Hey Folks!
I've been thinking about running a game only with Path of War and Psionics classes from dreamscarred. I was wondering if anybody had any notes from their own (in-game) experiences.
That's something I'd love to do, as well. But I don't know that all my players would go for it. I currently have a Psion Telepath in my game, but one of the other guys hates the bookkeeping needed for psionic or PoW classes and the other just wouldn't get it and screw things up all the time, despite his genius level IQ.
I play psionics all the time. What kind of questions do you have?
One of my characters is a Forgeborn Aegis/Warder (Zweihander Sentinel), works rather well as a giant defensive robot with a giant sword.
If you want to truly frustrate your GMs plans, play a tactician. Battlefield control is king. It let's all the dps do their work -- and is also the rogues best friend.
The only real note I have is that the soulknife MIGHT need some help, depending on build; their key feature is having a shiny magic weapon, but so does everyone else, and they didn't use a class feature to get their's.
My wife says she really enjoyed soulknife and psychic warrior when she played them, but has no special advice.
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Psionics Augmented: Soulknife has some really beefy Blade Skills to help the Soulknife a bit along with a suggestion to give the benefits of the Gifted Blade archetype for free.
I too am thinking of running a psionics only game. I currently was planning to just use ultimate psionics.
My concerns are as follows.
1.) Condition removal seems less available than with standard classes.
2.) Unless a vitalist is played healing seems sparse.
3.) Crafting of Big Six items by players would not be possible without allowing crafting feats to use manifester level instead of caster level.
Does anyone have any experience with any of this?
I'm currently running a no magic Steampunk-ish game with only the mundane Paizo classes (plus Alchemist), Psionics, and Path of War.
I use a better version of the Unchained book's Automatic Bonus Progression that I've been using forever to sidestep the Big Six issue, and make sure to be generous with potions of certain spells (and have raised the max potion level to 6th, rather than 3rd).
It's working out pretty well so far. Healing is tough, but that's because nobody has decided to play a Vitalist or Silver Crane specialist. The Chirurgeon is keeping them afloat though.
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I too am thinking of running a psionics only game. I currently was planning to just use ultimate psionics.
My concerns are as follows.
1.) Condition removal seems less available than with standard classes.
Only in the sense that spells providing condition removal are generally all or nothing (example: neutralize poison and the psionic equivalent Resist Toxin are caster level checks like dispel magic).
2.) Unless a vitalist is played healing seems sparse.
No, not really. All classes have access to healing via extra power known or expanded knowledge feats, what they lack is a easy method of applying that healing to someone other than themselves.
The Egoist, Tactician (Battle healer archetype), and Vitalist are all good healers.
3.) Crafting of Big Six items by players would not be possible without allowing crafting feats to use manifester level instead of caster level.Does anyone have any experience with any of this?
The psionics/magic transparency rules gives the option for the psionic items to be the equivalent item creation feat. Obviously in more open rulesets with more supplements there aren't any parallels, however.
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In my play experience I've found the use of DSP material in general to provide a very varied and fun play experience.
For the most part the players have more ways of interacting with their environment, doing cool stuff in combat, and working within a campaign world. For the most part the ceiling is lower and the floor is higher in terms of balance compared to Paizo printed material.
Stuff that we've done to further tune our game world include
-Limiting Path of War to the 1-6 initiating archetypes. Though that's more because of the classes published in Path of war itself, not the maneuvers. We're considering giving the archetypes access to 1-9 initiating.
-Allowing other 3PP options besides those found in DSP. In particular I like things from Little Red Goblin Games, Amora Games, Rite Publishing, and Kobold Press. Though as with any supplement, I always suggest looking it over and deciding how well it fit in your campaign world before allowing it.
-Some Spheres of Power. Spheres has some major problems with specific spheres (Creation, Conjuration, Weather, and a few more), but in general has good ideas and allows the creation of a lot of character concepts hard to create from Vancian or Psionic style casting.
-Altering some of the challenges. Some bestiary monsters need alteration if you plan to eliminate full casting as they may essentially jump in CR as the toolbox your players usually has to deal with them has lowered its ceiling.
Thanks for the info folks!
Ran an all DSP game a year or two ago and it worked just fine. My players are of the opinion that the DSP classes are built using a metric that PF didn't apply when writing the first couple of Core Books and so the DSP stuff may outshine the Core stuff (in the same way an Arcanist outshines a Wizard ... just willing to embrace complexity and advanced ideas).
The game was fine and I allowed for magic item creation being equivalent to magic item creation. The specific rules for Psionic only items like Dorje were fairly easy to embrace and worked well.
Best of luck with your game!