Heightened (+2) is not great on cantrips!

[vagrant-poet]

Telekinetic Rend is a damaging cantrip, which to me is the design space of a spell that you want to cast often, especially as an amp-able psi-cantrip.

+2 heightening gives jagged scaling that means that "bread-and-butter" spell is not very good when even level spells are your highest spell slot. I have the same complaint about daze, but we can't fix that now.

I understand that it may get the math right on average, but that ignores the fact that some levels are awkward. I don't like the in-play experience of getting out the calculator to see if Telekinetic Rend is good this level or not.

Spell slot spells are different, but AFAIC damage cantrips should have smooth scaling. It's a better experience for the player.

Now, of course there is no d3 in Pf2e, so we can't just split the difference, but there are other levers to change the math so it could average out the same, but scale smoothly, and I argue that is a worthwhile endeavor.

[Lanathar]

Agreed on this especially for a class that revolves around cantrips. The damaging ones should absolutely have a linear progression

[Candlejake]

I heavily agree. I have said this in other posts but telekinetic rend probably needs a hefty buff if it is supposed to upset having less spellslots. Honestly psychic needs cantrips that are better than inspire Courage to warrant having less slots than a bard. Id say the normal unamped Version would need to be as strong as the amped Version is now.

And the +2 hightening is as you say terrible. Imagine using that at level 3. Thats a d6 of damage. Compare that to scatter scree which has a very similar AoE and at 3 deals 2d4+4. The minimum damage is as high as rends maximum damage. Thats pretty rough.

I also think the amped Version of telekinetic projectile isnt great. Id honestly put the shove on a normal hit and maybe shove farther on a crit.

[Karmagator]

Yeah, it certainly seems a bit odd when compared to some existing options. Scatter Scree - as you pointed out - comes to mind, which realistically hits the same amount of targets (5ft burst vs 2 5ft cubes, i.e. realistically 2 targets at best), deals a lot more damage and creates difficult terrain. Haunting Hymn also has heightened +2, but also deals more damage in a bigger area and has an added critical failure effect.

I agree that the base version should be a lot more like the amped version, though it obviously can't be the same. Heightened by 2d6 every spell level seems a tad bit much for the base version :D

[Lanathar]

Perhaps some people should try and specifically playtest at these even cantrip levels to add further weight to this? I mean this is a “white room” point that seems pretty obvious on paper.

And yet it made it into the document

I assume more weight is given to feedback from people reporting to have played ?

I sadly don’t expect the opportunity