Dominant Mantle ACF

[Warlawk]

ACF found online here. (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20070629a)


Dominant Ideal

An ardent develops her power by embracing philosophical concepts, with her two primary mantles serving as the core of her beliefs, and the secondary mantles providing peripheral views of the world. For some, one specific ideal outshines even its primary companion, and secondary considerations are little more than a distracting shadow of doubt. If you want to make a single mantle the focus of your ardent, selecting the dominant ideal alternative class feature allows you to use its powers more effectively. In exchange for this stronger focus, you must give up access to a new psionic mantle, reducing your overall power selection.

Replaces: If you select this class feature, you do not assume an additional secondary psionic mantle at 10th level.

Benefit: At 10th level, you choose one of your primary mantles to become the dominant ideal in your philosophy, deepening your connection to this fundamental principle. You do not need to expend your psionic focus when applying metapsionic feats to powers you manifest from your chosen primary mantle, and the power point cost of augmenting or applying metapsionic feats to these idealized powers is reduced by 2 (to a minimum of 0). The reduction in cost applies only to the additional power points spent on augmentation or metapsionic feats; the power's normal power point cost is not reduced.

If you later decide to make the primary mantle for which you have selected this alternative class feature into a secondary mantle, you must also swap this feature, allocating it to one of your primary mantles.

Is the power point cost for Metapsionic feats reduced by 2 total, or by 2 for each feat applied (minimum 0 per feat). If I Extend and Empower an energy wall, is the metapsionic cost (2-2)0+(2-2)0=0 or is it (2+2)-2=2?

Either way is very good, just curious how people read this ability?

[MaxiDuRaritry]

The ACF makes no mention of "per metapsionic feat/augment" that I can see, so it's reduced by just 2.

Thing is, this ACF obliterates any sense of balance metapsionic feats had on the mantle's powers, as you no longer need to expend focus to apply meta feats to them. And since that and your ML cap to pp spent are the ONLY things in the rules keeping you from applying a metapsionic feat more than once or twice, that means that you can potentially apply any given metapsionic feat an infinite number of times if you drop its pp cost far enough (ie, to 0). Such as through the Metapower feat.

And no, there is no clause in psionics about not being able to apply metapsionic feats multiple times. It's there in every other metamagic-style casting feat in the game, but not in metapsionics. Obviously, this won't do much for Quicken or Maximize, but there are others that can grant nigh infinite benefits when applied to a mantle power.

[Warlawk]

The ACF makes no mention of "per metapsionic feat/augment" that I can see, so it's reduced by just 2.

Thing is, this ACF obliterates any sense of balance metapsionic feats had on the mantle's powers, as you no longer need to expend focus to apply meta feats to them. And since that and your ML cap to pp spent are the ONLY things in the rules keeping you from applying a metapsionic feat more than once or twice, that means that you can potentially apply any given metapsionic feat an infinite number of times if you drop its pp cost far enough (ie, to 0). Such as through the Metapower feat.

And no, there is no clause in psionics about not being able to apply metapsionic feats multiple times. It's there in every other metamagic-style casting feat in the game, but not in metapsionics. Obviously, this won't do much for Quicken or Maximize, but there are others that can grant nigh infinite benefits when applied to a mantle power.

Now that's just silly. I don't think you're wrong by any means, but I wouldn't ever want to play it that way. Being able to apply a couple of different metapsionics and reduce the overall cost by 2 is already crazy good.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Really, the ACF effectively drops the manifesting cost of a metapsionic'd power by 4+ pp, since expending your focus reduces the effective cost of every metapsionic feat by an effective 2 pp. Just convert metamagic feats to their equivalent metapsionic feats and you'll find that every single one of the latter costs 2 pp less than it should, BUT they require psionic focus, instead. But the ACF negates the need to expend focus, thereby negating that effective 2 pp cost. And that additional cost is waived for every single metapsionic feat you apply, on top of the flat -2 pp cost for augmentation.

So a power with no metapsionic feats added has its cost reduced by 2; a power with one metapsionic feat has that same 2 pp reduction, with one psionic focus that need not apply; a power with two metapsionic feats has that same 2 pp reduction, but it has two foci that don't need to be applied, and so on, thereby saving you a lot more of what a Vancian caster would term a spell level for each one.

So, is this better than all the metamagic cost mitigation out there, or what?