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Preface

I reviewed the original 3E Psionics Handbook on RPG.net Here when it came out a few years ago.  Since then, there have been a great many changes to the psionics system for D&D.  Bruce Cordell wrote not one but two psionics expansion/revision books for Malhavoc press between these two official WotC books.  First came revisions to the prestige classes to allow for the "+1 caster level" concept, which was a pretty universal improvement for them.  In that same book came the idea of being able to pay more power points to increase the damage of a power, also a helpful idea for the psions, as their powers don't naturally scale up with level like spells do.  The second book attempted a reworking of the clunky psionic combat system, which gained some fans but didn't please everyone.  Well, after those books comes the new official psionics system.  As with everything in life, not all changes are positive ones, there are some hits and misses in the Expanded Psionics Handbook.  Further muddying the waters are the general 3.5 alterations to D&D spellcasters, which have also been reflected upon the psionicists and resulted in more drastic changes to some things than would otherwise have happened.  It's not perfect, but my overall impression of the book is a positive one.

Expanded Psionics Handbook

Appearance
The book is pretty standard fare for WotC-published books nowadays.  Hardbound, fairly sturdy, and color printing.  The cover is pretty striking, having a crystal and brain motif to it that is perhaps a little cheesy, but perfectly fitting.  The interior art is a mixed bag.  The artists were certainly technically skilled, but they were drawing occasionally ludicrous things, such as the new psychic warrior iconic character with his great helmet that covers one eye and has a great big hole in the middle of the forehead that just screams 'Shoot here!'  The complaints people have about D&D characters being drawn in ridiculous armor and weapons applies tenfold to the psionic characters, who look like they're escapees from a circus.  It doesn't bother me, but I know some people who are very put off by their appearance.  The monster illustrations tend to be of a much more serious nature, and most of them are excellent.

Layout
The book mirrors the Player's Handbook.  Opens with races, goes to classes, then skills, feats, the psionic systems, the powers, the prestige classes, the items, and the monsters.  The font and spacing are equivalent to all of WotCs books, fairly clear and easy to read.  There's a detailed table of contents in the front, but the index is only a single page.  There shouldn't be much of a need for the index for most readers, however, so I doubt anyone would be inconvenienced by that.

Content
Moving in a chapter by chapter rundown:

Chapter 1: Races
This chapter has races with a psychic affinity.  Some are new, some are reworkings of previously-printed races to replace their magical abilities with psionic ones, and a couple are refugees from Dark Sun who have a new home in D&D with a psionic system to support them.  Dromites are halfling-sized monstrous humanoids with insectile qualities.  Duergar are the well-known subterranian dwarves of the Underdark, who gained mental powers after enslavement by the Illithids.  Elan are humans who sacrificed their humanity to become essentially psionic constructs.  Githyanki and Githzerai have of course made reappearances here, being two prominent planar psionic races.  Half-Giants are new (to my knowledge) to 3E D&D, having been a Dark Sun race that had not previously been converted to the new rules.  Maenad are like berzerker Vulcans, a restrained race who have rage-based powers whenever they lose control.  Thri-Kreen are another Dark Sun race, a walking four-armed blender that some DMs would probably be happier that the players didn't play.  And the Xeph are a dark-skinned catlike humanoid race who can boost their movement speed.  None of the races particularly leapt out at me, in part perhaps because I've been spoiled by Arcana Unearthed's racial levels and rather miss them when they're gone.  To be fair, though, they all seemed to be on par with other D&D races.  DMs will want to keep an eye on them, however, as they can all take psychic feats without taking any levels in a psychic class, which may be problematic depending on the campaign setting.

Chapter 2: Classes
I have extremely mixed feeling about this chapter.  First comes the revised Psion class, which I am overall rather pleased with.  They have more power points, a less-gradual gaining of powers, and five bonus feats.  They no longer receive a psicrystal for free, but can easily take the feat to have a psicrystal with one of their bonus feats.  The increase in power points and better power selection are not 'free', however, as I'll explain further with the new psionic rules section.  Also, the Psions no longer have different key ability scores depending on specialization, they all use Intelligence.  I personally liked the variety in ability scores of the 3E Psions, but there were lots of mechanics baggage attached to them, so removing that made life easier on the rules.  Psions do still have separate class skill lists depending on their specialization, so that's good, though some of them seem to have lost a skill or two.  Also, since intelligence is now their key requirement, Psions get a base of two skill points per level, not four, which is certainly fair.

I have less reservations about the new Psychic Warriors than the Psions.  They no longer receive Weapon Specialization, they lost access to a couple of skills.  They get bonus power points for a high stat, but that stat is wisdom, which some players are none too happy about, as the save DC for their powers is also now wisdom based.  Bad things all around, right?  While at first brush it seems so, Psychic Warriors have access to much better powers than they previously had, which more than makes up for the other changes in my mind.  Along with the changes to the feats (more later) it puts the emphasis of the Psychic Warrior onto their powers and tremendously improves the feel of the class rather than making them just Fighters with better feats, as they used to be.

I also have few reservations about the Soulknife, now a full class rather than a prestige class: I don't like it.  The Soulknife forms a weapon of psychic energy and beats people up with it.  Which is all well and good, but the prestige class Soulknife had access to powers, whereas the new Soulknife doesn't.  Half of the charm of the old Soulknife was that they could use powers, making them akin to psychic assassins, using their powers to be stealthy and quick, then following up with attacks from their mind blades.  Now that they have no powers, they're a much more bland class, a one-trick pony based around their mindblades.  The blades are more powerful than they were for the prestige class, but that's a small consolation to the loss of flexibility they suffered.

I'm also not very enamored of the second new class, the Wilder.  Supposed to be akin to the Wild Talents of second edition D&D, they learn fewer powers than a Psion but can manifest their powers with more 'oomph' from their highly emotional nature.  Two problems.  One is that they only get a total of eleven powers to work with, just over a quarter of the powers a Psion learns, and even less than the Psychic Warrior gets!  The other is that their ability to boost their powers has a chance to backfire, and that chance is percentage based.  No matter what level the Wilder attains, or how good they are, they will suffer the same chance to have their powers backfire on them.  In fact, since the higher level Wilders can boost their powers further than the lower level ones, their backfire chance can be as high as thirty percent!

Chapter 3: Skills and Feats
The only thing of note in this chapter is the new role of Concentration for psychics.  Psychics may now take a full-round action to make a DC 20 Concentration check to gain psionic focus.  This focus is required to use several psychic feats, all metapsionic feats, and some powers.  It doesn't cost any power points to gain (though you must have at least one power point to meditate), but it does put a brake on the use of several of the feats by making it mandatory for the character to meditate between uses.

In conjunction with the above, several of the old psychic feats have been toned down by the fact that you can't use them constantly.  Deep Impact and its ilk, for example, all require you to expend psionic focus to use them.  To balance this new requirement out, the feats no longer cost power points to use.  (Metapsionic feats do still cost power points, but less than before.)  While it prohibits people from being able to use great feats all over the place and stack powers with all kinds of metapsionic boosts, I do like that this new mechanic sets psionics apart from magic in a clear fashion.

Chapter 4: Psionics
The mechanics behind the new system, and the meat of the changes in the book.  Psychic combat is gone.  Few people will mourn its passing, as while the idea was always cool, the implementation of it left something to be desired.  The trick is, however, that all of the old psychic attacks and defenses are now powers, and the defenses can be manifested immediately in response to an attack.  In many ways, I think this is solid gold.  Psions can still duke it out between themselves, and the new powers are pretty universally cooler than they ever were as psychic attacks and defenses.  More on the powers in the next chapter.  The basics of the system are still the same as they were.  Psychics learn powers, and spend points to manifest the powers, just like a casting wizard.  However, Bruce took a page from Arcana Unearthed in that many of the powers can now be augmented by spending more points than necessary on them.  For the most basic things, many of the attack powers do more damage the more power points you spend on them.  This is not metapsionics and doesn't require psionic focus to do, it's an inherent part of the powers.  One thing to bear in mind, however, is that augmenting a power doesn't increase its level, so something like a Globe of Invulnerability will still block a low-level power regardless of how much it's been augmented.  The cap for augmenting is equal to the psychic's level, so a Psion couldn't dump 100 points into a power and do 100d6 damage in a single round or anything insane like that.  There are a couple of feats that allow one to exceed the cap by a couple of points at the cost of taking damage, and the Wilder's special ability exceeds the cap, but I think it all manages to work out elegantly and with a spirit that finally sets psionics apart from magic.  This system is clearly superior to the 3E psionics system, I am pleased to report.

Chapter 5: Powers
It's hard to really quantify the changes in the powers.  There are some powers that are gone, some are new, and many are changed.  Since there were some heavy spell changes in 3.5, however, it's difficult to say which powers were changed because the change was necessary, and which were changed solely because similar spells were changed.  Each specialist of Psion now has an exclusive list of powers available only to them, there is a general power list open to Psions and Wilders, and there is a list for Psychic Warriors.  Dividing up the powers among specialists is a huge pain in the rear for anyone who wants to convert a 3E Psion to 3.5, as I guarantee that at least one of the powers on any Psion's list will have wound up the exclusive domain of other Psions.  There is a feat to let one pick outside of their normal power list for one power, but both of my old Psions had more like three or four powers that they would have needed feats for.  Aggravating, but not the end of the world.  There are now several powers of the defensive variety that can be manifested as a free action, at the cost of not being able to use a free action on your next turn.  There were a couple of powers like that in the original Psionics Handbook, but now there are a whole lot more.  This puts a whole new spin on life for the Psychic Warriors, who are now actively defending themselves in a fight with the power of their mind.  There are also a few free action powers that are manifested on the psychic's turn that do things like make them run faster, which are welcome additions.  The addition of augmentation has removed several powers entirely.  The old astral construct line of powers is now only a single 1st level power that will create better constructs the more points are used to augment it.  Several offensive powers are now compacted into single low-level powers that can be augmented up to do respectable damage at higher levels. 

Balancing out the newfound addition in flexibility is the fact that several powers are now weaker than they previously had been.  Durations have been reduced, saving throws have been added, levels (and therefore cost) have been raised.  The feats that raised the DC of  a Psion's powers now require burning psionic focus to use, so they can't be used with impunity and are best reserved for tough fights.  As I mentioned earlier, all of the metapsionic feats also have the psionic focus requirements now, so Psions won't be so quick to use those, either, as opposed to 3E where it was possible and occasionally desirable to manifest every single power with metapsionics.

All in all, I'm pleased with powers the way they are now.  They're individually weaker than before, but they have greater flexibility, and I'd happily give up power for my old Psions in exchange for being useful in more situations.  I'm not so happy that so many of the interesting powers got shunted into specialty pools, but if there's one you simply must have, you can always use a feat to get it.  And the Psychic Warriors are no longer begging for scraps at the Psion's table, their powers are much nicer than they had previously been.

Chapter 6: Prestige Classes
As with the main classes, there are winners and losers in this chapter.  The majority are interesting and decent classes, though none of them struck me as being great.

We start with the Cerebremancer, a prestige class that allows for a Wizard 5/Psion 5/Cerebremancer 10 to have the spellcasting power of a Wizard 15 and the psionic power of a Psion 15.  At first brush, this is stupidly overpowered.  However, at higher levels the real firepower is in the highest level powers, which taking this prestige class will cause to be perpetually out of reach.  When the pure Wizard or pure Psion is merrily tossing around 7th level doom, the Cerebremancer is stuck with 5th level spells and powers.  Seeing as having both arcane spells and psionic powers does nothing to allow someone to actually cast and manifest both in a single round, you're really much better off being able to pack a punch with a single high level spell instead of a lot of low level spells.  But I do have to give this class credit, they'll have a truly unmatched number of spells and powers available.  It'll just be the spells and powers that everyone else quit using three levels prior.

The Elocator is a prestige class that focuses on movement and agility.  Nothing amazing, but it only gives up three manifesting levels, so it doesn't cost but so much to take.

The Fist of Zuoken is a psychic monk prestige class.  It gives a fairly good range of Psychic Warrior powers, but interrupts the progression of important Monk abilities like Ki Strike and Flurry of Blows, and as such may not work out well for most.

The Illithid Slayer has changed a fair deal from its previous incarnation, no longer offering bonus feats, and of somewhat less value to Psychic Warriors as a result.  However, it does provide some very useful defenses against mental powers in exchange for losing only one manifester level, so it would have great value for someone wishing to be a mental duelist.

The Metamind has to be the worst prestige class I have ever seen, I have to believe that there's a misprint involved.  In exchange for being able to manifest some 1st-5th level powers for free a certain number of times per day, being able to store some power points in a psicrystal, and being able to manifest powers for free for ten (consecutive) rounds a day, the Metamind gives up FIVE manifester levels.  That means over 150 power points, 8 powers, access to 9th level powers, and two bonus feats, all sacrificed for such paltry abilities.  On a good day, the Metamind is worth giving up two manifester levels, and even that is something of a stretch.  (Before anyone gets clever, it has already been asked on the WotC forums, metapsionics and augmentations on the 'free' powers must still be paid for in full.)

The Psion Uncarnate is a prestige class that eventually turns a character into an incorporeal creature, giving up their physical body entirely.  Unfortunately, they don't get to be incorporeal for more than a minute at a time until 10th level, and by the time they reach that point, being incorporeal isn't much of a defense against anything.  It's a cool idea, but the execution of it is a little lacking.

The Pyrokineticist has, like the Soulknife, lost their powers.  However, it seems that the Pyrokineticist isn't meant for Psions to take in this new incarnation, but rather a Wilder or someone without any psychic classes, as they use their fire powers for free and the save DCs of their powers are charisma-based (as is the Wilder).  A 20th level Psion could easily out-fire the Pyro, so it appears that they simply remade the Pyro for other classes.

The Thrallherd is a Psion-friendly class based around psychic domination.  Ironically, you're really sort of better off not being a Telepath before taking this prestige class, as it gives free access to a couple of Telepath-exclusive powers.  You'd have to spend a feat to get Mindlink, a prerequisite for the class, but at that point you'd get some nice Telepath stuff while still enjoying the benefits of your own specialization.

The War Mind is something of a Psychic Warrior-lite prestige class, it gets access to a few powers and some power points, as well as some unique class abilities to help it out in a fight.

Chapter 7: Psionic Items
Well, I always found the psionic items to be somewhat boring in the original Psionics Handbook, and things haven't changed much for this version.  They're all standard fare, many of them just alternate versions of magic items, the equivalents of scrolls, wands, and staves.  D&D has always had awesome items, but the Psionics Handbook has nothing that even begins to compete with the coolness factor of a Daern's Instant Fortress or Figurines of Wondrous Power.

Chapter 8: Monsters
There are a goodly number of fun monsters to throw into a game here, but very little has changed from the last Psionics Handbook in that regard.  There are 'example' monsters for the character races in chapter 1, and a tiny handfull of new monsters, but the vast bulk are reprints.

Appendix
This tiny section contains some new mental and psionic affecting magic, a Mind domain for clerics, and two deities.  The spells are nice, a few of them will really grease the wheels for cooperation if a party has both an arcane caster and a psionicist, but the odds of anyone actually taking up space in the spellbook to memorize them is frankly nil.

Rant
In my review of the first book, I complained that many of the Psion's anti-psion powers were useless against psionic monsters, who didn't need or use power points.  In later revisions of the book, most of those powers were updated so that they still served a function against psionic monsters and would hamper them at least a little.  All was good in the world, then.

Well, guess what.  Anti-psion powers that have no effect on psionic monsters are back.  But now it's even worse.  Much worse.  The Expanded Psionics Handbook introduces several anti-psionic feats that are geared expressly towards messing up a Psion.  Now, the standard way to play with psionics is to do what the book calls magic-psionic transparency, which is a way of saying that anti-magic affects psionics, and vice-versa, so that you don't wind up with Psions nuking magic-resistant critters with impunity.  With me so far?  However, these anti-Psion feats expressly say that the transparency rule doesn't apply to them, they have no effect on magic, and may not be taken by a psionic character.  Furthermore, all of the anti-psionic powers mess around with power points and making it tougher to manifest powers, and as such would do precisely squat to a mage.  So, the Expanded Psionics Handbook has a one-way street going when it comes to psionics.  Anti-magic spells will affect a Psion.  Anti-psionic powers won't affect a Wizard.  Anti-psionic feats are supplied for non-psionic use, but there's no 'screw over that non-Psion' feat.  Under these rules, if anyone went out of their way to gear up a character for killing Psions, they'd have a very easy time of it.

Evidently, the desire of these new rules is the discarding of the magic-psionics transparency system, otherwise it only takes a single Globe of Invulnerability to pretty much shut down the bulk of a Psion's powers.  Most of their offensive powers are 3rd level or below, as they rely on augmenting to increase their damage at higher levels, and as such would bounce right off of the globe.  Without any anti-magical powers at a Psion's disposal, the only conclusion I can come to is that the book was written with the assumption that psionics will automatically be bypassing magical defenses, 'cause they sure didn't hand out any powers made for dealing with a mage.  I find it to be very sloppy that given that most DMs will want to make their life simpler by putting psionics and magic in the same boat, the rules were not written in a way to smoothly deal with how anti-psionic things should affect magic.  (Psions do have a version of Dispel that would, under the transparency, affect magic just like psionics, to be fair.  However, that's pretty much their sole recourse when faced with magic.)

Ending
Like I said at the start, I am pleased overall with this book.  It needs some work, however; there's already errata out for it, and it needs a fair deal more beyond what has already been made public.  Some things, like the Metamind, are glaring in their need for change.  Others could use some more playtesting to kick out any bugs that may be lurking within.  Not to disparage the 33 people credited as playtesters in the book, but the playtests of three dozen won't work out the kinks nearly as well as the game experiences of hundreds, and I have a feeling that some problems will come to light as groups get more playtime in with these new rules.  Once the errata is finished and a second printing of the book comes, I have every expectation that it will be a truly excellent book for psionics in the d20 system.

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