Teridax's page

I'm personally quite happy that Paizo makes a point of not telling us how to adjudicate rules through social media communications: one of the many pet peeves I had with another tabletop system is that the developers were constantly telling players how to rule their game on social media, and some of the rulings they were giving out were baffling. If a rule was unclear (and many were), that meant trudging through various corners of the internet to see if there was advice given on the subject, instead of just going to a rulebook.

The caveat to all this is that it presumes that the rules themselves are clear at all times, and that the ones that aren't are addressed via errata or some other official process in timely fashion. When some notable ambiguities, discrepancies, and other errors are left unaddressed for over a year, however, sometimes years, and errata is seen as less urgent than shipping product that itself contains sloppy writing that will need more errata to address in the future, then all that's left is a whole bunch of unanswered questions.

Although I do think there has been a real drop in the consistency of rules writing post-remaster, I don't actually think that's the main issue for me: really, I'd be absolutely fine with a drop in quality if the underlying assumption was that things are in a healthy enough place that it'll pick back up in the future. What worries me much more is that behind the scenes, it appears the developers are severely burnt out from constantly working under crisis conditions over extended periods of time: one former Paizo employee mentioned they were working 11-hour workdays, and another said they were severely burnt out from the company's production schedule, and the only thing that was keeping them around was the free healthcare. That, to me, is not the sign of a company that's in a healthy spot. The remaster added a lot more books to an already packed production pipeline, and that kind of addition tends to come with crunch and burnout that doesn't seem to have been addressed. We can mention that Paizo exploiting its workforce is nothing new, as the company's employees unionized for that very same reason in 2021, but it sounds to me like the situation has worsened since the OGL crisis.

Prior to the remaster, the Oracle and especially the Witch were heavily criticized for sure, and there were calls for reworks. I don't recall the Psychic getting that much criticism before Player Core 1 launched, as the class still had a niche back then, but once casters started getting better focus spells, better Refocusing, and better class features, that's when the class fell comparatively behind and people were expecting buffs to give them an edge once more.

At this point, though, the impression I'm getting is more that people seem to feel that the ship has sailed as far as Paizo's work is concerned. It's a similar perception I've seen for the Wizard, whose remaster ended up nerfing them, and for the Oracle, who despite all the power they received ended up becoming a much more generic class, and a very different beast from their premaster version. Prior to the remaster, I remember Witches+ being a popular third-party supplement, and when Team+ gets around to doing a Psychics+ supplement, I'm fairly certain there's going to be high demand for it as well. I'm personally in the process of drafting up some homebrew to improve the Psychic, and will be looking at other third-party work to see what might interest my Psychic players.

Essentially, there are two strategies to buffing Imaginary Weapon I found. The first is keeping its niche as a high-risk, high-reward melee-only cantrip that deals large amounts of damage, and searching for a form of equilibrium with the original version when fighting a creature with a resistance. The second is changing its niche to support a melee-ranged mixed usage to make the subclass more versatile.

I like this approach, and both proposals come across to me as ways to make imaginary weapon a bit better in a way that can be largely agreed upon. Personally, I like the idea of giving the cantrip range so that the Tangible Dream Psychic isn't forced to put themselves in major danger to use their only starting damaging psi cantrip, and while I'd be in favor of even larger buffs to both the base cantrip and its amp, even just a slight bump in damage or a range increase I think could go a long way towards improving IW from its current state.

Unfortunately I think this is an problem Paizo runs into semi-frequently, where they don't properly budget feats that are designed to buff deficient options.

Yeah, this is a bit of a shame. I think the idea of keeping certain actions limited as a baseline can be good design, but only if the options that build upon them buff them significantly enough to be worthwhile. Done right, this could make those choices feel like massive power-ups even when they make you as powerful as if you'd taken a competing option. In practice, though, for all the text that gets put into these options sometimes, the end result is that you're about as powerful as if you'd used less limited actions, minus the benefit of an actual power-up. The Gunslinger I think suffers from this as well in that a lot of their features are about compensating for having to use weak weapons, yet a lot of their deeds and reloads are just okay, so they don't really catch up to other martials unless they pick notably strong options like Fake Out.

Locate is an Uncommon spell. Having a GM facing way to limit spells that might cause issues and then creating player facing ways to circumvent that limitation is really goofy. They did this back in PC1 too by making teleport being a Wizard School Spell. I don't really get it.

Same, and I'm honestly confused by the choice of spell here. If we were to just stick to common remaster and Dark Archive spells, there's still behold the weave, clairaudience, hypercognition, scrying ripples, and show the way at 3rd rank that would fit the theme just fine. I'm also not a fan of including uncommon spells in common subclasses and other character options, and I feel there needs to be some concept of inheritance of rarity for it to be respected: choices that feature uncommon options should be uncommon, or rare if they ever have rare options, and common choices should only feature common options. Otherwise, it kind of defeats the point.

I guess my own Silent Whisper Psychic can be glad they didn't know about Shatter Mind and that can remain literally the only spell I cast.

Yeah, amped shatter mind is freakishly strong, and I feel ought've been the standard to set for other amps. Dealing about 79% of howling blizzard's damage (or 107% with Unleash) while also applying a condition on a failed save I feel is a very good standard to set for an amped psi cantrip, and in my opinion the only reason it's spammed on Silent Whisper is mainly because none of the other amps are nearly as good. It definitely puts the IW nerf into perspective as well.

If that's correct, then that is just wild, because remaster focus spells should not care about order of operations like this. Those are the same feats giving a different outcome just based on the order you take them.

You are correct, the two sequences would yield different amounts of Focus Points. I also agree with you, order of operations should not matter for this and I find it quite silly that it applies here. I'm fairly certain this was an oversight, one that would have been very easily addressed by adding a bit of text stating your focus pool increases by 1 Focus Point if you have one already.

Psi Development is a 6th-level feat, and no longer gives you a Focus Point if you already have a focus pool (by contrast, it gives you one if you don't, so pick this before other focus spell if you want more Focus Points). The remastered dedication feat indeed makes you a spellcaster trained in spell attack modifier and spell DC, plus trained proficiency in Occultism and a single psi cantrip; definitely agreed that it could've easily given an extra psi cantrip and been absolutely fine. I also agree with Tridus and others who pointed this out that the dissociation between amps and Focus Points here is really clunky, and having order of feat selection matter when trying to expand one's focus pool feels more like an oversight than an intentional design element.

I can only express what I think on the matter rather than others' assessments, but for the Magus, a lot of their subclasses have benefits that don't turn on unless you enter Arcane Cascade stance. To enter Arcane Cascade stance, you need to spend an action, but only after Casting a Spell or Spellstriking, meaning you will need to either spend your whole turn doing nothing but this, or cast a single-action spell like shield just to enter the stance, which still takes up most of your turn. Additionally, most of the Magus's hybrid studies only grant benefits if you have a specific equipment loadout, so Twisting Tree only boosts your staff and Laughing Shadow only gives its benefits while you're unarmored and have a free hand. Thus, the Magus's subclasses tend to be quite restrictive in how you're expected to play to gain their benefits, and jumping through all of those hoops can end up severely hindering you compared to just ignoring those mechanics: the one major exception to this is Starlit Span, which lets you make ranged Spellstrikes, so even though you end up getting pigeonholed into a ranged build, it at least lets you do something you couldn't do before and makes you a lot stronger from the jump.

As for the Gunslinger, a large number of their ways require you to get into melee range to access several of their benefits, namely the Drifter, Triggerbrand, and Vanguard subclasses. This similarly means jumping through a lot of hoops, and in the case of the Triggerbrand also requires using combination weapons, which are generally not very good. This can lead to situations where ignoring all of that and just standing back to shoot can end up being more beneficial than leaning into these subclasses, especially as their unique actions aren't always very rewarding. By contrast, the Pistolero is a subclass that doesn't force you to get up close, yet also has what I'd consider the strongest slinger's reload and initial deed out of the lot.

Relaunching this discussion with Maya's blessing: there's been a lot of discussion lately around the Psychic after their changes were leaked for the Dark Archive remaster. Just to avoid having to sift through another thread, here are the changes that were reported:

General Changes
The following are changes that apply to the entire Psychic class.

I'll just say that I very much enjoyed Battlecry, as well as the Draconic Codex. I don't forsee much issues in the future, and I think 1 class getting a lackluster pass through with the remaster is being spun into this portent of doom, which imo is hilarious.

I can’t speak for everyone, but my own worries stem from a series of issues rather than one isolated incident. Given how others on here have also explicitly cited different examples of things they’re not happy about, I don’t think the above is really a fair assessment, and in fact it comes across more as an attempt to dismiss the opinions of people you disagree with by disparaging them and their judgment.

Hi Maya, I really appreciate the response and the kinds words. I'm glad to hear action is taken under these circumstances, and I hope it was for that thread. I would like to reiterate that this isn't an isolated incident, and I know at least one of the people involved is a repeat offender. Your post at the end mentioned "underlying smoldering tension and pain," and while some of that may have to do with a painful topic of conversation, my impression is that quite a few people were aware of the game that some people were playing and were sick and tired of it. I'll try to relaunch the discussion and hope for the best, but the fact that nobody has so far attempted to do so shows there has been an undeniable chilling effect in locking the previous thread.

I also do want to make it clear is that I don't think locking discussion comes from any ill intention, and in fact my impression is that you've made a significant effort from the very start to stimulate better discussion through positive participation and encouragement rather than punishment. I really like this approach, as I find it has significantly improved the atmosphere of these forums, and I have you to thank for the positive changes I've made to how I engage in online conversation. Although I'm not happy with how that particular thread turned out, I think you do amazing work, Maya, and I'm really grateful for all that you do.

I feel the change in quality is more of a symptom than the main problem itself, but yes, I'm a bit worried. I definitely feel like there's been a shift since the remaster, and the part of the shift that I have experienced has been a decline in product quality due to less consistent balance and more frequent poor design, but also less customer-friendly practices. The new storefront not factoring in store credit is an example of the latter, and making books opt-out rather than opt-in on the subscription model I think is a subtle yet predatory change that is particularly effective at targeting people with memory issues, ADHD, or other circumstances that might make them less likely to pick up on the reminders or remember to opt out. I also homebrew frequently and share my content online, and there was a debacle where Paizo briefly tried cutting out the Community Use Policy when reworking their licenses to then pressure third-party content creators into sharing their work exclusively through Infinite. Thankfully Paizo restored the CUP following negative feedback, but it kind of tarnished the idea that Paizo was standing up for creative rights post-OGL crisis.

The flipside to this is that, from what I've been seeing, developers have been expressing burnout and talking about working eleven-hour workdays, so if this is true, then the situation isn't great at Paizo either. There's been recent issues as well with a distributor going bankrupt and refusing to pay the company for their stock, so if I were to hazard a conjecture, my guess is that the company is struggling financially and compromising on both quality and ethics as a result.

I also imagine this thread is being written as a result of the Dark Archive remaster, and specifically the changes to the Psychic. I'm personally not planning on purchasing the remaster, because despite the positive changes to the Thaumaturge I don't think I'll be getting a better or more functional product than the version I already have.

Recently, a thread opened in the PF2e General Discussion subforum to discuss the remastered Psychic. As can happen on these threads, arguments started appearing, and eventually the thread got locked. Although this is nothing special, the reason I'm posting on the feedback subforum is because, in my opinion, it demonstrates a set of egregious behaviors that I keep seeing from certain usual suspects on the forums, behavior that I think is being unwittingly given disproportionate power by moderation.

Without naming names or pointing to specifics (you can find those in the thread, if you can stomach reading through it), there were a couple of people on that thread who were engaging in behavior that went beyond the usual stubbornness in an internet argument and into genuinely manipulative and destructive tactics. This included a consistent pattern of confronting people and then repeatedly shifting the goalposts throughout conversation to generate confusion and present a false narrative, making insincere requests for evidence, math, and other time-consuming justifications that were immediately ignored in favor of repeating claims that had just been disproven, and continually attempting to dictate to others how they should feel while dismissing their concerns.

However you want to call this behavior, it had a clear, destructive effect on conversation: because those individuals were continually attempting to center conversation around the same arguments, and kept ignoring or dismissing contrary evidence, conversation stagnated. Because those individuals were deploying tactics made to frustrate and dismiss, people got justifiably irritated, and in fact a whole bunch of individuals by the end were openly calling those people out for what they were doing. In response to a thread that had gotten heated as a result of transparently disingenuous behavior, moderation's response was to lock the thread, killing conversation entirely, and that was about it. This, in my opinion, was not a great way of handling the situation, and in fact I believe it risks reinforcing poor behavior, as has happened in the past.

To explain: when one party's position is "let's discuss this," and the other party's position is "no, we're not having a discussion, and I will do everything in my power to shut it down," then shutting down discussion punishes the party that wants to have a discussion, and rewards the party that acted to end it. It gives disproportionate power to people looking to stifle discussions they don't want to have, because if locking the discussion is the only outcome, then those people effectively have the power to end whichever conversations they like with impunity. From what I've seen, this is behavior that certain individuals on these forums have weaponized to get threads locked in similar fashion in the past, using similar tactics. What makes this behavior especially insidious is that in isolation, it can easily appear innocuous, and is particularly difficult to report, let alone identify, without connecting the dots across a person's posts in a thread and critically analyzing what they're doing throughout. This in my opinion is by design, and helps fly under the radar while engaging in behavior made to frustrate others and elicit the kind of heated behavior that gets those threads shut down.

With this in mind, I don't think the solution to arguments should just be locking threads when one or more bad faith actors are acting in a way that is actively derailing discussion. Although we could all engage with cooler heads, this really isn't a "both sides" issue to me when one side is expressly trying to frustrate the other. Although this kind of behavior can be difficult to untangle, it is still possible to identify, as happened on that thread, and I think taking steps to see where it's coming from and addressing it would help curate discussions, rather than kill them off. I certainly don't look forward to having future discussions on here and seeing the same people get rewarded when they try to shut it down, and seeing this happen is discouraging me from opening more threads.

I think there's an interesting idea in tying Spellstrike's recharge to MAP actions, so long as it's the only way to consistently recharge Spellstrike: if hitting with a Strike naturally recharged Spellstrike and you could then pick feats to recharge with Athletics maneuvers, Dirty Trick, and other attack actions, but nothing too reusable without MAP, then you'd enforce the on-and-off-turn rotation on the Magus. This, in turn, could allow conflux spells to be made stronger, and would leave room for other Strike feats that would have reason to exist alongside Spellstrike. If there were still to be evergreen, MAP-independent actions that recharged Spellstrike, however, players would still gravitate towards those and your engine would break down.

I find it interesting that for some people, calling out manipulative and destructive behavior by a name they may not agree with appears to be a far worse offense than the harmful behavior itself. This isn't just poor argumentation being called out, it's a consistent and deliberate pattern of rewriting the narrative, denying and omitting facts that have been laid out prior, dismissing the feelings of others, and pinning the blame for their actions on others. No matter what you want to call it, that kind of behavior isn't okay, and should have no place on these forums. It absolutely should be called out, as it has done significant damage to this conversation.

Which it sounds to me like the nerf was done without fully paying attention to the scope on Paizo's part. It sounds like a buff to amps damage would do more to close this gap.

I agree that if we were to assume Paizo were going for a power-neutral damage switch, then the heightening you propose would make the new IW a comparatively more attractive prospect. I also agree that the unamped new IW deals better than the unamped old IW against resistance, for whatever that's worth on a melee cantrip given to a 6 HP/level cloth caster.

My conjecture, and I have no concrete statement from the developers to support this, is that there seems to have been an intent to address common criticisms players made of the Psychic MC combo with the Magus. Rather than go about it with proper care, though, whoever applied the changes instead turned amping into a free action to prevent interaction with spellshapes (by itself, a good move if it didn't also disable reaction amps), but then also nerfed IW despite the synergy with the Magus getting cut, and then also nerfed the MC archetype far more than was necessary for good measure. Just the first of these changes would have nixed the Magus combo, and nerfing the MC archetype I think had some justification up to a point, but all of these at once and to the extent that happened I think was too much, especially when the class received far too little in return.

What signals to me that these changes were done carelessly isn't even the nerf, but the fact that several of these changes break certain basic mechanics: because the listed free action on amping has no trigger, it can't be used out of turn RAW, so GMs now have to houserule in order to fix the interaction with reaction amps that this change breaks. Because amps aren't focus spells and Psi Development only gives you a Focus Point if you don't have a focus pool, picking the feat won't give you a Focus Point if you have a focus pool already, making it one of the very few ways of having a different number of Focus Points than options to use them. It also means that the order of feat selection makes a difference, as picking Psi Development and then a focus spell will give you more Focus Points than if you do the opposite, which to me doesn't sound at all right.

The average damage for 2d8 + 1d8/rank is as follows

1(9)/2(13.5)/3(18)/4(22.5)/5(27)/6(31.5)/7(36)/8(40.5)/9(45)/10(49.5)

The average damage for 2d6 + 1d6/rank is as follows
1(7)/2(10.5)/3(14)/4(17.5)/5(21)/6(24.5)/7(28)/8(31.5)/9(35)/10(38.5)

Average Spell differential
1(2)/2(3)/3(4)/4(5)/5(6)/6(7)/7(8)/8(9)/9(10)/10(11)

I would encourage you to do all the math you just did... but actually use the amped versions this time. That's what I did, and I'm surprised that that wasn't your first port of call, especially as you did seem to notice that there was a discrepancy. I am struggling to think of a situation where a Psychic, faced with a PL+0 monster getting into melee range, would spend most of their turn using an unamped cantrip.

To resume: the difference in damage between the new and old unamped versions is 1 + spell rank, but this difference in damage increases to 2 x spell rank with the amped versions. An amped rank 4 IW would thus have a difference of 8 damage between the old and new versions, and fighting a Levaloch at 7th level would therefore represent a loss in 3 damage compared to the old version, despite hitting resistance. I simplified the math to have resistance match the devil's level in part to not have to deal with the stepwise progression of spells, but also because not factoring in that increased bump every odd level plays against the comparison I drew, which should hopefully help reinforce it if it can hold up still under those conditions.

There are a few different ways a class can receive some form of update via official means:

Also, apologies for the frequent posting and tangent, but a quick PSA: gaslighting isn't just telling someone that they're crazy, though that's certainly a form that can take. Gaslighting is, at its core, an attempt to seize control of the truth by taking away another's access to it. It can be a direct attack upon someone's judgment, memory, or perception, but it can also be a more indirect attempt to undermine all of those by shifting the narrative to the exclusive benefit of one party, ignoring or dismissing the other party's attempts to ground a conversation in facts, or holding oneself as the sole possessor of valid feelings, often by dismissing those of others. It is a form of abuse, but it is also a common manipulation tactic, not just in-person but online.

Thus, shifting the goalposts in an argument and pretending that the premise hasn't changed is one of the forms gaslighting can take, as it is a form of reality denial. Deliberately ignoring conversations that happened that are relevant to present discussion, or making assertions about prior conversations that are untrue, are both forms of gaslighting, as both are attempts to rewrite reality to one party's benefit by trying to create a self-serving narrative. Adopting an attitude that implicitly invalidates the concerns of others, such as by framing their feelings as an "obsession", and that expects others to feel a certain way in complete isolation from the facts at hand, is classic gaslighting.

What makes all of this particularly insidious is that unlike, say, calling someone a slur, gaslighting can be quite difficult to pick up immediately, including in online discussion: identifying gaslighting is often impossible to do from any one comment, particularly as those comments can be formulated in a way that looks completely innocuous. Rather, it's often a matter of connecting the dots, relating what the person is saying to other things they have said in the discussion, and critically analyzing the substance of what they're saying. This is a tall order for a moderator who may not necessarily have the time or bandwidth to get involved that deep in every debate that happens on their space, which is why so many people resort to gaslighting in internet arguments as a way to fly under the radar. It is, however, still possible to identify, which is why so many people have been calling out the same handful of suspects in this thread for engaging in dishonest argumentation. It may not be direct character attacks or hate speech, but it is in my opinion harmful to constructive discussion all the same.

All of which is to say: gaslighting is by nature pernicious and underhanded, such that it doesn't always take the obvious form of direct attacks against a person's sanity. It can be a collection of dishonest behaviors in which a person attempts to seize control of the narrative by lying explicitly or by omission, dismissing or ignoring relevant facts, and setting a double standard in which they automatically know the truth better than others. Despite being so harmful, it is in my opinion incredibly common, and I think there's been plenty of it on this thread. Tridus listed out all the different ways the goalposts have changed in this discussion, and I think the progression of the argument around imaginary weapon pretty much follows the pattern described in the narcissist's prayer:

"That wasn't a nerf.
And if it was, it wasn't that bad.
And if it was, that's not a big deal.
And if it is, it's not Paizo's fault.
And if it was, they didn't mean it.
And if they did, then it deserved it."

For point of clarity:

When talking about +2d8 damage heightening, I did specify instant damage, which is done when you cast the spell, on your turn, before the enemy gets to do any thing. Absolutely none of the focus spells touch 2 to 16 points more instant damage per rank.

"If I move the goalposts juuuuust right, maybe I'll finally be able to score a point!"

To supplement the above, here's a quick list of examples of buffs to the Psychic that could have fit within their page constraints:

heightening at +2d8 per level is equivalent to top flight, instant damage spell slot heightening.

It clearly isn't, as outlined in exhaustive detail in a comment just two places above the one currently being quoted. What is particularly pernicious about this statement is that you explicitly asked for examples of spells that outdamaged IW and were given numerous examples, several of which heighten better than IW even pre-nerf. You seem to be currently pretending that that particular conversation never happened, almost as if asking for factual information and having an informed discussion grounded in facts was never the intent behind your comment.

Nothing else about the spell is relevant, focus spells will not out pace equal rank spell slot spells. That is why the damage of the spell changed happened.

[citation needed]

If Bonespear comes out at +2d8 per rank, then we can all storm Paizo together and ask why it is ok for the necromancer to have nice things but not the psychic. Until then, this seems like a larger structural errata than having anything to do with the psychic or the magus.

Or, instead of constantly trying to gaslight people, we could perhaps acknowledge, right here and now, that the Psychic deserved better. We could acknowledge that the Psychic is in bad shape, and needed help to catch up to other casters in the remaster at least slightly. We could acknowledge that there were surgical buffs that would have greatly benefited the Psychic and fitted within page constraints, but that were nonetheless not implemented. We could acknowledge that the nerfs that were applied to the Psychic and their multiclass archetype were excessive and, in the case of imaginary weapon, uncalled for. We could acknowledge that the Psychic has become in certain respects a less functional class due to the slapdash changes to amping, and that this is a meaningful problem in the same respect that Unleash Psyche not working with certain damage cantrips was a meaningful problem.

You're right: what's done is done; this mess is what we're getting for the remastered Psychic. I don't, however, believe this calls for apathy: for starters, I will not be buying the Dark Archive remaster, because I expect a significantly better level of care and quality from Paizo. Should I want to play a Psychic in the future, or should a player be interested in playing one, I will be much more inclined to turn to third-party content to pick up the slack instead, with Team+ in particular being a go-to for their class supplements. Finally, I believe in expressing critical feedback on this subject, because I want Paizo to succeed and don't believe this is their best work. You can choose to cope however you like, but coping at people in the way you have I don't think has benefited anyone.

My claims are substantiated clearly by what I showed in my previous posts. You can read them again and see it if you care to.

Literally where? I have asked you to provide some basis your claim that a d8's worth of damage on a cantrip is out of line; all you've done so far is repeat the claim, which is not the same thing.

When did I claim the switch to 2d6 force damage was not a downgrade?

Literally here. Notice how I actually link to specifics instead of vaguely pointing in a general direction.

What I did show is when and where it is a downgrade. That nuance you didnt care to acknowledge.

You mean the nuance I not only acknowledged, but analyzed in detail by calculating the impact on every devil in the game? Most people reading through this thread saw that comment, so I don't see what you hope to gain by pretending the literal opposite of what happened.

Ok since Teridax asked for some math I thought I would show the basic problem with 2d8 scaling for a psychic using their class features.

Lets look at rank 7 with basic class features that dont require extra actions.

This math is as sloppy as the Psychic's remaster. Let's go about your comparisons properly, starting with a few baseline assumptions:

selling the Psychic?

defending them?

That kind of framing is missing the point of the discussion and polluting it.

Understanding what it is actually doing is the point.

Tell me: what understanding are you bringing to this conversation by peddling unsubstantiated conjecture? What are you trying to contribute by repeating claims that were proven false by several people on this thread many times already? I took the time and effort to disprove your claim that the switch to force damage was "not a downgrade", and all you offer in return is repeat the baseless assertion that this was necessary due to the cantrip being out of line. It wasn't, its worst offense was a synergy with the Magus that got nixed.

And to be clear, I'm not asking you to pick a specific side here, only to argue in good faith. Moosher12 expressed contrary opinions, for instance, but made the effort to supplement their claims with math and research. You, by contrast, continue to make no such effort. Please, for the sake of this conversation, make an effort to provide some kind of basis for your claims if you're going to be challenging those of others.

If you want to build and talk about a blasting psychic, and focus exclusively on damage output, we should be talking about the oscillating wave psychic, or even the distant grasp psychic. Instead there are several pages here in a thread talking about remastered psychics just talking about Imaginary Weapon spell, and insisting that this one nerf (I have been agreeing it is a nerf for multiple days now) represents a complete disrespect for the psychic and an overall nerf to the class.

Hold on, weren't you arguing earlier today that the nerf to IW was because a d8 was too high for a damage cantrip? Why defend the nerf if other subclasses can blast better anyway?

And while I do believe this one nerf is in fact unjustified and has gathered a lot of focus, the general impression I've been getting here is that a lot of people are upset that a notably weak class is getting no major buffs in their remaster, despite there being plenty of opportunity for easy wins. That the class and its MC archetype got unnecessarily harsh nerfs on top is the icing on the cake.

I honestly believe that just the change to unleash psyche is going to more than offset the nerf to imaginary weapon for the Tangible Dream Psychic, because Astral Rain is going to be a lot more fun to play with now, where it was a spell I would rarely ever cast because it was a waste when you had unleash psyche going or while you were stupified. I want to know what else has changed in the class, because the nerf to imaginary weapon is a minor change to the play of the class as a whole, not only because it was only one of many conscious minds, but because it was not a cantrip to build a psychic character around even if you were a Tangible Dream Psychic.

Infinite Eye gets a worse extra spell list, Violent Unleash got nerfed, and if you have a reaction amp, which is also the case for Infinite Eye and guidance, you can no longer use those reaction amps by strict RAW. Become Thought, Whispering Steps, and vector screen got buffed, Unleash finally got some of its non-interaction with duration damage cantrips addressed, while Twin Psyche got its level requirement bumped down, all of which is to say: in the majority of cases, your Psychic will remain just as weak as it is now, while a couple of your subclasses will be worse off than before. Although the changes to Unleash made the Psyche more functional in one respect, the changes to amping made them less functional in another, so what one hand giveth, the other taketh away.

That is why it doesn't matter if it is slightly worse than gouging claw as a base cantrip...because gouging claw is not a psychic cantrip and psychics don't get any melee cantrips by default. Having one as a back up option is nice even if it isn't the "best" one in the game, and amped it is still very good, especially in the situation where you can hit too creatures with it.

You can speak for yourself. It certainly matters to me, because I'm not picking a class with piddly spell slots, terrible base stats, and constrained spell selection just to have worse cantrips and focus spells than classes that have to contend with few to none of those issues. I don't care that the Psychic doesn't get melee cantrips by default, because I have no desire to take a 6 HP/level cloth caster into melee in the first place. All I can hope for is that if I'm saddled with a melee-exclusive cantrip as part of my class features and an enemy comes into melee range, I'm not going to be worse off than most other casters with their freely-chosen basic options.

Can anyone name 5 rank 1 focus spells that do better damage than remastered imaginary weapon?

I mean, you've listed two already with cry of destruction and tempest surge, both of which do indeed fit the bill of dealing more damage than the remastered imaginary weapon while also featuring better range and even the ability to damage more enemies than IW at a time, but let's just keep digging:

Gouging claw is useless against incorporeal creatures. The difference between IW doing physical damage with the force tag and just doing force damage is weird and maybe not a very big deal, but gouging claw has a much larger chunk of creatures that it is useless against. It is also not on the occult list, nor is Ignition. Psychics don’t get any melee cantrips by default so Imaginary weapon being one is useful to the psychic even if it is slightly behind a different tradition’s melee option for pure damage.

This is a whole lot of deflection just to avoid addressing the fact that if I as a player wanted a class with good cantrips and focus attack spells, I would in no way go for the Psychic, a class whose design revolves around upgraded cantrips and amps, much less a Tangible Dream Psychic when I could get better returns from any arcane or primal caster or just a Cleric, a class ostensibly not meant to rely all that heavily on focus spells. I am not going to pick a Psychic on the basis that they get a cantrip that will be worse than gouging claw or fire ray in the vast majority of circumstances, and will still have them eating Reactive Strikes in melee; that gouging claw is not normally on the list is not a selling point here.

And that's really what it boils down to: you're not selling the Psychic here, you're not even doing a good job of defending them. All you're doing is trying to score points at any cost. I mentioned earlier on that there were other people constantly shifting the goalposts to suit a predetermined conclusion: you are that other person. It's not even that you have anything particularly good to say about the Psychic, all you're doing is trying to downplay and dismiss everyone else's assessment of what ultimately boils down to a really obvious nerf. Worse yet, you're putting yourself in the designer's seat and making grand statements about how this is all following some heretofore secret standard of design in complete absence of evidence, and expecting us all here to buy it. As mentioned in a prior comment, you are making nonsense claims that you are then expecting others to disprove, when it should normally be up to you to do the basic due diligence of verifying your claims before making them. That is one of the fundamentals of arguing in good faith.

So, just so that we're clear on the facts: imaginary weapon was nerfed. It deals less damage now than it used to in the vast majority of circumstances, including in instances where the base cantrip would hit resistance. It deals less damage than gouging claw, another cantrip that exists, whereas previously its unamped damage was the same, thereby disproving your claim that a d8 of damage is too high for a cantrip. It now deals the same damage as fire ray, an easily-obtainable domain spell, only fire ray has the immense benefit of range, which is especially relevant when discussing a class with the worst HP and AC in the game. It does not matter which spell is on which list or which class: the Psychic's psi cantrips aren't the best cantrips around, and with perhaps one exception their amps aren't the best use of Focus Points around. Tell me then: what mechanical benefit is the remastered Psychic meant to offer over other casters? What is their unique selling point?

Fire ray is also not a free resource for any class.

Yes it is, the Cloistered Cleric gets a domain spell for free. If you want to count picking a subclass as "trading other class resources," then by that same virtue picking Tangible Dream instead of another conscious mind constitutes trading other class resources for the cantrip. Fire ray is as free as imaginary weapon, and much more easily accessible too.

Imaginary weapon, even remastered is still better than Thermal Lens or Distortion Lens. In its remastered state, it is in no way an outlier of a “bad focus spell.”

Its unamped version is worse than gouging claw, and its amp is worse than a 1st-rank domain spell. It is, at best, certainly not better in either case under the vast majority of circumstances. It is not a terribly good cantrip or focus spell, and the fact that other psi cantrips are even worse is more a damning indictment of the Psychic's current balance than any kind of valid defense.

I would argue that catching an enemy with fire ray's attack damage and terrain damage is not only a generally more interesting prospect, as you are taking one enemy out of a fight much quicker, I think it is also a far more reliable one, not only because of the range but also because you are always guaranteed at least one enemy in a combat encounter, but not always two. If the enemy moves out of the fire patch to avoid the damage, then the fire patch has worked as area denial, and because the fire patch spawns even on a non-critical miss, it is far more reliable than anything IW does, especially its push on a crit. If IW is to remain a melee-exclusive cantrip on a 6 HP/level cloth caster, then it should by all rights have significantly higher damage to justify itself. Not being straight-up weaker than gouging claw, a regular cantrip, would be a start.

Yep and by not looking at the ones where they do not exceed you didnt show exactly how much damage we are talking about at each spell rank to that resistance value that would still be seen on creatures you might encounter.

Its not much. So we see a small loss in at those gap levels. We can really talk about the full scope of the downgrade. where its worst and were its not really much, and where its not a downgrade rather than talk in absolutes.

You know what? Let's do this. Let's actually run the math on every devil, in alphabetical order:

Ok so i get the same 2 per rank of the spell to break even. but I think you just needed more creature data to look at.

Here is what I am seeing in the monster cores 1 and 2. This is going to be a better way to measure if we are looking at how the new IW is going to perform in the remaster.
In these books the human devil is the outlier that doesn't have a physical resistance.

As already mentioned in the comment I provided you, I specifically went through the entire list of devils; only 6 have resistance matching or exceeding their level out of the listed 22. In most cases, it's not even "very close", and "very close" would still not be good enough. Even against enemies who resist physical damage, this change is a nerf the vast majority of the time.

Did anyone actually do the math with actual creatures that do have resist physical at different level threasholds for IW old and new?

I did a bit of that in this comment. The TL;DR is that in order for the switch to force damage to be worth it, the creature needs to have resistance at least equal to their level. This is rarely the case, because resistance to physical damage tends to be low. In the vast majority of cases, amped IW premaster still outdamages the remaster amped IW even when it hits resistance.

well maybe consider what having a way to apply force damage with unleash psyche adds to an occult spellcaster.

You mean, the spellcaster whose tradition already has the best access to force spells in the game? The spellcaster with access to force barrage from level 1, along with spells like inner radiance torrent or repelling pulse at higher ranks?

Is the layout of the page really that important? If something gets pushed onto another page, can't they just shrink an image to make the text fit?

I mean, to you and me it probably is the least of our concerns, but it seems like it's really important to whoever's in charge at Paizo for the page layout to stay exactly the same on these remastered books. I honestly have no idea why it's such a top priority, but that's the constraint that's been imposed on every remastered expansion book so far. I'm really not a fan of this constraint either, as I think it's really gotten in the way of properly updating many game elements, including classes like the Gunslinger and Inventor who could've both done with full reworks, but it looks like them's the breaks.

Fire ray cant benefit from psyche unleashed, has many creatures resistant to fire. Only targets one enemy. but gets good range and a good ground effect. It occupies a different space than damaging two targets at the same attack bonus, push crit rider, gains 2xspell rank to damage from psyche unleashed. has to be used in melee. Can be amped differently if damage isnt the main goal that round.

It is a damaging attack spell that deals now as much direct damage as imaginary weapon, reliably either deals additional damage on top or forces creatures to move, is far safer to use, triggers weaknesses to fire, disables regeneration and other effects that are disabled by fire, such as a troll's regeneration, and is far more easily accessible. Although the two spells are not identical, this is not an apples to oranges comparison; the domain spell on the class that doesn't at all specialize in focus casting is better than the pseudo-focus spell on the class who's meant to be all about attrition-free spellcasting. Even if we want to concede that it's unclear which of the two spells is better, which was already the case prior to the nerf, that is already a bad sign when one option is supposed to be distinctly more powerful than the other. I would go as far as to say that IW, along with pretty much every other psi cantrip, could have used a significant buff, not a nerf.

We are not setting the standard. Paizo is. To me it looks like they deemed gouging claw just fine and a d8 imaginary weapon not only not fine but overlaping in design space.

But they're not; you are. You are looking at a set of changes that by all rights are haphazard, ill-conceived, and poorly-executed, and extrapolating conclusions from them that are not supported by other game elements. I am telling you that by the standards Paizo themselves have set with gouging claw and fire ray, the old imaginary weapon was fine on the Psychic, and its new version is weaker than alternatives.

I mean we are sitting here anecdotally comparing two or three spells and they have a complete map of their spell terrain looking for where this spell is going to fit in the system.

You might be doing that, but I am taking look at the breadth of spells that are already in the game, and pointing you to specific examples that disprove your point. I have yet to see you cite any concrete examples, let alone any developer confirmation of the intent you are imputing them. Although it can certainly be possible to extrapolate design and balance standards without a developer explicitly listing those standards themselves, the criticism I and others have been making of your claims is that they are unsupported by in-game evidence, they are simply conjecture. I am inviting you to consider the alternative hypothesis that the developers simply bungled this particular update, and rushed their way through with no regards for the Psychic's current state, their place in the game, or the deeper expectations players had for the class's remaster.

Thats is because Imaginary weapon was overtuned at d8s. It was a downgrade for system consistency.

Try that same analysis with contemporary focus spells for the ampted version of IW as it is now rather than comparing it to the d8 version we know was overtuned to the point magus players saw it as a holy grail of focus spells.

Okay, so by that standard, we should nerf gouging claw, which deals as much damage as imaginary weapon pre-nerf. Similarly, we should nerf fire ray, which was not far off from an amped imaginary weapon pre-nerf, and now deals as much damage while also having 60 feet of range and its bonus rider of creating burning ground, the latter of which occurs even on a non-critical miss. The argument that a d8 of damage is too much for a cantrip that is meant to be among the best in the game has, by my view, strictly no basis in fact.

I think graystone is right: whoever was in charge of this nerf likely saw all the Magus discussions, and decided to take this bazooka approach to balance where they turned off amp Spellstrikes (while also accidentally turning off reaction amps), which would've been enough to kill that combo, but then also nuked the MC archetype from orbit, and then overnerfed IW for good measure. The cantrip was never strong on the Psychic, an exceptionally squishy caster who would never normally put themselves within melee range of an opponent, let alone two. The Psychic was never going around doing too much damage, despite being designed to blast with certain subclasses, so I see no reason to nerf a cantrip they already synergized with poorly. I could have perhaps stomached the nerf better if the cantrip were given range or some other form of safety, but as of now there are options that deal equal or better damage without putting the class in nearly as much risk.

Is it really supposed to work like a spellshape free action? I think if they meant to do that, they would actually name the free action and give it an action stat block, like with Unleash Psyche or the wizard's Drain Bonded Item action.

My guess is that the developers were forced to keep the overall page layout the same as before the remaster, so they couldn't write in a new stat block. I do agree, however, that making amping a free action triggered when you cast a psi cantrip would have avoided the non-interaction with reaction psi cantrips. It would have kept the IW combo on the Magus, all else held equal, but on top of believing that the issue could be fixed by taking amps out of the MC archetype (without driving it into the ground in the process), I think that's a fair price to pay to avoid borking the class the mechanic is actually made for.

Are Psychic amps generally stronger than the strongest options available to other (non-Wizard) casters? You can argue it. What you can't argue is that the Psychic gets 3-5 "focus" spell options without investing a feat, 6 "feat" options if they do invest a feat, while other casters (generally? I don't remember all the remaster changes) only get one free focus spell and have to invest one feat at a time to match the number of menu choices that a Psychic gets.

Now actual use per combat/day of effective focus spells or amps is much closer post remaster with minimal feat investment by other classes. But the versatility without investment is there, and Paizo cares about that stuff.

Counterpoint: the Psychic pays for this in actual versatility by having a much more restricted selection of cantrips and spells than any other full caster. You only get a totally freeform choice of 3 cantrips, as opposed to the 5 of most other casters, and as a 2-slot caster, your repertoire is also more limited. Furthermore, the Animist gets up to 4 different focus spells for free that they can freely swap out each day, on top of numerous other benefits. While one can argue that the Animist is a special case, as they are rather generously tuned in my opinion, I think the net result here is that the Psychic is less versatile than other casters, not more. In fact, I'd argue the whole point of the Psychic's design is that they trade off the versatility and slot spell output of a typical spellcaster in exchange for a fixed subset of powerful spells that they can cast with no attrition constraints.

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As an aside, I think we can also dig a little deeper into the benefits of force versus bludgeoning or slashing damage on imaginary weapon: in my opinion, it's not enough that force can bypass certain resistances; those resistances need to be high enough that bypassing them constitutes a net increase in damage. I'd push on this and say that the net increase in damage needs to be rather high in order to justify a damage reduction in virtually all other circumstances, but let's be generous and just stick to any net increase. Because the damage die downgrade represents a drop in 1 damage per damage die, this means that all else held equal, amping imaginary weapon and dealing damage on a hit is as if you were hitting resistance equal to 2 per rank of the spell. Thus, the resistance on a monster needs to be higher than that for there to be a net increase, ignoring how it would need to be unrealistically high for a crit to deal more damage than pre-remaster. To grossly simplify, this translates to the monster needing resistance at least equal to its level for the bypass to be worth it. The question is: when a monster resists bludgeoning and slashing damage but not force, are the resistances high enough to constitute a net increase?

From what I'm seeing, the answer is: only rarely. Looking at devils, who famously resist non-silver physical damage, out of the 22 listed devils on AoN, only six make the cut, none of whom are higher than level 10. I've had trouble finding many other creatures that fit the bill, and those that do tend to be outliers known for being uniquely resistant to physical damage, like the adamantine dragon. Even then, the archdragon's resistances don't increase, so your 10th-rank pre-nerf imaginary weapon would, at worst, deal as much average damage as it will post-remaster. This I think makes sense, because physical resistances tend to be distinctly weaker than energy resistances so as to avoid hard-countering martial classes. Thus, even when the current cantrip does hit resistance that force damage would bypass, it still deals more damage on average in the majority of circumstances.

You don't like push effects?

Don't get me wrong, I love me a push effect, especially when I'm a super-squishy cloth caster and an enemy or two are getting far too close for comfort. However, when I need to use that push effect, I want it to be at least decently reliable: if the push effect triggers only on a spell attack crit, it is not reliable at all, so I can't count on it. Thus, in the vast majority of circumstances, I would much rather prefer double damage on both regular and bleed damage on a cantrip that now outdamages imaginary weapon by default.

To labor another point, a few have been trying to tout the switch to force damage as a buff, when in practice the current cantrip has the best of all worlds: there's this fixation on bludgeoning damage as if it were the only damage type the cantrip deals, but IW also can deal slashing damage instead. Not only does this let the cantrip bypass selective resistances and immunities to bludgeoning or slashing damage whenever they occur, this also lets the cantrip trigger a range of weaknesses, such as a zombie's weakness to slashing. Not only that, but because the cantrip has the force trait, it automatically bypasses the usual resistances of incorporeal enemies, making IW extremely difficult to mitigate under most circumstances. Switching the cantrip's damage to just force might perhaps be a benefit against a subset of enemies that resist all physical damage, but strips it of its ability to trigger all of those weaknesses. I therefore consider the damage type switch a nerf as well; at best it comes with severe tradeoffs that I don't believe justify the reduction to the cantrip's damage die.

Finally, I believe that even if psi cantrips truly were substantially stronger than regular cantrips, which is what I would've liked to have seen in this remaster, the dedication would've been perfectly fine including two of them, not just one. As mentioned already, the special benefit of an exceptionally strong cantrip isn't unbalanced when you eventually get so many slot spells and Focus Points that you have less need of some of those cantrips, and being restricted to choosing psi cantrips is a limitation other caster dedications do not impose for their own cantrip selection. Having two more limited but stronger options in my opinion would sit comfortably alongside two weaker but freeform options, and would have allowed the Psychic's MC dedication to continue shining in its own way. Limiting the dedication's benefits to a single psi cantrip, let alone one that may not even be worth picking over a regular cantrip, I think is way too severe a nerf that makes the MC archetype a lot weaker than competing options.

For gouging claw are you including the crit rider, cause imaginary weapon has its own crit rider its just not for damage.

I am indeed including the crit rider. Doubled regular and bleed damage by my books is significantly more reliable than pushing a melee opponent away when it means needing a crit to create safety for yourself.

Psi cantrips being better than other cantrips I'll grant you (Although that rapidly loses relevance once you have enough spells to cast multiple ranked spells per combat). But I've never bought the idea that Amped Psi Cantrips are better than Focus spells apart from maybe 4 outliers (Shatter Mind, Guidance, Message, and the old Imaginary weapon). I guess I can see where the reputation came from when bery few classes had access to good focus spells. But that seems to be more a case of them finally nailing down what they want focus spells to be able to do woth psychic, and most focus spells from then on being at roughly psychic's level.

I think context is key here, because focus spells premaster were generally a lot weaker: compare, for instance, ancestral memories to what it used to be. Back when that was the standard, the Psychic's amps were significantly above the curve. In general, the defining aspect of the Psychic's current weakness is that it's not that they changed in the remaster, everyone else did: every caster got to Refocus to full in-between encounters, nearly every caster got better focus spells, and nearly every caster got substantial improvements to their class features, with divine casters also receiving major improvements to their spell list. Although the Psychic was never the strongest caster around, they had distinct qualities that have now become the standard for virtually every other caster, so now their unique features are nothing special.

Well shield as a psy cantrip gets to target others in 30ft so its better than shield not as a psy cantrip.

Yes, and imaginary weapon is now straight-up worse than gouging claw in all but a handful of circumstances. What you are presently demonstrating is that not only was your prior argument false, the balance between psi cantrips is inconsistent. In neither case is offering just one of them in the dedication enough, in my opinion.

Really what you are getting when you pick that level 6 feat is a cantrip that is also a focus spell, a focus point, and the ability to amp your first chosen psy amp. its pretty loaded in that level 6 feat.

For starters, the feat does not give you a Focus Point if you already have a focus pool anymore, but even if it did, literally every caster MC archetype save for the Animist, the Sorcerer, and the Summoner let you get a focus spell and a focus point at level 4. If you go for the Blessed One dedication, you can even get both as early as level 2. Although I do think there are still legitimate problems with letting non-Psychics poach amps, at this stage I don't think even amped guidance is worth sinking a 6th-level feat if it doesn't also give a Focus Point.

What i really meant by not being better was that it seems the designers are obersving damage caps that this cantrip was not in line with. Compare it to amped melee Ignition or flurry of claws or fire ray.

Gouging claw, a regular melee cantrip, deals more damage, so this doesn't hold true either.

As far as I can tell the designer intent is shown in this release. It is what they meant it to be.

Sure, and in both the original release and the remaster, several of the Psychic’s psi cantrips are regular cantrips with upgrades layered on. I think that is a pretty clear statement of intent. Given how the remaster fails to account for the existence of reaction amps or the unique relationship between amps and Focus Points, I’m going to hazard the guess that the changes we’re seeing are less the product of sound decision-making, and more a cautionary tale of what happens when you burn out your developers and give them too little time to do the research and playtesting needed to update a class properly.

Think about it this way, the same expenditure of class feats elsewhere is now a comparable investment, before it was not.

As someone who called for the MC archetype to be nerfed, and argued bitterly with people on here over it, I think the archetype is weaker now than other caster dedications, and by a lot. If what you say is true and psi cantrips are on the same level as any other cantrip, then only receiving one such cantrip in the dedication is a worse deal than any caster dedication that gives out two cantrips. If amps are meant to be just run-of-the-mill focus spells, then having to wait two levels later than other caster archetypes to get a focus spell, and then not even get a Focus Point for it if you already have a focus pool, is a worse deal than other caster archetypes. I don’t think there is any consistent logic here to justify what was done to the Psychic in this remaster.

Basically the option was not in line with damage from other cantrips. that you can see.

When it was amped it wasn't in line with any other focus spell. Easy to see.

I don’t think it was ever meant to be. The whole point of psi cantrips is that they’re upgrades to regular cantrips, and amps are better than most other focus spells. While I do think there are issues to poaching amps, spending class feats to have an above-average cantrip I don’t think is unbalanced when you have focus and slot spells.

In addition, we should follow Ignition's example and give the user the option to make a melee attack instead.

"If the target is within your melee reach, you can choose to make a melee spell attack with the weapon instead of a ranged spell attack, which increases all the spell's damage dice to d8s."

I like this a lot; this would allow players to regain the d8 damage that was lost on the cantrip at an appropriate risk.

I remember homebrewing a Psychic remaster a while back and posting it online: there too, I turned amping into a free-action spellshape, and at least one other person immediately pointed out how this wouldn't work with reaction amps. A single, simple round of feedback was enough to avoid the problem we're now seeing on the class in officially-printed material. If the above is true, it also sounds a lot like whoever handled the Psychic remaster just copy-pasted boilerplate rules text without adapting it to the class's specific mechanics, which just leaves me wondering what happened for things to go this wrong.

Sorry for the tangent question, does the item bonus to attack rolls from Fury Cocktail add to all 'Melee Spell Attack' rolls? Thank you in advance.

No need to be sorry, I did a double take as well when I first checked the item! The Fury Cocktail grants an item bonus to melee attack rolls, which means it grants an item bonus to all melee attack rolls, whether they're weapon or spell attacks. As you might imagine, this is particularly juicy for spell attacks, which don't normally benefit from item bonuses.

So maybe a name change for what the Bio-Hacker class originally was, Pharmacist, etc, or rolling it into a class archetype for the alchemist and leaving it there.

When the Pharmacist injects you with the inhibitor that turns your bones to jelly, the "P" becomes silent.

To summarize the premise: the Dark Archive changes to the Psychic got leaked, imaginary weapon got nerfed to a d6 of damage, and I'm really not happy about it. The cantrip may be popular on the Magus, but it anti-synergizes with the Psychic's extreme squishiness and is resultingly very difficult to properly use on the class it's made for. I would have been much more comfortable with the damage nerf if it had come with improvements to the cantrip's safety, such as by making it ranged or giving the Psychic better protections, and so with this in mind I'd like to offer a different take on the cantrip to suit the Tangible Dream's theme of "impossible creations".

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Imaginary Weapon (Single Action, Cantrip 1)
Traits: uncommon, cantrip, concentrate, force, psychic
Duration: until the end of your next turn

You imagine a weapon, and it materializes in the air near you, ready to launch itself at a foe. For the duration, you can launch the weapon at a target as a single action, which has the attack and concentrate traits. After you launch the weapon, the spell ends.

When you attack with imaginary weapon, make a ranged spell attack against a target within 30 feet, dealing 2d6 force damage on a success and double damage on a critical success. You can coalesce the weapon into a more specific shape, allowing you to deal bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing damage instead of force as appropriate for the weapon and trigger vulnerabilities to specific weapon types, such as an arboreal's axe vulnerability.

While your psyche is unleashed, the first attack you make with imaginary weapon gains its status bonus to damage, even though the spell has a duration.

Heightened (+1): Increase the damage by 1d6.

Amp: You muster an unending barrage of dreamt-up weapons. You can attack with imaginary weapon immediately as part of Casting the Spell, and you can keep making attacks without ending the spell as countless new weapons materialize around you. You can coalesce the weapons into impossible shapes and energies, allowing you to deal any damage type instead of force with each attack.

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The basic idea behind this take is to make the psi cantrip safer and thus much more easily usable to the Psychic, but also lean into the Tangible Dream's theme of creation to let the class trigger weaknesses and vulnerabilities really easily. Rather than make one big attack, the cantrip would work a bit closer to biting words, letting you make multiple attacks within the duration. It wouldn't be as great for burst damage, but it could lend itself much better to heavier damage output over a couple of rounds, while giving a bit of flexibility by letting you stagger the action cost of the cast and the attack across those rounds.

It does not matter whether the next action is Spellstrike or Cast a Spell if all you care about is casting a spell.

Both actions cast a spell, and imho, the way Spellstrike is worded it never invokes Cast a Spell as a subordinate action, only Strike.

It does matter when your next action needs to be Casting a Spell. Again, this is the exact same process of examination used for spellshapes, and the wording is for that specific bit is the same, so I really don't see why we are trying to interpret the same thing two different ways.

I don't mean any disrespect here, but Teridax, have you ever played a tangible dream psychic?

I recently have yes, and I actually have ScooterScoots to thank for pointing me to a very fun interaction with the Fury Cocktail, which grants imaginary weapon an item bonus to its attack rolls. I similarly tried bulking up with the Precise Discipline subconscious mind, Toughness, and a Champion dedication to survive the hit to my AC on top of an already squishy chassis, and the result was still not as impressive as I'd hoped. Yes, the amped cantrip dealt a lot of damage in one go and the improved accuracy helped, but in the end I'd used an item and put my character in tremendous danger just to attack about on par with a martial class. My Psychic predictably got chunked a lot, and I ultimately considered neither the psi cantrip nor the combo as powerful as it looked on paper. With the change to the psi cantrip, my build would have been even less effective, such that if I wanted to play a spell attack build, I could have had a much easier time using a Cleric, an Oracle, or a Sorcerer.

This is also where I got to realize some of the deeper issues with the Psychic's feats: there are so many options that look interesting, but are ultimately trap options, like Violent Unleash, Dark Persona's Presence, Psi Catastrophe and Shatter Space, because they're all emanations that damage creatures indiscriminately. Even with me hovering closer to the front line, I still found myself close enough to my allies that I would generally have hurt my team more than the monsters if I'd used those feats. Not only have those feats remained untouched, Violent Unleash got nerfed, as it now costs an action instead of stunning you, thereby front-loading the action cost. It's not just that the changes to imaginary weapon are unjustified, the Psychic's entire change list in this upcoming remaster look like a concerted effort to nerf what is already a weak class, with seemingly no regard for improving the class's gameplay or addressing any of their long-standing issues. I don't see what justification there is to this, nor do I see the value in pretending that the proverbial emperor is still wearing clothes when these changes will not meaningfully help the Psychic.

Eh, no, I disagree. If your next action is Spellstrike with a psi cantrip you are most definitely casting a psi cantrip and it will be amped.

You can disagree all you like, that is not how the basic sequence of actions works. You yourself said it: your next action is Spellstrike. That is distinct from casting a psi cantrip, even if you cast a psi cantrip as a subordinate action of the Spellstrike. Once more, this is how spellshapes work for the purposes of determining what the next action is, and I don't see why we would make an exception here on top of this leap of logic.

Again though, there are very few conscious minds where you go out of your way to use your unique surface cantrip. No one choses to be an Oscilating wave psychic to cast thermal stasis. Nor even the Infinite Eye to spam glimpse weakness more than once an encounter when you are far more interested in using amped guidance as often as possible. Imaginary weapon is not an outlier for being situationally useful and about as good as a spell slot spell in that situation.

Again, if every surface cantrip is situational at best and weak at worst, that to me suggests that the Psychic could benefit from improvements to those, not to a nerf to the one that did see use elsewhere. The entire purpose of psi cantrips is to offer upgrades to regular cantrips, and pseudo-focus spells that are stronger than other focus spells: as of the remaster, imaginary weapon is straight-up worse than gouging claw, and arguably worse even than the fire ray domain spell or glutton's jaws. With this in mind, I would see even less reason to pick a Psychic post-remaster when even a Cleric or a Sorcerer have more to offer with their focus spells on top of their significant other benefits.

I didn't say it wasn't worth using, either; I said it wasn't worth using to the Psychic most of the time. When two enemies move into position on you, your priority is still likely going to be to find a means of escaping so that you, a 6 HP/level cloth caster, don't get turned to giblets. Unless you're running some glass cannon Fury Cocktail setup, you are unlikely to want to put yourself in that predicament in the first place, which is why the cantrip is just generally awkward on the Psychic in the same way glutton's jaw was awkward on the Sorcerer before it got changed into a ranged spell attack. I would've been fine with the nerf if the cantrip had been given a similar degree of reach or safety, but instead it is flat-out worse than it was before, so no, it is not quite as worth casting in the remaster as now, and it performs worse against creatures vulnerable to bludgeoning damage such as skeletons.

"This change won't really affect the Psychic because the cantrip is already not worth using to them most of the time" is, I would say, not necessarily the best defense of that nerf. I would even go as far as to say that the switch in damage type isn't necessarily a good thing either, given that bludgeoning damage tends to be quite good at triggering certain weaknesses.