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RPGBOT uses the color coding scheme which has become common among Pathfinder build handbooks. Also note that many colored items are also links to the Paizo SRD.
- : Bad, useless options, or options which are extremely situational. Nearly never useful.
- : OK options, or useful options that only apply in rare circumstances. Useful sometimes.
- : Good options. Useful often.
- : Fantastic options, often essential to the function of your character. Useful very frequently.
Psychic Disciplines
The spell options are bad and the features are mediocre.
Phrenic Pool Ability: Charisma
: Almost all of the options are terrible.
- : A bad spell. Strength damage really only handicaps enemies that will have high Fortitude saves, so it will be difficult to use this effectively.
- : The weakest polymorph spell, but it still offers some nice utility option. See my Practical Guide to Polymorph for further guidance.
- : Too slow, and it requires a touch attack. You don’t have a familiar which can safely deliver the spell, so you need to put yourself at tremendous risk to apply this.
- : Among the best area control spells in the game.
- : If the target has 20 or fewer hit points, you shouldn’t need a 6th-level spell to kill it. If it has more than 20 hit points you should be hitting it with a save-or-suck spell. I really want this spell to be good because it’s so funny, but it just isn’t.
- : Situational, and at this level you have several other options which are more versatile that will solve the same problems.
- : I really don’t like confusion because it’s so unreliable.
- : At this level you have a variety of other options which also require fortitude saves but will outright kill enemies. The only appeal of this spell is marching an army of undead past it for the temporary hit points.
- : Fireball with 1-round Daze and Stun. I’m confused why both conditions are applied since Stun is just a better version of Daze. My best guess is that it’s to help overcome condition immunities.
(Su): Increasing your spell DCs by 1 is great and the Will save bonus is nice since you’ll have relatively poor Wisdom, but the bleed damage is mostly pointless. The number of rounds should be fine so long as you only use this one rounds when you want to cast a save-or-suck spell.
(Ex): Unless you’re polymorphing, you should be investing more in not being hit and less in surviving hits.
(Su): Permanent spell resistance is fantastic, but remember that it applies whether you want it to or not, and lowering spell resistance is a Standard Action.
Dream starts of strong and gets gradually weirder and stranger as you gain levels.
Phrenic Pool Ability: Charisma
: Dream starts off with save-or-suck spells, but gets into weird utility spells after Deep Slumber. The theme is excellent, and most of the spells are at least usable.
- : The best save-or-suck spell for your first several levels. It’s annoying that you’re locked into it since it becomes totally useless at higher levels, but it’s still a good freebie.
- : Single-target save or suck. This will take a creature out of a fight for rounds/level, but be careful of the repeated saving throws.
- : The same issues as Sleep, but with a higher hit dice cap it will be useful for a bit longer.
- : Very situational normally, but once you get Walking Dream this will allow you to create a stock of host bodies if you manage to find creatures sleeping naturally. Unfortunately, there are no magical sleep spells with durations long enough to make this work, so you’ll need to actually ambush sleeping enemies somehow.
- : Very situational, but combined with Oneiromancy it can be extremely potent against enemies who you’re having trouble locating or drawing out of their lairs.
- : Extremely powerful, but it can be very dangerous since you need to be within 5 feet to affect creatures. Your best bet is probably to use this while invisible and sneak around putting creatures to sleep.
- : Excellent for utility, infiltration, and retreat.
- dream voyage: This is a very strange spell. Unless your GM knows what the subject is dreaming about, I’m not sure how this would work. I wouldn’t expect to use this much.
- microcosm: As far as I can tell, this is a save-or-suck spell with a potentially permanent duration. However, the text notably omits what the spell actually does to the target. “You plunge the targets’ minds into a veiled immersive mindscape of your own design” is the closest we get, and that’s flavor text. I post a thread on the Rules Forums, so hopefully someone will clarify.
(Su): It’s really hard to find a creature that’s asleep and that you’re planning to talk to in the next 24 hours unless you put them to sleep and interrogate them later. This must be the easiest method for recharging your Phrenic Pool, so it’s not surprise that there’s such a small limit on how much and how often you can recharge.
(Su): Oneiromancy is fantastic. Combine it with Dream Leach to effectively use Suggestion on a create that you put to sleep. Use it with Nightmare to convince a hidden enemy to meet you somewhere public. Get clever.
(Sp): Put creatures to sleep, and instead of waking them to interrogate them you can just read their minds.
(Sp): It appears that this effect doesn’t end if the creature would normally wake up, like at the end of a sleep spell’s duration. If you can put an enemy to sleep, take over its body and use it to fight. If it dies, you return safely to your own body and re-join the fight.
If your party lacks a cleric, this is a great option. It starts off slow, but really picks up at high levels when you get options like Prayer Aura. You get a little bit of healing, some spells from the cleric list, and eventually you get Miracle.
Phrenic Pool Ability: Wisdom
: Mostly good options, most of which aren’t on the Psychic spell list.
- : A great buff at low levels, and with minutes/level duration it can last through a fight or two.
- : Save-or-suck is always a better option.
- : Largely useless for you, but it can save your allies a fortune in gold spent on enhacing their armor and shields.
- : Fancy protection from evil with a slightly better deflection bonus.
- : Very powerful, but the 500gp material component is very expensive.
- : Situational. It’s a bit like Restoration, but only for mental stuff.
- : Situational, but very powerful when you need it.
- : Giving this to a spontaneous caster is cruel. It’s really expensive to use so you’re not going to cast it more than a few times in your character’s whole life.
- : Like Wish, but not quite as versatile and not nearly so costly.
Deity (Ex): Not a huge restriction.
: Very limited access to healing spells, but at low levels before your party can afford a wand of cure light wounds this will make a big difference. You also get to recharge your Phrenic pool when you heal things, which is a nice reward.
(Su): This will save you a few thousand gold pieces and open up your cloak slot, but cloaks of resistance are inexpensive compared to other defensive items so your resitance bonus may be worse than that of your allies.
(Su): Prayer is a great buff. Luck bonuses are extremely rare. It’s unclear if the penalties against your enemies allow a save, and if they do you could probably just toggle the ability on/off on your next turn to force them to save again. Discuss it with your GM to be sure. Activating this as a free action means that you can turn it on, throw a save-or-suck spell against debuffed enemies, and end an encounter using only one round of the duration.
A huge missed opportunity, the Lore discipline has a really cool flavor and some really good spells, but the abilities are almost universally worthless. The ability to gain extra Phrenic Pool points doesn’t function until 4th level, and doesn’t function without spending gold until at least 6th level. You also need to use the Skill Unlocks system to use one of the discipline’s abilities. The spell list is good, but locks you into several spells which will very rarely see use.
Phrenic Pool Ability: Wisdom
: Several absolutely fantastic options, but a few which you’ll only use rarely.
- : Situational, but useful and largely replaces the need for the Linguistics skill.
- : You won’t be using this in combat, but outside of combat this is a significant bonus to every knowledge skill.
- : Someone in the party needs to have it.
- : Situational, and it requires you to invest in Sense Motive for it to be effective.
- : Very situational.
- : Situational, but one of the most useful divinations in the game. It’s essentially “ask the GM about the plot” as a spell. You might only cast it once or twice, which hurts for a spontaneous caster.
- : Situational.
- : At hours per level duration you can cast this before sleeping and use the effect the next day. Save this for saving throws; a +16 bonus (the minimum you could get) will make you almost certain to pass even the most terrifying save DC.
- : It only lasts for one minute, but it effectively means that you can cast quickened spells of 5th level and below without raising their spell level. If you can cast this before jumping into a fight, it’s a game-changer.
(Su): It’s annoying that this requires you to learn and cast spells which the Lore discipline doesn’t give you. The spells which trigger the effect are vaguely defined. The first spell that seems to fit is Augury, which is 2nd level, so you can’t get extra pool points until 4th level. It also has a 25gp focus and a 25gp material component, so it can become a problem if you use it constantly. Blood Biography is the first spell without a gold cost, but it’s really situational and I don’t think I would waste a known spell on it if it didn’t get you Phrenic Pool points.
(Su): This is a very difficult ability to use. In real life an ability like this would be immenseley useful, but it’s easily replaced by mundane methods like writing stuff down in a journal. The best usage I can think of depends on the telepathic link part of the ability, which allows you to transfer memories to people. Of course, they receive them like normal memories, so it’s rare that you’ll be able to provide any meaningful detail to your party beyond what you could convey by descibing the event in detail. The second half of the ability is extremely situational, and doesn’t apply to symbol traps, which are the biggest thing you would want to use this on.
(Ex): If you’re not using skill unlocks, this is totally useless. Even if you do use skill unlocks, you’re forced to invest skill ranks in Linguistics, which is a largely useless skill. Adding Commune to the list of potential spell effects is neat, but you can’t guarantee that you’ll need to cast it once a week.
(Su): Permanent +2 (+4 if you study) to knowledge checks which your library covers. Not much at this level, but still nice.
The design of this discipline is exciting. The abilities are fun, the concept is neat, and everything makes sense thematically. Unfortunately, the entire discipline is based around dealing damage (already a weak option for spellcasters), and further handicaps itself by making much of the damage non-lethal.
Phrenic Pool Ability: Charisma
: Most of the spell list relates to dealing damage, much of which is subdual. Damage is usually a poor strategy for spellcasters, and this discipline doesn’t fix that.
- : A terrible waste of a spell slot unless you’re interrogating a helpless enemy.
- : Too slow. Not useful in combat, and Persuasive Goad does the same thing out of combat.
- : A good way to offset your poor hit dice, but without a familiar it can be dangerous to use.
- : Affecting multiple targets doesn’t make Pain Strike better.
- : The damage isn’t great, but a successful save doesn’t reduce it. Staggering a creature is very effective if it relies on full attacks, but if it uses a single attack, special abilities, or spells, Staggered will have little effect.
- : -4 to attacks is decent, but by this level you have numerous better options.
- : No save, no spell resistance. Against melee enemies this can be significant handicap. Just reducing their speed and preventing charges offers your melee allies a significant tactical advantage.
- : 1d6/level single-target damage. The worst way to be a spellcaster.
- : Fantastic save-or-suck. By the time you get this you can affect 9 creatures, which should win most encounters. The duration lasts long enough that you’re almost guaranteed that the targets will fail at least one save, rendering them unconscious. Since you get to pick the targets, you don’t even need to worry about your allies getting in the way.
(Su): At first and second level this can be significant. It won’t matter much at higher levels, but it’s a nice way to spend your swift action if you don’t have anything else to use it for. It also powers your phrenic pool recharge mechanic. Unfortunately, this requires that you deal damage with spells instead of relying on save-or-suck spells.
Power from Pain (Su): Recharging your phrenic pool based on damage isn’t ideal, especially since you have a chance for it to fail if you don’t roll enough damage. The scaling damage on Painful reminder will make it more reliable, but it’s going to be difficult at low levels where you need the extra points most. The daily uses are limited like every other discipline, but for some reason it’s dependent on Wisdom even though the discipline is Charisma-based. Hopefully this is an error, but the SRD has not been erratad yet.
(Sp): This won’t be a ton of healing, but you’re a wizard-equivalent, so you shouldn’t be taking damage frequently. You can also only use this on yourself, so its utility is limited, but this will save your party the trouble of healing you themselves.
(Su): Skip the fear-stacking and go straight to panicked for a round. If you use one usage, Frightened is better than sickened (remember that Frighten includes Shaken, which applies almost identical penalties to sickened). If you use two usages, Dazed will prevent your enemy from taking actions or Panicked can provoke a bunch of attacks of opportunity. Nauseated is good, but in no way as good as Dazed or Panicked.
This one starts off week and gets crazy at high levels. The low- and mid-level options are all mediocre at best, and work better as amusing novelties than actual character options. Then suddenly you get Hallucinogenic Aura and you can’t go out in public without sending innocent people into a fit frothing madness in which there is a very real chance that they will deal 1d8+str damage to themselves and bleed out in the middle of the street. If you manage to not be hunted down and murdered for your crimes against society, the high-level spells are fairly good. But you’ll need to make it to level 14 with little to no benefit from this discipline just to get some spells when you could just learn on your own since they’re already on your spell list.
Phrenic Pool Ability: Wisdom
: Starts off very poorly, but gets great options at high levels.
- : Amusing, but totally useless in any practical sense.
- : The target needs to fail a Will save to then take a penalty to Will saves. Why not just use whatever other spell you were going to follow up with?
- : This is an excellent debuff, especially against enemy spellcasters.
- : Confusion is unreliable.
- : Situational.
- : Very situational.
- : Cone of Stun with a decent fallback effect if targets pass the save.
- : Remove the target from the fight with no save for rounds/level. If you attack them there’s still a chance that they can’t retaliate.
- : The safest way to travel the planes.
(Ex): Very situational.
(Su): +4 Intelligence for a few minutes. It will boost your spell save DCs, but that’s about it.
(Su): Mind-affecting spells include a variety of effects, including scary things like dominate person. This adds a great backlash effect.
(Su): The effect is constant, so it takes effect as soon as creatures come within 30 feet of you. While this is great for deterring enemies, it’s really annoying anywhere else since you’re utterly unable to turn it off. The ability provides for an antidote which will help your party, but if you walk into a crowded area you’re going to cause mass insanity and violence. Walking through a crowded market could be considered a war crime. It’s that dangerous.
The Rapport discipline is a team player. You provide useful utility and defensive options to your allies, you eventually get teamwork feats which you can then share with Coordinated Effort, and you get the ability to share your Intelligence- or Charisma-based skill modifiers with your allies, opening up all sorts of skill uses to characters with poor skills.
Phrenic Pool Ability: Charisma
: A mixed bag. Most of the options are decent, and few are bad.
- : Fantastically useful in a world where the vast majority of people you talk to are humanoids.
- : Very situational.
- : One level after you get a free teamwork feat, you get the ability to share it with your party.
- : Situational, and it takes quite a bit of forethought to make this useful.
- : Much better than Tongues.
- : This is a really neat spell, but since you’re not going to be making attacks the only useful option is the spellcasting option. Hopefully you have another full caster to work with.
- : Situational, but very effective.
- : Very useful, but it won’t affect a huge number of creatures and it won’t help in combat.
- : Incapacitates enemies for rounds/level, but it won’t actually end a fight on its own.
(Su): A very useful way to keep tabs on your allies until you can cast Telepathic Bond.
(Su): This is fantastic, despite the limited usage. Your allies need to share your daily uses, so be sure to reserve this for saves that are going to really matter. Also be sure to invest in your Charisma to make sure that the bonus is as big as possible. If you start with 14 Charisma and get +6 from a headband, you’re granting a +5 bonus, which is a massive bonus even if you only get to use it a few times per day.
(Sp): Situational, but a neat flavor. Sharing a memory with someone is much more interesting than simply telling them what happened.
(Ex): Teamwork feats are great, but they need a lot of coordination with your allies. You can cast Coordinated Effort to share your teamwork feat with your allies, but until you’ve gained a few more levels it’s a poor way to spend your 3rd-level spell slots. See my Practical Guide to Teamwork Feats for further guidance.
(Ex): The possibilities here are great. Use Magic Device is a good fallback if you don’t know what else to use.
The Self-Perfection discipline borrows from Monks in many ways, and the result is a little bit weird. Still, the abilities and spells are good.
Phrenic Pool Ability: Wisdom
: Several fantastic options spread throughout the list.
- : Situational.
- : Ability score buffs from these spells aren’t especially helpful, and Constitution is the worst of them. Suddenly losing 2 hit points per level is a good way to kill yourself.
- : One of the best buffs in the game.
- : Somewhat situational, but grapple monsters are common, so this is very useful.
- : Blindsight for 10 minutes/level.
- : Become a fighter for rounds/level. This is a hard spell to use because it doesn’t solve some major problems like your poor hit points, your lack of decent weaponry, or your lack of combat feats.
- : Excellent for infiltration and escape.
- : Potentially useful in combination with Transformation, but still not especially useful for a strictly mon-melee character.
- : Cast this every day at the start of the day. It’s a free extra life.
(Ex): AC isn’t especially important for a dedicated spellcaster, but this is still a nice bonus. It could be especially useful for multiclass builds like cleric/psychic/mystic theurge or something.
(Su): Not especially useful, but it’s pretty easy to use to recharge your phrenic pool. Find something heavy and make a Strength check to lift it.
(Su): Some self-healing and the ability to remove many frustrating effects which normally require a cleric.
(Ex): Many high-level monsters use poison and disease, but as a spellcaster you should have options to prevent enemies from hitting you rather than attempting to survive attacks.
Tranquility does a lot of stuff involving stopping emotion effects. While that can be useful for psychic spellcasters who depend on “emotion components”, very few foes use emotion-based effects, so the abilities will rarely matter.
Phrenic Pool Ability: Wisdom
: Great options early and late, but the middle is a huge dead zone.
- : Since Tranquility is Wisdom-based you’re probably not your party’s Face. Use this to make creatures like your friends before they start talking.
- : Off-switch for spellcasters.
- : Very situational, and it doesn’t actually prevent people from killing you.
- : If this wasn’t limited to humanoids it would be fantastic. In encounters with multiple humanoid enemies you can cast this repeatedly and shut down the encounter one round at a time while your allies kill things.
- : Nonlethal damage is difficult, and this doesn’t do enough damage to be a serious deterrent against enemies at this level.
- : Situational. It’s a bit like Restoration, but only for mental stuff.
- : Too situational. (I wanted to leave this blank for comic effect, but it wasn’t very helpful.)
- : 24-hour duration. +8 against mind-affecting effects covers nearly all Will saves, and blocking divinations (including See Invisibility) means that you can turn invisible and comfortably hide knowing that magical means can’t expose you.
- : Among the best spells in the game.
(Su): The bonus is fantastic, but unless you throw yourself against enemies with effects which call for Will saves you’ll have trouble recharging your Phrenic Pool.
(Su): Very situational.
(Su): There doesn’t appear to be a limit on how often you can do this, so you can refresh the effect whenever it wears off. I recommend using Shaken as your go-to since many fear effects start by making the creature Shaken.
