Suggestions for a Thri-Kreen Psychic Rogue

[Essence_of_War]

We got a sizable LA allowance in one of the games I'm in as a player, and one of my fellow players is a Thri-Kreen Psychic Rogue. He likes to stab things.

Right now he's got 2 racial hit die + 2 levels of psychic rogue, his LA is free so he is ECL 4.

Feats:
racial - deflect arrows
1 - multiattack
3 - weapon finesse

The DM let him add the freedom mantle's dimension hop to the psychic rogue's list, so he likes to teleport into flanking positions and then full attack with his natural weapons.

He was asking me for some optimization suggestions/prestige classes that could work with being a psionic sneaky/backstabby character. I suggested a swordsage dip to pick up shadow blade and maybe some SH/TC maneuvers, but I couldn't think of any prestige class that might help him out.

Any suggestions?

Our group allows just about all 3.X stuff if it's used responsibly and run by the DM first, with the exception of drag/dung magazine materials.

[Cog]

The Shadow Jump special ability can get you into Telflammar Shadowlord (Unapproachable East), if you can use or adapt regional stuff, getting you Shadow Pounce. With each teleport you make - and you have swift, move, and standard - you can get off a full attack. PsyRog isn't very multiclassing-friendly otherwise, though; anything more than a dip will cost you some of your schtick in the form of lost skills, sneak attack, or manifesting (and often more than one). Warblade is an alternate TOB dip, giving you Int synergy and a slightly tougher chassis, while Swordsage's more supernatural bent offers less of a boost to PsyRog than it does to a classic Rogue.

[Dusk Eclipse]

Psy rogue is an int based manifester class.

Thri krin have an int penalty.

Does not compute.

[Essence_of_War]

He got a special dispensation to swap the int/wis penalty/bonus.
He was veeeerrrrryyyyy excited about being a bug...

I don't know why I didn't think of this before, but a Swashbuckler dip of 3 levels might be useful also. I'm going to recommend to him the WB/Swash dips and see if that is helpful to him.

[Urpriest]

Multiattack implies that he's using his claws as natural weapons rather than to hold manufactured weapons. This is fine for now (maybe even superior at this level), but eventually he may want iterative attacks.

Arguably, Improved Unarmed Strike can get you iterative attacks even if you're also attacking with your claws, via kicks and the like. More dubiously, you can gain more attacks with these via Multiweapon Fighting, since Two and Multi-Weapon Fighting as implemented in the rules don't usually care about whether you actually use your extra arms for the extra attacks, all that matters is that you have the extra arms in the first place. (While this may seem ridiculous, think of it from a monster design perspective: the Thri-Kreen is balanced with the expectation that it gets four manufactured weapon attacks. This balance expectation shouldn't shift if the hands aren't being used). However, the concept that you can use unarmed strike to TWF/MWF is on shaky rules ground already, so use caution when implementing this and ask your DM first.

[Psyren]

If you have any more houserules like that we need to know them up front.

The only decent PrC I know that progresses manifesting and SA is Daggerspell Psion (adaptation of Daggerspell Mage in CAdv) and even then you'd have to work out with your DM how to tweak it properly. Shadowmind and Ebon Saint suck. He might be better off staying pure PR.

[Dusk Eclipse]

If he is not that interested in manifesting, Psychic Assassin is pretty neat to get the ability to deal Int damage on sneak attacks, with at least five attacks per round it is pretty sure you will drop the brute type monsters as they usually have int 10 or less.

[Essence_of_War]

I'm fairly sure that's all of the houserules. Sorry about the int/wis swap, I completely forgot about it until Dusk Eclipse brought it up. I hope no one wasted too much brainpower thinking about that before I clarified :smallsmile:

Cog,
I'll look into the Shadowlord, good idea, thanks!

Urpriest,

Multiattack implies that he's using his claws as natural weapons rather than to hold manufactured weapons. This is fine for now (maybe even superior at this level), but eventually he may want iterative attacks.

That's exactly his game plan right now. He uses dimension hop to try to set up for full attacks w/sneak attack.

I'll float the suggestions for the MWF and/or imp. unarmed strikes by him and the DM. Even if he just went imp. unarmed, his full attack would look something like: Primary unarmed interatives + 4x secondary claws + 1x secondary bite right?

Psyren,
I was aware of Ebon Saint and Shadowmind both being fairly poor, but I'll look into the Daggerspell Psion adaptation with the player. I suspect he may be better off sticking with psyrogue also. I found the psychic assassin (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20040723d) linked at the end of the psyrogue article, but it looks pretty poor compared with more psyrogue.

Edit: Didn't see Dusk Eclipse's reply when I posted this.

[Urpriest]

Urpriest,


That's exactly his game plan right now. He uses dimension hop to try to set up for full attacks w/sneak attack.

I'll float the suggestions for the MWF and/or imp. unarmed strikes by him and the DM. Even if he just went imp. unarmed, his full attack would look something like: Primary unarmed interatives + 4x secondary claws + 1x secondary bite right?



Yup, that's how it works.

If he doesn't decide to do MWF but does grab imp. unarmed he may want Snap Kick. Just don't try to stack too many sources of extra attacks or none will hit.