Yet another blaster

[dspeyer]

There seem to be a rush of blaster base classes lately. This one's been sitting in my notes, so I thought I'd post it.

level|bab|fort|ref|will|special|power points|powers learned
1|0|0|0|2|resistance 2|3|Detect Psionics, Energy Ray
2|1|0|0|3|shape: bent|9|Control Flames, Mind Thrust
3|1|1|1|3|resistance 2/2|16|Energy Missile
4|2|1|1|4|energy: light|25|Energy Push, Energy Stun
5|2|1|1|4|resistance 5/2|37|Energy Cone
6|3|2|2|5|shape: convex subset|52|Energy Bolt, Energy Wall
7|3|2|2|5|resistance 5/5|69|Energy Ball
8|4|2|2|6|energy: force|87|Weapon of Energy, Telekinetic Maneuver
9|4|3|3|6|resistance 5/5/5|108|Energy Current
10|5|3|3|7|shape: concave subset|132|Hail of Crystals, Energy Shield*
11|5|3|3|7|resistance 10/5/5|159|Breath of the Black Dragon
12|6|4|4|8|energy: piercing slashing or bludgeoning|189|Chain energy*, Disintegrate
13|6|4|4|8|resistance 10/10/5|220|Ultrablast
14|7|4|4|9|shape: holes|255|Energy Conversion, Energy Wave
15|7|5|5|9|resistance 10/10/10|292|Telekinetic Sphere
16|8|5|5|10|energy: hellfire|331|Sunburst*, Energetic Cloud
17|8|5|5|10|resistance 10/10/10/10|375|Tornado Blast
18|9|6|6|11|shape: distorted|420|Meteor Swarm*, Reality Revision
19|9|6|6|11|resistance Immunity/10/10/10|466|any
20|10|6|6|12|energy: necrotic|514|any, any
Powers marked with a star are actually spells, but you use them as powers. For those renamed "energy", add the energy-change and augmentation language from energy ray.

HD: d4
Skills: 2+int
Class Skills: Autohypnosis, Concentration, Intimidate, Knowledge (psionics), Psicraft
Psionics are cha-based

resistance: You are so tied up in energy that it doesn't hurt you as much. You start with resistance 2 to fire, cold, electricity or sonic, and this increases every other level as shown until you are immune to one of these four and have resistance 10 to the others. You choose in what order to gain resistances, but can never decrease one you have already chosen.

shape: You can reshape your emenations when it makes sense to do so. Specifically:

bent: when a power originates from you and goes outward in a direction, you may cause it to turn once, anywhere along its length, by any angle
convex subset: when a power targets an area, you may reduce the area. The new area must be convex. If the old area needed to touch you, the new one does as well.
concave subset: like convex subset, but need not be convex
holes: you can leave areas of unaffected space in the middle of your area-effect powers
distorted: you may apply any dimension-preserving volume-preserving-or-decreasing linear transformation to your areas of effect


energy: When a power allows you to choose between fire, cold, electricity or sonic, you gain other options as well:

light: reduce each die by one; shadows take double damage, prismatic dragons and radiant creatures take none; any creature that take more than 15 points of light damage are treated as being "in bright daylight"
force: reduce each die by two, to a minimum of zero; this power no longer allows a save; effects incorporeal beings reliably
piercing, slashing or bludgeoning: no special properties
hellfire: reduce each die by three, to a minimum of one; like fire, but ignores fire resistance and immunity
necrotic: instead of dealing hp damage, each two dice do one point of ability damage to the physical score of your choice

[Grod_The_Giant]

That... is a truly impressive amount of power points. I guess you'll be augmenting each power to full, but still...

Resistances scale at an odd rate. Conventionally, they're in increments of 5.

The Shape abilities are worded somewhat strangely, especially Bent (I assume you're talking about lines?) and the Convex/Concave (not really sure what you mean). Try looking at the Sculpt Spell feat for ideas here.

I like the idea of additional energy substitutions. "Light" energy is kind of strange, though... do you mean positive energy? Or "light" as in "Searing Light," which is untyped (and thus, not resisted against by anything). The physical damage set could use some wording about whether or not damage resistance applies. Hellfire is terrible; you're losing half the damage for a net effect that you can already get with Sonic (-1 damage, nothing really resists) or Force (-2 damage, no resistances, hits incorporals, and NO SAVES?... that's mildly insane). Necrotic doesn't really fit the flavor of the rest of the class.

As for the power list... some of the powers you have on there, like Mind Thrust, Ultrablast, and Control Fire, don't quite fit the "energy damage only" theme you have going. On the other hand, it might not go amiss to add a smattering of utility powers/powers of your choice. Even the warmage gets Eclectic Learning, after all.

An ability to boost the save DCs against your powers might not go amiss.