Psychic Warrior: Worth It?

[Lord of the Vine]

Don't know if the main forum is the right place, but ******** all if I have time to find the right one.

In any case, I'm going to be involved in a 3.5 game with a group of people from the campus gaming club, and I can't quite decide whether or not I would like to play a Psychic Warrior. They sound like an excellent class, given I'm looking for something untraditional. However, not many people I know have played with Psychic Warriors before.

So my question is: Is it worth it to play a Psychic Warrior, or am I better off playing something else?  

[Raganui Minamoto]

The psychic warrior has Cleric BAB, so medium. Since it's psionics, you can wear whatever you want (check with DM on rules about helmets). They get low PP pool, but their things are normally focused towards self buffing. I'd say give it a shot and make your own opinion, since there are going to be people that like it and others that say 'just play cleric'  

[Lord of the Vine]

So I suppose the next question would be is it worth it to take a level or two in Psion to round out the PP pool?  

[Disciple of Sakura]

The psychic warrior is one of the better balanced classes in 3.5. It's not as broken as a CoDzilla or wizard, but it is a really good class. There's a fair amount of options available to them, so you've got to decide exactly how you want to build them. But they're one of my favorite classes, even if I haven't gotten to play them too much.  

[Disciple of Sakura]

Dion Necurat

So I suppose the next question would be is it worth it to take a level or two in Psion to round out the PP pool?

Not really. Psionic Talent will earn you extra power points, and coupled with Psionic Body, extra hit points to better tank and melee as well. Plenty of PsyWars manage just fine on the PP that they get by default and through their Wisdom bonus, as well. Naturally psionic races don't hurt, though...  

[Lord of the Vine]

Disciple of Sakura

Dion Necurat

So I suppose the next question would be is it worth it to take a level or two in Psion to round out the PP pool?

Not really. Psionic Talent will earn you extra power points, and coupled with Psionic Body, extra hit points to better tank and melee as well. Plenty of PsyWars manage just fine on the PP that they get by default and through their Wisdom bonus, as well. Naturally psionic races don't hurt, though...

Awesome, that leads to another question!

Which psionic race, if allowed, should I play? If I don't have that option, I'm debating between Half-dragon and Human.  

[Raganui Minamoto]

Don't do Half-Dragon. The LA is going to hurt and their breath isn't all that useful. If you can, I'd say either human or Half-giant.  

[Disciple of Sakura]

I'm partial to the Xeph and/or the Elan. They're both cool races. Half-Giants are obvious and all, but the LA naturally gets in the way of your class progression, and with a 3/4ths BAB, you're going to be behind in BAB enough, IMHO. I'm sure it works alright - plenty of people have done it. It's just not my first choice.

Kalashtar, if you have access to them, are a great race for any psionic class, since they keep getting extra power points, rather than just getting some at first level.  

[Wrasynth Ksyamen]

I know this is a fierce case of being a thread necromancer but? Psychic warrior is the most broken core class I've yet to witness, and splicing in levels of other psionic maniphesters would hurt the pp pool more than help.

Anyways find a way to get all the buffs activated all the time, wear mithral full plate, have a contingency effect activate the lions charge power whenever you charge. Have form of doom activated on an item with enlarge. Spend your bonus feats to get a psycrystal to share the enlarge with it and form of doom with it. It will stay above your square or in yours to fight with you, you now have 8 tentacle attacks on top of your beefy face fisting powers.

If you run into the final boss activate hat psionic power that lets you go absolutely ape s**t by spending mental stat points for physical. You will litterally just wreck the final boss in a single round so fierce everyone will have to pause and celebrate your s**t wrecking powers. By the way get elemental enhancements to your natural weapons through psionic powers. Share this as well with your psicrystal.

The psychic warrior is a completely under rated combat wombat. He may not do AoE well, but with the right items and power combos you can win before initiative is rolled. For the sake of not getting psychic warriors banned from any more games though, I suggest not doing this. The DM will make a poopy face if you power game too hard. Even if he's asking you to go balls deep power gaming, this is on the end of power gaming TOO much.

In the regards of not power gaming a psychic warrior? Honestly with keeping up with everyone else? It comes down to how much you can keep your buff powers up, or how quickly you can get them up. The longer the buff powers stay up the more encounters you can make it through. You are however one of the few classes capable of being entirely self sufficient. As long as you have enough power points. You can heal, you can heal others, you can go with out food or water, you can hit harder than a barbarian fighter frenzied bezerker, you can cast ranged spells if need be, you can pew pew with bows just fine, you can summon astral constructs (astral constructs are also trap finders.), really there isn't much limitation beyond how you spend your feats and the like.  

[Disciple of Sakura]

Yeah, WK is probably pretty far off. The PsyWar was largely considered one of the most balanced classes in 3.5, alongside the rogue. Wizards, Clerics, and Druids are far more capable of destroying a game than the PsyWar. The PsyWar has less power points than most other caster/manifesters, and they're reliant upon buffs that take actual effort to get running. Some of what WK is espousing doesn't even sound rules-valid. For example, Contingency kicks in once, not all the time - you'd be paying through the roof just to get Psionic Lion's Charge to activate whenever you charged.

Playing within the rules, you can do some impressive stuff with the PsyWar, but a CoDzilla would do more with the same eye to optimization.  

[Southern Cross Nemesis]

I always thought of the class to be, a psychic combo of a Paladin and a Fighter.

I thought the power point pool worked the same as the spells from different classes. Meaning you couldn't add power points together.

In all the times I have played them and Soulknives, I found the two to be well balanced and thought out. My Psion's are normally the ones that are imbalanced. Psion's can use armor and use powers similar in function to Wizards and Druids. As for wilder's I could never bring myself to play them...I don't know, why?

In fact the only thing, I would want more out of that class would have been access to some more of the fighter's skills list.