Psychic Assassin and Manifester Level?

[Sleven]

Web Enhancement
Powers Known: At 2nd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 8th, and 10th levels, a psychic assassin gains additional power points per day and access to new discovered powers as if she had also gained a level in whatever psionic manifesting class she belonged to before she added the prestige class. The psychic assassin does not, however, gain any other benefit a character of that class would have gained (bonus feats, metapsionic or item creation feats, psicrystal special abilities, and so on). This essentially means that she adds the level of psychic assassin to the level of whatever manifesting class the character has, then determines power points per day, powers known, and manifester level accordingly.

Text trumps table, so...

If I'm understanding this correctly, a Psychic Assassin's (from the web enhancement) manifester level increases with class level, but its powers known and power points only increase every even numbered level? It seems to seperate the two given that the first sentence doesn't mention manifester level, while the last one does.

I'm 80% sure that's what's going on here based on the text, but I can't recall encountering a class that works this way off the top of my head, so I'm questioning it.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Psychic Assassin (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20040723d) for reference.

"This essentially means that she adds the level of psychic assassin to the level of whatever manifesting class the character has, then determines power points per day, powers known, and manifester level accordingly."

This is only ambiguous when intentionally taken out of context. It does not say anything about your total Psychic Assassin level. It instead references the earlier "At 2nd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 8th, and 10th levels," thus stating, "This essentially means that she adds the [above] level of psychic assassin..." It's referring only to the levels indicated earlier in the ability description, not every Psychic Assassin level.

HOWEVER, you did point out something I've missed all these years: The table shows Psychic Assassin advancing manifesting at the even-numbered (2, 4, 6, 8, 10) levels, but the ability description includes the 5th class level, making it 6/10 instead of 5/10 manifesting. If you bail after the 6th level (5th for Mind Cripple, 6th because it gives BAB, all three base saves, and mainfesting), you only lose out on two levels of manifesting instead of three.

[Psyren]

Agree with Biffo. "Adds the level" refers to the specific level(s) listed, each time one of them comes up.