Mental Stances, Mental Rage

[Tokageko]

Unorganized thoughts:

I've heard a number of people compare Unleash Psyche to a Barbarian's Rage. I totally get that. I'm wondering if the Psychic might do better if they had something more akin to the Stances used by Fighters and Monks?

I'd suggest this replacing Amps for specific spells. Maybe they could give a benefit to all spells they cast. That could partially make up for a lack of spell slots. This would free up Focus Points to be used for actual Focus Spells. Tie mental rage to those instead, allowing for more castings of said focus spells if a fight goes on long enough.

Does this spark any ideas?

[Castilliano]

I'm a big fan of Stances for such things (and was happy to see the Magus acquire a Stance keyed to adding energy to Strikes). So yes.
I could see trying to keep Stances physical, so then perhaps the Psychic's mechanic could be a new, nearly identical mechanic.

And I'd also like to keep the Focus Spell mechanics clean and tidy. Mushing them with these alternate rules makes a mess. Instead of burning through and replenishing Focus Spells so quickly (and IMO too differently), Psychics could use one Focus Spell to boost instead...perhaps to enter aforementioned Stance.

Of course, there has to be a gate somehow to keep other classes that have more spells/day from pilfering w/o paying a due amount. Much like w/ how Rage improves much better for a Barbarian than an MCD Barbarian, maybe these Stances could be tied to innate class advancement too.

[Zylodrizzt]

Don't know if it was similar enough to what your talking bout but I had some suggestions

https://paizo.com/threads/rzs43hif?Other-ideas

In there

[Tokageko]

That's similar to what I was thinking, yes. I like your suggestions. The class is just a mess right now.

[Midnightoker]

Yeah you could easily do an entire new line of Class Feats called "States" that are similar to stances but come with their own rules (and we've already seen a few of these types of things in the game already).

For instance the idea that you can only use things with certain traits while in a "state" is already kind of how Rage works and Cathartic Caster's definitely lean in that direction as well.

It's a bit late to retroactively approach those things now, but if there were a PF2.5 that'd probably be something we'd see consolidated I bet.

That said, just as an innate Psychic concept with different State options would be interesting to say the least.