Dokers's page

Paizo. I love you. But what are you doing? No Skald in a book literally called Battlecry!? Maybe a Skald would break some design rules that you have internally for P2, but I had to break the rules of punctuation to even write that last sentence! No Skald in Battlecry! is like making a book called Arcane Spellcaster and not including anything for the Wizard! Ok, this post is a little tongue in cheek. But where is our Skald?

Like I said. I generally love 2e, and the creativity that we are seeing coming out of the design team in these themed books, and I do not want this to stop. But I am starting to notice that it feels like things get released and then almost forgot about. Especially if it is not apart of the core set. You can see this in the amount of options for core vs non-core classes or ancestries (poor Shoony), And even in things like entire categories of items/mechanics (like grimoires and ritual spells).

I like how these themed books are pushing creativity in ways towards the theme. But I wonder how much it might be stifling creativity in other ways. One of my favorite things about Pathfinder 1e was all the quirky, almost random seeming archetypes that existed for each class. Now I wonder if we will see these kinds of class options, because they happen to never fit the theme of the books coming out.

So basically, I don't want the theme books to stop, but I wonder if there shouldn't be some non-themed random books as well. Books that are allowed to build more on what exists in the non-core set, even though it goes against the current business philosophy of Paizo. I love what Paizo has been doing, and I don't want these great ideas to just get buried under the next set of great ideas.

The problem I see with the Psychic class is not that it doesn't have any good ideas, but that it has too many. And by trying to put all of them into one class, none of them have the space to feel flushed out.

There is of course slotted casters. The Psychic doesn't get enough slots to feel meaningful. And there is the idea of slotless casters. But the Psychic doesn't get enough unique choices here for that to feel interesting either.

And of course, you need some kind of cool new mechanism to make the class feel even more unique (something you guys have been hitting out of the Park with in P2e). The Psychic has two: the Amp system, and the rage-like forms.

This class should really pick one from each category, and try to flush them out to make them more interesting. What I would do if I were you is to make the Psychic a full slotted caster with the Amp system (turning the amps into something more akin to metamagic, but that take no actions). And take the slotless idea, mix it with the forms, and come up with the best anime inspired kineticist you can.

By doing so, you can take the time to make these separate ideas really shine. Oh, and add a Wis based Psychic, of course. I really want to play my Psychic Monk.