Two Weapon Psychic Warrior

[Aximili]

A friend of mine is going to play a two weapon fighter, and his girst thoughts were toward full fighter. While I support his decision, I started wondering wether a really good two weapon fighting Psychic Warrior could be achieved.

While I've had a couple dipping experiences with the PW, I've never really played one. His BAB really makes me think he wouldn't be good for two weapon, but I know better than to underestimate the power of powers.

What's the best way you know of building a Two-weapon Psy?

[ShneekeyTheLost]

The only problem with PsiWar is the +0 BAB at 1st level. Usually, that's when people pick up stuff like EWP: Bastard Sword, and TWF, but you can't do that with a +0 BAB.

However, Psionic Lion's Charge (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/psionicLionsCharge.htm) + Spring Attack = Charge In for a Full Attack, then get back out of the way before it can respond. Full Attacks are VERY important to TWF builds, since you can only use your offhand in a full attack normally.

Also, Expansion is a good damage booster, increasing your size category also increases your threat range, making opponents threaten AoO from you when they try to close.

[That Lanky Bugger]

I would recommend the Psionic Weapon (and Greater Psionic Weapon) feats, which are a great way to start off a battle. Another option your friend might consider is taking a few levels of Fighter. Both the bonus feats and the improved HD and BAB would really help make a solid front-liner.

Another option is multiclassing evenly between Psychic Warrior and Soulknife. It'd give a fantastic amount of versatility due to the fact that he's got a weapon he can never lose, decent saves all around, and other fun stuff. Admittedly you'd lose out on some neat Psionic powers, but if he's going to be a straight warrior that might not be too bad.

[Bears With Lasers]

You can't both charge and spring attack.

PsyWar is a poor choice or TWF because they have little way of adding bonus damage to each hit (which TWF needs); Offensive Prescience is not going to cut it.

Both Fighter and PsyWar are poor choices. A good TWFer needs per-hit damage--sneak attack, for example.

Edit: Adding Soulknife would be a TERRIBLE idea. Soulknive is a very, very poor class, mechanically, adds nothing, and makes you lose power and bonus feat progression. Don't Do It.

[PinkysBrain]

TWF with bastard swords is a waste of a feat and/or attack bonus, without OTWF, it's not like TWF builds have feats to spare for the extra point of damage compared to a longsword. Psionic Lion's charge with spring attack doesn't even work. As for large reach, threat range means something completely different, you need yet another feat to make use of TWF with AoOs.

Aximili, does having two claws for weapons count?

In principle you shouldn't use TWF without bonus damage, now between psionic lion's charge and offensive prescience you can get a fair amount of bonus damage as a PW ... but I'd still rather have the feats and use it to get some more tactical abilities rather than pour them all down the TWF black hole.

That said ... the necessities as far as feats are power attack, leap attack the twf-tree, OTWF and linked power. As for the powers, the ones mentioned above are important to provide bonus damage to make TWFing worth it. For the rest nothing much changes from a non TWF build.

PS. for a front line TWF fighter I'd rather play a scout/ranger with swift hunter.

PPS. lankybugger ... multiclassing with fighter or soulknife??? No, just no.

[Bears With Lasers]

Pinky--leap attack and power attack with TWF? That doesn't usually work.

Scouts need some way of full attacking and moving to get skirmish damage for TWF.

Edit: one way to instantly make TWF viable, though, is to dip Swordsage (from Tome of Battle) and then take the Shadow Blade feat. DEX to damage = whee.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

You can't both charge and spring attack.

PsyWar is a poor choice or TWF because they have little way of adding bonus damage to each hit (which TWF needs); Offensive Prescience is not going to cut it.

Both Fighter and PsyWar are poor choices. A good TWFer needs per-hit damage--sneak attack, for example.

Edit: Adding Soulknife would be a TERRIBLE idea. Soulknive is a very, very poor class, mechanically, adds nothing, and makes you lose power and bonus feat progression. Don't Do It.

I don't see anything in the rules which prevents Charging and using Spring Attack to move away after the charge, assuming you have enough Move left to do it with.

A PsiWar can get things like Metaphysical Weapon, Vampiric Blade and Weapon of Energy to augment his damage, which can then be applied to EVERYTHING, reguardless of sneak attack opportunities or vulnurabilities/immunities. This means he's not only doing extra damage, he's healing half the damage he deals out.

Pyro4 is also an option for PsyWar duo-wield combos to add 2d6 Fire damage to your weapons, although it doesn't promote your Manifesting.

I will grant that a DuoWield PsiWar is not a fully optimized build, however some people like to do things which are... *GASP*... fun. Maybe he just likes the idea of a TWF PsiWar. There are more things to life than optimizing, after all.

I will agree, though, Soulknife is a very sub-par class in general, and absolutely worthless for multiclassing.

[Jack Mann]

Charge is all one action, taking a full round. Spring attack involves making a move and a standard action, with the standard action taking place at the same time as the move. Thus, you cannot charge and spring attack.

[Bears With Lasers]

I don't see anything in the rules which prevents Charging and using Spring Attack to move away after the charge, assuming you have enough Move left to do it with.
Re-read the rules.
What kind of action does Spring Attack talk about?
And what kind of action is a charge?


A PsiWar can get things like Metaphysical Weapon, Vampiric Blade and Weapon of Energy to augment his damage, which can then be applied to EVERYTHING, reguardless of sneak attack opportunities or vulnurabilities/immunities. This means he's not only doing extra damage, he's healing half the damage he deals out.Reread Vampiric Blade; it's half a weapon's *base* damage. With a shortsword or something, that's next to nothing. Metaphysical Weapon just gives you the +X o a normal magic weapon. Weapon of Energy helps a bit, but is costly PP-wise--a level 4 power, you'd have to spend the actions to manifest it on each sword... not worth it.


Pyro4 is also an option for PsyWar duo-wield combos to add 2d6 Fire damage to your weapons, although it doesn't promote your Manifesting.The fire damage will do less and less good as a game progresses; the higher level you are, the more things are fire resistant. I wouldn't advise it.


I will grant that a DuoWield PsiWar is not a fully optimized build, however some people like to do things which are... *GASP*... fun. Maybe he just likes the idea of a TWF PsiWar. There are more things to life than optimizing, after all..http://forums.di.fm/images/smilies/eyeroll.gif
Get off the high horse. I said nothing about it not being fun, nor did I tell him not to do it.
People need to stop going "zomg! But you can do it for fun/roleplay/etc reasons!" every time someone points out something is a poor choice mechanically.

[oriong]

Actually Psychic Warriors aren't bad at adding additional damage: Offensive Prescience isn't their only option.

Prevenom weapon could actually make a decent TWF, the save scales without any use of extra power points. unfortunately you can't use it with save boosters like Psionic Focus, but since you'd have to expend psionic focus to do that anyway it's not that big a loss. You won't be penetrating a dragon's Fort save with it but full TWF attack will require enough saves be rolled that even an enemy with good Fort saves might fail a few.

There's also the advantage of things like Hustle and Psionic Lion's charge too, it seems that while the Rogue might do more damage in an optimal situation the psychic warrior is going to be able to inflict his full damage a lot more oftne.


EDIT: okay, prevenom only lasts until discharged. so ignore that.

[Aximili]

Wow, that's a lot more answers than I was expecting.
Anyway, I guess it really is a bad idea than. As far as extra per-hit damage goes, the weapon enchanting effects go down the drain when you have to use them twice, and he doesn't even ahve the fighters specialization to back him up a bit.
I just thought there could be some power or psionic feat I didn't know of.

Pynkisbrain,
Actually, I did suggest using claws of the beast and it fits perfectly with his character concept. But he got a little scared of the fact that he wouldn't be getting extra attacks from a high BAB.

[oriong]

Well, consider that claws of the Beast gives 2 attacks at full BAB, which is typically better than 3 attacks at -0/-5/-10, also add in the Bite of the Wolf and you get a 3rd attack, so you've got just as many attacks but at a higher AB.

The main drawback is the fact that you will have to rely on buffs unless you grab an item which gives constant natural weapon enhancements.

[Aximili]

And bite of the wolf is a Standard action. Such Standard action will already have to be spent on buffing the claws.

[oriong]

Yes, but like I said, 2 full AB attacks are better than 1 full AB and 2 iterative attacks.

[Bears With Lasers]

Pynkisbrain,
Actually, I did suggest using claws of the beast and it fits perfectly with his character concept. But he got a little scared of the fact that he wouldn't be getting extra attacks from a high BAB.

If he plays an Elan, he'll be an Aberration, and will therefore technically qualify for Rapidstrike and Improved Rapidstrike (in the Draconomicon), letting him make several attacks with each claw.

Alternatively, he could take Karmic Strike and Combat Reflexes, and get extra attacks whenever someone hit him. Combine this with the Vampiric Claw power for much fun--between augmentation and the Expansion power increasing his size, Claws of the Beast can wind up doing quite a bit of base damage.

[Aximili]

No, he's not an Elan.
But the Karmic Strike + Vampiric Claws sound like a lot of fun. I'll pass the word to him.

[That Lanky Bugger]

Edit: Adding Soulknife would be a TERRIBLE idea. Soulknive is a very, very poor class, mechanically, adds nothing, and makes you lose power and bonus feat progression. Don't Do It.

Mechanically poor? We must be talking about a different class.

It's got D10 HD, good REF and WILL, and the Mind Blade ability is actually pretty powerful, especially for a TWF. Though dual wielding he loses +1 from his enhancement bonus, he can still use the full benefits of his Mind Blade Enhancement ability... which is also useful because he can alter it to suit his needs. Not only that, but the Mind Blade is always a Mind Blade for the purposes of feats, but can be altered to become a Longsword or a Bastard Sword.

Heck, multiclassing with Psychic Warrior actually would work pretty decently. Stomp is a fairly solid 1st level power, as are Expansion and Biofeedback. Animal Affinity, Body Adjustment, and Psionic Lion's Charge are likewise solid 2nd level powers for a Dualwielding PsyWar/Mindblade. Empathic Feedback, Greater Concealing Amorpha (especially if you multiclass into Rogue for the Sneak Attack damage), and Evade Burst are all solid 3rd level powers. Weapon of Energy is a nice choice for a 4th level.

Is it ideally maximized? Probably not. However it's certainly not especially weak.

[Bears With Lasers]

Mechanically poor? We must be talking about a different class.

It's got D10 HD, good REF and WILL, and the Mind Blade ability is actually pretty powerful, especially for a TWF. Though dual wielding he loses +1 from his enhancement bonus, he can still use the full benefits of his Mind Blade Enhancement ability... which is also useful because he can alter it to suit his needs. Not only that, but the Mind Blade is always a Mind Blade for the purposes of feats, but can be altered to become a Longsword or a Bastard Sword.
Oh, man, we *must* be talking about a different class. It's got a poor Fort save (it's a frontliner!), and its class ability is... a magic weapon or two. Geez, just spend the gold, and take some class levels in something worthwhile.
The Mind Blade isn't even a great weapon (like the Kensai gets, say)--a +4, +5-in-enhancements weapon is pretty subpar, and the list they choose their enhancements from is small and pretty bad.


Heck, multiclassing with Psychic Warrior actually would work pretty decently. Stomp is a fairly solid 1st level power, as are Expansion and Biofeedback. Animal Affinity, Body Adjustment, and Psionic Lion's Charge are likewise solid 2nd level powers for a Dualwielding PsyWar/Mindblade. Empathic Feedback, Greater Concealing Amorpha (especially if you multiclass into Rogue for the Sneak Attack damage), and Evade Burst are all solid 3rd level powers. Weapon of Energy is a nice choice for a 4th level.High-level PsyWars need power points to fuel their buffing. All those powers do you no good if you have to spend a bunch of rounds maniesting them, too. Also, Stomp? Animal Affinity? Weapon of Energy? No. Those are bad choices. Stomp will have a very low DC; waste of a standard action. WoE costs too much and, again, eats an action (spend the power points and action on Offensive Prescience or something). Animal Affinity is made useless by items.


Is it ideally maximized? Probably not. However it's certainly not especially weak.No, Soulknife is a terribly weak class. It's one of the worst.
Here's why: they can't do anything. At any given round, the Soulknife won't contribute significantly.
They're definitely not casters.
Without trapfinding and with 4+INT skills, they certainly aren't skillmonkeys.
Melee? No, they can't do that well. They don't have full BAB, they don't have a good Fort save, and their light armor and stylistics lend themselves to Weapon Finessy characters which have no significant way of inflicting damage (the "give up a full attack to charge your weapon" Psychic Strike doesn't count). Strength-based Soulknives will find their defenses lacking due to their light armor, and still won't inflict significant amounts of damage.

Knife to the Soul is good. It's the only good thing the class gets. It's not enough to make the class viable.

So, yes--it *is* especially weak. It can't do anything well--and it's not even a generalist to compensate.

[Gralamin]

Soulbow however is excellent.

[PinkysBrain]

Pinky--leap attack and power attack with TWF? That doesn't usually work.OTWF too.

Scouts need some way of full attacking and moving to get skirmish damage for TWF.Rangers have Lion's Charge on their spell list.

PS. since the player doesn't mind using Claws and Claws of the beast rocks I would suggest he uses that ... even without iterative attacks a build using Claws of the Beast with expansion and Karmic strike is very good.

[Bears With Lasers]

Rangers can't cast Lion's Charge often enough for it to make TWF+Skirmish viable.

[SpiderBrigade]

BWL, while I mostly agree with your points about the Soulknife, can you explain why the poor fort save is a big downside? Why do front-line melee people need a stronger fort save than ref or will?

[Bears With Lasers]

Because a lot of things you face in melee have abilities requiring Fort saves, from poison to massive damage (a soulknife taking 50 damage but having a Fort save of less than +13 is conceivable).
Really, both their Fort and their Will saves are inadequate: poor Fort save and a middling CON, and a good Will save but without the WIS to back it up. Reflex will be good for a dex-based Soulknife, but Ref is the weakest of the saves (especially without something like Evasion).

[That Lanky Bugger]

Alright. The gauntlet has been thrown down. Time for me to take on one of the few undisputed rules masters of the board. I must take umbridge with your comments on the Soulknife, sir. Allow me to explain. Maybe I'll get it right, and maybe I won't.

And my apologies, Bears... This one be long.


Oh, man, we *must* be talking about a different class. It's got a poor Fort save (it's a frontliner!), and its class ability is... a magic weapon or two. Geez, just spend the gold, and take some class levels in something worthwhile.
The Mind Blade isn't even a great weapon (like the Kensai gets, say)--a +4, +5-in-enhancements weapon is pretty subpar, and the list they choose their enhancements from is small and pretty bad.

Personally, I think the Mind Blade is a terrific weapon. Looking at it's endgame abilities, it's a pretty powerful deal. It can be manifested instantly at no cost, eventually gains a +5 enhancement bonus and +4's worth of Psionic Weapon Abilities (albiet from a limited list) which can be customized with a night's rest. Despite your own misgivings, Collision is a fairly solid weapon ability for a +2, and Keen and Psychokinetic can help out with damage as well. Vicious can be fantastic depending on your circumstances... Mostly if you've got a Psion with Body Adjustment handy.

The Mind Blade can't be sundered. Alright, it can be sundered to deny a Soulknife his Mind Blade for attacks of opportunity, but beyond 5th level reforming it is a free action. It can be effectively used at range or in melee, and the same feats for the purpose of to-hit and to-damage apply to the Mind Blade regardless of the form you allow it to take. You could take Point Blank Shot (and the other feats in that tree) and apply it to the Mind Blade, for example.

You freely get Weapon Focus and Greater Weapon Focus with the Mind Blade, and it can be manifested as a short sword (alone, or as a pair), longsword, or bastard sword... and regardless of the form, you only need gain a feat for the "Mind Blade" for it to apply to all. Likewise, Bladewind effectively grants the Soulknife the Whirlwind Attack feat without making him bother with all the prerequisites.

Psychic Strike is useful, especially as an opener in combat. Preparing it beforehand, at the beginning of the day, allows the Soulknife a free +4d8 damage (or 4 Int, Wis, or Cha damage) against the first creature which makes him ornery. My personal experience has demonstrated that Knife to the Soul can effectively be used to hit the casters where it hurts, robbing them of even the ability to USE their high level spells. Two strikes at -4 Int, Wis, or Cha each and most of those spellcasters will be useless husks of not-quite fighter caliber (in the case of a Cleric or Druid) or basically peasants (Sorcerer or Wizard). Even the BBEG will lose his spells after three or four successful strikes.


High-level PsyWars need power points to fuel their buffing. All those powers do you no good if you have to spend a bunch of rounds maniesting them, too. Also, Stomp? Animal Affinity? Weapon of Energy? No. Those are bad choices. Stomp will have a very low DC; waste of a standard action. WoE costs too much and, again, eats an action (spend the power points and action on Offensive Prescience or something). Animal Affinity is made useless by items.I can't really disagree with your assessment too much, though I'll try anyway. Animal Affinity can be good for the buffs (and the ability to pump extra Psychic Power points into it to boost more than one attribute at a time can't be overlooked), and Stomp is mostly useful for the party's Rogue to wade into the prone opponents and do his Sneak Attack thing. Weapon of Energy I like because while it's a little on the expensive side for the cost to benefit ratio, the ability to choose the elemental damage it deals is useful.


No, Soulknife is a terribly weak class. It's one of the worst.
Here's why: they can't do anything. At any given round, the Soulknife won't contribute significantly.
They're definitely not casters.
Without trapfinding and with 4+INT skills, they certainly aren't skillmonkeys.
Melee? No, they can't do that well. They don't have full BAB, they don't have a good Fort save, and their light armor and stylistics lend themselves to Weapon Finessy characters which have no significant way of inflicting damage (the "give up a full attack to charge your weapon" Psychic Strike doesn't count). Strength-based Soulknives will find their defenses lacking due to their light armor, and still won't inflict significant amounts of damage.I disagree with you on both the saves and the thought that they're not frontline melee combatants.

Psychic Strike (and Knife to the Soul) have their place. It's in the first round of combat, not as a regular attack option. The Soulknife who doesn't charge his Psychic Strike as soon as he's got the time (or needs to use it in a fight to take out the casters) is a fool. It's the first thing my Soulknife does when he wakes up is charge it (alongside gaining my Psionic Focus for the Psionic Weapon feat and the Speed of Thought feat I got for free with my class). It's a free +4d8 in the opening round of combat.

Arguably, the Soulknife suffers a but in the armor department, but Mithral Breastplate is perfectly viable as an armor without wasting any feat, and additional magical or psionic enhancement would only increase this viability. The Fort save being weak I can see as an arguable STRENGTH, believe it or not. Many is the Fighter-type who's been brought low by Reflex or Will-save oriented spells or spell-like effects... A Soulknife aiming for frontline combat viability is likely going to have his Constitution as his second best stat. He's going to have a bonus to his impressive d10 HD, which translates into an equally effective bonus to his Fort save. Sure, he won't be quaffing a poison just to prove how tough he is, but that can be further patched with the Great Fortitude feat. And in the meantime, he'll be dodging those fireballs and resisting those mind-effecting spells which keep bringing down the Fighter.

The thing most people don't realize is that the Soulknife class shines in the Surprise round (and in getting the initiative). With a decent Dexterity and Improved Initiative, the Soulknife is going to be getting the jump on most spellcasters. Within two round, he can negate the majority of their spellcasting just by rolling to hit. Knife to the Soul offers absolutely no saving throw whatsoever... It's entirely dependent on the Soulknife's ability to hit, which is augmented by the free Weapon Focus and Greater Weapon Focus feats he has.

So, to recap, a Soulknife can open a fight by winning initiative, and then throwing his Mind Blade at the enemy Wizard. If it hits, the Wizard will take at least 1d6 damage, plus 4 Int damage, plus 5+1d4 for Collision and Psychokinetic, plus 2d6 or 4d6 damage depending on whether the Soulknife just took Psionic Weapon or used a feat for Greater Psionic Weapon. Hell of a way to start a fight if you ask me.

Hell, a Soulknife could use Knife to the Soul to take out a Fighter-type with ludicrous ease... Presuming he's in range, he can drop the Fighter 4 points of Int per round for which there is NO SAVE. Sooner rather than later, the Fighter will hit 0.


Knife to the Soul is good. It's the only good thing the class gets. It's not enough to make the class viable.

So, yes--it *is* especially weak. It can't do anything well--and it's not even a generalist to compensate.I believe I've highlighted most of the class advantages, though no doubt you'll see the problems I've missed and correct me.

[oriong]

This is an aside from the soulknife debate (Although Complete Psionic does have some feats that will make Psychic Strike significantly more useful), here's my observations on the ideas of a two-weapon psychic warrior.

The more I look at the psychic warrior's abilities the more it seems that they are designed for two styles of play: the first is the Big Weapon power attacker who focuses on using Power Attack, (Greater) Psionic Weapon, and powers like Dissolving Weapon, Prevenom, Truevenom, and Offensive Prescience to hit the enemy with single, massively damaging strikes. This build would probably hope to drop the enemy in a single round, since it's effectiveness drops a lot after that first hit.

The other, probably more effective, is the natural weapon fighter using the Claw and Bite powers in conjunction with some natural weapon enhancers.

However, pretty much all of the psychic warrior's useful combat abilities don't help much at all with two-weapon fighting, their weapon buffs focus on buffing only a single weapon for a single attack (at least that's my interpretation the wording on some is confusing), which pretty much kills their ability to add damage to a weapon.

Now a two weapon psychic warrior is still a psychic warrior and their powers do have other uses, mobility being one major benefit. A TWF straight Psychic Warrior is almost certainly superior to a TWF straight Ranger, probably better than a TWF Fighter, and not as good as either of those effectively comboed with Rogue, and also not as good as a Psychic Warrior built without TWF.

What a TWF Psychic warrior would need is the ability to 'buff' both his weapons at once, and preferably some boosters that enhance his full attack rather than just a single attack. This just isn't happening for the straight psychic warrior, but I could see it being excellent fodder for a prestige class who focused on enhancing both weapons at once in order to get that extra damage.

[PinkysBrain]

So basically you get around 180K for free. Your weapon is immune to effects a lot of DMs don't use anyway (sunder/MDJ). You get a ranged attack which is NOT efficient until you hit level 17. You get whirlwind attack for free, which is about as much as it is worth. By the time you get 4d8 psychic strike damage you will be fighting monsters with 100s of hitpoints, and the arcane casters will have abilities to make sure you don't even get to hit them at all (and also 100+ hitpoints).

Knife to the Soul is nice, but it takes awfully long getting there ...

Also none of this is relevant to why it would be a good idea to multiclass a psychic warrior with soulknife ... which it isn't.

[its_all_ogre]

psychic warrior is not good with two weapons basically, i think is the general consensus.
and the only class really worth multi-classing into soulknife for is fighter(or preferably gestalt with!)(just thought i'd add that there)