3.5 Psiforged Ardent - Downloaded from the Wizards Community, all coding removed by Solauren

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 livingnexus Aug 09, 2011 18:41:20	I recently started building a character for an upcoming D&D session with some people I met online. It has been a long time since I have played, so my skills are a bit rusty. That said, I did a lot of research to make this character, and I'm looking for a second opinion to help me see this character from different angles. I've always wanted to try a psionic character, so I dove into the internet to see what I could find about them. What I found is that psionic characters are pretty limited. The following build is my attempt to get the most out of my character. As my idea for this character developed, I knew I wanted to be able to do decent damage but still have utility options. However, there are very few ways for manifesters to boost their Manifester Level, which would allow me to not only do more damage but increase the DCs. After a little bit of tinkering I decided on this: Psiforged Wilder 1 / Psychic Warrior 1 / Ardent 8 17 \| 15 \| 15(+2) \| 13 \| 18 \| 14(-2) HP: 65 BAB: +7 With this web variant on the Ardent: Dominant Ideal An ardent develops her power by embracing philosophical concepts, with her two primary mantles serving as the core of her beliefs, and the secondary mantles providing peripheral views of the world. For some, one specific ideal outshines even its primary companion, and secondary considerations are little more than a distracting shadow of doubt. If you want to make a single mantle the focus of your ardent, selecting the dominant ideal alternative class feature allows you to use its powers more effectively. In exchange for this stronger focus, you must give up access to a new psionic mantle, reducing your overall power selection. Replaces: If you select this class feature, you do not assume an additional secondary psionic mantle at 10th level. Benefit: At 10th level, you choose one of your primary mantles to become the dominant ideal in your philosophy, deepening your connection to this fundamental principle. You do not need to expend your psionic focus when applying metapsionic feats to powers you manifest from your chosen primary mantle, and the power point cost of augmenting or applying metapsionic feats to these idealized powers is reduced by 2 (to a minimum of 0). The reduction in cost applies only to the additional power points spent on augmentation or metapsionic feats; the power's normal power point cost is not reduced. If you later decide to make the primary mantle for which you have selected this alternative class feature into a secondary mantle, you must also swap this feature, allocating it to one of your primary mantles.
#2 Tempest_Stormwind Aug 09, 2011 19:16:34	Your manifester level will not "stay intact". Your wilder power will have a manifester level of 1, your psychic warrior power will have a manifester level of 1, and your ardent powers will have a manifester level of 8. You can raise any one of these by 1 with a Wild Surge. Note, though, that your psywar and wilder powers will all be first level; you will not be able to learn Overland Flight nor Personal Mind Blank. Furthermore, Dominant Ideal appears at ardent class level 10. You will not have access to it. Psiforged is NOT actually a good psionic race. Psionic characters also in general do not rely too heavily on armor, even ardents or psychic warriors (it helps, but Inertial Armor can make it less useful, and several psionic powers are designed to absorb or withstand attacks. The classic combination is your psicrystal + Vigor + Share Pain). Warforged actually cannot sprint all the time. They are immune to fatigue, but sprinting does more than that: it applies nonlethal damage. Characters covering long distances cross-country use overland movement. Overland movement is measured in miles per hour or miles per day. A day represents 8 hours of actual travel time. For rowed watercraft, a day represents 10 hours of rowing. For a sailing ship, it represents 24 hours. Walk A character can walk 8 hours in a day of travel without a problem. Walking for longer than that can wear him or her out (see Forced March, below). Hustle A character can hustle for 1 hour without a problem. Hustling for a second hour in between sleep cycles deals 1 point of nonlethal damage, and each additional hour deals twice the damage taken during the previous hour of hustling. A character who takes any nonlethal damage from hustling becomes fatigued. A fatigued character can’t run or charge and takes a penalty of -2 to Strength and Dexterity. Eliminating the nonlethal damage also eliminates the fatigue. Run A character can’t run for an extended period of time. Attempts to run and rest in cycles effectively work out to a hustle. So your warforged cannot run for an extended period of time (stamina be damned), and although he is not fatigued from it, he still takes nonlethal damage from running and can in fact run himself into unconsciousness. Also, your warforged slam attack is a natural attack, which is different from a weapon attack. Most notably, you can't make iterative attacks with it (you can only attack once with it, even with a full-round action). However, you CAN combine it with a weapon attack as a secondary attack. (That is, you can attack with a weapon the normal number of times, and then make a slam attack at -5; the slam attack deals damage as if it were an off-hand weapon). As for the -20% XP hit, that is never worth it. You'd be significantly better off just playing a straight Ardent. The ardent is an amazing class in its own right, although it does take a bit of finesse in working with its mantles. However, ardents work best as gishes (warrior/mages) rather than blasters, even with Dominant Ideal. If you want an unparalleled blaster, go with a wilder. That said, in 3.5, blasting is actually a really bad choice past around level 5 or so, even with the boosts from a wilder. You'd be better off just removing foes from combat and leaving what damage you need to deal to your teammates. Still, if you want to play a blaster, psionics give you greater options than just about any other character for that role... For your powers, drop Deflection Field. It's utterly worthless due to its lack of a duration. For your feats, you do not need both Empower and Maximize; in fact, maximize is mathematically suboptimal to Empower in nearly every circumstance. Enlarge also only affects the power's RANGE, not their areas, and most energy powers have a respectable range anyway. Even with Dominant Ideal, you should be careful with metapsionics. (Be advised, Dominant Ideal does NOT allow infinite augmentation. If you manifest Energy Ray augmented to 3d6, it would cost 1 power point. If you manifest it augmented to 10d6, it would cost 8 points. If you manifest it at 8pp but Empowered (+2pp) it, it would cost you 8 points.) If you want battlefield control and support, definitely look into powers like Time Hop or Ectoplasmic Cocoon; the real strength in 3.5 D&D is the ability to control the number of actions you and your enemies get. To perform more research, here is the Ardent Handbook and the Wilder Handbook (which will help strategically - although note that Samb didn't get the memo about Power Link shards being a typo) and here is the 3.5 Psionics FAQ (which will help you more on figuring out things like your manifester levels). Psionic characters are nowhere near as limited as you make them out to be, but you do have to be a bit clever on how they're put together (especially for ardents).
#3 livingnexus Aug 09, 2011 22:17:08	First of all, thank you for your quick reply, Tempest. I have a few counterpoints for some of what you said, but overall it was a very helpful post. "Your manifester level will not "stay intact". Your wilder power will have a manifester level of 1, your psychic warrior power will have a manifester level of 1, and your ardent powers will have a manifester level of 8. You can raise any one of these by 1 with a Wild Surge. Note, though, that your psywar and wilder powers will all be first level; you will not be able to learn Overland Flight nor Personal Mind Blank." I was under the impression that manifester levels from different psionic calsses stacked. I cannot find any statement that explicitly says that they do not stack, although the wording in some places does seem to allude to this. In fact, I believe for psicrystals manifester levels of different classes do stack. I'm not saying you are wrong, but I hope you can see how I came to this conclusion. As for powers, the Ardent - as I read it - is only limited by his manifester level in terms of powers he can manifest; from what I understand this applies to the mantles he has chosen and any powers list that he has access to from other classes. If this is true by RAW, it would mean that I can manifest 4th level Wilder and PsyWar powers, because I can spend up to 8pp on any power (as an 8th level Ardent). From what I have read on the internet, this is also how others have interpreted this rule. "Warforged actually cannot sprint all the time. They are immune to fatigue, but sprinting does more than that: it applies nonlethal damage." You're right, Warforged are subject to nonlethal damage. Thanks "For your powers, drop Deflection Field. It's utterly worthless due to its lack of a duration." I noticed this, but I guess I got drawn in by it being a swift action and only 1pp to manifest. Technically it has a duration of "Concentration" but I'll already be making a lot of Con checks...it would be better if I didn't have to add another one. "For your feats, you do not need both Empower and Maximize; in fact, maximize is mathematically suboptimal to Empower in nearly every circumstance. Enlarge also only affects the power's RANGE, not their areas, and most energy powers have a respectable range anyway." I think the reason I chose both of them is that I can apply both of them for only 2pp with the Dominant Mantle feat (I know I get this at Ardent level 10...I'm not that rusty), even if they're applied separately. If you don't think the net gain damage is worth it, though, I'll reconsider. Also, I think I meant to take Enlarge out anyway; my original idea was to have the option of sniping with my energy attacks, but most of those already have a range of 100+ft. It's probably only going to be situationally useful, so I don't feel so bad about cutting it. I did read the Ardent and Wilder handbooks before making the character. I'll give the FAQ a look later.
#4 Slagger_the_Chuul Aug 10, 2011 0:49:09	I was under the impression that manifester levels from different psionic calsses stacked. I cannot find any statement that explicitly says that they do not stack, although the wording in some places does seem to allude to this. In fact, I believe for psicrystals manifester levels of different classes do stack. As described on pages 17 and 18 of the Expanded Psionics Handbook, for multiclass psionic characters your power points from all classes form a single pool which you can use for powers from any class, but individual powers are subject to the manifester level limit of the class that granted them. Levels in psionic classes do stack for determining psicrystal abilities, so that part is correct. The official FAQ confirms this. As for powers, the Ardent - as I read it - is only limited by his manifester level in terms of powers he can manifest; from what I understand this applies to the mantles he has chosen and any powers list that he has access to from other classes. If this is true by RAW, it would mean that I can manifest 4th level Wilder and PsyWar powers, because I can spend up to 8pp on any power (as an 8th level Ardent). From what I have read on the internet, this is also how others have interpreted this rule. And here, again, the manifester level for the ardent class is only used to determine the maximum power you can learn and manifest as an ardent. It has no bearing on powers from other classes, such as wilder.
#5 awaken_D_M_golem Aug 16, 2011 16:38:45	Instead of Wilder, take the Anarchic Initiate PrC. At it's 3rd level you get to do, what you want the wilder part to do. Ardent 10 with D.I. / AI 3+ ... is a workable build. Substitute Powers is also on the DI page. That'll get some minor tasty cheese going too.

Post/Author/DateTime

Post

livingnexus

Aug 09, 2011 18:41:20

I recently started building a character for an upcoming D&D session with some people I met online. It has been a long time since I have played, so my skills are a bit rusty. That said, I did a lot of research to make this character, and I'm looking for a second opinion to help me see this character from different angles. I've always wanted to try a psionic character, so I dove into the internet to see what I could find about them. What I found is that psionic characters are pretty limited. The following build is my attempt to get the most out of my character.

As my idea for this character developed, I knew I wanted to be able to do decent damage but still have utility options. However, there are very few ways for manifesters to boost their Manifester Level, which would allow me to not only do more damage but increase the DCs. After a little bit of tinkering I decided on this:

Psiforged Wilder 1 / Psychic Warrior 1 / Ardent 8
17 | 15 | 15(+2) | 13 | 18 | 14(-2)
HP: 65
BAB: +7

With this web variant on the Ardent:

Dominant Ideal

An ardent develops her power by embracing philosophical concepts, with her two primary mantles serving as the core of her beliefs, and the secondary mantles providing peripheral views of the world. For some, one specific ideal outshines even its primary companion, and secondary considerations are little more than a distracting shadow of doubt. If you want to make a single mantle the focus of your ardent, selecting the dominant ideal alternative class feature allows you to use its powers more effectively. In exchange for this stronger focus, you must give up access to a new psionic mantle, reducing your overall power selection.

Replaces: If you select this class feature, you do not assume an additional secondary psionic mantle at 10th level.

Benefit: At 10th level, you choose one of your primary mantles to become the dominant ideal in your philosophy, deepening your connection to this fundamental principle. You do not need to expend your psionic focus when applying metapsionic feats to powers you manifest from your chosen primary mantle, and the power point cost of augmenting or applying metapsionic feats to these idealized powers is reduced by 2 (to a minimum of 0). The reduction in cost applies only to the additional power points spent on augmentation or metapsionic feats; the power's normal power point cost is not reduced.

If you later decide to make the primary mantle for which you have selected this alternative class feature into a secondary mantle, you must also swap this feature, allocating it to one of your primary mantles.

Tempest_Stormwind

Aug 09, 2011 19:16:34

Your manifester level will not "stay intact". Your wilder power will have a manifester level of 1, your psychic warrior power will have a manifester level of 1, and your ardent powers will have a manifester level of 8. You can raise any one of these by 1 with a Wild Surge. Note, though, that your psywar and wilder powers will all be first level; you will not be able to learn Overland Flight nor Personal Mind Blank.

Furthermore, Dominant Ideal appears at ardent class level 10. You will not have access to it.

Psiforged is NOT actually a good psionic race. Psionic characters also in general do not rely too heavily on armor, even ardents or psychic warriors (it helps, but Inertial Armor can make it less useful, and several psionic powers are designed to absorb or withstand attacks. The classic combination is your psicrystal + Vigor + Share Pain).

Warforged actually cannot sprint all the time. They are immune to fatigue, but sprinting does more than that: it applies nonlethal damage.

Characters covering long distances cross-country use overland movement. Overland movement is measured in miles per hour or miles per day. A day represents 8 hours of actual travel time. For rowed watercraft, a day represents 10 hours of rowing. For a sailing ship, it represents 24 hours.
Walk

A character can walk 8 hours in a day of travel without a problem. Walking for longer than that can wear him or her out (see Forced March, below).

Hustle

A character can hustle for 1 hour without a problem. Hustling for a second hour in between sleep cycles deals 1 point of nonlethal damage, and each additional hour deals twice the damage taken during the previous hour of hustling. A character who takes any nonlethal damage from hustling becomes fatigued.

A fatigued character can’t run or charge and takes a penalty of -2 to Strength and Dexterity. Eliminating the nonlethal damage also eliminates the fatigue.

Run

A character can’t run for an extended period of time.

Attempts to run and rest in cycles effectively work out to a hustle.

So your warforged cannot run for an extended period of time (stamina be damned), and although he is not fatigued from it, he still takes nonlethal damage from running and can in fact run himself into unconsciousness.

Also, your warforged slam attack is a natural attack, which is different from a weapon attack. Most notably, you can't make iterative attacks with it (you can only attack once with it, even with a full-round action). However, you CAN combine it with a weapon attack as a secondary attack. (That is, you can attack with a weapon the normal number of times, and then make a slam attack at -5; the slam attack deals damage as if it were an off-hand weapon).

As for the -20% XP hit, that is never worth it. You'd be significantly better off just playing a straight Ardent. The ardent is an amazing class in its own right, although it does take a bit of finesse in working with its mantles. However, ardents work best as gishes (warrior/mages) rather than blasters, even with Dominant Ideal. If you want an unparalleled blaster, go with a wilder. That said, in 3.5, blasting is actually a really bad choice past around level 5 or so, even with the boosts from a wilder. You'd be better off just removing foes from combat and leaving what damage you need to deal to your teammates. Still, if you want to play a blaster, psionics give you greater options than just about any other character for that role...

For your powers, drop Deflection Field. It's utterly worthless due to its lack of a duration. For your feats, you do not need both Empower and Maximize; in fact, maximize is mathematically suboptimal to Empower in nearly every circumstance. Enlarge also only affects the power's RANGE, not their areas, and most energy powers have a respectable range anyway. Even with Dominant Ideal, you should be careful with metapsionics. (Be advised, Dominant Ideal does NOT allow infinite augmentation. If you manifest Energy Ray augmented to 3d6, it would cost 1 power point. If you manifest it augmented to 10d6, it would cost 8 points. If you manifest it at 8pp but Empowered (+2pp) it, it would cost you 8 points.) If you want battlefield control and support, definitely look into powers like Time Hop or Ectoplasmic Cocoon; the real strength in 3.5 D&D is the ability to control the number of actions you and your enemies get.

To perform more research, here is the Ardent Handbook and the Wilder Handbook (which will help strategically - although note that Samb didn't get the memo about Power Link shards being a typo) and here is the 3.5 Psionics FAQ (which will help you more on figuring out things like your manifester levels). Psionic characters are nowhere near as limited as you make them out to be, but you do have to be a bit clever on how they're put together (especially for ardents).

livingnexus

Aug 09, 2011 22:17:08

First of all, thank you for your quick reply, Tempest. I have a few counterpoints for some of what you said, but overall it was a very helpful post.

"Your manifester level will not "stay intact". Your wilder power will have a manifester level of 1, your psychic warrior power will have a manifester level of 1, and your ardent powers will have a manifester level of 8. You can raise any one of these by 1 with a Wild Surge. Note, though, that your psywar and wilder powers will all be first level; you will not be able to learn Overland Flight nor Personal Mind Blank."

I was under the impression that manifester levels from different psionic calsses stacked. I cannot find any statement that explicitly says that they do not stack, although the wording in some places does seem to allude to this. In fact, I believe for psicrystals manifester levels of different classes do stack. I'm not saying you are wrong, but I hope you can see how I came to this conclusion.

As for powers, the Ardent - as I read it - is only limited by his manifester level in terms of powers he can manifest; from what I understand this applies to the mantles he has chosen and any powers list that he has access to from other classes. If this is true by RAW, it would mean that I can manifest 4th level Wilder and PsyWar powers, because I can spend up to 8pp on any power (as an 8th level Ardent). From what I have read on the internet, this is also how others have interpreted this rule.

"Warforged actually cannot sprint all the time. They are immune to fatigue, but sprinting does more than that: it applies nonlethal damage."

You're right, Warforged are subject to nonlethal damage. Thanks

"For your powers, drop Deflection Field. It's utterly worthless due to its lack of a duration."

I noticed this, but I guess I got drawn in by it being a swift action and only 1pp to manifest. Technically it has a duration of "Concentration" but I'll already be making a lot of Con checks...it would be better if I didn't have to add another one.

"For your feats, you do not need both Empower and Maximize; in fact, maximize is mathematically suboptimal to Empower in nearly every circumstance. Enlarge also only affects the power's RANGE, not their areas, and most energy powers have a respectable range anyway."

I think the reason I chose both of them is that I can apply both of them for only 2pp with the Dominant Mantle feat (I know I get this at Ardent level 10...I'm not that rusty), even if they're applied separately. If you don't think the net gain damage is worth it, though, I'll reconsider. Also, I think I meant to take Enlarge out anyway; my original idea was to have the option of sniping with my energy attacks, but most of those already have a range of 100+ft. It's probably only going to be situationally useful, so I don't feel so bad about cutting it.

I did read the Ardent and Wilder handbooks before making the character. I'll give the FAQ a look later.

Slagger_the_Chuul

Aug 10, 2011 0:49:09

I was under the impression that manifester levels from different psionic calsses stacked. I cannot find any statement that explicitly says that they do not stack, although the wording in some places does seem to allude to this. In fact, I believe for psicrystals manifester levels of different classes do stack.

As described on pages 17 and 18 of the Expanded Psionics Handbook, for multiclass psionic characters your power points from all classes form a single pool which you can use for powers from any class, but individual powers are subject to the manifester level limit of the class that granted them.

Levels in psionic classes do stack for determining psicrystal abilities, so that part is correct. The official FAQ confirms this.

As for powers, the Ardent - as I read it - is only limited by his manifester level in terms of powers he can manifest; from what I understand this applies to the mantles he has chosen and any powers list that he has access to from other classes. If this is true by RAW, it would mean that I can manifest 4th level Wilder and PsyWar powers, because I can spend up to 8pp on any power (as an 8th level Ardent). From what I have read on the internet, this is also how others have interpreted this rule.

And here, again, the manifester level for the ardent class is only used to determine the maximum power you can learn and manifest as an ardent. It has no bearing on powers from other classes, such as wilder.

awaken_D_M_golem

Aug 16, 2011 16:38:45

Instead of Wilder, take the Anarchic Initiate PrC.
At it's 3rd level you get to do, what you want the wilder part to do.

Ardent 10 with D.I. / AI 3+ ... is a workable build.
Substitute Powers is also on the DI page.
That'll get some minor tasty cheese going too.