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40 of 44 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
{In} Complete Psionics, April 18, 2006
This review is from: Complete Psionic (Dungeons & Dragons d20 3.5 Fantasy Roleplaying Supplement) (Hardcover)
First I would say this is possibly the worst edited book I have ever seen from WotC. And it is not just in the editing, just the way many of the paragraphs are written seems "wrong". Remember back a few months when WotC website had a series of articles on how to write feats and such, I think this books violates every rule presented there.
Once you get past the editing then there is the recycling. A lot of material here comes from Dragon Magazine and the "Races of" series. I added the Tallaire back when they first appeared in Dragon, it is a little late to bring them to me now. And I did notice that they did not recycle any psionic content from the Eberron or Forgotten Realms books, are they off limits?
Then there is the Errata, I should not have to pay for errata, that should be made available at their website. And considering the reaction to the Astral Construct errata, hopefully it will be errataed once more.
OK, now that I am past that, what about the content?
I really like the classes! I do not see the Ardent as a psionic cleric, I see him as a theme-caster, like a sorcerer with all fire spells. The key difference is that they get to add additional themes as they advance. It would be very interesting to play an Ardent from 1st to 20th level. I doubt I could guess what Mantles I would actually choose because the path of the adventures would be the deciding factor.
The Divine Mind is good, but it seems lacking on the Divine side. Maybe if the mixed a Mantle with a Domain? I do like the Lurk, especially the fact that he gets ALL Lurk Augments and doesn't have to pick and choose from a feat list.
And yes, when you combine these with the Psion, Wilder, Psychic Warrior and Soulknife from the XPH, the Psychic Rogue from the Mind's Eye and maybe the Akashic from Arcana Unearthed, we can have an all Psionic Party.
The prestige class section is a waste of space. It is not just that there are so few, it is also that they are so class specific. The only one that applies to any psionic class is the Flayerspawn Psychic and it is destined to be an NPC class in most campaigns. And yes, I agree that this new format is too wasteful, I have used several of these new format PrCs, but did not use any of the background because it did not fit my setting.
There are many very good feats, but far too many are Racial feats (including the Host & Illithid feats). There are many new powers, but far too many are Mantle only and there are a few Psionic items and Monsters, but they are "meh".
I also agree the Elemental Stewards don't fit. Maybe there was an elemental prestige class that was cut or something, but they should have been replaced with some "Host" creatures other than Quorri so that the Host feats can be used out of Eberron.
Overall the book does add several new ideas to Psionics and provides several new options, but it is a fixer-up'er, be prepared to have a lot of editing mistakes to correct and more than a few DM descions to make on what to Rule 0 and what to expand to all Psions
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31 of 35 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
A shameful waste of paper., April 20, 2006
This review is from: Complete Psionic (Dungeons & Dragons d20 3.5 Fantasy Roleplaying Supplement) (Hardcover)
As a psionics fan I was really disappointed to see what was done with this book. I'm honestly unsure where the designers are coming from on a lot of the things in here. Certain powers got unfairly nerfed, while there are a host of abusable new wrinkles introduced.
Up to this point the complete series has been a shining example of how good WOTC can be at creating original material. Next to the core books these were the best written, as was the Expanded Psionics Handbook. Complete Psionic doesn't achieve a place even close to that of its predecessors. Let's go down the list one by one of how they botched this release.
New Classes-Ardent/Divine Mind. Originally a single class, it was split off into two. Both of which suck. They channel divine energy with their mind, breaking with both tradition and flavor of all previous psionic material. Mechanically they're rather boring as well, very little more than a "psionic cleric".
Lurk-An interesting class, even if it is "psionic rogue" which is precisely what it was when the concept originally appeared on the website (for free).
Erudite-somehow manages to be more powerful and versatile than the base psionic class Psion, which is a bad idea.
Prestige Classes-only 8 of them, none of which are particularly good. Not to say they're all bad, but not worth the price of the book.
Feats-a lot of them, but a significant portion fall into these categories. 1)allow a psionic race to use its daily Psi-like ability 2 more times. there are umpteen versions of this feat, for each separate PLA of each psionic race. could have been condensed into a single feat 2)use 2 or more uses of a specific racial PLA to achieve a slightly different PLA. very redundant, and again there are far too many slight variations. 3)shape a soulknife's mind blade into X different silly exotic weapons. Separate feats for each of course.
Powers. Most of the new powers are for the new classes only, though there are a couple usable ones. Unfair nerfs for Hostile Empathic Transfer and Astral Construct, which amount to WOTC attempting to sell us errata. Unfair. Not worth the cost of admission however.
Basically, steer clear of this book. Psionic fans will be disappointed by the lack of support for the already existing classes, and its poor writing, editing, and playtesting won't win us any new fans.
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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Many problems overshadow good material, April 25, 2006
This review is from: Complete Psionic (Dungeons & Dragons d20 3.5 Fantasy Roleplaying Supplement) (Hardcover)
Buying the Complete Psionic was a lot like getting hit in the face with a custard pie. Parts of it taste really good but I would have like the pie a lot better if the pie had been on my plate instead of in my face.
For those who don't know even though Bruce is listed as one of the two primary authors on the cover his was not the last hand that touched it. After he wrote the first draft of the manuscript the material was handed off to a development team for further playtesting and refinement. Then it went through final editing. Somewhere in this process the proposed page count of the book went from roughly 190 pages to 160. I'm sure Bruce had some input at various stages but I'm also sure that much of his material was changed substantially. One example that he has admitted to was that he submitted only one "divine" class yet the final product had two, the Ardent & the Divine Mind.
This book has several major things going against it.
1. It is very poorly edited. In addition to sloppy sentence structure and whatnot there are clear instances of where the development staff changed some of the original stuff. If you look at the feat tables you will see that they indicate that some feats can be used "3+ Cha mod times per day" yet when you get to the feat text it's 1/day.
2. The errata changing Expanded Psionics Handbook (XPH) powers is poorly done and is mixed in with the new powers. For example the Energy Missile & Energy Stun powers were changed so that the DC scaled +1 per 2 power points instead of the old +1 per 1 power point. These were powers that had received complaints for scaling too quickly so this change was not entirely unexpected. However, right there in the same section is a new energy power with the same old 1/1 scaling. There are other examples where changes appear to be illogical. But worst of all the things that seemed to most need errata, like clarification on the XPH Psychic Reformation power, were not done at all.
3. The content is very thin. Only 8 Prestige Classes ... less than half of what appears in any other complete book & less than half of these are actually useable. Only 6 new monsters and none of them are psionic constructs so the XPH feat "Craft Psionic Construct" is still unusable. No fluff on running psi focused games ... unlike, say the Complete Warrior which has stuff on warrior focused games. Lots of wasted space, for instance tables listing both the new powers in this book and all the ones from the XPH where all other Complete books just list the new stuff.
4. The "flavor" of Psionics is completely changed by this book. In the XPH psi seems to be about "the power of the mind" and a psionic character is unique in that he is not dependant on outside forces or foci for his power. His attack powers are based on creating an energy effect or affect the mind or body directly. The Complete Psionic changes this radically. Now some psychic characters get their powers from the gods. They link to the inner and outer planes to create effects. After this book there is literally nothing to separate a psion from a wizard, cleric, or paladin.
5. Many of the new powers, classes, and feats are underpowered. For some reason the final product has an incredible focus on things that are useable once per day. There are literally pages and pages of stuff that, if you take the class or feat you get something that can be used once per day. This goes so far that they even mistakenly attribute some stuff in the XPH to be once per day when it is not.
With that said the book does have some very nice gems.
The Ardent & Lurk base classes are fantastically done and can be easily inserted into any ongoing game that has Psionics. The Ardent in particular is a class that has wonderful flavor and enables one to play a "cleric" like character with a uniquely psionic feel. The Divine Mind is mechanically interesting, being somewhere between a Paladin, Marshal, and Psychic Warrior, but the fact that they draw their powers directly from a deity disturbs me to no end. I have no problem with a character who draws both on the power within and divine power, but I have a serious issue when WotC had deities granting psionic powers to folks.
Many of the feats are interesting and can find ready use in an ongoing game. In fact this was probably the best section of the book for me in spite of the problems between the text and tables that I mentioned above.
Some of the new powers are useful, though plenty more are odd or seem out of place flavor wise.
The new race introduced by the book is very interesting, though I think that I would tend to use either them or the XPH Elan and not both.
I love the Erudite class & feel that it could easily be used alongside normal Psions instead of replacing them as the book suggests. They have a fascinating blend of flexibility and restrictions that I find appealing.
I'm also big XPH Soulknife fan, and I have to admit that the Complete Psionic really delivers for them with new feats, Prestige Classes, and useful errata like the fact that dual Mind Blades can both be charged separately with Psychic Strike.
However, like the pie in the face, even though it has some great things going for it, in the end the Complete Psionic fails to deliver in a satisfying manner. I strongly suggest actually reading some of the book before deciding to buy it. In all honesty I would rather have had no new Psionic book rather than what was delivered in the Complete Psionic even though I will probably end up using bits and pieces of it ... and that's a hard thing for me to say since it was the psionics in the XPH that brought me back to DnD after a long absence.
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