Jade Phoenix Mage - Psionic conversion?

[SilverLeaf167]

See the title.

Changing the prerequisites and caster level progression of the class is easy enough, and so is replacing the class features' expended spell slots with expended power points. However, I ran into a little dilemma I'm not sure how to answer:

Is a boost to manifester level as strong as an equal boost to caster level?

For example, the Firebird Stance class feature increases your caster level for fire spells by 3. For a normal caster, that's a free, flat bonus, typically 3d6 damage or so in addition to duration. For a manifester, however, it's basically just permission to spend more power points from your own finite pool, only increasing duration and such if you don't. On the other hand, a manifester is capable of using this boost to apply metapsionic feats; he still has to spend his own power points though.

What do you think? If it's a big enough problem to affect the classes' power, how would you fix it?

[limejuicepowder]

Personally, I would give the psionic classes the same benefit: effective +3 manifester level, without spending the PP (like wild surge). Only applies to powers with the fire descriptor, obviously.

[Psyren]

Just leave it as is, +3 ML. While you're correct that psions have to augment manually instead of auto-scaling, they also get additional benefits to a higher cap that spellcasters don't - including metapsionics as you mentioned, or just higher DCs.