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Recently I gave my thoughts on the Unleash Psyche ability and feats related to it, and the power is heavily tied to the power of amps IMO. The basic benefit of getting 3 free amps is, for some unleash psyches and play styles at least, the biggest benefit of Unleashing Psyche. Plenty has been said about the basic amps from Psychic elsewhere so I'll only touch on those briefly as they are relevant to the amp feats.
Mental Balm: Amp a psi cantrip that affects allies and doesn't target/affect enemies, give them a bonus on saves against emotion (including fear) and counteract Stupefied or Frightened conditions. Looks like a solid tool for support, the save bonus is untyped and fear effects are somewhat common, and counteracting Frightened and Stupefied can be especially good. Distant Grasp Psychics can't use it, unless they want to attack their allies or grab Parallel Breakthrough (Nudge Intent). It's better than the default amp for Guidance, and sometimes worth it on Message too.
Warp Space: Amp a psi cantrip to ignore up to 2 points of cover in relatively common situations. Better for Distant Grasp than Mental Balm, not a terrible option if you're running into cover a lot though it does replace the amp damage scaling on the spells you want to reduce cover for, probably worthwhile for TK Projectile since an average +1 dmg/lvl isn't as useful as hitting in the first place. Maybe not worthwhile for TK Rend considering how slow its damage scales.
Psychic Beacon: A way to get around invisibility/concealment. It's good to have in the party somewhere, useful but niche. Might be worthwhile if you fight a lot of invisible creatures or in areas of darkness/mist pretty frequently. You could get the same benefit from scrolls of faerie fire, but at least Beacon does whatever the cantrip normally does at the same time instead of needing to juggle action economy to draw and cast the scroll.
Spontaneous Ignition: +1 dmg/spell level and half the damage is fire damage. It replaces normal damage scaling, for TK Projectile it's a wash as long as the target is not weak or resistant to fire damage. Other spells have more erratic damage scaling, but I think it is only useful for those if the target is weak to fire damage and otherwise is worse than the basic amp damage scaling. Other than Daze, which outright benefits from the increased damage (but not enough to cover daze's slow damage scaling).
Inertial Barrier: I like this one. High resistance to common damage types, and it can apply to any psi cantrip, a solid buff that everyone can use. Hand it to allies with Guidance or Message, keep it to yourself when attacking the enemy, flexible and broadly useful. Might be my favorite amp.
Shatter Space: Emanation does mediocre damage to people adjacent to you. If you get surrounded a lot it might be useful, otherwise seems like it's worth skipping. Doesn't help that it competes with the feat that gives you more spell slots. It does look pretty cool aesthetically though.
Cranial Detonation: I really want to like this one. Kill an enemy and give an AoE blast from the explosive shock is cool, but the application of the amp kills it for me, at least before Level 20. You have to cast your psi cantrip without any amp, while you have the ability to amp it, and hope that you reduce the target to 0HP without the damage boost from amps so you can apply this, and if all that happens it still relies on there being nearby enemies to be hurt by it and risks hurting enemies if you were focusing on the same target as the frontliners. Feels like it wouldn't come up very often.
Dual Amplification: Two amplifications for the cost of one, this makes a lot of the situational amps pretty good as it takes out the opportunity cost for cantrips with good amps by default or damage cantrips which rely on amps to scale their damage. Cranial Detonation becomes less situational. Not sure it's on the same level as a 10th level spell slot, but it is good.
Overall Thoughts: Lots of these are limited or campaign dependent. Not many seem outright bad to me but plenty do not seem as good as the feat they cost. Most don't seem as good as focus spells, and depending on what psi cantrips you use many don't seem as good as the default amp. Maybe the flexibility they offer between the base amps and the other options makes them more useful in play than on-paper. I'm also concerned that a lot of these only apply to offensive cantrips, it'd be nice to see more support amps. Overall it feels like a lot of the psychic class, stylish but undertuned.
Just to point out that Shatter Space is not only adjacent to you.
It could be adjacent to your melee ally if you use it with a buff cantrip, or even adjacent to an enemy INCLUDING the enemy (so kinda double tapping him) if you use it with an offensive cantrip.
Also, while extra spells at the same level sound neat, the fine print of them being only the very specific Concious spells kinda kills this feat for some of the minds with less than stellar spells.
Thanks for pointing that out, I missed that it could affect targets other than the caster somehow. Considerably more flexible and useful, and more competitive with the other 14th level feats.
Wow, didn't even realize that by the rules you can't do head explosion with an ampd cantrip...
How is a psychic ever supposed to get the effect off?
It's not for use against a high level threat, it's for plinking a mook with an unamped cantrip, then post amping it for extra damage against anything in detonation's range, a 15 foot emanation.
Upside, you get to make the GM explain how explody the exploded head explodes.
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This seems like a good place to leave a thought I've had since I first read the playtest, is that the Amp feats should be applicable to any of the Psychic's cantrips (that are psychic origined anyhow) and not JUST the Psi Cantrips that come with their conscious mind choice... that would let the feats be more flexible choices for more different Psychics. Just 2 cents on my part.
Wow, didn't even realize that by the rules you can't do head explosion with an ampd cantrip...
How is a psychic ever supposed to get the effect off?
It's not for use against a high level threat, it's for plinking a mook with an unamped cantrip, then post amping it for extra damage against anything in detonation's range, a 15 foot emanation.
Upside, you get to make the GM explain how explody the exploded head explodes.
For a level 18 feat I want more than the occasional Mook kill, especially when you consider how high level play the enemies are HP sponges.
The problem also becomes that you need to use cantrips at their lowest damage because of lack of amps specifically looking to kill a mook to get this off, and if it doesn't kill then you've wasted actions on a gamble where you could've outright killed them with a regular psi amp. As written it's a very poor feat
Oh, don't get me wrong, I don't think it's a Good feat. Just pointed out it's most likely use based on how it works. It's not great for use directly against higher level enemies, but can be useful for sniping a lower level enemy (think 15-17 while you are level 18) to deal a bit of extra force or mental damage to enemies in a reasonable range around them.
And even against a higher threat enemy, there is at least one benefit. There is no save to prevent the head explosion. It is an automatic Death effect that just flat kills a creature you plinked. So say you are fighting some creature like a Linnorm and nobody remembered to pack cold iron. Or say Xotani whose regen you can't shut off with a damage type. Assuming the creature doesn't have immunity to Death effects, you can plink it and kill it to bypass that regeneration.
Is that super likely to ever happen? No, not really. But it is a save-less death effect, which is pretty strong, in it's own super niche circumstances imo.
All that being said, would I ever take it over Deepest Wellspring? Nope. Not a chance.
Which is pretty sad... Because I personally have no interest on getting back three focus points on a class where unleash mechanics let you use focus spells for free... It's kinda pointless in my eyes, but of course this is my personal opinion, I'm not knocking the strength of the feat, it's just a boring feat for me. I want to explode some heads!
All that being said, would I ever take it over Deepest Wellspring? Nope. Not a chance.
Not all the amps are for combat: getting 3 means you can use a focus without worrying about needing 10 min to get it back before combat as you'll have 2 focus to get your unleash. For instance, the party trapfinder might need/want a amped guidance on a tough trap with a possible encounter close by. If you just leave it a getting 2 back, after the first combat you have to refocus after every focus use. Sure it's not as exciting as blowing up heads but for me, it's just a lot more useful.
For myself, I find cranial detonation hard to use: you have to kill something more than 15' away from any ally but within 15' of another foe. Then it only activates after I've killed something but I'd most likely be using my amp before hand to kill it and help trigger my overflow. So it makes it have to be an almost dead foe 15' away from my allies and within 15' of other foes. :(
Which is pretty sad... Because I personally have no interest on getting back three focus points on a class where unleash mechanics let you use focus spells for free... It's kinda pointless in my eyes, but of course this is my personal opinion, I'm not knocking the strength of the feat, it's just a boring feat for me. I want to explode some heads!
All that being said, would I ever take it over Deepest Wellspring? Nope. Not a chance.
Not all the amps are for combat: getting 3 means you can use a focus without worrying about needing 10 min to get it back before combat as you'll have 2 focus to get your unleash. For instance, the party trapfinder might need/want a amped guidance on a tough trap with a possible encounter close by. If you just leave it a getting 2 back, after the first combat you have to refocus after every focus use. Sure it's not as exciting as blowing up heads but for me, it's just a lot more useful.
For myself, I find cranial detonation hard to use: you have to kill something more than 15' away from any ally but within 15' of another foe. Then it only activates after I've killed something but I'd most likely be using my amp before hand to kill it and help trigger my overflow. So it makes it have to be an almost dead foe 15' away from my allies and within 15' of other foes. :(
Yeah, super situational. But at the same time, any instant death effect, even if it's triggered by a "kill" already, is going to have hoops to jump through. Vorpal requires 4 different requirements, a reaction to use and the enemy still gets a save against it. Granted all those requirements make sense, but it makes Vorpal difficult to count on vs. an elemental rune which just gives you more damage all the time.