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I was looking at Distortion Lens and thought it's just a sad spell. As is, it reduces enemy ranged attack's range by 10ft. when they shoot through a 5-foot cube during the nights of full moon. It's so niche I hardly expect a party to use it more than once during their career.
I'd have loved the spell to apply to all abilities, increasing/decreasing range of everything going through it by 10ft., affecting things like allies and enemies' reach, spells range and areas (casting a cone through the lens would increase/decrease the cone area) and such. It would have made the Lens a fantastic tactical ability and the Unbound Step Conscious Mind an interesting Conscious Mind.
It's so sad...
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Agree. It seems really weirdly specific in terms of when it's going to be valuable.
They could have at least let you place a distortion line or something.
Feel similarly about the amp. Spend a focus point for one singular square of difficult terrain that your allies can ignore? +5 feet of movement if an ally walks through that square... provided they aren't large+ because clearly the spell needed more restrictions.
What if the amp provided some unique benefits or penalties to attacks that are accelerated/decelerated by the lens? That could have been interesting.
... Honestly the word that comes to mind looking at this cantrip is stingy. On every level the spell is just kind of shortchanged: Short range, sustained duration, one single square, for an effect that requires both specific battlefield conditions and specific weapon/spell choices to even do anything at all, with an amp that alters movement in the most minimalistic way possible too (that doesn't even work if an ally is enlarged).
I can contrive a few situations where the spell as written is decent, but it all requires a number of specific circumstances to be true to happen.
I also just realized Ghostly Shift has a duration of Sustained. Another missed opportunity.
Phase Bolt is also a few damage short to compete with the other cantrips.
The whole Unbound Step Conscious Mind is disappointing.
thrown weapons
I've seen extremely few thrown weapon builds. And even if you ever have the chance to play with one, a 10ft. range increment in a single direction for the cost of an action... That's far from interesting.
I kinda like phase bolts amp. Automatic flatfooted can come in handy. The range does stink though.I also just realized Ghostly Shift has a duration of Sustained. Another missed opportunity.
Phase Bolt is also a few damage short to compete with the other cantrips.The whole Unbound Step Conscious Mind is disappointing.
I agree... until level 10 and Shadow Signet. So it's mostly a low level cantrip.
On top of it, you have a lot of super circumstantial bonuses, like removing teleportation effects on a critical hit: how many times in an adventuring career will you have an enemy able to teleport that you will luckily hit with a critical Phase Bolt? And even reducing circumstance bonuses to AC or pierce through hardness is circumstantial. It looks like a spell you keep in case you end up in any of these situations, but as a main attack cantrip it's just not good. You'd better grab Electric Arc.As a side note, if you grab Electric Arc one way or another, Unleashed Psyche Electric Arc is quite interesting. It does 50-60% more damage than a normal Electric Arc. Considering how good the cantrip is in the first place, it's a staple to me.
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I also just realized Ghostly Shift has a duration of Sustained. Another missed opportunity.
Phase Bolt is also a few damage short to compete with the other cantrips.The whole Unbound Step Conscious Mind is disappointing.
Ghostly Shift is indeed bad. At spell level 3 it gives you resistance 2, vs a Shield that can absorb 10 from a single hit plus provide a circumstance bonus to AC. I really hope you aren't planning to get hit often enough to make that resistance better than a Shield block.
The amp damage is pathetic, and the ability to walk through an enemy because you need to (yet not avoid any reaction from doing so) is pretty niche.
But I'll defend Phase Bolt, the amped flatfooted actually makes it on par with the other cantrips on expected damage, especially if you're True Striking with them while psyche is unleashed. Someone on the discord ran the numbers and it's right along with amped TKP when both are True Striked with psyche bonus damage, and I think both do about the same or slightly better average damage as a Fighter triple striking with a longbow and level appropriate runes.
But I'll defend Phase Bolt, the amped flatfooted actually makes it on par with the other cantrips on expected damage, especially if you're True Striking with them while psyche is unleashed. Someone on the discord ran the numbers and it's right along with amped TKP when both are True Striked with psyche bonus damage, and I think both do about the same or slightly better average damage as a Fighter triple striking with a longbow and level appropriate runes.
I've shown the numbers on another thread, considering that the other cantrips never get the Flat-Footed bonus (which is not entirely true). Phase Bolt is quite competitive before level 10, after that it gets worse than all the other Amped cantrips once you get Shadow Signet.
It's not bad at all, it's just a few damage short to compete with the other cantrips.If applied directly on top of the ranged attacker, the extra range can be used in any direction if I'm not mistaken. You do get some extra range from heightened too but it scales very poorly. Just one more thing to convince you not to use it I guess.
True, you can do that. But as you say... one more thing to convince you not to use it.
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But I'll defend Phase Bolt, the amped flatfooted actually makes it on par with the other cantrips on expected damage, especially if you're True Striking with them while psyche is unleashed. Someone on the discord ran the numbers and it's right along with amped TKP when both are True Striked with psyche bonus damage, and I think both do about the same or slightly better average damage as a Fighter triple striking with a longbow and level appropriate runes.I've shown the numbers on another thread, considering that the other cantrips never get the Flat-Footed bonus (which is not entirely true). Phase Bolt is quite competitive before level 10, after that it gets worse than all the other Amped cantrips once you get Shadow Signet.
You can't use Shadow Signet with amped cantrips. It's metamagic, the amp trait prevents metamagic. True Strike, buffs like heroism and the emotional acceptance 10th level feat are the only ways you have with your class tools to improve accuracy.
Thaumaturge MC for Divine Disharmony on a charisma caster would be a decent way for a Psychic to have a 1 action accuracy booster for their attack cantrips. No resources, but not entirely reliable. The occasional crit success will be nice, though.
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Yes, I know you're in the habit of spreading misinformation in numerous other threads. You can't use Shadow Signet with amped cantrips. It's metamagic, the amp trait prevents metamagic.
Damn, you're right.
Thank you for pointing it out, I'll correct my graphs.Edit: Thanks for editing your post.
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Yes, sorry, I edited that out.
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I just realized there's a use for Amped Distortion Lens: "Once during a Medium or smaller ally's move action, the ally can move into and out of the lens's square without that square counting against the total distance moved."
Properly positioned, it allows your allies to Step 10ft.
It's a (costly) solution to the 1-square corridor blocked by one enemy with AoO: with a properly positioned lens, everyone can Step 10ft. allowing 2 martials to take turns at attacking the enemy.
It can also been used when some characters need to Climb or Swim. By default, you only Climb 5ft. per action and Swim 10ft. per action. The Lens can help a lot with that.
It's still not a good spell but I now realize it has a limited use (as the unamped version has no use in my opinion).
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I forgot jumping. For long jumps, it's quite useful as 5ft. of distance is equivalent to +5 to the check. And for High Jumps, it allows you to add 5ft. to the distance jumped (which is enormous when you consider how small High Jumps are).
You can also use it if someone has to Tumble Through, you gain 10ft. of move in that case.
You can use it if someone needs to Crawl or even better if someone needs to Squeeze to move at 5ft. per round instead of 5ft. per minute, 10 times faster!
And you can combine it with Leading Dance for the Swashbuckler (but not the enemy) to move 10ft. instead of 5.
Of course, you can use it to ignore one square of difficult or greater difficult terrain (it can be used to Step sometimes, if there's a normal terrain square available).
Anyway, highly situational, but it can generate some funny situations during exploration (and sometimes during combat). And as you don't get much interesting Ampable cantrips as a low level Unbound Step Psychic, you have the Focus Points to use it.
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For out of combat uses and most in combat movement (when not threatened) I think you'd just use amped Warp Step to teleport rather than add 5' to a jump.
But in combat it's verbal only so unlike Warp Step it doesn't provoke AoO. If you need that 10' step it will give it to you.
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For out of combat uses and most in combat movement (when not threatened) I think you'd just use amped Warp Step to teleport rather than add 5' to a jump.
But in combat it's verbal only so unlike Warp Step it doesn't provoke AoO. If you need that 10' step it will give it to you.
Unfortunately, it doesn't. The Distortion Lens amped ability only affects allies (weird as the normal one affects everyone). But as a caster you are rarely the one who needs to make Swim/Climb/Jump checks during combat or exploration.
Anyway, once you reach level 7 and Teleport Warped Step and especially once you reach level 10 and Tesseract Tunnel, all these issues will be easily dealt with these 2 spells. But most of the Climb/Jump/Swim challenges are low level ones.
Hmm, good point! I guess they gave it to allies as a 1st level movement buff you already personally had from Warp Step. The lack of a somatic component is a pretty niche reason to have wanted to apply amped Distortion Lens to the psychic himself.
I also realized that in case of diagonal move, you can gain 10ft. of move by targetting an even diagonal square. But I guess this one is more GM-dependent (the square doesn't count in the distance travelled, but does it count in the number of diagonal squares moved through...).
Does it bother anyone else that all enemies (including mindless!) intuitively understand how this affects their range increments? Would it be so bad if at the edge of someone's range this spell actually worked if they failed to identify it?
Does it bother anyone else that all enemies (including mindless!) intuitively understand how this affects their range increments? Would it be so bad if at the edge of someone's range this spell actually worked if they failed to identify it?
I think it's because it's a lens. When you look through a lens you see things farther away (or closer). So anything that can see can understand what the lens is doing.
Anyway, even if you don't tell your monsters, attacks with a strict limitation on their range exist but are not that common. In general, you have a range increment and as such your monsters will just have a -2 to their attack.