How viable is Psion (Telepath) without Thrallherd?

[Endarire]

Thrallherd is nuts.  Telepath logically progresses into Thrallherd, however, and I'm curious how viable/spiffy Telepath is (possibly with a psionic Mindbender1 dip) without Thrallherd.

Any specific notes to GMs or/and players about Telepaths minus Thallherd?

[phaedrusxy]

I've played telepaths without thrallherd. They're perfectly viable, of course. They're tier 2 casters. You don't have to be pigeonholed into relying upon all Mind-Affecting powers either, as there is a wide variety of non-discipline powers available to you, and you can also dip into the other disciplines via Hidden Talent/Expanded Knowledge.

Really, the choice of which discipline to specialize in isn't as big of a deal from a mechanical perspective as one might assume. The main things to consider are:
1) Are there powers which you absolutely cannot tolerate a 2 level delay in getting?
2) Are there class skills which you cannot live without?
3) Are most of your desired powers from a specific list?

Otherwise, you can get basically any power you want on any psion via the feats I mentioned above.

[awaken_D_M_golem]

minor counterpoint ... Thrallherd up to 9
is basically Leadership + making up for
the lost feat slot and Caelic commandment.
You could r.a.i. almost call it a 2e kit (almost).

Psi anything is exposed to the classic
but proveably wrong Psi is Borkt claim.
And the powerpoint rules (oh so hard oh).
But spellpoints done as slotpoints ala 5e
is easy enough a caveman can do it.
You know my kitty avatar's Tail  don't do 2n-1, nope.

Low level psions + bad tactics = problems
especially for inexperienced players.


sidebar ---  both of you guys are how near to graduating?

[Nifft]

1/ Take Expanded Knowledge (astral construct) at level 3, and boom: you got disposable minions without needing any Thrallherd levels.

2/ Take the level 5 ACF which gives you telepathy instead of Psi Mindbender, unless you're going to PrC out of Telepath entirely. You get telepathy one level earlier (meh), but more importantly: nobody can argue that you lose your telepathy class feature if you no longer meet the PrC prerequisite (if you stop being non-good).

3/ My biggest issue as a Psion was always endurance. Going nova was easy, but tossing out round-by-round powers gets expensive. There are a bunch of ways around this, mostly involving Psionic Meditation and expending your focus, like the fun Psycarnum Infusion trick, or the very vanilla (Greater) Psionic Shot + crystal shard combo.

[Azrael]

For me the choice of what discipline to choose is normally based on which discipline has the most must-have powers in order to minimize the amount of expanded knowledge feats I take. Typically this is telepath (schism, dominate, mind probe) or egoist (metamorphosis/greater, revivify, restoration, fission). Also, even if you assume every major enemy will have immunity to mind-affecting it doesn't stop those powers from being very useful in non-combat situations. Your average NPC isn't going to be able to resist your suggestions/dominates/charms, and you can get a lot done by influencing politically or socially important NPCs that are not powerful in other ways.

[Necrosnoop110]

(1) Psion Telepaths are my all time favorite class. Thrallherd is basically overkill for average tables.

(2) Here's a nice skeleton for the basics.   

(3) As mentioned above to overcome the weakness of powers that have a lot of "mind affecting" limitations Expanded Knowledge: Astral Construct + (charm/dominate/etc others to act/fight against those who are immune to mind affecting) + wise power selection goes a long way if you are creative.