Mental Balancing Act

Last post got me thinking about how Psionics could be balanced so as not to be too overpowering in comparison with other magic types.

The first limiter, of course, is that the "casting stat" for Psionics is a derived stat, so to have a comparable amount of power to draw on you need to have multiple base stats which are high enough to average to another high or moderately-high stat.  With a system where there are only three base stats, admittedly, that is not necessarily as difficult as some, and yet it also means one low score can remove it as a viable option.

Something else to consider is what can affect, or is affected by, what.

Physical can affect physical things.  That's... pretty much it.

Magic can affect physical things, and it can affect magical things.  It can also bypass physical, depending on the spell.

Psionics can affect physical things (though this may or may not be more difficult), and it can affect mental/psionic things.  It can easily (depending on the setting, nearly by default) bypass physical.

But magic does not (at least typically) affect psionics, and likewise psionics do not affect magic.

So where's the problem?

Generally, magic does physical damage.  Even when it bypasses physical armor, it does physical damage or has some physical effect.  Psionics do mental damage, the grand majority of the time.  So a psionicist can easily bypass not only physical armor, but any form of resistance to physical damage, and is therefore even more effective against physical-based characters than a magically-trained character.  In addition, since magic doesn't affect psionics, a psion can bypass magical defenses as well, and is only slightly deterred by the better mental stats of a spellcaster vs. a fighter.

On the other hand, a psion can't block a non-physical magic attack, either.  Hmm.

Ok, so really, where's the problem?

Even if I permit a magic-user to affect psionics, and psions to affect magic (at an increased power cost for either) all I'm doing is making attack and defense types more accessible.  Which would mean mages and psions could actually have a chance of resisting each other rather than being glass cannons.

Maybe it isn't as intrinsically overpowered as I thought.

Online Gaming Resources

I came across this site a couple months ago, and overall I like it: http://fabletop.com/  Simple, easy to use, great for quick pick-up games.  Biggest problem is there is very little you can do to customize the system to suit your tastes.  The system in place is good, not saying otherwise, but it makes playtesting my own system on the site rather difficult.  Also, though there were a small number of people running games when I first joined, the site seems to be languishing right now, possibly due to a lack of GMs.  If you already have a playerbase to bring to the site, not so much an issue, but it can be hard (as a player) to find a game when you're available to play.

So I also came across this site: http://roll20.net/   Not quite as simple and certainly not as quick and easy to set up a game, but the customization is much more universal.  Dice are customizable, and I can actually use my own system on the site.  Plus, the option of voice and video chat between players is a nice touch.  I played around with it a lot tonight, and I'll probably end up using it to run games soon.  It seems vastly more populated than Fabletop, though that's less of a concern for me there since I'll be playtesting my own system.

On a side note, I may need to tweak the bonuses for weapon skills.  It looks as though I may have been a wee bit generous.

Short Update

Having only two people in the party can be a challenge as it is, but when neither one has healing it really makes it difficult to gauge an appropriate challenge.  In the most recent game, and the one before that, at least one character has fallen into negative hit points, and needed to be dragged to a temple for healing.  It seems like the encounters I've been giving are either way too easy, or way too hard, and I'm having some trouble trying to find the middle ground.  Then again, I don't really get a lot of time to find it.