[XPH] Psion versus Wizard/Sorcerer

[Thanee]

Now who is getting snarky? I've played both long enough to get 9th level spells, if that ain't long enough you can keep your damn discussion.

That's long enough... Sorry! You surely didn't sound like you had...

Like this: Sorcerors are generally weaker than Wizards except when serving as a living breathing howitzer.

Your games must be drastically different then!

With a good spell selection the sorcerer has a useful spell ready in almost every situation, especially if needed multiple times (even twice). Only if actually knowing what to go up against, the wizard is - of course - clearly superior.

but, just for the sake of comedy; how would you construct a Psion that had access to dominate, suggestion, energy ball, and teleport circle?

Expanded Knowledge. They don't need many other feats anyways, since they have almost all the stuff basically for free, which the sorcerer must learn feats for (Still Spell, Silent Spell, Heighten Spell, Energy Substitution, Spell Focus).

Some of the best psion powers are on the discipline lists, and you only get access to one of those.

Yep, which is a (pretty much the only) disadvantage of psions, as I have noted already.

The only other noteworthy thing is the non-automatic scaling, but given the fact, that scaling is better for psions than for other casters (i.e. increased DC) and that they have plenty PP to manifest at their full manifester level and still have a very decent number of powers per day, that's not such a big issue all things considered.

A wizard can do all these things, and for someone who just took the high road about who has played what character type for how long you seem to forget that spontaneous casts vs prepared spells doesn't hurt nearly so bad as the levels get higher.

As I said, your games must be quite different, as the spontaneous ability really starts to shine at the mid to high levels, when sorcerers have a decent spell selection.

In almost -all- cases if the party screws up bad enough that the Wizard Sorceror or Psion has to expend -all- spellcasting ablility, they've got some other issues than caster balance.

The Sorceror has more total spells known vs/powers. Don't agree?

No. Since 0th level spells don't count. They do nothing (detect magic excluded).

Assuming for one moment that total number of high level spells/powers known is the ultimate measure of power; there is no -large- discrepancy until 19th level;

Ahem.

On every even level, the psion has four times as many powers of the highest level compared to the sorcerer! Four times! At every level thereafter, they still have twice as many PLUS a complete new level already, which the sorcerer has not available yet! Repeat for the one thereafter. That's no -large- discrepancy!?

how many does a sorceror have at level 16? 35. 35 spells. Yes, many of them are 0-level. I used 0-level spells all the time when I played wizards and sorcerors. Sometimes for flavor, sometimes for mechanics. Detect magic is pretty damn important; read magic can be as well. Mage hand/Far hand is one of my personal favourites, and so on. For a Psion these cost as much as a 1-level spell.

You don't want to say 0th level spells can live up with 6th, 7th, 8th level powers, or do you? Coz those are the ones the psion has instead of the sorcerer's mighty 0th level spells in comparison at that level (see above).

Are you interested in discussing balance or collecting testimonials from people who agree with you?

I would like to see something, which is convincing, that psions are balanced, compared to the dozens of arguments I have brought up on this thread, why they are not. I don't think there is much, tho (the good powers being on the discipline lists is one thing, the scaling issues another... but the countless advantages on the other side overshadow this by far).

IMHO, the psion is well balanced with the core classes. If you do not agree, what would you change?

See the house rules forum. I'm sure you won't like it!

Bye
Thanee

 

[ph0rk]

And, not to mention, that at 10th level your fireball example is most favorably stacked towards the sorcerer (maximum scaling reached).

I'm sure as you compare the classes across a range of levels the balance will shift between them. We don't play the whole game at level 20.

 

[ph0rk]

Your games must be drastically different then!

I'd imagine everyone's are.

my biggest point is that the differences between psions and sorcers are relatively slight, as far as damage potential, in the short term. In the long term, one or the other will shine - depending entirely on the type and amount of butt-kicking required. (psions do much better with scores of weak enemies).


Generally though, again imho, psion powers are weaker than arcane powers. (remember for most powers, the DC does not scale) Sure, there are many that are identical, but a great deal of psionic powers just suck. My light? please.

Flavor-wise, I've (and others) never been happy with the fact that Sorcerors, a class what is supposed to have magic in their BLOOD, have to collect bat poo to cast fireball. (And other material components). Thats just stupid, and everyone knows it.

See the house rules forum. I'm sure you won't like it!

I haven't seen anything convincing. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, of course.

I don't see how psions in particular stand out from the crowd. (i.e. core classes) in any particularly unbalancing way. Sure, they do a few things a sorcerer does but better, and vice versa.

On the other hand, the Psychic Warrior is one of my favourite classes from the new book; I don't see too many people discussing -their- balance issues

 

[Thanee]

The comment about the 10th level was exactly meaning that. You can't just pick one level, you have to compare overall balance. And I'm sure that the psion will win out at most levels - and that's if you ignore many of their inherent advantages in the comparison and just compare their flexibility, manifestings per day, manifestings per round and effect of their manifestings compared to spells.

I'm pretty certain, that the psion will also outshine the sorcerer in raw damage dealing, if you do that, most of the time.

That is in damage per time, of course. The psion will be depleted quicker, if he does that.

The sorcerer will be able to do more damage over a longer time frame, but that includes many highly ineffective spells, that - once the real ones are depleted - simply won't make a difference anymore.

All in all, the sorcerer will be able to cast more spells per day than the psion can manifest powers. However, the additional spells are all of a pretty low level then. While those surely are useful still, they are not the ones that have a huge impact. The psion has the ability to manifest more (or even many more) high level powers, which easily balances their lower number of manifestations per day. What do you think is better? One 9th level power or one 6th level spell PLUS one 3rd level spell? That's basically what we are comparing here.

The ability to unleash more powerful powers is not to be underestimated. With all the stuff they get, psions are able to manifest powers worth a total of 48 PP per round (costing them 54 PP per round plus a one-time expenditure of 12 PP) at 20th level (starting with the 2nd, in the 1st they can "only" do their normal 20 PP plus the 12 PP for the quickened Schism)! There's a reason, why haste has been changed in 3.5! Being able to throw out more of one's powers in a shorter time frame is a huge advantage, that's exactly why haste has been toned down. Again, this will lead to a quick expenditure of the PP, but it will also lead to quicker defeat of the opposition in combat, so the overall expenditure is not really that much higher in the end. And this is a very extreme example as well, you don't have to go that high, it just demonstrates that they can go that high!

Anyways, here's even an example, using your "sorcerers can throw X fireballs a day" guideline. Let's see how many "fireballs" the psion can throw per day, if they are not augmenting to the max, but only stay at the same level of the fireball.

Level / Sorcerer # of CL10 Fireballs (avg.dam. 35) / Psion # of ML8 Energy Balls (avg.dam. 36)

10th / 17 / 14
15th / 34 / 35
20th / 52 / 61

10th: Int/Cha 22 (excluding Torc)
15th: Int/Cha 24 (including Torc)
20th: Int/Cha 28 (including Torc)

Yes, energy ball is a 4th level power which needs a feat, but as has been shown already, this is no problem for psions comparing to sorcerers.

Not so bad in direct comparison, eh?

Ok, now after these are done, the psion won't have the same number of 1st and 2nd level powers the sorcerer does have in spells left. It wouldn't be fair to forget about those.

Also note, that this is highly downsizing what the psion can do with the energy ball. They could easily do a lot more damage per time, if they wished to spend more points on them (and they can spend quite a few more)!

Of course, the sorcerer will have better spells than fireball at those levels (altho castable from fewer slots than above), the sorcerer will have to dedicate precious high level spells known to those, the psion does not need to learn much besides energy ball to keep up. If the example would be expanded to the actual scaling (that is using higher level slots for higher level spells), the sorcerer will do more damage over time for sure, fireball isn't really effective at 15th level or even 20th level. But that neglects some facts like energy resistance (the psion doesn't have any problem with those), Evasion (psion? switch to fortitude save), and such. The sorcerer needs feats or other spells to adapt to such challenges. That's the disadvantage the sorcerer gets for being a spontaneous caster. The psion doesn't have this disadvantage to this extent.

And... psion powers are generally weaker than arcane spells!?

I'd say, that while psions surely have less powers to choose from, their individual powers easily live up to corresponding spells (in fact they seem to be even better most of the time). Sure some of those are on the discipline lists, but then again Expanded Knowledge allows to pick them (and they have the feats to do so as well).

You don't really want to tell me, that fireball (your prime example) is better than energy ball (yes, it's 4th level, but that is no big difference in the long run... some spells/powers are always +/-1 level (i.e. dominate is -1 for psions)), do you?

I'm pretty sure, that the psions powers are not weaker than the arcane spells. But since they are roughly equal, they cannot have like a dozen other advantages with absolutely no disadvantage to balance these.

Psychic Warrior: Havn't looked at that too closely yet, but since the PW doesn't have the same huge advantages (and is not so similar to the wizard and sorcerer), I don't have such a big problem with them as I have with the psion. Publishing a class (the psion), that is so much better than a very similar core class, just isn't right.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Thanee]

I haven't seen anything convincing. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, of course.

That's a given, of course. I don't want to tell people what they have to like or dislike. I stated somewhere else, that the new psion rules surely will be fun to play.

I only tell them, that those new rules are not balanced. This is a fact.

I havn't seen many people post any serious disadvantages of the psion class yet.

There is one thing (the lower number of powers to select their powers known from, also that many good powers are unavailable unless you spend a feat (altho the psion has the bonus feats to do so)), which actually is a disadvantage.

Other than that?

I have listed like a dozen of advantages, some minor, some very powerful. Nothing is there to balance these.

Bye
Thanee

 

[kitoy]

Give the Psion a chance.

All of your arguments are well thought out, almost too well thought out sometimes. What you're doing is pushing everything to the bleeding edge of possibility. I know that we all have or have had munchkins in our party who'll push the rules to the limit, but not everyone pushes everything to the edge every single game.

My suggestion is that you run or play a few games with a psion in the party before you rush to judgement. Give the psion a chance to advance a few levels to see how they do, in play , before coming to a final decision.

You're making most of your arguments based on 10th and 20th level characters. Do you mostly play high level games? Do you start your characters at 1st level or do you start somewhere higher? We all know that the game is totally different at different levels, how do you think psions compare at lower levels?

I personally think that the new XPH is great, a well balanced book with the rest of 3.5, but I haven't played with the new psionics rules for 20+ levels. I could be wrong and you could be right.

I'm not saying you're wrong, I just think that you've jumped into the "I hate the XPH" pool with both feet without really giving it a chance. I know that you're scared that this book will ruin your game, but I believe that this product has been thoroughly playtested by the folks at WotC. Playtest it yourself and it may surprise you.

 

[nameless]

Psions seem to be better at blasting than either Wizards or Sorcerors, it's hard to argue otherwise. The versatility of Psions, however, is extremely limited compared to arcane spells. Wizards are a different enough that it's tough to compare them to Psions, but Sorcerors seem fair enough. They might have a greater number of "effective" known powers than Sorcerors, but arcane spells simply can do a wider variety of things than Psionics.

First off, very few beneficial psionic powers can be used on others. Like monks, psions are great at protecting themselves, but lousy at keeping the rest of the party alive and together. Psionics are also apparently unable to make illusions of any kind, except by messing with the minds (and everything that goes with offensive power use instead of passive illusion) of the targets. If you look at psionic powers, almost every one would fall into evocation, transmutation, or enchantment (though there are exceptions for many iconic spells). Psionics are almost always strictly offensive, and almost always allow a save.

The power list has another serious drawback, and that's in staying power. Many arcane spells can be cast once, and be an effective attack for the entire combat (Evard's Tentacles, Cloudkill, Polymorph/Shapechange, etc). It's usually more effective to use another spell each round, but sometimes it's important to conserve spell slots and win the battle, so the big spells are still left for then you really need them. Psions don't have that flexibility, because they need to keep spending PP to keep being effective.

Given everything on the table, psions can't do more in an encounter than a well-prepared wizard. Psions do have greater staying power than a wizard, for high level effects anyways, but not nearly as much versatility, and in noncombat challenges, wizards really shine. Sorcerors probably don't have the raw combat power of a psion, but they do have a more open list of spells and can contribute a good deal outside of combat. Sorcerors also have more staying power than a psion, between being able to use less spells per combat, and being able to use more relevant (though not maximum level, lower level sorceror spells can still be useful, where unaugmented powers frequently aren't),

So I think that psions are not equal to the arcane spellcasters, but each has unique advantages (wizards unlimited potential, sorcerors vast reserves, and psions quick adaptability).

 

[Psion]

What I do not think is, that the psion who gets spontaneous "casting" with even more flexibility and all the stuff the wizard gets (except for the unlimited spell knowledge, of course)

That's a pretty big "except" if you ask me.

Add that to the 15-minute-to-use-and-spell-in-your-books-rule, the flexibility of this wizard feature is fairly potent.

 

[Psion]

I only tell them, that those new rules are not balanced. This is a fact.

"Fact." Fortunately, the determination of fact is not up to you, and you have far from provided objective proof. It's your perception.

I'm pretty certain, that the psion will also outshine the sorcerer in raw damage dealing, if you do that, most of the time.

That perception relies on comparing an unbuffed third level running up against the level fence to an essentially 8th level power. If you slant your examples like this, of course they are going to come out looking like it's in your favor. A sorcerer can swap out their spells every other level. If at 15th level, the sorcerer is still using it, it would be the strategy of the sorcerer's player I would question, not the psion's balance.

That said, I would agree on the whole, it appears that the sorcerer comes off a bit weak compared to the psioni, even considering the above. But as others have said, you have misidentified the problem. The psion is not incredibly strong, from what I can see. Rather, the sorcerer is weak. This has been something people have brought up in debates that don't even talk about the psion.

In my game, I am pretty free with third party publications that seem a little over the top with the sorcerer, just because it feels a bit like a poor cousin to the wizard.

 

[Thanee]

All of your arguments are well thought out, almost too well thought out sometimes. What you're doing is pushing everything to the bleeding edge of possibility. I know that we all have or have had munchkins in our party who'll push the rules to the limit, but not everyone pushes everything to the edge every single game.

Hmm... I don't really think that I did that... I'm sure you can find stuff (like with PrC involved, etc.) which can get this to even higher levels.

Of course, I'm looking at the psion at his full ability. That's what is going to happen in play, or wouldn't you use powers with maximum augmentation, for example? That's like, if you play a wizard, you choose not to cast spells from your highest level.

My suggestion is that you run or play a few games with a psion in the party before you rush to judgement. Give the psion a chance to advance a few levels to see how they do, in play , before coming to a final decision.

See below.

You're making most of your arguments based on 10th and 20th level characters. Do you mostly play high level games? Do you start your characters at 1st level or do you start somewhere higher? We all know that the game is totally different at different levels, how do you think psions compare at lower levels?

I'm actually trying to argue from a very general viewpoint, that's why I am mainly discussing the mechanics behind the psionics. When I give examples, they are to demonstrate a point, nothing else. I do not base my argumentation on the abilities of a 20th level Psion, in most cases what I state is true throughout all levels.

But since you asked... When I looked up the PP for low level psions, I noticed, that they will be able to manifest 6 or more 1st level powers per day. At second level their ability almost doubles. At third they already have 2nd level powers (two even, at fourth they have four of them, when the sorcerer gets his first). No, I don't think they look weak at low levels.

However, they do not have any 0th level powers, which can actually be kinda useful at the low levels still.

So they are at least equal at this point, if not better (if I were a wizard or sorcerer I would easily drop my 0th level spells per day for more 1st level spells per day).

I'm not saying you're wrong, I just think that you've jumped into the "I hate the XPH" pool with both feet without really giving it a chance.

As I already stated, we've played with psionics in a very long-running 3.0 campaign, using the stuff the XPH rules are built upon (ITCK and MS).

It's similar enough to draw conclusions.

And I never said, that I hate the XPH. What I said is, that I am highly disappointed by it.

I know that you're scared that this book will ruin your game, ...

Actually... no. It won't ruin our game, since it won't be used!

...but I believe that this product has been thoroughly playtested by the folks at WotC.

You put a lot of faith into WotC playtesting.

Do you think that the 3.0 PsiHB has been playtested as well?
How could stuff like Psychofeedback or the Torc of psionic might find its way into the book then?

It doesn't take a genius or a revision to figure out that this stuff is hideously broken. They havn't even addressed it in the errata or FAQ!

Now in 3.5 they obviously did tone down some of that stuff (at least!), even though now Psychofeedback is totally crippled and completely useless. Doesn't look like the right way to me either.

Playtest it yourself and it may surprise you.

I don't need to playtest it to see that some stuff is utterly broken...

How about Metamorphic Transfer as an example.
Do you think this feat has been playtested?

I think, if it has been playtested, the people that did so should be looking for a new job.

How do you believe the product has been thoroughly playtested, yet they didn't incorprate stuff, which has been errataed for the PHB (Greater Manifestation). Why is the ability to spontaneously manifest multiple powers per turn in there, while the authors of the PHB have deliberately removed this ability from spellcasters to better balance them with the non-spellcasters? Why is there a psionic version of dispel magic (this is not really a rarely used spell in normal D&D so should come up fairly often in playtest situations), which is at 10th level TWICE AS GOOD as the equivalent spell and equivally good as the greater version cast by a 20th level character!? And why are psions better in dispelling magic than wizards, anyways, it's not like they have studied it, or did they?

I'd need to playtest, for example, to see how a class like the Wilder fares. It's too different in concept to say up front. The psion is not.

Bye
Thanee