Psionics in my campaign. How best do I handle this, any suggestions?


Homebrew


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I am running a campaign, where all of my players want a psionics system, more attuned to 2nd ed but are asking about several others, as well. I loved Occult Adventures' system, but a few things were missing. What happened to the Psychometabolist? She could change shapes, heal herself and others, poison with a touch. Awesome class, that I think was unintentionally missed, so it points me in other directions.
I am ruling out some systems, because they are just not compatible, mechanically, especially, if they tell you that one system, is helpless against the other and vise versa. What was wrong with 3.5's original system, wouldn't it work with this system, can we not use it for some reason? I guess, these questions surmise my needs.


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3.5's Psionics will almost certainly not work with SF. They'd be way out of whack on balance out of the box. You could probably homebrew something off of Ardent or Psychic Warrior that might work, but it's going to take a lot of work.

Dreamscarred Press is working on a Psionics handbook for SF. Unfortunately the kickstarter is over, but they did a couple playtest documents for their classes and stuff that are posted in the Third Party forum below. They might get you going while you wait on the final book (last I recall, scheduled for sometime around Oct/Nov completion).

I expect that will likely be the closest thing to something official for Psionics in SF for a long while.


pithica42 wrote:
3.5's Psionics will almost certainly not work with SF. They'd be way out of whack on balance out of the box. You could probably homebrew something off of Ardent or Psychic Warrior that might work, but it's going to take a lot of work.

I will note that this misbalance (which is absolutely accurate) is similar to just plopping any 3.X class, or even Pathfinder stuff.

pithica42 wrote:
I expect that will likely be the closest thing to something official for Psionics in SF for a long while.

I am unfortunately rather sure that there will never be an "official" (i.e. 1st Party/Paizo) psionics ruleset, as at least one, seemingly several of the developers at Paizo seem to be under the mistaken impression that psionics is highly imbalanced.

(To be fair, 3.0 was a hot mess of imbalance everywhere; and while 3.5 is not perfectly balanced - but if taken together and compared to the core 3.5 books, it's far more balanced than those three tomes, and pretty much any other subsystem that was published under 3.X era stuff.)

DSP has done a rather phenomenal job of keeping the torch burning, and should be able to do well - I have complete confidence in them.

... that said...

Rayenaire wrote:
I am running a campaign, where all of my players want a psionics system, more attuned to 2nd ed but are asking about several others, as well.

... what does this mean, exactly? If you're talking the old D&D 2E psionics, absolutely not, unless you're okay with ignoring balance entirely, and are really down for a metric ton of personal conversion effort. Obviously, the "2ED" (my own personal made-up short hand, just now) stuff won't work as-published, as the systems are too different. You can cludge some of them in, but it's going to cause a lot of unintentional weirdness (though, perhaps, less than the more subtle but problematic nuances between 3E and PF, or even 3.5 and PF).

If you mean PF2E (or "2EP" - yeah, I'm probably not going to remember these, either), I honestly don't know what they're going to do, but, again, I'll trust DSP, as they've done well, so far.

Rayenaire wrote:

I loved Occult Adventures' system, but a few things were missing. What happened to the Psychometabolist? She could change shapes, heal herself and others, poison with a touch. Awesome class, that I think was unintentionally missed, so it points me in other directions.

I am ruling out some systems, because they are just not compatible, mechanically, especially, if they tell you that one system, is helpless against the other and vise versa. What was wrong with 3.5's original system, wouldn't it work with this system, can we not use it for some reason? I guess, these questions surmise my needs.

So, for some personal conversion work, here we go:

The first thing you need to do is take a loooooooong and hard look at the spell systems from 3.5, compare the spells to PF, and then compare those spells as they appear in SF.

Step two requires finding the equivalent powers in 3.5 (or, better yet, DSP/PF) psionics and then applying the same conversion process, where possible. This is going to compress your 9th level manifesting down to 6 levels of manifesting.

Take special notes on the things that Starfinder shed - most notably, the shape-shifting stuff, and most anything that can irrevocably alter reality with an Instant duration. This doesn't mean you can't do this, only that it's worth considering.

-> the "addendum" to part 2, is that if you keep shapeshifting, you're going to want to tone down what, exactly, it can do. Size means much less in SF than it used to, so you're going to lose those bonuses. Also, take note at what kind of bonuses SF spells grant, when they grant them, and, even more importantly, when they don't grant bonuses. You're going to lose a looooooooot of "gain x bonus" effects, as they're just not used as often in PF.

-> if you like staying on-theme, look carefully at what they consider "phrenic" in SF: these are the "psionic" powers that exist in SF as-written, and are worth considering when doing your own.

Step three is to look at the spells per day value for things like cleric and wizard (ignore the mental bonus), and turn those into "virtual power points" - i.e. a 1st level spell slot is worth 1 power point, a second level 3 power points, a 3rd level 5pp, and so on; you should compare the 3.5 and PF versions of the class and (if different) convert both to compare the differences between edition (I'm not looking at anything right now - they might be the same). (Now, this won't be perfect - in fact, you'll effectively be shortchanging what you're actually getting from cleric/wizard class because, unlike psionics, they get free scaling for their spells, while psionic powers require Augmentation... but it'll get you a basic idea. Also, the two numbers will be different, because of cleric's domain slots and specialist wizards bonus spells, but focus on the generic spells/day.) Next, compare and do the same for psionics in 3.5 (or PF/DSP stuff, if you have access, or read it on d20pfsrd.com), and then compare to mystic and its effective pp/day.
Note: a psion is more accurate compared to a sorcerer than a cleric or wizard, however it's important to know that the psion is supposed to represent the same "role" that clerics/wizards fulfill, whereas wilders are supposed to cover the psionic version of the sorcerer's "role" in the grand scheme of things. Hence, my suggestion of cleric/wizard, psion, and mystic.

Step three allows you to get a feel for power point progression across the class, how it should feel, and how it stacks up to its mystic.

... so step four is implementing that, and making it actually useful. Make a progression chart of power points. I'd guess the psychic warrior is basically all this work done for you already as pithica implied, but I really can't be sure.

Step five is used to compare spell access to power access (both spells/powers known and how restricted they are), first in whatever 3.X chassis you're using, and then in SF - notice the similarities and differences.

Step six, then, is to apply similar to psionics in SF.

Step seven requires looking at how those spells interact with class features, as-presented in SF, and then comparing similar builds (with class features - feel free to blatantly steal mystic or technomancer features) to your new and improved SF scifi class (probably called a "mentat" since you've got "mystic" and "technomancer" already; "phrenic" for the "wilder"-equivalent or whatever, maybe; I dunno, do as you like!).

That's a looooooooot of work, and I'm out of time these days, but I hope this helps! Enjoy! (Or wait for someone else - that's cool, too. :D)


Here are the links for the stuff DSP is playtesting:

Races, Aegis class and Soulknife archetype

Specialist class with a lot of powers

The main Psion class (which used to be called Psionicist, if you are familiar with ye old AD&D) is still in the pipe and there's also a healer type class called Integrator in the works.

You can voice your thoughts about the material at the GitP forums.

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