Immortality and Psionics

Question

There are several ways to become immortal in DnD - like creating a phylactery to become a Lich, or eating chunks of starmetal to gain Construct traits. The most of those methods apply to arcane users, some - to divine ones, and due to some shenanigans (like Dragonwrought kobold) even mundane classes may enjoy an eternal life.

For some reasons, psionic manifesters seem to be nearly as close to eternal life, as fighters. Sure, they have means to resurrect themselves with quazi-Clone powers, mind-switch to get new bodies, slow their metabolism to the point when one year flows as one day to them and such - but I couldn't find anything that would allow a psion, for instance, spend several hundred years in a library doing research - a way to become truly ageless...

Well, there is one. Necropolitan template from Libris Mortis allows any character to become undead for a small payment of EXP and some gold... And unlike a Lich, still can be turned/rebuked/commanded, which may not look all that good for the psion who might not like the idea of becoming some random cleric's pawn.

Is there any other way for a, let's say, human psion to become immortal? No mind switch triks, no homebrew and preferably no setting books

Answer 1

Well, there’s the really simple answer of be an elan, which are immortal psionic creatures. Humans can theoretically become elans, though the process is deliberately left undescribed and up to the DM, plus it costs you all class levels, skills, feats, and so on (you start over as a 1st-level character).

Besides that, the psionic-magic item-creation transparency rules from Magic Item Compendium pg. 232 means that the regular lich template is probably available to humanoid psionic characters. The only requirement for becoming a lich is to be humanoid, and to be capable of crafting a phylactery, and a psionic character can craft psionic versions of magic items by doing the following:

• Substitute Craft Universal Item for Craft Wondrous Item.
• Substitute manifester level for caster level.
• Substitute “a psionic power of similar flavor” to craft an item that “includes a spell prerequisite, but the effect of the item does not directly implement the spell.” This seems like it should be more than sufficient to substitute “ability to manifest powers” for “ability to cast spells,” but it doesn’t come out and say that.

Interestingly, this is true even if playing with the “psionics is different” variant; Magic Item Compendium specifies that in that case, the item created this way is specifically psionic, but you can still do it.

Just for completeness’s sake, the extremely well-received third-party book Hyperconscious by Bruce Cordell (one of the primary authors of the Expanded Psionics Handbook) had a specific psionic lich adaptation.

But if you don’t buy that, don’t use that rule, or are not humanoid, there are other options.

The spectral savant from Complete Psionics is kind of mid-way between a lich or a vampire, and results in immortality. The grim psion even gets a kind of phylactery, though it is a 3.0 class that will require some adaptation. The psion uncarnate doesn’t actually say that you become immortal, but it’s kind of weird to imagine “a being of pure psionic consciousness” aging.

And then, just about any high-level psion can easily make a phylactery of sorts, though it does result in level-loss when you die, while a phylactery doesn’t.

Answer 2

A Persistent Timeless Body effectively makes you immortal if you cast it everyday.

The Astral Seed power allows you to practically create a psionic phylactery (but it returns you to your previous power level)