Psychic's Handbook, The

[JoeGKushner]

The Psychic's Handbook introduces a new core class and all the trimmings that go along with it.

The psychic is much like the psion or mage in that it can be played in a number of ways depending on how you build it. Unlike those classes though, the psychic uses no magic or psionic points, but rather, uses feats to gain access to skills. The higher the psychic's skill, the more the psychic can do with that power. Other feats related to that skill can also be taken to augment those abilities.

For instance, let's take the good old psychic who wants to pretend that he's a hero using a blade of mental energy. He could start off with his bonus feat to take Psychic Weapon, which allows him to take the skill, Psychic Weapon. Next, he could take his 1st level feat as Imbue Weapon. This surrounds any weapon with psychic energy that inflicts an extra 1d8 points of damage for every six character levels. Depending on what you roll, a 1st level psychic could do 1d6 (on a DC between 15-24), plus 1d8, all of 'ghostly, crackling psychic energy' damage. There are some other benefits to the old Psychic Weapon. For instance, you wield it with weapon finesse and it strikes as a touch attack and is considered a magic weapon using your Wisdom modifier instead of strength to damage opponents. There are some limitations like not being able to effect nonintelligent or objects.

Okay, now that sounds pretty tough right? What's the drawback? Would you believe strain? The psychic weapon costs 6 strain and the Imbue Weapon Runs 3 strain. Okay, so what's strain? It's nonleathal damage that the user takes each time he uses a psychic ability. With a d6 hit die, it'll be the rare psychic who decides to take that 9 points of damage. Other feats can lessen that damage but that's the main drawback. Certain feats that augment the abilities cost more strain. Now imagine that you're say 3rd or 4th level and decide to go for the big bucks. You go for an Empower Talent and get a 150% of the power's effect, so now you do an extra 1d3 + 1d4, but the strain is double so it's now 12 and 6 points of damage.

It's a fairly workable and quick system but unless you've got the skill points to spend on a lot of psychic skills, I've found that most of my NPCs tend to specialize with a few abilities or go quickly into PrCs to get other related abilities. For instance, one feat in this book, Skill Aptitude, lets you take two nonclass skills as class skills. I used my 1st level feat for that, my psychic bonus feat for psychometabolism, and my human feat for psychic stamina, a feat that lets you use wisdom instead of constitution for your hit point bonus. Now there's a PrC in this book, the Psychic Healer, that has psychic ability and psychometabolism as feat requirements and heal and psychic healing at 6 ranks. That's right, this NPC got into this PrC at 4rd level.

The good news is that while the book is about psychics and how they can fit into a campaign, they've provided a lot of room to maneuver. The prestige classes for example, cover almost all the standards. Want the old famous beastmaster or monk-psychic? You're covered. Want the angry child that burns the world around here? Covered. How about a non-psychic who just wants to off these freaks? Once again, you're covered.

Those looking to augment their psychics have some options. There are elixirs, similar to potions, and crystals. I was a little disappointed that there were no unique weapons, armors or other goods to help a player create some type of psychic sword wielding individual or that there weren't more monsters outside of a psychic creature template.

The book does a great job of providing the GM everything he needs to quickly integrate this class and its PrCs into his campaign, including an Advanced Class for d20 Modern, and notes on how psychic abilities fit into a high tech setting. If you're looking for advice, variants, or general ideas on how to use these individuals, you're covered with new sample factions, psychic phenomena and other goods to quickly get playing.

The art is top notch with Drew Baker, Jonathan Kirtz, Kent Burles and James Smith III lending their talents. Kent Burles has long been a favorite of mine from Palladium and other companies to his current work with modern d20 releases. Editing is fair. Layout is standard two columns with full page breaks between chapters and options and other important information boxed up. The boxes are pretty ugly though being gray with a lighter gray swirl like liquid metal around it making the text difficult to read but otherwise, good. At 80 pages, the price is on average or lower, at $16.95.

The Psychic isn't going to steal anyone's lunch. Campaigns can be developed where the psychic plays a major role, but the fighters, thieves, clerics and mages aren't going to have to look over their shoulder unlike the bards, druids and rangers. In this aspect, it reminds me greatly of other works by Green Ronin like the Shaman or Witch book, solid books that help fill niche or specialized roles in the campaign.

If you're looking for a skill and feat based system that tries something different and succeeds with the d20 system, then the Psychic's Handbook is for you.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

Psychic powers may seem like magic, but there's no reason to treat them as such in your d20 game. The Psychic's Handbook provides a completely independent system for adding psychic abilities to your campaign, abilities which are at once more subtle and wider-reaching than magic, powers with their own applications and limitations that separate them from the spells of clerics and wizards, and even the powers of psions. The core of the system is the psychic, a new class whose mental powers are based on skills and feats. The Psychic's Handbook, by award-winning game designer Steve Kenson, provides you with everything you need to integrate the class into your game, including prestige classes, new equipment, campaign advice, and conversion notes for Modern games. This winter, discover the true powers of the mind.

 

[Bynw]

Last week I received a free review copy of Green Ronin's "The Psychic's Handbook. Being a gaming fan of psionics since the begining (I have 20 year old campaign focusing around psionics - and currently uses a skills/feats system that I created) I am always interested in new rules and adaptations of psionic powers. I am also the founder of the Psionics.Net IRC Network that host the EN World chat.

When the book arrived in the mail I began to thumb through it, just to see if anything initially caught my eye. I was WOWED from the very first glance and overview of the parts I was reading as a sampling. It seemed to be the very thing that I was looking for in my own campaign. I sat down in earnest to read the entire book from cover to cover and get a good understanding of the nature of its mechanics.

The book held my interest through out its pages. And I discovered many similarities between the system I had written for my own campaign. This indeed was a professional work that got "psionics done right." I had noticed a few things from 1st Edition Psionics rules that came though Dragon 78 and prior to that the Deryni series by Katherine Kurtz (who also has done psionics right.)

Psionic abilities just work better as a series of skills and feats. They are easier to manage as a GM and as Player. The Psychic's Handbook, offers several options on what powers the psionics, from hit point damage, nonleathal damage called "strain", much like the SW d20 Force abilities and Vitality Points. It also present other options depending on the nature of the individual campaign. And the book has a wide range of feats and skills the fullfill most of the needed psionic powers as they have been presented in fiction and fact.

I highly recomend this book, and I am recomeding it to my players as today I am making some modifications to the psionic rules that I created. Pushing some of them assided and taking Green Ronin's in there place. My thanks to them for this fine work.

 

[Selvarin]

Perhaps you could expand your review? It would be helpful to hear more detail, more specifics.

 

[Bynw]

The issue I have. As I told Chris via an Email, is I don't like the idea that one needs several feats to get every psionic (psychic) power. This is the same issue that I have with the Force rules in SW d20 as well.

I do say that some skills would require special feats but not all of them.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

By John Grigsby, Staff Reviewer d20 Magazine Rack

Initiative Round
The Psychic’s Handbook is a Dungeons & Dragons supplement from Green Ronin. The latest addition to the Master Class line is an 80-page black-and-white softcover by Steve Kenson. The cover by Todd Lockwood shows a black-robed psychic in a classic pose. Drew Baker, Jonathon Kirtz, Kent Burles, and James Smith III provide the interior illustrations. The Psychic’s Handbook retails for $16.95.

Okay, I know that you’ve all heard me say this before, but I’ll say it again here for emphasis: I don’t like psionics in my fantasy! Katherine Kurtz’s work (which in all fairness, I’ve not read) not withstanding, I just don’t feel that mental powers belong in a world of wizards and warriors. That said, if you absolutely must play a mind warrior, then this book is probably the best way to go. In fact, it’s so well done as to make the concept almost tolerable.

In the Psychic’s Handbook, psionics are treated as feats and skills, much in the same manner as they are in WotC’s Star Wars d20 game. The manifestation of psychic power itself is handled through a feat, Psychic Ability. The base class, as presented here, is a blending of cleric and wizard, with no proficiency in armor nor any beyond simple weapons (armor does not interfere with psychic abilities, however), and the Psychic Ability feat for free at first level (along with a second psychic feat of the character’s choice). Thereafter, psychic feats are gained at different level plateaus, though there seems to be no rhyme or reason behind them.

Following a brief dissertation on multi-class psychics, there is mention of the wild talent (yes, you can have psychic abilities without being a psychic), and then a very interesting comparison of psychics and psionics. They are not the same thing, both work differently and use different mechanics, and it is possible to include both in a game. Three sample psychics, fully-statted (except for magical items), are provided for the DM for use as quick NPCs, one each of 4th level, 8th level, and 12th level. However, each of them has five different psychic skill/feat packages, so in effect, there are 15 different NPCs provided!

The Psychic’s Handbook also introduces some new prestige classes. The beastmaster is, as the name implies, a psychic whose abilities are centered on animals. The fire-starter is a pyrokinetic, the ghost stalker uses his powers to commune with and even battle incorporeal spirits, the mind hunter hunts and combats psychic beings and creatures, the psychic adept seeks to master control of her own body, while the psychic healer masters a more focused control of the bodies of others. There is also a psychic advanced class provided, for d20 Modern.

I mentioned earlier that psychic abilities, unlike psionics, were based on feats and skills. This system necessitates not only some brand new skills and feats, but also some minor alterations to existing skills. For example, a psychic might use Bluff to trick a target into consciously thinking about some piece of information, lowering the DC of a Mind Reading check to obtain the information. The big difference between psionics and psychics, however, is illustrated through the use of strain. The use of psychic powers is extremely taxing. Each use of a psychic skill inflicts a particular amount of nonlethal damage on the user, called strain. If a psychic’s total nonlethal damage exceeds the character’s current hit points, the character goes unconscious.

The strain of some psychic skill use is determined by the circumstances, but can also be affected by factors such as familiarity, mass (the weight of an object), and certain psychic feats. The skills themselves are quite varied, ranging from the somewhat familiar Psychic Blast to Drain Emotion. Some skills offer a variety of different effects, like Psychic Sense, which allows the user to sense psychic power use, sense mental contact, sense a psychic signature, or trace the origin or target of a psychic skill. Every skill has the prerequisite of a particular psychic feat that suits the skill (Dream Walking, for example, requires the Telepathy feat). Some very few skills may be used untrained, provided the character possesses the appropriate feat.

Psychic feats come in three flavors; psychic, psychic talent, or metapsychic. Psychic feats are available only to those with the Psychic Ability feat. Psychic talents are “enablers” for various psychic skills. Some offer access to many psychic skills, while others offer access to only one skill (albeit a less common one). Metapsychic feats, similar to metamagic feats, modify psychic skills in various ways, usually expanding the capabilities at the cost of greater strain. Three new general feats are also included; Mental Fortitude, which girds against psychic attack, Psychic Ability, the feat that must be taken to gain any other psychic skills or feats, and Wild Talent, which permits the use of a single psychic skill (not feat).

There’s more to adding psychic powers to a campaign than just opening a floodgate of feats and skill and letting the players leap in feet first, though, and the Psychic’s Handbook addresses those issues as well. Here may be found thoughts on defeating and extending psychic shields, mental conditioning, and drones. Psychics may aid others, even non-psychics, in certain tasks or in defeating any effect requiring a Will save. Concise rules for psychic gestalts (a series of minds linked into a single powerful entity) are provided, and rules covering psychic grappling (meeting minds on the mental battlefield) can be perused. Self-imposed memory alteration, wielding weapons through telekinesis, telepathic eavesdropping, and using teleportation to aid a sneak attack are all here as well. You’ll also find some equipment that most any psychic will find beneficial.

It’s just possible that some people enjoy the complexity afforded by the current psionics system. If you’re one of those people, fear not, there are plenty of variant systems offer here. Psychic energy points emulate the current system by tracking the use of psychic talents through additional points available to psychic characters, but there are also rules for ability damage, fatigue saving throws, hit point damage, XP cost for using psychic powers, and even ignoring the rules for strain entirely, letting characters use their formidable mental abilities without penalty or limitation.

Last, but not least, the role of psychic powers in the campaign is discussed. How did psychics originate? Should they be overt or secretive? How do non-psychics feel about psychics? There are even some new kinds of diseases that effect psychics.

Critical Hit
The psionics system the D&D uses has been in dire need of an overhaul since day one, and even though psionics and psychics are two different systems, this one appeals to me a lot more than trying to track aspects and power points. In addition, it works very well with the Wounds and Vitality option presented in Unearthed Arcana, which I’m currently using in my campaign. One of the things that attracted me to Star Wars d20 was the way that Force powers were handled, and seeing that system adapted to D&D is a welcome change of pace.

Critical Fumble
The biggest hit to the Psychic’s Handbook is in originality. The system, as nice as it is, simply isn’t all that original. That doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work. It does, and quite well, but it still isn’t exactly a new idea.

If there is a downside to the book, it’s that psychics and psychic powers are weaker than psionics, and that’s going to be irksome to some players. Still, I think that the tradeoff is worthwhile. Psychics are simpler and more realistic, and they’re the choice for my campaign.

Coup de Grace
Well, I’m in. If someone wants to play a psychic in my campaign, this is the book they will use. While it hasn’t convinced me that psionics belong in a fantasy campaign, it has persuaded me to permit them. That’s a big step over my previous opinion of such (fodder for my monsters) and probably the most impressive words for the support of this book that I can offer. When WotC redoes the Psionic Handbook, I can only hope that it takes a route similar to this one.

Basically, the whole of the book is Open Game Content. Technically, it cites chapters 1-4 as being OGC, but since there are only four chapters and the remainder of the book is reference tables that are taken directly from the text, I don’t see why they just didn’t declare the whole thing except graphics as OGC and be done with it. Unlike previous Green Ronin efforts, I’m very pleased to report that this one does not end abruptly and includes both a table of contents and an index.

To see the graded evaluation of this product and to leave comments that the reviewer will respond to, go to The Critic's Corner at www.d20zines.com.

 

[GameWyrd]

Psions suck. Psychics rule!

No. No. I haven't suddenly become a teenager bragging about his favourite class on a D&D chatroom - I'm just being controversial. I do think the rules in The Psychic's Handbook are very much more persuasive than any of the Psion rules I've seen to date. I don't think I'll be using Psions any time soon, I'd much rather use these psychic rules.

I must admit that I committed a cardinal reviewer sin with this book. I judged the book by its cover. Before I opened it up I had dismissed The Psychic's Handbook as a Psion splatbook. Okay; so it might be a splatbook (heavy with new mechanics) but it's not for the Psions. Psychics, by the definition in this supplement, are entirely different.

It's really easy to give you a quick run through on the differences between Psychics and Psions. It's easy because The Psychic's Handbook does it for us - this is a small but important section in the supplement. Sections like this one show Green Ronin's experience and the genius of Steve Kenson (Mutants and Masterminds). Psychic talents are more like skills (are skills, really) whereas Psionic powers are effectively spell like. A Psion has power points (another score to count) but a Psychic faces the strain of nonlethal damage. Psionic powers are fairly static; the same thing happens whenever you use the power and can't be improved, though the Psion can learn a better version of (essentially) the same ability. Psychic skills are more variable and can be improved. In fact, if you ask me, a Psion is just an awkward spell caster whereas the Psychic actually is a different class entirely.

We have rules for the new core class - The Psychic. Get this; we also have rules for The Modern Psychic for the d20 Modern system. Huzzah! Let's see more of this from d20 publishers please. If you're a D20 fantasy loyalist (a D&D player, say, rather than a M&M player) then you'll be pleased to see a smattering of the usual splat. Prestige classes! We've the Beastmaster, the Fire-Starter, Ghost Stalker, Mind Hunter, Psychic Adept and Psychic Healer too.

There are Psychic Skills and Psychic Feats. Before you can learn a psychic skill you need to have the appropriate psychic feat. This works well for a number of reasons - the mechanics encourage ?flavoured' psychics without needing to crudely shoehorn those rules in and it means anyone with the psychic feat can try and learn the skills. If you're not on the psychic class, but have the right feat and are trying to learn the skill then it's just the matter of paying for the cross-class skill. If the GM allows its simple enough to have someone with just a few psychic tricks and I think that reflects a more natural state than, say, the canon magic rules. Why do even the most humble of sorcerers possess about the same number of spells? Surely Daisy the Milkmaid who lives months a way from the nearest city, goblin infected mountain or haunted mine would master "Carry milk pails" if she had arcane blood rather than a half dozen low level combat spells? If Daisy the Milkmaid was a psychic then we could leave her safely in a NPC class, give her the appropriate talent for free and a few dots in something appropriate, Empathy or Telekinesis for example. Since Psychic skills improve , they start off gently and we'd even have the low level Daisy being just about able to carry a milk pail and not able to move boulders (or lift X-Wing fighters).

There are twenty pages of psychic skills - that's enough. If you want to add any more of your own then it's easy to do so, it's just a matter of creating a new skill and working out which feat is best suited to it as a requirement. That's a sign of good game mechanics, I think. I wish everything was so modular. I think there's an unfortunate typo on an important table of modifiers. The description for being "Intimately Familiar" with someone seems to merge into the description of being just able to see them in the DC modifier list. The effect is that the DC bonus for being Intimately Familiar with someone is less than the bonus for being Familiar with someone. You're also Intimately Familiar with someone if you can see them live on video. Woo. I wonder if I've been Intimately Familiar with Alicia Silverstone or that chick from Spiderman without actually realising it.

There are about seven pages of psychic feats; enough to prove that there are entirely useful and stand alone feats, not just "requirement padding" for the skills. The very first feat in the book, Apport Arrows, is such an attention grabber. Imagine being able to not be hit by an arrow (or crossbow bolt, etc) because you teleported it away elsewhere. Panache? Oh yes.

Chapter Four is titled "Psychic Campaigns" and all too often such chapters quickly become filler - where the GM points out his rules can be tricky, might unbalance the game and then only makes some patently obvious suggestions. Not so here. I'd already wondered why I'd bother trying to get past a powerful psychic shield and why I couldn't target the shield itself - and it's that discussion, with how to target the shield, which gets the chapter going. It's those awkward ideas that you know your PCs are going to come up with; telekinetically wielding weapons or eavesdropping, teleport sneak attacks, performing psychic surgery on themselves to hide memories (and trigger them later), etc, which this chapter addresses. There are also rules for drones (mind slaves) and forming psychic gestalts where psychics come together to combine the power of their minds.

There are, however, the usual sections for psychic equipment, a quick look at attitudes towards psychic characters and possible origins of psychic powers which have the slight suggestion of "d20 supplements by the numbers" to them. This is a d20 splatbook and whereas I'd love to see a thoroughly atmospheric and original piece on the possible origins of psychic powers such a chapter isn't suitable here and it's not what we get. It is tempting to say that if you're not going to do it properly then don't do it at all. There's rather lengthy section on psychic impressions which rather than being an example of something "done properly" seemed a little too pointlessly verbose for me. I'm a fickle reader, it seems, because I really liked the quick paragraphs for psychic storms and psychic virii (spelt ?viruses' in the book - is that an Americanism?).

The Psychic's Handbook benefits from the usual Green Ronin touches. The artwork is good. The layout effective and not suspiciously white space padded. There are easy to use reference charts and there is a detailed index. The print size good and paper quality fair.

Don't make the mistake I did. Don't write the book off. The Psychic's Handbook is a top of the range splatbook and isn't another offering in the obscure Psion market. We really do have a set of tempting, alternative or complementary rules here. The book gives you everything you need for Psychics in your game and makes it easy to add more. Whether you need yet another expansion to the d20 system and can cope with introducing a hitherto unnoticed/unknown character type to your campaign might be a problem. GMs who start a new campaign, on a homebrew world, shortly after buying this book, I think, to include the Psychic rules. Players who buy the book are just as like to bug the GM to allow the new feats and skills combinations too. That might annoy the GM but it is a sign of a good book.

* This Psychic's Handbook review was first published at GameWyrd.

 

[Psion]

The Psychic's Handbook

The Psychic's Handbook introduces a new system for psychic powers and characters for use with d20 System rules, and also includes notes and material which allow use of the book with d20 Modern. The book is written by Steve Kenson (author of the widely regarded Mutants & Mastermind, and one of my own favorites, the Shaman's Handbook, among others) and published by Green Ronin as part of their Master Class series of character oriented game supplements.

The book is written to 3.5 (and Modern) standards. The book is not written assuming the use of the existing psionics material.

A First Look

The Psychic's Handbook is an 80-page perfect-bound softcover book priced at $16.95.

The cover of the book is illustrated by WotC alumni artist Todd Lockwood, and depicts a cloaked man with a moon-like mark on his hand, against a rather gothic looking backdrop including a moon matching the mark on his hand. The art is up to Lockwood's usual high standard.

The interior is black and white and is illustrated by Drew Baker, Jonathon Kirtz, Kent Burles (a fast favorite of mine after green Ronin's Testament and Monsters of the Mind), and James Smith III. All the authors display great talent in this work.

A Deeper Look

The book is arranged into four chapters: the Psychic (defining new classes), Psychic Skills, Psychic Feats, and Psychic Campaigns. My usual approach is to run down and evaluate the various chapters of a product in the order presented. As is sometimes the case, I feel that in that it is best to overview the system in general first.

The system of psychic powers represented in this book is fundamentally what enthusiasts would call a "feats and skills" based system, i.e., it uses skills and feats as the basis for the power system instead of using separate systems such as the d20 System magic system does.

Green Ronin has done their homework in conceiving this product. Skills & Feats systems for supernatural powers have been discussed on various gaming message boards, and various authors such and Ken Hood and Steve Miller have put forth versions of such systems on websites and ezines (like the now defunct D20 Weekly). Similar systems have even appeared in d20 products such as Star Wars' force system and the psionic system for the Shadowforce Archer setting for AEG's Spycraft. But never has a major d20 publisher taken it upon themselves to make such a system for general d20 System fantasy or d20 Modern. Until now.


The system is fundamentally similar to those in Star Wars and Shadowforce Archer: A number of "enabler" feats (in this book, called psychic talent feats) when purchased, allow the character to purchase a number of psychic skills, which actually accomplish the supernatural effects. In many cases, the skills function like ordinary skills (albeit achieving extraordinary results) in that ranks contribute towards rolls related to tasks with the skill. In other cases, the ranks are used indirectly, such as to determine the duration of an effect.

One common similarity with both of the aforementioned products is that in many cases, you generate a total and compare it to a table under the rank to derive effects, which means that for those skills, having the book (and referring to it) is pretty much a necessity. However, it is superior to the table-happy Star Wars force system in this aspect in that it does not do this for saving throws. Instead of using a table, it simply uses half of the characters ranks plus ability modifier to set save DCs, which is consistent with the scaling of saving throws typical to the d20 System and does not require a table reference.

The system does use some common modifiers for most skills for mass and familiarity, where appropriate.

The psychic talent feats include clairsentience, dimensional shift, psychic weapon, psychokinesis, psychometabolism, psychoportation, and telepathy. All but dimensional shift and psychic weapon allow access to multiple psychic talents. (It's also interesting that these five feats that allow multiple talents are exactly the same as the five psionic disciplines used in AD&D 2e psionics that are available to starting characters.) In addition, all of these require the psychic ability feat to take in the first place, but also allows access to a few basic psychic skills.

Using psychic skills costs strain. What exactly strain cost is largely a matter of GM choice. As a default, it is nonlethal damage. However, the campaigns chapter allows you to choose other ways of assessing the cost of strain, such as applying it as HP damage, ability damage, XP costs, or a newly created pool of "psychic energy points." This allows the GM to tweak the feel and impact of psychics on the campaign.

Note above that the psychic talent feats only allow access to the psychic skills. They don't make them class skills. That's where we segue into chapter one, which introduces psychic classes.

The Psychic is the central class of the book. The class is a 20 level core class, that starts out with the psychic ability feat, and a bonus psychic feat (which is probably a psychic talent feat to allow access to some psychic skills.) To pay for all those skills, the psychic gets 6 skill points per level base, and all psychic skills are treated as class skills. The class is a moderate BAB class with a good will save and d6 hit die.

Beyond first level, the only real class ability the psychic gets are additional bonus psychic feats.

The class presentation has all the expected trimming such as discussions of relations to other classes, typical roles, basic strengths, a starting character package, and so forth. The class also includes a discussion of multiclass characters, sample psychic characters in low, middle, and high level versions (as other Master Class books), and a contrast with d20 System psionics. Oddly, the book does not presume that you will be using one or the other, as I suspect will most often be the case.

Also as with other Master Class books, this chapter includes a number of prestige classes supporting the subject class of the book. In this case, the classes include the beatmaster, firestarter, ghost stalker, psychic adept, and [/i]psychic healer[/i], all of which have class abilities which focus the psychics abilities towards a more specific pursuit.

There are also two classes that don't directly support the psychic class.

The mind hunter is a prestige class specializing in hunting and fighting psychics, probably most appropriate for settings in which such characters are regarded with suspicion or hatred.

The modern psychic details an advanced class version of the psychic to facilitate the use of psychic abilities in d20 Modern. Unlike the core class psychic (and typical of supernatural classes in d20 Modern) characters cannot start in this class and must have certain prerequisites before entering it. The class itself receives a bonus psychic feat at every even level. This is a bit odd for a d20 Modern class which typically allows an ability at every level, but one might consider the good allotment of skill points and all psychic skills as class skills to be a sort of class ability in its own.

Unfortunately, the modern psychic has the most editing problems. The class lacks a HD designation, as well action points, reputation and defense bonuses that are required for d20 Modern classes. Further, the class has an even number of skill points, which is a little out of line with the convention that skill point per level in d20 Modern is odd, accounting for the bonus skill points that humans receive. (There is already a web enhancement out on the Green Ronin site which addresses all of these problems except for the skill point problem.)

The skills chapter is where the system struts its stuff. The skills generally resemble what would be spells or powers elsewhere in the d20 system. The potency varies in some cases according to the total of a roll or the ranks, but generally, the more potent the skill effect, the more strain it costs. The powers are pretty typical for what you would expect for psychic powers, such as domination and mind reading for telepathy, powers to drain life and abilities for psychometabolism, and so forth.

Some skills require that you be in mental contact by use of a skill of the same name to use. This, along with the five basic psychic talents, shows a lot of homage or inheritance from AD&D 2e psionics systems.

The feats chapter includes the aforementioned psychic talent feats along with a number of other feats useful to psychic characters. Similar to core D&D, there are metapsychic feats (which boost the capabilities of psychic skills at an additional strain cost) and item creation feats. There are also a number of other psychic feats that let provide the psychic character with bonuses as well as let them acheive other effects more specific than those provided by psychic skills (such as flight or curing diseases.)

The fourth chapter, psychic campaigns, provides a variety of material that provide additional options as well as techniques for integrating it into campaigns and variations in the presented rules. This includes rules for psychic phenomena, eavesdropping, psychic equipment, as well as campaign material such as psychic factions and ideas for how to work psychic powers into a game.

Conclusions

There are those out there who, for whatever reason, been pining for an alternative to the official psionics systems. I am not one of those, but you know who you are, and I imagine you will be pleased with what you see.

As mentioned, I saw a lot of 2e psionics in the basic ideas of this system. To it's credit, however, this system doesn't seem to have near the abusability and seems much more playable.

The psychic class seems to me to have a slightly flatter power curve than most spellcasting and psionic classes in the d20 System, which is to say that it is slightly more potent at lower levels (albeit at the cost of nonlethal damage that spellcasters don't suffer), but doesn't seem to reach the same sort of apex of power at higher levels. The class also seems a little more customizable. A psychic skill with low skill ranks will correspond approximately to a low level spell, and a maxed out skill a high level spell. So by choosing your skill ranks, you pretty much pick the potency of your class abilities.

I would not want to use this class alongside the existing d20 spellcasting classes, but it might fit well alongside more subtle variants like Kenson's own witch (from the Witch's Handbook.) I would feel more compelled, however, to use this as a d20 Modern supplement, where I think the feel the book conveys is a bit more appropriate.

Overall Grade: B+

-Alan D. Kohler