Keeping Track Of Turns

[Vlorax]

I've noticed a lot of the triggers or requirements for unleash psyche requires the player keep track of what turn something happened on or how many have gone by. It's interesting but there are feats like

"Requirements The same enemy has damaged you on at least two of its turns in this encounter."

that seem fiddly. As a player you have to keep track of the creature damaging you twice, and that it did so on its turn. If you get attacked on enemy turn, then move away and it AoO's you in the head, RAW it wouldn't trigger since that AoO reaction happened on your turn.

Which seems overly bookkeepy and restrictive, if it was just "damaged by enemy on two different turns" it would be nicer?

I do dig the meta nature of tracking turns being part of a Psychic class, it fits pretty well.

[agnelcow]

I don't mind the complexity of tracking extraneous game info given that the Psychic may have lower complexity in play than a Wizard (due to lower spell slots and emphasis on amping cantrips), but interested to see other people's opinion on it.

The baseline Unleash Psyche definitely reminds me of 13th Age, where encounters have an "escalation die" that increments as the fight goes on and can unlock or enhance abilities when it reaches certain values.

[Ediwir]

Am I the only one who finds it too gamey?

I'm not against a "buildup" ability, and I think it fits the theme of psychic having to 'psych up' before going full power, but the way it's expressed just leaves me with a bad taste.

Compare with another buildup ability, the Rule of Three. Each time you use it, the effect changes, up to three when it gets full power. That I love and I will love using it. But I can't fit in my mind the idea of a character using a turn tracker.

Kinda reminds me of the whole "you can only swing your sword hard twice in a fight, then you forget how". It's the kind of immersion break that caused me to turn away from 4e, and we need to do better.

(once again to clarify, mechanic good, wording bad)

[OCEANSHIELDWOLPF 2.0]

I’m kinda into the tracking concept, but do agree it could be a turn off for many players. For me, being involved in the rounds of combat is part of the fun, and the concept from PF1 that many people talked about of “3 rounds of combat and it is over” always saddened me.

@Ediwir: maybe the concept of the sword swings is more akin to “you can only swing your sword hard twice in a fight, then you get tired”?.

[vagrant-poet]

I love the tracking aspect. It makes the psychic's abilities feel a bit like a rhythm game. The counting also has a kind of psychological component for players at table. IF the psychic players calls out a number at the start of their turns, everyone KNOWS what happens when they say THREE!

That's very cool to me.

[graystone]

Ediwir wrote:

Am I the only one who finds it too gamey?

No.

Vlorax wrote:

I've noticed a lot of the triggers or requirements for unleash psyche requires the player keep track of what turn something happened on or how many have gone by. It's interesting but there are feats like

"Requirements The same enemy has damaged you on at least two of its turns in this encounter."

that seem fiddly. As a player you have to keep track of the creature damaging you twice, and that it did so on its turn. If you get attacked on enemy turn, then move away and it AoO's you in the head, RAW it wouldn't trigger since that AoO reaction happened on your turn.

Which seems overly bookkeepy and restrictive, if it was just "damaged by enemy on two different turns" it would be nicer?

I do dig the meta nature of tracking turns being part of a Psychic class, it fits pretty well.

What's worse, IMO, is that you might be juggling the tracking of multiple triggers at once if you've collected several ways to Unleash. I can see people getting confused when trying to figure out who did what when and how many times they did it, especially when you mix things like Adjust Trajectory's reaction telekinetic projectile attack with the need to cast 2 damaging spells in different rounds.

[SuperBidi]

In my opinion, Unleash just doesn't work. In most cases, you can only Unleash during third round, and it costs you one action for a nice buff + a debuff.
But you need 2 rounds of pounding to get rid of a Moderate encounter and 3 to get rid of a Severe encounter, so in general fights last a bit more because you can't attack optimally every round, but third round is very often the last one. And if you are not fighting a single opponent, it means that you are strong for the rounds where you are just cleaning the last survivors.

As it is currently, Unleash Psyche is in my opinion completely unusable. I would not invest in any Psyche feat and just keep the basic one which is also the easiest to track.
For me, it's a dead feature.

[GM OfAnything]

I know that a lot of players favor the all-in rush idea of tactics when they play, but I like that Unleash encourages a more thoughtful buff and defend/evade beginning to combat. An evolving battlefield often feels more satisfying.

[CrimsonKnight]

At my table we use a lot of props and tokens to track resources so for us it is easy to track but few fights last more than three rounds. Some of my enemies flee to recover if the fight lasts more than three rounds only to harass the characters again. But I like the idea and the fresh mechanics it introduces. LIMIT BREAK!

[Unicore]

As a GM, I often have encounters spill over onto each other and the combat tracker on the VTT has hit 12 rounds before as the party has stormed a complex dungeon. VTTs also make it pretty easy to add effects to the turn tracker. I am pretty sure a psychic, and their ability to grow more powerful as the encounter goes on, is going to end up being pretty powerful in games I run.

[HumbleGamer]

I agree that VTT makes things easier.

we just add marks on enemies and players for anything:

- Battle Medicine Debuff
- Conditions
- Etc...

I don't think that having a Psychic would cause too many troubles ( the player may also decide to keep track of the ones who hit him himself ).

[cavernshark]

vagrant-poet wrote:

I love the tracking aspect. It makes the psychic's abilities feel a bit like a rhythm game. The counting also has a kind of psychological component for players at table. IF the psychic players calls out a number at the start of their turns, everyone KNOWS what happens when they say THREE!

That's very cool to me.

I'm going to be writing up a more detailed play test report later, but I played a level 3 psychic last night in a Pathfinder Society scenario. Of the four combats I participated in, 90% of enemies were dead before we hit the 3rd round. On one combat, we got to the third round with a single enemy (low level remaining). On the final fight, we got to the third round and on balance there was no value to Unleashing my intent. I did it anyway just to do it, but really it was a lot of build up past the point where it mattered.

Certainly only a single scenario but it really didn't feel good. I spent every fight intentionally amping cantrips each round to get into that state even when I'd probably done different things like using a spell at the front of combat and sustaining it alongside cantrips later.

I think there's potential in this style of build-up, but certainly no one at the table much cared and we all kind of laughed each time because it actually was more like me working myself up in the corner and hitting a peak well after it would have mattered. If these can only happen in the 3rd round of combat, they really need to just be straight game-changers. Otherwise I *should* be playing in ways to prevent my party from ever needing to hit that round.

I'd almost prefer if these were the spell-caster equivalent of rage; something you enter into at the start of combat with a clear cost-benefit.

[Ascalaphus]

If you start with two focus, and use one on your first and second turns to amp cantrips, don't you naturally meet the requirements to Unleash at the same time when you need the free focus?

This seems similar to me to Starfinder Solarians - they do their three round charge-up and it doesn't seem to be too difficult.

How many fights last three rounds? Not too many in PFS, but in APs I see it happen a lot actually. Especially when fights break out over longer distances, enemies have a big ton of HP to chew through and so forth.