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In order to get a good feel for the newest incarnation of psionic rules, one should have a proper grasp of the older rulesets. There's a lot of conjecture and horror tales abounding with the old rules, but most people don't know the bleak truth behind them...
We'll gloss over the old first edition rules, they were generally incomprehensible and tacked-on, relying on totally random rolls to determine what powers, if any, a psionicist possessed, and didn't have workable psychic combat rules.

Second edition graduated psionicists into their own class and catapulted them into controversy. I'll come right up into the whole crux of the thing: Disintegrate. Technically, it was possible for a third-level psionicist to be able to use the telekinetic science of Disintegrate. DMs around the world flipped; a *third* level character doing that? Psionics are pure munchkin fodder, never allow them into your campaign!

The reality of the situation, however, was far, far different. What many of the people telling these horror stories neglected to mention was the Power Score Check. Psionic powers were used like skills, in order to work the psionicist would first pay the cost for the power, then roll to see if the power actually worked. And, if the player rolled a 20, the power would backfire in some way that was at least unpleasant, and quite possibly fatal. (Remember, this was back in the days where high rolls weren't always good.) That gave the feared Disintegrate a fifty-five to seventy percent chance of working, after blowing forty power points (that's a lot), and a five percent chance of disintegrating the psionicist. When the subsequent saving throw is applied, the odds of the psionicist actually accomplishing anything for their hard-earned points is horridly slim.

Furthermore, the actual range of offensive powers were so slim as to be laughable. A couple of telekinetic rock-throwing tricks and a few other toys, all doing at best around 1d10 damage, were the extent of the powers, and almost none of those powers were usuable against more than one opponent at a time. The point has been made, and it's true, that the second edition psionicists are very good at messing up a single opponent. They could disintegrate him, take over his mind, or work any number of indignities upon him. But against multiple opponents, the psionicist would quickly run out of power points and be left an anemic non-combatant. In short, the second edition rules made for utterly ineffective psychic characters.

Why's that important? Well, the perception of the overpowered psionicist going around and disintegrating everything that moved obviously had a bearing on the development of this book. Gone are the freeform power selections; psionic powers now share the magical leveling system from 0-9 and are linked to the attributes, forcing a psionicist to specialize to some extent. No psionic power comes before the equivalent magical spell, to insure that the wizards don't feel any class envy.

In some cases, this makes no sense whatsoever, relegating Telekinesis, the fundamental power for the entire telekinetic devotion, a 4th level power. The psionicists can telekinetically control other people's bodies and blow up undead at 2nd level, but they can't pick up a bowling ball and make it move around the room until 4th?! That's really the worst example, most of the powers are well balanced for their levels, with 'intermediate' powers like Lesser Dominate to let them have a slightly watered-down ability at a low level.

Psionicists in general now have much cleaner classes, the Psion is essentially the new verion of the old psionicist class, and the Psychic Warrior combines psychic powers with old-fashioned killing. There are psionic skills and feats that are, as a whole, very nice. There is some redundancy that's somewhat unnecessary, they took the time to put in psicraft to replace spellcraft and use psionic item for use magic item, but a very nice touch is that each specialist class of Psion has their own unique skill list that compliments their powers. That way the telepath is a great diplomat while the telekinetic guy has a knack at opening locks, it adds a great deal to the class that is often overlooked by people who just flip straight to the powers.

Psychic powers are now like spells in just about every manner. Armor doesn't affect them, and they have no components, instead having "displays", highly obvious effects to cue people in that strange things are going on. Some of the displays are corny, with comic book-esque glowing eyes and rainbow beams, and a few of them are downright atrocious. An example: the aural display is a constant hum that can be heard in a twenty-foot raidus of the target for the entire duration of the power. Domination has such a component, so the dominated person will be humming for days, pretty much destroying any usefulness in a subtle role.

Yes, one can take feats to remove particular displays, just like spellcasters can take feats to remove components, but it's not a fair tradeoff. The casters suffer the annoyance of their components just during the casting, but the psionicists have to deal with the displays throughout the entire duration of their power, and any of the displays make going undiscovered effectively impossible. Try sneaking past some orcs when the psion has rainbows going every which way and clanging bells filling the air and you'll see what I mean.

The 'default' method of dealing with psionics is to treat them like magic, i.e. Dispel Magic removes psionic effects and vice-versa. For DMs who don't want to take the time to work up psionic threats to go with magical ones, that's definitely the best way to go. There are rules for making psionics and magic separate so they don't affect each other, but I'd recommend them only for the DMs who are taking loads of time to plan their campaigns, lest the psychic characters blow away the big, bad, magic-immune critters that you had planned on being the pinnacle of the adventure.

There's a batch of psionic monsters in the back of the book, and this leads me to one of my biggest gripes with the whole thing: Monsters don't use power points. They can cast ("manifest" in the handbook lingo) their powers for free, at will. The PC psionicists have to tread very carefully to balance out their power points against the need to use more effective powers, and in fact there are several feats, powers, and items that revolve around depleting or stealing an opponent's power points. All of those things are utterly useless against a monstrous psychic, making them useless in any campaign where the PCs aren't either fighting amongst themselves or fighting non-monster psionicists.

Secondly, it removes any incentive for a monster not to use the full-out, ungodly expensive attacks, what do they care about the cost? It's an easy enough task for a DM to assign power points to a monster, just check to see what level they're manifesting powers at and give them the appropriate amount of power points from the character chart. I would certainly do that in any game that I ran. It's a glaring incompleteness about the book, not that they didn't give the monsters power points, but that they didn't give any alternate effect to the power-draining stuff when used on the monsters. (The Psychic Vampire power is the sole exception to this, but its effect on monsters is minimal compared to PCs.)

The section on psionic items is pretty nice, most of it is basic fare that's very similar to magical items that can be found in the DMG, but there are a few nifty and original toys to play with in there. A few people have been annoyed at how crystal-centric psionic items are, but it never really bothered me. D&D is full of freaky materials, in a world full of adamantite and mithril and glassteel stuff, I don't mind throwing in some crystal stuff to add to the variety. There's no real in-game effect to the things being made out of crystal, except for the spells and creatures that have special effects on metal or crystal, which parties rarely encounter in any event.

As to the book itself, it's hardbound and sturdy, which is nice, and HUGELY OVERPRICED, which is not. Twenty-seven bucks for 158 pages, this is definitely a book you'll want to pick up on sale or in a used bin rather than for full price off the shelf unless you really love psychics. But once you get past the price, the book is well laid out and pretty clear, although there is unfortunately a fair amount of errata that made it into the first printing. Hopefully they'll mend that, and lower the price to something reasonable, for the second printing.

All in all, I'm happy with the book. I feel that it has made psionic characters the most playable they've ever been in the history of D&D, and despite its flaws I think Bruce Cordell did a commendable job of it. Whether you'll like it boils down to whether or not you'll like the new psionic classes. If you do, it's indespensible, if not, well... Just be understanding if someone else in your gaming group gets it and wants to play a psionicist.

Psionics Handbook
Psionics Handbook Capsule Review by George Jackson on 30/03/01 Style: 4 (Classy and well done) Substance: 3 (Average) The first big non-core D&D expansion is out, and odds are you'll love it or hate it. Product: Psionics Handbook Author: Bruce Cordell Category: RPG Company/Publisher: Wizards of the Coast Line: D&D Cost: 26.95 Page count: 158 Year published: 2001 ISBN: 0-7869-1835-7 SKU: WTC11835 Capsule Review by George Jackson on 30/03/01 Genre tags: Fantasy	In order to get a good feel for the newest incarnation of psionic rules, one should have a proper grasp of the older rulesets. There's a lot of conjecture and horror tales abounding with the old rules, but most people don't know the bleak truth behind them... We'll gloss over the old first edition rules, they were generally incomprehensible and tacked-on, relying on totally random rolls to determine what powers, if any, a psionicist possessed, and didn't have workable psychic combat rules. Second edition graduated psionicists into their own class and catapulted them into controversy. I'll come right up into the whole crux of the thing: Disintegrate. Technically, it was possible for a third-level psionicist to be able to use the telekinetic science of Disintegrate. DMs around the world flipped; a third level character doing that? Psionics are pure munchkin fodder, never allow them into your campaign! The reality of the situation, however, was far, far different. What many of the people telling these horror stories neglected to mention was the Power Score Check. Psionic powers were used like skills, in order to work the psionicist would first pay the cost for the power, then roll to see if the power actually worked. And, if the player rolled a 20, the power would backfire in some way that was at least unpleasant, and quite possibly fatal. (Remember, this was back in the days where high rolls weren't always good.) That gave the feared Disintegrate a fifty-five to seventy percent chance of working, after blowing forty power points (that's a lot), and a five percent chance of disintegrating the psionicist. When the subsequent saving throw is applied, the odds of the psionicist actually accomplishing anything for their hard-earned points is horridly slim. Furthermore, the actual range of offensive powers were so slim as to be laughable. A couple of telekinetic rock-throwing tricks and a few other toys, all doing at best around 1d10 damage, were the extent of the powers, and almost none of those powers were usuable against more than one opponent at a time. The point has been made, and it's true, that the second edition psionicists are very good at messing up a single opponent. They could disintegrate him, take over his mind, or work any number of indignities upon him. But against multiple opponents, the psionicist would quickly run out of power points and be left an anemic non-combatant. In short, the second edition rules made for utterly ineffective psychic characters. Why's that important? Well, the perception of the overpowered psionicist going around and disintegrating everything that moved obviously had a bearing on the development of this book. Gone are the freeform power selections; psionic powers now share the magical leveling system from 0-9 and are linked to the attributes, forcing a psionicist to specialize to some extent. No psionic power comes before the equivalent magical spell, to insure that the wizards don't feel any class envy. In some cases, this makes no sense whatsoever, relegating Telekinesis, the fundamental power for the entire telekinetic devotion, a 4th level power. The psionicists can telekinetically control other people's bodies and blow up undead at 2nd level, but they can't pick up a bowling ball and make it move around the room until 4th?! That's really the worst example, most of the powers are well balanced for their levels, with 'intermediate' powers like Lesser Dominate to let them have a slightly watered-down ability at a low level. Psionicists in general now have much cleaner classes, the Psion is essentially the new verion of the old psionicist class, and the Psychic Warrior combines psychic powers with old-fashioned killing. There are psionic skills and feats that are, as a whole, very nice. There is some redundancy that's somewhat unnecessary, they took the time to put in psicraft to replace spellcraft and use psionic item for use magic item, but a very nice touch is that each specialist class of Psion has their own unique skill list that compliments their powers. That way the telepath is a great diplomat while the telekinetic guy has a knack at opening locks, it adds a great deal to the class that is often overlooked by people who just flip straight to the powers. Psychic powers are now like spells in just about every manner. Armor doesn't affect them, and they have no components, instead having "displays", highly obvious effects to cue people in that strange things are going on. Some of the displays are corny, with comic book-esque glowing eyes and rainbow beams, and a few of them are downright atrocious. An example: the aural display is a constant hum that can be heard in a twenty-foot raidus of the target for the entire duration of the power. Domination has such a component, so the dominated person will be humming for days, pretty much destroying any usefulness in a subtle role. Yes, one can take feats to remove particular displays, just like spellcasters can take feats to remove components, but it's not a fair tradeoff. The casters suffer the annoyance of their components just during the casting, but the psionicists have to deal with the displays throughout the entire duration of their power, and any of the displays make going undiscovered effectively impossible. Try sneaking past some orcs when the psion has rainbows going every which way and clanging bells filling the air and you'll see what I mean. The 'default' method of dealing with psionics is to treat them like magic, i.e. Dispel Magic removes psionic effects and vice-versa. For DMs who don't want to take the time to work up psionic threats to go with magical ones, that's definitely the best way to go. There are rules for making psionics and magic separate so they don't affect each other, but I'd recommend them only for the DMs who are taking loads of time to plan their campaigns, lest the psychic characters blow away the big, bad, magic-immune critters that you had planned on being the pinnacle of the adventure. There's a batch of psionic monsters in the back of the book, and this leads me to one of my biggest gripes with the whole thing: Monsters don't use power points. They can cast ("manifest" in the handbook lingo) their powers for free, at will. The PC psionicists have to tread very carefully to balance out their power points against the need to use more effective powers, and in fact there are several feats, powers, and items that revolve around depleting or stealing an opponent's power points. All of those things are utterly useless against a monstrous psychic, making them useless in any campaign where the PCs aren't either fighting amongst themselves or fighting non-monster psionicists. Secondly, it removes any incentive for a monster not to use the full-out, ungodly expensive attacks, what do they care about the cost? It's an easy enough task for a DM to assign power points to a monster, just check to see what level they're manifesting powers at and give them the appropriate amount of power points from the character chart. I would certainly do that in any game that I ran. It's a glaring incompleteness about the book, not that they didn't give the monsters power points, but that they didn't give any alternate effect to the power-draining stuff when used on the monsters. (The Psychic Vampire power is the sole exception to this, but its effect on monsters is minimal compared to PCs.) The section on psionic items is pretty nice, most of it is basic fare that's very similar to magical items that can be found in the DMG, but there are a few nifty and original toys to play with in there. A few people have been annoyed at how crystal-centric psionic items are, but it never really bothered me. D&D is full of freaky materials, in a world full of adamantite and mithril and glassteel stuff, I don't mind throwing in some crystal stuff to add to the variety. There's no real in-game effect to the things being made out of crystal, except for the spells and creatures that have special effects on metal or crystal, which parties rarely encounter in any event. As to the book itself, it's hardbound and sturdy, which is nice, and HUGELY OVERPRICED, which is not. Twenty-seven bucks for 158 pages, this is definitely a book you'll want to pick up on sale or in a used bin rather than for full price off the shelf unless you really love psychics. But once you get past the price, the book is well laid out and pretty clear, although there is unfortunately a fair amount of errata that made it into the first printing. Hopefully they'll mend that, and lower the price to something reasonable, for the second printing. All in all, I'm happy with the book. I feel that it has made psionic characters the most playable they've ever been in the history of D&D, and despite its flaws I think Bruce Cordell did a commendable job of it. Whether you'll like it boils down to whether or not you'll like the new psionic classes. If you do, it's indespensible, if not, well... Just be understanding if someone else in your gaming group gets it and wants to play a psionicist.

Psionics Handbook