Frozencaveman's page

I think the current direction is different enough to a main caster to really be different from other casters, just because psychic has spells doesn't make it the main feature unlike wizards and sorcerers.

Oracles would be a closer analogy but their focus spells come with personal costs that the psychic doesn't have, and they are limited to three focus spells max, unless they accept even greater risks.

In terms of cantrip abusers that the psychic is made to be, Bard is the only other class that comes close, but because they focus on buffs rather than on affecting enemies i think they are again different enough. Plus the unleash mechanic brings an interesting level to using focus spells past the three max. (Although I think psychics should naturally be able to restock all their focus points rather than taking an 18th level feat but that's besides the point)

From the play test i like the direction, the problem is the power level of amps and the benefits of unleash are a little wonky, but hopefully they bring it around and really put enough power into these two unique mechanics to make it a worth while class

Because of psychic casting naturally eliminating verbal casting, if they just get Conceal Spell then a psychic can cast just like it had Silent Spell and only needs to roll a stealth check. I definitely think it should be a natural option for them to take, as even in 1e psychics were more subtle casters

What if, instead of just amping cantrips, they could amp any spells that they cast? Specific amps could amp specific types of spells like mind-affecting, force, etc...?

I think the ability to add amps to mind affecting and force spells would be a good direction, strong focus on what psychic should do best. It would also open up the psychic to other things than just spamming cantrips, although it would probably be a little harder to balance. Still, i see this as basically adding Metamagic to spells but with the added caveat of spending focus points.

We would definitely need more amp options to customize how you can do it, but it would also kinda make the psi cantrips less of the focus, so i don't think this is the way to go. I kinda wish they didn't put a limit to the number of amps you can use with a cantrip, it's already going to be limited by the focus point cost, even when unleashed they can just put in language of just one free amp, so if you want to do one big spell it would cost you all the focus points in your pool.

Crazy and probably too broken to implement but a fun idea I think

Oh yeah, by far a caster with a third hand would not have any of the issues I listed, but that's exactly why I suggest keeping it a full class psychic only feat. Limit the access so no other class can break the game

Frozencaveman wrote:

The 2 slots per level will only work if they have class features to make up for it. I like the 2 slots per level because it gives the designer the power budget to add power elsewhere.

This class is dead if they don't nail the psi cantrips w/ amps and the unleash mechanics, because of the lack of fall back to spells.

Since Psychic should be the best at mind affecting spells, I hope they include some way to get around the incapacitation mechanic, even if it's just temporary, like the ability to use charm spell that ignores the incapacitation trait but only while unleashed.

Or perhaps a new unleash that allows you to treat incapacitation spells as if cast at the highest spell slots

Psychic should be best at mind spells, but the play test has them falling short on this regard

I'm just going to chime in on this, even though it's a bit late. I agree with pretty much everything here, except that an unleash effect wouldn't support anything subtle, because they need to be used in fights. It would be odd for Psychic to be better at charming someone trying to stab them than someone they've been talking with for a little while.

Alright, fair. I should have said something more akin to being better at domination type effects. Being able to temporarily infiltrate the mind and have a bad guy work for you for the unleashed duration, and then immediately snap out of it once the unleash ends is what I meant. Sort of how combat forces the psychic to focus more but the psychic can only maintain that focus for a brief moment

Bringing it back to psychic, i think that a third hand that can't hold items (or can with an action cost) and can't make skills with the attack trait would be fine. Maybe with an amp they can make skills with the attack trait, using a spell attack roll instead would be interesting to add and make it worth a 10th level slot

Lightning Raven wrote:

I don't know why they're so afraid of extra limbs in this edition. In PF1e, the biggest "danger" was the fact that the more limbs you had, the more attacks you would make on a Full-Round Action. Which eventually lead to the infamous Kasatha Gunslinger.

In this edition, no matter how many limbs or weapons you use, the number of attacks won't scale beyond the expected, these useless feats are a waste of space AND they actually are pretty weird, since these limbs often both have the strength and dexterity to attack proficiently while not being able to do the most basic stuff (wrapping around an object to hold it aloft, for example).

There's a bunch of stuff in the game balanced around having exactly two hands. Two-hander vs. one-hander gives us the game's approximate value of a hand: two damage per die size. That's about twice the value of "all martial weapons" vs. "all simple weapons".

Yeah, i get that it's a balance point not to have a full third hand, it would give two handers a shield for example and make one handed weapons obsolete. It still doesn't make the current third hand feats worth anything. They really should be allowed to do anything a hand can do except hold an item or make skill checks that have the attack trait, because that's where I see the balance issues occuring. I don't find many problems with that except for the odd one handed range weapon like crossbow or the new guns plus a shield or wand... But since it costs a feat i think it's fine. Maybe if they made a follow up feat to grant this i could see it being fine, but I don't like that it's not an option at all

I don't disagree, but I'm not the one who made the extremely weak ancestry feats or the familiars who can't even open a potion lol

I think they are wary of the third hand shenanigans of 1e, but I honestly don't see those same issues happening with 2e design

I think they should let it work as another hand for free, but maybe change the level to 12, so you can't pick it up as an archetype, which is where the balance issues come in, or just make the prerequisite something that the archetype can't pick up so balance can be preserved for other classes. But as a full caster that doesn't use weapons i don't see any issues in just letting it work as another hand, maybe just add a no activating magic items clause? Since pathfinder 2e balance is super tight I can see this as a good way of future proofing

The thing that gets me kinda worry is that whomever wrote the daze amp didn't even realise that the critical amp effect is the exact same as the base crit effect, making it redundant.

Daze is just a terrible base that needs to be reworked or changed out...

All that being said, would I ever take it over Deepest Wellspring? Nope. Not a chance.

Which is pretty sad... Because I personally have no interest on getting back three focus points on a class where unleash mechanics let you use focus spells for free... It's kinda pointless in my eyes, but of course this is my personal opinion, I'm not knocking the strength of the feat, it's just a boring feat for me. I want to explode some heads!

I'd like to see some more impactful options from the cantrips. Maybe the daze amp can also read into their mind, and you can do a reaction to give an ally a bonus to AC or saves? Telekinetic projectile gives you the option to either shove, trip, or disarm...

If they want to not make it feel like spamming, then there needs to be choices, and the choices should be baked in from level one, and not rely entirely from amp feats, because that will make those psychics that focus on other feats spammers

Psychic are casters, that's most likely going to be a holdover from 1e. Psychic casting is still casting, just done differently. Still, they need a better identity apart from the other occult casters.

Incapacitation mind affecting spells cover all the spells you would associate with a psychic, mind affecting are their jam! So if we want to make them stand out from the crowd instead of being stuck forever as the worst occult caster, i would love to see these mind affecting spells have more oomph from a psychic.

If not a method of getting around incapacitation, maybe the ability to add amps? But I feel that this just becomes Metamagic with extra steps... Not really too different, unless they make some crazy amps.

I would love to see more feats that interact with the existing mesmerizing gaze

Perhaps something like a feat called fascinating gaze that makes it a fascinating effect for one action and a focus point like an amp, with an ability to keep an enemy fascinated when it would normally break if they fail another will save,

Maybe another called sickening gaze that forces a fort save with an action and a focus point

There's a ton of things they could do that can build off of the amp system now

Frozencaveman wrote:

Wow, didn't even realize that by the rules you can't do head explosion with an ampd cantrip...

How is a psychic ever supposed to get the effect off?

It's not for use against a high level threat, it's for plinking a mook with an unamped cantrip, then post amping it for extra damage against anything in detonation's range, a 15 foot emanation.

Upside, you get to make the GM explain how explody the exploded head explodes.

For a level 18 feat I want more than the occasional Mook kill, especially when you consider how high level play the enemies are HP sponges.

The problem also becomes that you need to use cantrips at their lowest damage because of lack of amps specifically looking to kill a mook to get this off, and if it doesn't kill then you've wasted actions on a gamble where you could've outright killed them with a regular psi amp. As written it's a very poor feat

Wow, didn't even realize that by the rules you can't do head explosion with an ampd cantrip...

How is a psychic ever supposed to get the effect off?

If we're going outside the box here, like way outside the box, I think the 2x spells issue could be fixed by having the feats grant a menu of amps for their standard spells in addition to cantrips. I'm talking like an amp that lets you make any mental spell have an enemy treat a successful save as a failure, and a failure as a critical failure, recover a spell slot for a single target spell that failed to affect the creature, maybe add a spell from your repertoire to your signature list for the fight, things like that. You can balance this pretty effectively by placing amps at the right feat levels, setting spell level caps specific amps can affect, or having some of them require additional actions.

I get that the big flashing red danger sign with this kind of openness is future-proofing, but if you look at what people like most about the class conceptually, it's the Amps. Amps really feel like the core of what they want in 2nd ed: more choices, less rote attack patterns, so extend it to the whole class.

Past the balance issues, this would make amps and Metamagic essentially the same mechanic, albeit at the cost of focus points. Perhaps once you add the focus point cost then it'll be different enough to Metamagic, and definitely they will need to add language on the unleash mechanic only adding free amps to cantrips, but this would make their limited spell slots better.

Maybe they can add an amp that gets around incapacitation limits, and the focus point cost will be the limiter... They could really use something to get around incapacitation! It would give the psychic a much stronger identity!

Unleash psyche is undoubtedly a very big aspect of the class, and i agree with your assessment, it's currently kinda awkward and unwieldy to enter into them.

I think that having them add damage to an Occult spellcaster is not the way to go, since the occult list is light on damage compared to others, and the fact psychics only have 2 spells per level is also a counterintuitive. Psychic should not be blasters, when a sorcerer will do that job so much better.

Psychic should be pushed in another direction, and the unleashed psyche should support that. When I think psychic i think mind affecting, yet none of these abilities help them there. One ability I'd like to see is perhaps a psyche that helps get around the incapacitation limit, which would also help give the psychic a stronger identity than worse sorcerer.

I think perhaps a different direction would be to add to the base unleash ability, rather than be forced to choose one per combat and that's it. I'd like to see the base ability change to a free action, and you can then spend an action, after meeting the requirements, to gain additional benefits and drawbacks from feats. Thematically, having a class with a lot of drawbacks is super interesting.

However, having drawbacks should necessarily improve the abilities you get. I'd like to see a system where the penalty you take conversely improves the opposite. So for example, taking a -2 penalty to AC you get a +2 to hit with spells. Since casters struggle with hitting, and since amps can't use Metamagic, i.e. the shadow signet ring which lets other casters target a save instead, i believe this wouldn't break game balance. Every caster in all my 2e games shy away from spell attack rolls because they fail more often than not, and don't have any effect on a failure.

The 2 slots per level will only work if they have class features to make up for it. I like the 2 slots per level because it gives the designer the power budget to add power elsewhere.

This class is dead if they don't nail the psi cantrips w/ amps and the unleash mechanics, because of the lack of fall back to spells.

Since Psychic should be the best at mind affecting spells, I hope they include some way to get around the incapacitation mechanic, even if it's just temporary, like the ability to use charm spell that ignores the incapacitation trait but only while unleashed.

Or perhaps a new unleash that allows you to treat incapacitation spells as if cast at the highest spell slots

Psychic should be best at mind spells, but the play test has them falling short on this regard

I don't understand why Paizo keeps making these sort of feats where "you have an extra tail/appendage/something that lets you manipulate things, sort of, but only briefly and only in specific scenarios, and you can't do anything other than these fringe cases that only come up with both hands full"

It's so limited that I've never thought of taking it as an ancestry feat, and i especially don't want to take it as a 10th level class feat, where usually most classes start to get their really good feat options.

So, i propose a rework. Leave the base ability as is, but add a new option:

As a single action you can focus on your telekinesis to make it act as a third hand in all ways. While concentrating on this telekinetic hand, you may manipulate, hold, or grab items as if it were a free hand, even if your other hands are occupied. Any round you cease to concentrate you drop anything you were holding using Automatic Telekinesis.

This hand has reach of 10 feat, which increases by 5 feet every 5 levels above 10. As part of concentrating on this hand, you may use the hand to strike or perform an athletic check using a spell attack roll against a creature within reach. Using this ability is considered an amp effect. If you hit, you deal 2d12 damage plus your spellcasting modifier as force damage. This increases by 1d12 at level 12 and 19.

On a critical hit with a strike, you may choose to trip, grapple, or shove the creature, as if you succeeded at an athletics check against the creature.

Daze is, by every metric, terrible. The base cantrip does laughable damage and only gets something on the rare critical failure. I think this is a case of putting lipstick on a pig, I'm worried no matter what sort of Amp effect they ultimately create, the raw base effect of Daze is going to make it a pretty bad option.

I think Daze should be replaced entirely, with something that would be worth casting unamplified, something that has decent damage, or a better effect on a failed save. Especially considering the direction of Psychic, we are going to be spamming these spells, it needs to be something better than Daze

Wave casting would be terribly unbalancing on the psychic and run counter to their slow build up approach to encounters. With 4 top level slots, all their spells become offensive in nature. Psychics now play really well at mid to high levels having a bunch of sustained Spells and defensive options to build up with into their unleash. 1 offensive spell slot per combat is more than enough for the design of the class.

How does having even less spells be unbalancing? Right now they have two high level slots and two of every level before it. The growing power is still there, because psi cantrips and unleash mechanics, but now they only have four spells total, albeit each one would be impactful. Sure, you can blow them all early, but then you have nothing but the cantrips left

Although I do see your point, maybe a free spell on unleash would be unbalancing, but I still like the wave casting idea with nice powerful spells but super limited

Frozencaveman wrote:

What I would like to see if they became a wave caster is some way to improve their incapacitation spells to affect higher level targets. Maybe continue to cap it at half their level rounded up, but seeing how psychics should be the best at mental spells, i could see this being how they achieve that fantasy

This I couldn't disagree with more. Having spells that are just more powerful than other classes, but getting less of them isn't a good balancing point in my mind. It just leads to the psychic having to be the class to go to for those spells and shortening the adventuring day because of it. Why would a wizard bother with incap spells if the psychic does it better?

The wizard can be just as good with incapacitation spells, as long as they cast them from their highest spell level slots. The only difference I'm suggesting is that a psychic could have an option to treat their lower level spells from wave casting as a higher level slot

What I would like to see if they became a wave caster is some way to improve their incapacitation spells to affect higher level targets. Maybe continue to cap it at half their level rounded up, but seeing how psychics should be the best at mental spells, i could see this being how they achieve that fantasy

Another idea to enforce that they are spellcaster focus while being a wave caster, perhaps when they enter a psyche they get to cast one spell for free? Basically it guarantees that they get at least one spell every combat despite having even less spells per day.

Also, there's no way around it, psychic NEEDS to be legendary casting

Lanathar wrote:

The slight issue is that adding more slots to the psychic will basically mean we might as well remove the witch from the game. There doesn’t seem like there would be a reason to pick on ever

Kkkkkkkkk

I usually don't compare prepared spellcasters with spontaneus ones. But if we do so the bards and occult sorcerers already do this job! kkk

I only make reference to witch class in order to remember what's happened to a class from playtest to release in the last time we said in foruns/surveys "yes, put less spells slot in trade of stronger focus spells". That's the only why I currently prefer more spellslots instead than expect that we have a good increase in psi cantrips and their amps.

Ah, so I'm not alone in thinking most of the witch hexes are rather weak...

That said, i think I'd rather see the psychic with less spell slots, but perhaps the ability to add amps to all their spells? As it stands they act exactly like Metamagic anyways, just without the action cost replaced with focus/unleashed mechanic. If this is the direction they took, then a lot of the power issues of the class can be solved, and it would help them from feeling too one note.

Of course this would probably make them feel more like a regular caster and less unique so this probably isn't the way to go. But if the final design has the unique selling point of the amp cantrips still be too weak, then this class is dead on arrival, because as is it's definitely too weak

I would definitely like to see a feat chain for Mesmerizing Gaze, as it's not a bad feat, not amazing because status penalties are so common, and especially because it seems like mesmerist is unlikely to ever be a class in 2e. A couple of examples:

Fascinating Gaze
If the creature fails the will save while under gaze, you also fascinate it.

All consuming gaze
If at any point the creature would have it's fascinated effect break, it must instead make a will save, on a failure it remains fascinated until the end of it's next turn instead

Weakening gaze
Target gains weakness to your mental effects, scaling by level

Subutai1 wrote:

Can someone explain Nudge Intent to me, as I see no practical use for it whatsoever? There is no reason for an enemy to decide against just taking the suggested action, since said action can be performed at any time during the turn and you cannot select an action the enemy cannot make. So he just takes the action whenever with no downside whatsoever, resulting in wasted actions and possibly a wasted Amp.

Has someone a practical example for me in which this cantrip is ever useful?

It's a terrible version of Command that gives the enemy the choice to take whichever option is least bad for them. It's not lost on cast like Command is, but the 1 minute per foe lockout and the lack of many great targets in most fights make it unlikely you'd want to cast it more than once or twice per day anyway.

I would definitely make the penalties less attractive, like start the frightened at 2 on a success, frightened 3 on fail, and add stunned 1 on a crit fail as the baseline.

Amped it should add stunned 1 on fail, and stunned 1 round on crit fail. The only way to get it to actually not be so easy to ignore is to make it a heavy debuff

Can someone explain Nudge Intent to me, as I see no practical use for it whatsoever? There is no reason for an enemy to decide against just taking the suggested action, since said action can be performed at any time during the turn and you cannot select an action the enemy cannot make. So he just takes the action whenever with no downside whatsoever, resulting in wasted actions and possibly a wasted Amp.

Has someone a practical example for me in which this cantrip is ever useful?

Otherwise, at the beginning of their next turn, the target must either choose to do their best to perform your chosen action that turn or attempt a Will save.

I've seen this mentioned a lot but in the spell it says it's in the beginning, i think it's not strictly the first action because, say you cast this on a wizard to do a strike, that wizard is probably at a distance with no weapon out. If it chooses to take the action to avoid the penalty, they need to first take an action to either draw a ranged weapon or move up to strike. Either way, if it does anything that doesn't contribute to the action stated then they need to make the save. At least this is how I read it.

Is it weak? Maybe, a once per combat spell that only causes frightened or stunned with both amp and a fail can probably be a lot stronger seeing as you can't spam it, but I don't see an argument for say, moving away and then casting, etc.

Amps need a boost in power for sure, since psychic loses a lot of spells per day vs other casters, their amp boosted cantrips need to be just as strong as other high level spells. They basically are trading versatility for consistently strong but narrow cantrips.

The unleash mechanic is cool, but probably takes too long to come online, i would probably knock it down to two rounds instead of three

Even so, i love the concept and the direction so I'll be playing it as soon as my group starts a new AP