Psionic Charger

[Elric VIII]

For the campaign I am running I would like to put together a legion of mounted charger characters to present as a foe. They represent a tribe of desert nomads. The idea is to use a combination of Ardent, Soulbound Weapon PsiWar, and Deep Impact to make a reasonably powerful charger.

The first draft of the build will look like:

Human Ardent 2/Psychic Warrior 2/Ardent 5/Ashworm Dragoon 3. Feats: Psionic Weapon, Power Attack, Deep Impact, Mounted Combat, Psionic Meditation, Ride-by Attack, Practiced Manifester.

Now, at Ardent 2 I will take the Justice Mantle and the Call Weaponry power (so that I can augment it based on Ardent levels). I also plan to use Hustle + Psionic Meditation to use Deep Impact (potentially) each round to power attack successfully.

So, the questions:

Are there any weapons, more interesting than lances, that get bonuses on a charge (aside from Valorous)?


IIRC, you can only know a power once. So how does that interact with the Soulbound Weapon feature that requires you to learn Call Weaponry if I have already learned it as an Ardent?


Are there any powers that you can recommend to make the charging more interesting?


If the Soulbound Weapon thing does not work, I will probably replace the 2 PsyWar levels with 1 Fighter level (for Ride as a class skill) and an additional level of Ashworm Dragoon.

[eggs]

IIRC, you can only know a power once. So how does that interact with the Soulbound Weapon feature that requires you to learn Call Weaponry if I have already learned it as an Ardent?
I don't think that would be a problem. The ACF just says it has to be the first power you learn. If you learned it from a different source, I don't believe it would foul anything up. The bigger problem would be that its Enhancement bonus is based on Psychic Warrior levels.

The one thing that I'd worry about is action economy. With Soulbound Weapon, you aren't reliably armed at the beginning of a fight, meaning you'll often face several restricting options:
-1. Waste a round manifesting the weapon. This is a bad enough idea that you can basically rule it out.
-2. Link it to a Swift power and attack with a secondary weapon in round 1. For a charger, this means you're either neutering yourself in the most important round of a fight, or investing enough resources in a secondary weapon that you may as well skip the ACF.
-3. Quicken the power. This means that your maximum enhancement is hugely reduced. For context, it means a straightclassed Psychic Warrior isn't going to get a Valorous Weapon on his opening charge until ECL 12 (though that can be admittedly be reduced with various investments).

Whether this will actually be a problem is enormously group-dependent, but it's a problem I've had with the ACF, and something worth bearing in mind.

[Elric VIII]

Well, this is for a group of NPCs my players will be facing, so (hopefully) they will be initiating the combat and will have their weapons ready.

So, I assume that means that I will be able to choose a different power to fill the PsyWar 1 slot?


Also, since I do hate to just homebrew stuff for the use of my NPCs, does anyone know of, perhaps, any types of lances different from the European style that I may use as a description of their weapons?