Thomar_of_Uointer
2012-02-13, 11:03 PM
Well, I just finished reading over the Pathfinder Astral Construct rules, and I decided to share my character optimization thoughts here. I apologize for the poor formatting, if it really bothers anyone I'll go back and neaten it up.
This is not a psion guide. If you are reading this, I expect you to have already read a Pathfinder psion build guide. I'm just going to focus on things specific to the shaper specialization and abilities that synergize with the shaper's astral construct power.
Part One: The Astral Construct Power
The astral construct power is the shaper's bread-and-butter power. It basically make you a summoner (and although you won't be competing with the druid, you will be able to be both a summoner and a serious caster at the same time.)
Note that the power requires you to spend a round manifesting, it's Close range, and it doesn't last very long. This means that at first level you will likely be using it to help your rogue with flanking, and not much else. However, it quickly becomes more useful for you as you level.
Make sure you know how augmentation works. You can spend 2 power points to improve the level of your astral constructs. You can't spend more power points on a power than your manifester level (unless you use Overchannel, which is not a bad idea.)
Astral constructs are all the same, except for the menu options you pick. You get one menu option to start with, you get one menu option from the Boost Construct feat, and you get one more menu option at 2nd level. This gives you a total of 3 menu options, which are discussed here:
==MENU A==
GRADE A (These are the best ones.)
Cleave: Let your AC make multiple attacks. This is extremely useful if you are fighting more than one opponent.
Resistance: Situational, but still very nice because you can usually tell what kind of energy resistance to give it.
Trip: Because the trip attempts are free and don't allow the target to trip back, this is actually really good. Prone opponents suffer -4 AC, -4 to attack, reduced mobility, and have to provoke AoO to stand up. A++, would pick from menu again if it stacked.
GRADE B
Celerity: ACs are plenty fast, and should be in melee as much as possible instead of moving around. Even though this power is situational, it comes up in enough situations to be mid-grade. This is most worthwhile if your rogue needs a flanking partner. If your GM rules that ACs can't leave Close range, this is practically worthless.
Deflection: Every little bit of defense counts if you want your AC to stay alive. ACs have good armor class already, which makes armor boosts more effective mathematically. However, this bonus is too low to tank well.
Power Attack: ACs tend to have good attack rolls, making this worthwhile. This is great against low-AC targets, but don't use it if your enemies are using decent armor. Remember, your slam is a primary natural weapon so you get to add a +3 bonus to damage!
GRADE C (These are the worst ones, usually because they are highly situational or just unoptimized.)
Buff: Only marginally useful. Compared to deflection or resistance? Meh. This only lets your AC survive half an extra attack, and ACs already have good hp compared to the average party member. And really, do you *care* about the AC's well-being? It's going to be gone in a few rounds. This might be slightly useful for a permanized construct, and if you combine all three of the buff options you get a total of +50 which is actually quite respectable, along with all of the other ability combos you can work into that.
Fly: Extremely slow, only good situationally.
Improved Bull Rush: It can be nice situationally to push enemies off of cliffs or into your fighter's reach, but at low levels your AC is too small to do it reliably. At high levels this is still situational, but high-level ACs can use reach to avoid AoO.
Improved Slam Attack: This averages to a single point of damage at low levels. Not worth it. At high levels it might be a nice ability, but you have to sacrifice a higher-menu ability to get it.
Mobility: ACs shouldn't provoke AoOs to go after high-value targets unless they're doing it to flank with your party's rogue or fighter.
Swim: Situational. Of course, when you need it you need it.
MENU A COMBOS
Remember, as a decently-optimized Shaper you can get three of these. These combos are also good at higher levels when you can sacrifice a Menu B option for two Menu A options.
Cleave/Trip: What's better than tripping one opponent? Tripping two opponents!
Cleave/Power Attack: Carve a path of destruction through enemies, and you still get a move action each time.
Trip/Power Attack/Improved Slam Attack: Power attacking a prone opponent is easy damage. At higher levels this is an excellent combo because you can get multiple attacks in before they stand up.
Cleave/Celerity: A good counter to enemies with Spring Attack or archers and squishy wizards who are going to run away. Cleave is a standard action, so you can just keep running up to them instead of charging.
Celerity/Mobility/Deflection: An honorable mention here, for when you absolutely MUST get your AC through the front lines to pin down that pesky enemy wizard or archer. But you're a psion, just use a power instead.
==MENU B==
GRADE A
Extra Attack: An excellent menu choice. More attack rolls per round means more chances to hit. The damage penalty is negligible compared to the additional hits you get.
Heavy Deflection: The deflection bonus is much better. If you're up against anything that can kill your AC in one or two hits, this is a great way to keep it alive until the duration expires.
Muscle: +2 to hit, and +3 to damage (unless you took Extra Attack.) Of course, the to-hit bonus is the one you care about.
Improved Fly: Now we're talking! This gives your Astral Construct the ability to pick any target of your choice in a crowd. A Large-sized AC covers a 30' cube with its reach, which means you can get away with hovering over your target to lay down some battlefield control. Much less useful if your GM rules that the AC can't leave Close range.
GRADE B
Compact Form: Actually a decent defensive buff. It grants +2 AC, and that still works against touch attacks (which are your construct's weak point.) The tradeoff, of course, is lower damage (but your to-hit stays the same.)
Improved Critical: Considering the damage your AC is outputting, this is not a bad ability to give your AC. However, "fishing for crits" is considered a bad optimization choice because it's unreliable (you're likely to fail to confirm the crit.)
Improved Grab: A grapple construct is a decent way to go against many enemies, but larger enemies and melee-optimized enemies won't work as well as targets. Also, a grappling AC isn't performing any battlefield control. Make sure you read up on the grapple rules before using this ability.
Smite: This isn't much damage, but it comes into its own at higher levels when the AC gets more Hit Dice. Only good against a single target.
GRADE C
Energy Touch: Power Attack does more damage than this. Extra Attack does more damage than this. This is only good if you're fighting something with regeneration or damage reduction, or maybe an energy vulnerability.
Fast Healing: The amount healed is ridiculously low, and most astral constructs won't fully heal before their summon duration expires. This may be situationally useful for a permanized construct.
Improved Buff: See Buff.
Improved Damage Reduction: Situationally useful. This works best against hordes of weak enemies who don't have magic weapons.
Improved Swim: See Swim.
Poison Touch: 1/minute, cure 1 save? Garbage.
Pounce: You don't normally get multiple attacks until the 5th-level construct. It's useful if your enemy is *just* outside of spell range and you want to start off with a full attack, but once you're in melee range it's significantly less useful.
Trample: The damage is really low. Situationally this could be used to get past your enemies, but flight is an easier way to do that.
MENU B COMBOS
Extra Attack/Muscle/Trip: More tripping for everyone! A great way to deal with a crowd.
Muscle/Smite/Improved Critical: Reliable damage combo, and if you get lucky they're dead. Best against a single target.
Extra Attack/Pounce: It can be hard to get full attacks in. You're probably better off focusing on to-hit.
Muscle/Improved Grab: If you're going to go for a grapple construct, go all in.
Heavy Deflection/Compact Form: A total armor bonus of +6, and it works against touch attacks! The downside is that your AC won't be getting reach soon enough to make it more of the center of attention.
==MENU C==
GRADE A
Dimension Slide: Great for positioning your AC where it needs to be, and it's often better than Improved Fly. A 7th-level AC can slide 55', and it gets better for higher-level ACs.
Extreme Deflection: The best way to keep your construct alive. Great against touch attacks too.
Natural Invisibility: Almost too good to pass up, even though most high-level enemies have a way to circumvent invisibility. However, it's devastating when you can use it properly. It also doubles as battlefield control because your enemies don't know where it is.
GRADE B
Blindsight: Situational, but when you need it you need it. Invisibility comes up often enough to rate this one higher on the list.
Concussion: The free action aspect of it is actually very interesting and makes it worth considering. It automatically hits a single target within 170' for 3d6 damage (or two for 2d6, or three for 1d6.) This averages to just under 10 points of damage per round, but it's guaranteed to hit and the range is very nice. It can also do nonlethal damage and can damage some objects, which is situationally useful. If you give it to multiple constructs you can actually do some impressive things against anybody involved in the fight.
Constrict: An obvious pick if you're building a grapple AC. It lets you do slam damage with a successful grapple check (no actual attack roll required,) which is useful.
Extreme Damage Reduction: The DR is high enough to be useful, and it's a nice choice to keep permanized constructs alive. Situationally, it will work best against enemies with lots of weaker attacks or hordes of weak enemies. Against strong enemies, not so much.
Power Resistance: This is actually a pretty good level of resistance (roughly a 40% chance to block spells of your level.) High-level enemy casters are going to try to shut down your summons, and this is an extra layer of protection. Natural Invisibility might be better because it's hard to dispel something you can't see.
Rend: Alone, not so good, but it combos well. Decent direct damage, but it's just too hard to pull off to consecutive hits. If you use this, make sure you pump your to-hit as high as possible.
GRADE C
Energy Bolt: Situationally useful for making an artillery AC to take out out an enemy with regeneration or many weak enemies who like to line up for you. But it requires a standard action, only does an average of 36 cold or fire damage on a failed save, and it can't change energy types after it's summoned. Your AC is better off doing battlefield control than direct damage, and as a high-level psion you can do MUCH better than this. In terms of pp spent, this could be an efficient way to do damage over time.
Extra Buff: See Buff.
Spring Attack: Why would you only want to hit an enemy once? This can be situationally useful for plowing through enemies you know you can one-shot, or for letting your AC survive a few rounds against an enemy with a devastating full attack (upwards of 3 attacks and no pounce capability.) If you have a lot of constructs on the field, this might be useful because it lets a construct make melee attacks from an ally's square (see the Spring Attack footnote in the PFSRD.)
Whirlwind Attack: Garbage. The AC already gets multiple attacks at its highest base attack bonus, and you can get another with a cheaper menu option. You can't combine it with Cleave. This could be situationally useful for clearing out crowds, but against level-appropriate enemies it's worthless.
MENU C COMBOS
Dimension Slide/Cleave/Trip: A really nice battlefield control combo. Just teleport wherever you need to be to set up a Cleave, and then trip them when you're done.
Rend/Extra Attacks/Muscle/Pounce/Trip/Power Attack: A decent damage-dealing combo, since you get +4 to hit prone enemies. If you swap out abilities, remember that to-hit is the most important statistic of a melee construct.
Natural Invisibility/Extreme Deflection/Compact Form: +11 to armor, and it's invisible. This gives you an armor class of 43 and touch of 21. Hands down, the best way to keep a melee construct alive.
Natural Invisibility/Dimension Slide: Makes your AC impossible to find, unless your enemies have a way around the invisibility.
Constrict/Concussion/Muscle/Improved Grab/Improved Slam Attack: If you're going to go for a grapple construct, go all in. Concussion is in there because it can either be used to speed up the process or maintain some battlefield control.
Concussion/Energy Bolt: Decent artillery at good range. This can be useful if you're fighting an oppponent with a three-digit fly speed.
Buff/Improved Buff/Extra Buff/Fast Healing: I'll mention this because you can take all three Buffs for a +50 hit point bonus. At these levels it won't last you till the end of the round, but if you have a permanized construct it's nice to make it more durable.
==POWERS==
Psions are more like sorcerers than wizards when it comes to spell selection. You don't get a spellbook, you are stuck with what you pick.
As a summoner, you have a lot of actions in combat. Know the rules, and don't take too long each turn. Be conservative with pp, only go nova if you know it's worth it.
Remember, Expanded Knowledge is your friend. Powers that require it have been marked with their class in parentheses.
GRADE A
1
Create Sound: You can get it for free as a discipline talent, and it has a lot of good utility uses.
Disable: A solid save-or-suck spell that requires a Will save. Good against mooks.
Ectoplasmic Sheen: A great Reflex save-or-suck for battlefield control, and it can make people hold still so your AC can hit them.
Ectoplasmic Creation: Get it for free as a discipline talent. Use it to make gallons and gallons of flammable oil. Has many other good utility uses, especially if you can convince your GM to let you make drugs, poison, or glue. Also, armfuls of wooden marbles.
Entangling Ectoplasm: Touch attack, no save, no SR, cheap. The discipline talent version would let you manifest it for free without expending focus, which is not a bad debuff even at high levels. The only real limitation is that you have to augment it to hit larger enemies. Keeps people from running away from your ACs or towards you.
Skate: A nice party buff.
2
Dimension Swap (Nomad): Guess what! Your ACs count as allies, you can shuffle them around with the rest of the party with this power.
Clarivoyant Sense (Seer): The psionic version of scrying, and it's *good*. You can use it to look behind doors and walls, but not to find people or objects. An informed caster is a prepared caster.
Hustle (psychic warrior): Because summoning requires a full round, the extra move action can be invaluable.
Inflict Pain: An awesome save-or-suck that still hurts them on a successful save. With augmentation it can affect multiple targets. Use this on anything that makes attack rolls.
Share Pain: Link up an AC with your party's fighter to keep the fighter alive longer. This works best if you use it on an AC with defensive options, because the last thing you want to do is start making your fighter soak damage for the AC. It's touch range, but you don't need to worry about that if you get a psicrystal and let it deliver it for you. Also combos well with Vigor if you share it with your psicrystal.
3
Dispel Psionics: Because you're not the only caster out there.
Ectoplasmic Cocoon: An excellent Medium-range way to instantly incapacitate enemies and well worth your actions because it's a save-or-suck. Use on mages, warriors, or anything else with a poor Reflex save. Against anything that can make the save, don't bother, you have better things to do. It also has practical uses because you can use it on an ally as a defensive shell, but that may be a bad idea in combat.
Time Hop: A good save-or-lose that requires a Will save. This also has excellent utility value if you're creative (but note the weight limit.)
4
Fold Space: Quick and easy getaway. Try not to leave your party behind.
Intellect Fortress: Saves your party (and your ACs!) a lot of pain.
Quintessence: Okay, here's the secret to this power. If an object coated in quintessence has an active spell on it, the duration won't expire. When you scrape it off, the spell effect continues where it left off. Now grab the PHB spell list and use your imagination. Check with your GM first.
Wall of Ectoplasm: Excellent battlefield control.
5
Ectoplasmic Shambler: Long range, no save, no PR, blocks vision, and makes life hard for casters. The only thing left to do is throw a grapple-build AC in there to clean things up.
Incarnate: Not quite as good if you are crafting magic items, but it's still a good pick at this level.
Pierce The Veils: Because you can't tell your ACs to attack what you can't see.
Psionic Revivify (Egoist): Guess what you can do better than the cleric can!
6
Crystallize: Ask your GM to rule that this can be augmented to improve the save DC. Even then, it's a great Medium-range save-or-lose. It even has practical uses, you can use it on a dying or poisoned ally to instantly stabilize him (but Time Hop is more versatile in this regard.)
Disintegration: Save-or-die, and excellent utility too. If your enemy has spell resistance, you can always blast the ground out from under his feet.
Temporal Acceleration: Lets you queue up a bunch of ACs in an emergency, and also buff yourself.
Trigger Power: Another one of those spells that will save your life.
7
Bend Reality: Gives you access to all the psionic powers you didn't take. Combine it with item crafting or incarnation to get access to powers that you would normally only be using once.
Ethereal Form (Nomad): Keep yourself safe while summoning. The higher-level psion version is a party buff.
Fate of One (Seer): For when you absolutely *must* reroll a saving throw.
Fission (Egoist): You get to manifest powers twice as fast. This is a straightforward way to "go nova".
Mass Ectoplasmic Cocoon: See Ectoplasmic Cocoon. You might want this to replace the single-target version, since you would already be spending pp to raise the save DC.
8
Astral Seed: Lets you survive death. In fact, you can survive a TPK. Go donate 500 gp to a temple somewhere in exchange for interring a coffin. Throw the seed into the coffin for along with clothing, something for teleport and scrying, and enough treasure objects for you to pawn them for a restoration spell plus spending cash. There's really no reason not to take this.
True Metabolism: The fast healing is good enough for this to get mentioned.
9
Affinity Field: Allows for an uncountable number of combos.
Assimilate: The best part is that the bonus is untyped and lasts for hours. Have your ACs deal nonlethal damage to someone and then use it on them while they're unconscious. For cheese, use it with a bag of tricks.
Reality Revision: Worth it.
GRADE B
1
Crystal Shard: This would be great if you weren't already doing good damage with your ACs. However, sometimes there's an enemy just over there who you really need to kill right now. Touch attack, no SR, no save.
Ecto Protection: Expensive, but the ability to throw it on top of an AC is nice. If an enemy mage is giving you problems, you might be better off spamming cheaper astral constructs because you'll outlast him that way. Don't take it as a discipline talent because you're better off shooting people with a crossbow when you're out of power points.
Energy Ray: See Crystal Shard, this one does 2 more damage per caster level but allows spell resistance. Only take one or the other.
Inertial Armor: Lasts for hours, and you can augment it to make it even stronger. Great for avoiding enemies who don't like the fact that your party has a summoner. The only real downside is that, as a psion, you can wear real armor.
2
Control Sound: Interesting, but there are better powers to take.
Ego Whip: A decent single-target save-or-suck power that, at higher levels, is capable of one-shotting enemies. Even on a successful save, the target still suffers Charisma damage. Use this against sorcerers, monsters that rely on spell-like abilities, and ugly monsters.
Minor Metamorphosis: Insanely good utility spell, even if you only use it for the odd movement speeds. You can use Expanded Knowledge to get from the Egoist list with a base cost of 1 pp instead of 3 pp.
3
Energy Wall: A nice battlefield control spell, combined with ACs you're going to be ruining everyone's day. Note that you can use the sonic version to do a LOT of damage to objects. Ignores SR.
Mental Barrier: This spell will probably save your life one day.
4
Correspond: Better than most arcane communication spells. This is a good utility spell.
Psionic Freedom Of Movement: Because getting grappled sucks.
Schism (Telepath): Nice for the extra actions, even if it can't summon ACs.
5
Planar Travel: The poor non-nomad's psychoport. Still an awesome utility.
Power Resistance: An excellent buff. You may not be using it as much as a wizard, though, because you will be keeping enemy casters busy with your ACs.
Psychoport (Nomad): Teleportation is one of the best utility spells, and you can use it to escape battle if things turn sour. There is a higher-level psion version, and the cost might be worth it because of its improved accuracy.
6
Dispelling Buffer (Kineticist): Great for your permanized AC. Good for the construct you're about to send into an enemy mage's sanctum. Still, it's probably cheaper just to summon two ACs instead.
Retrive: You can use this to disarm enemy fighters with ease as a save-or-suck, and it's also good utility. Also useful if you command your ACs to disarm people, then you can grab their weapons without a save.
7
Energy Conversion: Stand in your own Energy Wall for cheese.
8
Greater Psychoport: See Psychoport.
GRADE C
2
Cleanse Body: Only take this if your party has no cleric.
Reconstruction: Don't. It's easier to summon a new one. This could be situationally useful if you have a warforged in your party. You could use it to heal your psicrystal.
Sustenance: An okay utility power that might possibly save your life, oh, once every other campaign? More useful if you know that resource scarcity will be an issue. Or just play an Elan.
4
Augured Answer: Only take this if your party has no cleric.
Psychic Reformation: Cheese, because you can use it on yourself to change your power selection on the fly (and other creative utility uses.) If your GM is sympathetic to your limited power selection, you might be able to get away with it.
Trace Psychoport: Situational, but it could end up useful.
5
Adapt Body: Good if your party is going to travel to the elemental plane of fire or something.
6
Co-opt Concentration: Good if your GM lets you use it on spells as well as powers. However, most enemy casters will have good Will saves.
==FEATS==
GRADE A
Boost Construct: Take this first.
Overchannel: It hurts, but you can use Overchannel to summon stronger ACs.
Talented: Take this if you take Overchannel so it hurts less. If you don't take this, learn the vigor power to offset the Overchannel damage. Remember, you lose one of your three menu options of you don't keep your focus while manifesting astral construct (but the AC is several Hit Dice tougher, so it may not matter.)
Improved Initiative: I have never regretted taking this feat as a mage.
Expanded Knowledge: Get useful powers you normally couldn't.
Body Fuel: You will thank yourself for taking this when you have overextended yourself or run dry.
Endowed Mind: Actually quite useful with some powers if you augment to hit multiple targets.
Psicrystal Affinity: First off, it's a scout that can see in the dark and grants you a Perception bonus. Second off, you can get a new one in 24 hours if it dies. If you have a psicrystal, become familiar with all of its abilities and use them. Take Nimble (initiative bonus,) or Hero (to cover your poor Fortitude save.)
Psicrystal Containment: You will not regret having two psionic focuses.
Enlarge Power: No pp cost, double the range of your summon spells. Remember, you lose one of your three menu options of you don't keep your focus while manifesting astral construct. Still, dropping a construct where it can make a full attack is worth it.
GRADE B
Craft Potion, Craft Wondrous Item, Craft Magic Arms And Armor, and Craft Cognizance Crystal: Only take these if it's the kind of campaign where you get downtime and access to resources. Even though your spell selection is limited, you can use party members or hired mages to fill spell prereqs, or just make the needed checks.
Burrowing Power: Summon ACs through walls. Only works in conjunction with some type of scrying.
Psionic Meditation: Not as useful as it could be because it requires a move action, and as a summoner you don't get many move actions. You could take Hustle to refocus faster, but that's expensive. Still, it's nice to have focus when you need it.
Speed of Thought: Situationally useful, but you will benefit from it very often.
Unconditional Power: Might save your bacon someday.
GRADE C
Inquisitor: If it's that kind of campaign.
Delay Power: Summon ACs as traps. Note the half-minute limit.
Extend Power: Might be useful if you are worried your AC won't last long enough. This is only an issue at low levels.
Power Penetration: SR causing you trouble? Don't bother, have your ACs use the aid another action on the party fighter instead.
Twin Power: The only way to summon two ACs, but they are 3 levels lower. Ouch.
Mind Over Body: Might be helpful if you take Body Fuel.
Psionic Talent: Doesn't scale with level, and you would have to take it multiple times to get much effect out of it.
==RACE==
Can't go wrong with human. This build is a bit feat-intensive. Besides that, you should consider anything with an Intelligence bonus.
==STATS==
Intelligence, Constitution, and Dexterity, in that order. Your choice between Wisdom and Charisma, depending on whether you prefer Perception or social skills.
This is not a psion guide. If you are reading this, I expect you to have already read a Pathfinder psion build guide. I'm just going to focus on things specific to the shaper specialization and abilities that synergize with the shaper's astral construct power.
Part One: The Astral Construct Power
The astral construct power is the shaper's bread-and-butter power. It basically make you a summoner (and although you won't be competing with the druid, you will be able to be both a summoner and a serious caster at the same time.)
Note that the power requires you to spend a round manifesting, it's Close range, and it doesn't last very long. This means that at first level you will likely be using it to help your rogue with flanking, and not much else. However, it quickly becomes more useful for you as you level.
Make sure you know how augmentation works. You can spend 2 power points to improve the level of your astral constructs. You can't spend more power points on a power than your manifester level (unless you use Overchannel, which is not a bad idea.)
Astral constructs are all the same, except for the menu options you pick. You get one menu option to start with, you get one menu option from the Boost Construct feat, and you get one more menu option at 2nd level. This gives you a total of 3 menu options, which are discussed here:
==MENU A==
GRADE A (These are the best ones.)
Cleave: Let your AC make multiple attacks. This is extremely useful if you are fighting more than one opponent.
Resistance: Situational, but still very nice because you can usually tell what kind of energy resistance to give it.
Trip: Because the trip attempts are free and don't allow the target to trip back, this is actually really good. Prone opponents suffer -4 AC, -4 to attack, reduced mobility, and have to provoke AoO to stand up. A++, would pick from menu again if it stacked.
GRADE B
Celerity: ACs are plenty fast, and should be in melee as much as possible instead of moving around. Even though this power is situational, it comes up in enough situations to be mid-grade. This is most worthwhile if your rogue needs a flanking partner. If your GM rules that ACs can't leave Close range, this is practically worthless.
Deflection: Every little bit of defense counts if you want your AC to stay alive. ACs have good armor class already, which makes armor boosts more effective mathematically. However, this bonus is too low to tank well.
Power Attack: ACs tend to have good attack rolls, making this worthwhile. This is great against low-AC targets, but don't use it if your enemies are using decent armor. Remember, your slam is a primary natural weapon so you get to add a +3 bonus to damage!
GRADE C (These are the worst ones, usually because they are highly situational or just unoptimized.)
Buff: Only marginally useful. Compared to deflection or resistance? Meh. This only lets your AC survive half an extra attack, and ACs already have good hp compared to the average party member. And really, do you *care* about the AC's well-being? It's going to be gone in a few rounds. This might be slightly useful for a permanized construct, and if you combine all three of the buff options you get a total of +50 which is actually quite respectable, along with all of the other ability combos you can work into that.
Fly: Extremely slow, only good situationally.
Improved Bull Rush: It can be nice situationally to push enemies off of cliffs or into your fighter's reach, but at low levels your AC is too small to do it reliably. At high levels this is still situational, but high-level ACs can use reach to avoid AoO.
Improved Slam Attack: This averages to a single point of damage at low levels. Not worth it. At high levels it might be a nice ability, but you have to sacrifice a higher-menu ability to get it.
Mobility: ACs shouldn't provoke AoOs to go after high-value targets unless they're doing it to flank with your party's rogue or fighter.
Swim: Situational. Of course, when you need it you need it.
MENU A COMBOS
Remember, as a decently-optimized Shaper you can get three of these. These combos are also good at higher levels when you can sacrifice a Menu B option for two Menu A options.
Cleave/Trip: What's better than tripping one opponent? Tripping two opponents!
Cleave/Power Attack: Carve a path of destruction through enemies, and you still get a move action each time.
Trip/Power Attack/Improved Slam Attack: Power attacking a prone opponent is easy damage. At higher levels this is an excellent combo because you can get multiple attacks in before they stand up.
Cleave/Celerity: A good counter to enemies with Spring Attack or archers and squishy wizards who are going to run away. Cleave is a standard action, so you can just keep running up to them instead of charging.
Celerity/Mobility/Deflection: An honorable mention here, for when you absolutely MUST get your AC through the front lines to pin down that pesky enemy wizard or archer. But you're a psion, just use a power instead.
==MENU B==
GRADE A
Extra Attack: An excellent menu choice. More attack rolls per round means more chances to hit. The damage penalty is negligible compared to the additional hits you get.
Heavy Deflection: The deflection bonus is much better. If you're up against anything that can kill your AC in one or two hits, this is a great way to keep it alive until the duration expires.
Muscle: +2 to hit, and +3 to damage (unless you took Extra Attack.) Of course, the to-hit bonus is the one you care about.
Improved Fly: Now we're talking! This gives your Astral Construct the ability to pick any target of your choice in a crowd. A Large-sized AC covers a 30' cube with its reach, which means you can get away with hovering over your target to lay down some battlefield control. Much less useful if your GM rules that the AC can't leave Close range.
GRADE B
Compact Form: Actually a decent defensive buff. It grants +2 AC, and that still works against touch attacks (which are your construct's weak point.) The tradeoff, of course, is lower damage (but your to-hit stays the same.)
Improved Critical: Considering the damage your AC is outputting, this is not a bad ability to give your AC. However, "fishing for crits" is considered a bad optimization choice because it's unreliable (you're likely to fail to confirm the crit.)
Improved Grab: A grapple construct is a decent way to go against many enemies, but larger enemies and melee-optimized enemies won't work as well as targets. Also, a grappling AC isn't performing any battlefield control. Make sure you read up on the grapple rules before using this ability.
Smite: This isn't much damage, but it comes into its own at higher levels when the AC gets more Hit Dice. Only good against a single target.
GRADE C
Energy Touch: Power Attack does more damage than this. Extra Attack does more damage than this. This is only good if you're fighting something with regeneration or damage reduction, or maybe an energy vulnerability.
Fast Healing: The amount healed is ridiculously low, and most astral constructs won't fully heal before their summon duration expires. This may be situationally useful for a permanized construct.
Improved Buff: See Buff.
Improved Damage Reduction: Situationally useful. This works best against hordes of weak enemies who don't have magic weapons.
Improved Swim: See Swim.
Poison Touch: 1/minute, cure 1 save? Garbage.
Pounce: You don't normally get multiple attacks until the 5th-level construct. It's useful if your enemy is *just* outside of spell range and you want to start off with a full attack, but once you're in melee range it's significantly less useful.
Trample: The damage is really low. Situationally this could be used to get past your enemies, but flight is an easier way to do that.
MENU B COMBOS
Extra Attack/Muscle/Trip: More tripping for everyone! A great way to deal with a crowd.
Muscle/Smite/Improved Critical: Reliable damage combo, and if you get lucky they're dead. Best against a single target.
Extra Attack/Pounce: It can be hard to get full attacks in. You're probably better off focusing on to-hit.
Muscle/Improved Grab: If you're going to go for a grapple construct, go all in.
Heavy Deflection/Compact Form: A total armor bonus of +6, and it works against touch attacks! The downside is that your AC won't be getting reach soon enough to make it more of the center of attention.
==MENU C==
GRADE A
Dimension Slide: Great for positioning your AC where it needs to be, and it's often better than Improved Fly. A 7th-level AC can slide 55', and it gets better for higher-level ACs.
Extreme Deflection: The best way to keep your construct alive. Great against touch attacks too.
Natural Invisibility: Almost too good to pass up, even though most high-level enemies have a way to circumvent invisibility. However, it's devastating when you can use it properly. It also doubles as battlefield control because your enemies don't know where it is.
GRADE B
Blindsight: Situational, but when you need it you need it. Invisibility comes up often enough to rate this one higher on the list.
Concussion: The free action aspect of it is actually very interesting and makes it worth considering. It automatically hits a single target within 170' for 3d6 damage (or two for 2d6, or three for 1d6.) This averages to just under 10 points of damage per round, but it's guaranteed to hit and the range is very nice. It can also do nonlethal damage and can damage some objects, which is situationally useful. If you give it to multiple constructs you can actually do some impressive things against anybody involved in the fight.
Constrict: An obvious pick if you're building a grapple AC. It lets you do slam damage with a successful grapple check (no actual attack roll required,) which is useful.
Extreme Damage Reduction: The DR is high enough to be useful, and it's a nice choice to keep permanized constructs alive. Situationally, it will work best against enemies with lots of weaker attacks or hordes of weak enemies. Against strong enemies, not so much.
Power Resistance: This is actually a pretty good level of resistance (roughly a 40% chance to block spells of your level.) High-level enemy casters are going to try to shut down your summons, and this is an extra layer of protection. Natural Invisibility might be better because it's hard to dispel something you can't see.
Rend: Alone, not so good, but it combos well. Decent direct damage, but it's just too hard to pull off to consecutive hits. If you use this, make sure you pump your to-hit as high as possible.
GRADE C
Energy Bolt: Situationally useful for making an artillery AC to take out out an enemy with regeneration or many weak enemies who like to line up for you. But it requires a standard action, only does an average of 36 cold or fire damage on a failed save, and it can't change energy types after it's summoned. Your AC is better off doing battlefield control than direct damage, and as a high-level psion you can do MUCH better than this. In terms of pp spent, this could be an efficient way to do damage over time.
Extra Buff: See Buff.
Spring Attack: Why would you only want to hit an enemy once? This can be situationally useful for plowing through enemies you know you can one-shot, or for letting your AC survive a few rounds against an enemy with a devastating full attack (upwards of 3 attacks and no pounce capability.) If you have a lot of constructs on the field, this might be useful because it lets a construct make melee attacks from an ally's square (see the Spring Attack footnote in the PFSRD.)
Whirlwind Attack: Garbage. The AC already gets multiple attacks at its highest base attack bonus, and you can get another with a cheaper menu option. You can't combine it with Cleave. This could be situationally useful for clearing out crowds, but against level-appropriate enemies it's worthless.
MENU C COMBOS
Dimension Slide/Cleave/Trip: A really nice battlefield control combo. Just teleport wherever you need to be to set up a Cleave, and then trip them when you're done.
Rend/Extra Attacks/Muscle/Pounce/Trip/Power Attack: A decent damage-dealing combo, since you get +4 to hit prone enemies. If you swap out abilities, remember that to-hit is the most important statistic of a melee construct.
Natural Invisibility/Extreme Deflection/Compact Form: +11 to armor, and it's invisible. This gives you an armor class of 43 and touch of 21. Hands down, the best way to keep a melee construct alive.
Natural Invisibility/Dimension Slide: Makes your AC impossible to find, unless your enemies have a way around the invisibility.
Constrict/Concussion/Muscle/Improved Grab/Improved Slam Attack: If you're going to go for a grapple construct, go all in. Concussion is in there because it can either be used to speed up the process or maintain some battlefield control.
Concussion/Energy Bolt: Decent artillery at good range. This can be useful if you're fighting an oppponent with a three-digit fly speed.
Buff/Improved Buff/Extra Buff/Fast Healing: I'll mention this because you can take all three Buffs for a +50 hit point bonus. At these levels it won't last you till the end of the round, but if you have a permanized construct it's nice to make it more durable.
==POWERS==
Psions are more like sorcerers than wizards when it comes to spell selection. You don't get a spellbook, you are stuck with what you pick.
As a summoner, you have a lot of actions in combat. Know the rules, and don't take too long each turn. Be conservative with pp, only go nova if you know it's worth it.
Remember, Expanded Knowledge is your friend. Powers that require it have been marked with their class in parentheses.
GRADE A
1
Create Sound: You can get it for free as a discipline talent, and it has a lot of good utility uses.
Disable: A solid save-or-suck spell that requires a Will save. Good against mooks.
Ectoplasmic Sheen: A great Reflex save-or-suck for battlefield control, and it can make people hold still so your AC can hit them.
Ectoplasmic Creation: Get it for free as a discipline talent. Use it to make gallons and gallons of flammable oil. Has many other good utility uses, especially if you can convince your GM to let you make drugs, poison, or glue. Also, armfuls of wooden marbles.
Entangling Ectoplasm: Touch attack, no save, no SR, cheap. The discipline talent version would let you manifest it for free without expending focus, which is not a bad debuff even at high levels. The only real limitation is that you have to augment it to hit larger enemies. Keeps people from running away from your ACs or towards you.
Skate: A nice party buff.
2
Dimension Swap (Nomad): Guess what! Your ACs count as allies, you can shuffle them around with the rest of the party with this power.
Clarivoyant Sense (Seer): The psionic version of scrying, and it's *good*. You can use it to look behind doors and walls, but not to find people or objects. An informed caster is a prepared caster.
Hustle (psychic warrior): Because summoning requires a full round, the extra move action can be invaluable.
Inflict Pain: An awesome save-or-suck that still hurts them on a successful save. With augmentation it can affect multiple targets. Use this on anything that makes attack rolls.
Share Pain: Link up an AC with your party's fighter to keep the fighter alive longer. This works best if you use it on an AC with defensive options, because the last thing you want to do is start making your fighter soak damage for the AC. It's touch range, but you don't need to worry about that if you get a psicrystal and let it deliver it for you. Also combos well with Vigor if you share it with your psicrystal.
3
Dispel Psionics: Because you're not the only caster out there.
Ectoplasmic Cocoon: An excellent Medium-range way to instantly incapacitate enemies and well worth your actions because it's a save-or-suck. Use on mages, warriors, or anything else with a poor Reflex save. Against anything that can make the save, don't bother, you have better things to do. It also has practical uses because you can use it on an ally as a defensive shell, but that may be a bad idea in combat.
Time Hop: A good save-or-lose that requires a Will save. This also has excellent utility value if you're creative (but note the weight limit.)
4
Fold Space: Quick and easy getaway. Try not to leave your party behind.
Intellect Fortress: Saves your party (and your ACs!) a lot of pain.
Quintessence: Okay, here's the secret to this power. If an object coated in quintessence has an active spell on it, the duration won't expire. When you scrape it off, the spell effect continues where it left off. Now grab the PHB spell list and use your imagination. Check with your GM first.
Wall of Ectoplasm: Excellent battlefield control.
5
Ectoplasmic Shambler: Long range, no save, no PR, blocks vision, and makes life hard for casters. The only thing left to do is throw a grapple-build AC in there to clean things up.
Incarnate: Not quite as good if you are crafting magic items, but it's still a good pick at this level.
Pierce The Veils: Because you can't tell your ACs to attack what you can't see.
Psionic Revivify (Egoist): Guess what you can do better than the cleric can!
6
Crystallize: Ask your GM to rule that this can be augmented to improve the save DC. Even then, it's a great Medium-range save-or-lose. It even has practical uses, you can use it on a dying or poisoned ally to instantly stabilize him (but Time Hop is more versatile in this regard.)
Disintegration: Save-or-die, and excellent utility too. If your enemy has spell resistance, you can always blast the ground out from under his feet.
Temporal Acceleration: Lets you queue up a bunch of ACs in an emergency, and also buff yourself.
Trigger Power: Another one of those spells that will save your life.
7
Bend Reality: Gives you access to all the psionic powers you didn't take. Combine it with item crafting or incarnation to get access to powers that you would normally only be using once.
Ethereal Form (Nomad): Keep yourself safe while summoning. The higher-level psion version is a party buff.
Fate of One (Seer): For when you absolutely *must* reroll a saving throw.
Fission (Egoist): You get to manifest powers twice as fast. This is a straightforward way to "go nova".
Mass Ectoplasmic Cocoon: See Ectoplasmic Cocoon. You might want this to replace the single-target version, since you would already be spending pp to raise the save DC.
8
Astral Seed: Lets you survive death. In fact, you can survive a TPK. Go donate 500 gp to a temple somewhere in exchange for interring a coffin. Throw the seed into the coffin for along with clothing, something for teleport and scrying, and enough treasure objects for you to pawn them for a restoration spell plus spending cash. There's really no reason not to take this.
True Metabolism: The fast healing is good enough for this to get mentioned.
9
Affinity Field: Allows for an uncountable number of combos.
Assimilate: The best part is that the bonus is untyped and lasts for hours. Have your ACs deal nonlethal damage to someone and then use it on them while they're unconscious. For cheese, use it with a bag of tricks.
Reality Revision: Worth it.
GRADE B
1
Crystal Shard: This would be great if you weren't already doing good damage with your ACs. However, sometimes there's an enemy just over there who you really need to kill right now. Touch attack, no SR, no save.
Ecto Protection: Expensive, but the ability to throw it on top of an AC is nice. If an enemy mage is giving you problems, you might be better off spamming cheaper astral constructs because you'll outlast him that way. Don't take it as a discipline talent because you're better off shooting people with a crossbow when you're out of power points.
Energy Ray: See Crystal Shard, this one does 2 more damage per caster level but allows spell resistance. Only take one or the other.
Inertial Armor: Lasts for hours, and you can augment it to make it even stronger. Great for avoiding enemies who don't like the fact that your party has a summoner. The only real downside is that, as a psion, you can wear real armor.
2
Control Sound: Interesting, but there are better powers to take.
Ego Whip: A decent single-target save-or-suck power that, at higher levels, is capable of one-shotting enemies. Even on a successful save, the target still suffers Charisma damage. Use this against sorcerers, monsters that rely on spell-like abilities, and ugly monsters.
Minor Metamorphosis: Insanely good utility spell, even if you only use it for the odd movement speeds. You can use Expanded Knowledge to get from the Egoist list with a base cost of 1 pp instead of 3 pp.
3
Energy Wall: A nice battlefield control spell, combined with ACs you're going to be ruining everyone's day. Note that you can use the sonic version to do a LOT of damage to objects. Ignores SR.
Mental Barrier: This spell will probably save your life one day.
4
Correspond: Better than most arcane communication spells. This is a good utility spell.
Psionic Freedom Of Movement: Because getting grappled sucks.
Schism (Telepath): Nice for the extra actions, even if it can't summon ACs.
5
Planar Travel: The poor non-nomad's psychoport. Still an awesome utility.
Power Resistance: An excellent buff. You may not be using it as much as a wizard, though, because you will be keeping enemy casters busy with your ACs.
Psychoport (Nomad): Teleportation is one of the best utility spells, and you can use it to escape battle if things turn sour. There is a higher-level psion version, and the cost might be worth it because of its improved accuracy.
6
Dispelling Buffer (Kineticist): Great for your permanized AC. Good for the construct you're about to send into an enemy mage's sanctum. Still, it's probably cheaper just to summon two ACs instead.
Retrive: You can use this to disarm enemy fighters with ease as a save-or-suck, and it's also good utility. Also useful if you command your ACs to disarm people, then you can grab their weapons without a save.
7
Energy Conversion: Stand in your own Energy Wall for cheese.
8
Greater Psychoport: See Psychoport.
GRADE C
2
Cleanse Body: Only take this if your party has no cleric.
Reconstruction: Don't. It's easier to summon a new one. This could be situationally useful if you have a warforged in your party. You could use it to heal your psicrystal.
Sustenance: An okay utility power that might possibly save your life, oh, once every other campaign? More useful if you know that resource scarcity will be an issue. Or just play an Elan.
4
Augured Answer: Only take this if your party has no cleric.
Psychic Reformation: Cheese, because you can use it on yourself to change your power selection on the fly (and other creative utility uses.) If your GM is sympathetic to your limited power selection, you might be able to get away with it.
Trace Psychoport: Situational, but it could end up useful.
5
Adapt Body: Good if your party is going to travel to the elemental plane of fire or something.
6
Co-opt Concentration: Good if your GM lets you use it on spells as well as powers. However, most enemy casters will have good Will saves.
==FEATS==
GRADE A
Boost Construct: Take this first.
Overchannel: It hurts, but you can use Overchannel to summon stronger ACs.
Talented: Take this if you take Overchannel so it hurts less. If you don't take this, learn the vigor power to offset the Overchannel damage. Remember, you lose one of your three menu options of you don't keep your focus while manifesting astral construct (but the AC is several Hit Dice tougher, so it may not matter.)
Improved Initiative: I have never regretted taking this feat as a mage.
Expanded Knowledge: Get useful powers you normally couldn't.
Body Fuel: You will thank yourself for taking this when you have overextended yourself or run dry.
Endowed Mind: Actually quite useful with some powers if you augment to hit multiple targets.
Psicrystal Affinity: First off, it's a scout that can see in the dark and grants you a Perception bonus. Second off, you can get a new one in 24 hours if it dies. If you have a psicrystal, become familiar with all of its abilities and use them. Take Nimble (initiative bonus,) or Hero (to cover your poor Fortitude save.)
Psicrystal Containment: You will not regret having two psionic focuses.
Enlarge Power: No pp cost, double the range of your summon spells. Remember, you lose one of your three menu options of you don't keep your focus while manifesting astral construct. Still, dropping a construct where it can make a full attack is worth it.
GRADE B
Craft Potion, Craft Wondrous Item, Craft Magic Arms And Armor, and Craft Cognizance Crystal: Only take these if it's the kind of campaign where you get downtime and access to resources. Even though your spell selection is limited, you can use party members or hired mages to fill spell prereqs, or just make the needed checks.
Burrowing Power: Summon ACs through walls. Only works in conjunction with some type of scrying.
Psionic Meditation: Not as useful as it could be because it requires a move action, and as a summoner you don't get many move actions. You could take Hustle to refocus faster, but that's expensive. Still, it's nice to have focus when you need it.
Speed of Thought: Situationally useful, but you will benefit from it very often.
Unconditional Power: Might save your bacon someday.
GRADE C
Inquisitor: If it's that kind of campaign.
Delay Power: Summon ACs as traps. Note the half-minute limit.
Extend Power: Might be useful if you are worried your AC won't last long enough. This is only an issue at low levels.
Power Penetration: SR causing you trouble? Don't bother, have your ACs use the aid another action on the party fighter instead.
Twin Power: The only way to summon two ACs, but they are 3 levels lower. Ouch.
Mind Over Body: Might be helpful if you take Body Fuel.
Psionic Talent: Doesn't scale with level, and you would have to take it multiple times to get much effect out of it.
==RACE==
Can't go wrong with human. This build is a bit feat-intensive. Besides that, you should consider anything with an Intelligence bonus.
==STATS==
Intelligence, Constitution, and Dexterity, in that order. Your choice between Wisdom and Charisma, depending on whether you prefer Perception or social skills.