Psionic powers as spells?

[Wyntonian]

I'm a little inexperienced with psionics, but I just had a vaguely dumb idea. What would happen if one converted psionic powers into spells of the equivalent level, totally ignoring PP cost? For example, control light, a first level power, would become a 1st level spell, ignoring its 1pp cost. Recall death, an eighth level power, becomes an 8th level spell. I have no doubt that turning all these powers into spells is completely and utterly imbalanced, but it does sound like fun... maybe a wizard that uses the psionic power lists as a spell list, but is otherwise exactly like a wizard?


Thoughts?

[eftexar]

There actually shouldn't be too much of a problem. Have you looked at the spell point system in the unearthed arcana? If spells can use points sort of like psionics do, then there shouldn't be a problem using powers as spells.

[Almagesto]

I ALWAYS treat them differently. I consider Psionics to be totally unrelated to magic - whether Arcane or Divine.

[Jelvoden]

A mechanic actually exists to convert spells into powers, and it wouldn't be very difficult to reverse it.

Mind's Eye: Expanded Classes 4 (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20070629a)
Check the Erudite section.

Psionics tend to be lower-powered than spells, so it could work out alright as long as you don't mix spell lists too much (which the Erudite's spell-to-power ACF goes ahead and does, ugh). I have to ask, though; are you proposing this switch because you want to avoid using power point mechanics, or because you like the day-by-day mutability that comes with prepared spellcasters?

If it is the second, you might want to have a look at the base (sans-ACFs) Erudite class. They have a large list of powers known but are restricted by a "unique powers per day" mechanic which approximates preparing spells while still using power points.

[Tenno Seremel]

Psionic powers often depend on augments, so they might be less effective to you as you can't really use those unless you house rule as +1 higher level slot = +2 pp as augment. And even then you have limited amount of spell slots of any given level.

[Ernir]

The powers that scale with augments will be a problem for you.

In some cases, simply switching to CL-scaling instead might work. In other cases, you might want to split the powers into multiple spells, with "lesser" and "greater" versions.

Have fun...

[Almagesto]

[...]simply switching to CL-scaling instead might work. In other cases, you might want to split the powers into multiple spells, with "lesser" and "greater" versions.[...]

I don't think CL-scaling is the way to go. Evidently some powers will benefit more from this than others, so the option of just adding them as "lesser" and "greater" spell versions seems the more adequate for me.