Iron Chef Optimization Challenge in the Playground CXXVI

[Inevitability]

Judging!

Re-posting my criteria:

Spoiler

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All scores start at 1.

Originality:
1 point for your race: humans and strongheart halflings get 0 points, anything well-supported or obviously suited for the secret ingredient gets 0.5, and more obscure or unexpected things get 1.

1 point for classes: how surprised am I to see these classes in an iron chef submission, especially considering the SI? This includes breakpoints: Fighter 2 is an obvious dip: Fighter 4 less so.

0.5 points for feats: full points here if I'm solidly impressed by at least half the feats you select (that is, not counting mandatory bonus feats).

0.5 points if any of the above are unexpected to see together. Halflings are pretty common, and barbarian 1 is one of the most notorious dips, but a halfling barbarian would earn points here. Same with a wizard who grabs Power Attack, or a Stunning Fist paladin.

1 points for tactics and concept: can I quickly name a cool thing you do that's impressive or evocative on either the mechanical or practical level? Backstory can also deliver a small bonus in this area, though no more than half a point.

Power:
1 point for your skill at your chosen specialization assuming a reasonably favorable matchup. How good can the fireball-spamming wizard incinerate a cluster of mooks, how much sneak attack does the rogue bring to the table? Assume classes with a roughly similar power level as a point of comparison.

1 point for covering your weaknesses: that can be offensive (making sure your sneak attacker picks up Penetrating Strike) or defensive (giving your low-HP wizard some source of concealment and evasion).

How's your utility? 0.5 points if you're a complete face, scout, trap expert, tracker, or utility caster. Another 0.5 points for filling a second of these roles, or having enough bibs and bops that I think you'll be an useful backup for most of those roles.

Spoiler: Defining some terms

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A face should have good Diplomacy, supplemented by Bluff, Intimidate, or Sense Motive or magic that does something similar.

A scout should be able to avoid ambushes and traps through stealth or other means, while having the senses to perceive what's ahead.

A trap expert should be able to both detect and disable mundane and magical traps.

A tracker needs to be able to track down enemies. Merely having the Track feat and some Survival investment isn't quite sufficient: you have to possess a complementary ability as well.

An utility caster should offer a wide array of useful magic: whether curative, transporation-focused, or random problem-solvers like Silence and Legend Lore. Relying on external items (wands to UMD, scrolls to add to your spellbook) gets you half points.

How consistent is the build throughout your career? I expect the build to be broadly playable by level 5 and to have obtained all important elements by level 15 at the latest. 0.5 points here.

Another 0.5 points for making it through four encounters a day without a significant drop in power.

Elegance:

1 point for avoiding multiclass XP penalties.

1 point for avoiding mechanical errors, having all your sources in order, and giving me a good overview of your build.

1 point for avoiding reliance on ambiguous rules: taking the sane interpretation where they pop up also helps here.

1 point for your build's playability: do you need alignment shifts, specific items, conflicting memberships, or other things that the DM will probably not outright veto, but that might be impractical to acquire in an actual game?

UoSI:

Ballisteer has 11 class features: you get 0.1 points for each one that your character appreciates having (that is, something that meshes with your normal tactics and isn't outclassed by a feature you already possess), 0.25 points for a minor combo or synergy, and 0.5 points for a combo that truly wows me. 'Minor combo' or 'major combo' is defined relative to how useful I expect a feature to be: to use last round's Shadowspy as an example I'd have lower standards for rewarding use of Immunity to Blindness or Radiance of Pelor compared to Hide in Plain Sight.

Ballisteer has many prerequisites: do you use them for anything interesting? Up to 0.5 points here if the Tumble investment or feats get significant use beyond their default benefits.

Ballisteer is a psionic class, and subsystems don't get enough love in IC: do you do anything neat with its psionics, or are they just kind of there? Up to half a point here.

If you find some other unique trait of the SI to optimize (like including Cerebrex on a build to easily get Heal as a caster), you can get up to half a point of bonus here.

Spoiler: Elithkhad the Dancing Shadow (13.40 -> 13.65)

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Originality (3.75)
Kalashtar aren't humans, but they're definitely on my list of things to expect in any psionic round. 0.5/1

Monk 2 and Psion 3 are some of the quirkier ways to grab your prerequisites, but Monk 2 is a notorious dip. I did think about Soulknife + Soulbow (it's a wisdom-based psychic archer ingredient, soulbow is no huge leap) but it's still decently original compared to the simple psychic warrior entry. 0.5/1

Feats after prereqs are Zen Archery (obvious given the ingredient), Combat Expertise (wait what), Elusive Target (certainly known as one of the better reasons to grab Mobility, but cool to see) and Path of Shadows + Dancing With Shadows (I've seen these used in one of stormwind's optimization showcases and nowhere else). More than enough stuff here to impress me. 0.5/0.5

Psion on a build that otherwise feels so martial and wisdom-based is a bit remarkable. 0.25/0.5

Magical senses + shooting people through walls is a strategy I'm always a sucker for. I also really like the 'deliberately provoke, then flashstep 10 ft. and make your attacker hit his buddy' trick; it helps sell this character as a swift and evasive martial artist. 1/1

Power (2.25) (2.5)
Wisdom to attack and damage (and AC), impressive defenses, a Lucky reroll on each hit, and a sky-high AC boost are all very impressive. That said, your stated combat style leaves me with some questions.

From what I understand, you want to fight in melee, but using soulbow's ranged attacks. That robs you of one of the big benefits of archery: getting to reliably full attack each round. Keeping Combat Expertise active requires you to be in melee, and when 'melee' stops being where you are, you need to scramble to reposition to make sure you keep building towards that Dancing With Shadows payoff. Until Hustle arrives at level 18, you will only get a single attack on many turns. Worse, you're still provoking with every arrow you fire, and Psionic Sidestep only applies to one AoO per round: if you use it to set up an elusive target, you are still putting yourself in a flanking position with no way to get out until next turn.

The whole loop just feels a bit silly: you are fighting in melee to give yourself an AC bonus that would be less important if you weren't in melee, while decimating your accuracy for the first few turns of doing so. 0.25/1

You put some work into shoring up your lowest saving throw (and Autohypnosis helps against one of the common effects of failing that save), but with only 12 constitution and many low-HD classes your HP is still on the low side for a primary melee fighter, and there's so many ways to lose hit points that I'm not sure I'm fully comfortable with this. 0.5/1

Out of combat, you have a psicrystal with Chameleon, 16 ranks in Spot, and linked senses, which you suggest will make for a solid scout. However, your Move Silently leaves a lot to be desired, and your psicrystal won't have Darkstalker, so it seems to me that the first monster with good Listen checks or blindsight might just rob you of a class feature, to say nothing of magical traps. 0.25/0.5

Outside of that, your out-of-combat utility is limited to Mindlinks, manifesting a few low-DC Psionic Charms and rolling the occasional social skill at low levels. It all feels a bit front-loaded, but I acknowledge that you'll be a decent help at early levels at least. 0.25/0.5

Precise Shot is all but a feat tax for archers, so why don't you get it until level 20? By slightly re-ordering class levels you could've gotten you the feat at level 10. A lot of the time you'll be taking a totally avoidable -4 penalty to attack rolls.

Worse, I'm not sure I'd call the build playable before you enter soulbow. Your level 5 snapshot is a supposed melee attacker with 7 strength and zero class features that support melee: its strongest ability is probably Stunning Fist, but that's 2/day and difficult to land. Psychic Scimitar is nice, but at that point you're still just making +1 to hit touch attacks that deal 1d6 damage, at the expense of a steady trickle of PP all day. You suggest using Charms in-combat, but that's an inconsistent effect that your enemies will have +5 on their saves against. 0/0.5

You claim 88 power points by level 20. Assuming 4 daily combats of 4 rounds, that leaves you... slightly more than five points per round. I'm not sure what sort of point allocation you're expecting, but I don't think it feels anything but strained, especially when you'll feel quite underwhelming in rounds where you aren't using ballisteer abilities or psychic powers. 0/0.5 With the recalculation of psion ML, you have just a few more PP, and I'm comfortable giving you a moderate amount of points for endurance. 0.25/0.5

Elegance (4)
No multiclass XP penalties. 1/1

You meet the 5 rank Perform (Dance) requirement for Path of Shadows, but not the subsequent 8 ranks requirement for Dancing With Shadows. I also really don't like how your power points are formatted: you split up psion and psychic warrior PP (which is fine), but then proceed to add the kalashtar bonus to one of the other, switching over partway through. It's all one pool, where you assign it doesn't matter!

I also think you miscalculate your power points. You say you have 88 power points. From what I can see, at ECL 20 you should have 20 kalashtar PP, (11 + 2 x 3 x 1/2 = 14) from psion, and (27 + 10 x 6 x 1/2 = 57) from your 10 effective psychic warrior levels. That adds up to 91, not 88; am I missing something? 0.25/1

Aging rules often work out to free points for mentally biased characters. It gets a bit 'something for nothing' and won't fly at some tables, so I think a minor penalty is in order. 0.75/1

This build seems extremely playable, with nothing I can see bringing up issues in-game. 1/1

UoSI (3.4)
Use of class features.
Psionic Sidestep: Yeah, you'll regularly be provoking the AoOs that let you make use of this, and it has uses with Elusive Target in increasing the chance hits miss you. 0.25
Throw Anything: A passing mention, but let's be fair: you have 7 strength and a much better psychic bow; why -would- you bother with chucking stuff? 0
Invisible Shot: Cute synergy with soulbow in erasing all visual manifestation of you shooting people. 0.25
Ethereal Shot: You use this. 0.1
Energy Shot: You use this. 0.1
Incorporeal Shot: You use this. 0.1
Pinpoint Shot: You make no mention of this, and trying to put yourself next to enemies leaves me wondering if cover will be a big issue for you. 0
Explosive Shot: Explosive shot interacts weirdly with your melee preference. For obvious reasons, you don't want to explode anyone in the melee cluster you're part of, but melee has a way of clumping, and enemies near you might be all you've got. You fail to address this awkward element, so I'm left without any idea of how you plan to use it. 0
Improved Psionic Sidestep: The 5 -> 10 ft. upgrade is pretty relevant with how you want to use this for tactical positioning. I like the combo with Elusive Target. 0.25
Phased Shot: A cool little combo with Sense Link to get around both the cover and concealment that walls pose. The secondary one with Concealing Amorpha feels a bit impractical, as it takes a standard action to set up and you already need several rounds of defensive fighting to come fully online, but it still contributes. Also, your Lucky rerolls will decrease the odds of astral shots being lost above and beyond the to-hit benefit they offer. 0.50
Infused Shot: You use this. 0.1
Total: 1.65

Tumble is taken and forgotten, with only a passing reference made to it. Psionic Shot gets no real love, but Dodge, Mobility and Point-Blank Shot all become more relevant the closer to melee you are, and all show up in some of your other prerequisites. 0.5/0.5

At early levels, Psionics are a big part of what power you have, and Chameleon helps with the scouting side gig, so psionics touch on everything you do even if it's never particularly earthshaking. 0.25/0.5

Final Verdict
A fun build overall; this one definitely feels like one of the more unique ones, taking a surprising route to arrive at a very oddball strategy. You commit to the ballisteer theme, though its mechanics are a bit unexplored sometimes. I did like seeing someone explore Psionic Sidestep and its unique uses, so props for that!

Spoiler: Son’Har, the killer whale (12.00)

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Originality (2.75)
Landbound anthropomorphic whales, those beautiful insanities of D&D. I know they're good, you know they're good, they're a staple on crazy strength-based builds, have half points. 0.5/1

Psychic Warrior is the single most obvious class, and 4 levels are the obvious breakpoint if you're entering Ballisteer. Bloodstorm Blade is not something I'm surprised to see on mandatory-ranged builds, and you take it for an expected number of levels, so I can't award more than a small bonus. 0.25/1

Martial Study, Martial Stance, Power Attack... not surprising on most builds, but somewhat interesting in the context of the ingredient. 0.25/0.5

Nothing of this feels insane to see together, aside from the maneuvers-ballisteer combination I already awarded points for. It's a bloodstorm blade, it has a weird mix of melee and ranged feats, we know the drill. 0/0.5

I like the sniping-through-walls trick, and you expand on the greatsword-throwing in a fun way, but the latter is conceptually similar to any old bloodstorm blade. 0.75/1

Power (3.5)
Okay, let's get the obvious out of the way. You're big, you're strong, you took levels in the best weapon-throwing class in the game, you get four attacks. My only criticism is the lack of Precise Shot in this build. 0.75/1

As always, bloodstorm blade mixes the best parts of thrown weapons and melee combat. Your worst save is still decent, your HP is high, and even Grease isn't a problem with Balance as permanent class skill (not like you're that reliant on positioning yourself). 1/1

Out of combat, you can Shadow Stride, but if short distance self-only teleportation isn't the answer to a problem, you have to sit it out. 0/0.5 0/0.5

Your build is competent from the get-go. 0.5/0.5

92 PP gives you five or six points per round to play with, depending on how badly you want to keep Psionic Sidestep up, but unlike some psychic warriors you don't need to manifest hustle every round (more on manifesting later, actually). I still think this is a bit on the low side, given how power-hungry ballisteer can get and how much you tout your ability to make four attacks a round, but it should last you through most of the day. 0.25/0.5

Elegance (3.25)
Ka-ching! No multiclass XP penalties. 1/1

If you're going to use 3.0 web content, link it. Targeted Mind is core to your build: I should not have to play Data Archeologist to discover what it does and where it is exactly. The issue recurs with Psionic Weapon.

Furthermore, let's talk power points. You say you have 92 at level 20; I think you should have 51 (13 effective psychic warrior levels) + 2 x 13 x 1/2 = 64. Am I missing something here? 0.25/1

I think that your reading of invisible shot, while not indefensible, is very questionable. You assume that rendering your target unable to "deflect the attack through normal means" means they lose their dexterity bonus. The way I see it, this refers to things like the monk's Deflect Arrows ability, not the dex-to-ac that everyone gets (which is more like 'evading' or 'dodging' anyway, not 'deflecting'). While your reading makes sense, it goes beyond RAW or obvious RAI, and not all tables will agree. 0.5/1

Being Large comes with a set of issues. 5 ft. corridors force you to squeeze, anything smaller (like, say, low-level goblin and kobold warrens) is impossible to pass until you get shadow stride (you could have fixed this by grabbing Compression somewhere). Magic loot may or may not be an issue: from your illustration, so-so dex, and proficiencies I am left assuming you plan to wear armor, which will not innately come in whale-size. 0.5/1

UoSI (2.5)
You use the class features as follows.
Psionic Sidestep: You talk about using this, but ultimately conclude it's not often useful. 0.1
Throw Anything: When you get this, you already have it from Bloodstorm Blade, so I don't think you can argue obtaining this feature does anything for you. 0
Invisible Shot: I think using this with Assassin's Stance rests on shaky RAW, but conceptually it makes perfect sense. 0.25
Ethereal Shot: You use this. 0.1
Energy Shot: You use this. 0.1
Incorporeal Shot: You use this. 0.1
Pinpoint Shot: Much has been said about your ability to make big four-hit full attacks, and pinpoint shot is not compatible with that. You appreciate having it, but does it 'mesh with your normal tactics'? Cover doesn't seem to be a particular issue for you, and even when an enemy has it, do you really want to use this instead of throwing a flurry of swords and hoping one hits? 0
Explosive Shot: You use this. 0.1
Improved Psionic Sidestep: You talk about repositioning during a mixed melee/thrown full attack, which I think goes above and beyond the default use cases. 0.25
Phased Shot: You go above and beyond my expectations when using this, combining the range of a sniper with the damage of a power attacker. However, even with Lucky, you have a 1% chance on each throw to straight-up lose your primary weapon. That's a big deal, and will probably prevent you from using your best, most enchanted blade here. As such, I assigned points for a minor rather than major combo. 0.25
Infused Shot: Unobtained; a pity. The fact you use a weapon bigger than a longbow would've earned you some points here. 0
Total: 1.25

Tumble is maxed out and Point Blank Shot doubles for getting you into Bloodstorm Blade, but the other prerequisites play a minimal role in the build. 0.25/0.5

A lot of your given psionic tactics use swift/immediate actions, which you can't spare if you want to keep using Thunderous Throw. It's a bit of an awkward situation, and I feel like unlike other entries, you won't be able to use psionics even in many situations where they'd help out, because hitting attacks is more useful. 0/0.5

Final Verdict
A very middle-of-the-pack build. You're competent with some cool tricks, but the build has a lot of rough edges that you failed to properly shave. The action economy issue, the missing sources, the struggle to contribute out of combat, the 1% chance to lose your primary weapon with every Astral Shot; all these could have been considered and to an extent mitigated during building.

Also, I'm not sure if this build had to be an anthropomorphic whale. The RHD is actually pretty annoying in this cramped of a build, and forces you to get into Bloodstorm Blade with feats (for a total of six PrC prerequisite feats essentially) while also preventing you from taking ballisteer's capstone. Yes, the size and strength make you more powerful, but my standards for power aren't so high that you need to be an anthropomorphic whale before I give a perfect score. You could've gone with a more conventional race and used the extra levels to fix some of the build's issues, rather than go all-in on raw strength.

Spoiler: Goliath of Gath (12.40 -> 12.70 -> 13.95)

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Originality (4)
Anthropomorphic Baleen Whale number two. Not as expected as human, still quite a bit less original than many other things. 0.5/1

There's rogue, which I guess is a source of easy bonus feats if not the one I saw coming. There's psychic warrior, which is the source of easy bonus feats I saw coming. There's Ardent, which did occur to me as a one-level way to get 2nd-level powers, but I was expecting dips, not this modest investment. And there's legacy champion, which is never quite surprising and never quite expected. 0.75/1

The feats are on this level where they weren't quite expected, but fail to wow me. All very 'oh, that makes sense, I think handbooks list those a lot'. Hand Crossbow Focus intrigues me, though. 0.25/0.5

Ardent and Anthrowhale is a bit of a wacky combo, unified only by the first letter of their names and the strong aroma of cheese. Psionic legacy champions in general are unexpected, I guess. 0.5/0.5

So conceptually, you do this cool thing where you're the biblical Goliath, isekai'd to the forgotten realms or wherever and gradually adapting to this new world by mastering the weapon that slew him... but you're also a whale. Like, you've got blindsight, you have a tail, you're adapted for life underwater, you're a whale, and trying to squeeze that into the Goliath backstory is inherently ridiculous. I like the backstory, but you make your choice to prioritize mechanics over flavor very clear, and I feel like giving it a point reward would be showing it much more respect than you yourself are.

Fortunately, the fact that you submitted a sling build makes me excited enough for you to get full marks here anyway; they're definitely some of the most iconic but hard-to-optimize weapons. 1/1

Power (4)
You're slinging veritable mountains and arguably warping reality itself. Getting strength to damage already makes you a better ranged attacker than most, and the psychic warrior powers help out as well. I'd have liked to see Precise Shot, though. 0.75/1

Saves are good, you don't have a ton of backup options against something unusually resistant to big boulders, stealth or similar abilities might be annoying if blindsight doesn't break them, but generally I think it's fine to say you're a hard character to cheese. 1/1

The out-of-combat role you're closest to is utility caster, which is largely dependent on two spells until level 19. They're useful and versatile spells, but still, certainly not a 'wide array' of magic. True Creation and Reality Revision both come with pretty big XP costs, but they're impressive compared to the competition's baseline, and even impressive compared to other ardents. 0.25/0.5 0.5/0.5 Outside of that role, not much for you to do other than make the occasional Spot check. 0/0.5

Your to-hit is in the gutter before you get around to grabbing Zen Archery (at level 9!), and EXPANDING will only make the problem worse. You're a sling specialist in theory, but you're only primarily using the sling from level 15 on. There's a lot of places where your build has to 'catch up' to class features that you've had for a while. Still, no matter how awkward it gets, you generally find something to do at every level. 0.25/0.5

You have quite a lot of PP, so I'm sure you can keep going throughout the day. 0.5/0.5

Elegance (1.75) (2.75)
Anthropomorphic baleen whale's favored class is not ardent, so you take a multiclass XP penalty during level 19. This is very rough, but my criteria were up for weeks and clearly stated that multiclass XP penalties result in a one-point deduction. People put in effort to avoid these penalties, and I want to reward those people. 0/1

So, manifesting. The chair had this to say:

If you do not manifest as a psychic warrior before entering Ballisteer, you essentially become a multiclass character. When manifesting psychic warrior powers, your manifester level for those powers is equal to your Ballisteer level. You add PP as if you had multiclassed into psychic warrior (add PP as given for psychic warrior level = Ballisteer level, example in XPH p 17-18).

Now, it seems to me that this implies you do not actually advance ardent ML. Your manifester level is 4+4 for ardent and 11 for psychic warrior, your PP total is those of a 4th-level (maybe 8th-level) ardent and a 11th-level psychic warrior put together, and your powers known are wonky but not in the way you want them to be. 0/1

Mechanically the build is airtight. 1/1

You intend to use the Sling of Dire Winds, which is sized for medium creatures and only resizes for small ones. When using expansion, weapons do not 'adapts to Goliath's expanded size' (which you falsely claim), but they are instead 'similarly expanded by this power' (RAW). An undersized sling will stay undersized, meaning you take a -2 penalty on attack rolls from using a sling that consistently stays one size too small for you to use normally. Metamorphosis into a bigger form worsens the issue, and while ranged undersized weapons never become unusable by strict RAW, a lot of DMs might complain about a Huge creature using a Medium sling anyway. It's a relatively minor issue, but one I'd like to have seen addressed. 0.75/1

Are there issues with playing this build in a campaign? Yes: you have to obtain a specific item at the DM's mercy, and then subsequently make Knowledge (History) checks (checks that you do not optimize) to unlock its powers and get free feats. You have a +5 modifier to make a DC 20 check with, then a +9 modifier for a DC 25 check, and finally a +15 modifier for a DC 30 check. Even if you get a +10 bonus from somewhere, you're statistically unlikely to make all three of these, sourcing that bonus might or might not mesh with whatever the other PCs have going on, etc etc. Basically, you made your build dependent on performing certain in-game actions that you cannot guarantee you'll be able to perform, and you pay the price for that. Also, you're Large and never really grab magic that lets you navigate the occasional Small-sized space. 0/1


UoSI (2.90) (3.20)
Use of class features as follows:
Psionic Sidestep: No real advantages over 5-ft. steps 0.1 You're going to be provoking more than other ranged attackers because of how slings work, so this is useful enough. 0.25
Throw Anything: You throw a thing or two at low levels, but the strategy is eventually eclipsed by your sling focus. 0.1
Invisible Shot: This gets used. 0.1
Ethereal Shot: You make the interesting claim that because the sling forces you to use pebbles, you can't just grab magic sling bullets to deal with ethereal foes. Except the sole ability that mentions 'stones' instead of 'stones or bullets' is Stunning Stone, which you deride and trade away. Ethereal shot is still useful for you, but not much more than it would be for most archers. 0.1
Energy Shot: At level 12, you grab metamorphosis and spend a paragraph describing how great it is. No mention of Energy Shot, which I think says something about the priorities of this build. Still, you can obviously use it. 0.1
Incorporeal Shot: As with ethereal shot. 0.1
Pinpoint Shot: Not quite the power drop it is for some other entries: not actually having usable iteratives at the level you get this helps convince me you'll use it sometime. 0.1
Explosive Shot: This gets used. 0.1
Improved Psionic Sidestep: Another of those features you forget to mention in your build stub because you're too excited about manifesting. Presumably you will provoke sometimes, and this will help you, but it's not offering a qualitative benefit over the lesser version. 0.1 You use this, and you combine it with perfect archery to get around the issues on your sling attacks, particularly the more short-ranged ones. 0.25
Phased Shot: Some form of remote sensing to combo with phase shot. 0.25
Infused Shot: I expected people to get 1d8 or so damage per hit out of this, you're getting a ton more, to a frankly impressive extent, and then combo it with Vampiric Blade for very relevant amounts of healing. 0.5
Total: 1.65 1.95

Tumble is left by the wayside, Dodge/Mobility/PBS don't even get mentioned in your build, and Psionic Shot gets a one-time namedrop. The prerequisites are only here to get you into ballisteer. 0/0.5

Ballisteer's in-house psionics (that is, the psychic warrior powers) are used, though almost always in an incidental rather than essential way. Vampiric Blade gets worked in nicely, Perfect Archery is a very nice find, especially because you don't use it in a way that renders Psionic Sidestep useless. 0.25/0.5

Final Verdict
This build beautifully reflects the two faces of 3.5 optimization. On the one hand, you're making a traditionally useless weapon core to your strategy, you're combining wildly different classes in a complementary way, and you're writing up some hilariously insane fluff to tie it all together.

On the other, you bend over backwards to force 9ths into a build that didn't necessarily need them, you re-use the same tired optimizations everyone's been using since 2006, and you fail to think about the character as a character, as something to be introduced and played in an actual campaign. This is reflected in the mismatch of fluff and crunch, the lack of consideration for very mundane obstacles, and the handwaving of legacy champion's rituals research difficulty.

I asked Son'Haar and I will ask you too: did this have to be a whale, or did you think 'oh, anthrowhales make good psychic warriors, right' and throw it in there?

Spoiler: Chaka (13.35) -> (13.60)

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NOTE: as per the chair's advice I will be judging the variant (hadozee) build.

Originality (4.25)
Hadozee is neat but reliably shows up with secret ingredients that require Dodge. 0.5/1

I imagined someone might enter fighter; not that they'd stay past level 2. A Master Thrower dip isn't overplayed but hardly earth-shaking. Binder 5 gets my immediate interest. Also, there's no psionic classes in here, which I didn't know was even a possibility. 1/1

Boomerang thrower is an archetype I'm not too surprised to see pop up here, but just because the feats fit an archetype doesn't mean they can't be original. 0.25/0.5

Am I surprised to see these classes together? Quite! 0.5/0.5

Throwing one (1) boomerang and watching it bounce all over the battlefield is conceptually fascinating. On top of that, your qualification trick is elegant, unambiguous, and a complete and utter surprise, nice job! 1/1

Power (2.25) (2.5)
The good first: you can hit a truly massive number of attacks as a single standard action, all of which get your damage boosts and force saves vs daze. If combat goes to your liking, you can stunlock two enemies all the battle long... but without guaranteed access to a returning weapon, you might run out of competitive boomerangs before that battle ends. You can't just gesture at astaroth and assume every magic weapon is obtainable at no penalty. 0.75/1

However: all of your ricochet abilities require adjacent foes specifically, and your efficiency dramatically drops if those don't present themselves (or if they, y'know, move away from each other). Also, constructs and undead are immune and you don't bring much to use against them. I'm sorry to say, but when I ask 'is your build easily shut down', the worst possible answer is 'yes, but only if my enemies move'. And that's before getting into the possibility of (gasp) single-enemy encounters. Yes, you can attack normally, but you much prefer your ricochet stacking over increasingly inaccurate iteratives. 0/1 0.25/1

Out of combat, you're not doing much. You can try to hide from stuff and scout, and Compression + Chameleon + Leraje almost makes you good at that, except you have no way to move silently and no darkstalker, limiting your utility quite a bit 0.25/0.5. Outside that situation, you have a few ways to help out, mostly during multi-day downtime stretches. 0.25/0.5

Boomerang Daze at level 18 is very late, and I'm unsure what you're actually doing at low levels. 0/0.5

37 PP is basically nothing if you want to stack an appreciable number of damage dice on your boomerang daze. Assuming 4 combats of 4 rounds a day, you can add about 2d4 damage to your hits in an average round, assuming you want the occasional other special ability. Even multiplied by 8, that's not an impressive amount at all. 0/0.5

Elegance (3.75)
No multiclass XP penalties thanks to your careful level ordering. 1/1

Improved Binding requires 4 ranks in Intimidate. 0.5/1

You're qualifying for Psionic Shot and ballisteer using a vestige, then dropping the vestige the moment ballisteer supports its own entry, and switching to a different vestige to qualify for a different PrC. It's RAW legal (the first part: the second part depends on whether the 'benefit' of precise shot includes qualifying for things with it), but many DMs dislike having self-supporting classes or temporary abilities qualifying you for permanent PrCs. All in all there's enough here for a penalty to elegance. 0.25/1

No real difficulties in playing this that I foresee. You'll probably succumb to Leraje's influence from time to time, but it's not particularly obnoxious unless the campaign heavily features elves. 1/1

UoSI (3.1)
Use of class features as follows.
Psionic Sidestep: You get use out of this with your short range, but you don't use it for anything special. 0.1
Throw Anything: Well, you're not just throwing anything, you're throwing something in particular that's already a thrown weapon. I don't think this will come up often, especially with your build so heavily focused on boomerangs. 0
Invisible Shot: Essentially doubling (quadrupling, octupling) the effect by stacking ricochets, interesting. 0.25
Ethereal Shot: You use this, but as you cannot see into the ethereal, I'm not sure how you'd know when to use your ricochet trick for it. 0.1
Energy Shot: Big ability for you: getting to pile a bunch of d4s on your boomerang really helps make it a threat, and your various ricochets give you extra return on investment... when they apply. 0.25
Incorporeal Shot: Most incorporeal foes are undead, who are immune to your key trick, and you don't have the power points to throw handfuls of energy shot d4s at them. Incorporeal Shot makes you better at fighting the incorporeal, but does it truly combo with anything? 0.1
Pinpoint Shot: I can see this being used sometime, but I'm not giving combo points for pointing out how a specific weapon enchantment gives +1 to hit and damage with this. 0.1
Explosive Shot: Dazing people leaves them standing next to each other for next turn's Boom of Doom, clever. 0.25
Improved Psionic Sidestep: You get use out of this. 0.1
Phased Shot: Your build spotlight mentions this by name. No word on how you plan to use it, though: you don't have an obvious way to create cover or move behind it, and you can't see through solid objects so you wouldn't even know when to phase shot ricochet. Still, it's not utterly useless. 0.1
Infused Shot: 1d6 extra damage isn't much, but it adds another few points to your Boomerang Daze DC. 0.25
Total: 1.6

Point blank shot helps you get into Master Thrower, Dodge and Mobility don't really get used, Tumble is invested, Psionic Shot is a major part of what you like to do and qualifies you for a subsequent feat. 0.5/0.5

Your psionics are... limited. Two powers are used for stealth, one improves mobility, one gives healing, and the final two offer darkvision and extended range. Aside from the last of those, they're unlikely to significantly impact how you function round-to-round, and with power points such a scarce resource, I think this build makes less use of psionics than any other submission, and certainly less than the average ballisteer. 0/0.5

Final Verdict
Few other builds I've ever seen show such a drastic difference between their idealized and practical performance. When enemies stand next to each other, you're a vengeful dazing god; when they 5-ft. step away next turn you're a kid throwing bent sticks. Also, there's the whole "No boomerang daze until level 18" thing; that's awkward also.

Still, I like this build a lot! Your entry method is absolutely insane and I cannot emphasize enough how impressed I am by the find, and you leverage damage into more-than-damage in a way that only Queequeg rivals. The boomerang thrower is a well-worn archetype, but innovatively combining an old archetype with a SI is half the fun of iron chef.

Spoiler: Queequeg (13.00 -> 13.75)

Show

Fun fact: I'm actually reading Moby Dich right now.

Originality (3) (3.25)
Azurin, aka 'humans when you need essentia synergy'. I'm not saying that I expected a mineral warrior, but if you told me someone took a template, it would've been in my top five guesses (the other four, if you're curious, would've been half-fey, phrenic, primordial giant, and dark) 0/1 Okay, I still don't think a human-with-a-good-template should be rewarded more than options like elf or kalashtar, but there is some boldness in it, and it deserves a small bonus. 0.25

Psychic Warrior was expected, going all the way to level 8 only slightly less so. Master Thrower is not entirely surprising, but Totemist is, especially when it's only a one-level dip instead of the common two-level one. 0.5/1

A heavy incarnum focus in your feats: not what I expected in this round. 0.5/0.5

Nothing else too unexpected in what I see mixed together here. 0/0.5

Do you have cool tricks that make me excited to see more? Definitely. 1/1

Power (3.75)
Your core trick is clean, impressive, and optimized far more than most harpoon builds manage. You can definitely style on the right kind of enemy. Mineral warrior's burrow and mindsight help you start fights on your own terms, which is nice for such a buff-heavy character. 1/1

Of course, gimmicky strategies tend not to be foolproof. Against foes with ranged attacks, you're not doing all that much by restricting their movement, burrowing requires certain terrain, and wall-walker is useless against climbing or flying things. Your DR and bulk should make you an fine meatshield, so it's not the end of the world if a harpooned foe gets to attack you, but a lot of your theoretically impressive power reduces to 'tank with awkward aggro mechanic' in the wrong encounter. 0.5/1

Outside of combat, you have... zilch, basically. You can use a few soulmelds, but you'd prefer to shape the ones with combat benefits. Your Wild Empathy is awful, your powers are tailored towards battle, and you have fewer skill ranks than hit dice. Mindsight is the saving grace here, so let's say you fail to fulfill any out of combat role 0/0.5 but can at least contribute a little in odd situations. 0.25/0.5

Delaying Precise Shot until level 12 is a bit rough, but you're good at keeping a target from joining melee, and at least you take it. Brutal Throw at level 6 means a pure throw-based strategy might struggle a little early-game, but a decent array of psiwar powers should keep you relevant there. 0.5/0.5

So your augmented Call Weaponry is... not cheap, especially not when you have to manifest it after 10% of your phase shots. The Azure Talent + Psycarnum Infusion combo helps, but you can't quickly refocus in-battle. I guess you have quite a few power points from the sheer bulk of your psychic warrior levels, though, and you focus on single hits rather than flurries, so I'm going to say you can keep going throughout the day. 0.5/0.5

Elegance (2.25) (2.5)
That point of essentia comes at a price: Azurin have favored class (soulborn) instead of (any) and thus you take a multiclass XP penalty from the moment you enter totemist. 0/1

Qualifying for Mindsight with nonpermanent powers is a bit sketchy... but not as sketchy as taking Mindsight at the same level that grants you the soulmeld that gives the telepathy that you're using to qualify for Mindsight. At the moment you're selecting your 15th-level feat, you won't even have totemist class features, let alone a fully shaped and bound soulmeld: how are you meeting Mindsight's prerequisite? Also, you seem to purchase your final rank in Sleight of Hand as a class skill, even though it doesn't appear on the totemist list. Level 15 is an awkward place for you, mechanically! Finally, I'd have liked to see a clear overview of your power points. 0/1 0.25/1

You really want the trailing rope of your harpoon to count as part of the weapon so that Call Weaponry doesn't deactivate twelve seconds after throwing it. But if so, wouldn't the rope also turn incorporeal/ethereal/astral when the main body does so? Moreover, when the rope rematerializes with a solid object between you and the target, will it be stuck but unharmed? Shunted out? Cut in two? I cannot in good conscience assume the abilities will work out exactly like you hope at every table. Worse, though it's not quite RAW, realistically a lot of DMs are going to say you can't harpoon oozes and elementals and such, or that foes can attack the rope, or that they can sunder the harpoon itself... 0.25/1

You appreciate having dirt to burrow into, but simple cover works fine too, and otherwise this character isn't really dependent on terrain or the DM's good graces. 1/1

UoSI (4) (4.25)
Use of class features as follows.
Psionic Sidestep: On the one hand, you'll be chaining yourself to enemies on the regular, which restricts mobility and make sidestep less powerful overall. On the other, you could use this to scamper up walls or dive underground, which other PCs cannot do. Call it a wash. 0.1
Throw Anything: Sometimes, your harpoon will be stuck in stuff, and you'll appreciate being able to chuck a greatsword as a backup. 0.1
Invisible Shot: I imagine you'll want to use this sometimes. 0.1
Ethereal Shot: So you can use this, but without a way to look into the ethereal I'm not sure you use it better than the typical ballisteer. 0.1
Energy Shot: Clear synergy with the harpoon in increasing the single-hit damage that matters for you, and you use TWOB to make this more efficient. 0.5
Incorporeal Shot: Lets you harpoon things that strictly speaking should not be harpoonable, very cool! 0.25
Pinpoint Shot: The nature of your harpoon means that iteratives matter little if the first attack hits, spending a full-round on one attack that ignores cover might very well be worth it. With how mediocre this feat is, I'm kind of impressed to see a build where it's a solid option. 0.25
Explosive Shot: If you're already hitting two targets next to each other, might as well have them both take splash damage. Even better, your harpoon will keep them adjacent, in case you want to drop the rope, pull out a new weapon, and repeat the same trick next round. 0.25
Improved Psionic Sidestep: Used similarly to the base feature. 0.1
Phased Shot: Mindsight is equivalent to blindsense, not blindsight, so unless I'm missing something you are still risking the 50% miss chance imposed by total concealment. Able to pull off the wallsnipe special even on perfectly flat plains, and using it to immobilize foes totally, combined with Seeking to ignore all miss chances? That's a major combo, hands-down. 0.25 0.5
Infused Shot: A pity you don't take this, as it'd combo pretty nicely with harpoons as well. 0
Total: 2 2.25

Psionic Shot is useful beyond a basic damage boost, Point-Blank Shot fits perfectly with what you want to do (and again, does more than merely increase attack and damage numbers) and helps you get into Master Thrower, Midnight Dodge goes above and beyond regular Dodge. Tumble and Mobility are both abandoned after using them to qualify, but I still think you use enough of the prereqs elsewhere. 0.5/0.5

Your psionics directly expand on the ones granted by 8 levels of psychic warrior, granting you access to high-level powers that directly enhance your core strategy. On top of that, you make use of power-storing weapons to tie the psionics to your broader strategy. 0.5/0.5

Final Verdict:
My favorite of the builds. Simply picking up a harpoon makes so much of ballisteer fall into place, but you don't stop there. You devote considerable resources to giving everything (except maybe the sidestep feats) their time to shine, consider and mitigate logical weaknesses of the concept, and tie it together with a nice literary reference. The multiclass XP penalty here feels really painful, and a simple switch from azurin to human would've fixed it.

Judging continued in the next post, which will be up in a minute.