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Psionics, Mind Blast at Level 1

Creamsteak

Explorer
Corpus Navitas (Human Psionic Warrior 1)
Medium Sized Humanoid
Hit Dice: 1d8+1 (9 hp)
Initiative: +3 (+3 dex)
Speed: 30 ft.
AC: 15 (+3 Dex, +2 Leather Armor) [Touch 13, Flat Footed 12]
Attacks: Greatsword +3 melee; or Longbow +3 ranged
Damage: Greatsword 2d6+4, Longbow 1d8
Face/Reach: 5 ft. by 5 ft./5 ft.
Special Attacks: Mind Blast, Psionics
Special Qualities: Tower of Iron Will
Saves: Fort +3, Ref +3, Will -1
Abilities: Str 17, Dex 17, Con 12, Int 13, Wis 9, Cha 17
Skills: Autohypnosis +3 (Wis), Concentration +5 (Con), Stabalize Self +5 (Con), Use Psionic Device +7 (Cha)
Feats: Inner Strength, Talented, Body Fuel

Psionics
Power Points: 3
Free Talents: 6
Talents: Daze, Distract
Psionic Attack Modes: Mind Blast
Psionic Defense Modes: Tower of Iron Will

Equipment [140 gp]
Greatsword [50 gp]
Longbow [75 gp]
Arrows (100) [5 gp]
Leather Armor [10 gp]

Encumbrance: 48/86 Light Load

Errata:
p. 24, Body Fuel: Add as last sentence: You can burn no more than 60 ability points in a day, regardless of any ability healing you may receive.
p. 30, Trigger Power, Benefit: Add as the very last line of this paragraph: You cannot take 10 when using Trigger Power.
p. 40, Overview, 2nd paragraph after the table, 2nd sentence: Replace "The attacker adds the ability modifier to his roll to set the defender's Will save DC against the attack." with this: The attacker adds his key ability modifier to his roll to set the defender's Will save DC against the attack.
p. 40, Making a Psionic Attack, bottom of 2nd column, 2nd paragraph: Replace "The attacker's ability modifier depends on the specific attack mode used." with this: The attacker's ability modifier is always his key ability modifier, regardless of the specific attack mode used.
p. 42, Table 4Œ3, Tower of Iron Will Secondary Protection column: Replace "1 mental hardness*" with this: 2 mental hardness*
p. 42, Table 4Œ2, Psionic Attack Modes: Addƒƒ to Attack mode Heading. Also add footnote keyed to this heading: ƒƒAttack mode level equivalents for the purpose of Concentration checks: Mind Thrust, 1st; Ego Whip and Id Insinuation, 2nd; Psychic Crush, 3rd; Mind Blast, 5th.
p. 44, Tower of Iron Will, 2nd paragraph: Change "(if all are in a 10-foot-diameter area.)" to this: (if all are in a 10-foot-radius area.)

I am considering starting a game soon where I am a player and a friend of mine will DM. I'm influencing the group to allow psionics, because we have the material, but have never tried to use it before.

As the resident rules-lawyer (more or less) my eyes grew exceptionally bright when I found a race/class/power combination that, if legal, is quite devastating at low levels.

A first level human Psionic Warrior has 3 Feats. Taking Inners Strength, Talented, and Body Fuel will give you the ability to drain power points out of your ability scores. Normally this feat is overlooked because the cost is greater than the effect, however, with a little thing called Mind Blast you can put this power to great use at low levels.

Mind Blast costs 9 Power Points to use. If I have ability scores like Str 9, Dex 17, Con 12, Int 17, Wis 13, Cha 17 (as in my character's case), and 3 power points, you can mind blast multiple times per day at level 1.

The cost is drastic, however. You must pay point for point in ability scores, and recovery takes a great deal of time. However, with all this power, your group can easily deal with creatures slightly higher in CR than the usual challenges they face.

Need to kill Six Ogres? Just get them into a hallway or other restrictive setting and Mind Blast them. Then let your group mop them up.

If this is all true, then I'm going to do it. It will give me some ammunition for playing an interesting Psion.
 
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Off subject, but related to the same character, what are the penalties for using a Greatsword two handed with a strength of 9?

I get -1 to damage and that's it, right?
 

building your whole character concept around this one power is iffy at best. Yes you can get a mind blast off at 1st level, but Orcus help you if you roll a 1, you just blew your whole power alotment for the day for nothing. Not just that, but the number of times you'll get all the monsters in an adventure to stand in a nice 60 ft cone shaped room are probably limited. You'll be a one trick pony that spends the rest of the day as a poor fighter with no feats and reduced physical stats. Sounds like a 2e wizard that's already cast magic missle to me.
 

Hopefully if I had to really try a fight or die scenerio using this plan, I wouldn't roll a 1 every time I tried to throw a mind-blast. The pretty-ness of this character is that after level 1 I can go ahead into anything I want.

I can cast Mind Blast more than once per day... Technically if forced I could use 32 power points from my ability scores and still have a +7 DC versus non-psionic targets. Mind Blast 3 times normally, and the 4th time knocks me down to 0 intellect and charisma (by my choice).

I'm just making sure this is fine by the rules. This campaign won't last more than through level 3, and having an ability that allows me to knock most opposition out for 3d4 rounds will do me a lot of good at lower levels.
 
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Sounds like yet another reason to remove the psionic combat crap from the rules and replace it with one 2nd level "stun one opponent" power and one 5th level equivalent of Mind Blast.
 

creamsteak said:
Hopefully if I had to really try a fight or die scenerio using this plan, I wouldn't roll a 1 every time I tried to throw a mind-blast. The pretty-ness of this character is that after level 1 I can go ahead into anything I want.

I can cast Mind Blast more than once per day... Technically if forced I could use 32 power points from my ability scores and still have a +7 DC versus non-psionic targets. Mind Blast 3 times normally, and the 4th time knocks me down to 0 intellect and charisma (by my choice).

Let see you can do it a total of 5 times before you must spend weeks recovering. The first time will cost 12 ability points and all three of your power points. The remaining three times will cost 18 ability points each. (Body Fuel uses two ablity points per power point gained.) That is a total of 66 ability points that you must heal. At the rate of 1 per day of light activity that is 66 days.

Unless you campain is very low in combat and has lots of free time your character is realy goint to suffer. After just two uses your abilities are going to be down 20 points. A third use will lower all of your stats below 10 unless you are willing to burn one or more way below 10. Over the long run a Wizard can out preform you by using sleep. He can cast it once per day indifently. You can mind blast on the average once every 12 days if and only if you get 12 days to rest between fights. The wizard also has one (or two if a specialist) more spells to use. He will also have 3 feats to use as he wants that you have used to be a fragile one trick pony.
 

My DM decided that the psionic combat powers were unbalanced and funky, so he removed them. The psionic people in the campaign are still booyah.

Dunno if I'd design a character around that one trick.
 

Enjoy walking into a room of ogres AND constructs or undead.

I'm assuming some people in this world are going to be psionics-savvy. If there is any kind of storyline behind this campaign, you're a dead man. Any grudge-bearing master villain who sees you mop up his forces and then watches you get carried out like a vegetable... well, I'm betting you die in your sleep. At least, if I were said villain, I'd hire some psions/assassins/undead, find your inn-room, and let them go to town on you. You'll be a sitting duck.

(Worse yet: the local thieves guild might just slip in and rob you blind. Those guys will *love* seeing you being dragged back to town. Don't get too attached to your cool magic/psionic items.)

Your character concept relies heavily on the fact that:

a) There's no danger where your vegetable booty rests for weeks between your 'adventuring'.
b) You'll be guarded while your vegetable booty rests.
c) There's no danger on the way back from your adventuring locale, where your party's resources are at their lowest.

Keeping those facts in mind, go to town. I can only see a life of failure ahead for your character.

Vrylakos
 

Not so much an interesting Psion, as a psionic creature whose going to end up quite dead against anything that deals ability damage, including other Psions.

Also, please do realize, Stun != helpless.

In fact, all Stun ends up doing is deny Dex bonus and giving their foes a +2 to hit (good if you have a rogue in the party although).

For the 7.5 rounds on average, how much damage are you able to actually push out?

Also only really one attempt per day is possible without you starting to suffer, possibly two if you don't expect to get hit. Burning your charisma down will continue to reduce the effectiveness of your mindblasts. And you'll be taking a huge amount of ability damage in trying to be effective using this schtick. It also results in you being dependant on -alot- of rest between adventures (As someone said), at least until you get LBA, in which you can just do the ability damage cycle heal.

For the Greatsword bit, the modifier would actually be 1.5x(StrMod for 9), although that is still 1 :), so yep.
 

Corpus Morbus (Psionic Warrior 1)
Medium Sized Humanoid
Hit Dice: 1d8+1 (9 hp)
Initiative: +3 (+3 dex)
Speed: 30 ft.
AC: 15 (+3 Dex, +2 Leather Armor) (Touch 13, Flat Footed 12)
Attacks: Greatsword +1 melee; or Longbow +3 ranged
Damage: Greatsword 2d6+1, Longbow 1d8
Face/Reach: 5 ft. by 5 ft./5 ft.
Special Attacks: Mind Blast, Psionics
Special Qualities: Tower of Iron Will
Saves: Fort +3, Ref +3, Will -1
Abilities: Str 13, Dex 17, Con 12, Int 17, Wis 9, Cha 17
Skills: Autohypnosis +3 (Wis), Balance +7 (Dex), Concentration +5 (Con), Stabalize Self +5 (Str), Tumble +7 (Dex), Use Psionic Device +7 (Cha)
Feats: Inner Strength, Talented, Body Fuel

Psionics
Power Points: 3
Free Talents: 6
Talents: Daze, Distract
Psionic Attack Modes: Mind Blast
Psionic Defense Modes: Tower of Iron Will

Equipment [140 gp]
Greatsword [50 gp]
Longbow [75 gp]
Arrows (100) [5 gp]
Leather Armor [10 gp]
 
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