I'm leaning towards using something like what Mr. Sinister proposed, and getting rid of magic items that just provide bonuses for the most part. I may just have this apply to the PCs and other psionic NPCs though, to represent their "specialness" in the world. NPCs will still have to rely on items to get those bonuses, and the items they use will be largely useless to you guys, as they won't stack with your inherent awesomeness.
Also, whats the tech level gonna be like for this world? considering we have massive geothermal-powered domes lying around I figure its possible we have other magitech stuff lying around (and who WOULDN'T like a fight with a giant mecha guard? We could call it motherwill and beat it by blowing up all its weapons!)
Well, there won't be "tech" per say, but there will be plentiful magic items... inside the cities. The cities are going to have something like a mythal, which powers all kinds of "mundane" things like street lights, and also will provide power to automatons that maintain and defend them. These automatons won't be able to function beyond a certain distance away from the city that powers them (though I may include some means to get around this, like a Ring Gate, etc). Likewise, most of the other magical baubles won't function away from the city, but there will also be some permanent magic items that do. As with everything else magic, this stuff will be the property of the city they come from, and controlled by them as they see fit.
This does introduce the possibility of blackmarket items that have been stolen and hacked, so that they perform some function other than what they were designed for. I'm thinking something like stealing a streetlamp, and "rewiring" it as a taser, or things like that.
Edit:
P, if you wanna run with the 'magic items are rare' thing, go with something like this:
- Items that provide +s of any sort no longer exist.
- All characters have an enhancement bonus to attack and damage rolls, enhancement bonus to armour or shield AC bonuses (if any), resistance bonus to saves and enhancement bonus to all ability scores equal to their character level divided by 3, rounding down.
- All characters have a deflection bonus to AC equal to their character level divided by 4, rounding down.
- To reflect this, the 8-item limit needs to be reduced - I believe five is the right number.
This means that people still have the numbers the system expects of them, but at the same time, doesn't force item use to get there. It also helps people who are inherently MAD not suck quite so much.
Let's just go with this for now. I am also going to add a bonus to skills which scales at +1 per level, though.
Lastly, on full casting - I would strongly, strongly advise that all PrCs that advance manifesting do so fully. There is really no excuse for not doing this, as it tends to force additional investment to keep up with what your single-classed friends are doing. On that note, for the sake of sanity again, I recommend that you just say 'all classes who manifest have an ML equal to their character level, always and forever'.
In my house rules I have something mentioning that (almost?) all classes that progress casting/manifesting have full progressions. I don't want to fix ML=CL, as I don't think there are as many abuses for ML as there are for CL, especially if I limit magic item access. Also, there are several mechanics that I find interesting that boost ML that are inherent to psionics (overchannel, and wild surge).
So the short version: all classes that advance manifesting will mostly be bumped up to full progression, with a few exceptions (Thrallherd being one of them, as that class is just insanely powerful if you optimize around it at all).
