What is the Most Powerful Psionic School?

[Breitheamh]

As the thread title; what is it? I've heard it said that evocation and enchantment are the least useful of the magic schools. Does that make their rough equivalents of Psychokinesis and Telepathy the least useful psionic schools? Psychoportation seems like it's all mobility (except for psionic disintegrate; seriously, why is that psychoportation?:smallconfused:), which is crucial, but Psychometabolism is all buffs (plus the psionic equivalent of polymorph chain, metamorphosis), which are just as important. Metacreativity seems to have an ok mix of important stuff, plus the astral construct, which seems like the rough equivalent of the summon monster line of spells. Clairsentience is essentially Divination. So what's the best?

[Psyren]

Psychometabolism is probably the most all-round-useful, since no matter what sort of trouble you get into there's probably a way to alter your body to get out of it, either to overcome your obstacle or help you evade it. This goes double for psionics since Metamorphic Transfer gets you the supernatural abilities of your chosen creatures far earlier than magic does. And if you're stuck on a featureless desert island or something, Psychometabolism can help you go without food, water, shelter, and even air.

Metacreativity meanwhile isn't quite as useful as Conjuration; Astral Constructs are great beatsticks, but they lack the breadth of abilities and roles that traditional summons can fill.

[Rubik]

As the thread title; what is it? I've heard it said that evocation and enchantment are the least useful of the magic schools. Does that make their rough equivalents of Psychokinesis and Telepathy the least useful psionic schools? Psychoportation seems like it's all mobility (except for psionic disintegrate; seriously, why is that psychoportation?:smallconfused:), which is crucial, but Psychometabolism is all buffs (plus the psionic equivalent of polymorph chain, metamorphosis), which are just as important. Metacreativity seems to have an ok mix of important stuff, plus the astral construct, which seems like the rough equivalent of the summon monster line of spells. Clairsentience is essentially Divination. So what's the best?Metacreativity is the best overall; it's almost impossible to avoid being useful with a bit of thought, even if that's the only discipline you take.

After that, psychometabolism is incredibly useful and powerful, just with Metamorphosis. The only problem is that most of the psychometabolism discipline powers aren't very good, but Metamorphosis, Fusion, Fission, and Greater Metamorphosis make up for most of that.

I'd say psychoportation as a restricted discipline is very weak, since most everything you'd want (and more) is on the general list. Otherwise, it's plenty good, with long-distance teleportation, time manipulation, and more.

Telepathy is quite useful, since most enemies that are immune to it aren't immune to the tarrasque or planetar you just Dispelled and Dominated. Schism is also very nice.

Psychokinesis is better for blasting than evocation due to energy swapping, and several of the non-blasty applications are nice, but they aren't quite as good as the non-blasty evocation spells. (And there are nowhere near as many of them.) With augmentation, you only need two or three energy-based blasty powers, so it's really easy to OD on them if you're not thinking hard.

Clairsentience, like divination, is a great secondary discipline/school. In several ways, it's even better than divination. Luckily, specializing in clairsentience doesn't mean you're restricted on your "normal" psion list, and it's got some amazing powers, such as Clairvoyant Sense.

[Nich_Critic]

This is kind of a tangent to the actual topic, but the discussion doesn't matter as much for a Psion as it does for a wizard, since you aren't talking about removing schools, you're talking about gaining access to one school. In that way, it's more like cleric domains. While domains impart significant power and flavour to a cleric, you can be roughly as strong with ANY domains. The base psion list can cover the bases of whatever schools you don't have, and you can use a feat to "dip" a school if you're really torn up about not being able to metamorphose or something.

That said, Telepathy and Kinesis seem worst, the former because of enchantment's mindblank/immunity problem, and the latter because it seems to provide too many versions of the same thing. Both have some nice things, but it might be better to just take the cool thing you want with a feat and to pick a school with more variety.

[AmberVael]

From what I've seen, the differences in power between psionic disciplines is far less clear cut than their magical analogues. It is also far less important given the mechanics of psionics and the presence of the Expanded Knowledge feat.

Mostly what it comes down to is not the discipline overall, but the differences between the different psion options, because that is where it actually matters.

I would probably rank them (roughly) something like this, at least in regards to the psion variants:

1) Egoist (Psychometabolism)
2) Shaper (Metacreativity)
3) Seer (Clairsentience)
4) Nomad (Psychoportation)
5) Telepath (Telepathy)
6) Kineticist (Psychokinesis)


Egoist, Shaper, and Seer are all pretty close together though, I'd say. Egoist just has the powerhouse powers- Metamorphosis- while Shaper has a few really good picks, and Seer just has a ton of awesome exclusive options (Hypercognition is terrific).

Nomad and Telepath are a bit behind not due to any real lack on their part so much as to outside circumstances. Nomad is a bit redundant with the main list, while Telepath struggles with mind-affecting. Still, both have plenty of good options to them (Schism is a telepath power that every psionic character should have).

Kineticist is largely blasting. Due to how the "Energy" powers work, it actually isn't half bad, but it just doesn't have the options to compare with the others. If you want to blast, you can do it without kineticist and be fine. The real hits of Kineticist are the non-damage powers.

[Rubik]

My biggest problem with egoist is that you don't get your signature power until level 7, with Metamorphosis.

Shaper can get two of his at level 1.

[AmberVael]

My biggest problem with egoist is that you don't get your signature power until level 7, with Metamorphosis.

Shaper can get two of his at level 1.

Yeah, that's why my favorite is Seer- it just gets fun stuff pretty early on.

[sleepyphoenixx]

Pretty much every psionic school except psychokinesis and psychoportation has it's gems that are worth a feat.
Psychoportation and Psychokinesis lack behind not because their powers suck but because they don't really give you anything you don't already get from the general list.

Telepaths suffer a little from Immunity but it's hardly an insurmountable problem (since they have the general powers) and when their powers work they are usually devastating. Also, campaigns where you come up against nothing but mind-immune enemies are pretty rare.

Clairsentience and Metacreativity are probably the best picks as disciplines since they have the highest density of useful powers. Most of the others you can pick up via Expanded Knowledge unless getting them 2 levels later is dealbreaker.

[Breitheamh]

So the general consensus seems to be that, similar to spells, mind-affecting things and blasty stuff are down at the bottom, while the other stuff vies for position at the top. Thanks. Now to ask a question that bugs me even more but is extremely singular: seriously, can anybody tell me why Psionic Disintegrate is considered part of the Psychoportation school? I could see it being Psychokinesis or Psychometabolism easily, or maybe even Metacreativity, but Psychoportation? Really?

[Rubik]

So the general consensus seems to be that, similar to spells, mind-affecting things and blasty stuff are down at the bottom, while the other stuff vies for position at the top. Thanks. Now to ask a question that bugs me even more but is extremely singular: seriously, can anybody tell me why Psionic Disintegrate is considered part of the Psychoportation school? I could see it being Psychokinesis or Psychometabolism easily, or maybe even Metacreativity, but Psychoportation? Really?It scatters the atoms of the thing you hit.

It's blockable by Dimensional Anchor and Dimension Lock, but it works against a number of things that are immune to Transmutation.

[mangosta71]

Telepathy may be fairly weak as psionic schools go, but it's my personal favorite because it's just so fitting to have a psychic character that focuses on jacking with people's brains. The other schools seem more like standard magic to me.

But then, I either remove things like Mind Blank entirely or just have them apply spell/power resistance instead of giving the affected creatures outright immunity, simply because having a single spell/power that completely negates entire schools of magic/psionics is stupid.

[Particle_Man]

If you think the schools are close, you could always see which class skills you favour:

Seer (Clairsentience)
Gather Information (Cha), Listen (Wis), and Spot (Wis).

Shaper (Metacreativity)
Bluff (Cha), Disguise (Cha), and Use Psionic Device* (Cha).

Kineticist (Psychokinesis)
Autohypnosis* (Wis), Disable Device (Dex), and Intimidate (Cha).

Egoist (Psychometabolism)
Autohypnosis* (Wis), Balance (Dex) and Heal (Wis).

Nomad (Psychoportation)
Climb (Str), Jump (Str), Ride (Dex), Survival (Wis), and Swim (Str).

Telepath (Telepathy)
Bluff (Cha), Diplomacy (Cha), Gather Information (Cha), and Sense Motive (Wis).

The Seer has a nice skill set, although autohypnosis ain't bad either.

Oddly, if you really like Astral Constructs, you can get a slight boost to one of their abilities (Energy Touch) if you are a Kineticist.

Personally, I like the Shaper the best. But I am an Astral Construct fan.

[icefractal]

Also keep in mind that you can grab a few powers with the Expanded Knowledge feat. For example, if you just want Astral Construct, you don't need to be a Shaper. If you just want Energy Missile, you don't need to be a Kineticist. And so forth.

Telepath is an interesting one because while many of the powers are just ok, and the breadth isn't great, it does have two of the best powers of all - Psychic Reformation and Dominate.

If you're using the Pathfinder version (Psionic Unearthed), then there are some changes that affect this. For one thing, all schools get an at-will power, of which Shapers have the best, by a gigantic margin (Minor Creation at will!). If you're starting at low level, you should probably be a Shaper. Also, both the two powers I mentioned above are even better (Psychic Ref. has no permanent cost, Mind Control has full duration for no extra cost), so that's something in favor of Telepath (or at least grabbing those two).

[Draz74]

Telepathy discipline is way better than Enchantment school, mostly due to three factors:

Schism
Thrallherd
the ability to still cherry-pick good powers from other disciplines with Expanded Knowledge


It's still not as powerful as psychocreativity or psychometabolism, of course (in that order IMO).

I consider psychoportation the weakest of the six.