New to PF Psionics

[Sho]

I posted in the Dreamscarred Press FAQ thread awhile back about a question detailing the combination of the Contemplative Wilder and the Awakened Blade, but that is not what this thread is about. The combination of the psionic class with the initiator class a step into foreign territory using a system I already well knew: Initiators.

I'm not well versed in psionics in so far as their abilities stacked against their arcane and divine counterparts, so I am a little puzzled when I hear people address Psionics at large as being overpowered.

I do realize this is a simple thread with a not so simple answer, but are there any headliners as to why people would think that psionics are OP?

[Waker]

The most common reason given for Psionics being called OP is attributed to the notion of a psionic character going nova. Basically the idea is that a character rapidly expends their power points to deal large amounts of damage or some other effect. Often the source of this belief is overlooking the power point cap that limits how much you can expend on a single power, leading some to believe a psion could just spend all their PP on one giant blast.
Then there are a number of tricks revolving around regaining PP, though I can't properly explain those since I never bothered to research them.
Lastly some people might be bothered by specific little powers like Energy Ray and later incarnations that allow you to choose what energy damage you do during the casting, unlike other spellcasters who are locked into their type (Acid Arrow=Acid, Scorching Ray=Fire, etc). So in regard to blasting, you are more flexible.

[Powerdork]

Basically, a wizard, ranger, or bard has a cap on their shows of power. Their spell effects are arranged by grade, and there is next to no way to perform the highest-grade effects one can use more than the table (and the ability modifier for bonus spells) allows, special items excluded.
Compare to the psion, marksman, and dread, which all possess the ability to spend any amount of their mana bar on using their best power. A psion'll be able to run themself out of mana undoubtedly before their slot-based opposite runs out of slots, but before that, they absolutely shine like the brightest star in the sky, whereas the wizard gradually peters out if they keep spamming their most impactful spells.

Ultimately, psionics is not impacted by attrition the way that spellcasting is, so GMs that let the players fight a handful of random encounters each day rather than, for instance, setpiece battles every other week, or 30-hour days filled with constant action, are at a loss for challenging the manifester because that one weakness of slot-casters isn't present in psionics.

Add in that manifesting psionic powers is, by design, more flexible than casting arcane or divine spells. A sorcerer has to know each level of summon monster spell that they want to use, while a shaper psion simply needs to know astral construct to gain access to the full spread of grades of astral construct. A wilder that knows mind control (through the Expanded Knowledge feat, for instance) gains the ability to use a spread of effects ranging from dominate person to mass dominate monster. A 15th-level egoist psion knows minor metamorphosis, metamorphosis, and major metamorphosis (and two dozen other powers), while a same-level wizard needs to know and prepare polymorph and greater polymorph (massively inefficient for the slot) or know alter self, beast shape I, beast shape II, beast shape III, beast shape IV, elemental body I, elemental body II, elemental body III, elemental body IV, form of the dragon I, form of the dragon II, form of the dragon III, giant form I, giant form II, iron body, plant shape I, plant shape II, and plant shape III, preparing them inflexibly. And the sorcerer couldn't dream of having all those spells. The egoist's only real limits are the menu options of metamorphosis powers and their imaginations.

[Waker]

It bears mentioning that one of the greater weaknesses of powers vs. spells is that powers don't automatically scale for free. When you look at the description of a spell, you'll frequently see 1d6/per level, 10ft/per level or something to that effect. The majority of spells scale in some fashion based on your caster level. Powers don't really function like that, in order to make them stronger you need to expend additional power points.

[lord_khaine]

I do realize this is a simple thread with a not so simple answer, but are there any headliners as to why people would think that psionics are OP?

Its mainly because Psionic actually have a few tricks that magic cannot casually replace by spending a few spellslots. Not surprising that takes some people by complete surprise. And then its a lot easier to just yell "OP" instead of spending the time on comparing thing objectively.

[digiman619]

Ultimately, psionics is not impacted by attrition the way that spellcasting is, so GMs that let the players fight a handful of random encounters each day rather than, for instance, setpiece battles every other week, or 30-hour days filled with constant action, are at a loss for challenging the manifester because that one weakness of slot-casters isn't present in psionics.

You do realize that running out of spell slots after level 3 or so isn't a thing that actually happens in practice, right? Besides, the lack of auto-scaling makes powers inherently weaker than spells.

Consider the following: Perry the psion is friends with Wally the Wizard. At level five, each of them learns how to make a long-reaching electrical arc (energy bolt and lightning bolt, respectively). Each does 5d6 damage and takes up a noteworthy chunk of their power (5 PP and a third level slot =). Five levels later, Wally's lightning bolt is doing 10d6 damage for that same 3rd level slot, but Perry's still only getting 5d6 damage unless he pumps even more PP into it. And before you say "Well, energy bolt has greater flexibility because it can have different energy types"m it's also worth noting that they only have a limited number of powers known, as opposed to the Wizard who, even if they are under an incredibly stingy DM who never lets them find spellbooks or see a scroll, will have more spells than an equal level psion (3+ INT mod +2/level vs 3 +2/level).

Basically, as long as you follow the "max PP per power=ML" rule, it's way less broken than the standard system as DSP went out of their way to remove the PP-recharging shenanigans that 3.5 had. It also actually made the Soulknife useful, which is a major plus.

[Necroticplague]

At low levels, psionic powers almost always being more flexible than equivalent spells makes them look more powerful (and does make them easier to play), though the lack of automatic, free scaling means that they lose out to spellcasters in laster levels. Of course, the kind of people who look at something and scream 'OP!' typically only play at lower levels (or player higher levels as if they were lower levels), and would conflate 'easy to play' with 'powerful' (because they lack the skill to properly utilize hard-to-use mechanics). On the whole, just like in 3.5's psionics, they come ahead of martials, but still lag behind true casters (barring TO tricks that I don't think the PF psionics has anymore).

[Sagetim]

I posted in the Dreamscarred Press FAQ thread awhile back about a question detailing the combination of the Contemplative Wilder and the Awakened Blade, but that is not what this thread is about. The combination of the psionic class with the initiator class a step into foreign territory using a system I already well knew: Initiators.

I'm not well versed in psionics in so far as their abilities stacked against their arcane and divine counterparts, so I am a little puzzled when I hear people address Psionics at large as being overpowered.

I do realize this is a simple thread with a not so simple answer, but are there any headliners as to why people would think that psionics are OP?

Spoiler: Story Time With Sage Tim

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Usually it's because they don't read. Now, to be fair, in 3.5 psionics was under-supported and a lot of people would go raging off in reaction to reading part of the rules for it instead of, you know, actually reading the rules and seeing how they work and coming to an informed opinion. There was also a lot of prejudice against the rules in the book of nine swords (where, by referring to it by it's colloquial nick name, I got a warning on this forum).

Another part of it was that people would read under-informed opinions online, such as on the wizards forums, and pick up on someone else's raging misinformation and carry that on with them. And that didn't necessarily stop there. So it's entirely possible to wind up with people claiming that it's overpowered, without ever having actually read the rules for it.

Now, that's not to say that someone couldn't find the rules for psionics as legitimately overpowered, but generally it seems to be that people claim it's overpowered, then are perfectly fine with various magical shenanigans from full casters like clerics and wizards and what have you. But with the way psionics is built in 3.5, you pay more to do more. Unlike spells, which just get better automatically as you level up (with most spells deigning to have a limit on how much better they get, eventually).

Bearing that in mind, if someone is complaining that psionics is overpowered, and they also complain about full casters, then you have a consistent argument coming from this person. You might not want to play a game they run if they decide to ban the classes you want to play because they see them as overpowered, but at least they're being consistent.

Which finally brings us to Pathfinder. Dreamscarred Press is the ones who converted 3.5's psionics system for Pathfinder, this necessitated giving each of the classes they converted a face lift so that they would fit with the paradigm established with Pathfinder's facelift of core classes. Filling in Talents for manifesters where casters have cantrips, and giving classes actual class abilities. While we no longer have some of the nonsensical base classes (like the horribly hobbled divine mind), Dreamscarred Press gave us some new ones in exchange (like taking the Society Mind from the forums it was incubated in, touching it up, and bringing it out as the Vitalist).

So, with a little backstory out of the way, one of the biggest 'psionics is op' things that people bring up is the idea that manifesters can drop more fireballs than a wizard. This isn't completely untrue, but at the same time, it tends to get misrepresented.

To start with, you can only spend as many power points on any single power as your manifester level. Powers have a baseline cost starting at their native level (so, Energy Missile, for example, is a level 2 power). Starting with level 1 powers, it costs 1 power point to manifest a first level power. For each level over 1, add 2 to the cost (so 3, 5, 7, 9, etc).

To continue: Most powers don't directly replicate spell effects. The closest you get to fireball is energyball, and that's a pointblank 40ft radius effect, not a long range artillery explosion with a 20ft radius. So already you're comparing apples to oranges if you're not actually reading the descriptions in detail.

Another difference is that spells automatically scale in effect with your level (well, maybe not all spells, but a lot of the nice, damage dealing ones, like Fireball, do). Psionic Powers don't. This is a key difference, to get more power of a psionic power, you have to spend more. Now, the lightning bolt spell is similar enough to the energy bolt power that you can kind of fairly compare them. They both shoot a line effect and start at 5d6 damage, and have a level of 3. As you go up in wizard level and get more 3rd and higher level slots, you could shoot more lightning bolts per day. You can augment them with fancy metamagics and even without that, your damage with them will go up.

Not for energy bolt. If you are a 10th level psion, trying to compete damage wise with a 10th level wizard, you need to spend more power points on your energy bolt to do more damage with it. This is where we need to explain Augment. There are a lot of psionic powers with an Augment option on them, so that if you spend more power points on them when manifesting the power, it gets bonus effects (or you pick from options of bonus effects, but we're going to keep it simple and stick to energy bolt). But you still have to abide by the limit on power points we already covered.

So at level 10, you can spend up to 10 power points on a power. A wizard, with JUST a 3rd level spell slot, can do 10d6 damage with his spell. A Psion, spending 5 power points (the equivalent of a 3rd level spell slot) Only does 5d6 damage*. If the psion wants to do competitive damage with his energy bolt, he has to augment it. For 10 power points, he gets a minor bonus of the dc going up per 2 extra points being spent (so, +2 to the dc), and it does 10d6 damage, but the psion also just had to blow the equivalent of a 5th level spell, and then some, to get there.

Meanwhile, that 10th level wizard can laugh his way to the bank as he uses metamagic shenanigans, pearls of power, rings of wizardy and all manner of items to throw out an obnoxiously higher number of spells than the psion can compete with on a power points basis...Because the psion has, maybe, crystal capacitors to back himself up with. And those aren't free, the psion has to fill those with power points to use them. And they can't be used to recharge his power points directly, they have to be used to manifest powers, but only from the capacitor's reserve.

Spoiler: Unlimited Pow-meh

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As far as I recall, there Were a few tricks in 3.5 to net you unlimited (well, effectively unlimited) power points. But the only one I recall that would Actually work as the rules were written required you to hit level 10 to get the capstone in a really crap prestige class called The Metamind. It's capstone would let you act for 1 minute a day as if you had unlimited power points....but it was also a half manifester class, so even if you hit level 20, you were only a 15th level manifester, which meant you knew maybe one or two 8th level powers, no 9th level powers, and could only spend 15 power points on any given power. The trick was to get a 4th level power from complete psionic that extended any of your active buffs by 1 round, then use Schism so that you had a second manifesting each round, and just have the schism keep using the refresh power, and since you acted like yo had unlimited power points, you could keep that going until you got tired of torturing yourself.

*Because of the way energy powers are written, you can usually pick one of four damage types when you manifest the power, or, for Pathfinder Psionics, based on your active energy type. This is going to determine which of four minor modifiers applies to the power: fire tends to add +1 damage per die, cold tends to make it a fort save and give +1 damage per die, lightning tends to hate on people wearing metal, and sonic ignores hardness, but levies a -1 damage per die.


So, can Psionics potentially do Something better than magic? yes. But does that make it over powered? No. Because it's not 'all that and a bag of chips' it's 'I replaced my soda in that combo with a milk shake'. Sometimes you want a milk shake, sometimes you prefer the soda (and sometimes you are trying to lose weight and forego both for water).

Some of the thing that Dreamscarred Press changed when converting over to Pathfinder include: Dropping the concentration check to become psionically focused, introducing the concept of an 'active energy type' that you choose (and can change) when you become psionically focused, and making the soulknife a viable class that doesn't suck out loud.

[Calthropstu]

The most common reason given for Psionics being called OP is attributed to the notion of a psionic character going nova. Basically the idea is that a character rapidly expends their power points to deal large amounts of damage or some other effect. Often the source of this belief is overlooking the power point cap that limits how much you can expend on a single power, leading some to believe a psion could just spend all their PP on one giant blast.
Then there are a number of tricks revolving around regaining PP, though I can't properly explain those since I never bothered to research them.
Lastly some people might be bothered by specific little powers like Energy Ray and later incarnations that allow you to choose what energy damage you do during the casting, unlike other spellcasters who are locked into their type (Acid Arrow=Acid, Scorching Ray=Fire, etc). So in regard to blasting, you are more flexible.

PF, not 3.5.
Only the kinetecist psion can choose his element on the fly. Others must refocus, as the element is chosen upon gaining psionic focus.

To answer the OP, the "Nova" thing does hold a basic truth. Here is the thing, imagine a sorcerer or wizard. They have X spells per day of each level. They are restricted to those spell levels. They can't sacrifice 3 3rd level spells to cast a 9th. The Psion can. So a Psion can burn through his power points FAST to sling max level spells more times than any other caster.
But then they are done. The 5 minute adventuring day GREATLY favors the Psion.
On the flip side of things, they get very very few powers that scale with level. They only scale with power points used for the most part. So the wizard's fireball cast at 5th level is equal to the psion's energy ball at 5th level... but at 7th, the wizard is expending a 3rd level spell (5pp equivalent) while the Psion is dropping 7pp (4th level spell equivalent)
So the Psion has to burn through resources faster than a wizard. In a long drawn out caster fight, the wizard/sorcerer has an absolute advantage. But the Psion can sling top level powers at twice the rate.

[MesiDoomstalker]

Psionics is more flexible and precise than spellslots. You can choose how much PP to spend and your individual powers have options on what to spend that PP on. As others have mentioned, an uncareful Psionicist will burn through its PP reserves far faster than a spellcaster can its spell slots.

I will mention that Psionicists have greater action economy abuse than spellcasters. However, they are handicapped; they typically reduce ML or impose a PP surcharge (limiting augments and higher Powers) and facilitate that nova aspect; they can bring more force to bear in a shorter period but at great PP cost.

[Necroticplague]

To answer the OP, the "Nova" thing does hold a basic truth. Here is the thing, imagine a sorcerer or wizard. They have X spells per day of each level. They are restricted to those spell levels. They can't sacrifice 3 3rd level spells to cast a 9th. The Psion can. So a Psion can burn through his power points FAST to sling max level spells more times than any other caster.

On the other hand, the fact that lower and higher level powers use the same resource can also be a weakness for the Psion. After all, a wizard that's blown through all their 9th level slots can start working way down through 8th, 7ths, and so on. A Psion that's used up all their 9ths-level equivalent powers may not have anything left, depending on exact amount.