Psionic talents and Psionic focus

[tiger667]

I am slightly confused about psioinc talents. First please note that I only have the SRD to go by. On the page talking about psionic talents it says that talents can be used just by maintaining focus. But in some of the descriptions it looks like it says focus needs to be spent. Which is it?

Also, when taking the feat or substituting a normal power known to get five talents, are they limited to those on your class list of 0 level powers?

[Anguish]

tiger667 wrote:

I am slightly confused about psioinc talents. First please note that I only have the SRD to go by. On the page talking about psionic talents it says that talents can be used just by maintaining focus. But in some of the descriptions it looks like it says focus needs to be spent. Which is it?

For talents, generally you have two options. You can either spend one power point to manifest the power or you can expend psionic focus to manifest it.

While there may be some, I'm not aware of any that you can manifest simply by maintaining focus. It would be described in the power's entry specifically if they existed.

Think of it this way: many/most talents were taken from 1st-level powers and adopted as 0th-level powers. As originally written, they were expected to have a 1 power point cost, so making them at-will was slightly more powerful than expected. By forcing the manifester to expend focus to perform them at-will, balance was restored.

Quote:

Also, when taking the feat or substituting a normal power known to get five talents, are they limited to those on your class list of 0 level powers?

Access Psionic Talent specifically calls out (in the latest incarnation of the rules in Ultimate Psionic) that the talents learned can be from any class list. The PRD version has not be updated, but it's all written by the same publisher so the UP version should be your guideline.

[tiger667]

Thank you. I assume Ultimate Psionic no longer mentions maintaining psionic focus when talking about talents and the page on the srd comes from the first book that talents were introduced in.

[divineshadow]

The only time you can mainfest talents just by having focus is as a psion and they are the displine talents you get to pick from and most of those are scaled back.

[Jeremy Smith]

You do not expend focus to use talents.

Talents are 0th-level psionic powers that are powered
by psionic focus, rather than power points. These
abilities give manifesters minor abilities that can be
used at-will, but typically have very limited functionality
or use. Talents are typically used as a way to train
manifesters to avoid depleting the power point reserve.
A manifester may manifest any talent that he knows without paying power points as long as he maintains
psionic focus. However, if the talent has a duration
longer than instantaneous, he can only have one such
talent active at a time; manifesting another talent
without paying power points in this manner causes the
original talent to immediately expire.
A manifester may also manifest a talent by paying one
power point, regardless of whether psionic focus is held;
these do not cause any other active talents to lapse and
may be augmented if the power description indicates
such.
Talents can only be augmented if the manifester
spends 1 power point on the manifestation in addition
to any power points spent augmenting the power.