Why Psions are NOT underpowered

Shard O'Glase · Jan 28, 2003

as a dm oh how I wish the psions powers scaled. Then I might actually see some damaging powers instead of just DC25 save or else, DC 27 save or else, crap I rolled a 1 DC 9 save or else.

ruleslawyer · Jan 28, 2003

Your psions seem to roll rather well there, Shard.

Ever consider just going with the "characterless" 10 + power level + key ability mod variant?

Shard O'Glase · Jan 28, 2003

ruleslawyer said:
Your psions seem to roll rather well there, Shard.

Ever consider just going with the "characterless" 10 + power level + key ability mod variant?

They roll average overall so the DCs are not a big issue. It's just that every power is a save or else power. Way to many encoutners get ended with one power. If they had some decent damage powers I would likely see more of those, and damage is just inanely easier to deal with. Save or else powers require more special preparation which I can't always justify.

Though I can almost neuter the Telepath with undead and constructs, they unfortunately don't fit my city based campaign on a regualr basis. A few golem gaurdians, a few undead from the sewers or graveyard just outside of the city, but not a otn of them.

gfunk · Jan 28, 2003

Using simply the core psionic rules (PsiHB), I think that psions are pathetically weak.

If you toss in ITCK, SKR's supplemental powers/feats, and all the good stuff from the WoTC website (Mind's eye), then they are pretty decent.

Plane Sailing · Jan 28, 2003

It seems to me that there was a gap between them setting the additional pp cost to use metamagic (twice the equivalent spell level boost of the same metamagic on spells) and the time when they decided (wrongly IMO) to eliminate scaling of psion powers.

Maximise is an ideal case - for a wizard to maximise his 3rd level zap spell he must be at least 11th level, and it will do 60 points damage (because fireball scaled up to 10d6). For the psion to maximise his 3rd level zap spell will take +6pps onto the normal cost of 5pps, for a total cost of 11pp. Because of the pp usage limit, he has to be 12th level to produce this maximised whitefire for... ta-dah! 20 points damage. Real killer. Or he could use a 6th level power and do 11d6 to one target or 11d4 to multiple targets.

IF they had halved the pp increase for metapsionic feats to reflect the non-scaling nature of the powers they were applied to, they might be a little more worthwhile.

Cheers