Finding the Path: Psychic Thoughts

I don't like the sorcerer class. I understand that they are more flexible in battle than wizards, but having access to a very limited number of spells that you can't increase by adding scrolls to a spellbook...just feels bad to me.

So in theory, I shouldn't like the psychic class either, as it is similar in many ways. But I've been playing a psychic for a while now, and I am really enjoying it.

Illustration by Tomasz Chistowski

The main reason I wanted to try playing one is a spell called Burst of Adrenaline, which gives a massive boost to a physical score (Strength, Dexterity or Constitution) for one round, with the drawback of being fatigued on the next round. It's like a mini version of the barbarian's rage, and is one of the few spells in Pathfinder that you can cast as an immediate action (an instant spell for those of you who play Magic). Just by itself, it made me want to try out the new 'psychic magic' rules.

Like a sorcerer, the psychic is a full nine level spellcaster with a bad attack bonus. It also has a sorcerer-bloodline-like feature called a psychic discipline, that grants a small number of bonus spells and spell-like abilities. Like the sorcerer, their magic is innate rather than learned. But unlike a sorcerer, who uses charisma, their magic is keyed off of intelligence.

The psychic is very much a master of the mind, and even though they have innate magic, there is the feeling that it is not just handed out to them - it still requires intense study and discipline to pull off the the things they do. And perhaps that is part of the reason I like them so much, as it doesn't quite feel like your character just won the genetic lottery.

Illustration by Rogier van der Bank

Psychics have another class feature, borrowed from the sword-and-sorcery magus class - a  phrenic pool they can spend to amplify their spells, though, theirs is less flexible than the magus' arcane pool.

The psychic has a number of advantages over the sorcerer. Many sorcerer spells require the sorcerer to actually aim at the target, requiring an attack roll. These 'ray' spells usually ignore armour, but even with that bonus, a sorcerer can miss and waste the spell. Psychics hardly have any ray spells, most of their stuff just hits, because, they're messing directly with the opponent's head. Couple that with the fact that their signature spell mind thrust easily out-damages magic missile, and they start to look rather scary.

The sorcerer's arcane magic has verbal and somatic components - basically, you need to be able to speak the magic words and move your hands in the correct manner to cast your spells. All very Harry Potter. This means that sorcerers can't wear much armour, which restricts movement, and if you can silence them or stop their hands moving you can shut them down completely.

But the psychic uses psychic magic instead of arcane magic, which requires thought and emotion components. Tying up a psychic's hands is ineffective, and casting silence on them does nothing to stop their magic. In fact, psychics can actually cast silence themselves, and it's actually a good strategy for them drop a zone of silence if they find themselves duelling a wizard. In addition, they can wear full plate armour without it messing up their spells.

Illustration by Wayne Reynolds

This all seems pretty powerful - and it is - but psychics do have weaknesses. Like the witch, their reliance on mind-affecting spells means that they struggle against stuff that is immune to mind magic, like plants, vermin, constructs and - undead. And you tend to fight a lot of undead in Pathfinder. While they can circumvent the undead thing by learning an ampification, it's still something they have to spend extra resources on doing, and they still get stuck being useless against the other mindless stuff.

They are also lacking in the AOE department, not having access to things like fireball, lightning bolt, or the ever-popular burning hands. The only decent spell they have for this is sonic scream, which has it's own drawbacks.

Their spellcasting can be shut down by anything that messes with their emotions, like the rather common monster ability to cause fear, and their thought components make concentration checks nearly twice as difficult unless they spend actions clearing thier mind. Good like with casting that spell defensively.

Illustration by Wayne Reynolds

Overall, I think the class is really well made and pretty balanced. In addition, it doesn't feel like any other Pathfinder class (even though it heavily borrows ideas from a few) and so carves out it's own little space. And it's a really fun space. Did I mention you get to make heads explode?

Finding the Path: Off the Chain

In my previous posts about the classes of pathfinder, I mentioned a few of the classes had flaws: the rogue is often bad in combat, the fighter is a bit boring, and the barbarian requires far more maths than you should have to think about when playing a melee smasher with anger problems.

On the flip side, there is the summoner, a class I have barely mentioned. Mistakes were made. They gain their arcane spells more slowly than wizards, witches and sorcerers, to make up for the fact that they have an animal-companion-like creature called an 'eidolon' that is very good at fighting. But, their spell list grants them many arcane spells at a lower level than the other arcane casters, which defeats the entire idea of gaining spells more slowly. The summoners early spells also let them do crazy things like make wands of haste, a spell that is normally too high level to put in a wand. And when you start hasting an eidolon, everyone else in the party may as well just go home.

Magic & Pathfinder: The Vampires

When I was developing the racial rules for Pathfinders of Zendikar, I had to decide what to do with vampires. They are Zendikar's major black mana race, but straight up Pathfinder vampires are way too powerful to be used by players. Fortunately, there was a possibility - the dhampir race. Dhampir are half-human half-vampires, technically living, but treated as undead for the purposes of healing magic. I had a way to make the dhampir fit - but I had to pull out an old pet theory of mine. But lets go back a few years, to when I first started playing Magic.

Illustration by Adi Granov

Finding the Path: Not From Around Here

Those of you who read my post on the classes of Pathfinder may have noticed that I left out a rather important core class: the monk. Monks have been a part of RPGs for a long time, but, being based on the Shaolin monks of China, they don't quite fit in with the rest of the base classes. And Pathfinder has acknowledged this to a degree - Sajan Gadadvara, Pathfinder's iconic monk character, is from the far land of Vudra, come to the Inner Sea in search of his missing sister. He is very much a stranger in a strange land. But...he is not the only one who has traveled far from home to the Inner Sea. The ninja Reiko walks beside people who think ninja only fairy-tales, while the ronin samurai Nakayama Hayato sticks to the code of 'honour is strength' despite his exile from his homeland. Both hail from Minkai, a place on the other side of the world to the Inner Sea.

Magic & Pathfinder: The Maftet

Sometimes I get strange ideas in my head that I just can't let go. Case in point: the sphinxborn. It was pretty easy to get the five characteristic races for each of the colours of magic, as four and a half of them already existed in Pathfinder. (If you're counting, it's human, merfolk, vampire, goblin and elf.) But I wanted some sort of representation of the iconic creatures too. (Again, if you're counting, it's angel, sphinx, demon, dragon and hydra.)

For the white and black iconics it's pretty easy, as aasimir (humans with a bit of angel blood) and tieflings (humans with fiendish heritage) both have a storied history in Pathfinder. But the others were much harder. I'm still not sure how to pull off dragon and hydra (or if I should even try), but in preparing a Mul Daya related stuff for this week's Pathfinders of Zendikar I came across something interesting, called a maftet.

Finding the Path: The Races of Zendikar

The major challenge of running a Pathfinder game set on the world of Zendikar, is making the world the players are in feel like Magic: the Gathering, and not just 'Pathfinder but on Zendikar'.

The first thing I had to do was work out what races the players are allowed to play. Zendikar doesn't have many of the fantasy staples - no dwarves, gnomes, halflings or orcs. This cuts out over half of the core Pathfinder races. Fortunately the original Zendikar had a bit of tribal theme to it, making the selection of player races pretty obvious - kor, merfolk, vampire, goblin, elf and human. Elf and human were the only core races on this list.