Did the first level of Emerald Spire today with a first level Psychic. This was his first session.
Elf Psychic 1
Str 07
Dex 12
Con 08
Int 20
Wis 15
Cha 10
Desperate Focus, Convincing Liar
Feat: Spell Focus Divination
Spells:
Flare
Daze
Light
Open/Close
Detect Thoughts
Mind Thrust
Gear: Chainmail (yup, that's it)
Languages: all but Celestial
Skill Ranks: Bluff, Knowledge Arcana, Knowledge Local, Perception, Sense Motive, Spellcraft, Survival
Discipline of Tranquility
Character was a bit of a lobster - 6 hit points of squishy meat wrapped in an armored shell. For sure that armor saved his life, though, on more than one occasion. I was going to ditch it before long, but now I think I might keep it, maybe throw on an enhancement bonus or upgrade to plate.
A level one Psychic is pretty much like playing a Sorcerer with armor, but with less useful bloodline powers. One of the other players lent me a longspear for the adventure, but of course I was rubbish hitting anything at a -7. It did help to fill a role as flanking buddy.
Cast two Detect Thoughts and three Mind Thrusts. For one of those thrusts the goblins saved; on the other two I rolled really low on damage. I managed to use the Mental Placidity power once against an enemy cleric's negative energy channel, and the bonus to allies kept two of them from taking full damage. It also helped that there's no range given for the power; I was at one edge of the cleric's range and half of my party was on the other end.
I had no first level spells left for the big Bugbear boss at the end, so I spammed Daze and Flare in his face until the rest of the party finished him off.
Suggestions:
Why not a Phrenic Pool at level one? It would really help this class to feel useful. It's especially frustrating to make your will save with Mental Placidity and read that you should be regaining Phrenic Points, except you don't have that feature and won't for two levels.
They're so much like Sorcerers that I feel they should have something equivalent to Bloodline Arcana. For Tranquility a bonus to concentration checks (call "Stillness of Mind" or some such) seems about right. Actually, the Tranquil Discipline seems pretty short-changed compared the other disciplines.
I've asked a few times with no dev response - do other characters know a psychic caster is casting a spell when it has no verbal or somatic components? This came up while playing tonight.
When I asked I got this from Mark
There's a thread from Jason near the beginning of Pathfinder (so a whiles back) where people asked him this question about spell-like abilities and silent stilled spells. At the time, he said that they all have some obvious manifestation, thus allowing people to take their AoO or roll Spellcraft (both of which still work on SLAs and stilled silent spells).
Question: will a mind thrust (and other psychic attack spells) work through walls? GM ruled that since there was nothing in the spell to indicate otherwise, I'd need line of effect to hit a goblin with a mind thrust. This is irritating when you're Detecting Thoughts through a wooden door and you're unable to zap one with a Mind Thrust once you detect "I'm going to blow them up with a bomb".
I think if you can detect the thoughts of a creature you should be able to target them with Psychic attack spells. My suggestion would be to list the material qualities that psychic spells can penetrate based on detect thoughts/ detect evil. Lead and thick stone etc would block psychic attack spells. To my mind this fits the flavor and could potentially become on of the neat little draws to the magic system. "Snipe through walls with the power of your mind!"
Question: will a mind thrust (and other psychic attack spells) work through walls? GM ruled that since there was nothing in the spell to indicate otherwise, I'd need line of effect to hit a goblin with a mind thrust. This is irritating when you're Detecting Thoughts through a wooden door and you're unable to zap one with a Mind Thrust once you detect "I'm going to blow them up with a bomb".
I think if you can detect the thoughts of a creature you should be able to target them with Psychic attack spells. My suggestion would be to list the material qualities that psychic spells can penetrate based on detect thoughts/ detect evil. Lead and thick stone etc would block psychic attack spells. To my mind this fits the flavor and could potentially become on of the neat little draws to the magic system. "Snipe through walls with the power of your mind!"
So...?