Astral Constructs with CompPsi material

[thorr-kan]

Assuming the CompPsi changes to Astral Construct are in place.
Ignoring any arguments are about whether they are good changes or not.

Do the Entopic Form feats limit your psion to the forms you have feats for?

Do Entopic Form Astral Constructs still get to choose from the standard Astral Construct menus?

[Kelb_Panthera]

The feat's benefit reads


The astral constructs you create using this feat vary in appearance and talents.

Emphasis mine.

Use is voluntary. You can choose to use a thing or not. You can still make normal constructs.

On that topic, Google the Mind's Eye article on the constructor prestige class for even more options.

[Psyren]

I would avoid using any part of CPsi for a shaper simply because of the huge nerf that you can only have one construct out at a time (despite summon-focused spellcasters having no similar limitation.)

Assuming you don't mind that or your GM houserules it out however, basically what the Ectopic Forms do is give you prepackaged menu choices for your AC that you can then bolt additional selections onto. I believe they end up giving you more menu abilities than you can get if you were building the constructs from scratch, but it's been a long time since I did the math.

[DrMartin]

I believe that the intention behind the feat and the ectopic forms as a whole is that you don´t get to customize your constructs, as they are supposed to (quote) "provide characters with ready-made constructs that can be used at a moment's notice", as opposed to having to make choices and figure the stat block out as with normal astral constructs.

It is spelled out in a sort-of-roundabout way in the next paragraph, which lists the stats for "basic astral constructs", saying that what follows are the same stat blocks for the standard constructs from the xph, sans the menu choices. It then lists the stats for the individual ectopic forms, saying that "Their [ectopic form constructs] statistics blocks are truncated so that they provide only the characteristics that are different from, or in addition to, those of a basic astral construct of a given level."

So the base for an ectopic form stats is the "basic AC" listed in the book, not the "standard AC" listed in the XPH - so no menu choices.

Personally, I think it's dumb, but that's what's in the book.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

As others have mentioned, you can choose not to apply your ectopic form feat when creating an astral construct. You can take multiple ectopic form feats so you would need to be able to pick which one is used, or none at all.

Ectopic forms have set abilities instead of picking from the menus, you don't get both. However, the Boost Construct (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/psionicFeats.htm#boostConstruct) feat can be used to get an extra ability from a list the construct already has an ability from. So a 1st level Emerald Gyre has Improved Grab from Menu B, so Boost Construct would give it a second Menu B ability.

The Personal Construct ACF (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20070411a) allows you to manifest Astral Construct as a swift action, but that one always has the same abilities every time you use it. You can select one of your ectopic forms for that, but if you also have Boost Construct that extra ability would always be the same as well when using that.

[thorr-kan]

So you get to choose your preloaded Ectopic Feat AC or to choose a build-your-own AC when you manifest. I can work with that.

Thanks, folks.