#3.5posting

[stupidsexynonbinaryperson]

Psionics: Using the Force

Still 3.5posting

Psionics is a system which is only not dogshit to use (or the same as everything else (4e)) in 3.5. It doesn't exist in 5e because people threw a hissy fit when playtest content was unbalance, and the psionic rules for old school dnd are... a fun exercise in CBT. I believe this is still largely true in 3e.

It's just a spell point system, for the most part. Except it is power points because it is absolutely not magic™. Psionic characters are essentially spontaneous casters with spell points rather than spell slots, and they are about as powerful, a little more so since the psionics system was designed with power points in mind. They have a plethora of powers known, and can cast them by using their power points. Their powers can be augmented by just throwing more power points at the problem until you get the numbers on the power you want. It's kind of like 5e upcasting except not really. You can't throw more power points than your manifester level, though. Otherwise yeah it's just spellcasting, complete with 1-9 level powers, and a bunch of psionic disciplines, most of which are analogous to the schools of magic. Except necromancy and abjuration, which don't have a direct discipline analogue. For 3.5 they even added metacreativity, which is conjuration. Metacreativity is fucking stupid, and predictably powerful. It was only added to replace metapsionics, which used to be its own discipline but got turned into feats, which is fair enough.

Obviously, one of the main downsides of psionics is that most of the powers are mind-affecting. This is bad because creatures immune to mind-affecting abilities are really common.

Despite having the best, most useable psionics rules, they never made a Dark Sun sourcebook for 3.5. I suppose that is fair enough, thye didn't do sourcebooks for a lot of settings in 3.5. And Eberron kind of replaced it as the main psionic setting. Eberron was, of course, custom designed for 3.5, which is why artificer sucks in 5e.

Oh, despite not having a necromancy analogue, psionics probably has the most ways to fuck people over with negative levels, as far as I can tell. It's all under the psychometabolism discipline.

Furthermore, despite their being a psionic feat in the Tome of Battle, and the psychic warrior existing, there is no official psionic/initiator theurge (a theurge is any prestige class that combines two power systems, named after the mystic theurge). There are, of course, two arcane/psionic theurges. The cerebromancer, which is boring, and the mind mage, which is overpowered.

Anyway, if you're playing a psionic character, just bite the bullet and play an elan. They are objectively the best if you have power points.

[stupidsexynonbinaryperson]

The Tome of Battle: The Book of Anime Fighting Magic

It has been an unacceptable amount of time since I last 3.5posted. I shall fix this.

The Tome of Battle (ToB) was a supplement released back in 2006. It's goal? Make martials great again.

One of the issues that has plagued 3e/3.5 and 5e/5.5 is the martial/caster disparity. Where casters get more spells that do more stuff, martials mostly get to hit things more. This wasn't necessarily such a problem back in the days of TSR's DnD. Primarily because it took longer for casters to level up than it did fighters and rogues. However, when 3e came along, everyone started leveling up at the same xp thresholds. Hence, the casters would quickly outpace the martials. Now, 3e/3.5 still had a couple things holding casters back. Their early levels were still quite dangerous, and they were beholden to less armour proficiencies and a d4 hit die for wizards and a d8 for clerics and druids. Clerics and druids were of course far better of than your wizards and sorcerers, and are generally considered the two most powerful classes in the game. Now, wizards, clerics, and druids were still required to prepare in the proper vancian style: preparing spells into their spell slots at the start of the game. Spontaneous casters, of course, had spells known, and generally had more spell slots but less overall versatility, basically required to take the best spells and make do.

In this we find the Tome of Battle. The ToB was an early attempt at the 4e combat system, introduced as a semi-playtest in the latter days of 3.5. It introduces three classes: Warblade, Swordsage, and Crusader. Warblades are better fighters, swordsages better rogues and monks, and crusaders better paladins.

Note that I did say better versions of preexisting classes. While this is a little tongue and cheek, the options of the ToB vastly outstripped many other martial classes, to the point where if you were playing with it, you were pretty much forced to take a level or two in one of the classes from the ToB (initiators). That or take a feat.

How the system worked is that, as the title implies, it gives maneuvers, that are definately 100% not spells. They come in three forms: strikes for hitting stuff, counters for when you get hit or doing stuff not on your turn, and stances, for buffs. Initiators are closest to spontaneous casters in this analogue, with maneuvers and stances known, although they could only actually prepare another subset of these manuevers so the comparison breaks down a little.

The maneuvers aren't as powerful as magic, however this is counter-acted by the fact that they are refreshed every encounter. Some are spell-like, particularly from the desert wind and shadow hand disciplines. Which disciplines you have access to depends on which initiator you pick. You can, of course, take a feat to gain a specific maneuver that you qualify for. And another for a stance of the same discipline.

Initiating is more versatile than spellcasting. The character building rules for spellcasters go as follows: don't fucking multiclass. This is because you will end up gaining new spell levels slower, and your caster level goes down, which means you cannot overcome spell resistance as easily. Initiators don't have this problem, your initiator level (IL) is equal to your level in an intiator class, and also half your level in all other classes. This allows for greater versatility and multiclassing, something which became a staple for martial builds. Usually by necessity.

Also with the initiator classes came a host of prestige classes of various flavours of fun and cool.

Overall, the ToB is a very well balanced book, and I personally think it is perhaps the finest way so far displayed of closing the martial/caster gap. Of course it doesn't completely remove it, but it does make it better. The classes are tier 3 (not explaining right now), which sets them in the well balanced category, along with other such darlings as the duskblade and binder. Overall, I prefer the approach in ToB than in 4e, as it provides extra power to the martials, while keeping the mechanical distinction to casting, something that doesn't exist in 4e.

It also got nicknamed the book of anime fighting magic the reasons for which I shall leave as an exercise for the reader.