Psychic Chirurgery

[Seak]

I've been reading about the telepath power Psychic Chirurgery (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/psychicChirurgery.htm) and it appears to be very powerful. I'd like to suggest a couple possible hypothetical scenarios to make sure I understand this power correctly.

Scenario 1:
Me, a psion, and my wizard buddy each reach level 17 and buddy wants to make some shiny magic items
1) Buddy high fives a wight and willingly fails his save against the negative level. This sets him to 300,000 experience points.
2) He crafts 40,000 experience worth of goodies.
3) I Psychic Chirurgery's Repair Psychic damage on him, bringing him back up to level 17.
4) Repeat.

Scenario 2:
Me and another psion, Shapey, reach level 18 playing a telepath and shaper respectively. We want access to eachothers discipline powers.
1) We go hug a wight, willingly losing a level.
2) I use Psychic Chirurgery to Transfer Knowledge of Psychic Chirurgery to Shapey and we start tossing powers back and forth.
3) Once the xp well runs dry, manifest Psychic Chirurgery to refill.
4) Repeat.

The import part of Psychic Chirurgery that lets this work is that it specifical restores the subject to the highest level it had previously attained. Is there a reason RAW that this doesn't allow an experience factory without Thought Bottle?

[ATalsen]

I've been reading about the telepath power Psychic Chirurgery (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/psychicChirurgery.htm) and it appears to be very powerful. I'd like to suggest a couple possible hypothetical scenarios to make sure I understand this power correctly.

Your link is to a 3.5 resource, so I'm going to assume you want answers based on 3.5 (and not Pathfinder).

First let me say "Its not supposed to work that way, and I'm not in favor of it working that way." But you asked for RAW, so that's what I'll provide.



Scenario 1:
Me, a psion, and my wizard buddy each reach level 17 and buddy wants to make some shiny magic items
1) Buddy high fives a wight and willingly fails his save against the negative level. This sets him to 300,000 experience points.
2) He crafts 40,000 experience worth of goodies.
3) I Psychic Chirurgery's Repair Psychic damage on him, bringing him back up to level 17.
4) Repeat.


In 3.5 when you gain a negative level you get a bunch of penalties, but no actual level loss until 24 hours later.

I'm going to assume in #1 that you have allowed 24 hours to pass, and have actually lost the level.

With 40K in GP crafting, I'm going to assume that it takes more than 17 hours to finish crafting, which is your window for restoring the wizard's actual lost level:
"Also, you can restore levels lost to energy drain or a similar effect if the level drain occurred within a number of hours equal to your manifester level."

So, if you cannot defeat the time limit, then no, this will definitely not work.



Scenario 2:
Me and another psion, Shapey, reach level 18 playing a telepath and shaper respectively. We want access to eachothers discipline powers.
1) We go hug a wight, willingly losing a level.
2) I use Psychic Chirurgery to Transfer Knowledge of Psychic Chirurgery to Shapey and we start tossing powers back and forth.
3) Once the xp well runs dry, manifest Psychic Chirurgery to refill.
4) Repeat.


Same as above, but in this case with a manifesting time of only 10 minutes, the time limit is unlikely to be an issue.

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I have not done the research, but I think in 3.5 when you lose a level you are dropped to exactly what you need for the previous level. I also see that Restoration brings the target to "exactly the minimum number of experience points necessary to restore him or her to his or her previous level".

Since Psychic Chirurgery doesn't specify anything other than getting the target back to the level, not XP, it looks to work the same way - restoring to minimum needed.

Additionally, I don't think that you can craft items if it will drop your level, but I could be wrong about that.

This leads to 2 possibilities:
1) if you can't spend XP if it will drop your level, you cannot craft, nor provide powers.
2) If you CAN, you will drop *another* level (to 15th), and when Psychic Chirurgery restores your ONE level lost, that won't bring the wizard back to 17th, only to 16th.

And to forestall argument on "restoring it to the highest level it had previously attained" clause, I will point out that that clause is only to deal with removing current Negative Levels, and NOT part of the 2nd sentence on recovering from actual lost levels.

[Venger]

for scenario 1, as mentioned, in order for it to convert to real level loss, he'd need to wait at least 24 hours. assuming you can get your manifester level high enough for it to be in the 1 hr/lvl window (many ways exist) I assume he'll be doing his crafting in a fast time plane so he can get back to you in time, this will work.

the same proviso applies for scenario 2. the basic question isn't meaningfully different.



I have not done the research, but I think in 3.5 when you lose a level you are dropped to exactly what you need for the previous level. I also see that Restoration brings the target to "exactly the minimum number of experience points necessary to restore him or her to his or her previous level".
If you're going to make an attempt to answer the question, do the research. It's available for free online.
You are wrong (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/specialAbilities.htm#levelLoss). When you lose a level, you're set to the midpoint, not the minimum.


Since Psychic Chirurgery doesn't specify anything other than getting the target back to the level, not XP, it looks to work the same way - restoring to minimum needed.
No information exists, so I'm inclined to agree with you on this point.



Additionally, I don't think that you can craft items if it will drop your level, but I could be wrong about that.
you are correct (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/feats.htm#itemCreationFeats#XPCost)

[Seak]

When you lose a level, you're set to the midpoint, not the minimum.
This is what I would be using to fuel the crafting. Unfortunately the time limit prevents most crafting, but this still leaves open the possibility using this power to fuel experience costly spells and powers. The only problem is that it leaves you at the beginning of your level, but if you're able to do this at the right time these consequences can be minimized. This seems like a great way for a group of psions to get access to all the discipline powers.