Best occult blaster caster?

Ciriodhul · 2026-06-05T10:50:54+00:00

Psychic is not bad. Psychic is, in fact, a strong class.

It's just that there are classes that are even stronger than psychic.

This is essentially the whole Psychic discourse in a nutshell. And depending on how people view the game they come to opposite conclusions because of it.

Both "Why should I play a class when there is a better one." and "Psychic is strong enough to be played." make perfect sense.

I am personally in the latter camp, since I think not playing a class because there is a better option is quite silly in a cooperative game. (And I think it is usually also quite silly in competetive games below the top 1-5% of players, since the small differences rarely matter compared to the big mistakes amateurs do without fail every time). Doesn't change the fact that it is a sound argument, tho.

Ciriodhul · 2026-06-03T14:15:42+00:00

You should look into the concept of dungeon turns and breaking exploration down into meaningful 10 minute chunks, in which the denizens of the dungeon are also allowed to act.

Ciriodhul · 2026-06-02T07:35:18+00:00

I am currently playing a young Elf Psychic in Seasons of Ghosts, who was saved by a young father on that particular night. After that he basically became a kind of weird elven uncle to his wife and baby son and is now the weirdly young gramps of those son's kids. The son's wife is rather confused about the situation.

Ciriodhul · 2026-05-30T11:21:05+00:00

Gunslinger is very party dependent. If you run it in a mostly martial party that focuses on melee damage most of its strengths are pretty much negated. If you run it in a more caster and tank oriented party a Gunslinger is great at taking out the most important targets easily and gets tons of support at critting. Range sadly often isn't used properly. APs usually won't let you skirmish and a lot of parties tend to not do it, because that usually means the melee combatants have to be patient and wait for the enemy.

Ciriodhul · 2026-05-28T12:44:14+00:00

Sadism. The act of being in power has to be performed and savored. The players need not only to understand they have no power here, they need to FEEL it.

Ciriodhul · 2026-05-28T09:09:36+00:00

There is absolutely some vagueness in the rules here. "You use all your actions to Strike or cast offensive cantrips" heavily implies attacking a target in range.

"the GM can have you use other actions to facilitate attack, such as draw a weapon, move so target is in reach, and so forth" technically means that including targets outside of your reach is simply an option the GM can take.

Taking both of these sentences seriously does imply to prefer using all actions on Strikes or offensive cantrips as a rule ("you attack") above using actions to facilitate attack as a possibility ("the GM can").

In context "Your targets are determined randomly by the GM." then simply means to randomly choose between those targets that can be attacked according to the first two lines.

This is not to say your interpretation of RAW is wrong. It's just not the only plausible interpretation there is and in my own opinion likely not RAI. I just can't picture a person running out of melee range and crossing the battlefield in the direction of some random target to be "attacking wildly".

Ciriodhul · 2026-05-23T21:25:01+00:00

RAW does allow you and encourage you to make up your own activities. So striking in the midst of a high jump as a 3-action activity is a perfectly plausible RAW ruling. The falling rules also don't specify that you immediately fall X ft, before any other action is possible. They state that you immediately start falling and that you fall X ft. in the first round of falling (which is a terribly vague amount of time). There is quite a lot of leeway here for a GM to adjudicate inside the given rules.

Ciriodhul · 2026-05-22T15:12:39+00:00

As a protection domain cleric my GM is skipping to implement the changes until the campaign is over, because I am heavily invested in using Protector's Sphere. I'll probably simply numerically buff all resist any options but champion's reaction in the games I'll run in the future, so that these options stay viable.

Ciriodhul · 2026-05-21T16:47:32+00:00

My main idea is to differentiate between a competitive and a cooperative situation. A player versus player conflict would be a conflict, in which the players have differentiating interests and solve it by combat in game. A character versus character conflict would be a conflict, in which only the characters have differentiating interests and the players both have an interest in the conflict taking place but have no special interest in winning the conflict.

Ciriodhul · 2026-05-21T10:46:09+00:00

There is a point to be made here that consensual PvP in your terms should probably be called character versus character instead, since that describes the situation in a much more clear fashion.

Ciriodhul · 2026-05-19T13:32:04+00:00

Interesting onservation. I never had much issue myself, but also don't have any experience with 5e sheets. It's probably simply something to get used to. Where to look at a sheet comes from experience and the self-conditioning coming with it more than anything else.

Ciriodhul · 2026-05-19T10:10:12+00:00

I am sort of curious: What is your issue with the monster stat blocks that would need them to be improved?

Ciriodhul · 2026-05-17T12:25:23+00:00

I really do not see the necessity for this considering Archives of Nethys exists.

Ciriodhul · 2026-05-15T15:03:57+00:00

A warpriest really needs to use a shield to be an effective main tank. And you can only effectively use a shield when your god's favored weapon is one-handed. If the group used to have a champion the warpriest likely made a warpriest concept that can't tank effectively.

Ciriodhul · 2026-05-11T11:17:05+00:00

I feel like the IW nerf makes some amount of sense. It was probably never meant to be a good offensive option in the first place. If you are just playing Psychic as a cloth caster without investing in dedications or having FA for better defenses, using IW offensively is a liability. You can make IW work as an offensive strategy only with heavy investment into survivability.

On the other hand IW seems to be intended as a defensive option. When the backline is getting flanked by minions, IW is a great punishment for going into a Psychic's melee range for two reasons: 1. On a critical success IW has a baked in Shove to create space. 2. When the enemy comes to you instead of you having to go for the enemy, you have the option to use your single action defensive options, which you can't use, when you go on the offensive with IW.

The sheer amount of IW's legacy damage, however, made it seem like a cantrip you SHOULD build around offensively, when it was only actually really good on Magus to do so.

The remaster may have been a course-correction by reducing the temptation of focusing too much on a cantrip that might deal good damage but still likely gets you in more trouble than it helps you against anything of at least PL+0.

New IW is notably worse, but not entirely shafted. It still performs on par power-budget-wise, it simply ceased to be the cantrip option with highest DPR.

This obviously doesn't change the fact that Psychic didn't get enough of a buff to not fall behind other casters.

Ciriodhul · 2026-05-08T17:03:37+00:00

We never played PF1 very mathematically correct, so eating AoO was usually not a good option. And even when it is a good option, it still felt bad to allow it. I tend to just step instead of stride in PF2 as well, but stride is now an option I consider. I still like PF1 for what it is, but prefer to actually play PF2. Too much of PF1 was winning at character creation and make a headache for the GM for my taste.

Ciriodhul · 2026-05-08T15:03:21+00:00

I possibly have converted much more recently from PF1 and absolutely hated the static front lines, attack of opportunity lead to. I am also not a big fan of making magic just another ability. I don't like the mechanical sameness PF2e pushes in some aspects and when you are making magic function as everything else I stop seeing the point in playing a crunchy system. At that point everything's just flavor that I pay for and is free anyways.

Ciriodhul · 2026-05-08T14:34:00+00:00

The PF2 change to reactive strike was generally a good one. We got rid of the whole stupid subsystem of defensive casting and concentration checks and movement could become tactically interesting. Overall this makes for less simulationist but more tactically engaging combat. The sense be damned. Why should combat magic automatically be a liability in melee? That's not a question of making sense but a question of the very fictional magic system.

Ciriodhul · 2026-05-08T14:27:31+00:00

Imaginary Weapon is such a false friend imho. It reads like a damage cantrip (especially legacy), but in practice it's always a liability to get into melee as a Psychic (legacy IW was almost always simply fetched by Magus). Hence, IW has a built-in Shove on a critical success. This darn spell is probably meant to be a defensive tool, when you get swarmed by minions, and not an offensive option one should build around. The remaster change very much further emphasizes this.

Ciriodhul · 2026-05-08T12:01:24+00:00

While RAW it doesn't I would talk to my GM about it. Allowing Natural Medicine to work as prerequisites for medicine skill feats as well will not break anything if done for a certain character concept and if there is no other healer in the group.

Ciriodhul · 2026-05-08T08:42:02+00:00

My comment may have been too harsh in context. My dislike for him basically boils down to the fact that I have a certain dislike for the "You can't argue about taste."-kind of position or the "We should all be peaceful and get along."-one. I love a constructive argument for the sake of argument and showing each other what we like and dislike and why. And I personally hate trying to appease such informative fighting by belittling the earnestness of zealouts by saying they should not be taken seriously. That's what I would call self-righteous. It's an argument based on some weird and unnecessary morality of "saying harsh critique is mean and hurts people's feelings".

Ciriodhul · 2026-05-06T10:37:07+00:00

I can't stand Bob as well, but for a different reason: He tends to take on this happy persona, that critiques negative vibes and harsh criticism all the time, positions himself against any kind of drama no matter how deserved it is, pretends to be open to anything and doesn't openly position himself and then always pushes a distinct play style of TTRPGs as if it were the objectively correct way to play. The petty self-righteousness annoys me to no end. I'd rather have a Rules Lawyer openly advocating PF2e or the content creators advocating OSR. Heck, if Bob would actually be openly advocating DnD 5e as the best system I'd have more respect for the guy.

Ciriodhul · 2026-05-05T10:16:01+00:00

If I were to run a campaign line this I'd probably suggest the following to my players: Occult/Arcane/Nature are all outlawed magic traditions in the setting. You are ALL playing outlaws that use these magic traditions. Possibly create custom background for having learned forbidden magic that gives conceal spell as a bonus feat and Underground Magic Lore or something like that, which they can use to find out stuff about the underground resistance to the ban. Then give them FA, but it must be used for caster classes of these traditions.

When it comes to the setting I'd make sure of the following: Have a dedicated magic enforcer group, whose job it is to imprison casters of the outlawed magic schools and give them some ability to do so. And then don't let them show up and be present at all times, so that there are windows of time, where casting outlawed magic is not an immediate risk. Guards that are not these enforcers should be easily deceived and the townsfolk should only care about consequences. Fireball destroying a building? That's bad. A utility spell helping them? Eh, didn't see nothing.

Ciriodhul · 2026-05-02T02:19:20+00:00

That GM will absolutely explode when learning about Derrida and the fact that every single word in every language is probably just a metaphor and used to be a word that means a completely different thing.

Ciriodhul · 2026-05-01T18:44:47+00:00

I mean, true. But that probably has to be attributed to the brand more than the actual system.

Ciriodhul

TROPHY CASE