Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 Melissia wrote:
Then I guess you didn't have someone utterly abuse the broken rules to make an unkilllable superdeadly character

Believe it or not it's harder to do that kind of stuff with psionics than other power sets (at least in 3.P). Even with just the PHB even mid-level casters are already loaded with potential campaign smashers. That's overlooking cutsey low level gimmicks like Shrink Item.. Not to mention stuff they can pull with a few expansions, and silly TO like the Locate City Bomb. 3.P was held together with duct tape and the fact Fireball was shiny enough to keep most people's eyes off the Conjuration school.

 Ahtman wrote:
... Monk is not psionic. There...I said it.

I think the devs stated they wanted to make Monk part of a unified 'Ki' power source, but couldn't flesh it out enough, so it was forced into the Psionic source. Maybe if they had done a proper 4e version of 'Oriental Adventures' they could have had Monk, Samurai, Bushi, etc. as Ki power source. Then again, power sources tended to be pretty much irrelevant in actual play anyway.

3.P? I'm guessing that's pathfinder?

I think he meant 3.5

 Manchu wrote:
I think he meant 3.5

I've seen 3/3.5/Pathfinder lumped together as 3.P instead of doing writing '3/3.5/PF' each time.

Seems like a good abbreviation. I don't know why people pretend there is such a difference between 3.5 and Pathfinder. Chongara's point about psionics certainly applies to both.

I like psionics A LOT in terms of theme. In terms of mechanics, I don't think they have ever felt alien enough. It just seems like another kind of casting.

 Manchu wrote:
Seems like a good abbreviation. I don't know why people pretend there is such a difference between 3.5 and Pathfinder. Chongara's point about psionics certainly applies to both.

I like psionics A LOT in terms of theme. In terms of mechanics, I don't think they have ever felt alien enough. It just seems like another kind of casting.

 Ahtman wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
I think he meant 3.5

I've seen 3/3.5/Pathfinder lumped together as 3.P instead of doing writing '3/3.5/PF' each time.

Correct. While I've certainly seen some disagreement on the matter as far as I'm concerned 3.5 and pathfinder are basically the same game, at least from a general mechanics perspective. Pathfinders got some different class layouts, and did some minor streamlining of 1 or 2 futzy parts and that's about it. Pathfinder bears a closer resemblance to core 3.5, than many 3.5 games did post-house rules.

I think the fact you easily port something like Tome of Battle into pathfinder with minimal effort really speaks to how close to the systems are. Tome of Battle was tied pretty tightly to the 3.5 skill system, adopting it in a functional way took me all of about 20 minutes of effort.

Why would you WANT to port Tome of Battle in though?

That book is arguably more broken than any other book I can think of, if it'sw the one I'm thinking of (with maneuvers and swordsages and etc).

 Melissia wrote:
Why would you WANT to port Tome of Battle in though?

That book is arguably more broken than any other book I can think of, if it'sw the one I'm thinking of (with maneuvers and swordsages and etc).

A lot of people argue it brings nonmagical classes up to snuff against caster classes. It helps alleviate the caster dominance of 3.P.

 Melissia wrote:
That book is arguably more broken than any other book I can think of

And yet it still doesn't give parity to non-casters, but it does help.

A better way to do that is to work with your casters to get them to build more utility and less broken pure powerhouse, rather than to try to say "everyone gets a massive power boost".

A wizard who, for example, takes a school specialization and forebids conjuration and abjuration is required to be much more clever than one that doesn't.

 Melissia wrote:
A better way to do that is to work with your casters to get them to build more utility and less broken pure powerhouse, rather than to try to say "everyone gets a massive power boost".

A wizard who, for example, takes a school specialization and forebids conjuration and abjuration is required to be much more clever than one that doesn't.

I was under the impression that the utility spells are the big reason for caster imbalance.

Yeah, saying 'Please don't pick the broken stuff' doesn't balance things...

 pretre wrote:
Yeah, saying 'Please don't pick the broken stuff' doesn't balance things...

It balances things better than "make everything broken".

The only way that works is if you design a game from the start where everything is broken, which DnD 3.5 did not do.

 Melissia wrote:
Why would you WANT to port Tome of Battle in though?

That book is arguably more broken than any other book I can think of, if it'sw the one I'm thinking of (with maneuvers and swordsages and etc).

You are thinking of the correct book. Some editing issues aside I think it is hands down the best supplement they released for the system. In hindsight it was obviously an alpha for ideas later fully realized in 4e, but it was solid all the same.

Given your statements about psionics we obviously either have very different experiences with 3.P materials or just very different ideas of what constitutes good vs degenerate mechanics.

Probably a little bit of both.

Then again I've never been a powergamer myself, so my "power level", as it were, was never really that high for any of my characters save for my psyker in Dark Heresy (and even then that was basically on accident).

Psionics had a very bad reputation from 2E. 3E psionics were really just another kind of caster and I agree with Chongara that if anything they were less OP than tradcasters (if for no other reason, less splat).

I guess some of my 2e experiences were bleedign over in to 3e then.

Either way, I steer clear of psionics now in DnD.

 Manchu wrote:
Psionics had a very bad reputation from 2E. 3E psionics were really just another kind of caster and I agree with Chongara that if anything they were less OP than tradcasters (if for no other reason, less splat).

The other major hinderance is that they get a lot less of their good stuff. Casters scale with level, Psionic users have to pump more points to scale up their powers. This means that unless you scale up their costs to the same as your high-level powers your older stuff is very "Meh". In contrast a 2nd-level spell slot is going to scale up and remain useful at least until you 6th levels if not indefinitely. The end result is casters have a lot more "Power Points" of magic at their disposal - if you measure things on the psionic scale.

 Melissia wrote:
Probably a little bit of both.

Then again I've never been a powergamer myself, so my "power level", as it were, was never really that high for any of my characters save for my psyker in Dark Heresy (and even then that was basically on accident).

You also may have just never had a player randomly blunder into such gems as Color Spray, Glitterdust, Stinking Cloud, Solid Fog or Polymorph. It doesn't take a power gamer to have these spells kick an encounter in the nuts so hard they fly out its eye sockets. Any player who just *tries* one of these kinds of spells is probably going to immediately "Get it". Luckily blowing things up is just such an iconic "thing" for casters to do they never try them. Ditto the folks who never look past "Cure Wounds" for their clerics.

Heavens help any big dumb beast up against cleric that's figured out enemies are just a single failed will save from taking one-way trip to the elemental plane of fire (or positive energy... or negative energy... or... pick your poison I guess).

 Melissia wrote:
A better way to do that is to work with your casters to get them to build more utility and less broken pure powerhouse, rather than to try to say "everyone gets a massive power boost".

That sounds nice on paper but often we have to play with the groups available*. The 3.5 people I play with are nice, but they love caster dominance and system mastery so getting them not to do either of those is unlikely. It is odd because the DM for that particular game loves 3.5 (obliviously) and will allow all sources except Book of Nine Swords.

 Ahtman wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
A better way to do that is to work with your casters to get them to build more utility and less broken pure powerhouse, rather than to try to say "everyone gets a massive power boost".

That sounds nice on paper but often we have to play with the groups available*. The 3.5 people I play with are nice, but they love caster dominance and system mastery so getting them not to do either of those is unlikely. It is odd because the DM for that particular game loves 3.5 (obliviously) and will allow all sources except Book of Nine Swords.

I'm looking for the note that goes along with that asterisk.

Don't leave us hanging!

 Ahtman wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
A better way to do that is to work with your casters to get them to build more utility and less broken pure powerhouse, rather than to try to say "everyone gets a massive power boost".

That sounds nice on paper but often we have to play with the groups available*. The 3.5 people I play with are nice, but they love caster dominance and system mastery so getting them not to do either of those is unlikely. It is odd because the DM for that particular game loves 3.5 (obliviously) and will allow all sources except Book of Nine Swords.

Book of anime fan fightan magic is totally op bro.

Dude. Fighter-types totally have ~1hp/level more than Clerics and Druids, can you imagine how OP it is when they can do anything other than make attack roll vs AC to deal 2d6+X damage? It'd totally be unfair. The Druid can only turn into a T-Rex with a pet T-Rex, that uses his magic to summon other T-Rexes! The poor cleric? All he can do is summon angels, regrow lost limbs from stumps, and destroys dozens of lesser enemies with a single world. Seriously man, how could anyone possibly suggest the warrior should be able to more than take a single swing with his sword after moving. He might have as much as 15 or 16 more hit points!

You just wanna turn this game into one of your Chinese cartoons.

 Chongara wrote:

 Ahtman wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
A better way to do that is to work with your casters to get them to build more utility and less broken pure powerhouse, rather than to try to say "everyone gets a massive power boost".

That sounds nice on paper but often we have to play with the groups available*. The 3.5 people I play with are nice, but they love caster dominance and system mastery so getting them not to do either of those is unlikely. It is odd because the DM for that particular game loves 3.5 (obliviously) and will allow all sources except Book of Nine Swords.

Book of anime fan fightan magic is totally op bro.

Dude. Fighter-types totally have ~1hp/level more than Clerics and Druids, can you imagine how OP it is when they can do anything other than make attack roll vs AC to deal 2d6+X damage? It'd totally be unfair. The Druid can only turn into a T-Rex with a pet T-Rex, that uses his magic to summon other T-Rexes! The poor cleric? All he can do is summon angels, regrow lost limbs from stumps, and destroys dozens of lesser enemies with a single world. Seriously man, how could anyone possibly suggest the warrior should be able to more than take a single swing with his sword after moving. He might have as much as 15 or 16 more hit points!

You just wanna turn this game into one of your Chinese cartoons.

Well obviously we're all just playing the wrong way, and we should be playing AD&D and Basic like real roleplayers.

 Sinful Hero wrote:
Well obviously we're all just playing the wrong way, and we should be playing AD&D and Basic like real roleplayers.

You're on the right track!

 Manchu wrote:

 Sinful Hero wrote:
Well obviously we're all just playing the wrong way, and we should be playing AD&D and Basic like real roleplayers.

You're on the right track!

!

(And yes, I know where that pic comes from!)

 Alpharius wrote:
where that pic comes from

Just makes it funnier.

I never understood the decision to include Psionics in a fantasy setting to begin with. I mean, I get why you would do it in a sci-fi setting: so that you can have "magic" users without actually using magic to do it. But if your setting already has magic-users, who use magic, what purpose does having magic with a different explanation/rationalization/ruleset serve?

That, and the poor implementation of 2e left scars so deep that they are still felt by some people to this very day...

squidhills wrote:
I never understood the decision to include Psionics in a fantasy setting to begin with. I mean, I get why you would do it in a sci-fi setting: so that you can have "magic" users without actually using magic to do it. But if your setting already has magic-users, who use magic, what purpose does having magic with a different explanation/rationalization/ruleset serve?

That, and the poor implementation of 2e left scars so deep that they are still felt by some people to this very day...

Psionics has been in since almost day one.

"“The introduction of psionic combat is bound to enliven games grown stagnant. It opens up untold possibilities for both the players and the DM, and in so doing recognizes one of the favorite topics of science fiction and fantasy writers: the unknown powers of the mind.”"

A nice article on the subject:
http://community.wizards.com/forum/dd-next-general-discussion/threads/4084431

 pretre wrote:

Psionics has been in since almost day one.

"“The introduction of psionic combat is bound to enliven games grown stagnant. It opens up untold possibilities for both the players and the DM, and in so doing recognizes one of the favorite topics of science fiction and fantasy writers: the unknown powers of the mind.”"

A nice article on the subject:
http://community.wizards.com/forum/dd-next-general-discussion/threads/4084431

That doesn't address the issues I have with it. It is magic, by another name, with another ruleset (at least in 2.0 and 3.x). The question is; why? Does Vancian magic not work anymore? If so, why not change magic to work differently, rather than add a new magic system under a different name? "Unknown poers of the mind"...? That works great in sci-fi, but it is superfluous in fantasy. Who cares about the powers of the mind? How are they any different than the magic already present in a fantasy setting? Psionics give you superpowers. Magic gives you superpowers. Why do you need two sources of superpowers in the same game?

In a sci-fi game, you can use "psionics" to explain why characters have superpowers/cast spells. Psionics are a soft-science (or pseudo-science) explanation for magic in a setting that (apart from Star Wars) shouldn't have magic. Psionics work in sci-fi and have a reason to be there. They serve no purpose in fantasy, because why do you need a pseudo-science explanation for magic, when you already have magic?

Ah, the Eldritch Wizardry supplement. Psionics and... Demons... And then 'problems' began, or at least intensified