Ability to manifest a 2nd-level power

[kirerellim]

Alright, I know how to get casting without being a caster, but does anyone know a way to get the ability to manifest a 2nd-level power without three levels in a psionic class? Preferably nonracial, but if I must, I will lol.

[OldTrees1]

Alright, I know how to get casting without being a caster, but does anyone know a way to get the ability to manifest a 2nd-level power without three levels in a psionic class? Preferably nonracial, but if I must, I will lol.

Ardent is a weird Psionic class. It works off Manifester level rather than Class level.

[kirerellim]

Oh you're right! I forgot about that fun little exploit! Thanks!

Edit: My dm is raw happy, so I love that class lol

[Segev]

Yeah. Precocious Apprentice will get you 2nd level spells at level 1, as long as you start as a caster.

The only way I know of to get higher than first level powers with only one level of a psionic class, however, is through Practiced Manifester + Ardent. The trick is to take Ardent at level 3+, and take Practiced Manifester as a feat at the same level. This raises your Ardent manifester level by 4, to a maximum of your HD in manifester level. Thus, at level 3, you'd have one level of Ardent but be a 3rd level manifester.

Ardents, unlike all other psi classes, expressly can manifest any power they can spend enough pp on TO manifest. This number of pp is equal to your manifester level. So a level 3 manifester Ardent - regardless of how many levels of Ardent he actually has - can learn and manifest level 2 powers.

This is most commonly done at level 5+, because a level 4 [blank]/level 1 Ardent with Practiced Manifester is a 5th level manifester and can start with level 3 powers, having gotten 4 levels of some other class's features.

If you could somehow swing the feats, I suppose you could wind up with the ability to manifest level 2 powers and cast a single level 2 arcane spell by level 2:

1- Wizard w/ Precocious Apprentice
2- Ardent w/ Practiced Manifester + Overchannel

You have to take Wizard at level 1 to get Precocious Apprentice. I don't know that you can take Overchannel or Practiced Manifester without being already psionic, and you'd need the human bonus feat to get one of them at level 1 along with Precocious Apprentice. I really have no idea how you finagle a bonus psi feat at level 2 on top of this for the other psi feat.

However, in theory, this would let you have your level 2 spell from Precocious Apprentice, and you'd have level 2 manifesting from Practiced Manifester adding 1 to your Ardent (can't exceed the 2 HD you have, though, so no higher than ML 2 from that). The dirty trick is that Overchannel lets you take damage to raise your ML by 1. This means, having the feat, you are able to channel 3 pp on a single power. This means, by the wording of the Ardent that lets him determine his maximum power level known based on how many pp he can possibly manifest on one power, the Ardent can learn 2nd level powers.

Again, I've no idea how you manage all three feats by level 2, with that combination of classes. Could probably manage it pretty easily by level 3, though, since you could forgo Overchannel at that point. You'd be ML 3 at level 3 thanks to Ardent 1 or 2 and PRacticed Manifester alone.