http://tinyurl.com/o58z7xu
In progress, this is for the Dreamscarred Press psionic class Cryptic.
Any comments/suggestions? Planning to add color codes at some point.
Edit : Neither the publish link nor the sharing link appears to be working? Anyone have any ideas?
Sigh, i forgot the forums randomly inserts spaces into long URLs which makes you unable to copy and paste them to be opened...should be fixed now
You may wish to point out that abusing Disrupting Strikes is the only viable offensive use of Disrupt Pattern at such levels. We're talking 10+ here, as it's a 4th level cryptic power.
Already of short range, past level 5 the single shot can be overtaken by normal attacks with ease, proving outright pathetic compared to anyone with 3+ attacks later on (which is particularly problematic once your alternative is 4, 5, 6 or more shots or strikes of whatever weapon you may have).
The disrupt pattern ability does have some nice debilitations and special effects, which are it's main appeal. If you're not burning PPs on Disrupting Strikes by the time you have 4th level powers, you shouldn't have focused on it in the first place. Minimum damage means 'dice are 1s' by the way. Even at full power, 4*10d6+INT (at 20th) is no gamebreaker, and probably won't match the archer.
Unravel Pattern is a Supreme Insight, and only available at level 20, where 150HP or that DC are absolutely nothing. 20+INT FORT makes it unlikey any monster is capable of failing it, and even most PCs will easily shrug off this 1/day ability half the time... if and when their HP has fallen low enough!
I didnt run the maths but i did get the impression that at higher levels a single sneak attack wouldnt be very impressive.
But the way combat is designed, your first attack is almost always going to hit, your second has a decent chance, 3rd and 4th are luck or require heavy buffs. Being ranged touch, with disrupt attack you can easily land all your attacks. It also bypasses all DR.
So at later levels i suppose its pretty likely for the Cryptic with minimal buffs to do insane damage. But theres probably a gap between 5 and 10th level where the damage starts getting lacking, and its a bit dissapointing the class is very reliant on a particular power.
I didnt realise that some of those insights were supreme insights, thanks for pointing that out.
Also i cant seem to find this anyway, but a psychic spellcasters in general cannot switch out their powers known right? I thought i read somewhere that they decide the powers known every day and then can change them the next day, but i may have been wrong about that.
Regarding attack math it depends on what you are and how optimized you've become. Most bonus attacks above and beyond your iteratives are (with the occasional -2 penalty that really won't harm you if you've built up right) based on your FIRST attack, so at higher levels it's more "your first four attacks are almost guaranteed to hit, your fifth has a decent chance, 6th and 7th are luck or require heavy buffs".
DR is similarly no real limit at higher levels; any typed DR is getting bypassed by materials/alignment/element/whatever or overwhelmed by +X bonuses, and your damage bonuses, particularly in melee (though archers are no slouches in the least) mean that who gets the kill out of the party's damage dealers is mostly a matter of who rolled highest for init; that target probably won't live to see a second volley.
Ranged Touch is a special beast, but only gunslingers really get to abuse it to its limits. Disrupting Strikes is a comfy second, but the real issue behind it is that many "difficulties" are nothing but "and this guy's wearing plate cuz he's their boss", which is specifically exactly the kind of 'toughening up' that ranged touch attacks will never even notice. Tends to cause certain adventure paths to fall right apart, but then so do so, so many other abilities or *spells*.
For powers, they're about as hardwired with chosen powers as sorcerers tend to be. This goes hand in hand with the manifester level limit to PP Expenditure to really put the screws on a character's potentials, keeping them nice and balanced for the most part. Friendly warning: you'll often find the PP limit rule flatly ignored in complaints against psi classes, but it's a fundamental part of the system. A little math on any given 'examples' if they give some will usually show that right quick. A wizard would be (even more) quite broken if spells scaled automatically as they levelled and metamagics didn't up the level slot now wouldn't they?
I dont see how you can get get like +51/+46/+41/+36 power attacking to hit a balor at level 20 pretty much 100% of the time...at least not without crazy optimisation and/or buffing.
At level 9 i managed to get about +19/+11 power attacking as a full bab melee martial and that was with furious focus. CR9s have 20+ ACs usually so my iterative would miss about half the time. If i had average BAB i would be missing more than half the time.
Sorcs can swap spells out though i believe? All psionic spellcasters cant?
Overall i think psionics are much stronger. Theres no arcane failure chance for example, which really helps for all the gish types. Manifestation displays are also nowhere as obvious as vocal/somantic components...cast a spell, everyone knows it was you, even if you used either still or silent spell, because they are just so obvious. Manifest an auditory only power, well, all everyone heard was some noise in their head, theres no indication of WHO made that noise. And nobody wants to admit they have been hearing noises.
The ability to augment powers is incredibly useful...the biggest weakness of a spontaneous caster is limited spells known, and you dont need to worry about that if your level 1 spells are useful all the way to level 20 just by augmenting it. Some spells even allow you to change them to swift actions, without needing the quicken spell feat.
Psions are essentially sorcerers with wizard spell progression. At 4th level you have 5 level 1 powers and 4 level 2 powers known. Thats a lot more than the sorcerer, and you cast them spontaneously. The sorcerer also has the equivalent of 15 PP vs the Psion's 17, except the Sorcerer is limited to spell slots while the Psion can mix and match whatever he wants.
Metapsionic feats tend to have lower costs than metamagic feats too, empower spell only increases the PP cost by 2 points. That is way less than using +1 spell slot. The downside is that you need to expend psionic focus...which means that you cant blow a ton of metamagic spells in the same combat (but you dont really need to anyway). Normal casters generally dont have the spell slots to throw around metamagic spells like crazy.
Many spells which had little to no real use had much better psionic equivalents too. True strike is a great example. Spend one standard action to get a +20 on your next attack roll? Lame, you cant attack for a whole round! The psionic equivalent is a swift action for +5 to hit, that is far more useful for gish classes since they can cast it and attack in the same round. And you can augment it to increase the bonus.
Autohynopsis is a fantastic skill and any character can expend psionic focus to take 15 on a check. Since regaining psionic focus out of combat is no problem, this lets you effectively take 15 on any skill check out of combat with no downside.
I take 15 to search this room, i take 15 to sense motive, i take 15 to disable device...
The AC is just 36. You'll miss anyways on a 1 so a 'certain hit' is actually +34. Total 35 (rolling a 1) would miss anyways after all.
Conservatively it's easy to get up there: 20 BAB, +6 stat bonus, +4 magic weapon, +2 weapon training and gloves of dueling. Sure you'll have some penalties from power attack or rapid-shot-and-friends but your actual to-hit bonuses will be higher than this anyways. Don't forget that your extra attacks (from haste, rapid shot, first TWF, etc) are all at your highest BAB. That full attack is not costing you expenditure of a 4th level power to do either, so it does have its advantages even if a few beams can hit as hard more easily.
There's probably a feat or optional that lets you retrain some spells, which is why I'm not being adamant about "never swap spells" for sorcerers, but generally speaking neither they nor psionic classes are going to be changing out their powers with any regularity.
Psions do have "more" fuel to burn, but at the same time much less: augmentation is not free. While magic auto-scales with level for duration, damage and so on, psionics do not. If you're firing off a 10d6 fireball, you're expending a level 3 slot. If you're firing off a 10d6 energy ball (it started at 7d6 because it's a 4th level, not 3rd, power) you're using power in between a 4th (9d6) and 5th (11d6) power.
For Metapsi, increasing cost by 2PP is in fact pretty much exactly "+1 spell level slot", as 2(Lv)-1 is the price formula. Expending focus is an affair of action economy, actions being on of the most precious things a character, monster or NPC has at their disposition. You do get to save a little (6PP is not +4 spell levels) in exchange on the more expensive stuff though. A Wizard firing off all his spells per day, slot by slot level by level, vs a Psion attempting to act the same way would EITHER be much more powerful or last substantially longer; depending upon whether the psion is augmenting his powers to match the level-scaling output of his magical caster friend.
Now certainly they've got their advantages. +5 as a swift is certainly something you can get a lot more use out of, and there's plenty of powers that are, dare I say, just plain better written or balanced. Just as there's bad spells out there there's bad psionic powers, but there's plenty of good stuff on either side, and they're not always the same.
What's this about autohypnosis counting as a "take 15" on any skill? Feat I haven't seen? Because the only listed uses are: Ignore Caltrop Wound, Memorize bit of information, Resist Dying (this part is awesome though as it allows substituting an easy skill check for stabilization), tolerate poison damage, resist fear or "avoid taking 1 damage from acting when disabled". Certainly a great skill to train and use, I concur, but that other ability you speak of????
Too late to just edit but I'd like to put up a few numbers regarding total "casting" energy.
A Wizard 20 gets a total of 180 spell levels, before accounting for high stats, spell-triggers and so on. Firing off four of each level costs the 20th level psion 324 of 343 points, leaving just enough for one more shot of a 9th level power perhaps. This assumes the psion never augments powers beyond their base form, however, so that Energy Ray is dealing 1d6 when your magic missiles are doing 5d4+1 for the same 'cost'.
A Sorcerer 20 gets a total of 270 spells per day. Firing 6/6/6/6/6/6/6/6/6 would be 486 PPs, which is more than you'd have at 36 Int (imagine what that would do for the wizard, or sorc if Charisma).
Sorcerers also know more spells: 34 + 9 bloodline spells versus a Psion's 36, as well as a greater default number (9 vs 2) of cantrips.
Psionic characters have even less total energy and known abilities than full casters, in exchange for near-total control over how that energy is getting spent. A good tradeoff, though the lack of autoscaling stings deeply in comparison.
They're good stuff!
A correction on your entry:
Quote:
Dislocating Pattern : Requires 8th level. -2 to basically all rolls when you successfully hit a creature with your ray. Furthermore it’s a untyped bonus, so it stacks with everything, including itself. No limit to usage and can only be healed by a DC 15 heal check, which enemies are unlikely to do in combat (and it would provoke AOOs if they did try it). Probably a major oversight by Dreamscarred Press since an infinitely stacking -2 penalty to all rolls, which works with Disrupting Strikes is ridiculous and your DM is not going to react well to it.
Dislocating pattern does not stack with itself, as any attacks after the first are considered to be from the same source.
Quote:
Extend Tattoo : Double duration of non-instantaneous tattoos for int mod times per day. This doesn’t make sense when Enhance tattoo vastly increases the duration due to the increased manifester level. Only take it if you are going to hit level 16 and want to take Eternal Tattoo. Looks like Dreamscarred Press made a mistake here...
I disagree -- these insights are no different than the feats that are used to modify psionic powers. The Enhance Tattoo + Extend Tattoo allows for something like a 24 hour duration on Inertial Armor @ level 12. Very useful.
Quote:
Shining Pattern : Requires 8th level, on a successful disrupt pattern attack, all creatures within 15 ft must make a fort save or be blinded for 1 round. By RAW, stacks with all other insights such as Binding/Dislocating/Exploding pattern, and duration stacks with itself and Disrupting Strikes. Dreamscarred Press dropped the ball on this one as well.
Again, effects from the same source do not stack.
Jamie Charlan wrote: The AC is just 36. You'll miss anyways on a 1 so a 'certain hit' is actually +34. Total 35 (rolling a 1) would miss anyways after all.
Conservatively it's easy to get up there: 20 BAB, +6 stat bonus, +4 magic weapon, +2 weapon training and gloves of dueling. Sure you'll have some penalties from power attack or rapid-shot-and-friends but your actual to-hit bonuses will be higher than this anyways. Don't forget that your extra attacks (from haste, rapid shot, first TWF, etc) are all at your highest BAB. That full attack is not costing you expenditure of a 4th level power to do either, so it does have its advantages even if a few beams can hit as hard more easily.
There's probably a feat or optional that lets you retrain some spells, which is why I'm not being adamant about "never swap spells" for sorcerers, but generally speaking neither they nor psionic classes are going to be changing out their powers with any regularity.
Psions do have "more" fuel to burn, but at the same time much less: augmentation is not free. While magic auto-scales with level for duration, damage and so on, psionics do not. If you're firing off a 10d6 fireball, you're expending a level 3 slot. If you're firing off a 10d6 energy ball (it started at 7d6 because it's a 4th level, not 3rd, power) you're using power in between a 4th (9d6) and 5th (11d6) power.
For Metapsi, increasing cost by 2PP is in fact pretty much exactly "+1 spell level slot", as 2(Lv)-1 is the price formula. Expending focus is an affair of action economy, actions being on of the most precious things a character, monster or NPC has at their disposition. You do get to save a little (6PP is not +4 spell levels) in exchange on the more expensive stuff though. A Wizard firing off all his spells per day, slot by slot level by level, vs a Psion attempting to act the same way would EITHER be much more powerful or last substantially longer; depending upon whether the psion is augmenting his powers to match the level-scaling output of his magical caster friend....
Well 36 is achievable but i meant being able to hit with every iterative, which is much harder.
Being able to switch spells every day would be a huge advantage for a sorc. It lets the player freely experiment with what spell list would suit him best, lets him get utility spells on the fly that he would otherwise have to pay for temporary access, lets him easily meet spell requirements for crafting, lets him prep for encounters with ease. The ability to spontaneously cast spells is huge..thats why sorcs are under so many restrictions compared to wizards.
Augmentation is not free but its still an advantage over normal casting. For one, many powers allow you to augment them...this is not an option for wizards. Being able to take one power and have it be useful all the way till level 20 is amazing. You generally cant do that with spells because they just do not scale well in general.
Sure your fireball scales...but at 10th level 10d6 damage is a very ineffective way to spend your actions. Most arcane/divine spells that do scale are blasting spells which are crap, and they hit a cap so you are forced to use metamagic feats or get a new spell to push it higher, in which case you would be better off using PP to augment it.
You can also change the element type of a power just by gaining psionic focus. HUGE advantage right there if you are into blasting spells. Want to do a 40 ft burst as a sorcerer, but you are up against fire resistant enemies? Tough luck. Elemental spell is a metamagic feat that lets you switch the energy type, but you still need to prepare it on the fly/increase casting time and it adds +1 to spell level.
A psion can just gain psionic focus, and can easily do it out of combat. Oh hey going to fight fire giants today? No problem, change energy type to cold. Its totally free! A wizard would have to spend precious feats to do this, or spend gold/time researching new elemental varities. You even get free bonuses depending on energy type, so at 5th level, you are already doing 5d6+5 damage as opposed to a wizard's flat 5d6.
The only downside is that the spell is "centered on you" which is pretty sucidal for squishy casters, but the psionic lightning bolt equivalent doesnt have this restriction.
Funfact : Persistent power increases PP cost by 2 only compared to Persistent spell (+2 level). Applying metamagic feats to powers (which are all spontaneous casting) does not increase casting time either.
There are definately spells that are better than powers, but overall, psionic powers and their system are simply better. Its weird that psionic fly doesnt seem to exist though (sustained flight is overland flight). Most of the psionic buffs seem to be self only, not sure if they were trying to make psions a blasting skill or something else.
I meant that any psionic character can expend focus to take 15, not related to the autohypnosis skill.
You need not hit with every iterative to outpace a disruption shot if you're built for attacking. Few worry about getting their 6th+ attacks to hit, and anyways a real attacker is probably looking at about +40 or higher with deadly aim or power attack online.
Non-blasting powers that get augmented are in many cases just keeping up with (and effectively being, given their cost) higher level spells. Granted a full caster may find themselves leaving an old control spell behind at higher levels (a one-time early morning affair for a wizard, but requiring a bit more care when building up your sorcerer), but there's also a wider available variety of spells to choose at each level.
Energy blasting being something that can change types is an advantage, but as you said, blasting is the least efficient way to cast or use powers. Makes the advantage rather minor. Researching new spells costs gold but gold is a rather minor cost for class abilities.
The system, yes, is 'better'. This cuts both ways; broken spells are far more powerful, and broken-at-the-other-end-of-the-spectrum spells are far worse. A well optimized full caster will easily trump any manifester, but if you're looking for decent balance, you'd have gone with the manifester in the first place.
Enhance Tattoo does augment it up to the maximum PP you can spend. That should shift your assessment of it considerably if you're still updating this, since the foundation of it's less-than-glowing review just changed.
http://dreamscarredpress.com/dragonfly/ForumsPro/viewtopic/t=2206/highlight =enhance+tattoo.html
Quintain wrote: Quote: Again, effects from the same source do not stack. Aha, that helps a lot to understand the class. If binding / dislocating / shining, etc. were to stack with each other, that would be overpowered. This class was heavily influenced by the alchemist, the class description of which corroborates that bomb discoveries don't stack. It only makes sense that these insights don't stack either.
Regarding Shining Pattern, however, the RAW strongly imply you don't get to choose to turn it off.
Quote: Shining Pattern (Su): When a cryptic with this insight makes a successful disrupt pattern attack, all creatures within 15 ft. of the creature struck must make a Fortitude save (DC 10 + 1/2 the cryptic’s level + the cryptic’s Intelligence modifier) or be blinded for 1 round. A cryptic must be at least 8th level before selecting this ability. I assume, however, despite the mandatory language "must," that most are going to let the cryptic pick shining or another effect at the time he/she activates the power.
Question wrote: You can also change the element type of a power just by gaining psionic focus. HUGE advantage right there if you are into blasting spells. Want to do a 40 ft burst as a sorcerer, but you are up against fire resistant enemies? Tough luck. Elemental spell is a metamagic feat that lets you switch the energy type, but you still need to prepare it on the fly/increase casting time and it adds +1 to spell level.
A psion can just gain psionic focus, and can easily do it out of combat. Oh hey going to fight fire giants today? No problem, change energy type to cold. Its totally free! A wizard would have to spend precious feats to do this, or spend gold/time researching new elemental varities. You even get free bonuses depending on energy type, so at 5th level, you are already doing 5d6+5 damage as opposed to a wizard's flat 5d6.
I agree with Question on this point. Here is the rule, and it explains how kineticists differ:
Energy Powers: Many psionic powers deal damage of a certain type of energy, with cold, electricity, fire, and sonic being the most common. For powers that have the choice of cold, electricity, fire, and sonic, the manifester must choose after he regains his psionic power points for the day which of these four energy types is his active energy. The manifester may choose to change which energy is his active energy by gaining psionic focus. If he is currently maintaining psionic focus, he may expend it as a free action and then gain psionic focus normally to choose a new energy type. The manifester need not maintain psionic focus to have an active energy type. Wilders may change their active energy type when performing a wild surge. Kineticists are exempt from this restriction and may freely choose the energy type at the time the power is manifest, so long as it is within the choices allowed by the power. He could not, for example, choose fire as his energy type when manifesting concussion blast, as the power does not allow a choice in energy types.
Source: http://www.d20pfsrd.com/psionics-unleashed/psionic-powers
That said, the rule means all your energy-based damaging powers are confined to one energy type unless and until you spend a full-round action to reset it (or a move action with the Psionic Meditation feat). An arcane spellcaster could cast a lightning bolt, fireball, and polar ray without having to reset anything.
Ronnam wrote: I agree with Question on this point. Here is the rule, and it explains how kineticists differ:
Energy Powers: Many psionic powers deal damage of a certain type of energy, with cold, electricity, fire, and sonic being the most common. For powers that have the choice of cold, electricity, fire, and sonic, the manifester must choose after he regains his psionic power points for the day which of these four energy types is his active energy. The manifester may choose to change which energy is his active energy by gaining psionic focus. If he is currently maintaining psionic focus, he may expend it as a free action and then gain psionic focus normally to choose a new energy type. The manifester need not maintain psionic focus to have an active energy type. Wilders may change their active energy type when performing a wild surge. Kineticists are exempt from this restriction and may freely choose the energy type at the time the power is manifest, so long as it is within the choices allowed by the power. He could not, for example, choose fire as his energy type when manifesting concussion blast, as the power does not allow a choice in energy types.
Source: http://www.d20pfsrd.com/psionics-unleashed/psionic-powers
That said, the rule means all your energy-based damaging powers are confined to one energy type unless and until you spend a full-round action to reset it (or a move action with the Psionic Meditation feat). An arcane spellcaster could cast a lightning bolt, fireball, and polar ray without having to reset anything.
This is correct. If you choose fire as your active energy type, all of your powers that deal a chosen energy type deal fire until you spend a full round action to regain psionic focus. So you can prep the right element if you know what's coming, but if you prep fire heading into an icey chasm and it turns out that it's actually a volcano full of salamanders, you've got to spend that full round action to readjust, again changing all of your power types. Particularly obnoxious if you've got enemies with mixed resistances since that will pretty much automatically take you out of combat for a round to perform a full round action that provokes AoOs. Kineticists can select the energy type of their powers at the time they activate them, but that's pretty much their defining class feature.
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