Psycho Feedback, errata?

[kkoie]

ok, a player discovered a problem with the power psycho feedback, essentially if he burned all his points at once, since he has power attack, he could deal out ridiculous amounts of damage in a single round. We cooked up a quick house rule that you could not spend more than 16 points, but the power seems absurd from that point of view. There is no way I could make challenging single monster encounters when they could potentially deal out 1000+ points of damage by burning 150+ points to give themselves +75 str mods. Is there any official errata on this at all???

K Koie

 

[Rinndalir]

Nope. To quote the Sage:

There's no limit on the number of points you can spend on psychofeedback. If you want to blow all your points to get a really big modifier, you can. If you do, you'd better hope you don't have to deal with any psionic combat while your points are depleted.

Which is a fairly LAME answer if you ask me, since psionic combat come up so rarely if at all. A player of mine worked up an undefeatable death attack involving a coup de grace weapon and psychofeedback...get a x3 or x4 weapon with this enchantment, and once per day any creature not immune to crits is toast by you spending enough points to get, say, a +40 modifier and using the special coup de grace power. Nasty!

In addition to that, consider his answer on what kind of bonus is granted by animal affinity:

It's not a bonus, the user's score changes. Any bonuses the user might have to that score are applied to the altered score.

Now you've got a 2nd level power that can give a free stat increase...use a few metapsionics and you can easily get +7 (or more IIRC) to all your stats, and you're still eligible to use stat increasing items! w00t!

But wait, there's more - you can combo this with psychofeedback use and a few DC increasing feats to end up with MINIMUM, on a roll of 1, DC 30 or more powers!!!!!!!

And who said that psionics sucked?

Disclaimer - obviously the Sage was smoking some good stuff when he came up with these answers, and I'd advise that you nerf them. I ruled that animal affinity is an enhancement bonus like it ought to be, and psychofeedback can give you no more than your manifester level in bonus. Of course, YMMV...

 

[Lord Pendragon]

kkoie:

Actually, there is a rather simple counter to this. But you won't find it in the description for Psychofeedback. Look at the description of Power Attack instead.

Power Attack only allows you to transfer a number of points from your attack bonus to your damage equal to your BAB. So even if you had a +1 million bonus to your attack, you can still only transfer a number of points equal to your BAB into damage.

Rinndalir: I am unfamiliar with a coup de grace weapon, nor have I played in a campaign which has used Animal Affinity yet, so I can't comment on what you've said.

 

[Zhure]

Try coupling Psychofeedback with a high critical Mindfeeder weapon (like a Keen scimitar with improved critical).

Tres nasty.
Greg

 

[The Iron Mark]

Bodyfeeder is also a nice option.*thinks of using a Keen Bodyfeeder Mindfeeder Falchion of Sure Striking.8

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Umm, aren't we forgetting something?

Who cares about psi combat? If you run out of PP, you are dead. Sure, you can kill a big bad villain, but what about the next encounter for the day?
Psychic Warriors have it even worse: Lose access to all of your psionic feats.

Yes, you can boost the DC to incredible levels. I strongly suggest only using this for save-or-die powers.

Keen Bodyfeeder Mindfeeder Falchion of Sure Striking

Um, right. Most fighters don't walk around with such specialized weapons. A +1 vorpal bastard sword of speed is very hard to find, very hard to buy, very hard to get off of someone's corpse (and what was that NPC's level to afford one of these nasty things, along with magic armor, etc. ?), very hard to make (expense, time, etc), and gives you a terrible attack bonus. You'll only be able to hit once... when you use psychofeedback. Better off getting a +4 weapon, and spend your extra money on things that keep you alive.

Coup de grace weapons allow you to, once per day as a full-round action, use a coup de grace on a target. Even if they're not helpless. Keep this thing away from rogues! It has a market price modifier of +5. It's kind of like psychofeedback: Death, but only once per day.

Animal affinity is a 2nd-level power; it lets you increase any ability score by 1d4+1 points. The PsiHB claims that the increase is an "unnamed bonus" (specifically, it replaces your ability score instead of increasing it), but this was a holdover from when it used to give you an animal's ability score directly. Bruce Cordell himself has said that animal affinity is an enhancement bonus (like it should be), so that trick won't work.

I'm sure people can find really broken psychic combos, but wizards and sorcs can do this too. Just imagine a hasted wizard holding a rod of absorption, and wearing a ring of spell turning. For a cost of only 200,000 gp, about the price of an ultra-munchkin psionic weapon. Now the wizard casts fly, protection from arrows, and casts several forcecage and horrid wilting spells.

 

[kkoie]

kkoie:

Actually, there is a rather simple counter to this. But you won't find it in the description for Psychofeedback. Look at the description of Power Attack instead.

well that takes care of the problem of over using Power Attack, but they'd still get +75 to attack and damage if they spend 150 points in power attack. So although the character in question might not be capable of dealing out over 1000 points of damage, he can still dish out an ungodly amount. I'm still wondering if maybe a cap should still be placed upon the ability.

K Koie

 

[Fade]

Why does it solve the problem? You still get the +75 to damage from strength, you just can't powerattack to get +150.

Now Manifester Coup de Grace scythes are nasty. 5pp for a CDG.

 

[The Iron Mark]

But then you need a Cleric so you can get past DR because Manifester is +4, so you just barely can't use Sure Striking.

 

[Hypersmurf]

But then you need a Cleric so you can get past DR because Manifester is +4, so you just barely can't use Sure Striking.

See, that's why you make it a +1 CDG Manifester bow, and then you put the Sure Striking - or the +5 - on the arrows, since a CDB bow bestows the power on its ammunition.

And if you're a Psychic Warrior/Sorcerer/Arcane Archer 10, with lots of crystal caps, then you can enchant every arrow you fire as +5, and burn a cap per round on manifesting the CDG.

Rowr.

-Hyp.