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Between your focus and psyche you can effectively cast five amped psi cantrips in a fight without investing any feats in getting more duration. So let's assume you're always amping your damaging cantrips and take a look at their performance.
1. Telekinetic Projectile: Your damage is d8 (4.5dmg per level) vs 2d6 (7 dmg) per level for a top flight focus spell like Fire Ray. You also have a pushback effect on a critical hit.
So you're doing 64% of Fire Ray damage, with a rarely seen crit rider, in return for being able to cast it a lot more often. I don't know that this is a great tradeoff. d10, 78% of Fire Ray damage, would feel better.
The bigger problem is that you also have the below spell, which is straight up better if 2+ enemies are in range and not too closely entwined with allies.
I just don't see using this amp unless I'm using True Strike and a Shadow Signet to hope for the big push back effect. And I'm only doing that if I'm in the pigeon holed Staff of Divination play style.
2. Telekinetic Rend: Your damage is 2d6 (+2d6 +2 levels) in two 5' bursts. Let's compare to Fireball damage, which is 2d6 per spell level.
Level 1: 7 avg damage
Level 3: 14 avg damage (vs 21 avg, 66%)
Level 5: 21 avg damage (vs 35 avg 60%)
Level 7: 28 avg damage (vs. 49 avg 57%)
Level 9: 35 avg damgage (vs. 63 avg 55.5%)
It doesn't take a spell slot, of course, and it can hit 2-3+ enemies pretty consistently, so maybe this isn't terrible. But it's not good. Perhaps for a 1st level cantrip we shouldn't expect more.
But we also shouldn't expect to use Telekinetic Projectile much since we have this.
3. Daze: The weakness to mental damage here is a bit hard to adjudicate. It's a very minor damage boost to your casting of Daze, but also inflicts the weakness until the end of your next round and applies a -1 status penalty to will saves, helping any follow up spells you or allies cast. It obviously combos well with Phantom Pain or similar stuff, but status penalties aren't that hard to come by, and the damage boost is small stuff. I can't see this getting used except in weird party compositions that have lots of mental damage options and aren't otherwise debuffing the target.
4. Shatter Mind: This is the only spell that seems to actually apply the ability to apply both the regul and amp heightening effects (which is explicitly allowed on page 6, then written out of the telekinetic spells with their specific amp heightening wording), but it's janky, as the regular heightening is +2 spell levels, and the amp is +1. Effectively you have +3d6/2 spell levels.
At spell level 10 this does 12d6 mental damage (42 avg) in a 30 or 60 foot cone (why is this even a choice when it only effects enemies?) plus stupefies targets that fail. That's slightly ahead of Telekinetic Rend on damage, in a much bigger area, with no friendly fire risk and a debuff. If Telekinetic Rend is balanced, then I guess maybe that makes this worth spending an 8th level feat on.
Overall I'm not sure that spamming these damage options (for the 2/3 paths that have them) are worth it, but you don't have enough spell slots not to do it a bunch.
Telekinetic Rend is honestly pretty bad, especially if you consider it the main feature of a subclass and the reason the class gets less slots.
Unamped its unusable. Comparable to daze levels.
Compare it to scattering scree which has very similar Aoe. Screes minimum damage at level 1 is almost Rends max damage. nd it gets even worse at level 3 when rend doesnt highten yet.
Even amped its just slightly above Electric Arc.
Honestly they could buff the base one to be the amped one and buff the amped one more.
I think you're missing that Rend is a 5' burst and the amped is 2 bursts. That and it's the only cantrip with a fort save with a range greater then 5' and you get to pick 2 damage types. I do think it should get your spellcasting stat to damage though.
Imagine casting Rend at level 3 and you roll Bad. Thats 1 damage. For scree or arc the minimum is 6.
Well, I did say I think it should add your casting stat and you'd use it if you want to target fort. Say you're attacking a fey: you're looking at a 2-7 point difference in saves. Or a swarm, since scattering scree isn't an occult spells. In fact, electric arc isn't one either. Or you're attacking a zombie with Weaknesses: slashing 10.
So it's an area attack occult cantrip that can target multiple weaknesses... I know I can see some use from it. And if we're talking the amped version, I can't think of a 1st level occult spell that allows me to attack 2 separate targets not in the same area. It wouldn't be my go to spell but I can see it's uses, especially taking the occult list into account. Heck, it might be better than the amped up telekinetic projectile vs a high AC target.
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I just don't see using this amp unless I'm using True Strike and a Shadow Signet to hope for the big push back effect.Note that this doesn't work, since Shadow Signet is a metamagic and you can't use Amps and metamagics.
That's VERY bad. I really hope that shadow signet will work with psychic's in the release version.
Not saying the cantrips are perfectly balanced, but I don't think we should really be considering the unamped damage too much because you will be amping them 90% of the time.
Unless you really don't want the drawbacks, your goal will usually be to unleash psyche as soon as possible, and you have enough focus points to get you there. So with proper management you'll probably be able to Amp every single time you cast one of your main cantrips in combat.
Between your focus and psyche you can effectively cast five amped psi cantrips in a fight without investing any feats in getting more duration. So let's assume you're always amping your damaging cantrips and take a look at their performance.
I don't think it's limited to five. In particular, I'm pretty sure that once one unleash runs out, you can just unleash again.
Also, ignoring the un-amped version is a mistake if only because there's other amps (unlocked by feats) that one might wish to use.
In the Unleash side bar it says you can not unleash again until you have refocused.
Ah. I'd read through it two or three times looking for that, and somehow missed it.
I suppose that does make the Lingering Psyche feat more useful.
In the Unleash side bar it says you can not unleash again until you have refocused.Ah. I'd read through it two or three times looking for that, and somehow missed it.
I suppose that does make the Lingering Psyche feat more useful.
Yeah, you can get 9 rounds. Three focus points (investing in extra focus at level 18), that feat that lets you amp without focus at the cost of taking damage, and 5 rounds of Lingering Psyche.
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I'd just like to point out that doing 55% of fireball damage is even more underwhelming when you realise the sorcerer could cast 2 fireballs out of every single spell level it's got and still have as many spells left as psychic starts the day with.