Now available!
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yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeessssssss sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yay, thanks Liz!
I managed to get my hands on this (finally, and entirely my own fault for the delay) and I couldn't be more thrilled to see it come out! Looks very cool and I can't wait to try all the new goodies.
Just got the proof copy from the printer last night. A few things to tweak and I'll be sending in the revised files. Print copies should be available in November!
Print copies should arrive next week!
So are this and Ultimate Psionics sufficient to use the psionics rules, or will I need other material as well?
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Everything in this book is also in Ultimate Psionics. This book gives the folks who already have Unleashed and Expanded an option without having to buy Ultimate.
Frick! Wish I'd known that before I just bought both of them :(
Frick! Wish I'd known that before I just bought both of them :(
Sorry, mate!
We've tried to keep it open that that's what this is.
It would probably be a good idea to note that on this page's product description then, since it doesn't say so at all.
I've asked that the Ultimate Psionics description reflect that it's all three books. :-)
Print copies now available! :D
Just curious, for the next books in the series/Ultimate Psionics, do you think you're going to add more re flavorings to Psionics? I don't mind being able to refluff it myself, but I'd almost want a bit more built in for the curmudgeons who demand rules to every bit of flavor. If it's too much work, I totally understand as it seems like quite a bit for a small amount of people wanting something like it.
It's something we've discussed, yes. Nothing definitive, but it's on our list of potential releases.
THANK YOU FOR THE B.O.C. reference!!! "Veteran of the Psychic Wars" is a great song!
Also, could be an inspiration for a new campaign...
You're welcome, and I know I've been inspired to dream up a few things based on that song. :D
Everything in this book is also in Ultimate Psionics. This book gives the folks who already have Unleashed and Expanded an option without having to buy Ultimate.
So it's got classes from Psion to Marksman to Tactician, etc?
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Everything in this book is also in Ultimate Psionics. This book gives the folks who already have Unleashed and Expanded an option without having to buy Ultimate.So it's got classes from Psion to Marksman to Tactician, etc?
This specific book, no. It has suypport for the existing psionic classes but no new classes itself. Ultimate Psionics has updates to the 4 classes dating back to 3.5 (Psion, Psychic Warrior, Wilder, and Soulknife - revisions to the Soulknife being the very thing that brought the two guys behind Dreamscarred Press in the very first place!) and the new classes introduced in Psionics Expanded, the Aegis, Cryptic, Dread, Marksman, Tactician, and Vitalist.
Everything in this book is also in Ultimate Psionics. This book gives the folks who already have Unleashed and Expanded an option without having to buy Ultimate.So it's got classes from Psion to Marksman to Tactician, etc?
Ultimate Psionics has everything from: Psionics Unleashed, Psionics Expanded, and Psionics Augmented.
Psionics Augmented is the roughly 75 pages of stuff in Ultimate not in Unleashed or Expanded.
Part II of my review.
The Metanexus Tactician learns at 5th level to treat allies of his collective as origins for powers other than touch-range and even pool racial traits! And high-jack the senses (And line of sight!) of collective members - this DESERVES being called a Tactician's archetype - smart and extremely cool! The Psychic Warrior gets the new Pathmaster archetype, essentially a psychic warrior that focuses excessively on one path to the exclusion of others. Okay, I guess.
But no, we're STILL not done with archetypes - we also get archetypes for the non-psionic classes: Druids can now choose the path of Gaean. These druids can communicate telepathically with nature’s ally and they also double the duration of their spells, ignore e.g. verbal components etc. 1/day when in contact with nature – nice one! At 13th level, they may also merge with nature, upon being reduced to 0 hp to be healed – nice last second save ability, though it requires a caveat that it doesn’t work if an attack actually kills the Gaean. Rangers may choose to become Pack Leaders: These beings may treat up to wis-mod creatures as a pack, i.e. a collective of ½ tactician level, making them work better in tandem. Furthermore, at higher levels, telepathy among pack members and sharing spells is possible.
Clerics may now choose the new Psionic Domain, allowing them to emit a psionics enhancing aura and dispel psionic effects via a touch The Discipline subdomain allows for various benefits, from bonuses to saves and movement to a kind of flurry of blows, while the Dreams subdomain quotes and translates one of my favorite 3.X-abilities to PFRPG with lucid dreaming, allowing you to make alterations to reality as via the stone shape-spell – a pity, though, that finer alterations and creations ex nihilo are no longer possible. The Noetics subdomain is all about concentrating to move target objects and creatures, with the max weight depending on your class level. Sorcerors also get new tools in the form of the Psychic bloodline. These sorcerers get the option to hurl unattended objects around, fly and increase the potency of their [force]-spells. The Psychic Mage gets two opposing schools, but also Wild Talent – and, rather interesting, the Wizard archetype may learn psionic powers as spells, allowing him/her to cast them (and even augment them sort of) via the expenditure of spell slots. Weird, but ultimately very cool blending of psionics and vancian magic – two thumbs up, also since at later levels, they can use psionic foci to forego inexpensive material components or add verbal and somatic components to increase the oomph of their powers!
Paladins may now choose to become Purifiers, who learn to detect psionics instead of evil, smite aberrations and may clad their weapons in fire (which ignores immunity and resistance when combined with smite) and they also get access to the gifted blade’s list of powers – nice take on the psionic paladin! Barbarians may choose the Raging Beast archetype, which may manifest claws and bite while raging and get limited manifesting as a psychic warrior of ½ their level – okay, but somewhat bland fusion of barbarian and psion. Personally, I preferred the Feral Heart. Thoughtsingers are bards that can connect “willingminds” – yeah, blank space missing, to form a collective, which then benefits from their thoughtsongs – telepathic bardic performance plus some unique effects, essentially. Extremely cool, complex archetype with a capstone that allows them t plant mind seeds, but here’s another glitch -the power is not properly italicized – other than that, a superb FINAL archetype.
Of course, there is more content in here, for example…feats! And they do open up some neat combo-potential – for example take assassin’s shot for the marksman – when making a ranged attack that deals sneak-attack damage, you may 1/round activate one style ability that requires the expenditure of your psionic focus with actually expending it. Per se cool feat and laudable concept, but does that mean that shooting is enough or does the attack actually have to hit? What if a target is immune versus sneak attack etc., can the ability still be triggered. The feat is unclear about that and needs clarification.
Rather cool: Wilder/Barbarians may use 1 round of rage to forego the expenditure of their psionic focus when only using wild surge – only here being the key, otherwise you’d have me complaining right now. Also interesting: Deep Focus allows you to get a second psionic focus, but one that cannot be combined with Psicrystal Containment – great to see this potentially very strong combo excluded for an overall balanced alternative: 3 foci would have been a bit much… (And yes, I had a level 24 psion with 3 of them in the 3.X days of yonder – and it was glorious and insane at the same time…) There are also feats for combining fighter and tactician class-features, very overdue extensions of collective range (a must-have feat, imho), options to enhance class features of elocators, better disengaging, improved cover fire, a dread/cavalier combo-feat and one feat that allows a cryptic to apply full damage via disrupt pattern to targets, even if they’re not your currently chosen creature type. However, in order to take this powerful feat, you need no less than 6 skills à 5 ranks (though Knowledge (Psionics) lacks the proper amount of ranks required) – thus a significant investment to offset the drawback of the class.
Also rather neat would be a feat to combine alchemist bombs and the pyrokineticist’s talents (the latter can now also split the heads of his/her lash) or offer barbarian/aegis synergy. Psicrystal Imprinters of 5th level may use their resonance class feature to use metapsionic feats in lieu of their regular resonance effects – rather cool and thanks to the concisely-worded limitations, also not as easily breakable as you’d think. All in all, some very cool feats that help realize nice combo-class concepts and also provide some nice fodder for PrCs.
Thus concludes the player-section of this pdf. The DM-section starts with an immensely useful discussion on how psionics work that ANY novice DM not familiar with them should read. All the misconceptions, from augmenting to handling the nova-issue are detailed. Having followed x “Psionics are overpowered”-threads that stemmed from lack of proper rules-knowledge or just plain ignorance, this chapter should be considered a mandatory read for anyone planning to integrate psionics. Furthermore, it actually provides guidelines that allow DMs to use psionics and master for psionic PCs sans reading all the rules. We also get advice on introducing psionics to a given campaign and house-rules for limited transparency between magic and psionics and also a reskin for everyone that does not like the flavor of regular psionics – turning them into Rune Magic. I’m a bit ambivalent about that one, but I also like the base-fluff of psionics. We also get 2 new psionic powers (which should probably be in the player-section) and a new PrC, the Dark Tempest.
The Dark Tempests are secretive warriors, get d10, 2+Int skills, full manifesting/mind blade progression, 3/4 BAB-progression, medium fort-saves, 4 psychic strike enhancements over their levels and combine their levels with soulknife-levels for purposes of blade skills, feat prerequisites etc. They also get an expanded power list, though level 1 universally is NOT properly italicized. As an interesting fusion ability, these warriors may forego dealing psychic strike damage to instead power their manifesting – interesting indeed!
After this PrC, we get 2 new special armor qualities, 4 new magical armors/items (including one made from flayed human skin- ewww), 7 weapon qualities, 1 new special weapon, 3 new psicrowns and over 30 wondrous items await as loot to be dispensed among greedy players! And then, the Legendary Items-section begins – all items released in the “Psionic Items of Legend”-series so far have been included, which in turn means you’ll get a lot of powerful tools that improve with your characters. Since I’ve reviewed already all of them, I’ll point you just to the respective reviews and instead close this one.
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are okay at this length, though there honestly are more glitches in here than what I’d usually expect from Dreamscarred Press. The release of this prior to Ultimate Psionics is definitely a smart move, especially if they can iron out the glitches so that they don’t tarnish the huge hardcover. Layout adheres to a drop-dead gorgeous two-column full color standard and the numerous original artworks herein are honestly mind-blowing and beautiful – on the very highest of quality levels, this pdf is beautiful indeed. The pdf comes fully bookmarked, though the Psionic Items of Legend don’t get individual bookmarks, which is a minor comfort detriment, seeing that they span more than 13 pages.
Andreas Rönnqvist, Jeremy Smith and Eric Hindley have definitely created a worthy addition to the excellent first 2 psionics books, thankfully providing quite a bunch of new tools for the cool core classes and even cooler new ones introduced in Psionics Expanded. That being said, this pdf also features a significant array of editing glitches and wordings here and there that need some rephrasing to eliminate all ambiguities. You may have noticed that I have been particularly nitpicky this time around. Mainly, this is to improve not only this book, but the hardcover (which I wish I could have pledged for) in the end. Much like the Psionics Expanded series that was further and further improved when required, I’m confident that the rough edges herein will be addressed by the DSP-crew. For now, though, I can’t rate this supplement higher than 3.5 stars, rounded down to 3, though I’m looking forward to an improved release and upgrading my verdict.
Reviewed first on Endzeitgeist.com, then submitted to Nerdtrek and GMS magazine and posted here, on OBS and d20pfsrd.com's shop.
Endzeitgeist out.
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Thanks, End!
I'll see about getting the issues ironed out both in this book and Ultimate.
You're welcome, Jeremy, and thanks for the continued dedication to excellence.
All the best!
Hey End,
A few nitpicks of your nitpicks as I go through the feedback.
The Empty Caste archetype - active energy type is an overarcing rule defined in Psionics Unleashed. It's set / changed with gaining psionic focus. (Psionics Unleashed, page 64-65, and page 227)
"Energy Powers: Many psionic powers deal damage of a certain type of energy, with cold, electricity, fire, and sonic being the most common. For powers that have the choice of cold, electricity, fire, and sonic, the manifester must choose after he regains his psionic power points for the day which of these four energy types is his active energy. The manifester may choose to change which energy is his active energy by gaining psionic focus. If he is currently maintaining psionic focus, he may expend it as a free action and then gain psionic focus normally to choose a new energy type. The manifester need not maintain psionic focus to have an active energy type. Wilders may change their active energy type when performing a wild surge. Kineticists are exempt from this restriction and may freely choose the energy type at the time the power is manifest, so long as it is within the choices allowed by the power. He could not, for example, choose fire as his energy type when manifesting concussion blast, as the power does not allow a choice in energy types."
"Active Energy Type: The current selected type of energy (cold, electricity, fire, or sonic). Most psionic powers with the [Energy] descriptor deal damage based on the active energy type. Kineticists may change their active energy type freely, and wilders may temporarily change their active energy type during a wild surge; otherwise, a psionic character may change his active energy type when gaining psionic focus. The psionic character need not maintain psionic focus to maintain an active energy type."
Unifier's Command the Field already specifies the duration - Int mod rounds (minimum 1).
I'll be adding clarifications for the Mutator archetype, a range limit for the Fleshbinder, and rank specification for One Pattern. There are also a couple of other items under discussion, and so far I've fixed all the formatting issues identified.
I also still have to go through the reviews of all the legendary items and will include those in the next update.
Those will all be in the next PDF update.
Hej Jeremy, thanks for the nitpicks of my nitpicks - guess I got archetype blindness there - I *do* actually know what active energy is, I just wasn't aware of the terminology. Will rectify that in my review's revision. Furthermore: Sorry for the both re the Unifier's Command.
Thanks for the feedback, it helps be become a better reviewer!!
Cheers!
No problem - thanks for the very thorough review!
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Still waiting for mine to clear the Paizo warehouse and start it's journey to me. Hopefully I won't have the same problem I did with the last book where I ordered it and then discovered it was sold out and had to wait weeks for a restock and then a couple weeks more for paizo to ship. * ordered on Nov 13th and the site says I purchased it on Dec 12th hopefully it's in the box.
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A request. As someone who loves Herolab but is completely and utterly inept at coding new things into it, can someone please point me in the direction of someone who has worked up the three Psionics books from Dreamscarred press. I did find the stuff from the first book but neither of the second two. Any help would greatly appreciated.
Hey Jeremy, if we got Psionics Augmented here, will that PDF be updated today too?
Part II of my review of the revised edition:
But no, we're STILL not done with archetypes - we also get archetypes for the non-psionic classes: Druids can now choose the path of Gaean. These druids can communicate telepathically with nature’s ally and they also double the duration of their spells, ignore e.g. verbal components etc. 1/day when in contact with nature – nice one! At 13th level, they may also merge with nature, upon being reduced to 0 hp to be healed – nice last second save ability, though it requires a caveat that it doesn’t work if an attack actually kills the Gaean and/or how it interacts with instakill attacks. Rangers may choose to become Pack Leaders: These beings may treat up to wis-mod creatures as a pack, i.e. a collective of ½ tactician level, making them work better in tandem. Furthermore, at higher levels, telepathy among pack members and sharing spells is possible.
Clerics may now choose the new Psionic Domain, allowing them to emit a psionics enhancing aura and dispel psionic effects via a touch The Discipline subdomain allows for various benefits, from bonuses to saves and movement to a kind of flurry of blows, while the Dreams subdomain quotes and translates one of my favorite 3.X-abilities to PFRPG with lucid dreaming, allowing you to make alterations to reality as via the stone shape-spell – a pity, though, that finer alterations and creations ex nihilo are no longer possible. The Noetics subdomain is all about concentrating to move target objects and creatures, with the max weight depending on your class level. Sorcerors also get new tools in the form of the Psychic bloodline. These sorcerers get the option to hurl unattended objects around, fly and increase the potency of their [force]-spells. The Psychic Mage gets two opposing schools, but also Wild Talent – and, rather interesting, the Wizard archetype may learn psionic powers as spells, allowing him/her to cast them (and even augment them sort of) via the expenditure of spell slots. Weird, but ultimately very cool blending of psionics and vancian magic – two thumbs up, also since at later levels, they can use psionic foci to forego inexpensive material components or add verbal and somatic components to increase the oomph of their powers!
Paladins may now choose to become Purifiers, who learn to detect psionics instead of evil, smite aberrations and may clad their weapons in fire (which ignores immunity and resistance when combined with smite) and they also get access to the gifted blade’s list of powers – nice take on the psionic paladin! Barbarians may choose the Raging Beast archetype, which may manifest claws and bite while raging and get limited manifesting as a psychic warrior of ½ their level – okay, but somewhat bland fusion of barbarian and psion. Personally, I preferred the Feral Heart. Thoughtsingers are bards that can connect willing minds to form a collective, which then benefits from their thoughtsongs – telepathic bardic performance plus some unique effects, essentially. Extremely cool, complex archetype with a capstone that allows them to plant mind seeds– a superb FINAL archetype.
Of course, there is more content in here, for example…feats! And they do open up some neat combo-potential – for example take assassin’s shot for the marksman – when making a ranged attack that deals sneak-attack damage, you may 1/round activate one style ability that requires the expenditure of your psionic focus with actually expending it. Prior ambiguities have been cleared up.
Rather cool: Wilder/Barbarians may use 1 round of rage to forego the expenditure of their psionic focus when only using wild surge – only here being the key, otherwise you’d have me complaining right now. Also interesting: Deep Focus allows you to get a second psionic focus, but one that cannot be combined with Psicrystal Containment – great to see this potentially very strong combo excluded for an overall balanced alternative: 3 foci would have been a bit much… (And yes, I had a level 24 psion with 3 of them in the 3.X days of yonder – and it was glorious and insane at the same time…) There are also feats for combining fighter and tactician class-features, very overdue extensions of collective range (a must-have feat, imho), options to enhance class features of elocators, better disengaging, improved cover fire, a dread/cavalier combo-feat and one feat that allows a cryptic to apply full damage via disrupt pattern to targets, even if they’re not your currently chosen creature type. However, in order to take this powerful feat, you need no less than 6 skills à 5 ranks – thus a significant investment to offset the drawback of the class.
Also rather neat would be a feat to combine alchemist bombs and the pyrokineticist’s talents (the latter can now also split the heads of his/her lash) or offer barbarian/aegis synergy. Psicrystal Imprinters of 5th level may use their resonance class feature to use metapsionic feats in lieu of their regular resonance effects – rather cool and thanks to the concisely-worded limitations, also not as easily breakable as you’d think. All in all, some very cool feats that help realize nice combo-class concepts and also provide some nice fodder for PrCs.
Thus concludes the player-section of this pdf. The DM-section starts with an immensely useful discussion on how psionics work that ANY novice DM not familiar with them should read. All the misconceptions, from augmenting to handling the nova-issue are detailed. Having followed x “Psionics are overpowered”-threads that stemmed from lack of proper rules-knowledge or just plain ignorance, this chapter should be considered a mandatory read for anyone planning to integrate psionics. Furthermore, it actually provides guidelines that allow DMs to use psionics and master for psionic PCs sans reading all the rules. We also get advice on introducing psionics to a given campaign and house-rules for limited transparency between magic and psionics and also a reskin for everyone that does not like the flavor of regular psionics – turning them into Rune Magic. I’m a bit ambivalent about that one, but I also like the base-fluff of psionics. We also get 2 new psionic powers (which should probably be in the player-section) and a new PrC, the Dark Tempest.
The Dark Tempests are secretive warriors, get d10, 2+Int skills, full manifesting/mind blade progression, 3/4 BAB-progression, medium fort-saves, 4 psychic strike enhancements over their levels and combine their levels with soulknife-levels for purposes of blade skills, feat prerequisites etc. They also get an expanded power list. As an interesting fusion ability, these warriors may forego dealing psychic strike damage to instead power their manifesting – interesting indeed!
After this PrC, we get 2 new special armor qualities, 4 new magical armors/items (including one made from flayed human skin- ewww), 7 weapon qualities, 1 new special weapon, 3 new psicrowns and over 30 wondrous items await as loot to be dispensed among greedy players! And then, the Legendary Items-section begins – all items released in the “Psionic Items of Legend”-series so far have been included, which in turn means you’ll get a lot of powerful tools that improve with your characters. Since I’ve reviewed already all of them, I’ll point you just to the respective reviews and instead close this one.
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting have been cleaned up from the first iteration, with a lot of ambiguities gone and a lot italicization-errors purged. Layout adheres to a drop-dead gorgeous two-column full color standard and the numerous original artworks herein are honestly mind-blowing and beautiful – on the very highest of quality levels, this pdf is beautiful indeed. The pdf comes fully bookmarked, and now the Psionic Items of Legend actually get individual bookmarks.
Andreas Rönnqvist, Jeremy Smith and Eric Hindley have definitely created a worthy addition to the excellent first 2 psionics books, thankfully providing quite a bunch of new tools for the cool core classes and even cooler new ones introduced in Psionics Expanded. The new and vastly improved Psionics Augmented Vol. I takes just about all gripes I had with the initial release and gets rid of them - now that, ladies and gentlemen, is great support. While not all of the individual archetypes are winners, there is a plethora of cool options herein that expands the ways in which psionics work. Hence, the revised version gets an updated rating of 4.5 stars, rounded down to 4 for the purpose of this platform.
Updated in all the usual places.
Endzeitgeist out.
Thanks, End!
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I have Unleashed and Expanded.
As far as game content is concerned, is this the book I need to get to get me to the equivalent position of owning Ultimate?
I know you've answered a question almost the same as this! I'm just wanting to make sure I pick up any changes to Unleashed and Expanded that might have made their way into Ultimate, as well as the extra content.
What's the plan for Augmented Vol II, BTW?
Cheers
Richard
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Hi Richard!
yes, this book has all the new stuff from Ultimate.
Volume II is likely going to put mythic, seventh path, and alternate themes all together into one book.