[PF] Adaptive Warrior Prestige Class from Ultimate Psionics

[Slithery D]

Has anyone played this (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/psionics-unleashed/psionic-prestige-classes/adaptive-warrior)? The first time I skimmed it seemed like a waste, but I've been taking a closer look at the PrC's in Ultimate Psionics and found a couple of things that blew me away.

The big one is the level 4 ability to always threaten a critical on an examined enemy if you expend your psionic focus, which leads to the following boss killing strategy:

1. Carry a pick or scythe (anything with a x4 critical multiplier that can be two-handed).
2. Round one: move action to Examine Technique. Standard action to manifest Inevitable Strike or the to hit/damage boosting power of your choice.
3. Round two: Move to biggest enemy, expend focus for automatic critical threat, and Power Attack.
4. Ouch.

Being able to guarantee a critical threat obviously has a lot of synergies for other feats and weapon abilities. You'll want Impact on your psionic weapon you crafted; you may want Bodyfeeder or Mindfeeder. Critical feats make more sense, although if it survived a x4 optimized blow it'll probably make its Fortitude save, too, so maybe not.

Is it immune to critical hits? Well, at level 6 you can instead expend your focus on Accelerated Combat, and get two extra attacks at full bonus before you start your iteratives.

And there's other tricks.

I think the class has great synergy with Tactician. Use your first round swift action on a strategy or coordinated strike (which will admittedly be a bit weaker because of PrCing, but they aren't that great anyway), use your move action to examine enemies, use your standard action to manifest a shared power that boosts your collective. Then on the second round move into combat with that sweet, sweet competence bonus on attack and damage rolls until you decide to expend your focus on a finishing move.

[Psyren]

Yeah it's all right. Personally I like it more for the full BAB and 8/10 manifesting for a Psion gish (especially since it gives martial weapon, shield and armor proficiencies for free.)

You still have to confirm the critical so it's not as foolproof as it sounds.

As far as your action sequence, you can do it all in one round with Schism and Hustle. Just get Schism Incarnated ahead of time, which you should be able to do by the time you get to Adaptive Warrior 4.

1) Swift: Manifest Hustle
2) Move 1: Examine Technique
3) Schism Standard: Manifest Inevitable Strike
4) Move 2: Move to melee
5) Standard: Attack

[Bluydee]

The flavor is really cool, like Taskmaster from Marvel or something. It also is 8/10 manifesting and full bab.

[Dusk Eclipse]

Wait.... Schism is incarnate-able now? .... WOW that is so awesome.

[Psyren]

Wait.... Schism is incarnate-able now? .... WOW that is so awesome.

In PF psionics nearly anything can be, just like PF Permanency can be used on anything - the only caveat is GM approval, but it's at least explicitly stated now.

If your DM says no to Incarnate Schism and you still want to be able to do this in one round, Temporal Acceleration can let you do so. Use your move and standard to move up to the foe and attack, while your swift handles everything else.

[Slithery D]

Yeah it's all right. Personally I like it more for the full BAB and 8/10 manifesting for a Psion gish (especially since it gives martial weapon, shield and armor proficiencies for free.)

You still have to confirm the critical so it's not as foolproof as it sounds.

As far as your action sequence, you can do it all in one round with Schism and Hustle. Just get Schism Incarnated ahead of time, which you should be able to do by the time you get to Adaptive Warrior 4.

1) Swift: Manifest Hustle
2) Move 1: Examine Technique
3) Schism Standard: Manifest Inevitable Strike
4) Move 2: Move to melee
5) Standard: Attack

Allowing Schism to be Incarnated sounds like some pretty serious cheese. There's good reasons for the GM's discretion clause, and this power is at the top of that list.

Thanks for the "do it all at once" sequence, though.

As far as confirmation, it's not that hard with Inevitable Strike, especially if you also have Critical Focus, which you'd probably find useful to squeeze in pretty soon.

[Psyren]

Inevitable Strike (like True Strike) will be discharged on the attack itself, so you will have to confirm the crit normally is what I'm saying.

I don't see the big deal about Incarnate Schism - in most cases you'll be at 8th-level spells before you can pull that off. But again, if the DM doesn't like it, Temporal Acceleration will let you either perform the sequence, or throw on a Schism and then perform the sequence, all in one round anyway.

[Slithery D]

Inevitable Strike (like True Strike) will be discharged on the attack itself, so you will have to confirm the crit normally is what I'm saying.

Ah, I see the confusion, but that's not how I read this particular ability working. You automatically threaten before the attack is resolved, so your attack roll is your confirmation roll. If you hit, you crit. If you miss, you waste your psionic focus.

Now I see why you were less enthusiastic than me.

[Psyren]

Ah, I see the confusion, but that's not how I read this particular ability working. You automatically threaten before the attack is resolved, so your attack roll is your confirmation roll.

No, that's not correct. You explicitly still have to roll to hit. If your attack is successful, THEN you automatically threaten.

"At 4th level, an adaptive warrior may expend his psionic focus when attacking an enemy he has examined to automatically threaten a critical hit. He must still make a successful attack roll against that enemy, and still gains the competence bonus to attack and damage rolls on that attack."

Basically it replaces the threat range for your weapon that turn with "2-20." But you still have to roll, and if you miss, you miss. Thus, IS/TS get discharged on that first roll.

[Slithery D]

The part about having to confirm after your attack roll does make sense now that I think about, thanks.

But (http://paizo.com/prd/combat.html),


To find out if it's a critical hit, you immediately make an attempt to “confirm” the critical hit—another attack roll with all the same modifiers as the attack roll you just made.

So IS/TS do help there, as does your class competence bonus, flanking, etc.

[Philo Pharynx]

Have you looked at the Critical Refocus feat?


Critical Refocus (Combat, Psionic)
Your critical hits recharge your expended focus.
Prerequisites: Improved Critical, proficiency with weapon, base attack bonus +8.
Benefit: When you confirm a critical hit on an attack where you expended psionic focus, you automatically regain your psionic focus after the results of the attack are determined.

So when you use this feat, you get your focus back. Next round you Examine Technique again and attack. So long as you don't need to move you can use this each round. At AW6 then you get to Examine as a swift action.

I built a scythe wielding half-giant Aegis/Adaptive Warrior who does an average of 37.5 damage at 10th level, multiplied to an even 150. Since you are going to mostly do one attack per round, Furious Focus is an obvious choice. Full PA damage and you mostly take the penalty on iterative attacks.

[Slithery D]

I actually noticed that a couple of weeks ago. Good stuff.

[JusticeZero]

..At that point should you also be looking at the Vital Strike line? o.O