Now that Dark Archive is starting to trickle out, what are some cool (mechanical) builds and combos that can be made with the class?
1. Oscillating Wave with Spell Trickster for the Fireball option that does persistent damage. Drop a fire and cold fireball in consecutive rounds to tag a group with both forms of persistent damage.
2. Emotional Acceptance subconscious mind healer and damage mitigator.
When in psyche you can use your one action psyche actio to heal 2+2xlevel damage on one ally. They're immune for 10 minutes, but you can spam this on multiple allies during psyche, so theoretically up to 6 times.
For actions that aren't heals, you can toss out Shield, amped or not, or another one action support cantrip, like Guidance or Message, with the alternate feat amp that gives physical resistance.
At 6th level you can have some combination of guidance, message, shield, and glimpse weakness to just go pure healing/support with six actions during your psyche rounds. With the exception of message, none of these even require amping to be useful, so you could spend zero resources to provide six buffs or heals across two rounds.
3. Gathered Lore subconscious mind aid/support build.
This is similar to 2 above, but instead of heal you have the one action psyche ability to prepare to aid any ally within 30' on any roll, using Occultism as your aid check and not having to decide what/who you aid until you commit your reaction.
You have a reasonable chance to crit if you get an occultism item, and you still have your other actions available to support with one action cantrips (or if you really must cast a two action spell).
4. Infinite Eye conscious mind combined with either of the two support subconscious minds, plus Bard dedication for Inspire Courage. This is a pure melee party support build.
This gets you Guidance amp that can upgrade a crit fail or fail as a reaction when you know the bonus will matter (and the bonus is +2 after level 11!), and one action Glimpse Weakness to buff your martial damage. Without amping GW is roughly like a boosted weapon specialization added on.
Guidance you keep in reserve to rescue a bad party save (or upgrade a missed strike to a hit if that seems worthwhile) but note it competes with your aid reaction for Omnidirection Scan (see next paragraph), Glimpse Weakness you keep up on the toughest enemy to boost DPR, and Inspire Courage when you get it, well.
At level 6 you get Omnidirectional Scan deep cantrip, which is a one action aid prep to help one ally against one enemy, with spell attack as your aid roll. This isn't as good unamped as the subconscious mind aid action, BUT you can do it out of psyche, so it can be part of a 1st round three spell action that sets up psyche for round 2. And if you amp it this spell is bonkers: know the best and worst saves, give all allies within 30 feet a +1 circumstace bonus against the enemy (stacks with Inspire Courage), and your aid gets higher than +1 bonuses if you regular rather than crit succeed.
This build is strong after psyche ends - you can keep casting three support cantrips per round with no resource expenditure and be confident that two of them are going to pass the stupefy check. You're boosting damage or boosting accuracy via a couple of different methods.
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I find the Psychic Dedication to be super strong, personally.
With Magus/Eldritch Archer, Psychic gives you a 2d6 per level spell attack roll focus spell with Distant Grasp (with extra range for Eldritch Archer) for a single feat.
And with 2 feats, you can grab Tangible Dream Imaginary Weapon at 6 for 2d8 per level damage (that can also be used with Spell Swipe for out of bounds damage).
Otherwise, amped Shield from Tangible Dream is an excellent competitor to Lay on Hands. The damage blocked is close (if you use all the layers at once) but it does it at 30ft. which is far nicer for casters.
Amped Message is excellent once cast at 4th level and will nicely complement any kind of Marshal or Bard character.
Amped Guidance is also absolutely excellent and way worth the feat.
Amped Warped Step is also way worth it on a character with mobility issues.
And Glimpse Weakness is also very nice if you want to buff your allies.
Overall, a super interesting Dedication to me.
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I find the Psychic Dedication to be super strong, personally.
With Magus/Eldritch Archer, Psychic gives you a 2d6 per level spell attack roll focus spell with Distant Grasp (with extra range for Eldritch Archer) for a single feat.
And with 2 feats, you can grab Tangible Dream Imaginary Weapon at 6 for 2d8 per level damage (that can also be used with Spell Swipe for out of bounds damage).Otherwise, amped Shield from Tangible Dream is an excellent competitor to Lay on Hands. The damage blocked is close (if you use all the layers at once) but it does it at 30ft. which is far nicer for casters.
Amped Message is excellent once cast at 4th level and will nicely complement any kind of Marshal or Bard character.
Amped Guidance is also absolutely excellent and way worth the feat.
Amped Warped Step is also way worth it on a character with mobility issues.
And Glimpse Weakness is also very nice if you want to buff your allies.Overall, a super interesting Dedication to me.
I am liking the Psi Cantrip as part of the Psychic Dedication feat also. Some of the AMPs are pretty good for other classes. Using your example of the stacking Shield spell, a Fighter with Tangible Dream Psychic Dedication can cast an Amped Shield spell and Shield Block (and shield break) multiple times in a fight. This is pretty good with feats that don't have "Requirements You are wielding a shield.", such as Aggressive Block.
At later levels. when you have more focus points, it *appears* you may be able to cast the Amped Shield multiple times in the same fight by ceasing to Sustain it before the 3rd shield break ("You can keep using the spell until the final layer breaks; once it does, the spell ends and you can’t cast shield or amped shield again for 10 minutes."). If this works, you could use 7 Shield Blocks (or more if a block doesn't break a layer) in single fight and be ready to do again by the next fight.
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- Psychic with Bastion archetype, as the quick block extra reaction do work with it and the reactive block is also nice to protect yourself. Also learn the Dancing Shield spell for more shield shenanigans.
- Not really psychic, but as metamagic don't work with amps you could go Aberrant Sorcerer and pick imaginary weapon and use it with the Tentacular Limbs, if you are a gnome you can tentacular limbs + 2 imaginary weapons on two different encounters and hit 2 enemies with 2d8/spell lvl.
If you are using oscillating wave and plan on using the wheel, blistering invective to generate notes is pretty nice.
I think Time Mage archetype can do some great things with Psychic to maximize your unleashed psyche output, although parts 2 and 3 are once a day.
1: Into the Future feat allows you to cast a spell in round one (providing the prereq for triggering psyche next round), then have it come into effect in round 2. It won't benefit from psyche, since you didn't cast it in psyche, but you can use it to take advantage of a spell that debuffs for one round.
So cast amped Shatter Mind, have it trigger next round, then you have a round of psyche to take advantage of suppressed will saves from stupefy as you throw out a second Shatter Mind.
Or against a single target use Daze, which provides both a -1 to will save and a weakness to mental damage. Psi blast and other mindshift actions can hit that weakness in addition to your two action spell.
2: Quicken Spell. Once per day you're throwing out two big spells that first round of psyche, both with bonus damage and both benefiting from the debuff you laid down with Into the Future.
3: Timeline Splitting Spell. Go big or go home. In your second round of psyche you're going to burn two spells to see which is the most successful in terms of damage rolled and saves failed, then apply that one.
Sprite Psychic using amped Daze to give a target weakness to mental damage, then trigger the weakness with Pixie dust. No huge damage but a nice trick when not unleashed (becaus Psi Burst is vastly better as a third action). Could add Psi Strikes for an additional d6.
Emotional Surge from the Emotional Acceptance Mind + Amp Phase Bolt is effectively a +4 to hit. With the additional damage from Psyche, that should hit reasonably hard.
Psyvestigator seems like a very good mix.
Investigator Dedication for Devise a Stratagem, which allows you to amp your Telekinetic Projectiles/Produce Flames when you are sure you'll hit.
And the combo of Psychic and Investigator is super thematic. Unfortunately, Infinite Eye seems like the best Conscious Mind thematically but it doesn't benefit from the Devise a Stratagem combo...
Summoner Dedication may also be useful: Once your unleashed psyche subsides, you can use your actions on your Eidolon instead of taking the risk to waste your spells. Still, with a 6hp class, it may be a bit dangerous.
Psyvestigator seems like a very good mix.
Investigator Dedication for Devise a Stratagem, which allows you to amp your Telekinetic Projectiles/Produce Flames when you are sure you'll hit.
Devise a Strategem only works with strikes. Spell attack rolls are not strikes.
Cantrips have always gone well with Investigators for the opposite reason your propose - when you have a bad Devise roll and don't want to strike and miss, you can hit them with a cantrip instead.
Psyvestigator seems like a very good mix.
Investigator Dedication for Devise a Stratagem, which allows you to amp your Telekinetic Projectiles/Produce Flames when you are sure you'll hit.
Devise a Strategem only works with strikes. Spell attack rolls are not strikes.
Cantrips have always gone well with Investigators for the opposite reason your propose - when you have a bad Devise roll and don't want to strike and miss, you can hit them with a cantrip instead.
You're right, I made a mistake.
I really have hard time finding any archetype that works well with Psychic. And I really find the Psychic feats to be uninspiring (but it looks like it's a personal issue as others seem to like them). So I have absolutely no clue how I'd build a Psychic.| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
How about a Kobold Dragon Disciple Psychic (probably one of the Charisma subconscious minds)? You can use the Dragon Scales feat to patch your AC early on and Dragon Arcana can nab you some spells that don’t show up on the Occult Spell List. Your dragon ancestor could be one of the Esoteric Dragons.
Inertial Barrier might be better than I thought.
Taking two strikes Innertial Barrier Shield already is equivalent to 3 layers amped normal shield.
I have to say im kind of with you on the psychic feats. Its even worse because some feats WOULD be good but become borderline useless because they affect your allies. Violent Unleash, Dark Personas Presence and Psi Catastrophe are all cool feats that get ruined by this. Which is so weird because all of those feats ALREADY have drawbacks by themselves and dont need the additional drawback of affecting allies. And since they are all emanations it is more likely to have allies closeby than enemies. Just seems like a huge oversight, considering it is 3 feats that have...
I agree. When reading Psychic abilities, I have the feeling that the developers expect the Psychic to move a bit of everywhere around the battlefield (there's even an entire Conscious Mind mostly about that). But as a caster you don't need to do that much. And as a 6hp/level character, it's a very bad idea to leave the back line.
Found one that is far from overpowered but a bit useful:
Unbounc Step Psychic + Rogue Dedication.
You gain Light Armor Proficiency, which is always a good idea at low level.
Also, the target is always Flat-Footed against an Amped Phase Bolt, allowing you to add Sneak Attack damage once you grab Magical Trickster (an extra d6 is far from overpowered for 2 feats but it's better than nothing).
And you can grab Mobility that will greatly help avoiding AoOs when using Ghostly Shift. Only drawback, your speed is reduced to half, so you need to calculate your movement precisely.
I also have problems finding a good feat selection for a Psychhic. Seems to be a constant thing with casters in PF2. Though at least I can (barely) find enough good class feats to fill all 10 slots on a Psychic.
But it gets worse if you play with free archetype since you have even more feats with nothing great to spend them on.
For a Cha based Psychic you can go Captivator to get more spells. For Int based, I'm at a loss. It's a shame ancestral mind only covers innate spells from your ancestry or it would be a nice way to make Captivator work from Int.
Getting a Familiar seems good for the extra Focus once per day. I'd usually go Witch for that but since Psychic doesn't play nice with Focus spells, Witch seems a bit too limited.
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I like rogue dedication on clothie casters. Light armor proficiency will keep you safe until level 13 when your unarmored becomes better. Some extra skill training and a skill feat. And access to really good class feats such as Mobility and Dread Striker. And then eventually Skill Mastery, and strong defensive options like Evasiveness and Deny Advantage. If you're not a Wisdom driven class anyway, the Surprise Assault option for Avoid Notice also makes sense.
I kinda like some of the mobility/close range options, do wish psychics were a little tankier though to support. Like come on Paizo two slots per level but a wizard chassis? Could at least have given them bard HP even if they didn't want to give them armor.
I do like rogue dedication too though, but part of tht might just be that I'm a huge sucker for skill mastery.
Some multiclass caster dedication for Reach Spell would make amped Imaginary Weapon reasonably strong (for a spell attack, anyway). When unleashed it should come close to Dosintegrate in damage and it hits up to two targets (which makes it more ikely to hot at least one target) and doesn't allow a save. Pretty good for a cantrip.
Can't use metamagic on amped spells.
Can't use metamagic on amped spells.
Right. Forgot about that. Class is still too new.
Back to the drawing board.
It would be interesting to come up with a build that actually puts to use all the psychic's "angry emanation" abilities. They have so many of them, but the class is squishy. How can we make it do better on the front row?
The usual, I'd say. Champion dedication plus lots of champion feats and resiliency. Maybe add Bastion. I mean you'll still die horribly in the end if you stand between multiple enemies but you might just live long enough to pull off your damage thing-ies.
As for possible builds in general:
Looking at the Infinit Eye cantrips and spells, how about combining that with a bow?
Turn 1: Organsight + Strike
Turn 2: Unleash, Organsight check, amped Phase Bolt/Telekinetic Projectile/Telekinetic Rend (via parallel breakthrough)
Something like that?
It would be interesting to come up with a build that actually puts to use all the psychic's "angry emanation" abilities. They have so many of them, but the class is squishy. How can we make it do better on the front row?
Emotional Acceptance for the heal action. Blow up your allies with unleash then heal them.
Just remember that a captivators free action sustain is only on illusion or enchantment spells, of which there are very very few that can even be sustained.
Just remember that a captivators free action sustain is only on illusion or enchantment spells, of which there are very very few that can even be sustained.
There's about a dozen or so enchantment. The decent ones for a Psychic/captivator are: Mind Games (2, uncommon), Unfathomable Song (9), Focusing Hum (2, good for psychic to fight stupefied), Hideous Laughter (2), Roaring Applause (3), Glimmer of Charm (5), Girzanje's March (4, uncommon), Calm Emotions (2).
A couple of these are incapacitation and therefore have issues given the delayed captivator spell progression, but not as doomed as they'd be on a traditional caster MC. Hideous Laughter and Roaring Applause are, of course, very good.
Illusion spells that aren't obviously trash (Goodbye, pattern spells with incapacitate that weren't good enough to begin with, but I'm including utility/out of combat use here): Mislead (5), Invisibility Curtain (4), Project Image (7), Phantom Crowd (2), Replicate (4), Mirror Malefactors (5), Drop Dead (5, uncommon), Aura of the Unremarkable (6, uncommon), Illusory Creature (2).
Illusory Creature is your workhorse, but Mirror Malefactors is great, combine with amped Daze to trigger the weakness to mental damage on your sustain.
The free sustain is not only for the innate spells you pick from Captivator.
it is for ANY enchantment/illusion spell.
that means that good crowd control options that you either way want to have as signature spells, like Calm emotions, do work with it.
The first sentence of this feat: "You maintain your innate enchantments and illusions with hardly a thought." Of course that makes either this one or the second sentence partially redundant, but that's Paizo for you. Copyfit needs must.
The first sentence of this feat: "You maintain your innate enchantments and illusions with hardly a thought." Of course that makes either this one or the second sentence partially redundant, but that's Paizo for you. Copyfit needs must.
The free sustain is not only for the innate spells you pick from Captivator.
it is for ANY enchantment/illusion spell.
that means that good crowd control options that you either way want to have as signature spells, like Calm emotions, do work with it.
Second sentance which is the mechanical bit makes no mention of innate stuff. It specifically says it works on enchantments and illusion spells, with no mention of where they come from.
As opposed, an an example, to the 18th level feat that specifically only works with your innate spells.
The way the free sustain is worded it reads to me that the 1st sentance is fluff and mechanical stuff are in the second sentance.
if it was otherwise there would be no need to mention it only works on enchantments and illusions to begin with.
There would be no need, but Paizo constantly writes things that they don't need to, presumably because one sentence feats are both boring and don't take up enough space to fill pages. I'm personally comfortable judging that the use of the innate restriction here, as used in practically every other feat in this archetype, is not a mistake.
As I said elsewhere, I am generally quite skeptical of the first sentence of any Paizo feat, which all too often is entirely overpromising on what the clear mechanics provide. Their protestations that they don't actually do this and the first sentence is always just as meaningful for rules purposes only makes me more cynical about this.
But sometimes a rule is a rule, and the sloppiness or compromise with space to be filled happens in the later sentences. You rarely can go wrong by interpreting a Paizo rule to be as weak or limiting as possible. Alas, so it is here, I fear.
4. Infinite Eye conscious mind combined with either of the two support subconscious minds, plus Bard dedication for Inspire Courage. This is a pure melee party support build.
I didn't mention the Foresee the Path cantrip as part of this, because I thought it was bad, but now I don't.
You see just a split second into the future and glean how an enemy will move, making it easier for your allies to strike
it mid-action. Make a Perception check against the target enemy’s Will DC or Deception DC, whichever is higher. The GM may judge a different DC is more appropriate if it’s higher; for instance, using the Warfare Lore DC of a military captain. The target is then temporarily immune for 1 minute.Critical Success The target ally [u]gains a reaction[/u] that lets it make a melee Strike against the target enemy, triggered if the enemy leaves a square within the ally’s reach. If the ally already has an ability that lets it make melee Strikes as a reaction, such as Attack of Opportunity, the ally can [u]forgo gaining the temporary reaction[/u] to instead gain a +2 status bonus [+1 if a success] to melee Strikes it makes as reactions.
I thought this gave you an extra reaction option, but now I'm pretty sure it gives an actual extra reaction (useable only upon movement only to strike) in addition to the ally's normal reaction. That's great! And if you amp it later round of sustain it spread it around the party.
Of course you're bad at perception and the enemy might not move, so you may need the amp to upgrade a failure to a success. But even if you don't think they will move, you can slap this on an ally with AOO who expects it to trigger off a manipulate action to boost their chance to hit/crit, and without costing your actions.
So this gives you a crazy three action, three cantrip boost against one enemy.
First, Glimpse Weakness to enhance damage of the next successful strike.
Second, Omnidirection Scan to set up an aid circumstance bonus to an ordinary strike as a reaction.
Third, Foresee the Path to provide either a reaction they needed or boost an existing reaction.
None of this requires amping to be successful! Although the second and third benefit from it and become more reliable.
Nevermind, I think Foresee the Path is bad again and the temporary insanity inflicted on me by others arguing the opposite has passed.
The way it is written, your allies actually get +1/+2 attack on ALL reaction Strikes, not only those triggered by movement. So it works on Opportune Backstab/Riposte and makes AoOs more likely to crit and disrupt spellcasting.
And you can still combine it with Omnidirectional Scan for even more bonus.
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Back to actual builds (good or not remains to be seen...).
I noticed that the trigger for the Oscillating Wave's Entropic Wheel doesn't care about how you inflict fire/cold damage and it also gains aditional motes whenever you inflict such damage (regardless of source). Since that doesn't limit you to using spells, get Alchemist Dedication, start each fight with an Alchmist's fire in hand. On anything than a ciritcal miss, you deal fire spash damage and can trigger the spell.
Turn 1: Throw Alchemist's Fire > Amp Entropic Wheel > any 2 Action spell (preferably one dealing fire/cold damge without requiring an attack roll).
Turn 2: Unleash > Psi Blast (using mindshift to deal elemental damage and generate another mote) > any elemental spell.
Turn 3: Repeat turn 2.
At this point you have dealt 12 extra damage, possibly multiplied for area spells. Not too bad for a reaction and a Focus Point. Still mostly useful if you're fighting stuff that's weak against fire or cold (or both!) and has no resistance/immunity against the other.
As a side note, it's weird that the Amp effect doesn't increase the maxiumm number of motes. To get any real benefit from the Amp, you have to wait at least to level 7 or 9.
Using Blistering Invective when you reach lvl 7 let you do persistent damage to 3 creatures, generating 3 (6 amped) motes on a single round.
You can only generate motes once per turn.
The wheel can't gain motes more than once on a given turn, and the maximum number of motes is equal to entropic wheel's level.
Oscillating Wave Psychics might make pretty good use of the Geomancer archetype. Fatiguing enemies is boon to both you and the rest of your party.
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You can give your whole party basically AoO for the whole combat, and even if they already have AoO, it still gives them +1/+2 on those.
It's very far from AoO. It doesn't trigger on Manipulate, so not on spellcasting. It doesn't trigger on ranged attacks. And it doesn't trigger on move actions, so no reaction on standing up.
It's only if an enemy moves in your reach without Stepping.The only nice thing is the +1/+2, as from strict RAW it applies to all reactions against everyone. And even then, a +1 status bonus to attack rolls made as part of reactions is far from impressive. Especially considering that you need time to target the whole party and that it needs you to sustain the spell every round.
You can only generate motes once per turn.
The wheel can't gain motes more than once on a given turn, and the maximum number of motes is equal to entropic wheel's level.
Rounds and turns are different, the persistent damage is generating motes on the opponent turn in that case.
So example:
- Your turn, Blistering Invective lvl 4 + Alchemist Fire, and reaction for amped wheel. 2 notes.
- First enemy turn, burns and generate another 2 motes for 4 now.
- Second enemy turn, burns and generate another 2 for 6.
- Third enemy turn, burns and generates another 2 for 8.