Mind Over Ghostly Matter

Friday, February 17, 2017

Illustration by Litos Lopez Rodriguez

Amanda Hamon Kunz and Jason Keeley are back to tell you more about the brand-new Player Companion, Psychic Anthology, a compendium of esoteric ideas and unusual choices for the occult classes.

Jason

When writing, editing, or developing a project, I often like to ask myself, "Is this disgusting enough?" Luckily for me, I didn't have to pose that query very often for Psychic Anthology. In a product that features a book written on the inside of a human skull and a tome bound in the hide of an extraplanar monstrosity, my favorite is the Encyclopedia Etherica, which is made entirely out of ectoplasm. A chronicle of spiritualists and their phantoms, the original version of this encyclopedia exists only on the Ethereal Plane. The only way for a copy to appear on the Material Plane is for a spiritualist's phantom to grasp it and then be harbored in the spiritualist's consciousness. The spiritualist then must vomit up the book, page by page. I don't think Amazon will be using this method of delivery any time soon.

But if you can stomach reading about the Encyclopedia Etherica, you can find all kinds of exciting options for spiritualists! The first is the addition of a new phantom emotional focus—kindness. A kindness phantom excels at aiding others and can even provide a small amount of healing. This section also includes archetypes that grant spiritualists phantom animal companions or allow them channel positive energy to harm the undead. Or, if you want to ditch the whole phantom thing and instead wield a sentient ectoplasmic sword, then the phantom blade archetype is for you. Not only does the phantom weapon get more powerful as you gain levels, it can also be reshaped into different weapon types and, eventually, eat souls. Not convinced? Just ask Estra, who seems pretty satisfied with her giant gooey battleaxe.

Illustration by Veli Nystrom

Illustration by Veli Nystrom

Amanda

Aside from its very theme, the most exciting part of Psychic Anthology was, for me, the opportunity to present psychic versions of concepts that have long been Pathfinder staples. One of my favorite ways that we accomplished this was by creating psychic versions of tried-and-true magic items.

The in-world framework the book uses to introduce these items is the Infinity Scroll, an enigmatic work that only holds a tiny fragment of the Akashic Record—or perhaps a few manifestations of the Dark Tapestry's impossible truths. The scroll was lost long ago, but the fragments that scholars recorded led to the creation of the truly noteworthy items detailed in Psychic Anthology.

For one, the book presents the ring of mysticism, which works much like a psychic ring of wizardry in that it doubles the wearer's psychic spells per day for one specific spell level. We also present the robe of the overmind. I won't spoil exactly what it does, but think a more psychically appropriate version of robe of the archmagi.

There are so many other goodies in Psychic Anthology, but you'll have to pick up the book to find out more!

Open Your Eyes—Occult Adventures Art Preview

Friday, July 17, 2015

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Illustration by Wayne Reynolds.

Subscribers are beginning to get a peek at the gateway to the unseen world in Occult Adventures, which officially hits game store shelves and the convention floor at Gen Con on July 29! Since our art department has been keeping a fairly low profile, I wanted to take over and give you another preview of the artwork gracing the pages of this book. Enjoy these selections from Occult Adventures!

Illustrations by Igor Grechanyi and Subroto Bhaumik

Illustrations by Ivan Troitsky, David Alvarez, and Alexandru Sabo

Sarah Robinson
Managing Art Director

Occult Adventures Class Preview: The Psychic

Thursday, July 2, 2015

What do you get for the mind that has everything?

Illustration by Nemanja Stankovic

We always knew Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Occult Adventures would have a full 9-level caster who could cast all the biggest and baddest psychic spells. This was our psychic, running fully on the power of her intellect. The big challenge with 9-level casters is always making them unique without making their non-spell class features too powerful. Getting full spell access is a big deal, and doesn't leave a lot of room for other bells and whistles. This is also the Pathfinder RPG's first Intelligence-based fully spontaneous caster, drawing on the strange psychic structures of her mind rather than her force of personality. And that unique mental structure leads to...

Psychic disciplines! Because psychic magic is heady and full of occult weirdness, one of my priorities was making sure there was something for the player to wrap their head around a little bit more easily—a frame of reference for how her psychic works. Psychic disciplines fill that space by describing what techniques the psychic uses to access the spells from her mind. In many ways, it's akin to praying to a deity for a cleric or studying a spellbook for a wizard, but far more individualized to suit how psychic magic works. (This wasn't just useful for the players. Even the design team had some trouble wrapping our brains around the esoteric concepts this book talks about, so it was valuable for us too.) Much like sorcerer bloodlines, disciplines give additional abilities and additions to the psychic's spell list mirror bloodlines in many ways, and provide roleplaying cues. The disciplines didn't change drastically after playtest, except for a few balance and thematic issues, particularly in the pain discipline. The final version of the class adds several new disciplines: dream, faith, psychedelia, rapport, and self-perfection. Faith and self-perfection lend a bit of a divine feel and a bit of a monk theme, respectively. Some of these, like dream, required some of the new spells from the book to function properly, so we waited to add those until the final version.

Though our version of mental magic differs wildly from ye olde psionic rules, the psychic's phrenic amplifications were designed to recapture some of the feeling of augmenting spells. The psychic can exert herself to dig into the workings of her mind and mess with the very nature of her spells. Some of the new phrenic amplifications let the psychic read the thoughts of creatures affected by a spell, spend phrenic points to improve her undercast spells, or replicate metamagic feats.

Now, the biggest change to the psychic isn't really any of her special abilities. It's her spell list. From the playtest, the psychic spell list has expanded dramatically, including the vast majority of the new spells from Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Occult Adventures. The psychic is also the only class with access to undercast spells. The spell list more than doubled in size from the playtest version. At the low end, the book introduces a telekinetic 0-level spell that hurls an object at an opponent. With high-level magic, the psychic can duplicate herself to be in two places at once, make a special ship that can take her and her companions on a voyage through dreams, or permanently switch minds with another creature.

Archetypes for the psychic have an interesting range. The psychic can get better at psychic duels (a new subsystem in the book) with the psychic duelist archetype, adopt physical mutations with the mutation mind, or shed her physical body with the formless adept. The craziest archetype we've included is the amnesiac, who forgets her own spellcasting ability and can attempt to recall spells to determine which ones she knows at a given time.

Logan Bonner
Designer

Meet the Iconics: Rivani

Wednesday, July 1, 2015

Today, as part of our ongoing Meet the Iconics series, we introduce the next of the six new iconic characters featured in Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Occult Adventures. This week we meet Rivani, the iconic psychic!

Illustration by Wayne Reynolds

The path of the initiate is long and fraught with danger. For Rivani, the journey began as a young girl of 12 in the teeming city of Chendras, in the distant land of Vudra. Born the seventh daughter of a minor functionary in the court of a great rajah, Rivani seemed set to follow her sisters into a life of government service. Always a precocious child, Rivani took well to her studies, spending hours in her master's library studying tomes she could barely comprehend. She especially favored lavishly illustrated accounts of harrowing victories over fantastic creatures, or voluminous surveys of distant lands and their many peoples, monsters, and mysteries. Rivani thrilled at imagining herself traveling to those distant lands as a questing hero, and soon these whimsical idylls consumed her every thought. As her revels grew more vivid, Rivani grew more distant from her sisters, putting her presumed future as a courtier at risk.

The rishis at court saw promise in the young girl's whimsy, and implored the rajah to put Rivani to the Trial of the White Lotus, a simple test to determine a child's mental aptitudes. After a series of intelligence and motor skill challenges, the rajah's poets probed Rivani's knowledge of the world's esoteric nature. They were surprised to discover that Rivani's reading had already set her on the path to spiritual development. She knew of the growth of the soul through reincarnation, of the astral body and the etheric double, and of the distant planes that house them. She knew also the rudiments of ki, the energy force that binds all living things into a spiritual family. In terms of esoteric theory, Rivani knew more than most third-year chelas. A promising child, indeed.

But it all came down to the Trial of the White Lotus. Following the minor challenges, the rishis brought Rivani to a secret room within the onion dome of the rajah's highest tower, and there revealed a lush garden of fabulous flowers and colorful plants. Here was a verris bulb from distant Kaladay, there a purple jonquil from mythical Hermea. A massive quanlum bush—identical to the specimen allegedly recovered by Khiben-Sald himself on the far planet of Castrovel—dominated a far wall, next to a collection of ghorus seeds floating in a nutrient tank. And at the center of the room lay a pedestal, and on that pedestal a simple white lotus—Rivani's final challenge.

"Cast forth your mind," the rishis bade her. "Merge your life essence with that of the flower and realize that you and she are but tongues of the same flickering cosmic flame." Rivani closed her eyes and concentrated on regulating her breath, relying on techniques she'd read inscribed upon an archaic manuscript of palm leaves by a lost yogi brotherhood. With each exhalation, she pushed her consciousness deeper beyond her physical body into the scintillating emanations of ki that comprised her health aura. At first, Rivani wasn't sure if she simply imagined that it was so, but when her mind conjured the thought of her aura touching upon that of the white lotus, she felt her spirit lighten, and a beatific calm overcame her.

Sensing a breakthrough, the rishis instructed Rivani to infuse her ki with that of the plant, to meld her mind with its animating force and open its closed petals. As she considered their instruction, Rivani pictured the bulb of the lotus opening one petal at a time. From within the flower glowed a coruscation of colorful energy Rivani inherently knew represented the force of life itself. It flourished within the tiny cup of the white lotus, but it burned with an intensity that echoed that of the sun. At that moment Rivani realized—not just read, but truly realized—that all life, hers, the flower's, even the sun's, were but aspects of the same glorious creation. As her conviction grew deeper, as the petals of the white lotus opened faster and faster, Rivani became aware that her mind also opened itself one petal at a time. Sweat dripped from her brow, threatening to distract from her spiritual unfoldment by reminding her of the limits of her physical body, but still Rivani delved deeper.

In her mind's eye, Rivani stepped further and further into the light until she could no longer distinguish herself from the flower. But she felt other presences, too. The poets of the court were also part of the fabric of life, and Rivani brushed against their innermost thoughts without even meaning to. She saw their anticipation, their pride, their amazement at her unexpected power. She saw too their betrayals, their scandalous secrets, and their venal, immoral ambitions. Rivani had passed the Trial of the White Lotus, but none of the rajah's rishis celebrated her victory.

Instead, certain that her unexpected foray into their consciousness had revealed secrets that could threaten their status at court, the rishis proclaimed Rivani a mahatma reborn, the vessel of a world teacher consciousness returned to Golarion to guide the people into a new age. Just not in Vudra.

With the blessings of a rajah nervous about his advisors' tales of Rivani's mind-reading prowess, the rishis dispatched their blessed student across the sea to the Isle of Jalmeray, there to further study among the adepts of the Houses of Perfection. Each of the that institution's three monasteries welcomed their honored visitor from the East, but the Monastery of Unblinking Flame in particular seemed most eager to accept her into their ranks. Even as far away as Chendas, Rivani had heard tales of the Houses of Perfection and their "impossible" entrance trials. Steeling herself for the test of a lifetime, Rivani prepared, as her books instructed, to outwit an efreeti.

Instead, white-robed warrior monks escorted her to the monastery's courtyard garden for an audience with Anandala, the order's ageless sovereign. She denied Rivani's entrance to study at the monastery, for she was to be a teacher, not a student. "Everything you could teach us you read in a book," she said. "We have read books. Go out into the world and learn to live. Once you know something for yourself, come back to Jalmeray and teach us what you have learned."

Thereafter, Rivani spent several months as a librarian's assistant in Quantium before fleeing the city after becoming a pawn in the psychic espionage and infighting of the Council of Three and Nine. From there she ventured to Absalom, spending most of a year as a translator for the esoteric manuscripts department of the Forae Logos before conflict with a fellow librarian drummed her out on the streets. Although she still reads voraciously and is seldom found without a well-thumbed book or two, Rivani henceforth swore off finding the world's secrets in musty libraries, and finally set out to make some discoveries of her own.

A life filled with so much travel has filled Rivani with a wanderlust that borders on fatalistic. Her relationships burn intensely but briefly, as she constantly guards against delving too deeply—accidentally or otherwise—into the minds of her friends and lovers. She seems always fixated on the next stop on her journey, and while of a generally kind nature and friendly demeanor, she takes it as a matter of faith that she will soon be moving on, and avoids long-lasting, deep connections with others. Rivani loves nothing more than to share stories of her travels and cultural explorations, and to receive the tales of others in return. Through all of this she's begun to develop her own philosophy, but it will be many years, and many many more adventures to come, before she will be ready to share her wisdom with the world.

Erik Mona
Publisher