Ardent

Class Traits

Those who let their base emotions rule them invite madness and destruction. Prolonged feelings of fear, greed, lust, or hatred can weaken the mind’s defenses against manipulation. Wielding psionic power, you excite such emotions in your enemies, creating gaps in their defenses and frustrating their attacks, all while filling your allies with encouraging thoughts and guarding them against despair and other negative emotions.

Ardents rarely learn their art through formal training. In many ways, they are incidental leaders, having stumbled onto psionic power at some point earlier in their lives. How you discovered your psionic talent can shape how you wield this power now.

You might have awakened to your talent in the heat of battle, experiencing a mental breakthrough that allowed you to augment your attacks by rending your enemies’ minds. Or your friends might reflect your power when your mood bleeds into theirs, altering their emotional states to match your own. Regardless of the revelation, you learned to harness this power to support your fighting prowess and to guide your allies to victory.

“My joy is your anguish. My courage is your fear. My path to victory lies within your mind.”

FOR THE ardent, emotions are more than mere sensation. Emotion is a weapon you can wield and a tool with which the world can be remade. You draw power from your experience, taking advantage of your joy, your courage, and even your fear. You call on the power of your psionics by focusing your mental state, weaving emotion into a complex web or inflaming your passions through sheer force of will. Just as you channel this power, you are also a conduit for it. Sensing the emotions of allies and enemies alike, you manipulate them to suit your purpose with a deft mental touch.

Those who stand at your side are strengthened by the power that flows from you. Your enemies find their own bravery withering, their plans confused and their hopes shattered by the strength of your mental resolve. But the psionic power you wield comes at a price. Fear and doubt, dark thoughts and anger can all cloud your concentration.

Class Features

Ardents have the following class features.

Ardent Mantle

A person’s state of mind can be armor against the decay and madness born from base emotions, and thus ardents gird themselves by donning particular mindsets to ward off the perils brought on by fear, despair, and hatred. Various emotional states, called mantles, can safeguard the mind. Ardents most commonly use the mantles of clarity and elation.

Choose one of the following options. Your choice gives a power to you as well as a benefit to you and your allies.

In addition, each ally within 5 squares of you gains a +2 bonus to Insight checks and Perception checks.

You also gain the ardent alacrity power.

In addition, each ally within 5 squares of you gains a +2 bonus to Diplomacy checks and Intimidate checks.

You also gain the ardent outrage power.

When you choose your Ardent Mantle, you can choose Mantle of Impulsiveness instead of another option, such as the ones in Player’s Handbook 3.

In addition, each ally within 5 squares of you gains a +2 bonus to Endurance checks and Intimidate checks.

You also gain the ardent eruption power.

Mantle of Impulsiveness is an Ardent Mantle option from Psionic Power.

Ardent Surge

You gain the ardent surge power. Your advanced emotional state is inspirational, motivating your allies and helping them to recover from injuries.

Psionic Augmentation

Through discipline and careful study, you have mastered a form of psionic magic that offers greater versatility than other characters command. You know a broad array of at-will powers, each of which is a conduit through which you can pour as much or as little psionic energy as you choose. You channel psionic energy into a reservoir of personal power—represented in the game as power points—that you can use to augment your at-will attack powers, replacing the encounter attack powers that other characters use.

Because of this class feature, you acquire and use powers in a slightly different manner from how most other classes do.

You gain 2 additional power points at 3rd and 7th level, 1 additional power point at 13th level, and 2 additional power points at 17th, 21st, 23rd, and 27th level. If you gain power points from another source (such as your paragon path), add them to your power point total. You can use your power points to augment any augmentable power you have, regardless of how you gained the power.

You regain all your power points when you take a short or an extended rest.

• Level 1: Choose two at-will attack powers; gain 2 power points (2 total).

• Level 3: Choose one new at-will attack power; gain 2 power points (4 total).

• Level 7: Replace one at-will attack power; gain 2 power points (6 total).

• Level 13: Replace one at-will attack power; gain 1 power point (7 total).

• Level 17: Replace one at-will attack power; gain 2 power points (9 total).

• Level 21: No change to at-will attack powers; gain 2 power points (11 total).

• Level 23: Replace one at-will attack power; gain 2 power points (13 total).

• Level 27: Replace one at-will attack power; gain 2 power points (15 total).

Creating an Ardent

Ardents depend on Charisma more than other abilities. Constitution is important for powers that improve your allies’ attacks, and Wisdom is important if you want to foil your enemies’ attacks. You can choose any powers you like, though many ardents favor one of the two builds described here.

This section introduces a new ardent build for use alongside the builds presented in Player’s Handbook 3. The build includes a new mantle that you can choose when you create your ardent character.

Enlightened Ardent

You read your enemies’ weaknesses and reveal them to your allies, and your keen insight helps your allies overcome damaging effects. Make Charisma your highest ability score. You should also consider investing in Wisdom to take advantage of powers that confuse your enemies. A high Constitution not only grants you more hit points and increases your Fortitude, but it also lets you employ powers normally used by euphoric ardents. Your secondary role is defender, and your leadership helps protect allies from harm.

• Suggested Class Feature: Mantle of Clarity

• Suggested Feat: Bolstering Mantle

• Suggested Skills: Bluff, Diplomacy, Heal, Insight

• Suggested At-Will Powers: focusing strike, psionic shield

• Suggested Daily Power: wormhole plunge

Euphoric Ardent

You can scarcely contain the emotions that strain against your will like a crashing tide. When you make your attacks, they flood out of you, increasing your allies’ confidence and washing away your enemies’ courage. Charisma should be your highest ability score, followed by a high Constitution score to improve those effects that raise your allies’ spirits and diminish your enemies’ capabilities. If you want to diversify your powers, a high Wisdom can’t hurt, but you should also look to Dexterity for initiative checks and Reflex. Your secondary role is striker, and your powers can augment your allies’ attacks.

• Suggested Class Feature: Mantle of Elation

• Suggested Feat: Heartening Surge

• Suggested Skills: Athletics, Endurance, Intimidate, Streetwise

• Suggested At-Will Powers: demoralizing strike, ire strike

• Suggested Daily Power: battleborn acuity

Impetuous Ardent

If fear, sorrow, and hatred invite madness and defeat, the only certain method for protecting oneself from their toxic effects is to jettison them from the mind altogether. So-called intelligent creatures are vulnerable to such emotions when they cloak themselves in intellectual loftiness and hide behind certainty and belief to shield themselves from the uncomfortable world. You reject these notions and seek out your true nature.

Sifting through the layers of experience and learning imposed upon you by your people and culture, you uncover the iron core at the heart of your being. By retreating behind its stiff walls, you silence all doubts and misgivings, acting without hesitation or fear. Even if the results are not immediately beneficial, you do not second-guess yourself. Some might call you reckless, but you follow your true nature—a hardened warrior who offers no apology for your aggressive ways.

The battlefield is your home, and you destroy those who would seed the world with darkness. When so engaged, your eyes grow dark, and your face becomes impassive as you become a true instrument of destruction. The fear you might once have felt now manifests in your foes, shattering their resolve as you cut them down like wheat before the scythe.

Impetuous ardents have little use for caution or careful planning, and they allow their natural talent and fate to guide their actions. As an impetuous ardent, your secondary role is striker. Choose powers that deliver punishing damage, improve your allies’ attacks, or strip away your enemies’ ability to protect themselves. Any power that can help to quickly remove an enemy’s threat reinforces your preferred tactics. This said, wading through enemies places you at great risk. To mitigate the dangers arrayed against you, be sure to invest in feats and powers that help you last in combat. Charisma should be your highest ability score.

Look to your Dexterity score next to let you act sooner in the round and to keep your Reflex high. Round out your defenses and hit points by making Constitution your third highest ability score.

• Suggested Class Feature: Mantle of Impulsiveness*

• Suggested Feat: Deft Eruption*

• Suggested Skills: Athletics, Endurance, Heal, Intimidate

• Suggested At-Will Powers: impetuous ruin, part the fog

• Suggested Daily Power: battle flow*

**New option presented in Psionic Power.*

The new powers presented in this chapter add to the range of powers already available to ardents. Many of these new powers are tailored to the Impetuous Ardent build, but ardents of any kind can find useful options here.

Ardent Overview

Playing an Ardent

Fear. Fear so thick, it might as well have been perfume.

Oh, it wasn’t just fear. These thugs worked as leg breakers and enforcers for the thieves’ guild. And this was their home turf. Even now, Thalvos couldn’t be certain which of the various patrons in the common room were genuine drunks, and which were hunting him and his companions.

But they were here somewhere. This much he knew. He felt them. And there, beneath the light spice of exhilaration and a smattering of anger, the main dish was definitely fear. They knew that Thalvos and his companions had already slain a dozen members of their guild, and despite their confidence, they worried that they might be next. It would be a shame to disappoint them.

Thalvos coughed into his ale, spraying foam across his thick beard as he struggled to maintain control, fighting the urge to giggle uncontrollably. They made it so easy.

Even as he rose from his chair, he grabbed at their fear like a child catching snowflakes. He swirled it around in his mind, tasting it, transforming it. And he wondered, as he cast that emotional energy out as easily as he’d taken it in, if the thugs would recognize their own terror coating the blades that would soon be raised against them.

Wants and desires; needs and ambitions; loves and hatreds and fears. The world is driven neither by intellect nor belief, but by emotion—and those who control emotions control the world. Perhaps you are a child of the streets who learned to read danger in the intentions of others and to harness the hunger and fear that were the only weapons you had. You might be a frustrated student whose breakthrough came only after your impulses overcame your studies. You could be the guardian of a primitive tribe, drawing on powers developed in reaction to the dangers of the wild. Perhaps you are a wanderer denied a normal life, determined to reduce the suffering in the world because you are cursed to feel the suffering of others.

You might have followed one of several paths to become what you are now. As an ardent, you are driven and empowered by emotion—and you can no more change what you are or what you do than you can cease feeling at all.

Mantles and Emotions

You are unique among the psionic classes in your manipulation of emotion as the source of your power. Although all psionics users draw strength from emotion to some degree, they do so largely for the sake of their own empowerment. You use emotions as a puppeteer uses strings, manipulating the world around you.

Your powers come from the intensity of the emotion you experience. You sense the feelings of those around you and add them to your own power. Your fear armors you against attack; your anger blasts your foes with psychic force; your love and concern soothe your allies’ hurts.

Ardents draw on all feelings, but you focus on one particular emotion—your “mantle.” Although your powers do not rely on this emotion only, your mantle is the emotion on which you draw most frequently, and the one that allows you to control and channel other emotions.

Emotions Beyond Combat

Ardents absorb the emotions of those around them, but this ability remains all but unnoticeable in combat. Although battle inspires potent emotions, it creates roughly the same combination of excitement, exhilaration, anger, fear, and pain in everyone. If you’re already engaged in a life-or-death struggle, feeling your foe’s emotions isn’t likely to change your own.

Apart from battle, the ability of an ardent to absorb emotions becomes more noticeable. You likely take on at least an aspect of the feelings of those surrounding you. In the middle of a boisterous revel, you might become giddy and high-spirited. You feel grief at a funeral, even if you’ve never met the deceased. The elation felt by a gathering of zealots performing a ceremonial rite might overcome you even if you don’t share the beliefs of those present.

Ardents are not only the recipients of outside emotion—they project their own emotions as well. People gathered around when you’re in a bad mood grow irate, just as your own good cheer can spread through the dourest crowd. Neither phenomenon is so strong as to enforce an instant change in behavior. You won’t turn on a friend because someone else is mad at her, nor will your own despair cause another character to abandon an ongoing endeavor. But such emotional projections can create subtle long-term effects.

History records that the Arkhosian city of Kanrhik fell to orc mercenaries employed by Bael Turath—but some historians place the blame on one of Kanrhik’s psionically inclined noble families. When the patriarch’s only daughter fell in battle, the entire family went into mourning. Several of them were ardents, and historians believe that their sorrow so infected Kanrhik’s leaders and soldiers that they failed to react in time to an assault they should otherwise have repelled. Among those familiar with psionics, a sudden change in the behavior of a small population is often taken as evidence of an ardent’s presence.

Although many ardents shun strong emotion and avoid large groups so that they aren’t overwhelmed by the feelings of others, some members of this class deliberately seek out such experiences. They travel in the hope of experiencing everything the world has to offer: the greatest joys, the fiercest fury, and the darkest sorrow. By doing so, these ardents hope to learn to control such emotions, to ready themselves for accidental encounters with strong feelings, and to harness that energy to empower their disciplines.

Your Life Before

Ardents are the most seemingly mundane of the psionic classes. Psions and monks train to become what they are; battleminds discover their power in the heat of combat or under physical duress. You, on the other hand, might have been anyone. Ardents sometimes learn their abilities from other ardents, but for most, their powers arise spontaneously. It is said that no amount of study can create an ardent from someone who lacks the basic empathic and psionic capacities.

You might have been wandering the marketplace when you were suddenly overwhelmed by the feelings of those around you. Perhaps you returned from a hunt to discover that you had far greater insight into the people of your village. Or you might have had an inkling of your power before it fully manifested, perhaps discovering that your own mood influenced those around you. You might have taken advantage of your ability to manipulate moods by becoming a vendor, a performer, a grifter, or a gambler. Depending on what sort of person you were, you might have been popular, making those around you as happy as you were. Or perhaps you were hated, as your own anger or resentment was mirrored back by others.

Whatever the case, people rarely appreciate being manipulated. Many ardents first take up the path of a wandering adventurer when those around them become aware of their power, turning against them and forcing them to abandon the lives they once led.

Roleplaying an Ardent

Unsurprisingly, as an ardent, you are a highly emotional person. You react strongly to others, sometimes overreacting. If something is funny, it’s hilarious; if it’s fearsome, it’s terrifying; if it’s irritating, it’s infuriating. These extremes come about partly because you feel echoes of others’ emotions, and partly because your own emotions run so strongly. They must, after all, if you’re to draw power from them.

You can roleplay this internal conflict to give your character a strong sense of personality. You might attempt to wear a mask of stoicism at all times, struggling to repress—or at least conceal—those emotions. You don’t speak often, and you make every effort to avoid snap decisions.

You could also choose to go with the flow of the emotions surrounding you. You laugh loudly, and you fight fiercely. But if you decide to play your ardent as boisterous, don’t hog the spotlight. You’re a character, not a caricature, and faking tears because the tavern doesn’t carry elven wine isn’t dramatic—it’s silly, and it can take everyone else out of the game.

Consider playing your character’s emotions as appropriate to the powers you use. When imposing penalties with fear attacks, you might become vicious and intimidating, blatantly angry. Or you might become fearful instead, your manipulation of that emotion making you hesitate to approach your foes, or forcing you to visibly “talk yourself up” before taking risks. When healing your allies, allow your concern for them to show in your voice and your actions, perhaps acting briefly as a defender as you stand between them and the enemy. Your powers draw on your emotions—in a very real sense, they are your emotions—so if you behave appropriately, you help reinforce that connection in the minds of the other players, as well as in your own.

Many ardents are solicitous of others. These ardents are sympathetic and kind, always quick with a joke or a shoulder on which to lean. But some ardents grow jaded to the emotions of others over time. They wall themselves off, not caring what the people around them feel. They project their own emotions onto other characters—perhaps out of a desire to manipulate, perhaps out of spite. As an ardent, you are constantly torn between these two extremes, and only you can decide which path you ultimately take.

Ambient Emotion

In the same way that you can adjust your character’s emotional state based on the power you’re using, you might do so based on the people around you. If one of your companions is upset, you might become so as well, even if you have no real motivation to do so. If your party is attending a ball, you might be swept up in the joy and pageantry when you’re supposed to be keeping your wits about you. Again, don’t take the emotions too far—this should be a character quirk, not a means of stealing attention from the other players or ruining their plans. In moderation, however, this can provide both an interesting roleplaying challenge and an obvious hook by which to make your character memorable.

Spur of the Moment

You have little use for intricate planning. You prefer to act as the urge strikes you in any given situation, trusting your instincts and your feelings to guide you. You might grow impatient with others who try to plan for every possible contingency.

This doesn’t mean you’re incapable of forethought, however, nor does it make you an idiot. You don’t blindly leap into obvious danger, and you don’t take actions detrimental to your party or your cause simply because you’re in an irritable mood. More often than not, though, you base your decisions on what feels right rather than laboriously calculating every possible outcome.

Follow the Leader

Player’s Handbook 3 refers to ardents as “incidental leaders.” Although you might deliberately set out to fill a leadership role, most ardents don’t consciously choose to do so. Like so much else, you probably got where you are by following your instincts and impulses.

Even as a leader, you might not take an active leadership role. Instead, you use your powers to support your allies and are content to let someone else make the decisions. When people do follow you, it’s more likely because you’re the first to act and because you instinctively know that your decisions are the correct ones. (At least you feel that way at the time; hindsight might convince you otherwise.) You never insist that others follow your lead. But, driven as you are by your emotions, you might be surprised or put out when they don’t.

You might find yourself in a position of leadership only under specific circumstances. For example, if you play your ardent as a sharp-tempered, tactically savvy character, you might find your companions happy to follow your lead in battle but hesitant to let you speak (or stand too close) during diplomatic negotiations.

Manifestation

Your disciplines visually manifest in an aura of color that swirls around you, its hues and intensity varying based on your emotions. If you’re interested in individualizing your character or stretching your creative muscles a bit, consider modifying your ardent’s manifestations.

If your character is grim and despondent, your corona might contain elements of swirling gray and deepest black, mixed with whatever colors represent your current feelings. Alternatively, your corona might take on recognizable shapes. If you’re a zealously religious character, your corona might become a winged silhouette reminiscent of an angel. A militant, bloodthirsty ardent’s corona might resemble a weapon forged of light.

Your corona might change based on the power you’re using. Defensive powers might manifest in a form resembling armor or a shield. Teleportation powers could manifest as a brief image of a rearing horse or flapping wings.

Ardents in the World

In a world accustomed to all manner of magic, ardents are imperfectly understood. Because their powers arise spontaneously, and because they represent a relatively new form of psionics, less is known about ardents than about monks or psions. (Moreover, in the grim aftermath of the fall of Nerath, those who do understand ardents have difficulty disseminating that knowledge.)

Many people—including those well versed in the arcane arts—don’t yet recognize ardents as possessing a fully realized, variant form of psionics, seeing them only as peculiar individuals who have an odd smattering of powers. In isolated regions, they remain subject to lingering traces of superstitious suspicion that have largely faded from more civilized lands. Because of this, ardents have left only a light footprint in the world to date.

Rising Emotions

Ardents represent the youngest—or at least the most recently recorded—tradition of psionics. Although history is replete with individuals who might well have been ardents, the first confirmed ardents appeared only within the last few centuries. The Bael Turathi general Insalanda led the tiefling armies against the forces of Arkhosia for years, turning her enemy’s own fears against them. Although several bloodlines of Arkhosian dragonborn also produced ardents, Insalanda is the first historical figure who contemporary sages agree was an ardent of real power.

Since Insalanda’s time, the population of ardents has increased—some say faster than any other type of psionics user. But the sages cannot agree on why ardents first appeared, or why their numbers are increasing so swiftly. Supporters of various theories—such as the belief that psionic energy is a reaction to, or is caused by, aberrant incursions—point to ardents as evidence that the Far Realm’s influence is growing. Those who have religious viewpoints believe the increase is the result of conflict between Ioun and Vecna, which has allowed psionic energy to grow uncontrolled. Those who cite the theory of phrenic planes (page 91) suggest that the physical and mental planes are coming into alignment. (See “The Origin of Psionics,” page 118, for more on these theories.) But every argument is hypothetical at best, and no faction has offered proof. All they agree on is that the spread of ardents suggests that psionic energy is indeed growing more prevalent in the world.

Ardents and Witchcraft

A common theme during the early years of the ardents’ emergence into the world was the extreme mistrust and persecution they faced. Although the great empires treated ardents as any other user of obscure energy, smaller communities often revived ancient charges of witchcraft that had otherwise been largely forgotten in an age of widespread spellcraft.

The common folk, after all, have a vague idea of what arcane and divine magic are supposed to look like. When lone individuals appeared among them, manifesting strange coronas and unfamiliar powers, a certain level of distrust and fear was unavoidable. The nature of the ardents’ power amplified this initial distrust, often with horrifying results. An ardent’s ability to magnify ambient emotion meant that a people’s suspicion and an ardent’s own fear would mix and reflect back from the ardent like a dark tide, resulting in a vicious cycle of escalating terror and rage. In many communities, ardents were persecuted or killed. In others, they used their powers to become petty tyrants.

Although it is not a widely held belief, some historians attribute the fall of Nerath in part to ardents. They maintain that the social turmoil that devastated the far-flung reaches of the empire was caused by this kind of emotional feedback, centered on a small but growing ardent population.

Many early ardents were driven into various fringe organizations and faiths, including a number of diabolic cults. Commoners who already attributed ardent energy to an evil influence quickly drove such characters into the arms of those who would accept them, even as devil worshipers sought to take advantage of the ardents’ strange new powers. The fact that many early ardents arose among the Asmodeus worshipers of Bael Turath also contributed to this association.

Ardents Today

In recent years, as the number of ardents has increased, the folk of the humanoid realms have grown more accepting of them. A few isolated communities still express distrust, but in most regions, an ardent can expect a welcome no different from any other psionics user.

That said, ardents are still the least understood of the psionic classes. Ardents rarely form groups larger than the occasional cabal, and they lack the larger guilds and colleges that make wizards and psions readily identifiable to the populace. Ardents operate freely in many regions, although not because of any growing acceptance. Rather, the average commoner has no inkling that such characters even exist.

Even other psionics users sometimes look askance at ardents—not denigrating their abilities, but questioning their level of discipline. Monks and psions, who train hard to master their powers, view the emotional and impulsive ardent as a wild card, lacking the self-control to master the power with which he or she plays. In particular, because many psions value intellect and logical process over instinct, members of the two classes often end up on opposite sides of lively philosophical debates.

Battleminds are more accepting of ardents’ abilities, since they, too, operate largely on an instinctive level. But a focus on the physical leads many battleminds to shut themselves off from emotion in a way that ardents cannot understand.

Such conflict between the classes is rarely seen within adventuring parties, where a character’s actions and commitment to his or her allies speaks louder than words. Moreover, as the number of ardents increases and people become ever more aware of their capabilities, these general attitudes are slowly but surely shifting toward a measure of grudging respect.

Ardent Lore

Corona’s Glow (Optional Rule)

At your Dungeon Master’s discretion, the corona that manifests when you use your powers casts a visible light. Whenever you use an ardent encounter or daily power, you also shed dim light to a range of 4 squares until the start of your next turn. During this time, anyone in the area can see normally, but you take a –5 penalty to Stealth checks.

The Court of Sorrows

The most infamous of the small number of ardent enclaves scattered across the world is the so-called Court of Sorrows. This company of a dozen ardents dwells in a communal home in the isolated wilderness, but its members spend their time traveling throughout the region’s major communities. The court offers its services to any who can pay, and specializes in manipulating the leaders and governments of communities.

Rather than using overt, short-term, and easily detected methods such as domination powers, the ardents of the Court of Sorrows instead covertly gather in large numbers near government buildings and emote in unison. With so many ardents gathered together, the feelings that they project can have a subtle yet substantial impact on the mindset and emotional state of all people nearby. The effect is not capable of forcing a local duke, baron, or mayor to make any given decision. But it does render such characters susceptible to negotiation, intimidation, or deception, and makes it more difficult for them to make tactically wise decisions.

Although the ardents of the Court of Sorrows are paid well for their services, they have no obvious use for the funds they gain. As a result, the order’s true goals remain unknown.

The Role of Emotion

If you’ve chosen to roleplay your ardent as an emotionally driven or impulsive character, you might consider altering the way you behave in combat to match. For instance, when you are surprised, when you feel particularly threatened, or when you’re first bloodied, you might react with a daily power, the use of an action point, or both—even when these options are less than tactically sound.

If you’re interested in trying something different, consider this: What’s it like to literally feel someone die? Adventuring is a violent way of life. Creatures such as aberrants and demons are alien and innately evil enough that their deaths don’t bother you, and constructs and most undead don’t project much in the way of feelings. But what about a dragon? An orc? For that matter, what about a human or dwarf mercenary? What does it do to you to feel their emotions at the moment of death? Do you spend a few moments, or hours, in a despondent state after combat? Do you throw yourself headlong into the next adventure, hoping it’ll make you forget the last?

Because the rules of the game make it relatively easy to defeat a foe without slaying it, you might refuse to kill your enemies—again, making exceptions for particularly vile creatures—regardless of the difficulties that might result. You should first make sure that other players around the table are okay with this. Not everyone enjoys regular “What do we do with the prisoners?” discussions.

For the Dungeon Master: Sinister Intent

Although it makes up a huge thematic aspect of the ardent class, the ability to sense and project emotions doesn’t have much of a mechanical impact. Many of the ardent’s powers play off it, but it remains primarily a flavor and roleplaying tool.

You can use this connection to emotion as a story tool or an adventure hook, as well. This chapter already offers examples of how the long-term presence of a population of ardents can affect a community. On a smaller scale, you can use an ardent character as a means of introducing plot points to the party. Suppose the adventurers are in the middle of a well-attended banquet in the castle of the local duchy, enjoying the atmosphere, when suddenly the ardent experiences a sharp spike of murderous rage. What does it mean? Are murderous plots afoot? Is the duke in danger? And perhaps most importantly, who among the hundreds of guests was the source of this sensation?

If you go this route, make sure that your player understands that this is not something over which the character has control or that can be consistently relied on. An ardent is not a walking lie detector, and the character cannot wander past each person in hopes of sensing the emotion for which he or she is looking. If a player wants his or her ardent character to sense emotions deliberately, use the Insight skill and augment it with feat and background choices.

Ardent Powers

When you use your ardent disciplines, you transmit your thoughts and emotions to those around you.

These sensations bleed into nearby creatures, either filling them with despair and pain or hope and vigor. Your powers are accompanied by visual signs, contained in a sudden corona of light that swirls out from your head and flares around you. The light’s color reflects your mood, with brilliant scarlet flashes representing anger; green, health and vigor; black, fear and death; and so on. When you augment your powers by spending power points, the corona intensifies.

The new powers presented in this chapter add to the range of powers already available to ardents. Many of these new powers are tailored to the Impetuous Ardent build, but ardents of any kind can find useful options here.

Class Features

Level 1 At-Will Disciplines

Level 1 Daily Disciplines

Level 2 Utility Disciplines

Level 3 At-Will Disciplines

Level 5 Daily Disciplines

Level 6 Utility Disciplines

Level 7 At-Will Disciplines

Level 9 Daily Disciplines

Level 10 Utility Disciplines

Level 13 At-Will Disciplines

Level 15 Daily Disciplines

Level 16 Utility Disciplines

Level 17 At-Will Disciplines

Level 19 Daily Disciplines

Level 22 Utility Disciplines

Level 23 At-Will Disciplines

Level 25 Daily Disciplines

Level 27 At-Will Disciplines

Level 29 Daily Disciplines

Paragon Paths

At 11th level an ardent may take one of these paragon paths. Each grants path features at 11th and 16th levels plus the encounter, utility, and daily disciplines shown.

Anarchic Adept

“I see the order within uncertainty; I touch the chaos within law. I stand in both worlds as master of order and disorder.”

As your psionic talent matures, you find yourself focusing on the disparate nature of the disciplines you master. Focusing your thought on the edge of unpredictability in your training, you discover the latent chaos flowing through your magic. Through trial and error, you learned to master the chaos latent within your powers and unleash it against your enemies. Drawing on the power of chaos can be dangerous, but you are up to any risk you might face.

Anarchic Adept Path Features

• 1: No effect.

• 2: The ally shifts as a free action.

• 3: The ally gains a +1 power bonus to attack rolls until the end of your next turn.

• 4: The ally gains temporary hit points equal to your Charisma modifier.

• 5: The ally gains a bonus to damage rolls on his or her next attack equal to your Charisma modifier.

• 6: The ally can make a basic attack as a free action.

Anarchic Adept Disciplines

Argent Soul

“Despair has no hold when I am near.”

You are a brilliant vessel; you embody hope, joy, and endless confidence, and your presence lifts your allies’ spirits. On the battlefield, you wash away despair, dispel doubt, and fuel your allies’ passions. As an argent soul, you have an uncommonly pure spirit. You see the best in every situation, finding solutions where others find only defeat. Melancholy has no hold on you, for optimism’s light burns away grief. Others find your good nature infectious and strive to rise to your example.

The road to becoming an argent soul is varied.

You can simply be a good and wholesome person, untouched by the horrors you have witnessed, or you might have been touched by a god, your soul purified and claimed for a higher purpose. Regardless of the cause of your transformation, it is profound.

Whenever you attack with your ardent powers, a silver corona glimmers around you. Those it touches feel their confidence building, the pain from their injuries falling away so that they can keep fighting no matter the odds.

Argent Soul Path Features

Argent Soul Disciplines

Awakened Visionary

“Many roads lead into the future, but by following the one I walk, you can find the victory you seek.”

Incursions from the Far Realm have left scars across the world throughout the ages, so that the material fabric of the mortal realm is riddled with holes and fault lines. Your psionic power has made you sensitive to the damage caused by the aberrant invasion, and it has given you a talent for using that damage to your own advantage.

The memories come to you in dreams and waking visions, instructing you in forgotten fighting techniques to better combat the invasion from the Outside. These revelations also grant you a unique perspective on the world, allowing you to seek hidden pathways through time and space. Through these unseen scars of ancient battles, you move from place to place in a flash and can open portals through which you scatter your enemies across the battlefield. The more destruction caused by the threat of the Far Realm, the more powerful you become. Most importantly, this knowledge also tells you that the aberrant menace will one day be defeated.

Awakened Visionary Path Features

Awakened Visionary Disciplines

Catalyst

“I am the key to unlocking your forgotten potential.”

Although knowledge and training are great virtues, sometimes such expertise acts as a barrier. Knowledge can breed complacency, blinding an individual to a better path. As an individual specializes, time spent gaining a deeper understanding of the chosen specialty is time not used to expand his or her knowledge in other areas. Too much focus can narrow the vision.

Rather than bind yourself to one pursuit and one belief, you expand your mind and reject your assumptions. In doing so, you find new possibilities to explore. The lessons you learn help you overcome different challenges and hardships, and they allow you to adapt to whatever situation you face.

The liberation you enjoy can also extend to your companions. Reaching into their minds, you stir their true selves, shaking them free from the expectations that bind them. No doubts or fears hold them back. They are free to strive harder and to push past limitations their expertise places on them. You are their catalyst, and with a mere mental touch, you effect a transformation to help them become what they were meant to be.

Catalyst Path Features

Catalyst Disciplines

Incandescent Champion

“Not even the gods can control the perfect beauty and boundless power contained in the mortal soul.”

Mortals might be flawed creations, given to error and misjudgment. But all mortals are blessed with a singular gift: the soul. Psionic energy revealed your soul’s power, and through long study and introspection, you learned to navigate the labyrinthine pathways of your being.

This energy suffuses you and surrounds you in a radiant glow. Although you can dampen your inner light, you and others around you find its presence comforting. In time, the light responds to your commands, burning your enemies while bolstering your allies, or even allowing your soul to eclipse your body.

The more you access your soul’s power, the more you understand that this essence must be guarded. Those who would exploit souls, twisting them for dark ends, and those who would hoard souls on their journey beyond the body must be destroyed and their prisoners freed. To this end, you commit yourself against the myriad villains who use or abuse souls.

Incandescent Champion Path Features

Incandescent Champion Disciplines

Phrenic Invader

“Your secrets are mine to use as I see fit.”

You hear everything. Every thought, every idea, and every internal conversation reaches receptors in your mind in a confusing din. You have learned to reduce the cacophony to a muted rumble to maintain your sanity. You know these thoughts have their uses, however, and so you focus your concentration, sifting through the noise to seize the most powerful voices to aid you.

You are a phrenic invader—a thought warrior who can slip into any conscious mind and plunder it for its secrets. It takes only a moment to sift through the confusing jumble to find what you need, especially on the battlefield. An enemy’s mind reveals its intent, helping you anticipate its strikes. You can sense when another enemy might close on you, shifting your position to best receive the attack. The thoughts you steal help guide your attacks and keep you from harm, letting you endure in combat to destroy the enemies standing against you.

Phrenic Invader Path Features

Phrenic Invader Disciplines

Psionic Binder

“I am your prison. From me there is no escape.”

Though no chains bind them, your enemies become your prisoners. You are a psionic binder, a living prison whose thoughts are as strong as adamantine bonds. When you engage your foes, you redirect their thoughts inward, forming mental walls to constrain their thoughts and root them to the spot. You can keep your enemy imprisoned long enough for your allies to close in and deliver whatever justice the foe deserves.

The aberrant menace is a wily threat, slipping unseen into the mortal world and spreading its corrupting influence to foment unrest and mutation wherever it goes. No matter how many aberrant monsters are destroyed, others spawn to spread wickedness. The only answer is containment. By pinning down the threat, you can destroy it, one monster at a time.

By no means are your efforts exclusive to aberrant enemies. Any who stand against you in your single-minded pursuit deserve your dread attention.

Psionic Binder Path Features

Psionic Binder Disciplines

Siphon

“Your fears, hates, hopes, and dreams are mine to devour. My feast will end when only your husk remains.”

Not all vampires are undead, drinking the blood of the living or draining souls with a touch. Some feast on intense feelings such as fear and love, anger and happiness. They are insidious creatures—parasites that gorge without drawing attention to themselves. Some might not even realize what they’re doing. Regardless of whether a siphon is cognizant of his or her abilities, the effect of such a character’s power is palpable, as a victim falls into the clutches of lethargy, becoming torpid and drained.

As a siphon, you use psionics to absorb thought energy from your victims, drinking deep from their emotions and feelings to increase your power. Your mind is a vortex, catching others’ thoughts and using them to replenish your resources and overcome your injuries. Once you establish a link with another creature, you can draw its energy until your prey is drained and unable to act. You might keep this energy for yourself or transfer it to your allies so that they can share its benefits.

Siphon Path Features

Siphon Disciplines

Stygian Adept

“There are no fears but those of your own making.”

There are shadows in the mind. Unnerving memories, old fears, and crushing disappointments all lie ready to be exploited and manipulated. Those who know these fears can turn them into weapons, amplified until they unravel the consciousness. You are familiar with these fears, and you wield them like razors.

As a stygian adept, you sense the fear and terror in your enemies, harnessing these emotions and using them to attack your foes’ minds. With your powers you can create phantom terrors that only your opponent can perceive, distracting the enemy from your allies as they move into position. A foe firmly in your grasp finds itself lost in a maze of half-realized imaginings, each more terrible than the last.

Stygian Adept Path Features

Stygian Adept Disciplines

Talaric Strategist

“Your thoughts betray you.”

Long ago, when aberrant monsters first spilled into the mortal world, a warrior society was formed to protect the world from the Far Realm’s corrupting influence. The society’s members recorded their techniques in a volume known as the Talaric Codex.

In it were the forms and disciplines needed to master their psionic fighting art. In the countless years since its formation, the society has decayed and dissolved. Its monasteries have fallen, and the writings of its adepts have been scattered across the world.

You have found fragments of writing from this ancient society and learned to focus your psionic powers to give you a tactical advantage in battle.

Because your training was haphazard and pieced together from fragments of lore, you improvise where your training is incomplete, drawing from your ardent powers to fill your gaps in knowledge. Still, the teachings you uncovered proved instructive, and you can take charge of nearly any battlefield.

Central to your learning is the ability to read your enemies’ intent and turn it against them. You translate the clarity of your vision and your openness to the thoughts and experiences of those around you into a decided tactical advantage. You can warn allies against impending attacks, move companions to adapt to enemy formations, and help your allies scatter when they are faced with devastating magic.

Talaric Strategist Path Features

Talaric Strategist Disciplines

Ardent (PHB3 + Psionic Power) —