PrC for Psionics/ToB with hyper-reality concept, in development

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Kobold Avenger's picture
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factotums
Joined: 2005-11-18
PrC for Psionics/ToB with hyper-reality concept, in development

I'm trying to create a prestige class for characters with psionic powers from the Expanded Psionic Handbook (& Complete Psionic) and martial maneuvers from the Tome of Battle. The initial design was based off of the Jade Phoenix Mage prestige class from the Tome of Battle, but I didn't want to have a mere Psionic X version of that class. So I went into making something that had more customizable abilties.

Eventually I decided to put on the backgroud of this class being connected to the concept of the five levels of reality from the Doors to the Unknown module and Ravenloft's Nightmare Lands. And added the backstory of this being an part of the ancient ancestors of the githzerai and githyanki...

Anyways I'm looking for ways on tightening up both the concept and the flavour about this class, along with the game mechanics of this class to make it balanced which might mean stripping a couple of things.

Second of all can someone think of a better name to use?

Sublime Key Adept

The origin of the sublime key adepts dates back before the revolt of an ancient race from their illithid oppressors. These were the ancestors of the githzerai and the githyanki. It was among the long forgotten arts of these people that the foundations of the sublime keys existed in its infancy.
Combining the arts of the sublime way with that of the arts of the mind, the ancient adepts found a path from which they could ascend along to have a greater control of the levels of reality, which are central to their teachings.

Becoming a Sublime Key Adept
To be a sublime key adept requires the ability to use the sublime way and psionics, therefore most sublime key adepts are psions or psychic warriors, with some levels in warblade or swordsage. These two classes are the most common as they have pursuit of the esoteric or perfection of fighting forms to become an adept. Some sublime key adepts are lurks or wilders, and a smaller amount are ardents or divine minds with levels in crusader.

Entry Requirements
Feats: Psionic Meditation, Psychic Renewal
Skills: Concentration 10 ranks, Knowledge (psionics) 4 ranks, Knowledge (planes) 2 ranks.
Martial Maneuvers: Must know at least 2 martial maneuvers
Martial Stances: Must know at least 1 martial stance.
Powers: Ability to manifest 2nd level psionic powers.

10 Levels
1/1 BAB
Poor Fort & Reflex Saves
Good Will Saves
+1 manuever known every even level
+1 manuever readied at 3rd, 6th and 9th
+1 stance at 1st and 6th
+1 manifester level at every level except 1st and 6th

Level Special
1st Sublime secrets
2nd Multi-level mind stance
3rd Unlocking the doors
4th Master sub-reality, psychic boost 1x
5th Improved Clarity
6th Ascendant reality stance
7th psychic boost 2x
8th Dream travel, Tenacious Power
9th Improved psychic renewal
10th Reality Shaping, psychic boost 3x

Class Skills (2 + Int mod per level): Autohypnosis, Bluff, Climb, Concentration, Craft, Diplomacy, Intimidate, Jump, Knowledge (any), Martial Lore, Profession, Psicraft, Sense Motive, Tumble

Class Features
You must pick three martial disciplines with this class, these are the three martial disciplines which you gain maneuvers and stances known from.
Psionics: At every level except 1st and 6th you gain a level in a psionic manifesting class. You get the powers known and power points that class gets as if you advanced a level in it. If you have more than one manifesting class you must decide which one gets the increase in manifester levels.
Maneuvers: You may pick a maneuver from any of the three martial disciplines of your choice, these three martial disciplines are the only disciplines that you can learn maneuvers from with your sublime key adept levels. You get a maneuver known at every even-numbered level. Your sublime key adept class levels stack with your initiator levels.
Stances Known: You get a stance known at 1st and 6th level, these stances must be from the three martial disciplines you learn your sublime key adept maneuvers from.
Sublime Secrets: Depending on what martial disciplines you choose to pursue through this path, you gain a new understanding into the principles and concepts that these disciplines represent. These sublime secrets are based on exercises you learn, essentially the first step in the path.
From the 3 different martial disciplines, which are the disciplines you can only pick your maneuvers and stance from when you gain a level in this class. You get special abilities based on these choices.
Desert Wind – When psionically focused you gain a +5 bonus to you land speed.
Devoted Spirit – If you have psychic auras as a class feature you add your sublime blade psychic levels to your divine mind levels to determine the strength of your auras. When psionically focused you gain a +2 bonus to will saves against fear and compulsion effects.
Diamond Mind – You get a +2 bonus on concentration and autohypnosis checks and can take 10 on concentration and autohypnosis rolls, even in stressful circumstances.
Iron Heart – +2 to balance checks, you can always take 10 on balance checks and you suffer no penalties to balance checks from movement if focused.
Setting Sun – You gain a +1 bonus when making attacks of opportunity, and gain +2 AC against touch attacks.
Shadow Hand – If you have lurks augments you add your sublime blade psychic levels to your lurk levels to determine how many lurk augments per day you can use and the max number of power points you can spend on augments. You gain +2 to move silently and hide while focused.
Stone Dragon – When psionically focused you gain a +1 bonus to natural armor, and when you expend focus on any attack (such as the psionic weapon feat) you inflict an additional 1d6 damage.
Tiger Claw – +2 to confirm critical hits, and +4 to jump checks.
White Raven – +2 to damage when adjacent to allies and focused.

Multi-level Mind Stance (Ex): A sublime key adept looks into the different levels of reality, thus perceiving some of the lower and higher levels of reality. This gives them greater awareness and resistance. You may assume this stance as a swift action. In the multi-level mind stance you gain a +4 insight bonus to spot and listen checks, and a +2 insight bonus to saves to resist being stunned, paralyzed, or dazed. And while stunned, paralyzed or dazed you can take a single move action a round.
Unlocking the Doors (Ex): Using the sublime keys you unlock the doors to the greater mysteries of reality, as a result you gain a +2 bonus to all knowledge checks and may use any knowledge check untrained.
Master Sub-reality (Ex): At 4th level when dreaming or in the dreamscape, they may add their class levels to checks to wake-up or manipulate the dream reality. A sublime key adept can use their ranks in concentration instead of lucid dreaming to manipulate dream reality, if you’re using such rules.
Psychic Boost (Ex): At 4th level a sublime key adepts learn how to preserve some of their psychic energy through their practises of learning the nature of reality. Once an encounter after making a martial strike, a power you manifest in the next round has its cost reduced by ½ your class level. This reduction in cost is applied after you spend the power points on augmentations and metapsionic feats. At 7th level they can use this ability twice per encounter, and 3 times at 10th level.
Improved Clarity (Ex): At 5th level a sublime key gains instant clarity as a bonus feat. If they already had this feat, then the number of times they can regain focus with this feat increases to 3 times per encounter.
Ascendant Reality Stance (Ex): At 6th level a sublime key adept who assumes this stance, assumes a presence in hyper-reality. Opponents attacks become less ‘real’ to a sublime key adept, a sublime key adepts attacks can will their attacks to be more intense in normal reality and gravity has lost its grip on them. In this stance a sublime key adept gets a +2 dodge bonus to AC, and a flight speed equal to their land speed with average manueverablity. They also may spend a power point as an immediate action to re-roll one of their damage rolls they just rolled. Only the weapon’s damage is re-rolled and not any bonus damage with their attack.
Dream Travel (Ps): Since the lower levels of reality are dreams and dreamscapes, a sublime key adept learns to master these lower levels of reality. Once per day a sublime key adept may use dream travel as a psi-like ability with their class level as their manifester level. Also if a sublime key adept can manifest 7th level powers, they get dream travel as a bonus power known.
Tenacious Power (Su): At 7th level, during an encounter pick one of you’re ongoing psionic powers current active on yourself. If this power should be dispelled, it is instead suppressed. This power may be unsuppressed as a swift action whenever you use a manuever in the following rounds.
Improved Psychic Renewal (Ex): At 9th level when a sublime key adept uses psychic renewal, they don’t have to spend power points to regain manuevers.
Reality-Shaping: At 10th level a sublime key adept’s knowledge of the secrets opened by the studies of the sublime key, enable them to alter reality with the application of their will. They get the ability to manifest reality revision once per day, as a psi-like ability. They must spend the XP cost to use this power.

Playing a Sublime Key Adept
You’re a student of a very potent and ancient martial philosophy that provides some of the most ascendant secrets. Still for all your knowledge and abilities, many of the secrets of the sublime keys have been lost in the ancient ages. You realize that this path is but one of the methods towards unlocking the doors to beyond, and the mastery of the five levels of reality. It requires exceptional individuals to be practiced in both the Sublime Way and the Will of Mind, you are certainly one of them, but there are many others.
The secrets of the Sublime Keys have been passed down and diluted through many forms for generations. Once there was but one school of path, but now there are many across many worlds, and no one true way or form of this path. Each adept of this path brings their own secrets and truths. Some might have secrets beneficial for your own journey, while others will undoubtedly keep their own secrets to themselves.

Combat
Your ability to use psionic powers and feats along with martial maneuvers makes you a very versatile force in combat. Sublime key adepts rarely have the same abilities as there’s quite a range of different powers and maneuvers each one can know. Some can defy the rules of physics, striking from any direction with a many powerful techniques. Others are capable of manipulating energy and matter as easily as they can fight on the front-lines with a variety of techniques.
There’s many tactics that you could use depending on which path you took to get to this path.

Advancement
Resources

Sublime Key Adept In the World
The sublime key refers to the keys or physical exercises that open the doors to greater possibilities within the mind and reality itself. Reality exists in five levels according to the adept of the sublime keys: the first being basic dreams of individuals, the second being the more real dreamscapes from the planes of dream material, and the third being that of physical reality. The fourth level being that of hyper-reality which adepts further along the path have some concept and control in. The fifth and final level of reality remains out of reach to all, perhaps the greatest mystery and final destination in a sublime key adept’s path of enlightenment.
Ancient lore refers to beings such as the mercurials and the crystalline host from hyper-reality that the progenitors of this path encountered, which could easily manipulate physical reality. The very movements and thoughts were studied whenever the ancients encountered such beings, and recorded in what would later become the Sutra of the Sublime Keys. Along with looking towards the higher level of reality, the ancient adepts began to look within and outwards towards the lower levels of reality.
However the ancient’s civilization eventually fell to the horrible onslaught of the Illithid Empire. For centuries the ancient toiled, struggled and lived under the oppression of the illithids, the study of the levels of reality and the sublime keys were forgotten. Though scraps of the ancient Sutra of the Sublime Keys were found by the rebels who hid from their illithid overmasters. Soon they found a weapon that could be used in their struggle for freedom, as they trained in secret. When Gith lead an uprising that spread throughout the Illithid Empire, the secret adepts joined her cause and together they toppled their oppressors.
In the aftermath of the split which resulted in the Githyanki and Githzerai, first the sublime key adepts lived among the two respective races, but after a century they scattered among the multiverse. They stated a search for the many missing pieces of the Sutra of the Sublime Keys, which now found its way in the hands of many races across existence. As the search for the missing pieces spread so did the teachings, as the adepts began taking acolytes of any race (except those related to illithids).

Organization
NPC Reactions

Sublime Key Adept Lore

Sublime Key Adepts In The Game

Adaptation

Sample Encounter

Kobold Avenger's picture
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factotums
Joined: 2005-11-18
PrC for Psionics/ToB with hyper-reality concept, in development

Under the history of this prestige class does this diverge too much from the previously mentioned history of the Gith races?

MakThuumNgatha's picture
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Joined: 2006-11-12
PrC for Psionics/ToB with hyper-reality concept, in development

Their is virtually no material on the history of the forerunners of the Gith races prior to their enslavement. Most evidence suggests that they lacked psionic potential prior to their enslavement and that they were in general quite primitive. While I don't have Bruce Cordell's Illithid adventure trilogy with me; I am fairly certain that it is stated in "Dawn of the Overmind" that home world of the gith forerunners lied in the crystal sphere that would eventually be known as Penumbra, the center of the Illithid Empire. But there are no ruins of the ancient civilization of the forerunners to be found. It could be that they still do exist hidden away in some corner that never interested the Illithids, or that the cities were dismantled and used for raw materials by the illithids. Another question that comes to my mind stems from the fact that the forerunners, as you present them, must have been quite powerful: how did the early illithids overthrow them? Who were the early thralls of the illithids that they managed to use to overcome the forerunners?

Ultimately much of the history of the Gith races and the illithids is unknown and not addressed in canonical texts. Nothing that you said necessarily contradicts canon. But I have to wonder what is actually gained by attributing the origins of the Sublime Key Adept prestige class to forerunners of the Gith races?

Kobold Avenger's picture
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factotums
Joined: 2005-11-18
PrC for Psionics/ToB with hyper-reality concept, in development

I do see some points that need to be clarified or fixed with this project...

The gith origin was something I tacked on when needing to come up with a reason for this prestige class to exist.

My theory of why they were conquered by the Illithids were that the gith fore-runners were a rather peaceful people as a whole, and that the early adepts of the sublime keys were just a sub-culture of these ancients, and back then it might not have even existed in as martial of a form. In some ways they may have been like the Shaolin and Wudan, those schools were never the actual defenders or military of China, the Chinese imperial military forces were.

Then again the Illithids in their natural state exist as parasitic tadpole like creatures that grow into Neolithids. Maybe a bunch of the leaders of the ancients became infected with the Ceremorphis parasites, and by the time it became apparent, it was too late.

Now the sublime way (not the sublime keys) in the book of nine swords is described as this universal practice and tradition that many races have. It's origins were somewhat left shrouded, but it suggests that Hobgoblins, the Gith races, and Rakshasa were some of the early races to use those fighting styles.

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