Psionics

Okay I finally got talked into allowing psionics. I have always been against psionics for one reason or another, but I have to say I kind of like it so far. I don’t think it’s anything beyond magic just another form kind of like mana.

Is there anything to watch out for? I’m waiting for the other foot to drop I guess. It’s just starting, but it seems to be going well. So I figure something wrong has to happen.

I will say I hate their items or more so the names. I feel like they just changed the names. They’re not wands they’re dojres. They’re not wondrous items they’re psicrowns. Why can they just be wands?

So Psionics Good or Bad?

Fizz

One thing to make sure of is to make sure that you don't let them "overcharge" their abilities. There is a set limit by level of power points that can be used to enhance an ability, and if you loose track of that, its easy for someone to create a psionic tactical nuke.

So, for your campaign you could always do just that.

I mean, nothing says you can't make dorjes into wands. Especially if you're running the psionics and magic are the same (just different ways of drawing on the same energy).

- Ashavan

Yeah, especially if you already have some "flavor" as to what type of magic might use specific material for different wands. "Mind Magic" might use crystal wands, necromancy bone wands, perhaps conductive metals for evocations, etc.

The only place the distinction really matters is when choosing psionic Item Creation feats. For example, a Crystal Capacitor has its own feat, in spite of it being the equivalent of a Pearl of Power, which is made via the Craft Wondrous Item feat. By the same token, one can make a psionic Ring of Invisibility much earlier, because it's covered under the Craft Universal Item feat, rather than Forge Ring.

But good/bad? I've always been a fan of psionics. Just make sure you know the rules and quirks for psionics, and don't let your players pull a fast one on you. I think you'll find they work pretty well.

Decide ahead of time how psionics and magic interact. Depending on your degree of interoperability, you may wish to do away with several skills.

An important point to remember:
Manifester level is king. You cannot spend more power points than you have manifester levels. Be wary of anything that modifies this.

Two players in my Age of Worms campaign have psionic levels; one's a multiclass soulknife, the other a straight-up psion.

I've allowed them to draw upon the two main psionic hardcovers for material, and my experience thus far is that the psion is grossly overpowered compared to other character, particularly when metapsionic feats come into play. As mwbeeler noted above, Manifester Level is the main check upon the power of a psion, and there seem to be too many ways to amplify it. The gnome psion in my campaign can create a steady barrage of "save-or-lose" effects with ridiculously high save DCs, or he can just pump out an insane amount of damage at will. He'll toy with the enemies for a while (crazy gnome), but once they do a bit of damage, he can put an end to most fights in a round or two.

What makes the psion overpowered?

1) The ability to manifest whatever energy is needed for a particular fight without preparing it in advance. (Fire elemental? OK, I'll hit it with cold energy...) This is a big advantage over Wizards and Sorcerers and well, pretty much everyone.

2) The ability to spontaneously unleash metapsionic-enhanced powers as needed.

3) Feats and abilities that lose sight of game balance. Example: One combination of feats gave the character bonus hit points for every new metapsionic feat he took.

4) Low-level abilities that scale up to become terrifyingly powerful as the character goes up in level.

5) They basically have the silent spell, still spell, and eschew materials feats for free, at first level, for most of their powers. They only need to succeed on an easy skill check to "suppress the display" and cast powers without incriminating themselves.

6) Ambiguous power descriptions. Many abilities don't clearly describe the effect in visual terms allowing players to try and make a case for "energy missile: sonic" that no one can see because "I suppressed the display" or "the description doesn't specify that it's visible". I shut this idea right down, but the regular rules disputes dragged my game to a screeching halt on some occasions. In short, there are too many powers that leave the effect open to interpretation. They're easily abused by rules lawyers.

7) Too many of the psion powers, IMO, duplicate existing arcane spells. There's so much overlap in potential ability that there's little incentive to play an arcane caster anymore.

8) Augmentable powers let psions escalate their damage or DCs by spending more points. This would seem to be a balancing factor, but at higher levels, psions have way more points than they usually need. There's very little reason to NOT augment all of your powers all the time.

I'll probably think of more ideas later, but you get the idea. Maybe it's just because the psion in my group is a die-hard munchkin rules lawyer extraordinaire, but I've seen psionics become very broken. Your mileage may vary...

P.S. It's also possible that my psion player is getting away with bending/breaking some rules that I am not as familiar with; he has studied the books thoroughly and knows them better than I do. I'd be happy to hear about it if any of my problems above are based on my own misunderstandings...

Have a good chart you can look at for what power costs are and how much mana is being used and so on. I have a really good player who keeps good track and roleplays his Psion well but it helps regardless to have a clear idea of what the character is actually doing.

First question I'd like to know is are you playing with Complete Arcane and, especially Players Handbook II?

If the answer to this is yes they the wizards and Sorcerers are more powerful.

First aspect I'll address is the idea that Psions can out omph a standard spell caster. Its true for a wizard but a wizard is an extremely versatile class and their benefits are centered around the ability to choose from a huge array of spells picking just whats needed to overcome any challenge set before them.

Otherwise when it comes to pure omph in short order the sorcerer wins out over the Psion. Here I'm comparing a mid level or higher sorcerer to a Psion of equal level. Essentially if you go through PHB II and Complete Arcane your going to find a number of spells that have a casting time of 1 swift action. This is the Sorcerers ace. By the mid levels a sorcerer has more spells then he knows what to do with - but if your casting two spells a round well that all starts to change. Now these swift spells are often notably weaker then the other spells at their level but nonetheless two spells is two spells. Since the Sorcerers top tier spells (those at his highest level) are roughly equal to the psions powers used at max power - both generally do roughly 1 die per spell level of damage. But the sorcerer augments that with a second spell. You can look through all the Psionic Books but with maybe two exceptions there simply is nothing comparable to this.

Psions, even with good stats don't have as many PSPs as one might think. It changes a little as the levels rise but generally speaking a Psion can use its power maxed out about 8 times at mid level before the PSPs are pretty much gone. A sorcerer usually has 3 high level spells and 5 spells of one level below that plus a slew of even lower level spells. If the Sorcerer is firing off a 5th and a 3rd level spell every round he'll be able to keep that up for maybe 3 rounds, he'll then switch to 4th and 3rd or 2nd level spells. By the time 8 rounds has gone by the Sorcerer is beginning to really get down there in terms of spells but there are still some of those orbs at the bottom and maybe a few 2nd level spells. At this point the Sorcerer can't keep up with this whole 'cast two spells a round' deal - he's pretty much tapping out - still our psion is finished - all power gone, must use magic to keep going and the amount of magic needed to keep tossing out 8 or 10 PSPs a round is phenomenally expensive. Your just not going to see much more then a few points stashed away unless the psion is spending every dime on this sort of thing.

OK I mentioned the orb spells for a reason - they have no save and no SR. No SR is the really big deal here - search the Psion list and your going to find almost nothing that beats SR. There are two or three powers at most and their generally weak for their level. A sorcerer will be designed to deal with SR - might not like SR and it might crimp his style but he'll have spells that SR can't beat - its just good character design. The Psion can't do that there basically just are not enough good options. This is a big deal - by mid to high levels almost every enemy worth talking about has SR. Almost every powerful Demon, Devil, Dragon, Abberation or Undead has SR - its the norm, not the exception. This is one of the reasons 'battlefield control' type mages are so powerful and popular, they perform to their full potential and they don't have to beat SR to do it.

Decide ahead of time how psionics and magic interact. Depending on your degree of interoperability, you may wish to do away with several skills.

An important point to remember:
Manifester level is king. You cannot spend more power points than you have manifester levels. Be wary of anything that modifies this.

I'd say decide ahead of time that psionics are magic. Don't go the other way unless your are really familiar with psionics and know what your doing.

Basically speaking if psionics and magic are different then the Psion gets a free pass past the bad guys nerf abilities. If SR is not PR then all those demons, devils, undead etc. are suddenly vulnerable to a psion in a way that they simply are not to a mage and this is a bad thing. That SR really goes a huge way to balancing the classes. Its not just SR either - lots of creatures have varous magical defences - but if Psions ignore all of these defences then this is a very unbalancing thing.

In D&D the mages, sorcerers and psions outpower every other character class in the game - except when the bad guy stops their ability with SR, nerfs their ability with a really high save, dampens their powers, fires their powers back at them or laughs as they ignore their freezing abilities with [/i]freedom of movement[/i] etc.

Essentially if the wizards and psions abilities work at full power every round the opposition is toast - but the abilities just don't. You summon things only to have them banished, you blast enemies only to have them have energy resitance up or they make their save or they evade and on and on. The Wizard or Psion is generally doing well if more then 50% of their abilities actually work as advertised - its this that keeps them in check. That fighters magic sword - it works like its supposed to a good 90% of the time and the fighter can deal with a few things going wrong and shrug. For the mage if things go to heck and the enemy is in your face you've no real choice but to start using spells to escape and that means your not contributing this round.

Two players in my Age of Worms campaign have psionic levels; one's a multiclass soulknife, the other a straight-up psion.

I've allowed them to draw upon the two main psionic hardcovers for material, and my experience thus far is that the psion is grossly overpowered compared to other character, particularly when metapsionic feats come into play. As mwbeeler noted above, Manifester Level is the main check upon the power of a psion, and there seem to be too many ways to amplify it. The gnome psion in my campaign can create a steady barrage of "save-or-lose" effects with ridiculously high save DCs, or he can just pump out an insane amount of damage at will. He'll toy with the enemies for a while (crazy gnome), but once they do a bit of damage, he can put an end to most fights in a round or two.

I'd like to know which meta-psionic feats he's using to do this sort of thing. My experience with psionic metapsionic feats is that their very iffy compared to say a wizards metaspells. The wizard uses meta spells to make lower level spells into high level ones used at max efficiency. This is pretty good because these spells still got naturally more powerful (up to a point) as the wizard gained levels. Fireball from a 10th level mage does 10 dice. A psion must spend their power points to get the power up to 10 dice so it is not the same kind of free power increase.

For the mage enhancing their 10 dice fireball makes it a lot more powerful - now it does 10 dice +50% damage and its just used up a higher level spell slot. One where he probably does not have a spell that can dish out this extra damage.

The Psion often faces diminished returns in trying to do this - adding metapsionic powers increases the cost to use the power but does not raise your manifestor level. Net result is a psion can 'maximize' say energy missle but because it costs 4 PSP to maximize the energy missile what he's really doing is making a 6 die energy missile do max damage. If he chose not to maximize it he could have gone with a 10 die energy missile. Depending on the level etc. this might mathematically be worth is but the damage potential is close - 6d6 = 36 points of damage maximized versus 7*5 (7 is the average roll of 2 dice - so 7*5 is the average damage the 10d6 will do in damage) Well 7*5 means that the psion would do an average of 35 points of damage - maximized was better but it cost a feat to do an average of 1 hp more damage per casting. Not worth it.

Of particular note here is that the wizard actually got more damage out of his spell. Enhanced it did 5*7+50% = 35+50% = ~52 points of damage. The Psion can't compete here as the manifestor level cap means he can only enhance a power at the price of using a weaker version of that power.

Ok, let me hit some of your points Chris,

The soul knife is the weakest of all the psionic classes (except maybe for the divine mind) Untapped Potential by Dreamscarred Press is the best thing to come out of the Complete Psionic. The Mind's Eye also has a good fix.

Let me hit the psion points one by one.

What makes the psion overpowered?

1) Energy powers: The versitility is the psion's halmark. The Psion gets 36 powers, equal to the Sorcerer, less the Sorcerer's 0 level spells. The Sorcerer gets free augmentation, and as a result more 'spell points' As an example the Sorcerer gets 4d6 with three targets for a scorching ray. for energy Push to hit the same damage against one target, you'd need to spend 25 PP, or the equivelent of a 12th level spell. Yes the save would go through the roof too, but it's one target.

2) Unless the Psion invests in two feats (Psycrstal and Psycrystal containment) He can only tack one metapsionicfeat on to a power. He can enlarge a power or empower it, not both. Also since he blows focus, this can shut down his psionic feats (see point 3) and can only metapsionic every other round. It takes a full round to regain psionic focus, a move action if you have the Psionic meditation feat.
Even with all three feats, he can only double metapsi the first power in an encounter, and can then only metapsi every other round, unless he has hustle, which will burn more power points. Also the metapsionic feats cost points themselves, and can't break the metacap.

3) Psonic Body only gives extra HP for every [Psionic] feat, not every [metapsionic] feat. And like Toughness is the example of a good feat?

4) See 1) above about augmentation. Also, a Sorcerer throwing Delayed Blast Fireball slices through the globe of invulnerability. A Kinetisist throwing Energy Ball with 13 PP is stopped by the same spell.

5) Yes, their powers are psioic, so no gesturing with their fingers. They still have to fear the grapple, and still draw attacks of oportunity. Psion sitting in a bar using detect thoughts might get away with it. Then again, how loud does a wizard have to cast? In combat, 'that guy' is still concentrating enough to draw AoAs so it's not so subtle.

6) Page 58. It lists all the default power displays.

7) The same arguement can be made for clerics. Mages do still have their own unique spells. even some as simple as glitterdust. Also Summon X still rules Astral Construct.

8) See #1 above. Arcane and Divine casters get free scaling, people just don't notice, since it's the default. Also are you doing 3+ encoutners a day on average? Or are you letting your psion 'Nova' and rest after an encoutner or two. The UA spellpoint system puts the scorcer and wizard ahead of psions on spellpoints though.

You may also want to browse the psionic boards, specifically the 'myth' threads. Or if you have any other issues with the psion, feel free to post them here or e-mail me.

What makes the psion overpowered?

1) The ability to manifest whatever energy is needed for a particular fight without preparing it in advance. (Fire elemental? OK, I'll hit it with cold energy...) This is a big advantage over Wizards and Sorcerers and well, pretty much everyone.

Yeah this is a sweet ability of a psion. One of the only areas I think they have an advantage over wizards and sorcerers. That said its a bit of a corner case ability. First you need to figure out what damage is type works and you can spend several rounds working trying to figure this out. A sorcerer or mage will have something comparable in all likely hood in any case. What they do is you take spells with different energy types at different levels. That way they always have whatever energy type is optimal. Because their powers tend to scale up those spells will still be good for many levels to come.

2) The ability to spontaneously unleash metapsionic-enhanced powers as needed.

I noted above that, because the manifestor level cap remains in place you can only spontaneously unleash weak versions of your powers. Furthermore a sorcerer can easily do the same thing. Their is a feat that allows sorcerers to reduce the casting time for using metamagic feats to a standard action - now the sorcerer can spontaneously unleash their powers in the same way...but their not weakened versions of the same power.

3) Feats and abilities that lose sight of game balance. Example: One combination of feats gave the character bonus hit points for every new metapsionic feat he took.

Again their are similar feats for a sorcerer, also, as I recall this added some paltry number of hps. Like two per metamagic feat. Thats spending a feat for an extra 10 hps or something for a high level character. Hardly seems worth it - feats are rare and valuable.

4) Low-level abilities that scale up to become terrifyingly powerful as the character goes up in level.

Mostly I think these powers are not usually really all their cracked up to be. Generally your scaling up things like hp damage - but the bad guys start having obscenely high hps later in the campaign - or their immune to mind affecting abilities, or their saves are through the friggen roof. Generally using the most powerful spell is simply more effective and often the psion should do the same thing - though their high level stuff does seem kind of gimped compared to high level magic IMO - which is why ramping up the lower level stuff is so popular.

5) They basically have the silent spell, still spell, and eschew materials feats for free, at first level, for most of their powers. They only need to succeed on an easy skill check to "suppress the display" and cast powers without incriminating themselves.

6) Ambiguous power descriptions. Many abilities don't clearly describe the effect in visual terms allowing players to try and make a case for "energy missile: sonic" that no one can see because "I suppressed the display" or "the description doesn't specify that it's visible". I shut this idea right down, but the regular rules...

OK I've never really dealt with this issue and I can see how its annoying. I suppose its a good idea for a DM to keep this angle in mind when considering how things will play out in their world. But in a world with lots of magic I'd be careful about wandering around using spells on people. Their going to suspect things potentially and, most of the time, a band of adventurers kind of stands out if your searching up and down the street trying to figure out who might be using magic on you.

Forgot to add;

As others have mentioned, use the transparent rules until you're comfortable with the system, then you can experiment with semi-transparent, or different.

The default is 'transparent' or 'psionics and magic are transparent, unless it benefits the psion'.

1) Knowlege Arcana works to identify arcane and divine effects, Knowlege Psionics only works on psionic effects. The same is for Spellcraft/Psicraft, and Use Magic Device/Use Psionic Device. House Rule: Allow the arcane skills to work on Psi, and vice versa. If you want to keep them 'different' impose a -5 penality

2) Metamagic and metapsionic feats are not transparent. Not so important, but it keeps the metacheesic rods from the psion's hands, and makes the Cerebromancer have to double up on metafeats.

3) Augmentation != heighten. An energy ray augmented with 16 points (making it about equal to a 9th level power, oost wise) still is a first level power for globes of invulnerability and the like.

4) RAW, Psycrystals get feats. It has been argued that RAI they shouldn't, but the rules don't support that. Animal Companions get feats, and that's not overbalanced. Unless your psion tries the 'psycrystal as a hat' trick to use the mounted combat feats, it won't be game breaking.

Chris you mention that its 'easy' to for your Psion to circumvent his manifestor level cap. Thats never been my impression at all. My experience has been that its possible but your either paying through the nose to do it, your doing it only a very few times a day or your suffering debilitating effects for doing it. Often all three.

I'd love to know how the player is circumventing the manifestor level - I have my doubts. Wilders have the ability to pump up their manifestor level - its their schtick and they pay by having a phenomenally restricted number of powers (they make sorcerers look versatile). My experience has been that WOTC is aware that passing ones manifestor level is something that should be mostly reserved for the Wilder and their are not a lot of ways to get around it unless your willing to pay a prohibitive price for the ability.

Psionics are no big deal; just do as the book suggests and treat it like any other magic spell.

Oh another point on the Psionic-Magic Transparency rule. My players had a really hard time with this rule because they kept expecting it to sort of always be in effect.

The key with interpreting this rule is to follow the machanic and not the description so much. So, for example, the Psychic Hole feat means that if a character is being effected by psionics the individual using the psionics looses more PSPs to make their power work.

So what happens if you have this feat and a sorcerer casts a spell on you? The answer is nothing at all - the mechanic drains PSPs. Sorcerers don't have PSPs so this mechanic does not come into play. Don't try and force it by making the sorcerer loose spells or something. You should not need to start making up house rules just to have the psionic-magic transparency rule in your game. If your find that you feel you have to make up house rules your trying to hard to make magic=psionic be everywhere. The rules say what they do and they work fine, but that means sometimes X only applies to spells and sometimes Y only applies to psionics because the mechanics happen to differ in this case.

Follow the mechanic and it all works in the end. However do keep in mind that most of the time a mechanic is replicated for both a mage and a psion. Power Resitance is Spell Resitance and vice versa, if your immune to 3rd level or lower spells your immune to 3rd level or lower powers. If you can see invisibly you see through both magic and psionic invisibility etc.

But if the monster drains your PSPs it won't drain your spells - spells don't have PSPs. If it erases memorized spells it probably does nothing to a Psion - since they don't memorize spells etc.

Soulknives are definitely in need of love as written. I usually have no issue with giving them evasion as a freebie (and replacing the 1st level feat with Hidden Talent instead).

Is there anything to watch out for? I’m waiting for the other foot to drop I guess. It’s just starting, but it seems to be going well. So I figure something wrong has to happen.
Fizz

If the other shoe does drop consider just waiting it out. Psionic characters tend to be at their most powerful from around 4th to 8th level. At these levels their ability to do hp damage is at its peak compared to their enemies. That Energy Missile can really seem awesome - its like a baby fireball every round. After around 8th level psionic characters tend to really go into decline.

A sorcerer or mage can help the whole party via teleports and hastes etc. The Psion can't really. Almost every power works on himself or on a single (or a few) enemies. Eventually the players are not fighting simple 'bags of hps' like Ogres and Trolls anymore but bad guys with amazing powers of their own and when this period rolls around the party turns to the mage to make it all better again - or to teleport their asses out of here. A sorcerer can fulfill this role somewhat through the use of scrolls and well chosen powers. A Psion basically just can't fulfill this role at all. The kinds of abilities needed don't exist in the Psions power list so they can't be taken.

As I mention above SR is a real killer - faced with a really high SR the psion is basically just SOL. He can't beat the SR and he has almost nothing he can otherwise do if he can't beat SR ... at higher levels everything has good SR.

A sorcerer or mage can help the whole party via teleports and hastes etc. The Psion can't really.

The psion in my group has a psionic teleport and has been using it to ferry the group back and forth from the dungeons to rest in comfort. I don't think he made it up, but let me know if it's not supposed to work that way. The "5 minute workday" is definitely in effect with them. The psion uses his points liberally, then teleports everyone out when he gets low, thus avoiding the need to budget his point use under most circumstances.

Thanks for all of the replies to the points I made about the psion. I don't know the tricks my player is using well enough to present them in detail, but I review the relevant rules whenever he does something zany, and whatever he's trying to do usually seems to work according to the books.

He's a very trustworthy player with regards to power points, and the manifester level cap on point use per round--he's just very good at pushing the rules to their literal limits.

As an example, he once used a power (the name of which escapes me) that involved several areas of damage. He overlapped them so that one target was in the area of most/all of them, and used Twin Power to double it. It ended up failing completely because the power specified living targets, and it was an undead they were facing. (Something like that; boy was my player frustrated!) But if it had worked out, it could have done hundreds of points of damage. I'll try to have him explain that trick to me next time we play, and I'll jot it down to post it here.

I agree completely that SR is a Psion's weak point. And thank goodness for that! It's the only thing that has kept my player in check for any length of time. We had one fight in a recent game session where the psion didn't do any damage, and the daggerspell mage and soulknife got to shine a bit. It stood out because it was a rare event, but I expect him to take Power Penetration the next chance he gets.

One thing he does a lot is set up an Energy Current, transfer concentration over to his psicrystal, and follow it up with a quickened power. Then he's free to do two other powers each round while his crystal maintains the energy current.

By the way, with a few rounds of buffing, he can get his Armor Class in the 40s. Might be low 50s, but I think 40s. I'll ask him to outline that for me next time we play. It's quite an impressive combination that seems to work according to the rules.

One thing he does a lot is set up an Energy Current, transfer concentration over to his psicrystal, and follow it up with a quickened power. Then he's free to do two other powers each round while his crystal maintains the energy current.

*smite*

nope. He can do two powers a round once then his focus is blown and he needs to regain it. He can't use Hustle to regain it in the same round, since he used his swift action to use the quickened power.

Assuming he has all the feats to pull it off, the fastest he should be able to go is this. I'm going to assume 9th level nomad here for ease.

Precombat: Both crystal and psion have focus.
Round 1: Manifests energy current, solicit psicrystal as a swift action. There's 14 points (assuming EC is manifested at minimum level).
Round 2: Quickens an Energy ray, burning his crystal's focus, then fires a normal one. assuming he's fully augmenting that's 3d6 + 9d6, 18 points
Round 3: Repeat round 2 this time burning his own focus. another 18 points.
Round 4: Manifests Hustle as a swift action (assuming picked up at 6th level with expanded knowlege) refocuses as the free move action, then fires an empowered energy ray. 7d6 * 1.5, 9 more points.
Round 5: Grab party members (can grab 3 others and himself. *bamf* out. Another 9 points.

That's 58 of roughly 80-90 points he has depending on stats.

Feats:
Psycrystal affinity
Psycrystal Containment
Expanded Knowlege (hustle)
Quicken Power
Empower Power

You said he has psionic body as a feat, that's 6. Max he can have at 9th level (barring flaws) is 7.

As for fun counters, Energy Adaptation (specified) can be manifested as an immediate action by a 7th level manifester. Since it's an Immediate Action, it's an interrupt.

For added fun, have one of the bad guys hit him with Dimensional Anchor. He novas, goes to teleport out and fizzles.

It's a 7th level power but Divert Teleport is also a fun counter. They go to bamf out and end up in a dungeon, or pit of lava, or falling...

I'd also add that I only know of one power that allows overlapping. and the first time he tries using it on someone with energy conversion he's going to regret it.

also there's a power called Damp Power that makes any power it affects do the minimum of damage.

If you want to be real mean, Dimension anchor the cleric, or someone who can't bamf out on their own. Psion goes to 'port out, leaves someone behind...

An important point to remember:

Manifester level is king. You cannot spend more power points than you have manifester levels. Be wary of anything that modifies this.

You're mostly correct here. The "Overchannel" feat allows a little extra; in which case you might want to get "Talented" (?--I'm at work...) as your next feat, as there can be a backlash for that little extra oomph :)

Also, kudos especially to JM and MM for defending psionics so articulately.

Jeremy Mac Donald wrote:

A sorcerer or mage can help the whole party via teleports and hastes etc. The Psion can't really.

The psion in my group has a psionic teleport and has been using it to ferry the group back and forth from the dungeons to rest in comfort. I don't think he made it up, but let me know if it's not supposed to work that way.

Sorry - teleport was a bad example since its one of the few areas that a Psion can help the whole party. My point was that mages and well designed sorcerers have a really long list of spells that all work this way by creating things on the battlefield or adding to the rest of the players like wall of force, solid fog, mass fly etc.

At higher levels the players can find themselves over their heads in a hurry due to an attack by something unexpected or battle with a monster with abilities they are unprepared for. mass fly sticks out for me as an example because I recently did as Mathew mentioned above, hit a player with dimensional anchour and was surprised when the mage simply countered with mass fly and the party flew away as opposed to teleporting away. Its this kind of versatility that is the halmark of a good wizard and its not likely to work with a psion. Psions tend to be very self focused classes and that makes them less important at the higher level. That said you seem to also have a dagger spell mage. I've got to admit that a psion and a mage makes a great team - but then a war mage and a wizard make a good team as well.

mwbeeler wrote:

An important point to remember:

Manifester level is king. You cannot spend more power points than you have manifester levels. Be wary of anything that modifies this.

You're mostly correct here. The "Overchannel" feat allows a little extra; in which case you might want to get "Talented" (?--I'm at work...) as your next feat, as there can be a backlash for that little extra oomph :)

Also, kudos especially to JM and MM for defending psionics so articulately.

What do you mean by 'Talented'? I figure its some kind of feat combo but I'm interested in knowing which combo.

Anyway this feat does hp damage to you every time you use it. It can be worth it but there is a price to pay. You damage yourself using this feat. Use it twice in a combat, each time for a 2 level maniftestor gain and you just did 6d8 damage to yourself - thats a lot for a class with a d4 for hps.

In fact if I managed to hit a caster for that with a spell they'd be looking to the cleric for some loving. This is a dangerous game. At higher levels your always in some danger with your 40-60 hps. If you do this and then suck down a sudden maximized orb of cold you could be dead right there.

Talented would allow him to overchannel lower level powers w/o chance of damamge but again it consumes that psionic focus. Add overchannel and talented and something in my feat buld has to go.

Talented would allow him to overchannel lower level powers w/o chance of damamge but again it consumes that psionic focus. Add overchannel and talented and something in my feat buld has to go.

Matthew beat me to it (I was at work when I 1st posted). It's on p.51 of the EPH, and it's a feat w/ Overchannel as its prerequisite. It stops the damage if you Overchannel 1st-3rd level powers only. But since you expend your focus, you won't exactly be doing it every round either. Unless you also have Psionic Meditation, in which you can attempt to become focused w/ a move action I guess...

Another sort of checks-and-balances thing w/ Psions is that really you're talking about 6 different classes, not just 1 "base class". A certain number of powers should be available to most if not all of the 6, but once you take that subclass (e.g., I run a Shaper), you can't get some of the cool powers other subclasses get w/out using up a Feat. And those don't exactly come liberally for the Psion.

I've been running my Psion/Shaper for about 11 levels now. I don't think it's overpowered at all. I have to be very careful w/ rationing my pp or else it's "Look, there's the BBEG--I think I'll shoot him w/ my +1 light crossbow...". Then again, I don't have my party doing a lot of resting/leaving the dungeon kind of thing.

As for the allegedly underpowered Soulknife, I run one of those as well. I know there are a lot of "fixes" for the RAW Soulknife, but I like mine just fine. I'm more interested in the flavor of the character than I am in having every one be the Ultimate Asskicker (TM). He's good in certain situations, others...not so much. That's why we have a group of characters that can complement one another in the 1st place. Check out the Illumine Soul (CP) prestige class if you want an excellent anti-undead Soulknife (one of their otherwise weak spots). Now if I could just find something for plant creatures and constructs :)