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LordShaper
2010-03-10, 03:25 PM
The facts are these:

I'm running a 3.5 campaign with gestalt characters and recharge magic.

I'm thinking about throwing psionics into the mix at some point in the campaign (the PCs are restricted to PHB classwise and to humans racewise but I'm slowly dipping into other books as they are moving farther and farther away into the unexplored territories).

Has anyone here tweaked psionics so that they can be used in a recharge magic campaign without feeling seriously underpowered? Unearthed Arcana doesn't have anything to say on the subject and I'd really like some input and advice...

Nero24200
2010-03-10, 03:35 PM
Someone who's first impression of psionics is that they're...if anything...underpowered?.....does not compute

Back on Track: The best thing to do I'd say is to provide some sort of Power Point recharge. Something like 1 point a round and increase the rate at higher levels or some such.

NEO|Phyte
2010-03-10, 03:36 PM
Simplest way would be to cross out "spells" and write in "powers" on the variant, if you want to keep PP involved somehow, have spent PP recharge at some speed or another.

alisbin
2010-03-10, 03:37 PM
as far as i'm aware there is no official recharge variant for psionics. however you could probably mock something up by using the effective power level when augmented (so a mind thrust augmented by 4 points would be equivalent to a 3rd level power), so essentially for every 2 power points you would spend to augment would add 1 to the effective power level. one big question would be, if a character fully augmented power, how long before he could use it again less augmented...
anyway, its definitely possible, but i'd suggest running a couple test combats with whatever homebrew you come up with to make sure it doesn't overpower or cripple psionics.

Lord Vukodlak
2010-03-10, 03:49 PM
It require to massive an overhaul, augmentations in psionics allow psions to easily NOVA expending a great amount of power in a very short amount of time. If a party tends to enter encounters fully recharged (which is common in a recharge magic system). Psionic characters have a massive advantage.

You could easily have the opposite problem with the psion having to big an advantage.

One method is when the power's recharge time is up, the power points return. To figure the general recharge time, the maximum power points you can spend is the Highest possible, and every two power points less is the next highest.

But psionics doesn't work well with having a power unavailable for a certain amount of time and having power points simply return at a given rate doesn't feel like it would work either.

But in the end I just don't think it works right, you'd have to completely rewrite the psionics system as in a recharge system its either very weak or supremely over powered.

Pluto
2010-03-10, 04:19 PM
Simplest way would be to cross out "spells" and write in "powers" on the variant, if you want to keep PP involved somehow, have spent PP recharge at some speed or another.
I'd second this, if it means what I think it means.

A system that recharged unaugmented powers like spells, with a seperate PP pool on the side (usable only for augmenting the powers as they recharged), you could have an interesting system.

The PP recharge could be something like ML/hour to keep the pool sizable enough to use reliably, but small enough to prevent outrageous novas.
(Though I'd worry more about Sorcerers as far as that last part is concerned.)

Optimystik
2010-03-10, 04:46 PM
Simplest way would be to cross out "spells" and write in "powers" on the variant, if you want to keep PP involved somehow, have spent PP recharge at some speed or another.

Seconded, big time. Giving psionics a longer recharge, reduceable via PP expenditure sounds like an excellent way to merge the PP and RM systems.

It would be tricky to do on paper though.

Wings of Peace
2010-03-10, 04:49 PM
Someone who's first impression of psionics is that they're...if anything...underpowered?.....does not compute


I believe they meant underpowered in comparison to recharge magic.

Nero24200
2010-03-10, 07:21 PM
I believe they meant underpowered in comparison to recharge magic.

Well...to be fair, 99.9% of people go by the first impression that psionics is horribly overpowered compared to 3.5 core, Probably due to previous incarnations of psionics and internet hype. Seeing someone admit they're unfamilier with it and, at the same time, surgest they might be underpowered is quite a rarity to me, even if meant in a specific context.

Back to Topic: I agree with the general consensus. Use power level as a base compared to spells with increased recharge time for augmentation.

Pluto
2010-03-10, 07:27 PM
Well...to be fair, 99.9% of people go by the first impression that psionics is horribly overpowered compared to 3.5 core, Probably due to previous incarnations of psionics and internet hype. Seeing someone admit they're unfamilier with it and, at the same time, surgest they might be underpowered is quite a rarity to me, even if meant in a specific context.
That doesn't sound right to me.

I'm hardly a powergamer, but most of psionics immediately struck me as "Core Magic under a different name. Also, mostly Enchantments and Evocations. Also, buffs can't be share deasily. And less staying power."

Maybe it's just that nobody complains that the system is borked when they don't see it as less powerful than core?
Or nobody baits them into shouting matches?

LordShaper
2010-03-12, 10:39 AM
Thank you everyone for your input:smallsmile:

For now I think I'll work around the issue by making psionics a new thing in the setting, i.e. psionic races and psionics themselves 'evolved' in a large area that is covered with a permanent antimagic field and the inborn magical ability of sorcerers 'mutated' into a form in which it could express itself or somesuch thing, not really important for the time being.

Thus, by making psionics the 'new thing' they'll appear 'weak' to spellcasters from all over the world everywhere but on their turf, where they're fearsome.




And yes, I meant 'standard psionics are underpowered when compared to recharge magic', thought it was obvious from my wording:smalltongue:

sonofzeal
2010-03-12, 02:30 PM
I think having pp recharge over time should be fine. It simulates the same effect, and meshes more elegantly with the system than recharge magic does with Vancian. I'd say 1pp a round works fine, but you can tweak as you go.

Sinfire Titan
2010-03-12, 02:57 PM
I think having pp recharge over time should be fine. It simulates the same effect, and meshes more elegantly with the system than recharge magic does with Vancian. I'd say 1pp a round works fine, but you can tweak as you go.

1pp/round is pretty fast. 4pp/minute would be more balanced (as 1st level Psions would be just using powers every round at will, which gets ridiculous with Astral Construct). 14,400 rounds/day, remember? 1,440 minutes/day, so a total of 5760pp regenerated in a single day. Dunno if that evens out though.

Lycanthromancer
2010-03-12, 03:07 PM
I thought about this on a similar thread, and figured that you could give a psion equal to his manifester level x3, but he doesn't start recharging until the end of the 4th round after he started manifesting (and by then he'd start recharging his ML in pp each round).

Haven't really considered how to deal with powers with long durations. Perhaps this would require you to retain your psionic focus so long as you wish to keep them going.

NEO|Phyte
2010-03-12, 04:58 PM
When I was initially responding to this thread, I was actually pondering adding PP recovery to the psionic focus, specifically, expending your focus to gain some amount of PP, probably something like Manifester level + Number of psionic feats. Has the problem of being less than reliably usable at low levels given the DC20 check, plus unless you spend a feat, it's a full-round action to attempt to regain focus.