| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
Occult Adventures was probably my single-favorite addition to the Pathfinder system. The flavors of the classes were all great, but I also really loved the mechanics of Psychic casting. With 2E coming out, I'm a little worried that classes from this book will get absorbed into Arcane and Divine camps, or just not come back at all.
Does anyone else want to see the third style of magic persevere in 2E? Would you want it to keep its unique Emotion/Thought Components, or would you want them to use Verbal/Somatic components like Arcane and Divine magic for simplicity's sake? What changes would you make? What would you want to keep the same?
Is there any chance we could see Psychic Magic appear in the Core Rules?
I understand that they are planning to bring back all the PF1 classes eventually, but since the classes in the CRB are locked and none of them are Psychic casters it's probably not a great use of limited book space.
But I expect that psychic magic will be appearing in a supplement sooner rather than later. Do Ultimate Magic again and include the Oracle, Witch, Magus, Psychic, Occultist, Mesmerist, and Spiritualist, say.
There's a fringe theory that the fourth spell list (after arcane, divine, and nature) is psychic, and they're going to introduce archetypes that give access to that list so that occult classes (or at least the Psychic) can be simulated right away. I'm hopeful but not expecting it.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
There's a fringe theory that the fourth spell list (after arcane, divine, and nature) is psychic, and they're going to introduce archetypes that give access to that list so that occult classes (or at least the Psychic) can be simulated right away. I'm hopeful but not expecting it.
I am a proponent of that theory. I may be the inventor; at least when I posted that idea, I had not seen it said before; so it could be paralell development.
They've already forcibly stapled the Occultist's Mental Focus mechanic onto literally every character, so they're not going to bring the Occultist back, that's for sure.
They've already forcibly stapled the Occultist's Mental Focus mechanic onto literally every character, so they're not going to bring the Occultist back, that's for sure.
I believe they have said that they will bring back every PF1 class, so that converting old modules and APs will be fairly simple (you have to rebuild every character, but at least you know what class to rebuild them as.)
But I would imagine that rather than wholly reproducing mechanics from PF1, they will instead attempt to reproduce the premise, theme, and gimmicks of a class instead. Plus, I mean, given that the Occultist was the best at UMD, they could just make them the best at resonance.
But honestly I don't think "resonance" has anything to do with the Occultist, except that the Occultist was the class with the word "Resonant" in one of its class features; since Mental Focus doesn't work like resonance at all.
|
If they do bring back occult classes, they need to make some of them A) easier to understand how to use and B) easier to actually adventure with.
The Medium and (while not occultist) the Vigilante both have a problem that without specific GM leeway, coordinating between GM and Player, or a niche-style or city campaign, these two could be nigh unplayable in most of the APs as they are set up.
They've already forcibly stapled the Occultist's Mental Focus mechanic onto literally every character, so they're not going to bring the Occultist back, that's for sure.
Mental focus is invested in bulk in implements for resonant powers and spent from those implements' pools for effects.
Investing one point per item and spending from the leftover pool seems different enough to me.
Big difference was that there was really no incentive whatsoever for the Occultist to not allocate all of their mental focus at breakfast, and also that "how much focus goes into each implement" was generally determined by "how much do you need to top off the good resonant powers."
Could build the Occultist in PF2 by giving the Occultist a Resonance Pool of 2*Level + IntMod+ChaMod and giving them extra bonuses by allocating extra resonance to stuff.
|
The Medium and (while not occultist) the Vigilante both have a problem that without specific GM leeway, coordinating between GM and Player, or a niche-style or city campaign, these two could be nigh unplayable in most of the APs as they are set up.
Vigilante only has a few talents related to specific cities, and there is an FAQ that says Mediums can just.. make areas of importance.. The example given is hunting a deer and using the site it fell to channel the Champion spirit.
Already confirmed not-core, I believe, in the Know Direction Podcast.
But they will be making a comeback eventually.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
There's a fringe theory that the fourth spell list (after arcane, divine, and nature) is psychic, and they're going to introduce archetypes that give access to that list so that occult classes (or at least the Psychic) can be simulated right away. I'm hopeful but not expecting it.
first time I heard anyone else espouse this theory. But I share it as well. It would make it interesting to see what the bard would get though.
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I would be surprised if bringing back every class necessarily meant bringing them back as a stand-alone base class. A number of classes would have been better served as archetypes to begin with, so hopefully we can cut redundancy and have a cleaner class list this time around.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Okay, I must say I LOVED the psychic classes. It was such a refresh take on traditionally-hated psionics, and I loved the occult flavor.
However, I must say this is not quite the time for it. The problem with new editions is that everyone wants their favorite options right at the start. That tends to rush things, which end not being as good as we wanted. Past editions had many splatbooks to give these options to us.
I'm completely fine if they delay the psychic classes to a splatbook or such, so they can work out the classes, improve them, etc. I would also like them to use a different form of spellcasting than both prepared and spontaneous casting. That would be fun ^^
They've already forcibly stapled the Occultist's Mental Focus mechanic onto literally every character, so they're not going to bring the Occultist back, that's for sure.I believe they have said that they will bring back every PF1 class, so that converting old modules and APs will be fairly simple (you have to rebuild every character, but at least you know what class to rebuild them as.)
But I would imagine that rather than wholly reproducing mechanics from PF1, they will instead attempt to reproduce the premise, theme, and gimmicks of a class instead. Plus, I mean, given that the Occultist was the best at UMD, they could just make them the best at resonance.
But honestly I don't think "resonance" has anything to do with the Occultist, except that the Occultist was the class with the word "Resonant" in one of its class features; since Mental Focus doesn't work like resonance at all.
Mark I think even specifically called out that a future occultist would probably be designed around resonance, and enhancing it. So I think we will be getting at least that class back eventually
Also chime me in on the list of folks who want psychic magic sooner than later. And I am totally cool with introducing some of those classes into other books. The kineticist for instance really is it's own thing, since it's not a "spellcaster", so doesn't need to be bundled into a single volume with the other casters. A lot of these classes had a lot of moving parts, and getting them in earlier will allow options that have been largely neglected and which we will never now see from Paizo.
The main objection to including psychic magic in the initial rules is that, with no classes natively casting such spells, they would do a half-assed job putting the spell list together and then discover all sorts of things that they should have done differently once they finally get around to designing the actual new psychic classes. As much as I want to see updated versions of the occult classes, I can't see anything to be gained by putting anything related to psychic magic in the core rulebook (other than futureproofing the wording of things in the core rulebook with the knowledge that psychic magic will eventually be a thing).
Okay, I must say I LOVED the psychic classes. It was such a refresh take on traditionally-hated psionics, and I loved the occult flavor.
However, I must say this is not quite the time for it. The problem with new editions is that everyone wants their favorite options right at the start. That tends to rush things, which end not being as good as we wanted. Past editions had many splatbooks to give these options to us.
I'm completely fine if they delay the psychic classes to a splatbook or such, so they can work out the classes, improve them, etc. I would also like them to use a different form of spellcasting than both prepared and spontaneous casting. That would be fun ^^
Some people don't even give the Occult classes a second glance because they assume it uses a whole additional magic system they'll have to learn and incorporate rather than being a new classification of magic.
I'd insist that at the very least Thought and Emotion components fit the sorcerer better than V & S components. Being born with the ability to cast spells somewhat doesn't fit right with "artificial" necessities such as language or specific hand signs...
I loved psychic magic too, both for the flavor and for the fact that it was actually a different type of magic. Even though it was pretty much just trading out verbal/somatic components for thought/emotion components, it was still a very interesting mechanical difference that required a slightly different style of play. I'd like more different spellcasting styles like that. I'd like some significant mechanical difference between arcane and divine. I also think it'd be cool if the spell lists were more unique to even further enforce this. As is, there's a lot of overlap in spell-lists that I personally think makes things rather dull. There's already enough feats and archetypes that allow you to poach from other spell lists. Leave it at that.
My objection would be answered if the Sorcerer turned out to be a psychic class -- but I am guessing that that would be too radical a change to make at this time.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Do you think people would be more receptive to learning the rules for Psychic Magic if it's featured in a very early supplement (say the PF2 analogue of "Ultimate Magic")? Since Psychic Magic in OA really wasn't much of a cognitive burden to handle (your components are different, that's it) but people might have avoided it because OA was released after the point where PF1 already had a huge number of rules.
But if you put Psychic magic in the game before you do Word of Power, Mythic, Mass Combat, Nautical Combat, Kingdom Building, etc. it would probably get more traction.
Yeah, Occult Adventures is one of my favorite PF books as well.
Kineticist is my favorite class.
I really love the "thought" and "emotion" spell components.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
I'm really excited for when the Psychic classes eventually get ported over to P2e (one of my favorite characters of all time was a Phantom Blade Spiritualist and I'd love to build her again for P2e), but I'm fine with waiting for them - I'd rather Psychic magic gets introduced once P2e has had time to develop and settle so Paizo has the opportunity to develop occult magic with a set in, concrete foundation.
In regards to classes being bundled into books, I personally think it would be cool if it wound up being something like Ultimate Arcane (Witch, Magus, Summoner, Bloodrager, new arcane class), Ultimate Divine (Oracle, Shaman, Inquisitor, Warpriest, new divine class), Ultimate Occult (all the original Occult classes, maybe a new occult caster class as well), Ultimate Nature (Hunter, Shifter, Skald, new natural classes), and Ultimate Martial (Cavalier, Gunslinger, Vigilante, Swashbuckler, Brawler, Slayer, new martial class). If all of the old classes were introduced in themed books, it would facilitate getting all of the returning old classes into P2e while simultaneously creating new classes around those themes at the same time.
Well, I think they should be released earlier than in 1e. However, I've seen enough 5e to know that trying to rush things at the core book is bad for classes. Classes that are rushed over lose a lot of their shine, by being shoehorned into the core book.
So yeah, I want it earlier - now that Paizo has created things - but waiting a little bit is fine.
For future books, they will almost certainly want to organize the follow-on books differently rather than, for example, having an obvious 2e version of Occult Adventures. They certainly need to cover the ground from the previous hardback books at a pace greater than one new book corresponding to only a single old book if possible.