Customer Reviews

Complete Psionic (Dungeons & Dragons d20 3.5 Fantasy Roleplaying Supplement)

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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

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.

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.

First off, this is a love-hate book. Before you buy it, I suggest you try to find a copy at a place like Borders and flip through it to see if you're interested.
Second, please remember that you MUST have The Expanded Psionics Handbook ( Expanded Psionics Handbook (Dungeons & Dragons Supplement) ) to utilize this volume.

Onto business. First off, the new base classes are awesome. I have played both the Lurk and the Ardent, and they're fantastic classes. The Ardent class is not only well-balanced, it makes sense in role play (a psionic that has devoted him/herself to a particular set of 'truths,' and those truths grant them psionic powers). The Lurk is the psionic form of a rogue/[...] mix, and is intriguing to play. While I have never played an erudite, it class appears to be balanced and well-written.
I was, however, dissapointed with the prestige classes. The prestige class for Shapers is absolutely useless, and the Storm Disciple is wasted potential. It could have been a lot cooler than it is. There is another problem in that there are very few feats, if any, that expand the options of the new classes introduced.

As for feats, I am a fan of Elemental Stewards (which allows you to have an elemental companion instead of a psicrystal), but they are kind of out of place. Why a psionic would have a particular type of elemental following them around seems a little off unless it fits racially. The better option would have been to make some sort of psionic familiar template. Most of the feats somehow grant you extra power points per day, and there is an irritatingly long list of racial feats. The Illithid racial feats (and prestige classes) belonged in Lords of Madness, not this book.

However, the new monsters are really neat, and the feats that allow you to enhance your astral constructs are cool. What wasn't cool was their attempt to down-power astral constructs, but that can easily be dealt with by, well, ignoring it. The fact that this book didn't address psionic golems at all also irked me, as the EPH didn't either.

In the end, it's well worth having this book if you're looking for a couple new options for your psionic characters or looking for some slightly different base classes.

I found Complete Psionic to be a disappointment. CP is padded with useless feats, powers, guilds, and fluff, even beyond the usual padding in WotC products. Art was scarce, ranging from poor to good, a far cry from Tome Of Magic. Editing was terrible, as is typical in many WotC products: problems from exisitng sources appeared again here.

CP has the usual components of "Complete" book from WotC. The new classes--the lurk, divine mind, and ardent--are interesting, and possibly the best part of the book, although they are a bit derivative. The lurk is a psionic rogue without some of the usual rogue skills. The divine mind is essentially a psionic paladin, and the ardent is a psionic cleric. The feats are mostly a junk drawer of odds and ends that most likely will never be seen in play (do you really want to take feats to turn into a mind flayer?). The monsters are uninspired and forgettable. The few psionic items in the book are generally not that interesting.

The "new" powers in the book are mostly a mixed bag. Many are reprints from other sources. Other powers needlessly introduce new mechanics to the psionics ruleset or scale in an perculiar manner. We now have "light beam" that causes light, shadow, and darkness damage (?), and a d4 energy power at first level. Energy barrage doesn't have a check for psionics resistance, unlike every other energy power in the Expanded Psionics Handbook. Other powers were restricted to certain classes without any real justification. There didn't seem to be any overriding theme for the powers here. Discipline powers were almost absent, meaning characters like shapers, telepaths, and nomads won't see much love from CP. The book is mostly a playground for the lurk, ardent, and divine mind.

Unfortunately, CP didn't address problems in the XPH, such as the death of psicryrstals or abuses of psychic reformation. The soulknife, wilder, and metamind are largely considered underpowered, but nothing here remedies that in any meaningful way. I don't understand the point of CP. It could've brought everything psionic together in one volume. It could've remedied long standing oversights and problems from the Expanded Psionics Handbook. I love psionics, and I think Bruce Cordell is just brilliant. But CP is a poor work.

I was really looking forward to this one. Man, was I disappointed.

I like psionics in the DnD game. I enjoyed the PH, and really enjoyed the XPH. This, however, was a waste of money and I'm really glad I got it on sale.

Feats: Most of the feats were class and/or race specific. I'm not sure what the problem was here, tbh. It seemed to me that the CP was an attempt to get folks to actually play some of those races? Really, it's the only explanation I could think of. Otherwise, why wasn't this material contained in the XPH?

Classes/PrCs: *sigh* I was unimpressed. Nothing that screamed "play me". The Ardent and Divine Minds are just psionic clerics, and the Lurker is just a psionic rogue. Wow. The PrC were even worse, IMO. Nothing that justified the price of the book, really. Most of them were utterly unmemorable and really boring. And I'm a PrC freak; I love the concept.

Powers: Again, nothing that really did anything for me. It seemed to be extremes; the powers seem really broken.

The rest of the book was just unmemorable. I've used that word a lot, and it's a theme for this book. "Unmemorable" is the best word I can think of for the Complete Psionic.

I thought the Complete Arcane, Warrior, Divine, and Adventurer were all good books. They all had their problems, to be sure, but they have really added to my groups roleplaying experience. We've added a Scout (Adventurer), a Dervish PrC (Warrior), Divine Contemplative PrC (Divine), and a boatload of feats have been excellent additions to the game. But myselof and my DM are both huge psionic fans, and most of the material contained in the Complete Psionic will never see the light of day in our game.

There are better ways to get folks to play psionic characters than releasing a bad book.

Complete Psionics is the latest in the Complete Series of Wizards of the Coast. The other books in the series are not needed to use this book, but the 3 Core Books and the Expanded Psionics Handbook are.

The book is adressed to DMs and players alike. As normally psionics are not part of every campaign, DMs and players may be required to spend some time and effort to incorporate the elements of this book into their games. If you intend to introduce psionics the first time into your game, I would recommend to use only the Expanded Psionics Handbook first, and add this book to the game only after you became familiar with the concept of psionics in v3.5.

Complete Psionics presents the reader with the usual chapters found in other books of the series: 3 new core classes (or 4, if you count the erudite as a different core class), prestige classes, new feats, powers and items, monsters, substitution levels and epic level progression for the new classes, organisations, even a new race, and locations of interest.

The book itself - almost every chapter - focuses on the new classes, that is, most new feats and powers are connected to the new classes in some way. This means that if you do not really like the new classes, you will find most parts of the book unuseful. I think that this is the biggest problem with the book, as it offers old classes some additional material, but it is not enough for those only interested in these classes to buy the book.

Also, in the feats section some feats (illithid feats and host feats) are only for those who want to introduce illithid heritage to the game or for those who play mainly in Eberron.

Two of the new classes are connected to someting new to the game - gaining psionic powers not simply from one's own mind but from universal philosophies or from divine connection. This is certainly something that older gamers may find alien to the system of psionics, and many reject it, but one should never be too old to try out something new.

So, before buying this book, you should carefully think about these questions: Do I want to incorporate psionics into my game? Do I like the new classes? If not, do I find the other material enough to buy the book?

I think that if you answer these questions with "yes", then you will find Complete Psionics a great book. If the answer is no, then only buy the book if you are a desperate collector of v3.5 WotC books.

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I just picked up a copy of the Complete Psionics when i ran across it in a local game store, and i was highly dissappointed with the product.

Two of the three core classes (Ardent and Lurk) seem well done, although the name 'Lurk' seems a bit weak to me, (anyone at WoTC have a thesarus?) The Divine mind doesn't seem to achieve what it sets out too, and fails to explain the reason for the direction it takes. Why would a divine power segue into psionic powers ... it doesn't seem organic at all. Also would have been nice to see a Yogi or Guru or something far east asian flavored as is the standard for the series so far.

On the prestige classes ... my single largest gripe: Where is the BEEF. Every other complete book has featured 19 to 36 presige classes allowing for the theme in all character types and interesting ways. In this book we get 8? There are no specific racial classes which would be nice to have as there isn't as much support for the Psi races. There are even suggestions in other books of classes that could be 'adapted' to psionics, and those areas remain unexplored untouched and unused. Given the history of the series, i think everyone expected more in this area.

The Feats chapter was fairly well done. I would have liked to see more Feats with a cost break based on keeping, expending Psionic Focus, one of the better mechanics to come from Psionics.

The Powers chapter made some interesting choices, including printing consolidated class lists of powers instead of lists of new powers. To me this just strikes me as FILLER for s weak underdeveloped product. One could make the argument that it is convienient to have a consolidated list of psionic powers, But i would posit that argument is false, as it woudl require that each new product add consolidated lists, taking up amazing amounts of space in subsequent products. The only workable forum for consolidated lists is online.

The creatures and constructs section again seemed to be largely filler. How many pages of very simple minor templates applied to astral constructs so does one need? Do you really need to apply each template to an astral construct at each level? Only if you don't have enough material for your product and are trying to fill space.

The races chapter seems short on meat again. The level adjusted lists of psi races should be 3 or 4 levels long at maximum, yet we are giving a rediculous 20 level progression for each race which all read ad (get the racial abilities over the firest few levels of your class, and advance slowly then, then move on normally thereafter).

I see a lot of good and interesting ideas in complete pionics. I don't have nearly enough readily usable material to make the purchase anywhere near as valuable as any of my previous 'complete' books. Should WoTC decide to publish a 'complete esoterica' further developing incarnum and the classes of Tome of Magic, i will definitely look at the material a lot more closely before i decide to purchase such a tome.

This book weighs in at 160 pages compared with 192 for most of the 'complete' books(complete warrior was also 160 but didn't have a bulk of spells to incorporate),

I have to disagree with some of the other posters, I think this was a very good expansion for psionics. While having divine psionic classes introduces a new wrinkle that some player groups may not care for, it was necessary for groups that want to play only psionics. Keeping healing within the divine rules was necessary to prevent psionic characters taking over segments of regular campaigns mechanically intended for divine classes. The prestige classes are adequate. It might have been nice to have more, but the Storm Disciple is easily adaptable to the other three elements, and there are PRC's in Complete Arcane and such that are appropriate for psionics (i.e., the Mindbender, which is only a psionic PRC in my campaign, and the Master Transmorgifist). The expanded powers and feats are great. I could have done with a few fewer racial feats, but no harm done. I especially liked the additional feats that expand the Soulknife and Wilder possibilities -- significantly answering the complaints of users that they are underpowered.

Other plusses: a consolidated powers list, many erratas addressed (alhtough if they were going to do errata, I'd have liked them to do all of them instead of just a few), and I'm all for having some of the already published data included so I don't have to go looking through multiple books and magzines for psionic rules and options.

Some minuses: Editing problems, nerfing of astral constructs (may be justified for play balance, but I'm not yet convinced), fairly thin magic and monster section, and the whole concept of Illithid heritage (just does not fit with the background of the race and how hosts are changed into Illithids after being infested by Illithid tadpoles). The updated version of the Erudite should have included the Extra Unique Power feat that appeared in the same Dragon Magazine article that introduced the Erudite (every other "spellcasting/manifesting" class has an analagous feat). While Dragon is 100% official, leaving it out of Complete Psionic makes it ambiguous as to whether the feat in the magazine is still official.

Overall, I recommend this book. It is a solid expansion of the rules from an official source that will be allowed in any game.

In April, Wizards of the Coast released "Complete Psionic" to be added to their complete character class book series. As a lover of psionics and the complete book series, it was a must on my buy list. However, the book is a mixed bag of worms, both good and bad.

This book was divided similar to the other complete books. They start out with introducing three new character classes: Ardent, Divine Mind and Lurk. While there are mixed feelings across the series about introducing new character classes, they do accomplish what they are trying, provide players with another option. The ardent and divine mind classes introduce divine psionics, and the lurk is a psionic rogue of sorts. The prestige classes they introduce are the anarchic initiate, ebon saint, ectopic adept, flayerspawn psychic, illumine soul, soulbow, storm disciple and the zerth cenobite. Feats are separated into psionic, general, racial, metapsionic, host and illithid heritage. Psionic powers, mantles and items take up the majority of the book and for good reason. They follow with new psionically focused monsters and end with optional rules and a new playable race. Each section has their good, bad and ugly.

The Good:
There are a number of good points in this book. The first are the extra powers. This section includes some sorely needed powers that help round out the psion disciplines and extend the possibilities for psionic warriors. Also, the new prestige classes are also excellent additions for metacreativity psions, chaotic psions and fighting focused individuals. A part that stands out about Complete Psionic is that for each class included a background group and example. This brings extra flavor for those people who buy the books just to read them. The zerth cenobite is particularly interesting as they describe the limbo monastery in which they train. Besides, who wouldn't enjoy a monk that could hit you so hard, he knocks you into the next century? Well, maybe not that far, but you get the idea, a monk who has power over time. Finally, they add a class that I personally believe was missing, the soulbow. While the name leaves something to be desired, the idea is good. A range / arrow focused mindblade.

The Bad:
While this almost falls into "the ugly", I was fairly disappointed in the "divine psionics". Psionics is its own form of magic, there is no need to mix it into something similar to divine spell casters. In fact, doing so takes away the credibility of psionics in a campaign world. However with that said, I will have to see someone play one of the divine classes. It may turn out they are a valuable addition, but I have my doubts. Second, while they have a couple prestige classes, they lack a real strong psion prestige class. Yes they have some, and they are only alright, but they don't really have any that stand out as extremely worth while. This is a bad across all of the psionic books.

The Ugly:
First off, this book is horribly edited. Did they even have someone look at it, before the published it? While I enjoy most of the feats, I do feel they set them up far more complicated than it needs to be.

DM suggestions
As always psionics is a difficult concept to introduce into campaigns, mainly on on the DM side. There are a number of reasons I have heard in the past. To list two:

* Psionics feels like scifi - of all of the reasons this is probably the most valid reason. Depending on how you and more importantly your players view psionics, some may feel psionics ruin the atmosphere. The simple solution? Ask them about it. What if psionics was just another form of magic, just cast differently... not so scifi.

* Psionics is broken - heard and overstated, and I will simply state it is a myth brought on from second edition psionics. I have tested in numerous ways (both DM and player side), and the numbers do work out. However, the big problem is that psions are extremely versatile. They can do something very powerful, for one moment, then be drained for the rest of the day. That is the key. See how your players handle their psionics, if they do all their powers at once, "remind" them days are long.

For these reasons and others, it usually is the DM that has problems handling a situation. How many campaigns have you put together, planned out an exact situation, to have the players solve it completely differently? Psionic powers are just slightly different than magic, so it is hard to prepare. The easiest way to prepare - expect anything.

As for introducing psionics, I would recommend at first following the psionic / magic is transparent rule. Simply stated, everything psionic is magical in nature. Thus a psionic power just another spell. This means negation, dispels and all that are universal. Play this way for a while, it is a lot easier.

Overall
Even with the edits, and the poor choice in divine psionics, I still recommend this book for your dungeons and dragons books collection - if you already have the XPH. It fills in some of the holes in the previous book, and it adds functionality to currently psionic enabled campaigns.