New Fic Recomendations: Hey Look there's a lot of Typewriters!

[Shepherd]

Inertial armor is an always active feat for psions that grants a full body energy field, on the protection level of chain mail that works against ghosts.  For some odd reason he needs to actively activate this before combat.  This guy is only surviving because of divine/writer intervention.. how else would he get to take an ability ignores cross classing of skills or class restrictions on skills.

Add that used the terribad 3.5 awful edition of 'advanced' psionics (read rewritten by moronic drunks watching DBZ on acid with a deep hatred of balance)... and that he took an ability of +1 to AC from spider senses over self healing or Fist of the North Star... and you can start to understand the raw fail of this guy and how much effort the invisible DM is putting into keeping him alive.

Actually, since he is using the 3.5 psionics system, Inertial Armor is a power that must be activated rather than an always active feat.

Also, 3.5's Expanded Psionics Handbook is indeed orders of magnitude better than the 3.0 Psionics Handbook (I own both). OTOH, 3.5's Complete Psionic book is indeed utter trash (buying that book was a big mistake). Your assertion that the system is unbalanced is one I've heard from a number of people who don't understand how the system works (especially the hard limit on how many points you can pump into a power). Even the rules lawyers over on the D&D optimization threads agree that tweaked out Psions tend to be significantly weaker than tweaked out Wizards, Clerics and Druids. Psions are the weakest of the core 'casting' classes.
As for why he took 'spider senses' instead of 'self healing' or 'Fist of the North Star', I'd assume that it is because Defensive Precognition is a first level power (available at first level) while Body Adjustment is a 3rd level power (only available at 5th level). I'm not certain which psionic power you're referring to with the Fist of the Northstar reference. Additionally, the Defensive Precognition power provides a +1 bonus to AC and all saving throws as a base effect; spending additional power points boosts the bonus by +1 per 3 spent. Damn nice considering how many saving throws he had to make in the fic.
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"Anyone can be a winner if their definition of victory is flexible enough." - The DM of the Rings XXXV