Occultist Casting Focus (Conjuration Resonant Power)


Rules Questions

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Has anyone lately found a use for the Casting Focus resonant power for the Occultist other than Glitterdust, multliclassing or "hand it over to the wizard"? Any FAQ answered about it? I haven't been able to find anything on the forums. I had a few ideas and wondered if they were possible uses:

- Use it when casting conjuration spells through magic items. I'm pretty sure this only works with staves which seems a bit impractical.
- Use it with some of your conjuration focus powers (servitor and psychic fog). From my understanding, SLAs are treated just like their spell versions. Servitor is based on Summon Monster, a round/level spell in its base form. Same with psychic fog as solid fog. I still feel like this is reaching but might work.

I can't think of any other way to take advantage of this ability. I really wish the developers would give a quick FAQ/errata on it along with other small issues even though I know they're done with 1e and busy with 2e.


I don't know if there's a good way to use it, but the HAUNT COLLECTOR archetype was written specifically to address this (the writer of the archetype said so). So while you can't make use of it, you can trade it out.

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MrCharisma wrote:
I don't know if there's a good way to use it, but the HAUNT COLLECTOR archetype was written specifically to address this (the writer of the archetype said so). So while you can't make use of it, you can trade it out.

Though disappointing, I'd say this is a good enough answer for me. Thanks.


Yeah it is a bit disappointing.

In a home game i'd just say the power works on all conjurations spells, not just thise measured in rounds (and on the focus powers since they're about the only thing that IS measured in rounds).

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Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

I did just come up with this idea that would involve jumping through a lot of hoops. Even if you happened to not have another Conjurer on your team, you could risk calling a creature with Planar Binding or Contact Entity that might have the relevant spells. Again, lots of work and probably lots of luck required but I think it could theoretically work.


If only the Haunt Collector's optional replacement was an option for every archetype... I'd much rather have a Spirit bonus than the worthless Casting Focus ability on my Neccrocultist... I seriously have to question how and why this ability even made it into the final printing... I saw discussion before about the original design for the Occultist having had all of the Summon Monster spells on the spell list, but those were all replaced with the servator ability before final print... when they were replaced, the Casting Focus ability should have been rewritten...

If the Haunt Collector was written to resolve the issue with Casting Focus, then the book it was printed in should have included a universal option to resolve it instead of being a "take this archetype to fix it" solution. It's not like other splat books haven't added additional universal options for classes that resolve issues that exist in the base class before...


John R. wrote:
I did just come up with this idea that would involve jumping through a lot of hoops. Even if you happened to not have another Conjurer on your team, you could risk calling a creature with Planar Binding or Contact Entity that might have the relevant spells. Again, lots of work and probably lots of luck required but I think it could theoretically work.

It might even work with some summoned monsters? I'm not familiar enough with summoning builds to know how that'd go.

Chell Raighn wrote:
If the Haunt Collector was written to resolve the issue with Casting Focus, then the book it was printed in should have included a universal option to resolve it instead of being a "take this archetype to fix it" solution. It's not like other splat books haven't added additional universal options for classes that resolve issues that exist in the base class before...

I think the weiter only wrote that archetype, not the whole book. And while she obviously wanted to fix this mistake it wasn't on everyone's radar.

The Occult books are famously un-supported, so I guess we make do with what we have. Outside of PFS you can probably convince your GM to give you some bonus to this ability.

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Update for Occultist fans unaware of the following!
I have done some research and the following round/level Conjuration spells are on the Occultist spell list:

- Cold Iron Fetters (5th lvl)
- Glitterdust (2nd lvl)
- Major Creation (for Rare Metal) (4th lvl)
- Pernicious Pranksters (3rd lvl)
- Rising Water (4th lvl)
- Roaming Pit (6th lvl)
- Straitjacket (4th)

Most of these spells seem to want to affect enemy mobility which is neat because it gives the Conjuration implements a focused (wakka-wakka) function. Straitjacket in particular also seems to have the added benefit of giving a crazed party member a chance to get rid of confusion and similar effects.

On top of all of this, I discovered that using the Psychodermist's Manifest Abilities by killing and utilizing the harvested parts of a particular Planar Binding target can temporarily net you those elusive round/level Conjuration spells. It's risky and overkill but it should work.

Now the only completely useless (and not even tacked-on) ability for the Occultist is Color Beam! I think we can all totally live with that. Have fun everyone!


That's a fantastic list, and thank you for doing the research!

I'm kicking myself for not noticing Pernicious Pranksters, my Occultist has that spell (she's a Haunt Collector with a haunted Conjuration Implement so I didn't even think to look).


I wonder if Samsaran race's magic thing is valid.. it might help Occultist out a bit.
Though the wording is ARcane and D ivine. and has to be on the same..

but if it works for psychi on psychic, you can probably snag a few that way.

Really isnt ideal at all though.


Well there are archetypes that make the Occultist arcane or divine, so you could go that way at least.

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