Min/Max Boards

You might make it 1/encounter or something. Taking the maneuver, then, gives you extra attempts.

-snip-

And you're not interpreting the rules to say what you want? Your conclusions are supported by the most holy RAW with not one shred of assumption or decision-making on your part? Buddy, you're no better than anyone else in this regard.

No more talk needed, as anyone would understand 'essentially the same source' as 'the same spell or item'.

Explain to me, exactly, how this is not interpretation.

I'm not sure it works in layers like that. Wouldn't your true seeing see through the effect of invisible spell (making the spell effects invisible), and then see through the invisibility that the feat had made invisible?

And that's why Caelic's Razor suggests that, even if you find both interpretations equally logical, you should probably conclude that "magic item that grants a bonus" is essentially the same source as any other "magic item that grants a bonus". I think that's glaringly obvious, and that the particular body part you happen to be wearing the item on is irrelevant, but apparently that's not the universal opinion. And that's fine, it usually doesn't come up, but even if you don't buy into the logic, it's good optimization practice to assume the least broken of two plausible interpretations.

Yeah, it sounds to me like information was the big thing here, as well. Two things stick out, in particular: Transdimensional Dimensional Anchor, and the different Ethereal Planes. The latter is something that's already been mentioned, and the former is something that they players didn't really have any way of figuring out. As far as I can tell, there was no evidence that he was capable of layering control spells on the area, so they may have expected a straightforward bruiser creature. They also likely figured that attempts to probe his senses would arouse his curiosity (something they felt they couldn't afford to risk, given the degree to which it's been made clear that they cannot survive his attention). You know your group better than I do, but those seem like important factors when setting up a puzzle like this.

Generally, I'll reserve a 20% minimum of my WBL for straight-up ability score boosts after level 8. I don't know exactly when I run out of  enhancement bonuses given that, however, and I will often go higher depending on the character and the needs I have at a particular time. Vague recollection suggests around level 17 or so. Prior to that, there are better ways to spend my money.

Possibly a nonlinear progression would work well for this, then. 2d6, 4d6, 5d6, 6d6, 7d6, 8d6, 9d6, 10d6, or something like that.

It should be noted that that does mean that it's likely that a character built on dishing out damage will find themselves in a position where it's unambiguously better to full attack than use a major formula. That's probably a good thing, though, since it varies combat up a bit. Basically, if you have at least 2 attacks and at least +3d6 of bonus damage (or at least 3 attacks), you always full attack when you want damage. Only applies against touch AC; the risk of missing against full AC on iteratives is likely too great. That might not be good.

Yeah, I'm not complaining about power level. You can construct your gameworld however arbitrarily you need to in order to create a fun campaign for characters of any comprehensible power level, so I don't really give a shit about how the system handles it when I talk about the system's design. Options are what I'm talking about. It's possible that the current feat list won't be entirely revised, and they're representative of where we're going here. If that's the case, then Wizards fundamentally misunderstands how their own game is going to work, but whatever. Nothing new there. At least they're not guilty of the particular problem I'm accusing them of - feats can still be a useful way of customizing your character outside of Basic.

But the thing is, it's easy to get trapped in your Simplifying Philosophy. You start writing rules under certain assumptions, and you go on to build a game system that works. But when it's time to add on the complications, you find you have to overhaul a lot of the system you spent so much time building, if you even consider it at all. It becomes very easy for, "Feats are optional, so we can work on them after we get the class system up and running" to become, "Feats are optional, so they're not as important as the class system" to become, "Feats aren't important, we're going to focus on the core of the system" by the time you get to release.

So what I'm worried about here is that this is going to become an ingrained part of the design paradigm, and it's going to poison future development for the rest of the edition. You'll get people saying that if you don't like the balance of feats, you shouldn't allow them in your game, as if playing Basic for the rest of ever is actually the default assumption. Stuff like that, that completely ignores the current intent.

Implying that there aren't powerful psionic powers that don't care about manifester level.

Implying that psionics don't have dozens of ways of easily increasing their PP reserves, if not fully recharing them whitout need to rest, meaning you can go nova every round every battle whitout a care on the world.

There are. What's your point? That doesn't stop there from being many bread-and-butter powers that do require investment. PP recharge is also high-op, not really the point here. If we're going high-op, then we're already done here. One or two of those combinations is enough to render recharging pointless - you don't need the entire thing, and you don't need Lycanthromancer's claim that the enemy has burned through half of his powerpoints. That bullshit was Core only, for reference. I'm deliberately avoiding splats, because "Wizards are more powerful because they got better splat support" really is a legit argument, it's just one that I don't think is sufficient to carry the day. Seriously, buddy, let's keep it sensible here.

UMD doesn't make item spells better than wizard spells. UMD burns your money to use. UMD doesn't come with its own alternate spellcasting system with a bunch of new powers to abuse and combo with your newly converted spells.

None of which matters when the argument being made is that Psionics is overpowered compared to magic because it can get magic's tricks, and magic can't get its. A single poorly-thought out rule does not define an entire system of play, no matter how badly it was written. Manipulate Form doesn't make Kobolds broken, either.

Implying that there aren't "sillier" combos in psionics, like transfering your mind to sandwiches, fusion/fission shenigans, etc, etc.

Anyway I'll point out that your best argument that "psionics aren't OP" is that "psionics holding back isn't automatically more OP than a vancian caster going all out".

No, my best argument is that psionics holding back isn't automatically less OP than vancian caster holding back, and psionics going all out is probably weaker than vancian caster going all out, provided you ban StP Erudite. Because I'm assuming, here, that you are capable of rational thought.

Which, for that matter, doesn't define The Mind's Eye material overall. We all know StP Erudite was a stupid rule. It was one ACF out of dozens of pages of new, useful rules, most of which were better balanced than Core spellcasters. Telling us that it's awful is not news, and telling us that it proves that the rest of the web material was also awful is just stupid.

If you really feel Psionics was OP, then introducing CPsi will only help your game. I really don't understand why you think it actually helps break psionics - how many gamebreakers from it do you see in play compared to XPH? Between fixing the DC scaling, subjecting Bludgeoning/Piercing/Slashing from powers to DR, limiting you to only a single Astral Construct, and tricking new players into thinking the Divine Mind is a PC class, you're pretty much left with energy damage type versatility and action economy as the only things psionics has going for it (and breaking the action economy is way less useful for a Psion played to his strengths in this environment than a Wizard played to hers).

We can also talk about Divine Casters' own particular screwups, if you want, but for the sake of simplicity I'm keeping my own arguments limited to Core Wizardry for now, and XPH only psionics unless I'm specifically addressing CPsi.

Where psionics is OP is in a low-op game, where Dodge and Toughness are acceptable feats and Fireball is how you clear a fucking room at level 10. There, ignoring ASF probably will have a significant impact on the game, and a psion's advantage in damage versatility is obvious and effective, at least once they have the powers. A monk's grapple is a serious risk to a spellcaster, so not needing components is tremendously helpful. This is what I was getting at before this whole argument. In a mid-op game, where you make good choices without dumpster diving, psionics is probably on par with spellcasting, with each holding to its own particular specialties. I'd reckon spellcasting has a slight edge, but psionics definitely reigns its own domains (at least within my source material restrictions), and it's a subjective matter. That's what I've been arguing, really, over the past few posts. At high-op, where Wizards are untouchable arcane superbeings commanding legions of what are essentially lesser gods, and Psions are casually wielding their unlimited powers over reality because they know they'll never run out, "who's more powerful" starts to lose meaning, but Wizards definitely have more bullshit available, if only because of their access to extraplanar nonsense.