One of the new UA fighter subclasses is the Psychic Warrior. For those of you who have played with it or thought about it what are the builds you've been thinking about? How do you think it would best multiclass? Is strength or dexterity better for this subclass in particular?
I enjoy how the psionic abilities essentially make the Fighter a powerhouse...adding damage while telekineticaly shoving enemies around to your hearts content.
For multiclassing, I can see a "College of Whispers" fitting the psionic motif...the "Psychic Blades" gives the Fighter even more burst damage, and some support for teammates...you can flavor Bardic Inspiration as the Fighter "psyching" up their team...heh.
Rogue is also a safe bet..."Expertise" gives your Fighter something to specialize in, maybe outside of combat, and if you want to add the new "Psychic Blades" subclass, you have a natural synergy with your freaky psychic powers.
My main thoughts on the Psychic Warrior is that you are going to have to pump up your Intelligence to make good use of the features, but i would definitely take a look at the 'Magic Initiate: Wizard' and a level or two-dip in Wizard to really pay off for having the stat that high, If you feel weird about throwing Wizard into your Psionic, then just keep your spells to things like 'Shield', Feather Fall, Magic Missile or spells from the Psionic UA, things you could reflavor to 'Psionic tricks' you can only do once a day.
But all in all, I feel like the Psychic Warrior is something you play for the Flavor more than the Power. So I'd focus more on that and describing the bad-ass things you get up to, this way when you have the moment when you think to use your Telekinetic powers in a way not exactly RAW and look at your DM they'll hopefully smile and nod at your attempt to hold up a collapsing tunnel by running into it and using Telekinetic Bulwark to reinforce the walls and ceiling.
bladesinger wizard is perhaps your best bet in terms of multiclassing helping you in combat, especially if you go for an dex heavy build, since you can add your intelegence to your armor class, provided that you are willing to give up all use of shields and two handed weapons (including almost every ranged weapon exept for the sling, hand crossbow, dart and blowgun, none of whom are especially good tradeoffs).
technically also, you dont really need intelegence that much honestly, an low int build will work fine since the only thing that will be worse by bad int is the feature at 7th level and the feature at 15th level, all other features work just as well regardless of if you are as dumb as an ogre or as smart as an archmage
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
i am soup, with too many ideas (all of them very spicy) who has made sufficient homebrew material and character to last an thousand human lifetimes
Paladdy, I might actually recommend Artillerist rather than Battlesmith
Assuming you're primarily a fighter, you're going to be going for level 5 or 11 Fighter first to cap out the extra attack. Since one would want the Strength of Mind at 7, 11 Fighter first seems reasonable. So it's really unlikely using Int as the combat stat will come into play. And the Steel Defender stats are driven by your investment into Artificier, which you wouldn't really have much of. The spell list is pretty nice though!
But the Artillerist does a bit more.
Shield and Thunderwave for the spell list are both useful and thematic for a Psionic, but the Eldritch Cannon is really the star here. The cannon can be tiny and held on your person and the effect itself operates the same independent of levels. So you could easily have a pocket sized Temp HP pulse or a shoulder mounted Force cannon that you've reskinned to be a Psychic power.
This gets me thinking of a Goliath Psychic Warrior 3/ Totem Barbarian. Stone's Endurance and Augmented Defenses coupled with Rage makes you resistant to everything except psychic damage and you can mitigate 1d12, 1d10, and heal for 1d10+Fighter level using Second Wind.
The only saving grace of the MADness of this subclass is that the base class has so many ASIs to mitigate it.
(Like, imagine if monks got 2 extra ASIs. We might actually see monks take feats.)
As long as you don't roll abysmally low for stats, you can get close to max in your attack stat, Con, and Int over the course of 20 (well, 19) levels. Again, it's not great, but it's something.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Partway through the quest for absolute truth.
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
One of the new UA fighter subclasses is the Psychic Warrior. For those of you who have played with it or thought about it what are the builds you've been thinking about? How do you think it would best multiclass? Is strength or dexterity better for this subclass in particular?
What are your thoughts?
I enjoy how the psionic abilities essentially make the Fighter a powerhouse...adding damage while telekineticaly shoving enemies around to your hearts content.
For multiclassing, I can see a "College of Whispers" fitting the psionic motif...the "Psychic Blades" gives the Fighter even more burst damage, and some support for teammates...you can flavor Bardic Inspiration as the Fighter "psyching" up their team...heh.
Rogue is also a safe bet..."Expertise" gives your Fighter something to specialize in, maybe outside of combat, and if you want to add the new "Psychic Blades" subclass, you have a natural synergy with your freaky psychic powers.
My main thoughts on the Psychic Warrior is that you are going to have to pump up your Intelligence to make good use of the features, but i would definitely take a look at the 'Magic Initiate: Wizard' and a level or two-dip in Wizard to really pay off for having the stat that high, If you feel weird about throwing Wizard into your Psionic, then just keep your spells to things like 'Shield', Feather Fall, Magic Missile or spells from the Psionic UA, things you could reflavor to 'Psionic tricks' you can only do once a day.
But all in all, I feel like the Psychic Warrior is something you play for the Flavor more than the Power. So I'd focus more on that and describing the bad-ass things you get up to, this way when you have the moment when you think to use your Telekinetic powers in a way not exactly RAW and look at your DM they'll hopefully smile and nod at your attempt to hold up a collapsing tunnel by running into it and using Telekinetic Bulwark to reinforce the walls and ceiling.
bladesinger wizard is perhaps your best bet in terms of multiclassing helping you in combat, especially if you go for an dex heavy build, since you can add your intelegence to your armor class, provided that you are willing to give up all use of shields and two handed weapons (including almost every ranged weapon exept for the sling, hand crossbow, dart and blowgun, none of whom are especially good tradeoffs).
technically also, you dont really need intelegence that much honestly, an low int build will work fine since the only thing that will be worse by bad int is the feature at 7th level and the feature at 15th level, all other features work just as well regardless of if you are as dumb as an ogre or as smart as an archmage
i am soup, with too many ideas (all of them very spicy) who has made sufficient homebrew material and character to last an thousand human lifetimes
Another build could be Fighter X / Artificer (battlesmith) 3 to gain:
Paladdy, I might actually recommend Artillerist rather than Battlesmith
Assuming you're primarily a fighter, you're going to be going for level 5 or 11 Fighter first to cap out the extra attack. Since one would want the Strength of Mind at 7, 11 Fighter first seems reasonable. So it's really unlikely using Int as the combat stat will come into play. And the Steel Defender stats are driven by your investment into Artificier, which you wouldn't really have much of. The spell list is pretty nice though!
But the Artillerist does a bit more.
Shield and Thunderwave for the spell list are both useful and thematic for a Psionic, but the Eldritch Cannon is really the star here. The cannon can be tiny and held on your person and the effect itself operates the same independent of levels. So you could easily have a pocket sized Temp HP pulse or a shoulder mounted Force cannon that you've reskinned to be a Psychic power.
ah yes but consider this: most of the psychick warriors intelegence stat will not come up until like 7th level, so barbarian?
i am soup, with too many ideas (all of them very spicy) who has made sufficient homebrew material and character to last an thousand human lifetimes
This gets me thinking of a Goliath Psychic Warrior 3/ Totem Barbarian. Stone's Endurance and Augmented Defenses coupled with Rage makes you resistant to everything except psychic damage and you can mitigate 1d12, 1d10, and heal for 1d10+Fighter level using Second Wind.
I really want to like this subclass, but the fact you almost have to multiclass to make it good says it all.
its a MAD build with a heavy jump into INT that flavor wise doesn’t really mix well when multi-classing.
They done goofed not listening to player feedback in the UA
The only saving grace of the MADness of this subclass is that the base class has so many ASIs to mitigate it.
(Like, imagine if monks got 2 extra ASIs. We might actually see monks take feats.)
As long as you don't roll abysmally low for stats, you can get close to max in your attack stat, Con, and Int over the course of 20 (well, 19) levels. Again, it's not great, but it's something.
Partway through the quest for absolute truth.