Has anyone had any experience playing these classes?
I like the rebirth discipline but is it as functional as a sorceror?
For the mesmerist, it seems they are poor in melee combat. Are they just casters with a smaller amount of spells?
I think the Mesmerist is more interesting, since it's not obvious how to make the class work. I think ideally you want to debuff, stare at people, and throw darts?
The Psychic is a stronger class, since it's a 9 level caster, and it more or less functions like any other spontaneous 9 level caster except that you've got a serious problem with emotion effects and you can just wear full plate without the proficiency without affecting your casting in any way.
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I will vote for mesmerist. They play differently than any other class. You are a potent debuffer but you are also a support/battle field controller with tricks. You can defend people, move them around, guard their minds all with no actions.
The other thing that is cool is you provide support to both melee builds, with tricks, bold stares, and painful stare for damage, and casters with hypnotic stare, intimidate often adding sicken later for -8 to will saves.
Many builds end up applying -8 to attacks and will saves and -4 or more to most other rolls. This is done pretty passively (without a standard action) through intimidate and stare feats. If you add the spells like a casting of bestow curse you can really start crushing opponents.
You can build mesmerists for melee combat but it takes attention to detail. Making them useful casters is easy on the other hand.
The psychic is functional enough; not all their spells are mind-affecting, and they have a few spells without emotion components in the event you get shaken. Rebirth is a solid choice with the floating spell known, but note that it doesn't have a way of regaining phrenic points during the day, and the pool being based of charisma is the worse of the two possibilities IMO.
Mesmerists can be very competent melee combatants, though you might want to look at an archetype like the Vexing Daredevil. The feat "Manifold Stare" also gives you a pretty huge damage boost.
Mesmerists also make very solid save-or-suck casters, and some of their tricks grant some potent defensive buffs. They even have ways to get around immunity to mind-affecting effects. Really it comes down to what kind of character you want to play, but the Mesmerist works well in either a combat or a caster role.
As for the Psychic, they're definitely different than a sorcerer. Their spell list lacks the sheer scope of the sorcerer/wizard, but they do get plenty of good spells, like haste, telekinesis, and black tentacles. The rebirth discipline is a solid choice if you need additional versatility. Like the Mesmerist, the Psychic's ability to boost spell DCs makes them really solid save-or-suck casters, probably better than a sorcerer. The Phrenic Pool ability also lets you use your spells in clever ways that sorcerer wouldn't be able to.
Yeah manifold stare on a vexing daredevil with a one level dip in inspired blade smash and mes can do decent melee and still cast reasonably well too. Mesmerist are fun.
Psychics are fine fairly simple class in my opinion.
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I have a full mesmerist I use acid splash (two world magic), later Quarterstaff of Entwined Serpents, then later Ring of Forcefang to do damage. It has worked well for conserving spells dealing a bit of damage. Later I'm mostly casting. So it is just a back up end of battle clean up strategy.
High level Mesmerist can do some pretty kewl damage with shadow evocation battering blasts to deal manifold intense pains painful stare damage
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I like bouncing trick for most mesmerists, though it might me too many immediate actions with Reflexive Trick.
Reflexive Trick can work offensively with Misdirection, but it's also a weak option as it's once per turn and will burn through tricks quickly.
If you are considering 2 level dips and you want to feint the vigilante has a good talent for that. But it's not a good use of resources.
I have not found a way around the low attack for the mesmerist yet. The system wants me to use feint but the action economy is bad and effect can but minor.
In writing this I figured out what is need a bold stare that applies the penality to AC.
- Perturbing Stare
- Blinding Stare
- Penetrating Stare
Are the feats meant to bolster melee mesmerists.
Finally, it is worth noting that many stare feats are combat feats and eliable for barroom brawler and martial flexibility.
Rebirth discipline is amazing. It really smooths out a lot of wrinkles as a spontaneous caster as you get going. Psychic is a better Sorcerer, what with the Int base and actually getting good class skills (all the social skills and knowledges, with perception thrown on as an extra).
Mesmerist is lots of fun, and benefits considerably from the Reflexive Trick feat. Instead of planning for what you expect to face, you can access any of your defenses as an immediate action. Reflect Fear to buy some casting time and Mesmeric Mirror to avoid attacks are my favorites. Lots of fun archtypes, too. I'm fond of Vizier for flavor.