My First Psionic PC

[Scott]

I just rolled up a character for a new campaign I’m going to be in. I rolled pretty good, and decided to be a magic-user. Str: 13, Int: 17, Wis: 13, Dex: 13, Con: 18, Cha: 15, Com: 11. After I had finished, another player rolled up a decent fighter. When he was finished he asked if he could roll for psionics. He rolled low, but then I was given the opportunity to roll. I rolled 98%, just enough to qualify for psionic abilities. I ended up with the attack modes Psionic Blast and Psychic Crush, the defense modes Mind Blank, Intellect Fortress, and Thought Shield. I also start with Cell Adjustment. At third level I add Reduction, at fifth Detect Good or Evil, at seventh Clairvoyance, and at ninth Telepathy.
Not bad for an afterthought.
This is the first psionic character I can remember having, and only the second I’ve seen in a campaign I’ve been involved with in the 25 or so years I’ve been playing.
Now watch me get smoked by the first kobold we stumble upon and have to roll up a new character.
Scott

[Falconer]

I'm tellin' ya, man, "lucky" characters die quick! Regards.

[Drexlorn]

I don't really know for 1st ed (because I never played) but in 2nd ed, psionics are too much powerful.

I once had a player being a psionic character (it was a class in 2E) and he continually broke up my dungeon traps. What's the deal when you teleport at level 1 ?

But in one adventure he somehow had a bad luck while teleporting in a special room filled (or unfilled...) with "void".

Immediate death.

Just bad luck (read DM had enough). ;D

[DragonFire]

Nice roll Scott. In 20+ years we have had 5 or 6 players (out of hundreds) actually roll psionics. One I still play (now as an NPC), two were still alive (but we no longer play with those players) and the other two or three, I believe, died at some point.

The psionics never really played much of a part in the game, basically just another special ability. And, we only had 2 psi-combats. One was between an NPC and player. The other was with my character and a mind flayer (I LOST!!!)

[mephisto]

Sorry to reanimate this thread, but I don't wont to beginn a new one for my little question.

How do you handle the "level of mastery"?

Is level of mastery for you current character-level, or the variant from dragon-magazin, where every new discipline starts as mastery-level:one.

I think the DM-variant has some weakneses in higher level, for example:

If your character is Level 7 and you get the "invisibility" disciplin, i think you can just use it against monsters ( goblins, kobolds, etc) which were at this level no sort of challenge, so you rarely will meet them in an adventure...

[geneweigel]

I recall someone pulling psionics out of his butt once and saying that they rolled it but forgot. Those were the days when porting old characters and one on one sessions were just as common as a regular campaign. Then there were rule smearing multiclass psionic characters based on the DRAGON psionic classes. There was a negative consensus amongst new players to the campaign that had a general dislike for the rules. By the time 2e had reared its head psionics was largely ignored in the mindsets of incoming players. When the complete psionics 2e book was out I recall some people making characters but they chose not to use them. When we tried the 2e DARK SUN set (that my cousin Bill bought a pile of for me for my birthday making me obligingly play it) there was still an aversion to all the psi rules within. Since that adventure didn't make it past the obligatory one time attempt not one player (myself included I tossed the whole series of gazetteers and adventures!) retained that "bank of characters" that the DARK SUN required! When 3e came out I had made a psionic character based on the Psionic hardcover and played through a Necromancer games 3e adventure DMed by my friend Taylor and man what a bad session that was. Ouch! I still have the character but I'm definitely remaking as an npc magic-user to save the creative energy that i wasted on a bad system and a bad class.

So I have no psionic player characters at all from back in the day however to meet the demand I did make several psionic npcs (as I did for every DRAGON npc class). There was a man from Earth who now resided in Greyhawk city who was psionicist with reputation but I can't seem to find his sheet anywhere (I created him using the Psionicist derived from the Deryni novels in issue #78 October 1983). But none of the others were notable just cheap psionicist encounters with no "face".

these days I don't even bother as I'm not that fond of clerics and thieves much less psionics!

[Scott]

Aug 17, 2004 22:15:28 GMT -5 Falconer said:

I'm tellin' ya, man, "lucky" characters die quick! Regards.

Falconer proved to be quite prophetic. This character had a short life. He died pretty quick, and I don’t think the psionics ever came into play.

[GT]

Well, Woodstock actually rolled psionics too, but I docked him XP when he used that instead of his ongoing Fighter/Thief/Bard abilities! ^__^