Note: Apologies if this has been covered or is on the wrong messageboard.
In my game, I am incorporating Psionics from Dreamscarred Press yet, I'm warry of certain things.
1) The Psychic Warrior seems awesome in a few ways, yet I question two choices. A) They only have a d8 hit die? I thought these are supposed to be the "tank" Psionic Class? B) They do not have a full BAB. This seems strange for the same reason as "a." For those playing with the Psychic Warrior, does he feel to under-powered?
2) The Soul Knife, on the other hand seems to overpowered! I love the theme of the class yet I'm really worried about this class's potential abilities. Full BAB, d10 hit die, ect. The blade skills are very good (Yay!) but some do appear too good like Combat Slide. For those GMing a Soul Knife character, is the character overpowered?
I recognize that most of my worries come from just a capsule review of the product and not play-testing, hence coming to you guys! What are your opinions or even better, playing experience, with these classes?
The "tank" class for Psionics is actually the Aegis from Psionics Expanded. While the psychic warrior is indeed capable of filling that role with the right powers. Bigger Club really put it quite well.
Combat Slide is more an interesting option to screw with movement of the enemy, but they can just ignore you after you make that step, so it's not hugely powerful. While the defensive option is far more powerful, it uses up your immediate action, which limits your options in that round and the next round.
|
Psy Wars play fairly similar to Magi. They both have a very sweet spot balancewise. The warrior path helps a lot with that.
Regarding the SK, they tend to be somewhat feat starved, which makes them a bit less versatile. That is compensated by their talents, which is why said talents need to be interesting and widen their options. They have about the same power lvl as barbarian rage powers (which include beauties like Superstitious and Cope and get me)
|
I think the psychic warrior is a little weak but I love the flavor and like the power point system. Those two combined with the class features of heavy armor and heavy shields with purely mental Psionics activation not requiring a free hand to cast like a caster and martial weapons and bonus feats made me love the class. I feel my two 3.5 pws were both respectable pcs. One was heavy AC and only an ocational heavy hit via powers/deep crystal and the other was no AC but frequent heavy hitting via a two handed weapon with more on an ocational expenditure of power points one way or another. I think the new pw will be at least a little more powerful than the 3.5 ones but than again, even the pure melee classes are more powerful in PF.
I believe the accusations I was overpowered were more due to others players being weak with the tools(class, feats, equipment choices) they made for their characters compared to what i choose for mine and more so by their poor choice of actions compared to my much more tactical play.
Most people who complain that Psionics is broken never read the rules. They can only site cases where another player who also never read the rules and did some amazing thing. Problem is that since neither of them read the rules, both of them were guilty of ignorant instead of playing by the rules. Then they complain about rules being broken when they never fully read and comprehended them in the first place.
Not familiar enough with the sk. Heard they were even weaker than the pw.
|
YAY a thread about Psionic classes.
Ok 1st of all Psychic Warrior is more of a dpr class than a tank class and it is not under powered at all. If u check its capstone ability for example u can see how awsome that is in comparison to a lot of the other classes. Also it has sme nice abilities while leveling like the Weaponmaster Path and Assassin’s Path.
2nd, Soul Knife is not over powered though it may look it at 1st glance. What makes the SK great is its weapon versitility. Though a simple anti magic zone will completely face rape it until later levels. Now the SK is great dmg but its better tank if it picks up Mind Shield and Trade blows. Mind Shield will grant a +2 shield bonus if u have a hand free and trade blows allows u to perform attacks on targets that attack u that can, under normal circumstances, never happen with any other character. Also to be effective as a SK u have to level as a SK 1st since u can only enhance ur mind blade by leveling in the class and wont be able to enchant it in normal means like other players.
In all there as op as any other class in its own right and they way u perceve a class should not be based on bab and hit die. I will warn u though playing with psionics in ur game can be fun but aswell can be broken depending on how ur players and ur self aproch it. Example, in a game i play we the party made a bunch of psionic phaser weapons (think star trek on crack).
I'd have to agree that the psychic warrior gets downright terrifying when you take his capacity for self-buffing into account. The fact that a 7th-level psychic warrior can bump himself up to Huge size, has two different options for a move+full attack, stealing health on a successful hit, and a bunch of good defensive self-buffs.
On top of the capacity for self-buffing the psychic warrior gets a total of eight bonus feats, which is enough to make everyone but the fighter start envying you.
Also worth mentioning the biggest change between 3.5 and Pathfinder, the addition of Warrior Paths that can give some very nice bonuses (For example, Feral Warrior and Weaponmaster both give a scaling to-hit bonus that bumps you up to roughly full BAB). Also, the Advanced Path feats from "Psionics Expanded: Master The Battle" give most of the path abilities a huge boost (For example, the Advanced Assassin Path feat gives you sneak attack damage as a rogue of half your level). The Advanced Path feats have pretty stiff prerequisites, but the Psychic Warrior's bonus feats help a lot there.
By contrast, I would say that for all it's combat power, the Soulknife suffers from the common martial class problem of not having a lot of out-of-combat utility. Meanwhile, the Psychic Warrior has quite a few good utility powers. There a reason one of the more popular Soulknife archetypes is the one that trades away Psychic Strike for manifesting powers at a level about equal to Paladin/Ranger spellcasting.
Thank you all for your responses! These have been some great responses that I will consider completely. I realized after thinking about it that Combat Slide, while nifty, isn't as game breaking as it sounds.
I'm glad to know that the Psychic Warrior, meanwhile, is not under-powered by comparison! Thank you.
As far as the Aegis and the other Expanded Psionics content, I haven't acquired that book yet, and I was going to until I head of the Ultimate Psionics Kickstarter. I definitely got involved on that one!
The "tank" class for Psionics is actually the Aegis from Psionics Expanded.
I dunno if I'd call the Aegis the "tanking" psionic class, partly because I don't have most of the Psionics Expanded books to see any of the other base classes, and partly because their Astral Suit's stats are difficult to adjust and you can't give them any enhancement bonuses (unlike, say, a Fighter who can wear +5 Mithral Full-Plate for some serious AC bonuses from Armor and DEX from Armor Training) and I'm also not sure if Armor Special Abilities work while the Astral Suit is on (if they don't, they fall behind again, because Armor can get some really nice things placed on it).
I present this case in defense to the Soulknife as well. Yeah, the soulknife gets some fairly fun abilities from its blade skills, but from a mechanical perspective, the Mind Blade actually lags far behind normal Magic Items, not just because you can't get the full +10 that a normal magic weapon can get, but also because the list of weapon special abilities available to be added to the Mind Blade is now very small compared to all the weapon special abilities released in Ultimate Equipment (on top of all the unique weapons with special powers).
I dunno if I'd call the Aegis the "tanking" psionic class, partly because I don't have most of the Psionics Expanded books to see any of the other base classes, and partly because their Astral Suit's stats are difficult to adjust and you can't give them any enhancement bonuses (unlike, say, a Fighter who can wear +5 Mithral Full-Plate for some serious AC bonuses from Armor and DEX from Armor Training) and I'm also not sure if Armor Special Abilities work while the Astral Suit is on (if they don't, they fall behind again, because Armor can get some really nice things placed on it).
The astral suit can get a very nice set of tanking abilities.
One important piece of gear you might not be aware of are the Crystal Spaulders from Psionics Expanded: Master the Battle. Spaulders will give you up to a +3 enhancement bonus on your suit and three extra customization points. Combine those with the Improved Armor customization, and your suit can function as a set of full plate with a +4 untyped and +3 enhancement bonus (So basically, +7 Fullplate).
Armor special abilities are also less of a concern when you can pick up a lot of the nicer ones like Heavy Fortification or elemental resistance/immunity as suit customizations anyway. Plus things like up to DR 12/- and the only class I know of that can have Improved Stalwart and Improved Evasion. I'd say that all adds up to a pretty good tank. Especially since reconfiguring and augmenting can let you customize some of your upgrades for whoever your current opponent is, like gaining immunity to fire when you're up against fire elementals or a fire-breathing dragon.
Also, being able to eventually grow up to Huge size and get even further extended reach beyond what you get for growing makes it a lot easier to pull off the "protecting allies" and "drawing aggro" parts of tanking. Hard to ignore or avoid the giant with a 20-foot reach.
However, I would say the best tanking Aegis is one using the Aberrant Archetype from Hidden Intentions, which swaps out the Astral suit for enhancing their body directly and get natural armor bonuses (up to +9) that you can stack normal armor on top of. Plus they get to keep just about all of the great tanking options the normal Aegis gets.
I present this case in defense to the Soulknife as well. Yeah, the soulknife gets some fairly fun abilities from its blade skills, but from a mechanical perspective, the Mind Blade actually lags far behind normal Magic Items, not just because you can't get the full +10 that a normal magic weapon can get, but also because the list of weapon special abilities available to be added to the Mind Blade is now very small compared to all the weapon special abilities released in Ultimate Equipment (on top of all the unique weapons with special powers).
Two things I would point out here:
1) The Improved Enhancement blade skill bumps you up to a full +10 weapon.2) The list of Weapon Special Abilities got a huge extension in Hidden Intentions. Granted, it's not up to date with what's in Ultimate Equipment, but it's still a much-expanded list of options.
A lot of stuff.
Well, like I said at the beginning of my post, I haven't been able to get my hands on the other psionics books to see what's inside them, so all of my information is coming from just the Psionics Unleashed and Unlimited Possibilities book.
A lot of stuff.Well, like I said at the beginning of my post, I haven't been able to get my hands on the other psionics books to see what's inside them, so all of my information is coming from just the Psionics Unleashed and Unlimited Possibilities book.
Yeah, part of why I got so detailed.
I agree with Chengar, go aegis if you can get the book. It's super cool. You should really just buy the full Psionics Expanded because it's creative and neat as hell.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I'm not sure why it took me so long to think of it, but I totally need to get all of our backers the pdfs of the constituent parts.
Note: Apologies if this has been covered or is on the wrong messageboard.
In my game, I am incorporating Psionics from Dreamscarred Press yet, I'm warry of certain things.
1) The Psychic Warrior seems awesome in a few ways, yet I question two choices. A) They only have a d8 hit die? I thought these are supposed to be the "tank" Psionic Class? B) They do not have a full BAB. This seems strange for the same reason as "a." For those playing with the Psychic Warrior, does he feel to under-powered?
2) The Soul Knife, on the other hand seems to overpowered! I love the theme of the class yet I'm really worried about this class's potential abilities. Full BAB, d10 hit die, ect. The blade skills are very good (Yay!) but some do appear too good like Combat Slide. For those GMing a Soul Knife character, is the character overpowered?
I recognize that most of my worries come from just a capsule review of the product and not play-testing, hence coming to you guys! What are your opinions or even better, playing experience, with these classes?
In response to the OP, from what I've seen of Psionic characters used in other GM's games, it appears to be similar to the way most classes work. If you make poor choices when building, or misunderstand how something works, then yes, a character will be underpowered. If, on the other hand, you're playing to deliberately break the game, then you can most likely find a way to do that too. I like to think that most players will try to strike a balanced and fun character. Though looking at some of the shenanigans my players get up to with their builds, I wonder how I've managed to stay so optimistic...
I'm not sure why it took me so long to think of it, but I totally need to get all of our backers the pdfs of the constituent parts.
I had considered asking about that Jeremy. Glad to hear it's on the cards, I'll be kicking off Shattered Star soon and I've got a 3.5 Psionic player joining the group who was quite disappointed that I didn't have any rules for Pathfinder Psionics.
Is that something you'll be looking at doing soon? Is there some way to have the PDFs linked to our Paizo accounts so that I can make sure I've always got a copy available to me?
I'm not sure if there's a way to do it via the Paizo account, but I can do it either via the Dreamscarred site or via RPGNow / DriveThruRPG.
In response to the OP, from what I've seen of Psionic characters used in other GM's games, it appears to be similar to the way most classes work. If you make poor choices when building, or misunderstand how something works, then yes, a character will be underpowered. If, on the other hand, you're playing to deliberately break the game, then you can most likely find a way to do that too. I like to think that most players will try to strike a balanced and fun character. Though looking at some of the shenanigans my players get up to with their builds, I wonder how I've managed to stay so optimistic...Note: Apologies if this has been covered or is on the wrong messageboard.
In my game, I am incorporating Psionics from Dreamscarred Press yet, I'm warry of certain things.
1) The Psychic Warrior seems awesome in a few ways, yet I question two choices. A) They only have a d8 hit die? I thought these are supposed to be the "tank" Psionic Class? B) They do not have a full BAB. This seems strange for the same reason as "a." For those playing with the Psychic Warrior, does he feel to under-powered?
2) The Soul Knife, on the other hand seems to overpowered! I love the theme of the class yet I'm really worried about this class's potential abilities. Full BAB, d10 hit die, ect. The blade skills are very good (Yay!) but some do appear too good like Combat Slide. For those GMing a Soul Knife character, is the character overpowered?
I recognize that most of my worries come from just a capsule review of the product and not play-testing, hence coming to you guys! What are your opinions or even better, playing experience, with these classes?
I think this is the case. I was mainly worried from reading the book and what one of my players was saying of the Soul Knife in another game he played recently. I'm glad to hear that they are good as is.
Also, to Jeremy, that sounds awesome! I just got the update from the Kickstarter.