Psionics and nova-ing

[Quietus]

I've heard things spoken of on these forums regarding a psion "going nova", or something to that effect. I've managed to read enough to know that this effectively has something to do with building bigger and bigger effects until eventually you've done an officially stupid amount of damage, but burnt out all of your power points - but the only actual example of a build I've seen that did it were the Naruto copies on the Wizard boards, specifically Neji and Hinata, who abused the Linked Power feat and Synchronocity, both from the Complete series.

Is there any way to do this with the use of core-only material? How? Or does this require blatant abuse of Linked Power and Synchronocity to build a rising crescendo of ridiculous amounts of damage?

[The Glyphstone]

Well, the original "nova" was just the psion spending all his PP in a single battle, I think. That build was called the "Nova" because of that.

[Zincorium]

Usually it refers the the mistaken belief that you can blow all your power points, as a psionic character, on a single power that wipes out everything but leaves you with just about nothing left. While this is against the rules, the particular paragraph stating you cannot do this is a bit hard to find in the rulebook itself, but you can locate it pretty clearly when looking through the SRD, especially the feats section.

As far as a legal way of expending power points in this manner, the XPH is already technically going beyond the 3 core books, so 'core' is a meaningless restriction. If you mean only with the expanded psionic handbook, and thus what's in the SRD, then the Overchannel feat and the Wild Surge class feature are the only methods to increase your effective manifester level so you can add more power points onto a power than you normally could, but neither is all that useful or reliable.

Edit, for clarity: To be specific, I mean spending every last power point from your full day's allotment, which shouldn't be possible unless you are a really, really poor manifester, since every time you get to add another power point to your spending limit, you add at minimum that many to your pool.

[Jack Mann]

Generally, psionicists "go nova" by using their biggest powers, or augmenting their powers as far as they can, so that they use up all of their resources on a fight.

This is easier for a psionic class than a spellcaster because A) they can use their power points all on high level or augmented spells and B) they don't have as many resources to start with as a caster.

[Were-Sandwich]

Where is synchronicity? I can't find it in my XPH or the SRD.

[Rigeld2]

Since he said that Linked Power and Sync. were both from the Complete Series, I'd look there (starting with Complete Psionics).

[martyboy74]

Since he said that Linked Power and Sync. were both from the Complete Series, I'd look there (starting with Complete Psionics).

That book was cancelled, wasn't it?

[Zincorium]

That book was cancelled, wasn't it?

I think if enough of us become convinced of that, 'collective reality' will kick in and WotC will decide it's time to actually write up a useful, actually complete book of rules for psionics. Kind of like re-rolling a new character, the probability it will be as much of a disappointment is much smaller than the probability of the current, supposedly canceled, version being a disappointment, which is close to 100%.

[menschenfresser]

i think schizm and that other power allowing you to manifest twice a round are an important part of it. there was a build on the wizards board once, maybe you could look that up.

[Quietus]

I may have to. I had to retrofit a char that was casting as 20wiz/20clr as a 30psi/30clr (now at charlevel 30, it's pretty crazy). We're going to be facing down Tiamat, as I've mentioned before, and I'm basically looking for ways to blow 520 power points in such a way that she'll be crying for me to stop. Yes, I recognize this isn't likely. Then again, we shouldn't really be fighting Tiamat right now anyway.

Ultimately, I think we have it basically handled; With a little DM cooperation, Wee Jas will have my back and shut down Tiamat's godly abilities for a short time, in which case we'll be able to fight her on relatively even terms. I'll be fused with a fiendish halfling, giving us somewhere around 800 hit points, as well as crazy sneak attack abilities in addition to my 4 quickened spells a turn. Should make for an interesting fight. I just wanted to find a way to blow more damage, faster, than just superpowering all of my abilities to the max.

[martyboy74]

I may have to. I had to retrofit a char that was casting as 20wiz/20clr as a 30psi/30clr (now at charlevel 30, it's pretty crazy). We're going to be facing down Tiamat, as I've mentioned before, and I'm basically looking for ways to blow 520 power points in such a way that she'll be crying for me to stop. Yes, I recognize this isn't likely. Then again, we shouldn't really be fighting Tiamat right now anyway.

Ultimately, I think we have it basically handled; With a little DM cooperation, Wee Jas will have my back and shut down Tiamat's godly abilities for a short time, in which case we'll be able to fight her on relatively even terms. I'll be fused with a fiendish halfling, giving us somewhere around 800 hit points, as well as crazy sneak attack abilities in addition to my 4 quickened spells a turn. Should make for an interesting fight. I just wanted to find a way to blow more damage, faster, than just superpowering all of my abilities to the max.

Create/Buy an item of Affinity Field. Give it to the halfling. Cast Delay Death (SpC) on both of you. Manifest Affinity Field, and have your Halfing activate its Affinity Field item. Punch the Halfling in the head while within 20' on Tiamat. Watch as everything, excluding the two of you, within 20' in utterly anhiliated. Have one of your friends with a bucket of water nearby for when one of the fields wears off. You're going to need a lot of healing, but Tiamat is stone cold dead. The Diehard feat helps with this, too.

[Quietus]

Yeah, I've found a million different ways to cheese things up, but I'm choosing not to take that route if I don't have to. I could throw some ridiculous amount of d6's of untyped damage at her via overuse of one spell from the Libris Mortis, and a bag of holding full of rat skeletons. I choose not to, because I want this fight to actually mean something. Blowing all my power points in one massive wave of superdestruction? Acceptable. Playing damage-bouncing-spellcaster doesn't really lend itself well to epicness in story.

[Jasdoif]

My suggestion: research an epic power.

No, really. Trying to get past the manifester level cap to that extreme is beyond the range of normal powers. But an epic power might be able to pull it off.

Looking at the part on ritual epic spells as mitigating factor, it looks like there's a 1-1 relationship between caster level required for a spell slot and the DC reduction, so its safe to say that one power point provides a -1 to the DC, normally. But what we're doing here isn't normal, obviously. Let me see here....

Creating a bolt with the energy seed, adding 2 to the DC increases damage by 1d6. So, instead of expending power points to drop the DC, we'll use them to increase the damage. We'll make the power deplete your power point reserve entirely, circumventing the usual manifester level cap. That would be inefficient though, and boosting damage like this isn't typical in any case, so...let's say an ad hoc +10 for the capability itself, and the damage boost is +1d6 per 5 power points you have, instead of per 2. Less like cheating with power points that way :smalltongue: Also, you can't choose to use only part of your power points, it's all of them.

With 520 power points, at the base 10d6 plus 1d6 per five power points, that's 114d6.

Adjust factors as you see fit.

[Quietus]

Eh. For 114d6, I'll just fire off four fully augmented crystal shards. Ray, no save, no SR, 1d6/PP spent. At a max expenditure of 30, that's 120 PP spent to do 120 damage, no save - with a ranged touch attack. Which shouldn't be tough, since my first round's actions will see me Greater Metamorphosing into either a Pit Fiend to fuse with my fiendish halfling buddy, or into a Faerie dragon, followed by Gating in a LN Rust dragon, and fusing with THAT. Either way I'll be adding more than 50 to my attack rolls.