Psychic fighter combat ideas?

[Munafiq]

Hi all. Loving the flavorful Psychic class and prepping a new character to drop into an already advanced Age of Ashes campaign. I’m semi-retiring my goblin Swashbuckler (fencer-acrobat) and replacing him with another 12th level character. I’m excited about my character concept in general, but wondering if folks have suggestions about specific combat tactics. I’m seeing few online discussions about psychic martials (so maybe I should have picked up the hint that this is sub-par?!).

The character is a Psychic base but with a heavy martial influence. The backstory is that he is a grizzled fighter whose psychic powers were recently manifested. He was human veteran in Lastwall (fighter and sentinel archetypes). He barely survived Tar-Baphon’s massacre at Vigil, and the traumatic near death experience has unearthed his psychic powers. We already have a straight-on tank fighter in the group so I’m the secondary martial in a group of five.

Lvl 12 - Human Lastwall-Survivor Psychic
Str 19, Dex 16, Con 19, Int 21 Wis 10, Cha 10
Conscious Mind - The Silent Whisper
Subconscious Mind - Precise Discipline

He wears half-plate and uses a shield and warhammer. Feats are mostly made up of fighter/martial feats since I’m mostly relying on class features for the psychic under-structure:

1-Light armor proficiency
2-Fighter dedication
3-Medium armor proficiency
4-AOO
5-Toughness
6-Fighter resiliency
7-Fast recovery
8-Sentinel dedication
9-Shield block
10-Impose order
11-Steel skin
12-Psi catastrophe

My general sense of his combat strategy is that he’ll start by casting in round 1, setting himself up to Unleash Psyche. Then spend the next 2 rounds unloading spells, especially the no duration damage spells that are increased during the Unleash period. Then he’d enter hand-to-hand combat with shield/hammer while he’s stupefied and recovering. That seems like a feasible back-and-forth combat pattern, but am I missing anything? Beyond the general unleash-melee-unleash cycle, I could use some more specific ideas, like best cantrips or spells to use and when? Combat tactics? Etc. Thanks a lot!

[CaffeinatedNinja]

I think your biggest issue is that a psychic in melee combat is not going to hit at all accurately or hard and is going to be super squishy.

Your plan to wade into combat in round 4 isn't bad, but those are usually (not always) cleanup rounds after the threat is mostly dealt with, so might work?

I wouldn't go fighter though.

I would use unconventional weaponry as a human ancestry trait to get a martial weapon that will scale with you, at a cheap price! Warhammer should work, that is definitely common in other cultures hah.

Then instead of fighter take Champion. That is a lot easier for stats, since you just need str and cha, and you can use cha as your primary psychic stat.

That gets you heavy armor, access to lay on hands, etc etc.

[VampByDay]

I theorycrafted a psychic fighter. Check out my psychic guide, it is the first build under esoteric builds.

[Munafiq]

Yes, Caffeinated, totally agree that Champion is the most efficient or fitting way to go. I tried but it just doesn't fit with my character concept (the deity/cause aspects or the CHR aspect) so I went the less efficient fighter route. I like the unconventional weaponry idea, but not sure that it actually scales up(?) but will check it out, thanks!

Vamp, found your psychic guide right after I posted! Love the guide overall, really cool. I like the melee psychic build, thanks. And I agree, it's a pretty specific build to get the right mix. I've seen a few other references to the dwarf/unburdened iron, I think it's a great fit. I tried to achieve something similar for the human with sentinel. One thought, for melee psychic fighter you might want to make a reference to the unleash-melee-releash cycle since I think it may end up driving the combat pattern with this multiclass. But I'll have to see how it works out when I finally get to put it into practice...

[VampByDay]

Munafiq wrote:

Yes, Caffeinated, totally agree that Champion is the most efficient or fitting way to go. I tried but it just doesn't fit with my character concept (the deity/cause aspects or the CHR aspect) so I went the less efficient fighter route. I like the unconventional weaponry idea, but not sure that it actually scales up(?) but will check it out, thanks!

Vamp, found your psychic guide right after I posted! Love the guide overall, really cool. I like the melee psychic build, thanks. And I agree, it's a pretty specific build to get the right mix. I've seen a few other references to the dwarf/unburdened iron, I think it's a great fit. I tried to achieve something similar for the human with sentinel. One thought, for melee psychic fighter you might want to make a reference to the unleash-melee-releash cycle since I think it may end up driving the combat pattern with this multiclass. But I'll have to see how it works out when I finally get to put it into practice...

Glad you liked the guide!