XPH: Dispel Psionics house rules?

[Perun]

Just last night, a player, whose psion is about to reach 5th level, told me about the 3rd-level powers he's considering taking.

Naturally, I looked them through, to see what they were all about, and whether there are any issues I'd have to deal with.

I was very unpleasantly surprised (to say the least) when I saw the augmentation for Dispel Psionics.

Manifesting a fully augmented Dispel Psionics (10 PP), at 10th manifester level (meaning the manifester is a 10th-level psion), it gives a dispel check of 1d20+20.

At 7th level, a wizard uses a 3rd-level spell, and gets a dispel check of d20+7, a psion uses an equivalent of a 4th-level power (7 PP) and gets his dispel check atd20+11. At 9th-level, the wizard is still using his 3rd-level spell, and has a dispel check of d20+9, while the psion expends 9 PP (the equivalent of a 5th-level power) and gets his dispel check at d20+15. Finally, at 11th level, the wizard uses Greated Dispel Magic, a 6th-level spell. One'd think that the situation will even out, or at least favour the wizard. Fat chance. Wizad is at d20+11, whereas the psion, using a lower-level equivalent power (level 5.5) gets the above mentioned d20+20.

From that point on, the psion is at his max, while the it takes the wizard NINE levels to even things out.

So, I've decided to make things a bit more even, and I'm cosidering replacing the original Augmentation entry with the following: "By spending 6 additional power points, your dispel check becomes d20 + your manifester level, maximum +20."

Has anyone else house-ruled this power? I'm rather interested in other people's solutions.

Regards.

 

[Dinkeldog]

I'm unsure whether I think this is really about house rules or asking if there's errata on the power, so I'll leave this here for now. My belief is that it's an editing problem that comes from an attempt to eliminate the scaling (original reading would have been that you make a dispel check at d20 + 5 with +1 modifier for every +1 pp spent). That however is really cheesy and ineffective (not to mention tops off at +15 while arcane and divine casters top off at +20). So then they tried to fix it by making the dispel check d20 + manifester level. The combination is a bit overpowered, though.

The interpretation I think that I'm going with is dispel check of d20 + manifester level max +10; for +6 pp, max is +20.

 

[Thanee]

I'm unsure whether I think this is really about house rules or asking if there's errata on the power, so I'll leave this here for now.

That one hopefully will see errata.

My belief is that it's an editing problem that comes from an attempt to eliminate the scaling (original reading would have been that you make a dispel check at d20 + 5 with +1 modifier for every +1 pp spent).

I doubt, that's an error. The +1PP/+2 is most closely resembling the cost of Greater Dispel (10 PP, where it should be 11 for the max of +20).

I think they simply didn't realize, that scaling and augmentation stacks, which is what causes the enormous problem here, since you do not scale to one point and augment from there, you can do both at the same time, since scaling and augmentation are two very different things.

The interpretation I think that I'm going with is dispel check of d20 + manifester level max +10; for +6 pp, max is +20.

Yep, that's the easiest approach, basically make it Dispel and Greater Dispel in one power.

Even better (IMHO, of course) would be to either use scaling OR augmentation, not both.

That is...

A) Make it two powers, that scale up to 10/20, like Dispel Magic, with no augmentation. Precedence to this one would be Polymorph/Metamorphosis, that works the same way.

B) Make it like almost every other power, NO scaling, but augmentation (maybe capped at +20 in this case, which would set it apart by introducing a cap where normally is none, so not to brilliant either - altho, it actually might work even without the cap, considering, that there is Mordenkainen's Disjunction to compare it against at epic levels).

All in all, it's always somewhat whacky, since it doesn't completely follow the psionic system (B without cap would be the only method, that really does).

Either it has a too low cost (no real augmentation cost involved) and can therefore be used way too often per day (the reason, why augmentation costs PP and why psionic powers normally do not scale), or it has a cap, or it uses scaling and no augmentation, or a mix of both.

Anyways, any of the three methods would be more or less fair, I think.

As written, it is totally ridiculous, of course.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Someone]

It´s obviously an errata (or the poorest wording I´ve ever seen). I still have only the SRD, but the final sentence of the augmentation gives a clue: "for every additional power point you spend, the bonus on your dispel increase by 2 (to a maximum bonus of +20 for a 5-point expenditure)"

I may be wrong, but 2 x 5 = 10, not 20. It´s clear that the augmentation increases the cap (to simulate the effect of greater dispel magic at later levels), not the actual bonus.

 

[Thanee]

As written, the bonus increases by +2 per PP (up to 5 PP may be spent) and by +1 per manifester level (up to a maximum or 10), this results in a maximum bonus of +20.

They might have meant a bonus to the cap, not to the actual roll, but even then, the power would be a sizeable bit better than any other dispel. Defintely not reasonable (that psions can dispel magic better than wizards), unless you use the psionics are different version without any cross-system dispel spells/powers (i.e. dispel psionics spell and dispel magic power), which is not the standard.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Goblyn]

I would imagine the errata will look like this:
"The Augment for Dispel Psionics should read as follows:Augment: For every additional power point you spend, the maximum bonus on your dispel check increases by 2 (to a maximum bonus of +20 for a 5-point expenditure).

I don't think the augment is intended to affect the dispel check in any way other than increasing the maximum amount of manifester level you can add.
ie. an x-level manifester will not be able to dispel any better than a wizard of x-level, though this one power covers the domain of both Dispel Magic and Greater Dispelling.

 

[Scion]

Hopefully, with that change, they will also put in something like, 'if you augment this with at least 4 points then this power can also dispel any effect that remove curse could remove, even if psionic dispel could not normally end the effect'