I still hate Psionics

[Username17]

I'm tellin' you, man, you're missing out.

People have variously said "you should give Psionics a try" and such. I did. They suck. So having given Psionics an honest try, I'll give a scathing review of them nonetheless.

We'll take it frame by frame, starting with the PC classes, because the races are simply a convoluted method of taking up extra space with poor editting and reprints:

OK, the first thing we notice about the Psychic Warrior is that you are better off as a Cleric Archer or Druid. I mean, you don't even have a better BAB over those guys. The first thing we notice about the Soulknife is that he's a god damned joke. Neither of these characters will be used in this experiment. The first thing we note about the Wilder is that they have only 10 powers known at 18th level, they take longer to get access to their spells and in general just suck my butt. So we focus in on the Psion, because at least they get enough Powers Known for anyone to give a damn.

The obvious parallel is the Wizard, so we will play him like one. There are some advantages we notice right off. Namely, that you get to have some decent skills on your list in addition to Spellcraft and Knowledge: Own Ass. You must choose a discipline to specialize in, which isn't any different from a Wizard who is a god damned moron if he doesn't specialize in a school, so you aren't down anything there.

We also notice that at least in the class description, the method of spellpoint regaining is poorly defined. I see that getting into a huge argument as soon as you are up all night, and then attempt to regain your powerpoints by sleeping through lunch, and then go adventuring for the evening, and then go to sleep.

Psicrystals are inane, but aren't actually any worse than most familiars. Letting the player just take a bonus feat of "any hit feat" would be funcitonally identical to this. Noone ever gave rat's ass about the Psicrystal's ability to sprout poorly computer animated legs like those hunters from Minority report. It's just there for the bonus to a skill check or saving throw. Everything else in here is wasted space. It is true that it is actually impossible to do anything interesting or good with a Psicrystal, unlike a Familiar which actually has the potential to be an entertaining minor participant in the plot, but this is similar enough to how most people use familiars that it makes no odds.

Epic level Psionics work differently from Epic level spellcasting, and therefore are not balanced with them. But Epic Level Spellcasting isn't balanced with anything, so I don't care.

Adding extra Skills: This is a bad idea. Seriously.

Psionic Feats: Psioni Focus is the worst idea I've seen in a long time. It creates a weird system of anti-synergy and rewards hit-and-run attacks even more than the rules already do. I'm not sure why anyone thought this was a good idea, but they were obviously wrong.

Tirade on Psionics Stacking: This takes some time to parce, but what it says is that you can gain unlimited bonuses if you find the right type of bonus from a Psionic power (an untyped bonus). No surprises there.

Power Displays: These are retarded. The fact that the Psion smells like bacon every time he busts out his space lazer is funny exactly once.

Power Augmentation: AKA we fvcking hate direct damage Aparently they fvcking hate direct damage, and if you read the name of that section carefully "Bruce Cordell to Denounce Direct Damage as the Source of Global Warming" you can see where their predjudices lie. This could have been an OK idea, but instead it isn't, and that's pretty much the end of that.

The powers themselves.

So a big part of this must naturally be a discussion of the powers themselves. What do they mean? What do they stand for? Apparently they stand for being just like regular magic except that they force you to flip between books constantly. Psionic Grease makes you go read Grease. Psionic Identify take a whole fvcking day for some reason.

There's no advantage here. Everything works just as clumsily as Magic does (which is saying a lot), except that it has extra rules hidden in its text and you still have to refer to the hidden rules in the Magic text.

Psionics doesn't do anything except have a more complicated attached accounting system and some annoyingly poorly described special effects. There's some unique cheese loops available here, but basically you just have all the complexity of a Wizard and all the complexity of a Sorcerer and all the flavor of the Candle Caster.

Fvcking fvck!

-Username17

[User3]

Regarding Psychic Warriors, the only reason people play these is to use them as minor-level dip investments for martial builds (like, 2 or 4 levels) or to abuse stackable size increase augmentations with those vampire claws (which is only viable at high levels).

Anyone recall exactly which psi powers are all the rage these days? I believe Time Hop is. As well as Schism.

[Oberoni]

DUEL! DUEL!

Psicrystals are inane, but aren't actually any worse than most familiars. Letting the player just take a bonus feat of "any hit feat" would be funcitonally identical to this. Noone ever gave rat's ass about the Psicrystal's ability to sprout poorly computer animated legs like those hunters from Minority report. It's just there for the bonus to a skill check or saving throw. Everything else in here is wasted space. It is true that it is actually impossible to do anything interesting or good with a Psicrystal, unlike a Familiar which actually has the potential to be an entertaining minor participant in the plot, but this is similar enough to how most people use familiars that it makes no odds.

Oh my stars and garters, no. Psicrystals can be really useful if you know what to do with them.

1. Poor man's Mindlink: Psicrystals can communicate telepathically with anyone nearby. This means that you can use one to keep the whole party silently informed, which is extremely sweet. I still prefer actual Mindlink, but not every psion has it.

2. Scouting: Psicrystals can fly and see in total darkness. They're not perfect scouts, but they are good in the right situations.

3. Sleeping: This is best before you actually can just camp out in extradimensional spaces. Psicrystals never sleep (and, as mentioned earlier, can see in total darkness). It doesn't hurt at all to have it constantly moving around at night, ready to telepathically wake your ass up if someone's getting ready to jump you.

4. Roleplaying: If this is what gets you, remember that a Psicrystal can communicate with people, and really represents one small aspect of your personality (to the exclusion of others). You can do some interesting stuff with that if you try.

Psionic Feats: Psioni Focus is the worst idea I've seen in a long time. It creates a weird system of anti-synergy and rewards hit-and-run attacks even more than the rules already do. I'm not sure why anyone thought this was a good idea, but they were obviously wrong.

In some ways, Psionic Focus sucks, no doubt. However, as you may note, many metapsionic feats require less of a "level increase" than their corresponding metamagic feats, exactly because you must also expend focus.

This means that, if you're pretty sweet and don't suck, you can totally use Quicken Power on a much more regular basis. If you throw Overchannel in there (which lets you jack up your manifester level), it gets even sweeter. This lets you do stuff like overchannel into a Quickened psionic Grease as early as level 6. And that's the least dramatic use I can think of for it; Quickening extra save-or-dies (or, rather, save-or-be-disabled) at higher levels is pretty dang effective.

Power Displays: These are retarded. The fact that the Psion smells like bacon every time he busts out his space lazer is funny exactly once.

Given how ultimately non-game-affecting displays are, I'll take them over regular components any day of the week. Seriously, if I can totally teleport (or set up a mental network, or zap someone) while tied up and gagged, I'll happily smell like bacon while unleashing my cool space lazer.

At higher levels, all it takes is a good Concentration check (which you're guaranteed to make) to hide a power's display. At those levels, you are (for all intents and purposes) manifesting Silent/Still "spells" all the damn time.

Power Augmentation: AKA we fvcking hate direct damage Aparently they fvcking hate direct damage, and if you read the name of that section carefully "Bruce Cordell to Denounce Direct Damage as the Source of Global Warming" you can see where their predjudices lie. This could have been an OK idea, but instead it isn't, and that's pretty much the end of that.

Not at all. I've had far greater success using Energy Missiles and such in a game than I ever did with a Fireball.

Psionic damage powers usually deal more damage than damage spells of the same level. Some damage powers have DCs that scale really, really quickly.

And some even do other cool stuff besides sheer damage. Energy Stun, for example, does a respectable amount of damage, and also has a good chance of stunning your opponent(s) for a round. Very good combo.

And, finally, Crystal Shard is the ultra-reliable damage power. It's freakin' hard to stop this one.

So a big part of this must naturally be a discussion of the powers themselves. What do they mean? What do they stand for? Apparently they stand for being just like regular magic except that they force you to flip between books constantly. Psionic Grease makes you go read Grease. Psionic Identify take a whole fvcking day for some reason.

Yeah, some edge cases look stupid (like Identify), no doubt. However, flipping isn't a huge deal. We D&D players do it all the damn time. Most of us Denners don't even need to flip to use Psionic Grease, for example; we already know what Grease does.

So, I'm not exactly sure what part of the powers truly gets your goat.

[Murtak]

OK, the first thing we notice about the Psychic Warrior is that you are better off as a Cleric Archer or Druid. I mean, you don't even have a better BAB over those guys.

What kind of argument is that supposed to be? "You get your ass kicked by a druid" oh my. Of course so does everything else in the player's handbook. If being less powerful then the most powerful two base classes means the class sucks that also means we are left with two classes. Seriously, you can't tell me that this is a good argument. Heck, I am sure there is a dozen good reasons why psychic warriors suck that do not come down to "I am less powerful than some classes who use broken game mechanics".

So we focus in on the Psion, because at least they get enough Powers Known for anyone to give a damn. The obvious parallel is the Wizard, so we will play him like one.

That sounds fairly ridiculous. "You know, the closest thing to a cleric is a druid, so I will play him like one." And this is to be the basis of your comparison?

P. S.: I think a lot of the things you wrote are right. But leading of your review with statements like this makes it hard for anyone to take the rest of what you write seriously.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

A Frank Trollman rant is a work of art, Murtak. Worry less about whether it makes sense, and just go with it.

[User3]

1116677868[/unixtime]]\Seriously, you can't tell me that this is a good argument. Heck, I am sure there is a dozen good reasons why psychic warriors suck that do not come down to "I am less powerful than some classes who use broken game mechanics".

On the other hand, a "Warrior" class that has a worse BAB than an actual NPC class Warrior -- that's not cool. Back when the ExPHB came out, there was a long discussion here (which you can probably still find in the archives) on this very subject.

A Psychic Warrior with full BAB would still not be as good as a cleric, partly because it also has the same hit dice, armor, skill points, less class abilities, and a worse spellcasting progression. Partly that's an admission of just how rocktastic clerics actually are. But partly it's a sign that the designers just aren't even trying. They made it the same as a cleric in all ways except for the Bard spellcasting progression and a meaningless advantage in weapon proficiencies -- what are we supposed to say here? "Play it anyway, because it's cool, and the cleric is unbalanced"? Until the cleric actually gets nerfed, the objection that the Psychic Warrior is less good in all ways than just being a frickin' class in the core rules seems like a pretty valid one to me.

--d.

[Lago_AM3P]

Psionics in 3.0E was just way too much of a hassle to integrate and research for only a small benefit in flavor. If that's what you even wanted.

I don't know what it's like in 3.5E, but the attempt previously was so horrible that it's completely spoiled my perception of the add-on.


Also, d, is there any way I can contact you? I don't think that you saw my post.

[Josh_Kablack]

1116690749[/unixtime]]
I don't know what it's like in 3.5E, but the attempt previously was so horrible that it's completely spoiled my perception of the add-on.

With each new edition, the handling of Psionics gets much better.

By 7.9th edition or so, it should be truly awesome.

[Murtak]

On the other hand, a "Warrior" class that has a worse BAB than an actual NPC class Warrior -- that's not cool.

True. And this is a good argument, but a very different one from "this class is less powerful then a cleric archer".

what are we supposed to say here? "Play it anyway, because it's cool, and the cleric is unbalanced"? Until the cleric actually gets nerfed, the objection that the Psychic Warrior is less good in all ways than just being a frickin' class in the core rules seems like a pretty valid one to me.

That depends entirely on what kind of characters your campaigns feature. If you routinely feature venerable jermalaine druids, persistent cleric archers and 3.5 incantatrixes with a +30 skill items then the psychic warrior might look pretty weak. If you have fighters, straight barbarians, multiclassed casters and the like it might look pretty strong. And if you have a party with a rogue and a sorcerer it might look just right.

As long as it measures up to the classes that actually get played in your campaign that is fine, isn't it? And falling somewhere in the middle of the base class power curve does not seem too bad either. Does every class really need to fully measure up to a cleric archer to be considered useful?

In my opinion the psychic warrior is a tad on the weak side, but not so far as to make it unplayable. Giving it a full BAB would not hurt though. That makes it an ok class, somewhere in the middle of the road as far as PHB classes go. If of course you play with the more powerful caster constructs you will be fairly useless. But so will paladins, barbarians, bards, fighters, rogues, sorcerers and rangers.

The Soulknife however is far below what gets played in any campaign I have seen and certainly below all of the PHB classes. That means the class sucks.

Mind you, I do not object to you me the class is weak, useless or whatever. I object to you telling me it is crap because it does not top a cleric archer.

[Murtak]

With each new edition, the handling of Psionics gets much better.

By 7.9th edition or so, it should be truly awesome.

Agreed. I like the general concept of 3.5 psionics. In theory you can get by with some general abilities instead of separate spells or powers for every +1, extra die or the likes, which makes the sorcerer concept of spells/powers known a little more workable. Power points and augmenting make sense to me, at least moreso than spell slots.

Of course when arcane and divine casters basically get all augments except for quickening for free you have a problem.

[User3]

Lago -- um -- I'll see if I can find a username that isn't already registered here that I don't hate too much. Shockingly, "d." is not available. I may sue.

1116692553[/unixtime]]
True. And this is a good argument, but a very different one from "this class is less powerful then a cleric archer".

Well ...

I mean, you don't even have a better BAB over those guys.

Now it's true that Frank didn't happen to focus on the class at any length -- but of all the qualities that the classes have in common, that is the one that he did mention.

That depends entirely on what kind of characters your campaigns feature.

Well, yes and no.

Like every other class, the degree to which the Psychic Warrior sucks depends partly on the amount of min-max fu you have and are willing to exert. So to that degree, yes, if nobody else in your group is a hardcore, or even a moderate, number-cruncher, you can play a psychic warrior and you'll do okay.

But the flip side of that is, if you already are a hardcore number cruncher, why would you play a class that is mechanically inferior to another class that pretty much fills the exact same role? What, in short, is there about the Psychic Warrior (besides a really cool flavor thing -- which really makes no difference, since clerics can have any flavor they want) that enables it to fill a role not already filled by the cleric?

In my opinion the psychic warrior is a tad on the weak side, but not so far as to make it unplayable. Giving it a full BAB would not hurt though.

I agree that it's weak but not unplayably so. I would probably not play one in a game where clerics were available -- but if for some reason someone wanted to, they would not suck any worse than any other character class whose only crime is "not being a class with full spellcasting". Hell, it's better than the fighter -- not that that's saying much, but it's a core class.

The soulknife is complete ass. As was previously pointed out, when you invest all of your class features in "having a really cool sword" -- and the wizard or cleric in the party can just wave his hands and give anyone else a really cool sword -- then you suck, utterly and irredeemably.

--d.

[erik]

And note that it isn't just cleric archers that stomp all over the ass that is a psychic warrior. It's every cleric.

Choosing psywar over cleric is like choosing warrior over fighter. Sure, you're within throwing distance of the other, but you are inferior, period.

My take on psionics remains, too many mechanics for too little oomph. If you are in dire need of psionics, then allow silent and still metamagic feats to be +0 levels then you've got a psion. Bam.

[RandomCasualty]

1116692553[/unixtime]]
That depends entirely on what kind of characters your campaigns feature. If you routinely feature venerable jermalaine druids, persistent cleric archers and 3.5 incantatrixes with a +30 skill items then the psychic warrior might look pretty weak. If you have fighters, straight barbarians, multiclassed casters and the like it might look pretty strong. And if you have a party with a rogue and a sorcerer it might look just right.

This is the paradox of the new rule designer.

Basically it means that almost any class you make can be both overpowered and underpowered at the same time. And that no matter what new classes do they're pretty much going to do something wrong.

And that stems from the fact that the core isn't even balanced. And if you aren't working with a balanced set of rules to begin with, worrying about balance at a later time is almost pointless. Until fighter 20 can beat a druid 20, there's just no point judging anything harshly because of poor class balance.

The psywarrior is better than fighter 20 and barb 20, he will totally wipe the floor wtih either in fact.

The people who write books like the psiHB are put in a no win situation. Write a class for powergamers and you make it totally dominate a casual game. Write a class for casual gamers, and powergamers will tell you it sucks.

Until someone goes through the core rules and actually does some real playtesting, the game isn't going to get anywhere. Maybe if the designers can finally get through their their heads that primary caster shouldn't be God, they can finally start getting something fixed.

[User3]

Psionics fill a niche that, IMO, needs to be filled. If sorcerers had ben done well, psionics would be unneccesary. Sorcerers weren't done well, and so psionics are neccesary.

Primarily they're a flavor class.
You won't really see standard psions pulling out anything that a wizards coulden't do with the right preparation. But there are some things which the unmodified psion can do better: Things which you would expect 'psionics' to be better at, flavor-wise. Augmentation really helps with this.
Psionic Dominate (post-errata) is awesomely cool, and it makes me sad to think that Sorcerers can't augment their Dominations. I coulden't care less about augmenting purely 'Blasting' powers, blasting isn't what psionics is about.

That isn't to say that I don't have any beef with Psi 3.5. I'm still annoyed about the crystals up the wazoo. Crystals are fine for a single New-Age bullshit PrC and a few feats. As an over-arching concept, they're retarded.
Splitting TK into three seperate (lower level) powers may have seemed like a good idea at a time, but it was the wrong way to go. It should have been made into a single lower-level auugmentable power. Probably a Psychokinesis discipline power.

In fact, one of my biggest issues with 3.5 is how many powers should have been augmentable, but aren't.

I also despise Psionic focus. Psions already have one 'give it your best shot' ability, and thats Augmentation. They don't need another which is there just to make metapsionics more annoying. In fact, they don't need metapsionics at all. Metapsionic feats are for pre-Augmentation psionics. Now they're a redundant waste of time.

I also don't like how 3.5e psionics have more MAD. Thats right, more MAD.[/b] In 3.0e, a psychic warrior could focus entirely on Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution. In 3.5 they're suddenly Wisdom junkies.
Please don't say anthing about Polymorph, Polymorph isn't balanced.

And yet they retained the 6 disciplines. How unnessesary. 4 disiplines is the correct number.
But that is easy to solve. I deleted something like 1/2 or 1/3 of the powers in the psi SRD, re-arranged the remaining to the four disciplines, and assigned the four disciplines to Con, Int, Wis, and Cha.
Then I added some spells and a fuckload of augmentation. Viola, the psionics suddenly had the flavor and mechanics I wanted, without sucking. I did it without changing the fundamental system at all--That is, someone casually looking a the psion in play might not detect a difference.
Yes, I said "viola," not "voilà."

Anyway, I love psionics, I hate sorcerers, and I love wizards too.

I can see a pretty clear reason why Frank woulden't like psionics: They basically run 100% counter to the idea of at-will abilities. To this I say...its still D&D, live with it.

P.S.
Psychic Reformation.

[SuicideChump]

As for the XPH, I think it is one of the few splatbooks which is worth its cost.

Some of the new races are not simply rewritings of former ones: Elans, Half-Giant and Dromites are new races (edit: and Maenads too, but they suck so I simply ignore them all of the times ).

The Display mechanics may seem dumb, but has been created to overcome one the main disparities among psionics and arcane/divine spellcasters: psionic powers are intrinsically Stilled/Silenced. And have no material components. So a Display, expecially at low levels, helps to keep the balance in situations where powers with no display would break the game. A stilled/silenced Psionic Charm at 1st level? you could manipulate any person in a crowded room without letting anyone guess what is really happening. The Concentration check to suppress the display is a way to make things a little more difficult.

Psychic Warrior: this class has been 'playtested' in my playing group. Are Psychic Warriors weak? yes and no, I'd say. If buffed with all of the Precognition and Prescience powers a Psychic Warrior is a total pain in the ass for anyone. The real problem with this class is that it has too few pp to activate all of his buffing powers, and this is something which sucks indeed.
A Psychic Warrior has a good versatility, but when his pp pool is depleted he is a Fighter with less feats and 3/4 BAB for the rest of the day. But if he'd burn all of his pp in a single encounter, his opponent should better have some readied Dispel Psionics/Dispel Magic (or simply be a Druid ), or he is screwed.

Soulknife: Soulknives suck, it's a matter of fact.
A Soulknife 10/Kensai 10 with Vow of Poverty is the only optimization available to Soulknife. And it is far from being as gamebreaking as Incantatrix/Dweomercheaters/etc.
Besides, their only decent ability (Knife to the Soul) is Mind-Affecting, and now you can only target Wis, Int or Cha. And in the feats chapter, Soulknives have no dedicated feat to improve their mediocre class abilities...

[PhoneLobster]

I still remain fond of the XPH. Damned if I know why.

The flavour? Well. OK I'm a "mind taker" fan (anyone watch Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law?). But they are far enough off base that it could have been done way better on the flavour front.

Classes?

Soul Knife - Sucks like a pirate.

Psychic Warrior - Weak, but not pirate weak. It could be used, the bite of wolf/claw stuff is interesting flavour.

Wilder - Their key trick is uh, oddly implemented, it peeves me that it gets worse as it gets better. If you really want the psi warrior type this might be a better choice, maybe, the trade offs against a psion are iffy but probably worth considering.

Every Prestige class in the book - useless, but thats prestige classes for you.

The rest?

Powers known limitations are no big deal. Psionic classes learn new powers like wizards, only slower and with a tacky XP cost just to make it seem more inconvenient than it is. But I'm not entirely sure if thats a point in favour of the psionics rules. Still, there is no realy number of powers known limitation.

Its a spell point system and pretty much comparable to the spells per day system, rather than a fatal flaw I call that a wash. People have mentioned unlimited uses as a competing idea, but I ask you, Warlock or Psion?

Psicrystals actually need you to take a feat before you can have one. So I don't care much if they are slightly more ass than a familiar, since I generally would trade a familiar for a free feat slot any day of the week.

It does annoy me however than the psion, obviously built on the wizard bonus magic feat at 1 and every 5 levels thing frees up the first slot from a forced selection of scribe scroll only to not give you anything back in return for needing to spend that slot if you want your familiar. But then, you don't really want your familiar.

I can't stand psionic focus. I have read people saying they like it. They are clearly one brick short of of the full wheelbarrow.

I generally just ignore anything involving it, thats a few fighty type feats gone (horrah for continued fighting nerfage).

And its most of the psionic metamagic feats basically ignored. But then most of standard metamagic feats get ignored because of mad costs as well. If its core metamagic vs psionic metamagic thats a wash in my book. And if you can house rule or cunningly exploit one you can do it with the other.

OK I also totally ignore the dumb power displays. But then I also pretty much ignore spell components. And of the two spell components are WAY more ass. Bat guano? I mean BAT GUANO? God damn toilet humour idiots.

Psionics direct damage kinda seem better than standard direct damage. Yes psions get less uses per day, than a wizard no less, what with PP costs and all.

But wasn't there some thing about uses per day/rest limitations being well near meaningless, certainly there seems to be a level after which it gets tough for characters other than the poor screwed over psiwarrior to blow their whole stash of PP on one combat, well, maybe if they tried REAL hard.

And the powers themselves? Well some of the direct book flipers annoy the hell out of me, both for convenience reasons and due to stupid out of the blue changes like Identifies casting time. Certainly I'd have liked to see psionic dominate be better, duration wise especially. But mostly They seem OK, well, as far as your usual WOTC spells go. Again I call it a draw.

OK I admit it. I really have no idea why I like the XPH, its clearly only as good as the core at best, and sometimes just a little worse (certainly the accounting IS pointlessly measurably worse). And half my defenses of it amount to "well clearly you don't use that rule, because its dumb", which is a dumb defense.

And heck as mentioned, if they HAD a funcitonal Sorcerer the entire XPH would be pretty much redundant. Its only possible use then would be to chalk the powers up freely augmented as spells of the same level and let the sorcerer have at it.

But sadly, the sorcerer sucks.

(On a side note the Psion may be the psionic wizard, but the Wilder is the psionic Sorcerer, as in he is that wierd "not quiet full caster/gets his next level of spells one level late" class, and yet in every other respect, HP, Skill Points, Class Abilities, is basically better than the sorcerer. Its still hard to say if its a good choice. But when you compare it to the sorcerer...?)

My current and only theory as to why I REALLY like the XPH is probably that I haven't had as much of an opportunity to grow jaded with it.

[Username17]

DUEL! DUEL!

OK, fine.

There are three reasons to not include something in your game, and any of them are sufficient. They are:

1: No player would ever use the rule. That is, if the player is being offered something that does the same thing worse than another option, it has no place in the game. The Soul Knife fails right here. Your big class feature is that you have a fvcking short sword. That's even worse than the monk's ability to not need a short sword.

2: The thing in question is a flavor concern and it sucks. That is, if something is flavor text only, and the flavor text is lame. This is where the displays come in. Sure, it doesn't actually matter whether you are doing displays or components. Odds are that these will only actually come up maybe once in the entire run of the game. But in the one adventure where you point out that you need to make a toy tower of babel to cast tongues that's just a little bit less insulting than in the one adventure where it becomes important that the Psion smells like bacon all the time.

3: A proposed rule slows down the game without compensatory advantage. That pretty much explains itself. If you are slowing down the game, you'd better be able to give a coherent reason why. Psionic Grease is exactly the same as Magic Grease, but resolving Psionic Grease takes more play time, so it's bad for the game.

Between those three reasons, I was unable to find anything in the XPH which was salvagable. Some of them don't always apply, there's no pressing game mechanical drive to use components over displays (since the practical effect of either is simply that the DM has the option of doing an adventure some time where for whatever reason it becomes important which one you use, and either one could go against you), but they are stupid beyond belief. And that's plenty.

-Username17

[User3]

When evaluating the use of a game system, I try to weigh the Good against the Bad. Not the Bad against the <nothing>, as you are apparently doing, Frank.

I suppose that could result in different conclusions, and certainly explains why you've come up with so many good ideas only to abandon then like poor, orphaned genius-children.

When evaluating one game system relative to another, I try to create a matrix of good and bad between the systems, which results in <SystemA badness>*<SystemB goodness> - <SystemB badness>*<SystemA goodness>, and leaves me completely confused.

[Murtak]

Well, if your groups feature mostly primary spellcasters the XPH actually has next to nothing in it for you. The classes are all weaker then what you already use, you add more stuff you have to get rid of (namely infinity loops) and psionics do next to nothing you can not already do with magic. You are pretty much left with the flavor parts of the book - and half of that you can easily get by playing a wizard and asking your GM to let you use displays instead of components.

It does work out ok if your party features some fighter types, rogues and non-optimized casters though.

So both Frank and everyone who says the XPH is not all that bad can be right at the same time.

[Oberoni]

1116959157[/unixtime]]
1: No player would ever use the rule. That is, if the player is being offered something that does the same thing worse than another option, it has no place in the game. The Soul Knife fails right here. Your big class feature is that you have a fvcking short sword. That's even worse than the monk's ability to not need a short sword.

No doubt that the Soulknife sucks, I wouldn't defend that piece of crap.

2: The thing in question is a flavor concern and it sucks. That is, if something is flavor text only, and the flavor text is lame. This is where the displays come in. Sure, it doesn't actually matter whether you are doing displays or components. Odds are that these will only actually come up maybe once in the entire run of the game. But in the one adventure where you point out that you need to make a toy tower of babel to cast tongues that's just a little bit less insulting than in the one adventure where it becomes important that the Psion smells like bacon all the time.

It's a negligible penalty you get in return for a large bonus.

I noticed that you mainly compare displays to non-costly material components. That's unfair. You should be comparing displays to somatic, verbal, and non-costly material components.

In that case, would I take the penalty of occasionally smelling like bacon to never worrying about somatic, verbal, and non-costly material components? Damn skippy, hippy.

3: A proposed rule slows down the game without compensatory advantage. That pretty much explains itself. If you are slowing down the game, you'd better be able to give a coherent reason why. Psionic Grease is exactly the same as Magic Grease, but resolving Psionic Grease takes more play time, so it's bad for the game.

Yeah, it's dumb, but it's the minor sort of dumb that makes me shrug, instead of the major dumb that makes me shake my fist angrily.

[RandomCasualty]

Alot of the XPH is designed on bad concepts, and that I think is the main problem.

The basic idea behind displays is good, but the implementation is horrible. The original intention for them was to prevent people from doing stealth charm person, but I think just having one "your eyes glow" display would be fine instead of getting into all that weird ass crap. Also I'm not sure why they allow you to cover up the displays. Sort of defeats the whole purpose of having them if you can erase them with an easily made concentration check with no penalty.

Augmentation is pretty much a joke. It punishes direct damage, it makes buff spells totally useless or overpowered. It's always been my opinion that powers and spells shouldn't need to scale at all. Really the only place scaling is necessary is in the damage system, but that's because the hit point system just plain sucks. If buff spells are going to work at all, we need level relative bonuses and not level appropriate ones. About the only place augmentation can kinda work is the palces they didn't use it. Like paying extra points to make a single target spell into a mass version and so on.

And the flavor is way off. I'm not sure why they had universal energy attacks for psionics. It would seem to me that you should choose the energy type and then be able to choose the shape through augmentation, instead of picking "energy ball" and being able to use any kind of energy so long as it fits in a ball shape. That to me just seems fucking weird and contrary to every bit of psionics in fantasy and sci fi I've ever seen. Psionics should be about controlling a given energy type instead of controlling anything so long as its a spherical burst. Wtf?

The psicrystal is more of an extension of the designers desires to screw over anyone who tries to treat their familiar as anything but a free bonus you carry in your pocket. The only reason anyone ever takes the pet rock is for that extra psifocus, other than that you fear someone destroying the thing and screwing you over.

The XPH also shows that Bruce Cordell doesn't learn from his mistakes, since he brings back all that flawed extra action bullshit that made 3.0 haste incredibly broken. You'd of thought that the designers would learn that extra actions just aren't good for the system, but nope. Now we've got schism, hustle, temporal acceleration and all sorts of other combat structure breaking powers. They removed extra action mechanics from 3.5 for a reason jackass. They'd probably have removed time stop too if they gave a rats ass about high level, which they don't.

But worst of all is that psionics is the epitome of the flawed construct known as charge casting. It's built around the principle that you can easily dominate any one encounter at the cost of wasting your firepower for the inevitable encounters 2-5. That kind of paradigm may work in old school RPGs without teleportation and a limited fixed position rest zones, but in a freeform RPG where you can camp anywhere and truly win by attrition. Forget it.

While psionics power balance I can generally forgive one way or the other, the basic design principles of the system are generally pretty poor. There's very little redeemable about the book from a design standpoint, it actually goes in the opposite direction, reviving and promoting old legacy mechanics which we found out don't work. With all the graverobbing from the crypt of failed mechanics going on, I'm surprised we didn't see demihuman level caps brought back.

[Desdan_Mervolam]

Just one nitpick. The soulknife's schtick is that he has a short sword that he never has to worry about being deprived of ever. It's a minor distinction that I though should be noted, despite the fact that it utterly fails to redeem the class.

Hey, I think the soulknife is a great idea. I just agree that you need alot more bennies in that class before you get something that's good. It's a serious problem in this game that the designers really honestly think that having weapons that cannot be removed from you (Be it a monks fist, a soulknife's soul knife or whatnot) is so fall-down awesome that they can be allowed to fall so far behind the curve.

-Desdan

[Bigode]

1116705897[/unixtime]]And yet they retained the 6 disciplines. How unnessesary. 4 disiplines is the correct number.
But that is easy to solve. I deleted something like 1/2 or 1/3 of the powers in the psi SRD, re-arranged the remaining to the four disciplines, and assigned the four disciplines to Con, Int, Wis, and Cha.
Then I added some spells and a fuckload of augmentation. Viola, the psionics suddenly had the flavor and mechanics I wanted, without sucking. I did it without changing the fundamental system at all--That is, someone casually looking a the psion in play might not detect a difference.
Yes, I said "viola," not "voilà."

Do you still have this, Mr Godfoot?

[/new thread necromancy record]

[Voss]

*dancing to the music of the dead, as the viola plays on*

[JonSetanta]

Sometimes Necromancy can be used in the name of Good :B

Frank's opening statement is valid but I don't agree with it mostly because Psionics offered (and continues to) an alternative to the horrible, horrible "Vancian curse" that has plagued my spellcasters for too long.
While Psionics could be better, especially when it comes to direct damage (but hey, all spells need improving here), it's still fuckin good option in a world of Wizards.