Psion tier-hike

[The_Ebolanator]

Psions are rated as tier 2 because:
A) They're essentially spontaneous casters, meaning they're stuck with the same set of powers for the rest of their days.

B) They must pick their powers (permanently) from a single discipline.

C) Psionic powers are seen as second banana to spells anyway.

Consider the following changes . . .

A) Psions can now prepare their "Powers Known" list on a daily basis.

B) Instead of being stuck with only one discipline to choose powers from, they choose a specialty discipline where they gain their extra skills and goodies from and a forbidden discipline to stay away from; all other powers are up for grabs.

C) Like divine caster, psions don’t need any sort of spellbook to prepare their powers; they simply choose an hour out of the day to meditate or something.

Leaving all other aspects of the class the same save the changes above, would the psion hit tier 1? Are the changes sufficient? Are they too little or too much? Is a different approach needed? Discuss, as I am curious.

[gkathellar]

The Tier 1 psion is the erudite. Even without StP, it easily hits Tier 1.

A) They're essentially spontaneous casters, meaning they're stuck with the same set of powers for the rest of their days.

Which is why Psions are to Erudites as Sorcerers are to Wizards.

B) They must pick their powers (permanently) from a single discipline.

This is wrong. Every psion has access to one special list of discipline powers, in addition to the broader psion/wilder list.

C) Psionic powers are seen as second banana to spells anyway.

This is also wrong. Psionics has some crazy tricks available.

A) Psions can now prepare their "Powers Known" list on a daily basis

Erudites get to do this retroactively.

B) Instead of being stuck with only one discipline to choose powers from, they choose a specialty discipline where they gain their extra skills and goodies from and a forbidden discipline to stay away from; all other powers are up for grabs.

Actually worse than the original, moving on ...

C) Like divine caster, psions don’t need any sort of spellbook to prepare their powers; they simply choose an hour out of the day to meditate or something.

Guess what single word I'm going to type following this sentence. Banana.

Erudite.

[The_Ebolanator]

So such a thing already existed? Good to know.

What book is the erudite found in?

[gkathellar]

Complete Psionic. Read it very carefully — by RAW, it actually gets way more unique powers per day than seem immediately apparent. It's actually listed as Tier 1 in the Tier list.

There's also a notable variant, Spell-to-Power Erudite, which drops its first-level bonus feat so that it can research wizard spells and manifest them as powers. You should be able to find it by google-fu, it's in a web enhancement. An optimized StP Erudite is really the only thing that can actually stand on the same ground as a hyper-optimized wizard or a psionic artificier.

[The_Ebolanator]

Complete Psionic. Read it very carefully — by RAW, it actually gets way more unique powers per day than seem immediately apparent. It's actually listed as Tier 1 in the Tier list.

There's also a notable variant, Spell-to-Power Erudite, which drops its first-level bonus feat so that it can research wizard spells and manifest them as powers. You should be able to find it by google-fu, it's in a web enhancement. An optimized StP Erudite is really the only thing that can actually stand on the same ground as a hyper-optimized wizard or a psionic artificier.

That . . . is viciously delicious.
Thank you for the enlightenment.

[Siosilvar]

B) Instead of being stuck with only one discipline to choose powers from, they choose a specialty discipline where they gain their extra skills and goodies from and a forbidden discipline to stay away from; all other powers are up for grabs.

C) Like divine caster, psions don’t need any sort of spellbook to prepare their powers; they simply choose an hour out of the day to meditate or something.

Psions already do this.

The disciplines only give extra powers, they don't take powers away.

[Tenno Seremel]

Personally, I like the idea of simply increasing powers known similar to Pathfinder Human Sorcerers(?) so Psions have a place to be something other than their main theme.