Phrenic Archetype and Mystic?

[YogoZuno]

I thought I understood how Archetypes work, since they're relatively simple in concept - if you take an archetype, you replace some class abilities with new ones, and this seems to hold up fine for Envoy, Mechanic, operative, Soldier and Solarian, even the Technomancer.

However, I found a strange one in the Mystic replaced class features. According to the list on p127, if an Archetype has a feature at 9th Level, then the Mystic either loses a feat or healing touch. Losing the feat is fairly easy - you can probably just lose the 9th level feat, if you are single-classing. But how does the lost Healing Touch work? Do you have Healing Touch for levels 1-8 as a Phrenic Mystic, and then suddenly lose it at level 9? Do you never get Healing touch at all? What if you only ever progress to level 8 as a Phrenic Mystic - do you then get to keep Healing Touch?

Going back and thinking about the replaced feat option...what if you aren't single-classing as a Phrenic Mystic, and so actually take Phrenic Mystic level 9 as your 10th character level? Do you give up your NEXT feat? Do you have to give up a feat at some point before hitting level 9, in the hopes that you will eventually get there? Do you drop an already learned feat when you get that feature?

The Starfinder Forerunner archetype doesn't replace anything at level 9, so a Mystic Starfinder Forerunner doesn't raise this question.

[DM_aka_Dudemeister]

You don't lose Healing Touch, it just does not advance at that level. So you'll be considered an 8th level Mystic for determining how many hit poinys you can heal, when you hit 10th level you'll be considered a 9th level Mystic for effects related to healing touch etc.

[YogoZuno]

Can you please explain how you arrived at that conclusion? I don't think you are correct.

The Mechanic Override ability, which is altered at 9th level, explicitly says that you delay getting override for a level. The Mystic 9th level just says 'You either don't gain the healing touch class feature or don't gain a feat...'. Which is weird, since you get Healing Touch at level 1...All you get at level 9 Mystic is a new Connection Power.

[Andy Brown]

Page 126, Gaining an archetype wrote:

When you first gain an archetype, read through all the altered or replaced class features that will affect your character, and note these down; for some classes (especially mystics and technomancers) these changes affect features from levels before or after the levels at which you gain archetype features.

However it also says you gain the archetype at the first level that the archetype changes things (2nd), so it looks like you'd have Healing Touch for first level, then lose it when you hit 2nd.

[Utar, Vicar of Pebbles]

I have the same question as the title of this post and I hope an official comments on it.

However, at this point I believe its a typo, its doesn't make sense otherwise.

Basically you loose your 9th level feat (or if you are multi-classed, your next odd-leveled feat). As of now I'm ignoring the Healing Touch part.

[Naal]

My interpretation (just ran into this myself).
If you pick the phrenic adept archetype (or any other archetype that has a level 9 swap ability), you choose to lose one of the following perks.
a) healing touch (you never get it at all)
b) level 1 feat
c) level 3 feat
d) level 5 feat
e) level 7 feat
f) level 9 feat
You can postpone the decision to level 9, and by then you have no choice but to lose level 9 feat.

The reason you might want to lose an earlier feat is to use a higher-level feat to access something with higher prerequisites. The reason you might want to lose a later feat is to front-load your character's capabilities.

But I also hit the FAQ button.

[Violet Hargrave]

I'm pretty sure one of the following is true:

A: If you play a phrenic adept mystic, you never gain access to healing touch at all, perpetually 2 fewer connection powers than a non-phrenic would, begin knowing only a single first level spell, and don't gain access to the full compliment of spells known, nor connection spell for a given spell level until the next spell level is unlocked.

B: Sometime between writing the archetype rules and the final release of the game, healing touch was moved from being a level 9 ability to level 1, and nobody updated the archetype rules with a fix.

The feat question when multiclassing meanwhile is a separate issue, but I'd say by both the letter and the spirit of the rules, if you want to be a multiclassed phrenic adept mystic with access to healing touch, even if you don't take a single level in mystic until level 10 or higher, you don't gain a feat at level 9.

[quindraco]

Definitely needs to be FAQed; right now, all Mystics fail to gain Healing Touch at level 9, so the Archetype ability has no penalty, and any that gain their 9th level of Archetype Mystic at an odd character level also already fail to gain a feat, also meaning no penalty. It seems clear neither fact is intentional.

[whew]

My guess: It should say "9th level connection power" instead of "healing touch class feature".

[Ravingdork]

As someone about to play a mystic phrenic adept, I too find myself wondering how this is meant to work. FAQ'd.

[Ravingdork]

Mystic 6th: You don’t gain access to the highest-level connection power you would normally have access to.

Does this mean that my empath mystic has no connection powers at level 1, but gains Empathy at level 3, rather than greater mindlink?

Or do I just skip the 6th-level connection power (emotionsense) and call it a day?

[Xenocrat]

"Gaining an Archetype, pg 126 wrote:

You can gain an archetype when you achieve a new class level in an eligible class matching the earliest level for which the archetype offers an alternate class feature. The archetype is then considered part of the class you gain a level in when you level up. For example, if you are playing an envoy interested in being a Starfinder forerunner, you must select that archetype when you gain your 2nd level of envoy (the first level at which the Starfinder forerunner has an alternate class feature). From that point forward, whenever you gain an envoy class level, you should check whether you gain an alternate class feature from the Starfinder forerunner archetype, as well as whether any envoy class features are altered or replaced. When you first gain an archetype, read through all the altered or replaced class features that will affect your character, and note these down; for some classes (especially mystics and technomancers) these changes affect features from levels before or after the levels at which you gain archetype features.

You just skip the 6th-level power. For a Mystic the odd ones are 9th, where you can apparently decide to either give up healing touch early at 1st, or wait to give up a general feat at 9th, and 12th, where you give up a channel skill increment at 11th and 14th in return for your 12th level archetype ability.

[Ravingdork]

Wait, I thought you gave up healing touch at 9th (or the feat). How could you give up something at level 1, when you don't even decide if you have an archetype until level 2?

[Xenocrat]

Ravingdork wrote:

Wait, I thought you gave up healing touch at 9th (or the feat). How could you give up something at level 1, when you don't even decide if you have an archetype until level 2?

There’s precedent for giving up stuff early, but I admit the before you take the archetype issue is hard. There is no precedent for giving up something you already have. 9th level Mystic is horribly written, the only safe thing to do is give up your 9th level feat if you don’t want to risk a GM disagreement or confusion.

[YogoZuno]

Quote:

the only safe thing to do is give up your 9th level feat if you don’t want to risk a GM disagreement or confusion.

Assuming you are single-classing...

[th3razzer]

YogoZuno wrote:

Quote:

Quote:

Wait, I thought you gave up healing touch at 9th (or the feat). How could you give up something at level 1, when you don't even decide if you have an archetype until level 2?

There’s precedent for giving up stuff early, but I admit the before you take the archetype issue is hard. There is no precedent for giving up something you already have. 9th level Mystic is horribly written, the only safe thing to do is give up your 9th level feat if you don’t want to risk a GM disagreement or confusion.

Assuming you are single-classing...

I think one thing is being assumed here:

You do NOT make changes to your class until the change is relevant level-wise; i.e., you would not "get rid of Healing Touch early", that is a VERY poor interpretation of the rules.

You would, essentially, keep everything as-is until the decision actually needs to be made, meaning that until level 9, you do have access to Healing Touch, and then at level 9 you must decide which you are giving up. And it most assuredly isn't "don't count a level in Mystic for number of HP healed from Healing Touch" or it would be phrased that way, as many other replacement/alter texts are written. In fact, even within the Mystic Archetype section there is lengthy text explaining what to do, so a simple lack of text along with what other option they're asking you to choose from seems pretty easy as far as RAI.

CoreRuleBook pg. 127 wrote:

You either don’t gain the healing touch class feature or don’t gain a feat you would otherwise gain from reaching an odd-numbered character level (see page 26); this

feat could be the one normally gained at 9th level.

I think the reason they did this is because you might hit this LV9 decision on an odd class level, if you're multi-classing. Say that you have to make this decision when you're LV10, having had 1 level in another class: now your ONLY option is to remove the Healing Touch feature, as you have no Feat to give up at 9th level, since you've most assuredly taken it already one level before. Hence, why it is spelled out to look down the road at your progression - the book even asks you to write out down the line what your changes might look like. They are treating the players as grown-ups, and sometimes the growing pains suck: your ultimate question is "is this replacement worth it for [insert archetype skill here]?"

[Utar, Vicar of Pebbles]

A) Bumping this to hopefully (and finally) get an official answer.

B) I originally was in agreement with the following:

th3razzer wrote:

You do NOT make changes to your class until the change is relevant level-wise; i.e., you would not "get rid of Healing Touch early", that is a VERY poor interpretation of the rules.

I've now changed my opinion. Specifically because the very next replacement rule (possibly) contradicts your argument.

CoreRuleBook pg. 127 (12th Level Mystic Replaced Feature) wrote:

At 11th level and again at 14th level, you don’t gain the increase to your channel skill bonus. Your channel skill bonus is thus 1 lower than normal at 11th level and 2 lower than normal at 14th level—it remains +3 and doesn’t increase to +4 until 17th level).

The rules specifically state you loose the +1 bonus BEFORE gaining/replacing the 12th level Archetype ability. So in other words, you loose Healing Touch or a Feat before 9th Level, it would be at the moment of taking the Archetype, which must be at 1st-Level since it alters class features at that level.

This also means that if a "feat slot" is chosen to be lost, it has to be one that you have not yet selected a feat for; in other words, you should never loose something you at one time had. I also believe this makes the overall rules more consistent.

["Dr." Cupi]

I think this hasn't been clarified because the quoting of the rules seems to me to make almost everything clear.

At 2nd level, it seems that if there is a choice prompted by an archetype you are entering, you make all of the decisions at that point and then "...note these down;". "...this feat could be the one normally gained at 9th level..." seems to imply that you can pick any feat that you would gain at any odd level (should probably leave level 1 out of this, for lack of confusions sake).

All-in-all, this is pretty clear in it's meaning. The only thing that is confusing to me is 1st level. I wracked my brain about it for a couple minutes and then said to myself, it's not only 1 level but 1st level. I then stopped caring as such a thing is pretty trivial. Sure, the mystic can have healing touch at level one but not 2+ (if that is the option they choose), I don't really care about that a whole lot, nor does it make a big difference in the grand scheme of things. Let 'em have it, why not?

[Utar, Vicar of Pebbles]

"Dr." Cupi wrote:

I think this hasn't been clarified because the quoting of the rules seems to me to make almost everything clear.

Valid point.

But I do agree with Xenocrat, the rules are poorly written.

[Kishmo]

Bump - is there an official answer to this?

It looks like the consensus above about the 9th level replaced class feature is that you choose to either lose a feat at your leisure, or you choose to not have Healing Touch starting at 2nd level (the loss doesn't start at 1st level since Owen has clarified that Archetype replacements don't hit you until the first level when the Archetype kicks in.)

That consensus just feels really punitive to me. Even with the reduced "value" of HP (with Stamina and all) Healing Touch is a pretty big deal. I could see losing 9th level Healing Touch progression in exchange for your 9th Level Archtype feature (so as of lvl 9 your effective class level for Healing Touch is 1 less) but to lose it altogether, starting at lvl 2, really seems disproportionate to the value that any feat or 9th Level archetype power brings?

With the way HP scales linearly, Healing Touch lets you completely bring a technomancer to 100% HP, a solarian/soldier to about 70%, and any other class to about 80%, of full HP once a day (ok, that doesn't count racial HP @ lvl 1, but meh. Back-of-napkin math.) That's the difference between adventuring more, or stopping to rest for the night, in my mind.

Is my sense of the worth of Healing Touch just overinflated? Someone help me out :)

[Pantshandshake]

First, a bit of explanation:
AD&D 2E had a system kind of like archetypes, called Kits. They ranged in quality from poor to almost mandatory, depending on what you wanted to do with your character. One of the worst parts about whoever wrote them was that many of the most powerful Kits had fantastic mechanical advantages, ‘balanced’ by negatives that were strictly role playing related. Like the Elven Bladedancers, for example, were basically an early incarnation of the Magus. The negatives were that you basically had to be an elven supremacist. The Myrmidon Kit for the fighter gave you a free weapon specialization (a HUGE deal in AD&D 2E) and was balanced by you being a professional mercenary, so sometimes you’d have to listen to your boss.

The archetypes in Starfinder seem, to me, to have gone to the other end. Every time I look through archetypes when I’m thinking about a new character, all I can see is great role playing flavor added, and mechanical bits from your actual class being taken away. Like, the Star Knight is great flavor, but if I want my mystic to have heavy armor and not be crippled forever, I’ll just play a Dwarf, or take a level of soldier.

To sum up, I don’t feel that the loss or crippling of class stuff will ever be worth the piddling gains from archetypes in this system. Keep your healing touch at full strength, toss the archetypes to the curb with 2 weapon fighting and Combat Reflexes.

[Berggen]

Let's start wit the rules for gaining a archetype: "You can gain an archetype when you achieve a new class level in an eligible class matching the earliest level for which the archetype offers an alternate class feature. The archetype is then considered part of the class you gain a level in when you level up. For example, if you are playing an envoy interested in being a Starfinder forerunner, you must select that archetype when you gain your 2nd level of envoy (the first level at which the Starfinder forerunner has an alternate class feature). From that point forward, whenever you gain an envoy class level, you should check whether you gain an alternate class feature from the Starfinder forerunner archetype, as well as whether any envoy class features are altered or replaced. When you first gain an archetype, read through all the altered or replaced class features that will affect your character, and note these down; for some classes (especially mystics and technomancers) these changes affect features from levels before or after the levels at which you gain archetype features."

So at level 1 of Mystic, you cannot have an archetype.

Mystic archetype costs include: "9th Level - You either don’t gain the healing touch class feature or don’t gain a feat you would otherwise gain from reaching an odd-numbered character level (see page 26); this feat could be the one normally gained at 9th level."

And of course, Healing Touch is a 1st level Mystic ability.

These three things put us into a little bit of a pickle about how to pay for this.

So either, you can take a archetype before 2nd level, must lose an odd feat between 3-9th level, or you actually lose healing touch or a feat as opposed to not gaining it. If you lose healing touch / a feat, do you lose it at 9th level or the level you pick up the archetype? If you splash one level of something else and then pick up 9 levels of Mystic, taking an archetype with only a 9th level power, you don't gain a feat at character level 10.

There's also the idea that it just gets held back by 1 level, but that seems to be far out of proportion to a typical 9th level archetype power, so I don't think that interpretation is correct.