Free Your Mind: A Guide to the PF2e Psychic


Advice


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Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

I'm back with another guide! This time, I'm covering the psychic. The guide is currently in a very early stage, but it's got writeups of all the core psychic class features: conscious minds, subconscious minds, and class feats.

As with my oracle guide, I'll be building this guide out more as I go. Eventually, it'll include advice for every ancestry and versatile heritage, as well as every occult spell (and the few non-occult spells that certain conscious minds can use) and which skills are worth investment. It'll also have recommendations for particularly applicable archetypes, skill feats, and general feats, plus a short section at the end touching on psychic as an archetype for other classes.

I hope you all find this guide useful, and please feel free to give feedback!

Free Your Mind: A Guide to the PF2e Psychic


Emotional surge is only available for emotional subconscious.

Subconscious specific feat should note what is correspond subconscious needed for.


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A lot to disagree with here.

Detect Magic ahead of Guidance? Hard to justify. One is some extra utility out of combat and a very poor decision in combat, the other upgrades allies saves 1/10 of the time on demand and turns their misses to hits 1/20 of the time. It'll make a difference many combats, most when it upgrades to +2 and those go to 1/5 of saves and 1/10 of attacks. (Skills are in between, depending on whether they care about a crit fail.)

Foresee the Path wrote:
The baseline version of this cantrip effectively allows you to grant the Attack of Opportunity reaction,

It's effectively 1/4 of the AoO reaction. Movement out of a square only, no triggering on manipulate actions so no standing up from prone, no spell casting, no ranged attacking, no every single action the Thaumaturge does, etc.

Ray of Frost not being blue seems odd, if for no other reason its Strain Mind synergy, although the temp HP on its own is nice on a bad HP class that has some close range spells and abilities. It earns enough temp HP on average to almost completely soak Strain Mind damage, so it's basically a free focus point every hour - use it with your last FP, then Strain Mind for one more.

Entropic Wheel does tiny damage, and your point about applying feat amps is entirely misguided. Entropic Wheel doesn't have a target and doesn't effect you (it adds damage to your spells, like Magic Weapon buffs a weapon, not you), so none of them work with it. Paizo is mostly competent, they don't miss exploits as basic as this and they didn't here.

Imaginary Weapon wrote:
The damage is pretty average, but the push effect is a strong single target control tool.

This statement alone is guide malpractice. It's the highest damaging cantrip in the game! Amped its the highest single target focus spell in the game, except it can hit two targets! This has been the subject of discussion for weeks on the Discord, this forum, and Reddit. The touch range is a big problem, but it's literally the only thing that is not perfect and amazing on this spell.

Phase Bolt wrote:
The damage isn’t too great and the situation that offsets the low damage isn’t terribly common. The amped version automatically treating a target as flat-footed is better, but again, the features it ignores are situational.

Amped Phase Bolt does slightly better damage than the other amped single target damaging cantrips except for TKP, especially if you're using True Strike. Amped it deals +5 average, but also gets a roughly 20% damage boost from flat footed increasing your to hit and to crit (assuming the crit range isn't way out of your league, which is where True Strike comes in to help extra by reducing misses sharply), so +6. The d10 amped cantrips go up +5.5, TKP does +7. Someone used one of those damage calculator and with True Strike, unleashed psyche damage, and amped both Phase Bolt and TKP do roughly the same damage, and more than a Fighter of the same level triple attacking with a longbow with all appropriate runes. It's a good spell, Brent.

Emotional Acceptance wrote:
CHA key ability with a psyche action that allows you to either help an ally save against mental effects, which are fairly common, or give them a bit of healing. Neither is particularly amazing, but they’re both useful enough to be worth using once in a while.

The heal is almost as much as a 1 action Heal spell. At range. With no resource cost. Heal does +4.5 per spell level, you do +2 per character level, they spot you an extra +2 to start so you're only half a point behind at level 1 and only fall have a point further behind every two character levels. The math on this is straightforward and the comparison an obvious one to draw.

Ancestral Mind wrote:
This feat gives you some extra flexibility with your innate spells if you’re building to incorporate any. It’ll be very dependent on your ancestry and ancestry feat choices, but the niche it fills should be pretty clear. You’ll only really want it if you build for an INT-based subconscious mind as it doesn’t give much benefit to CHA-based builds.

It can add Electric Arc to your psychic list so that it benefits from psyche damage. That's a big benefit to all builds.

Warp Space wrote:
This is sort of a better Reach Spell, except at the cost of a focus point and without the metamagic action tied to it. It doesn’t double your range like Reach Spell would, but you do get an extra 30 feet out of it for any spell with a range and can potentially overcome cover or other spell-limiting terrain effects. Solid.

Except at the cost of a focus spell is a pretty big deal. Why would you want an extra 30' of range on a bad, unamped cantrip at the cost of a focus point that could have bought you a huge damage increase or other great benefit? No one is burning a FP to shoot TKP unamped around a corner.

"Any spell with a range?" No. Any cantrip with an amp.

Thoughtform Summoning wrote:
If you want to focus on summoning spells, this feat will make them noticeably more durable.

It will make them negligibly more durable. A level 11 caster using a 6th level summon spell gets resistance...3 on a level 7 creature facing level appropriate stuff easily critting it. Only the mobile flanking aid (if they don't eat a reaction for their troubles) has any value here.

Violent Unleash wrote:
Some frontline allies will be more easily able to overcome the reflex save than the will save.

I love that this is green and this line in particular. Your 6 HP no armor caster should run into crowds to blow him and his allies up, and one of the selling points is that you can target the spell against...your allies stronger saves.

Steady Spellcasting wrote:
Repeat after me: don’t get into melee. If you’re in a position such that you need this feat, you’ve got bigger problems.

Good advice! Your allies you blew up wish you'd listened.

Brain Drain wrote:
An emergency focus point and a strong debuff? Wow. It’s two actions, but this feat is basically a spell in terms of resource expenditure and effects. Among the best class feats available to you. Only usable while Unleashed (implying encounter mode) since it has the psyche trait.

This is an orange or red trap, not blue. It's two actions, it might not work, it prevents you from casting a spell in psyche that would benefit from the main point of psyche, bonus damage, and if you succeed you got an extra focus point...right before you're going to be stupefied and potentially lose the spell you amp with it, plus combat is about to end and you can refocus anyway. The upside it's only one success a day so you can't waste your time attempting this too often. Eventually it'll work and you'll be forced to do rational and productive things in fights.

Dark Persona's Presence wrote:
With a 30 foot emanation, you can comfortably stay away from the front line and still get use from this feat. Unfortunately, it also affects your allies. The fact that it’s a free action when you Unleash is great for your action economy. Since enemies can’t go below frightened 1 while in your emanation, it’s a powerful effect.

Your allies also can't go below frightened 1. I guess they'll be too afraid of you to complain that you used this green rated feat to debuff the entire encounter and party together. At least the psychic is feeling ok.

Remove Presence wrote:
Effectively becoming invisible to a creature is good, but after using this amp you’ll erase its effects if you use any hostile actions. Not hostile actions specifically against the target, any hostile actions. That’s not great. Out of combat, you might get more use out of it.

It only works on a target you hit with a spell, so it can't be used out of combat (barring a one on one Charm Person scenario or similar where no one is around to see an object to you casting a spell on their friend and watch you do things their friend can't see). In combat you can toss heals, buffs, and walls (or holographic cubes), and other indirect crowd control before positioning yourself optimally to toss out a hostile action. The biggest limitation is that the scrubs will still see you, and if there are no scrubs the usual action economy mismatch means if you're not the last man standing you probably don't need this.


Just read this. And I also just got the chance to read the Psychic class itself on Archives of Nethys. I'm no expert on the Psychic class, nor on 2nd Edition in general (I'm a 1st Edition type), so it's good to have your guide even in the event of not everyone agreeing on the advice, but I did notice a block of text in the Ratings explanation that seems to have been copied from an Oracle guide: It references Mysteries.

The Psychic class itself seems to have some proofreading problems. These pop up in several places (some that you even note in the guide), but the one that comes most readily to mind is in Unlimited Potential, where it says "If your next action is to Cast a Spell of 5th level or lower that has no duration, you don't expend the prepared spell as you cast it."

Also weird that unlike the 1st Edition Psychic, they didn't have any Wisdom-focused Subconscious Minds.


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I won't repeat what Xenocrat said, but I agree with most of his post.

You added human ancestry. How come Adapted Cantrip can be anything but purple? It's the go to way to grab Electric Arc as a Psychic spell. Next to that, you value Arcane Tatoos with the same color when you need to take a first level class feat to make a good use out of it.
For Cooperative Nature, you completely forgot the interaction with Gathered Lore Subconscious Mind.

As a side note, Amped Guidance is in my opinion one of the best reactions in the game, second only to Champion's Reaction as long as you don't have a Bard. It's just an automatic hit/success to a save as a reaction. That's way out of bounds in my opinion and the number one reason to grab Parallel Breakthrough.


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Another thing: One action ampable cantrips are very interesting because you can combine them easily with amp feats (Mental Balm comes to mind). That's especially a problem for Distant Grasp Psychics who only have 2 action ampable cantrips. It severely limits their ability to use Amp feats.

I've mostly looked at Unbound Step as I may create one for PFS, so I'll comment on this one.
Warp Step is very far from an "Ho s!!~" button before level 7. Unamped it's mostly useless and won't get you out of anything you can't get out by just moving (the extra speed is ridiculous). Amped, it's a very nice mobility tool (and only mobility as it won't save you if you're grabbed). Once at level 7, you can finally teleport so you have a Dimension Door equivalent cantrip. In my opinion, there should be 2 colors to this spell, as the level 7 version is absolutely awesome.
Distortion Lens needs to be red. There just nothing you can get out of it outside of extremely convoluted situations.
Ghostly Shift is red, too. The need to sustain it makes it way too expensive for the benefit. The only use I can see is to avoid taking damage while adventuring. But the source of damage needs to be very low (or composite) for it to be worth it.
Tesseract Tunnel is certainly the reason you choose Unbound Step. I don't think anyone can determine its efficiency without having tried it, so giving it a color is a bit hard. But there are so many uses to it I can see for a coordinated party: Creating an artificial bottleneck, teleporting the entire party to a better position, shutting down a spellcaster through hit and run strategies, forcing mindless/stupid enemies to lose a lot of actions moving...

I hope this post will help.


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One critically important detail to Ghostly Shift is that it's not a self-buff, it's got range 30'. You can throw this up on an ally to prevent some incoming damage (not a lot, unless it's mixed damage because resist all is real good).

The amped version allows an ally to easily get into flank (instantly making you every rogues best friend, but also helps clear bottlenecks) and hurts the creature some. The force damage isn't significant, but it's force damage, and it may be a good third action for the ally you've buffed to just step in and out to trip it on an enemy, depending on encounter.

Definitely not something you want to use on yourself, but I can see it being a good support cantrip, and there's definitely worse uses of your third action. (Also, it's only Verbal components, meaning it doesn't provoke most AoO triggers)


Ghostly Shift is very badly written. It states "You" but has a range. It's hard to know if the error is on the range or inside the text.


That's fair. Whether it's useful depends greatly on whether you can be throwing it on allies.


Yeah. The thing is that between both reading, one is nearly useless and one is quite nice. From strict RAW, it affects you even if you target a creature within 30ft. But I think there's an issue on the spell. I don't know if anyone reported it as needing for a FAQ.


Apart from the range issue, it also states the Area is "1 Creature".

what kind of "Area" is that lol?!

That should have been Target from what I can tell.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

The "area" is incorrect on AoN. In the PDF (and, I assume, the physical printing), it's "Targets: 1 creature."


blammit wrote:
The "area" is incorrect on AoN. In the PDF (and, I assume, the physical printing), it's "Targets: 1 creature."

Physical printing is the same.

Note that self-only spells don't give a "Targets" entry either (see Mirror Image). Absent errata I intend to read it in the way that makes it useful, anyways.


Good to have some mind-freeing Psychic guide stuff out there for PF2e, blammit. ;)

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