So, i wanna make a point to my DM for a 3.5 game about something. He's considering psionics, but when i asked for ToB, he almost outright refused it, as a kneejerk reaction.
So i'd like to know why psionics has the stigma it does, because i haven't played with it and don't have a good frame of reference.
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>still playing 3.5
>[current year +1]
lol
yeah, yeah. But this is more on moral of the fact that he'd consider one of the most broken things in a system, but wouldn't even consider something that only bridges an already horrendous power gap.
Psionics are broken only insofar as magic in general is broken in 3.5 -- that is, it gives you loads of strong, effective options to deal with just about any situation, and offers a few that are downright gamebreaking. However, it's on the relatively tame side compared to core spellcasting, because psionic classes have a limited repertoire (similar to sorcerers), and psionic powers on the whole are a bit weaker than spells.
The main thing that makes psionics weaker is also what makes them "more complicated": Augmentation. Where spells automatically scale with caster level, psionic powers require you to spend additional power points to augment them. This means, in translation to regular spellcasting terms, you need to use a higher level "spell slot" to get a bigger effect. For instance, a level 10 wizard casting Lightning Bolt uses the same 3rd-level spell slot a level 5 wizard does, but gets double the damage out of it (10d6 instead of 5d6). However, for the equivalent in psionics, a level 10 psion manifesting Energy Bolt (the closest psionic equivalent) would get no better damage than a level 5 psion unless he spent more power points to augment the power. He could get the damage up to 10d6 by augmenting it, but that would double the PP cost from 5 to 10, essentially the same as if a wizard would need to use a 5th-level spell slot to cast a Lightning Bolt for 10d6 rather than 5d6 damage.
The augmentation mechanic also seems to have led to a misconception of psionics as crazy overpowered nova casting, because apparently a lot of people miss the fact that the max PP you can spend on a single power (including augments) is your manifester level, and thus think you can just dump all your PP into a single power to augment it to crazy levels. But this is just plain false -- and besides which, even if true it mostly would only benefit blasting powers, and as anyone familiar with 3.5 can tell you, blasting is not what makes magic OP.
>blasting is not what makes magic OP
No, but it certainly helps it. Like you said, that lightning bolt is doing 10D6 regardless of where it is in the spell slots. More if you maximize or enlarge it, the metamagic equivalent to psionic augmentation.
That said, this is a pretty clear and concise explanation.
And it also helped me realize why magic is so broken. They scale AND get metamagic, on top of whatever they do normally. Man, WoTC really dropped the ball with magic, didn't they?
They aren't.
The thing about blasting is that it takes a fair amount of investment to really stack up to what a fighter can do, compared to taking advantage of the myriad other ways of handling combat that are ultimately a lot more effective. Blasting has its uses (eg, controlling crowds of low-hp mooks), but you can play a full caster with basically no blasting whatsoever and it won't stop you being overpowered one bit. And while you can build frighteningly powerful blaster casters if you put your mind to it, that's still a fairly tame way of playing a caster compared to focusing on utility and control.
Much the same can be said about the scaling and metamagic issues, really. They contribute to caster dominance, certainly -- just more power in the arsenal -- but at the end of the day it's the base effects themselves that are the problem. This is why psionics, while somewhat toned down compared to regular magic, is still on the overpowered side: They reined in the scaling and metamagic (metapsionic feats are limited by the fact you have to expend your psionic focus in addition to spending more PP, effectively limiting you to one metapsionic effect per power), but the base effects themselves are just too much, particularly given the breadth of capabilities you can get in your toolbox.
TL;DR,
>Running 3.PF and not allowing Tome of Battle/Path of War.
Literally the fucking worst.
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This rather solidly rips apart the myth.
Fair enough
Once he actually looked through it, he allowed it, so there's that.
When if first started DMing, I didn't know that there was a cap (the psychic's manifestor level) and either the player didn't know either or ignored it since I didn't know, and so he was haphazardly tossing around 60-point expenditures to take out enemies left and right without issue.
Most horror-stories about expanded psionics are going to be related to similar mis-readings, misinterpretations, and key details missing from use or attention.
I can attest that rules abuse also turned my current group off of psionics. The worst part is that the guy who broke the rules and scared them died, so I can't just dog on him and talk shit about his rules abuses without offending people.
Psionics are overpowered is a meme leftover from the Complete Psionicist's Handbook in AD&D2E and people not understanding the rules in the first psionics book from 3E.
AD&D2E Psionics were broken. Psionicists were mechanically clerics with wizard-level versatility and twice as many spell slots.
But in 3E people just didn't read the rules and thought they could nova strike at level 1.
Psionics doesn't scale without you paying for it. That's the biggest difference.
>blasting helps
No it isn't Blasting is flashy but ineffective.
10d6 damage is on average 35 damage. By the time that comes online. The average monster has well over 100 hit points. It's the least effective form of magic their is. You spend MORE resources to do less damage than anyone with a weapon who's actually trying.
3.5 is bad, but discussing it is INFURIATING because Veeky Forums has no fucking clue WHY it is bad and the fixes.
Thats still only with a third level spell though.
I remember some faggot claiming that psionics were OP because they did more damage than wizards.
Know what we call a wizard who specs in damage spells? A fucking shitty wizard.
Yeah, pretty much.
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Here's a great example of this sort of bullshit. OP of that thread tries to ban anyone from talking about psi in any posative way, and threatens to run to the mods if someone does.
Positive, by the way, means correcting out and out lies about shit people are saying, or factual inaccuracies people are spouting about the rules.
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>Martial characters are already built/balanced with the idea that while a caster can do more damage that increased damage is limited to X times per day, whereas the greatsword will always do 2d6+6 every single swing.
Ahahaha.
It continues to astonish me how 3.PF fans can understand so little about their favourite system.
>And it also helped me realize why magic is so broken. They scale AND get metamagic, on top of whatever they do normally.
That's really not it. It's a decimal point on the sum total of what makes magic broken. Yes, it adds to what makes them good but it's not even a large portion of the problem.
The biggest issue with 3.5 magic is the spells that just *do* things, no dice rolls required and how that completely obviates large chunks of the game's rules. What use is the stealth skill when any arcane caster can cast invisibility and silence and do what no level 40 rogue can dream of? Rest limitations become pointless when casters can sleep safely in extradimensional pocket planes of their own creation. The very concept of melee combat becomes null when you gain the ability to fly, etc and so on. Casters get hard numbers that inflate faster than other classes, yes, but they also have access to an entirely different game that mundane characters or enemies aren't even sitting at the table to play.
Food for thought, if mages had to choose schools to start with, would they have been more balanced?
Because most 3.5 players are retarded. If he could crunch numbers or use basic logic, he would realize that neither ToB nor psionics come close to the cheese of core CoDzilla or Wizards.
Not between each other. Spell schools are not equally populated
All the talk in that thread about 'Psionics isn't fantasy' wants me to go and beat people over the head with my Lone Wolf Adventure books.
I mean, that was an entire series of iconic fantasy choose your own adventure books about playing a psionic warrior monk who's best friend is a wizard.
Not really.
Conjurers (for example) have insane versatility: blasting power, teleportation, crowd control, debuffs, summons...
Basically, you have to hack out all T1 and 2 classes entirely. And T5 and 6.
How can one forum contain so much autism?
3.PF inflicts brain damage. Its that simple.
They join the forum because its turned them into pod people.
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Systematic tearing apart of a 3.PF drone, amazing.