Changing the PF Psion to Charisma based

[Feint's End]

As the title says. What would you change in order to make it reasonably balanced? I want to keep the powerprogression and powerlist so I think the most reasonable way would be to increase skillpoints to 4+int modifier and changing the skilllist a little? Any thoughts?

Link (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/psionics-unleashed/classes/psion) for those who don't want to go and look for it.

[137beth]

Increasing skill points to 4/level (or maybe 5/level?) is probably enough. It will be better at diplomacy but worse at knowledge. Realistically, skill points are not a huge part of a psion's power.

[Feint's End]

Increasing skill points to 4/level (or maybe 5/level?) is probably enough. It will be better at diplomacy but worse at knowledge. Realistically, skill points are not a huge part of a psion's power.

They probably aren't but nonetheless the part which needs the most rebalancing I think.

[Eldest]

I gotta ask, why are you doing this and why not use the wilder?

[Terazul]

I gotta ask, why are you doing this and why not use the wilder?


As the title says. What would you change in order to make it reasonably balanced? I want to keep the powerprogression and powerlist so I think the most reasonable way would be to increase skillpoints to 4+int modifier and changing the skilllist a little? Any thoughts?


That would probably be why, is my guess. Student Surge + Elan or Human favored bonus makes up for the lack of powers, you still end up a fair bit behind (20 powers over 20 levels vs 36 for the Psion, plus a level behind in progression), though with surge yours end up a fair bit stronger overall. You miss out on discipline powers, but you can pick a few up with your bonus Expanded Knowledges.

[Feint's End]

I gotta ask, why are you doing this and why not use the wilder?

Because Wilder have a distinctive different flavour and playstyle. I want to have an allrounder with the mainfocus on manifesting but was wondering if it would be possible to make a reasonable transcription to charisma since it fits the character I have in mind better than intelligence based. Basically I want to make a nomad psion powerwise but charisma just sits better with the character.

Wilder do not have disciplines and lack the broader focus a psion can achieve. They have very few things they usually are good at ... mainly blasting and gishing. Even with humans and Elans favoured class boni (one of which I actively avoid to play) and educated wilder you get some more options but you are still extremely limited in flexibility compared to the psion.

Discipline Abilites are a big one for me since I plan on taking fast step at level 3 so I can do teleportations as a moveaction to give me even more mobility.

[Ssalarn]

You know, this is actually something James Jacobs wanted to do for Pathfinder but didn't get to. He'd originally hoped to tie each mental stat to a particular power source, so that INT = Arcane, WIS = Divine, and CHA = Psionics.

Unfortunately, PF decided to backburner psionics indefinitely (and have since said if they do it they'll probably call it something else), and their restraints as regarded following the OGL meant they were already breaking that structure right out of the gate.

[Feint's End]

You know, this is actually something James Jacobs wanted to do for Pathfinder but didn't get to. He'd originally hoped to tie each mental stat to a particular power source, so that INT = Arcane, WIS = Divine, and CHA = Psionics.

Unfortunately, PF decided to backburner psionics indefinitely (and have since said if they do it they'll probably call it something else), and their restraints as regarded following the OGL meant they were already breaking that structure right out of the gate.

Really? That's interesting news. I'm not sure if that would have been a good thing though. Would have limited the characterconcepts you could realise.

Well I'm not sure if I would call it unfortunate that they backburned psionics. I mean think about it. We recently got Ultimate Psionics which is about as good as it gets with Psionic Material. Not sure it would have been better or even coming close to what it is if Paizo would have designed it.

edit: I just though about it again and it would have one advantage. It would have brought more attention towards psionic and brought it to equal heights with arcane and divine spellcasting. There are sadly still a lot of people and groups out there who have misconceptions about how psionics work and how to flavour the system.

[Elderand]

edit: I just though about it again and it would have one advantage. It would have brought more attention towards psionic and brought it to equal heights with arcane and divine spellcasting. There are sadly still a lot of people and groups out there who have misconceptions about how psionics work and how to flavour the system.

Wotc's psionic wasn't third party and that didn't prevent anyone from having knee jerk reactions towards it. Just because it's official doesn't mean it's going to be accepted.

[Ssalarn]

Wotc's psionic wasn't third party and that didn't prevent anyone from having knee jerk reactions towards it. Just because it's official doesn't mean it's going to be accepted.

True dat.

I talked to Erik Mona a while back and he was saying that if/when Paizo does Psionics they're probably going to go a very different direction with it than the type of psionics done by 3.5 and DSP, starting with the fact that they probably won't call it psionics and they probably won't use a point-based system. I got the impression that there's a very definite idea of what they want to do, the time to do it just hasn't been right.