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Myth 21: Elans are overpowered
Answer: The Elan racial abilities, at first glance, are quite powerful. However, several things need to be taken into account before deeming them overpowered. First, usage of any of the saving throw / damage negating abilities uses the character's immediate action. Use of an immediate action means the character cannot use another immediate or swift action until after their next turn. So, a character playing an Elan could activate the damage reducing ability and negate 10 hp of damage, but if the next enemy casts a spell on him, he now cannot boost his saving throws - he's already used his one action for that round.
Second, the cost of the damage reducing ability is subpar compared to the temporary HP buff of Vigor. A quick Vigor buff will not only save the Elan power points, but grant them better HP usable for more than just a one-shot.
Third, unless the character is a psion or wilder, their number of power points is more than likely extremely limited, meaning the number of times per day they can use these abilities can usually be counted on one hand. If the character is a Psion or Wilder, they are then taking away power points used to manifest more efficient powers / offensive powers, taking away from their combat ability.
The Elan racial abilities, while nice, are mostly for extreme emergencies than anything else. Use of them on a regular basis will end up with a character who, while hard to kill, won't be able to contribute as much to combat. If you feel that these abilities need to be brought in line, limit the number of power points that can be spent on any of these abilities as 1 / HD or 1 / 2 HD, or something that suits your taste.

From personal experience elans psions take the feat that makes them use only 1 pp for 4 hp absorbed. And they never lose hp.

Meaning at 20th level the spion can easely have the equivalent of 1500 hp.
And seriously 10pp is expensive to absord 40 damage ?

Although I have never played a psion and my knowlege is limited... unless people have been cheating all this time no magic resistance for spionics is really a great deal too. And no one can actuly deny the flexibility of the spion far exceeds anything else. The fact that the spion is a few powers behind the soceror is a joke when the spion only need 1 charm spell that he can change, 1 summon that he can change, etc.

The psionic is way better then what he was in the second edition... but it still is not perfectly balanced imo.

PassedOut wrote:

From personal experience elans spions take the feat that makes them use only 1 pp for 4 hp absorbed. And they never lose hp.

Meaning at 20th level the spion can easely have the equivalent of 1500 hp.
And seriously 10pp is expensive to absord 40 damage ?

Although I have never played a spion and my knowlege is limited... unless people have been cheating all this time no magic resistance for spionics is really a great deal too. And no one can actuly deny the flexibility of the spion far exceeds anything else. The fact that the spion is a few powers behind the soceror is a joke when the spion only need 1 charm spell that he can change, 1 summon that he can change, etc.

The spionic is way better then what he was in the second edition... but it still is not perfectly balanced imo.

Mind you, the Myth thread was made way before CompPsi, the argument there doesn't adress Elans with that racial feat.

I think I'll make a crack at it though...

Though if you compare the 11PP/44 HP negation with Heal the Elan ability comes out behind in several ways, and ahead in others. First I will justify the comparison a bit... 11 PP is a 6th level power equivalently, though there is no ML cap on Elan Resiliance the amount of Power Points spent is equal to a 6th level power. An equivalent healing ability would be Heal or perhaps Cure Moderate Wounds, Mass.

CMWM heals 24.5 damage per person and Heal heals 60 points of damage for one target and gets rid of a multitude of effects. Meanwhile Resilience with the CompPsi feat 'heals' for 44 HP as a swift action and a personal only ability.

So: (Assuming Caster level 11)
CMWM(3d8+CL to 1 target/level): 24.5 x 11 = 269.5 Points healed over 11 people. Standard Action. Close Target spell.
Heal: 110 points of damage healed and status effects. Standard Action. Creature Touched.
Elan Resilience: 44 HP. Swift Action.

Part of this goes back to free scaling... 1 PP/4HP, vs 1st level CLW/5.5 HP [and for the same cost the CLW heals more.]

And a 20th level psion who negated 1500 points of damage would be useless. Plus there's a good chance the next attack would kill him anyways.

And its "Psion"

The whole point was that it was not a spell but a immidiate action ability. An example would be if you get ambushed by a rogue and he hits you for 100hp in the round... your 4/- damage reduction is not going to help much... however you can decide to spend 25 pp to take 0 damage and then destroy that rogue very easely. No other class would survive the encounter so easely. Also remember that reduction does not help agaist spells... this ability does.

This is also much better then healing since the blow could kill you fist and it does not take a round to cast. But maybe it could be compared to a quicken heal.

This is only my opinion so it is quite arguable. But to my knowlege a psion does not run out of pp in a single encounter. So the issue of having to spend pp cannot be compared to the power of the ability to survive anything until you want to teleport away. With this ability you cannot die from damage(some other things could kill you but elans also have better saves if they want to and the ability can also be improved by a feat) unless you have fought a couple of battles in the same day already.

For an ECL 0 ?

Elans with levels in a primary manifesting class die the death of a thousand stings.. basically the opposite of creatures with damage reduction. Many small attacks will fell them.

Still, if you are talking about a race plus a feat plus a very significant amount of your classes ability (possibly putting you into the 'commoner with a good will save' category) plus an action it is hard to call it as being too far over the top.. It is defensive in nature and by comparison I would say that arcane strike is a stronger use of the race + feat + class resource use.

I dont much care for the elan race as written personally.. too weak normally and then only passable when you burn tons of class resources to make them so. I'd rather be a halfling, you get the bonus to saves constantly without having to worry and the effective +2 to AC is likely to beat out the damage prevention of the elan ability with less resource use, and I am not stuck with only a couple of choices for classes to make it work!