Making it so each augment can only be used 1/encounter (which mostly defeats the point of the psionic characters, and would really change what powers the battlemind wanted, but...) or fixing the cheap augments which are overpowered as spam (the more likely, and better, solution).
Then why not just have Encounter powers if you are going to do this?
Exactly. I was actually initially looking forward to the psionic release of 4e. I thought the at-will/encounter/daily/utility system was FINALLY a fix for all the grey-area, shady psionic point augmenting stuff of previous editions.
I mean.. why did this sacred cow live? You have to roll to hit with magic missle now, and they can't get rid of power points???
New mechanics for the power system I guess? Also if the 3 psionic classes have the usual encounter powers, they might be very similar to their counterparts ie psion=wizards, ardent=warlord, battlemind=swordmage(?) with just their class features to differentiate them. In other words, take away power points and what makes psionics unique other than refluffed powers from the other power source?
New mechanics for the power system I guess? Also if the 3 psionic classes have the usual encounter powers, they might be very similar to their counterparts ie psion=wizards, ardent=warlord, battlemind=swordmage(?)
They did just fine with Martial, Arcane, and Divine classes even though they each share roles. Avenger and Barbarian are very similar, for example, in that they're melee strikers favoring two handed weapons, but they have a significantly different feel in play.
with just their class features to differentiate them. In other words, take away power points and what makes psionics unique other than refluffed powers from the other power source?
Frankly, this is what I wanted to happen. Psionics has always been different for being different's sake. That's why many people don't like psionics.
Few people can see genius in someone who has offended them. -- Robertson Davies
New mechanics for the power system I guess? Also if the 3 psionic classes have the usual encounter powers, they might be very similar to their counterparts ie psion=wizards, ardent=warlord, battlemind=swordmage(?)
They did just fine with Martial, Arcane, and Divine classes even though they each share roles. Avenger and Barbarian are very similar, for example, in that they're melee strikers favoring two handed weapons, but they have a significantly different feel in play.
I think the major problem is that the fluff and the crunch of psionics didn't work.
According to the text, you have Monks, who cultivate their mystical training through dedicated traditions, Psions, who harness the hidden pathways of the mind, and Ardents and Battleminds, who accidentally find themselves with power. Monks thematically sound closest to their Psion cousins, both dedicating themselves to enhancing their psionic talents through specific, refined methods, as opposed to the wild and fluxuating emotional powers.
Problem is, crunch shows the opposite story.
With three power point users and one full discipline, the monk appears to be the black sheep of the Psionic family, the one who is different and shall always be different. The "chaotic and emotional" psionicists have identical mechanics to the "refined, erudite" psionicists, breaking through the imagined barrier between them. Ask yourself...apart from flavor text, what is emotional about the Ardent? Emotions shift and change, but the Ardent's powers are normal and unvaried. That Battlemind is worse, having no flavor whatsoever, and borrows mechanics from other defenders, with the Warden's transformations, Paladin's punishment, Swordmage's movement, and Fighter's stances. It has nothing to call its own, aside from "I have power points", making it a Psionic X defender.
This wouldn't be the case if Psionics had used its fluff properly.
Imagine if, for a moment, the Runepriest WAS the Ardent. You have an Emotional State, with Rage, Fear, and Sympathy (rune of destruction, rune of protection, and a third one, which would be akin to rune of healing). The Ardent becomes a character who's powers are wild and shifting, completely variant according to what state they wield. Meanwhile, their mantles become the way they protect themselves from their own abilities; Clarity allows them to see through the emotions they channel, Elation is self-sacrificing by embracing the emotion to enhance its power, and Serenity isolates a portion of its own mind to allow the tide to never take hold of them.
Meanwhile, you create a unique mechanic for the Battlemind (and give it a better name, damn it) to set it apart from its other psionic brethren. If each of the classes were unique in their mechanics, it would perfectly represent a Power Source that was less refined and entrenched in the world. You have many routes to power, all of which are different both from the other classes and from their own fellows within their source, representing how no two branches of psionic might are the same. And you have a hotbed for interesting character mechanics, because each character plays differently than anything that has come before, and future classes can take the genre into unique dimensions on their own.
But the ship has sailed. And like most of the PHB III, there's a lot of wasted potential.
Which, by the way, is I guess how I would sum up the mutterings and musings about "what went wrong". It isn't so much that the PHB III is bad. Far from it. It is a decent book.
But for the flagships of the edition, decent isn't good enough.
It's the Psionic Power Source being A Bunch Of Guys With Clubs, three out of four being melee.
It's the Runepriest occupying the same role, same primary, same source, and same thematic image as a current class.
It's the Seeker borrowing the Warden's fluff rather than creating its own, unique idea.
It's the Hybrid Rules preventing us from getting two new classes, when they could have easily been a Dragon article.
It's the book's psychotic obsession with Wisdom. Every race has a bonus to the stat, and every single class uses it as a primary or secondary. Oddly enough, only one psionic character uses Intelligence.
It's the Ardent being regressive, ignoring the progress the Bard and Artificer made in creating leaders that were not bound to a single weapon style.
It's the Battlemind being a royal disaster, pathetic in fluff and flawed in mechanics, an utterly sloppy creation.
It's the fact that there isn't a single thing any of these classes can do where the end result isn't something we've seen before. For example, you couldn't properly summon before the PHB II. When the Invoker and the Shaman were created, they pushed the boundary of the game to an entire new plane of possibilities. The PHB III presents new ways of doing old things, but at the end of the day, everything they do is just an alternate way of doing something someone else does.
It's the fact that some of the subsystems were completely unnecessary (Superior Implements, for example, basically come down to a +1 bonus to attack roles or a minor damage boost. You could make that a single feat, without the need for "new" equipment).
It's the fact that there are so many things the book tries to sell you, that it is very swingy. If you don't like Psionics, you are left with only two new classes, one of which is eerily similar to the Strength Cleric. If you don't need the hybrid rules, that's 25% of the potential for the book, gutted. If you don't want the Runepriest and don't care about the Seeker, there's only Psi. Compare it to the PHB II, where even if you hate Primal with a passion, you have half the classes as interesting and dynamic archetypes. If you don't like the new divine classes, you have plenty of old favorites in the arcane and primal to choose from.
It's the fact that it just has less than any handbook that came before it. And what we got has parts that are rushed, contrived, or downright sloppy.
The PHB III isn't a bad book. But it is NOT all it could have been. There is a ton of material in the volume, things that they could have done better, that they should have done better, but they did not. And thus, a great deal of potential was wasted.
It's a decent book. But it is not amazing. And we expect handbooks to be amazing.
After the Dragonborn book and martial power 2 both being very cool I was pretty disappointed by PHB 3.
I really wanted to play a seeker but they are pathetic past heroic tier. It's like the designers were so woried about some form of power creep that they decided that they can't do more than 2[w] + 2d10 ever and can`t have any large AE control. This is a class that is suppose to be able to fill the same roll as a wizard and utterly fails compared to the other controllers.
The monk I actually like. The move actions included in thier powers add some great flavour and make them different.
The rest of the psionic classes I think are pretty boring. The whole augment idea is pretty bland to me. You basically are limited to 3 different effects with varying strengths and then dailies. A regular class will have a lot more variety with encounter powers that do things wildly different from thier at-wills. The power point system is also broken. Why would an ardent ever give up energizing strike when at epic tier it can give them up to 8 surges/encounter worth of healing not including thier minor action heals?
The runepriest confuses me terribly. We already have a paladin, cleric, warlord, bard, artificer and ardent who can all be played as weapon wielding front-line healers. Do we really need another one? The mechanic is kind-of interesting but I just feel like this idea has been done to death and a robe wearing intelligence based wizardy-ish leader would have filled a current gap in the system.
The Hybrid rules I have no problems with as lots of people like hybrids.
The poster above me had some good ideas. Combining the ardent idea with the runepriest idea is something that should have happened. Now THAT is a cool class idea.
The poster above me had some good ideas. Combining the ardent idea with the runepriest idea is something that should have happened. Now THAT is a cool class idea.
Danke. But actually, that's just the second thing they could have done with it. Other rant incoming...
Why wasn't the Runepriest Elemental?
Ponder this, for a moment. The Elemental Chaos is all about change, flux, constant shifting. The Elemental power source is currently unknown, with nothing to show for it, the only power source that is currently declared viable by developers but has nothing under its name.
Why, then, was the Runepriest not the first of the Elemental Classes?
Rune State is so easily transformed, as its current flavor is a little lacking (it is an alphabet, but also a rune? What is the difference between rune and word and icon? Despite the fact that runes should make words, they have equal power mechanics). But what if it were something completely different?
Every stone that forms a lofty mountain is an avalanche waiting to occur. The same wind in a cool summer breeze will one day slash forth in a hurricane's rage. The waters that give life can also drown it. All that is constantly changes, a cycle of birth and death, creation and destruction. Everything strives, and all one can do is survive. Grasping power by the throat, gaining insight into the universe even while surviving its torment, some immerse themselves in creation and destruction to harness its abilities, challenging the typhoon and howling in the rage of the desert sandstorms to learn their wrath.
Mechanically, rune state becomes Creation and Destruction, the two aspects of change, and all his powers make or unmake as he sees fit. He IS the chaotic flow, because his powers are never the same form one moment to the next, and only his will to power determines what will unfold when he calls them forth. The Wrathful Hammer is the Path of the Mountain, the Defiant Word the Way of Waters (and should grant polearm and spear proficiencies, thus allowing iconic tridents), with further possibilities such as sword (forge of fury), axe (edge of oblivion), and bow (howling wind).
The Runepriest could easily have been the Primordial Priest, the dark brother of the Strength Cleric, sinister and forbodding. His power source would be amoral (not immoral, mind you), embracing constant change and the enforcement of one's own strength upon the world. His method of power would be distinctly non-primal, with no respect for spirits or harmony (considering nature and man alike to have the same core, the will to change), and far diverged from arcane contraptions. And his similarity in battle position to the Strength Cleric becomes an asset, for they meet as equals on the field of battle and clash together as twin sides of the same coin, one champion of the gods, the other endowed with primordial might.
Every stone that forms a lofty mountain is an avalanche waiting to occur. The same wind in a cool summer breeze will one day slash forth in a hurricane's rage. The waters that give life can also drown it. All that is constantly changes, a cycle of birth and death, creation and destruction. Everything strives, and all one can do is survive. Grasping power by the throat, gaining insight into the universe even while surviving its torment, some immerse themselves in creation and destruction to harness its abilities, challenging the typhoon and howling in the rage of the desert sandstorms to learn their wrath.
Sounds like a good description of the Primal Power Source as well.
Huh. Personally I really like the fact that the power point (or psionic strength point) mechanic survived in some shape or form. It is part of what really defined "psionics" for me. But I guess that is just me...
The runepriest confuses me terribly. We already have a paladin, cleric, warlord, bard, artificer and ardent who can all be played as weapon wielding front-line healers. Do we really need another one? The mechanic is kind-of interesting but I just feel like this idea has been done to death and a robe wearing intelligence based wizardy-ish leader would have filled a current gap in the system.
This pretty much sums up the majority of my disappointment with the Runepriest. It's not that it is a bad class, I actually find the basics of the runestate mechanic very interesting, but another melee fixated divine class in heavy armor is not what I was expecting when the name got leaked. Something less like a warpriest and more like a cloistered cleric, a divine scholar that uses tome implements, would have been far more desirable.
The runepriest confuses me terribly. We already have a paladin, cleric, warlord, bard, artificer and ardent who can all be played as weapon wielding front-line healers. Do we really need another one? The mechanic is kind-of interesting but I just feel like this idea has been done to death and a robe wearing intelligence based wizardy-ish leader would have filled a current gap in the system.
This pretty much sums up the majority of my disappointment with the Runepriest. It's not that it is a bad class, I actually find the basics of the runestate mechanic very interesting, but another melee fixated divine class in heavy armor is not what I was expecting when the name got leaked. Something less like a warpriest and more like a cloistered cleric, a divine scholar that uses tome implements, would have been far more desirable.
I would have saved it for Divine Power 2 and made it into a cleric build.
One thing that disappointed me with the Psion class is there is no little extra ability with your powers with regards to being a Telekinetic Psion or a Telepathic Psion. The only thing that makes you different are the two encounter powers you get for being one or the other. I figured they would throw in a neat ability in your powers to go with being one or the other.
