Getting inside your mind...psionics! (3.5)

[Whisper rider]

I want to use psionics in my new campaing (first time dm) i've never played one before, and my dm doesn't like them because, he doesn't know them very well.. So i was wondering whats your opinion un psionics, are they so different from arcane spellcasters? Advice on getting to know them.. (besides reading psionics handbook 3.5) :smallbiggrin:

[Aegis013]

They're interesting and neat. There are some things like the inner workings of psicrystal shenanigans that might stump you for awhile, but a Psion isn't quite as strong as a Wizard, and if you use Psi/Mag transparency, it's not hard to pick up and play with.

It adds a lot of nice options to the game. It's a good addition, in my opinion.

[Hiro Protagonest]

Don't think of a psion as some mind-controlling guy. He can't do that much more (if any more) than the wizard or sorcerer.

Just remember, you cannot spend more PP on a single use of a power than your manifester level. Those tales of psions pulling a supernova when they know there's only going to be one encounter that day? Those aren't allowed by the rules.

Psions are basically video game wizards, instead of spells per day, they have a pool of points from which they can use any of their powers, similar to a mana pool/bar. They also make more flexible blasters than most arcane casters, even sorcerers, although blaster sorcerers with metamagic and metamagic reduction can rack up huge damage numbers (see: The Mailman).

[eggs]

They're cool.
Psionic focus was a clever mechanism.
Just be sure you don't get confused with 3.0 psionics - while most things stayed relatively consistent through the edition change, psionics were totally altered from a weird, breakable system into a pretty slick minimalistic one.

[Particle_Man]

They are fun and one of the few splat books to make it into the SRD!

I have heard people worry about spamming with created Astral Constructs so some people use the rule from Complete Psionic that you can only have one around at a time. Otherwise, a lot of people don't like Complete Psionic that much.

Tier wise, Psion is 1, Wilder is 2, Psychic Warrior is probably 3, Soul Knife probably 5. Oh, and I am probably wrong on this but someone will correct me, I'm sure. :smallsmile:

Some of the races in the XPH book not only have level adjustment but also racial hit dice, so cannot be taken at very low levels.

Some combos are thought to be a little powerful, like Warforged Psion with Adamantine Body but that requires a bit of mixing and matching books anyhow.

There are sprinklings of support for psionics in other splatbooks, which is nice.

[OracleofSilence]

Psion is actually Tier 2 (limited powers known) StP Erudite has been agrued to be Tier Zero (the have ALL the tricks).

Well some things to keep in mind. Immunity to mind affecting can screw you over if you are not careful (even powers that have nothing to do with brain bending can be thwarted). Most of the Really Powerful Tricks involve malicious abuse of the action economy, but take a lot of work, and Psions are (possibly) the best damage seed in the game when using the right builds.

[Cor1]

It really depends on how you make it. The default psion is not remotely as powerful as a Wizard, but an optimized psion is better than a wizard at a lot of things. Not running out of power, first : Psions have numerous ways to recharge their power points. This solves the 15-minutes workday problem.

It's balanced by the fact that Psions can't spend more power points on a power than their Manifester Level. There are ways to pump that, but then it just enables spending the power point reserve faster. There are a few ways to augment the power point reserve, too, but not by that much. (In normal cases.)

Also, the psionic focus. It's like a class feature you buy with feats. As obviously intended, you can have one and your psicrystal too, have to spend a move action to acquire one, and have to spend them for minor effects or to activate a metapsionic power. The only way I found to have more than that is delving into psicrystal shenanigans.

TL;DR : a psion can supernova and then recharge, but the rate at which they spend energy is limited, and the quantity they can deploy in a nova is limited too.

There's also the power Psychic Reformation. It permits to change the attribution of feats, skill points, known powers, and such. It costs 50xp by level reformatted, starting with the last.

The Disciplines ... The versatility cost depends on which : no way to enter someone's mind if you're not a Telepath (or it costs one feat per power), but Blasting is apparently for everyone, as well as Divination (the Divination power is on the general list, and you don't need much else. Scrying? A 3000gp item does that at-will.) The other utility schools, Creation and Teleportation, well you get Dim Door on the standard list, as well as Greater Teleport (1 power level above the restricted, standard Teleport). And about Metacreativity... I find it the most fun. Need something? "I create it with my mind!" And gets Astral Construct, basically the only summon you'll ever need. As for healing, the Egoist has a couple of powers, usable at a lot of levels... not as good as a dedicated healbot, or a standard Cleric, unless/until you use the Soul Crystal power from Magic of Incarnum. (It basically enables the Psion to share his power list with the whole party. Can be used from reasonably to IWIN XD. )

No spellbook and no somatic/verbal compenonents, few material ones. Psions are harder to shut down than Wizards. But they have fewer options by default.

[Soranar]

First the tiers

Tier 1 Erudite, psion (due to power access, amount of power points available and bonus feats)

Tier 2 Wilder (unlike a psion no bonus feats and less powers available)

Tier 3 Everything else

Most full manifester classes can become tier 3 (if they don't start there or higher) simply because they can expand their Power list through feats and, unlike magic, most of the best powers are low level powers (which you then augment to high level effects).

Don't be fooled though, a mage (or a sorcerer) will probably have more spells than you have powers, but your powers are often better than their spells.

They'll also have more specific situation spells while you'll get swiss army knife powers.

for example:

A mage gets access to every possible summon spells

A manifester gets astral construct, which is a ''make your own summon'' power. By the way, getting astral construct + the boost construct feat makes you a tier 3 class as long as you have a reasonable amount of PP (psychic warrior, for example, is better off improving his fighting skills).
It's that versatile.

but

A mage gets way more spellslots than a psion's equivalent in casting power. For example, a level 20 psion (around 400 PP) can cast a 20 point power 20 times a day (assuming a low bonus to INT)

But a mage gets a ton of spells of every level, far more than 20. There are ways to increase, or recover, your PP reserve but those need DM approval. Generally this scales in a similar fashion at every level.

A mage's spell altering feats are also, generally, better since you don't use the psionic focus mechanic.

As for a familiar compared to a psicrystal, the crystal should be much better assuming your DM rules it obtains feats.

An erudite also gets a weird special ability which is basically: turn a spell into a power. Depending on your DM , it can easily become completely broken.

A final note, psionic gish classes benefit from psionic powers far more than their arcane counterpart. Generally speaking, psionic buffs and utility powers are insanely good for melee classes.

[sonofzeal]

- Psi Powers are usually inferior to Spells, but more flexible. You get less of them though, so they have to be.

- Psi is arguably better at blasting, summoning, Charm/Dominate, and enhancing someone's physical attributes. In return, it stinks at healing, necromancy, and illusions.

- Psi has way better action economy manipulation than arcane magic. In return, it's categorically inferior at metamagic; layering two metapsi effects on the same power is very difficult, and layering three is practically impossible.



PSION - flavoured like Wizards, but the mechanic is more like Sorcerers. All Psions must specialize though, and the specialization makes a huge difference. Most of the best powers are restricted to specialists in the particular fields, and to those who blew feats just to access them. Still, the result is very much like a Sorcerer who selected Spells Known based on a theme.

WILDER - a pitiful number of Powers Known, coupled with a medium BAB chassis with better HD and skills, means Wilders play like something between a Warmage and a Bard. Their Overchannel ability means they tend to rely on one big power to dominate a fight, but rarely have the flexibility to solve a variety of problems with magic the way a Sorcerer or Psion can, let alone a Wizard.

PSYCHIC WARRIOR - one of my favorite classes. Less bonus feats, BAB, and hp than a Fighter... but you get psi powers to make up for it, and past the first few levels that's a pretty darn good trade. Just about everything the Fighter wishes he could do, the PsiWar gets to do. The only limit is pp/day; you'd better darn well have a good Wisdom, because otherwise you have to be exceedingly careful about rationing your power. It's a good dynamic though, and probably the best implementation I've seen of a magically-powered warrior type.

[Rejusu]

Don't get caught up in any of the stigma surrounding psionics. The fact you've decided to include them in your game means that you're at least not making a rookie DM mistake (fearing the unknown) unlike your last DM. Psionics is much more well balanced than Arcane or Divine casting and is an excellent system to add to a game.

As has already been mentioned a common misconception is that a Psion can just burn all their points on super powering their powers. While it's true that they can augment their powers by pumping points into them there's a hard cap (manifester level) on how high they can take it. Interestingly enough the augment mechanic makes them weaker in one sense than arcane/divine casters. Essentially a caster gets upgrades to their spells for free where as a psion has to pay for theirs. A wizards fireball damage increases with their level while still taking up a third level spell slot. A comparable Psion power though needs to be augmented to achieve the same damage increase.

Also to echo SonOfZeal Psychic Warrior is an awesome class, it's a tailor made gish.

Here are my main three pieces of advice though:

1) Learn what Psionics CAN'T do. This may sound counter intuitive, but sometimes it's better to gauge a system by what can't be done rather than what can. Something that may sound overpowered if you hear what it's capable of may actually then sound underpowered if you learn what the restrictions are. As an example it sounds powerful that Psions can spend more points to boost a power but learning it's capped by manifester level and that they don't get as many free upgrades to their powers as wizards do to their spells makes it sound balanced. Similarly the psionic focus mechanic acting as a hard cap on metapsionics is another example of this.

2) Set out from the start what level of transparency you're going to be using. Are magic and psionics different or the same? The former can be more interesting but the latter is simpler and much easier to manage. By treating magic as psionics and psionics as magic it makes things a lot easier to manage. At it's core this means stuff like dispel psionics also dispels magic and vice versa as well as anti-magic fields affecting psionics. Of course you need to make a judgement call on where to draw the line, but as long as your players don't try and apply metamagic feats to psionic powers or treat their manifester level as a caster level you'll be fine.

3) If any of your players tries to play a Soulknife (doesn't count if they're just dipping 2 levels for Soulbow) give them the Pathfinder version to play instead. The 3.5 Soulknife is broken, and not broken in an overpowered way but rather broken in that it's a mechanically bad class. The PF Soulknife fixes the majority of these problems and puts it on the same level as a Barbarian or Rogue. As it is though I'd rather play a Monk, Fighter, or Paladin over it.

[Terazul]

Well some things to keep in mind. Immunity to mind affecting can screw you over if you are not careful (even powers that have nothing to do with brain bending can be thwarted).

That is... patently false :smallconfused: If it doesn't have the Mind-Affecting descriptor, it's not beaten by Immunity to Mind Effects. Being undead might save you from a Mind Thrust, but not an Energy Ray.

[OracleofSilence]

That is... patently false If it doesn't have the Mind-Affecting descriptor, it's not beaten by Immunity to Mind Effects. Being undead might save you from a Mind Thrust, but not an Energy Ray.

I did not say that it effects everything, just a lot of psionics. As a result, while it is true that Energy Ray does work (it is not mind effecting), a lot of other powers, such as Ultrablast (a strict blasting spell, loosely connected to telepathy), are totally screwed. My point was that you need to be careful to avoid having to many spells that can be invalidated this way.

[Terazul]

I did not say that it effects everything, just a lot of psionics. As a result, while it is true that Energy Ray does work (it is not mind effecting), a lot of other powers, such as Ultrablast (a strict blasting spell, loosely connected to telepathy), are totally screwed. My point was that you need to be careful to avoid having to many spells that can be invalidated this way.

:smallconfused:

Ultrablast
Telepathy [Mind-Affecting]

I mean, I get what you're saying, but I'm pointing out (mostly for clarification for those unfamiliar with psionics) that this is less of a psionics thing, and more of a general thing; If you were a wizard you'd want to avoid too many mind-affecting enchantment spells. It doesn't affect "alot" of psionics, it affects basically just the Telepathy school. Which happens to have a "blast" power or two that happen to be punching the opponent in the brain, in addition to the more iconic mind control stuff. Your initial statement was kind of ambiguous.

[Draz74]

It seems relevant here to mention Ernir's Translation (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=194002) of Arcane and Divine Magic to work on psionics mechanics.