[3.5] Thinking on your Feet: The Psychic Rogue Handbook

[Jackalope]

Something that might work nicely with psyrogue: The Shadow Blade feat grants Dex to damage while in a Shadow Hand Stance and with an SH discipline weapon (Dagger, sai, short sword, spiked chain, siangham, unarmed strike). Works quite well with Compression. The Shadow Hand discipline has some nice maneuvers and stances, but perhaps most notable for (psy)rogues is Assassin's Stance which grants +2d6 SA damage. Due to how martial adepts work it's possible to get that stance with a single level dip in swordsage after level 8 I believe. Or a couple feats which are Martial Study and Martial Stance. Shadow Hand is also known for having such maneuvers as Shadow Jaunt which are the only extraordinary teleportation abilities in the game. Anti-magic/null psionics field? Not a problem.

[Phelix-Mu]

Not sure if reminders count as necromancy, but this is an excellent guide, and I would remind the honorable Psyren that the link to psychic rogue has changed due to all that idiocy over at the WotC forums. I found it just fine with the "archive" prefix at the start of the address instead of "www", but a good handbook should work for the uninitiated, as well.

Props on a nice resource, Psyren.

Also, any thoughts about this in light of the DSP material (with which I am woefully unfamiliar), but which has presumably come out by now?

[Psyren]

Not sure if reminders count as necromancy, but this is an excellent guide, and I would remind the honorable Psyren that the link to psychic rogue has changed due to all that idiocy over at the WotC forums. I found it just fine with the "archive" prefix at the start of the address instead of "www", but a good handbook should work for the uninitiated, as well.

Props on a nice resource, Psyren.

Also, any thoughts about this in light of the DSP material (with which I am woefully unfamiliar), but which has presumably come out by now?

'
I previously achieved mod permission to bump my handbooks so we should be good. I'll make the change to the URL, thanks for the tip.

As for DSP material, I tried to limit the scope of this particular guide to 3.5, so Ultimate Psionics and the like are not included. They have some 3.5 material as well but in general this is less well-known.

If you did want to port this guy to PF it would be pretty easy. He's built like an ACG hybrid, or perhaps an alternate class - just give him access to rogue talents and advanced talents (including the psi-flavored ones), tweak the skills to match PF, decide whether you're going to buff the sneak attack or leave it at 7d6 and call it a day.

Oh, and give them the Lurk/Cryptic's powers and PP progression.

[Nihilarian]

How would you rate Diamond Dragon as a Psychic Rogue Prestige Class?

[Psyren]

How would you rate Diamond Dragon as a Psychic Rogue Prestige Class?

I didn't evaluate this one earlier because I was trying to focus on classes that a psionic rogue, or at least a skill-focused manifester of some kind, would be interested in.

Let's see... you're not getting in until 10 (you need 3rd-level powers) unless you multiclass, so I'll evaluate it as Psychic Rogue 10/DD 10, though in truth that may not be the most optimal entry.

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The three ranks in Knowledge (arcana) will likely be a pain for you (wasting skill points or perhaps a feat) but the rest of the requirements are doable.

- Manifesting: 8/10. Not great, but not a deal-breaker either as you still get 5ths and only lose a single power known.
- Skills: Gets you Knowledge (arcana), Ride, and the ever-important Psicraft, which is nice. Unfortunately, you give up a lot of skill points, as well as many other good skills while you are in this class. You are also hampered further by needing 10 levels of PR before you can enter this class (and thus not being able to alternate between the two as you go), thus making you end up behind on several skills.
- Dragon Augmentation: The untyped bonuses to Dex are nice, even if you only get +3 over the life of the PrC.
- Neutralize Sleep/Paralysis: These are nice to have as both can be fort saves (e.g. from poison), which are difficult for you to boost. Personally though I would rather just avoid getting hit in the first place.
- Claws: These are nice if you don't already have decent weapons, and the ability to make them scale is handy too. The ability to manifest and swing in one round is particularly nice, letting you do tricks like standard action to drop the lights or cloud mind, move action to sneak up to your attacker, and swift action to swipe with a claw with sneak attack for instance. Once you do have good weapons though, it's probably better to stick with those, especially since you won't be able to use your claws and your handheld weapons in the same round. In addition, you've likely had Claws of the Beast and even Quicken Power for a while now by the time you get these.
- Breath Weapons: These are all great (no cooldown, multiple energy types, 1 die per PP spent and auto-scaling DC) but you can burn through your ammunition fast and none of them interact with your sneak attack. This is much better on a psion, who have the PP to burn on this. Still, being supernatural means you can cut right through SR and immunity, letting you melt golems and similarly mean creatures.
- Dragon Wings: Psionic Fly is tough for you to get so these are handy, and perfect flight is particularly nice. Not to mention you can make these pretty fast.
- Dragon Tail: You now have a total of three natural attacks from this class. While the tail is powerful (getting 1.5x Str), most of your damage will not be coming from strength, but from SA, and as written the tail can't be combined with other reach weapons you may possess. I also don't like the fact that it doesn't threaten, and it's pretty expensive
- Fear Aura: This thing isn't exactly what I'd call subtle, though it can at least get enemies away from you and has a decent DC even on a PR. I'm not a fan of the cost though, I think there are better things you can spend 11+ PP on than making people run away for a few rounds. Worse though is that at level 20, too many enemies will be outright immune.

Verdict: All in all it's not a bad PrC, but the lack of skills and sneak attack advancement make it a tough sell for a PR, at least in my opinion. In general you're probably better off just manifesting Claws of the Beast (which last all day) and Bite of the Wolf if you need some natural attacks, and a xd6 energy power if you need to blast. On a Psion or even a Psywar, this PrC is much more useful, especially since you can get in earlier and easier.

Final rating is likely Green.