Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Buy it for the list of powers, August 17, 1999
By A Customer
This book is valuable merely for the list of psionic powers it contains. It's a fairly complete list; combined with the revised Dark Sun package and the Player's Option books, it presents a list of powers that needs no further expansion. Use the mechanic from "The Will and the Way" (in the Dark Sun box, or available for free online from TSR) or the Skills & Powers book, though. It makes a lot more sense.Psionics don't unbalance a game if your DM addresses the issue appropriately. I've played psi characters and found it to be incredibly challenging; I've DMed for psi characters and have had no problem with game balance. The key is that the DM needs to be aware of what psionicists can and cannot do and then plan accordingly. Besides, once your psionicist is out of PSPs for the day, he's not much more effective than a mage who has cast all of his spells for the day.
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Unorthodox and innovative - careful integration is worth it!, June 9, 2000
The PHBR (Player's Handbook Reference) series is one of the most highly-regarded, and yet much-maligned, series of supplements ever created. Each sourcebook takes one of the races or classes of the AD&D game, and adds to it huge amounts of new detail - new equipment, spells, kits (sub-classes), lore, new rules, etc. The problem is that the players love these so much that the DM often feels compelled to buy into the rest of the series - an expensive proposition! Fortunately, these works were "reprinted" in the excellent AD&D Core Rules CD-ROM. This one introduces the powerful and alien class of the Psionicist - if you are not running a Spelljammer or Dark Sun campaign, you will want to think VERY carefully before allowing this class to players! The power and versatility of these characters is amazing. Details of this book include: the Psionicist class and restrictions, a full explanation of psionic powers, disciplines, and advancement, special abilities, the powerful Wild Talents, psionic combat (a great system), the great powers (Clairsentience, Psychokinesis, Psychometabolism, Psychoportation, Telepathy, and Metapsionics), running a psionics campaign, and great monsters! It's a wonderful book - and used carefully, it will add a whole new dimension to your games.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Well, it's better than the 1st Edition..., June 25, 1998
By A Customer
Psionics: The system TSR can't get right. The First Edition's psionics system was cryptic and confusing. The CPH version isn't a whole lot better, the power descriptions being on the whole vague and the systems being unnecessarily complex. There's also the problem of power.You see, the CPH makes a big deal about psionics not being magic. That's fine until you realize that most AD&D monsters with high magic resistance are completely vulnerable to psionics. Your nonpsionicist has only one defense against psionic attack -- stopping everything he's doing and concentrating. This makes high magic resistance, anti-magic shells, and the like a joke. Anyway, the CPH is like an early alpha release of an operating system -- it doesn't work very well. Maybe TSR can finally fix psionics in the Third Edition. Maybe not. What am I, a mind reader?
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