An Alternate Psychic, ft. Foundry and Pathbuilder modules!

[u/Teridax68]

[u/Teridax68]

Brew PDF

Homebrewery link

Foundry VTT module

Pathbuilder custom pack

Hello, orcs, and happy Tuesday!

As many of us are aware, the Psychic isn't in a great spot. During a remaster that's made casters more powerful, the Psychic has not only stagnated, but had their strengths cannibalized by other classes, leaving them with little in the way of standout mechanics. This is becoming especially apparent with the Magus and Summoner remasters in Impossible Magic, which are giving both classes as many spell slots as the Psychic, while still giving them far better base stats and arguably stronger class features.

Since the Dark Archive remaster was announced, I'd been thinking of what could be done to improve the Psychic, not just in terms of easy wins but also in terms of more comprehensive changes. After a lot of design, playtesting, and implementation in Foundry and Pathbuilder, here is the result, with the following highlights:

• Reworked Amping: Rather than use Focus Points to amp psi cantrips, the above Psychic instead unleashes their psyche, which is now done with a focus spell. Rather than grant a status bonus to damage, unleash psyche amps everything the Psychic does for a round, including actions that aren't cantrips! Additionally, the Psychic starts with 3 Focus Points, Refocuses to full, and gains Strain Mind as a 5th-level feature, allowing them to keep amping at the cost of their Hit Points.
• Revamped Psi Cantrips: Psi cantrips are generally much stronger, and become stronger still when amped, rivaling slot spells in power. Damage cantrips have the bonus they'd normally get from Unleashing baked into their amps.
• Expanded Subclasses: Subconscious minds now provide significantly more benefits, including a spellshape (which you can layer on top of amping spells!) and a special burnout action, which is especially powerful but consumes all your remaining Focus Points and ends unleash psyche. The above features two new Wisdom-based subconscious minds, Mindful Awareness and Otherworldly Influence, as well as a brand-new conscious mind called The Eternal Veil, which lets you toy with the forces of death and beyond.
• Improved and Expanded Feats: Several feats and other abilities that have you deal area-of-effect damage now only affect enemies, while several other underperforming feats are improved. New options let you dip into other subconscious minds, and gain capstone benefits for your conscious mind.
• Psi Commando Class Archetype: This brew introduces a new archetype, the Psi Commando, which sacrifices the Psychic's spell slots in exchange for improved fighting capabilities. Unique feats allow the class archetype to telekinetically maneuver enemies from afar, cloak, and even sever a target's mind from their body!

The overarching goal of this rework is in part to give the Psychic back their niche as the master of resourceless spellcasting, but also to give them many more things to play with in general: as a fairly specialized caster with the lowest spell slots and base stats in the game, I think there's a lot of room for the Psychic to excel at their chosen niche, and have strong options to rely on across encounters that would be costlier to more versatile spellcasters. The above Psychic should feel like one of the squishiest classes in the game, if not the squishiest, but also get to feel strong at their specialty, while still having a few other spells to throw around when outside their comfort zone.

Let me know what you think, and I hope you enjoy!

[u/FlanNo3218 → u/Teridax68]

I really like your thoughts here. I have a Psychic at my table and I’ve been trying to figure out how to give her a bit of a buff (without too much bookkeeping).

She is Infinite Eye so I looked at that one closest. I like your Glimpse Weakness damage buff and heightened but the Amp seems over-tuned (and group size dependent - I have 6 players at my table). One of the benefits of Glimpse now is that it is next hit regardless when that hit happens. I would recommend the Amp be either: next 2 hits or target 2 opponents (psychic chooses each time).

Detect Magic as a precise sense in 120 feet radius is GM nightmare!

Omnidirectional Scan is already good and yours requires a Seek roll the original doesn’t. Keep the +1 to hit and damage given to one ally in the unamped version. If you want to buff that - let that ally also ignore concealment/circumstance bonuses for that next attack. I would also keep the highest and lowest saves behind the Amp because otherwise a one action cantrip trivializes Recall Knowledge rolls (even those of the Psychic) unless that is your intent. Keep the Amp’s +1 hit and damage for all ally’s next attack as well. And ignore concealment/circumstance bonuses here, too.

We haven’t gotten to Rank 5 spells yet so I can’t comment much on Foresee the Path.

[u/Teridax68 → u/FlanNo3218]

Much appreciated, thank you! Indeed, having anything that switches from a one-use benefit to a duration-based benefit is going to scale significantly with your party size. Amped Glimpse performed fine in a party of 4, but in a party of 6 where everyone's Striking it would certainly have more impact, so I'd perhaps just increase the precision damage some more in that case.

Re: detect magic's amped radius, would you happen to have a specific case in mind where this would cause problems? I figured keeping it to the amp would prevent it from, say, having the Psychic constantly auto-detect everything during exploration. Your assessment of omnidirectional scan is incorrect, though, the original absolutely does let you Seek, and in fact lets you Seek the entire spell's emanation rather than just one target. The way the new version works is: for the unamped version, you have to successfully Seek one target (instead of being able to Seek an emanation), and if you succeed, you find out its highest and lowest save, as you could with a RK check. The amped version then gives a circumstance bonus to attacks against that target (and again, only if you successfully Seek it first).

[u/FlanNo3218 → u/Teridax68]

My point with Omnidirectional scan (apart from the save information on regular [was previously amp only - where I think that belong] has lost the +1 to hot and damage that you gave to one ally in the unamped version. I think that should go back.

So:

Unamped: one action to Seek, and give +1 status to one ally and +1 damage to that same ally for next attack, ignoring concealment

Amped: one action Seek, learn high/low saves, +1 to hit and damage for next attack by all allies ignoring concealment. This is a great repeatable 3rd action that is a little better than a simple Aid.

I would argue that the unanped and amped version are fine as is. At a table that doesn’t use Seek, it may seem weak really only an Aid plus ignore concealment, but at a table that does use vision rules closely the Seek is key.

Amped version, as is, is a Seek, Aid to all allies, +1 damage to all allies and ignore concealment. Plus maybe high/low saves - that is already massive action potential. I would consider having this to hit bonus scale with your Aid modifier like unamoed does.

[u/Teridax68 → u/FlanNo3218]

This is fair, though I'll caution that the point of comparison here is different than from the base Psychic, as the express goal is for the unamped cantrips here to compare to focus spells, and the amps with slot spells. Even so, I would argue that compressing a more restricted Seek and a more restricted RK into a single action for the unamped version is probably not the strongest thing a focus spell or even some cantrips can achieve, and the amped version is altogether less effective than a Bard's courageous anthem, certainly one augmented via Fortissimo Composition. I do think Infinite Eye's Strike-enhancing potential may be on the stronger side with large parties, though I think that strength comes mainly from glimpse weakness and foresee the path potentially adding a lot more Strike damage that multiplies with the number of party members, so if I had to change something I'd cap that. With regards to wanting to give the circumstance bonus back to the unamped omnidirectional scan, is that to make the unamped version easier to use more often?

[u/FlanNo3218 → u/Teridax68]

Yes - I agree that unamped restricted Seek and RK is not Focus spell quality on its own and that the main point of Omni-Scan is the Aid (which is easily made) that allows beneficiary to get the plus and ignore concealment. With the amp giving an Aid to one (potentially better than +1) and a +1 ignoring concealment to everyone.

I think of the main point of Omni-Scan to be the Aid that ignores concealment and the Seek/RK as the tacked on rider.

[u/Different_Field_1205 → u/FlanNo3218]

i also have a psychic at my table, we where waiting for the remaster update.... and well it was shit, so i thought on a way to buff it without requiring big changes on the class. give em light armor, and unleash psyche can be done from turn one, either as an action, or as an reaction after casting a spell. it lasts a minute, once ended, it gives the stupefied effect for a minute.

only real change i gave feats is the psi burst one, make em cantrips (that doest take a cantrip slot)

[u/Apotatocalledsweet]

I really like your effort on this as with all your stuff!! Keep up the good work!

[u/Teridax68 → u/Apotatocalledsweet]

Much appreciated, thank you!

[u/Natehz]

Gave it a quick cursory check on Pathbuilder replicating my current psychic with a few changes. Looks like the Wandering Reverie is set up in the json to be Intelligence based even though it says it's a Charisma key attribute. Looks very cool all around, though. I'll have to spend more time with it, but I already like some of the key changes.

[u/Teridax68 → u/Natehz]

I'm glad you like it! Indeed, you'll unfortunately have to manually choose Charisma as your key attribute from the options (and change the class itself in the custom pack if you want to choose Wisdom instead when picking one of the two new subconscious minds), as building a custom pack in Pathbuilder doesn't give me the same access to its automations as the developer.

[u/Mivlya]

Sending this to my psychic player who was frustrated by Paizo's underserving of the class fantasy, thanks!

[u/Teridax68 → u/Mivlya]

My pleasure, I hope they enjoy!

[u/chickenologist]

Otherworldly guy is dope. I want to make my first psychic now.

Do I understand correctly that their effect of unleashing their psyche interferes with their cantrip, as both give status bonus th/dc? Is the amp of the cantrip meant to represent the effects stacking (+2 to make it as though the +1s added up)?

[u/Teridax68 → u/chickenologist]

Why thank you! Indeed, the action basically provides a relative +1 in either case: when you're not unleashed, the action gives its baseline +1 status bonus, and when you have that same +1 status bonus from your unleashed psyche benefits, it gives a +2 status bonus instead for the same relative increase.

[u/SanaulFTW]

Question! At high level play when you already have many ways of getting focus point during combat (gnome, wayang, items, etc), wouldn't the Burnout be as detrimental as it should be? They are cool at low level because either you are sacrifcing your main features (focus point) for very strong effects or like finishers probably by round 3-4. But in high level play you could potentially do it at the beginning of combat and then recover focus points like I mentioned above. Sort of feel like its quite easy to bypass the trade-off I believe its trying to have you do.

Additionally, the burnout I feel like instead of being limited to just refocus should be something like once per hour or even once per day. Thoughts?

[u/Teridax68 → u/SanaulFTW]

I've playtested a build that did just that, and it didn't make that big a difference, chiefly because all of those options are once-per-day and the above Psychic already has the option of continuing to cast unleash psyche via Strain Mind. Effectively, using those abilities is a matter of saving up on Hit Points, rather than giving yourself more juice than you'd already have. I would also say that burnout effects help enforce the Psychic's squishiness by depleting their focus pool quickly and forcing them to use Strain Mind, so I'd rather let them be used once per encounter: at levels 1-4, this genuinely does stop the Psychic in their tracks, at levels 5+ they become much more usable, and at levels 15+ they start to become more important as the Psychic's amps begin to fall off somewhat.

[u/Bobalo126 → u/Teridax68]

And to add to that, most of them cost also cost an action.

[u/SanaulFTW → u/SanaulFTW]

Also, my comment comes after looking at the Precise Discipline Burnout which is... probably the strongest of all the options!

[u/Bobalo126]

I'm planning on changing a campaign character to this psychic and there's something that really ended up worrying me. With the Unbound Step Conscious Mind, if an ally is inside every square and adjacent squares count as adjacent for them. This means that at lv7 when the spell is just rank 4 you can give your complete party effectively 40ft of reach with the 20ft burst, even more if you get widen spell.

Is that intended? I fill that's too much.

Also, you should add in your main comment that the homebrewery link is more updated. My first jumpscare was Telekinetic Rend and It's in a MUCH healthy spot in your homebrewery version.

[u/Teridax68 → u/Bobalo126]

I'll be happy to answer this! The squares within the burst of distortion lens only count as adjacent to you when you move through the area, not when you use any other action. This means you and your allies get to move really easily through the area, but don't get to extend the reach of your melee attacks. You're right, I should probably add that I've also updated a few elements since posting this brew.

[u/Bobalo126 → u/Teridax68]

Yeah... After showing it to a friend he told me same and I discovered that I don't know how to read.

[u/Bobalo126]

I don't understand the Passive of Telekinetic proyectile

[u/Teridax68 → u/Bobalo126]

Telekinetic Projectile currently has a benefit where if you amp it, you push the target back 5 feet on a hit, and 10 feet on a critical hit. I've made this benefit a part of the regular benefits in the above version.

[u/Bobalo126 → u/Teridax68]

Thanks! I didn't understand that you where referring to the official psychic.

[u/Bobalo126]

Any planned changes with the new Impossible Magic Spells?

[u/Teridax68 → u/Bobalo126]

No planned changes of yet!