I did a playtest (with me running all PCs and monsters) where I recorded every action that the PCs took.
Playtest Battle Record
So far I've gotten through one adventuring day of three battles: a Moderate, Moderate, and Severe battle. The party won the first two battles but was defeated on the third.
The playtest was at 8th level.
Here were my thoughts on the Psychic and Thaumaturge:
=== PSYCHIC ===
- In the first battle, the Psychic felt mostly like another occult caster. I wasn't really able to use my amped cantrips because the monsters rolled really well the first couple rounds and did lots of damage, forcing me to use healing spells.
- The second battle, where the party did best on, was the one where I really felt like what was unique about the Psychic came into its own. The Psychic was able to use lots of one action cantrips (Guidance, Amped Message, Mental Scan) to help allies do their thing. On the other hand, most of that was closer to the end of the battle, when additional power is less valuable.
- The third battle was one where I really felt the lack of spell slots. Once I used the Heroism (cast pre-battle) I was down to only 1st and 2nd level spell slots, so was very limited in what I could do. At this point, having an extra spell slot of each level (so I could cast another summon unicorn > heal or other big spell) would have been more valuable than the amped cantrips.
- In general, it seems like the intended design is that Psychics have more powerful cantrips than other classes, at the cost of fewer leveled spells. But the downside of this tradeoff is that usually, when you are casting a higher leveled spell, it is because you really need the spell now, while cantrips are usually when you don't need something high-powered right now. So compared to other casting classes, Psychics get more power at the times when they need it less, but less power at the times when they need it more. This didn't seem like a good trade.
- Not only do they have fewer spell slots, they have a worse spell selection: they only get to select 2 spell slots at each level (plus a 3rd slot which is fixed for them, and is often not very useful). For instance, in the Irnakurse battle it would have been really great if I had had Hideous Laughter to shut down the enemy's reactions, but of course I didn't know in advance that that was what I would be facing, and didn't have enough spell choices to cover my bases. Of course this is a spontaneous casting class, so it *shouldn't* be able to cover *all* its bases, but the fact that it covers *fewer* bases than other casters was a big downside.
- I didn't feel like the psyche feats were that good. None of the psyche benefits were really that useful; it mostly just felt like an action tax to be able to keep using your amped cantrips.
- Okay, that was what was lackluster about the class, what was good about it? When I was able to get a series of buff cantrips off, that really felt unique. In particular, I really liked Amped Message - the effect it gives is very unique, it feels good to be able to play off of your ally being in a good position to attack. The only downsides of it are (1) it doesn't really come online until level 7; it would have seen very lackluster if all I could do is have someone move, and (2) it is a little dependent on party composition, i.e. having someone with a powerful "basic Strike" and nothing else they want to do for their reaction.
- On the other hand, Amped Message was really the *only* amped cantrip that felt unique to me. Mental Scan felt like a weaker Inspire Courage, the ones that do damage didn't feel unique because there are lots of better ways to do damage, and stuff like amped Detect Magic or amped Guidance seem very situational.
- One build I think would be interesting for this class is a build that stays invisible most of the time and focuses on buffing and healing allies - that would mitigate the weak defenses. My Psychic has Cloak of Elvenkind and Boots of Elvenkind for that reason. It does depend though on whether you rule Mental Scan as a hostile action that breaks invisibility. (This test, I did; I think next time I'll rule that it doesn't, in order to test this out more)
- If I were revising this class, I might lean more into the idea of "creating mental links with your allies to help them"; it seems like that is flavorful for a psychic and could make the class feel unique, as there aren't really any other classes with that focus. This could be things like other cantrips similar to Message that let allies do other actions, ways to make it easier to cast buffs on allies or reward you for casting buffs on allies, maybe even a spell you cast on one ally that gives that ally a way to help another ally, and so on.
=== THAUMATURGE ===
- I have less to say about this class, as in this run I only really ended up using Find Flaws / Esoteric Antithesis and the implements. Also, the fact that I'm playing solo, and already know everything about the monsters, means I don't really get a chance to see the advantage of the Recall Knowledges.
- But in general, I did find that Find Flaws / Esoteric Antithesis didn't really feel that unique; it felt like other classes' bonus damage abilities except with some extra hoops you have to jump through. For instance, the "flavor text" of Find Flaws says that if you fail, you have to "invoke a wide range of superstitions and narrow it down from there". But there's no actual "narrowing things down", there's just an action tax.
- I think a more interesting design might involve something like: Esoteric Antithesis doesn't require using Find Flaws first, and lets you change what damage type your weapon deals. So if you already know or can guess what the monster's weakness is, you don't need to go through Find Flaws first. And if you fail your check and are not sure, as a player you have to actually guess. (Of course you would also need ways of imposing custom weaknesses etc.)
- I had Scroll Thaumaturgy and Handy Esoterica, which could have been really useful in the last fight (if I were to pull out a scroll of Hideous Laughter or something) but (due to my own mistakes) I didn't actually buy any scrolls or leave myself with enough gold to use Handy Esoterica. But I do see a major downside to Scroll Thaumaturgy: since the Thaumaturge usually has both hands full, they have to either spend an action to put away their implement and another action to pull out a scroll (which means they won't have enough actions left for a 2 action spell) or they have to drop their implement on the ground.
In the next installment, I'll buy some new items with the treasure from the two encounters I did pass, change up my spell lists, and see if we can get some more data on the Thaumaturge!
