Post/Author/DateTime	Post
CthulhuChild 09-12-05, 08:27 PM	I've just joined an Eberron campaign at 6th level, but it will go on from there. I'm new to the expanded psionics book, so I'm looking for some advice on a solid build. Some good news, and some bad news: First the bad news. 1) I am using the Expanded Psionics handbook, the core books, and that's it. I may be playing in Eberron, but I hate having feats from five diffferent sources. Dragon Marks are the notable exception, I'm from house Lyrandar, and *could* be carrying around a mark... it'd make story sense, but I'm enough of a min-maxer to consider power before taking it. 2) If it involves cheese, cheese, and more cheese? I probably won't have fun playing it. Running up walls and enjoying crazy psionic hijinks? Yes. Triping an opponent six times a round? No thanks. 3) My character is probably party tank. He's also Lawful Evil, and serving aboarda Lyrandar Elemental Galleon. Beyond that? No real restrictions. Dual wield? Sure. Plate mail and 2 handed sword? No probs. I have 13,000 gold for equipment (again, Core rules plus psionics only), and there's no reason I shouldn't take advantage of mithril chain and other delightful goodies. It has to be playable at level 6, but I'll probably level to 14 by the end of the campaign? So having something to progress towards is fine, as long as I'm good to go as is. The other good news is my stats. 18 17 16 16 12 10 Yeah, and that's before the +1 from level 4. The only restriction I'd like to put on that is that unless there is an absolutly compelling reason not to, I'd really very much like to have 16 int, for skills Last, but not least, please explain (in brief) what each feat/power does, as well as why you take it. Some names have changed, become confusing, and I never was all that clever to begin with... please, I beg you, spare me 45 minutes of looking things up? Many thanks in advance, Adis!
PhaedrusXY 09-12-05, 08:58 PM	Are you looking specifically for a Psychic Warrior build? Or just a "warrior" that uses psionics (like a Wilder/Slayer, etc)? Take a look at this (http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=53738) for Psywarriors, and this (http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=487972) for Wilders. There isn't one for psions, as they are really too diverse, and noone has written one yet. A "standard" build for them is often something like Ranger1/Psion6/Slayer10 to start out with, though. This has many advantages over a Psywarrior, and having a high Int would be a must. Egoist is regarded as the best discipline for a psion "gish". Take the Expanded Knowledge feat a few times to get any "must have" psywarrior powers you want.
The Rizz 09-13-05, 02:36 AM	If you're just looking for some psionics to boost your combat abilities, try the following: STR 17 (+1 at 4th level), DEX 12, CON 18, INT 16, WIS 16, CHA 10 Ranger 1 / Fighter 2 / Psychic Warrior 2 / War Mind 10 / ??? 5 Ranger for the favored enemy + track + skills, fighter for the armor + feats, Psychic Warrior for the psionic power and excellent combat abilities. War mind is the "meat" of this build; many power points, damage reduction, +4 to STR, CON and AC, every attack can target two adjacent opponents, and the ability to add 10d6 to a single attack each day. For the last five levels, it kinda depends on where you want to go with the character... Since you're playing in Eberron, you could take the Heir of Siberys PrC (one of my favorites), or the Eldeen Ranger. Of course, you could always just finish it out with 5 more levels of Psychic Warrior, or 5 levels of Slayer. For feats, go with whatever typical fighter build you like, but make sure you take the following two feats: Psionic Weapon (bonus to damage if you use your focus - prereq for Deep Impact) and Deep Impact (expend focus to resolve your attack with a melee weapon as a touch attack - use this to guarantee landing your 10d6 damage attack). As you didn't make any note of your race, let me suggest the Half-Giant (XPH). It gives you (among other things) +2 STR, +2 CON, -2 DEX, and the Powerful Build trait. Powerful Build lets you consdier yourself either medium or large (whichever is better) for the use of weapons, bull rush, tripping, and many other abilities. It does have a +1 LA though - however, if your DM is using the LA buyoff (UA) this isn't really an issue.
cerberuspuppy 09-13-05, 06:04 AM	I was actually thinking about some possibilities for a Psychic Warrior Tank in Eberron, so hopefully I can be of some help. I am not very experienced with the Psionics rules, and I am not familiar with anything psionic beyond the SRD. I do know a thing or two about tanks, though, and one of my best characters ever was one. I understand your desire to keep the books you need to lug to every session to a minimum, but there's alot of great stuff in Complete Warrior. I'd recommend at least looking through it. Still, I think we can do well enough with just the PHB, XPH, and DMG. I'll be working with just 6 levels in PW. So, my recommendations: Scores: Str 18, Con 18, Dex 12, Wis 16, Int 16, Cha 10 This is of course with taking the Con up at 4th. Gear: When I think of a Tank, I think Full Plate, especially since you have a 12 to put in Dex. The 20 speed can be a problem, but you have an excellent mitigator for that: Burst. All things considered, I think Full Plate is your best choice. You see magic armor less often than magic weapons, so this might be the first magic (or psionic) item you pick up. There aren't alot of good magic properties for armor in your price range, though, so I'd stick with masterwork full plate for 1650. Next is your weapon. I like the greastsword, especially combined with Keen Edge- 2d6 critting on a 17. :D With Keen as its only enchantment a greatsword would cost (IIRC) 8,350 gold. You can get Keen with a power at next level, though, so you might want to wait for that instead. In the meantime, how to do the sword? If the party includes or knows someone who can enchant items, you can start with only masterwork. Why? Because the enchantment you really want is out of your price range right now. And what is that? Well, Check out the "elemental" Burst properties for weapons. The first is Flaming Burst on page 224 of the DMG. (Psychokinetic and Psychokinetic Burst are similar) These give you not only extra damage on every hit, but even more extra damage on a crit, and combined with Keen... Your crit damage would be 4d6 slashing + 1d6 fire + 1d10 fire + 12, for an average of 35 and max of 52. That's without Power Attack, or any bonus to your strength, or any use of powers. Granted, that would be very expensive and would take time, so you might want something else. 8,350 gp could get you a greatsword with the Lucky or Power Storing psionic abilities. Lucky might be cool. Bane (DMG p 224) is another possibility. Don't bother with rings right now. The only good ones you can afford are things you can pick up easily enough later. Wondrous Items are of more interest. I could really see spending more on them than anything else. I'm sure you'll want some minor items like potions and such too. Some power stones or something might help with your limited power points. For 10,000 even, you could have masterwork full plate and greatsword, boots of striding and springing, and a bag of holding type 1. Another 1000 gold gets you a +1 enchantment on the armor, which might be cost effective at this point. It seems it would be more cost effective to pay 7150 for the full plate and boots than it would be to pay 1100 for Mithral Shirt (DMG p220) and try to make up the difference in AC with other items. That could work with one of those 16s in Dex, but I think you were wanting to keep them in Wis and Int. Powers: 1st: Burst, Force Screen, and Biofeedback 2nd: Body Adjustment, Disolving Weapon, Wall Walker Burst will help you alot in those situations where you really need to get moving, and it can offset the speed penalty from heavy armor nicely. Force Screen, if I understand correctly, will not only work with the armor, but will also allow you to keep both hands on the sword. Biofeedback will help you in those cases where you're consistently getting hit despite your AC. Body Adjustment can help you rely less on the party cleric, but might not be necessary. Disolving Weapon is a no-brainer. Wall Walker is just there for fun, but could actually be useful in tight quarters. Feats: Bonus: Power Attack, Cleave, Psionic Weapon Power Attack and Cleave are musts, and Psionic Weapon is so you can get Deep Impact at 8th, but it can be useful on its own. Then there are your three regular feats, which you can use for a Dragonmark, or maybe Expanded Knowledge if there's something on the Psion list that really catches your fancy- Mind Thrust maybe? That might be a good ranged attack. If you are taking alot of psionic feats, Psionic Body might be a good choice.
slade_caizer 09-13-05, 07:21 AM	I recommend you get your hands on BoVD. :D But that aside I think you've got a pretty simple road ahead of you. I'm partial to Elan for their nice racial abilities and the fact that they aren't humanoids (technicality of classification if you ask me, but it works!). PsychicWarrior6 would be a nice and fairly easy way to start. A PsychicWarrior10/Slayer10 would remain very simple like you desire while being fairly potent. The bonus feats from PsyWar would make it more than easy to take Track at some point. You'd only lose 1 manifester level the whole way, and you'd end with BAB 17. It's unfortunate that you don't want to use Eberron books. I've found that a Warforged Egoist with Adamantine Body can be a lot of fun. If that's not a 'tank', I dunno what is! If you do break down and pull out BoVD, I'm thinking that throwing Disciple of Mephistophiles on top could be slightly helpful, but mostly just fun. PsyWar7/Slayer10/DoM3 would give you a manifest level of 16, all the niceties from Slayer, plus fire resistance, at will flaming for natural attacks (like the swift-action manifesting Claws of the Beast), and an at-will 4d6 "fireball" as a ranged touch. Then there's the really basic numbers game: while DoM's abilities more or less suck past level 3, it does have full BAB and all good saves. All of those also have good HP for lasting power. Your skills would suffer slightly I think, but you did want a 16 or better Int anyway. The more I think about it...it probably won't matter heavily what you play as far as those ability scores go. For tanking you'll probably want Str 18, Dex 17, Con 16, Int 16, Wis 12, Cha 10. Even if you go Psychic Warrior that Wis can keep up if you raise it at every opportunity. If you go Psion your Int will be fine for a long time and give you leeway to tap that Dex up to an even number. If you do decide you like the Warforged + Adamantine Body idea, you'll want to swap Dex and Wis. Permanent fullplate with DR 2/- is fun but hard on that speed. Still, even with that penalty to Wis a Warforged could make a decent Psychic Warrior if you dumped that 17 in Wis. On the up side you'd have your Con boosted to 18 as well.
carnivore 09-13-05, 12:52 PM	you want to: 1)be a tank 2)use psionics 3)keep a high int ok....try this: human Ranger 1/ Fighter 2/ Psiwarrior 2/ Psion(Egoist) 5/ Slayer 10 Ranger 1.............Track,Feat,Feat Psion 1...............Feat Fighter 1.............Feat Fighter 2.............Feat,Feat PW 1..................Feat PW 2..................Feat,Feat Slayer 1 Slayer 2 Slayer 3..............Feat Slayer 4 Slayer 5 Slayer 6..............Feat Slayer 7 Slayer 8 Slayer 9..............Feat Slayer 10 Psion 2 Psion 3................Feat Psion 4 Psion 5...............Feat this is an easy build that has a lot of flexibility: BAB +16 good skills 14th(17th with overchannel) lvl Manifester(Psion), 2nd(5th lvl with overchannel) lvl Manifester (PW) 7th lvl powers (Psion), 1st lvl powers(PW) try to take feats for battlefield control ,use your Psionics for Buffs and transport suggested feats: combat expertise combat reflexes 2 weapon fighting imp 2 weapon fighting double hit deft opportunist sidestep charge hold the line Karmic strike dodge overchannel talented psionic meditation expanded knowledge(any 6th lvl power or lower) this will allow you to get lots of attacks: 2 attacks for each AoO @ +4 to hit they trigger AoO when: they hit you charge you charge you and miss also you can get different combat forms, for better fighting....you wont even need weapons(if you take :Claws of the beast) even though you will take a lot of damage......you can heal yourself and damage your foes with Hostile empathic transfer(if you take it) you can do basically anything you want...customize the build to your liking :D