Segev
2020-12-06, 04:50 PM
The Bastion (https://libraryofmetzofitz.fandom.com/wiki/Bastion) psionic power is an interesting one that enables a psion or vitalist to empower an Aegis (https://libraryofmetzofitz.fandom.com/wiki/Aegis) ally. For 2 pp, the manifester gives his ally a bonus custumization point to spend for a number of minutes equal to his manifester level. It augments for 4 pp per additional customization point the manifester wishes to grant.
This has some nice buffing capability for a party with multiple psionic characters, but the purpose of this thread is to examine the single-character exploitation of this power.
Because of course one can multiclass as a psion/Aegis. (Or a Vitalist/Aegis, but the intelligence-focus of Aegis makes it stack a little better with Psion.)
It is worth noting that a straight Aegis build gets "Augment Suit" at level 4, which permits 1 pp to be spent to get 1 customization point that lasts for Int Modifier rounds. Every 4 levels, the number of pp that can be spent 1:1 for CP increases by 1.
So a 20th level Aegis can spend up to 5 pp to get 5 floating CP to alter his suit. This is pretty useful.
Bastion is nowhere near as efficient, being 3 pp for the first CP and 4 pp for each thereafter. Still, a 19th level manifester can also give 5 floating CP (at a cost of 19 pp), for 19 minutes, to his buddy!
Or to himself, if his 20th level is an Aegis level.
Now, a lot of Astral Suit customizations are level-restricted, but they're case-by-case, so there's also a lot you can pick up just by having the CP available. While it might be tempting to try to make your Aegis 1/Psion X build into a gish, the actual power, I would argue, of such a build is the flexibility it offers you. Bastion becomes a slate of varying powers you can give yourself by adding Customizations to your Astral Suit. You're a behind-by-one-level Psion, otherwise, which leaves you mostly a full manifester.
This isn't a guide, and I am not that great a judge of what's super-useful vs. what isn't, so I won't be rating things, but I will provide here a list of Customizations that a 1st-level Aegis can pick up, and discuss a little bit what uses they might have to a Psion. Remember: while some of these might be expensive, pp-wise, they're all available for a single-level dip and a single power choice. Power choice is a huge limitation for Psions!
1-Point Customizations
Custom Psicrystal (1 CP): You probably already have Psicrystal Affinity, but if you don't, this is a way to get it for a few minutes at a time. The beauty of it is that you're making a new psicrystal each time, so you can change which skill it boosts.
Even if you already have a permanent psicrystal, this lets you spend additional CP to buy feats that have Psicrystal Affinity as a prerequisite (other than the explicitly-excluded Superior Psicrystal). Some fun examples include:
Psicrystal Containment
For 7 pp (assuming this is all you're getting), you can have that second psi focus running without any feat investment!
Psicrystal Reservoir
If you're willing to go up to 11 pp, this gets your psicrystal the ability to refocus itself, rather than taking your action to focus it.
Improved Psicrystal
Especially if you have a fixed psicrystal from the feat proper, this enables you, each time you activate it, to still pick a new "second" skill for a +3 bonus. So for 2pp, you can get +3 to almost any skill, or +4 init. And the +4 init stacks with Improved Initiative.
Darkvision (1 CP): 60 ft. of Darkvision is a 3rd level power ("Heightened Vision" in Pathfinder). Admittedly, that lasts 1 hour per level, while this is only 1 minute per level, but it's available as one of many possible features from a 2nd level power-pick. With the delay to your level from multiclassing, you're only getting it a level early, but it's still cheaper, and it's far more flexible than locking up a power selection in a power that only gives darkvision.
Energy Resistance (1 CP): Energy resistance 5 against your active energy type. Doesn't scale since you're not leveling up Aegis, but not terrible. Even just as a comfort thing, Fire Resistance makes you comfortable in any hot weather that isn't doing direct fire damage to you, and Cold Resistance has a similar benefit in cold weather. Admittedly, again, the only-for-minutes duration makes this less useful than it could be for that last purpose.
Evasion* (1 CP): *This one gets an asterisk because you do need to invest at least 2 levels into Aegis before you can pick it up, but it's worth mentioning anyway. Especially if you go for 4 levels of Aegis to try your hand at a proper gish, and have the ability to use Augment Suit for 1 pp along with Bastion's more expensive augmentation.
Extra Arms, Lesser (1 CP): Not terribly useful, really, though they can help if you're juggling a lot of items for some reason.
Flexible Suit (1 CP): Reduce ACP of your suit by 1. You probably are going to use a normal CP on this if you're concerned about that. (This also is one you get for free at level 2 on the middle-weight armor option for your astral suit.)
Ghostly Guidance (1 CP): +1 to Perception and -5% to all miss chances is... okay, but situational. Probably not worth Bastion's costs.
Hardened Strikes (1 CP): Lets you make unarmed strikes as if armed, do lethal damage, etc. Unlikely to be attractive to a psion, honestly.
Harness Shard (1 CP): Put a skill shard into your astral suit and spend 1 pp to use it without burning it up. Note that, unlike Harness Power Stone, it doesn't say the Shard is destroyed when removed if you've used it this way.
Power Stone Repository (1 CP): Store 1 power stone in your suit to make it appear and disappear with the suit, and gain a +1 bonus to the UMD check to activate it if it's not on your power list. This gets better with more Aegis levels, but is mostly a stepping-stone to Harness Power Stone, which has a 3rd-level-Aegis requirement.
Psionic Attacks (1 CP): All melee attacks you make overcome DR/magic, and melee weapons are masterwork if not already (so a +1 to hit for mundane weapons). Decent for a gish. Useful in a pinch if you HAVE to engage in melee.
Pull (1 CP): Not terribly useful since you need a reach weapon to use it at all, and you rarely want to get closer to enemies.
Push (1 CP): Slightly more useful than Pull because it shoves enemies away from you on a hit, but still highly situational at best. Also, doesn't work on anything bigger than you.
Ranged Attack (1 CP): This one actually seems pretty cool, to me. Bastion becomes a level 2 power that gives you 1d8 piercing damage ranged attacks with range increments of 30 feet. Not bad. If you have iteratives, it even works with those.
If you have Superior Psicrystal giving your Psicrystal the Aegis ability to have its own adorable little Astral Suit, you can have your psicrystal shooting these, too!
Speed (1 CP): While you probably have this from the astral skin variant of your astral suit, it stacks up to 5 times. Only 5 ft. increase to speed, though, so whether it's worth the power point investment is a good question. Worth noting that Speed has no type, so it stacks with all other speed-enhancers.
Spiked Carapace (1 CP): Probably not one you're going to go looking for excuses to use, but if somebody insists on grappling you, you can poke them back for it.
Stalwart* (1 CP): * This one gets the same "have to be 2nd level, but worth mentioning anyway" asterisk as Evasion. This is Evasion for Fortitude and Will saves, turning save-for-partial to save-negates. If you're willing to invest the second level of Aegis, it could be worthwhile in the right combats.
Suit Maneuverability (1 CP): Useful if you're high dex and want a heavier astral suit. +2 to the suit's max dex bonus to AC. And you're a manifester, not a caster, so heavier suits can be worn without impeding your manifesting.
Swim (1 CP): Swim speed equal to base land speed is a nice thing to have on tap when you need it. Situational, but the beauty of Bastion is that it has so many uses that it makes these "situational" needs convenient.
Underwater Breath (1 CP): Goes perfectly with Swim, but doesn't actually require it. If you need it, it's 3 pp away!
2-point Customizatoins
Adhesive Feet (2 CP): +4 to CMD against a selection of maneuvers that move you, and to climb checks. Very situational for 7 pp, but again, "situational" is a beauty of Bastion letting you get all of these powers.
Brawn (2 CP): +2 enhancement to Strength! It's like a mini version of animal affinity. More expensive, though. But you have it available if you don't have animal affinity but do have Bastion.
Climb (2 CP): Gain a climb speed of half your base land speed. This is effectively doubling the 1/4 land speed a climb normally permits, but the real benefit here is the +8 to climb checks that having a climb speed gives you. So if you want to climb, this is better than Adhesive Feet.
Crystalized Weapon (2 CP): Make your weapon masterwork (if not already) and deep crystal (spend 2 pp for +2d6 damage on its next hit). No action is listed for spending the pp, so it's either free or standard. I think RAI is free, but RAW is standard due to no specification.
Flight* (2 CP): * This one gets another special mention. Can't take it
until 5th level, so useless on the 1 Aegis/X Psion build. However, an Aegis 4
with Student of the Astral Suit who is mixing it up with Psion could get Flight
for 7 pp, the same price a Nomad pays for it from having the flight psionic power. Normally a Nomad-exclusive. Of course, multiclassing that hard means you're going to be 11th level, unless you can pump your manifester level up significantly. (Overchannel can get you 2 ML at level 8, and Psychic Trait can get you +2 more, so you could manage it at Aegis 4/Psion 4; with such a build, you'd also have up to 8th level suit customizations available.)
Fortification (2 CP): 25% chance to ignore criticals. Probably never coming up, but like a lot of situational ones, if it does, be glad you had it on hand.
Hardy (2 CP): Same comments as Brawny. This one's for Constution.
Improved Damage (2 CP): Extra damage on melee attacks.
Nimble (2 CP): Same comments as Brawny. This one's for Dexterity. Worth noting that it's free on the astral skin.
Power Resistance (2 CP): 13 power resistance at 4th level isn't bad. It's unclear whether this can be taken 3 times as a level 1 Aegis, with 8th and 12th level giving you a 4th and 5th time, or if 8th and 12th level give you the 2nd and 3rd time you're allowed to take it. Stacking it adds 3 to the PR each time.
Powerful Build (2 CP): As the racial trait. Not really one size larger, but get a lot of the benefits of it.
Presence (2 CP): Same comments as Brawny, but for Charisma.
Unlock Psionics (2 CP): +2 to UMD. +4 if you've 10 ranks in UMD.
3-point Customizations
Diehard (3 CP): As the feat, but without needing prerequisite feats. Not bad, but not great by the time you have ML 11 to pick it up. Though as a level 1 Aegis, you could choose this as your one all-day customization.
Easy Suit (3 CP): Makes your non-Astral Skin Astral Suit into light armor, letting you move at full speed in it. Probably not an issue for you, but if it is, well, we've commented on the benefits of bastion wrt situational uses before.
Force Field (3 CP): 2 temp hp and fast healing for the temp hp of 3. If you have more CP to invest in this, eacy additional point gives +1 fast healing and +5 temp hp. This is one that might be worth investing your level 1 Aegis's 3 CP into, and then augmenting further with bastion if you need more temp hp and fast healing. Vigor is still a much better investment, but again costs its own power known. Worth noting that this does STACK with vigor, being a separate source of temp hp, but it won't share its fast healing with vigor's temp hp.
There are no 4-point Customizations that a low-level Aegis can pick up.
Akashic Customizations
Chakra Bind, Lesser (1 CP): Gives a minor bonus if you bind a veil to a magic item slot. Not fully familiar with DSP's version of Incarnum, so this may be better than I think it is, but probably not.
Shape Veil, Lesser (1 CP): Now, this is chaining versatility like nobody's business. When you have your suit formed, you gain the benefits of one veil from the daevic veil list (https://libraryofmetzofitz.fandom.com/wiki/Daevic_Veil_List), which you pick when you set up your suit for the day. It makes careful not that you can't change this even if you reconfigure your suit, so I will assume that uniquely, you're stuck with the choice you make when you manifest bastion for the first time for this Customization on any given day. But the list in the link is way too long for me to analyze in this post, already. Check out all it gives you access to, via Bastion!
Contemplation (2 CP): Spend power points to invest phantom Essence into your veils. Starting to get pricey, but useful if you really need a veil pumped up. Unless you're effectively 6th level as an Aegis, you can't stack the investment, and it gets much more expensive at 6th level with the second investment (3 pp per receptical for +1 essence).
Ectoplessence (2 CP): More likely what you'll use over Contemplation; gives you an essence pool equal to half your Aegis level (minimum 1). So...1. But still, you have it, now. Maybe you will use Contemplation if you prefer fueling multiple recepticles.
Martial Customizations
As a note, these make Aegis's incredibly flexible martial initiates on their own. The utility to an Aegis 1/Psion X is questionable, but if you find some techniques that serve you well, you can access them here! The fact that taking these Customizations lets you pick afresh what maneuvers you know is simply amazing.
Additional Maneuvers* (1 CP): * This one requires Aegis 3, so is only viable for the gish build. But it's likely mostly only desirable for it, too. Can be taken multiple times. The first time gives 2 maneuvers, and each additional time gives one more. You can also ready an additional maneuver for every 2x you take this Customization. Must have Initiator's Soul already to take it at all.
Additional Stance* (1 CP): * Similar notes to Additional Maneuvers. Given that stances are available right away, though, if you do have Initiator's Soul, this is likely more useful than Additional Maneuvers in a clutch situation.
Initiator's Soul (2 CP): 3 maneuvers and 1 stance when you take this customization. You get Sleeping Goddess and any two other Disciplines of your choice, which is pretty big since you can pick them anew each time you take this Customization. All 3 of your maneuvers can be readied, though Additional Maneuvers doesn't expand this until you take it twice.
Herein lies the biggest limitation on this: it takes 10 minutes of "tinkering with his astral suit" for an Aegis to ready his maneuvers, which means you need to have ten minutes after manifesting Bastion to have them ready to go. The Stance is ready to go right away, though.
You're probably only picking this up for Stances unless you have some neat tricks up your sleeve to ready maneuvers more swiftly.
As a final note, the way they recover maneuvers requires a full-round action, but also gives them a neat power to shift one of their CP to another ability. The shift only lasts one minute, but for various utility purposes, that could be an even better thing than bastion.
Martial Maneuvers of Interest
Editing this section in as I look at some of the martial maneuvers. In all honesty, there's not a lot to get too excited about past early levels, because you're a level 1 Aegis and thus get only level 1 maneuvers (unless you go for a level 4 Aegis and maybe Student of the Astral Suit, in which case there's more to consider, but my current perusal doesn't cover these higher-level options). Stances and strikes that give bonus damage, though, aren't terrible. However, one stood out to me as interesting as a possible choice.
Embrace the Elements (Stance, Elemental Flux Discipline): This is a stance, so you only get the one when you pick up Initiator's Soul, and this is still probably best done with 2 of your all-day CP. The Fire variant on this one gives you +4 to initiative and endure elements, so via Aegis, you can access endure elements without needing to invest in the environment shield power. And the initiative bonus is also quite nice. But this is Aegis-based, not bastion-based, most likely, since it's unlikely you'd ever need endure elements for only a few minutes at a time.
Overall, bastion provides an Aegis 1/Psion 3+ a ton of versatility that is just not present with other power selections.
Any tricks to enhance this are welcome, as are corrections to anything I may have missed.
This has some nice buffing capability for a party with multiple psionic characters, but the purpose of this thread is to examine the single-character exploitation of this power.
Because of course one can multiclass as a psion/Aegis. (Or a Vitalist/Aegis, but the intelligence-focus of Aegis makes it stack a little better with Psion.)
It is worth noting that a straight Aegis build gets "Augment Suit" at level 4, which permits 1 pp to be spent to get 1 customization point that lasts for Int Modifier rounds. Every 4 levels, the number of pp that can be spent 1:1 for CP increases by 1.
So a 20th level Aegis can spend up to 5 pp to get 5 floating CP to alter his suit. This is pretty useful.
Bastion is nowhere near as efficient, being 3 pp for the first CP and 4 pp for each thereafter. Still, a 19th level manifester can also give 5 floating CP (at a cost of 19 pp), for 19 minutes, to his buddy!
Or to himself, if his 20th level is an Aegis level.
Now, a lot of Astral Suit customizations are level-restricted, but they're case-by-case, so there's also a lot you can pick up just by having the CP available. While it might be tempting to try to make your Aegis 1/Psion X build into a gish, the actual power, I would argue, of such a build is the flexibility it offers you. Bastion becomes a slate of varying powers you can give yourself by adding Customizations to your Astral Suit. You're a behind-by-one-level Psion, otherwise, which leaves you mostly a full manifester.
This isn't a guide, and I am not that great a judge of what's super-useful vs. what isn't, so I won't be rating things, but I will provide here a list of Customizations that a 1st-level Aegis can pick up, and discuss a little bit what uses they might have to a Psion. Remember: while some of these might be expensive, pp-wise, they're all available for a single-level dip and a single power choice. Power choice is a huge limitation for Psions!
1-Point Customizations
Custom Psicrystal (1 CP): You probably already have Psicrystal Affinity, but if you don't, this is a way to get it for a few minutes at a time. The beauty of it is that you're making a new psicrystal each time, so you can change which skill it boosts.
Even if you already have a permanent psicrystal, this lets you spend additional CP to buy feats that have Psicrystal Affinity as a prerequisite (other than the explicitly-excluded Superior Psicrystal). Some fun examples include:
Psicrystal Containment
For 7 pp (assuming this is all you're getting), you can have that second psi focus running without any feat investment!
Psicrystal Reservoir
If you're willing to go up to 11 pp, this gets your psicrystal the ability to refocus itself, rather than taking your action to focus it.
Improved Psicrystal
Especially if you have a fixed psicrystal from the feat proper, this enables you, each time you activate it, to still pick a new "second" skill for a +3 bonus. So for 2pp, you can get +3 to almost any skill, or +4 init. And the +4 init stacks with Improved Initiative.
Darkvision (1 CP): 60 ft. of Darkvision is a 3rd level power ("Heightened Vision" in Pathfinder). Admittedly, that lasts 1 hour per level, while this is only 1 minute per level, but it's available as one of many possible features from a 2nd level power-pick. With the delay to your level from multiclassing, you're only getting it a level early, but it's still cheaper, and it's far more flexible than locking up a power selection in a power that only gives darkvision.
Energy Resistance (1 CP): Energy resistance 5 against your active energy type. Doesn't scale since you're not leveling up Aegis, but not terrible. Even just as a comfort thing, Fire Resistance makes you comfortable in any hot weather that isn't doing direct fire damage to you, and Cold Resistance has a similar benefit in cold weather. Admittedly, again, the only-for-minutes duration makes this less useful than it could be for that last purpose.
Evasion* (1 CP): *This one gets an asterisk because you do need to invest at least 2 levels into Aegis before you can pick it up, but it's worth mentioning anyway. Especially if you go for 4 levels of Aegis to try your hand at a proper gish, and have the ability to use Augment Suit for 1 pp along with Bastion's more expensive augmentation.
Extra Arms, Lesser (1 CP): Not terribly useful, really, though they can help if you're juggling a lot of items for some reason.
Flexible Suit (1 CP): Reduce ACP of your suit by 1. You probably are going to use a normal CP on this if you're concerned about that. (This also is one you get for free at level 2 on the middle-weight armor option for your astral suit.)
Ghostly Guidance (1 CP): +1 to Perception and -5% to all miss chances is... okay, but situational. Probably not worth Bastion's costs.
Hardened Strikes (1 CP): Lets you make unarmed strikes as if armed, do lethal damage, etc. Unlikely to be attractive to a psion, honestly.
Harness Shard (1 CP): Put a skill shard into your astral suit and spend 1 pp to use it without burning it up. Note that, unlike Harness Power Stone, it doesn't say the Shard is destroyed when removed if you've used it this way.
Power Stone Repository (1 CP): Store 1 power stone in your suit to make it appear and disappear with the suit, and gain a +1 bonus to the UMD check to activate it if it's not on your power list. This gets better with more Aegis levels, but is mostly a stepping-stone to Harness Power Stone, which has a 3rd-level-Aegis requirement.
Psionic Attacks (1 CP): All melee attacks you make overcome DR/magic, and melee weapons are masterwork if not already (so a +1 to hit for mundane weapons). Decent for a gish. Useful in a pinch if you HAVE to engage in melee.
Pull (1 CP): Not terribly useful since you need a reach weapon to use it at all, and you rarely want to get closer to enemies.
Push (1 CP): Slightly more useful than Pull because it shoves enemies away from you on a hit, but still highly situational at best. Also, doesn't work on anything bigger than you.
Ranged Attack (1 CP): This one actually seems pretty cool, to me. Bastion becomes a level 2 power that gives you 1d8 piercing damage ranged attacks with range increments of 30 feet. Not bad. If you have iteratives, it even works with those.
If you have Superior Psicrystal giving your Psicrystal the Aegis ability to have its own adorable little Astral Suit, you can have your psicrystal shooting these, too!
Speed (1 CP): While you probably have this from the astral skin variant of your astral suit, it stacks up to 5 times. Only 5 ft. increase to speed, though, so whether it's worth the power point investment is a good question. Worth noting that Speed has no type, so it stacks with all other speed-enhancers.
Spiked Carapace (1 CP): Probably not one you're going to go looking for excuses to use, but if somebody insists on grappling you, you can poke them back for it.
Stalwart* (1 CP): * This one gets the same "have to be 2nd level, but worth mentioning anyway" asterisk as Evasion. This is Evasion for Fortitude and Will saves, turning save-for-partial to save-negates. If you're willing to invest the second level of Aegis, it could be worthwhile in the right combats.
Suit Maneuverability (1 CP): Useful if you're high dex and want a heavier astral suit. +2 to the suit's max dex bonus to AC. And you're a manifester, not a caster, so heavier suits can be worn without impeding your manifesting.
Swim (1 CP): Swim speed equal to base land speed is a nice thing to have on tap when you need it. Situational, but the beauty of Bastion is that it has so many uses that it makes these "situational" needs convenient.
Underwater Breath (1 CP): Goes perfectly with Swim, but doesn't actually require it. If you need it, it's 3 pp away!
2-point Customizatoins
Adhesive Feet (2 CP): +4 to CMD against a selection of maneuvers that move you, and to climb checks. Very situational for 7 pp, but again, "situational" is a beauty of Bastion letting you get all of these powers.
Brawn (2 CP): +2 enhancement to Strength! It's like a mini version of animal affinity. More expensive, though. But you have it available if you don't have animal affinity but do have Bastion.
Climb (2 CP): Gain a climb speed of half your base land speed. This is effectively doubling the 1/4 land speed a climb normally permits, but the real benefit here is the +8 to climb checks that having a climb speed gives you. So if you want to climb, this is better than Adhesive Feet.
Crystalized Weapon (2 CP): Make your weapon masterwork (if not already) and deep crystal (spend 2 pp for +2d6 damage on its next hit). No action is listed for spending the pp, so it's either free or standard. I think RAI is free, but RAW is standard due to no specification.
Flight* (2 CP): * This one gets another special mention. Can't take it
until 5th level, so useless on the 1 Aegis/X Psion build. However, an Aegis 4
with Student of the Astral Suit who is mixing it up with Psion could get Flight
for 7 pp, the same price a Nomad pays for it from having the flight psionic power. Normally a Nomad-exclusive. Of course, multiclassing that hard means you're going to be 11th level, unless you can pump your manifester level up significantly. (Overchannel can get you 2 ML at level 8, and Psychic Trait can get you +2 more, so you could manage it at Aegis 4/Psion 4; with such a build, you'd also have up to 8th level suit customizations available.)
Fortification (2 CP): 25% chance to ignore criticals. Probably never coming up, but like a lot of situational ones, if it does, be glad you had it on hand.
Hardy (2 CP): Same comments as Brawny. This one's for Constution.
Improved Damage (2 CP): Extra damage on melee attacks.
Nimble (2 CP): Same comments as Brawny. This one's for Dexterity. Worth noting that it's free on the astral skin.
Power Resistance (2 CP): 13 power resistance at 4th level isn't bad. It's unclear whether this can be taken 3 times as a level 1 Aegis, with 8th and 12th level giving you a 4th and 5th time, or if 8th and 12th level give you the 2nd and 3rd time you're allowed to take it. Stacking it adds 3 to the PR each time.
Powerful Build (2 CP): As the racial trait. Not really one size larger, but get a lot of the benefits of it.
Presence (2 CP): Same comments as Brawny, but for Charisma.
Unlock Psionics (2 CP): +2 to UMD. +4 if you've 10 ranks in UMD.
3-point Customizations
Diehard (3 CP): As the feat, but without needing prerequisite feats. Not bad, but not great by the time you have ML 11 to pick it up. Though as a level 1 Aegis, you could choose this as your one all-day customization.
Easy Suit (3 CP): Makes your non-Astral Skin Astral Suit into light armor, letting you move at full speed in it. Probably not an issue for you, but if it is, well, we've commented on the benefits of bastion wrt situational uses before.
Force Field (3 CP): 2 temp hp and fast healing for the temp hp of 3. If you have more CP to invest in this, eacy additional point gives +1 fast healing and +5 temp hp. This is one that might be worth investing your level 1 Aegis's 3 CP into, and then augmenting further with bastion if you need more temp hp and fast healing. Vigor is still a much better investment, but again costs its own power known. Worth noting that this does STACK with vigor, being a separate source of temp hp, but it won't share its fast healing with vigor's temp hp.
There are no 4-point Customizations that a low-level Aegis can pick up.
Akashic Customizations
Chakra Bind, Lesser (1 CP): Gives a minor bonus if you bind a veil to a magic item slot. Not fully familiar with DSP's version of Incarnum, so this may be better than I think it is, but probably not.
Shape Veil, Lesser (1 CP): Now, this is chaining versatility like nobody's business. When you have your suit formed, you gain the benefits of one veil from the daevic veil list (https://libraryofmetzofitz.fandom.com/wiki/Daevic_Veil_List), which you pick when you set up your suit for the day. It makes careful not that you can't change this even if you reconfigure your suit, so I will assume that uniquely, you're stuck with the choice you make when you manifest bastion for the first time for this Customization on any given day. But the list in the link is way too long for me to analyze in this post, already. Check out all it gives you access to, via Bastion!
Contemplation (2 CP): Spend power points to invest phantom Essence into your veils. Starting to get pricey, but useful if you really need a veil pumped up. Unless you're effectively 6th level as an Aegis, you can't stack the investment, and it gets much more expensive at 6th level with the second investment (3 pp per receptical for +1 essence).
Ectoplessence (2 CP): More likely what you'll use over Contemplation; gives you an essence pool equal to half your Aegis level (minimum 1). So...1. But still, you have it, now. Maybe you will use Contemplation if you prefer fueling multiple recepticles.
Martial Customizations
As a note, these make Aegis's incredibly flexible martial initiates on their own. The utility to an Aegis 1/Psion X is questionable, but if you find some techniques that serve you well, you can access them here! The fact that taking these Customizations lets you pick afresh what maneuvers you know is simply amazing.
Additional Maneuvers* (1 CP): * This one requires Aegis 3, so is only viable for the gish build. But it's likely mostly only desirable for it, too. Can be taken multiple times. The first time gives 2 maneuvers, and each additional time gives one more. You can also ready an additional maneuver for every 2x you take this Customization. Must have Initiator's Soul already to take it at all.
Additional Stance* (1 CP): * Similar notes to Additional Maneuvers. Given that stances are available right away, though, if you do have Initiator's Soul, this is likely more useful than Additional Maneuvers in a clutch situation.
Initiator's Soul (2 CP): 3 maneuvers and 1 stance when you take this customization. You get Sleeping Goddess and any two other Disciplines of your choice, which is pretty big since you can pick them anew each time you take this Customization. All 3 of your maneuvers can be readied, though Additional Maneuvers doesn't expand this until you take it twice.
Herein lies the biggest limitation on this: it takes 10 minutes of "tinkering with his astral suit" for an Aegis to ready his maneuvers, which means you need to have ten minutes after manifesting Bastion to have them ready to go. The Stance is ready to go right away, though.
You're probably only picking this up for Stances unless you have some neat tricks up your sleeve to ready maneuvers more swiftly.
As a final note, the way they recover maneuvers requires a full-round action, but also gives them a neat power to shift one of their CP to another ability. The shift only lasts one minute, but for various utility purposes, that could be an even better thing than bastion.
Martial Maneuvers of Interest
Editing this section in as I look at some of the martial maneuvers. In all honesty, there's not a lot to get too excited about past early levels, because you're a level 1 Aegis and thus get only level 1 maneuvers (unless you go for a level 4 Aegis and maybe Student of the Astral Suit, in which case there's more to consider, but my current perusal doesn't cover these higher-level options). Stances and strikes that give bonus damage, though, aren't terrible. However, one stood out to me as interesting as a possible choice.
Embrace the Elements (Stance, Elemental Flux Discipline): This is a stance, so you only get the one when you pick up Initiator's Soul, and this is still probably best done with 2 of your all-day CP. The Fire variant on this one gives you +4 to initiative and endure elements, so via Aegis, you can access endure elements without needing to invest in the environment shield power. And the initiative bonus is also quite nice. But this is Aegis-based, not bastion-based, most likely, since it's unlikely you'd ever need endure elements for only a few minutes at a time.
Overall, bastion provides an Aegis 1/Psion 3+ a ton of versatility that is just not present with other power selections.
Any tricks to enhance this are welcome, as are corrections to anything I may have missed.