Segev
2020-07-29, 06:53 PM
There are a number of scattered references to psicrystals having feats in the material Dreamscarred Press has printed for Pathfinder on Psionics. Not a ton of them, but a few. Not the least being in their Psicrystals Augmented booklet, where a feat lets a psicrystal have and use psi focus, which is expressly noted as being useful for feats that require maintenance or expenditure thereof.
However, as best I can tell, psicrystals, by default, do not get feats. There is no way to "level them up" or give them more HD.
But... what if they took class levels? Okay, normally, there's no mechanism for that. But what if you take them as a cohort, making them a pseudo-PC? You could, obviously, take a normal PCable race as a cohort and get any class you want. Is there anything against the rules or overpowered (beyond normal for the Leadership feat) in taking your own psicrystal (or, I suppose, familiar; no reason to restrict this to psionics only) as a cohort and giving it class levels?
The two big things that might stand out as potentially broken, to me, are the possibility of using the shared powers to make your psicrystal into a doubled-up powers-known reservoir, and getting the psicrystal its own access to things like Share Senses (which would let it do the concentrating on sharing its senses with you). The latter is what led me down this thought process, for the record: how to get the most use out of sharing your psicrystal's Sighted trait.
The former, however, isn't really all that broken; a cohort with a psionic class could already share those powers with you.
So, is there anything I'm missing here? Is it broken? Illegal? Legal? Balanced? Any neat tricks inherent to this that aren't to a non-psicrystal cohort? Any other ways to expand your psicrystal's ability to get feats or use psionics?
Anything for or against doing this with a familiar?
However, as best I can tell, psicrystals, by default, do not get feats. There is no way to "level them up" or give them more HD.
But... what if they took class levels? Okay, normally, there's no mechanism for that. But what if you take them as a cohort, making them a pseudo-PC? You could, obviously, take a normal PCable race as a cohort and get any class you want. Is there anything against the rules or overpowered (beyond normal for the Leadership feat) in taking your own psicrystal (or, I suppose, familiar; no reason to restrict this to psionics only) as a cohort and giving it class levels?
The two big things that might stand out as potentially broken, to me, are the possibility of using the shared powers to make your psicrystal into a doubled-up powers-known reservoir, and getting the psicrystal its own access to things like Share Senses (which would let it do the concentrating on sharing its senses with you). The latter is what led me down this thought process, for the record: how to get the most use out of sharing your psicrystal's Sighted trait.
The former, however, isn't really all that broken; a cohort with a psionic class could already share those powers with you.
So, is there anything I'm missing here? Is it broken? Illegal? Legal? Balanced? Any neat tricks inherent to this that aren't to a non-psicrystal cohort? Any other ways to expand your psicrystal's ability to get feats or use psionics?
Anything for or against doing this with a familiar?