Psionic Ideas

[Taelan]

So now we have the psionic badguys. What would it take to get the psionic classes opened up for pc class selection?

Well, I think that the Soulknife would be a fairly easy class to add to the game now that we have the monk class. The upgrades are fairly similar between the two and the dev's wouldn't even have to add the artificial enhancements to the class in order to increase their damage as the Soulknife is able to add the various weapon pre- and suf- fixes to their attacks as they desire whenever they rest (just like the wizard and cleric classes.) As far as the other abilities of the Soulknife? Well, I don't believe that they would be very difficult to emulate in the game.

As far as the other three (plus) classes from the psionic book? I think that the biggest problem with instituting them for player usage is the Augmentablity of the various powers. After all the magic system, with it's mana points, is virtually identical to the power points of the psionic system. Both systems allow their users to select the powers/spells that they will use depending upon their class. Both systems grants their class so many points based upon their level. Both systems grant the character so many points based upon a high attribute and level.

So again, the major difficulty in adding psionic powers to the game is going to be the powers that are augmentable. My ideas for such an addition are as follows:

1) An option is to use chargeable powers. The longer that you hold down the hotkey, the more points you place in the power. The drawback (especially in a action-oriented game such as DDO) is that this is going to use up time to manifest a power. Time that many folks will not want to give up. Also how do you illustrate the number of points being used in a power on screen. A current superhero-based MMO uses a small bar at the base of the screen to illustrate a charging power. Would it work in DDO?

2) Another option is related to the rest system. Limit the power-using classes to making choices about their loaded powers to a time after each rest and require them to only change them at those times. This reduces some of the advantages of powers but it may be a reduction that we would have to put up with in order enjoy the new classes. Of course this limitation might be reduced if a player is allowed to have multiple choices of the same power with different numbers of power points used on their hotbars.

These were just a couple of ideas that came to me about adding the psionic classes to the game. I know we still don't have all of the classes from the basic Player's Handbook but Turbine has also demonstrated that they are going to add classes outside of the basic book before we get the druid added to our class list. So as far as the addition of psionic classes? I think that new classes is always a good idea. Anything to keep the players interested and new folks coming into the game.

So, what do other folks think?

[Ignis_solis]

With augmenting I'd take an all-or-nothing approach, similar to how Power Attack works in ddo. Most of the time, you either want to hit as hard as you can or conserve your power points. Just add a toggleable icon for augmenting, which incidently could (probably) be implemented in the same vein as metamagics.

[Angelus_dead]

What would it take to get the psionic classes opened up for pc class selection?

Adding the D&D psionic classes to DDO would be a serious mistake. Not only would it be a tremendous waste of developer effort, but the result would actually be a worse game than currently exists.

It is a design error to focus on the details of "how" to add a new feature, without first looking at "if" it would even be helpful. I'll go through the four D&D psionic classes.

Psion:
A d4 HD class with bad BAB and good Will saves which learns abilities from a big list as you advance in level. Those abilities cost points to activate (which you recover by resting), and are more powerful if you have higher Intelligence. Since that description is exactly the same as a DDO Wizard, how would it help the game to add such a similar character class?

Wilder:
A d4 HD class with bab BAB and good Will saves which learns abilities from a big list as you advance in level. Those abilities cost points to activate (which you recover by resting), and are more powerful if you have higher Charisma. Since that description is exactly the same as a DDO Sorcerer, how would it help the game to add such a similar character class?

Soulknife:
A class whose only ability is to hit enemies with melee weapons, just like the existing DDO Fighter and Barbarian. Well, minus the hitpoints, AC, DR, and even BAB those classes have, not to mention lacking the ability to equip powerful magic weapons without throwing away his class features. The Soulknife class is infamously ineffective in D&D.

The most reasonable way to add Soulknife to DDO would be not as a class at all, but simply as a specialty enhancement allowed to a psionic race (like Kalashtar), which allows the character to summon magic weapons of force in lieu of acquiring items normally. Alternatively, if Psywar was included then Soulknife could be added to the spell list (which is a change frequently recommended for D&D players)

Psychic Warrior:
This seems to be the least-frequently mentioned class when people bring up psionics, but it would be the best fit to add to DDO, as its role has the least direct competition from existing classes: a melee combat character that makes frequent use of a long list of special abilities to maintain both offensive and defensive effectiveness. That kind of gameplay happens somewhat with the DDO Paladin or melee builds of Clerics, but Psywar would be pretty different from either: more spells than a Paladin (and more dependency on them), and lacking the Cleric's wide range of spells (particularly to heal his allies).

Note that a Psywar class added to DDO would not be "psionic" in anything but name: in practice he's just another guy with spells and spellpoints. It would still need to be seriously buffed from the D&D baseline in order to be competitive, and of course it would be tricky to do that without getting overpowered.

[Symar-FangofLloth]

Soulknife would make a nifty PrE for Psychic Warrior. In fact, the first version of the Soulknife was in fact a PrC. As a stand-alone class it does indeed suck. It's entire class feature is "hey, I always have a magic sword, and I can throw it, too! and I can never lose it!" Which can work, in tabletop. But here the overabundance of loot and no way to lose any (aside from permanent damage, but that's rare, and if you care you'll bind it if it isn't already) pretty much negates that feature. Along with the suckiness of throwing weapons.

Psion is indeed a 'Wizard,' with Wilder being a 'Sorcerer.' But here's the thing: different spell list. (Or power list, actually.) The issue that arises is: are any of the powers different enough, or even able to be implemented into the game, to make this worth it?
And even if they did, my vote is to skip out on Wilder, and just make Psion and PsyWar.

[Greydeath]

Because sometimes it does take a Kalashtar

It is a design error to focus on the details of "how" to add a new feature, without first looking at "if" it would even be helpful.

While I agree that under a Spell Point system Psionics lose a lot of their originality, Turbine has typically demonstrated that they follow the path of least resistance, rather than be truly innovating. As such the overlap plays to the likelihood of implementing these.

Need a new race? Never mind the Gnomes, Half-Orcs & Half-Elves we promised, we will give you dark skinned Elves!
New a new class? Forget about Artificers, we will give you the spontaneous Cleric!

Turbine has made it clear that they would rather recycle content than actually produce new product(s) for us. Thus while the psionic classes (save Soul Knife) are already replicated in the game, it would be easy for them to virtually rename them with new ‘spell lists’ and produce three new classes (indeed in PnP, this is often the view of psionics).

That said, psionics does bring something different to the table and with psionics enemies becoming more prevalent it would make sense that players have access to them as well.