Psions: Options and optimization

[Dragothien]

So...to give you a brief overview... At our last gaming session 4 of our seven regulars were unable to attend, the guest that had planned to come could not attend, and one of the few of us there had to leave just as another was arriving..

So, we decided to break from our normal campaign and play temporary characters.

I wasn't expecting to play long and just wanted to have fun so I made a level 7 Kobold psion. Long story short.... Lots more people showed up late in the night, and our DM actually weaved these characters into the same location and story as our mains and started making us play both.

Some **** happened...

and now Level 7 kobold buddy is a lvl 18...

SO THAT BEING SAID!

I have reason to believe that these secondary chars will soon become mains, or no more secondary than our main characters..so..

What are some of my options taking this character from level 7 to 18? It's a rare opportunity, this has never happened to me, so I'd like to take advantage of it and come up with something fairly optimized. I was debating perhaps the psychic theruge or the cerebemancer, roleplaying of course that I stole the knowledge from someone else, but what would you do?

For Psychich theruge which I was most heavily leaning towards, I can't really see how to do it efficiently without a little smudging because I want to maintain good psion manifesting. Light smudging probably wouldn't be too hard because the role play I have in mind is sensible and our DM cares most about roleplay. Still though, I like to be as close to accurate to the rules as possible.

Any advice on making one of these options happen, or other routes I might take to optimize the psion, (lvl 18) would be greatly apprecaited!

As a note, just about any 3.0/3.5 book is welcome - and I would like the character to remain first and foremost a psion.

Also note, most of the psion optimizations I have seen revolve around specific psion classes like the Ardent. I made the character as a Psion (telepath) and at least seven levels of any optimization have to stay that way.

Thanks in advance!

[Samb]

Ahh a telepath? That's interesting, How cheesy are you willing to go? For mega cheese I would say go for thrallherd and ask for another psion of a different disipline. Take psychic chiugery and swap powers and make him take most or all of the XP cost. Use psyreform and repeat the process.

Use true mind switch on one of your minions if they look like they have good physical stats.

Now you have a psion with every power in CPsi and XPH. Is that optmized enough?

[KellKheraptis]

Ahh a telepath? That's interesting, How cheesy are you willing to go? For mega cheese I would say go for thrallherd and ask for another psion of a different disipline. Take psychic chiugery and swap powers and make him take most or all of the XP cost. Use psyreform and repeat the process.

Use true mind switch on one of your minions if they look like they have good physical stats.

Now you have a psion with every power in CPsi and XPH. Is that optmized enough?

Make another Thrall an Erudite and you have every decent spell, too. Then when you're done, mindrape yourself into anything you want. Either Ardent 10/Anarchic Initiate 10 for mass effect, or some gish combination. If I finish a 20/20 ML with 16+ BAB psi-gish I'll let you know :D

[magic9mushroom]

Anarchic Initiate and Thrallherd are the two huge psionic PrCs. Anarchic Initiate doesn't lose ML (and gives quite a few nice abilities), Thrallherd gives Leadership++.

Dual-progression works better for an Ardent than most other psionic characters.