The Quintessential Psychic Warrior

Thaumaturge

Wandering. Not lost. (He/they)
I found a copy of this at my FLGS, at it looks very good. I haven't read through the whole thing yet, but there are interesting and disturbing things in here. Psychic warriors can gain power points by self-mutilation (anything from rubbing skin off to flaying skin from the bone) and by cannibalism. There are also new chapters on battle trances and weapon meditations, both of which are cool mechanics. Of course there are new character concepts, feats, prestige classes, and powers, but I haven't finished perusing them just yet.

Thaumaturge.
 

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I've been dying for this one to come out! I'd appreciate a brief description of the PrCs, especially your take on how well balanced they are (full psi-progression? half-progression?) and how many levels (I'm not too fond of 5-level PrCs, myself).

Battle trances - Are those fighting styles/schools of combat?

Powers - I hope there are some new powers for weapon-using Psychic Warriors. A lot of Psi-Warrior powers favor unarmed combat, for some strange reason.
 



I got mine. It's sort of interesting.

5 main points of interest:

Character concepts: I usually disdain these. But IMO, these were done right. Disadvantages include pelanties to skills you might use, instead of meaningless sacrifices of penalties to skills a character simply won't use.

Prestige classes: All prestige classes have their own known power advancement instead of continuing manifesting advancement, which I find disappointing and outdated. That said, the classes do seem balanced; it is a given that new power advancement is weak, but each has a fairly potent array of abilities as well as good combat advancement. The concepts are alright as well.

Many of the classes are 5 levels, but some are 10 level. About an even split, IIRC.

Chakras: One of the major focus points of the book is the concept of chakras. With the right skills, a character can obtain extra power points and other benefits, though the means of doing this is sometimes dangerous. Desperate characters may also resort to "psionic canabalism", in which they liberate psionics from other creatures.

The idea is interesting, becasue it helps ground the idea of physical psionic power in easter mysticism, which I always thought the idea hearkened to. But the whole idea is a little gross, especially when you start talking about psionic canibalism.

Weapon Meditations: These require a feat, and give you mostly skill related benefits that rely on having a certain power reserve and/or skill ranks. They do smack of fighting styles, but are much more balanced IMO.

Battle Trance: Also requires a feat and power reserves but are easily disrupted, ergo also more balanced than fighting styles.


A lot of it does seem very variant, and adds a lot more detail (and thus complication) but it does seem balanced if the ideas do interest you.
 

Thanks for the info, Psion.

I dropped by my FLGS yesterday and took a quick look through the book, and nothing in it immediately grabbed me. And when I saw that all the prestige classes had their own power lists, it made me wonder what that was all about. It's like the author used only the Psionics Handbook as a guide, and hasn't been following the backlash and new trends in 3E psionics (most of the prestige classes in The Mind's Eye add psi-levels instead of starting over with a new power list). And that was a bad sign, so I decided to wait for the reviews.

It sounds like it might still be a good book, but it's not necessarily what I was wanting in this book.
 

As I have already said, the "rebooted power advancement" sort of bugs me too.

Last night, I read the PrCs a little deeper -- many of the class abilities enhance an existing power. Considering the limited acces that the PrCs grant to the powers, this seemed a bit problematic. I think what would balance it out nicely is if they had the class abilities a bit more like the minds eye classes, i.e., if you don't have power x, you get it, but if you do have power x, you get a bonus.

Also, why does the finesse fighter not have a good reflex save?
 

I made up a PrC that was designed primarily for a paladin, but might be used by just about anyone else. So, what I did was simply give the +1 divine caster level in the table, with the note that at 1st level they would gain the spellcasting abilities as if they were a 4th level paladin if they didn't previously have a divine caster level.

I think it works fine instead of the duplication of spells you see in other PrC's made for non-spellcasters.

But, if these are all requiring psionics before you can join them, it's a waste to not +1 level occasionally.
 

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