Optimizing the cascade flu

[Zaq]

Cascade flu:

Spread by brain moles and other vermin; injury; DC 13; incubation one day; damage psionic cascade.

A psionic cascade is a loss of control over psionic abilities. Using power points becomes dangerous for a character infected by cascade flu, once the incubation period has run its course. Every time an afflicted character manifests a power, she must make a DC 16 Concentration check. On a failed check, a psionic cascade is triggered. The power operates normally, but during the following round, without the character’s volition, two additional powers she knows manifest randomly, and their power cost is deducted from the character’s reserve. During the next round, three additional powers manifest, and so on, until all the psionic character’s power points are drained. Powers with a range of personal or touch always affect the diseased character. For other powers that affect targets, roll d%: On a 01-50 result, the power affects the diseased character, and 51-00 indicates that the power targets other creatures in the vicinity. Psionic creatures (those that manifest their powers without paying points) cascade until all the powers they know have manifested at least twice.

As with any disease, a psionic character who is injured or attacked by a creature carrying a disease or parasite, or who otherwise has contact with contaminated material, must make an immediate Fortitude save. On a success, the disease fails to gain a foothold. On a failure, the character takes damage (or incurs the specified effect) after the incubation period. Once per day afterward, the afflicted character must make a successful Fortitude save to avoid repeating the damage. Two successful saving throws in a row indicate she has fought off the disease.

So on the one hand, if you're a true manifester who's expecting to get through a whole adventuring day on one stock of PP, triggering a psionic cascade kind of sucks. You'll probably manifest random crap that won't help, and you'll end up burned out and out of juice.

On the other hand, if you aren't a true manifester? If, say, you just happen to have a few extremely well-chosen powers, and it's okay if you go nova in an encounter? A psionic cascade is horrifying action economy. You get an increasingly large number of powers manifested every round with no action cost! (They can't take an action because otherwise you physically couldn't manifest all of them at the rate specified.)

This seems extremely breakable if you build very carefully. I mean, if nothing else, synchronicity is a 1st level power, so consider a kalashtar with a single level of wilder who knows synchronicity and nothing else. Kalashtar will give extra PP (which could perhaps be boosted with feats and maybe items?) to let you keep spamming increasing numbers of manifestations of synchronicity round after round: two, then three, then four, then five... That's a hell of a nova if you've got anything even slightly interesting to do with your standard actions other than manifest! Find a way to get around the augment cost (Overchannel + wild surge? Torc of power preservation + Earth Power?), and you don't even have to choose in advance what you're doing!

I mean, yeah, synchronicity is pretty much raw unfiltered cheese anyway. I'm not claiming that's new. What I am claiming is new is finding ways to manifest this many copies of it round after round in a glorious nova encounter, especially with such relatively little investment! (At least, I don't recall seeing anyone else talk about it? Maybe it's not new?)

Synchronicity might be the most obviously broken power to spam copy after copy of in a hilarious cascade nova, but there might be other options that are amusing if we look hard enough. Brainstorming: Psionic minor creation would be way faster than usual, if nothing else? No action cost, right? It just says that the powers manifest, not that they go through the usual manifesting time.

If we were really leaning into the "eh, we're just theorycrafting and not making something playable" side of things, you might be able to make an argument that you couldn't manifest powers for which your key ability score is too low, so if (for example) you took levels in psion with 10 INT and one level of wilder with 11+ CHA, even though you'd get more PP from your psion levels, you couldn't manifest your psion powers because your score is too low and you'd only manifest your one wilder power. Maybe. Not sure if that's actually legit. Maybe we'll stick to just getting the PP from kalashtar and stuff.

Alternatively, perhaps this could be funny on a metamind? Not that metaminds are playable anyway.

Is there anything else we can do with this? Again, yeah, it's an insane and goofy nova, but that's the whole point. And again, it's best not to be a real manifester, but I'm liking the "kalashtar with 1 level of wilder" setup...

[PoeticallyPsyco]

Hmm... martial characters seem to benefit the most from this. Does a readied action count for this?

If you are able to take only a standard action or a move action on your turn, you can still charge

Warlocks would also love this. For more traditional casters, maybe a theurge of some sort, so they'll have enough spell slots to spam comfortably.

On the psionic side of things, adding some self-buffing powers to your repertoire might be objectively less powerful, but would make your DM hate you less.

It looks like White Raven Tactics can't hasten the process along, because they manifest on the next round, not the next turn. However...

It doesn't look like there's a restriction on what manifestings trigger this. So the first turn manifesting synchronicity triggers it once. Use the readied action to manifest it again (and intentionally fail the check). Now on the second round you're automatically manifesting four times instead of two. Stack as often as desired (when the DM recovers from stunned silence would be the polite stopping point).

So I'm thinking a Kalashtar Warlock (or ubercharger) with Hidden Talent, maybe with a level or two in a psionic class for more power points.

[Jack_Simth]

Cast this as a wizard, then trigger the cascade.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

So I'm thinking forget Kalashtar. Go human or strongheart halfling and take Hidden Talent (Synchronicity) and Precocious Apprentice at 1st level. Have a Wisdom score of 12. And take Practiced Manifester at 6th level.

Sorcerer 1/ Warlock 4/ Ardent 1/ Cerebremancer 10/ [I dunno, maybe Binder 1/Hellfire Warlock 3; alternatively Legacy Champion (Cerebremancer) 4]

At 6th level you're a first level Ardent, but you manifest based on your manifester level of 5. For your two powers known grab one (cheap) second level power and one 3rd level power (unless there's a second 2nd level power you wouldn't mind casting in place of synchronicity). Advance Ardent and Warlock with Cerebremancer, and only learn powers of 3rd level or higher... that you can't actually manifest because of your crummy Wisdom. Now your cascade flu manifests will be 50% synchronicity and 50% that 2nd level power, on average. That would make it harder to get the ball rolling, if you couldn't use your prepared standard action from synchronicity to cast it again, ad nauseam until you've got plenty of free manifests on your second turn. Each of them should proc cascade flu again, so at this point the ball is well and truly rolling; use all those standard actions from synchronicity to spam Eldritch Blast and other invocations. Even a super conservative estimate has this getting off 30+ Eldritch Blasts/Invocations over the course of about 3 turns. Now that's an effective nova!

But what about the rest of the day? Well, you're still effectively a Warlock 17 at least, and you even have Deceive Item. Plus, with stat-boosting items/potions/spells/powers, you can still use all the powers of an Ardent 15+. Just be sure to have enough ranks in Concentration to reliably make the DC 16 check (may be worth investing in the Make Your Own Luck feat to reroll the check), and to take these items off before using Cascade Flu! If you go the Hellfire Warlock route, you get some serious firepower throughout the day, while Legacy Champion gives you some more versatility and more psionic power (64 power points, for starters) at the expense of, well, the drawbacks of owning a legacy weapon.

EDIT: Open to suggestions on that second level power, and the rest of the powers, for that matter. I don't actually know much about psionics.

[Zaq]

Cast this as a wizard, then trigger the cascade.

Problem is you’ve got a 50% chance of targeting yourself. Would mind blank make you immune to all of those powers, or just most of them?

[Unavenger]

Problem is you’ve got a 50% chance of targeting yourself. Would mind blank make you immune to all of those powers, or just most of them?

"This spell protects against all mind-affecting spells and effects", and all of them have the mind-affecting descriptor, so all of them.

[Segev]

Seems to me this is best for psi-gishes. Especially those with one-attack or one-round buffs. Manifest an attack-augmenting buff on round one and fail the save, and then let your other powers manifest automatically. It’s a little chaotic, but you wind up with your buffs manifesting without you needing to give up actions, and multiple, oft-incompatible single-attack and round-long buffs active at once.

If you’re a Wilder or have other means of using Share Power to perform recharge tricks, and you can get the cascade to the point you’re manifesting everything every round, you just need to get the recharge fast enough to pay for every power every round and you can be always buffed by all your carefully-chosen powers.

[Zaq]

Seems to me this is best for psi-gishes. Especially those with one-attack or one-round buffs. Manifest an attack-augmenting buff on round one and fail the save, and then let your other powers manifest automatically. It’s a little chaotic, but you wind up with your buffs manifesting without you needing to give up actions, and multiple, oft-incompatible single-attack and round-long buffs active at once.

If you’re a Wilder or have other means of using Share Power to perform recharge tricks, and you can get the cascade to the point you’re manifesting everything every round, you just need to get the recharge fast enough to pay for every power every round and you can be always buffed by all your carefully-chosen powers.

I don’t think you can get enough recharge to keep this up forever. The number of powers you manifest each round increases every round, and there isn’t a limit other than your PP.

[Uncle Pine]

A question comes to mind: does a 51-100 result on a cascade using Personal powers result in them affecting other creatures? Using synchronicity as in the earlier example, would half of your synchronicities end up granting free standard action to someone else (potentially an enemy)? Or would synchronicity fizzle, since it's a Personal power and can't be manifested on others?

Ruling that Personal power could end up target other characters (a "specific trumps general" scenario) effectively kills the self-buffing potential of the cascade, but seems the most sensible approach to me.

[Jack_Simth]

A question comes to mind: does a 51-100 result on a cascade using Personal powers result in them affecting other creatures? Using synchronicity as in the earlier example, would half of your synchronicities end up granting free standard action to someone else (potentially an enemy)? Or would synchronicity fizzle, since it's a Personal power and can't be manifested on others?

Ruling that Personal power could end up target other characters (a "specific trumps general" scenario) effectively kills the self-buffing potential of the cascade, but seems the most sensible approach to me.

From Cascade Flu, quoted in the OP: "Powers with a range of personal or touch always affect the diseased character."