Occult Adventures help?


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion


For whatever reason, I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around these classes, as in "how they'll play" rather than "what they are."

Could I possibly get a 1 or 2 line real brief explanation on the playstyles of each Occult class? I'd really appreciate it. :D

Sovereign Court

Neo2151 wrote:

For whatever reason, I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around these classes, as in "how they'll play" rather than "what they are."

Could I possibly get a 1 or 2 line real brief explanation on the playstyles of each Occult class? I'd really appreciate it. :D

Kineticist: Element powers. Deals lots of consistent damage, has the risky ability to nova, limited themed utility.

Medium: Spirit powers. Jack of all spirits, master of none - except unless using archetypes, you want to focus on one spirit and use the rest as nice bonuses.

Mesmerist: Eye powers. Debuffs, controls, save-or-sucks, some secondary combat ability to look swag (dem sword canes).

Occultist: Item powers. Focused (heh, puns) wizard-lite if specialised in certain schools, psychic gish if specialised another way.

Psychic: Mind powers. Plays like the Arcane (Sage Wildblooded) Sorcerer was it's own class, could explode heads, and had a more limited arcane reservoir and bloodline.

^ This is a fairly simplistic summary. I found them complicated to read through too, though - I'd recommend reading the PRD versions, I found it easier to follow.


Kineticist: All day blaster with vanilla attack but enhancements (for more and bigger effects) to her attack cause non-lethal damage but that's okay because you stack CON. Get bonuses when you take some non-lethal damage but also have lots of ways to avoid accepting too much non-lethal damage. BECOME THE AVATAR!

Liberty's Edge

Kineticist is, in many ways, the 'martial class' of the bunch. They blast things. It's what they do. They have some interesting utility powers (varying by element), and at range they wind up using their Move Actions for Gather Power to jack up their one big attack rather than making full attack actions (or they get Kinetic Blade, go melee, and full attack like everyone else), but they're real straightforward in their basic role.

Medium is...a little weird. The best way to play them is have Champion as your go-to spirit (and take the Feat that boosts it) and in that case on most 'adventuring' days they play like a slightly-fragile martial character with 4-level casting that's a bit better than usual (they get both Haste and Mirror Image as 2nd level spells, for example). But if they have days off, they can start doing amazing things with skills, or have basically any spell necessary that a 6-level caster (either Arcane or Divine) of their level could possibly have...but will be stuck in skill or caster mode for the whole day.

Mesmerist is sorta an inverted Bard. Bards do party-buffing with a side of mind control. Mesmerists do mind control, with a side of party buffing. They play like dedicated offensive casters focusing on enchantment spells in combat, though they can set up some neat buffs between combats, too, and remove status effects. Just Stare at people and mess with their heads and you have the basics down.

Occultist can actually play a few different ways based on their Schools. Going Transmutation they can do the Inquisitor thing and give their weapon Bane, plus jacking up their stats, and manage to be scary combatants personally. Going Conjuration they can be pretty decent summoners. Going Evocation they can manage as a pretty fair blaster. And so on. They can mix and match these a little, but they'll likely only be particularly good at one or two.

Psychic is an Int-based Sorcerer with a somewhat different spell list. The Disciplines are a littlemore powerful than Bloodlines, and Phrenic Amplifications add a few wrinkles, but really? Int-based Sorcerer off a different list.

Spiritualists are a lot like the Unchained Summoner who can't summon anything but their eidolon, though their pets tend to be less direct damage and more scouting and debuffing heavy than most eidolons. The details are way different (they're Wis based, for example) but the broad strokes are very similar.


To add to the Mesmerist, I find it useful to think it as the eleventh hybrid class from the ACG: it plays practically like a Bard/Witch hybrid.
Throw around mind-affecting effects all day, with some way to circumvent it for immune enemies, but instead of getting better SoS to seal the deal and more control they get medium BAB to whack things decently and a number of minor buffs to apply. I haven't gotten a look at the recent options that came out for them, but I feel that Mesmerist, Psychic, and Occultist are the better classes of the bunch of OA.

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