How did Complete Psionic "nerf" things?

[Endarire]

I'm not an avid psionic fan, yet I wish to know how WotC upset to many.

[Archmage Joda]

Well, I seem to remember one point of contention being the bit where it limited astral construct to only having one out at a time without the use of a PrC to specifically override that. I also remember something about Energy Missile being changed, but can't remember what. Also, the book is pretty much not liked because there's very little that's worthwhile in it. Linked power is said to be broken, the various mindblade and racial psi-like ability feats could've been condensed into one feat apiece, the infamous erudite comes from that book, and nobody knows how to use that illithid blast feat, because it refers to using power points, but no mention at all of how many.

[Grim Sage]

Also, the sidebar at page 79 saying that powers doing slashing, piercing or bludgeoning damage ARE hampered by DR.
That got a few less-than-enthusiastic replies...

[Havok4]

Also, the sidebar at page 79 saying that powers doing slashing, piercing or bludgeoning damage ARE hampered by DR.
That got a few less-than-enthusiastic replies...

The big issue being that there is no corresponding rule for spells or a corresponding limit to summons, which makes the complete psionic nerfs seem unfair and indicative of the "PSIONICS ARE OVERPOWERED!!!" mindset. Although some good things did come out of that book which are not broken, like the Ardent.

[archangel.arcanis]

Yeah i think the biggest thing was that they nerfed some psi stuff and then turned around and handed magic users new more powerful rocket launchers immediately after that in other books. It also didn't help that they released so many books between the XPH and CPsi for everyone else including multiple books for skill monkeys and casters while ignoring the requests of Psi fans. Also the fact that they substituted removing a hindrance they added for real class development, AC nerf and the PrC to remove it in same book.

Also overall the quality of the book was really low compared to everything before and after it. It had lots of half-assed written items, like the illithid blast feat, that don't actually work. There seems to have been no editing of the book what so ever, not even spell check in word. It was essentially seen as a huge F you from WotC toward the Psi community.

[Tonymitsu]

Also, the sidebar at page 79 saying that powers doing slashing, piercing or bludgeoning damage ARE hampered by DR.
That got a few less-than-enthusiastic replies...

The big issue being that there is no corresponding rule for spells or a corresponding limit to summons, which makes the complete psionic nerfs seem unfair and indicative of the "PSIONICS ARE OVERPOWERED!!!" mindset. Although some good things did come out of that book which are not broken, like the Ardent.

 

My group has always played that spells that specifically call out piercing/bludgeoning/slashing damage are hampered by DR.  Such spells also double dip with elemental resistances where applicable too.

Ice Storm, to use an example from another thread on the same subject, that does cold and bludgeoning against a vampire that has Cold resist 10, and DR 10/silver and magic.

Say the player rolls 48 damage: which means 24 cold and 24 blunt.
That becomes 14 cold and 14 blunt, for 28 damage total.

After all, that DR would certainly apply if a rock were dropped on the vampire's head so we saw no need to make an exception for a frozen rock.
(Oh yeah, and in the case of DR/magic, such effects also don't count as magical weapons.)


We figured that was the way it was supposed to be, otherwise why bother to call out the damage type like that?

[Havok4]

Page 292 of the DMG clearly states that spells are not subject to damage reduction. Complete psionic therefore either unintentionally broke the already established rules (demonstrating its poor editing) or created an even more unfair disparity between magic and psionics (demonstrating its poor game design).

[PhaedrusXY]

My group has always played that spells that specifically call out piercing/bludgeoning/slashing damage are hampered by DR.  Such spells also double dip with elemental resistances where applicable too.

I know it makes sense, and it is probably a common house rule, but as Havok4 points out this is strictly not how it works by the RAW.

[Nunkuruji]

Also, the sidebar at page 79 saying that powers doing slashing, piercing or bludgeoning damage ARE hampered by DR.
That got a few less-than-enthusiastic replies...

Splinterbolt in SpC has some similar limitations, fwiw.

[archangel.arcanis]

Also, the sidebar at page 79 saying that powers doing slashing, piercing or bludgeoning damage ARE hampered by DR.
That got a few less-than-enthusiastic replies...

Splinterbolt in SpC has some similar limitations, fwiw.

There are a couple of other spells that specify that are specifically affected by DR as well, but those are only out of the later books and are few in number. The rule mentioned before applied it to all psionics and only psionics.

That also reminds me. A good chunk of the book was errata to previous things. So rather than making it a PDF to download off the site they made you pay for it and took space away from other more useful things.

[Sinfire Titan]

Also, the sidebar at page 79 saying that powers doing slashing, piercing or bludgeoning damage ARE hampered by DR.
That got a few less-than-enthusiastic replies...

Splinterbolt in SpC has some similar limitations, fwiw.

There are a couple of other spells that specify that are specifically affected by DR as well, but those are only out of the later books and are few in number. The rule mentioned before applied it to all psionics and only psionics.

That also reminds me. A good chunk of the book was errata to previous things. So rather than making it a PDF to download off the site they made you pay for it and took space away from other more useful things.

And the errata needs errata! 

[Prime32]

Hyperconscious. The true Complete Psionic.

That is all.

[awaken DM golem]

ditto


Here's what Tempest put in his faq:
Q: Did anything change in Complete Psionics that I should know about?
A: There were three major areas of clarification, and five powers were altered (in what appears to be paid-for, yet non-universal, errata).
What was changed:
CLARIFICATIONS:
1) DR now applies to metacreativity powers that deal damage described as slashing, piercing, or bludgeoning.
2) Manifesting a power from a stone using your own points flushes the stone.
3) Charging a soulknife's twin-shortsword mind blade with Psychic Strike requires a separate action for each blade.
ALTERATIONS:
1) Astral Construct: Only one construct may be in existence at a time.
2) Dimension Door: Additional augments added, including two negative-cost augments for diminished effect.
3) Empathic Transfer, Hostile: Complete rewrite. Similar (but far weaker) effect and a definitive ruling on the multiple-target augment.
4) Energy Missile: DC scales as other energy powers.
5) Energy Stun: See Energy Missile.
Several of these changes were seen as unnecessary and unjustified (in particular the Astral Construct modification), while others were welcomed (in particular the Soulknife clarification and Dimension Door). However, as these rules are in Complete Psionic instead of an official errata, they are not considered as 'essential' to your game. Several DMs ignore some or all of these changes; speak to your DM about which ones are in use.
It should be noted that the CPsi sidebar on metacreativity and damage reduction directly contradicts not only all the rules on magic, but also the official 3.5 psionics FAQ from the Sage.



My impressions:
Clar #1 ... gets a boo.
Clar #2 ... is reasonable, but I prefer the powerstone loop (of course). It's just out of combat anyway. The nerf provides a weird upper level power access.
Clar #3 ... is a whatever. I mean when was the last time someone here !@$#-ed about the Soulknife ?! Only a WoL mindblade "could" be overpowered.
Alter #1 ... gets a boo. Wasn't overpowered to begin with.
Alter #2 ... nice improvement.
Alter #3 ... I could play the original, but it was complicated. The update is much quicker / easier. Could be treated as 2 different powers.
Alter #4 ... gets a boo. Why should psionics have something nice.
Alter #5 ... gets a boo. Why should psionics have something really nice.

[PlzBreakMyCampaign]

Page 292 of the DMG clearly states that spells are not subject to damage reduction. Complete psionic therefore either unintentionally broke the already established rules (demonstrating its poor editing) or created an even more unfair disparity between magic and psionics (demonstrating its poor game design).

Of course magic should just go through everything, right? right? 

I think the big one is astral constructs. Psionics before that had a nice (albeit strange) summoning niche.

[deuxhero]

The best thing (soulbow) in complete crud is free.

[Sinfire Titan]

The best thing (soulbow) in complete crud is free.

As is the most powerful thing (Erudite). Linked Power is a close second, but that isn't worth the book.

[bearsarebrown]

Ardents are pretty cool....

[ProfessorCirno]

Another issue was with the fluff.  While I personally didn't have a big issue with Ardents, quite a few others disliked Ardents and Divine Minds a lot.

A lot of the new spells were...questionable.  One psychokinesis spell has you teleport tiny illithid spawn onto the enemy out of nowhere, which then just vanish right after, doing stat damage.  It's probably the most roundabout ways of doing stat damage, and one of the weirder spell I've seen in awhile ("So you do what again?"  "I teleport lots of Illithid babies onto him that do stat damage, uh, somehow.  I'm not exactly sure where they come from since, you know, Illithid babies."  "And then?"  "They just sorta disappear, I guess.")

In fact, every thing in the book that involves illithids were just weird.  Not cool and otherworldly weird like mind flayers are meant to be, though.  More "How did they...WHY did they...?" levels of weird.

[PhaedrusXY]

Yeah... the illithid fluff in that book was absolute crap, and contradictory with just about everything that had ever been written about mindflayers in a D&D book, and even with itself... How exactly can you have an illithid heritage, when the illithid reproduce parasitically? And if mindflayers can have offspring the normal way (and hence... have a heritage), what the hell are the larval flayers, then?

I do like the ardent, though, and Linked Power and Anticipatory Strike are both incredibly good. So there were a few good things in the book, but they're mixed in with a lot of bad. Overall, I don't think it is all that different from many WotC books, though. There is always a lot of crap to wade through to find the gems, and quite a few books only have one or two really decent things in them, with the rest being crap. This one has several things I'd say were good.

[Bauglir]

Yeah, it's just that the crap was so very crappy here, as opposed to being merely lightly-crap-coated mediocrity. There's probably about the same ratio of nice things to useless things as there are in most campaign setting supplements and the like (although, Complete books usually have the bar a bit higher than that).