pitch me a characer build

[Shin Okada]

it was a running joke that all special abilities worked once.
and only once.

Your DM seems to be overdoing counter-tactics against PCs (Maybe except for de-buffing. It is popular and generic enough). But I am curious, how many PCs are in your party? And is the party composed well?

One creature can't have all the abilities at once. So usually, if all the creatures you meet counters one PC's signature tactics, other PCs can deal with it.

Also, if all the enemies you encounter has the same ability, that means all of them tend to have the same weak point. So it is easy for your party to exploit that weakness. Say, if all the opponents has immune to fire, they are not immune to other abilities, and many of them are vulnerable to cold. If all the monsters are flying ones, party sorcerers can learn wingbind or your party druid can use Control Weather often. Or your party can just run into a buildings or caves. If all the opponents you meet can cast Mordenkeinen's Disjunction, they are either all mages or someone has very high UMD and using scrolls. That means, they are at not the least top class warriors. Just go into melee fast.

 

[Kmart Kommando]

If you want to shoot attacks of various energy type, warmage do much better. They have variety of non-spell-resistance attacks, too.

Psionic powers need to be augmented to roll maximum number of dice. It is like you always need 5th-level spell slot to shoot a 10 dice fireball, while Sorcerers and Warmages can automatically shoot 10 dice attacks with their 3rd-level spell slot if their caster level is 10th. So psionic characters tend to burn up their power point pool really fast.

psionic characters also don't have to burn a feat to get into the psionic shot/weapon/fist trees, which can help boost their staying power considerably with weapons/weaponlike powers. this is doubly effective since they can pump all their power points into whatever power works best at the moment, instead of guessing beforehand. Warmages can do pretty much the same, but less defensively. Isn't the spell progression and the PP progression pretty much the same, in terms of how many spells/powers you can toss per day? you can track the sorc round for round if you don't go for the big guns all the time.
the warmage in our group now burned several slots on crappy utility spells a wizard would have in his stack of scrolls, or the stack of scrolls of the some-sort-of-pseudo-arcane-cleric that casts more arcane spells than the warmage does in combat.

in our age of worms game, we got hit by some overchanneling wilder using an augmented 1st level no save no SR/PR range touch no-type energy attack, using the psionic shot tree and one of the extra action powers to kill 2 PCs in the first round. then another, then the psion/wizard/cerebremancer survived the hit, barely. then he killed the wilder in the 4th round, using the same extra action power. but I digress.

 

[Starbuck_II]

in our age of worms game, we got hit by some overchanneling wilder using an augmented 1st level no save no SR/PR range touch no-type energy attack, using the psionic shot tree and one of the extra action powers to kill 2 PCs in the first round. then another, then the psion/wizard/cerebremancer survived the hit, barely. then he killed the wilder in the 4th round, using the same extra action power. but I digress.

There is no energy power without a type as that is a contradiction.


You may be thinking of Crystal Shard: Must penetrate DR (according to Complete Psionics errata), Ray, No SR/PR, 1d6 per PP spent.

Not sure how he hit two? Split Metapsionics? Twin? Quicken?

Only power that grants extra action is the one that gives a dual mind Schism, but the power is at a lower manifester level so the second would be weaker if he did this.
Did he Crit?

 

[Shin Okada]

Isn't the spell progression and the PP progression pretty much the same, in terms of how many spells/powers you can toss per day? you can track the sorc round for round if you don't go for the big guns all the time.

At least in my experience, no. Psions tend to burn up their PP much faster than Sorcerers and Warmages burn up their spell slots. At least in the most frequently played 5-15 level ranges. It may depend on how many encounters your DM throw to your party every day. And depend on if all the encounters are nearly challenging or there are some of them are easy and others are challenging. But in overall, psionic characters tend to burn up one's resources faster than other type of characters.

Wizards should rely on magic items and should make them by themselves. That is why they get Scribe Scroll at the 1st level. Sorcerers are much better at using save or die/incapacitated spells.

As for devastating one-encounter tricks, many other types of characters can do it.

 

[blargney the second]

Winged dragonborn (RotD) water half-orc (UA) barbarian
Alternate class features: lion totem (CChamp), whirling frenzy (UA)
Feats: power attack, improved flight (CAdv), air heritage (PlanarHB)
Weapon: large gloryborn (DMG2) ripper (PlanarHB) with as much hardness as you can get if the DM likes to sunder
Eq: strongarm bracers (MIC), animated gloryborn heavy shield, gloryborn light armor
Ability order: str, con, dex, whatever

Basic strategy: if they're 10' or more away, pounce on them. If they're 5' away, shift and full attack. If they're flying, just fly up and and say hello with Mr Pointy.

If you can find some easy way to gain immunity to fatigue that might be a good thing, but it's not essential. If dragonborn is not allowed, raptoran (RotW) will substitute fine.
-blarg

 

[blargney the second]

Addendum to the build stub above: multiclass into scout/ranger with swift hunter (CScoun) for skirmishing goodness on a pounce and some useful bonus feats. Later on walk into a level of horizon walker for immunity to fatigue.
-blarg

 

[Shin Okada]

Is Warforged allowed in the campaign? They are immune to fatigue.

 

[green slime]

Dragonborn (wings) water half-orc barbarian
Alternate class features: lion totem, whirling frenzy
Feats: power attack, improved flight, air heritage
Weapon: large gloryborn ripper (as much hardness as you can get if the DM likes to sunder)
Eq: strongarm bracers, animated gloryborn heavy shield, gloryborn light armor
Ability order: str, con, dex, whatever

Basic strategy: if they're 10' or more away, pounce on them. If they're 5' away, shift and full attack. If they're flying, just fly up and and say hello with Mr Pointy.

If you can find some easy way to gain immunity to fatigue that might be a good thing, but it's not essential. If dragonborn is not allowed, raptoran will substitute fine.
-blarg

Blarg, there is so much there that isn't core, could you please list which book the different stuff comes from? I found this stuff

Dragonborn (races of the dragon)
Water Half-Orc (Unearthed Arcana)
Alternative class features (Unearthed Arcana)
Air Heritage (Planar Handbook)

But I don't know where the gloryborn feature is found, nor a "ripper" weapon.

 

[Kmart Kommando]

At least in my experience, no. Psions tend to burn up their PP much faster than Sorcerers and Warmages burn up their spell slots. At least in the most frequently played 5-15 level ranges. It may depend on how many encounters your DM throw to your party every day. And depend on if all the encounters are nearly challenging or there are some of them are easy and others are challenging. But in overall, psionic characters tend to burn up one's resources faster than other type of characters.

because they tend to use and abuse the highest level power they have round after round. they don't work top down like a sorc or warmage. they go top, top, top, top, top, empty..

the wilder in the AoW campaign was using crystal shard, and I think twinned, empowered, then schism for more actions, maybe a psicrystal for an extra focus to expend, not sure, I didn't pay much attention after "surprise, the healer's dead, oh, I won initiative too? the fighter-type's dead too.." "nope, not going to target the psy-war, he knows damp power..."
then something like "how did the psion absorb 300 damage and not die?"

 

[Shin Okada]

because they tend to use and abuse the highest level power they have round after round. they don't work top down like a sorc or warmage. they go top, top, top, top, top, empty..

That is not the only reason. For example, compare a 10th-level Psion against a 10th-level Warmage. Without ability modifier, a Psion has only 88 pp. That is only enough to shoot eight 10d6 area attacks. On the other hand, a Warmage has 6 3rd-level slots, 5 4th-level slots, & 3 5th-level slots. And he can use all of those 14 slots to shoot some 10d6 attack spells. There are damage caps for each spells (Like 10d maximum for Fireball), but in overall, a warmage can use all of his highest to 1-2 levels lower slots for causing "level d6" damages. And there are spells like Everd's Black Tentacles, for which almost only the caster level matters. So in regard to the number of "top tier" attacks per day, Warmages and Sorcerers tend to trample Psions.