Phrenic Amplifications and Psychic Multiclassing


Rules Questions

Shadow Lodge

1 person marked this as FAQ candidate.
FAQ wrote:
General rule: If a class ability modifies your spellcasting, it applies to your spells from all classes, not just spells from the class that grants the ability. (The exception is if the class ability specifically says it only applies to spells from that class.)
Occult Adventures wrote:

Phrenic Amplifications

A psychic develops particular techniques to empower her spellcasting, called phrenic amplifications. The psychic can activate a phrenic amplification only while casting a spell using psychic magic, and the amplification modifies either the spell’s effects or the process of casting it. The spell being cast is called the linked spell. The psychic can activate only one amplification each time she casts a spell, and doing so is part of the action used to cast the spell. She can use any amplification she knows with any psychic spell, unless the amplification’s description states that it can be linked only to certain types of spells

When Phrenic Amplifications refers to "psychic magic" and "psychic spell," is it restricting the use of the ability to (1) spells from the psychic class or (2) psychic magic generally, as opposed to arcane or divine magic.


I feel like "psychic magic" refers to #2 and "psychic spell" refers to #1. But this is sufficiently ambiguous that I'd appreciate a FAQ.

I feel like this doesn't come up a lot since the consensus is that multiclassing 9 level casters is a bad idea.


PossibleCabbage wrote:
I feel like "psychic magic" refers to #2 and "psychic spell" refers to #1. But this is sufficiently ambiguous that I'd appreciate a FAQ.

From the wording, I feel strongly that "psychic magic" refers to the type of magic (Arcane, Divine, or Psychic). As you say, the second seems more ambiguous. If it meant a spell from the Psychic Spell List, I would have expected to see the words "Spell List" like for the Magus Spell Combat and Spellstrike abilities.

For a more apples-to-apples comparison, consider the Psychic Detective description.

OA wrote:
Spells: A psychic detective casts psychic spells drawn from the psychic class spell list and augmented by a select set of additional spells (see Psychic Detective Spells). Only spells from the psychic class spell list of 6th level or lower and psychic detective spells are considered to be part of the psychic detective's spell list. If a spell appears on both the psychic detective and psychic class spell lists, the psychic detective uses the spell level from the psychic detective spell list.

That's from the same book and they certainly were careful to use "spell list" when appropriate. So I think the use of "psychic spells" that Weirdo cited is likely the type of magic like the first, but I'm not nearly as certain as I am for the first case.

PossibleCabbage wrote:
I feel like this doesn't come up a lot since the consensus is that multiclassing 9 level casters is a bad idea.

True, but the Psychic Detective does get a Phrenic Amplification. I can't think of another 6th level caster that does, but there may be some. For 6th level casters a dip into another class like Occultist could be worth the cost.

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