Thoughts on Occult Adventures


Product Discussion

1 to 50 of 271 << first < prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | next > last >>

I'm just starting this to see what everyone's general thoughts are of the occult adventures, whether they're excited, happy and satisfied, or underwhelmed and disappointed and the reasons for feeling that way.

Just got the book not a few hours ago. Have to say I'm actually a bit underwhelmed with how the classes turned out.

Kineticist: Seems a bit lack luster overall, and Blood Kineticist seems to wait until mid-high levels to do anything really interesting (wrack seems bad overall, 1/4 on save seems really unnecessary since its already half damage). Air seems the best out of the four really, but that does make me want to sort of play an electricity based kineticist (even though I'm Earth Nation all the way, but Earth felt... bland in terms of options). Still, despite this, it fits a lot of great potential character designs that I couldn't really hit with past classes.

Occultist: Can't shake the feeling that the class is watered down from the playtest for some reason. Not sure why, don't have my playtest anymore to check, but there feels like a lot more forced spending of points to do things, instead of the option strategically placing and keeping static abilities up. May have been that way all the time and I'm just tired. That said, I do like what they did with the magic circles. Actually, thinking about it now, maybe it didn't change much at all. In the end, still interested in trying it out, almost as much as the kineticist.

Medium: Definitely simplified from its original creation, not sure if its for the better or not though. I understand that you can change between class styles (rogue, mage, cleric, etc...) day by day, and that's pretty good, but it sort of feels... meh to me.

Psychic: Didn't read through it, as it wasn't a class I was excited about. I assume that since it's 9th level caster, it's probably one of the more powerful of the classes. Also the way the spell list is listed sort of hurts my eyes haha. So many close together italicized spells.

Mesmerist: Same with Psychic, although I think I'll be checking over it in a bit, since I've heard it got retooled from what it was in the playtest. More usable overall. Hopefully that is right, as I like the idea of setting triggers to help the party at the beginning of the day.

Spiritualist: Also didn't read yet, but it never really excited me to begin with.

There were a few interesting archetypes, surprisingly, the psychic archetype that made you intangible over time caught my eye the most, sort of liked the battle occultist too even though it seemed a bit weaker over all. I like the idea of the chakram and rituals they introduced, some really cool stuff there. I dunno though, I guess I just feel a lot of it was really held back in terms of class power. I understand its for balance purposes and I get that, doesn't make it less disappointing though.

Regardless though, despite my feelings of the kineticst and occultist, one of them will probably be my next character for a game.

Anyways, rant / analysis over. What is everyone else's thoughts though? Which class are you excited about most and why? Which class has the most "oomph!"? Maybe I'm not seeing or realizing things everyone else is.


Kineticist is awesome. Unique, and interesting all around. I'd love to see more talents for it and more archetypes.

Psychic is another ninth level caster with a pool of points. Yawn. and it takes up so much space...

The rest is pretty underwhelming. Maybe I just don't dig having to spend points on stuff from a tiny poo/doing things once per day for every five levels l that the classes seem to love.
The kineticist is the only one that really separates itself from Class with Spell list + point pool thing. Maybe I'm just bored with the style of casting at this point. there's only so many times you can reskin it.


My favorite is psychic investigator archetype. I love the investigator, but not a big fan of alchemy. Being able to replace that with psychic magic is awesome. This I will play as soon as possible.

I like the psychic too, more than I thought I would for a guy I figured is pretty much int-based sorcerer. Mechanically strong of course, but the disciplines have cool flavor. The serve the same purpose as bloodlines but the powers and concepts are more varied.

Kineticist and Mesmerist seem good, I don't quite get the occultist yet, and spiritualist doesn't really appeal to me.

Medium I like the concept, but it terrifies me with a big red warning flag, because of this thing called favored locations it really seems like you will not in fact get to choose your role, but rather get it forced upon you by location availability. It seems like you can find any of the favored locations if you're in a city, but very few in wilderness. The kami archetype is worse, even being reliant on the weather for some spirits. Need to discuss the issue with DM and make sure he's willing to handwave it before I'd consider playing the class.

Chakra seems hard to justify using. 1st power does basically nothing so it takes 2 rounds to ramp up, and then you're able to jump far which might be useful but you need to know 1 round before you need to do it. And that's costing you ki which is not a plentiful resource to begin with. And there's risk involved. And I think 0 characters can actually do this without multiclass or the psychic sensitivity feat. So I'm thinking I will never in my life see chakras used in play. Good thing it only used up 2 pages.

Liberty's Edge

Well, I've only been able to look at a bit so far, but one of the first things I did was to take a look at the feats to see if there was anything that might be good or useful for my current characters. But there's pretty much nothing. A feat for monks to resist possession. A feat to communicate with linguistics (which, I don't know why you couldn't do this before, and takes a DC 25 check). A 3 feat chain to basically get minor magic and major magic rogue talents, but for psychic spells only. A few metamagics. And my personal favorite, a feat that allows you to squeeze your head into a different shape for bonuses (and penalties) on skill checks, and a once a day bonus to spellcasting.

All in all it's pretty underwhelming. I have taken a look at the kineticist, and it looks good. Am hoping to get through the classes tomorrow, and take another look at feats afterwards. Hopefully the feats for the occult classes will be a little bit better.

EDIT - Also Psychic Investigator sounds awesome, I think I'll start with that.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

I'll be honest, when I got the PDF yesterday evening, my eyes glazed over when trying to make sense of the Kineticist and after that I only skimmed through the book for the artwork and to read the list of spells (which look singularily useless for the non-psychic classes). I guess I'll take a new look later today, maybe have some actual opinions. But the new classes look waaaaay more complicated than what we got before, needlessly so.


The Medium is the class I was most looking forward to playing and the massive change in how they worked from playtest to this was jarring.

That said, they are still pretty cool except for one thing. Favoured Locations for spirits.
There are locations that come up regularly in play that NONE of the spirits can be summoned from.
eg. traveling along a back road in the wilderness, a desert, a boat on the ocean( or even just a decent sized river)...

Requiring the spirits to only be called from so few locations turns the Medium from relatively versatile to predictable as as a dictionary. And in many cases, useless since they won't be able to call a spirit at all!


Natan Linggod 327 wrote:


Requiring the spirits to only be called from so few locations turns the Medium from relatively versatile to predictable as as a dictionary. And in many cases, useless since they won't be able to call a spirit at all!

Yeah, that worries me a lot. :/

I hope I just didn't understand it and they're just suggested location, because if that isn't the case only the Hyerophant and the Champion can be summoned reliably: for the first you can just lug an altar around, and the second accepts places of violence/battlefields as a favored location.
Considering that we call PCs murderhobos, that won't be a problem. :P


1 person marked this as a favorite.

big fat "meh"


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Natan Linggod 327 wrote:

The Medium is the class I was most looking forward to playing and the massive change in how they worked from playtest to this was jarring.

That said, they are still pretty cool except for one thing. Favoured Locations for spirits.
There are locations that come up regularly in play that NONE of the spirits can be summoned from.
eg. traveling along a back road in the wilderness, a desert, a boat on the ocean( or even just a decent sized river)...

Requiring the spirits to only be called from so few locations turns the Medium from relatively versatile to predictable as as a dictionary. And in many cases, useless since they won't be able to call a spirit at all!

Well, the favoured location lists aren't complete it specifically says in the class that those are just ideas so you know what sort of locations fit the different spirits. If your camp next to some natural location that would be like the perfect ambush point for example, I could see you being able to get a guardian or trickster spirit (for it's defensive properties and sneak attack properties respectively).


I really like the flavor of the Battle Host Occultist. A character with one empowered weapon, armor or shield is super common in media. Mechanically, I feel it could have used a little more work, but I haven't had the time to really crunch numbers on it. It is disappointing they didn't mention how it acts for enchanting or if you could have a special material.

Also, a weapon, armor or shield that's immune to the broken condition is sure to bring up a lot of questions of interactions with other items and effects, such as firearm misfires.


Did they tone down the kineticist from the playtest? We had one in our PFS group during the playtest and it was extremely overpowered.


Eryx_UK wrote:
Did they tone down the kineticist from the playtest? We had one in our PFS group during the playtest and it was extremely overpowered.

I wouldn't say they were toned down. Curious how your playtest version was considered OP though. Their damage is less than an archer's in most cases. The Air Kineticist is a bit OP in mobility though. All day flight and virtual sight based teleportation.


Eryx_UK wrote:
Did they tone down the kineticist from the playtest? We had one in our PFS group during the playtest and it was extremely overpowered.

Kineticist is now more powerful.

Liberty's Edge

The chakra section seems like a waste of space.
It only applies to the rogue with a ki talent, but since they likely only have 2-4 ki points they'll never get high in unlocking chakras. And monks no longer have good wil saves, so they'll fail checks quickly. Even for a Chained monk, hitting a DC 38 Will save is difficult.

I suppose DM's could use it. A high save creature with a bunch of monk levels might have enough Hit Dice to boost its saves high enough.


Milo v3 wrote:
Eryx_UK wrote:
Did they tone down the kineticist from the playtest? We had one in our PFS group during the playtest and it was extremely overpowered.
Kineticist is now more powerful.

That is disappointing. Between that and a over-optimized medium/barbarian, the playtest classes pretty walked everything they did in our PFS games.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Eryx_UK wrote:
Milo v3 wrote:
Eryx_UK wrote:
Did they tone down the kineticist from the playtest? We had one in our PFS group during the playtest and it was extremely overpowered.
Kineticist is now more powerful.
That is disappointing. Between that and a over-optimized medium/barbarian, the playtest classes pretty walked everything they did in our PFS games.

Consensus on the playtest kineticist was that it was really really really really weak, which is why it was buffed. Even with the buffs, most people are complaining that the released kineticist is too weak.


I think most of the issues of weakness were addressed, but I'm sure some will disagree, because some people always want more buffs. The current kineticist seems to do decent damage while also having other neat tricks he can do. Getting 4+ skills was also nice.

And while archers can often do more damage than the kineticist, archers are on the overpowered side of things.


To me it's a toolkit book.
Not stuff I'm going to use in a normal dungeon delve or adventure path but something I can use when I'm planning a more customized game where these elements work. For example if I was going to do a sort of Victorian setting mystery game I'd replace the normal Clerics and Wizards with Mediums, Mesmerists and Occultists.


The kineticist is the class I'm most interested in, and I feel that the final product was a success. It's a high Tier 4 class with good combat potential and a smaller bag of utilities that they can use nearly at-will, giving the class a lot of options in addition to just elemental damage.

Energy resistance and immunities are going to really hurt, though.


Just one word.

Undercasting

This is going to be great for spontaneous casters.


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
magnuskn wrote:
I'll be honest, when I got the PDF yesterday evening, my eyes glazed over when trying to make sense of the Kineticist and after that I only skimmed through the book for the artwork and to read the list of spells (which look singularily useless for the non-psychic classes). I guess I'll take a new look later today, maybe have some actual opinions. But the new classes look waaaaay more complicated than what we got before, needlessly so.

Haha. This thread is totally for you my friend.


Overall I like it. I"m not great at crunching numbers and stuff on first read, and I'm a more inclined to flavor. THe boks has given me a few characters I want to build, so overall a success imo.

The Kinetecist is the class I've looked the most. Overall I really like it and will likely make a geo at some point. I was very disappointed in the aesthetic archetype as a melee focused option. Due to the limitations on infusions and such my Suli Brawler feels similar and a more interesting play experience. I'm also a little underwhelmed on the aether composite blasts, they do not seem worth 2 burn. Otherwise love the class.

The Occultist has given me a couple character ideas. The class is cool, and seems to have some fun rp potential.

The Medium was the class I was most excited about going in, but that was the Harrowed version. I still like it, but can't wait to see the Harrow version eventually. I love the idea of swaping roles and adapting to whats going on. Relic Channeler has some fun rp overlap with the Occultist, and the spirit dancer cranks up the versatility.

The Spiritualist has provided me with probably the most full character idea out those I've had from the book. THe rp potential is great, and many of the spirits seem really useful in various ways.

The Mesmerist wasn't something I cared much about. Some really cool stuff going on here, and I'd love to play alongside one. I might try a Vexing Daredevil at some point.

The Psychic is the one I haven't gotten to. I'm just not into frail casters really. I'll get to it at some point I'm sure.

Over all the book sparked ideas, which is good enough for me.

Liberty's Edge

Eryx_UK wrote:
Milo v3 wrote:
Eryx_UK wrote:
Did they tone down the kineticist from the playtest? We had one in our PFS group during the playtest and it was extremely overpowered.
Kineticist is now more powerful.
That is disappointing. Between that and a over-optimized medium/barbarian, the playtest classes pretty walked everything they did in our PFS games.

The kineticist is solid at low levels, as they can hit when everyone else is whiffing. But they fell behind at higher levels as iteratives came into play and everyone else's accuracy improved. Their accuracy even dropped as they're a 3/4 BAB class and their hit and damage stats are different.

That' state problem with PFS testing: it's too low level to get a real feel for the class.

The published one is comparable at low levels, but gets buffed slightly at higher levels with more utility and slightly higher damage.


So far I really like it. The only class that felt lackluster to me was the Psychic which was inevitable. I was concerned about the Kineticist from the playtest and while I still don't like burn the class makes it more than tolerable. The Spiritualist and Medium feel like they cover similar themes but are different enough for me to be satisfied. The Mesmerist and Occultist fill up roles I've always wanted. There are archetypes that I would have liked to see that I didn't, and that's okay I guess. I'm skeptical about the execution of opening chakra because it seems too costly to achieve and maintain. Nice that there are feats to handle that but really I think ki users need more ki in general.

The rest of it is just obvious things to facilitate the theme. The points where I was actively disappointed were the places that was way more fluff than crunch like the subject of auras.

Shadow Lodge

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Eryx_UK wrote:
Did they tone down the kineticist from the playtest? We had one in our PFS group during the playtest and it was extremely overpowered.

I would chalk that up to A) low-level play & B) perhaps your group composition. I playtested a kineticist all the way to L9 in PFS--if you play a turret-style ranged kineticist in a game where the enemies are never in your face and you can move action gather then fire off an empowered blast, you will seem OP to the melee who are constantly moving and only getting a single attack. Once iteratives and haste/blessing of fervor comes online for martials, depending on the group's charbuilding skills, you will be at par or behind DPS-wise.


Sammy T wrote:
Eryx_UK wrote:
Did they tone down the kineticist from the playtest? We had one in our PFS group during the playtest and it was extremely overpowered.
I would chalk that up to A) low-level play & B) perhaps your group composition. I playtested a kineticist all the way to L9 in PFS--if you play a turret-style ranged kineticist in a game where the enemies are never in your face and you can move action gather then fire off an empowered blast, you will seem OP to the melee who are constantly moving and only getting a single attack. Once iteratives and haste/blessing of fervor comes online for martials, depending on the group's charbuilding skills, you will be at par or behind DPS-wise.

And that without counting archers that play turret too


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Alright, I think I got the basics of the Kineticist, although I'll have to read all the different talents in detail to see what I would want to play (although no danger of that, I am currently GM'ing two groups with many a month to go for both campaigns).

I'll say that putting nine very long and complex descriptions of class abilities (and some shorter ones) before you even get to see what all those wild talents and infusions and thingamajigs can do, made it definitely a chore to read through the class. It's doable, but it definitely is the most complex D20 class I ever read through and I've never had this problem with any other Paizo class before.

I guess that's a sign of its versatility, but, man. I'll be looking at the other classes throughout the next days, I hope they are less complicated. I hope that the Occultist really is the "Harry Dresden" type of class, which I remember a developer saying during the playtest.


2 people marked this as a favorite.
Adahn_Cielo wrote:
Considering that we call PCs murderhobos

"Murderhobo" is an archetype that needs to happen.

Scarab Sages

My initial impression of the classes is that they are very complex for the most part. Many of them have resource pools to track, sometimes multiple pools across multiple items. Based on character complexity, I doubt I'll ever see a Medium in one of my games (We play on Maptool, for the medium you basically have to manage six character tokens instead of one). The classes are all *interesting*, and beyond the psychic (read: arcanist), they all seem fresh and not a rehash of the existing classes.

Skills and Feats chapters are pretty much as expected, nothing to write home about. Metamagic feats and extra X feats and a few psychic abilities feats.

The spells were interesting, and nice to see many of them extending out to the existing casters. Explode Head is my favorite! Needs a chaining version tho lol!

The occult rules section is where my meat and potatoes lie, though. I was really impressed with the subsystems in the section, and have already began integrating some of it into my home game.

The occult games section was an interesting read, and for folks not already running a game like that, it is a good resource for adding the esoteric into your game.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Eryx_UK wrote:
Milo v3 wrote:
Eryx_UK wrote:
Did they tone down the kineticist from the playtest? We had one in our PFS group during the playtest and it was extremely overpowered.
Kineticist is now more powerful.
That is disappointing. Between that and a over-optimized medium/barbarian, the playtest classes pretty walked everything they did in our PFS games.

It doesn't take much to cakewalk a Paizo publication.


Ravingdork wrote:
It doesn't take much to cakewalk a Paizo publication.

It's very variable. Some are known for being much harder than others and some are super easy if you have the right tool in your party.

Liberty's Edge

How does everyone feel about the psychic duel system? And the rest of the non-class stuff?


So, if you haven't noticed Psychics get Overwhelming Presence (normally spell level 9) at spell level 4. It's an interesting choice but it sort of obviates the need for stuff like Id Insinuation, Greater Command or Greater Forbid Action. I expect errata.

Psychics also hilariously get a complete lose/lose effect at level 11. The Synaptic Shock phrenic amplification means that if you fail a save against a Mind Affecting spell then you are confused for a round after that spell ends or immediately if it is instantaneous. If you make the save you are confused for a round. It only costs a point per target too. So you are ending up confused regardless. Priceless.

Of course with Overwhelming Presence it might not really matter. That is helpless then staggered with wisdom drain on a fail or just staggered on a save and you are hitting up to 8 targets when you first get it.


andreww wrote:
So, if you haven't noticed Psychics get Overwhelming Presence (normally spell level 9) at spell level 4.

I thought I read something about that being a typo.


Class selection was a little off for this book, in my opinion.

Mesmerist and Occultist seem like excellent additions to the game. The Mesmerist is sort of a bard flipped inside out, filling a sort of similar niche in a very different way, which I liked. The Occultist's take on magic is very interesting, and I like having a magical points pool you put to work when it's just sitting there with the resonant powers and spend to gain additional powers, and overall the class looks very fun and probably captures the "occult" feel best to me.

The Medium and the Kineticist are the two most conceptually interesting classes, but I feel like the Kineticist is too much risk and complexity for not enough reward; if I'm activating a class feature that scythes off a scaling chunk of my health for the rest of the day, I'd usually be expecting to be leveling everything in front of me, not compensating for kinetic blasts needing some work to outpace archery. I'd hoped the final version of the kineticist would get around this, but it's not looking like it; maybe it'll surprise me. I really want to like the class, it's one of the most unique and interesting ones Paizo's ever made. The Medium, I like the concept of a true jack of all trades whose niche in the party can shift day-to-day, but it kinda feels like the class is a little too at the GM's mercy the way it's been implemented. I thought both of Mark's classes were very original, but they seemed...constrained compared to the others, like people wanted to restrict his first two classes more than their abilities really warranted. I do find it kind of annoying that when Paizo finally addresses my trouble that magic in pathfinder often feels too easy, consistent, and safe, it only does so to make the new developer's classes riskier to use while the veteran designers completely sidestep the issue.

No real opinion on the Spiritualist yet, but the Psychic bothers me. I felt like the Arcanist was pushed in the ACG, and this one is giving me the same vibe. Not at all unique, interesting, or flavorful in my view; just your bog-standard 1-9 int-based caster, extremely powerful but not really doing anything new or interesting despite the push in power level and a huge section of the spells section of the book exclusively for its benefit as the only class in the game that can use psychic spells level 7 and above.

Spells section was big and bustling, as expected in a book expanding the magic system, and it was nice to see rituals somewhere besides Kobold Press's Deep Magic. On the other hand, the feats section felt really phoned in; four pages, and not a one with anything very interesting going on. Pretty slim pickings for classes that aren't high-magic in this book.

The chakras system is an interesting concept, underwhelming execution. The two increasing saves thing where if you fail a single one you wasted your time even attempting this process hurts a lot, the ki consumption is worryingly high (If you're a 14th level monk with 24 wisdom, that's like half your ki pool just to get to the Crown Chakra), it takes too long (the maintenance expense means you can't feasibly buff pre-fight using chakras, and any tactic that takes seven rounds to reach its true power is a tactic you will almost never use in a serious fight) and the benefits just don't feel appropriate. You get a bunch of little tricks, most of which aren't as good as the bog-standard ki powers the Unchained Monk has to spend his Ki more productively on without risking a round of daze, and then your ultimate seven-turns technique is basically a pocket-witch cackling her fortune on you. Opening all of your chakras is a BIG DEAL; any character that does that in any medium where chakras are a thing can gain godlike power doing so. A monk with most of his chakras open should become ridiculously more formidable than a normal monk. A monk with ALL of them open should be doing things that make even high-level casters stop and stare.

These are my initial impressions, continuing to digest the book in the meantime.

Grand Lodge

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Eryx_UK wrote:
Milo v3 wrote:
Eryx_UK wrote:
Did they tone down the kineticist from the playtest? We had one in our PFS group during the playtest and it was extremely overpowered.
Kineticist is now more powerful.
That is disappointing. Between that and a over-optimized medium/barbarian, the playtest classes pretty walked everything they did in our PFS games.

this is more to do with PFS being piss easy than a classes power. PFS is not, will not, and never will be an accurate gauge of power, Which makes it's treatment that it is all the more frustrating.


As for the new spells showcased in the book, which ones look to be like "must haves"? Which ones have game-balance or possible OP issues?

This goes for spells of any of the classes besides the new ones ... including the traditional core classes - Sorc/Wiz, Bard, Cleric, etc.


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Awaken cosntruct looked like fun. As did mind switch.

Grand Lodge

3 people marked this as a favorite.
Crai wrote:

As for the new spells showcased in the book, which ones look to be like "must haves"? Which ones have game-balance or possible OP issues?

This goes for spells of any of the classes besides the new ones ... including the traditional core classes - Sorc/Wiz, Bard, Cleric, etc.

well there is always Explode Head, if only because it's hilarious.


Overall I'm loving it, and I'm the last person who would be a fan of psychic stuff. I just reflavor everything, to be honest, but the way it's all implemented makes it super easy to do, whereas other psychic systems I ignore because they get all "pseudokineticistetry in your psychosomatistician purple attunement crystal's dreamscapeolometriculanthropy *fart*."

Occultist is probably my favorite. It feels like a spiritual (hah) successor to Artificer that's a lot more interesting. It has serious potential as just an "adventurer" class, like Bard, where it can be built to just solve problems, or use the more combat-oriented archetype to mess stuff up with grandpa's sword. I also really like that you can hand out your implements to give their static bonuses to allies and that you can spend the points and you won't lose bonuses or have to recalculate things. Plus truename stuff! DAYUM! I've been waiting for something that really had that as a class feature. Binding outsiders for advice is sweet, and I really like the flavor on the object investigation stuff. I can't help but imagine every Occultist as an archaeologist. I have a player who loves playing Investigator-type classes, and I'm hoping he picks this one for our next campaign so I can see it in action.

Psychic really don't care, but it seems fine. This was the one class that I'll pretty much ignore, while the other five have some really nice mechanics or flavor options that just weren't there before.

Mesmerist Paizo got their Pathfinder in my Guild Wars! Seriously though. Every Mesmerist must wear purple and shoot butterflies all over the place... I'm enjoying this class a lot as an anti-bard, and the tricks are really nice. They're narrow but powerful, and it's actually been a choice for me when I build Mesmerists to test. The sort of duelist theme is nice and adds another dimension to the illusionist/enchanter package, and the creepy stare is actually pretty rad. Also, that 1st-level spell that just removes a creature's abilities, prepared spells, skills, etc.? What the hell?

Spiritualist only less interested in this because I think the other classes are so cool. Having a ghost familiar is something that a player (ok, Puna'chong Sr. He's big into Hellboy) has requested a lot, so this delivers there. Really glad that the Unchained Summoner has more to do with outsiders now, explicitly, which gives this more of a niche. The phantoms are pretty neat and have a lot of utility, but I'd definitely steer new players far, far away from this one. The different stages of manifestation took me a bit to figure out.

Kineticist power level aside, this is something I've been looking for for a looooong time as a DM. So often you get new players that just want to be a frickin' fireball-shooting lunatic and get disappointed that Wizards and Sorcerers don't really do that. Now I can finally throw them a Kineticist/elementalist and let them go at it. They seem pretty fun for players that really do just want to be the equivalent of a Fighter, except with elements, and it's nice to have a blaster base class. I really like the composite elements stuff, that's really cool, just wish that the Metakinesis (psychosomatisticianisms everywhere) came online a lot earlier than 19th level!

Medium outside of the favored locations, I think the class has a lot of character and can pull off a lot of roles that a party might need. The locations are something that I'll probably houserule. Probably something along the lines of not sharing seance bonuses with party members unless you're in a favored location, or maybe getting a weaker version of the spirit or one with more influence. Outside of that caveat, I really like the class, since I was a sucker for the 3.5 Binder, and I think it's a cool class for those players that like to do a little bit of everything.

Haven't gotten too much into the subsystems, though I think PSYCHIC ARENA is ridiculous in a wholesome, family-friendly way. I will say I'm totally miffed that the skill unlocks here are pretty much exactly what I wanted the Unchained skill unlocks to be! Those are actually cool and have some interesting uses, plus they don't take five levels just to come online. Some of the psychic spells are pretty cool though, and I'm glad that almost all of them can be reflavored to be less Prof. X or whatever the hell psychic media people consume to get themselves all stoked on this stuff, and more in line with the aesthetic that the rest of the classes have.

Overall this thing hit home for me. I'm a total fanboy for the Occultist.

Grand Lodge

Ghost-Rider cavalier, enough said ;) Oh and yes I'm liking pretty much the whole book, this was clearly a labor of love for the authors, and it shows.


Ravingdork wrote:
magnuskn wrote:
I'll be honest, when I got the PDF yesterday evening, my eyes glazed over when trying to make sense of the Kineticist and after that I only skimmed through the book for the artwork and to read the list of spells (which look singularily useless for the non-psychic classes). I guess I'll take a new look later today, maybe have some actual opinions. But the new classes look waaaaay more complicated than what we got before, needlessly so.
Haha. This thread is totally for you my friend.

Likewise... I was already a little tired when I started reading the kineticist and about halfway through the ability descriptions I had to close the PDF and came back to it the next day. The class looks really interesting and pretty unique.

Thanks for the link, Ravingdork. Going to read through that when I get some time to hopefully help break down that class without constantly having to look back and forth between pages to fully comprehend exactly what the heck its talking about lol.


9mm wrote:
Eryx_UK wrote:
Milo v3 wrote:
Eryx_UK wrote:
Did they tone down the kineticist from the playtest? We had one in our PFS group during the playtest and it was extremely overpowered.
Kineticist is now more powerful.
That is disappointing. Between that and a over-optimized medium/barbarian, the playtest classes pretty walked everything they did in our PFS games.
this is more to do with PFS being piss easy than a classes power. PFS is not, will not, and never will be an accurate gauge of power, Which makes it's treatment that it is all the more frustrating.

I still haven't had the opportunity to properly look through my copy to confirm it still does what it did before, but the problem we had with it wasn't so much damage output but infinite healing that we had problems with.

Scarab Sages

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Eryx_UK wrote:
9mm wrote:
Eryx_UK wrote:
Milo v3 wrote:
Eryx_UK wrote:
Did they tone down the kineticist from the playtest? We had one in our PFS group during the playtest and it was extremely overpowered.
Kineticist is now more powerful.
That is disappointing. Between that and a over-optimized medium/barbarian, the playtest classes pretty walked everything they did in our PFS games.
this is more to do with PFS being piss easy than a classes power. PFS is not, will not, and never will be an accurate gauge of power, Which makes it's treatment that it is all the more frustrating.
I still haven't had the opportunity to properly look through my copy to confirm it still does what it did before, but the problem we had with it wasn't so much damage output but infinite healing that we had problems with.

It never had infinite healing, and explicitly doesn't now. Gather power can only be used with blast talents.


Overall, I like it, one of the best supplements I've seen from Paizo, particularly the occultist, kineticist and mesmerist (and the mindblade archetype for the magus). The spiritualist is not for me (hate pet classes), but I don't have any real problems with it. I want to give the ectoplasmatist a whirl, but it feels rather neutered and flavorless with that archetype, since almost all class features are lost.

Mostly, though I like the themes, which I find sorely lacking in most PF classes. The lack of silly dependencies for classes on books, gods or bad-touched ancestors. The exceptions (medium and occultist) make sense, and the latter takes real advantage of the Power of Stuff in a way that is rather consistent with the setting and the games fetish-focus on items. It also helps that half-casters are generally the far more balanced classes, not too overwhelming or useless.

Problem areas:

the psychic is bland, the disciplines are wackily awful (though with some fairly ridiculous abilities buried in some of them), and it lays the spell bloat in the system out to an ridiculous degree. I don't want to read through all those spells from half-a-dozen books to cherry pick the ones that aren't awful. At its root, its just a sage sorcerer archetype variant, very boring.

The medium. I want to like it. The relic hunter makes seances functional, so seems to be the mandatory default. But... overall... the per day theoretical versatility is overwhelmed by the complete lack of things the class actually does. Mostly it just feels like a one level dip for multiple classing, to pick up (with the spirit focus feat) a +2 to hit, +4 damage and +2 on Fortitude saves. Really tasty for archers and two weapon enthusiasts in particular, especially those that want a dex build. Negate the penalty for TWF and get a working damage bonus? Yes, please.

Psychic magic on the whole is an interesting change, but seems potentially very, very vulnerable to being unable to cast entirely.


I really like the Spiritualist, seems like a believable expression of the Summoner:-)

I also really like the Occultist, now my cluttered bookish dwarves no longer need to be Clerics or Wizards, and they'll be able to utilize all the crap my party weighs them down with.

Also I might be in the minority here but I like how Kineticist is designed, suddenly Constitution is about more then just Hit Points :-)

I also cannot wait for the flood of Samsaran Psychics that will inevitably hit PFS :-)

Dark Archive

I think the Medium is frankly amazing. At first, it felt wildly underwhelming, but the longer I look at it, the less it looks like a bad choice. It can do, quite literally anything. Sure, you're better off specializing in one Spirit, but you have the ability to be a magus today, a warpriest tomorrow, and a rogue the day after that. A better rogue than a rogue, for that matter. And, this was pointed out just yesterday, you might be the best magic item crafter ever. So there's that.


Legio_MCMLXXXVII wrote:
I think the Medium is frankly amazing. At first, it felt wildly underwhelming, but the longer I look at it, the less it looks like a bad choice. It can do, quite literally anything. Sure, you're better off specializing in one Spirit, but you have the ability to be a magus today, a warpriest tomorrow, and a rogue the day after that. A better rogue than a rogue, for that matter.

Well... kind of. You can certainly swap out the power suites on a day to day basis, but you certainly aren't a magus or a warpriest. There are a metric ton of class abilities you don't get to support either of those concepts. Rogue, too, is very debatable. If you mean just skill monkey, then... I guess. But skills aren't really an issue with the classes in this book, or with more recent classes (or traits for that matter). On the other side of the rogue... surprise strike every 3 levels is bad even compared to sneak attack every 2.

But what you don't have is the stats, feats or gear to support those roles. Heck, I'd challenge the generalist medium to just be able to carry the array of weapons multiple sets, armor (spare set of heavy for guardian). Also, keep in mind for the hierophant and archmage... you're still just on the partial caster progression, and you'll often need DC modifiers, which means burning other stats for charisma. If you want to be a real spell slinger...eh. Utility caster, yeah, but you then don't have the utility or combat abilities most partial caster classes carry.

Item crafter? Yeah, some potential there. And if the downtime is likely you can step into that function from your normal role. But other than that use, I really think the medium has to be built as a combat role or a spell role, or the mediocre build just falls apart.

Dark Archive

I am kind of sad that the Psychic has no healing spells... I mean, for me the 'psychic healer' is a thing I was looking forward to making.


Reading the posts on the Product Discussion from when just Subscribers had the book this book sounded great! Overwhelmingly positive on EVERYTHING. But now that it's out for everyone, all I'm seeing is complaints of everything in the book being incredibly underpowered and worthless, if flavourful, to the point where it's probably not worth the flavour to be so worthless. It's really killing my interest...

1 to 50 of 271 << first < prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | next > last >>
Community / Forums / Pathfinder / Pathfinder First Edition / Paizo Products / Product Discussion / Thoughts on Occult Adventures All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.