NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Spatzimaus" data-source="post: 2996688" data-attributes="member: 3051">At level 20, a Sorcerer has 9/5/5/4/4/4/3/3/3/3.  No spells are prohibited.At level 20, a Psion has 0/5/4/4/4/4/3/3/3/6 by my count, assuming he always takes powers from the top level available.  Many key spells (fly, teleportation, astral construct, charm, animal affinity, schism, fission) are limited to a single Discipline, so unless you burn a LOT of Feats, you'll have far less to choose from, and you can't even use items that cast those powers.  (A Sorcerer who skips fireball can use a wand or scroll for it just fine...)  This REALLY hurts in the mid-levels; I had a hard time finding enough I actually wanted at some levels (especially 6th and 7th).Picking from the top psion level at all times really isn't a good idea; when my Psion was around level 10ish, his power point pool was just too small to make lots of 4th and 5th-level spells a good idea, but there were plenty of good 1st-level spells available, many of which would be augmentable for down the road (when I'd have enough power points to do so).  By 20, I think I had eight or nine first-level spells, most of which were augmentable.  So the effect, in the end, is the same as with the Sorcerer; you'll still be choosing lower-level powers when you could be taking higher-level ones, simply because they're the best choice for you.So, the difference?  The Sorcerer gets 9 cantrips (Psion gets none), one extra 2nd-level spell, but loses 3 spells of 9th level (really, this means "any level" since there are only 7 9th-level powers, plus 1-2 per discipline, and most of them aren't that great).  Now, you can scoff at cantrips all you want, but have you ever tried to play a Sorcerer or Wizard who couldn't use read magic or detect magic?  Like it or not, these things are useful, and to get the equivalent, a Psion has to take them as 1st-level powers... which means if he doesn't want to dump some other critical 1st-level power, he's going to have to use a later slot (like those extra 9th-level ones).  This really adds up.To me, this is a wash; the Psion gets an edge because of the flexibility of the powers involved, but I'd still put it close enough to not be a huge discrepancy, but the Sorcerer can pick from a much wider range of spells thanks to the Discipline limit.Anyway, I and my group are happy with Psionics, to the point where we've basically merged the Wizard into the Cleric class to make room for the Psion.  It's very flexible, but the Focus thing limits metapsionics, and the Sorcerer still beats it in sustainable firepower by a large margin, while the divine casters beat it in spell selection easily.  The ONLY major complaint I've seen is that the Schism/Fission-style powers are just too good; in 3.5E haste was changed so that casters couldn't double-cast as easily, and yet Psions can still do similar things.  Fortunately, none of the Psions I've grouped with ever chose a Telepath, so schism just isn't an issue for us.And as a Shaper who specialized in Astral Constructs, I can say: I love the things, but there's REALLY a big appeal to being able to summon something with spell-like abilities, or good all-around resistances, or that can drain some stat, or that have Scent, etc.  ACs become a bit too one-dimensional.</blockquote>

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