Damn, have I been reading and remembering things wrong with Psionic Tattoo Mastery, and with Capacitors.
- The actual printing of Psionic Tattoo Mastery for 3.0 allows for metapsionic-enhanced powers. Boris's 3.5 adaptation, which is quoted in the Getting Rewired handbook (which, to reiterate, is not an official WotC-printed update) tosses out metapsionics. For some reason, it feels the need to add in augmentation (superfluous, 3.5 Scribe Tattoo already allows to to make tattoos at any ML) and automatic power heightening (which I've railed against elsewhere and won't repeat here). See the spoiler for my take on how the feat should be.
- I reread the description of capacitors and I believe my previous understanding and explanation of their function was flawed. It's the capacitor that needs to recharge (and retains/records/repays the PP deficit), not the psionic tattoos it was linked to, so they do remain usable while attached to a depleted capacitor. It also means that once a capacitor is depleted and goes into recharge, it doesn't actually have to remain attached to the psionic tattoos and can be detached safely with an integrated circuit.
Here's how I would be doing Psionic Tattoo Mastery if I was updating it to 3.5. The only notable change from the 3.0 version is adding 1 to the effective level increase for metapsionics to account for psionic focus expenditure. Everything else is just terminology updates (PP by ML instead of a metapsionic cap) and different wording (putting the formula for tattoo slots by power level in the feat description instead of a table).
Note that the formula for a tattoo's base cost is unneeded, as it's already in Scribe Tattoo's text, as is the ability to make them at higher-than-minimum ML.
Psionic Tattoo Mastery [Item Creation]Prerequisite: Scribe Tattoo.
Benefit: You can create a psionic tattoo of any appropriate psionic power of up to 9th level. The amount of time required to create a psionic tattoo is one day per 1,000 gp of base cost of the tattoo. Tattoos of powers higher than 3rd level are larger and more intricate; these tattoos count as 2 more tattoos per power level above 3rd (note that the normal limit you can have is twenty tattoos). You can create metapsionic-enhanced tattoos. You must have the metapsionic feat on your list of feats. The psionic tattoo has an effective metapsionic level 1 level higher than the power's level for every 2 points the metapsionic feats increase the power's cost, plus 1 level for each metapsionic feat whose use normally requires the manifester to expend her psionic focus. The metapsionic level is used for calculating the base cost and the number of slots used by the metapsionic-enhanced tattoo only. Metapsionic-enhanced tattoos are limited by your manifester level, and thus the number of power points you can spend at once, as normal. Additionally, you can scribe
special psionic tattoos.
Normal: You can create psionic tattoos of up to 3rd level powers, but not with metapsionic feats applied.
Yes that's very helpful. Just simply, clear explanations is what I was hoping would happen (to the handbook).
It seems to me that 1) All tattoos need capacitors, because you don't want to lose your hard earned tattoos.
Pretty much. Without a capacitor, a tattoo is basically just a potion, and charop consensus is that potions are not worth the cost in the vast majority of cases.
2) a character then only wants 1 or 3 actual power-holding tattoos (due to the limit on relay tattoos). Do nonpower-holding tattoos count against this limit?
You really want at least 2 slots per 3 psionic tattoos to be used for relays and capacitors (1 capacitor can link to 3 power tattoos attached to 1 relay). An integrated circuit lets you share a single transducer among multiple capacitors if your priority is tattoo slot efficiency over PP efficiency (just link it, out of combat, to whichever capacitor you want to recharge at a time). An IC is nice to have with a lot of tattoos, anyways, if only because it makes it easier to adjust things if you need to (change the order your relays trigger powers in, for example).
Non-power tattoos don't count towards a relay's 3 tattoo limit. Most of the special tattoos can attach to the relay-linked trio as a whole. I don't know why the example in the article has 3 capacitors, one for each of the powers on the relay, while having a single mental tap for the trio, as the wording for the two special tattoos is identical as far as I can tell.
3) a character should have atleast 1 contingency (inducer) tattoo: "as though the power stored in the tattoo were affected by the contingency power" means there is still the clause of "You can use only one psionic contingency companion power at a time" still applies. This means you only pay 56 once rather than 15 xp everytime you blow your contingency.
The text doesn't have enough clarifying information to solidly argue one way or another (at least, not as solidly as I would like). I lean towards the other way, that multiple inducers are feasible and that they don't interfere with the Psionic Contingency power, either. Your interpretation is probably more likely to be correct that mine, however.
4) atleast the contingency tattoo, and probably any other high-use tattoos, should have a recharge (inducer) tattoo so you don't have "down" days.
If you have enough high-use tattoos that don't require instant recharging, it may be more efficient to use one transducer and an integrated circuit to move it between your capacitors, or to have multiple capacitors and use an IC to swap a fresh one in after the previous one is used.
Note that for the above I had to use your elucidations and then cross-reference the handbook; its simply not clear enough to read directly and quickly. I'm also pulling the above from the post were bracis seems to be quoting the original rules, but just to be sure I had to be the one to cross-reference this because the handbook didn't say... In fact he is quoting (atleast the piece that I checked) correctly.
I seem to remember crunching the numbers and realizing that tattoos weren't worth the gp for normal buff powers. It would probably take me a while to recreate that math. Can I get some "how to quickly tabulate costs" examples?
It's the cost of the psionic tattoos themselves (50 gp x ML x power level + 5 gp/xp; the actual formula, rather than a table, is found in the
Scribe Tattoo feat's text) plus that of any special tattoos. There's nothing complicated about it.
For reference, a relay has a market value of 50 gp, and a capacitor has a market value of 1250 gp. Those are probably the most commonly used special tattoos.
