Claws of the Beast questions

I have some questions regarding this power for a psychic warrior I would like to make. The SRD says:

SRD said:

Claws of the Beast
Psychometabolism
Level: Psychic warrior 1
Display: Visual
Manifesting Time: 1 swift action
Range: Personal
Target: You
Duration: 1 hour/level
Power Points: see text
You call forth the aggressive nature of the beast inherent in yourself, psionically transforming your hands into deadly claws. You gain two natural attacks with your claws, each dealing 1d4 points of damage (1d6 if you are Large, or 1d3 if you are Small) plus your Strength bonus.
Your claws are natural weapons, so you are considered armed when attacking with them, and they can be affected by powers, spells, and effects that enhance or improve natural. You can choose to deal nonlethal damage with your claws, taking the standard –4 penalty on your attack roll.
Your claws work just like the natural weapons of many monsters. You can make an attack with one claw or a full attack with two claws at your normal attack bonus, replacing your normal attack routine. You take no penalties for two-weapon fighting, and neither attack is a secondary attack. If your base attack bonus is +6 or higher, you do not gain any additional attacks—you simply have two claw attacks at your normal attack bonus.
You can manifest this power with an instant thought, quickly enough to gain the benefit of the power on your turn before you attack. Manifesting this power is a swift action, like manifesting a quickened power, and it counts toward the normal limit of one quickened power per round. You cannot manifest this power when it isn’t your turn.
You can call or dismiss the claws as a swift action during the duration of the power. If you attack with a manufactured weapon or another natural attack, you can’t make any claw attacks in that round. You can still hold and manipulate items with your claws or cast spells just as well as you could with your hands.
Augment: If you spend additional power points, you can create larger, sharper, and more deadly claws, as shown on the table below.
Power Points Claw Damage
Small Medium Large
1 1d3 1d4 1d6
3 1d4 1d6 1d8
5 1d6 1d8 2d6
7 1d8 2d6 3d6
11 2d6 3d6 4d6
15 3d6 4d6 5d6
19 4d6 5d6 6d6

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If I have a human 16th level PsyWar with overchannel and talented, I can spend 19 pp to manifest calws that do 5d6. If I have the improved natural attack feat, what damage do the claws do then? The SRD has no guidelines for a 5d6 attack (the list goes straight from 4d6 to 6d6). If I manifest expansion before I manifest the claws, I can make claws that do 6d6 damage. Do the claws then go back to 5d6 when the expansion wears off? If I manifest claws for 4d6 and then use expansion to go up two sizes, I should have claws that do 8d6 damage, and with the improved natural attack they do 12d6. If I am already a large creature, get 6d6 claws, expand two sizes, and have INA, do the claws do 16d6? That seems to be the next progression, but the list stops at 12d6. And last, how does metamagic interact with this. Say I spend 15pp to manifest 4d6 claws, then maximize them for 4pp using overchannel - I now have claws that do 24 damage with every hit. With INA and 2size expansion, am I now automatically doing 72 damage with every hit?

As for Maximise - No, you cant maximise/empower them so that they do an automatic dmg per hit. a Meta-Psionic feat for that would be like - Extend to them last longer. The power just creates the weapons, you cant empower or maximise them.

As for the build - from 12d6 - its would prob go to 12d8. If you really wanna cheese it up add claws of the vampire to the mix. you hit for 12d8 and heal half that every hit. Adds claws of energy to an extra 1d10 energy subtype dmg. Burn the PPs for Prescience, Offence and Pecongition, Offence to get +6 to hit and +7 to dmg on every hit. Greater Psychic Weapon + Psychic Meditation + Hustle means youc an be goin an extra +4d6 every round. and greater weapon spec is another +2 to hit and +4 to dmg. Take Kramic strike - that allows you to take an AoO on anyone who hits you

I dont wanna add all that up, But you could easly kill just about anythign thats stays in range for 2 rounds

~ That said - I hope you Never actualy try and play this character in a real game, Its fun to build - but - Its a complete cheese to the rules and will end up jsut pissin people off

Kabol said:

As for Maximise - No, you cant maximise/empower them so that they do an automatic dmg per hit. a Meta-Psionic feat for that would be like - Extend to them last longer. The power just creates the weapons, you cant empower or maximise them.

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But the damage of the claws is a variable, numeric effect, and so should be eligible for maximize/empower. If a power that creates an effect is not eligible for maximizing/empowering, then fire shield would also be out. It is a perosnal power with a target of 'you' that creates an effect that causes variable damage. It's kind of abusive (the claws, not the fire shield) , but I don't see why it wouldn't work - though I would be happy if I can find a rule that forbids it.

Kabol said:

As for the build - from 12d6 - its would prob go to 12d8.

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The progression after 3d6 damage seems to be : drop down one step-> double. so from 3 -> 2 -> 4, from 4->3->6, and so on, up to 12->8->16.
if it went from 12d6 to 12d8, we would expect 2d6 to go to 2d8 before going to 3d6, which isn't the case.

Kabol said:

~ That said - I hope you Never actualy try and play this character in a real game, Its fun to build - but - Its a complete cheese to the rules and will end up jsut pissin people off

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Of course it's cheese, but it's actually not as bad as some other things i've done to my players (though i would probably leave off the maximized claws - i was just curious if people thought it should work), and it's always good to have something like this in backup, just in case my players aren't feeling challenged enough.

I would argue that the claws damage is a variable numeric effect, but of hitting people, not of the power.

After all, if you cast Summon Monster to get a bear, can you maximise it's claws?


glass.

glass said:

I would argue that the claws damage is a variable numeric effect, but of hitting people, not of the power.

After all, if you cast Summon Monster to get a bear, can you maximise it's claws?


glass.

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But, the summoned bear's claw damage is not an effect of the spell(not in the spell description), while the damage of the claws granted by the power is. If I say that the creation of the claws are the effect of the spell and the damage they cause is secondary, then that ruling seems like it should apply to Mordy's Sword, Fire Shield, Fire Seeds, Flame Blade, etc., which also all create something which is then later used to cause damage.