Utterly Untapped Potential

[Zeruel]

I both love and hate when I find a sourcebook I had never heard of: I love it because I get to read plenty of original options and it opens up a brand new world of possibilities; I also hate it because the hype for the discovery is too often toned down by DMs that, not being familiar with the new material, won't bother to even give a look at it.

Exactly what happened when I found out of Untapped Potential: New Horizons in Psionics.

I was astonished by the amount of reliable material in it, from new classes and prcs to feats and powers' revisions, it almost puts Complete Psionics to shame, IMHO. Furthermore, it makes me mad to know that just because it is 3rd party material many people wouldn't even consider it while allowing Dragon Magazine and the likes, where half the content is plain broken and the other half is useless or close to be. :smallfurious:

So...

1. Has any of you ever read this supplement? What's your opinion about it?
2. Do you know any other text like this to be this much ignored while not deserving it?
3. Why is it so overlooked in any handbook or guide to psionic classes, beside being purposely designed around D&D 3.5 psionic sourcebooks, not just generic d20 System (it even as an errata for rebuilding lost psicrystals, overlooked in both XPH and CP)?

Thanks in advance for going through my whining :smallbiggrin:

[Ssalarn]

Untapped Potential is one of the products that really made Dreamscarred Press a known quantity in the 3pp RPG world, and it's a solid offering. Dreamscarred has since gone on to update psionics for use with Pathfinder, with the amazing Ultimate Psionics (http://paizo.com/products/btpy91t5/discuss?Ultimate-Psionics), a massive book with all the psionics from the XPH plus Untapped Potential and some other original options, updated and refined for use with Pathfinder.

3pp products had a rough run in the 3.x era of D&D; quality varied wildly from company to company, and the companies that owned Dungeons and Dragons over the years were actively against most 3pp activity as they saw it as a threat to their own product lines. More recently however, 3pp accountability has gone up quite a bit, with companies like OBS (DriveThruRPG and its affiliates), Paizo, and Endzeitgeist.com creating databases where you can easily look at reviews of existing products and see whether or not they might be good fits for your campaign. With 3pp accountability enforcing more strenuous quality controls, the average quality of 3pp materials has also gone up quite a bit in recent years, so I've personally found that a lot more people are open to its use.

[Zeruel]

Untapped Potential is one of the products that really made Dreamscarred Press a known quantity in the 3pp RPG world, and it's a solid offering. Dreamscarred has since gone on to update psionics for use with Pathfinder, with the amazing Ultimate Psionics (http://paizo.com/products/btpy91t5/discuss?Ultimate-Psionics), a massive book with all the psionics from the XPH plus Untapped Potential and some other original options, updated and refined for use with Pathfinder.

3pp products had a rough run in the 3.x era of D&D; quality varied wildly from company to company, and the companies that owned Dungeons and Dragons over the years were actively against most 3pp activity as they saw it as a threat to their own product lines. More recently however, 3pp accountability has gone up quite a bit, with companies like OBS (DriveThruRPG and its affiliates), Paizo, and Endzeitgeist.com creating databases where you can easily look at reviews of existing products and see whether or not they might be good fits for your campaign. With 3pp accountability enforcing more strenuous quality controls, the average quality of 3pp materials has also gone up quite a bit in recent years, so I've personally found that a lot more people are open to its use.

I actually really felt the quality of the product while reading UP, so it's only fair that Dreamscarred Press earned a place in the industry of RPGs. The background info you provided where interesting too, I can tell you are an expert, thank you.

It's a shame 3.5 Edition is not supported anymore, 3rd party sources would still be made for it and this would have made theme more visible to the masses, making them more likely to be considered. How sad, there would be at least thrice the material available...

[Psyren]

It's not that hard to port the PF stuff back to 3.5 if it's more third-party material you want. Generally though, I find it easier to go the other direction - play in PF and bring in the 3.5 stuff you want.

Anyway, as Ssalarn said, Untapped Potential was an early DSP work back in their 3.5 days, and pretty much everything in it was refined and added to Ultimate Psionics for PF.

[Zeruel]

It's not that hard to port the PF stuff back to 3.5 if it's more third-party material you want. Generally though, I find it easier to go the other direction - play in PF and bring in the 3.5 stuff you want.

Yeah, I'd personally do that in my group, but I won't have occasion to be the DM, not anytime soon, and other potential ones are like "3.5 is not Pathfinder bla bla bla" ecc., but this is more because they are so lactose intollerant and afraid of abuses that they only allow boring options impossible to exploit, the amount of available resources is pretty discouraging. Though they rarely add exceptions, these are too few to be enjoyable...