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Hello there! My name is Sasha Hall and I come with a continuation of the Psionics Augmented line. As a freelancer, it's my honor to work with the excellent crew. It's been a while ride, but I'm proud of what I've done. Thanks for the opportunity, and I'm glad to meet you!
Feel free to read, test, and post your feedback!
I'll look over this tomorrow when I get home from School :)
Ooh! It is the Psion's turn in the Psionics Augmented Line huh? Let's take a look.
Clairsentience
Aura seems like a very fair trade for what you get. I like it.
As for Falsehood, I am not sure how I feel about Lies and Slander. It is a pretty large penalty, but it only lasts a round and takes your focus. Also, at a standard action I don't think it is problematic. Pretty sure its balanced, but I wanna test it to be sure.
Reading is very nifty! I love its Who Are You? ability.
Terror definitely feels too strong. There are very few Clairsentience powers at low level to make use of Fright Factor, but all of them go from strong to ridiculous when used together with the auto-frighten for blowing your psionic focus. Especially Recall Agony and False Future. Also, having a basically permanent Terrifying Presence is pretty darn strong, especially considering what you trade.
Metacreativity
Crystal seems like a downgrade unless you are going for some kind of weapon using build or gish prestige class. I think it could use a buff.
I really like Guide, though I think Direct the Flow could use a buff. Perhaps Guide the Flow could operate at double the range of Guide the Blade?
For Plasmic, does Right Tool for the Job work for all skills? Same with Persistent Plasma.
Steel is definitely balanced.
Psychokinesis
Blaze is awesome! Though I think Pyromaniac should use the word "reduce" instead of "cut" to stay consistent with wording of similar abilities published by DSP.
For Boom, Crash and Clang feels like it has too long of a duration. Other than that it is fantastic!
Frostbitten Waste for Chill feels a bit too strong as well. Even assuming they pass the save, expending psionic focus to auto-stagger all targets for 1 round is amazing. It makes a deadly combo with Energy Missile, since with Energy Missile you can pinpoint exactly who you want to hit with no risk of hitting friendlies.
Spark is perfectly fine. Pretty cool to see party buffing in Psychokinesis.
Psychometabolism
Adrenal is good and fair. I like it.
Well done again. Animalia is awesome!
Second Gear looks good to me, but you may consider renaming Speed of Thought since that is also the name of a feat in Ultimate Psionics.
For Storage, Expulsion feels too weak. The Secret Pocket itself is way cool however.
Psychoportation
Bypass is not overpowered, though Disappearing needs some new wording I believe. Automatically passing a stealth check doesn't mean much, and doesn't set a DC for perception checks to notice you. I think taking an automatic 20 or 15 would convey what you wish, but have more clarity with the rules.
Drive is some great stuff, and sounds like a lot of fun for your party. I know I want to give it a test drive.
Labyrinth's Here Before is very situational and steps on the toes of the Ranger very heavily. I don't know what to recommend, besides changing its bonus. Additionally, possessing 1 rank in survival already allows you to automatically know where north is.
As for Retrieval, I like it but I think it could use some buffs. I think at some point it should allow you to teleport objects you have not held for 1 minute.
Telepathy
Channel's Direct Link is nice, but it is basically rendered useless at 8th level when the Psion gets Telepathy. I'd recommend making changes to this. Distant Messages is quite cool though!
Closed is very cool! I really like its theme. If anything, I think Out of the Loop should be expanded to also make foes temporarily unable to be aided by Collectives.
In the Know on the Informant is pretty overpowered. Skill bonuses to skills like these are basically always limited to 1/2 a character's level. Additionally, this feels like it steps on the Bard's territory way too much. I Was Never Here is golden however.
Mental Grip on Mystique seems exceedingly powerful for the level you receive it, and continues to to stay stronger than similar abilities for most of the game. Also, it says to make a Sense Motive check, but I cannot find why. Similarly, Implant Memory says to make a Bluff check, but not why or what the Bluff check does.
I noticed Athanatism is missing. Will you be writing up something nice for our Seventh Path?
Cool! :D
Feedback:
- Aura's Smiting Ideals seems like a really weird ability to give to an Intelligence based 1/2 BAB manifester. Their Charisma is unlikely to be very impressive, and they have no incentive to focus on melee combat.
- Reading's Hindsight doesn't list a range for applying it to allies.
- Reading's Who Are you? says you can learn what skills it has the most ranks in, but not how many skills that is. If a target has 10 ranks in one skill, 9 in another, and 8 in another, how many of those do they learn? What if their target only has the same number of ranks in all of their skills, or has 10 ranks in one skill and 5 in all of their other skills? Needs more information to be usable.
- Metacreativity (Crystal) seems... really underwhelming. You can make attacks for weak damage that doesn't scale effectively, and get a bonus to attacks and damage with manufactured weapons... which the class is otherwise not good at because it's a 1/2 BAB manifester. They won't even scale up if you take a prestige class to advance your manifesting and gish it up.
- Guiding doesn't really fit metacreativity. It's more like a psychokinesis thing, since you're doing active correction with telekinesis. Guide the Blade could probably use a type attached to, and its range is painfully short.
- Plasmic's abilities are a little weird. They make you basically the best skill monkey in the game (which is an odd role for a 9 level manifester) and reference "tool bonuses", which aren't a thing- this is the only effect in the game that uses them, so it's pretty pointless typing.
- Steel's Iron Ego doesn't need to specify it's a free action, just adds unnecessary word count. Likewise it doesn't need to be specified as "untyped".
- Shielded Spirit is really weird. Getting a +4 shield bonus to AC for 14 minutes costs 1 power point at this level, it's pretty trivial to have up all the time when it's going to matter.
- Blaze's Stop Drop and Roll has questionable use when forgoing the fire resistance (which needs to be re-worded that it's only against that attack, not a permanent loss), since most of the time the only creatures within 10 feet of you when you take fire damage are going to either have fire resistance and be hitting you with fire damage special attacks, or be your allies.
- Blaze's Pyro Maniac comes in painfully late for how long you'll have had to deal with fire resistance, and the inability to use it for splash damage against targets without fire resistance is a little strange.
- Boom's Sonic Burst is a little confusing; what does "deal normal damage" mean? Not taking the -1 per d6 penalty?
- Sluggish Cold is a pretty weak effect to allow a save, seems underwhelming.
- What happens if you use Spark's Invigorating Volt multiple times? Does the old one get overwritten, or is it just not usable?
- Having a subdiscipline for each energy type in psychokinesis is really weird- energy damage isn't the only thing in psychokinesis. There's nothing covering telekinetic movement (the old one, Unseen Hand, really doesn't do it and Telekinetic Hurl is terrible), barriers, counter-caster effects, etc.
- Adrenal's Got My Own Back is another really weird power for a psion to have. It doesn't fit in at all with their capabilities.
- Likewise for Animalia's Animalistic Reaction.
- Animalia's Bestial Enhancement seems off-theme, since it can apply to mental ability scores (and likely will be used to stack save DCs by boosting intelligence).
- Second Gear's Speed of Thought shares a name with a psionic feat that boosts movement speed.
- Storage's Secret Pocket is pretty underwhelming compared to other discipline powers, since it doesn't even make you any better at hiding stuff than anyone else. It should also probably be (Ex)... because what happens when it gets turned off?
- Storage's Expulsion has really underwhelming damage. It's hard to justify using it instead of other actions a psion would be capable of at this level.
- Bypass' Pass Through is outclassed by Nomad's Step + Fast Step. The name is also misleading, since you can't use it to pass through anything.
- Bypass' Disappearing isn't necessarily a huge problem, but it does render all of your other investment into stealth pointless when you're using it, and it's not a lot of fun to play against.
- Drive is awesome. Chauffer's Joyride could probably use a name change though, it's pretty silly. :p
- Is Labyrinth's Incomprehensible Rhythm supposed to reference Blindsense instead of Blindsight? Also, the DC pumping on this is going to get really absurd. At 18th level this is going to be a +7 increase to the save DC, which is approaching irresistible for a lot of enemies. It might as well just be a static +2 or something; an increase to a DC is just as valuable at level 2 as it is at level 20.
- Labyrinth's Here Before ability is really weak for its level. It's almost useless.
- Retrieval's To My Hand is of pretty limited utility, especially compared to other abilities at the same level like Push Through.
- Retrieval's Boomerang Warp isn't useful to a psion.
- Channel's Direct Link is received at 2nd level, but mentions scaling after 1st level. It'd be a bit more useful if you could link up with multiple creatures at once, at least later on.
- Channel's Distant Message really doesn't need a word limit, since you can just use it multiple times.
- Closed's Out of the Loop should probably allow a save. It's free spell failure against casters.
- Informant's In the Know is amazingly powerful. It needs to be significantly weaker- an ability that provides a huge static bonus to skills in general is probably not a good idea.
- Informant's I Was Never Here is weird. It's fluffed as wiping recent memories, but it actually only affects yourself (so the mind-affecting tag only makes a difference if you're immune to mind-affecting- it prevents you from using the ability).
- Mystique's Mental Grip is cool, but the name doesn't fit and the Sense Motive check seems pointless (maybe vestigial from a prior version of the ability?).
- Mystique's Implant Memory also seems to include a Bluff check for no reason.
Will definitely be keeping an eye on this as well.
Cool; so they'd be kind of like what subdomains are divine caster domains?