Metamagic shenanigans via Incarnum and Psionics

[Echoes]

This trick is a variation of T_G's free PP trick (Psycarnum Infusion + Azure Talent + Psionic Meditation + Improved Essentia Capacity), using Midnight Metamagic + Psycarnum Infusion + Psionic Meditation. Midnight Metamagic, on its own, is fairly underwhelming. While free metamagic is always nice, and especially metamagic that you can apply on the fly (prepared casters rejoice!) and that doesn't affect casting time (spontaneous casters rejoice!), the 1/day restriction really hampers its flexibility. Plus actually having enough essentia as a straight caster to make it worth it takes a lot of feats; too many, IMO, for the 1/day effect.

Enter Psycarnum Infusion. Since you never invest essentia into Midnight Metamagic (Psycarnum Infusion lets you treat the feat as having max. essentia for 1 round, but explicitly doesn't generate any actual essentia), you never trip it's 1/day limiter, thus allowing you to reuse Midnight Metamagic over and over, at the cost of your psionic focus. I'm sure you can find ways to abuse 4 free levels of spontaneous metamagic/round. You can increase the bonus by taking Improved Essentia Capacity, but that requires an essentia pool of 2, meaning you'll either need to take another incarnum feat, have levels in a meldshaping class (you could head towards Soulcaster, for example) or be one of the incarnum races.

[awaken DM golem]

You're on the right track.
DH_'s Psycarnum Metamagic has been White Screen of Death 'd unfortunately.
http://forums.gleemax.com/wotc_archive/index.php/t-507714

But it works in a fairly straightforward manner.
Psycarnum Infusion + Midnight Metamagic = big metamagics
Throw in the 1st Incarnum PrC (i'm blanking on the name right now) + big metamagics = Cha bonus as limit to Metamagic Level. Really.
It is that bad !!

The pp trick requires a 1 pp Cognizance Crystal. You have to have 1 pp "available",
and the pp generated by Psycarnum Infusion + Azure Talent are temporary pp.
2 feats and a 1000gp item, for infinite pp, is pretty good stuff.
Psi Meditation feat gets a Psi-focus more often, makes it possible to use it in combat.

Midnight Augmentation with 1 more essentia point, discounts Bestow Power by 2 pp. 4 in, and 4 out. Just need 1 more for recharge. 

[Echoes]

The way I understood T_G's trick was that Azure Talent functions just like the other ______ Talent feats - it adds bonus PPs to your pool. Normally, you invest the essentia into the feat, and get a small number of PPs in return. With Psycarnum Infusion, though, you can treat the feat as having max. essentia (and thus granting you real PPs) for 1 round. Since they aren't temporary PPs but bonus PPs, you can spend them from your pool along with your regular PPs, allowing you to either manifest "free" lower-level powers or discounted higher-level powers. For example, a Psion 20 with the feats could get up to 10 bonus PPs from Azure Talent (4 + 1 from Improved Essentia, x2 = 10). With those, either he could manifest astral construct, augmented to 5th level for 9 PPs - meaning he doesn't have to spend any of his own PPs. Or, he could manifest it as a 9th-level power (augmening to 17 PPs) and only spend 7 real PPs - a huge discount.

You're right that it synergizes well with Cognizance crystals and other ways of stuffing PPs into other sources for safe keeping.

As to Midnight Augmentation, I see two possible interpretations. Either it reduces the base augment cost - that is, astral construct normally costs 2 PPs to augment. With Midnight Augmentation, it would only cost 1. Or it reduces the final PP cost (so an astral construct augmented to 9th level would cost 16 PPs instead of 17). If it's the former, then Midnight Augmentation is stupidly powerful. If it's the later, it's still decent with higher-level powers (when you can invest more essentia into it to get a bigger discount) but isn't very useful for low-level powers.

[PlzBreakMyCampaign]

Psycarnum Infusion + Midnight Metamagic = big metamagics
Throw in the 1st Incarnum PrC (i'm blanking on the name right now) + big metamagics = Cha bonus as limit to Metamagic Level. Really. It is that bad !!

The pp trick requires a 1 pp Cognizance Crystal. You have to have 1 pp "available",
and the pp generated by Psycarnum Infusion + Azure Talent are temporary pp.
2 feats and a 1000gp item, for infinite pp, is pretty good stuff.
Psi Meditation feat gets a Psi-focus more often, makes it possible to use it in combat.

Midnight Augmentation with 1 more essentia point, discounts Bestow Power by 2 pp. 4 in, and 4 out. Just need 1 more for recharge. 

Incandescent Champion 4 is not good for that purpose. It's only 1/day and you really have to go MAD on cha before you can start piling on free metamagics... except this PrC has no casting progression

Im not sure about the cognizance crystal counting or not that seems vague (unless you can find a line about how they count as always having PP 'available').

Yes the Big metamagics is powerful (though feat intensive). But I still have to question the wording. Perhaps one interpretation might be yours, that the counting as invented essentia doesn't trip the 1/day. But an alternate interpretation (and more fair) would be that the feat really says "Once per day, you can ... choose one or more spells that you know to apply ..." Which means that both the investing and the choosing metamagic can only be done once a day. As of now I'm not convinced since English can be ambiguous when using conjunctions. That said, I think my interpretation stands. Unless you can find a player's choice rule about ambiguity similiar to the player's choice rule for order of metamagics.

Please explain the infinite PP in depth please, Golem. I think I'm missing something

[Echoes]

Yes the Big metamagics is powerful (though feat intensive). But I still have to question the wording. Perhaps one interpretation might be yours, that the counting as invented essentia doesn't trip the 1/day. But an alternate interpretation (and more fair) would be that the feat really says "Once per day, you can ... choose one or more spells that you know to apply ..." Which means that both the investing and the choosing metamagic can only be done once a day. As of now I'm not convinced since English can be ambiguous when using conjunctions. That said, logically my interpretation is figured which I think can stand. Unless you can find a player's choice rule about ambiguity similiar to the player's choice rule for order of metamagics.

Please explain the infinite PP in depth please, Golem. I think I'm missing something

You're trying to make the "choose one or more spells ..." section inherit the once per day clause when we never trigger the preceding condition. "Once per day, you can invest essentia into the this feat and choose one or more spells ...".  We never actually invest essentia into the feat so we avoid the inheritance.

There are a couple different PP tricks that you can pull with Psycarnum Infusion/Azure Talent. The simplest one is to simply activate Psycarnum Infusion to "fill" Azure Talent, giving you bonus PPs equal to twice the amount of essentia you put in (or at least fake putting in, as with Psycarnum Infusion). These PPs are just like bonus PPs from having a high ability score so you can spend them along with your natural PPs if you need to. This lets you manifest lower-level powers for free (with Improved Essentia Capacity @ 20th, any power costing 10 PPs or less is free) or higher-level powers at sharp discounts. It gets really good when you combine it with Midnight Augmentation. There are two ways of reading Midnight Augmentation: either it reduces the base augmentation cost or it reduces the final augmentation cost. If it's the former, then the feat is absolutely insane and Azurin Psions are the most powerful Psions evar. If it's the later then it's merely a decent feat if you use one mid- to high-level power a lot.

[awaken DM golem]

I had to go break out MoI to "remember" it all.
So ... OOPS on the temporary vs. bonus pp. Yer right, it's bonus.

The problem with bonus pp is when are they used relative to the regular pp?
At some point you run out of regular pp, or maybe you don't because the bonus pp are used instead.
But then at some point you definitely run out of regular pp, and you don't have the 1 pp "available" to obtain psi-focus anymore.
And then the trick ends.
Unless you have a 1 pp cognizance crystal, which specifically has 1 pp "available".
Then you use AT + PI over and over and over ...

Only useful for out of combat activities.
Psi Meditation feat opens it up for possible combat use.
3 feats and a 1000gp item, is kinda expensive compared to Bestow Power based infinite pp loops.
But not bad at all early.

Goes up at the essentia cap rate, of 1*2pp until 6th, 2*2pp 6th to 11th, 3*2pp 12th to 17th, 4*2 18th+
Improved Essentia Capacity feat, boosts it by 1 essentia.
Crown Binding availability boosts it by 1 essentia, available via Incarnate 2, or Incarnate Blade PrC 1.

Overall it goes:
(1) ... stick 1 pp into the CC on the previous day
(2) ... use all you regular pp (just to be exactly sure where you are on pp)
(3) ... obtain Psi-focus
(4) ... blow Focus on Azure Talent + Psycarnum Infusion for free bonus pp
(5) ... use pp before 1 round is up
(6) ... repeat steps 3 to 5 indefinitely
(6a) ... Psi-meditation feat lets this happen more often

Midnight Augmentation goes:
1st level power cost 1pp + gets aug'd by 1 pp + gets MA extra 1 pp if 1 essentia into feat.
2nd level power costs 3 pp + gets aug'd by 1 pp + gets MA extra 1 or 2 pp if 1 or 2 essentia into feat.
3rds get 1 to 3 extra if 1 to 3 essentia, etc

Used with Bestow Power, but no real need for Psycarnum Infusion feat, it provides 2 pp reduction.
Azuran + MA + puts the 2 essentia into Bestow Power, at 6th level is the -2pp side of a two man recharge set-up.
Cheap. Very Cheap. VERY VERY CHEAP.
Wilder 4 with 1 more discount, works the other side. Not quite as cheap, but hey, infinite pp!!


Midnight Metamagic + Psycarnum Infusion = gold.
Midnight Metamagic + Psycarnum Infusion + level 4 of Incarnate Champion = way way over the normal metamagic cap, just 1/day,
... but it ditches 9th level spells, so it better be worth it, especially since MM + PI is so good.
Good thing Ur-Priest and Inc Champ can't mix due to alignment issues.

[PlzBreakMyCampaign]

You're trying to make the "choose one or more spells ..." section inherit the once per day clause when we never trigger the preceding condition. "Once per day, you can invest essentia into the this feat and choose one or more spells ...".

Yes I am and due to conditionals being able to be carried over by conjunctions. So depending on interpretation of this ambiguity, this trick either does or doesn't work.

And golem I'd take the more conservative position on your last point and for the previous one, that is a continuous discount, but not technically infinite