Erudite

[Alleine]

Anyone here played an erudite? I'm trying it out, and I know it has awesome potential, but the whole "learn stuff" mechanic makes me unhappy. Oh, I'm grateful for the ability to learn it all, it just seems like I won't be able to for quite awhile, since the DC's for simple contact are uncomfortably high.

I was going to try to use an item familiar to offset the XP loss, but in order to hit those DC's I'll need to have a bunch of ranks and bonuses in psicraft that will be really hard to get early on. Any suggestions on how I can boost it quick and cheap?

[Kaelik]

Anyone here played an erudite? I'm trying it out, and I know it has awesome potential, but the whole "learn stuff" mechanic makes me unhappy. Oh, I'm grateful for the ability to learn it all, it just seems like I won't be able to for quite awhile, since the DC's for simple contact are uncomfortably high.

I was going to try to use an item familiar to offset the XP loss, but in order to hit those DC's I'll need to have a bunch of ranks and bonuses in psicraft that will be really hard to get early on. Any suggestions on how I can boost it quick and cheap?

I believe the answer to that would be Item Familiar.

[RTGoodman]

According to the DMG/SRD guidelines, you can get an item that gives a competence bonus on a skill check for [bonus squared x 100] gold. So a +10 Psicraft item is only 10,000 gold (assuming I'm reading all of those charts correctly). That's not exactly cheap, but your DM might be willing to sell you an item like that, or you can just take Craft Wondrous Item an make it yourself with whatever bonus you want.

Also, for more (cheese-laden) power for the Erudite, check out this Mind's Eye column (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20070629a) (scroll down pretty far to find the Erudite stuff) - it gives a variant that allows Erudites to learn arcane spells as they would psionic powers, as long as they can also make a Spellcraft check (and, of course, the variant adds Spellcraft to their craft skills).