Visual and Auditory Manifestations

[Madame Endor]

One rather disappointing issue with the class is the "Your spells still have clear and noticeable visual and auditory manifestations as normal for a spellcaster." rule in Psychic Spellcasting. Wizard and Witch have the Conceal Spell class feats, and Wizard as Silent Spell. Thematically, wizards and witches are both in folklore and fantasy much more likely to have visual and auditory manifestations, while psychics, psychic mediums, police psychics, and psionisists generally have none with the exception of sometimes talking to spirits in a fairly straight forward common language speaking manner, so this discrepancy is incredibly odd. Similarly, while the word sorcerer is applied to a wide variety of magical characters in both folklore and fantasy, the implementation as characters with magic in their ancestral heritage is an odd combination with the lack of a similar ability to not have an auditory manifestation while the non-ancestral bloodline classes have access to that ability.

I'd prefer the class to be closer to the traditional theme, at the very least having access to the same Conceal Spell and Silent Spell feats, but preferably not needing them at all to use powers without the visual and auditory manifestation. If that is deemed unbalancing in the power of the class, I'd be fine with trading off power from elsewhere to have the class fit the theme better.

[Dragonstriker]

Manifestations are after casting; they’re properties of the spell, not verbal or somatic components of the Cast A Spell activity. I just thought it was important to note that, as I’ve seen people be confused about the distinction.
Silent Spell affects the Verbal component not the auditory manifestation - the spell sound effect.

[Leomund "Leo" Velinznrarikovich]

All spellcasting has the visual and auditory manifestations that are not the verbal or somatic components. I suspect they added that language in because there was a big thing back in PF1 where peeps were saying "Psychic casting doesn't use verbal or somatic components, so the casting can't be noticed."

I agree though, I'd like to see some sort of conceal spell in the Psychic's feat options.

edit:

CRB pg 302 wrote:

When you Cast a Spell, your spellcasting creates obvious visual manifestations of the gathering magic, although feats such as Conceal Spell and Melodious Spell can help hide such manifestations or otherwise prevent observers from noticing that you are casting.

interesting...it only says visual

[Frozencaveman]

Because of psychic casting naturally eliminating verbal casting, if they just get Conceal Spell then a psychic can cast just like it had Silent Spell and only needs to roll a stealth check. I definitely think it should be a natural option for them to take, as even in 1e psychics were more subtle casters

[Alchemic_Genius]

While I def feel that psychics should get feats to hide their casting (I've posted many times about this), I think for psychics the are not hiding their magic, manifestations might be more pallettable if we reskin them. Maybe a distant grasp psychic causes stuff nearby to shake and lights to flicker, or an invisible eye psychic's eyes glow, go blank, or they manifest an ethereal third eye, etc

[Leomund "Leo" Velinznrarikovich]

I don't know if 'reskin' is appropriate if it was not 'skinned' to begin with.

[Alchemic_Genius]

It very much is, it explicitly talks about geometric patterns and wild lights for the logic and emotion components respectively

[Leomund "Leo" Velinznrarikovich]

I indeed missed that, my bad.