Psiforged Detective, what's the best way to do this?

[deathbymanga]

So, I'm joining an Eberron campaign and I've always liked the idea of playing a Warforged, but my knowledge and experience of psionics is very limited. So far I've spotted Lurk, Psychic Rogue, and Erudite as possible candidates.

We're allowed 1 flaw/bonus feat and I'm starting at lvl 1 with a 28 point buy.

I'm leaning on Grabbing Knowledge Devotion and using that to improve my damage and accuracy, so I might be able to ignore having a bad BAB for now. I also would like to grab Mindsight as soon as my Psicrystal gets Telepathy.

I know I already have to spend my 1st level feat of Psiforged Body, but I get a bonus/flaw feat to counter that, so what would you recomend?

The type of character I'm thinking of making is a Sherlock Holmes/**** Tracey PI. He's curious about everything and desires to use his intellect to make the world a better place. He's brash though and has trouble socializing, accidentally insulting even his clients and teammates occasionally by commenting on their stupidity.

Part of me also wants him to be a melee character and swing around Kukri for their really good Crit Range, but the other part cares more for being a psionic detective over being a cut throat. what should I do?

[The Viscount]

Of the three, I would most recommend Psychic Rogue. Lurk doesn't have the PP to support its actions, and is basically just worse Psychic Rogue. Erudite is much more like wizard, so isn't too much into the physical combat sphere.

Knowledge Devotion and Mindsight are very good choices. For sneaks, Darkstalker is a near necessity for those who run into monsters or even watchdogs.

In terms of being a detective, if you want, there are a few classes that mesh with the detective feel in my eyes. CWar's Justiciar is the lawman type detective, finding criminals and bringing them in.

CA's Bloodhound is the bounty hunter type, more fitting with those who are slightly more tarnished morally.

Masters of the Wild's Watch Detective is very much the forensic detective type. It is super weird, and isn't fit for every game, but it can be quite fun.

[deathbymanga]

Of the three, I would most recommend Psychic Rogue. Lurk doesn't have the PP to support its actions, and is basically just worse Psychic Rogue. Erudite is much more like wizard, so isn't too much into the physical combat sphere.

Knowledge Devotion and Mindsight are very good choices. For sneaks, Darkstalker is a near necessity for those who run into monsters or even watchdogs.

In terms of being a detective, if you want, there are a few classes that mesh with the detective feel in my eyes. CWar's Justiciar is the lawman type detective, finding criminals and bringing them in.

CA's Bloodhound is the bounty hunter type, more fitting with those who are slightly more tarnished morally.

Masters of the Wild's Watch Detective is very much the forensic detective type. It is super weird, and isn't fit for every game, but it can be quite fun.

what about Psychic Warrior? how does he fair in this situation considering this looks to be a very feat-heavy build.

I'm seeing Education, Psiforged Body, an Armored body upgrade (depending on the class chosen). Knowledge Devotion, Psicrystal Affinity (so that you can best utilize Mindsight).

Justicar seems to be a good build for synergy with Psychic Rogue. Debuff Intelligence and Strength (typically enemies who favour one dump the other unless you're an Eldritch Knight or a Psychic Warrior) and a buff to Sneak Attacks as well.

Bloodhound seems pretty identical to Justicar, except different. Justicar has that non-lethal sneak attack which is great for stacking, but the Bloodhound's Crippling Strike does a bigger Strength penalty. Bloodhound is focused more on tracking, while Justicar seems to be a Grappler of a sort.

Watch Detective seems to fit lore-wise as a Sherlock Holmes style character, being able to profile, solve mysteries, and I get bonuses to my knowledge skills right off the bat. However, it doesn't synergize at all with Psychic Rogue, not using sneak attacks, or Psionics

However the biggest issue with all of them, is that none of them synergize with the psionic part of teh character. I might as well drop being a psionic and go full rogue. But I'd like at least to have a Psicrystal Watson who can use Mindsight to help me investigate.

Let's look at the requirements.
All three require the Track Feat, and Justicar and Bloodhound each require a second feat as well.

Justicars want a BAB +6, which comes at 8th level.
Bloodhound requires a BAB of +4, which as a Psychic Rogue we don't get until 6th level.
and Watch Detective doesn't require any BAB.

Justicars require 5 ranks in Gather Intel, Search, and Survival (Psychic Rogues don't even get Survival).
Bloodhound requires 4 ranks in Gather Intel, Survival, and Move Silently. (Psychic Rogues don't even get Survival).
and Watch Detective requires 4 ranks in Gather Intel and 1 Knowledge Skill, and 8 ranks in Search.

For Alignments, justicar needs to be Lawful, Watch Detectives can't be Evil, and Bloodhounds can be anything.

Ok, so, even with the 8 ranks in Search, Watch Detective is the quickest PrC to grab, and the easiest (especially with the Knowledge section).

I'll need to have grabbed Track by at most 3rd level then if I want to quickly jump into Watch Detective. I get 1 feat for being level 1. 1 feat for a flaw. and 1 feat at 3rd level. I have to grab psiforged body at lvl 1. as well as Education. so I can't balance there. and so I won't get Knowledge Devotion or Psicrystal Affinity until 6th level. Not to mention, when will I be grabbing the Armored Body feat? meaning my AC will likely be terrible since I can't wear armor (I even need a Feat to be able to grab the no-armor body :P )

So I'll likely need to drop psionics entirely for this kind of build, which really sucks because part of why I wanted to make this build was to play a Psychic detective. (pout)

[The Viscount]

If you want to play up the psionic aspect, Ebon Saint can help with that. It's sneaky and lets you read minds.
You could also talk to your DM about adjusting Unseen Seer to be a manifesting class instead of a casting one.

[deathbymanga]

If you want to play up the psionic aspect, Ebon Saint can help with that. It's sneaky and lets you read minds.
You could also talk to your DM about adjusting Unseen Seer to be a manifesting class instead of a casting one.

but does psionic even DO anything to help me play a better detective?

[IcarusWulfe]

[QUOTE=deathbymanga;20309226]but does psionic even DO anything to help me play a better detective?[/QUOT

Most Seer powers are designed to help find clues and gather information. Powers such as Object Reading and Sensitivity to Psychic Impressions sound perfect for a detective

[deathbymanga]

but does psionic even DO anything to help me play a better detective?

Most Seer powers are designed to help find clues and gather information. Powers such as Object Reading and Sensitivity to Psychic Impressions sound perfect for a detective

Psychic rogues don't get Sensitivity to Psychic Impressions and this is already a feat intensive build

[Zaq]

PsyWar might not work because the stats don't line up perfectly. PsyWar manifesting is WIS-based, not INT-based, and while having good Spot/Listen/Sense Motive is good for a detective, I don't know if that's enough to outweigh having fewer skill points (and lower Knowledge and Search).

There's honestly some merit to just going Seer over going PsyRogue. You'll do some things worse (no Sneak Attack, fewer base skill points) and some things better (easy access to detective-style info-gathering powers, more powers known, more PP). You'd save at least one feat (since all Knowledges are already in-class for Psion, you wouldn't need Education unless you planned on dipping out of your primary class a lot), though you'd then possibly want to spend your feats on different things. You can also take the Mind's Eye ACF to get a Bardic Knowledge effect, which might be useful to you. Telepath powers might also help detective work, depending on exactly how you like going about things. One advantage of going pure Psion is that you wouldn't really have to worry that much about being useful in combat; just take one or two solid and reliable combat powers, and then you can spend the bulk of your feats and your powers known on detective stuff.

All told, I guess it just boils down to what you want to focus on and what you're comfortable compromising over. Short of Gestalt, you're not going to get a character with the power selection and PP of a Psion AND the skill list/skill points of a Rogue AND the melee capability of a beatstick. PsyRogue is a great class, and it'll have pretty much the same strengths as a mundane Rogue when it comes to detective-ing, but aside from access to Object Reading, I'm not seeing a ton of detective-related utility coming from the psionic aspect of it. If you're okay with that, then I think you can still have a lot of fun with a PsyRogue, but that really depends on exactly what you want from your psionic-ness.

For what it's worth, I've never been that excited by the actual feat Psiforged Body. I don't feel like its effects are especially strong; the Cognizance Crystal effect scales really slowly, and the general Cognizance Crystal rules about needing to only spend PP from one source per manifestation means that it'll be hard to use your stored PP to the fullest. (And, of course, you have to have leftover PP from one day to the next in order to have anything to put into your Cognizance Crystal—not really that big an issue at high levels, but if you're a low-PP class like a PsyRogue, that'll be hard at the low levels where you most NEED the extra PP. If you have short adventuring days, you're more likely to have leftover PP to store, but if you have short adventuring days, you're less likely to actually need to use your stored PP, so I'm not sure how useful that's likely to be.) Unless your GM is a real hard-ass about fluff, I'd recommend just being a warforged without the feat Psiforged Body—you're still obviously a psionic character and still obviously a warforged, and who's to say that your warforged doesn't have crystals and stuff as part of their body? Who's going to question a psionic warforged who chooses to call themselves a psiforged?

Speaking of things that most good GMs shouldn't require a feat for, there is the feat Investigate in ECS. I feel like that shouldn't require a feat (so if you can get away with not taking it, don't), but if your GM is the type who wants WotC to dictate every single thing your characters can and can't do, it provides hard rules for finding and analyzing clues. Very GM-dependent, but it's worth pointing out, since I don't know your GM.

Honestly, no matter what path you pick, I think the biggest thing to keep in mind is that you're going to be level 1. No one can do a hell of a lot at level 1. Even your best skills aren't going to have total modifiers much above +4 to +7 (maybe +8 to +10 if you're crazy focused on something, but that'll be rare). You'll have very limited psionics at your disposal no matter what class you are. You won't have any multi-feat combos online (you can't even take Knowledge Devotion at level 1, since you can't hit the required 5 ranks in a Knowledge skill). Combat's going to be really ugly, since you have basically zero tricks online. You simply aren't going to have Sherlock Holmes levels of competence at level 1. (The skill thing both makes PsyRogue more and less attractive—from one perspective, no one has a crazy high skill mod for anything at all, so simply having a handful of ranks in a skill makes you as good as you're going to get at something, meaning that having a high number of base skill points opens up some options for you. From another perspective, your skill mods are nowhere near high enough to be anything called "reliable," so it's kind of scarier to have to rely on them.) But yeah. Moderate your expectations with the fact that you're just level 1, because that's going to be the biggest thing standing between you and your character goals. (From a metagame standpoint, if you don't know the group that well, you might want to avoid building for far-off PrCs and focus on character options that will be useful right away, since you don't know if you'll even reach the levels you're shooting for. But that depends on how long you trust the game to keep going.)

I'm not sure if anything I'm saying here is helpful at this point, so that's probably a clue for me to shut up for now.

[deathbymanga]

PsyWar might not work because the stats don't line up perfectly. PsyWar manifesting is WIS-based, not INT-based, and while having good Spot/Listen/Sense Motive is good for a detective, I don't know if that's enough to outweigh having fewer skill points (and lower Knowledge and Search).

There's honestly some merit to just going Seer over going PsyRogue. You'll do some things worse (no Sneak Attack, fewer base skill points) and some things better (easy access to detective-style info-gathering powers, more powers known, more PP). You'd save at least one feat (since all Knowledges are already in-class for Psion, you wouldn't need Education unless you planned on dipping out of your primary class a lot), though you'd then possibly want to spend your feats on different things. You can also take the Mind's Eye ACF to get a Bardic Knowledge effect, which might be useful to you. Telepath powers might also help detective work, depending on exactly how you like going about things. One advantage of going pure Psion is that you wouldn't really have to worry that much about being useful in combat; just take one or two solid and reliable combat powers, and then you can spend the bulk of your feats and your powers known on detective stuff.

All told, I guess it just boils down to what you want to focus on and what you're comfortable compromising over. Short of Gestalt, you're not going to get a character with the power selection and PP of a Psion AND the skill list/skill points of a Rogue AND the melee capability of a beatstick. PsyRogue is a great class, and it'll have pretty much the same strengths as a mundane Rogue when it comes to detective-ing, but aside from access to Object Reading, I'm not seeing a ton of detective-related utility coming from the psionic aspect of it. If you're okay with that, then I think you can still have a lot of fun with a PsyRogue, but that really depends on exactly what you want from your psionic-ness.

For what it's worth, I've never been that excited by the actual feat Psiforged Body. I don't feel like its effects are especially strong; the Cognizance Crystal effect scales really slowly, and the general Cognizance Crystal rules about needing to only spend PP from one source per manifestation means that it'll be hard to use your stored PP to the fullest. (And, of course, you have to have leftover PP from one day to the next in order to have anything to put into your Cognizance Crystal—not really that big an issue at high levels, but if you're a low-PP class like a PsyRogue, that'll be hard at the low levels where you most NEED the extra PP. If you have short adventuring days, you're more likely to have leftover PP to store, but if you have short adventuring days, you're less likely to actually need to use your stored PP, so I'm not sure how useful that's likely to be.) Unless your GM is a real hard-ass about fluff, I'd recommend just being a warforged without the feat Psiforged Body—you're still obviously a psionic character and still obviously a warforged, and who's to say that your warforged doesn't have crystals and stuff as part of their body? Who's going to question a psionic warforged who chooses to call themselves a psiforged?

Speaking of things that most good GMs shouldn't require a feat for, there is the feat Investigate in ECS. I feel like that shouldn't require a feat (so if you can get away with not taking it, don't), but if your GM is the type who wants WotC to dictate every single thing your characters can and can't do, it provides hard rules for finding and analyzing clues. Very GM-dependent, but it's worth pointing out, since I don't know your GM.

Honestly, no matter what path you pick, I think the biggest thing to keep in mind is that you're going to be level 1. No one can do a hell of a lot at level 1. Even your best skills aren't going to have total modifiers much above +4 to +7 (maybe +8 to +10 if you're crazy focused on something, but that'll be rare). You'll have very limited psionics at your disposal no matter what class you are. You won't have any multi-feat combos online (you can't even take Knowledge Devotion at level 1, since you can't hit the required 5 ranks in a Knowledge skill). Combat's going to be really ugly, since you have basically zero tricks online. You simply aren't going to have Sherlock Holmes levels of competence at level 1. (The skill thing both makes PsyRogue more and less attractive—from one perspective, no one has a crazy high skill mod for anything at all, so simply having a handful of ranks in a skill makes you as good as you're going to get at something, meaning that having a high number of base skill points opens up some options for you. From another perspective, your skill mods are nowhere near high enough to be anything called "reliable," so it's kind of scarier to have to rely on them.) But yeah. Moderate your expectations with the fact that you're just level 1, because that's going to be the biggest thing standing between you and your character goals. (From a metagame standpoint, if you don't know the group that well, you might want to avoid building for far-off PrCs and focus on character options that will be useful right away, since you don't know if you'll even reach the levels you're shooting for. But that depends on how long you trust the game to keep going.)

I'm not sure if anything I'm saying here is helpful at this point, so that's probably a clue for me to shut up for now.

no, you've been very helpful here.

Hmm, ok, i'll drop psiforged body. thought it was required to play a psionic warforged.

and so long as I can Search, Gather Intel and use my knowledge skills to improve my combat with Knowledge devotion I'm good with my skills selection.

I've taken your advice to heart. My Slam Attack +Strength+ KnowDevo should be enough to balance my low BAB in melee combat. However Psions lack any armor means my AC will be really low unless I have high dexterity. Can a warforged's Slam attack be made finesse? If so, would it be smarter to go Dexterity with finesse slam attacks? Or should I abandon the idea of going the sherlock boxing route if I go seer psion?

EDIT: Actually, what about Grabbing 1 lvl of Psion, grabbing Adamantine Body, sucking for a lvl, and the grabbing a lvl in Fighter for the Bonus BAB and Heavy Armor. Fighter is the Warforged Favoured Class, so it's not like it'd cause a Multiclassing problem) Then I just focus on Strength and Intelligence.

Hmm, with Psiforged Body gone, as well as Education, Hmm, what to do for feats? I'd grab Psicrystal Affinity at lvl 1 for my Psion Bonus Feat. I guess Track so that I can become a detective. Hmm. does the Telepathic link between myself and my psycrystal count as a telepathic range for Mindsight? allowing me to grab Mindsight at lvl 1?

[Keld Denar]

'Forged don't need proficiency with Heavy Armor to take Adamantine Body, do they? Thats why it's so great for psionic warforged, because they don't have to worry about the ACP, there's no spell failure, and it doesn't affect carrying capacity. Even if you don't have proficiency, all it is mostly a penalty to RTAs, which you don't NEED any RTA's. You won't be terribly sneaky, but if you want that, don't go Adamantine Body.

Object Reading is GREAT, but don't take it as a power. Gloves of Object Reading are almost free (like, 2k gold) and allow you to do it at will enough to go back ~2.5 owners of the item. Not quite as good as actually casting it with full ML, but good enough for the price paid.

[deathbymanga]

'Forged don't need proficiency with Heavy Armor to take Adamantine Body, do they? Thats why it's so great for psionic warforged, because they don't have to worry about the ACP, there's no spell failure, and it doesn't affect carrying capacity. Even if you don't have proficiency, all it is mostly a penalty to RTAs, which you don't NEED any RTA's. You won't be terribly sneaky, but if you want that, don't go Adamantine Body.

Object Reading is GREAT, but don't take it as a power. Gloves of Object Reading are almost free (like, 2k gold) and allow you to do it at will enough to go back ~2.5 owners of the item. Not quite as good as actually casting it with full ML, but good enough for the price paid.


Your armor bonus is increased to +8 and you gain damage reduction 2/adamantine. However, your base land speed is reduced to 20 feet, and you are considered to be wearing heavy armor. You have a +1 maximum Dexterity bonus to AC, a –5 penalty on all skill checks to which armor check penalties apply (Balance, Climb, Escape Artist, Hide, Jump, Move Silently, Sleight of Hand, Swim, and Tumble), and an arcane spell failure chance of 35%.

So, there's still an Armor Check Penalty to getting Adamantine Body. And, considering I'm not getting a lot of skills, I'd at least like to not get Penalized for my Stealthy skills. Or my Parkour Skills. (Especially since I'm likely going to have high strength for my Slam attacks)

[RoyVG]

Maybe have a look at the Psionic Artificer variant from Magic of Eberron?

It gives you trapfinding and disabling, is Int Based with most of the detective skills present like Seach, Open lock and posibbly Disable Device.
It has a lot of option both inside and outside of combat, like a Homonculus. The Warfoged Artificer Substitution levels are definitely worth to check out. (Races of Eberron)

Psiforged body is kind of wasted though as you don't actually manifest and get no power points (besides the one from Psiforged body), you create temporary psionic items like Dorjes and Power Stones.

It might be a bit too much, but these are my two cp.