From Levels 15 to 30 - help build an epic psigish

[JW86]

Hi guys.

I am waiting to introduce a new character into a campaign - I have posted in here previously and gotten loads of good feedback, but want to run this by you all because I find your ideas useful and fun :D

If you were to introduce a character at level 15, with a view of levelling them into mid-high 20s, perhaps even level 30, how would you go about it?

Added conditions..
The character is a Lesser Tiefling. The character has a Katana(or Jovar) and is proficient in its use. The character is a powerful psionic manifester.

Stats are 16,15,14,14,14,11 - so by level 15 including racial mods I'm going with STR14, DEX16 (14+2 racial), CON 16 (15+1lvl), INT 20 (16+2racial+2level), WIS 14, CHA 9 (11 -2 racial)

Basic staple powers would include Dimension Hop, Inertial Armour, Concealing Amorpha, Energy Missile, Crystalstorm, Disintegrate, Temporal Acceleration, and perhaps Inconstant Location. Also the Share Pain/Vigor/Solicit Psycrystal tactic will be in use.

I'm open to a number of melee-options - whether iajutsu focus, power attack/leap/shock trooper, crit-fishing, abusing AoO. etc., Anything that is cool with a katana/jovar - although having a high crit chance coupled with AoO abuse would be fun - alongside dimension hop, gives the idea of a highly mobile fighter, difficult to hit and constantly poking holes in people.

Perhaps Ranger 1/Warblade 1/Psion 4 / Slayer 10 / Psion +6 / Warblade +8?
Psion/Slayer/Anarchic Initiate?
Warblade/Psion?
Ardent 10/Swordsage?

Egoist is the obvious choice for a Gish, but I think Shaper is filled with so many cool fluff ideas - quintissence, creating demiplanes, etc and all that cheesy God stuff. Nothing like going through a long, self-aggrandising speech to the stupid fighter of the group about how I'm storing quintissenced prisinors in my personal demiplane to planeshift to and empathic hostile transfer health from when I feel like replenishing myself, etc.

So, to summarise, I'd be loving comments for:
Tiefling Psigish wielding a Katana for massive damage, AoOs, etc. alongside Dimension Hop and Concealing Amorpha for being a generally tricky bugger to hit.
High-level God-like Psionics - lots of 'tricks up her sleeve' to do things to surprise, impress, protect allies and to utterly destroy enemies (yes, empowered maximised energy missiles and disintegrate is fine, if possible - but even something like a psychoportive shelter or taking her friends to her private demiplane would be quite surprising to the other players- we are all new to the game and I'm the first to look at Psionics in real depth)
So - much like the anime, Bleach - we want awesome meleee crits, flash steps, some high level destruction and cool tricks. Alongside great mobility and difficulty in hitting (inertial armour, force screen, concealing amorpha, vigor, share pain, solicit psycrystal should take care of that)

Just please, brainstorm away if you care to - it would please me greatly.... :smallamused:

[JW86]

For level 15, I've come up with the following idea..


Melee feats - Combat Reflexes, Karmic Strike, Robilar's Gambit, possible Improved Critical.
Psionic feats - Psicrystal Affinity, Psionic Meditation, Empower Power, EK: Dimension Hop, EK: Energy Missile.

Powers:
1 - Inertial Armour, Force Screen, Vigor, Crystal Shard, Dimension Hop[EK]
2 - Share Pain, Concealing Amorpha, Ego Whip, Energy Missile [EK]
3 - Solicit Psicrystal, Time Hop, Energy Cone
4 - Divination, Freedom of Movement, Psychic Reformation
5 - Plane Shift
6 - Disintegrate, Temporal Acceleration, Retrieve.

If Egoist, take Hustle
If Shaper, take Astral Construct, Greater Concealing Amorpha, Ectoplasmic Cocoon, Crystallize.

Dimension Hop into place, attack, then attack them some more on their own turn, Dimension Hop to a distance and blast them with with a blasty power, rinse and repeat.. sounds like a fun playstyle. Use Concealing Amorpha alongside Inertial Armour and Force Screen to reduce chance of being hit. Use Vigor/Share Pain/Solicit Psicrystal to reduce damage taken.

Sound OK for a start? :)

[SciChronic]

if you want psigish with a katana i'm just going to suggest the psychic warrior w/ the soulbound weapon (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20070214a) ACF. Weaker than an Egoist or Shaper? Yes. But i feel it fits the flavor much better. You can still achieve the Psicrystal/Vigor cheese with psicrystal affinity and expended knowledge, its also possible using vigor w/ Midnight Augmentation + any other essentia increasing feat/dip to achieve full power points between fights, so the smaller pool isn't really an issue.

[Zweisteine]

Go straight psion, and when you hit Epic, make an epic spell to give you
Gish-powers.

(if the spell is too hard to cast, add backlash and a contingent revivify)

[Captnq]

First time I saw this thread I thought it said:
Help build epic spanglish

And I thought, who needs to speak epic spanish-english in a d20 game?

[JW86]

Thank you for the suggestions.

I'm still leaning towards a Psion/Slayer based build - I want to focus more on manifesting, with an interesting melee style to back it up.

An epic power to grant gish abilities - lol. So with mainly the Fortify Seed for boosting up stats, natural armor, speed, save throws, etc. Could be fun! But a bit overwhelming for me mechanically.

For a level 15 build, I'm looking at something along the lines of.

Ranger 1/Fighter(or Warblade?) 1/ Psion 4 / Slayer 9.
BAB +13
ML 12, 156pp/day including Int mod.
Feats something along the lines of.
1: Combat Reflexes, Trap (ranger)
2: Combat Expertise (fighter)
3: Psicrystal Affinity, Practiced Manifester (Psion)
6: Psionic Meditation
9: EK: Dimension Hop
12: Improved Crit (Katana)
15: Robilar's Gambit

I'm really open to some help, here.
I'm considering using a Soulbreaker Katana for negative level evil. So if somebody takes a swing, if they get AoO'd and crit'd, they lose a levil. Kind of a cool concept I think.

Would like to get EK: Energy Missile, and Karmic Strike, in there somehow.. as well as Empower Power and possibly Quicken Power. Time to take some flaws, or am I just biting off more than I can chew here?

The idea is to be more of a manifester/God character, who can quickly make anyone engaging her in melee regret the idea (via multiple AoOs and a Soulbreaker weapon - as they slash at her, they feel their strength leaving them as they take multiple stabs in return, draining their levels, heh) - Is there a less feat-intensive way than Combat Reflexes, Combat Expertise, Robilar's Gambit and Karmic Strike all together?

[Feint's End]

Well if you can get the psionic version of the Jade Phoenix Mage allowed you would have an amazing chasis for a gysh (especially since Psionic Strike is so much better on Psions than it is on mages since you can easily spare 1pp per round to buff your to hi if needed ... add a MArtial Discipline Weapon and you can PA to your hearts content without the fear of not being able to hit).

Maybe going into legacy champion and progressing Jade Phoenix Manifester to get some very high ML preepic? I'd advice against it though since you would loose access to 9th level powers.

For a 20 level build you could go something like psion 9/ warblade 1 / Jade Phoenix MAnifester 10 so you'll get 9th preepic. The build also works awesomely with Ardent/ Warblade/Jade Phoenix Manifester since you can migitate the ml loss by getting Practised Manifester Ardent.

[JW86]

Yeah, Jade Phoenix conversion not on the table - but thank you for suggesting it.

Think I need to focus on Psion/Slayer as the core of the build, I'm just wondering whether or not to include any Warblade for maneuvers, Fighter for feats, etc., or if I need to keep this as "psionically focussed" as possible.

Because I don't want lose my "psionic focus". Groan..:smallbiggrin:

So, I am mainly asking now for arrangement of feats/powers to in line with above - Dimension Hopping and Soulbreaker Katana, Attack of Opportunity focussed for melee, but with a slightly greater emphasis on the manifesting - and I would like 9th level powers which is why Psywar does not appeal so much. Something that is also ready to take into epic.

I don't need to be super-optimised - so, whilst having multiple AoOs is appealing, I don't want to be enlarging myself, using a 10" reach weapon or spiked chain, or metamorphosising as it ruins the favour I have in mind. Does anybody with experience of AoO builds know the 'basic feats' to recommend - combat reflexes/expertise and robilar's gambit? karmic strike?

I hope this is not too vague, I'm now more looking for build advice tinkering/finalising the basic frame I typed at above - any experienced advice welcome :)

[DMVerdandi]

Honestly, I would use a spell to power erudite.
By that level you can use tenser's transformation. It's bad for wizards generally, because it shuts down spellcasting, but ERUDITES MANIFEST (bwahahaha). This stipulation also works for the mage slayer feats as well.

Generally, the only metamagic you are going to need is Persistent Power. Buff n stuff before you start your day. In fact, I would get one of those nifty handy haversacks, manifest all your buffs, sleep an hour to reset your UPPD, and go forth and kick asses.

Generally a good regular power to keep on hand is energy ray. It's a handy, low powered, and decent blasty spell to keep on hand at all times. You can use all energy types and hit the touch AC. Kicks butt. Other powers that should be considered is shadow evocation, and shadow conjuration. Those will add SO much variety to your abilities to manifest whatever you want. Also, spectral weapon so you can use any weapon you wish.

All that put together should give you a pretty gishy experience. Instead of knowing a bunch of high level martial arts or whatever, you are instead a pretty strongly focused illusionist "conjurer/evoker". More like someone who can create the stuff of anyone's nightmares from the sheer power of his mind.

A phantasm, a spectre of the mind. Play as boogie-man, becoming terror incarnate for whomever wants to step. Stalk your prey, erect walls to trap them into single combat, and then crush them. Crush them ever so sweetly.


At least that is what I would do. It is my dream build. Favorite tactics with my favorite class.

[Feint's End]

Generally, the only metamagic you are going to need is Persistent Power.

1.)Get Persistent Power
2.)Persist Timeless Body
3.)?????
4.)Profit!

On a more serious note the 3.0 Version is too good ... I as a Dm would personally allow it but you have to use the Hyperconscious version (still good but way more balanced).

As for JW86: Generally I'd take the Sanctified Mind PRC over Slayer especially if you have a decent Cha score.

A neat trick you can do to get a minor bonus to hit and some other goodies is: get martial maneuver + martial stance (stance of your choice) -> retrain or psychic ref. martial maneuver since martial stance selfqualifies. Then get a Martial Discipline Weapon of the Discipline you have a stance of. For the cost of one feat and a +1 enchantment you get +3 to hit (on top of everything else) and a stance (some of which are really good ... like thicket of blades for example)


A general Build I'd probably use if the conversion of JPM is not on the table is the following (note that I assume partial BAB ... a thing any reasonable DM should use):

Elan Erudite
1 Erudite Psicrystal Affinity, Power Attack, Overchannel
2 Erudite
3 Erudite Psicrystal Containment (you need an additional focus for persistent power)
4 Erudite
5 Erudite Extend Power
6 Anarchic Initiate Track
7 Anarchic Initiate
8 Slayer
9 Slayer Practised Manifester (Erudite)
10 Slayer
11 Slayer
12 Slayer Martial Stance (Thicket of Blades)
13 Slayer
14 Slayer
15 Slayer Persistent Power
16 Slayer
17 Slayer
18 Sanctified Mind feat of choice
19 Sanctified Mind
20 Sanctified Mind
21+ Finish Sanctified Mind and make an epic progression for it! (More levels of Sanctified Mind give you more rounds of partioned mind)

For this build to work you need to get Iron Will through Otyughs Hole before level 18.

Also note that you can build amazing Psionic Gysh using Ardent or Wilder if you rather prefer one of those classes but Erudite's will always be stronger powerwise. You can also use the StP Erudite ... in this case shift the Psicrystal Containment to Level 9 and Practised Manifester to level 18.

I'd personally talk to my DM about allowing PRCs to progress Unique Powers per day (a thing they don't do by RAW) and about finding a homebrew solution for Unique Powers per day ... the way they are worded right now is terrible in any case. Either you basically have no limit at all (11 powers per level) or your limit is too harsh (11 powers of all levels). Make sure to find a solution for this!

Starting of at level 15 you should always persist Schism and all the good buffs with short duration (this will drain a good punch of your daily ressources) + get extended share pain + inertial armor. Also get a weapon made of deep crystal.

[JW86]

Hi, thank you for your suggestions.

Unfortunately, I don't believe Erudite or Anarchic Initiate get knowledge dungeoneering as a class skill, which is required for Slayer.

Also Thicket of Blades would still require the ability to pull off another maneuver from the school.

This build would also involve multiclassing with 3 unfamiliar classes, maybe a little much to bite off and chew!! :)

Now - Extend Power and Persist Power are verrrry interesting. Psicrystal containment alongside those feats, taking lots of buffs - that's interesting. And StP Erudite for Tenser's Transformation (Or even Bite of the Werebear??!!) is also very interesting..

So - Feint's End, if you're willing! (and I'm grateful), would you please maybe offer or suggest some build advice on using some of the tactics you've mentioned into perhaps Psion/Slayer/with a touch of Crusader/Warblade for Thicket of Blades? Certainly including persist/extended metapsionic buffs.

May well be able to include Sanctified Mind, although at the moment CHA is the dump stat (I am stoically attached to the idea of the lesser tiefling, -2 cha and all!))

[JW86]

LESSER TIEFLING – KHAYELLA
STR 14, DEX 16, CON 16, INT 20, WIS 14, CHA 9.
Ranger 1 / Psion(Shaper) 6 / Slayer 8
BAB +1 +3 +8 +12
HD d8 6d4 8d8
PP (as 13th level psion) - 147 + 20 int (32) = 179pp/day, ML13 (up to 17 with prac. Man, 15 as 15HD).
Feats
Flaws – Extend Power, EWP: Bastard Sword (Katana)
Ranger 1 Track, Combat Reflexes,
Psion 2 Psicrystal Affinity
Psion 3 Psionic Meditation
Psion 6 Psicrystal Containment, Empower Power
Slayer 9 Practiced Manifester (Psion)
Slayer 12 EK: Dimension Hop
Slayer 15 Robilar's Gambit
Powers Known:
1st – Inertial Armour, Force Screen, Vigor, Crystal Shard, Energy Ray, Dimension Hop [Expanded Knowledge]
2nd – Share Pain, Control Sound, Ego Whip, Psychoportive Shelter
3rd – Solicit Psicrystal, Time Hop, Ectoplasmic Cocoon [Shaper] , Greater Concealing Amorpha [Shaper]
4th – Divination, Freedom of Movement, Psychic Reformation, Telekinetic Maneuver
5th- Plane Shift, Major Creation, Ectoplasmic Shambler, Hail of Crystals
6th – Disintegrate, Temporal Acceleration, Retrieve,
7th – Energy Conversion

Think I am happy with this for now.

Can Extend Inertial Share and Force Screen, have Share Pain/Vigor on the Psicrystal, manifest Greater Concealing Amorpha when in combat and Dimension Hop around blasting, controlling or melee-ing as I see fit, using Energy Conversion to store up any elemental damage directed at me in order to blast straight back at opponent.

Only questions - EWP: Bastard Sword is kind of a feat for flavour purpose - I want to wield a katana in one hand - this I suppose, is unwise mechanically? Although I can put a buckler on the other arm for greater AC.

Also, I should consider Astral Construct for a Level 1 Power as I'm going Shaper.. but I'm very attached to all of the existing Level 1 Powers I've selected! Energy Ray and Crystal Shard are both lovely.

Will finish with either Sanctified Mind or Anarchic Initiate.. Iron Will or Overchannel required, I know.

Will run Persistent Power past my DM before committing it to the build.

I am now pretty much set on the overall build at this point - comments on the feat/power selection is very much welcome!

[DMVerdandi]

Hi, thank you for your suggestions.

Unfortunately, I don't believe Erudite or Anarchic Initiate get knowledge dungeoneering as a class skill, which is required for Slayer.

Also Thicket of Blades would still require the ability to pull off another maneuver from the school.

This build would also involve multiclassing with 3 unfamiliar classes, maybe a little much to bite off and chew!! :)

Now - Extend Power and Persist Power are verrrry interesting. Psicrystal containment alongside those feats, taking lots of buffs - that's interesting. And StP Erudite for Tenser's Transformation (Or even Bite of the Werebear??!!) is also very interesting..

So - Feint's End, if you're willing! (and I'm grateful), would you please maybe offer or suggest some build advice on using some of the tactics you've mentioned into perhaps Psion/Slayer/with a touch of Crusader/Warblade for Thicket of Blades? Certainly including persist/extended metapsionic buffs.

May well be able to include Sanctified Mind, although at the moment CHA is the dump stat (I am stoically attached to the idea of the lesser tiefling, -2 cha and all!))

Erudite has same skills as psion, as it is a variant, and Psions get all knowledge skills as class skills.
Now that you are aware, perhaps that might change your mind.

STP erudite is a beast, and just much cooler than both wizard and psion IMO.
Sure you can be haxx with it, but I think one of the best parts is the casting mechanic and fluff. Emulating spells with psionic energy rather than arcane... Just screams cosmic-level marvel comics to me. Love it. It's like a cerebromancer without having to muddle up your stuff.

Even alone as a regular erudite, running around and peaking inside people's heads to steal their powers...Sylar?

[JW86]

OK, I need to take the hint here and look at Erudite in some more detail.

One of the drawbacks to this is that the game world is non-psionic.

Not to say that there is no psionics at all... but it is utterly unknown in the plane/world we exist in. There is no magic/psionic transparency, and certainly nobody else out there in this plane to learn psionics off.

We can, however, plane shift to a psionics-using patch of the universe, but I'm wary of my character constantly going off on mini solo quests to unearth knowledge.

I suppose this is where it would be more advantageous to be a StP Erudite - so I would be gaining 2 powers/level, and also whatever spells I can suck from those I encounter?

I've got to admit, Tenser's Transformation sounded pretty cool. So did 'Bite of the Werewolf' !!

[JW86]

OH God, I have been reading more of Wizardry and an StP Erudite sounds really quite exciting.

I've never played a Wizard before and was relatively unaware of the awesomeness of their spells.

So...

Ray of Enfeeblement/Clumsiness/Stupidity/Exhaustion... See Invisibility, Wraithstrike, Dispel Magic, Fly, Haste, Greater Invisibility, Enervation, Ray Deflection, Greater Resistance, Orb of Fire, Burning Blood, Teleport, Overland Flight, Dispel Magic, True Seeing, Greater Heroism, Tenser's Transformation, Bite of the Weretiger/Werebear, Banishment, Greater Teleport, Forcecage, Ethereal Jaunt, Reaving Dispel, Maw of Chaois, Sphere of Ultimate Destruction and Gate..

..Are all really tempting.. :smallbiggrin::smalltongue::smallbiggrin:

It would really work, storywise. This Lesser Tiefling character has gone undercover at the Demon King's fortress. She has actually made a deal with an Archdevil to secretly undermine and usurp the Demon King (because devils are cunning and want rid of demons, right?). She is a psionic being in a non-psionic world, so learns to absorb and transform creature's arcane spells into psionic powers.. She bides her time, finding out information, actually becoming somewhat 'trusted' to the Demon King and of use to Him, becoming one of his soldiers/envoys etc.. she gains power with every military campaign, every mission, until one day she sees the new band of adventurers (existing PCs, level 17-21) landing on the continent, taking over a city within a day and causing massive upset on the continent - and perhaps sees her chance to begin the revelotion!!

My God I'm so excited. I need to make this work. Will contact my DM today about this :D :D :D

[JW86]

What is a reasonable way of working out already learned spells/XP to burn on spells when introducing a level 15 erudite-based character to a campaign?

5k? 10k?

Should I drop to level 14 and just take 15k? or get level 15+ 5/10k free? Is there a rule on this?

[JW86]

No need to roll a new character, we have been allowed a reroll of our existing characters, so now with ECL 18 (10Erudite/8Slayer)

Erudite 1 - Psicrystal Affinity, Spell-to-Power, Combat Reflexes
Erudite 2
Erudite 3 – Craft Psionic Arms and Armor
Erudite 4
Erudite 5 – Extend Power
Erudite 6 - Track
Slayer 7
Slayer 8
Slayer 9 – Psicrystal Containment
Slayer 10
Slayer 11
Slayer 12 – Martial Stance (Thicket of Blades)
Erudite 13
Erudite 14
Erudite 15 – Persistent Power
Slayer 16
Slayer 17
Erudite 18 – Practiced Manifester (Erudite)

This will allow me to make plenty of AoOs, have extended/persisted buffs, and actually make a Coup de Grace weapon by ML 19. Maybe it's worth taking a flaw and getting improved critical on an 18-20 weapon to make that really worthwhile.

Mixed progression to minimise XP costs of learning new spells/powers.

Any comments or suggestions? The one thing I find myself lacking is feat slots!! What are some good flaws to take to increase feat room?

In an ideal world, I'd also like to take EWP: Elven Courtblade, Robilar's Gambit, Empower Power, Quicken Power, Split Ray, etc!

As we're going epic, I'm considering getting to Erudite 10/Slayer 10, then maybe even taking levels in Warblade for some of the nice maneuvers like Iron Heart Surge, the Diamond Mind concentration-related maneuvers, etc. for that ultimate Gish feel.

STR 18, DEX 18, CON 18, INT 34, WIS 10, CHA 8.

I'd also be looking to create an epic power, (which counts as 10th level), which will then open up the book to learning 9th level discipline powers and spells.

[Feint's End]

You can't go into Slayer like thi (bab requirements!) ... one of the reasons I recommended Anarchic Initiate which is very strong and easy entry PRC from complete psionics.

Take my way to get entry at level 8 (with your way you had to take 8 levels of erudite and those 3 levels aren't really worth it) -> 5 levels of Erudite for 2.5 bab + 2 levels of anarchic initiate (good thing they get the best classfeature at level 1) for another 1.5 bab => 4 bab and you can go into Slayer at level 8.

Also you don't need to take Crafting feats ... the reason for that is Psychic Reformation .... if you really need to craft something do it at a level where you get a feat or a bit later and just change the last gained feat twice.

The reason why I recommend Sanctified Mind is the full bab + the amazing class features. You might want to take a look into this class since it is technically better than Slayers.

[JW86]

OK, Anarchic Initiate = awesome!

Sanctified Mind = Prohibited, (character is of evil alignment - this is now a rewrite of my E Githzerai, no longer a new CG Lesser Tiefling - things changed a lot in the last session and rewrites are granted).

I would like my character to get all the Level 9s, so I'm thinking that having at least as many levels in Erudite as another Psionic class is going to be important now, and will necessitate a few more levels in Erudite than the bare minimum to get into Slayer (due to the stipulation that if you take more classes in a psionic class other than erudite, you lose its power learning abilitiy). BAB problems can easily be overcome with the StP 'Tenser's Transformation', 'Wraithstrike', etc.

At level 18, I'm considering Erudite8/Slayer8/Anarchic Initiate 2. Build probably to be Eru9/Slay9/Anar 2 by level 20, at level 21 take Eru10 for the extra epic feat, then probably go into Warblade (Iron Heart Surge, and the Diamond Mind con-to-X maneuvers etc. looks awesome and suitable for character fluff). With the persisted buffs, this will be covering the ACs, the melee, the powers, the saves etc. all pretty solidly, I expect.

Unless more HP/BAB could be squeezed out of going Eru6/Slayer6/Ghostbreaker6/Anarchic 2 or somesuch, but I don't want to over-convolute the build.

What I originally wrote at Eru10/Slayer8 already has level 9 powers and level 8 spells. Once in epic I'd be looking at level 9 powers, discipline powers and spells, working into Warblade towards mid-high level maneuvers for an alround gishy experience.

StP Eru10/Slayer8 played pretty damn well in a couple of trial combats, using persisted buffs, dimension hops, energy rays and enervations.

Thank you for pointing out the Psyref options to me, its something I keep overlooking. That's very handy, to swap in creation feats as need be, lol.


I found judicious use of Dimension Hop incredibly tasty as it effectively stops enemies from ever getting a full attack in, they may run up and get a single attack, but by my next round I'm zooming out of the way, without an AoO, and casting more energy ray/enervation/disintegrate at them. Coupled with the AoO feats and thicket of blades means that they get scratched coming in. Once I've made a coup de grace, 15-20 weapon, those scratches will occasionally be completely debilitating.