"Feat based" psionic system

[Anonymouswizard]

I have wondered if psionics could work like savage worlds has it (and it's other "arcane backgrounds"). The way this works is like this: to manifest psionic powers you take a feat, which gives you 3 powers and a number of power points. You then can take feats that give you more power points, more powers, and ways to gain more power points quickly.
Power points would most likely be regained at a steady rate of 1/period of time. This is a constant recharge. Feats would be availble to decrease the time it takes to regain power points. There are also two options for powers: we redisign them so there are a range of powers of similar levels balanced by their power point cost, or we make the highest level psionic power availible based on your character level. For the moment I am going to use the second option. If this system is used the psion could be implimented as a person who has dedicated his life to psionics, gaining more powers and power points than other characters.

Psychic gift
You have the ability to tap into the energy of your mind, manipulating it to produce effects.
Prerequsites: Int 13, Wis 13, or Cha 13.
Benifit: you imediately gain the ability to manifest psionic powers with a manifester level equal to your character level. You imediately gain 1 first level power and 3 power points. You regain power points at the rate of one per hour.

rapid recharge
Prerequisites: psionic talent, character level 9th.
Benifits: You regain power points at the rate of one per three quarters of an hour.
Special: You can gain this feat a second time, increasing the regain rate to one per half hour.

[Anonymouswizard]

Psion
{table]level|BAB|Fort|Ref|Will|Special|Power points|Powers discovered
1|+0|+0|+0|+2|Psionic talent, Bonus feat|0|2
2|+1|+0|+0|+3||4|4
3|+1|+1|+1|+3||9|6
4|+2|+1|+1|+4||15|8
5|+2|+1|+1|+4|Bonus feat|23|10
6|+3|+2|+2|+5||33|12
7|+3|+2|+2|+5||44|14
8|+4|+2|+2|+6||56|16
9|+4|+3|+3|+6||70|18
10|+5|+3|+3|+7|Bonus feat, Psychic speed|86|20
11|+5|+3|+3|+7||104|21
12|+6|+4|+4|+8||124|23
13|+6|+4|+4|+8||145|24
14|+7|+4|+4|+9||168|26
15|+7|+5|+5|+9|Bonus feat|193|27
16|+8|+5|+5|+10||219|29
17|+8|+5|+5|+10||248|30
18|+9|+6|+6|+11||278|32
19|+9|+6|+6|+11||309|33
20|+10|+6|+6|+12|bonus feat, Psychic speed|341|35
[/table]
Psions have their normal skill points, and they gain the skills of the Telepath.
weapon and armour proficiency: Psions are proficient with the club, dagger, heavy crossbow, light crossbow, quarterstaff, and shortspear. They are not proficient with any type of armor or shield. Armor does not, however, interfere with the manifestation of powers.
Power points: this is the amount of power points the psion gains in addition to those granted by the psionic talent and power points feats.
Powers discovered: A psion begins play knowing three psion powers of your choice. Each time he achieves a new level, he unlocks the knowledge of new powers.
Choose the powers known from the psion power list, or from the list of powers of your chosen discipline. You cannot choose powers from restricted discipline lists other than your own discipline list. You can choose powers from disciplines other than your own if they are not on a restricted discipline list. A psion can manifest any power that has a power point cost equal to or lower than his manifester level.
The number of times a psion can manifest powers in a day is limited only by his daily power points.
A psion simply knows his powers; they are ingrained in his mind. He does not need to prepare them (in the way that some spellcasters prepare their spells), though he must get a good night’s sleep each day to regain all his spent power points.
The Difficulty Class for saving throws against psion powers is 10 + the power’s level + the psion’s Intelligence modifier. Maximum Power Level Known: A psion begins play with the ability to learn 1st-level powers. As he attains higher levels, a psion may gain the ability to master more complex powers.
To learn or manifest a power, a psion must have an Intelligence score of at least 10 + the power’s level.
A character with more psion levels than levels in other classes counts his manifester level as being one higher for the purpose of determining the highest level of power he can know.
Psychic gift: the psion gains the psychic gift feat as a bonus feat at 1st level.
Psychic speed: at 5th the psion regains power points at twice the speed of other characters. This increases four times as fast at 20th level.
Bonus feats: the psion gains a bonus A psion gains a bonus feat at 1st level, 5th level, 10th level, 15th level, and 20th level. This feat must be a psionic feat, a metapsionic feat, or a psionic item creation feat.
These bonus feats are in addition to the feats that a character of any class gains every three levels. A psion is not limited to psionic feats, metapsionic feats, and psionic item creation feats when choosing these other feats.

[Ormagoden]

Psionic talent
You have the ability to tap into the energy of your mind, manipulating it to produce effects.
Prerequsites: Int 13, Wis 13, or Cha 13.
Benifit: you imediately gain the ability to manifest psionic powers with a manifester level equal to half your character level. You imediately gain 3 first level powers and 3 power points. You regain power points at the rate of one per hour.

This is similar to the wild talent feat.
Wild Talent [General]

Your mind wakes to a previously unrealized talent for psionics.
Benefit

Your latent power of psionics flares to life, conferring upon you the designation of a psionic character. As a psionic character, you gain a reserve of 2 power points and can take psionic feats, metapsionic feats, and psionic item creation feats. You do not, however, gain the ability to manifest powers simply by virtue of having this feat.

I suppose you could simply alter this feat to grant you a single 1st level power as well as 2 power points. You could also make your class levels now count as Manifester levels for the purpose of calculating power DCs and effects.



Power points
Prerequisites: Psionic talent.
Benifit: you gain two extra power points. These power points are added to your power point reserve.

This was already covered with Psionic talent (which is better because it increases each time it is taken.)

Psionic Talent [Psionic]

You gain additional power points to supplement those you already had.
Prerequisite
Having a power point reserve.

Benefit
When you take this feat for the first time, you gain 2 power points.
Special

You can take this feat multiple times. Each time you take the feat after the first time, the number of power points you gain increases by 1.



New power
Prerequisites: Psionic talent.
Benifit: you gain one power whose maximum level is equal to twice your manifester level.

I like this but if you make manifester level = character level then there is no need to double it. However, like your other ideas, it's already been covered. Take a look.

Expanded Knowledge [Psionic]

You learn another power.
Prerequisites
Manifester level 3rd.

Benefit
Add to your powers known one additional power of any level up to one level lower than the highest-level power you can manifest. You can choose any power, including powers from another discipline’s list or even from another class’s list.
Special

You can gain this feat multiple times. Each time, you learn one new power at any level up to one less than the highest-level power you can manifest.



rapid recharge
Prerequisites: psionic talent, character level 9th.
Benifits: You regain power points at the rate of one per three quarters of an hour.
Special: You can gain this feat a second time, increasing the regain rate to one per half hour.

I dig this, if PP charges over time an increase in the rate of charge sounds fun. Do the characters have to meditate to charge or does it naturally refill?
Maybe make meditation a requirement to regain PP, then you can make a feat to allow characters to recharge PP without meditation.

Just my 2cp...

[Anonymouswizard]

Power points naturally refil, and I'll change it so you take the expanded knowledge and psionic talent feats (will change the name of the feat to psychic gift). I changed the post to specify that it is a constant recharge. Need abilities to up the speed of the psions power point regeneration at the end of the day at higher levels.

[Milskidasith]

The recharge rate is too slow, and adds nothing to psions, honesty. A psion at 20th level recharges a power point every 7.5 minutes if he took two feats (and psions are incredibly feat dependant), which means that he takes over a day to recharge, compared to any other classes 2 hours (Ring of Sustenance).

Even further, gradually regaining power points does nothing for combat, since it's far too slow to ever play a part in combat, and it would require tedious amounts of time calculation to see if you get one power point during the battle or not.

[imp_fireball]

Psychic gift
You have the ability to tap into the energy of your mind, manipulating it to produce effects.
Prerequsites: Int 13, Wis 13, or Cha 13.
Benifit: you imediately gain the ability to manifest psionic powers with a manifester level equal to your character level. You imediately gain 1 first level power and 3 power points. You regain power points at the rate of one per hour.

Game Breaking. Wild Talent doesn't give manifester levels. Even if wild talent were a prerequisite, it's still game breaking. Got a Psion 10/Wizard 10? Take this feat and suddenly you defeat the entire reason for being a wilder (gaining 10 manifester levels that aren't temporary). :P

---------
How about a feat that involves regaining psionic focus? Or better yet, scrapping feats entirely and merging martial adepts (tome of battle) with psychics?

[Zeta Kai]

Feat-based magic/psionics? Bad Idea.

Why? Here's why: You only get 7 feats before epic levels. So if you wanna invest in being a caster/manifester, then you can hardly do anything else. The current psionics system (you know, the balanced fun one that's been playtested ad nauseum & is empirically proven to work) allows psionic characters to have their powers, & feats too. Also, Humans have a bonus feat, which gives them a huge advantage under this new system over their non-bonus-feat-having counterparts (a 14.286% advantage, to be exact).

[Set]

Check out Green Ronin's Psychic Handbook for an example of a Feat/skill based 'psion' class.

I think mixing in Feat requirements to the pre-existing 3.X psionics rules is a step in the wrong direction. It pretty much already works the way it is.

[Anonymouswizard]

Thank's for your feedback, I think I'll scrap this system unless anyone can come up with a fix.
Also, If you look at the Psion I posted up, you will see that it already has the Psychic gift feat as a bonus feat, meaning a psion cannot get psychic gift to increase his manifester level. A similar thing would have to be done for the other classes (if you look, you will also see that the psion is the same except with the psychic speed ability to make him regenerate faster, I might add the ability in at 5th and 15th level if I do pick this up again.

[Mulletmanalive]

I've also posted a psionics system that was feat based, but it didn't get any love:smallfrown: Psionics without power points

My change was to attempt to flatten the system into the use of focuses, that way allowing me to eliminate the laser brain powers that didn't seem to fit otherwise...

[Knaight]

It could work, but you need to have this be the only way to have a psionics system, and have just the first feat provide a decent amount of scaling psionic power, with another few being add-on abilities. Such as the actual psionic spells, which should probably stay in the telepathy/telekenisis/force type stuff.

[imp_fireball]

Heck, it's probably easier to go with the existing system that empirically works and homebrew a few feats, powers and such to get what you want rather than design an entirely new system.

People are obsessed with that these days, for some reason. IMO, that's where creative liberty is a little too silly.

[Mulletmanalive]

Heck, it's probably easier to go with the existing system that empirically works and homebrew a few feats, powers and such to get what you want rather than design an entirely new system.

People are obsessed with that these days, for some reason. IMO, that's where creative liberty is a little too silly.

In my case, this was actually the product of finding my notes for a Martial Arts system that i was working on long before i ever read Tome of Battle and finding it threaputic to design a few bits and pieces to go with it.

Before i knew it, a race had spawned that fitted nicely into a campaign role and i bulked it out to include a class...

[Melayl]

You know, you could do feat-based psionics (and/or magic). Simply give the "caster" classes bonus feats per level to get them up to whatever power level you choose.

This lets the non-caster classes get access to some power, still gives the casters greater access, and can be much more customizable (for those who want to go through the work).

I've been working on something similar for divine magic (but it is still waaaaaay far back on my burner.