in any case an *essential feature of the class*. Take it away and you might as well just make Psions into Sorcerers with a different spell list.

As far as Eschew Materials, Still Spell and Silent Spell, these are all fairly pointless metamagic feats to take. A character who takes them will be suboptimally built, because Silence doesn't come up often enough to be worth taking a feat to offset, and Still Spell is only useful for those wizards who are wearing armor with an ASF chance, which itself leads to suboptimal builds. And Eschew Materials is just, well, dumb. It makes you marginally more likely to survive being grappled. Woot.

This is really like saying a fighter is broken relative to a wizard because a fighter gets Martial Weapon Proficiency, Heavy Armor Proficiency, etc. "for free" rather than having to take the feats. This is why counting feats as a way to compare classes is dumb, because you clearly have fairly pointless feats (Toughness, Eschew Materials, Deft Hands) vs. really good or at least significant feats (Empower Spell, Power Attack, Mobility).

I mean, sheesh, are we saying that a wizard who has one level of Outsider HD has a "free feat" because the larger HD gives him the same bonus that Toughness would?

 

[Marcus Smythe]

I'd suggest using Core only. Because if you can prove that psionics isn't broken compared to arcane in the core, then you'll have a pretty powerful card to play in your arguments. The only reason to use the complete books is to include the "I'm an evocation spell dressed as a Conjuration spell to ignore SR" Orb spells so that you can hold them out and say, "See how borken arcane magic is!?"

Start with Core, build out from there.

See, I disagree inasmuch as Psionics was brought into 3.5 in a 'Core+Complete' Environment... several Complete books were already out, and more were in the works.

And a powerful card? It would be a nigh overwelming one, because the SRD is the -weakest- Arcane magic ever, ever got... whereas Psionics got nerfted in its complete book, and mostly ignored in the others (meanwhile full-progression Arcane PRCs spring up like mushrooms). Im sorry, im not.. quite.. willing to willfully gimp my arguement to that great a degree (though I still believe it winnable).

Besides, Core+Complete seems to be the closest thing to a 'baseline game' that you often see... I cant recall the last Core-only game in my area, and alot of GMs still frown on things beyond complete (Faerun, I'm lookin at you, ya monkey!)... but pretty much everyone considers the Complete series to be fare game. Thats just my experience.