Feedback requested: Powering psionics under the Auran Empire assumptions

General ACKS Forums House Rules
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Specifically, the Auran Empire divine power assumptions, as expressed here:

http://autarch.co/comment/12931#comment-12931
http://autarch.co/comment/9221#comment-9221

So I am working on a psionics system that would fit into ACKS. Because I love numbers, I would like to make it fit into the divine power assumptions in those two links.

Normally, this would be easy. I threw up a table for the wizard spell point:XP correlation and found out that it ranges between 2% and 6% depending on level. My problem is that traditionally, psionics is powered entirely by the user.

The difference between psionics and the two kinds of magic is, traditionally, that divine magic is granted from elsewhere, arcane magic is taken from elsewhere, and psionics is powered entirely by the user. However, in these assumptions, the user of arcane or divine magic pays only for 10% of the spell, and paying for 10% uses up almost all of their 6% XPV excess. Without any alterations, if psionicists actually power their abilities entirely on their own, they would need to have access to roughly ten times as much divine power as a wizard. That strikes me as a problem.

I have a few thoughts on ways to solve this problem. I’m not sure which one is the best, so I’m soliciting feedback on what people think about them.

Option 1 - Psionic powers are more efficient. No energy is lost in transit. As a result, psionicists can get a particular effect accomplished for roughly 10% of the cost of a cleric or mage. This allows them to power their abilities themselves, using their 6% excess divine power.

Option 2 - Psionicists are better trained at using their own energy. A psionicist generates excess divine power in excess of 6% of their own XP value. Option 2 can be combined with other options (I imagine options 1 and 2 together would be less crazy than either one alone.)

Option 3 - Psionicists do not power their abilities alone. This is, in my opinion, the cop-out answer. If they don’t power their abilities themselves, then they’re just an alternate spellcasting class. (Although I think my track record shows I have no objection to alternate spellcasting classes, it’s not what I’m trying to do here.)

Option 4 - Since psionic powers do not have spell levels (although in the system I’m working with now, they have difficulty ratings, which range from 1 to 6 and are analagous to spell levels. Analagous enough, in fact, that I am using the Player’s Companion spell design rules to create the powers and assigning them a difficulty rating equal to the level the spell would have ended up at), their costs do not need to follow the same progression as spells. This would free me up to use an entirely different scale, and then just slap on whatever conversion factor is necessary as a footnote. It feels kind of lazy, though, and if possible, I would rather come up with a way to link the numbers together better.

Those are the options I’ve come up with. If anyone has a better idea, or a way to make any of these ideas really work instead of just sort of work, I would really like to hear it.

If anyone would like to read the incredibly incomplete parts I have written thus far, http://aryxymaraki.pbworks.com/w/page/79422176/Psionics . (Since I haven’t hammered out the PSP system yet, as is the entire topic of this thread, every cost listed for anything is a placeholder.)

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I had another thought.

What happens if you spend more divine power than your 6% excess?

Would it manifest as fatigue, or as HP loss, or as some sort of degeneration mechanic? Could you regenerate faster than 6% per day with rest, or perhaps with uplifting activity?

Given that the actual amount you have in your body is ten times your XP value, this is highly unlikely, but what happens if you spend all of it? Most likely I would assume you die and your soul is destroyed. What happens if you spend the full XP value, though? Do you die, or do you get a chance to recover?

This brings me to the possibility of Option 5 for powering psionics - psionicists can spend themselves below their 6% generation, perhaps with penalties for going lower. If combined with option 2, this could give us, for example, a psionicist who can spend 60% of their XP value, then regenerate 30% per day. It could be used to create a multi-day resource generation mechanic.

This is in keeping with the 2E psionicist costs/regeneration; a 20th level psionicist in 2E can have at most 149 PSPs (18 wis, 18 int, 18 con) and can regenerate at most 12/hour. If you assume 8 hours of sleep a night, they would regenerate 96 PSPs a night, or 64% of their total. (Although admittedly, 90+% of 2E psionicists will regen their entire pool in a night of sleep. 3 18’s and a 20th level character are both pretty unrealistic.)