A Different Assassin

[TheGeckoKing]

Now, I was reading some random books to kill some time, when I came across the Psychic Assassin ACF.
No, not the Mind's Eye version, the Secrets of Sarlona version (p113, to be exact).
It does what Psionic-themed books like to do, and basically swaps spellcasting for manifesting. Now we know the normal Assassin is pretty good, but ONLY if you don't try to use that danged Death Attack and ONLY if you have Spell Compendium, but what about this assassin ACF? How does it compare? And while i'm here, what's the playground's verdict on this Psychic Assassin (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20040723d)?

[Flickerdart]

Well, it gives you powers if you didn't have any before, the SA progression isn't gimped...on the other hand, the powers aren't so great, and the tiny amount of PP really hurts (to compare, the War Mind gets 70PP and the Psionic Fist gets 71 PP at 10th versus the Psionic Assassin's 27). The Mind's Eye Psychic Assassin gets a truly awful power progression (but piggybacks fine on Ardent) and one die of SA less, but it gets better goodies (and the Special Abilities make up the SA difference if you've got nothing better to use them on).

[Amphetryon]

I would contest the "Assassin's pretty good" assertion, but that's neither here nor there.

If you're running a Kalashtar Ardent/Ninja with the Death Mantle and don't have ready access to some of the other poison-user types, the Psychic Assassin is a pretty decent option, considering.

That said, I needed a whole lot of caveats to preface 'pretty decent option, considering.'

[TheGeckoKing]

So, the Mind's Eye Assassin is only good with Ardent........that's a shame.
And as for the SoS Assassin, is there any good way of increasing the PP pool/lowering pp costs?

As for "Assassin is pretty good", I meant it's pretty good as a Rogue prc. God knows it's not good for anything else.

[Zaq]

There were two (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9940319&postcount=170) builds (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9940342&postcount=171) in the Assassin episode of Iron Chef that used Psychic Assassin. They might serve as inspiration.

[Bugbeartrap]

Mind's Eye Psychic assassin starts to shine when it gets to do Intelligence damage, but other than that, I'm unimpressed.

SoS Psionic assassin has always intrigued me, particularly with a Kung fu genius monk and tashalatora. However, I've never played any psionic class so I had no baseline to compare the powers/power points an assassin receives. With magic/psionic transparency for UMD/UPD use of spell compendium spells, I don't think psionic assassin would lose out compared to regular assassin.