Brainstorm for Psionic Tricks, Tactics, and Combos Handbook

[MaxiDuRaritry]

But then this book isn't 1st-party

It's 2nd party, I believe, which is officially sanctioned by WotC.

[Fable Wright]

Your fissioned copy isn't under the effect of Temporal Acceleration, as per the description of Fission

Perhaps change to Step 1: Manifest Fission
Step 2: Fission manifests Temporal Acceleration
A. Affinity Field, then
B. Synchronicity.
Step 3: You now have Synchronicity, which you can use on the Fission's turn, and the Fission can choose to also immediately manifest Synchronicity afterwards, giving you another off-turn action to do as you please with.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Okay, so I found a way to expand upon this:

Bad Good Touch
This trick is especially useful for wilders and other manifesters with extremely limited powers known, but it's useful for manifesters of every stripe.

The more manifesters that share a power list that are in the same party, the more powers they'll have available to them. All they need to do is retain physical contact while "addressing the power stone" that is the other party member. For instance, only one manifester needs to know inertial armor for everyone to use it. Or if nobody wants to waste that power known slot, feel free to take it on your psicrystal with the Hidden Talent feat. Then everyone in the whole group can touch the psicrystal, manifest it using their own power points, and augment it sky-high.

Not very useful in battle, for the most part, but it's a definite way to improve viability for utility and long-duration buff powers.

If one manifester (say, an erudite) has a particularly large repertoire of powers, find a way to store him in (or as) an item, and then wear that item on your person. Now you can manifest from its list of powers known without having to wait while "attuning" to it. It basically doubles (or more) your number of powers known, and all it costs the other manifester is his freedom and status as a humanoid (or whatever he used to be). Maybe a level in fiend of possession, or a long-term metamorphosis effect to turn him into a bangle of some kind?

I call it The Psionic Pspellbook.

[edit] Are any of these going to be linked in the first post any time soon? Did the OP pass on, or something?

[Pippin]

[edit] Are any of these going to be linked in the first post any time soon? Did the OP pass on, or something?

The OP seems quite gone now. Maybe someone should make a new thread.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

The Wand Chamber Fandango
In Dungeonscape you have wand chambers, which can fit into any weapon with a handle or other solid part that's 6 inches long or greater, and that let you hold and wield a wand without having to drop what's in your hand or draw the wand.

In CPsi you have a feat that lets you use a dorje (or wand, since they're equivalent) as a stabbing weapon.

Wands and dorjes are about a foot long each, are the same shape, and are activated the same way, for the same type of purpose.

This means you can have a whole bunch of dorjes and wands that have wand chambers, which means you can wield a dorje inside a dorje inside a dorje inside a dorje inside a dorje inside a dorje etc etc etc.

Ahem. Whitetext.

I misremembered slightly. It was Dorje Blade. Dorjes are the psionic equivalent of wands (same size, shape, and everything, but made from psionic crystal).

Dorjes are consumables, right? And you're still using a consumable item, albeit not in a consumable way.

Could you combine this (and wand chambers) with the Wandstrike feat? How would that work, exactly? You'd probably need the Magic mantle for that, either way.

Ultimate Cosmic Power! Itty Bitty Power Levels.
Dip several different manifesting classes, 1 level each. Take Supernatural Transformation (Psionics) to keep their MLs up to your HD. Add all their MLs together via a dip in the alternate [psionic] spellthief with the Master (Psi)thief feat. If you have the Magic mantle, you can also dip casting classes, too. This means your ML now equals your HD x the number of classes you've dipped.

Unfortunately, you'll only be able to manifest low level powers unless you dip ardent, in which case you'd have to buy powers known via psychic chirurgery or take Expanded Knowledge a whole bunch.

Toss in some mind mage to add up to +10 to all of your class dips, which are then added together to determine your ultimate MLs.

Note: 3 levels in illithid savant would allow you to add the StP erudite's learning mechanic to your ardent dip; alternately, you could add the ardent's manifesting mechanic to your other manifesting classes, which would fix the above low-level powers issue.

[Edit]

Lycanthrallherd
If you're a thrallherd, you can boost your Leadership score via C.Divine's curse of lycanthropy. It boosts your effective Leadership by boosting your HD, but since it's a non-Instantaneous buff spell, you don't count as actually being higher level due to LA and the bonus HD. This also gets boosted via Supernatural Transformation (Psionics), as noted above.

Cursed With Awesome
Similar to the above, take Practiced Manifester and inflict yourself with C.Divine's curse of lycanthropy for up to +4 MLs. Alternately, Supernatural Transformation (Psionics).

[daremetoidareyo]

A&EG has the creature type trainer feat. Brain moles are a vector of cascade flu. If your only powers are stackable self buffs, or like hustle and synchronicity, you get to manifest for free while you beat your opponent up just by spending a power point.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Here's one I just came up with in response to another thread:

Planeshift, in the Cheap Seats
The Transdimensional Power feat from C.Psi allows any power you manifest to cross dimensional barriers to target any other plane that is attached to the one you're on in some fashion, even extradimensional and nondimensional spaces. So just manifest a 1st level teleportation power (or a 0 level, if you have one), and you can cross dimensional barriers whenever you want, teleporting to the other plane. It costs your psionic focus but no extra power points, so you can do this at level 1. Add to Dimension hop, a 1st level teleportation power from C.Psi, and you can travel the planes in style like a cheapskate.

[edit] If the DM rules that you MUST target a creature using Transdimensional Power (nevermind that AoEs target spaces, instead, just like dimension hop), use dimension swap instead. Level 2 power, doable by character level 3. See the comments section below.

[Hish]

I don’t think that works. Transdimensional Power only refers to creatures on other planes, it doesn’t say that it lets all powers cross dimensional boundaries. Even the flavor text only mentions that your powers “affect targets lurking in coexistent planes and extradimensional spaces.” I really wanted that one to work, but I don’t think it does

[MaxiDuRaritry]

I don’t think that works. Transdimensional Power only refers to creatures on other planes, it doesn’t say that it lets all powers cross dimensional boundaries. Even the flavor text only mentions that your powers “affect targets lurking in coexistent planes and extradimensional spaces.” I really wanted that one to work, but I don’t think it does

And yet you can fire off AoE effects just fine, even though they don't target anything, and you have to target a point in space, instead. Just like you do with powers like dimension hop.

If nothing else, find a minion that can go ethereal or something (such as a ghost familiar) and use dimension swap with it, instead. A level 2 power, doable at character level 3.

[ExLibrisMortis]

I do think that'll let you dimension hop to the Ethereal, as long as you can see it (e.g. with see invisibility), because the power requires line of sight. Very nice trick!

[MaxiDuRaritry]

I guess you could always use a modified Ocular Spell and a lens of ray widening to use dimension hop for this, although that requires additional resources.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

A Blaster's Wet Dream
Ardent with the Magic mantle and the Dominant Ideal and Substitute Powers ACFs (on a mantle with war magic energy wave on it), War Magic Study, Empower Power, Widen Power, war magic energy wave, and Metapower (Widen + war magic energy wave).

Note that the only limit to the number of times you can apply a metapsionic feat to a power is however many psionic foci you've got; if you've got multiple foci, you can apply a meta feat that many times. And since Dominant Ideal erases your need for foci, you can apply both Empower and Widen as many times as you want (since war magic energy wave has Long Range instead of 120'), leading to NI damage and NI Area. All that will survive in the AoE will be stuff that's flat-out immune to your choice of energy damage (which can be fixed next round), stuff that's immune to death from hp damage, and stuff that just can't be killed normally (like astral projecting wizards and ghosts).

Have fun with that.

[nijineko]

A Blaster's Wet Dream
Ardent with the Magic mantle and the Dominant Ideal and Substitute Powers ACFs (on a mantle with war magic energy wave on it), War Magic Study, Empower Power, Widen Power, war magic energy wave, and Metapower (Widen + war magic energy wave).

Note that the only limit to the number of times you can apply a metapsionic feat to a power is however many psionic foci you've got; if you've got multiple foci, you can apply a meta feat that many times. And since Dominant Ideal erases your need for foci, you can apply both Empower and Widen as many times as you want (since war magic energy wave has Long Range instead of 120'), leading to NI damage and NI Area. All that will survive in the AoE will be stuff that's flat-out immune to your choice of energy damage (which can be fixed next round), stuff that's immune to death from hp damage, and stuff that just can't be killed normally (like astral projecting wizards and ghosts).

Have fun with that.

I believe that metapsionics (along with metamagic) cannot have the same meta-feat stacked onto the same power multiple times, unless the feat says it stacks? I seem to recall reading that somewhere.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

I believe that metapsionics (along with metamagic) cannot have the same meta-feat stacked onto the same power multiple times, unless the feat says it stacks? I seem to recall reading that somewhere.

Nah, that's metamagic. Metapsionics doesn't have that caveat anywhere at all, unless I somehow missed it when I combed through all the rules on metapsionics. The natural outcome of metapsionics being restricted by psionic focus naturally approximates that, but add in Dominant Ideal, and...

[RSGA]

It also depends on the GM reading the cost adjustment as being to each instance of augmenting or metapsionics and in that case you might as well just look for a power with an augment cost less than 2 and boost it to NI with no feats.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

It also depends on the GM reading the cost adjustment as being to each instance of augmenting or metapsionics and in that case you might as well just look for a power with an augment cost less than 2 and boost it to NI with no feats.

Under Metapower, it says:

"The cost of modifying your chosen power with metapsionic feats is reduced by 2 power points (to a minimum extra cost of 0 power points)."

You're modifying the power multiple times in this case. So each time you modify the chosen power with the metapsionic feat in question, it activates Metapower, and the cost is reduced by 2 pp (min 0).

[Segev]

Under Metapower, it says:

"The cost of modifying your chosen power with metapsionic feats is reduced by 2 power points (to a minimum extra cost of 0 power points)."

You're modifying the power multiple times in this case. So each time you modify the chosen power with the metapsionic feat in question, it activates Metapower, and the cost is reduced by 2 pp (min 0).

I might be getting a bit lost in the weeds here. Are you asserting that metapower enables you to use the same metapsionic feat as many times as you want for a single expenditure of your psionic focus? Or did I miss a step that also removed the need to expend psionic focus in order to enable this?

[MaxiDuRaritry]

I might be getting a bit lost in the weeds here. Are you asserting that metapower enables you to use the same metapsionic feat as many times as you want for a single expenditure of your psionic focus? Or did I miss a step that also removed the need to expend psionic focus in order to enable this?

As mentioned above, psionics has no limit to how many times you can apply a metapsionic feat other than psionic focus (and, of course, your manifester level); and, of course, a lot of metapsionic feats (such as Quicken Power) don't have any benefits from applying them multiple times. Typically, you can only apply a metapsionic feat once or twice, since you can only apply a metapsionic feat with the expenditure of a focus -- and gaining an additional focus with Psicrystal Containment is the only way most characters can gain more than one focus to spend at once until epic. This is pretty well-balanced.

Metapower only reduces the cost of a metapsionic feat when applied to a specific power by 2 points. This is also pretty well-balanced, given feat opportunity costs.

What breaks this is Dominant Ideal. It takes all the powers on the chosen mantle, reduces metapsionic feat costs by 2 points on them, and removes the need to expend focus when applying metapsionic feats to them.

So combining Metapower with Dominant Ideal removes the need for psionic focus and reduces the metapsionic cost for the chosen feat/power combo by 4, so long as the power is on the chosen mantle. Which can be altered with the Substitute Mantle Powers ACF.

[Segev]

As mentioned above, psionics has no limit to how many times you can apply a metapsionic feat other than psionic focus (and, of course, your manifester level); and, of course, a lot of metapsionic feats (such as Quicken Power) don't have any benefits from applying them multiple times. Typically, you can only apply a metapsionic feat once or twice, since you can only apply a metapsionic feat with the expenditure of a focus -- and gaining an additional focus with Psicrystal Containment is the only way most characters can gain more than one focus to spend at once until epic. This is pretty well-balanced.

Metapower only reduces the cost of a metapsionic feat when applied to a specific power by 2 points. This is also pretty well-balanced, given feat opportunity costs.

What breaks this is Dominant Ideal. It takes all the powers on the chosen mantle, reduces metapsionic feat costs by 2 points on them, and removes the need to expend focus when applying metapsionic feats to them.

So combining Metapower with Dominant Ideal removes the need for psionic focus and reduces the metapsionic cost for the chosen feat/power combo by 4, so long as the power is on the chosen mantle. Which can be altered with the Substitute Mantle Powers ACF.

Ah, okay, Dominant Ideal was the part I had missed. Thanks!

[Peelee]

The Mod on the Silver Mountain: Some would call this the handbook of the dead.