Five Levels, make a FRPG Hard-Boiled Detective

[Sejs]

Personally, I see wisdom as more important to the detective type. Charisma is nice, but perception and intuition would be the gumshoe's meat and potatoes.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

That would work, Strangemonkey. You'd still have access to the two lynchpin 2nd-level seer powers if you were a 3rd level psion. I forgot about the kalashtar social bonuses, which would be a big help for this character.

If I were choosing two psychic warrior powers and was thinking about combat ability, I would give strong consideration to claws of the beast. It's the standard attack of the psychic warrior, with the following features:

- Manifest as a swift action, which is pretty close to a free action for our purposes
- Duration is 1 hour/level
- You can use your hands normally while claws are manifested.
- Damage scales as you pour more power points into it. It will "grow" with your character
- It gives you two natural claw attacks at no penalty. If your regular class attack routine eventually improves past two attacks a round, this power does limit you to two attacks (at your highest bonus), but that shouldn't be a concern if you spend the rest of your career as a psion.

Don't forget that inertial armor also scales as you grow, adding +1 armor per 2 PP spent. So, at fifth manifesterlevel, you'd have a +6 armor bonus that sticks around for five hours. I can appreciate the idea of choosing compression/expansion for general utility, but it's hard to beat claws of the beast/inertial armor as foundational combat powers. You'll have so many power choices as you progress as a psion that you should be able to pick up compression or expansion a bit later if you choose. You could buy some dorjes with the powers in them to test their utility out before committing a power to them as well.

All right, claws of the beast does sound mighty cool, but since I'll have armor anyways I don't know that I'm convinced by the inertial armor.

My big question is: can you pick out a power from a list that you isn't in the class you leveled up in but that you do have levels in?

Cause I thought that if I went psion for the rest of my days I wouldn't be able to pick up psionic warrior powers once I was done with them.

 

[Dave Turner]

Right, I forgot you'd be going psychic warrior, so you dont' need inertial armor. I'd replace it with one of two options:

- Force Screen: gives a +4 shield bonus to AC that doesn't scale up as well as inertial armor and only lasts for 1 min/level. Still, it protects against regular and force attacks (like the arcane spell) and it keeps your hands free to take advantage of the double claw attacks from claws of the beast.

- Chameleon: if you want to move away from combat power a bit, you can't go wrong with a +10 Hide bonus for 10 min/level. This might be good on the detecting side of your character.

To answer your question, I don't think you can go back and pick psychic warrior powers with your psion levels. There is some overlap between the lists, but anything that's exclusively psychic warrior would probably not be a legal choice. Don't forget that all the bread-and-butter melee combat powers are on both lists and psions get lots of interesting combat options that psychic warriors don't.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

Cool, thanks for the advice, it's been super helpful.

The powers I went for my two levels were claws of the beast and expansion.

We picked up another level today and I'll have a week to decide on which of the psionics classes I want. Right now I'm looking at Egoist or Seer and planning to pick up a power or two from Telepath and Shaper using feats.

Speaking of feats, I went with psionic weapon and psionic body for my two psionic feats so far, do you have any other suggestions?

I agree with the +10 to bluff feat, and I'm tempted to trade out my psionic weapon feat for psionic fist and see if I can get the DM to let me custom make some psionic grappling feats.

Grappling is cool and in the absence of either knockout rules for fisticuffs or crackshots with handguns that's certainly the way I'd want to go for the gumshoe feel.

 

[Dave Turner]

If you're going with claws of the beast, I'd definitely switch out psionic weapon in favor of psionic fist.

Psionic body is a good feat that will serve you later as you pick up bonus psion feats at the least. You'll want to save a feat or two for greater psionic fist and unavoidable strike if you wanna boost your combat ability. Unavoidable strike allows you to resolve your natural attack as a touch attack, so that's a small step in the direction of a "fisticuffs knockout".

One feat option you might consider if you're going for a classic gunshoe is Psicrystal. Your psicrystal is immensely useful with lots of powers that are better than a wizard's familiar, including much greater combat resilience. The gumshoe angle comes in when you think of your psicrystal as the "faithful secretary". The woman who always pines for the gumshoe and worries about him, never seems to catch is eye, and is hopelessly devoted to him. There's a great RP opportunity there.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

If you're going with claws of the beast, I'd definitely switch out psionic weapon in favor of psionic fist.

Psionic body is a good feat that will serve you later as you pick up bonus psion feats at the least. You'll want to save a feat or two for greater psionic fist and unavoidable strike if you wanna boost your combat ability. Unavoidable strike allows you to resolve your natural attack as a touch attack, so that's a small step in the direction of a "fisticuffs knockout".

One feat option you might consider if you're going for a classic gunshoe is Psicrystal. Your psicrystal is immensely useful with lots of powers that are better than a wizard's familiar, including much greater combat resilience. The gumshoe angle comes in when you think of your psicrystal as the "faithful secretary". The woman who always pines for the gumshoe and worries about him, never seems to catch is eye, and is hopelessly devoted to him. There's a great RP opportunity there.

Now see, I thought that psionic weapon would work both with claws and other weapons.

Psicrystal is something to consider, though I'd rather have the secretary.

I picked up Monte Cook's Psionics book, Hyperconsciousness, on PDF last night. Really really nice.

What's sort of sad though, is that there isn't really a seer themed or investigator themed prestige class in anything I've found. This despite the rash of psychic detectives in contemporary pulp.