Taking a break to take a look at Psychic. As usual, this is mostly build stuff, mostly from the vague and nebulous "how satisfied am I making my characters with this".
Overall impressions before building something:
Ouch, those spell slots.
The existing cantrip augs seem really weak for the most part?
I thought Telekinetic Rend scaled at Heightened + 1, and thought that was solid compensation. Ouch upon noticing it's + 2.
It's all the same stuff folks have been saying.
(NOTE: It looks like Silent Whisper gets Sending (a 5th level spell) as a 6th level granted spell. There's not even a heighten effect to make this worthwhile.)
I only had one Psychic character in PF1, Kyoni. She bounced around between Psychic and Mesmerist, leaning more Mesmerist over time. We'll focus on her Psychic version, though. Rebirth discipline, kitsune, representing a disgraced rakshasa who hadn't quite sunk to raktavarna in this reincarnation. Spells focused on compulsion and possession, emphasizing the rakshasa ideal of control, with charm, illusion, and comfort spells rounding out the rest. Rebirth's off-list spell was generally Rope Trick, and planned to follow the extradimensional comfortable lodging spell line.
Things that would be nice to have: Mind-reading, ability to force incapacitation spells through, damage reduction, anything tied to reincarnation, compulsion spells. From Mesmerist, defensive tricks, ability to make her bite scary, various Vizier abilities.
Ancestry: Kitsune (Cha, Dex)
Background: Returned is the closest from the Rare backgrounds, and doesn't fit at all, so over to normal ones. Charlatan fits best. (Cha, Dex)
Class: Psychic (Cha)
Improvements: Cha, Dex, Int, Con
Ancestry:
Heritage- Tiefling
Ancestry feat- Beastbrood. Courtly Graces does nothing for us, but there's nothing we needed too much from first-level ancestry feats and Society is definitely a skill we want. It's satisfying to be able to combine kitsune and rakshasa-blooded tiefling in this edition.
Skills: Deception, Occultism, Society, Diplomacy, Intimidation, Stealth, Acrobatics or Arcana
With only one spell, it kind of feels like the class should be getting a first level feat, like Magus or Summoner.
Class choices:
Subconscious Mind- Emotional Acceptance Indulgence. Kyoni works as Int or Cha based, but Cha is a lot more fun.
Conscious Mind- Silent Whisper, definitely.
Let's take a look at the spells.
Granted Spells
1st: mindlink; - Nope, this is willing targets only.
2nd: remove fear; - Goodness no. That's the last thing Kyoni wants to do, even for allies.
3rd: heroism; - It's a great buff, and she can use it on herself.
4th: telepathy; - If she's got somebody deafened, this lets her still talk to them, but it's such a poor use of a fourth level slot. Okay, this is necessary for Telepathic Demand to work. Glad to get it for free, then.
5th: synaptic pulse; - Offensive enchantment combat spell. Would prefer something that makes people do something, but this works.
6th: sending; - *shrugs* Hold on, what the heck!? Sending is a fifth-level spell, with no heighten ability. Put a note up top for that.
7th: visions of danger; - Kyoni would find this one fun, yeah.
8th: uncontrollable dance; - Here we go! Finally something fitting her.
9th: telepathic demand - Perfect! Also, wow, this is a weirdly restricted spell.
The first two are spells that she'd rarely touch. Mindlink fits the line's theme fine, but Remove Fear… eehhhh…
I'd like to take a moment to make a suggestion here. Sorcerer getting a fixed list of spells known is pretty chill. Psychic getting a fixed list? Not so much, it's a much larger percentage of spells known. Could it be "choice from two" at each level? No worries if not; this is the sort of thing where I could just talk to the GM about a more on-character interpretation of Silent Whispers.
All right, taking a break here. Will come back to continue later.
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Continuing, taking a look at the cantrips and amps.
Daze - Well, it's a way to lower will saves for the real spells. Only if they'd have failed anyway, of course, but it's also doing a little damage in the process.
Message - Hey, bossing teammates around! It's a bit of a tweak to the flavor, but this works well for her. And it's one action. Nice!
Nudge Intent - And, bossing enemies around. I like that they have to make the save after deciding. Frightened drops by 1 at the end of turn, so mostly this is reduced.
All in all, I'm happy with the flavor on the three cantrips. The issue, though, is that the reason I like Nudge Intent is that it's like a lesser Command spell.
If I went Sorcerer, right from level 1 I'd have two extra castings of the actual Command spell. A little better spell, but it's not at-will. So far, fair enough.
At level 3, the Sorcerer has four extra castings of Command. That's about what I expect to get out of an at-will spell on a good day. I'm not even looking at the better second-level spells, I'm just using my extra spells known to take Command again even though there's no heighten benefit.
At level 5, the Sorcerer has 6 extra castings of Command. Nudge Intent never scales.
When we hit level 9, Sorcerer starts adding Command castings that target up to ten targets at once. At that point, I will just ask the GM for a Psychic- or Rakshasa-flavored bloodline.
Psychic uses the Occult list, and a lot of psychic stuff is centered around incapacitation trait spells. Charm, Calm Emotions (for other types of psychic), Suggestion, Uncontrollable Dance, etc. all demand top-level slots. You've got one or two. So, I get to do what I'm really here for once or twice.
If I were playing a game that I knew would end before 5th level (when Sorcerer has +2 top level slots, and the +4 lower level slots that, in my personal evaluation, equal Pyschic's class features), I would go Psychic. For 5th and 6th, I could go either way. At 7th, it's over; I'd never consider Psychic. At that point, I can set aside six Command castings per day and cast relevant incapacitation spells two to three times as often.
What would it take to win me over to Psychic? (Any of these individually would do it for me; not all of them are reasonable.)
- Command, the first level spell, as a non-heightening cantrip. Magically telling somebody to kneel whenever I want is flavorful enough to do the trick. Magically suggesting a broad course of action that they can choose to ignore at their own risk just isn't the same.
- Treat all spell slots as max for Incapacitation purposes. If Sorcerer can cast way more spells, but I have more effective uses of Charm per day, I'm happy.
- Increase all spell slots/spells known by 1, keeping cantrips/augs as-is. Too strong? Maybe, especially early. But we don't rush into "Sorcerer is WAY better" territory, we slowly walk into it.
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All in all, I'm happy with the flavor on the three cantrips. The issue, though, is that the reason I like Nudge Intent is that it's like a lesser Command spell.
I'd consider it more like a lesser Fear spell honestly. Well, the lesser between the two of a lesser command spell and lesser fear spell. Which is really not great.