Psychic 3E to Pathfinder

[pokepaul]

I own the Psychic's Handbook http://www.greenronin.com/store/product/grr1306e.html and I know that 3E and 3.5 are fairly compatible with each other and 3.5 converts easily to Pathfinder, but pretty much everyone I know agrees(even reluctantly me) that, as it's written, Psychics(which are also featured in Green Ronin's Advanced Player's Manual) are overpowered and a basic conversion to Pathfinder would make it worse. I'm fairly certain that the main issue is with the DCs and Strain numbers(though I'm sure the prestige classes would be interesting too). Anyway, I was hoping maybe someone out there could balance it and convert it to Pathfinder. Please someone help?

[Unimportant]

I also have a copy of that book and have long wanted to do a PF conversion of it, but I never got past some basic notes. If you want some help, I'll be glad to pitch in.

[+5 Toaster]

so...I am guessing this is not psionics?

[ShadowcatX]

No, the Psychic class was a 3.X class put out in an advanced game guide by Green Ronin Press. They get to do nifty psionic stuff not based around level 1 - 9 powers and power points but based around psychic skills and skill checks. It is a very neat design. I'd definitely encourage you to check it out if that type of thing appeals to you.

And sadly, yeah I do think it would be grossly overpowered. (I'm not sure if a straight psychic would be over powered compared to a wizard, but a psychic 1 / wizard 19 would be pretty horrible, or even just wizard 20, and using the skills out of class.) Sadly, I'm not sure there would be a way to convert it. Instead of converting it, I think you'd probably have to re-imagine the whole thing.

If I was going to port it over I'd probably drop the psychic skills as skills entirely and make them class abilities that look like skills. (Ie. You get X psychic skill points per level, psychic skill points are not interchangeable with regular skill points. Psychic skills are not skills and are not able to be modified with things like masterwork tools nor feats such as skill focus.) The prestige classes might not all have access to the same psychic skills. You could even have multiple psychic base classes, one more focused on powers, one focused around a mix of skills and psychic skills, etc.

Alternatively, one thing you might do is look up SGG's archetype books. (There's 4 of them, martial archetypes, archer archetypes, arcane archetypes, and divine archetypes.) These are archetypes that any class can take, though it costs them a fair amount of their class abilities. You might consider doing psychic as something along those lines, that way you can have psychic fighters, monks, barbarians, wizards, etc. (Fair warning though, not all classes suffer equally from loosing class abilities.)

Or, if you are the DM and you are totally infatuated with the class, you could even build a world around it. Say that everyone gets some psychic feat and maybe a psychic skill point or two per level. That'd be a neat world that I'd love to play in. (Heck, you could even go into something about how magic and psychic powers aren't compatible and if you persue magic you give up your psychic ability and buff all the low tier classes while not buffing the high tier classes. . .) Darn you now you got me to thinking. . .

Unfortunately, I can't find any where that talks about what is actually being declared open game content. Thus everything seems to be closed game content, thus posting it online and working on it would be bad news. That makes me sad. :( (If anyone can correct me on this I'd be very happy.)

[David knott 242]

That book should have in it somewhere a statement of what is open content and what is product identity. The mechanics of the Psychic class should be open content, but you will have to track that down yourself since I do not have the book handy.

Given the difference in the way skills work between 3E and Pathfinder, you could set a limit to the ranks you can gain in psychic skills equal to psychic level plus half level in other classes in order to keep the power level down to what the 3E version of those rules wold have provided.

[Unimportant]

ShadowcatX wrote:

If I was going to port it over I'd probably drop the psychic skills as skills entirely and make them class abilities that look like skills. (Ie. You get X psychic skill points per level, psychic skill points are not interchangeable with regular skill points. Psychic skills are not skills and are not able to be modified with things like masterwork tools nor feats such as skill focus.) The prestige classes might not all have access to the same psychic skills. You could even have multiple psychic base classes, one more focused on powers, one focused around a mix of skills and psychic skills, etc.

That's where I hit the brick wall in my conversion. The mechanics were just too convoluted, and figuring out the proper number of psychic skill points to make it balanced just got too much.

Oh, and the whole "closed content" thingy, too. Which is a pity, because I have always wanted a more "psychic" alternative to straight-up 3.5/Dreamscape psionics (no offense to Dreamscape, you guys did an awesome job converting it over).

[Askanipsion]

pokepaul wrote:

the Psychic's Handbook http://www.greenronin.com/store/product/grr1306e.html

AWESOME book - love how they handled the mechanics in that book....unfortuately so many of my DMs hate Psionics

I hate Bards but I wouldn't prevent others from playing them....Bards usually tend to die anyway in our campaigns