Divine Minds may be better than we thought

[Garryl]

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20070629a
Take a look at the Ectopic Ally ACF for Divine Minds. At the cost of 5 ft. of aura radius, you get Astral Construct 1/day/2 levels as a psi-like ability. But, it gets better/stranger than that.

You take the ACF at 1st level. Half your level is 0 at 1st level, so you gain no benefit until 2nd.
The fluff section indicates you should choose an ectopic form. Nothing in the ability says anything about the AC you summon being in that form.
The AC is a PLA, meaning it's automatically augmented up to your ML (equal to your class level). But, you can spend extra daily uses to augment it even further. I think someone forgot that psi-likes automatically augment or forgot to put in a clause saying that the AC power doesn't augment.

As written, this seems like a nice boost to the Divine Mind (after 1st level, at least). Makes it like a weaker psionic version of PF's Summoner. Also lets you get a 9th level AC at level 10. As intended, it's still probably worth the trade, although it isn't as amazing.

[Havok4]

That actually makes the class somewhat salvageable. Nice find. It is kind of sad when it is a great leap forward for a class to have the ability to manifest a couple of pseudo summon powers per day.

[awaken_D_M_golem]

It may have been discussed like 1 or 2 posts when it came out ...  ... (man giggle).
Substitute Powers from the Ardent section, specifically refers to "mantles" not ardents.
Div Minds get lots of mileage out of Sub powers.


The AC thingy:
1*1=1 ppoint equivalent ... might be worth it, but I don't think so.

2*3=6 ppoint equivalent ... retrain the ability at 3rd level, back in for 1st level aura. Gain your 5' Aura back.
Absolutely worth it. It's much more difficult to make the Aura bigger to be more useful.
or 1*5=5 ppoint and no increase in ability access.

etc on up

8*15=120 ppoint or 4*17=68 ppoint
9*17=153 ppoint

153 + the base Div Mind ppoints = better than normal 6th level casters like Bard.
But consider if you were playing a Psion and half of your ppoints had to go to AC.
You can make a Psion that does that better. You might not want to.

You might value it higher, for the Ectopic part.
Still the old psi board figured ACs are about on par with Earth Elementals.
You can get much better summoning on the Arcane side of things.


6s to get 1/2 the 7s feels like the break point of usefulness. That's level 11.

Level 14 gets the move action aura switch + a Hustle item to improve it.
This got the all 7s AC stuff at level 13. Good enough. Get out of Div Mind.