I'm building a Sadist Life Leech Soulthief Vitalist. I have never built, let alone played, a Psionic character before, so I don't even know where to start as far as the feats go. Any advice on what I should be looking for as far as feats are concerned would be greatly appreciated.
A couple of fun combos
Signature skill-heal
Occult skill unlock
Pyschic healing
And the battlefield surgeon trait
The combo is explained on a Reddit thread called "the heal skill has recently become awesome"
Essentially you can take a heal check on someone, and heal them (without spells) as well as give them a huge buffer if temporary hit points, treat party memebrs before a fight and you can give them a ton of extra hit points :D
Also, the vitalist can pass healing to others, so if you grab endurance, and diehard, you can grab a feat called
Fast healer, which allows you to gain extra healing equal to 1/2 your constitution whenever you are healed
Get a nice high constitution score (even 18 increases all healing by 2)
Then get an item boots if the earth
(Grants fast healing for a move action, as long as you don't move, this healing is increased by half your constitution)
And eventually grab a ring of regeneration (will also grant extra healing with fast healer)
And that's extra hit points you can pass on every round :)
(If your allies take this combo, they can also recieve extra healing from your healing)
Signature Skill (Heal) is also really good in conjunction with the Healer's Hands feat.
Prerequisite(s): Heal 1 rank, Knowledge (planes) 1 rank.
Benefit(s): You can use the Heal skill to treat deadly wounds as a full-round action. You do not take a penalty for not using a healer’s kit when treating deadly wounds this way, and you can do so on a given creature more than once per day. When treating deadly wounds this way, if your result exceeds the DC by 10 or more, add your ranks in Knowledge (planes) to the damage healed. These benefits do not apply to creatures that are not healed by positive energy.
You can use this feat’s benefit a number of times per day equal to your ranks in Knowledge (planes).
If you have a skill rank every level you need a place for, Knowledge (Planes) feeds this feat.
These are great suggestions. Thanks a lot.
Your welcome :)
@ Chrion, you're going to be using Steal Health as a primary form of damage during the early levels, and when you want to step up the damage that's when you'll use Transfer Wounds. As a Soul Thief Vitalist, your Xfer Wounds is particularly nasty because it's a Touch Attack nuke that heals you for the full amount of the damage caused. The cool thing about the Vitalist is that all of your healing is "Triage" healing that can be dispersed throughout the group whenever you Steal Health or Xfer Wounds, or whenever you manifest any healing powers obviously. Anywho, almost all of your primary attacks are going to heal your group, so making Touch Attacks land all the time is key to your success. Right off the bat, get Blind-Fight and Intuitive Fighting; this causes your Wisdom mod to be used for your Touch Attacks in lieu of Strength. Also, get Expanded Knowledge and pick up the Hammer power at lvl 5-7ish. Manifest Hammer on yourself and get a bunch of charges, and then start doing your Xfer Wounds and Steal Health (just make sure that you don't manifest other powers once Hammer is active on you, otherwise all your Hammer charges will disappear-- you can still use abilities like Xfer Wounds and Steal Health though). Each time you touch a target, the Hammer is going to proc and you're going to Steal Health on top of that.
Hammer + Steal Health or Hammer + Transfer Wounds are going to be your primary way of causing damage and healing throughout the entire game, and you'll be set up to do this by level 5 by getting those three feats: Blind Fight, Intuitive Fighting, and Expanded Knowledge: Hammer.
Next, you'll want to make sure you have Psicrystal Affinity and use Vigor/Share Pain on your Psicrystal to beef up Temp HP and then half all the damage you suffer between yourself and your psicrystal. This makes you extremely tough to kill, and if you ever get close to death, re-manifest Vigor throughout your entire party (including your Psicrystal).
Once you've established these feat chains, you can really go anywhere from there. You could choose to augment your Manifesting prowess by picking up Exp Knowledge: Energy Missile as your freebie at level 9, OR you can augment your Melee prowess/survivability by getting Exp Knowledge: Metamorphosis. Metamorphosis gives you the ability to Fly, and it also gives you TONS of on-demand utility.
If you choose to augment your Manifesting Prowess, you're definitely going to want to get Psionic Meditation, Psicrystal Containment, Empower Power, and Maximize Power.
As far as archetype, I would definitely not recommend taking Life Leech, but Sadist is cool. Life Leech takes away your Xfer Wounds ability, and it's honestly just too freaking good for a Soul Thief to give up.
As far as ability scores, you should be Wis >>>> Dex=Con > Int=Str >>>> Cha. Try to start the game at level 1 with an 18 Wis and use your racial to make it 20 Wis and pump it with items asap. Your Wisdom drives your entire class because it's how you get extra daily Power Points, increase your offensive power DC's, and determine your +attack if you get Intuitive fighting.
As far as Race, Human or Elan. Elans get psionic specific boons and a couple of immediate action abilities to make you so much more survivable with boosting Saves or even using your PP to absorb damage, AND more importantly, Elan's FCB for Vitalist is +1/2 uses per day of Xfer Wounds-- which is extra nukey/healy goodness. Humans are an obvious good choice as well because of the extra feat and you can start the game with Blind-Fight AND Intuitive Fighting, then at lvl 3 get Psicrystal Affinity, and then at lvl 5 get Expanded Knowledge: Hammer. Human's FCB is +1/3 power, so you can gain extra powers this way. Vitalists only get 11 powers by level 20, so picking up extra powers makes humans pretty attractive.
As an example:
A level 7 Vitalist with 22 Wis causes 3d6+7 damage with Transfer Wounds, and you would heal all this damage back to yourself (which you can disperse as a Triage heal throughout your Collective as a free action). You would have +9 (3BAB + 6Wis) to make a Touch Attack (most TAC's are around 10-15, unless they're a rogue with crazy dex).
You could manifest Hammer on yourself for 7 PP and give yourself a 2d8 Hammer that lasts for 5 charges (or a 3d8 Hammer for 3 charges), and each charge is going to go off whenever you make a Touch Attack with your Xfer Wounds.
So:
Xfer wounds for 3d6+7 dmg (and as a Soul Thief, all this damage becomes healing for your Collective), and then a 3d8 Hammer goes off because you Touched the target.
At level 7 that's an avg DPR of 16.5 dmg+ 16.5 triage heal, plus an avg DPR of 13.5 dmg from Hammer. You'd still have 2 charges of Hammer left after this.
Wow. Thanks for taking the time to write all this up for me I really appreciate it. Are you sure transfer wounds can be used in combination with hammer how you describe it? Using transfer wounds is a standard action and using Hammer requires you to make a touch attack. I'm not sure you could do both at the same time, but I could be wrong.
You're welcome :)
Hammer stays on you for multiple charges, similar to the spell Frostbite. When you use Transfer Wounds you're using a class ability, not a power. So if you manifest Hammer in round 1 (or prior to combat) and then use Transfer Wounds in rounds 2, 3, and 4, your hammer charges go off as a secondary effect because you touched someone while using Transfer Wounds (or even Steal Health).
The only way that the Hammer effect is going to end is if you expend all of the charges or if you manifest any new powers.
Touch Spells in Combat
Many spells have a range of touch. To use these spells, you cast the spell and then touch the subject. In the same round that you cast the spell, you may also touch (or attempt to touch) as a free action. You may take your move before casting the spell, after touching the target, or between casting the spell and touching the target. You can automatically touch one friend or use the spell on yourself, but to touch an opponent, you must succeed on an attack roll.
Touch Attacks: Touching an opponent with a touch spell is considered to be an armed attack and therefore does not provoke attacks of opportunity. The act of casting a spell, however, does provoke an attack of opportunity. Touch attacks come in two types: melee touch attacks and ranged touch attacks. You can score critical hits with either type of attack as long as the spell deals damage. Your opponent’s AC against a touch attack does not include any armor bonus, shield bonus, or natural armor bonus. His size modifier, Dexterity modifier, and deflection bonus (if any) all apply normally.
Holding the Charge: If you don’t discharge the spell in the round when you cast the spell, you can hold the charge indefinitely. You can continue to make touch attacks round after round. If you touch anything or anyone while holding a charge, even unintentionally, the spell discharges. If you cast another spell, the touch spell dissipates. You can touch one friend as a standard action or up to six friends as a full-round action. Alternatively, you may make a normal unarmed attack (or an attack with a natural weapon) while holding a charge. In this case, you aren’t considered armed and you provoke attacks of opportunity as normal for the attack. If your unarmed attack or natural weapon attack normally doesn’t provoke attacks of opportunity, neither does this attack. If the attack hits, you deal normal damage for your unarmed attack or natural weapon and the spell discharges. If the attack misses, you are still holding the charge.