My Psychic Friends Network

[Aristophanes]

I'm soon to be starting my first Psychic character: a Fey-touched Gnome Barrister named Basingstoke, with Emotional acceptance and Distant Grasp.
Now, I'm not looking for optimization advice.
What I want is to know what experience others have had with the Psychic.
Have you been enjoying the class as a player? Have you found it lacking in some way? Do you find yourself doing the same routine in battle?
And GMs: What has been your impression?
And, of course, stories of Psychic heroics always welcome.

[breithauptclan]

I haven't played one, but I have been in a game with one. Playing through Fall of Plaguestone, so capping out at level 4. So low level experience only.

Same two subclass choices though: Emotional Acceptance and Distant Grasp.

What I have seen is that the limited number of spell slot spells is quite noticeable. Especially if the character is the main in-combat healer. Soothe is great, but when you can only cast it a couple of times per day it does feel quite limiting.

I expect that this won't change at higher levels. While you can technically cast Soothe more often if you set it as a Signature spell, only the top few spell slots will be meaningful for in-combat healing.

Unleash Psyche is a big risk, big reward type of ability. And it definitely plays out that way too. Telekinetic Rend and Telekinetic Projectile are both really good blasting cantrips, especially when Amped. But when you trigger Unleash Psyche you hope to have timed it correctly. If you don't, Stupefied 1 will make casting anything a big risk. If you fail the flat check, it will disrupt the spell you are trying to cast. And if it was a spell slot spell, that will still use up the spell slot - one of your very limited spell slots.

And Restore the Mind is good, but not great. It does do a reasonable amount of healing - a bit less than Lay on Hands would do, if my approximations are accurate. (4 points per spell level with 2 points bonus). But that isn't enough to keep up a melee brawler that is taking heavy damage.

As far as routine and boring - we haven't found it to be so.

[Claxon]

I hadn't expected anyone to try to build a psychic who would heal. I didn't think I would see that in this thread.

Of course, the general point about limited spell slots remains.

[Deriven Firelion]

I am DMing a psychic with The Silent Whisper and Emotional Acceptance.

They seem fun and have been very effective. They seem much better as a backup healer than a main healer. But we have a lot of healers in our group, so it isn't a concern for us. You don't need a dedicated healer in PF2, just various sources of healing.

So far Forbidden Thought has been really nice for hammering enemies. It is a super nasty control spell that does quite a bit of damage over the course of a battle.

Emotional Acceptance is nice, but can only heal the same ally once every 10 minutes. Remember to take this into account. The amount it heals for one action is pretty decent.

So far the Psychic is nice caster damage class with some utility. I put it up there with the bard, sorcerer, druid, and magus as one of the best designed all around caster classes. Lots of nice feats, its powers fit the concept well, and flexible ways to build.

Seems like the best damage caster class, but can be built for strong utility as well.

It seems like a fun and engaging class.

[shroudb]

breithauptclan wrote:

I haven't played one, but I have been in a game with one. Playing through Fall of Plaguestone, so capping out at level 4. So low level experience only.

Same two subclass choices though: Emotional Acceptance and Distant Grasp.

What I have seen is that the limited number of spell slot spells is quite noticeable. Especially if the character is the main in-combat healer. Soothe is great, but when you can only cast it a couple of times per day it does feel quite limiting.

I expect that this won't change at higher levels. While you can technically cast Soothe more often if you set it as a Signature spell, only the top few spell slots will be meaningful for in-combat healing.

Unleash Psyche is a big risk, big reward type of ability. And it definitely plays out that way too. Telekinetic Rend and Telekinetic Projectile are both really good blasting cantrips, especially when Amped. But when you trigger Unleash Psyche you hope to have timed it correctly. If you don't, Stupefied 1 will make casting anything a big risk. If you fail the flat check, it will disrupt the spell you are trying to cast. And if it was a spell slot spell, that will still use up the spell slot - one of your very limited spell slots.

And Restore the Mind is good, but not great. It does do a reasonable amount of healing - a bit less than Lay on Hands would do, if my approximations are accurate. (4 points per spell level with 2 points bonus). But that isn't enough to keep up a melee brawler that is taking heavy damage.

As far as routine and boring - we haven't found it to be so.

For my support psychic I went with Captivator. Even though I'm Int based, there are enough good enchantment/illusion spells that don't require attack/save.

Soothe is an Enchantment spell and with Heightened and Intensity on it you have a few more extra heals of relevant levels.

As an example, on my 12th level psychic which would top at 2 5th and 2 6th spells I get 2 extra 5th and 1 3rd level soothes (on top of another 4th, 2 3rd and 2 2nd level spells from the archetype)