Samsaran Psychic: Good Choices for Mystic Past-Life Spells

[This Side]

Hi all,

After moving to a new state I unfortunately fell out of the habit of playing pathfinder without my amazing local PFS chapter or friends for home-gaming - luckily my friends have decided to start a new AP (War for the Crown) via Roll20, so I'm excited to get back into it. However, given my year-long delay I am a bit rusty.

For this campaign I am creating a Samsaran Rebirth Psychic - I will be the only 9th level spell caster in the group of 5 (others are rogue, investigator, warpriest, and vigilante). I am trying to figure out what are the best options I can choose for spells for the Mystic Past Life alternate racial trait for Samsarans.

As of now I am planning on taking Heal from the Spiritualist list, but I have 4 more options I am unsure about. Any good recommendations?

[Theaitetos]

The group seems to have covered the heavy social focus with rogue, investigator, and vigilante pretty good already. The warpriest should be able to cover basic clerical needs with a little support from items or your additional spells. Maybe add some "arcane" power for the battlefield beyond the control spells?

If you go with Occultist instead of Spiritualist (both have Heal on their list, so good there), you can add some arcane evergreens: Sirocco, Fireball, Wall of Fire/Stone, other evocations or Symbol spells.

If you stick with Spiritualist, make sure to take the superbly versatile shadow spells like Shadow Conjuration, Shadow Evocation. Additionally you can consider some dark arts like Bestow Curse, Enervation, Cloudkill or additional healing spells like Breath of Life, Neutralize X, Remove Y, Restoration, Raise Dead; the latter are usually cast by the warpriest, but if it's the warpriest who is incapacitated/dead... I'd recommend at least Breath of Life.

[Davor Firetusk]

My best advice would be to wait on most of the choices, your number of choices is set at first level, but you don't actually have to pick them right away. Even with experience you will likely come up with a better idea of your needs as the campaign evolves. If you have a first level spell you really want right away certainly take it, but I'd hold off on most of them until later because the psychic spell lists are very diverse, particularly between the occultist getting most normal wizard spells and the spiritualist opens a lot of the key healing space which you may discover you want as time goes on. I've seen warpriest as the only divine healer parties struggle at high levels.

[avr]

Step 1 is checking with your GM. Mystic past life works with arcane spells or with divine spells, but was written before psychic spells comes out - they're not in its list.

If it's OK then occultist would be my pick. You'll want area damage eventually and parchment swarm is fun. Magic circle against evil is useful. And it has heal too as Theaitetos points out.

[This Side]

Thanks all! The route I am leaning now is going Medium to get early access to spells I was already planning on taking (Haste, Slow, etc.) It definitely doesn't appear to be RAI but I ran it by my GM and he's cool with it. Getting non-psychic spells from Occultist does seem more flavorful, but one concern is most of those spells are all going to be high level and I have no idea if we'll ever even reach that point (playing 2.5 hours a couple times a month).