Is it RAW to Hire a Manifester/Psionic NPC?

[Kevingway]

We can elicit the services of spellcasters thanks to the table on the PHB, but I'm not able to find anything that says we can also hire manifesters to manifest a psionic power for a (relatively small) price. Is there anything that might have stated in some way or another that it's possible to hire NPCs for these purposes outside of cohorts?

[Oracle_of_Void]

I see no reason why you can't use the same price/listing in the PHB for the psion. When you get down to it, psions and wizards do the same thing. Its just that psions didn't exist when the PHB when written, so they weren't included in the table. I would just replace the words wizard/spellcaster with psion/manifester and act like nothing else changed.

[Kevingway]

Right, but I always have a guilty conscious doing/allowing things like that if there isn't an explicit wording for it, or some other way of allowing an option for that specific system.

[malonkey1]

Right, but I always have a guilty conscious doing/allowing things like that if there isn't an explicit wording for it, or some other way of allowing an option for that specific system.

Well, you could argue it applies via transparency rules. (Powers are basically spells, and manifesters are basically casters).

[Kevingway]

Possibly, though it's not explicitly stated. There's also wording that suggests that psi-like abilities work just likes powers or spells, and also that psi-like abilities are "magical" (all powers are considered psi-like abilities). That might be enough, but I'm not quite past the point of not quite thinking it's intentional.

[EisenKreutzer]

To be honest, I think the only time you should be worried about RAW is when doing theoretical builds and other experiments that are never supposed to see actual game play.

Most of the time you should be following RAI as judged by the GM and the consensus of your group.

Allowing someone to hire a psion or someone who uses Incarnum is perfectly fine.

[Squark]

Incarnum might be tricky since there isn't a clear price for service. Psionic powers should be fine, though (Effective Spell level=[Power Points+1]/2)

[Kevingway]

To be honest, I think the only time you should be worried about RAW is when doing theoretical builds and other experiments that are never supposed to see actual game play.

Most of the time you should be following RAI as judged by the GM and the consensus of your group.

Allowing someone to hire a psion or someone who uses Incarnum is perfectly fine.

I agree, and that's actually the mindset in how the game was designed; however, it just gives me peace of mind to know that something that can have any huge effect on my later playing is actually rules-legal. For this purpose, it's universal item creation.

[Chronos]

You can clearly hire them for some price or another: It would be an absurd world where every psion you asked "Can I pay you to use your abilities" said no (unless the class had some Vow of Poverty-like restrictions, but it doesn't). So then it's just a matter of figuring out the price. The simplest assumption is that the price is the same as for spells, and there's no rule saying it's anything other than that, so just go with that.

The one potential complication would be augmentation. You should probably treat paying for an augmented power to be equivalent to paying for a higher-level spell.

[EisenKreutzer]

I agree, and that's actually the mindset in how the game was designed; however, it just gives me peace of mind to know that something that can have any huge effect on my later playing is actually rules-legal. For this purpose, it's universal item creation.

Honestly, using RAW leads to much more broken awfulness and problems than RAI. It's a myth that following RAW leads to fair games, RAw breaks D&D over it's knee and stomps on the remains more often than not.

[Curmudgeon]

Honestly, using RAW leads to much more broken awfulness and problems than RAI.
I disagree. Your "rules as intended" may be my "what exactly do you think the designers were smoking?": we can't do more than guess at what the designers intended (and our guesses may vary wildly), but we can know what they wrote. After examining the RAW we can decide on house rules to address problems, and then start playing. It's contentious and extremely dissatisfying to build and play a character based on the known rules, only to find out later that the character is ineffective because the DM has decided (when a particular part of the rules is encountered for the first time) to change things based on some vague premise about knowing what the designers intended. RAW is determined. RAI is ever-changing as new parts of the rules come up. :smallfurious:

[EisenKreutzer]

I disagree. Your "rules as intended" may be my "what exactly do you think the designers were smoking?": we can't do more than guess at what the designers intended (and our guesses may vary wildly), but we can know what they wrote. After examining the RAW we can decide on house rules to address problems, and then start playing. It's contentious and extremely dissatisfying to build and play a character based on the known rules, only to find out later that the character is ineffective because the DM has decided (when a particular part of the rules is encountered for the first time) to change things based on some vague premise about knowing what the designers intended. RAW is determined. RAI is ever-changing as new parts of the rules come up. :smallfurious:

Couldn't disagree more. RAW is so dependent on technicalities and wide open to ridiculous builds and cheese that it's not even funny. Any game that allows strict RAW interpretations, often based on ambiguity and poor wording by the designers, is bound to end up mired in absolutely awful rules interactions and cheesy exploitation of technicalities and twisted logic.

RAW may be definitive as far as allowed interpretation goes, but it produces bad games. RAI, while more depended on on-the-spot rulings, is much more satisfying because it moves the game away from the monster it has become because of RAW-exploiting builds and cheap tricks, and towards common sense and the game the designers had in mind when they wrote their flawed system.

In short, RAW is a terrible way to play.

[icefractal]

I don't so much go "RAI", as I go "the game designers weren't perfect, I'm not going to treat what they wrote as unimpeachable". Like for example, drown healing - I don't disallow that because it's not RAI, I disallow it because it's stupid.

I don't think it's possible to play fully RAW for any group that fully comprehends the RAW, because doing that means you achieve NI power at 1st level (as does everyone else), and the game turns into some kind of philosophical exercise. You're always going to at least be removing the NI-loops if you want to play a functional game.