I'm tossing this in the Rules Questions even though it's a third party thing because this is more of a questioning on a ability. ( I noticed that the third party section seems less about rules and more about promotions) Here is my post on Dreamscarred Press forum.
So this is my first foray into the Psionics Expanded handbook and making a Psionic character under Pathfinder rules. I decided to make a Tactician because it fills a role within the King Maker campaign. Looking over one of the abilities, it seems a bit underpowered or rather part of it seems completely pointless.
The ability I'm talking about is, of course, the Echo Effect ability. On the whole it seems a pretty balanced ability, allowing a person to copy buff spells onto another person in the collective. Where I run into issues is with the augmentation part of it.
With the base ability it always costs in power points, the manifester or caster level of the buff you want to echo. This makes sense by itself. So for example if everyone in the party is 8th level and you want to echo Mage Armor from the Wizard to the Monk it costs 8 PP. Simple enough. However, under the augmentation rules in order to try and echo this ability to an additional target you must spend 4 PP for each target. The problem is with the limitation on this "if this augment would raise the cost of the echo above the tactician's manifester level, the echo attempt fails (although eh may still attempt to echo it onto a single target)". The way I read this is that the base cost of the Echo for moving Mage Armor from the Wizard to the Monk is 8 PP. If you are an 8th level manifester this is pretty much where things stop. Your PP cost is your manifester level and as long as all the other casters in the part are your level this is where it will ALWAYS stop. One person costs 8 PP while trying to augment will tack on 4 PP making it 12 PP. The only way this would be doable would be if the Wizard was a 4th level Wizard 4th level Cleric because then it would only cost 4 PP to echo mage armor.
Of course there is no limitation, that I can see, on how many times you can use this ability to spread Mage Armor throughout the party, it just takes a standard action each time. No issue there. What I see as the problem is that the augmentation part of this ability is completely pointless the way the PP cost is calculated. Now if the augmentation wording were a bit different in lets say "the augmentation cost cannot be more than your manifester level" then at 8th level you could echo to 2 additional people in one standard action.
Or if the PP cost were based on Spell/Power Level the augmentation would make more sense. In this example you would be moving Mage Armor from the Wizard to the Monk at 1 PP then another 4 PP to move it to one additional member of the party for a total of 5PP. You would not be able to echo it onto any more party members because 5 PP plus another 4 would equal 9 PP and be above manifester level. This is of course for just a 1st level spell. At level 8 you would essentially be able to echo up to a 2nd level spell onto 2 different party members. Beyond that you would have to go up in levels. I think this still balances things out.
Has anyone else seen this issue? How have you handled it?
I'm tossing this in the Rules Questions even though it's a third party thing because this is more of a questioning on a ability. ( I noticed that the third party section seems less about rules and more about promotions) Here is my post on Dreamscarred Press forum.
So this is my first foray into the Psionics Expanded handbook and making a Psionic character under Pathfinder rules. I decided to make a Tactician because it fills a role within the King Maker campaign. Looking over one of the abilities, it seems a bit underpowered or rather part of it seems completely pointless.
The ability I'm talking about is, of course, the Echo Effect ability. On the whole it seems a pretty balanced ability, allowing a person to copy buff spells onto another person in the collective. Where I run into issues is with the augmentation part of it.
With the base ability it always costs in power points, the manifester or caster level of the buff you want to echo. This makes sense by itself. So for example if everyone in the party is 8th level and you want to echo Mage Armor from the Wizard to the Monk it costs 8 PP. Simple enough. However, under the augmentation rules in order to try and echo this ability to an additional target you must spend 4 PP for each target. The problem is with the limitation on this "if this augment would raise the cost of the echo above the tactician's manifester level, the echo attempt fails (although eh may still attempt to echo it onto a single target)". The way I read this is that the base cost of the Echo for moving Mage Armor from the Wizard to the Monk is 8 PP. If you are an 8th level manifester this is pretty much where things stop. Your PP cost is your manifester level and as long as all the other casters in the part are your level this is where it will ALWAYS stop. One person costs 8 PP while trying to augment will tack on 4 PP making it 12 PP. The only way this would be doable would be if the Wizard was a 4th level Wizard 4th level Cleric because then it would only cost 4 PP to echo mage...
Linking us to the rules would have helped...
Yes, you can't echo to more than 1 target unless you are have a higher manifester than their caster level (id echoing a spell).
This is possible due to items, feats, etc that raise Manifester.
Overchannel (does it work?), Wild Surge, etc might help.
3.5 had a good number of +X manifester items (usually 1 or 3/day).
Opps, Here are the rules on it http://www.d20pfsrd.com/psionics-unleashed/classes/tactician
Overchannel really wouldn't help. You'd really have to stock up on feats to be able to essentially increase your manifester level by 4 in order to get more than one person with the ability.
It just seems pointless to have an augmentation ability with the way the rules read now.
Reading it the ability seems to have two costs, the first is the CL of the ability being copied. This particular cost is exempt from from the ML limit as a supernatural ability as detailed in the ability.
The cost of the augment seems to be what is limited by the ML as is the norm. It would seem the ability basically allows the character to make one copy of the spell every 4 ML , to a max of 5 copies at 20th level. Then the amount equal to the CL/ML (which is not limited) is added to that limited amount.
But the rule actually states "if this augment would raise the cost of the echo above the tactician's manifester level, the echo attempt fails"
the cost of the echo, in my understanding, still involves the other PP cost of the original part of the echo. Yes the initial echo cost can be above manifester level, but any augmentation cannot go beyond this.
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You're better off going to the Dreamscarred Press forums probably, this isn't really the right place for it.
http://dreamscarredpress.com/dragonfly/ForumsPro/viewforum/f=2.html