A better psi fix

[moon2587]

So I have been looking at the game and the changes and frankly it doesn't really fix anything. You still can play all four schools, you still have all the abilities at full strength, you still don't really get the goal of build diversity.

So instead of shoehorning in a D&D spellbook mechanic maybe go the opposite route and embrace making psi more like a weapon as well as the crafting system. IN that you have a gauntlet(s) that act as a "focus" for abilities. Which fits since we already have headbands and armor affecting psi builds. It would even make sense with Force Emission and the gauntlets could double as an unarmed weapon.

From there you choose one school to "attune" the gauntlet to, this school would operate as it always has. I.e. with 100% accuracy, duration, and power. The unattuned schools take hits in all three categories based on INT/WILL with different categories affected in different portions. Or as example accuracy could be governed by will, power by intelligence, and duration a combination. Higher of course means less reduction, but it still is significant. But more significant at lower values. I was thinking for a normal 8/8 starting value the penalties would be 20% reduction in accuracy, half duration, and -15% in power. Just throwing our numbers, but the point is that they are significant but still workable penalties.

From here the gauntlet allows more diversity in play. You could build the gauntlet to give more more in power, duration, or an innate crit chance (like the feat) for a particular school or even more for a particular ability of said school. Or you could build the gauntlet to negate the penalties of a second school. You could even have alterations to abilities such as force wall acting as an AoE stasis, or Force Emisison allowing you to switch to a second weapon to buff damage. The dev could go as crazy as they wanted with this system, and it would benefit builds that aren't strictly psion as well.

This would also make it easier to fine tune psion abilities as you can change the abillity, the values given by equipment, or the penalties non-attuned schools get. At this point since there are guilds for playing a 4 school psion still, and they are still pretty much just as powerful and versatile, I think the answer to build diversity is to actually give meaningful choices to playstyle in the form of equipment and penalties based on player stats.

[A_furious_noot]

Why does psi need another craftable item when it already has psionic headbands? A powerglove would duplicate the options available for the headband.

Using a weapon slot would suck for hybrid psi builds that want to use two weapons, for example spear users or melee builds with taser. Thematically I don't think it fits better than the current invocation mechanic.

[TheAverageGortsby]

I'd rather the four psi schools scale half or fully off of different base stats, and perhaps reduce the synergy.  You could still have your generalist build, you could still specialize, but you would address what, to me, was the real source of overpowerment in psi - if you optimized for one school, you optimized for all of them, and strengthening one strengthened them all.  Then it was simply a matter of the correct choice always being "more psi" because you were already optimized for all of it.

The new system doesn't change that optimizing for one optimizes for all, it just adds a delimiting factor that is so bizarrely arbitrary that it feels like a joke.  So the core mechanics still push your character one way, but the new psi is a janky mess that pulls you another way and results in artificial limitation, which is always a bad way to design a system.  Doubly so when the rest of the core game mechanics are so - comparatively - elegant.

The current psi system is a bit like nerfing ARs by taking the Guns skill and dividing it into Long Guns, Pistols, Energy, and Burst Weapons; then making magazine changes cause some of your inventory ammo to vanish.  Sure, you took away options, but you didn't address any of the core reasons - and both the division and "fix" are nonsensical.

The problem with your suggestion of having a tchotchke to Do The Thing is that it completely ignores the fundamental causes of the problem Styg wanted to solve.  But so does the patch, so maybe you're on to something.

[moon2587]

Why does psi need another craftable item when it already has psionic headbands? A powerglove would duplicate the options available for the headband.

As I said you could have different options such as having two schools "attuned" or completly augmenting a power, which are two things headbands don't do. Even then, again it is allowing build diversity which was what Styg was supposed to have been going for with the patch.

Using a weapon slot would suck for hybrid psi builds that want to use two weapons, for example spear users or melee builds with taser. Thematically I don't think it fits better than the current invocation mechanic.

Actually it would, as it is a hybrid suffers no drawback from being a hybrid. In fact supposedly the game is much much harder if you don't take any sort of psi ability at all since they are in general more powerful, more available to use, and at less cost effective then many non-psi alternatives. If part of the reason the patch was introduced was because all of those things were true of a full psion, they are still true in a hybrid build. Which means there should be some consequence to being a hybrid, which there really isn't one outside of a minor reduction of health.

[moon2587]

The problem with your suggestion of having a tchotchke to Do The Thing is that it completely ignores the fundamental causes of the problem Styg wanted to solve.  But so does the patch, so maybe you're on to something.

Not exactly. Again the major issues as I understand it is that psi abilities are cheap, always available, 100% reliable, and in general more useful/powerful then the non-psi weapons and utility items. For example fireball is simply much much harder hitting then a grenade, somewhat from the synergy power boost and somewhat from the fact you can with the right build throw multiple fireballs in a turn. Something you can't do with a grenade (far as I know/played).

Limiting one school to having at all times 100% ability strength, duration, and accuracy would make for build diversity. For example take Metathermics vs Time Manipulation. You could have your attack spells be at full strength at the cost of your AP manipulation spells only lasting 1 turn with a 4 or 6 turn cool-down respectively; along with the risk of putting a debuff on yourself. The alternative is you could "attune" temporal manipulation or even buff it with the crafted glove but then your attack spells have less power and can miss. Which I would suggest making it a flat miss chance no matter range to target, and in that case firearms could have an advantage since they can increase chance to hit based on distance to target and weapon being used.

In the first example you maintain the power of the psi build but the utility is greatly reduced, in the latter example you have more utility but the power is reduced. So you see you get an actual trade-off which can be further diversified by having another slot that can augment a school like the headband, but unlike the headband again this slot determines to greater effect  at what strength and duration schools/abilities could be used at.

So again a nuker built character would still be powerful, but mainly along one school only. Even if the hypothetical gauntlet allows two schools to be at full strength, you still would have to choose between attack or utility, and the utility abilities of schools not augmented would be severly reduced in strength. Thus overall making school choice much more meaningful.

As a side note it would also make building a hybrid less of a standard option and more an actual choice as well. As to use utility abilities at full strength you would have to give up a weapon slot. Or you could run with less powerful utility, or simply not run a hybrid at all. Because again if you want build diversity you need to have actual reasons for people to go along different routes.

[TheAverageGortsby]

Again the major issues as I understand it is that psi abilities are cheap, always available, 100% reliable, and in general more useful/powerful then the non-psi weapons and utility items. For example fireball is simply much much harder hitting then a grenade, somewhat from the synergy power boost and somewhat from the fact you can with the right build throw multiple fireballs in a turn. Something you can't do with a grenade (far as I know/played).

But the tchotchke (the glove) does nothing about any of those things.

Your explanation is all about how to limit psi powers either in strength and versatility, but the New Psi clearly shows that the innervation mechanic can do those things.  The glove, the physical object, does nothing.  That's unlike a weapon; you can't just throw bullets at your enemies and have an effective outcome.  And your opportunity cost of having something taking up a weapon slot isn't an opportunity cost for psi users, only for dabblers, who don't get the raw power out of psi because their stat profile doesn't support it.  They're not the ones Styg set out to nerf.

My point is that if you're trying to float ideas to limit psi, go at it as a fix to psi.  Adding A Thing to the mix gets you all wrapped up in the thing and you end up - as you did in your OP and your explanations - changing effects with The Thing without addressing the underlying concerns.

BTW, pyrokinesis ("fireball") has a cooldown that can't be LTI'ed away so, no, you cannot throw multiple in a turn.  OTOH, you can throw up to three grenades a turn, and with LTI plus Grenadier, you can even throw two of the same type (so long as that type is direct damage) in back-to-back turns.

[moon2587]

But the tchotchke (the glove) does nothing about any of those things.

Your explanation is all about how to limit psi powers either in strength and versatility, but the New Psi clearly shows that the innervation mechanic can do those things.  The glove, the physical object, does nothing.  That's unlike a weapon; you can't just throw bullets at your enemies and have an effective outcome.  And your opportunity cost of having something taking up a weapon slot isn't an opportunity cost for psi users, only for dabblers, who don't get the raw power out of psi because their stat profile doesn't support it.  They're not the ones Styg set out to nerf.

But first off a weapon degrades and needs to be repaired, that isn't something that the patch touches. Plus boosters plus an item that takes up a weapon slot would very much be making psi more in line with other weapon types. Not only do you have ammo (boosters) but you have the weapon to maintain (gauntlet). Again that means right now that hybrids can carry up to three effective weapons at a time based on build when a pure psi or pure weapon build won't be able to carry that.

No you can't "throw bullets" but the mechanic would be the same, there would be a persistent cost and failure to maintain equipment may not mean you couldn't use your abilities but again they all would be heavily impacted.

As for what Styg set out to fix, from what I have read it was the fact that pure psi users had to much utility and power available at all times. That there was no ammo cost, no upkeep, and that it would be hard to add new abilities into the system as it is right now. You are saying my suggestion doesn't fix any of that but you haven't actually explaned how. Innervation just adds "spell slots" but the issue is that a pure psi build will still be able to use all four schools just not as many of the abilities at the same time.

The problem with this however is that even with the added cost it still doesn't really add diversity to builds. The utility spells that hybrids want they still can use with little investment, the spells that a pure psi build would want they still can use. It just makes the less desirable ones like force emission even less desirable to take for the average user, and I have had people tell me you easily can get buy with 6 slots...which means the need to change or adapt with 8 is even less which brings us back to the original issues psi has: to much utility, power, and accuracy all available at the same time.

So if outright restricting isn't solving the issue the solution is to make the options more impactful. Innervation is cheap, easy, and is more of a annoyance mechanic then an effective one. But as I am suggesting anyone who wants to use psi would have the same build considerations as what gun to use or what melee weapon to use. It also would allow customization by the crafting system which is something that psi builds really don't have much diversity at the moment with either.

My point is that if you're trying to float ideas to limit psi, go at it as a fix to psi.  Adding A Thing to the mix gets you all wrapped up in the thing and you end up - as you did in your OP and your explanations - changing effects with The Thing without addressing the underlying concerns.

If you are seeing actual issues that this suggestion doesn't address please point them out, because obviously from where I am standing I am seeing this system add diversity, reign in the power and utility, gives meaningful choices, and makes psi more like other weapon choices while not actually removing the reasons one might want to make a full psionic build. Which from what I am reading in Styg's posts are what they were going for in the first place, but either their patch doesn't really address.

[UnLimiTeD]

I'd rather the four psi schools scale half or fully off of different base stats, and perhaps reduce the synergy. 

I'd like to applaud this post. More than just by clicking the button. At least somewhat benefitting from different attributes would also allow psi characters an easier sidegrade into other options;
right now, you either use it as a little bit of support, or you go all out, excepting low health crit builds.
Promoting some variety from within the system would certainly help. Maybe innervation could be a more costly affair, but you can still cast everything else at a higher cost out of combat?

I'm personally not against adding more equipment slots for psi users;
Gun users can have a belt to accelerate reload or boost chemical warfare, 2 weapons with viable crafting options to specialise, they get goggles with a variety of effects, and their armour can also provide bonuses - on melee characters, you still get all those equipment slots to allow bonuses for your playstyle, only you can also use your armour to directly boost offence, and add the boots into the mix, too.
Psi only gets headbands and crafted armours. There's certainly room.
I mean, what weapons does a psyker currently use? There's a knife that reduces chance to be critted, a knife that boosts lockpicking, gloves to increase strength to be able to wear crab armour, and if you like TC, sormibaren spears. Which all happen to be unique, or close to it.

I do, however, also not believe that adding invoker gloves would fix the underlying problem, if any.

However, it needs to be something that purely provides utility boosts unless Styg actually wanted to nerf hybrid characters.  (I do think there needs to be another feat or two for non-psi, though. I mean, who does that?)
Psi abilities are also more similar to special abilities than weapons, only you get more abilities and no "standard" attack.
Why not give a sort of weapon that allows a low psi cost, no cooldown base attack, with accuracy based on one of the disciplines, and (potentially craftable) bonuses along the line of "+1 Innervation slot", "-10% [school] skill, -5%-15% [school] cost", "killing an enemy with a single target psi ability refunds X psi points, to a limit of X% skill cost", or "+1 range on [school] abilities"?
Just brainstorming.

[Sanchez]

All PSI needs to get balanced is a PSI special weapon that boosts one of the four particular schools, and uses energy as bullets for each spell casted.
There you go +expenses, +specialization, +balance.

Right Now psi is underwhelming, and levelling both psi and knife before patch, It was 3 times weaker than knife even before the nerf. Crowdcontrol / Utility is better but damage wise? Psi builds suck.

[MeToLee]

I'd rather the four psi schools scale half or fully off of different base stats, and perhaps reduce the synergy. 

Psi abilities are also more similar to special abilities than weapons, only you get more abilities and no "standard" attack.
Why not give a sort of weapon that allows a low psi cost, no cooldown base attack, with accuracy based on one of the disciplines, and (potentially craftable) bonuses along the line of "+1 Innervation slot", "-10% [school] skill, -5%-15% [school] cost", "killing an enemy with a single target psi ability refunds X psi points, to a limit of X% skill cost", or "+1 range on [school] abilities"?
Just brainstorming.

I was thinking how nice it would be the make Force Emission baseline melee attack as soon as you take the pill without any costs. And a perk or two related to it to maybe leech some Psi energy each hit or to do more damage etc.