Grim Psion prestige class
Based on
The Mind's Eye: Grim Psion (Prestige Class), by Scott Brocius and Mark A. Jindra, published 06/28/2003.
Alignment: Any non-good.
Manifesting: Must be able to manifest 4th-level or higher powers.
Skills: Knowledge (psionics) 5 ranks, Knowledge (religion) 5 ranks.
Feats: Imprint Stone.
Hit Die: d4
Level | Base
Attack
Bonus |
Fort
Save |
Ref
Save |
Will
Save |
Special |
Manifesting |
| 1 | +0 | +2 | +0 | +2 | Psionic Resilience (half), Undeath | -- |
| 2 | +1 | +3 | +0 | +3 | Ability Boost (1st), DR 2/- | +1 level of existing manifesting class |
| 3 | +1 | +3 | +1 | +3 | Fear Cone, Natural AC +2 | +1 level of existing manifesting class |
| 4 | +2 | +4 | +1 | +4 | DR 3/-, Turn Immunity | +1 level of existing manifesting class |
| 5 | +2 | +4 | +1 | +4 | Ability Boost (2nd), Tainted Construction | -- |
| 6 | +3 | +5 | +2 | +5 | Ability Boost (3rd), DR 4/- | +1 level of existing manifesting class |
| 7 | +3 | +5 | +2 | +5 | Cold Immunity | +1 level of existing manifesting class |
| 8 | +4 | +6 | +2 | +6 | DR 5/-, Natural AC +4 | +1 level of existing manifesting class |
| 9 | +4 | +6 | +3 | +6 | Paralytic Touch | +1 level of existing manifesting class |
| 10 | +5 | +7 | +3 | +7 | Psionic Resilience (full), Astral Phylactery | +1 level of existing manifesting class |
Class skills (4 + Int modifier per level): Bluff, Craft, Concentration, Diplomacy, Knowledge (all skills, taken individually), Listen, Psicraft, Search, Sense Motive, Spot.
Weapon and Armor Proficiency: As a grim psion, you gain no new weapon or armor proficiencies.
Manifesting: At each level except 1st and 5th, you gain additional power points per day and access to new powers as if you had also gained a level in whatever manifesting class you belonged to before you added the prestige class. You do not, however, gain any other benefit a character of that class would have gained (bonus feats, metapsionic or item creation feats, psicrystal special abilities, and so on). This essentially means that you add the level of grim psion to the level of whatever manifesting class you have, then determine power points per day, powers known, and manifester level accordingly. If you had more than one manifesting class before you became an grim psion, you must decide to which class you add the new level of grim psion for the purpose of determining power points per day, powers known, and manifester level.
Undeath (Ex): By embracing this path, you become an undead creature. Due to your new creature type, you gain the following traits:
- You gain darkvision with a range of 60 feet.
- You become immune to poison, sleep, paralysis, stunning, disease, and death effects.
- You are not subject to critical hits, nonlethal damage, ability damage to your physical ability scores (Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution), ability drain, or energy drain, nor are you subject to fatigue and exhaustion effects.
- You have no Constitution score and are therefore immune to any effect requiring a Fortitude save (unless it affects objects). This may alter your hit points and your Fortitude save modifier.
- You use your Charisma modifier when making Concentration checks.
- As an undead, you are no longer healed normally. You require negative energy (such as an inflict wounds spell) to heal, rather than positive energy (such as a cure wounds spell). You can still heal damage on your own, however, and fast healing effects work normally.
- You are not at risk of death due to massive damage, but you are immediately destroyed if reduced to 0 hit points or less. You can no longer be raised or resurrected. You can be brought back to existence only through use of a wish, reality revision, or other effect capable of reviving undead.
- You do not breathe, eat, or sleep. You must still rest as normal to regain your power points each day.
- You can be turned.
In addition, you gain the augmented subtype for your previous type. Unlike most undead, you do not ignore mind-affecting effects.
Psionic Resilience (Ex): As an undead creature sustained physically by your own mental prowess, the source of your resilience and stamina shifts from biological fortitude to mental fortitude. You may use one half of your primary manifesting ability modifier in place of your Constitution modifier to determine the bonus hit points you gain at each level, where beneficial. If multiple ability scores could be considered your primary manifesting ability score (for example, if you are a multiclassed psion/psychic warrior), use the highest one.
At 10th level, this ability improves, allowing you to use your full primary manifesting ability modifier to determine your bonus hit points instead of only half.
Ability Boost (Ex): As you gain levels in this prestige class, your ability scores increase. At 2nd level, one of your Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma scores increases by 2. At 5th level, you can choose a second such ability score to also receive this bonus. At 6th level, the third of these ability scores also gains the bonus. You can select each ability score only once. These increases stack with all other adjustments and are gained as if through level advancement.
Damage Reduction (Ex): Beginning at 2nd level, your body toughens, giving you damage reduction of 2/-. This improves to DR 3/- at 4th level, 4/- at 6th level, and to 5/- at 8th level.
Fear Cone (Su): Beginning at 3rd level, you can create a cone of fear 30 feet long as a standard action. Creatures in the cone must make a Will save of DC 10 + your grim psion class level + your Charisma modifier. Those who fail are panicked for 2d6 rounds. This is a mind-affecting fear effect.
Natural Armor (Ex): Due to the increasing toughening of your body, you gain a +2 natural Armor Class bonus starting at 3rd level. This bonus improves to +4 at 8th level.
Turn Immunity (Ex): At 4th level, you become immune to turning effects. You cannot be turned, rebuked, or commanded, but you are still subject to spells and powers that affect undead.
Tainted Construction (Ex): At 5th level, you gain the Tainted Construction feat as a bonus feat even if you do not meet the prerequisites for it. Any construct you manifest will now be of tainted ectoplasm.
Cold Immunity (Ex): At 7th level, you become immune to cold damage.
Paralytic Touch (Su): At 9th level, you complete your connection to the Negative Energy Plane. You gain a touch attack that deals 1d8 points of negative energy damage; a Will save with a DC 10 + your grim psion class level + your Charisma modifier reduces the damage by half. If the target fails this save, it is also paralyzed for 1d3 rounds. Undead and other creatures that are healed by negative energy are neither healed nor harmed by this effect, although they may still become paralyzed. This is a Necromancy effect.
Astral Phylactery (Ps): At 10th level, you gain the ability to use a form of
astral seed power at will as a psi-like ability, although with its normal manifesting time of 10 minutes. This astral phylactery functions identically to the
astral seed power, except as follows:
- Unlike with an astral seed, you cannot use ectoplasm to grow a new body for yourself. Instead, you must find a corpse of your original size and type (as appropriate to your type from before you entered this class and became undead) that was slain within the past 9 days. Upon making contact with the corpse, you may will the transfer, causing the storage crystal to shatter into dust. You become helpless for 24 hours, as the body decays to match your skeletal state.
- An astral phylactery counts as an astral seed to determine the total number of astral seeds that you can have in existence at any given time. It also counts as a lich's phylactery for the purposes of powers and other effects.
- Additionally, unlike with the astral seed power, you do not suffer any negative levels, level loss, or diminished psionic abilities for using this effect. Your powers known and maximum power points are as they were when you died, instead of when you manifested the power. In addition, you do not suffer an incurable negative level in your crystalline form, and you do not lose a level when you acquire a new body.
Comments
Hit dice promotion replaced with an effect similar to the walker in the waste/dry lich's unholy toughness. Mind construct renamed astral phylactery and tweaked a bit to rely more on the astral seed text (itself an update of the 3.0 mind store power).
Unlike the walker in the waste (probably the closest PrC to this concept with respect to turning into a lich), but similar to the dread necromancer, the grim psion gains its lich-like abilities over the course of the entire PrC, rather than all at once at the end.
Also, loses manifesting on only two levels instead of four (similar to Walker in the Waste).
Change log
24/6/2017: Reposted to Min Max Forums. Updated formatting. Clarified psionic resilience with multiple manifesting classes and multi-attribute manifesters.
November 2011 or so: First posted.
