Looking for a ...more psychic PsyWarrior

[GrayDeath]

The Title says it all.

For our running game, a player has fixed on playing a Psywarrior...however the overall Power Level is too high for him to be really useful all around (Sorcerer Theurge with free Pixie Template, Warforged Initiator/Telflammar Shadowlord Gestalt, Mindflayeresk Psion and at times, not full time, a massively cheesy Gunslinger (PF Import)).

So I, as fellow Player, am asking you: is there a Prestige Class (or other Option) that would allow a Psywar to get a massive boos in Power Points and a slight boos in things to do that are not self buffs?
He is set on the concept of Uses Mind to buff self and whack things, and would prefer to have more utility if possible without suffering at that area so the suggestion to simply play a Psion or similar will fall on deaf ears.

(As is the fact that he will likely, unless he gets healing and/or similar stuff, be less killy than my character and much less so than the from time to time Ranged Nuisance of Damage^^).

And while we are willing to homebrew something, the DM is less open for it than I would be, hence my question.

[Nifft]

You've got PCs with gestalts and others wtih free LA in the intro post.

How much of that can the PsyWar PC make use of?

An easy way to be "more psychic" would be to pick a psionic race with a lot of inherent powers -- or just slap on the Phrenic template.

[The Glyphstone]

Can he rebuild into a King of Smack? Generally a very powerful PsyWarrior build, as far as they go.

[Karl Aegis]

Take Psionic Talent a bunch of times and pick better powers. That's all there is to Psychic Warrior.

[GrayDeath]

You've got PCs with gestalts and others wtih free LA in the intro post.

How much of that can the PsyWar PC make use of?

An easy way to be "more psychic" would be to pick a psionic race with a lot of inherent powers -- or just slap on the Phrenic template.


We gain templates as follows:

We can choose one of +1LA for free.
We can choose up to +3 in total, but buyoff is at levels 6, 11 and 17 repsectively.

SO yeah, aphrenic Template is a rather obvious way to achieve the goa, thank you.

Still, is there a classbased solution?

Also, yes, the Psywarrior may gestalt with a T5 or 6 class, but he would prefer a more In Class Solution, as after all there is no T5 or lower class that makes you more psychic, as far as I know....



Can he rebuild into a King of Smack? Generally a very powerful PsyWarrior build, as far as they go.

I am unfamiliar with that (shorth checking makes me think it focusses quite strongly on Damage, a field where we already have 1- (depending on the Sometimes Player")....am I correct?

That would solve the Power Issue, but there IS an Illithid---ish character in the group, so the Illithid SLayer part would be problematic to start with, and it seems not more flexible than the PsyWarrior to me...

[Troacctid]

Could try Ardent. Same progression as the Psion, but in exchange for a more limited power list, you get a sturdier Cleric-like chassis.

Illithid Slayer is a good option too. Remember that Slayer, the generic version of the class from the SRD, allows you to choose a psionic creature other than mind flayer to be your hated enemy.

[The Glyphstone]

W

I am unfamiliar with that (shorth checking makes me think it focusses quite strongly on Damage, a field where we already have 1- (depending on the Sometimes Player")....am I correct?

That would solve the Power Issue, but there IS an Illithid---ish character in the group, so the Illithid SLayer part would be problematic to start with, and it seems not more flexible than the PsyWarrior to me...

The only thing a PsyWarrior really does is damage, so there's not a whole lot of flexibility there. If he wants flexibility, he'll need to retrain into a real caster class. The King of Smack is a build that focuses on Rapidstrike with Claws of the Beast, Vampiric Claws, and stacking every weapon size-increasing effect he can get his hands on to deal massive damage-per-hit and heal himself with every attack as well, creating an extremely high-damage and tanky melee character.

[The Vagabond]

Still, is there a classbased solution?

Also, yes, the Psywarrior may gestalt with a T5 or 6 class, but he would prefer a more In Class Solution, as after all there is no T5 or lower class that makes you more psychic, as far as I know....
Well, there are alternative options-
Pathfinder has modified 3.5's Psywarrior into a different beast, but that might not be to your party's taste.
3.5 has Ardents and Divine Mind to gestalt with. Not too psionic, buf some Psionic Flavor. There is also the Soublade as an additional Psoinic Option. Lurks are a thing that exist.

[Nifft]

We gain templates as follows:

We can choose one of +1LA for free.
We can choose up to +3 in total, but buyoff is at levels 6, 11 and 17 repsectively.

SO yeah, aphrenic Template is a rather obvious way to achieve the goa, thank you. It is the easy way out. :)



Still, is there a classbased solution?

Also, yes, the Psywarrior may gestalt with a T5 or 6 class, but he would prefer a more In Class Solution, as after all there is no T5 or lower class that makes you more psychic, as far as I know....

Soulknife might be T5, and it's "more psychic" since it gives you a few [Psionic] bonus feats.

In terms of "class-based", you've got classes like Ardent (already mentioned above) which give you more power points & faster access to powers. But there's no trivial option to just make a PsyWar into a better PsyWar.

[ExLibrisMortis]

"More psionic" psychic warrior is going to be tricky. You might be able to do something a bit silly and quasi-homebrew like psychic warrior 5/war mind 1/ultimate psywar 10 (Ultimate Magus converted to psionics, add 3/4 base attack, because we're talking psywar), which gets you two progressions of more-or-less psywar with a bunch of neat ML-boosting/extra metapsionic class features (I'd re-imagine the Augmented Casting feature as allowing metapsionics on class A's powers to be paid for with the ML from class B (up to class level pp per use, must be able to manifest powers of equivalent cost), as there's no separate reserves for a dual-manifesting character).

[Zombulian]

Soulknife might be T5, and it's "more psychic" since it gives you a few [Psionic] bonus feats.

In terms of "class-based", you've got classes like Ardent (already mentioned above) which give you more power points & faster access to powers. But there's no trivial option to just make a PsyWar into a better PsyWar.

Relatedly to Psionic tier 5's there's always the Divine Mind.

[MilleniaAntares]

Let him backport the Pathfinder psychic warrior (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/psionics-unleashed/classes/psychic-warrior/), and any psionic powers and feats he wants to use. That should at least boost him up a tiny bit.

[Nifft]

Looking harder at Soulknife, and it's surprisingly good for a T5 mix-in.

• 2 good saves, which are Reflex and Will -- applied to a PsyWar, you get all good saves.

• 2 good ACFs here: http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20070214a -- take both, and you get a bunch more free feats, plus Hidden Talent gives you a free power known from any list. Hello astral construct or psi minor creation or mindlink for entry into Thrallherd.

• d10 HD and 4+Int skills are both improvements over the PsyWar base.

• The Mindblade itself is poor as a main class feature, but as an incidental bonus feature it's quite decent. Also it looks cool, and it presumably "feels more psychic" when you stab someone with your mind.

[The Shadowmind]

Take both the Pathfinder Psywar, and the Soulknife

For the Psychic Warrior, consider the Martial Kineticist archetype, or no archetype, it more depends on the play style for the player.
For the Soulknife, Do Gifted Blade for extra powers, and Augmented Blade to enchant normal weapons and get a psicyrstal.

[Piggy Knowles]

The Psycarnum Warrior by RadicalTaoist uses incarnum on a straight classed PsyWar to get a constantly refreshing pool of bonus PP, letting you buff to your heart’s consent without cracking into your own PP reserves. It’s strong but not gamebrealingly so, and still feels like a psychic warrior every step of the way. Might be worth looking into.

Here’s the link to his write up of the build: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?471353-Weekly-Optimization-Showcase-Psycarnum-Warrior-(RadicalTaoist)

[Ramza00]

Read this thread for instead of posting select amounts it is good to just read it all.

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?555882-Guide-Astral-Construct-Resources

But pay particular attention to Power Link Shards from Magic of Eberron. It requires the race Kalashtar or Use Psionic Device / Magic Device, but if you are DM you can just homebrew an alternative.

Even without the manifester level boost the shards gives you, you get 6 power points per shard, and can have 1 shard per level. Furthermore Kalashtar Race gives you 1 power point per HD. Thus you get a net 7 pp per level for the cost of 1 HP per level and 1,500 GP per level if you craft, or 3,000 GP if you buy the shards at a market.

To give you an idea of how powerful this is, not counting bonus power points from high wisdom:

HD 5 Psychic Warrior would get 7 power points from Psychic Warrior, and 35 power points from Shards and Kalashtar Race (but you can't really afford 5 shards at Wealth By Level 5)

HD 7 Psychic Warrior would get 15 power points from Psychic Warrior and 49 power points from Shards and Kalashtar Race

HD 11 Psychic Warrior would get 35 power points from Psychic Warrior and 77 power points from Shards and Kalashtar Race

HD 15 Psychic Warrior would get 67 power points from Psychic Warrior and 105 power points from Shards and Kalashtar Race.

HD 20 Psychic Warrior would get 127 power points from Psychic Warrior and 120 power points from Shards and Kalashtar Race.

------

Astral Construct is an awesome psionic power. It is great for PW if you can afford it power points and you can add the power to your class list. Hidden Talent gives you AC to the Psychic Warrior List and adds it to your powers known, plus 2 more power points, and it can be taken at 1st level (if you can't afford the feat at later levels Expand Knowledge also works from level 4 on but no 2 extra PP)

Psychic Warrior has lots of swift action buffs, so use Linked Power Feat+Swift Action Buff, and next round your Astral Construct shows up to provide battlefield control options. Have it Grapple enemies, be a meat shield, and just split the enemies resources while you kill things, followed by after you kill things you round about and kill the things the Astral Construct is focusing on. Aka the AC is your tank / taunter because of its grapple abilities and high hit points, while you are the person providing damage per round. Effectively you are half a conjuration wizard specialist by adding a single psionic power to your Psychic Warrior list plus a few feat choices that just makes sense anyway.

The only downside is AC is power point intensive, while PW buffs are usually less PP intensive, but when you have power linked shards giving you 7 power points per HD you can use power points more often than a traditional Psychic Warrior.

[Rebel7284]

The power link shards are a great idea and offer an amazing boost to any psionics user. While the extra power points are nice, the ability to Augment significantly above your level is ridiculous. Whether you're using it to for buffs or as a emergency nova button, a power augmented with an extra 30PPs at level 10 is going to be silly good!

You can also get access to a lot of powers by seeking out a Telepath with 9th level powers who can grant you all their powers with Psychic Chirurgery. Even better if it's an epic Erutide who has Spell to Power ACF instead and can grant you all spell AND powers...

You can take the spellcasting service cost out of wealth by level of course.

[Demidos]

The soulknife gestalt sounds like it would be right up his alley.

A Magic-in-the-blood (Feat which makes your racial SLAs 3/day, usually allowed under transparency) Phrenic Psychic Warrior//Soulknife is quite good.

Note that all PLAs (power like abilities) are automatically boosted to your level in powerpoints, meaning that you might double your power points just from adding phrenic alone. Phrenic also gives a particularly standout power, Intellect Fortress, which HALVES ALL DAMAGE from psionic powers (and with magic transparency, all magic!), can be activated as an immediate action, and lasts for the entire encounter. That alone can make you the party MVP.

[emeraldstreak]

Stat-wise, I would consider going either for Strength (Kalashtar + HalfMinotaur or HalfOgre from DM) or Wisdom (Intuitive Attack + Saint from BoED).

Damage-wise, going for (at least) Colossal-sized claws (via classic KoS) or unarmed strike (via Tashalatora) is a must. Beast Strike (DM) may be added at some point.

Movement-wise, unless your singular attack is truly devastating, go for pounce. If for some reason you feel a level of Cleric is in-character, an alternative option would be Travel Devotion and Magic domain (be able to activate items as both Cleric and Wizard while you're at it).

Defense-wise, how cheesy is your table? Starmantle cloak + Evasion + 13 Reflex cheesy? Trollblooded + nonlethal damage immunity cheesy?

[GrayDeath]

Hmmm, SoulPsyWar Gestalt and Phrenic sounds like the way to go, with enough crystals thrown ina s soon as he can get them to boost his boosts that should allow a nicely powerful and also more flexible build.

THanks so far, still open for opther ideas, so keep it coming!

[Nifft]

Hmmm, SoulPsyWar Gestalt and Phrenic sounds like the way to go, with enough crystals thrown ina s soon as he can get them to boost his boosts that should allow a nicely powerful and also more flexible build.

THanks so far, still open for opther ideas, so keep it coming!

You could play an LA +2 body snatcher: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?503805-Tsochar-Psionic-PEACH

[TallerSpine]

Ask your DM to read Monte Cook's Book of Experimental Might. In turbo-powered games, I always use his variant where characters get a feat at every level instead of every three levels. Make his gestalt fighter/psychic warrior and see if the DM will allow the fighter to gain feats at every level rather than every other level (which was a suggestion in the aforementioned book, as well). Then ask if instead of limited to fighter feats, he can include Psionic feats. Then with Expanded Knowledge and Psychic Talent, you can get a ton of power points and extra powers known.

[nintendoh]

Melee wilder build.

Take ek: astral construct and work in the share pain vigor psicrystal.... Its more psiiiiii.


Really tho, from my understanding the psywar is all uptight like a monk. The wilder is more... Expressive


One of the toons is gestalt right. If thats an option do dragon shaman or something. Dragons are cool. Lots of people get all emotional over dragons so it fits.

[ExLibrisMortis]

I have to disagree with the posters above who recommend soulknife; I don't think it'll do anything to make the psywar more psionic. It's basically a melee class with Wild Talent, which is to say, barely psionic at all.

[Nifft]

I have to disagree with the posters above who recommend soulknife; I don't think it'll do anything to make the psywar more psionic. It's basically a melee class with Wild Talent, which is to say, barely psionic at all. I'm recommending Soulknife in the context of the ACFs available here: http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20070214a

If you're not allowed to use the ACFs, then ELM has a point.


Anyway, about the ACFs:

Level 1 you get Hidden Talent (from an ACF). That's +2 power points and a level 1 power from any list. Having access to a discipline-only power from level 1 does seem "more psionic" to me.

Level 6 you get Speed Of Thought, another [Psionic] feat.

If you take the more-feats ACF, then you get a decent number of bonus feats chosen from the set of all feats that "your mindblade could benefit from", so you could pick up a large number of [Psionic] feats, stuff like Deep Impact which is nice with your Mindblade and also nice with any other weapon.

You get these feats at levels: 3rd, 7th, 11th, 15th, and 19th. That's 5 extra feats, one early enough to matter.

Having more [Psionic] feats does seem "more psionic" to me.

The glowing neon mind-sword is just gravy.

[Feantar]

Can you tell us a bit about your rules? As in, what are the gestalt limitations for character creation? Because a good psychic warrior could be a gestalt Fighter / Egoist (who, depending on level, can just ignore physical scores through metamorphosis) but that seems to be out of bounds.

[GrayDeath]

If you are using a T 3 or lower class you may gestalt with up to 2 T 5 (or in case of T4 with T 4 or T5) Classes.
Prestige classes are allowed or disallowed on a case by case basis, but overall a clear "Main class" per side is a requirement for the DM.

So no Class A 2/Class B1/ Class A 1/CLass C 5/CLass B 1/Prestige Class A 10//Race 3/CLass B 2/CLass D4/CLass E 2/CLass D 2/CLass F 7 Builds.

[The Shadowmind]

Okay with those rules:


Unarmed Build:
PF Psychic Warrior (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/psionics-unleashed/classes/psychic-warrior)Meditant Archetype (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/psionics-unleashed/classes/psychic-warrior/archetypes/dreamscarred-press/meditant)//PF Soulknife (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/psionics-unleashed/classes/soulknife/)Deadly Fist (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/psionics-unleashed/classes/soulknife/archetypes/dreamscarred-press/deadly-fist) / Gifted Blade (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/psionics-unleashed/classes/soulknife/archetypes/dreamscarred-press/gifted-blade) // Phrenic (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/monsters/phrenicCreature.htm[/url) LA 1

PF Psychic Warrior (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/psionics-unleashed/classes/psychic-warrior)Meditant Archetype (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/psionics-unleashed/classes/psychic-warrior/archetypes/dreamscarred-press/meditant)//PF Soulknife (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/psionics-unleashed/classes/soulknife/)Deadly Fist (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/psionics-unleashed/classes/soulknife/archetypes/dreamscarred-press/deadly-fist) / Gifted Blade (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/psionics-unleashed/classes/soulknife/archetypes/dreamscarred-press/gifted-blade) // Phrenic (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/monsters/phrenicCreature.htm[/url) LA 2


PF Psychic Warrior 3 (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/psionics-unleashed/classes/psychic-warrior)Meditant Archetype (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/psionics-unleashed/classes/psychic-warrior/archetypes/dreamscarred-press/meditant)//PF Soulknife (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/psionics-unleashed/classes/soulknife/)Deadly Fist 3 (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/psionics-unleashed/classes/soulknife/archetypes/dreamscarred-press/deadly-fist) / Gifted Blade (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/psionics-unleashed/classes/soulknife/archetypes/dreamscarred-press/gifted-blade) // Soulborn 1

PF Psychic Warrior 4 (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/psionics-unleashed/classes/psychic-warrior)Meditant Archetype (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/psionics-unleashed/classes/psychic-warrior/archetypes/dreamscarred-press/meditant)//PF Soulknife (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/psionics-unleashed/classes/soulknife/)Deadly Fist 4 (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/psionics-unleashed/classes/soulknife/archetypes/dreamscarred-press/deadly-fist) / Gifted Blade (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/psionics-unleashed/classes/soulknife/archetypes/dreamscarred-press/gifted-blade) // Soulborn 2

PF Psychic Warrior 5 (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/psionics-unleashed/classes/psychic-warrior)Meditant Archetype (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/psionics-unleashed/classes/psychic-warrior/archetypes/dreamscarred-press/meditant)//PF Soulknife (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/psionics-unleashed/classes/soulknife/)Deadly Fist 5 (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/psionics-unleashed/classes/soulknife/archetypes/dreamscarred-press/deadly-fist) / Gifted Blade (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/psionics-unleashed/classes/soulknife/archetypes/dreamscarred-press/gifted-blade) // Soulborn 3


Etc.

Soulborn is mostly providing the build with better BAB, and HP. Take the feats needed to do the Psycarnum Fusion trick, even thought you are doing it at a later level than the pure-build.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

The ceiling on psychic warrior is quite high, able to keep up with T1s and T2s with a bit of op-fu applied. Perhaps optimize a bit harder? (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?162701-3-5-The-Psychic-Warrior-Handbook)

[edit] The above link massively undervalues the psicrystal, and yes, I know it's rated blue. It's insanely versatile and powerful if used to its fullest extent. Look up uses and optimization for the psicrystal for more details.