Segev
2020-12-11, 04:05 PM
A mind stone (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/alternative-rule-systems/psionics-unleashed/equipment/psionic-items/universal-items/#TOC-Mind-Stone) is a psionic item from DSP's PF Psionics material that I had, until yesterday, not known of. It requires you to have the power it contains on your class list, and if you do, you can use it to manifest it as if you knew it. Essentially, a power-known in an item.
If you use magic device to emulate a class for its features (such as a class list), the DC is 20+[level you need in the class]. So you qualify for purposes of using an item as [UMD roll]-20 level in the class needed to activate it.
Using UMD to qualify to use a Mind Stone would, I presume, thus set your ML at the UMD roll minus 20 (so a 25 would make you a 5th level manifester in the appropriate class). Of course, this doesn't give you any power points with which to manifest the power you've managed to know from the Mind Stone.
This is where cognizance crystals come into play. (Recharging them obviously requires a friendly psionic character.) UMD to get the knowledge of the power, then activate it with power points from the cognizance crystal. This is obviously pretty expensive to set up.
Presumably you'd have to do this every time you tried to manifest the power, so this is best done with long-term powers you can take your time setting up. Metaphysical weapon augmented to at least 5 pp is the example that I was digging around for when I discovered the Mind Stone item.
A curious question is whether you only need to UMD it to attune it, or if you need UMD every time you try to use it. Greater Mind Stones don't require attunement, so almost certainly have to be UMD'd every time. The limits on how many non-greater Mind Stones you can have attuned are overcome by UMDing enough class levels to be considered to have 2x the powers known over the number of Mind Stones you're attuning.
The way you can make UMD scale, it's probable that this could get you out-scaled MLs for your character level, though I don't know the best optimizations for this. What powers do you think would be best to get with this, and what ML / augmentation cost is optimal to exploit it? The lower the number of PP needed per manifestation, the cheaper it is, because cognizance crystals are cheaper when you can get a number of smaller ones rather than one big one.
If you use magic device to emulate a class for its features (such as a class list), the DC is 20+[level you need in the class]. So you qualify for purposes of using an item as [UMD roll]-20 level in the class needed to activate it.
Using UMD to qualify to use a Mind Stone would, I presume, thus set your ML at the UMD roll minus 20 (so a 25 would make you a 5th level manifester in the appropriate class). Of course, this doesn't give you any power points with which to manifest the power you've managed to know from the Mind Stone.
This is where cognizance crystals come into play. (Recharging them obviously requires a friendly psionic character.) UMD to get the knowledge of the power, then activate it with power points from the cognizance crystal. This is obviously pretty expensive to set up.
Presumably you'd have to do this every time you tried to manifest the power, so this is best done with long-term powers you can take your time setting up. Metaphysical weapon augmented to at least 5 pp is the example that I was digging around for when I discovered the Mind Stone item.
A curious question is whether you only need to UMD it to attune it, or if you need UMD every time you try to use it. Greater Mind Stones don't require attunement, so almost certainly have to be UMD'd every time. The limits on how many non-greater Mind Stones you can have attuned are overcome by UMDing enough class levels to be considered to have 2x the powers known over the number of Mind Stones you're attuning.
The way you can make UMD scale, it's probable that this could get you out-scaled MLs for your character level, though I don't know the best optimizations for this. What powers do you think would be best to get with this, and what ML / augmentation cost is optimal to exploit it? The lower the number of PP needed per manifestation, the cheaper it is, because cognizance crystals are cheaper when you can get a number of smaller ones rather than one big one.