OSSR: Complete Psionic

[CapnTthePirateG]

So I am ashamed to admit that I actually preordered a copy of this book. At the time, it seemed like a good idea - psionic support - and I was a huge psi fanboy. While I still like the system, it's not something I play that often any more.

So what's wrong with this book? You all know already - poor editing, pointless nerfs, stupid-ass flavor, weak classes - in short, everything you expect from WotC. So let's get started.

The cover displays a soulknife. It's not bad art, but I have no idea how he's holding those blades. He's just kinda making psi blades around jazz hands, it's kinda silly.

Moving on, the introduction starts with some annoying fiction about the horrors of leaving women in portals with vague connections to mind flayers. Apparently that's why my dating life sucks. It then gives you a lecture about how you need the 3 core books and the Expanded Psionics Handbook, but you should buy all the splatbooks to enhance your enjoyment of the product.

Off to a good start.

So we have psionic classes. Oh dear.

Ardent: You believe in stuff so strongly that it gives you psionic powers! You cast manifest spells powers off your Wisdom score and have to select mantles, which are pretty much psionic domains. You get a mantle power and you get to pick spells from that mantle, which can be manifested more than 1/day, fortunately. You can tell Bruce Cordell was really filled with creativity here. Medium BAB, d6 hit die. I don't actually hate the flavor of this class as much as some of the others in this book, but "psionic cleric" is not exactly creative. It also brings alignment crap into psionics, when the fluff was that psionics are pretty alignment-agnostic. There are also wacky manifester level shenanigans where you select powers based on your ML, so you can multiclass this with practiced manifester and not suck too bad. 9th level manifesting.

Divine Mind: There is nothing, absolutely nothing worthwhile about this class. You are supposed to get psionic powers from a god. This makes no fucking sense whatsoever, as god grant divine magic to their followers and psionic power is strictly internal. Hell, FR calls out that Mystra can't actually cut off psions from their power because it comes from within them. The mechanics suck, as you are a shitty fighter with shitty auras that gets a poor manifesting pool (think paladin). Seriously, fuck this class.

Lurk: Psionic Assassin. You are supposed to do the same things as a rogue, but :
a) you don't get trapfinding
b) you have a list of crappy augments you can apply to attacks (ranging from 'knock out people's psionic focus' (aka do nothing and was) to additional sneak attack damage (1d6 per 2 pp spent per round) to deal negative levels for 1 round, to... well most aren't good. It takes a swift action to power them up each round, they last one attack, and they're melee only. Medium BAB, 6th level manifesting, up to 3 augments per turn, d6 hit die. I would also like to point out that the only built-in sneak attack they get, they get 4d6 of over 4 levels and they need to be psionically focused to deliver the attack. This class has glimmers of playability, but it is like a gem in a pile of horseshit that you dig out only to discover that it is a rubber gem from a costume store. To try to do actual rogue-level damage you need to set all your power points on fire, and even then it only applies for the first attack in a round. To make matters worse there's a psychic rogue somewhere on the WotC website which is a normal rogue with psionic powers randomly added, so there is no reason to ever use this class.


Join us next time for prestige classes, in which they try to tell us a soulknife is playable![/b]

[Lago PARANOIA]

You know what? I fucking love the flavor of D&D psionics and think that it has a place in D&D, let alone modern heroic fantasy. I really think that there's room for a transhumanist, New Age meets Cosmic Horror-flavored spellcaster who hurts you with little more than a box of scraps in a cave the human spirit THE HEART concentration and rationalization. Psionics is a reality-warping class that feels different just from the thematics and flavor alone and when discussing phlebtonium sources I think that they have more of a need to be in the game than warlocks and sorcerers and swordmages.

But they just keep fucking it up. Even the people who supposedly love psionics take a dump on it. I can see a real need for the monk, psion, and 3.0E ardent, PF tactician, and maybe the psionic warrior... but divine mind? Battlemind? Soulknife? Vitalist? Lurk? Are you shitting me up the ass?

[Maxus]

Butbut....a Soulknife -always has his weapon!-

He's the most playable fighter-type EVER!

...

...if anyone thinks I actually mean that I will find you and break your fingers off and shove them up your ass.

I -loved- the fluff of the Soulknife. I liked the idea of it.

And they fucked it up. It's that, more than anything, which convinced me that WotC is incompetent and unsystematic and can't be trusted.

And it was googling for Soulknife rewrites that, eventually, led me here.

[rasmuswagner]

If your Soulknife class doesn't let me play Psylocke, what the fuck good is it?

[Ancient History]

Lurk and Soulknife should have been solid classes. Supernatural-powered rogues is a popular enough concept that there should be a couple of decent options, but like the "psithief" the Lurk turned into a steaming pile of afterthought.

Ardent and Divine Mind are just another two rancid flavors in the "thine alignment must mean something" and "if you really believe" character class concept, which kept popping up throughout 3.5+ - in Magic of Incarnum, in Book of the Nine Swords, etc.

[hogarth]

But they just keep fucking it up. Even the people who supposedly love psionics take a dump on it. I can see a real need for the monk, psion, and 3.0E ardent, PF tactician, and maybe the psionic warrior... but divine mind? Battlemind? Soulknife? Vitalist? Lurk? Are you shitting me up the ass?

(a) I'm not sure what "they" is referring to, since you're mixing together WotC and fan-created stuff.

(b) Nobody really gets worked up by shitty splatbook classes. Classes like the Shadowcaster or the Spellthief are good for a little eyeball-rolling, but that's about it.

(c) Complete Psionic is probably the worst 3E splatbook I ever read, and that's saying something. There's practically nothing salvageable in it at all.

[shadzar]

from WotC

3rd edition crap. wish WotC would have learned long ago to stop reusing names for books or making them similar cause i was hoping for another laugh at psionics but being 3rd... it isnt even worth the bother to read this even unfortunately.

if someone does the other book pre-WotC, please let me know so i can have a good laugh at all the stupid found in it (MTHACO ).

we now return you to your review uninterrupted. enjoy!

[Istred]

if someone does the other book pre-WotC, please let me know so i can have a good laugh at all the stupid found in it (MTHACO ).

The Complete Psionic Handbook reviewed by Darth Rabbitt? http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=53980

[Lago PARANOIA]

I'm not sure what "they" is referring to, since you're mixing together WotC and fan-created stuff.

When you start asking for money for your product or writing on the payroll for a product line that does ask for money, you don't get to hide behind the 'it's just a fan product, lighten up geez' excuse.

Nobody really gets worked up by shitty splatbook classes. Classes like the Shadowcaster or the Spellthief are good for a little eyeball-rolling, but that's about it.

Complete Psionic is probably the worst 3E splatbook I ever read, and that's saying something. There's practically nothing salvageable in it at all.

I have no idea why you would post these two sentences one after another as if they didn't have anything to do with each other.

[Username17]

if someone does the other book pre-WotC, please let me know so i can have a good laugh at all the stupid found in it (MTHACO ).

The Complete Psionic Handbook reviewed by Darth Rabbitt? http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=53980

No, he's talking about Skills and Powers. It's an awe inspiring reign of failure, but I'm not sure if it deserves an OSSR or not. It's not really a coherent... thing. It's like Unearthed Arcana for 2nd Edition AD&D. Actually, it's almost exactly like that.

-Username17

[hogarth]

I'm not sure what "they" is referring to, since you're mixing together WotC and fan-created stuff.

When you start asking for money for your product or writing on the payroll for a product line that does ask for money, you don't get to hide behind the 'it's just a fan product, lighten up geez' excuse.

I don't know what to tell you -- I honestly didn't know you meant anyone who "ask for money" for an RPG product. In that case, I would argue that some RPGs have psionic rules that work just fine.

Nobody really gets worked up by shitty splatbook classes. Classes like the Shadowcaster or the Spellthief are good for a little eyeball-rolling, but that's about it.

Complete Psionic is probably the worst 3E splatbook I ever read, and that's saying something. There's practically nothing salvageable in it at all.

I have no idea why you would post these two sentences one after another as if they didn't have anything to do with each other.

I can excuse a book that has a lackluster class in it (e.g. Tome of Magic's Shadowcaster or Complete Adventurer's Spellthief), as long as it has some salvageable pieces in it; that's a seriously low bar to meet. So I just look at the Shadowcaster and the Spellthief and I shrug because a healthy dose of useless crap is pretty much par for the course.

What makes Complete Psionic so special is that not only does it have nothing useful at all (I'm sure there are some Ardent fans out there, but I'm not one of them), but it actually makes older books worse! (E.g. with its pointless nerf to the power Astral Construct.)

[Maxus]

if someone does the other book pre-WotC, please let me know so i can have a good laugh at all the stupid found in it (MTHACO ).

The Complete Psionic Handbook reviewed by Darth Rabbitt? http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=53980

No, he's talking about Skills and Powers. It's an awe inspiring reign of failure, but I'm not sure if it deserves an OSSR or not. It's not really a coherent... thing. It's like Unearthed Arcana for 2nd Edition AD&D. Actually, it's almost exactly like that.

-Username17

Ye gods.

The mind boggles

[Sigil]

(I'm sure there are some Ardent fans out there, but I'm not one of them)

The main reason people seemed to like the Ardent was that there was a loophole involving manifester level. After the 1st level of Ardent, you gain a power from one of you mantles each level on the condition that you are able to manifest it. Because manifester level is pooled between psionic classes, that allows you to multiclass (or use Practiced manifester) to gain access to a higher level of powers than your class level (but not character level) would normally allow, and allows you to cherry pick the good powers from the Ardent with minimal investment.

This is actually pretty interesting and useful, but I doubt it was an intended interaction so it isn't actually a point in favor of Complete Psionic being well designed.

[Ice9]

It has a few feats / powers / items that are useful. It's not by any means a good ratio of useful to crap, but if you were playing a Psion, and someone gave you the book for free, it wouldn't be totally pointless.

And while the AC nerf is stupid and fail, making Energy Stun not scale twice as fast as anything else is probably a good idea.

[hogarth]

It has a few feats / powers / items that are useful. It's not by any means a good ratio of useful to crap, but if you were playing a Psion, and someone gave you the book for free, it wouldn't be totally pointless.

I played a psion and I had a copy for free and I thought it was totally pointless. I can't think of a single feat that was noteworthy. I think there were some "Psionic X" powers (where "X" is a wizard spell), but I don't think I ever took one.

And while the AC nerf is stupid and fail, making Energy Stun not scale twice as fast as anything else is probably a good idea.

Fixing dumb stuff like the DC for Energy Stun/Energy Missile is a good idea.

Hiding errata for one splatbook inside another splatbook is a terrible idea.

Hiding errata for one splatbook inside another splatbook AND having that errata actually make things worse? That's just awesome in its stupidity.

[Ice9]

I played a psion and I had a copy for free and I thought it was totally pointless. I can't think of a single feat that was noteworthy. I think there were some "Psionic X" powers (where "X" is a wizard spell), but I don't think I ever took one.

Off the top of my head:
* Link Power can be useful - or fairly broken, depending on how you use it.
* Improved Resilience makes it compare favorable to Vigor.
* While most of the AC-shaping feats are pointless, the burrow-granting one (Amber Tunneler?) gives you some utility.
* There may have been some meta-psi feats that were good.

In terms of powers, the only ones I remember are Burrowing Bonds (Reflex-based Hold Monster, plus minor damage), and Ethereal Agent (a pretty decent scouting one). Deflection Field is certainly useful with Link Power; I don't remember if it's otherwise good. Synchronicity is the pathway to broken shit, but is also pretty handy when used as intended. There were some others as well, I think.

The only item I remember is the psychoactive skin of armor - not incredibly impressive, but basically full plate with less ACP and looks cool, for not that much gp.

[Meikle641]

Damp Power was handy. Immediate action to minimize all spell/power damage/healing done to you for the round for 3 PP. Optionally for 4 more PP you can have everyone within an AoE benefit from it as well.

Dimension Hop (Freedom Mantle, lvl 1), is a 10' swift action teleport for 1 PP, and adds 5'/1 PP for augments.

Uh... I guess there were those two healing touch powers, too.

The psychoactive skin of armour was nice, but it got nerfed in MIC.

The set of bands that double your throwing distance for like, 2k are decent.

[CapnTthePirateG]

On with Chapter 2: Prestige Classes!

These classes, by and large, are terrible. But they're prestige classes in a WoTC splatbook, so it's kind of expected at this point.

So let's start the hurting.

Anarchic Initiate: This, aside from certain classes published on the WotC website, is the only PrC in the game that gives 10/10 manifester levels at the cost of a feat you would have taken anyway (overchannel). In exchange, you get the wilder's wild surge, ability to have a 1/2 chance of making your next power better (25 percent chance of suck), and can rip open chaotic breaches that fuck with people's spellcasting and power use. So basically, if you are a psion, you take this class for free shit. The reason it's dumb and bad is because it stomps all over the wilder's toes, but let's be honest: no one played that stupid class.

Also, the writeups all have 1 page of info and 3 pages of padding. Thank you, Mr. Cordell.



Ebon SaintYou're a rogue/psion or a lurk. You need combat expertise and improved feint. 4/5 manifester levels (and remember you lost a level to get sneak dice) and you get a bunch of lurk-style augments. None of them are any good. To use any of them you need to waste a round studying a dude to get a attack and AC bonus. This class is shit.

However, as one of the abilities is "alter self to turn into a guy when you stab him", I'm sure the people at minmaxboards are all touching themselves when they imagine stabbing troglodytes for that +8 NA bonus.

Ecotopic Adept: This class fucking sucks on principle. So one of the major nerfs that comes later in the book is limiting astral constructs to only one at a time. If you take 5 levels of this stupid class and lose 1 manifester level you get two astral constructs. Fuck this class, it is the epitome of all that is wrong with this book and just looking at it nearly gave me AIDS. The book acts like this is the most powerfulist thing ever but every druid is laughing their collective asses off.

Flayerspawn Psychic: Oh no no no no no. You're a sorceror with draconic heritage feats - I mean a psion with the illithid heritage feats. You get a bunch of bonus feats and lose 4 manifester levels. Now, you could be an ardent with practiced manifester and not give a shit, but you're supposed to be a telepath. This class is terrible: you get shittier illithid mind blasts up to 5/day and the feats are poorly written (we'll get to this later). Also illithids can't breed with humans, but that's something I'm willing to forgive. Supposedly people take this class for power. I have no idea how that works.

Illumine Soul:You're a soulknife. You can do positive energy damage with your blade. Go you. You do get death ward pretty much at will, which is something, and, um...you can psychic strike undead creatures, except psychic strike sucks so hard no one cares. But hey, your mind blade is undead bane! That's good, right? Right?

Soulbow: It's another soulknife class. You shoot mind arrows. People say it's a good class...but it's pretty much the psionic arcane archer. There's not actually anything here I'd want as an ability. Also you have to be part of some rebellion or something that's too uninspired to reproduce, but eats up page count.

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

Zerth Cenobite: A monk class. You get psychic warrior powers, rerolls, and can step forward in time. It's not terrible I guess, but you're still a monk.

Join us next time for feats you won't want to take, ever!

[Koumei]

I think people really wanted a Psionic Rogue, but not the Lurk. A dude who telepathically becomes invisible, Mindblanks, teleports around the place, charms people and sneaks into people's minds to give them status effects. Pretty much "the Beguiler, with the [Psionic] tag". The Lurk being "an assassin with lame Sneak Attack... BUT PSYCHIC!" instead of that was an actual disappointment for people, even those who don't care about psionic shit.

Anarchic Initiate: This, aside from certain classes published on the WotC website, is the only PrC in the game that gives 10/10 manifester levels

I think IT BREEDS TRUE had a Psionic PrCl that was full progression (5 level class) and gave some kind of cool abilities relating to Fear effects. It requires you to be one of their dumb special races, I can't remember what fucked a human to breed true with this one.

Also illithids can't breed with humans, but that's something I'm willing to forgive.

Best explanation I've seen so far: you don't descend from Illithid, you're an ancestor of them. They arrived supposedly out of nowhere, having travelled back in time (in at least one of their various backstories), and your bloodline will end up contributing to what they will become. You're just pulling genetic traits out of the future of your race.

That was a fairly cool fan explanation. Imagine if WotC had actually gone with that one rather than obsessing over everyone having icky grandparents, and then also made the class not be shit.

It's not terrible I guess, but you're still a monk.

Sums that class up pretty well. Indeed any Monk PrCl can at best be seen as "Making the best of a bad situation".

[Emerald]

I think IT BREEDS TRUE had a Psionic PrCl that was full progression (5 level class) and gave some kind of cool abilities relating to Fear effects. It requires you to be one of their dumb special races, I can't remember what fucked a human to breed true with this one.

Creatures from the plane of dreams. Though it isn't "dream creatures fuck humans, the resulting hybrids breed true" it's "dream creatures possess humans, the resulting human offspring are somehow born with a dream creature already possessing them despite the fact that their whole hook is that the spirits reproduce on the Plane of Dreams and need willing hosts." So CPsi isn't the only source of bad psionics fluff by a long shot.

[Ancient History]

Zerth Cenobite was actually a class from Dragon magazine, borrowed and slightly modified for this book.

This was also well into the period where WotC's splatbooks started unnecessarily padding out the prestige classes with useless, terribly written background material.

[Koumei]

I know, to think those "The background of this Prestige Class and its organisation you won't use and a sample NPC you'll gloss over" pages exist and yet there are places where people don't have lavatory paper is a true injustice. I recommend sending such pages (or indeed, the entire books) to them for use as such.

[Ancient History]

Glossy paper. It's terrible even for that purpose.

[CapnTthePirateG]

My apologies for the delay, ladies and gentlemen. (Or, I suspect, gentleman and Koumei. Not that there's anything wrong with Koumei, but she's hardly ladies plural).

Chapter 3: You are totally gonna take these feats guys, for reals

So we have an entire chapter of feats. Like most chapters of feats, these are mostly shitty bonuses that you don't care about, with a few bonzai feats thrown in that 99% of players who are eligible will take, and a bunch of meh feats that look vaguely interesting but you can't take because your fighter needs to take 9 feats in exact order to stay relevant.

Rather than go through all the feats individually (that would be effort) I'm just gonna go through and point out some of the fun ones.

But first I need to make a nod to originality. In a nod to how Complete Arcane had a section on how spell-like abilities interacted with feats, there is a small section on how psi-like abilities interact with feats. The difference being that in Complete Arcane there's an actual class that relies on spell-like abilities, while in Psionic there might be a few mantles. And some races. Seriously I don't know where all the psi-likes in the hands of players are coming from, and of course there's the fact that they're just spell-like abilities, and then there's the "what are powers, exactly, and can I take Supernatural Transformation and then what happens?"

On with the book.

There are a bunch of feats that let you do things with racial Psi-like abilities. Some are for races with level adjustment and will never be used. Some are for the races in the XPH I've almost never seen played, even by psions. Then there are a bunch of feats that let you shape your mind blade, but these are for soulknives and will forever be ignored. Also, if you're a soulknife these don't actually help you. There are a series of feats that lock astral constructs into a specific form, which you will never use because if you use astral construct you want to pretend this book doesn't exist. You can trade out your psicrystal for an elemental, which is totally a psionic thing to do and probably loses you access to psicrystal containment. There are more feats for soulknives augmenting their class features in shitty fashions. This book is trying so hard to sell that class but failing. I mean one of the feats is seriously "you can charge your blade with a mind strike as a swift action...1/day". WHY???? This would be a feat tax if it was at will and the class would still be shitty.

There's a small collection of feats that give crappy psi-like abilities 1/day, and you don't care because they are shit.

There are also "illithid heritage" feats, which are for that class we discussed earlier. These are totally different from draconic heritage feats, for real guys, we swear. Highlights include the psionic blast you can't invest PP into but the flayerspawn psychic thinks you can, the feats that add powers to your list, and the feats that boost telepathy dcs. Other than that...meh.

Next up are psionic feats, including linked power which lets you explode the action economy even harder than normal psi (you just didn't have enough) and some other crap you don't care about. There's also a version of practical metamagic for one power, but you don't care because all you need to do is jack your manifester level. Bonus points go to the power leech feat that gives you back 1 pp on the affected power but costs 2 to manifest - I have no idea why you're supposed to care.

Next time: Powers that are totally original and inventive.

[ishy]

That reminds me.
How exactly am I supposed to interpret this line

SRD[/url]]The manifestation of powers by a psionic character is considered a psi-like ability

-Edit: added link.