| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
The Psychic has a lot of very precise interactions. I made a few mistakes when reading it, it doesn't happen that often to me when reading other classes.
Thinking more about it (and answering to myself), I feel Paizo did a very weird class out of the Psychic. I'm talking about the way the class is written, not how it works. But I see a lot of pain points in its layout currently:
- Niche Protection. Amped cantrips can't be metamagiced, you refocus for 2 Focus Points unless you used one on a non Psychic ability, Unleashed Psyche damage bonus only affects Psychic spells, the tiny improvements on cantrips are only there if you have the proper conscious mind and not if you grabbed the psy cantrip from somewhere else. It forces players to jump through hoops (and I take Electric Arc through Adaptive Cantrip to circumvent the limitation on Unleashed Psyche). Also, there are questions raised about these niche protections: Are metamagic feats that strong? What would happen if a Psychic gains Unleashed Psyche bonus to non-Psychic spells? Does anyone care about the tiny cantrips improvement and why are they protected? It limits builds a lot as you can't get some nice things from other caster classes. And I feel that it's not that powerful (outside Reach Imaginary Weapon, but that's one case that has to be protected). I have no clue why the Psychic has to be separated that strongly from all the other caster's feats and abilities.- Lack of interaction with some basic concepts. You can't use the Shadow Signet on spell attack rolls on a class which is very much focused on spell attack rolls. You can't grab any Focus Spell without ending up with only one Focus Point per refocus up to level 18 where you suddenly jump to 3. Also, you get 2 focus points per refocus at level 1 but can't increase it before level 18.
- Future unproof. Because the class doesn't interact with some basic concepts of the game, the Psychic won't benefit from many improvement in the future. The only thing they gain are new Occult spells. If new items are released, if new options get available, the Psychic will be bared from them and may end up lagging behind other casters. The biggest example is the Shadow Signet which is a balancing item and the Psychic can't use it. Such items and feats may appear in the future.
- Amped cantrips are badly written. Why haven't they created brand new Focus Spells called Amped whatever? It would have been extremely clear. Right now, there are tons of tiny changes to another spell that is in another book and it's tedious for no point (I'm not even sure there's such book space saved). And I know most cantrips by heart, for a beginner it's a chore.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
People were talking about it before, but it just now registered with me - 1st level telekinetic projectile doesn't get increased damage via the amp. I mean it is still not terrible with that push, but that's just weird.
About amps not being able to use metamagic, it's probably to avoid stacking effects in a single spell and also to make it work similar to the bard compositions, that you can metamagic the cantrip as normal but the focus spells that modify because are metamagic can't stack with another. Basically would be something like inspire courage had an amp that increased the duration of it (lingering composition).
People were talking about it before, but it just now registered with me - 1st level telekinetic projectile doesn't get increased damage via the amp. I mean it is still not terrible with that push, but that's just weird.
This is consistent with the other damaging cantrips at 1st level, the specifics are just different because of the normal d6 scaling.
Produce Flame and Ray of Frost go from d4+4(6.5) to d10+1(6.5) or d10(5.5), flat or reduced (but with a nice buff) compared to their unamped damage. The heighten amp is +6.5(counting splash) or 5.5 per spell level from there. Daze goes from terrible base to amped the same damage as RoF (with a good debuff).
TKP stays at d6+4(7.5) and heightens at +7 per spell level from there.
Phase Bolt gets d4+4 and also doesn't go up heightened, spell levels send that up by +5 but you get more effective damage out of it because of the flat footed. (And slightly better improvement from True Strike for the same reason.)
So level 1 heightens were a deliberate choice to keep base damage the same, with only a buff/debuff added (and Daze brought up from bad to competitive).
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Ray of Frost doesn't say it loses spellcasting mod like Produce Flame does.
TK Rend also just doubles its base damage at 1 when amped.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
About amps not being able to use metamagic, it's probably to avoid stacking effects in a single spell and also to make it work similar to the bard compositions, that you can metamagic the cantrip as normal but the focus spells that modify because are metamagic can't stack with another. Basically would be something like inspire courage had an amp that increased the duration of it (lingering composition).
I'd have agreed with you if it was the only limitation. But stacking 3 major limitations on a single class makes me feel Paizo strapped the Psychic to its base chassis with a lot of duct tape.
There's a thread about nice Psychic builds and it's deadly silent as there's nothing you can build besides the very obvious builds. Without these limitations, I'm pretty sure we would have seen some Focus spell oriented builds, others grabbing some nice Metamagic feats and others focusing on damage by grabbing lots of extra Arcane/Primal spells. I'm not sure they would have been that much stronger than the basic class but that would have given us a lot more freedom.Limitations shouldn't stack, you should only apply the strongest one!
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Maybe they saw you talking about Fire Ray magus builds and got scared that something silly might slip through the cracks if they weren't super careful.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Well then that failed, as Magus now will go after Psychic for either Ray of Frost if they want right at lvl 2 or Imaginary Weapon if they can wait to lvl 6.
And a lot of casting classes can pick it as easily as well and sometimes uses the cantrips even better than the class itself.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Maybe they saw you talking about Fire Ray magus builds and got scared that something silly might slip through the cracks if they weren't super careful.
I'd love to have such an impact on the game design. But the Psychic really doesn't go as far as the Magus when it comes to brand new things.
Ray of Frost doesn't say it loses spellcasting mod like Produce Flame does.
TK Rend also just doubles its base damage at 1 when amped.
Ray of Frost just uses different language to reach the same result, I assume for copyfit, sloppiness, or because they felt they didn't need to repeat the parenthetical since they'd already established the principle.
"The ray deals 1d10 damage" isn't vague. That's the damage it does. Nothing else.
Daze is the same, but slightly different. "The spell's damage changes to 1d10." No attribute here, either.
Compare to Shatter Mind amp. "...the damage dice for the spell change to d10s." Here you keep the attribute.
Redistribute Potential. "The spell’s damage increases to 6d6." No attribute was ever here, you don't get it now, but once again, just as with Ray of Frost and Daze, the old damage has been overwritten, not partially modified or added to. One says "deals", another "changes to," and the final one "increases to" but they all operate the same way - you discard the old damage formula and replace it with the new amped one.
Note that while the "Amp Heightened" trait says you add the effects to the heightened effects, except where otherwise specified (which most of them do otherwise specify), the "Amp" trait just notes that they "modify the properties of cantrip." If the amp entry says "the damage is this," that's the damage property modified, with the original damage formula having no further relevance.
As far as TK Rend, I wasn't talking about that and neither was the person I responded to - we were discussing TK Projectile.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
You're probably right, but at the very least it's imo kind of sloppy to have two abilities that are supposed to do the same thing and change the damage in the same way, but only mention it in one of them.
And I know, I was bringing up TK Rend because it's an example of a level 1 cantrip that gains damage with its amp before heightening.
I do agree it’s sloppy and like much of the class leads to misreading the first five times you look at it.