Post/Author/DateTime	Post
animunculi 10-26-07, 11:03 AM	I'm looking to play something interesting (and psionic :D) next game. So I checked out Complete Psionic (oh noes, gasp!) and saw these new base classes. I think psionics would be spot on for a calm and mentally focused character I am planning to play. Y' see, I have a concept in my head about a fighter who relies more on few but strong and sure strikes than just a quick succession of them. I instantly thought about Deep Impact and Power Attack (suggestions maybe?). However, I am worried about the fact that there are no psionic classes that get full BAB and this decreases the usefulness of P. Attack. I'd really like to know from people here at the psionic boards about the usefulness and viability of the Divine Mind, Psychic Warrior and the suchlike. It would be great if people posted their experiences from playing these. Also, you don't have to go light on the mechanics and the crunch, but please, not very cheesy! Much thanks!
The_Shaman 10-26-07, 11:37 AM	From what I know, playing a psychic warrior is a bit like playing a cleric. You have okay fighting abilities, true - you're not a fighter. On the other hand, as you're not a fighter, you have a choice of sweet buffs that more than compensate for your fighting being just okay. Plus, unlike most other classes a psychic warrior gets a lot of feats that you can use for following several feat chains to further improve his abilities. Between stat bonuses provided by, say, expansion and animal affinity, attack-improving powers such as offensive precognition and damage boosts, psychic warriors do quite well in the numbers game. However, I personally am most impressed by how they can use their powers for battlefield control or mobility - features sometimes more important than raw damage. They have powers for defense, offense, mobility, utility... Even if they spread themselves thin instead of concentrating, they can probably match any other martial character as long as they don't run out of PPs. Even then, as long as they have one or two for the feats that require them to have or expend a psionic focus, they do okay imo. As for power attack, I'd say that after the first few levels it gets quite useful. Sure, you can't sacrifice as much attack bonus as a barbarian, but I've seldom seen a character PA for his entire BAB anyway. The divine mind, unfortunately, has few of these options. The class gets very weak manifesting, none of the bonus feats, and is widely regarded as a joke (the not-funny-actually-quite-pathetic kind). If you want to be a paladin-esque character, the variant paladins, the pious templar PrC, the soulborn from MoI, or the ToB crusader are all much better. If you want to have auras or something like that, be a bard or dragon shaman. If you want to serve a higher cause, be a cleric, druid, or ardent.
CrimsonDeath 10-26-07, 11:58 AM	I know that you didn't specifically ask about the Ardent, but it's pretty good too (although I'm not quite familiar enough with it to do an in-depth analysis). The biggest drawback is probably that, if you want to remain effective your entire career, you need to sit down and plan a 20-level build, including all the Mantles you plan to take, whether and when you want to swap primary mantles, all the powers you're going to learn, and all the feats you'll want. Although, for some people (such as myself), that's not really a huge drawback. (I generally do that anyway.)
Bukowski 10-26-07, 12:03 PM	Another route you can take for a martial character that relies on single decisive strikes and focuses on mental calmness, etc.: Take a psionic race and play full BAB classes; that will grant you access to psionic feats. If you have access to Tome of Battle for your game, you can do some nice crossover things between psi feats and martial maneuvers.
TheKeyofE 10-26-07, 12:20 PM	Synad is a good choice for race if you use ToB. You get the psionic subtype so you can take psionic feats, and the synad multitask lets you double boost once per day.
okpokalypse 10-26-07, 12:55 PM	A Psychic Warrior is probably the most powerful Melee PC build there is. They just need to operate with a specific set of spells and take the right few feats along the way... - (L1) Expansion [Up to +2 Size Categories; 15' Reach] - (L1) Precognition, Offense [Up to +7 Insight Bonus to Attack] - (L1) Precognition, Defense [up to +7 Insight Bonus to AC & Saves] - (L2) Psionic Lion's Charge [Full Attack on Charge] - (L2) Hustle [Gain an Extra Move Action] - (L3) Empathic Transfer, Hostile [Give your Damage to an Enemy] - (L4) Dimension Door [This is KEY] - (L5) Perfect Riposte [Get Extra AOOs when enemy misses you] - (L6) BlackStone Hammer [Petrify Enemy on Hit] This is a pretty basic power chain. There's a few really mean combinations in there if you take the time to look at the powers. One in particular that you can use once you're L13 is the Hustle / Dim Door Power. Hustle creates an Extra Move Action (Swift) and you can Augment Dimension Door, Psionic to manifest as a Move Action. Yes, that means you can effectively Dim Door as a Swift Action - which is a Caster Killer since you get a Full Attack Action when you appear right next to them. This makes the Psychic Warrior the king of Battle-Field Mobility. No one else comes close from the Melee classes. Also, simple prep before you do such a tactic is to cast Blackstone Hammer with 3 Charges in it. Assuming you've got good Wis, that's like 3 DC 25+ Saves your enemy needs to make or be Petrified. With Expansion you've got a 15' Reach, and with a few extra AOO provoking abilities you have, you likely can disrupt any casting going on near you. The Psychic Warrior's Precognition abilities give large augmentable Insight Bonuses to Attack, AC and Saves. These are bonuses other Melee classes cannot get, and you still have access to all the other standard bonuses (enhancement, morale, sacred, luck) you'd normally get from items and spells. Lastly, you get a good amount of bonus feats. One thing I highly recommend taking with these are two Expanded Knowledge Feats for the following two Powers: - (L5) Anticipatory Strike [Immediate; Accellerates your Initiative to NOW] - (L4) Schism [Split your Mind; Manifest while Making Full Attack Actions] Gratned, these come later, but they're HUGE boons. You really need to focus on Wisdom as your primary Stat, because you go through PSPs quickly, and having more than 2 encounters a day will hamper your ability to full perform. But you can make up for that by taking the Intuitive Strike Feat (BoED - Wis to +Attack) and getting a Monk's Belt (DMG, Wis to AC). And if you want to throw some cheese on it, dip two levels of Paladin at the end, or anything that gets you Divine Grace and take the Serenity Feat (Dragon Magazine 306) to go with this. This allows you to replace Charisma with Wisdom for Divine Grace, Lay on Hands, Smite and Turning. By the high end you should have a 30+ Wisdom, so that's a two level dip for at least +10 to all your saves, 20+ Healing per day and a single +10 Attack per day. Not bad considering all you get for those last two levels of Psychic Warrior are 2 Powers and some PSPs. More than likely you should have enough PSPs already. This build, defensively, should have upwards of 40+ Will Saves and 40+ Fort Saves. Even your Reflex Saves should be in the 30+ Range. You should have excellent HP and over 200 PSP to play with. Divine Minds on the other hand are much better at being a party booster. Their Aura's will provide pretty significant bonuses to the party, and they're not slouches per se either. They however don't really come close to what the Psychic Warrior can do in the terms of pure offense. The Psychic Warrior doesn't need anyone else around him to be extremely effective. The Divine Mind excels in making others around him much more effective than they could be without. If you want to be part of a group, in the more traditional sense, the Divine Mind might be better because it tends to make everyone else enjoy their PCs more - especially Melee Types.
okpokalypse 10-26-07, 01:07 PM	From what I know, playing a psychic warrior is a bit like playing a cleric. You have okay fighting abilities, true - you're not a fighter. On the other hand, as you're not a fighter, you have a choice of sweet buffs that more than compensate for your fighting being just okay. Plus, unlike most other classes a psychic warrior gets a lot of feats that you can use for following several feat chains to further improve his abilities. Between stat bonuses provided by, say, expansion and animal affinity, attack-improving powers such as offensive precognition and damage boosts, psychic warriors do quite well in the numbers game. However, I personally am most impressed by how they can use their powers for battlefield control or mobility - features sometimes more important than raw damage. They have powers for defense, offense, mobility, utility... Even if they spread themselves thin instead of concentrating, they can probably match any other martial character as long as they don't run out of PPs. Even then, as long as they have one or two for the feats that require them to have or expend a psionic focus, they do okay imo. As for power attack, I'd say that after the first few levels it gets quite useful. Sure, you can't sacrifice as much attack bonus as a barbarian, but I've seldom seen a character PA for his entire BAB anyway. 100% True. Although, looking at the bonus feats, Power Attack is quite potentially more useful for a Psychic Warrior at the High-End. Granted, a Psychic Warrior tops out at +15/+10/+5 BAB. So you're operating at -5 and one less attack than a traditional Fighter. But with a +7 Insight Bonus to Attack, Adding Wisdom Bonus to one's Attack Roll and all the Standard Enhancement / Stat Bonus effects to be had in game, well, they often find themselves having a good +5 or more Attack Roll in the end. And the Mobility is the trump card. It's so good it's almost unfair. Add in Schism taken via Feat so that a Psychic Warrior has two minds, one which casts at ML-6, and DAMN! Potentially, that's a Blackstone Hammer recharge every round, or possibly dipping into an Energy Damage Spell and powering it up to 14d6 Damage every turn - in additon to Full Melee Attacks. It takes forethought on how to build the power tree and utilize it, but once you've really gotten it down - there isn't another Melee PC that comes close without dipping into the cheese of the UMD Fighter ;)
Lycanthromancer 10-26-07, 01:20 PM	You could also get Psicrystal Affinity, then take vigor and share pain to get massive numbers of hit points, nearly (or more than, depending on your Con score), doubling what you already have. Also, if you take Expanded Knowledge: schism, be sure to also take the Overchannel feat. By the time you get schism, you can get an additional +2 ML to your second mind, which definitely comes in handy when you need some higher-level powers manifested. At the highest level, you get +3, which means that you take 5d8 points of damage, but this is chump change even to a psion by then (especially with vigor + share pain manifested on your psicrystal).
okpokalypse 10-26-07, 02:46 PM	You could also get Psicrystal Affinity, then take vigor and share pain to get massive numbers of hit points, nearly (or more than, depending on your Con score), doubling what you already have. Also, if you take Expanded Knowledge: schism, be sure to also take the Overchannel feat. By the time you get schism, you can get an additional +2 ML to your second mind, which definitely comes in handy when you need some higher-level powers manifested. At the highest level, you get +3, which means that you take 5d8 points of damage, but this is chump change even to a psion by then (especially with vigor + share pain manifested on your psicrystal). Remember, Schism only affect Manifester Level, and thus the Pts you can spend. The highest level Power a Psychic Warrior gets is L6 (11 Pts to Manifest). Unless you're looking to do some serious augmentation, you don't need to worry about it really. You can still Manifest every power you've got with your 2nd Mind by L17 without feats to boost your ML.
animunculi 10-26-07, 03:50 PM	Thanks for all the responses, especially okpokalypse for the very thorough post on the psychic warrior. CrimsonDeath, Bukowski and TheKeyofE, at first I thought about asking about ardent, but I never got to it. I've also got ToB, but for some reasons, it always leaves a bad taste in my mouth after I read it :P . I mean the new possibilities are great but all the "blade magic" is too much for me. It would be awesome if it were more ... how to say it now?... psionic ;). However, I'd be still open if you pop up with great ideas and examples of martial characters. Thanks. Considering my previous questions, I have been thinking more and more about the humble fighter class and the feats it gets. However, all that psionic weapon tree is pretty big and takes a lot of feats. Plus the wild talent and psionic meditation makes it especially hard to acquire without losing out on combat expertise and of course p. attack. On the other hand, you've really managed to sway me more towards psychic warrior, especially with the synergies with paladin (and the serenity feat [ps: is it in Dragon Compendium too?]). Definitely something to remember. I'll check out synad too, I remember glancing over it sometime. As you can tell by now, I like psionics a lot. It would be totally awesome if there were more support for it. I also regret that my DM was tainted by the evil 3.0 Psionics Handbook and isn't very lenient in the case of adding psionics to his game. If anyone is up for some character building too then it'd be great if you did a low-mid level build, which wouldn't have to wait a ton to get to the meat of it. If you want you can use these scores I rolled: 17, 17, 17, 15, 15, 13 :D Thanks for all the replies so far, I really appreciate them. :cookie: PS: I'll bring a build I've been considering myself on the table too, so maybe you can check it out.
CrimsonDeath 10-26-07, 03:57 PM	or possibly dipping into an Energy Damage Spell and powering it up to 14d6 Damage every turn Even for a psion, that's a quick way to run out of PP. (I know; I tried it.) For a PsyWar, it's a recipe for disaster. Remember, Schism only affect Manifester Level, and thus the Pts you can spend. The highest level Power a Psychic Warrior gets is L6 (11 Pts to Manifest). Unless you're looking to do some serious augmentation, you don't need to worry about it really. You can still Manifest every power you've got with your 2nd Mind by L17 without feats to boost your ML. A lot of PsyWar powers do have really nice augments, though.
okpokalypse 10-26-07, 04:14 PM	Thanks for all the responses, especially okpokalypse for the very thorough post on the psychic warrior. You're very welcome! On the other hand, you've really managed to sway me more towards psychic warrior, especially with the synergies with paladin (and the serenity feat [ps: is it in Dragon Compendium too?]). Definitely something to remember. I think it's on p106. :) As you can tell by now, I like psionics a lot. It would be totally awesome if there were more support for it. I also regret that my DM was tainted by the evil 3.0 Psionics Handbook and isn't very lenient in the case of adding psionics to his game. I've had that problem as well. Really, the 3.0 Psionics Handbook wasn't so bad as some like to believe. Quite honestly, I can think of two things much more imbalancing right from the start: Natural Spell and Divine Meta Magic. Heh. But seriously, it was the powers that weren't thought through properly. The structure of the classes themselves were very sound, and with the 3.5 Updates in XPH it's just another spontaneous Caster progression with less pop and more versatility. The real place where damage was done wrt Psionics was in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (circa 1980). 1st Level Dwarf Cleric w/ Psionics could get Disintegrate. Sick. It didn't get much better in the 2nd Edition where everything was so different mechanically, it may as well have been a foreign game unto itself. If a DM didn't commit a week to reading & understanding it, it could destroy a game. Psionics now are pretty much standard for the d20 system. DM's who refuse to incorporate it just need to take the 15 minutes to read the "About Manifesting" section of the XPH and it's cake from there. The only thing a DM needs to do from the outset is decide if there's going to be a Magic / Psionics transparency, and if he'll allow the Supression of Effects on Manifestation - because in some cases, a Psion who can't be detected as having manifested could _really_ cause story-line problems for DMs. Overall, Psionics are a bit less powerful, on the whole, than Arcane Magic - and far less so than Divine Magic.
okpokalypse 10-26-07, 04:21 PM	A lot of PsyWar powers do have really nice augments, though. Very true. At least the earliest a Psy Warr can get Schism is L14, so in the end you're 2nd Mind starts with a ML of 8. Not horrible. 1 More Level and your 2nd Mind can manifest all your 5th Level Spells. It's the Precog Spells you want to Augment as high as they can go though, and if you need to do that through Schism, I see what you mean.
Fireclave 10-26-07, 04:28 PM	Considering my previous questions, I have been thinking more and more about the humble fighter class and the feats it gets. However, all that psionic weapon tree is pretty big and takes a lot of feats. Plus the wild talent and psionic meditation makes it especially hard to acquire without losing out on combat expertise and of course p. attack. The psionic weapon feat tree is not all that big compared to some other feat trees (only three feats, four if you count psionic meditation). You'd still have 11 more feats to spend, assuming you take psychic warrior all the way to 20th. That's plenty enough to explore a few more feat chains (Combat Expertise, Shock Trooper, and Leap Attack can be awesome in the hands of a psywar) or take Expanded Knowledge a few times to expend your versitility even more (flight, constructs, and scrying abilities? yes pls). Also, as a psyware, you do NOT need or want Wild Talent. Wild Talent is only useful if you want access to psionic feats without playing a psionic race or taking a level in a psionic class yourself.
The_Shaman 10-26-07, 06:40 PM	BTW, has anyone tried the Inconstant Location power from CPsi/Sandstorm? It looked just, well, almost too nice. I can't help but think how insane this would be, say, for an elocater or an archer.
InkBlot 10-26-07, 07:05 PM	I haven't tried it yet, but inconsistent location could be very nice in combination with the Sun School tactical feat from Complete Warrior. The Flash Of Sunset maneuver from Sun School gives you a free attack at your highest BAB whenever you 'port in next to a foe. Although if you're not using the full range of the 'porting provided by inconsistent location, then dimension hop is more cost effective and available earlier (at level 1!). You need to be an ardent or take Expanded Knowledge to get it, but ardent and monk have good wisdom synergy (Sun School requires Flurry of Blows).
AntiDjinn 10-27-07, 12:44 AM	Although, looking at the bonus feats, Power Attack is quite potentially more useful for a Psychic Warrior at the High-End. It is quite useful at the low end as a prereq for Cleave. Even if you rarely bother to exercise the Power Attack option until your BAB is higher, being able to drop one target and swing through into the next is something you want to be doing ASAP.
Lycanthromancer 10-27-07, 12:13 PM	Remember, Schism only affect Manifester Level, and thus the Pts you can spend. The highest level Power a Psychic Warrior gets is L6 (11 Pts to Manifest). Unless you're looking to do some serious augmentation, you don't need to worry about it really. You can still Manifest every power you've got with your 2nd Mind by L17 without feats to boost your ML.As a note, there are a number of other effects that are affected by manifester level, such as duration (which is a huge bonus for a psychic warrior, as a longer duration = fewer power points spent), range, and dispellability (and since a psychic warrior is dispel-bait, this is important). You can also note that a higher manifester level definitely comes in handy for buffing, as there are a number of augments that decrease the manifesting time of powers, increase the amount of healing done via body adjustment, and so on. Having a higher manifester level is a HUGE boon, though perhaps not quite so much for a psychic warrior as for a psion or wilder. :)
awaken_D_M_golem 10-27-07, 03:57 PM	... and Divine Mind Well, Psy War 2 - one of the powers is Vigor Marshall 1 Commoner 2 - yep, really Psy War on up Will be superior to almost all Divine Mind builds, unless you dig really deep.