Optimizing Psychic Warrior with Natural Weapons

[MichielHagen]

Hi,

I am currently considering building a Psyhic Warrior and for flavor i wanted to try one that will not use normal weapons, but only his Bite/Claws.
With this limitation set i want to optimize it as far as i can (only using 3.5 books, so no Dragon Magazine, 3.0 books or webpublished material).

Anyone have any tips for me to look at to accomplish this?

thanks for your trouble!

<edit> i will be creating a lvl 10 Character

[tyckspoon]

Everything you need for that is actually there in the Expanded Psionics Handbook. Going outside that can be helpful for some things, but isn't truly necessary. Your basic tactic is as such:

At the start of your day, manifest Claws of the Beast at the highest augmentation level you can manage. At level 10, that'll be the 2d6 point.

When you get into a fight:
Manifest Bite of the Wolf if you need it. It'll be doing 3d8. Use Expansion if you need or want to- extra Strength and all your weapons size up. Since they're effectively larger already, this gives you pretty good results. If you need healing, use Claws of the Vampire to rip it out of your opponent's hides. Use Hustle or Lion's Charge to close with the enemy and open with a full attack.

That's really all there is to it. You can do some other stuff if you feel like it- for example, you can decide between wearing actual armor and just using Inertial Armor. You could enhance your claw(s) with Metaphysical Claw. But as a PsyWar, you have a fairly limited power point pool.. so you probably should save your points for the in-combat manifestations you need, like Expansion and Hustle. You can take Improved Natural Attack for your Claws and Bite (should do this- the extra size increase stacks nicely with Expansion and the 'virtual' sizes you get from augmenting the Claws.) I recommend wearing real armor and acquiring a Necklace of Natural Attacks to cover the bonuses on your claws/bite. Or buy your local Druid a small stack of Pearls of Power and get him to Greater Magic Fang you a couple times.

[Advocate]

Linked Power from Complete Psionic greatly speeds up combat buffing.

Inertial Armor is far superior to worn armor. Get special properties via Gnome Twistcloth.

When it comes available, you'll want Form of Doom, for even more boosts.

[Lycanthromancer]

That advice was good. Great, in fact.

However, you'll want some actual physical weaponry just in case you run out of power points, get caught in an AMF, need to fight from range, need to overcome damage reduction, etc.

I'd suggest playing a race with a regular natural attack; preferably something like a hoof attack or tail attack, if you can find it, which will stack with the weapons you get from your powers. Or take Improved Unarmed Strike, which can be used in conjunction to your bite of the wolf and claws of the beast. (Also, see below.)

If you go without wearing armor, using inertial armor instead, you might just want to take a couple of levels of monk, and the Talashtora feat, from Secrets of Sarlona (which allows your psychic warrior levels to count as monk levels for flurry, UAS damage, monk AC bonuses, and speed, IIRC). The levels in monk cover the natural attack(s) mentioned in the previous paragraph, as well as grant you additional points of AC and speed boosts. A psionic monk variant (+2 pp at first level, you count as psionic for taking feats, and can take psionic feats as monk bonus feats, with no other changes) would be great both fluff- and mechanics-wise, given that you're going psywar anyway.

[Advocate]

Monk 2. Only catch is that Wis to AC won't work with the Twistcloth. It works fine with Inertial Armor though.

[Keld Denar]

Monk2/PsyWar8/Slayer10 is pretty solid. You lose 1 ML from Slayer, but you aren't really a full Manifester, so that and the 2 levels you lose from Monk don't hurt you too much. Alternatively, jump out of Slayer after 4 and head into Warmind for the awesome Sweeping Strikes ability along with continued manifesting.

I wonder, how would effects like Claw of the Beast, Expansion, and Improved Natural Attack affect your unarmed damage if your strikes were already considered Collosal due to a CL20 Greater Mighty Wallop? GMW caps at collosal, but precident dictates that you apply effects in the order most beneficial to you, which would be GMW > INA > Claws > Expansion for effectively Collosal ++++ UAS damage.

Right?

[Advocate]

Yes. It's the principle behind the Shadow Sun Medic.

[The Glyphstone]

Look no further, my friend, that the almighty King of Smack.

[MichielHagen]

Thanks for the tips.

Amulet of Natural Attacks is not 3.0 or does it appear in another book beside Savage Species?

Another question regarding Metapower/Linked Power

If i pick Claws of the Beast as my Metapower, would i essentially be able to cast a Claws of the Beast (1 PP) and Link it to say...a Vigor of (11 pp) and then reduce the cost by 2 (Linked Power) totalling 10 PP for a lvl 10 PW?
Effectively i can then cast any spell (targeting myself) as a swift action, delayed by 1 round, at a -1 reduced cost.....

[Advocate]

You should already have Claws of the Beast up. Doing it with another power... I dunno.

[MichielHagen]

You should already have Claws of the Beast up. Doing it with another power... I dunno.

I assume that the greatest Claws should count, if i cast Greater Mage Armor, then Mage Armor, i would still get the +6 to AC.

Anyway, make it "Burst" then instead of the claws...or "Hustle" so i can put the Focus i expended back on again!!

[Keld Denar]

Amulet of Natural Attacks was not updated into 3.5, but rather replaced with the Amulet of Mighty Fists which is essentially the same thing with a 1.5x factor on the price tag.

Because WotC didn't think Monks were weak enough, they make you choose between buying a super expensive magic weapon, buying an item that increases your wisdom to augement most of your monk abilities, or buying an item to increase your con to make sure you DON'T FREAKIN DIE.

Luckily, MIC helps out with this. You can add wisdom to your Amulet of Mighty Fists without the 1.5 multiplier in the cost of that as well, thanks to the rules on pg 233. And you can add +con to your belt or torso thanks to the expanded item slot affinity on pg. 234. Yay MIC!

[Advocate]

I assume that the greatest Claws should count, if i cast Greater Mage Armor, then Mage Armor, i would still get the +6 to AC.

Anyway, make it "Burst" then instead of the claws...

Why not just use Bite of the Wolf for that? You'd want it anyways. Combo it with, whatever. Form of Doom late game.

[NEO|Phyte]

You should already have Claws of the Beast up. Doing it with another power... I dunno.

Plus, claws of the beast can be worthwhile to augment, if you're stacking size modifiers. When claws of the vampire ONLY works off of base damage dice for health gained, you want as big a pile of d6s as you can. At 10th level, this is 2d6, or 3d6 if you Overchannel up to manifest level 11th. At MEDIUM size. Improved Natural Attack and an augmented expansion can bump that up to 6d6 (8d6 with overchannel). I'm quite sure there's a lot more that could be done here, even without Greater Mighty Wallop, as claws are slashing/piercing.

[MichielHagen]

Why not just use Bite of the Wolf for that? You'd want it anyways. Combo it with, whatever. Form of Doom late game.

It being a swift action makes it preferable in my opinion.

Start of the day:
Claws (7pp) + Inertial Armor (3pp) -2 = 8 pp

Round 1:
Swift: Claws (1pp) + Expansion (7pp) -2 = 6 pp
Standard action: Bite of the Wolf (1 pp) = 1 pp
Move action: Put Focus back on

Round 2:
I am ready for action,
Lion's Charge my opponent+Full Attack = 3 pp
Or, if it is not within range yet, i can cast it as a swift action using this:
Swift: Claws (1pp) + Lion's Charge (3 pp) - 2 = 2 pp
It saves me 1 pp, i can take a move action to put Focus back on and the other move action to shorten the gap so the Lion's Charge that is effective next round gets in.

Round 3:
I am getting hit quite a bit, i need to put more defense up, but i dont want to waste an attack.
Full attack
Swift: Claws (1pp) + Vigor (11 pp) -2 = 10 pp

I can't do this with Bite.....

[MichielHagen]

Plus, claws of the beast can be worthwhile to augment, if you're stacking size modifiers. When claws of the vampire ONLY works off of base damage dice for health gained, you want as big a pile of d6s as you can. At 10th level, this is 2d6, or 3d6 if you Overchannel up to manifest level 11th. At MEDIUM size. Improved Natural Attack and an augmented expansion can bump that up to 6d6 (8d6 with overchannel). I'm quite sure there's a lot more that could be done here, even without Greater Mighty Wallop, as claws are slashing/piercing.

I know, i am assuming the smaller Claws does not override the Larger one i have manifested.
The 1 pp claws just serve as a -1 pp reduction and swift+1 rounnd delay.

[Behold_the_Void]

Monk2/PsyWar8/Slayer10 is pretty solid. You lose 1 ML from Slayer, but you aren't really a full Manifester, so that and the 2 levels you lose from Monk don't hurt you too much. Alternatively, jump out of Slayer after 4 and head into Warmind for the awesome Sweeping Strikes ability along with continued manifesting.

I wonder, how would effects like Claw of the Beast, Expansion, and Improved Natural Attack affect your unarmed damage if your strikes were already considered Collosal due to a CL20 Greater Mighty Wallop? GMW caps at collosal, but precident dictates that you apply effects in the order most beneficial to you, which would be GMW > INA > Claws > Expansion for effectively Collosal ++++ UAS damage.

Right?

Doesn't Warmind have it's own progression up to level 5 powers? If so, Form of Doom is unavailable, if memory serves.

[Graymayre]

I'd suggest playing a race with a regular natural attack; preferably something like a hoof attack or tail attack, if you can find it, which will stack with the weapons you get from your powers. Or take Improved Unarmed Strike, which can be used in conjunction to your bite of the wolf and claws of the beast. (Also, see below.)

The Shifter from ECS is a good race for natural attacks OP (+0 LA). It starts off with a shifter racial trait (which can net you a natural attack), can gain feats to further improve their natural attacks; and can shift, which is like barbarian rage, only better.
Plus, if you gain the razorclaw shifter trait, you'll be able to manifest claw enchancers without claw of the beast (if you have to). Not to mention, one feat shifters can get allows them to do an additional 1d4+1/2 STR damage whenever they hit with 2 claw attacks

Unfortunately, this race does have a -2 to Intelligence. But honestly, if you are focusing on natural attacks, this is really one of the best; non-LA races you can pick.

[Keld Denar]

So Claws of the Beast would over-write your Unarmed Strike damage from Monk? That kinda undermines taking Tashalatora. If it does, I'd suggest using UASs instead of CotB because UAS will scale much faster than CotB, don't use any PP to have available, and can be insanely improved by a friendly caster packing a Greater Mighty Wallop (from Races of the Dragon).

[NEO|Phyte]

So Claws of the Beast would over-write your Unarmed Strike damage from Monk?

It overwrites nothing. Claws != unarmed strikes.

[The Glyphstone]

Doesn't Warmind have it's own progression up to level 5 powers? If so, Form of Doom is unavailable, if memory serves.

Warmind uses the Psychic Warrior powerlist.

[NEO|Phyte]

Warmind uses the Psychic Warrior powerlist.

And form of doom is 6th level, out of Warmind's reach.

[The Glyphstone]

Eh really?

*Checks*

Whadda ya know, it caps at 5th level. I thought it capped at 6th. Phooie.

[Advocate]

Linked Power: Hustle + x.

Use granted move action to regain focus.

Losing Swift action in round 1 > losing entire round 1.

[Keld Denar]

It overwrites nothing. Claws != unarmed strikes.

So...wait...would this work?

Manifest Claws of the Beast to get natural attacks.

Make a full attack flurry with UASs utilizing your feet to kick.
Made additional secondary attacks with natural weapons?

This would open up the option to take Multiattack and maybe even (Improved) Rapid Strike. Something evil is hatching!

[NEO|Phyte]

So...wait...would this work?

Manifest Claws of the Beast to get natural attacks.

Make a full attack flurry with UASs utilizing your feet to kick.
Made additional secondary attacks with natural weapons?

This would open up the option to take Multiattack and maybe even (Improved) Rapid Strike. Something evil is hatching!

Technically, you can only use unarmed strikes and monk weapons when flurrying. Natural weapons are neither.
Of course, this depends on how anally you interpret "When using flurry of blows, a monk may attack only with unarmed strikes or with special monk weapons (kama, nunchaku, quarterstaff, sai, shuriken, and siangham)," as I believe it has been argued that the natural weapons would be used AFTER the flurry is completed, but I personally don't see it that way.

[Advocate]

The book was written under the assumption all of your attacks were either based on an unarmed strike or a manufactured weapon, because PHB races don't get natural attacks. Of course, Monk 1/Druid 19...