Is psionics overpowered?

[Cryov]

I haven't touched psionics in over 8 years and I can understand why it was supposedly "op" then but I haven't gone through the pathfinder variant yet.
Is it still deemed "op" in pathfinder as well?

[MrSin]

Its a common misconception that its overpowered. Here's an article on it. Link

[Fig]

Are you talking about the 3.X WotC material or the Dreamscarred Press for PF?

I'm not well acquainted with the 3.X material, but the DSP stuff is pretty darn awesome. It's clean, maintains much of the 3.X feel while getting it back in line with power levels. Further, the system takes great pains to point out that psionics and the PF standard work interchangeably, transparent and "plays well with others." Further, there are levels of how much integration, much like firearms: none, some, inconvenient access, commonplace.

All told, I'm sold on it, and eagerly awaiting the Ultimate Psionics.

[Jamie Charlan]

... well, a Psion can be well into Tier 2... But other than that...

It's got far stricter limitations [psi focus expenditure for meta, maximum PPs per manifester level expenditure, a few less powers that are quite as gamebreaking] than core magic.

Basically if you can deal with full casters, all the psionic classes are a solid step down. They are, however, generally [the DSP ones] quite well designed, so you can have powerful, versatile classes. The psionic combat classes have tons of fun abilities outside of just being a sword with damage stats, the support classes can actually be worth taking, there's even a good healer. You don't HEAL in pathfinder when you should be annihilating the battlefield or controlling everything on it, but the Vitalist can actually pull it off.

Lower highs, higher lows. Way easier to work with as a Gm, and less horrific traps that leave players hating their choice of class "because they chose wrong and now suck".

[Cheapy]

Cryov, check out the search bar and type in "Psionics overpowered".

You will find many, many posts on this topic.

[LazarX]

Fig wrote:

Are you talking about the 3.X WotC material or the Dreamscarred Press for PF?

Or he could be talking about Gygax's original creation for AD+D which was in Gygax's own words. "The biggest mistake I ever made."

[Jamie Charlan]

The 2e version was far better balanced, way, way weaker, NOT "the original and only gestalt", though unfortunately marred by being the frickin skill system and tainted by the stories of people who knew people who'd heard people talk about people they knew who'd heard that the original gygax version was broken as all ****.

There's a lot of players I met back then who "knew" 2e psionics were so broken they made 20th level wizards look like a first level thief with just 9 dex. They absolutely "KNEW" this. They didn't need to read the rules or book or try one out to discover this. Eighth-party information was more than enough to KNOW.

[Zhayne]

LazarX wrote:

Fig wrote:

Are you talking about the 3.X WotC material or the Dreamscarred Press for PF?

Or he could be talking about Gygax's original creation for AD+D which was in Gygax's own words. "The biggest mistake I ever made."

Gygax made MUCH bigger mistakes than that.

Anyway, no, psionics is not overpowered, compared to the full casters. One big reason why not is the lack of free scaling.

For example, let's compare a psion to a wizard. Each is 5th level, and each can cast Fireball/Energy Ball for the same damage, 5d6, for the same resource expenditure (5PP=3rd level spell slot).

Four levels later, let's do that again. The wizard now gets 9d6 damage out of that same 3rd level slot, while the psion must expend 9 PP (the equivalent of a 5th level slot) for the same damage. The wizard could prepare an Empowered Fireball in a 5th level slot, doing the equivalent damage of 13.5d6.

Add to that the absence of a prepared psionic (wizard > sorcerer, after all), and psionics comes in behind wizard/druid/cleric/sorcerer easily.

Heck, I think they should use the psionic point system for spellcasters ... it makes more sense to me than slots.

[williamoak]

I've yet to see psionics in play. Read a bit of the 4e rules, and they seem fairly reasonable (like slightly more flexible sorcerers). But yeah, none of the "D&D" systems where built with psionics in mind, and I think some designers MIGHT have gone overboard. At least thats what I understand from the general "PSIONICS ARE GAMEBREAKING" hyperbole out there. It's definitly doable (I mean, magic "works"), but apparently in many cases the effort wasnt made to balance it properly.

[Jamie Charlan]

A lot of it really is the ancient artifacts of old player knowledge though.

Psionics are actually very well built with the worlds they'll be in in mind. At the very least, the DSP pathfinder stuff has some significant balancing done. Fits quite well but then what wouldn't given how all over the place golarion really is?

[LazarX]

Zhayne wrote:

LazarX wrote:

Fig wrote:

Are you talking about the 3.X WotC material or the Dreamscarred Press for PF?

Or he could be talking about Gygax's original creation for AD+D which was in Gygax's own words. "The biggest mistake I ever made."

Gygax made MUCH bigger mistakes than that.

Anyway, no, psionics is not overpowered, compared to the full casters. One big reason why not is the lack of free scaling.

For example, let's compare a psion to a wizard. Each is 5th level, and each can cast Fireball/Energy Ball for the same damage, 5d6, for the same resource expenditure (5PP=3rd level spell slot).

Four levels later, let's do that again. The wizard now gets 9d6 damage out of that same 3rd level slot, while the psion must expend 9 PP (the equivalent of a 5th level slot) for the same damage. The wizard could prepare an Empowered Fireball in a 5th level slot, doing the equivalent damage of 13.5d6.

Add to that the absence of a prepared psionic (wizard > sorcerer, after all), and psionics comes in behind wizard/druid/cleric/sorcerer easily.

Heck, I think they should use the psionic point system for spellcasters ... it makes more sense to me than slots.

1. I was quoting Gygax. As to which of his mistakes was the biggest... that's a LOONG thread for another eon. And I will say that First Edition psionics was a bloody mess bolted on to AD+D with no redeeming features whatsoever.

2. The thing about 3.X psionics which I assume is the main topic here, is the nova factor. A Psion with overchannel can be absolutely devastating if he's willing to take the damage to do so, especially with the crystal powers which are not subject to a saving throw or spell resistance.

[MrSin]

LazarX wrote:

2. The thing about 3.X psionics which I assume is the main topic here, is the nova factor. A Psion with overchannel can be absolutely devastating if he's willing to take the damage to do so, especially with the crystal powers which are not subject to a saving throw or spell resistance.

To clarify, Overchannel let you raise your manifester level by up to 3(at 15th, it scaled). Crystal spells are usually measured in D4s and you could raise the damage by D4 for every point you spend. So a 5th level Psion could spend 6 points, take D6 damage, and spew a cone of crystals as a ranged touch that do 6D4 no save, no SR. This would cause them to burn out faster and take damage at the cost of having 1-3 more caster levels.

Another example would be a 9th level psion using Crisis of breath. Takes 2D6 damage, and uses his 3rd level power and augments it to be a 20 foot burst save or suffer(up to four humanoid targets) with the DC equivalent of a 6th level spell. Essentially the Psion is casting a spell one level higher than he's supposed to have at the moment.

Overchannel is usually a very minor change though, and as I said you tend to burn out even faster when you use it. The psion in the first example burns out in 4ish rounds, the one in the second in about 6. This is actually discussed in the article I linked(numbers: 1, 15, 22)

[DM Beckett]

For 3E/PF, how OP it is lies almost entirely on your personal bias for Psionics.

If you love Psionics, then o matter what, it's perfectly balanced and everyone that thinks otherwise is stupid.

If you hate Psionics (or don't particularly care), then no one can convince you it's not amongst the most broken mechanics.

Personally I'm more on the "it's broken side", but from experience. A few other things really tip the scales. Magic/Psionic Transparency is a big one. Another one is how often the DM will incorporate the weaknesses that Psionics should have vs Magic, because the base game is not really built with Psionics in mind. Outside of the Transparency, if there are a lot of normal monsters that Psionics naturally gets around where magic has issues, that starts to really favor the Psionic characters. Psionics can also do things that magic can not, like target items, armor, or weapons with direct damage that bypasses Hardness. Other things are how a DM can limit magic users to certain spells, (you can't find a teacher or a scroll) doesn't apply to Psionics.

[Zhayne]

DM Beckett wrote:

Magic/Psionic Transparency is a big one. Another one is how often the DM will incorporate the weaknesses that Psionics should have vs Magic,

This is why magic and psionics acting the same is highly recommended.

Quote:

Other things are how a DM can limit magic users to certain spells, (you can't find a teacher or a scroll) doesn't apply to Psionics.

Two free spells of your choice, no limits, any level. Also, note that if a DM finds any power or spell problematic, he can simply ban it, whether wizard or psion or anything else. Non-argument.

[DM Beckett]

DM Beckett wrote:

Magic/Psionic Transparency is a big one. Another one is how often the DM will incorporate the weaknesses that Psionics should have vs Magic,

Zhayne wrote:

This is why magic and psionics acting the same is highly recommended.

I'm not sure if it was recommended. I know it was the base assumption <in 3.5>, but that's not the same thing. :)

DM Beckett wrote:

Other things are how a DM can limit magic users to certain spells, (you can't find a teacher or a scroll) doesn't apply to Psionics.

Zhayne wrote:

Two free spells of your choice, no limits, any level. Also, note that if a DM finds any power or spell problematic, he can simply ban it, whether wizard or psion or anything else. Non-argument.

Obviously. That should have gone without saying. :)

I was talking about not outright banning of spells, but rather either making them difficult to come by or holding off on attaining them. Anyway, that was just a short list off the top of my head of some of the things that tend to get overlooked by Psionic fans.

[MrSin]

Zhayne wrote:

Two free spells of your choice, no limits, any level. Also, note that if a DM finds any power or spell problematic, he can simply ban it, whether wizard or psion or anything else. Non-argument.

In 3.5 it was four if you took the right feat. Plus spell bloat. Delicious delicious spell bloat. The best way to not have spells you don't want is to say No, to be perfectly honest.

[The Shaman]

Cryov wrote:

I haven't touched psionics in over 8 years and I can understand why it was supposedly "op" then but I haven't gone through the pathfinder variant yet.

Is it still deemed "op" in pathfinder as well?

8 years ago? Strange - this was after the XPH updated psionics for 3.5, and I think 3.5 Psionics was a pretty solid system, barring a few hiccups (i.e. the soulknife and a few other loser options).

It is basically "mana-based" spontaneous casting where full casters get their spells the same level as "prepared casters" like wizards, druids, clerics etc do. It does not suffer from arcane spell failure, which is a definite plus, but for many effects you need to pay extra for some of the scaling effects normal magic gives you for free - or for other options normal magic doesn't have, such as shorter casting times. Metapsionics, however, is a lot more limited due to expending a time-consuming resource with every use. DSP more or less "pathfinderized" the classes by giving more fluff and abilities apart from just power points and powers known, and made the soulknife a lot less absurd to play. I have not read the ultimate book, but the regular one is definitely solid imo.

If you treat psionics as identical as magic for the purposes of resistance etc, it should work reasonably well. It did decently enough the few times I was able to play a psionic character.

Edit: saying the above, it might be interesting to see how a, say, 10th level wizard compares to a 10th level psion in terms of how much "juice" they have. Presuming spells to be worth of a basic, unaugmented power of their level in PP, a 10th level wizard gets the equivalent of 70 PP of spells if generalist (4+ 4*3 + 3*5 + 3*7 + 2*9), while a specialist would get 95 from the extra spell slot per level. A Psion gets 88. Now, this looks good for the psion, but as noted many of their powers need to pay extra for scaling casters get for free (i.e. extra dice on a damage power, the extra AC on a "barkskin" power, etc).

The bonuses from having a high casting score are similar: 20 intelligence at level 10 will gives a wizard extra slots worth 26 PP, while the same for a psion gives 25. Mind you, the bonuses for regular casters cap and are dependent on whether they are full or partial casters, while those for psionic classes keep growing - i.e a psion with the same intelligence at level 20 will have 50 bonus PP, while the wizard won't get any new bonus spells.

[Zhayne]

DM Beckett wrote:

I was talking about not outright banning of spells, but rather either making them difficult to come by or holding off on attaining them.

Again: Two free spells every time you gain a level, no limitations. No scrolls needed, no teachers needed. You just grab two off the list. Unless the DM bans the spells outright, you can't stop the wizard from claiming the spells.

[Jamie Charlan]

But don't you know? It's balanced if its a wizard.

[the David]

I think the Half-Giant is a bit overpowered...

That is, when given a large greatsword, a level of barbarian and a level of psychic warrior, the interceptor path with expansion as the power he can manifest freely, extra rage and weapon focus (greatsword), a strength of 20 when not raging/large, and the killer and psionic knack traits.
Don't bother telling me I should have chosen power attack instead of weapon focus. I did the math, although there is probably some way to improve on him.

[Zhayne]

Jamie Charlan wrote:

But don't you know? It's balanced if its a wizard.

Heh.

I'm entertaining the serious thought of running a game without the arcane or divine classes, just martials and psionics.

[Jamie Charlan]

Any 1d12 weapon will become 3d6 as well so a Lucerne Hammer or Great Axe can do quite well. 1d10s become 2d8 which isn't bad.

[Kimera757]

I'm assuming psionics is pretty similar to the 3.5 version. It's pretty balanced compared to wizards but had some features that made it more powerful in some areas (in addition to being less powerful in some areas). Since players tend to gravitate away from weak options, the most powerful abilities are prominent.

Psions tend to have poor utility, and at least in 3.5 direct damage is even more expensive, but (oddly) could do spike damage even better than wizards, with much more flexibility in terms of what elements they were dishing out. (No, this isn't something I agreed with.)

Power points are incredibly efficient when it comes to save-or-suffer powers. I'm recalling a fight my PCs went through back when 3.5 psionics was very new. It was an already established campaign and the PCs were 15th-level. One psion had the power Recall Death, which forced you to see your future death and then experience it immediately. It was basically the psionic equivalent of Finger of Death, a spell that the party's mage could have cast a bunch of times. Recall Death is an 8th-level power, costing 15 power points.

The PCs were riding on a barge of some sort when they faced a "devil kraken", a kraken with the fiendish template and one other one that I can't recall. It was basically a solo monster 3.5 style. Both the wizard and psion consistently blew through it's spell resistance, but it had great saving throws. Both kept throwing save-or-suffer spells at it, and it kept saving. Other PCs attacked and did very little to it too. (It's CR was, officially, not too high above 15.) Eventually the kraken grabbed and nearly drowned the wizard. Once rescued, the wizard player got smarter. He dished out Enervation. There's no save against that. The kraken took a -4 penalty to all saves. Yet another Recall Death... dead.

The wizard had used up all his top level spell slots, but of course had other slightly lower level ones. A sorcerer would have been in a similar state. The psion was still going strong, since he could do the equivalent of converting all those fairly useless 1st-level powers into more 8th-level powers.

Another corner case is a lack of components. I don't see this as hugely overpowering, but a monk carrying a Silenced item and grappling a psion accomplished nothing more than forcing a Concentration check.

Jamie Charlan wrote:

The 2e version was far better balanced, way, way weaker, NOT "the original and only gestalt", though unfortunately marred by being the frickin skill system and tainted by the stories of people who knew people who'd heard people talk about people they knew who'd heard that the original gygax version was broken as all ****.

Nonsense. I played psionics in 2e and tried not to abuse it. So no wild talent cheese to get Disintegrate (and the 40 PSPs needed to power it, or better powers) at 1st-level. (You could legitimately get it at 3rd-level without the cheese.) It wasn't always overpowered, and indeed there was a ton of double jeopardy, scaling and maintenance cost issues, but it didn't play with the same rules as other supernatural abilities.

It often didn't rely on saving throws. In the game, higher-level creatures get better saving throws to protect themselves from crippling effects, but psionics let you bypass this. Magic resistance was ignored too. The last psionic PC I played (using power scores, not MTHAC0), a psionicist 2/rogue 2 at campaign end, could dish out Id Insinuation 60% of the time. Considering the low saving throws low-level monsters had, this was probably weaker than throwing around Sleep spells. On the other hand I could (and in fact did) drop wizards who were just not high enough level to cast Mind Blank. 2nd-level PCs shouldn't be able to take on 14th-level wizards by themselves - I could use Shadow Body to pretty much guarantee surprise, with a little helping from my rogue skills, of course. (For that matter, I'm not even sure if Mind Blank could stop a power I could manifest at 2nd-level.)

Psionics also had a problem with being overly complex and not transparent. DMs have a hard time modifying encounters to "fix" that. Sleep was easy to understand; it had a Hit Dice cap, saving throws, many creatures were immune, there was a way to wake up the sleeper, and you could cast it maybe twice a day, if you were a 1st-level Enchanter. A 1st-level half-elf fighter can just laugh it off, and noone is going to notice if (behind the screen) the DM decides to make one of those a half-elf. My psionicist could dish out Id Insinuation four times before a fairly quick recharge (the rate didn't improve over levels though) and balancing it required memorizing the complex contact rules.

Finally there was some weird "balancing attempts" that weren't. Using psionic Disintegrate was allegedly risky, because if you blew the power check (a roughly 5% chance) you also had to save or be turned to dust. At +4. And saves versus death are usually your best save. That didn't slow me down at all. (Enemies usually making their save are what really stopped me from doing that, but I still think an instant death power available at 3rd-level isn't a good thing. Not when wizards need to be 7th or 8th level to do the same thing.)

[MrSin]

Zhayne wrote:

Jamie Charlan wrote:

But don't you know? It's balanced if its a wizard.

Heh.

I'm entertaining the serious thought of running a game without the arcane or divine classes, just martials and psionics.

Invokers(Warlocks) and Occultist(Binders) also run life a little differently. Can't forget about those guys!

Kimera757 wrote:

The wizard had used up all his top level spell slots, but of course had other slightly lower level ones. A sorcerer would have been in a similar state. The psion was still going strong, since he could do the equivalent of converting all those fairly useless 1st-level powers into more 8th-level powers.

Erm... It should've worked inversely to be honest. All of the wizards spells have a caster level of 15, and the Psion should've been drained if he was constantly using 15 power points per spell. He would've run out in 13ish spells, but the wizard should've had 40ish spells.

[DM Beckett]

Nah, your misunderstanding I think. They are saying that the Wizard burned through all of their Finger of Deaths because it seemed that was the only thing they felt would work. The Psion was keeping up with their equivalent Recall Death, but because the Wizard only hand # they could potentially use, they ran out and had to try something different while the Psion, if they want can basically trade in all their "low level spell slots" to cast a Recall Death a few more times. A Sorcerer likewise would have been out of spell slots to cast Finger of Death.

It's the other side of Nova with Psioics, just spamming.

[TOZ]

MrSin wrote:

Invokers(Warlocks) and Occultist(Binders) also run life a little differently. Can't forget about those guys!

And shadowcasters.

[Jamie Charlan]

If you had disintegrate at third level, you were a one-trick pony. At 16 CON/WIS/INT you're looking at 24PSPs at level 1, and gaining 11 each level up.
By level 3 you'd have 46. If you fail to activate the power, you're not firing it off today. And it offered its usual saves.

Part of the balancing regarding effects was that magic was guaranteed. Unless someone shot and fizzled you, your spell goes off. Psionic powers went off... fairly reliably in most cases, but not guaranteed, not all the time, and, given the costs, not as often at higher levels as a mage could do. After all, he'd cast it once and it might last hours - the psionicist is paying maintenence costs for the whole time.

As far as no saves go, you appear to mis-recall the majority of them.
Detonate: 1d10 damage, breath half. It'll not be going up, maybe 2d10 eventually if you meditate on it as per the dark sun research rules for a few months. Power Score is CON-3. Don't roll over.

Disintegrate: WIS-4. Wis 16 will barely get this working 60% of the time. They get a save vs death magic to avoid the entire effect. A 20 is a +5 save vs death for you or BAD END.

Project Force could do up to 1d6+10 against an AC10 target, but even this gives a save for half.

Ballistic Attack: no save but you're throwing a rock. CON-2 to activate and then you actually have to roll to hit.

Control Body requires beating their strength instead of a saving throw, if your CON-2 works out.

Molecular Agitation offers no save, BUT requires several rounds of maintenence to be of use, starting with one point of damage, then 1d4, then finally 1d6 per round. Melf's Meteors are going to be doing a lot more than that per round.

Death Field: YOU don't get a saving throw, but targets in the field avoid it wholely if they make theirs vs death.

Life Drain: here's one that actually doesn't give a save and can deal significant damage. Needs touch of course.

Aging is CON-7 to get to work. I hope you rolled all 18s. It does get a few years of aging done even if you make your save, and it's very very evil. ALSO needs to touch the target of course.

Cause Decay won't harm people, but items do get their saving throws.

Double Pain's damage is illusory, though there's no save and it's quite useful. Just get it working and then touch the target.

Banishment offers no save but does allow resisting with a contest.

Dominations do allow saving throws, and also require first having gotten contact first.

And so on.

Psionicists could get things a bit earlier, but instead of "save vs this enchantment spell or you're dominated, it was "Hit with attack modes to get three contact tangents against the target. Now Activate this power by rolling equal to or below WIS-4. IF all this works now the target gets a save vs spells. Duration? What are you talking about? You pay maintenence costs as long as you hold it". Those that offered less than full saves usually needed to-hit as well, just like certain spells.

The backfire component was actually a very small part of the balancing factor.

[Cold Napalm]

The ONLY thing that make psionics OPed is if there is no magic/psionics transparency. If you use the default ruling that they are the same...then no issues. If you do not...then yes, it is OPed. So if the player is okay with they are the same, it's cool (haven't met somebody who asked for psionics in a game I run who was okay however). As soon as they even hint at they should be different...like a snide comment about how their powers should ignore SR, boot em. No really. It's not worth the headache.

[MrSin]

TOZ wrote:

MrSin wrote:

Invokers(Warlocks) and Occultist(Binders) also run life a little differently. Can't forget about those guys!

And shadowcasters.

I've actually never seen a shadowcaster and I don't know if they have a PF equivalent.

DM Beckett wrote:

It's the other side of Nova with Psioics, just spamming.

I see that now. Like I said though, they burn out pretty quickly if they do that unless its an excessively high level. At 5th you can throw out 5ish of your highest level spell, at 10 8ish, and 15 13ish. Escalation.

[Jamie Charlan]

It's possible the reason they aren't okay with it is because it often used to end up with "your disintegration can't break down that wall of force - it's not the disintegration spell" and "What? NO, you can't defend yourself from magic mind reading with Conceal Thoughts. That's a specific magic spell, not some researched emulation of your ESP power" and other such bull.

They might just be on their toes, given how often spells get to bypass SR but not the other way around by gm whim...

OR they could be asshats. Just giving a possible explanation.

[the David]

Jamie Charlan wrote:

Any 1d12 weapon will become 3d6 as well so a Lucerne Hammer or Great Axe can do quite well. 1d10s become 2d8 which isn't bad.

Make that 4d6+12, as in a huge greatsword. A great axe would do the same damage, but the greatsword is slightly better on average if you have the killer trait.

[DM Beckett]

MrSin wrote:

I see that now. Like I said though, they burn out pretty quickly if they do that unless its an excessively high level. At 5th you can throw out 5ish of your highest level spell, at 10 8ish, and 15 13ish. Escalation.

Sure, but the alternative was death for everyone, and the same level Wizard had already burned out.

[Zhayne]

Jamie Charlan wrote:

It's possible the reason they aren't okay with it is because it often used to end up with "your disintegration can't break down that wall of force - it's not the disintegration spell" and "What? NO, you can't defend yourself from magic mind reading with Conceal Thoughts. That's a specific magic spell, not some researched emulation of your ESP power" and other such bull.

They might just be on their toes, given how often spells get to bypass SR but not the other way around by gm whim...

OR they could be asshats. Just giving a possible explanation.

It's the latter.

[Chengar Qordath]

DM Beckett wrote:

MrSin wrote:

I see that now. Like I said though, they burn out pretty quickly if they do that unless its an excessively high level. At 5th you can throw out 5ish of your highest level spell, at 10 8ish, and 15 13ish. Escalation.

Sure, but the alternative was death for everyone, and the same level Wizard had already burned out.

I think "You must cast large numbers of a single specific spell/power or the party all dies" is a bit of an extreme corner case.

[Sitri]

In my experience with them in 3.5 and Pathfinder, they felt pretty well balanced, but have a tendency to go nova if you aren't careful. If the GM is giving you one fight a day they will probably feel too powerful, but if you are fighting marathon style they can easily feel weak. I suppose the same could be said for any casters, but it feels even more so for psionics to me. That being said, I actually far prefer psionics to traditional casting styles. It feels like a mana system to me.

[DM Beckett]

Chengar Qordath wrote:

DM Beckett wrote:

MrSin wrote:

I see that now. Like I said though, they burn out pretty quickly if they do that unless its an excessively high level. At 5th you can throw out 5ish of your highest level spell, at 10 8ish, and 15 13ish. Escalation.

Sure, but the alternative was death for everyone, and the same level Wizard had already burned out.

I think "You must cast large numbers of a single specific spell/power or the party all dies" is a bit of an extreme corner case.

The example might be, (it wasn't mine by the way), but going Nova and spamming where pretty common.

[Mordo the Spaz - Forum Troll]

Cryov wrote:

I haven't touched psionics in over 8 years and I can understand why it was supposedly "op" then but I haven't gone through the pathfinder variant yet.

Is it still deemed "op" in pathfinder as well?

Psioncs weak. Look at my eyes. See, you agree! No problem. All happy.

[Jamie Charlan]

Don't forget the manifester level limits [even Wilder surge involves it, the ability raises your manifester level for the job].

A Psion generally will outdo a Sorcerer, Favored Soul or the such if you've only got two encounters a day. The psionic classes that use extensive manifesting have their PP values adjusted to balance around 3-5 encounters a day, depending on the difficulty or party size you deal with [obviously if you're doing full buffer duty or using powers to replace a thief in a dungeon crawl on top of blasting you're burning out more quickly]

At the other end of the spectrum it takes going over six challenging encounters a day for an Invocation user's "infinite uses" to start actually making a difference versus a full caster. By the time a full prepared caster runs out of spells, the rest of the party would've gone bone-dry with resource usage twice over because of the sheer difference those spells can make.

The nova potential's pretty good, but it's nothing that'll shatter your campaign. Just don't be surprised if a kineticist annihilates a small encounter - he's burning himself out for awesome.

[Justin Rocket]

Jamie Charlan wrote:

The 2e version was far better balanced, way, way weaker, NOT "the original and only gestalt", though unfortunately marred by being the frickin skill system and tainted by the stories of people who knew people who'd heard people talk about people they knew who'd heard that the original gygax version was broken as all ****.

What does the 2e system have to do with the original Gygax system?.

[Justin Rocket]

As for whether psionics is OP, it depends on the GM. If the GM consistently creates adventures which deny 15 minute days, then psions probably aren't that bad.

Personally, I hate psionics (as it seems largely to just be an excuse to have magic with spell points and crystal power - it doesn't feel like psionics to me*), but I don't think its necessarily op.

*call it something else like "magic with spell points and crystal power" and I wouldn't have much of a problem with it.

[thaX]

There is a couple of things that separate Psionics from the rest of the game.

As mentioned above, there is the whole "not magic" thing that makes it hard to determine how it is effected by defenses that target magic, such as SR.

The Psi points and focus is mismatched with the rest of the mechanics of the game, which was made worse in that other edition that Wizards is finally giving up on.

Whether or not it is overpowered is more to do with resources that they have rather than some broken build or scheme.

[MrSin]

thaX wrote:

As mentioned above, there is the whole "not magic" thing that makes it hard to determine how it is effected by defenses that target magic, such as SR.

Actually, 3.5 had a section on it, and dreamscarred press has one too. Its referred to as Psionic-Spell Transparency. In general, its a bad idea to separate them.

thaX wrote:

The Psi points and focus is mismatched with the rest of the mechanics of the game, which was made worse in that other edition that Wizards is finally giving up on.

Oh noes, something other than vancian casting and spell slots! I actually prefer the delving into other systems personally. I like invokers and martial adepts and psionics more than I do the basic vancian. I've never seen anything about wizards giving up on them though.

[Grammar Coach]

"*Are* psionics overpowered?"

Drop and give me twenty.

[Zhayne]

thaX wrote:

There is a couple of things that separate Psionics from the rest of the game.

As mentioned above, there is the whole "not magic" thing that makes it hard to determine how it is effected by defenses that target magic, such as SR.

This is not an issue, as the standard, default setting is 'magic and psionics are affected the same by SR and everything else'.

[Dabbler]

I've done a lot of comparison between the two systems in terms of crunch (see this link) back when DSP were working on Psionics Unleashed.

Generally speaking, powers are more versatile than spells, but you get less of them. Power points are a better resource management system than spell slots, but you get less power points. You can boost powers, but spells scale automatically.

There isn't much that powers do that spells don't, but there is a lot that spells do that powers don't. There are a few things powers do better than spells, notably blasting (a wilder blaster is actually a very viable blaster without much effort), but there are a lot of things spells to better than powers, like buffing others, messing about with undead, and so on.

If anyone wants to take a look at a game with psionics as the main focus, I'm running one here.

A wizard who knows what's coming is better than a psion. A psion is better on the fly. A wilder and a sorcerer are very different things, it's hard to compare them properly. I think a psychic warrior and a magus are pretty evenly matched (edge to the magus, in all honesty though), while a soulknife measures up against the combat classes quite evenly on the DPR stakes.

[Elosandi]

Whether it's overpowered depends on what you mean by overpowered.

More powerful than the most powerful core classes? No

More powerful than the weakest core classes? Yes

So...wizard players have nothing to fear from them, but rogues are probably still going to feel a little invalidated if the psion picks powers that can replace their typical niche.

[Ashiel]

Psionics are ultimately as balanced if not more so than core magic. I've been playing with psionics for a long time (3.5 psionics were great, and DSP has made them greater) and I can say they're not OP with a very strait face.

I'm currently playing a dual-discipline psion with some homebrew feats my GM okay'd that allow her to extend the duration of her shapeshifting powers to 1 hour / level instead of 1 minute / level. She also takes full advantage of the ability to manifest/share powers on her psicrystal, and she summons astral constructs, and puts enemies to sleep, and does a lot of crazy stuff. But the funny thing is...she's only average in the group.

A group that consists of an android soulknife, a human barbarian, a catfolk bard, and a human paladin. The human barbarian is just sick at this level (we're 5th level running through the Reign of Winter APs). So far my character has been support. Half of her benefit comes in the form of skill checks and making magic items for my party.

She's got some good tricks, like vigor shared with psicrystal + share pain, but such tricks tend to be PP intensive and given the amount of combat in these games (or the size of some of the combats and/or how they come in waves) getting low on PP is something that happens pretty regularly each session if we start fighting seriously. Most of the time I tend to try to conserve PP by manifesting little things like 1st level astral constructs to serve as backup for the frontliners.

We're going to have a Vitalist (another psionic class) joining the party soon which will be a lot of fun. Vitalists are basically psionic healers with a really cool method of healing stuff. It'll look good in the party with the Paladin. :)

[Chris Lambertz]

Removed a post and reply. Please keep personal insults out of the conversation.