Yesterday's post about how to deal with Nova Casters reminded me of a houserule I haven't whipped out in a while. Houseruling is, and will always be, my favorite form of conflict resolution, for better or worse. I made this rule when I noticed a pesky kineticist was out-damaging the rest of the party combined (and there was a druid in that party, so I knew something was up). I designed this rule so that it wouldn't stop a psionic character from being effective (especially at low levels' note that the average 1st-level psion needs to blow all her power points in one minute to risk psychic shock), but to put some mechanism in place to stop psionics from being such a nova party. Without further ado, psychic shock.

Psychic Shock

Manifester	Shock
Level	Threshold
1	2
2	4
3	6
4	8
5	10
6	12
7	14
8	16
9	18
10	20
11	22
12	24
13	26
14	28
15	30
16	32
17	34
18	36
19	38
20	40

If a psionic character spends a number of power points greater than her shock threshold for her mansifester level within the span of one minute, she risks suffering from psychic shock from the massive release of psychic energies in such a short period of time. Immediately after the action that caused her threshold to be surpassed is resolved, she must succeed on a manifester level check against a DC equal to 10 + half the power points expended in the last minute (rounded down) or lose a number of power points equal to her manifester level. If her power point reserve has already been consumed, she sustains 1 point of Intelligence damage for every 6 power points she would have lost (rounded up). If this check is successful, no power points are lost, but the manifester must continue to make this check as long as she continues to spend power points above her threshold (which consequentially raises the DC of this check). After the manifester fails one of these checks, if she spends more power points above her threshold, she loses power points equal to 1 + 1 per five manifester levels. This additional power point loss never results in Intelligence damage.

New Feats

Psychic Stability [Psionic]
Your mind is unusually resistant to psychic shock.
Benefit: You gain a +4 bonus on manifester level checks to resist psychic shock.

Stable Power [Metapsionic]
You can manifest powers that do not disrupt your psychic equilibrium.
Benefit: To use this feat, you must expend your psionic focus (see the Concentration skill description, Expanded Psionics Handbook, page 37). You can manifest a power as a stable power. Power points expended on a stable power do not count when you determine whether you have surpassed your shock threshold.
Using this feat increases the power point cost of the power by 2. The power’s total cost cannot exceed your manifester level.