Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 Zardnaar May 28, 2006 3:41:57	Yep another Psionic is overpowered type thread. My PCs reached Troll Grave Chasm and after a brief encounter with an assassin and the cleric rolling a 1 on his saving throw vs death attack descended to the bottom. Lately the Psion (Psychokinesist)has been dominating in combat and the Ranger has been a bit weak. The PCs encountered some Trolls (only place in Athas I have them) in the chasm. The Psion basically destroyed them even though she was grappled early on in the encounter. 2 powers in particular seemed to be problamatic. 1. Energy Missile. The problem here is the DC scales up alot faster than saving throws. 2. Energy Current. Psion usually uses this once in an encounter and concentrates on it. Its basically 1d6 damage per level for 1pp per level. Few NPCs can survive this round after round even with energy immunity. Using this power the Psion doesn't run low on power points either. 3. Metapower (Complete Psion) Pick a psionic power you can freely add a metapsionic enhancement to without having to spend extra PP's on. Feels like a psionic equivilent of Divine Metamagic which is widely regarded as broken. 4. Damp Power (Complete Psion). Immediate action reduce most spell and psionic damage/effect to the minimum for 3 pps or the entire party for 7pp as an immediate action. The Psion has chosen Metapower-Energy Arc and freely empowers it expending the Psi focus. At level 11 she was doing 16d6+11 damage (fire varies by element) every round to target creature. She only has to spend 11 pp's and then concentrate on it. She has 19 con and often makes her concentration checks when she gets damaged (+18 concentration skill). Other PC's are feeling a bit neglected- even the divine powered/divine might enhanced Templar feels neglected. Other PCs have commented on it and are joking the perfect party would be a Psion or 2 with Dwarven Defender backup and a Cleric for healing. As a DM its making designing encounters challenging even when I use multiple spellcasters/Psions in an encounter. At level 10 they defeated a level 10 defiler, level 12 defiler and a level 10 Templar all at once with Half Giant backup. I don't really want to start adding opposing Psions with Damp Power to alot of my encounters. Even energy resistence mass on Fire/Electricity/Frost/Acid only worked for a bit until dispelling and sonic damage chewed through them.
#2 mystictheurge May 28, 2006 8:10:11	I had similar problems with Energy powers, and have considered eliminating them from campaign, as I don't feel like they fit the feel of psionics, especially on Athas where I feel such things should be the purview of Mages. You are remembering to use Power Resistance and make her make Manifester Level Checks, right? If you haven't been throwing enemies with PR at them, definitely do. That's a good place to start.
#3 travis_ui May 28, 2006 9:30:32	It sounds to me like you're simply negelecting the fatal flaws of these admittedly fantastic kineticist powers. They are neither overpowered nor broken, even with the metapower used on I'm assuming you meant energy current, not energy arc, and the reason is because of the extraordinarily limited range on both powers. Energy Missile, although it has an actual medium range, only affects creatures within a 15 foot diameter, not even a radius, a diameter because of the maximum possible five targets no two of them can be more than 15 feet apart. That means all of the targets must be within a nine square/hex area on a battle map. Simple solution is don't have your npcs clustered so closely together, but frankly Energy Ball has a longer range and greater area of affect. Energy Missile at higher levels is pretty much just good if everyone is clustered into melee and you don't want to hit allies. (Btw, you did notice that this power was nerfed in CPsi, right?) Energy Current has only short range so at 11th level a maximum of 50 feet, less than a double move for most creatures. I pray that you have not ignored the textual caveat on Energy Current that concentrating on that power is a full round action. This means that your psion cannot take any other action than to concentrate on this power in a turn. She can't even manifest swift or immediate action powers because the rules for concentration specifically prohibit the manifesting of additional powers while concentrating on one. She can't move to follow targets, she can't dampen powers or spells that target her, which means your npcs can simply stroll out of the 50 foot range of the power and it is ended as though concentration was broken. Alternately you can just hold action to blast her when she needs to make the concentration check and even a +18 will be hardpressed to contend 10-12 level fireball, or you could forget about the concentration check and just go for a dispel to counter the ongoing affect. Sure, metapower is a nice feat, but so very limited since it can only apply to one power. In this case your psion has chosen to apply it to a power that anyone can just walk away from after it's first initiated. If your NPCs are attacking a kineticist without having room to jump out of range of such a hallmark power then they're just asking to get wasted and should probably rethink their ambushing strategies. For that matter grappling with a psion is a pretty poor strategy, since there aren't even any somatic components attempt to interfere with. Basically your kineticist is doing precisely what the kineticist was designed to do, blow things up. She's not doing anything particularly special or unique, you're just not adapting to it very well, and that's not psionics' fault. (Hmm, sorry, that looks a little harsh...but I'm one of those big psionic defenders! :P ) Anyway, as far as the troll fight goes, really, any kineticist is gonna own a troll or three, or four. There's just no contest there, and that's the way some monsters are with some classes. But as far as NPC spell casters and other things with greater intelligence and the ability to strategize, you just need to capitalize on her weaknesses, force her to start it up again every round if she insists, and then throw the group into four or five encounters. See how useful she is by the end of the day if she doesn't refine her strategy.
#4 Sysane May 28, 2006 10:35:45	Have you been using the errata energy missile from CP? The DC doesn't scale up as easily. Damp Power is broken. It needs to be either made a psy-warrior only power, made to a 3rd level power, or be changed from an immediate action to a standard one with a duration of 1 round per level or till the manifester is effected by a damaging power or spell (which ever occurs first). For metapower, are you remebering that even though the manifester doesn't have pay the specific metapsionic feat's cost, its cost still counts towards the number of power points that can be spent in a around. Lastly, its no secret that I feel that psions and wilders get to many power points. I suggest using the spell points for a wizard from UA. That would greatly keep them in check. Give it a shot for one session and I bet you'll see an improvement.
#5 radnovius May 28, 2006 11:30:38	I pray that you have not ignored the textual caveat on Energy Current that concentrating on that power is a full round action. This means that your psion cannot take any other action than to concentrate on this power in a turn. She can't even manifest swift or immediate action powers because the rules for concentration specifically prohibit the manifesting of additional powers while concentrating on one. She can't move to follow targets, she can't dampen powers or spells that target her, which means your npcs can simply stroll out of the 50 foot range of the power and it is ended as though concentration was broken. Alternately you can just hold action to blast her when she needs to make the concentration check and even a +18 will be hardpressed to contend 10-12 level fireball, or you could forget about the concentration check and just go for a dispel to counter the ongoing affect. Just hit her with a psionic attack. If she wants to raise a defense, she's going to have to drop the power. Unfortunately none of the attacks causes Con damage, but a psychic crush might change her tactics a bit.
#6 dirk00001 May 28, 2006 23:17:06	Psions can only really be considered "broken" if your campaign is one in which the PCs tend to have only one or two fights per day, as opposed to 4-5+ of varying difficulty levels as (IIRC) the DMG says is more "normal". I run my game the same way most people seem to - with ony the one or two daily fights - and the psions would have a definite advantage over everyone else if I wasn't using a spell-point/magic system based directly on the psionics system...but at the same time, on the game-days where there are multiple fights, the psion in the group ends up blowing all of his points in the first couple combats and for the remainder of the day is eating up all of his attributes to gain a couple piddly extra PPs so he can fire off an Energy Ray rather than pulling out his crossbow and pretending that he's actually contributing to the fight. The other thing to keep in mind is that a psion needs to be thought of as a sorcerer rather than a wizard, when it comes to their capabilities - with their limited number of powers they will always end up specialized at doing certain things, so to say that a kineticist is "broken" because they're really good at blowing stuff up doesn't make any sense. I suggest that, rather than banning a specific type of psion or nerfing the psionic rules, you take a look at the PCs in the group and see if there are perhaps other reasons why the psion seems so powerful in comparison to everyone else. Perhaps he's the only single-class "caster" type, or the wizard in the group has also gone the way of the combat-caster and is simply being outdone by the kineticist, who specifically excels at dealing out damage. The other problem, it sounds like, is that you're not setting up your encounters in a way that allows every PC to really use their abilities. As MysticTheurge mentioned, you can always throw a creature or two with PR against the group - give the psion some other targets, but have a PR critter that the ranger and other melee types can take on. And then there's always the "fight fire with fire" approach - create psionic opponents that use Damp Power, Dispel Psionics, Power Resistance, and powers that work especially well against psions (I like the crystal-based powers, for example; nothing like piercing damage to bypass those pesky anti-energy spells and powers). Psions also have natoriously lousy Fortitude saves, so any spells, powers or abilities (including poisons, which you can justify just about any intelligent creature making use of) are also good. For instance, if said trolls know that the PCs are coming, perhaps one of them - a PsyWar with poison-based powers, Chameleon, and anti-damage powers - could be tasked with taking on the psion. Or, in another situation, you throw in an elven sniper with poisoned arrows whose goal is to take out casters and psions.
#7 Zardnaar May 29, 2006 0:12:53	Thanx for the feedback everyone. I have this nasty little thing called a job. My adventures are often frree flow. The PCs tend to pick what direction they're traveling in and go that way so often they only have 1-3 encounters per day (more in a dungeon crawl). I can "counter" the Psion with other Psions or arcane/divine magic but thats just more of the same really. I try and use intelligent encounters such as high level rangers with min/maxed hide scores that snipe from 200 feet away, two handed weapon users with power attack, low level NPC wizard there just to cast haste etc, surprise rounds, defilers, etc. I could kill the Psion really easily if I wanted to via finger of death spells or sneak/death attacks but I don't think going out of your way to kill a specific PC is a great idea. The last time the PCs ventured into Troll Grave Chasm they had a 60% mortality rate and lost a PC yesterday before they even entered the chasm so I'm not adverse to PC fatalities. The Psion running out of points isn't to much of an issue because. 1. She is good at conserving them via energy current or letting the others do grunt work only going "nova" if needed. If she thinks shes not needed she spends one pp on Force Screen or something. Usually has Inertial Armor up most of the time for max PPs. 2. When she runs low on PPs the resr of the party is usually low on spells/hit points as well. Sure I could hit them again and again to wear here down but I don't usually try for a TPK unless PCs do something really stupid or get unlucky. The party consists of. 1 Halfling Ranger level 10 1 Elven Level 2 Fighter/3 Rogue/5 Assasin 1 Human Templar level 11 (follows Oronis) 1 Human Psion level 11 The builds are reasonably min/maxed but not to an extreme level (no divine metamagic, multiple PrCs etc)
#8 shim May 29, 2006 4:26:10	For most direct damage (kineticist) powers we scaled the damage from sorceror/wizard-like damage to clerical-like damage. So, for each 1d6/pp we made 1d8/2pp's. It works quite good. We also banned most energy powers, as they don't feel psionic like in 2nd ed. We leave the real damage dealing stuff for the wizards. Otherwise, there is no reason to play a wizard with all the cons in a world where magic is forbidden. We also reduced the dampen power: only 6 on d6, 8 on d8, etc are reduced to 1.
#9 mystictheurge May 29, 2006 8:13:31	Psions can only really be considered "broken" if your campaign is one in which the PCs tend to have only one or two fights per day, as opposed to 4-5+ of varying difficulty levels as (IIRC) the DMG says is more "normal". I run my game the same way most people seem to - with ony the one or two daily fights - and the psions would have a definite advantage over everyone else if I wasn't using a spell-point/magic system based directly on the psionics system...but at the same time, on the game-days where there are multiple fights, the psion in the group ends up blowing all of his points in the first couple combats and for the remainder of the day is eating up all of his attributes to gain a couple piddly extra PPs so he can fire off an Energy Ray rather than pulling out his crossbow and pretending that he's actually contributing to the fight. I want to say, that this really is crucial. Especially for kineticists. You even see a difference between one high level encounter and two or more lower level encounters. Especially if you can keep the psion guessing as to how much they're going to need to augment their powers. Add class levels or HD to what should be an easy encounter and watch as your players are confused when their un-augmented powers don't actually do anything. Then throw some unadvanced creatres at them and they're left having to decide whether to augment or not. But yeah, if you can take the time, just a little, to plan a few encounters you want to throw at them. Or even just work in advance to come up with some generic encounters you can throw in with everything else (i.e. here's a good encounter for rocky badlands, this one I can use if they're in a city state). Then you can make sure you throw a few encounters per day at them. If the problem isn't her going Nova, then make sure you've really studied her powers and what they can and more importantly can't do. Someone already suggested a few tactics that can be used against several of the specific powers you've mentioned. Keep in mind that your creatures don't necessarily need to be intelligent to use these tactics. Athas is a psionics heavy world and even animals might develop certain instinctual responses to certain powers. (Or at the very least run away when they're getting burned by an energy current.)
#10 dirk00001 May 29, 2006 16:03:43	I could kill the Psion really easily if I wanted to via finger of death spells or sneak/death attacks but I don't think going out of your way to kill a specific PC is a great idea. The last time the PCs ventured into Troll Grave Chasm they had a 60% mortality rate and lost a PC yesterday before they even entered the chasm so I'm not adverse to PC fatalities. ...with that high of a death rate I'm really not sure why you'd even care about the psion, or more importantly, why "picking off" a specific PC would bother you. If the psion hasn't been one of the characters to die, then you actually *should* go out of your way to get her character, as it sounds like the rest of the group has all had their share of PC deaths...and it's always best to spread the death around if you want to avoid having a particular player get ****** off. Besides, spellcasters/psionis are, in most situations, the most dangerous foes a group can encounter, and just as the PCs likely target enemy casters first, there's no reason that the NPCs wouldn't do the same. In fact, if the psion were the target of hostilities more often, perhaps she wouldn't pose such a problem - if she's spending actions putting up defensive powers, healing herself, finding a place to hide, etc. then that's less time to spend firing off energy balls or concentrating on energy current. And, as Travis_UI mentioned, energy current specifically states that it requires a full-round action to concentrate on it, making "defensive"-type actions that much more difficult. Something to keep in mind when it comes to concentration powers or spells - anyone with Spellcraft or Psicraft (whichever is appropriate) can make a check to identify the spell/power, and if they do they'd likely know it's weaknesses. Anyone witnessing the energy current being manifested only has to make a DC 20 Psicraft check to identify it, no action needed, and if someone else walks in while it's active the DC is still only 25...and all it takes is for a single enemy psion to yell "someone, hurt that enemy over there ! *points at psion*" to ruin the kineticist's day. True, there's no reason to randomly target a psion simply because you (the DM) knows that they are the most destructive member of the PC's group, but at the same time, once the enemies (in-game) know that they're facing a psionicist, and especially a kineticist, they'd logically do their best to knock that person down.
#11 Zardnaar May 29, 2006 22:49:35	The 60% mortality rate was an extreme example with several PCs faioing saving throws on a maximised fireball. Otherwise its a much lower fatality rate. Sundays casualty was due to a 1 being rolled vs a death attack saving throw.
#12 radnovius May 30, 2006 10:23:38	Check out my new anti-psionicist spell, Psychic Leech. You might find it useful.
#13 cnahumck May 30, 2006 11:21:58	For me, the most important thing to remember is to play the NPC's as if they were a real adventuring party. I go for strike force- commando tactics all the time. Elf and Slave Tribes are used to raiding, as are thri-kreen, so they will have developed tatics and strategies that will focus on taking out those they need to. The same applies for thieves guilds, the VA, and templar groups. For my campaigns, the PC's haven't yet worked out a team stradegy yet, and so the first few rounds I am smaking them around pretty good. I even play the non-humanoid encounters intelligently. For me, a tigone is going to be aware of it's surroundings and will be hunting the party for a few rounds. It attacks those that it sees as weakest (although this is sometimes a mistake if the halfling barbarian with the BIG sword is around, she is just mean). The biggest thing to remember is that this is not a video game, and the encounters are with fully developed, capable creatures. This is athas, and those not capable do not survive long. Play the encounters well, and it will not be a problem, your PC's will love you for it, too. it makes things much more realistic, and when they win, they feel like they did something. when I almost killed half the party with a lone bog wader ambush during the first session, they caught on quick how things were going to go.