Day-by-day stamina/staying power for Sorcerer vs Psion

[Norin]

Hey,

Did anyone do a comparison between, or have experience with playing, the Psion and Sorcerer as far as how well they each perform in terms of "longevity" in day-to-day adventuring?

I'm curious as to how fast they run out of spell slots and power points.

As far as this question goes, I am not interested in PP recharge tricks, infinite sanctum celerity spellsurge loops and the like. Just an equal amount of encounters and situations where you must use your spells or powers.

Let's say both the Psion and the Sorcerer has the same stat (20?) in Int/Cha respectively.

[Vaz]

Sorcerer's I have found rarely run out of spell slots - more that they actually lose out by having so many spell slots, but not enough variation in spells to make that worth casting.

A Psion (or any psionic character) can afford to go hard or go home with its biggest spells as there are several PP recharge systems (Incarnum and Psionics go together like Strawberries and Cream). Even if you're not interested in them, they exist, and are easier to accomplish than a Sorcerer. Plus, a Sorcerer can achieve a similar result by traveling to a fast time plane (albeit, at ECL14, rather than ECL9).

Psionics also has the benefit of "autoscaling" spells - for example, they have Psionic Dominate, which at the appropriate level becomes Psionic Dominate Monster without the need for taking up another spell/power known, while a Sorcerer has to take Dominate, and Dominate Monster. Same with things like Metaphysical Weapon, etc. This means you have more appropriate powers to use.

[Lord Haart]

Without PP recharge, Sorcerer has bigger ammo reserves than Psion unless the later focuses entirely on utility powers that can't or don't need to be augmented, in which case it's about even. The reason is the augmentation system; Psions have to invest more PPs in their powers for them to scale with level, while Sorcerer's spells scale automatically without taking higher level slots.

A level 8 stupidfireballblaster psion with Int 18 (74 pp) can fire nine energy balls for 8 damage dice each, and he'll only have enough PP's for two greases or two oh-so-weak 1 damage dice (as if he was first level caster) energy rays. Alternatively, if the situation demanded ranged touch attacks, he could fire 18 ranged touch attacks for 4 damage dice each and have two greases remaining (or nine ranged touch attacks for 8 damage dice each).

A level 8 stupidfireballblaster sorcerer with Cha 18 can fire 10 fireballs for 8 damage dice each, and then have 7 first-level and 7 second-level spell slots unused; each of them could be used to cast Grease or to make a ranged touch attack (lesser orb of X) for 4 damage dice, if the situation demanded them (of course, if really necessary he could cannibalise his fireball slots too, for a total of 24 of 4-dice ranged touch attacks). On the other hand, he wouldn't be able to use these slots for 8-damage dice ranged touch attacks, since his scaling works differently.

Notice how i've only used the spells/powers that compare most easily (which led to sorcerer's suboptimal choice to use his 2th-level slots of 1st-level spells and 4th-level slots on 3rd-level fireballs), and how i've ignored Versatile Spellcaster for more possible fireballs. I'd like to compare summons vs astral constructs instead (as they are avaiable on each level), but the non-level-based difference between them would be more pronounced.

Of course, there are lots of problems with that comparison (some of them most certainly will be pointed by someone), but meh, the idea of "sorcerer's lower-level spells autoscale, if badly and with a cap; psion's lower level powers augment easily to higher-level standarts at the cost of eating as much resourses as higher-level powers would" is what's important.