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| #1pyromancer999Jun 30, 2008 17:45:49 | I know that all psionic players have, at some point, encountered or experienced the sheer thrill of commanding, the Astral Construct power. However, the conversion to 4e has left many fans of psionics (including me and the group I DM). Anyway, the purpose of this thread is to help put together a 4e version of Astral Construct. I've personally thought about using it either as a class feature, at-will power, or an encounter power. Post on so I can help come up with a 4e version of Astral Construct for the good of all psionics lovers. |
| #2eldritch_lordJul 01, 2008 10:44:36 | I've personally thought about using it either as a class feature, at-will power, or an encounter power. I'm thinking that, since the wizard is supposed to be split up based on school (current wizard is mostly evoker, Shadow will have a mostly-necromancer, Psi will have a mostly-enchanter, etc.), splitting the psion up by discipline would be a good idea. Then you could make astral construct a fairly major class feature of the shaper and not worry about having that on top of other class features overpowering the class. My thoughts on astral construct at the moment: --class feature is similar to Channel Divinity; several astral construct powers, one of which may be used in a given encounter --11 powers, astral construct I through astral construct XI, where I-IX convert the old power and X-XI are new for the epic levels --start out with I and IIknown, and you can take feats to learn III-XII, with appropriate prereqs to limit them by level --actual construct is a minion, so it dies in 1 hit and it's not too overpowering --standard to use, Sustain Minor to keep the construct there --idea: if the construct dies, keep Sustaining and roll d6 each turn; roll 6 and the power can be used again. This ensures that the construct doesn't die on the first round and waste a power I might flesh this out some if I have time later. |
| #3thazerdedelmarcusJul 01, 2008 11:04:41 | I'm thinking that, since the wizard is supposed to be split up based on school (current wizard is mostly evoker, Shadow will have a mostly-necromancer, Psi will have a mostly-enchanter, etc.), splitting the psion up by discipline would be a good idea. Then you could make astral construct a fairly major class feature of the shaper and not worry about having that on top of other class features overpowering the class. I do not like the idea of taking feats to gain astral construct 3-12, they can be spread out throughout the 30 levels. I do like the idea of sustain the power if the astral construct dies, but at the same time i am not a fan of it being only able to take one hit, if that applies to all versions of it. Maybe the higher level ones could have more hp. |
| #4eldritch_lordJul 01, 2008 11:25:50 | I do not like the idea of taking feats to gain astral construct 3-12, they can be spread out throughout the 30 levels. They can be, but I'd make them more like Channel Divinity because (A) different Psi classes could share it if you want them to, like the cleric and paladin share channel divinity, and (B) you can't grab them with a multiclass feat, so they stay purely Psi. One thing I was thinking of that I forgot to mention, though, is that taking the feat for an astral construct power gives you the lower ones as well; grabbing the Astral Construct VI feat without taking any others gets you everything from I to VI. Does that make it sound better to you? I do like the idea of sustain the power if the astral construct dies, but at the same time i am not a fan of it being only able to take one hit, if that applies to all versions of it. Maybe the higher level ones could have more hp. Well, the one thing I'm worried about is making a single construct equal to a PC; a standard monster would effectively increase party size by 1, and would have more HP than an even-level PC. Hold on...how about if a construct had HP equal to your healing surge, and instead of rolling d6 to recharge the power you could spend a healing surge the next round to bring it back directly? That (A) makes it have more HP than a minion but nowhere near standard HP and (B) balances this per-encounter ability by using a daily resource, so even if you are adding a party member you can't abuse it. |
| #5thazerdedelmarcusJul 01, 2008 15:13:19 | They can be, but I'd make them more like Channel Divinity because (A) different Psi classes could share it if you want them to, like the cleric and paladin share channel divinity, and (B) you can't grab them with a multiclass feat, so they stay purely Psi. That does sound better, to me. Well, the one thing I'm worried about is making a single construct equal to a PC; a standard monster would effectively increase party size by 1, and would have more HP than an even-level PC. the part on having the astral construct's hp equal to the caster's healing surge could be good. But the highest level astral construct could still get owned against a level 30 monster. If we assume that the psion has the same hp per level as a wizard and assuming a 10 Con and assuming for all the times that a player has a stat increase they would point a point into Con, knowing it would boost the astral construct, if i did the math correctly, the highest level astral construct would have around 36hp. Now if psion were make the highest astral construct in the game to fight say a Tarrasque. The Tarrasque would destroy the astral construct, using the assumptions above. A single Fury of the Tarrasque will do, assuming the DM rolled all 1's, would be 36 with 15 extra damage ongoing every round until it saves. This would be enough to KO the astral construct and next round the DM can roll that 1d6 and have a 33% to have Fury of the Tarrasque return. |
| #6pyromancer999Jul 01, 2008 15:17:03 | Thanks for the suggestions, guys. I think I will use the astral construct as a class feature, mostly based off what Eldritch Lord has suggested. Should it be an at-will, or encounter class feature? As for the Astral construct I-IX, I'm thinking about doing one of the following: A) sacrifice the use of a power (need help on what type if I'm to do this) B) have the power of it increase as levels are gained C) to regain the customizability of it, make a series of powers that mimic menu options from 3e. Remember, feel free to post under my thread for the 4e psion! |
| #7thazerdedelmarcusJul 01, 2008 17:35:26 | Thanks for the suggestions, guys. I think I will use the astral construct as a class feature, mostly based off what Eldritch Lord has suggested. Should it be an at-will, or encounter class feature? As for the Astral construct I-IX, I'm thinking about doing one of the following: I would make it an encounter class. I would also have to pick option B |
| #8eldritch_lordJul 02, 2008 8:05:09 | the part on having the astral construct's hp equal to the caster's healing surge could be good. But the highest level astral construct could still get owned against a level 30 monster. That is a problem; it recreates the whole minion issue from before. How about, let's see...the psion can transfer as many healing surges as he wants to the construct, with a maximum of 4 at any one time, and the psion can only add surges to bring it back if it dies? That way, it never has more HP than the psion (and the psion has to pay to get that) and, assuming maybe 7+Con surges for the psion, he can probably make a full-HP construct once and bring a half-HP construct back once without risking death himself. What do you think? Should it be an at-will, or encounter class feature? Like I said, making it like Channel Divinity would be a good idea: If you use astral construct VI in an encounter, you can't use the others as well. That should prevent "spamming" it as well as prevent having 9 different allies at once. As for the Astral construct I-IX, I'm thinking about doing one of the following: Hmm...I'd do a combination of B and C. What you could do is, instead of astral construct I-IX, you could do astral construct I-XXX, splitting it up into 30 powers with the same take-one-feat-get-all-the-lower-ones scheme as before. Then you take, say, astral construct III from 3e and split its options up into 2-4 powers, so they're all manageable. After that, you just say you can combine X abilities from any of the powers (don't worry about the 2A=B, 2B=C thing) and voila, you're golden. |
| #9pyromancer999Jul 02, 2008 8:44:21 | Thanks SO much for the all the help everyone! I am currently working to create the actual mechanical 4e Astral construct right now. I SHOULD have it done by some time this week. As soon as I'm done with it, I will post it on here. Also, if any former kineticist fans are looking at this, know that I have posted a possible class feature for the 4e kineticist under my thread, "Need suggestions for a 4e psion." |
| #10thazerdedelmarcusJul 02, 2008 10:18:02 | That is a problem; it recreates the whole minion issue from before. How about, let's see...the psion can transfer as many healing surges as he wants to the construct, with a maximum of 4 at any one time, and the psion can only add surges to bring it back if it dies? That way, it never has more HP than the psion (and the psion has to pay to get that) and, assuming maybe 7+Con surges for the psion, he can probably make a full-HP construct once and bring a half-HP construct back once without risking death himself. What do you think? The part of giving your healing surges to the astral construct works for me. I just don't want the highest level astral construct, that if you had to take a feat for or learned through gaining a level, to be a one hit wonder. I also agree with a 4 surge maximum transfer but i think if the psion want to heal his current astral construct with healing surges they should be allowed to as many times as the want since using them means less hp for the next astral construct. |
| #11eldritch_lordJul 02, 2008 10:34:46 | The part of giving your healing surges to the astral construct works for me. I just don't want the highest level astral construct, that if you had to take a feat for or learned through gaining a level, to be a one hit wonder. Well, I just don't want them to be Super-Defenders; if you can just keep healing them, and you don't care if they die (just extended rest and get them back), you could just block off passages or soak up hits or otherwise make other Defenders obsolete. If you have to wait a round or two after they die to recreate them, enemies can eventually get through and the psion won't outclass everyone else. |
| #12pyromancer999Jul 02, 2008 10:42:24 | Personally, I'm inclined to make this rule for the astral construct's HP: The astral construct has a number of Hit points equal to your healing surge value, and when it reaches zero hit points, it is destroyed. However, when an astral construct is going to be destroyed, you may spend one healing surge to sustain it and bring it back to its full hit points. Also, heres another rule I'm going to make for the astral contruct: You may not have more than one astral contruct at a time. This prevents a player from having a huge number of astral constructs. While that might be overally good for the party, it makes the player's turn too long, and then the other players get extremely bored. Also, I'm debating on whether to allow the player who created the construct to keep the astral construct after the encounter for future usage, or to make the astral construct destroyed at the end. |
| #13thazerdedelmarcusJul 02, 2008 12:21:03 | Personally, I'm inclined to make this rule for the astral construct's HP: as i stated before, this will not make the astral construct viable to use. It becomes a waste of a power as it will not be able to survive. Again if the psion has a 10 con that gives their astral construct only 5hp at level 1. A wizard could kill with its magic missile. Since it deals 2d4+int mod that should be enough to kill astral construct. Using a healing surge to bring that back would also be a waste of healing surge. Also, heres another rule I'm going to make for the astral contruct: this is good, use it Also, I'm debating on whether to allow the player who created the construct to keep the astral construct after the encounter for future usage, or to make the astral construct destroyed at the end. just make it an psion class encounter power so that it can only be used once per encounter. That way there is no spamming issue. |
| #14pyromancer999Jul 02, 2008 15:24:17 | As ThazerdeDelmarcus has said, the issue with HP at 1st level COULD make astral contruct a bit useless, but this could be accomadated by modifying it by a certain amount at the earlier levels, but I don't exactly know how that would be accomadated.... |
| #15thazerdedelmarcusJul 02, 2008 16:38:37 | As ThazerdeDelmarcus has said, the issue with HP at 1st level COULD make astral contruct a bit useless, but this could be accomadated by modifying it by a certain amount at the earlier levels, but I don't exactly know how that would be accomadated.... one thing I want to point out is that the astral construct did have a d10 hit die and it had some extra hp. A level 1 astral construct could have anywhere from 11-20hp +5 if it had the buff power for a max of 25hp. Compare that to the psion who had d4 +con +anything else you can add to it. I know Eldritch_Lord is concerned about making it equal to a PC, but the power was only out for a 1 round/level. I am not saying that the astral construct should be using the fighter hp, but they will be doing some combat and should have enough hp last more than one round and thus wasting your encounter power. |
| #16eldritch_lordJul 03, 2008 7:54:51 | I know Eldritch_Lord is concerned about making it equal to a PC, but the power was only out for a 1 round/level. I am not saying that the astral construct should be using the fighter hp, but they will be doing some combat and should have enough hp last more than one round and thus wasting your encounter power. Well, in 4e they don't really like fixed durations (just Sustain and (save ends)) so you trade off the ability to be tougher than the psion in order to last longer--instead of 2x-4x psion's HP for 1 round/level, it's 1x psion's HP for as long as you want to sustain it. So like I said, charge healing surges for his HP, max 4; that puts it at about the right point HP-wise. Whether you want to go with your suggestion to heal it as you go, or with mine that you have to wait until it dies, I think you shouldn't have it go above the psion's HP value. |
| #17pyromancer999Jul 03, 2008 8:27:15 | I like the whole max of 4 healing surges idea, and also, I'd like to combine Thazerdelmarcus', Eldrtich Lord's, and my own ideas. I think that this would be reasonable for the HP rules: The Astral construct starts out with a number of hit points equal to 1/2 your HP + your Intelligence modifier. You may expend a healing surge at any time to help the construct to regain hit points, and the maximum HP it may have is equal to your own. You may also expend a healing surge when It would be destroyed to sustain it. The construct is the restored to an amount of HP equal to your healing surge value. No matter how many healing surges you have, you may not spend more than 4 healing surges on one construct. |
| #18eldritch_lordJul 03, 2008 10:15:04 | I like the whole max of 4 healing surges idea, and also, I'd like to combine Thazerdelmarcus', Eldrtich Lord's, and my own ideas. I think that this would be reasonable for the HP rules: I like it. You avoid the whole "construct won't die" problem, you limit the max HP, and ensure the psion can't cripple himself by spending too many surges on his construct. |
| #19pyromancer999Jul 03, 2008 12:52:44 | Thanks for the approval, Eldritch Lord. Glad that you like it. Anyway, as I see it, there are three things left before the astral construct feature can be completed: how much damage it should do, and how do we regain astral construct's damage becoming more powerful as the shaper progresses through the levels. I think the Astral construct should do something like 1d8+ Intelligence modifier at 1st level, and it gains another die every time the shaper progresses a certain number of levels (somewhere between 3-6 I should think). |
| #20eldritch_lordJul 03, 2008 14:59:55 | Thanks for the approval, Eldritch Lord. Glad that you like it. Anyway, as I see it, there are three things left before the astral construct feature can be completed: how much damage it should do, and how do we regain astral construct's damage becoming more powerful as the shaper progresses through the levels. I think the Astral construct should do something like 1d8+ Intelligence modifier at 1st level, and it gains another die every time the shaper progresses a certain number of levels (somewhere between 3-6 I should think). Perhaps it simply gains one of the psion's at-wills, which can be chosen whenever it's manifested? That fits with the whole "menu of choices" thing, and it's automatically balanced for its level since it's the same as what the psion can do. |
| #21pyromancer999Jul 03, 2008 15:28:56 | That sounds pretty good, for the at-will powers thing. Or perhaps it could have a unique at-will power of its own. With the damage progression, I personally favor it, but It could make the construct a little stacked. |
| #22thazerdedelmarcusJul 03, 2008 15:46:28 | I like the whole max of 4 healing surges idea, and also, I'd like to combine Thazerdelmarcus', Eldrtich Lord's, and my own ideas. I think that this would be reasonable for the HP rules: I like this also |
| #23thazerdedelmarcusJul 03, 2008 15:56:19 | Thanks for the approval, Eldritch Lord. Glad that you like it. Anyway, as I see it, there are three things left before the astral construct feature can be completed: how much damage it should do, and how do we regain astral construct's damage becoming more powerful as the shaper progresses through the levels. I think the Astral construct should do something like 1d8+ Intelligence modifier at 1st level, and it gains another die every time the shaper progresses a certain number of levels (somewhere between 3-6 I should think). you could do 1d8+int mod at heroic levels and then add another d8 at paragon and then another at epic |
| #24pyromancer999Jul 04, 2008 13:25:33 | I like that idea, about the damage modifier. |
| #25pyromancer999Jul 06, 2008 15:54:32 | I'm also going to make an astral consturct description soon |