Psionic Power Points...?

[DannyBoy2k]

Yes...am I missing something obvious about the above?

I am reading through the Expanded Psionics Handbook, and as far as I can tell, HL is giving me a bonus to the power points for some unfathomable reason?

Now, I know there is a diffrence between the books and the OGL stuff, but I don't think there should be a diffrence there? With all stats at 10, so that I shouldn't get any bonus points, I still have 'too many' from level one, and it climbs quickly, too.

This seems to be inherant in the program, as my Swordsage, which is based on Psionics, but uses an entirely diffrent list of points at various levels, also receive these bonus points.

So, am I being blind or am I missing something?

 

[Sendric]

You'll have to explain more what you are seeing. What class? What level? etc.

 

[DannyBoy2k]

You'll have to explain more what you are seeing. What class? What level? etc.

All psion classes and my own Swordsage. The psions should, according to the rulebook, have 2 power-points at the first level, not counting pontential bonus points. All that I've tried start out with 3. The same with the Swordsage, where I've replaces 'readied maneuvers' with power points, and they should have 4, but do have 5.

The amount of power points in excess of what should be quickly rises too, for no apperent reason. Having checked the 'built-in' psionic classes, they shouldn't have these points as far as I can tell, the progression being the same as that in the handbook(s), making me wonder if I either missed something or if this is something coming from deeper in the program.

 

[Sendric]

Ok, I had to do some digging cause this sparked a vague memory. I posted a bug way back in 2010 about this. Here's what I said:

Bonus power points are being applied to Psionic classes when their main attribute is 11 or below. For instance, if you select Wilder as your class, the attribute that determines bonus points is Charisma. If your Charisma is 11 or below, there is a bonus power point (bringing the total to 3). At 12 and 13, there are no bonus points (which is correct) and the total drops to 2, and from there on up it seems to be correct.

I can take a look at trying to put in a work around for this.

 

[DannyBoy2k]

Having looked at the psi-classes a little, I've come to a curious conclusion. My home-made Swordsage, which uses power points in place of maneuvers, get one extra power-point, no matter the level of the character. Should have 4 at the start, has 5, should have 20 at the end, has 21, the end noted as level 20, of course.

This is, of itself, peculiar.

However, the REAL psionic classes seems to get a climbing amount. The Psion and Wilder should have 2, at level 1, and gets 3. At the end, they should have 343 points, but get 352. That's 9 too many.
Psychic Warriors should have 0 and 127, and get 1 and 133, making it 6 too many.

Interestingly enough, if you add enough of its bonus attribute to give it 1 mod-point, they correct themselves. At that point, they should have 10 more than the 'proper' number of points, and they do, 353 and 137.

The problem occurs in prestige classes, the ones that use power points, too.

 

[Sendric]

Having looked at the psi-classes a little, I've come to a curious conclusion. My home-made Swordsage, which uses power points in place of maneuvers, get one extra power-point, no matter the level of the character. Should have 4 at the start, has 5, should have 20 at the end, has 21, the end noted as level 20, of course.

This is, of itself, peculiar.

However, the REAL psionic classes seems to get a climbing amount. The Psion and Wilder should have 2, at level 1, and gets 3. At the end, they should have 343 points, but get 352. That's 9 too many.
Psychic Warriors should have 0 and 127, and get 1 and 133, making it 6 too many.

Interestingly enough, if you add enough of its bonus attribute to give it 1 mod-point, they correct themselves. At that point, they should have 10 more than the 'proper' number of points, and they do, 353 and 137.

The problem occurs in prestige classes, the ones that use power points, too.

Yes, I think what you are saying and I what I reported above is the same thing. Unfortunately, the only way to fix this from what I can tell is to modify each class individually. I could do that I suppose, but it wouldn't solve your problem. You should create an eval script on your class to reduce the power point total by the appropriate amount if the main attribute is below 12 (or possibly just 10 or 11, you may have to fiddle with it).

Edit: simply subtracting 1 doesn't work. There appears to some sort of weird calculations going on beneath the hood. I'll try to figure something out and will post here when I have something.

 

[Sendric]

Well, I can't figure this out. Simply subtracting 1 works at first level, but then for some reason it subtracts another 1 at second level, and every two levels after that. I have no idea why, but I can't figure out a way to fix this. Its going to have to be done by LW, but I wouldn't expect that to happen any time soon. We could probably make an adjustment to manually correct it.

 

[DannyBoy2k]

Yeah...I can't figure out ANYTHING...there seems to be some sort of formula, is the best I can figure...but how that formula WORKS, I don't get at all. And there is no obvious 'link' to where it might be hiding, so that's out too. I did find two separate class-linkings in the psion classes. The psion-link seems to go no-where that I can find, but it DOES fit in with the 'all psions are psions' idea, just variations on the base class as it were. And either way, that doesn't explain the OTHER classes. Just mental.

 

[Sendric]

I tried a number of things, such as forcing the class power point totals, to modifying those points and modifying total character points. Whatever is happening is being done under the hood, probably in the same place where they calculate bonus power points based on ability score. Why its wrong for 11 and under, I don't know, and I have no idea how to fix it. Unless someone from LW can point us in the right direction, this might be a problem only they can fix.

 

[Aaron]

Let me take a look, and see if I can point you in the right direction.

 

[DannyBoy2k]

That would be LOVELY.

 

[Aaron]

Alright, I found the issue on our end. It looks like in the calculation script we used a variable "bonus" which had already been used earlier and we forgot to remove the value from it's previous use. This it was always adding the value of the cPsiLevMax field if there were no bonus power points from your attribute.

Here's the offending bit of code, along with the debug statements I used to track the issue down:

      field[cPsiLevMax].value = bonus

      ~ If we have a link to an attribute for bonus power points, get the
      ~ attribute bonus now so we can calculate how many bonus PP we get.
      var bonus as number
      var attrbonus as number
      if (tagis[PsiAttr.?] <> 0) then
debug "We have the tag"
        var searchexpr as string
        searchexpr = tagids[PsiAttr.?,"|"]
        attrbonus = hero.findchild[BaseAttr,searchexpr].field[aModBonus].value
      elseif (islinkage[psiattr] <> 0) then
debug "We have the linkage"
        attrbonus = linkage[psiattr].field[aModBonus].value
        endif

      ~ Our bonus PP = (attribute bonus * level) / 2, rounded down
      if (attrbonus > 0) then
debug "attrbonus is " & attrbonus
        bonus = (attrbonus * level) / 2
        bonus = round(bonus, 0, -1)
debug "bonus is " & bonus
        endif

      ~ Add our bonus power points to the maximum we have at this level
debug "bonus is " & bonus
debug "before add bonus, cPsiPPMax is " & field[cPsiPPMax].value

      field[cPsiPPMax].value = field[cPsiPPMax].value + bonus

debug "after add bonus, cPsiPPMax is " & field[cPsiPPMax].value

So, to compensate for this error, you should make an eval script which foreaches through the psionic classes, checks their associated attribute bonus, if it is 0, then subtract that class' maximum psionic power level from the PP point total. Since d20 doesn't have mechanics, you'll have to put it on something else added to all heroes, like a condition (I believe there is a Hasted condition in the Community files which will serve).

Here's the script I used:

PostAttr 11000

    var attrbonus as number

    foreach pick in hero from BaseClHelp where "Helper.Manifester"
      attrbonus = eachpick.linkage[psiattr].field[aModBonus].value

      if (attrbonus = 0) then
        ~ This part undoes the error on the total power points.
        hero.child[Psionics].field[tPPTotal].value -= eachpick.field[cPsiLevMax].value

        ~ It's too late to stop the points from being forwarded from this class, but this part at least fixes the display on our class tab.
        eachpick.field[cPsiPPMax].value -= eachpick.field[cPsiLevMax].value
        endif
      nexteach

I tested it a little bit, but not extensively. Tell me if you need help refining it.

 

[Sendric]

Here's the script I used:

PostAttr 11000

    var attrbonus as number

    foreach pick in hero from BaseClHelp where "Helper.Manifester"
      attrbonus = eachpick.linkage[psiattr].field[aModBonus].value

      if (attrbonus = 0) then
        ~ This part undoes the error on the total power points.
        hero.child[Psionics].field[tPPTotal].value -= eachpick.field[cPsiLevMax].value

        ~ It's too late to stop the points from being forwarded from this class, but this part at least fixes the display on our class tab.
        eachpick.field[cPsiPPMax].value -= eachpick.field[cPsiLevMax].value
        endif
      nexteach

I tested it a little bit, but not extensively. Tell me if you need help refining it.

Awesome. Thanks so much, Aaron. This was driving me nuts! I'll add it to the next community release. The only tweak I will have to make is that it needs to be "attrbonus <= 0" since this issue occurs when the bonus is negative too (though I'd like to think most players wouldn't build their characters like that).