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Pathfinder Player Companion: Psychic Anthology (PFRPG)

3.80/5 (based on 8 ratings)
Pathfinder Player Companion: Psychic Anthology (PFRPG)
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A Mind-Expanding Read

For curious readers who wish to hone their psychic skills, a plethora of occult tomes, lost scrolls, and even stranger items lie hidden throughout Golarion. From the kaleidoscopic Recursion Tablets to the never-ending Infinity Scroll, Pathfinder Player Companion: Psychic Anthology presents a diverse archive of texts elucidating esoteric ideas and techniques that can benefit any psychic spellcasting class, as well as other spellcasters. Alongside feats, magic items, and spells, this volume unlocks the hidden powers of the mind!

Inside this book, you'll find:

  • New archetypes for nearly every occult class, including the phantom blade spiritualist and the autohypnotist mesmerist.
  • Panoplies­—collections of occultist implements that harness the power resonating between the items—and numerous kineticist wild talents for all the elements.
  • A new corruption arising from raw psychic energy that, if left unchecked, could mutate one's form into an all-consuming horror of writhing flesh.

This Pathfinder Player Companion is intended for use with the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game and the Pathfinder campaign setting, but can easily be incorporated into any fantasy world.

ISBN-13: 978-1-60125-928-8

Other Resources: This product is also available on the following platforms:

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5/5 —

I'm not going to talk about the psychic or mesmerist much here. The psychic gets to be the magic and magic item section, and it's a mixed bag. Mesmerist just isn't a class I much care to play (outside of one archetype), so I haven't spent much time looking at it.

Spiritualists get a nice chunk of stuff, a fun new emotional focus (and rules for using it with older archetypes). Two new archetypes, one bringing in some black blade magus fun, and a phantom animal one. I have intentions of using the phantom blade, the totemist I might if an appropriate campaign comes up. My only real problem with either is they lose emotional focus (something I enjoy about the flavor of the class).

Medium gets a fun new archetype. It doesn't really address any issues with the class, might even make some of them worse (forcing taboo). It get's fun abilities and has cool flavor though. Look for a thematic campaign to use it in.

Kineticist gets a lot of expanded selections. The invocations are a cool idea, and possibly a good tool for the future, but the feat look for most characters is disappointing. More talents, especially for wood and void is nice. Wood's new simple blast is disappointing, and makes for a (mostly) true pacifist if taken as your first. Not practical but interesting choice. More blade abilities make the melee fan happy. Speaking of which the Kinetic Knight is everything I ever wanted for the Kineticist, not just supporting but encouraging a strength based build, nice defensive features. I've already started playing one and it's one of m favorite builds. The lack of form infusions can be limiting somewhat though.

Occultist is another nice package here. The panopolies are great. Between giving you a way to go deeper into your spell list with out giving up too much versatility and some nice new focus powers. the archetype to support them is a nice addition too.

Overall a great book that supported the four psychic classes I care about in fun ways, and inspiring at least 4 new characters I want to play.

A Fantastic Expansion of Occult Options (for the most part)

5/5 —

This is a fantastic companion book for those interested in playing one of the classes in Occult Adventures. And for the most part, it gives these classes a lot of love. In order of how much (and the quality of) the love they receive:

1. (A+): The Spiritualist was originally my least favorite class in Occult Adventures. A class with cool flavor but weak mechanics. This book changes that. It introduces not one, but two archetypes that turn the Spiritualist into a viable and interesting option. The first is essentially a psychic version of the Blackblade Magus, and the second gives you a phantom animal companion (or two!) that's a viable option in combat. And it introduces a new Kindness emotional focus that the Id Rager can take(!). This went from a class I couldn't imagine getting myself to play, to a class I have at least two character ideas for. Fantastic stuff.

2. (A+): The Mesmerist, on the other hand, was one of my favorite classes in Occult Adventures. It's a lot like the alchemist -- a 6th level caster with lots of skill points and a bag of abilities that, though neat, don't obviously fit together (in the case of the alchemist: bombs, mutagens, self-buffing extracts, poison-using abilities and alchemy/potion-oriented abilities, in the case of the mesmerist: stares, tricks, touch treatments and a bevy of mind-affecting spells). In the case of the Alchemist, this was fixed by a bunch of great archetypes and options that allow you to really focus on one of the themes of the Alchemist (e.g., bomb focused alchemists, mutagen + self-buffing alchemists, poison-focused alchemists, etc). But until now the Mesmerist didn't really have the options to do the same.

This book starts to change that. It introduces a trick-focused archetype and a bunch of feats that make the Mesmerist's tricks cool and effective enough to really build a character around. Likewise, there are some great Stare feats that make stares effective enough to build a character around. Add in a cool Possession-focused archetype and a "mind-over-matter"-style archetype which moves away from *just* mind-affecting spells, and there are now a number of interesting and distinct options on the table to focus your Mesmerist around. More great stuff.

3. (A+): The Occultist was originally in the middle of the pack for me -- lots of flavor, and reasonably effective mechanically, but with a couple awkward features that make it hard to develop all of the versions of the class one might like to try (such as the dramatic difference in the power of different schools -- from the virtually obligatory Transmutation to the painfully bad Necromancy and Evocation -- and the strong disincentive to choose a school more than once, essentially locking you into a single spell per school). This book (combined with the incredible Silksworn archetype from the Heroes of the High Court) do a fair bit to change that. By adding panoply options (and the corresponding panoply-focused archetype) you now have a cool and flavorful way of getting multiple spells from a given school, and of spreading out your spell picks a bit more. There's still a few awkward features of the class left over (it's still hard to imagine building an Occultist without Transmutation, or with Necromancy and Evocation), but the class is definitely more fun to play with than before.

4. (A): The Kineticist was a class I liked a lot, and it also gets a lot of love, in the form of the first good Kineticist archetype (a melee-focused armor-wearing kineticist tank) and a big batch of new wild talents which open up the variety of builds to pursue, especially if you want a Wood or Void-focused Kineticist. Granted, a lot of them are high-level abilities which only the DM is likely to get to play with, and it's hard to not to wish there were even more utility Wild Talents and Kinetic Invocation options. (More! More! More!) But this still opens up a lot of interesting options, making this book pretty much a "must-have" for anyone building a Kineticist.

5. (B): The Medium was one of my least favorite classes in Occult Adventures. It had great flavor, making it a class I very much wanted to play. But mechanically, the only really viable option seems to be building your character around the Champion spirit and making them a kind of psychic-flavored fighter, which didn't fit very well with most of the Medium-style character ideas I wanted to play with.

This book adds some more neat flavor options to the Medium (you can tie yourself to a kind of outsider), with an accompanying archetype, which someone building a Medium might consider. But none of these options make the class feel like it would play very differently, or open up the possibility of making a Medium which isn't basically a psychic fighter. Of course, these demerits of the Medium class aren't this book's fault, and it's a little unfair to expect it to resolve all of the problems facing the Medium. Still, given how much I like the idea behind this class, it would be great to someday see some options for making a viable character focused around one of the non-Champion spirits.

6. (B-): The Psychic was originally another class from Occult Adventures in the middle of the pack for me. The disciplines have lots of flavor, but, much like the sorcerer's bloodlines, most of them don't have enough mechanical "meat" to make them feel like they'd play that differently. The amplifications are kind of neat-ish, but most don't do interesting enough things to be memorable. And the overwhelming focus on mind-affecting spells makes the Psychic feel a bit fragile, usefulness-wise, for a 9th level caster.

This book does a bit to round out the Psychic's spell casting possibilities, and adds in some psychic analogs of arcane spell-related magic items. But the class feels much the same as before (in both good ways and bad) in light of these options, and there's little that seems specific to the Psychic that's on offer. Okay stuff.

All told, if you're mostly interested in the Medium or the Psychic, then while there are some new options in this book, there isn't anything that you really need in this book. But if you're interesting in playing around with Spiritualists, Mesmerists, Occultists or Kineticists, then this is definitely a book you'll want to have.

Lots of great stuff and a little bit of really, really bad

3/5 —

I would strongly recommend you buy this book, but I can't give it more than three stars because it has some really poorly conceived and edited options in here that should be mildly embarrassing to Paizo.

The mesmerist, spiritualist, and occultist options are generally great, a couple of bad archetypes and unclear rules ("holding" panoply occultist implements) aside. As far as I can tell the medium and kineticist stuff is of similar quality, but I don't care about those as much. If you want more options for these classes absolutely buy this book and you won't regret it.

Where the book falls down is the Psychic items and spells section. I can agree that this was arguably more necessary to grow the class than an archetype or more disciplines would have been, but the implementation is pretty poor. Most of the magic items are uninspired psychic retreads of (bad) arcane options that in some cases already worked fine for psychic casters. The spells have some decent options, and a couple of weak options, but the real problem is that there are two absurdly strong options. One allows you to daze lock a creature even on a successful save (at 3rd level!), the other is basically a Moment of Prescience god mode that applies to almost every roll you do for 1 full minute. I think you can easily solo higher threat CR creatures in melee with this spell and a few standard buffs. It's that ugly.

Publishing either of these spells would have been irresponsible, publishing both makes me doubt Paizo takes this line seriously anymore with respect to maintaining the integrity and balance of their game. PFS will ban the hell out of them, but having this sort of awful munchkiness out there as an idea that someone at Paizo thought was ok to publish is troublesome.

My final complaint is that there are a few more than the usual (already disappointing) level of poor editing and rules mistakes that we've come to expect in the Player Companion line. You have an unprecedented casting time of "1 full round action" on some spells (a big problem on Psychic classes that need their move action to add metamagic or center and avoid concentration penalties and not an innovation that should be dropped in without explanation), missing explanations of partial saving throws, and a couple of other minor signs that this needed a better development pass from a responsible adult.

That aside, you should reward Paizo for the good things with your money and put the good options to use responsibly. I just hope the bad things get more attention in future products and don't become a trend.

Good fluff, but wouldn't recommend...

2/5 —

The fluff and items range from good to alright, but everything else is sorta meh. The new spirits for the Medium are pretty cool, as well as some of the Stare feats/tricks for the Mesmerist, but other than that...

I'll be honest. I wanted more kineticist talents when I bought this book, and I was nothing but disappointed. Oh gee, more ways to melee as a kineticist - as though there weren't a half-dozen archetypes that did pretty much the same thing. Oh look, *more* blasts that expand the use of your kinetic blade! Oh look, *feats*! Like there aren't *enough* feats, and these simply add a few spells as kineticist talents.

It was alright overall, but frankly, I would've saved the 10 bucks.

uninspired

2/5 —

I pride myself on long detailed reviews, but there is very little to say about this. Uninspired, tending to overly dramatic and "uncontrolled!" type wackiness. Lack of content covered by larger than normal bad magic items section.

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1 person marked this as a favorite.

Please please PLEASE let us get an Shaman archetype that turns your spirit animal into a phantom animal and gets rid of wandering spirit and wandering hex in return for boosts to your phantom animal! :D
8 people marked this as a favorite.

I just want phantom animal for the fact that way I can kind of do a tribute to my late dog Malcolm. I miss you boy.
2 people marked this as a favorite.

Now I kinda want a cat-lady cat-person archetype that has a phantom cat swarm.

Chairman,

Not sure I do but I still want my other idea.
Shadow Lodge
NetoD20 wrote:

Please please please let there be options that allow for better mixing between arcane and psychic magic. Let wizards have more of a share of the mystical, mysterious and esoteric. I'm tired of the trope where non-arcane spellcasters get all the mystical flavour and wizards are relegated to be compared to scientists and "they use magic in a almost scientific way". I hate that, and I understand some people may like it, but I'm tired of it, we've already had too much, a change would be great.

An archetype that puts wizards in the meat of psychic magic and, for instance, allows them to cast some psychic spells, would be amazing. I'm hoping the release of Doctor Strange will help my case here down the line.
A great (and sadly, one of the very few) examples of introducing esoteric themes to the wizard was the Spirit Whisperer archetype (although it's sad that it does away with the spellbook).

Agreed, designing magic as science tends to take a lot of the uncertainty and unknown out of a medium that is supposed to have it. Wizards and Sorcs should feel a little scared and exhilarated when they throw down spells where they aren't exactly sure how it's going to work every time.

1 person marked this as a favorite.

Based on how they presented doctor strsnge in the movie (I haven't read his comics, but I understand that they stayed fairly true to them), I would actually classify him more as an occultist than a wizard, using the pathfinder classes.

Although frankly, the given that it sounds like your issue with the wizard class is about the flavour, not the actual mechanics, so I see absolutely no reason why you couldn't play a vanilla wizard and just role play it with the mysterious stuff, or if you really want the psychic stuff, build one of the occult classes and just refer to yourself as a wizard whilst playing said character.

Also, Clarke's Third Law, "any technology, sufficiently advanced, is indistinguishable from magic," has a corollary: "any magic, sufficiently analyzed, is indistinguishable from science." While not ubiquitous, this is a fairly common take on how magic works in fiction, as well as being the more or less central idea behind the real world belief system of hermeticism, from which a lot of our modern chemistry and physics is derived, as well as a lot of the imagery of magic in both visual arts and literature.

I'm not saying that your view point is wrong for wanting the mystery, but given that it is a purely flavour difference, there really shouldn't be any need to create new archetypes for the wizard class just to allow people to role play a wizard with different flavours than the default.

The one question I would like an answer for, will this book have anything for kineticist?
Dragon78 wrote:
The one question I would like an answer for, will this book have anything for kineticist?

Seconding

Dragon,

I'd imagine there will be a few things for Kineticists. But I'm more hopeful for more for spiritualists honestly.
Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Yeah, we'll just have to wait and see. I'm pretty sure my desire for more mesmerist material will be met, but not sure about my desire for more kineticist material.
2 people marked this as a favorite.

Mysteries abound! ^_^

Well this is a February release so we will be waiting awhile to get that question answered.
4 people marked this as a favorite.
Isabelle Lee wrote:
Mysteries abound! ^_^

What?! She just said Oracles are invading the Psychic Anthology! How can that be?!

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Fourshadow wrote:
Isabelle Lee wrote:
Mysteries abound! ^_^
What?! She just said Oracles are invading the Psychic Anthology! How can that be?!

Well, there is the psychic searcher oracle...though an oracle archetype that gets psychic spellcasting would be neat. Perhaps having their psychic potential awoken by divinity rather than directly empowering them?

1 person marked this as a favorite.

I am always down for new Oracle mysteries and curses. Some psychic ones would be cool.

Some psychic curses would be pretty sweet.
Thomas Seitz wrote:

Dragon,

I'd imagine there will be a few things for Kineticists. But I'm more hopeful for more for spiritualists honestly.

Personally i'd rather talents and prestige classses over more archtypes

Too be honest I am sick of archetypes and not a fan of most prestige classes.
1 person marked this as a favorite.
Dragon78 wrote:
Too be honest I am sick of archetypes and not a fan of most prestige classes.

Not going to speak for anyone else, but I knew that already.

Thoroughly enjoyed Arcane/Divine Anthologies, looking forward to this one. Regardless of what is in it.

I rather enjoy archetypes myself....not so much PrC....

I'm still hoping against hope for a Primal magic element for Kineticist :P

"Primal magic", you mean like wild magic, nature magic, or something else?

Occult Realms has Elemental Saturation which can give access to Primal magic events

What I would want is something like "Spellfire"....raw magical energy, and the defensive ability would be spell resistance, that if it's not overcome, gives you an increased effective burn (without the HP hit)..
1 person marked this as a favorite.

I know it's too late, but in a future related title I'd like to see an expansion of how telepathy works. Questions that should be answered:

1. Does each telepathic creature have a distinct mental voice (yes, please), and can you try to imitate another's voice?

2. Does telepathy follow line of effect (no, please)? (Note some AP monster tactics assume that it does not follow line of effect, allowing you to broadcast to allies in other rooms in a dungeon.)

3. Can you sense the direction and distance of a telepathic voice talking to you (I'm agnostic), i.e. for pinpointing an invisible creature talking to you?

My only request is that when wording the new items, feats and spells etc, word them such that the psychic bloodline sorcerer can take advantage of the new options, since his psychic casting locks him out of all the "arcane-caster-only" options.

Some feats that grant anyone psychic spells as spell like powers would be cool.
1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Dragon78 wrote:
Some feats that grant anyone psychic spells as spell like powers would be cool.

Like Psychic Adept and Psychic Disciple?

Yeah stuff like that but more options along those lines and also one that grants limited telepathy. Also if you already have limited telepathy then you can take a greater version of the feat at 9th to have full on telepathy.
The Exchange

I have yet to play a medium, but I would love to see variant abilities for all the Medium spirits. More seance and spirit power options would make it easier to switch between the legends as needed. Strong abilities that are one use but refresh when the medium uses a spirit surge would be great and encourage using lesser legends.

Of course this product will not have the space for it but I would like to see what product would have room but would love to see the 52 medium spirits based on the harrow.

I hope to one day see non-humanoid phantom options.

It would be cool to see feats for mesmerists that grant them gaze attacks that cause sleep, paralysis, petrification, etc.
Silver Crusade Contributor
1 person marked this as a favorite.
Dragon78 wrote:
Of course this product will not have the space for it but I would like to see what product would have room but would love to see the 52 medium spirits based on the harrow.

54, in fact. 6 suits and 9 alignments. ^_^

Dragon78 wrote:
I hope to one day see non-humanoid phantom options.

This is pretty simple. I could definitely see this happening someday.

Dragon78 wrote:
It would be cool to see feats for mesmerists that grant them gaze attacks that cause sleep, paralysis, petrification, etc.

Expectation management: it's highly unlikely that you'll see these options as feats, as they would be walking a narrow line between "game-balance nightmare" and "waste of a feat".

It would be interesting to see some gaze-themed mesmerist spells that do these things, though - especially petrification, which isn't normally something a mesmerist is capable of. I could also see an archetype based around these themes...

If they have a limited use per day then I can see them as feats.

So there are 54 suits, I wonder why I thought it was 52. Anyway I hope one day we get a hardcover book that would get such options.
Dragon78 wrote:

If they have a limited use per day then I can see them as feats.

So there are 54 suits, I wonder why I thought it was 52. Anyway I hope one day we get a hardcover book that would get such options.

Regular playing cards are 52, maybe that's it.

Yeah, that was more then likely what I was thinking about.

Or maybe you're thinking of 52 weeks in a year, Dragon.

No, I think it was the playing card;)

The harrow cards have 54, but what about taro cards since that is what they are based on?
1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Lost Omens, Rulebook, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Dragon78 wrote:

No, I think it was the playing card;)

The harrow cards have 54, but what about taro cards since that is what they are based on?

Standard is 78, I believe. 22 Major Arcana and 56 Minor (one more "face" card). The Minor most accurately represents playing cards.

*still thinks maybe Dragon thinking of DC Comics 52...*
Liberty's Edge

52 is the number of regular cards in a deck once the jokers are removed. 54 would include the jokers. In any case, a harrow spirit medium could be fun with some players literally deciding the spirits by drawing cards off the top of the deck. If they were executed correctly, you could have a very intresting medium varient or archetype that can unleash some serious and entertaining devastation upon foes.

I hope we get to see it at some point.

We do not need an archetype for these options.
Silver Crusade

We can have an archetype for these options.

But the archetype shouldn't be required to use the 54 harrow spirits.
Silver Crusade
Dragon78 wrote:
But the archetype shouldn't be required to use the 54 harrow spirits.

Something probably should be, that's a lot of spirits.

Silver Crusade Contributor
1 person marked this as a favorite.

Given that even the legendary spirit options require a level of in-game effort to acquire... something tells me they won't just multiply your available spirits by ten and call it good. ^_^

It'd probably be an alternate class. The layout of the spirits themselves would likely be changing, and there's significant separate material. That's a bit much for an archetype. We know it's not going to be in a Player's Companion, though- at least unless it's simply containing the Harrowed Medium and nothing else.

Still, looking forward to what the occult classes do get in this!
Silver Crusade Contributor
1 person marked this as a favorite.

If I recall, the Harrowed Medium is too long for a Player Companion even if it had every page to work with.

Yeah they already said that it's too big to put in a softcover book. Basically you have to wait for a fitting hardcover book. Though when that will be, who knows:(
NetoD20 wrote:

Please please please let there be options that allow for better mixing between arcane and psychic magic. Let wizards have more of a share of the mystical, mysterious and esoteric. I'm tired of the trope where non-arcane spellcasters get all the mystical flavour and wizards are relegated to be compared to scientists and "they use magic in a almost scientific way". I hate that, and I understand some people may like it, but I'm tired of it, we've already had too much, a change would be great.

An archetype that puts wizards in the meat of psychic magic and, for instance, allows them to cast some psychic spells, would be amazing. I'm hoping the release of Doctor Strange will help my case here down the line.
A great (and sadly, one of the very few) examples of introducing esoteric themes to the wizard was the Spirit Whisperer archetype (although it's sad that it does away with the spellbook).
psychie wrote:

Based on how they presented doctor strsnge in the movie (I haven't read his comics, but I understand that they stayed fairly true to them), I would actually classify him more as an occultist than a wizard, using the pathfinder classes.

Although frankly, the given that it sounds like your issue with the wizard class is about the flavour, not the actual mechanics, so I see absolutely no reason why you couldn't play a vanilla wizard and just role play it with the mysterious stuff, or if you really want the psychic stuff, build one of the occult classes and just refer to yourself as a wizard whilst playing said character.

Also, Clarke's Third Law, "any technology, sufficiently advanced, is indistinguishable from magic," has a corollary: "any magic, sufficiently analyzed, is indistinguishable from science." While not ubiquitous, this is a fairly common take on how magic works in fiction, as well as being the more or less central idea behind the real world belief system of hermeticism, from which a lot of our modern chemistry and physics is derived, as well as a lot of the imagery of magic in both visual arts and literature.

I'm not saying that your view point is wrong for wanting the mystery, but given that it is a purely flavour difference, there really shouldn't be any need to create new archetypes for the wizard class just to allow people to role play a wizard with different flavours than the default.

I entirely disagree with you, while it is certainly possible to take a vanilla wizard and roleplay him as a more mysterious/esoteric/mystical type, one of the major features of Pathfinder is providing so many options so that you can build very specific types of characters, serving a variety of possible flavours within the same class, through customization. Anyone could take a Bard and roleplay it as a Skald ages before the hybrid class was released, but that was never an impediment for fans to demands, or publishers to release, the Skald class and the archetype that came before it. In Pathfinder mechanics are created and innovated in order to match specific flavours.

And I know people disagree with me on this, but Merlin's beard, I hate Clarke's laws SO MUCH (not trying to pick a fight with anyone over this second statement though, Rao's peace, people).

I can understand that argument about mechanics complementing flavor. I also think I may have misunderstood your initial requests about the wizard class, as I took it more as lamenting a lack of possibility than a lack of direct support, given this newer, hopefully more accurate understanding, I no longer have issue with the request, and would be interested to see how paizo would fulfill such a wizard.

Also not looking for fights, but purely from curiosity, why do you hate Clarke's third law? Feel free to pm me with a response so as to avoid derail and potentially aggressive responses.
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