Lead Designer
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This forum if for general discussion of the rules and content appearing in the Occult Adventures Playtest. Feedback derived from actual playtest experience should be posted in the Playtest Feedback forum.
In this forum, you will find seven threads, stickied to the top, each of which covers a general portion of the playtest. There is one such thread for each one of the classes and a seventh thread for a discussion of the magic and spells presented in the document. These threads should be used for GENERAL feedback only. Specific discussions about one particular aspect of these classes or spells should get their own thread, created by you!
As a reminder, please be polite and courteous to your fellow posters. We are all here to endeavor to create a better play experience with these rules and excessive arguing and insults are inappropriate. The design team reserves the right to close down threads that are no longer serving the interests of the playtest.
Thanks again for participating in the Occult Adventures Playtest. We are looking forward to seeing your thoughts and ideas on these exciting new rules.
Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer
When a spell calls for an expensive material component, a psychic spellcaster can instead use any item with significant meaning and a value greater than or equal to the spell’s component cost. For example, if a spiritualist wanted to cast raise dead to bring her dead husband back from the grave, she could use her 5,000-gp wedding ring as the spell’s material component.
This book is going to be AWESOME.
Overall, I like the feel of the book - it evokes a sense of gothic fantasy/horror that was ubiquitous in fiction from the middle of the Victorian Era to the end of WWII - it's that "oily, dirty magic" sense you get when reading things like Hellblazer that so many books and writers had all but forgotten about in the wake of Lord of the Rings - Fantasypunk, if you will.
(Not to say I don't LIKE the Melniborne books and other "Dark Fantasy" things out there, it's just that you can only take so much of that before you yearn for things like The Shadow and mediums regurgitating Ectoplasm again)
My only real beef - and this may be defeating the entire purpose of the book - is "Psychic Spells". That term just irks me; it's like it doesn't fit with everything else about Pathfinder. Arcane vs Divine is great, and the addition of Alchemical seemed like a natural progression - something that's neither, yet similar, and can thus mimic both.
"Psychic Spells," though, just kinda feels like a cop-out. Reading through, I wondered "why is [insert class here] a "Psychic" caster with "Psychic" spells - it'd be much more appropriate as [Arcane/Divine/Both], or else not make them spells and casters at all!"
I think it'd integrate into the system as a whole better if the spellcasting classes were divvied up equally among Arcane and Divine ranks... either that, or go full-on crazy and say that they're considered both Arcane AND Divine at the same time! (it'd actually also fit thematically better, since it seems like a lot of the aesthetics are taken from Lovecraft and Alan Moore's works, where the difference between "arcane" and "divine" is a grey area to begin with, and just gets even more massively grey the deeper down and farther back you get).
The other option would be to declare them not Magic, Spells, or Casters at all, but instead make all the Psychic "spells" into Supernatural Abilities, which is pretty much identical to how the Alchemist is handled - Extracts are Magic in all but name, mechanically, but aren't Magic at all in descriptive nature. It'd be nice to seem some building upon the third spoke of power (the Untyped one that Alchemists & Investigators use) that hasn't had nearly as much love as Arcane and Divine.
So, yeah... I guess the short version of my impression is, "classes seem great, just drop either the 'psychic' or 'spells' moniker from the engine, and I'm sold"
So, I'm confused. Do all the Psychic Classes that cast Psychic Spells have access to the Psychic Magic spells like Ego Whip and Tower of Iron Will? Because they aren't listed under the individual Class's Spell Lists.
Sorry, for the double-post, but maybe I should further explain WHY I feel that way:
When a "not divine or arcane" caster was created, it was the Alchemist. The fact that it was neither Divine or Arcane was pretty much immediately apparent, and it was fine. The fact that Extracts weren't spells was a little odd, but we adapted quickly, and the fact that they're ingested through drinking meant we already understood the effects (mostly - the endless threads arguing over the nature of how Extracts work vs AoOs, etc. would make you think otherwise, but your average hobby-store-goer says they provoke like quaffing a potion).
This was because the Alchemist was new; it was something that hadn't ever been done before (at least by either WOTC or Paizo), and so setting a new precedent was completely okay.
The Investigator continued this idea, and Extracts aren't considered really all that odd anymore.
However, several - or most - of the classes in this playtest tread waters already touched on thoroughly by other classes: drawing your spells and powers from spirits or mysterious forces is not unlike the Witch, Oracle, or Shaman; focusing on affecting the minds of others is not unlike Enchanter Wizards, Bards, or Sorcerers who focus on the Enchantment school; characters using a focused object is a natural progression of either a Cleric with their Deity's Focus and/or a Wizard's Bonded Object; Focusing on a specific area of magic is just like a Cleric's Domains, a Wizard's Schools, an Oracle's Mysteries and Curses, and a Sorcerer's Bloodline; having a summoned buddy is present in both Arcane and Divine classes, but having a combat-ready/centric buddy is much more a Divine thing, considering that 4 Divine classes focus on having either a Mount or Animal Companion.
I'd reassign the classes as such:
Kineticist (doesn't need changing, 'cause it's not a caster, and THANK YOU for making a Bender class finally!)
Medium - Arcane, both because it fits and so that both Arcane and Divine each have 2 Pseudo-Casters
Mesmerist - Arcane, because everything about this class screams "Arcane" with its focus on mind-affecting spells.
Occultist - a dual Arcane-Divine class because its focus on objects and their energies fits smoothly between both Arcane and Divine classes. Alternatively, make it a magically-neutral class like the Alchemist, because its requirement of a focus is very similar to the Alchemist's need for Extracts. ALTERNATIVELY-alternatively, make it, by default, a magic-neutral class... until they start using a Focus - the Focus determines the nature of the spells it casts; some focuses make it cast Arcane spells, while other make it cast Divine. This is basically how you would make characters like John Constantine.
Psychic - EVERYTHING this class has places it right on the line between Arcane and Divine, with a foot planted firmly in each. If no other class in this book deserves to be a dual Arcane-Divine; reading it, it feels like it's the Mystic Theurge fleshed out into a full 20-level Wizard/Cleric hybrid class; as an arcane-divine dual class, I love it.
Spiritualist - let's not even joke here; this is a Summoner clone. And that's fine. And if it were a Divine version of the Summoner that's even more fine, because thematically it is; it's especially perfect as a Divine class because it would round out the class roster so that Divine and Arcane would have the exact same number of Full-casters, half-casters, and pseudo-casters
