Help with a crazy Psions AC

[Rystil Arden]

Which will put him down 3 points of AC, relative to a quickened Force Screen. Sure, the extra 0.5dX of damage from an Empowered power (at 7th - 5dX base, 2.5dX from Empowering gives.... 7.5dX, vs. 7dX without empowering; seems manifester level 7 is about the break-even point of empower; with overchannel, that's 9dX with Empower, 8dX Standard; Wild Surge gives 12dX Empowered, 10dX standard) will be handy, but it may or may not be worth the AC bite. It's situational. If you are facing well-spaced archers with fewer HD, the AC could be more important; if you are facing a single BEG, the extra damage could be more important.

'Strue, there's always a situation where different tactical abilities become useful. That's the great thing about D&D. Against those archers, he might even consider some sort of Concealing Amorpha; the great thing about quickening those is that you don't miss out on any majour augmentation.

 

[KarinsDad]

Which is better is situational; take, for example, a 7th level manifester with Force Screen and Inertial armor: He can get Inertial Armor (Augment +3 AC) and Force Screen (Augment +1 AC) in two rounds for +12 AC, or he can get Inertial Armor (Augment +3 AC) and Force Screen (Quickened) in one round for +11 AC. If he already has Inertial Armor up, Quickening the Force Screen can permit a damaging power while the non-quicken is still putting up Force Screen for an extra AC point. Is a round of blasting worth 1 AC? Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't.

What is vastly superior is to take Expanded Knowledge: Schism which allows you to: 1) effectively Quicken ALL of your low PP powers, 2) plus it does not use up your psionic focus, 3) plus it costs 6 PP less per power "quickened", 4) plus it lasts 1 round per level, 5) plus you can still cast a swift power in the same round, 6) plus the earliest you can get it is 9th level (unless you are a Telepath in which cast you do not need a feat for Expanded Knowledge for it), the same earliest level as you can both get and immediately use Quickened Power (unless you want to get it at 6th and not use it until 7th), and 7) plus it protects versus certain mind powers.

All for 7 PP and a feat that you were already thinking about taking Quicken Power with.

All Psions (except Telepaths) should take Expanded Knowledge: Schism at 9th level (Telepaths should take it even earlier) unless they do not have any low PP powers worth effectively quickening.

The only downsides to Schism are that: 1) you do not get to start using the lower PP powers until the following round whereas with Quicken Power, you can do it in round one, and 2) if you are only going to Quicken a single power, it costs 1 PP more.


I personally like Schism combined with Entangling Ectoplasm for 1 PP a different medium sized opponent (or 3 PP for a different large sized opponent) every single round while still doing your normal actions.

 

[Rystil Arden]

Agreed. Schism is certainly very fun. Its even more fun when it doesn't cost a feat Take it from a Telepath

 

[KarinsDad]

Agreed. Schism is certainly very fun. Its even more fun when it doesn't cost a feat Take it from a Telepath

I think it will be about the same amount of fun, just upwards of 2 levels later of fun.

 

[Rystil Arden]

I think it will be about the same amount of fun, just upwards of 2 levels later of fun.

Ah, but its so much more fun when you don't have to pay! Its like the difference between winning a free meal at a fancy restaurant versus shelling out the cash to eat there

 

[Staffan]

anyway during the fight downstairs our 2nd lvl Psion kineticist (quite a crazy guy) picked a fight then cast force shield and inertial armour. One is +4 AC and one is +4 Shield AC (which apparently dont stack with normal armour/shield but since he has none)

Inertial armor and force screen are basically the psionic versions of mage armor and shield (except they can be augmented to provide more AC at higher levels). So I really don't see the problem.

 

[Nail]

...then you haven't been paying attention to the "quickened/schism" discussion.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

I do not understand the fuss. A low level wizard could do the exact same thing: Mage Armor + Shield + Protection vs. ? + Dex will give an AC in the ballpark of 22 to 26, higher if he is maxxed out for this sort of thing.

In 3.0, Mage Armor + Shield alone gave AC 21. Start stacking other bonuses on top and a low level Wiz could easily hit ACs the high twenties.