Energy ray.
Keeping in line with those same abilities, I pull out an 11 power point energy ray, no empower, no cheese, just straight up fire damage.
Also no saving throw.
Spells/powers that have touch and ranged touch attacks don't generally allow saving throws. This is not broken, this is just the way they work.
11d6+11. Average damage of 49. Scorching ray's average is 42. On top of that this is ONE attack roll, can be cold, and can be turned into anything else to suit the fight.
It also expends the resources of a 6th level spell slot to do it. scorching ray requires a 2nd level spell slot. So yes, actually if I have to blow masses of extra resources I would expect the result to be better - how would it be fair if it wasn't?
Effectively, you get to play a better sorcerer, since you get more spells and more spell selection. What the hell is the point of playing a sorcerer then?
You do? 36 powers for the psion, vs 52 spells for the sorcerer. Even if you have the energy powers, they are not 'four different spells' - what are your options with energy ray? Four varieties of 'zap somebody'. You also need utilities to cover other eventualities.
On the aside, a lot of the powers I looked at could be augmented in some way, providing you with a lot more spells at higher level.
Less than half of them, if you go through the entire list, and I have, and most have only one augment option. So if we take the total powers available and assume half of them include an 'extra spell equivelant' then you get 36 x 1.5 = 54. Now compare this with the sorcerer's total spells of 52, and the specialist wizard's 55 ...
I'm comparing what a wizard can do to what a psion can do.
No, you are comparing them in terms of direct damage spells and effects, generally considered to be the most unproductive use of a wizard's spells in the game. What you are really doing is comparing what an evoker can do against what a kineticist can do, in terms of damage only. How about we compare area of effects? A close look will show you that powers generally have sucky combinations of range and areas of effect when compared to spells of the same level.
Now, how about we compare necromantic spells vs necromantic powers? It's really easy ... because there are NO power equivalents of necromantic spells. None.
How about illusions, they can be devastatingly effective! Well, telepaths have one or two powers that have illusion type effects ... on a single individual. Looks like wizards win at illusions, too.
Abjurations? Yep, wizards win there, as there are few equivalents of abjuration powers in the psion's power list.
I could go on, but I'm sure you get the picture.
On top of that his three touch attacks each have a chance to miss, while the psion has one.
That's actually an advantage, statistically speaking, because for the psion there are only two outcomes - all the damage, or none. The wizard is more likely to score some damage than the psion.
The bell curve damage is much less impacted by a miss on the wizard's part, but now he can no longer do his job, while the psion can still put your head back on, create astral constructs and make anti-psionic goop. Oh and damage things with fire immunity.
Again, you are intent only on what the psion can do that the wizard cannot, and not the very many things in the reverse. The psion cannot cast a magic circle that can keep out extra-planar creatures, for example, nor can he raise the corpses of the dead to defend him, or create scintillating illusions to distract hsi foes ... or even turn invisible and escape (cloud mind can only effect a single individual, not a host of foes).
In general, it's actually the psion's flexibility that makes him better than the wizard in my eyes.
Yes, but you fail to mention the wizard's flexibility: he can memorize a huge variety of spells that go far beyond the scope of what the psion can do, and he can vary his selection to make it perfect for what he expects for the day. Given foreknowledge and time to prepare, the wizard can always have the ideal spell - even if he has to invent a new one, which he can do. The psion, well I will concede he - like the sorcerer - probably has the edge in dealing with surprises.
There is no scope for the psion to develop new powers, there is scope for a wizard to research new spells.
And when you give the wizard a run for his money on damage and a number of other things I don't have the time to compare (Telepaths in particular, Metacreation being not so bad, although the meta prefix makes no freaking sense here considering you create real things not pseudo real ones), AND you can do other things?
I have, though. Taking the wizard schools:
Abjuration - no psionic equivelant, there are a few powers that mimic abjurations, but nothing that major. Abjuration is win for the wizard or sorcerer.
Conjuration - Metacrativity is similar in scope and effect. While a Shaper can make some great astral constructs, the scope of what can be summoned is just as large, and has the options for summoning lesser creatures in greater numbers. All in all, about even.
Divination - Clairsentience is the equivalent discipline, and they come out about even in scope and power.
Enchantment - Telepathy is the equivelant, and it definitely has the edge on enchantments in terms of scope and effect; when it comes to messing with your mind, the telepath rules.
Evocation - the kineticist can out-damage the evoker against a single target on any day of the week, no question. In terms of area of effect, at a given level the evoker generally has the edge, but on the whole this one belongs to the psionics.
Illusion - the few illusion-type powers in psionics are under the telepath's banner, and they are not very good. The wizard owns this one.
Necromancy - there are not psionic equivalents. Win to the wizard.
Transmutation - Psychometabolism is the discipline associated with transmutation, and it has a lot of similar powers that are very versatile, as well as the ability to heal ... yourself. Even most of the buffs are 'self only', which is in many cases pointless and not much help to a party that has to work as a team. This one goes to the wizards.
Universalist - there's no generalist psion, they all have to be specialists.
Other - Psychoportation is a discipline that has no equivalent in magic, although most of the abilities are present in other schools. There's not much a nomad can do that can't be found in a spell somewhere, but I'll call this one a win for the psion for just having the speciality.
You're better than him.
Out of a total of nine different schools and disciplines, the psion comes out ahead in three (psychokinetics/evocation, telepathy/enchantment and psychoportation), draws on two (divination/clairsentience, conjuration/metacreativity) and loses on four (abjuration, illusion, necromancy, transmutation/psychometabolism). Based on this, I'd have to disagree - the psion is better than the wizard at some things, the wizard is better than the psion at others.
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I've also read and heard back from enough gamers that psionics literally explodes game balance (ala ToB: Bo9S) every time they introduce it into their campaigns. Apparently it's real hard to rate via the former CR system.
No, the Psionics system itself doesn't do that, a race called the ELAN does that.
Using Expanded Psionics and the splat for it, your PC could effectively almost never lose HP or fail a save, as long as you used an ELAN.
I've also read and heard back from enough gamers that psionics literally explodes game balance (ala ToB: Bo9S) every time they introduce it into their campaigns. Apparently it's real hard to rate via the former CR system.
No, the Psionics system itself doesn't do that, a race called the ELAN does that.
Using Expanded Psionics and the splat for it, your PC could effectively almost never lose HP or fail a save, as long as you used an ELAN.
It's not even that.
It's when people don't read the rules, or when they hold vicious double standards. The second one is especially applicable to Tome of Battle. Warblades are overpowered because sometimes they can almost do as much damage as a wizard who isn't trying very hard.
You ever looked at true sorcery?Skill check to cast and non-lethal damage as the cost. I'll take that over both power points and Vancian any day.Agreed, and I am intrigued now; so if I understand you, each spell has its own DC and if you don't meet it, the spell just fails? And how much temp damage are we talking per casting, approximately?
And did they completely redo the entire spell system, spells and all? Or they just retooled the casting rules and classes and added some new stuff?
Well also there is no "level" just a base DC for the talent. And ya gain a bonus to spells craft Evey 5 levels or so making it possible for ya to cast those higher level spells.
If you look at the link I posted it has two previews on the page. The first is the spellcaster class, there is only one the 2nd is a few of the talents
The first is obscure
Prerequisite: Second Magnitude—base DC 20.{10th level)
Component: Somatic; Range: Personal; Target: You;
Duration: 1 round; Saving Throw: Will negates (harmless);
Spell Resistance: Yes (harmless}
From which it gives you three examples of spells you can make, and how the math worked out
As for the points I am wanting to say half your HP total, but really it has been to long and I simply do not recall.
To make this quick 228/74.5=3 3 rounds of 13pp equals 39 pp per fight
39 pp used/106 availible=0.3679 or 36.79% of resources in one fight.
Sure psions can do this, but he will be out of power points real fast which is why a DM that has a psion novaing might want to check the player's character to make sure he is doing the numbers right. You can't push like that and keep going.
The psion gets bonus PP per level, though. So it's actually less than a third of his power.
If you have around a 20 at 11th level (about average) in your casting score you get 27 bonus PP, raising your PP to 133
If you DON'T empower that's 133/11= 12 castings of a 6th level equivalent spell. Three encounters worth with a 39 pp expenditure per fight.
Kolyaruts Fort +6
Fine. I will go to a 6th level spell, disintegrate. 22x3.5=77. Two casting and it is game over.
And I can get maybe three of those a day if I'm a transmutation specialist and cast nothing else whereas the psion gets 10. Oh, and I have an extra chance to fail. Admittedly not much of one, but it's enough to be worth noting.
There is also a psionic disintegrate, but the save DC on it doesn't go up for some reason. It's not as though disintegrate was a terrific standby already, but seriously Wizards, what.
I am sure since we are both trying to prove the other wrong all these monsters die in 3 rounds or less. After typing this I read your the rest of your thread. I guess both of us got tired of typing. :)
Yeah, I was assuming you had a party with you who was making sure the monster doesn't come up and introduce you to the grappling rules. In both cases the caster will try to teleport away and continue the fight from there or get grappled and die, so I figured there wasn't much to going into that.
The psion can damage things, but the wizard can jack you up in a number of ways. Even with the rock to mud thing I could have summoned monsters to hack on those elementals without endangering a party member.
Um, earth elementals have earth glide, air elementals can fly and the save DC on rock to mud is incredibly low unless you heighten it (Which don't get me wrong, is good, I'm just saying). I hope any DM who's read the earth elemental entry would just go "Oh, he's not going to lose actions from the ground changing its composition, he swims through the earth."
I'm not sure if common sense DMing is allowed in these debates, but that's what I'm going with.
While but while the psion does things directly he does not have a lot of things that make the party better. The wizard can beat you directly or through his partners... I actually think the sorcerer is better than a psion. The psions does a limited number of things rally well, but the arcanist just flat out do more things.
The sorcerer is awesome, but the psion... The psion gets two powers every level, even when he gets a new level of powers until he hits 11th level. The sorcerer got one every time, had to walk uphill both ways to school, and endure the ridicule of the wizards sitting up in their towers crafting items and doing cool things with their spells and WE LIKED IT! /sarcasm
The sorcerer can do a bunch of stuff, but... Let me get to that later.
Madcap Storm King wrote:
11d6+11. Average damage of 49. Scorching ray's average is 42. On top of that this is ONE attack roll, can be cold, and can be turned into anything else to suit the fight.
It also expends the resources of a 6th level spell slot to do it. scorching ray requires a 2nd level spell slot. So yes, actually if I have to blow masses of extra resources I would expect the result to be better - how would it be fair if it wasn't?
Because that can be any energy type, whereas scorching ray is always fire all the time. And since an 11th level psion is basically spending a 12th of his power here, it should be good.
But that's without spending the power points effectively.
On top of that, one ray is better because that baby can crit. If scorching ray crits it's cool but barely matters. If this crits the monster is dead. It's basically polar ray but better (Don't get me wrong, I'm cool with that because polar ray is bad), and it's FIRST LEVEL. I can have up to 21 other ways of dealing with the problem, whereas the wizard can have around 6-8 and a bunch of utility stuff because he had to prep and can't change his mind.
Some stuff about school equivalencies
Necromancy is terrible and expensive, Illusion is sometimes completely useless (It's my favorite spellcasting archetype to play and it doesn't work on ANY undead... *Sniff*), and abjuration is alright. The abjurer is pretty cool, but the psion has quite a few useful tools from the abjurer list. They're no dismissal or dispel magic, but they're hardly completely admissible.
There's also False Sensory Input that the telepath gets. Fairly versatile, I would be able to do some pretty nasty stuff while affecting one sense, and it can distract spellcasters, which illusions can't do. That's one power, I couldn't find too many others so I will say that yes, the illusionist cannot be duplicated. However, this effect can be used on a variety of creatures that are immune to illusions but not to mind affecting effects.
I definitely agree with you on transmutation, the school has twice the size of other ones. I would be more ready to give the wizard some of the psion's powers in that case, since the psion can't just turn you into a dragon for ten minutes (Only ten minutes! :P).
Yes, but you fail to mention the wizard's flexibility: he can memorize a huge variety of spells that go far beyond the scope of what the psion can do, and he can vary his selection to make it perfect for what he expects for the day. Given foreknowledge and time to prepare, the wizard can always have the ideal spell - even if he has to invent a new one, which he can do.
The wizard- How do I put this? He's not "all that". It's about time D&D players came clean about this. The wizard can be the best class in the game, but he can also lose to an animated clay statue at a level when the fighter can take it out by himself.
A universalist wizard is bad. Seriously. You lose out on spells, which you don't get that many of, but you can cast anything, making your top two casting levels more valuable. If you by chance or accident prepare the wrong spells or encounter the wrong things, congrats, you are not able to to much other than your backup plan, which can be chuck magic missile or buff the fighter.
Plus, getting all those spells in your book takes time and money, and there are no hard and fast rules for researching spells, but the srd suggests that it take awhile. AD&D Magic-Users were a lot better about this, since they actually had chances to get new spells through research that were quantified. The psion can't get new disciplines because it would be like a sorcerer getting new spells (more like three to four new spells in some cases).
On acquiring spells: You can't get whatever you want. It's up to the DM, there's a check to copy successfully, and the DM is going to get tired of catering to you every time you go into town and interrogate every wizard (I would anyway). If you really want a spell, you have to research it, and there are jack all rules for it, which means you could get off easy and research in like a week or the DM could just watch you pump money into it like a slot machine and demand a good spellcraft roll at the end of a month's time.
Plus, knowing what you'll go up against in a day is impossible unless you spend hours scrying in the same day with no spells prepared. If someone decides to attack you in the morning, you're more dead than a normal wizard because you just spent an hour getting rid of all the previous day's leftovers for scrying and a couple of other spells you know you'll want. Plus, the spells never tell you everything. They might tell you that Melvin the Malicious is close to perfecting the cauldron of doom, but it might not tell you about the assassins he's hired to go after your mother, his stone golem he keeps underneath a permanent silent image at the entrance, his invisible vampire confidant etc., and even then Melvin has to fail a will save for you to get any information before blowing another ten minutes and a spell slot. If you do succeed, Melvin might just be napping, eating a bagel, feeding his snake familiar, or reading a book.
In other words, the perfect optimization monkey wizard, like all best made plans, fails to survive contact with the enemy (Sometimes literally).
The wizard does have the virtue of being able to do a bunch of stuff, but that's a maybe and requires committing himself before any of it happens. The psion has some of the benefits of being a sorcerer with none of the drawbacks until higher level, and even then can still have a heck of a lot more ways of dealing with a problem, which means one of them will be more effective than the wizard's one most of the time.
The wizard can do some things the psion can't, the psion can do some things the wizard can't, but int he end the psion has an amazing amount of flexibility compared to the sorcerer or the wizard, and power comparable to the wizard.
The one thing that comes close to balancing this is the disciplines, but restricting the options when you already get so many only serves to make sure the psion doesn't just cherry pick amazing powers, which would make this no contest.
HOWEVER: Being restricted making being more powerful OK is a fallacy. Players should, and will be intuitive enough to make sure they are useful in a variety of situations, and to make sure their specialty isn't rendered pointless by picking their battles. It just turns the game into rock paper scissors, with the player picking one symbol the whole time, and not losing when his symbol comes up because he has other people in the party to compensate and can just choose not to engage that foe.
In general, a lack of options is not something that psions have, and that, more than any other thing, makes them the best choice for an arcane caster class.
The psion gets bonus PP per level, though. So it's actually less than a third of his power.
I was going by the number you gave me. I did not check the math.
If you have around a 20 at 11th level (about average) in your casting score you get 27 bonus PP, raising your PP to 133If you DON'T empower that's 133/11= 12 castings of a 6th level equivalent spell. Three encounters worth with a 39 pp expenditure per fight.
If the psion does not empower the enemies are still alive. If the psion empowers the victory is still not guaranteed because a lot of monsters have energy resistance, which means the psion can't target the save he wants when he wants to. He has to choose the energy power that wont be negated. Another point is that if he empowers he becomes a target, and unlike a wizard his defenses are not as great. You will probably respond with "the psion will have some defenses up", but then that means he won't have all those pp available for blasting, which I have just shown is not as easy as you are making it sound. You are trying to make it sound like the psion can blast to his heart's content without consequence. It does not work that way. Those points have to be managed. IIRC you said you had a bad experience with them. You tell me the experience and I can tell how it is handled by most DM's.
Kolyaruts Fort +6
Fine. I will go to a 6th level spell, disintegrate. 22x3.5=77. Two casting and it is game over.
And I can get maybe three of those a day if I'm a transmutation specialist and cast nothing else whereas the psion gets 10. Oh, and I have an extra chance to fail. Admittedly not much of one, but it's enough to be worth noting.
There is also a psionic disintegrate, but the save DC on it doesn't go up for some reason. It's not as though disintegrate was a terrific standby already, but seriously Wizards, what.
The point was that the wizard could handle the opponent just as easily. Unless the DM is Kolyraut happy you won't need 10 castings of that spell so it won't happy.
I am sure since we are both trying to prove the other wrong all these monsters die in 3 rounds or less. After typing this I read your the rest of your thread. I guess both of us got tired of typing. :)
Yeah, I was assuming you had a party with you who was making sure the monster doesn't come up and introduce you to the grappling rules. In both cases the caster will try to teleport away and continue the fight from there or get grappled and die, so I figured there wasn't much to going into that.
Um, earth elementals have earth glide, air elementals can fly and the save DC on rock to mud is incredibly low unless you heighten it (Which don't get me wrong, is good, I'm just saying). I hope any DM who's read the earth elemental entry would just go "Oh, he's not going to lose actions from the ground changing its composition, he swims through the earth."
I will give you the mud thing, but summons still take him. Hopefully the wizard is flying. Yeah the elemental will probably run away, but a win is a win. I was just replying to your example, and air elementals were not mentioned.
Without quoting you post I have to disagree. Both arcane classes are the shiznit. What clay statue is taking the wizard out, really?
On researching spells: Most DM's just give you all your stuff when you level up, and the ones that don't make everyone wait a day or so. The only thing that cost money is putting spells from scrolls into your book or from another wizard's spellbook, and that is more than worth it.
As far as preparing the wrong spells a psion can get powers that don't work, and those never get changed out. At least the sorcerer can throw powers away, and the wizard can choose not to use a spell again.
On acquiring spells:What is all this research you speak of. Most people don't do that. They either buy the scroll or they beat up an enemy wizard and take it. The wizard might get everything he wants, but I have never seen one not have enough, unless the DM is trying to nerf them because his encounters were owned by one before.
Gather information and divination spells help you know what you will be up against, and some spells are just generally useful. Haste is one as an example, and it normally lends to more damage than a spell or power depending on party composition of course.
Not all psionic powers are super-versatile, meaning he ends up being less capable to multi-task than a sorcerer or wizard.
Actually the lack of options(powers) is the biggest weakness. Their strength is that they can cast without having the "slot" issue.
A wizard is harder to learn how to play well than many classes, but if it is well played it is often the MVP.
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1. First... dump the name psionics. Consider something that might be more attuned to a fantasy setting such as mentalism, mystic, channelling, I'm sure other possibilities exist.
I really don't get how this whole "psionics isn't fantasy enough!" thing got started. Yes, psionics are generally more associated with science-fiction... but they're still a fantastic element of sci-fi, which is why "no psionics" is one of the standards for hard sci-fi. There have been lots of fantasy novels and settings with psionics, either by that name or as "psychic powers," particularly in horror/fantasy and dark fantasy settings. And it's even sillier a dichotomy when you remember that the very earliest incarnations of D&D freely mixed fantasy and science-fiction! Some of the first adventures for the game were about finding a crashed spaceship, or fighting robots, or taking over the drow goddess' FREAKING GIANT MECHA I KID YOU NOT. *breathes*
I just don't understand this focus on renaming something when "psionics" gets across what the powers are supposed to do, what they're based on, and where they're coming from easily enough, and when there's not going to be any rules confusion for this game since it's only going to refer to whatever rules Paizo finally puts out. It's like calling a rabbit a "smeerp"--it's just unnecessary complication for the sake of complication and no real benefit.
Jeremy Puckett
Folks are still complaining about the Memorization System? What's the point? Paizo has already weighed in on their plans and I really don't think it's going to change.
For me, the point is a 3PP can look at this thread and provide some of the alternatives people want in the gap that Paizo leaves. That's the awesomeness that is Open Gaming.
Power points really aren't complex at all...
There, you are now an expert on psionics.
Dag Nabbit! Now you've explained psionics so that EVERYBODY can understand them! You are hereby banned from 'the secret club Which has no Name so We can Keep it a Secret!'
{concerning balance}
I do get where you are coming from, but I think there are factors you overlook.
First off, the huge flexibility of powers is really just the energy-based powers - and yes, they are good. There are also many things they do not effect at all. All that flexibility comes down to being able to choose how you are going to zap somebody, and in many cases zapping isn't the best way forwards. That huge damage the psion can put out with just an energy ray, a 1st level power, may look great but if you are burning the equivelant of a 6th level power, you also actually have 6th level powers that may prove more useful under many circumstances. What you are actually doing is using a lower level power to do what a wizard would also do - use a lower level spell to achieve an appropriate effect. So what if the wizard needs two lower level spells to achieve this? He can do that and still have expended less resources.
Secondly, the damage may be better but the area effects at a given level are worse. If you compare the 3rd level evocation spells to the 3rd level psychokinesis ones, you quickly see that range is firmly on the evoker's side - fireball has excellent range on it, while energy cone (which is the best area of effect energy power at 3rd level that doesn't endanger your allies) has a very short range to it by comparison.
Thirdly, that 1st level energy ray augmented to the moon and back is still a first level power, and still gets stopped dead by a minor globe of invulnerability.
Fourthly, direct damage is usually acknowledged as the worst thing a wizard could specialise in. In other words, the psion is able to make effective a concept that the wizard cannot. This still does not make it broken - if you face a dirty great earth elemental, what you are really doing is taking the edge off it's hit points before the party fighter gets stuck in.
Regarding wizard versatility, remember that the wizard can do something that no other core caster or psionic character can do: he can leave spell slots empty and prepare them when he knows what he will need. That's a VERY effective ability. Further, while precise knowledge of what you face may not be available, you usually have a good idea. if your adventure involves descending into the fumarole of an active volcano in pursuit of fire giants, you can take a pretty good guess that fire spells will not be needed. This is the wizard's flexibility - it's not a flexibility on the fly such as the psion or the sorcerer has but remember that is the only kind that they have got; if the wizard is really worried about what he could come up against, he can always prepare a 'get out of sh*t fast' spell in order to run away and come back better prepared.
This is why I think the wizard and psion are actually pretty balanced - there are a few things the psion is better at (direct energy damage being one of them, telepathy being the other) and a few things the wizard is better at (false sensory impression is a good power, I agree, but it only effects one target; illusions effect everything that can see them). While you are right in that restricting versatility and increasing power are not balanced after a point, I don't think that point is reached with psionics. All my experience with the system says it's balanced pretty well with core magic.
In other comparisons, I can sum up:
The psion has less powers known than the wizard or sorcerer have spells known, but his powers are more flexible. That pretty much balances.
The psion has a better way of managing his resources in power points, but he has less total power than the specialist wizard and much less than the sorcerer. That also pretty much balances.
IIRC you said you had a bad experience with them. You tell me the experience and I can tell how it is handled by most DM's.
I've had a couple. One after I had convinced myself that psionics were not broken.
The first one involved a psion who I know NOW had no business having these two powers, but he had a good blasting spell and psionic dominate.
The second one was after the advanced psionics handbook came out and someone wanted me to allow a combo that could deal infinite damage to a single target (I don't remember the combo, but it involved the time stop power and some feat that game back power points for dealing damage once a day) and when i said no, he said "But it's only once a day."
That could just be the advanced psionics handbook, but whatever.
The third was with autohypnosis when I had a low level (3rd or 4th) sorcerer avoid being poisoned by a viper I had put in specifically to get someone ability damaged so they would want to get a lesser restoration spell at a nearby church (I was much more heavy handed back then). He meditated the poison away while stabbing the snake and killed it despite two more bites. No ability score damage. He literally only stabbed it in melee because he didn't feel like wasting the spells on it. If it had been doing ability score damage...
The most recent one I can remember is someone with a psion blaster and outdamaging the wizard in the party in one combat by so much my jaw nearly hit the floor. That character got served by the deck of many things later that day, and I didn't even stack it. Psionics constantly throwing a monkey wrench into my game got old after the first time. I keep a careful watch on my game's balance, with the most insane thing I've allowed being the spell compendium minus anything near the word "celerity" until Pathfinder came out.
I was going by the number you gave me. I did not check the math.
Sorry, I did say 106 plus, since the casting stat and thus bonus points can vary I wasn't sure of what to use as a baseline at the time. I should've just picked a finalized number instead of pussyfooting around the issue.
The point was that the wizard could handle the opponent just as easily. Unless the DM is Kolyraut happy you won't need 10 castings of that spell so it won't happy.
But those AREN'T ten castings of disintegrate, those COULD be ten castings of disintegrate. If the specialist wizard has prepped 3 disintegrates he can't do anything else. If the psion uses 3 he can still use 7 other 6th level effects in the same day that are about as powerful as what he just used.
And that's with no psicrystals to expend instead.
Sorry about the air elemental thing as well, I could have sworn I said something about other kinds of elementals or someone did... Oh well.
As far as defenses go, the wizard will draw the same kind of aggression for putting up a wall or summoning something. I have seen archers drop a wizard in one round for summoning a giant bee. That is how little tolerance some DMs have for summoners. I don't care too much honestly as long as they don't bog down game or take my monster manual every time it's their turn. Both really can work well when they have their friends doing their things, fighters and barbarians charging in and druids stopping any kind of advance. I think either one can take a lot of heat for pretty much anything.
Haste can also be cast by bards and some clerics, and by a UMD rogue. Haste is probably the best spell in the game. Psions just don't get it because they don't play that way, man.
The 3.0 sorcerer couldn't throw away spells if I remember correctly, so the psion might have been able to trade stuff if it had ever been updated.
It's not as versatile as I first thought (As in why would someone not get psionic dominate as a blaster) but they can still do whatever they want to very well and have a lot of staying power if they don't blow maxed out powers every turn. The thing is: The wizard CAN'T expend that many slots, ever, and the sorcerer has a hard time making his one top spell and his two or three second to top spells matter as much as the upgraded psionic ones can. So there's no incentive for the psion to not win every encounter, and then if his party members whine remind them how easy the last three to four encounters were.
Regarding wizard versatility, remember that the wizard can do something that no other core caster or psionic character can do: he can leave spell slots empty and prepare them when he knows what he will need. That's a VERY effective ability. Further, while precise knowledge of what you face may not be available, you usually have a good idea. if your adventure involves descending into the fumarole of an active volcano in pursuit of fire giants, you can take a pretty good guess that fire spells will not be needed. This is the wizard's flexibility - it's not a flexibility on the fly such as the psion or the sorcerer has but remember that is the only kind that they have got; if the wizard is really worried about what he could come up against, he can always prepare a 'get out of sh*t fast' spell in order to run away and come back better prepared.
They CAN do this... But usually not with higher level spell slots. I've seen one wizard play with a top level spell slot unprepared and it was like he had been bought as a puppy with his top level spells and then suddenly taken to the vet one day... You could see the player looking at that slot like it had so much wasted potential.
Also not everyone runs the "Fire Dungeon". I've had parties go through the chaos plane and fight a life size animated statue of the tarrasque. Maybe resist planar effects or some thus named spell would work. Maybe it won't matter. Maybe by the time that spell would've been useful the chance to use it has passed. And maybe you really need a disintegrate spell after springing a trap and you didn't prepare one. Leaving spell slots open is great for utility, which is basically the wizard's main class feature.
Running away to come back prepared might not work either. If you're going into a dungeon and the monsters know you came in (Hard to cover up all the stolen goods and slain bodies), they might have time to rig something up themselves, meaning that only IF that same situation exists you are prepared for it.
It's useful. To be sure it had better be or the wizard is dwarfed by the sorcerer in terms of power. But only in situations that exist in a complete vacuum where monsters don't notice anything or act like characters does it make the wizard the best class ever. Most of the time it's so you can leave a 3rd level slot open to prep dispel magic or fly as needed.
Blasting may not be the best way to go about things, but sorcerers tend to do it just fine, and wizards who are willing to either sacrifice a lot of versatility or money can as well. Both are dwarfed by the psion in the sheer number of things he can do that will be at their highest save, and thus the most effective.
You keep saying that not all psionic powers can be augmented. This is true, but some of them really have no room for improvement.
Schism is just ridiculous. It's basically 3.0 haste with a reasonable limitation unless you have a bunch of lower level warmup powers which don't need that many pp anyway. Plus it makes you immune to mind affecting effects.
Energy stun is just dumb. It's like if sound burst was good at higher levels. It a save to avoid the stun after a failed save, but you target his weak save, deal some good damage and see if he loses a turn. If any fighter type gets hit with this, he loses. It does need to be buffed to get better, but it's so ridiculous I felt I needed to share.
Synesthete: Pay one power point and negate blindness or deafness.
Nuff said.
Forced share pain doesn't seem so bad, until you realize that if you just drink a healing potion every turn, your aggressor will have to concede or kill himself. And that you could instead just do this:
Every turn. You taking damage to temp hp is still you taking damage. You can gain a lot of temp hp and then try your best to get beat up by whoever, and then rebuild them every round until your target is dead. Since they failed a fort save, I don't see that taking too long.
Honestly, the structure of the power usage and the powers here aren't the problem for me: It's the combination. Doing something ridiculous that makes my encounters a cakewalk is OK if it doesn't happen all the time. But the psion CAN do that, and someone who's more experienced than me can probably do it better than I tried to. In general, it's just too much. The powers are insane for a decent number of them, the psion can max out a huge number of them per day and still have a good chunk of fuel left with no psicrystals, and the general result looks cool to a player but is a nuclear holocaust to a DM trying to run encounters with balance in mind.
And if I wanted to play Mad Max I would've handcuffed my players to a leaking car already.
Yes the complexity killed it for my players at the time. And wile it is a complex system I thought it was very well done myself.
If I recall it was based off the system they used for The Black Company setting, so if your familiar with those books ya might have an idea how it works.
It's useful. To be sure it had better be or the wizard is dwarfed by the sorcerer in terms of power.
Remember the sorcerer has had a HUGE boost in ability in Pathfinder just to stay up with the wizard, that gained very little indeed. Wizards are generally considered better than sorcerers because of this versatility. No offence, but it sounds like half your problem is getting wizards to work effectively rather than psions being overpowered. Not for nothing is the wizard called 'the GODwizard', so it must be good for something!
As for powers and spells ... well I will not deny that some powers in 3.5 needed a good hard cudgelling with the nerfbat - but then so did some spells, and most of them got it in Pathfinder. Looking at Dreamscarred Press and the Pathfinder psionics system they are developing, a fair number of them do - including the likes of schism and forced share pain, to name but two. Remember, there were broken combinations of spells in 3.5 as well, psionics was not alone in this.
That said, I think the +50% rule on power numbers works reasonably well, certainly in my experience. It's certainly frustrating having to take a power and burn power points at low level on something that to a wizard is a cantrip, just to have a little utility, it's not all fun and games.
I guess everybody's experiences are different, but from what I can see there is no fundamental imbalance between psionics and magic, and the classes that use them.
The third was with autohypnosis when I had a low level (3rd or 4th) sorcerer avoid being poisoned by a viper I had put in specifically to get someone ability damaged so they would want to get a lesser restoration spell at a nearby church (I was much more heavy handed back then). He meditated the poison away while stabbing the snake and killed it despite two more bites. No ability score damage. He literally only stabbed it in melee because he didn't feel like wasting the spells on it. If it had been doing ability score damage...
Autohypnosis only works on a poison's secondary damage or effect. He would still need to make the Fort save to avoid the initial ability score damage every bite.
Sounds like you have a second case of DM not realizing the character can't do that.
It's getting a hit with the nerf-bat too in DSP's version - it can give you a bonus to your save, just like Heal, but can't negate the damage.
Honestly Vancian casting is no less magical and illogical then a "mana" system.
QFT
It's no less magical or logical than any other magic system for that matter. It's just a system, like all other systems.
IIRC you said you had a bad experience with them. You tell me the experience and I can tell how it is handled by most DM's.I've had a couple. One after I had convinced myself that psionics were not broken.
The first one involved a psion who I know NOW had no business having these two powers, but he had a good blasting spell and psionic dominate.
The second one was after the advanced psionics handbook came out and someone wanted me to allow a combo that could deal infinite damage to a single target (I don't remember the combo, but it involved the time stop power and some feat that game back power points for dealing damage once a day) and when i said no, he said "But it's only once a day."
That could just be the advanced psionics handbook, but whatever.
The third was with autohypnosis when I had a low level (3rd or 4th) sorcerer avoid being poisoned by a viper I had put in specifically to get someone ability damaged so they would want to get a lesser restoration spell at a nearby church (I was much more heavy handed back then). He meditated the poison away while stabbing the snake and killed it despite two more bites. No ability score damage. He literally only stabbed it in melee because he didn't feel like wasting the spells on it. If it had been doing ability score damage...
Every class can be broken and the old WoTC boards had many ridiculous combos with every class. That is not a psionics function. That is a 3.5 function. Someone build a wizard once that always went first. It did not even have to roll initiative. There is the diplomancer build, another build that lets you take a lot of rounds, based around the time stop spell. I think there was a monk that could do over 32d8 per hit. I know I did not specify, but I was asking for more reasonable builds that any player could be expected to make. I do think autohypnosis is too good, but I said that earlier. From a bystander PoV the snake story is humorous though. Now I will continue reading.
The most recent one I can remember is someone with a psion blaster and outdamaging the wizard in the party in one combat by so much my jaw nearly hit the floor. That character got served by the deck of many things later that day, and I didn't even stack it. Psionics constantly throwing a monkey wrench into my game got old after the first time. I keep a careful watch on my game's balance, with the most insane thing I've allowed being the spell compendium minus anything near the word "celerity" until Pathfinder came out.
Wizards are not good at doing damage without splat books. I think that is a terrible comparison. That is why blaster wizards are frowned upon. That is also why in out earlier post I switched to the wizards other spells. I use a variety of monsters when I fight so the psion might have his fun, but then find himself surround by teleporters in another fight. I also mix up the number of combats, and don't allow people to sleep without harrassment all the time. That keeps the nova'ing in check. Sleeping outside the BBEG's door, buffing, and going in 100%, not in my games. <--Yes I have seen this happen. Now back to the reading
stuff about 10 casting of disintegrate
I would love to see a psion using pp's up like that in my game. It is actually a bad idea, which I thought I discussed in an earlier post. Sure he can do it, but he will pay for it. One of the main complaints against psions is when they blow their pp and become a commoner. I don't see how these guys are using pp like that and not learning from their mistakes unless the DM just allows them to rest at will.
wizard dropped by archer
Why didn't the wizard put up a spell like mirror image, displacement or wind wall? I am not telling others how to play, but when you have d4 hit points(3.5 days) you should already know what happens if you become useful and get hit. Now if the dice gods were on the player's side( bypassed mirror image, and displacement) then I will say you can't use an extra ordinary situation to try to prove a case. The 3.5 sorcerer could. I never played 3.0 so I dont know about those versions.
Running away was as simple as a rope trick or that mansion spell. I would get scrolls of those. Now the monsters might be outside waiting for you, but at least you get a good night's sleep and new spells.
I still don't how the psion is winning encounters.
Your first two examples would have been told no in a game, just like certain arcane combos would.
The third is a skill that is open to anyone, but does not win encounters, just annoys DM's
The fourth means the guy with no armor just pulled aggro(WoW term). The guy in the back(d4 hit points) in should be useful without making it obvious or have good defense. There may be a psionic verion of mirror image, but I don't know about it. Yeah he might have vigor up, but that can be dispelled. I hope that psion player has another character sheet.
1. First... dump the name psionics. Consider something that might be more attuned to a fantasy setting such as mentalism, mystic, channelling, I'm sure other possibilities exist.I really don't get how this whole "psionics isn't fantasy enough!" thing got started. Yes, psionics are generally more associated with science-fiction... but they're still a fantastic element of sci-fi, which is why "no psionics" is one of the standards for hard sci-fi. There have been lots of fantasy novels and settings with psionics, either by that name or as "psychic powers," particularly in horror/fantasy and dark fantasy settings. And it's even sillier a dichotomy when you remember that the very earliest incarnations of D&D freely mixed fantasy and science-fiction! Some of the first adventures for the game were about finding a crashed spaceship, or fighting robots, or taking over the drow goddess' FREAKING GIANT MECHA I KID YOU NOT. *breathes*
The fluff of psionics is based on 19th century/early 20th century academics who tried to *scientifically* research parapsychological phenomena. The Rhine Research Center, formerly a part of Duke University, led the way. Much of the terminology and flavor of psionics is drawn from this source. So, for me personally, the term "psionics" is an ATROCIOUS fit for anything belonging in a fantasy game. Indeed, psionics is anti fantasy because the original psi researchers tried to quantify and demystify "strange" powers and experiences. Psionics saps the lifeblood out of fantasy.
[/opinion]
I don't think there's anyone alive who plays D&D that knows that or, for that matter, cares about it, other then you.
And really, must I say it again? "Telekinesis is a wizard spell." Hell, in earlier editions, wizards outright had the spell "ESP."
Besides, I have yet to see any of the psionic flavor as being remotely "anti-fantasy" or being drawn from that source at all.
If's funny. People get mad when psionics is all about fantasy magic and crystals. Then they get mad when it's not about fantasy magic. Just admit you're unpleasable.
So Firefox seems to enjoy eating my posts. Here are things I want to discuss in bullet point form (Unbridled rage mostly withheld for your viewing pleasure):
*Optimization wizards don't usually use the rules to acquire all of their spells, check the magic section.
*Scry can be beaten by a 24 hour spell (nondetection) or can provide useless information, and gather info can be used to convey misinformation.
*How is it my fault that players don't know what their own abilities do? Am I supposed to read a book I don't have access to?
*Insert increasingly acidic and angry rant on the imbalance of autohypnosis here (Saved you a bunch of reading).
*The combo I posted and the powers I posted were not optimized, they were straight on of the book. The combo is from a logical progression of powers and provides a broken ability from two things in the same book.
*The psion "nova"ing can't be prevented and is actually a good use of offense as you're completely eliminating a threat. Plus they don't need to nova all the time, and with potentially three times the top level spells the wizard would get they don't need to, since there are 3-5 other people playing (Yes this is totally a bullet point).
*I don't let the PCs have a good night's sleep either. Posting watch is a dreaded thing in some of my games.
*The wizard figured the archers would concentrate on his big scary monster who had nearly killed one of them. He never got the chance to wind wall. If he had, he would have done only that and been useless as the encounter was over the next round.
*Rope tricking doesn't work as with 9 hours of prep the monsters can just seal you in, build traps around the portal, etc. Or better yet, a spellcaster enemy dispels it after he is fetched by the others. This all assuming the Dm doesn't consider his NPCs to be animatronics.
*The psion is winning encounters by removing threats, dealing stupid damage and novaing to win. The fact that you can get 'em later if they do so is irrelevant. The wizard can't do this. He can win one encounter a day by spamming his big stuff while the psion wins three plus. IF the wizard's stuff gets saved away, he cries, while the psion does the same thing again without batting an eyelash. Meanwhile, the sorcerer becomes frustrated when he finds a creature immune to his new top level spell.
*Psionics win encounters because they are too much and there is no kind of regulation to prevent them from destroying encounters. A psion can nova and then pull out some crystals and pretend he didn't.
Don't mistake the fact that you are ignorant about this with the idea that most gamers are. Most gamers are quite familiar with these facts.
No, most gamers aren't experts on 1900s terminology or the origins of the word "psionics." I think I'm very safe in stating that as a fact.
1. First... dump the name psionics. Consider something that might be more attuned to a fantasy setting such as mentalism, mystic, channelling, I'm sure other possibilities exist.I really don't get how this whole "psionics isn't fantasy enough!" thing got started. Yes, psionics are generally more associated with science-fiction... but they're still a fantastic element of sci-fi, which is why "no psionics" is one of the standards for hard sci-fi. There have been lots of fantasy novels and settings with psionics, either by that name or as "psychic powers," particularly in horror/fantasy and dark fantasy settings. And it's even sillier a dichotomy when you remember that the very earliest incarnations of D&D freely mixed fantasy and science-fiction! Some of the first adventures for the game were about finding a crashed spaceship, or fighting robots, or taking over the drow goddess' FREAKING GIANT MECHA I KID YOU NOT. *breathes*
The fluff of psionics is based on 19th century/early 20th century academics who tried to *scientifically* research parapsychological phenomena. The Rhine Research Center, formerly a part of Duke University, led the way. Much of the terminology and flavor of psionics is drawn from this source. So, for me personally, the term "psionics" is an ATROCIOUS fit for anything belonging in a fantasy game. Indeed, psionics is anti fantasy because the original psi researchers tried to quantify and demystify "strange" powers and experiences. Psionics saps the lifeblood out of fantasy.
[/opinion]
I don't think there's anyone alive who plays D&D that knows that or, for that matter, cares about it, other then you.
And really, must I say it again? "Telekinesis is a wizard spell." Hell, in earlier editions, wizards outright had the spell "ESP."
Besides, I have yet to see any of the psionic flavor as being remotely "anti-fantasy" or being drawn from that source at all.
If's...
I just don't like the word psionic. If someone else likes it, that is cool. I hope they have a very happy game with the word psionic in it. Me, I don't like the word psionic. I have nothing against telekinesis or ESP, i think they are swell. I will therefore keep them in my game. So I think I have a right to like the word ESP and telekinesis and NOT like the word psionic. I can also like chocolate milk shakes and not hot fudge milk shakes. I can through my whole like refusing to drink a hot fudge milk shake and always enjoying a chocolate milk shake. And everyone else can do the same or vice versa or neither. And you know what I'm not going to think someone is stupid for not liking the word psionic in their game.
And additionally I love the class dnd vancian magic system, played with many different systems over the decades and the dnd vancian is the one i like best and i think is easiest to dm and balance in a campaign. If you don't like vancian magic, don't let it ruin your life, there are many other magic systems out there. I am sure you can find one you like. Life is short, if you don't like vancian magic then find another one. If you love the word psionic then by golly use it til your heart is content. I think this is still a free county for the most part, sort of, i think.
I don't think there's anyone alive who plays D&D that knows that or, for that matter, cares about it, other then you.
Actually, I and most of a former gaming group did some psi-research in the 90's and all became associate members of the SPR for a while. :D
On the flip side, the pseudo science nature of them makes a kind of sense to me because why wouldn't a culture that had access to easy paranormal power investigate it and categorise it logically? A lot of fantasy literature is rooted in 19th century works (Lord of the Rings is a good example, as is gothic horror), so why not?
*Optimization wizards don't usually use the rules to acquire all of their spells, check the magic section.
Actually, they do. Read Treantmonk's guides, that guy does stuff that makes my eyes water and it's all legal.
*Scry can be beaten by a 24 hour spell (nondetection) or can provide useless information, and gather info can be used to convey misinformation.
Indeed they can, that is the fun. A smart wizard knows this and can usually infer some of the truth of a situation - enough to take a good guess of what they may encounter. If your wizards are only ever stocking up on general use and just-in-case spells, then you don't have wizards, you have 2nd rate sorcerers.
*How is it my fault that players don't know what their own abilities do? Am I supposed to read a book I don't have access to?
That's up to your players. However, the experience of most is that the wizard in 3.5 is uber-powerful, more so than any class except CoDzilla.
*Insert increasingly acidic and angry rant on the imbalance of autohypnosis here (Saved you a bunch of reading).
That's OK, it was a broken skill we can all agree. However, it WAS a skill and was available to everyone, psionic or not, so there's not point including it in the 'psionics is broken' argument.
*The combo I posted and the powers I posted were not optimized, they were straight on of the book. The combo is from a logical progression of powers and provides a broken ability from two things in the same book.
Most optimization tricks are just that too.
*The psion "nova"ing can't be prevented and is actually a good use of offense as you're completely eliminating a threat. Plus they don't need to nova all the time, and with potentially three times the top level spells the wizard would get they don't need to, since there are 3-5 other people playing (Yes this is totally a bullet point).
That really depends on the nature of the threats. There are some threats where a psion has to augment a power to the max to deal with where a wizard has to just use a lower level spell. It's like the issue of the 10th level psion and the 10th level wizard both throwing a fireball or equivelant: the psion has to burn the resources of a top level spell slot to use a lower level power, the wizard is just burning a lower level slot.
One of the issues you are raising is the psion's ability to spend his power points on what he wants. Yes, that's an advantage over the wizard, but it's one the sorcerer shares, and yet sorcerers are considered less powerful than wizards - go figure.
*I don't let the PCs have a good night's sleep either. Posting watch is a dreaded thing in some of my games.
Good. But surely that means that the psion that nova'd earlier in the day is going the rest of the adventure with no PP?
*The wizard figured the archers would concentrate on his big scary monster who had nearly killed one of them. He never got the chance to wind wall. If he had, he would have done only that and been useless as the encounter was over the next round.
Who needs wind wall? He has lower level spells he could have used to increase his longevity that he could have cast before the fight began, and certainly before he summoned anything. Shield and Mage Armour would reduce their hits, as would mirror image.
*Rope tricking doesn't work as with 9 hours of prep the monsters can just seal you in, build traps around the portal, etc. Or better yet, a spellcaster enemy dispels it after he is fetched by the others. This all assuming the Dm doesn't consider his NPCs to be animatronics.
Actually there are many ways around this, you don't just use a spell in front of an enemy.
*The psion is winning encounters by removing threats, dealing stupid damage and novaing to win. The fact that you can get 'em later if they do so is irrelevant. The wizard can't do this. He can win one encounter a day by spamming his big stuff while the psion wins three plus. IF the wizard's stuff gets saved away, he cries, while the psion does the same thing again without batting an eyelash. Meanwhile, the sorcerer becomes frustrated when he finds a creature immune to his new top level spell.
Actually, it is very relevant, and wizards CAN nova. If your wizards and sorcerers were spending all their spells on direct damage, then of course the psion would beat them at it. Most don't, because they actually have much more effective tools in their arsenals for neutralising foes and enhancing allies.
*Psionics win encounters because they are too much and there is no kind of regulation to prevent them from destroying encounters. A psion can nova and then pull out some crystals and pretend he didn't.
Cognizance crystals are no better and no more expensive than pearls of power - why aren't your wizards and sorcerers using those if the psion has cognizance crystals? A few pearls of power and your wizard can spam his highest level spells to devastating effect.
I'm sorry if this sounds offensive, but your arguments come down to: "A competently played psion is better than a badly played wizard" which is a no-brainer. Now, that it's easier to play a psion competently is so far as I am concerned a strength of the system, not a weakness.
Parapsychology was once called a "science" only in the way that Alchemy was thought to be a "science" in a bygone age. The term has fallen out of favor once parapsychology was exposed as the pseudoscience and general quackery it was.
About 90% of it, yes. But I wouldn't say it was entirely BS, there have been some very interesting results to experiments, the main problem with them is there is insufficient information to actually formulate a theory.
The fluff of psionics is based on 19th century/early 20th century academics who tried to *scientifically* research parapsychological phenomena. The Rhine Research Center, formerly a part of Duke University, led the way. Much of the terminology and flavor of psionics is drawn from this source. So, for me personally, the term "psionics" is an ATROCIOUS fit for anything belonging in a fantasy game. Indeed, psionics is anti fantasy because the original psi researchers tried to quantify and demystify "strange" powers and experiences. Psionics saps the lifeblood out of fantasy.Parapsychology was once called a "science" only in the way that Alchemy was thought to be a "science" in a bygone age. The term has fallen out of favor once parapsychology was exposed as the pseudoscience and general quackery it was.
But that's not why I'm advocating getting rid of the name. What Paizo is thinking of creating is going to be different enough from D20 Psionics that a different name might encourage everyone to think of it as a fresh start and not endlessly compare it to the old. After all the only thing that Paizo's psionics will have in common with the old is the name, so why not junk the name as well?
Besides, Mentalism gives it a nice cross between fantasy and the old serial dramas which used to use that term for people with mental powers.
I'm still somewhat amazed by the argument.
Psionics are anti-magic because it involved science and experimentation and an attempt to "normalize" and catagorize the supernatural.
Vancian casters are magical because they involve science and experimentation and their spells are an attempt to normalize and catagorize the supernatural
Wait, what?
Absolutely nothing came out of parapsychology.
Parapsychology is largely studying that which lies outside the mainstream of science. Many times this has been done, and discoveries have been made which proved that what was thought to be a crazy idea in fact was true, and it then becomes part of mainstream science. This is how science grows. I've attended some talks by some very eminent scientists on this subject, and their stance is summed up as follows:
"To say every raven is black implies there are no white ravens, and I've never seen one. However, you have to keep looking because you only have to find one white raven, ever, for the statement to be wrong."
There is a lot of phenomena in the world that we don't currently have very good explanations for, and parapsychology is an avenue of research that may provide answers one day, just as string theory may provide answers to some fundamental questions in physics. Parapsychology has not turned up anything concrete yet - and neither has string theory.
Dabbler, I would just like to thank you for this extremely well thought out and informative post in answer to Madcap Storm King's post. Well said.
Dabbler, I would just like to thank you for this extremely well thought out and informative post in answer to Madcap Storm King's post. Well said.
Thank you. I think Madcap has had some bad experiences perhaps because his players focussed on direct damage. For a wizard or sorcerer this is not an 'optimal' choice, but it works for psions and wilders, while their other options except for telepathy are less than stellar.
I really would recommend he read this to see how effective wizards really can be. I'm no optimization monkey, but I can look there and take a few tricks away now and again to help me build an effective character.
Madcap Storm King wrote:
*Optimization wizards don't usually use the rules to acquire all of their spells, check the magic section.
Actually, they do. Read Treantmonk's guides, that guy does stuff that makes my eyes water and it's all legal.
Actually they don't. It is irresponsible to automatically assume that every spell you need to be "prepped" you are going to get. Not only does not every game work like that, you can fail to acquire spells as you level. After all, if you have all these wizards around with more spells than you willing to let you copy their spellbook for money, why should your party not dump you and have the more experienced men adventure with them?
Assumptions... You know what they say about assumptions.
Madcap Storm King wrote:
*Scry can be beaten by a 24 hour spell (nondetection) or can provide useless information, and gather info can be used to convey misinformation.
Indeed they can, that is the fun. A smart wizard knows this and can usually infer some of the truth of a situation - enough to take a good guess of what they may encounter. If your wizards are only ever stocking up on general use and just-in-case spells, then you don't have wizards, you have 2nd rate sorcerers.
Nice of you to assume things like that. Assuming that the wizard can't be fooled, assuming that everyone I've played with is incompetent... I'm sure that no one you've ever played with has made mistakes or done anything wrong. Clearly, they must have been listening to your expert advice, which is to blow a spell every day and infer things from half truths and fictitious information.
Madcap Storm King wrote:
*How is it my fault that players don't know what their own abilities do? Am I supposed to read a book I don't have access to?
That's up to your players. However, the experience of most is that the wizard in 3.5 is uber-powerful, more so than any class except CoDzilla.
And considering that wizards are killed by rogues, I guess they're not that powerful.
Madcap Storm King wrote:
*Insert increasingly acidic and angry rant on the imbalance of autohypnosis here (Saved you a bunch of reading).
That's OK, it was a broken skill we can all agree. However, it WAS a skill and was available to everyone, psionic or not, so there's not point including it in the 'psionics is broken' argument.
Interesting. So you don't find the fact that this skill was included in the very same book to have any bearing on the content of the rest of the book?
Also this is a class skill for every psionic class including the blaster psion. A couple of psions don't get it as a class skill.
If you're willing to throw out access to a skill so easily as an attribute of balance, would you say that rogues and bards are still just as powerful after not taking use magic device?
Madcap Storm King wrote:
*The combo I posted and the powers I posted were not optimized, they were straight on of the book. The combo is from a logical progression of powers and provides a broken ability from two things in the same book.
Most optimization tricks are just that too.
Most optimization tricks involve more than one book.
Madcap Storm King wrote:
*The psion "nova"ing can't be prevented and is actually a good use of offense as you're completely eliminating a threat. Plus they don't need to nova all the time, and with potentially three times the top level spells the wizard would get they don't need to, since there are 3-5 other people playing (Yes this is totally a bullet point).
That really depends on the nature of the threats. There are some threats where a psion has to augment a power to the max to deal with where a wizard has to just use a lower level spell. It's like the issue of the 10th level psion and the 10th level wizard both throwing a fireball or equivelant: the psion has to burn the resources of a top level spell slot to use a lower level power, the wizard is just burning a lower level slot.
One of the issues you are raising is the psion's ability to spend his power points on what he wants. Yes, that's an advantage over the wizard, but it's one the sorcerer shares, and yet sorcerers are considered less powerful than wizards - go figure.
Sorcerers also only get one top level spell while the psion can upgrade most of his powers to become one, providing him with more potential options to deal with a situation.
Apparently you don't get that the psion's entire spell list is smaller because most of his spells can be ANY level. They are hardly harried in this aspect.
The sorcerer has no such ability.
The wizard's fireball also has a lower save than the psion's single target can-target-in-melee powers and deals far less damage.
Madcap Storm King wrote:
*I don't let the PCs have a good night's sleep either. Posting watch is a dreaded thing in some of my games.
Good. But surely that means that the psion that nova'd earlier in the day is going the rest of the adventure with no PP?
You'd think that, except that he's resting around a group of people that hardly got touched. He should just use auto-hypnosis to lull himself back to sleep while they kill the ambushers.
Madcap Storm King wrote:
*The wizard figured the archers would concentrate on his big scary monster who had nearly killed one of them. He never got the chance to wind wall. If he had, he would have done only that and been useless as the encounter was over the next round.
Who needs wind wall? He has lower level spells he could have used to increase his longevity that he could have cast before the fight began...
Oh really? Since you know so much about the occurrences in a game you were never in, why don't you just tell me what happened before the encounter?
Don't worry, I'll check with the player to make sure your facts are accurate.
Madcap Storm King wrote:
*Rope tricking doesn't work as with 9 hours of prep the monsters can just seal you in, build traps around the portal, etc. Or better yet, a spellcaster enemy dispels it after he is fetched by the others. This all assuming the Dm doesn't consider his NPCs to be animatronics.
Actually there are many ways around this, you don't just use a spell in front of an enemy.
But you do use one in front of an enemy to escape. Which was what we were discussing. That is why rope trick is not an escape spell, it's a camping spell.
Madcap Storm King wrote:
*The psion is winning encounters by removing threats, dealing stupid damage and novaing to win. The fact that you can get 'em later if they do so is irrelevant. The wizard can't do this. He can win one encounter a day by spamming his big stuff while the psion wins three plus. IF the wizard's stuff gets saved away, he cries, while the psion does the same thing again without batting an eyelash. Meanwhile, the sorcerer becomes frustrated when he finds a creature immune to his new top level spell.
Actually, it is very relevant, and wizards CAN nova. If your wizards and sorcerers were spending all their spells on direct damage, then of course the psion would beat them at it. Most don't, because they actually have much more effective tools in their arsenals for neutralising foes and enhancing allies.
Alright, the wizard can win ONE through sheer power. Then what? He pays later when he needed to save his spells and the psion is still fine?
Madcap Storm King wrote:
*Psionics win encounters because they are too much and there is no kind of regulation to prevent them from destroying encounters. A psion can nova and then pull out some crystals and pretend he didn't.
Cognizance crystals are no better and no more expensive than pearls of power - why aren't your wizards and sorcerers using those if the psion has cognizance crystals?
Because only prepared casters can use pearls of power.
The fact that the psion has these is ridiculous. He's not a prepared caster. You've said yourself any number of times he's more like a sorcerer, who can't use these.
Plus the wizard had to spend thousands of gold on getting spells in his spellbook, which is a lot less money to spend on high level pearls of power, especially when they cost 16 thousand and 25 thousand.
They do cost the same... But remember that psions have no such need of expenditure.
I will confess that it's a bit of a long shot, but that both have easy access to scrolls.
A few pearls of power and your wizard can spam his highest level spells to devastating effect.
For the price of a few pearls of power he could have a staff instead, and the psion could get a *&!#ing psycrown, which is more powerful because you can choose to expend less charges with each use.
I'm sorry if this sounds offensive, but your arguments come down to: "A competently played psion is better than a badly played wizard" which is a no-brainer. Now, that it's easier to play a psion competently is so far as I am concerned a strength of the system, not a weakness.
The mere fact that you call my competence into question indicates to me that you're running out of ammo, whereas every time you make me look into the srd I find new magazines.
Considering you're measuring ONE way of playing a wizard (The only correct way? Oh really?) against every way of playing a psion proves my point more than it does yours: That the psion is more powerful. Anything the psion does comes close to competing with the one way of playing the wizard that only succeeds because it is difficult to interfere with. On top of this, the fact that you can play a psion incompetently, using the maximum power points possible and blow through a lot of encounters is apparently not a point to you, when to DMs it severely handicaps any plans they may have made. It completely screws the balance of the rest of the classes. The cleric can't do this. The druid can do this, but it's his only shtick and doesn't work on flying creatures which is a pretty big deal, the wizard can't do this and the sorcerer can do this to one or two things.
Trust me, you insulting my knowledge of the game is the least of your worries. You've just shown that every facet of the psion is more powerful than anything but one way of playing a wizard, and I can burn that tree down too if I need to.
Actually they don't. It is irresponsible to automatically assume that every spell you need to be "prepped" you are going to get. Not only does not every game work like that, you can fail to acquire spells as you level. After all, if you have all these wizards around with more spells than you willing to let you copy their spellbook for money, why should your party not dump you and have the more experienced men adventure with them?
Assumptions... You know what they say about assumptions.
Sorry, those are houserules.
Being able to buy magical items - including scrolls - is the assumed ruleset of 3.5. Denying this is houseruling. It's a somewhat regular houserule! But a houserule nonetheless.
Wizards get two spells every time they level up. That's the rule.
Wizards can send money to buy scrolls. That's the rule.
Scrolls are buyable. That's the rule.
Incidentally, I won't do a play by play of your whole post, except for this part:
The mere fact that you call my competence into question indicates to me that you're running out of ammo, whereas every time you make me look into the srd I find new magazines.
First off, your competence deserves to be called into question.
Secondly, the only reason you need to keep finding these new magazines is because he's deflecting every bullet you shoot at him. Seriously, "Well I have all these things you've disproven" doesn't make you correct.
So Firefox seems to enjoy eating my posts.
The lazarus add-on is awesome. If the boards eat your post just hit the back button then right click in the white space. you will see a portion of a couple of your old post. Choose the one that resembles your last post and everything comes back.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6984/ <----Link to lazarus add-on
*Optimization wizards don't usually use the rules to acquire all of their spells, check the magic section.
They don't need all the spells, only the best ones. Don't remember I am playing nice by not stepping outside of core.
*Scry can be beaten by a 24 hour spell (nondetection) or can provide useless information, and gather info can be used to convey misinformation.
That argument is suspect because the phrase "and detect spells" is suspect. There was a long debate on it a while ago with no clear winner about what "and detect spells" actually includes.
*How is it my fault that players don't know what their own abilities do? Am I supposed to read a book I don't have access to?
Most DM's know how good their player's are at interpreting things. If his rules interpretation is suspect check behind him, and if you don't know how something works you should not be allowing it. You=any DM so I am not pointing any fingers. I am not saying I have never done it, but that does not make it ok, an I still take the blame for it.
*Insert increasingly acidic and angry rant on the imbalance of autohypnosis here (Saved you a bunch of reading).
I already agreed with you on this one and so did Dabbler.
*The combo I posted and the powers I posted were not optimized, they were straight on of the book. The combo is from a logical progression of powers and provides a broken ability from two things in the same book.
The blasting they do is not overpowering. It is just more than what a wizard or sorcerer can do. Considering the things they psion can't do I think it is ok. I don't expect for a psion and arcane caster to be equal in all things. Each one has advantages and disadvantages to the other than cancel out.
*The psion "nova"ing can't be prevented and is actually a good use of offense as you're completely eliminating a threat. Plus they don't need to nova all the time, and with potentially three times the top level spells the wizard would get they don't need to, since there are 3-5 other people playing (Yes this is totally a bullet point).
I prevented it, and you are assuming it will eliminate the threat which brings about the point of a psion that novas and fails will definitely be a lot less useless in the last battle since he will have to try to make up for the failed nova attempt.
I stop psions from novaing the the say way I stop casters from doing it, buy not being predictable. If I play a sorcerer, and I know I only have two fights a day, why not own encounters. This assumes I don't care about anyone's feelings, but from a tactics point of view it makes sense.
*I don't let the PCs have a good night's sleep either. Posting watch is a dreaded thing in some of my games.
I think you are saying the only way to stop nova'ing is to not let PC's sleep. I don't agree with that, but sleeping "at will" is an issue.
*The wizard figured the archers would concentrate on his big scary monster who had nearly killed one of them. He never got the chance to wind wall. If he had, he would have done only that and been useless as the encounter was over the next round.
If you don't believe in defense I have no sympathy for you. There are times when you don't need to cast spells/powers. Having encounters where you do nothing, but live is worth it, as long as it does not happen all the time. If it happens all the time the game(game campaign/session) has issues. Every character has times when he can't/should not do anything. If you play in my games, and do something effective prepare to get some "love". The word "love" may be misleading, but you get the point. If I never attack your character you might need to rethink some things.
*Rope tricking doesn't work as with 9 hours of prep the monsters can just seal you in, build traps around the portal, etc. Or better yet, a spellcaster enemy dispels it after he is fetched by the others. This all assuming the Dm doesn't consider his NPCs to be animatronics.
It should not work all the time, but it finding the spell should not work all the time. It depends on what minions the BBEG has available to him.
The psion is winning encounters by removing threats, dealing stupid damage and novaing to win. The fact that you can get 'em later if they do so is irrelevant. The wizard can't do this. He can win one encounter a day by spamming his big stuff while the psion wins three plus. IF the wizard's stuff gets saved away, he cries, while the psion does the same thing again without batting an eyelash. Meanwhile, the sorcerer becomes frustrated when he finds a creature immune to his new top level spell.
What do you mean, by get them later?
The wizard can only win one encounter really? If a wizard focuses on SoD or SoS spells he wins a bunch of fight. Most player's just don't play like that, but it can work. You can get ridiculous save DC's if you focus on it.
*Psionics win encounters because they are too much and there is no kind of regulation to prevent them from destroying encounters. A psion can nova and then pull out some crystals and pretend he didn't.
The regulation is the DM. The concentration check hides the manifestation(sound, like and so on) that accompany the power, but the psion still has to concentrate so anyone that is watching him can make a spellcraft/psicraft check. The hiding power idead only works if the psion is hiding since you can make a spellcraft check against someone you can't see. If he did try to hide a detect magic would give him away, and since psions would be common in that DM's world using it when attacks come from "nowhere" is hardly an ingenious idea.
Edit: made corrections to my interpretation of last bullet.
Actually they don't. It is irresponsible to automatically assume that every spell you need to be "prepped" you are going to get. Not only does not every game work like that, you can fail to acquire spells as you level. After all, if you have all these wizards around with more spells than you willing to let you copy their spellbook for money, why should your party not dump you and have the more experienced men adventure with them?
Assumptions... You know what they say about assumptions.
The games assumes you get the spells when you level. Anything else is a houserule. Houserules bring too much to make a debate reasonable. We will be arguing the meaning of "is" with houserules.
Nice of you to assume things like that. Assuming that the wizard can't be fooled, assuming that everyone I've played with is incompetent... I'm sure that no one you've ever played with has made mistakes or done anything wrong. Clearly, they must have been listening to your expert advice, which is to blow a spell every day and infer things from half truths and fictitious information.
We are not saying wizards can't be fooled, but we are saying they can usually get enough info to get the right spells, and the most people don't expect to be scried on. Nothing works all the time, but scry works enough to make it a valid tactic.
And considering that wizards are killed by rogues, I guess they're not that powerful.
Any class can kill any class in the right circumstance so what is your point? Most powerful does not mean untouchable
stuff about autohypnosis and UMDOf course if any class takes UMD or autohypnosis it is a better all around class, just like any melee character taking power attack is better. The point is that since any class can take it you can't use it to say psionics is broken. Many optimizers gave it to fighters. Is the fighter overpowered now too?
still comparing the worst thing a wizard can do to psions and thinking he is proving a pointWhy do you keep using damage for a wizard knowing it is one of the worst options and expecting to get points here?
You'd think that, except that he's resting around a group of people that hardly got touched. He should just use auto-hypnosis to lull himself back to sleep while they kill the ambushers.If the psion is so useless he is not needed then he can't be that powerful ;)
Oh really? Since you know so much about the occurrences in a game you were never in, why don't you just tell me what happened before the encounter?
Don't worry, I'll check with the player to make sure your facts are accurate.
He was talking about games in general. You seem to be getting upset. Of course it is hard to read one of voice online so I may be wrong.
[quote[That is why rope trick is not an escape spell, it's a camping spell.
I thought we all assumed the spell was being used to rest in enemy HQ(while not being observed). Of course nobody tries to climb a rope with the enemy swing and shooting at you.
Trust me, you insulting my knowledge of the game is the least of your worries. You've just shown that every facet of the psion is more powerful than anything but one way of playing a wizard, and I can burn that tree down too if I need to.
Just because you can't handle the psion that does not make it overpowered, and if you can that must make it balanced.
You have yet to show me an in game situation that could not be handled by myself or Dabbler. The examples you gave me before were rules mistakes or munchkins. Ok, so there was the autohypnosis example which could be done by anyone so that is not even a psionics issue. Give me consistent examples of a psion ruining a game that we can't counter. Someone questioning you does not mean they are running out of ammo. This is a debate we are supposed to question each other. This whole forum is full of questioning. Nobody likes being questioned, but until you prove your(anyone in general) point expect for the questions to keep coming.
Madcap Storm King,
I seriously don't think that Dabbler is saying you or your players are wrong, doing it wrong or anything else. You seem completely unable to even consider an alternative viewpoint on this subject however. Dabbler is trying to address the very issues that you are bringing up and giving thought-out counter arguments. You seem completely unwilling to discuss the issues and turn every counterpoint into a personal attack against you, this is not furthering the discussion. I really don't think that was the intent of Dabbler or anyone else's posts either.
Can we please discuss these issues instead of arguing about them?
Personally, I would like to have a civilized discussion about what people *think* are the issues about the psionic character classes, their abilities and whatnot without it degenerating into name-calling and finger-pointing.
As for my experience with Psionics, I have played with psionics extensively since 1st edition AD&D, Dark Sun, 2nd Edition, 3.0 (which had many problems) and 3.5 as well. I've both played a psion to level 23 in 3.5 and run a campaign with three psionic characters to level 20.
In none of these games did the issue of Nova'ing come up, though I do recognize this as a valid concern.
While I agree with Dabbler that it is not a huge issues, since the Psion that Novas every encounter is going to find themselves quickly depleted of PPs, I still do think there should be some manner of hard limit on the number of top-level powers that a Psion can use per day. Off-hand, I'm not sure how best this could be accomplished, but it would certainly go a long way towards defusing the ire of all those who have an inordinate worry over Nova-ing with Psionic powers.
Autohypnosis is far too good a skill overall, IMO. Dabbler and others have already agreed on that. A great deal of the issues surrounding the skill could be fixed if some of the possible effects of the skill were removed and/or the DCs for accomplishing some of the effects increased.
If find it to be an unfair practice to assume that a Psion will have free access to whatever items they want (such as multiple cognizance crystals) while the Wizard given as an example is not allowed to get particular spells. Allowing one while denying the other is bad form for a comparison and would be extremely bad form for a DM in game. Cost for Cost, Cognizance Crystals and Pearls of Power are identical. Another issues is that Pearls of Power refresh their magic naturally, each day. Cognizance Crystals must be recharged by the user, therefore impose a PP tax on the Psion if he/she wants those points available at a later date. Not much issue while resting in town, but a huge difference in the feasibility of using said items while in the wilderness.
A Wizard and a Psion of similar level both have a near same number of spells prepared to powers known. To me, the big difference is, that the Psion has to hope the powers he/she has picked are going to function well for the entire campaign, whereas the wizard only has to prepare spells for the day and hope he/she prepares good choices.
As for the "Nova" issue...I am going to do a quick comparison of a base 10th level wizard (4/4/4/3/3/2) and 10th level Psion (88 pp). Damaging Spells to Damaging Spells. I will only compare similar spells, for fairness.
Let us begin with Fireball vs. Energy Ball.
-Wiz10 casts 3 fireballs for 10d6 damage each (x3 3rd level slots consumed). Total damage: 105 (assuming 35 dmg average each)
-Psi10 manifests 3 fire energy balls for 10d6+10 damage each (for 10pp each). Total damage: 135 (assuming 35 damage average each)
Running Totals: Wiz10 (4/4/4/0/3/2), Psi10 (58 pp)
-Wiz10 casts 2 Cones of cold for 10d6 damage each (x2 5th level slots consumed). Total Damage: 70 (~35 avg)
-Psi10 manifests 2 Cold Energy cones for 10d6+10 damage each (for 10pp each). Total damage: 90 (~35 avg +10 each).
Running totals: Wiz10 (4/4/4/0/3/0), Psi10 (38 pp)
Though these spells/powers are not directly similar, they have similar damage potential and area of effect.
-Wiz10 casts 3 Ice Storms, long range, 20ft radius cylinder doing 5d6 damage (3d6 bludgeoning and 2d6 cold). Total Damage: 51 (~17 dmg each)
-Psi10 casts 3 Cold Energy Bursts, 40ft radius, which must be centered on the Psion. This does 5d6+5 cold damage. Total Damage: 66 (~22 dmg each).
Running Totals: Wiz10 (4/4/4/0/0/0), Psi10 (23pp).
For this example, we will just fudge it and assume both the Psion and the Wizard hit with all their rays....
-Wiz10 casts 4 Scorching Rays spells for 4d6 fire damage twice per spell. Total Damage: 112 (~14 damage per ray x8 total rays)
-Psi10 manifests 4 Fire Energy Rays for 4d6+4 fire damage.
Total Damage: 72 (~18 fire damage per ray x4 rays)
Running total: Wiz10 (4/4/0/0/0/0), Psi10 (7pp)
-Wiz10 casts 4 Magic missile spells for 5d4+5 force damage per spell. Total Damage: 68 (~17 force damage per spell x4 spells).
-Psi10 manifests 2Concussive Blasts (the only really comparable power, Energy Missile is different) for 1d6 force damage each.
Total Damage: 6 (~3 force per blast) OR
Sonic Energy Missile twice, if you prefer for 3d6-3 sonic damage per target in a small area. Total Damage: 14 (~7 per missile, per target).
Running Totals final:
10th Level Wizard (4/0/0/0/0/0)
10th Level Psion (1 out of 88 pp remaining)
Wizard's total damage done: 406 damage.
Psion's total damage done: 369 w/Concussive Blast, 377 w/Energy Missile.
I'm trying to see the issue with the Psion being a better blaster than the Wizard? Sure...a Psion devoted to being a blaster matched against a wizard who is not, the wizard will be hard pressed to keep up. Just the same, a Psion who isn't using some of those PPs to use on manifesting defensive powers is a dead PC, just like the wizard would be if all he/she prepared were attack spells.
The above comparison was done with the best examples I could think of to compare apples to apples. Please add your thoughts, examples or comments if you feel there are better examples.
And before anyone asks, I am not attempting to figure out DPR or anything of the sort. And yes, I do realize that both the psion and wizard can be more or less effective if different powers (like Dominate were brought into a comparison)...
However, in the interest of understanding the "Nova" issue, I wanted to do this specific comparison to have a better look at just how the two classes stack up against one another in a sheer damage capacity.
Don't mistake the fact that you are ignorant about this with the idea that most gamers are. Most gamers are quite familiar with these facts.No, most gamers aren't experts on 1900s terminology or the origins of the word "psionics." I think I'm very safe in stating that as a fact.
Actually, you're wrong P.C. and he's right - about gamers who were around when psionics were first introduced :) Eldritch Wizardry... I think that was the supplement to original D&D that introduced the first psionics system (point based and all). There was a lot of discussion about the basic ideas behind it and "science" it was derived from. If you weren't around back in the dark ages of gaming with us dinosaurs you might have missed all that... those of us who were just nodded when we read LilithsThrall's post.
Sorry, those are houserules.
Being able to buy magical items - including scrolls - is the assumed ruleset of 3.5. Denying this is houseruling. It's a somewhat regular houserule! But a houserule nonetheless.
Wizards get two spells every time they level up. That's the rule.
Wizards can send money to buy scrolls. That's the rule.
Scrolls are buyable. That's the rule.
You have a fallacy in there through ommission.
Magic items are expected to be sold.
However, not all magic items may be sold at all times.
Therefore wizards can fail to acquire spells in this manner.
The core game nowhere assumes one way or the other whether all magic items or no magic items are sold at any given time (Until Pathfinder where there is a table).
The mere fact that you call my competence into question indicates to me that you're running out of ammo, whereas every time you make me look into the srd I find new magazines.First off, your competence deserves to be called into question.
Secondly, the only reason you need to keep finding these new magazines is because he's deflecting every bullet you shoot at him. Seriously, "Well I have all these things you've disproven" doesn't make you correct.
He ADMITTED that the psion can do more damage than the wizard, and is more powerful in that aspect.
He ADMITTED that both it and the sorcerer have an enormous amount of flexibility over the wizard.
The Psion does not have the same limitations as the sorcerer and can make any of its spells as effective as its best spell.
He has failed to address in any way that spamming high level spells can fail to win encounters, and the fact that the psion can do this and in fact because of the proactive argument in the very article he linked SHOULD do this to be an effective character does nothing but hurt his case.
The fact that he's been trying to chip away at examples that have little to do with the main point (Like the argument involving the summoning wizard) and actively avoiding my main points do not make him right either.
Addressing that I made points that I didn't make also doesn't hold up very well either, and in addition it ticks me off.
For the record, I don't hold any longstanding dislike against you but coming from you, a question of competence is laughable.
If I play a sorcerer, and I know I only have two fights a day, why not own encounters. This assumes I don't care about anyone's feelings, but from a tactics point of view it makes sense.
The psion has enough juice to go for around 3-5 fights at full throttle assuming full three round combats, whereas the wizard can do one and the sorcerer can do two at most if he doesn't get unlucky. The psion wins here. He also has the biggest selection of higher level spells, meaning he has the best chance of being useful aside from one discipline (Nomads, who have no real special advantage or disadvantage against specific targets).
The point is if you win three encounters, even at the cost of continued effectiveness, you keep everyone else fresh for even more encounters. If novaing would be effective there is never a reason to not do it. If casting a spell could be effective there are some times and places when it would be a bad idea. Casting rock to mud is dumb when you have an all melee party. Casting Enlarge Person (Or generic buff spell #5) is a bad idea when you're being targeted by area dispellers or enchantment eating creatures. Charming someone is only a bad idea when they're immune to it or are likely to save, and if that's your only role you're going to do it anyway, so why not do it?
It should not work all the time, but it finding the spell should not work all the time. It depends on what minions the BBEG has available to him.
Yup, every little thing can matter here, what you did before, if you rope tricked up into a tree or past a permanent illusion. The problem is that you give your foes prep time as well, and if there's any number of issues the time you spent preparing will have been ineffective.
I'm not saying rope trick doesn't have its place, I should have said that it's not a reliable way of escaping an encounter because it's generally too obvious and what most theoretical optimizations use it for is not practical for defeating a foe. The theory assumes the enemy does nothing with nine hours of time, which... Nobody do this anymore, OK? Unless they're frozen in time for nine hours I'm sure they'll think of some way to react to the fact that they've just been attacked and the situation will change.
Preparing with info can work, but this is not the way to do it. In general you're better off working with what you know (Your party) than working with unknowns (The enemy).
If you don't believe in defense I have no sympathy for you.
Gonna stop you right there.
Stop putting words in my mouth.
Stop saying I am the wizard.
Just stop these things, please.
Firstly, there are some encounters where you CAN'T cast a bunch of spells ahead of time to preempt everything that will happen. Which is one thing everyone's been saying that is wrong. Plain and simple.
Secondly, these archers had gotten a surprise round. This means if the wizard had said "I cast-" while the DM was talking, he would've gotten punctured with arrows just the same, since they went before him.
The ARCHERS actually made the wrong decision in this case by not focusing on the barbarian death machine approaching them up the hillside. A turn later thanks to him and the archer (with a golf clap for the summoned beastie) they were all dead.
This wrong decision turned out to be a good decision because it prevented him from summoning another creature.
The wizard tried to contribute and got smacked down.
I had no input on this. I was the rogue.
Well I did, but I was more concerned with not getting shot while I closed to prevent the barbarian from getting shot to hell by archers that are ten feet away by doing my damn job.
Plus as you and others have said, he should have done his job.
Or stepped behind cover. Actually, summoning a creature was basically his dumbest possible move defensively.
Not my character.
Not capable of being affected by conversation at this point.
Not important.
What do you mean, by get them later?
The wizard can only win one encounter really? If a wizard focuses on SoD or SoS spells he wins a bunch of fight. Most player's just don't play like that, but it can work. You can get ridiculous save DC's if you focus on it.
By get 'em later I mean punish them for using up all their pp.
The wizard has 2-3 top level spells. If he just blows all of these to win an encounter that's 2-3 rounds of combat.
Save or dies don't usually win an encounter except against one target. In that instance, you're trading reliability for a spell that will either work, stopping a threat or be wasted. Both classes being discussed have this problem, but the psion can answer it by being a sorcerer and cahttp://paizo.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/Store.woa/wa/DirectAction/createNewPo st?post=v5748gbiipetw&thread=v5748dmtz2u41#newPoststing the same spell, or being a wizard and trying a different spell that's just as powerful. He can do this for most of the day.
I think you are saying the only way to stop nova'ing is to not let PC's sleep. I don't agree with that, but sleeping "at will" is an issue.
What way do you have to stop the psion from novaing to win encounters? Not letting the psion sleep will hurt pretty much everybody. I was commenting on what you said, that letting PCs sleep without ever being disturbed could be abused, and I was agreeing.
The last paragraph
What I meant by "pretend he didn't" was that after the psion blows all his powers he then goes into his reserves of magic items as necessary to "pretend" that he can still cast spells, albeit less powerful ones. and there's not much difference unless you're very adamant about them only being able to hold one object in hand at a time, which means they won't be moving.
Thanks for the Lazarus link by the way. That should be helpful in ensuring that no matter how bad the script for the week gets on Facebook it does not mess with me again (The messager, upon getting a message, would take me out of whatever I was doing, and so when I hit backspace it would send me back on the browser).
Madcap Storm King,
I seriously don't think that Dabbler is saying you or your players are wrong, doing it wrong or anything else. You seem completely unable to even consider an alternative viewpoint on this subject however.
I can when the alternate viewpoint doesn't assume false premises.
Or when I am personally attacked by being told that I don't know what I am doing. Which was basically the tone and the ending point of his
It tends to piss me off when both of these things are happening at once.
I can be reasonable with you, however.
You make a very good comparison, the issue being that you forgot about empower power (a feat), which costs 2 pp, doesn't require expenditure of psionic focus, and unlike the wizard's spells doesn't necessarily take any more resources than the psion was going to spend. This makes for a very big difference in the numbers.
Basically, in each case you have to take the psion's max damage, subtract two dice and maybe one DC and multiply the new damage by 1.5.
A dedicated psion blaster should have this feat, and since a psion blaster can mostly just blast it's a safe assumption to include this.
The wizard can even do the same thing, but the cost is one "level" higher. Empowered scorching ray is one of the best damaging effects in the game. I can do a comparison of the two for their respective spells later.