Psychomancer Base Class


Homebrew and House Rules

RPG Superstar 2015 Top 8

After Paizo's announcement for a psychic magic book coming next year, I thought I'd share my own take on psionics with the Psychomancer Class. I aimed for the alchemist's level of power, versatility and customizability. I haven't been able to playtest this yet.
Comments, advice, suggestions and criticism are greatly appreciated.

RPG Superstar 2015 Top 8

Updated in case anyone is interested.


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RPG Superstar 2015 Top 8

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Ciaran Barnes wrote:
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The updated link should work.

RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 16

It strikes me as a psychic warlock with pseudo-spellcasting. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but I don't see any mechanics that really pop out to me. It would have been cool if you had to put yourself in a trance to do certain abilities or something like that. I do really like the line of esoteries related to telekinesis, though that seems a little out of place for a class advertised as a manipulator of minds.

Psychic pool's basic ability strikes me as absolutely broken. Being able to negate all forms of cover and concealment is the holy grail of every ranged fighter. It also has no range. With this ability, I could shoot an arrow at an enemy I can't see hiding behind 10 solid walls, and it's not only possible for my arrow to somehow bypass all of the walls, but also I take no penalty for it. Compare to the Improved Precise Shot feat, which only bypasses anything less than total concealment and total cover. And that's an 11th level feat.

I think you also need to re-evaluate the power of the esoteries. None of them have level requirements. Stunning blast is particularly broken. So at second level, I can do 1d4 ability damage and daze someone at-will. Even if they save, they still take ability damage. This is an auto-win against any animal, who only have 1-2 Intelligence. This means a 2nd level psychomancer has a 25% chance to one-shot a T-Rex (CR 9) on a successful save.

Admittedly, I'm personally not a big fan of at-will blasts for many reasons. Making the damage nonlethal kind of helps until you get an esotery to negate that.


Good point. The int blast could use a limitation. Take a look at the spell Ray of Enfeeblement and see if that gives you any ideas.

RPG Superstar 2015 Top 8

Thanks for your input, Cyrad, you raise some good points.

Cyrad wrote:
It strikes me as a psychic warlock with pseudo-spellcasting. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but I don't see any mechanics that really pop out to me. It would have been cool if you had to put yourself in a trance to do certain abilities or something like that. I do really like the line of esoteries related to telekinesis, though that seems a little out of place for a class advertised as a manipulator of minds.

To me, this class is all about mastering invisible forces. No flashy effects, but a rather tight focus on telepathy, mind reading/control and telekinesis. I wanted this class to be versatile, i.e. offering possibilities for caster and martial builts alike. I also wanted to execute this idea within the ruleset that Pathfinder has to offer - and to show that it can be done. I probably should have been more experimental in my approach.

Cyrad wrote:
Psychic pool's basic ability strikes me as absolutely broken. Being able to negate all forms of cover and concealment is the holy grail of every ranged fighter. It also has no range. With this ability, I could shoot an arrow at an enemy I can't see hiding behind 10 solid walls, and it's not only possible for my arrow to somehow bypass all of the walls, but also I take no penalty for it. Compare to the Improved Precise Shot feat, which only bypasses anything less than total concealment and total cover. And that's an 11th level feat.

You are right, this could have been worded more clearly. I did not intend for it to ignore total cover or concealment, which makes this somewhat less scaring.

Cyrad wrote:
I think you also need to re-evaluate the power of the esoteries. None of them have level requirements. Stunning blast is particularly broken. So at second level, I can do 1d4 ability damage and daze someone at-will. Even if they save, they still take ability damage. This is an auto-win against any animal, who only have 1-2 Intelligence. This means a 2nd level psychomancer has a 25% chance to one-shot a T-Rex (CR 9) on a successful save.

You are of course right concerning the level requirements, I just prefer a more modular approach to class abilities. In general, I hoped to balance esoteries through action economy and the cost of psychic pool points, which happen to be a rather limited ressource. I also wanted the psychomancer to have access to certain abilities earlier than other classes (like blindsense).

I can see how stunning blast could be a problem under certain circumstances. Making it a penalty instead of ability damage, as Ciaran Barnes recommended, seems like a good solution.

Cyrad wrote:
Admittedly, I'm personally not a big fan of at-will blasts for many reasons. Making the damage nonlethal kind of helps until you get an esotery to negate that.

Please note that mind blast is not an at-will power, but limited to a number of times equal to class level+Int modifier.

Again, thanks for taking the time to read and comment!

RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 16

Oh it's not at-will? I missed that. My mistake.


I rather like this class and the mechanics really seem to fit the fluff and design goals.

I tried something similar ages ago, but instead of spells as psychics abilities, went with warlock invocation style disciplines (groupings of invocations based on similar concepts). I think yours implements everything much more elegantly than my attempt.

RPG Superstar 2015 Top 8

Thanks,

I didn't think of this class as a warlock until the similarities were pointed out to me by others. In the beginning, I wanted to use the five psionic attack and defense forms from earlier editions, but I found no satisfying solution to implement them into Pathfinder. So I just gave them a blast power to be able to contribute in combat, but to me, it's not the defining class feature (the esoteries are).

I saw your warlock and I quite liked it. I guess I'll have to take a closer look into how others have implemented that concept, since there are quite a number of conversions/homebrew versions.

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