D&D psionics

[SirNitram]

Honestly, this is why I adore ToB's per-encounter mechanic. I can throw one or one hundred encounters at my players, and they'll have their primary powers right at the expected level.

I love ToB too! I have a feeling you will be a fan of Fourth Edition.

I'm reserving judgement for the release, but so far, the stuff I've seen is coming out well. I love the new smites. 'HOLY SHIT! A REASON NOT TO MULTI OUT OF PALADIN!'.

In my group (the one most of my anecdotes are from) I had a best-of-both-worlds nightmare scenario...a warblade using White Raven Tactics to front-load the kineticist's big blast twice in the first round of play. They didn't manage to break the adventure but sweet christ did that do a lot of damage. If I ever get that group together again I'm going to have my revenge by throwing a caster/manifester with 5 warblade flunkies at them.

I come from the "sure you can optimize all you want because I'm better at it" school of thought.

Though I have banned polymorph.

I've just tweaked it alot. I love the idea of shapeshifting heroes. I just had to introduce a fairly obvious mechanic: You need extensive knowledge of the target critter.

As for DF Adepts, it combines the nice stuff from Warlocks with a Breath Weapon. Entangling Breath as a feat to add onto it, and your enemies get held in place by your breath, then carved up. It's beautiful stuff.

Neat! A buddy of mine has Dragon Magic. One part of me is annoyed that the class seems to step on the toes of both the dragon shaman and the warlock, but another part is intrigued.

It's really a better-thought-out version of both, in my eyes. They live and breath battlefield control, though they can also unleash horrific damage if the situation demands.

I actually discourage summoning because of the bookkeeping, but that's a personal thing.

I feel that. I've never banned it but I've never seen a player that was interested in playing one. I really like the idea of playing one but the bookkeeping and longer combats do not appeal to me.

I have used them as a DM because I can plan what they will do (complete with stat blocks) in advance.

Yea. When you're DMing, it makes sense to summon up hordes, especially expendables to waste the PC's precious resources and time. But the PC's should be the heroes.. They shouldn't call up random celestial/infernal goonsquads.

If someone really wanted to play one, I'd just hand them Psi-Likes with a /encounter reset. It eliminates the damn issue.

That's an interesting idea. It makes me want to design a psi version of the Warlock (even though that's not quite what you're talking about). Maybe I can call it the Wilder since I love the idea behind that class, but loathe its mechanics.

The Warlock style could also work, though it would require a more extensive rebalancing. Warlock Style(Also extensive in Tome Of Magic, except for the half-assed Shadowcaster) and ToB style really free up the DM. You can throw balls-out, full throttle encounters out fairly consistantly.

In short, more Big Damn Hero moments.

[lance]

You know what's even better than this 'Turn a barbarian into a Hydra' schtick?

Crystallize the arcane caster, whose fort save will tend to suck.

Since when were you fighting an arcane caster?

lance again proves he talks a big game but doesn't grasp Rule One of casters: Damage means nothing. Save or Lose is king.

The damage I put out averages out to be more than the average hp of an equivalent CR monster-224.63(max 312). Which means that provided that the creature isn't immune or heavily resistant, then it should either drop it or take it down to where a couple arrows will finish the job. A save or lose is going to be about DC 24 40% effective. So a creature could take two of them and still be kicken. Two of the damaging spells and it will be out.