xsinx
2012-09-07, 02:16 PM
Hey everyone,
I'm new to the forum as a member but I've been reading stuff on here since for a long time on a regular basis. I've been playing D&D since the dawn of AD&D so it's been a while... Well I took some long breaks, but anyways. I'm a 35 year old male from Quebec, Canada in the Montreal area.
So on to my question. I'm setting up a character for a 3.5 gestalt game with quite a bit of flexibility on the part of the DM in terms of rules. Without getting into the details, my toon is a slave Mul from Dark Sun which ended up at the helm of an experimental Silt ship that ended up with Spelljamming-like capabilities, allowing me to escape my life of slavery by going to another world (namely, Forgotten Realms).
I didn't like the different gladiator classes so I ended up with a Warblade and chose Psion (telepath) as my second class. The synergy can be pretty good and hey, a D12 psion that can wreck your face with melee when he's out of PPs is nothing to sneeze at.
On to the issue... While choosing my powers I really liked the Empathic Transfer (hostile) manifestation. The fact that it's balanced for a d4 character makes it pretty awesome and well, self-healing is always fun. The first version I saw of this spell is the one from XPH and let me tell you it's one of the most confusing spells I have ever had to ponder on. The newer version is clearer (from Complete Psionic), but a bit contradictory at the same time.
My main issue with it all is the fact that it's a telepathic power that deals with physical damage. The XPH description says "transfers pain"... the CP description says "transfers hurt". What is pain and what is hurt and how to they relate to physical wounds? I talked about it with my DM and his stance is that "pain" is mental only, so the spell allows me to ignore the pain and keep going even if my guts are hanging out but at the end of combat, I need to either get some real healing or let time do it's job, all while retaining those "temporary" hit points but eventually being subject to disease, infection, stay dogs wanting a bit off me, etc.
How do you picture this? Imagine I have 3 arrows in the back and cast this on a foe.... Do the arrows fall on the ground and arrow wounds appear on the foe? Do I retain the arrows and just ignore them, transferring only mental pain to the foe (and eventually killing him from a heart attack if he goes bellow 0)?
It's a pretty confusing spell! I won't even go into the second augment for the first version of this spell that doesn't even specify how it affects the creatures. I've read interpretation of this spell dealing damage to all creatures but only transferring the spell amount to me.. I've read about spreading it around. I even read about people who thought it was the healing that was AoE, allowing me to damage a creature for 50 hp and heal me and my friends my 50 hp each. Heck, reading the description, it could even heal all creatures, damage all creatures, or both. The revision of it is a lot more clearer, but the 50% damage nerf is pretty harsh (goes from slightly overpowered to slightly underpowered IMHO).
So yeah, I'd just like opinions on it all, food for thought mostly. I'm not sure I'm at ease with any of the versions I gathered (XPH, vs CP vs my DM's).
TLDR: What is pain in a telepathic context and how does it relate to HPs and physical wounds?
I'm new to the forum as a member but I've been reading stuff on here since for a long time on a regular basis. I've been playing D&D since the dawn of AD&D so it's been a while... Well I took some long breaks, but anyways. I'm a 35 year old male from Quebec, Canada in the Montreal area.
So on to my question. I'm setting up a character for a 3.5 gestalt game with quite a bit of flexibility on the part of the DM in terms of rules. Without getting into the details, my toon is a slave Mul from Dark Sun which ended up at the helm of an experimental Silt ship that ended up with Spelljamming-like capabilities, allowing me to escape my life of slavery by going to another world (namely, Forgotten Realms).
I didn't like the different gladiator classes so I ended up with a Warblade and chose Psion (telepath) as my second class. The synergy can be pretty good and hey, a D12 psion that can wreck your face with melee when he's out of PPs is nothing to sneeze at.
On to the issue... While choosing my powers I really liked the Empathic Transfer (hostile) manifestation. The fact that it's balanced for a d4 character makes it pretty awesome and well, self-healing is always fun. The first version I saw of this spell is the one from XPH and let me tell you it's one of the most confusing spells I have ever had to ponder on. The newer version is clearer (from Complete Psionic), but a bit contradictory at the same time.
My main issue with it all is the fact that it's a telepathic power that deals with physical damage. The XPH description says "transfers pain"... the CP description says "transfers hurt". What is pain and what is hurt and how to they relate to physical wounds? I talked about it with my DM and his stance is that "pain" is mental only, so the spell allows me to ignore the pain and keep going even if my guts are hanging out but at the end of combat, I need to either get some real healing or let time do it's job, all while retaining those "temporary" hit points but eventually being subject to disease, infection, stay dogs wanting a bit off me, etc.
How do you picture this? Imagine I have 3 arrows in the back and cast this on a foe.... Do the arrows fall on the ground and arrow wounds appear on the foe? Do I retain the arrows and just ignore them, transferring only mental pain to the foe (and eventually killing him from a heart attack if he goes bellow 0)?
It's a pretty confusing spell! I won't even go into the second augment for the first version of this spell that doesn't even specify how it affects the creatures. I've read interpretation of this spell dealing damage to all creatures but only transferring the spell amount to me.. I've read about spreading it around. I even read about people who thought it was the healing that was AoE, allowing me to damage a creature for 50 hp and heal me and my friends my 50 hp each. Heck, reading the description, it could even heal all creatures, damage all creatures, or both. The revision of it is a lot more clearer, but the 50% damage nerf is pretty harsh (goes from slightly overpowered to slightly underpowered IMHO).
So yeah, I'd just like opinions on it all, food for thought mostly. I'm not sure I'm at ease with any of the versions I gathered (XPH, vs CP vs my DM's).
TLDR: What is pain in a telepathic context and how does it relate to HPs and physical wounds?