OSSR: Complete Psionic

[Kaelik]

1) So I have no idea where that comes from, but damn, Psions are the best. You spend the minimum PP to augment something to full ML, then you get to for free bring it to maximum because all psi-like abilities get to do.

2) Actually, you might really want the practical metamagic feat. You apply it to whatever swift action power you are going to use Link power with every single round. Bonus points if you can find one that can also be manifested as a standard action and cost 1 pp.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Psions and their bastard cousins Erudites is one of the reasons why I hate psionics so much.

Psions gain real ultimate power not from the publication of overpowered spells/powers (though Psions do have them), but because they jack the resource management system in the dickhole. Some psionic powers are linearly scaling in effect and some are exponentially scaling yet they all require a linear expenditure of power points.

If you disregard blatant fuckery like Psychic Reformation and Temporal Acceleration, psion powers are weak sisters compared to spells. But if you fiddle and metagame and run the numbers in Excel hard enough you end up with Real Ultimate Power.

[Rawbeard]

Bad math/design is a better reason than "psionics don't fit dnd/are unrealistic".

I totally forgot this terribad book. Never used anything from it, suprisingly.

[Koumei]

The best reason for excluding Psionics, however, is that it really sends fuckwad psion fanboys like Stormwind into tantrums. I can't recommend it enough.

[Username17]

The best reason for excluding Psionics, however, is that it really sends fuckwad psion fanboys like Stormwind into tantrums. I can't recommend it enough.

Didn't he try to make a "fallacy" for people who wouldn't let him play a Psionicist?

-Username17

[vagrant]

I love psionics. I just wish they (according to table and optimisation) either didn't suck or weren't overpowered. I could never get which, since apparently it had to do with how the GM saw things.

[Ancient History]

Ideally, I'd like to see a system where magic was a sort of quick, shorthand way to do accomplish an effect (with discrete, pre-calculated spells and rituals that you just spend your points on and fire off) and psionics was the crunchy build-your-own power for people that wanted to put the work in. Something like a crunchier system than Mage, but less variable than Shadowrun spellcasting. But that would require some careful balancing.

[CapnTthePirateG]

What you could do is have psi be quick effects that come from you while magic requires you to call a spirit or demon or whatever and have it perform the task.

[Stahlseele]

ok, somebody please tell me what this OSSR is supposed to mean, since i see it very often around here?

[...You Lost Me]

Old School Sourcebook Review

[Stahlseele]

Aaah, thank you very much!

[Slade]

Storm Disciple: You, um, shoot lightning. But it's psychic lightning.
You also lose a manifester level, so no one cares.!

You wish.

You don't shoot lightning (the picture is an exaggeration): instead you sword deals extra lightning damage.

At level 3 of the class: You are immune to magical and natural storms and their effects (all of them even rain).
Call Lightning? Immune.
A Druid Controls Weather to bring forth a tornado? It moves around you and nothing hits you.
Never need a umbrella again.

[Koumei]

If it specifies storms, it's even weirder than that: you could find your hair getting messed up by the light breeze and complain "This wouldn't fucking happen in a tornado" and you'd be right. You only need an umbrella in light rain, not in storms.

The best reason for excluding Psionics, however, is that it really sends fuckwad psion fanboys like Stormwind into tantrums. I can't recommend it enough.

Didn't he try to make a "fallacy" for people who wouldn't let him play a Psionicist?

He made the Stormwind Fallacy (which he later regretted being named after him), which is "Optimising a character does not lead to being a bad roleplayer. It does not logically follow. They're not mutually exclusive, but there's no causal link or correlation either."

And that's basically correct - it's just putting a name to a specific instance of some existing fallacy of some kind.

That said, his signature included a multi-paragraph rant about how including psionics literally always changes your game for the better, and if you don't let him play a psion then you are personally doing more damage to the game than he ever could have done.

[CapnTthePirateG]

Hi again guys. Sorry about the late update, real life intervened.

Also this book makes me cry.

Chapter 4: Powers, Mantles, and Items
It starts with the lurk power list. I'm not even kidding. They get perception powers, crappy buffs, and time stop at 6th level (they have bard casting). However, you are still a lurk.

Next we get into the psionic mantles. Some of them are strange, like the Chaos Mantle which grants the ability to expend psionic focus to deal more damage with attacks or spells...but not psionic powers, which you are probably using. Yes, they do have granted abilities. Yeah, they're pretty much domains. Yes, they shoehorn alignment into psionics. Like now there's a psionic protection from evil. Because creativity. But hey, they don't all have powers for every level, so you can totally f up choosing powers. Also, your psions can blow feats to loot powers from these things.

For some stupid reason they reprint the entire psion/wilder list with the new powers rather than have a list of new ones. I suspect this is to disguise that the list of new powers is pitifully small.

And now we get to the real meat of the chapter: bullshit nerfs/dubious rules interpretations! First, the wonderful sidebar on how metacreativity powers that specify bludgeoning/piercing/slashing damage are affected by DR - despite the fact that DR explicitly applies to weapons. DR does not apply to spells and SLAs, which I believe psionics fall under. So fuck off.

A bunch of powers get altered. Astral construct gets a fuck-off nerf that limits you to one construct at a time unless you take that godawful PrC that lets the DM know this shit exists. Energy missile and stun get DCs lowered. Dimension door can dazzle (TEH POWA) at the end of a teleport. Aside from the DC nerfs, none of this is necessary.

But we also have new, shitty powers that actually don't mesh with psionic flavor at all. From summoning mind flayer heads that eat dudes (wtf) to turning into outsiders, to alignment effects, to shitty negative energy effects that last for 1 round, to generic copies of magic spells so they can fit into a domain (to be fair psi has always had this). Many of these spells don't match psi at all - summoning demons? Calling on the planes? It's pretty clear the authors wanted to make psi a nerfed version of magic, and they kinda succeeded.

There's some cool stuff like implanted suggestion and damp power (mimimize energy attacks) but other than that these powers are crap.

Then there are some weapons. There's a spiked chain you can animate to trip people, a longsword that stabs ethereal dudes, a hammer you hit the ground with for shockwaves...standard stuff. There are the usual magic item knockoff psicrowns that are not staves. There's a mask you can force on helpless psions to make them unable to manifest if they fail a DC 15 will save (snicker). There are a few skins reprinted in MiC. Random necklaces. There are also two psionic locations, which are just like magical locations, but suck.

Next time: psionic monsters you don't care about!

[ishy]

What is the third power in the Life Mantle supposed to be?
Its name doesn't match the short description.

[Koumei]

First, the wonderful sidebar on how metacreativity powers that specify bludgeoning/piercing/slashing damage are affected by DR - despite the fact that DR explicitly applies to weapons. DR does not apply to spells and SLAs, which I believe psionics fall under. So fuck off.

Citation needed there. I'm pretty sure that the rare spell that deals Slashing damage doesn't ignore DR /-, that it isn't "is magical" that bypasses DR, it's "is an energy type". So a flaming torch ignores DR despite not being a spell, because it's doing Fire Damage. But Psi-Slash does not ignore DR, because it's a physical pokemon move[/i]dealing Slashing.

Many of these spells don't match psi at all - summoning demons? Calling on the planes?

Which psi? D&D hasn't had a cohesive flavour for psionics, with "stupid hippy mood crystals and "more scientific-sounding names" just being the current things. Oh, that and "used by monsters, typically Aberrations".

Now sure, summoning demons might not sound like Star Trek empaths to you, but let's chuck an "a" into "demons" there, and now you use psychic energy to summon daemons... and suddenly it's 40k! Which is just as valid as any other flavour of psionics, because see above.

They really wanted to push the mind flayers and divinity though. Honestly, they should have just made Lords of Madness into the "toys for psions" book by sprinkling new psychic stuff in there and then saying "oh by the way, you don't have to eat human brains and have calamari for a face in order to take these".

[ishy]

Citation needed there. I'm pretty sure that the rare spell that deals Slashing damage doesn't ignore DR /-, that it isn't "is magical" that bypasses DR, it's "is an energy type". So a flaming torch ignores DR despite not being a spell, because it's doing Fire Damage. But Psi-Slash does not ignore DR, because it's a physical pokemon move[/i]dealing Slashing.

Spells, spell-like abilities, and energy attacks (even nonmagical fire) ignore damage reduction.

[zugschef]

I'm pretty sure that this includes only untyped and energy damage. When a spell specifically deals bludgeoning/piercing/slashing damage it is reduced by the corrsponding DR, otherwise it would be completely pointless to give any spelldamage one of these three types.

[Koumei]

...I yet again stand corrected. However, that does indeed make me wonder if the people who created spells that do those damage types actually realise this.