My psychic warrior build, what do you think.

[morkendi]

I am more interested in what people think of feats and powers. Character has been very fun to play as we started at 1 and we are just now getting to 20. Getting ready for epic lvls, so I dont know what I am going to do yet. I stayed psychic warrior instead of going to slayer or another prestiege class because I wanted to see how it would go and I wanted to pick my own feats. So far, character has turned into a power house in the game.

at lvl 20 stats , 20 str, 14 int, 14wis, 16 dex, 14 con, 8 cha.

Feats not in order taken

Exotic weapon, spiked chain

Combat Expertise

Improved Trip

Knockdown

Combat Reflexes

Meta power, quicken expansion - Reduces the cost and allows you to get 2 buffs in first round. I usally str of my enemy and then do this first round

Expand Knowledge-Inertial Armor 1st lvl add 4 to ac. Augments for every 2 pp adds another point to ac.

Expand Knowledge-Thought Shield - gain pr13 against mind effects

Expand Knowledge- Prowess - Gain an instant AoO if the oppertunity arises, stacked with Combat reflexes, it gives 4 per round which will do more than 10 points which kicks in the knockdown

Earth Sense - prereq for earth power, but it can sense all creatures within 20 feet if the are touching the ground.

Earth power - Reduces the cost of all powers by 1 if you are in contact with earth

Linked power- Pay for 2 powers in 1 round. First goes off this round, other in next round, thing is you are free to do your normal thing the secound round. I usally cast Str of my enemy linked to True Venom Weapon, then use my metapower to get off a quickened augmented expasion thus going 2 size catigories. This means all 3 buffs are up in the begining of the second round. I am now doing 4d6+10 plus whatever other bonus to weapon and such. Minimum with no other bonus is 14 which kicks in Knockdown. And remember I am draining str and con for each hit and adding the str to my own making my damage go up every time even with the AoO.

Powers I took wich work well.
1. Expansion
1. vigor 5 HP per PP spent, spend 10 and you have 50 mor HP.
1. Call Weapon spend 16 points, you can call a +5 spiked chain out of the thin air to use. I got this after th DM decided to have someone pollymorph any object my chain into a spoon.
2. Body adjustment Heal d12 for every 2 points spent
2. Lions charge, make full attack after charge
2. Str of my enemy. Drain 1 str and add to yours. Max of 8 per mob, but you can take 8 from each mob you face. AoO drains as well.
3.Empathic Transfer Hostile. Transfer up to 50 points of daqmage you have taken to enemy on touch attack max 90 if you spend 9 points
3. Evade Burst. works like evasion
3. Vamperic Blade. Heals half your base weapon damage when you hit, good with AoO and the fact that you are enlarged from expasion. Minimum heal per hit is 7 and max is 17. With number od attacks and AoO, it adds up fast.
4. Dim door. Augment lets you use as a move action.
4. True Venom no save for first 1d8 poison damage to con, secondary gets fort save. Very nasty because 0 con meens death.
4. Freedom of movement
5. Adapt Body
5 Oak Body
5. Psycofeedback Boost one physical stat at the cost of another. Trick here, all that Str you keep building from str of my enemy can be transfered to another pysical stat now. You can add to con for more HP or Dex for more AoO. My favorite is add to dex getting more AoO , wich meens more attacks wich gives me even more Str to change over, Never ending circle untill you run out of things to hit or power points. Don't forget more reflex saves if people try to blast me wich i can save for none or half thanks to Evade burst.

Very nasty, fun to play character.... 149 PP at 20th lvl with attacks at +21/+16/+11. Hit Die are 8 sided, but with self healing and buffing, this is no issue.

No need to keep going because I get five 6th level powers, but I rarely use them.

I know the king of smack exist, but if my DM thinks something is cheese, he wont allow it. Everything has to kept within reason with no homebrew stuff. He is all base books and some pathfinder. He does allow us to retrain feats and powers when we train for lvl however, so I can make changes.

[morkendi]

Any ideas on what way i should go? I think I have gone to a point i am getting everything I need already. Now we are in epic lvl, so I am looking for something to compliment this build. Core books and pathfinder only, no homebrew.

[D@rK-SePHiRoTH-]

I don't see Karmic Strike or Robilar's Gambit.
Stormguard Warrior is also a must.

EDIT: I'm sorry, I didn't read properly the limitations.

From Pathfinder, you should definitely get Combat Patrol

[Lonely Tylenol]

Tashalatora would be nice, because you could, with a dip and a feat, grab 21st-level progression of a Monk's unarmed strike, flurry of blows, and AC bonus (when unarmored), but it requires a feat out of Secrets of Sarlona, which is definitely not core.

Within core, Psionic Meditation, combined with the second-level PsyWar power Hustle, would allow you to regain psionic focus as a swift action (Psionic Meditation mitigates it to a move action, and Hustle grants you a move action with a swift action casting time), but you don't have Hustle, so I don't know what that's worth to you. This can be combined with Quicken Power (which you already have), or with any number of cool things you can do with your psionic focus (usually via feats).

[morkendi]

I was thinking staying psychic war and grabbing robilards gambit and karmic strike. Was kind of thinking head towards great cleave also. If i kill a enemy, i could move to next target. I kill a good amount of mobs with the con drain from true venom as the 1st d8 has no save.

[dantiesilva]

I would grab psionic weapon and greater psionic weapon. Add 4d6 damage to each swing. As well as psionic mediation so that you are making your maximizing your damage which you seem to be doing already. Besides that I say congratulations amazing build.

[Rubik]

I'd hit level 20 as a psywar and then start taking mantled wilder and then metamind (stacked with wilder). Wild Surge works on psywar powers, which gives you a minor boost, wilder will give you extra power points and powers known (go with buffs and non-scaling powers, at least at first), and then metamind will (eventually) give you Font of Power. A couple of instances of Practiced Manifester will mitigate several levels of ML loss, and the wild surge will boost everything else. You could also fit in some anarchic initiate in there if you like.

Alternatively, go psion for the extra bonus feats.

[Urpriest]

I'd hit level 20 as a psywar and then start taking mantled wilder and then metamind (stacked with wilder). Wild Surge works on psywar powers, which gives you a minor boost, wilder will give you extra power points and powers known (go with buffs and non-scaling powers, at least at first), and then metamind will (eventually) give you Font of Power. A couple of instances of Practiced Manifester will mitigate several levels of ML loss, and the wild surge will boost everything else. You could also fit in some anarchic initiate in there if you like.

Alternatively, go psion for the extra bonus feats.

At Epic, any boost from Wilder will be much lower than what can be gotten through Improved Overchannel.

[Flickerdart]

I would grab psionic weapon and greater psionic weapon. Add 4d6 damage to each swing. As well as psionic mediation so that you are making your maximizing your damage which you seem to be doing already. Besides that I say congratulations amazing build.
PW/GPW don't add anything "to each swing". They only work on one attack, after which you need to recharge psionic focus.

[Rubik]

At Epic, any boost from Wilder will be much lower than what can be gotten through Improved Overchannel.I guess so. The important thing is to multiclass so you keep accruing power points.

[Rubik]

Also, two of the epic feats in CPsi are awesome. The others suuuuck.

[TuggyNE]

Most of this is good, but I noticed a few weird things.


Expand Knowledge-Inertial Armor 1st lvl add 4 to ac. Augments for every 2 pp adds another point to ac.

Expand Knowledge-Thought Shield - gain pr13 against mind effects

Expand Knowledge- Prowess - Gain an instant AoO if the oppertunity arises, stacked with Combat reflexes, it gives 4 per round which will do more than 10 points which kicks in the knockdown

Decent selections, but why did you burn feat slots on them, instead of just taking the power on level up? (There is no requirement to learn max-level powers, or anything like that; you can learn a second-level power at any level.)


1. Call Weapon spend 16 points, you can call a +5 spiked chain out of the thin air to use. I got this after th DM decided to have someone pollymorph any object my chain into a spoon.

Might be cheaper/better to make your spiked chain magic; PaO doesn't work on magic items. (Which naturally raises the question of how that ever worked in the first place, since you should have a magic weapon anyway at the level 8ths are being tossed around.)


5. Psycofeedback Boost one physical stat at the cost of another. Trick here, all that Str you keep building from str of my enemy can be transfered to another pysical stat now. You can add to con for more HP or Dex for more AoO. My favorite is add to dex getting more AoO , wich meens more attacks wich gives me even more Str to change over, Never ending circle untill you run out of things to hit or power points. Don't forget more reflex saves if people try to blast me wich i can save for none or half thanks to Evade burst.

Ow, no, psychofeedback does not work that way. You're taking ability burn to one score — not an ability penalty, not ability damage, not even ability drain: ability burn, which cannot be magically or psionically healed. In other words, you're hurting your ability score for days, weeks, or months, unavoidably, to get a round/level boost. Because of that also, the enhancement bonus to your Str doesn't help you much: you only benefit from the highest enhancement bonus (which at ML 21 is going to be at most +20 — a very respectable figure, if you can get that many attacks off on a single opponent, which seems a little implausible), and you can't burn your base ability score below 0 anyway. What this means is you can take up to 19 points of ability burn to Str and add that to Dex for a bit, and rely on strength of my enemy or whatever to get you a semblance of strength for the next few weeks while your burn heals — obviously, when it's not running, you have Str 1 or whatever, which is pretty terrible.

So no, psychofeedback is not a good power for routine use like that. (I'm actually not sure it's a good power for much of anybody, to be honest.)

[Rubik]

Most of this is good, but I noticed a few weird things.



Decent selections, but why did you burn feat slots on them, instead of just taking the power on level up? (There is no requirement to learn max-level powers, or anything like that; you can learn a second-level power at any level.)



Might be cheaper/better to make your spiked chain magic; PaO doesn't work on magic items. (Which naturally raises the question of how that ever worked in the first place, since you should have a magic weapon anyway at the level 8ths are being tossed around.)



Ow, no, psychofeedback does not work that way. You're taking ability burn to one score — not an ability penalty, not ability damage, not even ability drain: ability burn, which cannot be magically or psionically healed. In other words, you're hurting your ability score for days, weeks, or months, unavoidably, to get a round/level boost. Because of that also, the enhancement bonus to your Str doesn't help you much: you only benefit from the highest enhancement bonus (which at ML 21 is going to be at most +20 — a very respectable figure, if you can get that many attacks off on a single opponent, which seems a little implausible), and you can't burn your base ability score below 0 anyway. What this means is you can take up to 19 points of ability burn to Str and add that to Dex for a bit, and rely on strength of my enemy or whatever to get you a semblance of strength for the next few weeks while your burn heals — obviously, when it's not running, you have Str 1 or whatever, which is pretty terrible.

So no, psychofeedback is not a good power for routine use like that. (I'm actually not sure it's a good power for much of anybody, to be honest.)I agree with everything said here.

The only way I'd EVER take Psychofeedback is if I was immune to ability damage (as in, undead or something), or if I had Psychic Bastion, a feat in 3.0 (which is still viable, as it's never been rewritten) and in Hyperconscious (which is 3.5 and 3rd party, but it's written by Bruce Cordell, who also wrote the XPH and the GOOD parts of CPsi). It gives you ability depletion resistance 3/-, which acts just like DR but for anything that lowers an ability score for any reason.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Quit the game. No, seriously.

Look, Epic level games don't turn out so well. If you are melee, your job is basically 'make coffee'. If you are a caster, your job is 'exploit the epic spell seed creation system to obliterate any semblance of game balance'. At this point, Balor Bombs, Titan Gate Chains, and Reset Buttons are all old hat. Basically, you've entered the Rocket Launcher Duel Academy. If you win initiative, you win. Otherwise, you lose. It's literally the only roll that matters anymore.

Having said that, you've missed some tricks.

1) Empathic Transfer, Hostile. Assuming any opponent is not immune, use the area effect version. EACH OPPONENT gets hit for 50 (and augment-able upwards), and you heal for the TOTAL DAMAGE DEALT. So if you hit four opponents for 50 each, that's 200 healing you just did for yourself. Plus, it's Will/Half, so even if they save, it's still healing you.

2) Empathic Feedback. You forgot this. If you still are being hit in melee, don't. 20 damage shield is a lot of fun against multi-attacking opponents. The phrase is 'go ahead and hit me, you'll only die faster'. Combo with Empathic Transfer, Hostile to heal back up. Do note the duration of 10m/lvl. At 20th Manifester level, that's 200 minutes, or just under 3 and a half hours. Blow your focus for Extend Power, and that's 400 minutes, or just over 6.5 hours. At your level, this is quite a while.

3) Mind Blank, Personal. Immunity to quite a lot of obnoxiousness. Duration of one day.

4) Energy Adaptation is a good way to shrug off blastomancy, if you expect it. Notably, it stops you from frying when you have Oak Body up and someone tosses a Fireball your way.

4) I don't see anything mobility related. Don't underestimate something like Dimensional Slide to save your allies.

5) You seem to be an AoE Lockdown Tank, using a Spiked Chain + Expansion to get a 20'+ melee reach, with Improved Trip. You forget that a Spiked Chain is a two-handed weapon. Power Attack is your friend. See if you can get your GM to bend on getting Shock Trooper from Complete Warrior. Also inquire about Leap Attack from Complete Adventurer. There's no need to go to ridiculousness that some 'charger' builds use, but these two feats will let you actually use Psionic Lion's Charge a LOT more effectively.

Sure, Shock Trooper means you WILL get hit. That's why you have Empathic Transfer, Hostile and Empathic Feedback. Go ahead. Hit me. Please. First off, you take damage when you hit me, then I drain it all back the next round anyways.

6) Ever heard of the Slayer PrC? It's on the SRD. For the price of needing Track (maybe a Ranger dip?) you net full BAB, 9/10 manifesting, and some lovely immunities. Ranger1/PsyWar9/Slayer10 ends up with +17 BAB and 18th level Manifesting.

[Rubik]

6) Ever heard of the Slayer PrC? It's on the SRD. For the price of needing Track (maybe a Ranger dip?) you net full BAB, 9/10 manifesting, and some lovely immunities. Ranger1/PsyWar9/Slayer10 ends up with +17 BAB and 18th level Manifesting.Or you could forget the spiked chain and go spiked gauntlet and guisarme, skip that level of ranger, and have the same BAB and 19th level manifesting. Also, there's a PrC in Hyperconscious called the ghostbreaker. Easy-peasy to qualify for, 5/5 manifesting, and full BAB. It also gives good bonuses vs undead.

Spiked chain isn't really worth the feat. And that says something about exotic weapons in general, since it's one of the best ones.

You could always use that feat to take the soulbound weapon variant ACF (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20070214a) and use it when you need just the right weapon for whatever you wanna stab.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Or you could forget the spiked chain and go spiked gauntlet and guisarme, skip that level of ranger, and have the same BAB and 19th level manifesting.You also need skills which are class skills for Ranger but not for PsyWar. It's easiest to just grab the dip and call it done.
Also, there's a PrC in Hyperconscious called the ghostbreaker. Easy-peasy to qualify for, 5/5 manifesting, and full BAB. It also gives good bonuses vs undead.3rd party sources make Pun-Pun cry.


Spiked chain isn't really worth the feat. And that says something about exotic weapons in general, since it's one of the best ones.I've seen the argument before. I still don't agree with it. You halve your damage output to anyone closing with you. That's extremely counter-productive. With Gusarime, you can ONLY hit someone 20' out, and with gauntlets, you're hitting at 5' and 10', there's still a gap at 15', with Large size. And Gauntlets are not two-handed weapons, so your bonuses from PA/LA/ST and Str bonuses are halved. Rather silly, in my opinion, but to each their own.


You could always use that feat to take the soulbound weapon variant ACF (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20070214a) and use it when you need just the right weapon for whatever you wanna stab.
/heddesk

You don't 'use a feat' to take an ACF. You replace the 2nd level bonus feat you get to obtain something else instead. Very important difference there. Also, it requires picking up the Call Weapon Power, which isn't really worth bothering with, even with this ACF.

As with the Soulknife and the Arcane Archer: Thou Shalt Not Do That Which Can Be Done With A 3rd Level Spell.

[eggs]

You don't 'use a feat' to take an ACF. You replace the 2nd level bonus feat you get to obtain something else instead. Very important difference there.
With retraining, it's really not. And he's already using Call Weaponry as a primary weapon mode. He might as well not suck at it.

[Tvtyrant]

As with the Soulknife and the Arcane Archer: Thou Shalt Not Do That Which Can Be Done With A 3rd Level Spell.

Normally I would agree with you, but the augmentation feature is actually pretty good (much better than a Soulknife). You can use the Elemental weapon line from the MIC to gain summons as a Psywarrior, for instance, or Bane properties, etc. Having a weapon you can augment for no XP on the fly is actually not a bad option.

[morkendi]

Most of this is good, but I noticed a few weird things.



Decent selections, but why did you burn feat slots on them, instead of just taking the power on level up? (There is no requirement to learn max-level powers, or anything like that; you can learn a second-level power at any level.)



Might be cheaper/better to make your spiked chain magic; PaO doesn't work on magic items. (Which naturally raises the question of how that ever worked in the first place, since you should have a magic weapon anyway at the level 8ths are being tossed around.)



Ow, no, psychofeedback does not work that way. You're taking ability burn to one score — not an ability penalty, not ability damage, not even ability drain: ability burn, which cannot be magically or psionically healed. In other words, you're hurting your ability score for days, weeks, or months, unavoidably, to get a round/level boost. Because of that also, the enhancement bonus to your Str doesn't help you much: you only benefit from the highest enhancement bonus (which at ML 21 is going to be at most +20 — a very respectable figure, if you can get that many attacks off on a single opponent, which seems a little implausible), and you can't burn your base ability score below 0 anyway. What this means is you can take up to 19 points of ability burn to Str and add that to Dex for a bit, and rely on strength of my enemy or whatever to get you a semblance of strength for the next few weeks while your burn heals — obviously, when it's not running, you have Str 1 or whatever, which is pretty terrible.

So no, psychofeedback is not a good power for routine use like that. (I'm actually not sure it's a good power for much of anybody, to be honest.)

I spent the feats because they are powers I wanted for this. At level 20, I get three 1st level powers , three 2nd, three 3rd, three 4th, three 5th, and 5 6th. I think a good amount of the powers are key for what I wanted to do, but with a choice of only 3 per level at lower levels limited this, thus I took the expanded knowledge.

I took the call weapon because our dm likes to sepparate us from our equipment sometimes. Weather it is a mob that does it in some way or whatever. Between this and inertial armor, I am able to fullfil my roll as party tank no matter what and not totally dependent on equipment. My normal chain is +4 holy.

I dropped psycofeedback for catapsi.



With retraining, it's really not. And he's already using Call Weaponry as a primary weapon mode. He might as well not suck at it.

Call weapon is not my primary. Its there to make this character self supportive and allow him to do what he does in any situation. In one part of the game, I surrendered mysell to capture on purpose to get into a mobs base. They stripped me nakid and tossed me into jail. Between expansion, call weapon, and inertial armor, I was able to fight my way out nakid without haveing to change the characters play style. I just walked out and beasted everything with trips and attacks of AoO and hit them while they were prone. I razed enouph hell that they had to pull guards from walls to try to deal with me wich allowed the rest of the party to get in. A normal fighter couldn't be this self supportive. Being able to heal myself and do these things is key in my characters mindset.


Quit the game. No, seriously.

Look, Epic level games don't turn out so well. If you are melee, your job is basically 'make coffee'. If you are a caster, your job is 'exploit the epic spell seed creation system to obliterate any semblance of game balance'. At this point, Balor Bombs, Titan Gate Chains, and Reset Buttons are all old hat. Basically, you've entered the Rocket Launcher Duel Academy. If you win initiative, you win. Otherwise, you lose. It's literally the only roll that matters anymore.

Having said that, you've missed some tricks.

1) Empathic Transfer, Hostile. Assuming any opponent is not immune, use the area effect version. EACH OPPONENT gets hit for 50 (and augment-able upwards), and you heal for the TOTAL DAMAGE DEALT. So if you hit four opponents for 50 each, that's 200 healing you just did for yourself. Plus, it's Will/Half, so even if they save, it's still healing you.

2) Empathic Feedback. You forgot this. If you still are being hit in melee, don't. 20 damage shield is a lot of fun against multi-attacking opponents. The phrase is 'go ahead and hit me, you'll only die faster'. Combo with Empathic Transfer, Hostile to heal back up. Do note the duration of 10m/lvl. At 20th Manifester level, that's 200 minutes, or just under 3 and a half hours. Blow your focus for Extend Power, and that's 400 minutes, or just over 6.5 hours. At your level, this is quite a while.

3) Mind Blank, Personal. Immunity to quite a lot of obnoxiousness. Duration of one day.

4) Energy Adaptation is a good way to shrug off blastomancy, if you expect it. Notably, it stops you from frying when you have Oak Body up and someone tosses a Fireball your way.

4) I don't see anything mobility related. Don't underestimate something like Dimensional Slide to save your allies.

5) You seem to be an AoE Lockdown Tank, using a Spiked Chain + Expansion to get a 20'+ melee reach, with Improved Trip. You forget that a Spiked Chain is a two-handed weapon. Power Attack is your friend. See if you can get your GM to bend on getting Shock Trooper from Complete Warrior. Also inquire about Leap Attack from Complete Adventurer. There's no need to go to ridiculousness that some 'charger' builds use, but these two feats will let you actually use Psionic Lion's Charge a LOT more effectively.

Sure, Shock Trooper means you WILL get hit. That's why you have Empathic Transfer, Hostile and Empathic Feedback. Go ahead. Hit me. Please. First off, you take damage when you hit me, then I drain it all back the next round anyways.

6) Ever heard of the Slayer PrC? It's on the SRD. For the price of needing Track (maybe a Ranger dip?) you net full BAB, 9/10 manifesting, and some lovely immunities. Ranger1/PsyWar9/Slayer10 ends up with +17 BAB and 18th level Manifesting.

Thanks for the advice. I don't have dimmension slide, but I do have Dim Door. I didn't want to take both as there are more 3rd level powers I wanted to fit in.

I use empathic transfer just like you said. Most times, when the mobs see the damage output I do in close coupled with trip, 4 AoO, Str of my enemy, and true venom wepon, They back off and try to handle me at range. Casters blast me, and I evade burst. Archers shoot etc. I just epathic transfer what they do to me back out to them in 20 ft radius.

I looked at slayer, but just decided to stay psychic warrior to gane the bonus feats. I wanted to fill a roll. My job is main tank. I force mobs to deal with me first, I trip them and our rouge gets backstab bonus almost entire fight. The mysic thurge is free to use a good amout of his save or else spells as he doesn't have to sack much for healing. The three of use are able to handle a lot as most campains end before 20 with this dm from character deaths or something.