Psychic Warrior: Worth it?

[avr]

If you want to deal damage at range as a psychic warrior, getting a bow and using appropriate powers to buff is your best bet. Alternately, you can spend your 6th level feat on expanded knowledge (Energy Missile) - this will burn thru your power points quite fast so use it sparingly.

 

[Bacris]

I would advise against a direct damage power. Instead, I would recommend powers that augment the psywar himself. Powers like Expansion, as mentioned, which will increase your weapon size by one or two steps. Or powers like Offensive Prescience, which gives a +2 or higher bonus on damage rolls.

Empathic Feedback can also be good if you're going to be in melee, but you probably want to avoid needing too many buffs, due to prep time.

There's also Graft Weapon, which has a really nice duration

 

[Blue Sky]

I've played a psychic for a very short, combat focused game, and ended up doing a vast majority of the damage, while being pretty much unkillable.

Use Claws of the Beast to start with, and add Claws of the Vampire when you get high enough level. Expansion (psionic power) and Improved Natural Attack (feat) will boost the damage you do with the claws, which will in turn boost how much you heal with each hit. Take Karmic Strike from Complete Warrior as soon as possible, and Combat Reflexes. Everytime someone hits you, hit them back, and heal.

 

[Azaar]

I've only tinkered with Psychic Warrior once, with a PbP game here: elan psychic warrior 1/monk 5. Took inertial armor, and between that and all the variants from UA we used (class bonus to defense being the primary contributor), I had an AC in the high 20s when manifesting inertial armor (AC 27 or 28, if memory serves). I'll agree, however, that the Psychic Warrior is best when buffing himself to augment his own combat ability. Anything else, and you'll fall quickly.

 

[Arkhandus]

Where's the reckless ofense feat?

Also, I want to focus on a damage dealer, in melee and hopefully at range (using psionics only). What kind of damage dealing psionic powers would you recommend?

And which armor would you recommend the pc wear?

Reckless Offense is from the same source as the Psychic Warrior (in 3.5, anyway). It's in the nonpsionic feats section of the Expanded Psionics Handbook (and the 3.5 System Reference Document; just go into the Psionic Feats section, and look to the side where it lists nonpsionic feats that come from the same source).

Psychic Warriors use weaponry (or natural weaponry through their "Claws of X" and "Bite of X" psionic powers) to hurt people, not psionic powers. Their psionic powers are for personal augmentation and weapon augmentation.


For reference, my suggestions are all based around efficiency and being effective in as many situations as you can be. You want to focus on being a damage-dealer, so that's the main focus of my suggestions too; but you need to be survivable as well, so that's factored in too.

Armor-wise, get either a masterwork breastplate or masterwork full plate armor, depending on how much you're willing to spend from your initial character wealth. Get the armor enhanced to +1 if you can afford it, but at 3rd-level that's probably a no-can-do, since you'll want to prioritize your weapons' enhancement first. Eventually, you'll want to acquire mithral full plate armor and get it enhanced, but that's much too expensive for a 3rd-level character. Or you might aim for a mithral breastplate later on, if you want to have greater mobility (only if you get significant magic items for boosting your Dexterity, though, like Gloves of Dexterity +6; otherwise, the mithral full plate is preferable).


Learn Offensive Precognition or Offensive Prescience to boost your attack accuracy or damage (respectively; I'd suggest the latter power). And get the Expansion power (only manifest it when you're planning on going into melee, though), as well as Vigor. Don't waste much time in combat on manifesting your powers; just manifest one or two in preparation, then start attacking. Expansion and Vigor if going into melee, or just Offensive Prescience if going for ranged attacks.

Also, if you want to be flexible as both a main melee attacker and a main ranged attacker, take the feats Psionic Weapon, Point Blank Shot, and Psionic Shot (in that order). You can get all three of them at 1st-level if you play a Human Psychic Warrior. PBS is a prerequisite for Psionic Shot (you'll need Strength and Dexterity scores of 13 or higher in order to qualify for these feats). Starting at 3rd-level, you'll have 2 more feats; take Weapon Focus (longbow) and either Rapid Shot or Psionic Talent. Try to keep 1 power point unspent at all times, so you can keep regaining psionic focus for Psionic Weapon/Psionic Shot, but if a battle seems like it's going to end badly, go ahead and spend the last power point on Vigor (to save yourself from the next attack) or Expansion (to boost your melee damage enough to finish beating down the enemy).


Ability score-wise, go for an 18 Strength, 14 Dexterity, 12 Constitution, 8 Intelligence, 14 Wisdom, and 8 Charisma. You'll have a total of 6 power points, or 8 with Psionic Talent. That's enough PP for 4 fights in one day, if you go into melee combat twice (with Expansion and Vigor, unaugmented) and ranged combat twice (with Offensive Prescience, unaugmented). With Psionic Talent you'd be able to augment Vigor or Expansion once to a full 3pp (for more HP or a longer duration, respectively).

Get a greatsword, and a composite longbow that allows adding 4 points of Strength bonus to damage. If your starting wealth is enough to afford magical or psionic weapons, get both of those weapons enhanced to a +1 bonus on attack and damage. Prioritize the longbow first if you can't afford to get both weapons enhanced right away, since the longbow will be less accurate otherwise (due to your lower Dexterity and the use of Rapid Shot). This way you can do significant damage at both melee and range, and with reasonably good accuracy.


Later on, consider the other feats and powers that would help you out in both melee and ranged combat. Force Screen is your friend! Learn it to avoid having a terrible, terrible Armor Class. Learn it at 4th-level, then learn Animal Affinity and Body Adjustment. At 7th-level, you'll learn your first good offensive power, rather than a self-boosting power, in this case Hostile Empathic Transfer. Then learn Psionic Darkvision and Greater Concealing Amorpha. Later still, you might want to learn Psionic Freedom of Movement, Psionic Dimension Door, Energy Adaptation, Inertial Barrier, Psychofeedback, Adapt Body, Oak Body, Personal Mind Blank, Form of Doom, Dispelling Buffer, and Breath of the Black Dragon.

Of course, you might just multiclass into the War Mind prestige class at some point, which would mean learning powers at the War Mind's rate instead. Anyway, feat-wise, get Power Attack, Cleave, Precise Shot, Greater Psionic Weapon, Greater Psionic Shot, Psionic Meditation, Reckless Offense, and Improved Critical, in whatever order works for you (and in whatever order you meet the prerequisites). Any other feats would be fine for later. You might want to take one or two copies of Expanded Knowledge for a psion power or two that you fancy, or Psionic Talent if you're feeling really limited in power points.

As you go up in levels, put ability increases into Wisdom and Dexterity (probably Wis at 4th and 8th level, Dex later), so that you have more power points and access to all levels of Psychic Warrior powers that will eventually be available to you, and so that your ranged attacks are similar in accuracy to your melee attacks.

 

[Kahuna Burger]

I'm currently playing a oversized twf psiwar with the leap attack feat and heavy use of the psionic lion's pounce. This particular build had a massive case of MAD, unfortunately, but the class itself is a fair amount of fun.

Claws of the beast look like fun, and one option I would consider if redoing my psiwar. Bite of the wolf is also nice, and is one of the few powers that the damage automaticly scales with level for the same power point cost.

One thing I would advise against is taking any metapsionic feats. For a psiwar or a psion. You take the feat, then you expend your psionic focus, then you still pay extra power points. It's just crazy.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Psychic warrior is a bit like a cleric without the ability to heal or buff others.

Yeah!

Think Cleric with the War Domain, and its pretty much spot on (esp if you drop Domains in favor of Domain Feats).

With the right power & feat choice, he can be a deadly unarmed combatant (using "natural weapons" created by his power) or IUC type (mixing with Monk). For example, with the Psionic Fist feat tree, he can eventually resolve melee attacks as touch attacks, and that's pretty tasty.

Armed, he's just as deadly if not moreso- each power that boosts natural/unarmed attacks has a melee weapon analog, as does the Psionic Fist feat tree in Psionic Weapon. The class multiclasses nicely with the Soulknife.*

The Psionic Shot feat tree does the same for ranged weapons as PsiFist and PsiWeap did to melee attacks, making them deadly at range.

Expanded Knowledge lets any psi manifester learn a power from any class' list- handy if you really want to be a PsiWar who can use EnergyBolt or some such.

*I know you said d20SRD only, but I must state that Bruce Cordell's Hyperconscious is practically universally accepted as a supplement to his XPH, CompPsi has some nice stuff in it, and Dragon #341 has nice Soulknife Feats- some better than the contemporaneously released CompPsi's.

 

[Humanaut]

Half Ogre Psionic Warrior 1 for now... but with Expansion you become Huge... by manifester level 7 you can spend the extra points and become Gargantuan! Ha ha ha ha! I've always wanted to try it for giggles.

Edit: dang, it's not SRD

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

With a Half-Giant or Goliath, you can approximate that damage output, since both have Powerful Build.

Can't match the reach, though.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

For the record- der_kluge & bento saw a variant on what I mentioned in post #4 of this thread in the Dallas Gameday event dk ran.

Gameday variant:
Ftr4/Monk2/Kensai3

She had a +3 Large Greatspear, 3d6x+3x3P +1d6 Flame +1d6 Frost + 1d6 Shock, Reach, RI 10'. Feats included Monkey Grip, the Power Att Feat tree, ComRef (she had Dex18), and a feat from DCv1 called Pole Fighter (lets Monk use polearm as monk weapon).

With her Enlarge Person potion, she boosted that an additional 1d6. That's a grand total of 7d6 + Strength bonuses on a normal (no Kensai Power Surge, no Power Attack, etc.) strike.

Had she been a PsyWar, the overall damage would be the same (1 less level of Kensai, but 2 levels of Expansion), but her reach would have been greater. She also could have equipped something else instead of the potion, and could have Expanded more times than she could have used potions.

Plus the Monk's IUC damage would have boosted from 1d8 (for a Enlarged Monk) to 2d6 (Expansion Monk)- important if someone got inside the threat range of the polearm.