[3.5] gestalt psion

[Odegra]

Ok, here's the deal: my DM is running a gestalt campaign, starting level 4, with just about any book printed available for use. It's in Eberron. The character I'm aiming for is psion 4 // something. I can really go with anything there, don't have too much in mind, as far as flavor goes. The DM is a consummate min/maxer and survival depends upon the pcs being min/maxed as well. I know a bit about the trade, but I'm not too confident in my abilities.

This is where everyone else comes in: It's an 80-point build for attributes, 4th level gestalt with half exp towards fifth, 5400 gold, and basically the sky's the limit. The only restriction he's placed is dragon-based races/templates/feats, so no venerable dragonwrought desert kobold. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Milskidasith]

80 point buy? Holy crap... that's an 18 on almost everything.

Ok, what you do is go with a warblade as your gestalt (lots of good passive goodies, int based).

18 int, 18 str, 18 con, 18 dex, 18 wis, 8 charisma (maybe dump wis for charisma if you don't want to be socially retarded).

Warblade gives you full BAB, good fort and reflex (IIRC), d12 hit die, and a bunch of active and passive melee options. Psion gives you a bunch of active and passive powers. It rocks!

As for race... it's really your choice at that point, but something that gives you a boost to either int or the physical stat you are going to use for attacks (str or dex) is probably best, with a - to charisma or the melee stat you aren't using.

[Optimystik]

Close - Warblades only have a good Fort save, sadly.

[Tavar]

But they do get Int to Reflex saves, so it kinda balances out in the end.

[Noodles2375]

I can't stress enough how much I agree with the previous poster. The warblade synergizes so well with the psion it is crazy.

Just be sure to pick your manuvers and powers wisely. You still get 1 move, 1 std, 1 swift action each round. If you want to be manifesting lots of powers, those typically take std actions, so try to get your warblade side to give you sweet passive abilities or boosts you can use as swift actions or counters that can be used as swift actions.

You want to be a multi-trick pony without stepping on either of your trick's toes :)

[Myrmex]

You could also pick up 8 to 12 levels of factotum, to really break the action economy, and auto-overcome SR & DR. And get some nice skills.

[Ernir]

Warblade if you want some melee abilities. Or, that is, if you want to be a self-boosting, fully Int-synergized melee monster. :smalltongue:

Try Factotum (Dungeonscape) for a more rogue-ish feel. They give you extra standard actions on level 8 (this is huge), and the best Int synergy you can get.

This is where everyone else comes in: It's an 80-point build for attributes
That means the sum of your ability scores is going to be 80, not that you are actually working with an 80 point buy as per the DMG rules, right? :smalleek:

[Odegra]

Slight mis-speak earlier. It's not exactly 80-point buy, rather, the stats have to add up to 80 (81 since it's level 4). So, if I've got four 18s, the other two stats are going to be fours. The DM and I are probably the only two who could do the math for point-buy without our heads exploding, so he just went with this to ease up on the other players.

So, yeah, Ernir got it right.

[Milskidasith]

Ok, then, you probably want an 18 in int, con, and strength, with a decent dex and wisdom and dumped charisma. With 54 points on those, you could take a 10 10 6, but con isn't necessarily that important with your d12 HD, so you might go for something like...

19 int (+1 from levels)
18 str
16 con
10 wis
10 dex
8 cha

With a +2 item of int and str in there (maybe of con, too, can't recall 5th level WBL off the top of my head). You might need a higher wisdom for some feats, though, so you could lower dex and con a bit, or lower str if you don't care that much about your frontlining (or just get a race of +str to make up for it.)

Actually, yeah, a lot of good psionic feats (I think it was the move action focus one, especially) require decent wis, IIRC.

[Draz74]

I do have to agree that Psion//Factotum/Warblade is one of the most fun possible Gestalt builds.

[mabriss lethe]

I'd second factotum or binder for some nice passive abilities.
Warblade is also good for hit dice, int synergy, etc.
If you allow LA to apply to only one side, the Karsite race has some fun stuff.

But really, with psion, as long as you stay away from other casters, you can't make that bad of a decision. Sure, barbarian may not be a good idea, but most other classes will enhance you in some fashion or another.

[Proven_Paradox]

Let me stand out from the crowd and recommend something besides Warblade or Factotum. These are both excellent, excellent options that you should consider strongly, and for optimum min/maxing probably your best choice.

That said, if you've got all books available and are ready for something completely different, you might try cracking open Magic of Incarnum. Incarnate and Totemist are both beautiful in gestalt, as most of their abilities are entirely passive, saving your actions for manifesting powers. They're essentially constitution based, so they add minimal MAD. Incarnate probably works a bit better for you, as Totemist wants to get into melee and its heaviest hitting attacks require standard/full round actions and wants strength for standard melee goodness.

Essentially, let Psion carry your offense while Incarnate handles defense and adds out of combat utility. There are a lot of ways Incarnate can give you extra defenses (usually in the form of cheap boosts to AC or saves), and there are some excellent skill boosts and new movement forms available. If you want to do a blaster Psion and haven't figured out your alignment yet, go with Chaos Incarnate to get some good boosts to your ranged attacks.

Melding psionics with incarnum is unusually well supported considering how obscure incarnum is. Mind's Eye has an excellent article, Psionics of Incarunum (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20060217a). By standard gestalt rules the PrC is out of your reach, but the soulmelds are nifty. The psycarnum feats are quite good, and if you want to cross the border from min/maxing to outright cheese, Midnight Augmentation (in MoI) is incredibly abusable. If you want, you could pick up Share Soulmeld and let your psycrystal do some extra damage with melds that enable it to use ranged attacks (Dissolving Spittle is good for this).

You have to watch your gear, make sure your good, bindable chakras are open, but beyond that you end up with a really interesting and versatile class that doesn't steal actions from the Psion end.

[Kommisar Engel]

Kineticist || Focused Specialist Immediate Magic Conjurer (banning Evo, Ench, and Necro) or Kineticist || Archivist

No words can be said on how cheesy those can be with access to Spells and Powers to fall back on.

[Milskidasith]

Kineticist || Focused Specialist Immediate Magic Conjurer (banning Evo, Ench, and Necro) or Kineticist || Archivist

No words can be said on how cheesy those can be with access to Spells and Powers to fall back on.

Two active classes = minimally more powerful than just taking one of them. While the wizard itself may be more powerful than the psion, it doesn't add that much to the gestalt.

[Myrmex]

Two active classes = minimally more powerful than just taking one of them. While the wizard itself may be more powerful than the psion, it doesn't add that much to the gestalt.

With Synchronicity & Schism, you can get two actions/round. You also will have a lot of endurance. You can be putting out 50 damage/round to every enemy on the battlefield in the rounds you don't feel like controlling. While it may not fit into the standard CharOp assumption that you only venture out of your private demiplane once to nova on a fighter who thinks wizards might not be that great, in many games (especially gestalt!), the DM will have you fight more than one encounter per day. Sometimes 3 or 4 or maybe even as many as 8!

Of course, you could just go psion//warblade and do a ton of damage for as long as you want.

[Milskidasith]

With Synchronicity & Schism, you can get two actions/round. You also will have a lot of endurance. You can be putting out 50 damage/round to every enemy on the battlefield in the rounds you don't feel like controlling. While it may not fit into the standard CharOp assumption that you only venture out of your private demiplane once to nova on a fighter who thinks wizards might not be that great, in many games (especially gestalt!), the DM will have you fight more than one encounter per day. Sometimes 3 or 4 or maybe even as many as 8!

Of course, you could just go psion//warblade and do a ton of damage for as long as you want.

Synchronicity & Schism are psion only things anyway... if we assume that you are playing a psion on one side, you can assume that any class can benefit from psion action abuse.

[Lycanthromancer]

I'm playing a low-level psion//factotum right now, and it absolutely rocks. I'm considering some ToB dips later on (at or after level 9) to improve my melee prowess. Just make sure you have access to Font of Inspiration (from Dungeonscape's web enhancement). I have 3 iterations at level 2, and having 9 inspiration points allows me to use them every round.

Psion//warblade is great too, especially if you take the Linked Power feat (from C.Psi) and a swift- (or better yet, immediate-) action power to buff yourself.

However, if you don't want to play with those, what about psion//druid? Both can easily be taken all the way, and though both of them are highly active classes, druid has a lot of incredible passive abilities (see: wild shape and animal companion). It also frees up all of your physical stats, so you can afford the Int/Wis MAD rather easily (especially given 80 "point buy"). Battlefield control with druid, and a variety of tricks with psion. Tasty.

Alternately, psion//artificer. Artificer allows you to buff yourself through item crafting and infusions pre-battle, while psion lets you craft psionic items (there are some really, REALLY good ones, like the psychoactive skin of proteus). Get yourself decked out with 3x your WBL in items, and you'll be a contender for "world's greatest gestalt character".

[Myrmex]

Synchronicity & Schism are psion only things anyway... if we assume that you are playing a psion on one side, you can assume that any class can benefit from psion action abuse.

Yeah, but using schism and synchronicity to get an extra strike/round is really lame, compared to the things you could be doing with that action as a wizard.

[Milskidasith]

Yeah, but using schism and synchronicity to get an extra strike/round is really lame, compared to the things you could be doing with that action as a wizard.

That's not really the classes specifically complimenting each other so much as the wizard being broken.

[Myrmex]

That's not really the classes specifically complimenting each other so much as the wizard being broken.

Anything that gets the wizard more actions is complementing him.

[Milskidasith]

Anything that gets the wizard more actions is complementing him.

Then it should be a wizard//factotum, not psion. If he wants to play a psion, it is not optimal for him to use the psion side purely for abusing a few psionic powers to augment his wizardry, because he's not really doing anything as a psion.

[Myrmex]

Then it should be a wizard//factotum, not psion. If he wants to play a psion, it is not optimal for him to use the psion side purely for abusing a few psionic powers to augment his wizardry, because he's not really doing anything as a psion.

As I mentioned, he gets double the endurance. Unlike having full BAB on both sides, which gets you nothing, casting on both sides means twice as many spells. This is especially important, seeing as how he's playing from level four. Combined with focused specialist, he can get even more spells, and sacrifice very little versatility. Rather than be a guy who can hit stuff and manifest some powers, he gets to be a wizard who is an even better wizard.

With that point buy, a familiar, and a psicrystal, he can get both his HP and fort save high enough to make up for his poor fort progression.

[Samb]

With a 81 point stat total you have already overcome MAD, so why is everyone making a big deal of "INT synergy"? Just make a PC that is great at everything.

I would personally go with Egoist//fighter, and taking up warmind at level 6, because warmind simply rocks. This gives you full BAB, more PP, the best saves in all three, DR/, "psionic rage" and sweeping strike.

Deep impact with sweeping strike+power attack while you are metamorphed into a [something big and scarey] is just too sick. Why not throw in a hustle (or at hihger levels PLC) into the mix just for overkill? Why seetle for a regular charge when you can leap attack too? Anitcipitory strike so you can kill the whole encounter on someone else's turn?

[erikun]

Psion//Psychic Rogue gets you extra PP, extra powers, skill points and abilities like sneak attack/evasion which can come in handy. You can also prestige out the Psychic Rogue into something like Metamind, without losing any manifester levels on the Psion side.

Psion//Factorium synergizes well, and I believe can give extra actions at higher levels. Psion//Warblade or something with access to Diamond Mind maneuvers can be quite useful. (Substitute Concentration for a saving throw? Sure.) Psion//Monk can be handy, especially with one of the feats that runs the Monk's abilities off INT.

[2xMachina]

81 total...

You could get 18,18,18,18,5,4. Go Druid, and stay wildshaped 24/7for Dex Str. Effectively, 18+ in all.

As for Psion/Wizard. Seems fun really. Especially StP Erudite. Wizard for utility, psion for blasting? Unique power limit is not much of a problem if you keep spamming the same damage powers. Schism to do both at once.

As for SAD... well, there's still the item enchantments. Much easier to just boost Int to the stratosphere, rather than trying to do so with Int AND Wis together.

[Myrmex]

81 total...

You could get 18,18,18,18,5,4. Go Druid, and stay wildshaped 24/7for Dex Str. Effectively, 18+ in all.

As for Psion/Wizard. Seems fun really. Especially StP Erudite. Wizard for utility, psion for blasting? Unique power limit is not much of a problem if you keep spamming the same damage powers. Schism to do both at once.

As for SAD... well, there's still the item enchantments. Much easier to just boost Int to the stratosphere, rather than trying to do so with Int AND Wis together.

4 charisma is just asking to be ego whipped into submission.

[Draz74]

4 charisma is just asking to be ego whipped into submission.

That's why he was suggesting 18 Charisma, 4 Strength, 5 Dexterity. :smalltongue:


Then it should be a wizard//psion, not factotum. If he wants to play a factotum, it is not optimal for him to use the factotum side purely for abusing Cunning Surge to augment his wizardry, because he's not really doing anything as a factotum.

Scary how close you argument comes to making sense when it's completely reversed.

[Kylarra]

Scary how close you argument comes to making sense when it's completely reversed.Well actually though, factotum provides a lot of passive boosts to the wizard side, whereas psion doesn't.

Factotum gives you [passively]: D8 HD, 3/4 BAB, good reflex, +4 skills/level && all skills class, trapfinding (lol), Int to Str/Dex checks && more importantly, initiative.

Psion overlaps wizard completely in the passive department since they're essentially the same thing with a different power source.

[Myrmex]

That's why he was suggesting 18 Charisma, 4 Strength, 5 Dexterity. :smalltongue:

Well who the heck lists the attributes backwards?


Scary how close you argument comes to making sense when it's completely reversed.

Heh. Though as Kylarra points out, Factotum comes with some nice perks. None that beat the awesomeness of being two wizards at the same time, each getting 2 actions/round + quickened spell. A Fissioned wizard is... well it's something.

[erikun]

Well who the heck lists the attributes backwards?
It looked to me like he was listing them in descending order.

[Samb]

Wait 81 total? So could he overload INT to 31 and spread the rest for 10? Then we should consider synergy!!!

Psion//Erudite for massive novas.

Why stop at 31? go to 35 INT and the rest 9 for even better results.

[erikun]

Erudite is a variant Psion; you can't have a Psion/Erudite. Also, I would assume that starting characters are still limited to 3-18 stats. (Then again, 80 point buy is kind of crazy.)

[deuxhero]

Then it should be a wizard//factotum, not psion. If he wants to play a psion, it is not optimal for him to use the psion side purely for abusing a few psionic powers to augment his wizardry, because he's not really doing anything as a psion.

Though a Psion//Focused Conjurer/master specialist/Malconthingy with that feat in dragon 113 that lets you apply Astral construct traits to summons :)

[Odegra]

Ok, lots of homework. Spoke with DM last night, forgot that factotum was also out, on the logic of "you're already doing gestalt, there's no need for the class that does everything whenever it wants to." thanks for all the great suggestions though, much to look into. So, yeah. Doing that now.