The Combat Drone (a Wilder build)

[Soranar]

The combat drone is a simple idea: how broken would a wilder hengeyokai sparrow be?

Let's find out.

Race: Hengeyokai (Sparrow)
Templates: none
Age Category: middle aged


Alternate class features: educated wilder

STATS (32 pts buy, though 28 would work just fine)
STR 7 dump (1 in sparrow form)
DEX 7 dump (23 in sparrow form)
CON 14 fairly important
INT 14
WIS 14
CHA 19 (main stat, gets every increase)

2 flaws

Feats:

Level 1 Illithid heritage, Illithid Compulsion, hidden talent (astral construct)
Level 3 Illithid Legacy
Level 6 Boost Construct
Level 9 Greater Illithid Legacy
Level 12 practiced manifester
Level 15 expanded knowledge
Level 18 expanded knowledge

Power known

Level 1
-Astral Construct (hidden talent)
-Charm (illithid heritage)
-Inertial armor (with your 24 naked AC, this alone makes you almost invulnerable to physical attacks)
-Energy Ray (your to hit is +14 at level one and you deal touch attacks, needless to say you don't need true strike)

Level 2
-Amethyst Burst (anything not affected by energy ray will be affected by this)
-Read thoughts (illithid heritage)
-Clairvoyant sense (1rst bonus expanded knowledge)

Level 3
-Dispel psionic (greater illithid heritage)
-Time hop
-Empathic transfer, hostile (2nd expanded knowledge)

Level 4
-Dominate (greater illithid heritage)
-Divination
-schism (3rd bonus expanded knowledge)

Level 5
-anticipatory strike

Level 6
-Temporal acceleration
-Disintegrate, psionic (expanded knowledge, level 15 expanded knowledge)

Level 7
-Mind blank, personal
-fission (4th bonus expanded knowledge)

Level 8
-Bend reality
-true metabolism (level 18 expanded knowledge)

Level 9
-stygian conflagration
-Reality revision

Combat
-You start your day by manifesting inertial armor. As usual you should use wild surge since you're out of combat and there's no reason for you not to do so.

Lets compare this Wilder to a Mailman Sorcerer

a mailman's schtick is pretty simple

arcane fusion, true strike + orb of force
at higher level it'll be a twinned empowered repeated orb of force

The Combat Drone doesn't seem to pack that much of a punch at first but a Combat Drone never fights alone. First he casts anticipatory strike to go first
then he casts temporal acceleration (which you can augment to get several more rounds, if you enervate you just lose a round recuperating)

during your temporal acceleration the combat drone does the following

-manifest schism
-manifest fission (now there are 2 of you)
-manifest an astral construct at maximum wild surge (if you are stunned you will be spending your stunned turn in temporal acceleration anyway, besides your schism self is unaffected)

-meanwhile your clone also manifests anticipatory strike
-he also manifests temporal acceleration
-he also manifests schism
-he also manifests an astral construct at maximum wild surge

combat starts

you now have 2 astral constructs (one at your manifester level + wild surge, the other at manifester level + wild surge -2) in play and you have 4 standard actions per round (1 at full manifester level, one clone at -2, one schism at -2 and another schism at -4)

say a level 20 character

this means 2 level 9 astral constructs
each entity manifests energy ray for about 90d6 of damage or 315 damage (enough to kill anything CR appropriate by yourself)

if you're facing something with bad FORT saves, you can switch to disintegrate
if you're facing multiple opponents, you can carpet bomb the entire place with amethyst bursts
if you're facing multiple tough opponents, you can open the round with stygian conflagration (at full wild surge that's 1d4+4 negative levels, no save) then your schism can do the same (at 1d4+3) before your clone destroys whatever is left with rays or bursts.

Most easy encounters though, a simple fully augmented astral construct should do the job while you stay out of trouble.

Unlike a sorcerer, you have plenty of useful out of combat powers. You only had to spend 3 power known on attack powers and you get every summon you need with a single power. You also get all the charm/dominate spells in 2 powers so there's no real need to invest your skills in bluff, intimidate and diplomacy.

Instead the Combat drone focus on finding targets (listen, spot), concentration, psicraft and use psionic device (which lets you fill out all the utility powers you shouldn't waste a feat on).

Finally, if you really want to show off, you can even take vow of poverty. I considered taking metamorphosis but the sparrow form is so useful I don't see much point in turning into a melee character, I much prefer letting the astral constructs do the fighting.

[Vaz]

My favourite combination is Marshal 1/Wilder 19.

You need the following;
- Outsider Type (Neraph is LA+0, others exist which are more useful, but are more questionable or require buy-off).
- Metamorphosis power (or some other way of Alter Self or similar)
- Metamorphic Transfer feat
- Psychic Reformation power (Limited Wish or Bend Reality can recreate this if you don't have access to it)
- Astral Construct

Optional;
- Leadership for easy access to a Character with access to Fast Healing for Ability Damage, or able to heal ability damage to speed up the process)
- Sense Danger power (not Danger Sense)
- Synchronicity power
- Linked Power feat
- Psionic Meditation feat
- Metapower feat
- Bestow Power
- Overchannel
- Psychofeedback
- Thought Bottle

The main part of the trick involves taking the shape of the Visilight, and using Metamorphic Transfer to use it's Charisma Drain ability. This has the unique property of adding it to your own Charisma, losing 1 per hour until you return to normal. Even though you only get 3 uses of the ability per day, the average human has 10-11 Charisma, giving you a boost of 30-33 on average humans. Each day, you're going to be between +6 to +9 higher of your Charisma, provided you can grapple a target and maintain that grapple.

In the event you're in the wild and don't have easy access to people, you can use an Astral Construct for much the same, and they have less compunction about resisting it (i.e, have to do what you tell them to); they are Cha 10. I also suggest Leadership here, so that you can pick up a Binder who binds Naberius to use his Fast Ability Healing. Each round D6 Cha is drained and added to the Visilight, each round 1 damage is healed. If you're not being completely broken, and don't say that there's nothing to stop you from going into Negative Charisma, this gets you longer access to boosting Cha Drain; rather than a Cha 11 Character drained in average 4 rounds, it is now drained in 5 rounds, thanks to the healing, giving you a further amount of Charisma to stack. And obviously, acts like Renfield to our Dracula in the field.

Now, the question is what to do with it.

Marshal uses the Motivate Aura to buff our friends and allies, but most importantly, ourselves. You can use a Psychic Reformation to change this aura. There is a reading of Linked Power which can allow you to remove XP costs, but I don't go by that reading, but YMMV. But that isn't why I suggested it.

Sense Danger is a power from Magic of Eberron, which allows you to no longer be denied Dex to AC when Flat Footed, and manifest one power as an immediate action during the Surprise Round. It cannot take more than a standard action to manifest, and it has a maximum PP spend equal to the amount of augmented pp you put into it. In rolls Augmented Synchronicity, that old friend; for 2pp extra on Sense Danger, (7pp total), you get to Act before anyone else, because Immediate Actions in the Surprise Round, even when Flat Footed are brilliant. Synchronicity triggers, which you then take immediately, giving you your action. Of course, you could make it a Linked Power Synchronicity, because we all know how good that is. Psionic Meditation to regain your focus in combat is helpful.

Your linked power Synchronicity? Link it to Psychic Reformation. Congratulations, you can now reallocate your abilities on a whim; Powers, Skills, feats, class features (under the "decisions of these sorts" clause; again, a strict DM might kibosh that reading). Obviously this costs XP, and for levels greater than 10 levels down, a Thought Bottle may be of use.

Anyway, you've now got essentially arbitrary Str, Dex, Con, Wis, Int, or Cha bonus at any one time. Do with that what you will.

Psychofeedback is another nice trick with this, especially for a Wilder, who combined with Overchannel can get +9 Manifester levels. Orange Ioun for +10, and maybe Practised Manifester if desperate/going non-psionic epic for +11/+14. You can up your Str/Dex/Con by up to your new ML (say +18 in this case) at the expense of burning your Charisma stacks. No real loss there, although it only lasts for (in this case) 28 rounds, so it's maybe a 1/day thing unless you've seriously spent some time stacking (+6 Cha/day).

Augmented Bestow Power with Synchronicity to restore pp in between combats.

Feel free to be the MVP of your time.

Personally, I prefer using it on an Ardent, and used that with my Tsagoth build for the Iron Chef 64 for the Slime Lord (as an Ardent, you get the ability to give up access to a Mantle at level 10, to turn your Primary mantles into easily Metapsionic'd powers). Both Wilder and Ardent have their benefits; Ardent for Dominant Mantle and its Manifester level based Learning Mechanism, while Wilder has Cha based DC's and Wild Surge.

[mabriss lethe]

I like adding warforged arm grafts to wilders and then picking up the psionic hand component that lets you manifest a power 1/day. (though I forget the specific name for it.) It should still work fine while you're transformed.