Author Topic: [PF] Occult Adventures Discussion and Review  (Read 11763 times)

Offline Nanshork

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[PF] Occult Adventures Discussion and Review
« on: August 05, 2015, 02:01:58 PM »
As a book with six new base classes, a new-ish type of magic, and no prestige classes this book interested me enough that I've got a copy.

Anybody besides me take a look at it?  Any thoughts?  Do I need to attempt some sort of review?

EDIT: REVIEW/OVERVIEW OF THE BOOK CAN BE FOUND BELOW.

Offline Unbeliever

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Re: [PF] Occult Adventures
« Reply #1 on: August 05, 2015, 09:00:05 PM »
I, for one, would be interested in hearing what's in the book and how good it is, especially from someone who frequents boards like this one.  The reviews I've read, ahem, elsewhere have often been too polemical for my tastes and not super helpful.

Offline Chrononaut

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Re: [PF] Occult Adventures
« Reply #2 on: August 05, 2015, 09:18:41 PM »
You paid for it, tell us if it's worth our time and money in your opinion!  :bigeyes

Offline Nanshork

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Re: [PF] Occult Adventures
« Reply #3 on: August 05, 2015, 09:27:01 PM »
Okay, I'll write something up.  I've never done a review before so bear with me.

Offline Nanshork

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[PF] Occult Adventures Discussion and Review
« Reply #4 on: August 06, 2015, 01:40:01 AM »
Occult Adventures Review

The book has 274 pages, 7 chapters, and very little fluff.  The chapters are as follows:

 - 1: Occult Classes
 - 2: Archetypes
 - 3: Feats
 - 4: Psychic Magic
 - 5: Occult Rules
 - 6: Running an Occult Game
 - 7: Occult Rewards
 
The intro is pretty standard.  It goes over the fluff of "occult", lists the books referenced in this book, talks about what is an occult adventure (boiled down: mind over combat, mysteries within mysteries, raw power isn't everything, etc.), an explanation of psychic magic (I'll go over that later), and other standard D&D book intro stuff.
 
 
 
 

Chapter 1 - The Occult Classes

The book has 6 new base classes (and 0 prestige classes, I like that).  I'll go over each in order and give a brief overview, hopefully hitting all relevant points.

No classes have alignment restrictions.  Each class has racial favored class options for the PHB races.

Please note that I'm not great at playing spellcasters so there isn't much analysis about spells.

Kineticist
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Medium
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Mesmerist
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Occultist
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Psychic
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Spiritualist
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Offline Nanshork

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Re: [PF] Occult Adventures Discussion and Review
« Reply #5 on: August 06, 2015, 01:44:37 PM »
Chapter 2 - Archetypes

Every class in this book has multiple archetypes, and in addition there are archetypes for other Paizo classes in order to use some of the new rules and information printed in this book.  I'll go over everything in the order printed and try to do some actual reviewing while I'm at it.

Kineticist

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Medium

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Mesmerist

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Occultist

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Psychic

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Spiritualist

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Other Class Archetypes

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Offline Nanshork

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Re: [PF] Occult Adventures Discussion and Review
« Reply #6 on: August 06, 2015, 01:46:24 PM »
Chapter 3 - Feats

I'm not going to go over all of the feats here, but I'll give a basic overview.

There are feats for all of the classes as well as the new rule systems. 

There's also some random ones, e.g.: Elongated Cranium - Gain bonuses and penalties based on head shape.

There's a line of feats for hiding better while possessing creatures.

There's a lucid dreamer feat.

There are some general metamagic feats.

There are stare feats specifically for the Mesmerist.

There's a new teamwork feat for the Kineticist.

All in all the feats seem decent, no trap options and some pretty decent stuff here for the new classes.

Offline Nanshork

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Re: [PF] Occult Adventures Discussion and Review
« Reply #7 on: August 06, 2015, 01:46:37 PM »
Chapter 4 - Psychic Magic

Psychic Magic isn't arcane or divine, if anything affects specifically one/both of those than it has no effect on psychic magic.

It also doesn't have normal casting components.  There are no verbal or somatic or inexpensive material components (expensive ones still happen).

Instead, there are thought components (increased concentration DC if you don't take a move action to center yourself) and emotion components (if you're under the effect of an emotion or fear spell you can't cast the spell).

Psychic spells can also be undercast.  Any psychic spell that is part of a I II III etc. spell chain can be cast as the lower-level versino using a lower spell slot.

When you pick a higher level version of a spell that can be undercast as a spontaneous caster you freely retrain the lower level versions.

There are 36 pages of spell descriptions so I won't be going over spells individually.

However, there is spell support for pretty much every paizo class to date, including hybrid classes with their own spell list list the shaman.

Offline Nanshork

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Re: [PF] Occult Adventures Discussion and Review
« Reply #8 on: August 06, 2015, 01:46:45 PM »
Chapter 5 - Occult Rules

There are six sections of occult rules.
 - Occult Skill Unlocks
 - Auras
 - Chakras
 - Psychic Duels
 - Possession
 - Occult Rituals
 
 
Occult Skill Unlocks

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Auras
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Chakras
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Psychic Duels
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Possession
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Occult Rituals
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Offline Nanshork

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Re: [PF] Occult Adventures Discussion and Review
« Reply #9 on: August 06, 2015, 01:46:57 PM »
Chapter 6 - Running an Occult Game

This section is half boring useless stuff and half hidden crunch that I wouldn't have expected to find here.

There are sections on incorporating the occult, occult elements, occult themes, and occult adventure seeds.

Some of the information in those sections is interesting, some is not.  Like any niche book they have a specific idea of how they want you to use the material so YMMV.

There's a section on Occult Locations.  Despite what you may think this is crunchy.  There's a big part on Loci Spirits (pretty self explanatory) and how they can be corrupted and effectively turned into haunts.  There are rules on creating them as well as a couple of samples.

There are also new rules on haunts (which I have never seen used outside of an official adventure path so who knows if you'll care).  There are also some new haunts for you to not care about.

For some reason ley lines are occult and we have rules for those as well.

We have a section that makes me think of Inception about mindscapes and how you will never use them because nobody uses the random rules.  Think of a mindscape as a section of the astral plane that has it's own planar rules and then other rules too.

We then get a section on other planes, some information on the normal ones we already know and then places in them such as the Akashic Record or The Boneyard. Could be useful for a DM but there's not much here.

Offline Nanshork

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Re: [PF] Occult Adventures Discussion and Review
« Reply #10 on: August 06, 2015, 01:47:07 PM »
Chapter 7 - Occult Rewards

This chapter is exactly what you expect.  Adventuring gear, alchemical items, magic items, and artifacts.

The adventuring gear is meh, although we now official have rules for big wanted posters.  The rest is just pretty much supporting the new classes and rules.  Well, except for things like the PORTABLE SWEAT LODGE.  Also we now officially can buy ventriloquist's dummies.

The alchemical items are about the same, there are three and the only one that caught my eye is snake oil.  You can be a snake oil salesman (it heals nonlethal damage).

The magic items are what you expect.  A ring to cast more psychic spells, a ring to store your soul to possess people who wear it.  A lot of metamagic rods and other rods (we get more multi-purpose rods, I like those).  Also some staves.

The wondrous items are mostly bland flavor stuff.  Lucky horseshoes to put on your buildings (because that's actually a thing).  Flying boats.  A real lucky four-leaf clover.  Voodoo dolls.

There are also cursed items and that's where things get interesting.  Example: Maniac hand.  If you've lost a hand it will magically replace it and give you bonuses to attack and damage rolls, you can also take an AC penalty to make an extra attack on a full-attack.  The downside? It has an ego score and will try to take control over you to make you murder your friends or innocent people without being witnessed.  If it succeeds you don't even remember it happening, just blinding rage.  The longer you resist, the more Ego the hand gains and if it gets too much then cautious murders stop being good enough for it.  If you resist it too long it will try to kill you.  If you prefer you can just keep it sated by willingly giving it control sometimes.  There's even rules for how it tries to resist you if you try to cut it off.  Awesome.

We also get some minor artifacts (one is linked portals that make me think of Stargate) and major artifacts (like the Picture of Dorian Gray). 


That's it.
Final Thoughts: I'd definitely say the pdf is worth it (maybe not after the information is integrated into PFSRD, depends on how much you care about stuff that isn't classes).  There are six base classes, over half of them are genuinely decent in my opinion with the Occultist being the only one that pops out to me as potentially playing really poorly.  There's a good bit of random rules info on possession and whatnot too that could be useful to more than just those who want to play an "occult adventure".  I say if you're still on the fence then just go for it.

Edit: And if it helps, this book is actually going to get supported later his year. Here, here, and here.

Offline Nanshork

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Re: [PF] Occult Adventures Discussion and Review
« Reply #11 on: August 06, 2015, 01:47:16 PM »
Obviously this is turning into more of an overview than a review.  If you want more/less/different information please let me know.

Offline Unbeliever

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Re: [PF] Occult Adventures Discussion and Review
« Reply #12 on: August 06, 2015, 04:11:05 PM »
Obviously this is turning into more of an overview than a review.  If you want more/less/different information please let me know.
I think you should feel free to be more opinionated, which it looks like you started to do with the archetypes.  Pathfinder has so much flotsam, mechanics-wise (seriously, it's like their brand identity now), that it'd be nice to know if the classes are hopeless, decent, etc.  So far it's been an interesting read. 

Offline Nanshork

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Re: [PF] Occult Adventures Discussion and Review
« Reply #13 on: August 06, 2015, 04:44:41 PM »
Obviously this is turning into more of an overview than a review.  If you want more/less/different information please let me know.
I think you should feel free to be more opinionated, which it looks like you started to do with the archetypes.  Pathfinder has so much flotsam, mechanics-wise (seriously, it's like their brand identity now), that it'd be nice to know if the classes are hopeless, decent, etc.  So far it's been an interesting read.

It's hard for me to be opinionated about the classes since I don't like playing spellcasters much, but I'll add an opinion section to each of them after I'm finished with the last two chapters.

Offline Nanshork

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Re: [PF] Occult Adventures Discussion and Review
« Reply #14 on: August 06, 2015, 05:14:03 PM »
Okay, done.  Including adding some thoughts to the end of each class overview. 

Offline Phantasmoon

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Re: [PF] Occult Adventures Discussion and Review
« Reply #15 on: August 07, 2015, 05:37:11 AM »
Alright, this is the thread I meant to respond to. I've skimmed through OA and talked it over with some other people, and here's the gist I got from it.

You said the kineticist looks really exciting, and it might look reasonable, but it's actually really bad. It's a primary damage dealer, and if you build around that and kill yourself in the process, you can almost compare to an NPC with a bow. It does have some lateral ability, but that only manages to scrape it into tier five. You can try to play it if you get conductive weapons, though; wield four double pistols and pretend the game doesn't hate you.

The Medium was a super disappointing class, because Buhlman decided to cut out half of its class features and spend that book space on Psychic spells instead. It's unplayably bad because of this, as you spend most of your game time without the basic abilities of your class, doing literally nothing, and as such doesn't really even deserve a tier; use the playtest version of this class instead. Also, I think the writer put out an independent barbarian archetype called Masquerade Reveler, which looks fun. If I actually played tabletops myself, I'd be tempted to give that one a shot.

The Psychic is Paizo's caster supremacy raining true. Undercasting is really strong, and there is absolutely no reason for it to get Summon Monster, but it does because it's a good spell. The mental and emotion components to its spellcasting are nice in theory, except for when it decides to completely ignore them. It's an Int caster with a reliable save-or-die to toss around in boss fights from level three, and a respectable tier one, which balances the kineticist out nicely.

Chapter five is pretty terrible all around. The Chakra system in particular is entirely crap, and the Psychic Duels manage to be both worthless and overpowered, being that they'll only over find value from Instigate Psychic Duel, because a spell that utterly shuts down the BBEG while your party members stab him to death and he can't do anything to resist you is entirely reasonable for level two.

Basically, it's a product that was really exciting and well designed until it actually came out.

Offline Nanshork

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Re: [PF] Occult Adventures Discussion and Review
« Reply #16 on: August 08, 2015, 12:18:56 PM »
Alright, this is the thread I meant to respond to. I've skimmed through OA and talked it over with some other people, and here's the gist I got from it.

You said the kineticist looks really exciting, and it might look reasonable, but it's actually really bad. It's a primary damage dealer, and if you build around that and kill yourself in the process, you can almost compare to an NPC with a bow. It does have some lateral ability, but that only manages to scrape it into tier five. You can try to play it if you get conductive weapons, though; wield four double pistols and pretend the game doesn't hate you.

I'm about to play one so we'll see how it goes.  No game I ever play in Pathfinder ever uses guns, and I personally hate how pathfinder uses guns, so that's not in any way an option for me.  Also you can't kill yourself, it's nonlethal damage and caps out at 3+con mod so how is that going to kill you?

Quote
The Medium was a super disappointing class, because Buhlman decided to cut out half of its class features and spend that book space on Psychic spells instead. It's unplayably bad because of this, as you spend most of your game time without the basic abilities of your class, doing literally nothing, and as such doesn't really even deserve a tier; use the playtest version of this class instead. Also, I think the writer put out an independent barbarian archetype called Masquerade Reveler, which looks fun. If I actually played tabletops myself, I'd be tempted to give that one a shot.

I'll take your word for it, I don't look at playtests.  We have very different opinions on unplayable and what the "most basic abilities of your class" are though.

Quote
The Psychic is Paizo's caster supremacy raining true. Undercasting is really strong, and there is absolutely no reason for it to get Summon Monster, but it does because it's a good spell. The mental and emotion components to its spellcasting are nice in theory, except for when it decides to completely ignore them. It's an Int caster with a reliable save-or-die to toss around in boss fights from level three, and a respectable tier one, which balances the kineticist out nicely.

It's based on 3.5, of course casters are better.  That's the d20 system.  Also the mental and emotion components are just part of the psychic casting for all of the caster classes in the book and only the emotion one really matters IMO.

Quote
Chapter five is pretty terrible all around. The Chakra system in particular is entirely crap, and the Psychic Duels manage to be both worthless and overpowered, being that they'll only over find value from Instigate Psychic Duel, because a spell that utterly shuts down the BBEG while your party members stab him to death and he can't do anything to resist you is entirely reasonable for level two.

Basically, it's a product that was really exciting and well designed until it actually came out.

I agree that the Chakra system is probably never going to really get used by anyone because of the massive ki expenditure involved, and psychic duels are something I expect a lot of people to just not want to deal with.


We'll just have to agree to disagree about our base opinions of the book.

Offline Cyrocloud

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Re: [PF] Occult Adventures Discussion and Review
« Reply #17 on: August 10, 2015, 09:52:55 PM »
The thing about burn is you will only have 4.5+con mod/level in hp, so if you max out burn you'll only have your 1.5 hp/level or you get knocked out.  Taking 1 hp per level to do anything useful is huge, and the worst part is it's unhealable unless you rest for 8 hours. The only way to even do decent damage with the class is to do empowered composite blasts, which will cost you 1-3 burn depending on your level, granted you can take a move action or full round to mitigate it, but then you are just standing still with a big hit me sign on you, and if they hit you while you're gathering power you run the risk of taking all the burn you would have mitigated, and not even cast the ability, the worst part about all of that is that a warrior (The NPC class) is still probably going to out damage you with a bow without having to worry about hitting himself in the face to do it.  Granted kineticist does have some utility but most of the decent ones cost burn so your going to take significant damage to even use them.

I really want to like this class, but it just doesn't work, the only way to make it decent at something is either play up kinetic whip and kinetic form to have a huge range in which to be an aoe tripper that does ok damage, or get conductive ammo and go nuts with multi/rapid/clustershot, which is pretty darn expensive (I think throwing daggers with a blinkback belt and 3 levels of the cartomancer archetype for witches also work). It's a tier 5 class, it has roughly similair damage out put to npc classes that are built well, with cursmudgeon of utility, it could possibly tier 4 if I underrated it's utility a tad and with conductive ammo shenanigans (You can do some pretty silly damage dual welding guns with each shot getting 15-30d6+(~12-40) of an energy damage tacked on to each shot, that might also blind, deafen, entangle, dispel buffs, at +4 to attacks or grapple the people hit).  If you want an example of something an archer inquisitor which is pretty solid tier 3, will have significantly more utility than a kineticist and be out damaging one without having to worry about hitting himself in the face with unhealable damage to be useful.  Honestly the best comparison for it is probably a rogue, which will have higher damage output more skills and a bunch of odd abilities to give it some utility, putting a kineticist at tier 4-5. 

Something to look forward too though is that the developers hinted at there being too new elements to pick from in the supplement book, plant and void.

The reason the medium is unplayable is because the spirits can only be bound in certain locations, that means that while your out adventuring you'll be lucky if you can even bind 1 or 2 different spirits. Considering the whole class is about flexibility and being able to switch the spirits up on a daily basis, being unable to choose even 1 or 2 if your lucky very much defeats the purpose of this.  The champion can be summoned in a place of violence, the trickster in a place filled with traps or mazes, and the hierophant at a shrine, those are the only three you might be able to really summon on the road regularly, and that is only if you make a place like that every morning or before you set up camp. Granted this is a super easy thing to house rule around, and the playtest was more binder like with i want to say ~20 spirits and you could bind multiple at low levels, all with different interactions with each other and being based of alignments and stats, with there being a total of 52 (to match up with the harrow deck). But that got scrapped for page space.


Offline Nanshork

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Re: [PF] Occult Adventures Discussion and Review
« Reply #18 on: August 10, 2015, 11:11:24 PM »
Like I said, we'll have to agree to disagree.  I can't look at the class and see tier five, even after playing it.  It's underwhelming at low levels, but as I went from level 1 to level 2 only accumulating 3 burn as a fire element kineticist spending a move action to gather power isn't that big of a deal.  Also, there are a lot more crowd control abilities than an archer can bring to the table and that can make/break an encounter.  My opinion is just that, and if you want to disagree in this thread feel free to.  It isn't an amazing class, but I don't see it as bad as you're making it out to be.  I am looking forward to the supplements though.


I'll give you the Medium being a problem.  I missed the line where you forcefully lose the spirit after 24 hours, that will complicate the seances.  More reason for me to prefer the Relic Channeler achetype.

Offline zook1shoe

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Re: [PF] Occult Adventures Discussion and Review
« Reply #19 on: August 15, 2015, 01:23:08 AM »
Thanks for making this thread.  :clap Ive gotten quite a bit of useful info out of it. Like what to avoid even reading and what to focus on. I like that several other people are giving their opinions, it gives more depth to the thread.

The barbarian archetype is gonna be fun to play.
The book eater will be fun too, just need to read up on the class more.

WTF is up w Elongated Cranium? That is soooooooooo weird
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