Free Your Mind: A Guide to the PF2e Psychic [Legacy]

Free Your Mind: A Guide to the PF2e Psychic

by blammit (AKA u/double_blammit)

PLEASE READ: THIS GUIDE WILL NO LONGER BE UPDATED. I will keep this guide alive, but will make a copy of it for Remaster content and provide updates there. This guide will remain in its current state for people who wish to play Pathfinder 2e in the original, pre-Remaster version.

REMASTER VERSION IS HERE

4 January 2023: Ancestries updated for the CRB errata change to ability boosts.

16 November 2022: Now includes the ancestries and ancestry feats from Impossible Lands.

About the psychic & the guide

The psychic, at its core, is a spontaneous occult caster with a heavy focus on modified and modifying cantrips. While it can use fewer spells per day than any other full caster, it has a much more readily renewable resource in the way it uses focus points to amp its cantrips. Each of its subclasses, called conscious minds, gets two modified standard cantrips and (eventually) three unique cantrips, all of which prompt further choices regarding focus point usage.

This class builds on psychic tropes: telekinesis, mental control of the elements, teleportation, clouding minds for invisibility, psychic shielding, precognition, and astral projection. If you want to live out your Matrix fantasy and bend the world around you with your mind, this is the class for you.

I will only cover uncommon or rare options for ancestries and a limited few but more widely applicable options.

This is a guide oriented toward optimization. There are plenty of fun choices that are passable and even effective, but not optimized. Please do not consider this guide a comprehensive be-all, end-all. It is designed to guide you toward optimal build choices.

This guide is designed such that you can jump to any portion of it and get a full understanding of the available options. If you read this guide from start to finish, be aware that you will see repeat information.

If you have questions, comments, or recommendations, please feel free to message me on reddit as u/double_blammit.

Color/rating guide

Best (*****): Seriously. You want this.

Great (****): You almost certainly want this.

Good (***): Generally worth taking, but not in all cases.

Situational (**): You can make it work, but it mostly applies in limited situations.

Bad (*): Generally, you don’t want this. Sometimes worth taking in rare situations, or requires a lot of effort to make it work.

Identifiers

(U): Unleash your Psyche candidate. These spells will receive the status bonus to damage granted by Unleash your Psyche.

(C): Indicates an enchantment or illusion spell for the purposes of the captivator archetype.

Ancestries

I deliberately did not include certain heritages and ancestry feats. If it’s not in the guide, consider it either too situational for me to include it in the guide or outright bad (*). That’s not to say you should always avoid the options the guide doesn’t list - just be aware that those options will tend to be situational or otherwise highly specialized.

Across the board, ancestry-related lore feats will be more useful to CHA-based subconscious minds, assuming you feel the need for a couple more trained skills. Generally, I consider these feats yellow (**) because you’re only ever realistically going to have three skills that receive boosts. More trained skills may or may not feel useful to you. These feats will be better at early levels and you can comfortably retrain out of them at later levels.

In the case of heritages and feats that only grant one specific type of resistance, you can comfortably take them since they’re almost certain to come up at some point. These are always worth talking with your GM, though, assuming said GM is willing to work with you on choices that you can expect to be useful. No one likes a dead feat(ure).

Common ancestries

Dwarf (***)

You’ll have less speed than most ancestries, but fortunately the psychic has a few ways to get around that (The Unbound Step conscious mind in particular). With 10 HP, it’ll help keep you alive a bit better, although that may not be a big consideration for you depending on party composition and how able you are to keep yourself away from enemies. If you want to use the baseline abilities, CON/WIS/free are workable boosts, especially if you plan to take the Strain Mind feat. With a CHA penalty, you’ll be best off with one of the INT-based subconscious minds. If you want to play a CHA build, you’re better off choosing the two free ability boosts instead. Inherent darkvision is nothing to sneeze at. Dwarf is a decent ancestry choice that will primarily benefit you if you want some extra survivability.

Heritage:

Ancient-Blooded (***): The circumstance bonus to saves as a reaction is great no matter what, especially because you don’t have a ton of options for your reaction.
Anvil Dwarf (**): If you plan to use an air repeater, this will help you a bit with making your own ammunition.
Death Warden (***): There are lots of necromancy effects out there (one notable early and frequent example: harm). This will help you overcome them. It’s especially nice for those that target your fortitude save.
Elemental Heart (**): Synergizes well with The Unbound Step conscious mind, but since it requires two actions it’s risky for you. It’ll be easier to use if you’re under haste or a similar effect.

Ancestry feats:

(1) Clan Lore (** / ***): Despite being a feat that gives two trained skill proficiencies, this one’s relatively valuable because it gives you quite a bit of flexibility in which skills you can choose. CHA-based subconscious minds will appreciate this more, while INT-based subconscious minds may not feel the need for extra trained-proficiency skills. Clan Runebinder effectively gives you arcana and a free skill.

(1) Dwarven Doughtiness (**): The frightened condition is common enough that getting rid of it more quickly will occasionally be valuable, especially into the higher levels when you’re fighting enemies that can hit you with worse levels of frightened. You do have great will saves, though, so you may find that you don’t have to deal with the frightened condition often.
(1) Explosive Savant / (13) Explosive Expert (**): It’s uncommon, but has to do with firearms. If your GM allows firearms, this feat will give you proficiency in the (long) air repeater. That’s a decent firearm to take advantage of the damage from Psi Strikes. You don’t necessarily want to use a weapon and make Strikes, but it’s a decent third action every now and again. Just don’t do so on a turn when you’ve made a spell attack.
(1) Eye for Treasure (***): The rating here assumes you’re playing an INT-based subconscious mind build. This feat slims down the skill diversity required for identifying magic items, placing the focus on crafting, allowing you to use crafting to identify magic items, and giving you a bonus to do so. Considering that you don’t get a rogue or investigator amount of skill increases, rolling functionality from one skill into another is valuable for you.
(1) Rock Runner (**): For a terrain-limited feat, this choice is actually decent for you. You certainly have the flexibility to focus on DEX, although you’ll have to put a background skill boost into it to really be competent with DEX skills. Still, as an ancestry with mobility limitations, being able to overcome some of those limitations with a first-level ancestry feat will be alright for you. Once again, this will be most valuable with The Unbound Step conscious mind, and requires you to focus on acrobatics.
(5) Defy the Darkness (****): There aren’t a whole lot of occult spells that deal with darkness. You don’t give up much in exchange for greater darkvision.
(5) Dwarven Reinforcement (**): You aren’t likely to be running around with a shield, but an ally might. If you’re focusing on crafting - and with an INT-based subconscious mind plus some other ancestry feats, you just might be - you can help your champion or fighter take a bit less damage with improvements to their shield’s hardness.
(9) Echoes in Stone (**): An extra imprecise sense might be useful in tandem with Homing Beacon, but as usual you’re limited by your poor perception progression. It’s also terrain-limited. As such, this feat is very situational.
(9) Energy Blessed (**): A bit of extra damage and control over the emanation’s size if you’re an elemental heart dwarf.
(9) Heroes’ Call (****): Psychics are entirely capable of putting innate spells to good use. Heroism is a solid spell, even though you already have access to it, especially because of your limited number of spell slots. Giving yourself some potential to layer on temp HP when you’re in danger is even better.
(9) Kneel for No God (***): It requires a specific ethnicity, but being able to turn a crit fail into a fail against divine spells as a reaction is pretty good. Since you don’t need to worship a deity as a psychic, this feat is a viable pick.
(9) Mountain’s Stoutness (***): There are two ways to look at your HP: you’ll never have much, so you shouldn’t worry about it and stay way far away from anything that will do damage to you; or, you should do everything in your power to shore up the weakness. Since you’re already looking at playing a dwarf with good ancestry HP and a CON boost, your thinking likely falls into the latter category. Mountain’s stoutness really leans into that mentality, essentially being the general feat Toughness but also stacking with Toughness. If you do stack it with Toughness, that’s an extra 2 HP per level and it’s much easier to recover from the dying condition. Especially if you’re planning to do hit-and-run tactics with The Unbound Step subconscious mind, extra HP is your best friend.
(9) Stone Bones (**): Despite the above analysis of Mountain’s Stoutness, you still really want to stay away from enemies that can comfortably crit you. If you do feel like engaging in risky near-frontline play, this feat gives you a chance to survive those nasty crits.

Elf (****)

Best baseline speed of any ancestry, which is valuable for a squishy caster with the lowest HP in the game. Speaking of low HP, if you run the baseline abilities, that CON penalty is rough. DEX/INT/free are great boosts for an INT build, though. If you don’t want to deal with the CON penalty, just choose the two free ability boosts instead. The extra speed helps counteract your low HP somewhat by better helping you keep away from danger, and synergizes with the mobility tools available to you (The Unbound Step in particular). The innate spells you can get from this ancestry are absolutely fantastic when coupled with Unleash your Mind. It’s also a good ancestry alongside a versatile heritage since most of its value comes through the ancestry feats on offer.

Heritage:

Ancient (***/**): You can get a head start on a class archetype. This may or may not be great depending on the archetype you pick.
Cavern (***): Darkvision is always good.
Seer (***): You get detect magic and so can ignore the skill feat that would grant it, as well as free up a cantrip slot. You’ll primarily want this heritage on an INT-based subconscious mind since it gives you a bonus to identify magic.
Whisper (**): Helpful with Homing Beacon to counter invisible creatures for you and your allies. Your perception won’t be great, of course, but it at least makes the Homing Beacon feat more accessible if you really want to use it.

Ancestry feats:

(1) Ancestral Longevity / (9) Expert Longevity / (13) Universal Longevity (** / ***): You’ll primarily want these feats on an INT-based subconscious mind build. That being the case, you likely have everything you want to be proficient in at trained proficiency already, meaning Ancestral Longevity may not be that exciting for you. I recommend using it for lore flexibility prior to Expert and Universal Longevity. Once you get those feats, however, being able to raise one of your trained skills to expert proficiency is great. Universal Longevity’s flexibility will once again allow you to flex into a lore skill as needed, but more readily than just at the start of any given day.
(1) Elemental Wrath (***): Acid splash isn’t the best cantrip, but having access to not only a spell you wouldn’t otherwise get, but a choice of energy damage type, is valuable. Psychics are very capable with innate spells, too. This feat is a solid pick.
(1) Elven Verve (**): This feat is inherently situational, but as a caster who will frequently use two actions to cast a spell the debuffs this feat helps you overcome can be particularly frustrating.
(1) Elven Weapon Familiarity (**): If you’re planning to take Psi Strikes, the shortbow is one of your best options for Strikes. You don’t have the proficiency for weapon Strikes to be a core part of your build, but it’s an extra choice for a third action at least. Oscillating Wave psychics will have the most damage versatility with the shortbow coupled with Psi Strikes.
(1) Forlorn (***): Good across the board since emotion effects are common and you already have a good will save.
(1) Nimble Elf (****): Getting a baseline 35 foot speed is fantastic no matter what, especially for Unbound Step psychics for the movement speed synergy.
(1) Otherworldly Magic (****): As always, getting innate spells from other traditions’ spell lists is quite nice. The arcane list has a lot to offer (electric arc).
(1) Unwavering Mien (**): You’ve got a great will save already. You may feel that this feat is redundant because of that fact, but if you really want to shore up your defenses against mental effects this will help.
(1) Wildborn Magic / (5) Wildborn Adept (***): Note that this is only available to elves of the Mualijae ethnicity. Cantrip versatility and access to more damage types is awesome. Just keep in mind that Wildborn Magic is uncommon.
(5) Ageless Patience (**): Another feat that can help with Homing Beacon. It does mean that you have to spend two actions in combat to Seek, though, which will be pretty limiting on which cantrips you can amp for the Homing Beacon effect.
(5) Ancestral Suspicion (**): Much like Unwavering Mien, you may feel that it’s redundant, but being controlled by an enemy is problematic, to say the least. The bonus to Sense Motive won’t be as useful for you, though.
(5) Elven Instincts (***): Since your perception isn’t great, having a buff for initiative is helpful. If you can consistently find a skill to roll for initiative instead (stealth is a good one), you may just want to go that route, but this feat helps otherwise.
(9) Brightness Seeker (***): Not only is augury generally useful, getting a reaction for 30 minutes following its use to improve your saves is quite good.
(9) Elf Step (***): You’re a squishy caster with the lowest class HP in the game and an ancestry that does not embrace the CON life. Being able to Step twice with one action to get away from danger is valuable for you.
(9) Otherworldly Acumen (****): Especially as a spontaneous caster, getting a flexible innate spell from another spell tradition is awesome. It has to be from the same tradition as your prerequisite innate spell, but considering your options are generally arcane or primal, that’s hardly a hindrance.
(9) Tree Climber (***): Getting a climb speed means your hands can be free to cast and do whatever else while climbing. Additionally, having extra movement speeds interacts with warp step, which technically every conscious mind can access the standard psi cantrip version via the Parallel Breakthrough class feat. Once you have common (or permanent) access to flight, this feat is significantly less valuable and you can retrain out of it, but that’s a long way into a campaign.
(13) Wandering Heart (**): If the environment is frequently an issue for you and you picked one of the prerequisite heritages (let’s be honest, it was probably cavern elf), you can flex your heritage as needed to adapt to environmental hazards.

Gnome (****)

If you want to play a CHA build, the baseline CON/CHA/free boosts with a penalty to STR are perfect for you. Even if you want to play an INT-based subconscious mind, it’s a decent ability set. CHA builds don’t have much reason to instead choose two free ability boosts, but INT builds will appreciate the flexibility in that choice. Low-light vision is okay, but nothing too exciting. This ancestry offers a wealth of useful heritages and feats to boot.

Heritage:

Chameleon (**): You can afford to invest in DEX and, as such, stealth if you want. If you do so, the circumstance bonus will be helpful pretty frequently. Silent Whisper psychics do best with it since they have a slight bent toward infiltration.
Fey-Touched (****): Innate spells are great, and the Primal spell list provides welcome damage type versatility (cough, electric arc). Plus, you can swap your chosen cantrip out once per day. If you take an archetype that grants a primal focus spell, this can qualify you for Energized Font later. If you use imaginary weapon, druid can be a good choice. The leshy familiar, from level 8+, provides access to 15 foot reach (Grasping Tendrils via Leshy Familiar Secrets) coupled with the Spell Delivery familiar ability, even if that is a feat-heavy combination.
Sensate (**): This heritage can help with Homing Beacon but, of course, it is still limited by your poor perception.
Umbral (***): Darkvision is always good.
Wellspring (****): Innate spells are great, and having access to either the arcane list to pull a cantrip from is even better (electric arc). It also grants access to the divine spell list, but you’ll be more hard-pressed to find a consistently useful cantrip there. If you want the Energized Font feat, you’ll either have to choose an occult cantrip (the easiest method) or plan to take an archetype that grants a focus spell from a tradition that matches the cantrip you choose.

Ancestry feats:

(1) Animal Accomplice (***): Familiars are good. You’re not even restricted on what kind of familiar, other than a roleplay nudge to pick a creature with a burrow speed. If you ever want to make it better, though, you’ll need an archetype.
(1) Empathetic Plea (****): This is an amazing defensive benefit for a CHA-based psychic, especially because your initiative rolls won’t tend to be good. If you do get good initiative rolls, consider the delay and ready actions if you want to play defensively. If you take this, plan to focus on diplomacy - there isn’t anything else in the game that can impose a -8 penalty. Especially as a class with the lowest class HP, any tool to keep yourself alive will be quite valuable. Even if you’re playing an INT-based psychic, the fact that the gnome ancestry grants a baseline boost to your CHA means you can start with 16 CHA and this feat will still be very nearly as effective as a CHA-based psychic.
(1) First World Magic (****): Innate spells are great, and the Primal spell list provides welcome damage type versatility (. If you take an archetype that gives you a primal focus spell, this can qualify you for Energized Font later.
(1) Gnome Obsession (***): Good if you plan to use Recall Knowledge much, and great for an INT-based psychic (especially with the Gathered Lore subconscious mind). Automatic scaling is amazing. Discuss with your GM as to your choice’s value in the campaign.
(1) Gnome Polyglot (**): Can be useful if you plan to emphasize the face skills and makes the Multilingual skill feat worth taking. Multilingual is helpful if you plan to use Bon Mot frequently or to augment Demoralize in the rare cases where Intimidating Glare won’t work. Naturally, this is most useful for a CHA-based psychic.
(1) Grim Insight (***): A nice way to turn the tables on enemies trying to demoralize you. Even outside of the ubiquitous demoralize action, fear effects are common. Note that this requires the Umbral heritage.
(1) Illusion Sense (**): It’s pretty situational on its own, but it’s required for some decent feats.

(5) Intuitive Illusions (**): This has outstanding action economy if you have a build focused on illusion spells. Note that it’s only once per day.
(5) Natural Illusionist (***): Free scaling spells are nice. Silent Whisper psychics do best with it since they have a slight bent toward infiltration. Note that it’s not specified whether these spells are chosen in daily preparations or chosen spontaneously.

(1) Life-Giving Magic (***): Temporary HP is a great buffer for a class without much HP.
(1) Razzle-Dazzle (**) If you’re using amped dancing lights, this feat can help it out a bit by extending the Dazzle duration. It’s more valuable of a feat if you take spells that inflict the Dazzled condition, but the only one of those that’s truly good is vibrant pattern, which isn’t available until the middle levels.
(1) Theoretical Acumen (**): INT-based psychics will like this one. It’s only once a day, but you’re probably investing in at least one Recall Knowledge skill. Using that better modifier for a save or a Seek will be decent and works well with Homing Beacon.
(1) Unexpected Shift / (9) Fortuitous Shift (** / ***): The damage resistance and save bonus are quite good, but the flat check is only a 25% chance. Once you get Fortuitous Shift and make it a 50% chance, it’s a pretty good chance of mitigating effects you don’t want to suffer. Especially valuable as a reaction since you really have to build for reaction options.
(5) Energized Font (****): One free focus point recharge per day is downright amazing, even if it takes an action to do so. Note that you can only qualify for this with the Wellspring heritage unless you have an archetype that grants a non-occult focus spell. If you take the Wellspring heritage but don’t choose an occult cantrip, you will also need an archetype that grants a non-occult focus spell. You have several other options for immediate focus point recharge, but you really can’t have too many.
(9) First World Adept (***): You already have access to both spells, but they’re both good and you’re strapped for spell slots. It’ll require you to have a primal innate spell, but that’s not much of a restriction - you’re probably getting electric arc from this ancestry anyway.
(9) Life Leap (***): The action economy isn’t as good as Tumble Through, but it does eliminate a reliance on acrobatics to get into position. It can also be a useful escape mechanism which, without much HP, you want. You can also use it to better get into position for flanking if you’re playing one of the conscious minds with a melee psi cantrip, which is especially useful because it doesn’t trigger reactions based on movement.
(9) Vivacious Conduit (**): You really want to be at full HP at the start of every encounter. This will help you get there more easily. It’s not necessary provided your party has the resources to heal everyone up to full as needed in exploration mode. By this level, they probably do, but still, it can’t hurt to have a little extra guaranteed HP.
(13) Instinctive Obfuscation (****): It’s only once per day, but every little bit keeping you alive helps. You’ll need an arcane or occult innate spell, but you probably have electric arc as an arcane spell if you’re eyeballing this feat. Especially useful for conscious minds that have melee cantrips.

Goblin (***)

If you want to run the baseline abilities, DEX/CHA/free boosts are great, they just come at the cost of a WIS penalty. For a CHA build, if you feel you can handle the WIS penalty (your will save progression is great, after all), you’ll appreciate the DEX/CHA/free boosts. If you’re building an INT-based subconscious mind, you’re generally better off choosing two free ability boosts. Darkvision is always good to have, too. There’s only really one standout heritage, but you could always go for a versatile heritage or discuss with your GM which of the environment-oriented heritages will be most useful.

Heritage:

Unbreakable (***): You get 10 HP rather than 6. ‘Nuff said.

Ancestry feats:

(1) Bouncy Goblin (***): (Unbreakable goblins only): A trained skill that relies on DEX and a +2 bonus to Tumble Through. Not bad. If you’re focusing on acrobatics, and you certainly have the room in your ability scores to support doing so, this is a good choice. Getting some help to Tumble Through can help you get out of a bad position, or get into a better position if you’re building a conscious mind with melee psi cantrips.

(9) Roll With It (**): This is a risky feat, but its benefits are pretty good. If you get hit in melee, as a reaction, the enemy that hit you can move you 30 feet to a point of its choosing. Not only does this put you at risk of poor positioning, it’s not considered forced movement, meaning you trigger movement-based reactions. Then you’re prone and stunned 1, meaning your next turn is going to not only have less actions but at some point require you to dedicate an action to standing up. At this level, hopefully you’ve invested enough in acrobatics to have access to the Kip Up skill feat so you won’t have to spend an action to stand up. As for the benefits, you take minimum damage from a successful Strike against you or make it so that a crit success Strike doesn’t deal double damage to you. Like I said, risky tradeoff, but on a very low HP class, it may make a world of difference.

(1) Burn It! (**): For most conscious minds, you aren’t going to be dealing fire damage often. For Oscillating Wave builds, though, this feat is blue (****). All of the damage-dealing psi cantrips and granted spells for Oscillating Wave do fire damage at some point. If you’re using entropic wheel, all of your granted damage-dealing spells and psi cantrips deal fire damage no matter the phase of Conservation of Energy. It only works on spells, though, so it won’t add damage to mindshift effects. If you’re playing an Oscillating Wave psychic goblin, you absolutely want this feat. It isn’t a ton of extra damage, but it’s completely free.
(1) Goblin Scuttle / (9) Skittering Scuttle (***): Getting away from harm as a reaction is a valuable tool for you. Conscious minds with melee cantrips in particular will like this feat because their allies can enable them to get into melee, cast their cantrip, and then Step away from danger outside of their turn as a reaction. You may occasionally find some value in delaying your initiative to go just before your champion or fighter friend. Skittering Scuttle will give you more bang for your buck as far as movement, but because it’s a Stride will open you up to movement-triggered reactions.
(1) Goblin Song / (5) Loud Singer (**): These debuff one to nine targets and are based on your CHA, which you’ll have plenty of with a CHA-based subconscious mind. It’s also among the best uses for performance. Unfortunately, it requires you to invest in performance, which is not a particularly useful skill outside of this feat. Additionally, since it’s a status penalty, it won’t stack with the debuff provided by the daze standard psi cantrip.
(1) Twitchy (***): At minimum, it’s a slight bonus to your otherwise not-so-great initiative. It also applies on all skills for initiative, not just perception.
(1) Very Sneaky / (13) Very, Very Sneaky (**): If you’re investing in stealth, these feats will help a bit. Very, Very Sneaky is essentially a better Swift Sneak, although it’s available six levels later.
(13) Unbreakable-er Goblin (****): (Unbreakable goblin only) 10 more HP? Yep, great feat.
(17) Reckless Abandon (****): It’s only once per day, but turning a failure, and especially a critical failure, into a success against a harmful effect is incredible. On top of this, it minimizes damage from one effect. Note, however, that it only applies to effects that occur on your turn.

Halfling (***)

At 6 HP, this ancestry won’t do you any favors on the squishiness front. For the baseline ability spread, the STR penalty is fully manageable and DEX/WIS/free boosts are fine for any build. Not much reason to take the two free ability boosts instead, but you’re not exactly shooting yourself in the foot by doing so. You only get normal vision, but the Keen Eyes feature will help if you want Homing Beacon.

Heritage:

Gutsy (***): Emotion effects are common and you have a good will save. Shrug off those effects with ease.
Hillock (**): You really want to be at full HP at the start of every encounter. This will help you get there a bit more easily. It’s not necessary provided your party has the resources to heal everyone up to full as needed in exploration mode. At low levels, it will be much more valuable.
Nomadic (**): Can be useful if you plan to emphasize the face skills and makes the Multilingual skill feat worth taking. Multilingual is helpful if you plan to use Bon Mot frequently.

Ancestry feats:

(1) Distracting Shadows (***): If you build toward stealth, and you certainly have the ability score flexibility to support it, you’ll appreciate being able to Hide behind your allies and keep yourself a bit safer.

(13) Ceaseless Shadows (****): Now you can just use your allies as barriers. You don’t even need to Hide or Sneak to get bonuses from them, although you can now take those actions without needing cover or concealment. Even just being behind an ally (relative to a threat) without expending any actions, you gain +2 to AC, stealth, and reflex saves, which is very good. If you do spend an action to Take Cover, those bonuses all go up to +4. This also has some synergy with the Wandering Reverie’s Dream Guise feat, allowing you to easily get you and your ally into a position where you will get these bonuses.

(1) Halfling Luck / (13) Incredible Luck (****): Halfling Luck is very limited in its use frequency, but you’re almost certainly going to fail a check at least once per day. Among the best ancestry feats, bar none. Coupled with judicious hero point usage, you can really make this one stretch, too. Incredible Luck makes this much less limited, although it doesn’t affect Guiding Luck or Helpful Halfling.

(5) Halfling Ingenuity (**): This makes your Halfling Luck more versatile. It’s kind of like Untrained Improvisation, but limited in when it applies and with a big circumstance bonus to reroll untrained skill checks.
(5) Shared Luck (****): This makes your Halfling Luck more versatile. Share the love with your party. Giving an ally a reroll on a failed save can make a huge difference.
(9) Guiding Luck (****): This is essentially a once-per-day reroll for an attack or perception and nothing else, but both of those are worthy uses for a once-per-day reroll. Note that the Seek and Sense Motive actions are secret checks. Speak with your GM about how this will work for rerolls.

(1) Intuitive Cooperation (***): It’s uncommon and requires a specific ethnicity, but Aid is a valuable third action, especially if you have the Infinite Eye conscious mind and are using omnidirectional scan. Getting a +2 to Aid will be helpful to you for a long time, as well as the fact that allies get a +2 to Aid you. Also works well to load your Aid utility onto a single skill with the Gathered Lore subconscious mind.
(1) Unfettered Halfling (***): Casters really don’t like the grabbed condition. This helps quite a bit. You’ll most likely want to be invested in acrobatics to put it to best use.
(1) Watchful Halfling (**): The bonus to Sense Motive won’t do you all that much good, but this feat does give you some extra utility with Aid. Also works well to load your Aid utility onto a single skill with the Gathered Lore subconscious mind.
(5) Cultural Adaptability (****): There are a lot of great first level ancestry feats out there. One of the best uses for this feat is to pick up an innate spell for electric arc.
(9) Helpful Halfling (***): More bonuses to your allies is always good. It’ll synergize well with Infinite Eye’s omnidirectional scan (sort of) since you won’t necessarily need to amp it to give your allies a better bonus. There is some overlap though, so Infinite Eye builds may feel some redundancy with this feat.
(9) Irrepressible (***): Same benefit as the Gutsy heritage, but if you have Gutsy, you’re that much more resistant to emotion effects.
(9) Unhampered Passage (***): Casters don’t like being grabbed. This helps a ton, and you like innate spells.
(17) Shadow Self (***): A straight upgrade for any build that focuses on stealth. Invisibility once per hour without expending a spell is pretty good.

Human (****)

As usual, you can’t go wrong building as a human. A wealth of universally useful feats, access to the half-elf and half-orc versatile heritages without a variant rule, and the only way to get a first level class feat at level 1.

Heritage:

Half-elf (****): See the half-human heritages section.
Half-orc (*** / ****): See the half-human heritages section.
Skilled (**): One of few ways to gain automatic skill progression, although it only goes to expert.
Versatile (****): General feats are awesome. Getting one at first level is even better.

Ancestry feats:

(1) Adapted Cantrip (*****): Any one non-occult cantrip that takes up one of your picks in your spell repertoire. Pick up electric arc with absolutely no further feat investment required. You can even retrain it into a different tradition’s spell later on. This feat effectively gives you the benefits of two first level human ancestry feats. At the nearly nonexistent cost (which you may not even consider a cost, build depending) of trading out one of the three occult cantrips in your repertoire, it replaces the need for an ancestry feat that grants an innate cantrip as well as the need for Natural Ambition to get Ancestral Mind at first level.

(5) Adaptive Adept (**): If you’re picking electric arc, and you probably should, that means you’re locked in to either arcane or primal spells for this feat. Some decent picks for first level, non-occult spells (I’ll use (A) for arcane, (P) for primal, and (A/P) for both: ant haul (A/P), befuddle (A), fleet step (A/P), grease (A/P), gust of wind (A/P), longstrider (A/P), lose the path (P), mud pit (A/P), shockwave (A/P). This list isn’t exhaustive and there are more situationally good options, but consider whether you want to take up your fifth level (or higher) ancestry feat slot to take an arcane or primal spell in one of your repertoire slots without increasing the number in your repertoire.

(1) Arcane Tattoos (**): Arcane Tattoos is uncommon and requires an ethnicity or a nationality. It can give you electric arc, though. Normally this feat would be blue, but compared to Adapted Cantrip you’re not getting much by picking this feat instead. Consider the opportunity cost: by taking this feat instead of Adapted Cantrip, you also need a first level class feat to enable it, meaning not only that you can’t take Natural Ambition at first level but that you have to take Ancestral Mind at second level instead. All you get out of that exchange is an extra occult cantrip.
(1) Cooperative Nature / (9) Cooperative Soul (****): At later levels, you won’t have as much need for the bonus from Cooperative Nature, but being unable to fail Aid checks is awesome. Especially useful for Infinite Eye psychics coupled with omnidirectional scan. Also works well to load your Aid utility onto a single skill with the Gathered Lore subconscious mind.
(1) Dragon Spit (**): Another means of gaining an innate cantrip and, once again, electric arc is an option. Requires an ethnicity. Normally this feat would be blue, but compared to Adapted Cantrip you’re not getting much by picking this feat instead. Consider the opportunity cost: by taking this feat instead of Adapted Cantrip, you also need a first level class feat to enable it, meaning not only that you can’t take Natural Ambition at first level but that you have to take Ancestral Mind at second level instead. All you get out of that exchange is an extra occult cantrip.
(1) General Training (****): General feats are awesome, especially since you can get two at level one between this feat and the Versatile heritage.
(1) Gloomseer / (5) Darkseer (** / ***): These feats require an ethnicity. Low-light vision is helpful occasionally, but not terribly exciting. Darkvision, however, is quite useful.
(1) Haughty Obstinacy (**): You may feel that this feat is redundant given your will save, but if you really want to shore up your saves against effects that control you this feat will help.
(1) Natural Ambition (****): This is the only way to get a first level class feat at first level. You have a couple good choices and you’ll certainly want Ancestral Mind if you’re getting spells from any feat other than Adapted Cantrip.
(1) Natural Skill (**): If you’re running a build without much INT, you may want a couple more trained skills.
(1) Unconventional Weaponry (**): IIf you’re planning to take Psi Strikes, the shortbow is one of your best options for Strikes. You don’t have the proficiency for weapon Strikes to be a core part of your build, but it’s an extra choice for a third action at least. Oscillating Wave psychics will have the most damage versatility with the shortbow coupled with Psi Strikes.
(5) Clever Improviser / (9) Incredible Improvisation (***): Untrained Improvisation is among the best general feats. Being able to later get a +4 on one untrained skill check per day makes it even better.
(9) Group Aid (**): It’s not often that multiple allies make non-attack rolls that you can Aid in the same round, but you may see value here for Recall Knowledge checks. Acrobatics to Balance may come up as well. It does synergize with the Gathered Lore subconscious mind, but that doesn’t remove the limitation.
(9) Multitalented (***): There are several good dedication feats.
(13) Advanced General Training (***): General feats are awesome, although your build may be all set on them by this point. This can also get you a skill feat if there’s one you absolutely need.
(13) Bounce Back (***): Considering your low HP, you’re generally more at risk of gaining the dying condition if damage gets focused on you. Being able to shrug off wounded once per day is pretty good.
(13) Irriseni Ice-Witch (***): (Wintertouched human only) This feat requires an ethnicity. The resistance is likely to come up at some point. The real value here is in getting an innate spell.
(17) Zealous Conviction (***): Being able to pre-buff with temp HP due to the 10 minute duration makes this feat pretty readily usable. The status bonus to will saves is big despite functioning specifically against mental effects.

Uncommon ancestries

Azarketi (*)

For the baseline abilities, while CON/CHA/free is good for CHA builds and workable for INT builds, the WIS penalty will be unpleasant. For a CHA build, if you feel you can handle the WIS penalty (your will save progression is great, after all), you’ll appreciate the CON/CHA/free boosts. INT-based subconscious minds will generally prefer the two free ability boosts, though. Despite the decent baseline abilities, the hardest part of this ancestry is that you (for the most part) need to be near water. You can’t even overcome the generally less-than-useful ancestry feat list with a versatile heritage since you’ll really need the Mistbreath heritage to function in most campaigns. You could get a Decanter of Endless Water, but it’s a seventh level item. It’ll be a while before that even becomes a sort of viable choice, and even then you’re relying on a mid-level item to overcome a basic aspect of your ancestry. Unsurprisingly, most of the feats have to do with improving your capabilities in the water. I will not list any of them here because their purpose is clear and not applicable in the average game. If you are in an aquatic campaign, this ancestry will be much better suited for it.

Heritage

Ancient Scale (***): Darkvision is always great. You can also help out your low-light vision friends. Unfortunately, you’ll still be stuck having to be near water.
Inured (**): This helps mitigate the requirement to submerge yourself, but you’ll still need to be near water.
Mistbreath (***): On par with most races for average land speed and still gets a swim speed. If you’re not in an aquatic campaign, choose this heritage.
Murkeyed (**): May be helpful from time to time in targeting creatures for Homing Beacon use, assuming you want to skip the Seek.

Ancestry feats:

(1) Alghollthu Bound (**): You may feel that its effect is redundant, but being controlled by an enemy is problematic, to say the least. Be wary of campaigns where you frequently face alghollthus, though.
(1) Hydraulic Deflection (***): This is a convenient way to still have, essentially, a shield without having to worry about hands. It’s also a stopgap measure if and when your shield cantrip is in its 10 minute cooldown period.
(5) Marine Ally (**): Familiars are good, but this is restricted to having a Swim speed or the amphibious ability. If you ever want to make it better, you’ll need an archetype.
(9) Replenishing Hydration (**): You really want to be at full HP at the start of every encounter. This will help you get there more easily. It’s not necessary provided your party has the resources to heal everyone up to full as needed in exploration mode. By this level, they probably do, but still, it can’t hurt to have a little extra guaranteed HP. This feat is a bit worse than similar feats from other ancestries because it requires you to be submerged in water.

Catfolk (***)

If you want to run the baseline abilities, DEX/CHA/free boosts are great, they just come at the cost of a WIS penalty. For a CHA build, if you feel you can handle the WIS penalty (your will save progression is great, after all), you’ll appreciate the DEX/CHA/free very much. If you’re building an INT-based subconscious mind, you’re generally better off choosing two free ability boosts. Low-light vision is nothing too exciting, but it’s at least a slight upgrade over normal vision.

Heritage:

Hunting (**): This heritage can help with Homing Beacon but, of course, it is still limited by your poor perception.
Nine Lives (***): With your low HP, you want every advantage you can get to keep yourself alive if and when you take a big nasty crit. Reducing your dying value when that happens will help keep your character around longer.
Liminal (**): You get detect magic, which frees up a cantrip pick for you. You might find that useful. Getting an occasional +1 to occultism, which you get for free from the class and may invest in, will be helpful sometimes. Whether or not this heritage is valuable to you will depend on party composition. If your party needs someone to slot detect magic and you don’t want to take up one of your known cantrip slots, this heritage will skirt the issue.
Sharp Eared (***): This heritage can help with Homing Beacon but, of course, it is still limited by your poor perception. Unlike most of these heritages/feats, however, the +2 to Seek (hearing only) can really help.

Ancestry feats:

(1) Cat Nap / (5) Focused Cat Nap (***): Temp HP is not only a valuable buffer for your low class HP, it can fuel the Strain Mind class feat. At first, taking your Cat Nap to get the temp HP will be mutually exclusive with Refocus, meaning extra time between encounters. Focused Cat Nap, however, makes these activities simultaneous. At low levels, your party is probably failing medicine checks occasionally or may be relying on focus point healing a la lay on hands. That being the case, a little extra time occasionally spent between encounters isn’t too big a deal, and Focused Cat Nap will keep your between-encounter time expenditure on par with your party.
(1) Cat’s Luck / (5) Expanded Luck / (17) Reliable Luck (*** / ****): Cat’s Luck only allows you to reroll a failed reflex save once per day, but Expanded Luck makes this any save once per day. Not failing saves is good. Reliable Luck allows you to roll once per hour, which is fantastic.

(5) Lucky Break (**): If you’re investing in acrobatics, this will help you Tumble Through to get away from danger or into better positioning for melee cantrips. It doesn’t mitigate reactions that trigger from movement, though, and you really don’t want to get smacked around.
(9) Sense for Trouble (**): Better initiative is great, especially because your perception doesn’t scale well. That being said, it’s at the cost of rerolling a save, which is likely to be much more important. It’s better if and when you have Reliable Luck, but it’s still got the opportunity cost of not being able to use it for a save. Its value will generally be greater in fights with lots more smaller enemies assuming you can blast early in initiative to get rid of several before they can cause problems, then also have a better chance of resisting their save effects as opposed to those of a higher level enemy.
(9) Shared Luck (***): It’s only against reflex saves, but giving your allies an extra chance to save against bad effects is a great addition to a support kit.

(5) Graceful Guidance (***): Adding some versatility to your Aid is a welcome upgrade, especially for the Gathered Lore subconscious mind.
(5) Light Paws (**): The fact that it’s two actions means you won’t be casting a two-action spell on the turn you use it, which also means you’re unlikely to use it while Unleashed. For situations where you really don’t want to trigger a reaction, though, this feat can get you out of a tight spot.
(5) Pride Hunter (**): You’ll need to focus on stealth, but being able to force some enemies to have to overcome a 50% miss chance against you is pretty good for a third action. Just make sure your party knows you have this and how you plan to use it (namely, two-action cast and then Hide) and they position accordingly.
(9) Predator’s Growl (**): Inflicting Frightened as a reaction is decent, although this comes online pretty late. Naturally this will work best on one of the CHA-based subconscious minds. Note that the trigger requires a successful Seek check, and you don’t have great perception. It’s a bit better with the sharp-eared heritage and provides some synergy with Homing Beacon.
(9) Silent Step (**): Requires you to invest in stealth, but being able to combine two evasive actions into one, and one of which will not trigger movement-triggered reactions, is good. Synergizes well with Pride Hunter, making you slightly less reliant on ally positioning.
(9) Wary Skulker (***): If you’re investing in stealth, this will enable you to be safe at the start of an encounter while undetected, roll stealth for initiative (and it has a good chance of being a higher initiative mod than your perception), and provide an initiative bonus to your allies all at the same time. Note that Avoid Notice enables stealth for initiative independent of this feat, it’s just worth mentioning that those benefits in tandem make for a valuable feat on a build that incorporates stealth.
(13) Black Cat Curse (****): When you really need to stick a debuff or big damage on a hard target, this can make it happen.
(13) Caterwaul (***): Extra support as a reaction once per day is nothing to sneeze at. Keep an ally up and able to get away from danger, perform a healing action, or whatever the case may be to get them back in the encounter.
(17) Elude Trouble (****): Getting out of danger as a reaction, using your full speed, and not triggering any movement-triggered reactions is awesome for a low-HP class like psychic. You’re less likely to have a Strike miss you than your fighter pal, sure, but any port in a storm.

Fetchling (*)

As an ancestry with no baseline ability flaw, you might as well just take two free boosts. Unfortunately, there just aren’t a lot of good feats for you. Consider taking a versatile heritage if you like fetchlings. Really, though, if you’re taking a versatile heritage, it’s going to fully replace almost everything you get from this ancestry with maybe the exception of the Shadow Sight feat. From an optimization standpoint, you’ll be better off with most any other non-red ancestry.

Heritage:

Bright (**): Although both cantrips are already on the occult list, this heritage can free up your repertoire slots for other choices. If your party needs a readily-available light source and you don’t want to spend your repertoire cantrip slots to provide light, this heritage will solve the issue.
Liminal (**): This heritage can help with Homing Beacon but, of course, it is still limited by your poor perception. The +1 won’t put you on par with a class that gets master perception proficiency, but it’ll help some.
Resolute (***): Emotion effects are common and you have a good will save. Shrug off those effects with ease.
Wisp (**): A trained skill that relies on DEX and a +1 bonus to Tumble Through. Not bad. If you’re focusing on acrobatics, and you certainly have the room in your ability scores to support doing so, this is a decent choice. Getting some help to Tumble Through can help you get out of a bad position, or get into a better position if you’re building a conscious mind with melee psi cantrips.

Ancestry feats:

(1) Shrouded Magic (**): If you feel you’re short on cantrips or want to load as much damage into your psychic cantrips as possible without relying on Ancestral Mind, you can put some utility here rather than in your repertoire slots.
(5) Lightless Litheness (**): If you’re taking this, you want to be invested in acrobatics. Being able to more readily Escape from grapples and then Step away from the offending enemy will keep you generally safer.
(5) Shadowy Disguise (**): Illusory disguise isn’t the most exciting spell, but most innate spells are beneficial. This one just happens to be situational and generally for out-of-combat use.
(9) Shadow Sight (***): Being able to ignore all forms of darkness is pretty strong, even if it’s only for a minute out of any given hour.

Gnoll (**)

Since the baseline abilities include STR/INT/free boosts and a WIS penalty, you will be better off choosing two free ability boosts in all cases. Low-light vision isn’t particularly exciting, but it’s at least an upgrade over normal vision. The bite will be worthless to you. If you really like gnolls, you could get away with a versatile heritage and pick up the feat or two you care about from this ancestry. A versatile heritage is especially useful for a 17th level ancestry feat since gnolls don’t otherwise get one (assuming your adventure runs that long). For that matter, this ancestry doesn’t offer you any meaningful 13th level ancestry feats either.

Heritage:

Great (**): The extra HP is somewhat helpful, but you’d be hard pressed to find a reason to invest in athletics.
Sweetbreath (**): CHA builds can put the diplomacy to good use and you’ll have a bonus to your face role capabilities out of combat. This heritage also gives you access to the Breath Like Honey feat.
Witch (**): You get an extra cantrip, possibly freeing up some utility or offense in your repertoire, plus a situational bonus to Impersonate or Create a Diversion. It also gives you access to the Distant Cackle feat.

Ancestry feats:

(1) Hyena Familiar (**): Familiars can be helpful, although you’ll need an archetype to advance it.
(1) Pack Hunter (****): Aid is a meaningful third action and especially useful for Infinite Mind and/or Gathered Lore builds. Both getting and giving a +2 to Aid is solid.
(1) Sensitive Nose (**): An extra imprecise sense might be useful in tandem with Homing Beacon, but as usual you’re limited by your poor perception progression. It’s also terrain-limited. As such, this feat is very situational.
(5) Distant Cackle (**): Innate spells are always nice to have, but this particular one will require some creativity on your part. It’ll only be useful out of combat. Requires the Witch gnoll heritage.
(9) Breath Like Honey (**): Innate spells are always nice to have, but this particular one will require some creativity on your part. It’ll only be useful out of combat since the fascinated condition is more or less worthless in combat. Requires the Sweetbreath gnoll heritage and will increase the heritage’s bonus to Make an Impression to +2.
(9) Grandmother’s Wisdom (***): Augury is a helpful spell to guide you and your party and very few ancestry feats allow you to use an innate spell twice per day.
(9) Laughing Gnoll (***): If you’re investing in intimidation, this feat gives you the effects of Intimidating Glare on top of granting you Battle Cry. Two feats for one is pretty good, although you may feel you’ve got enough skill feats without taking this.

Grippli (*)

For the baseline abilities, DEX/WIS/free boosts are workable for any of the subconscious minds and a STR penalty is the best possible penalty for an ancestry. Not much reason to take the two free ability boosts instead, but you’re not exactly shooting yourself in the foot by doing so. Low-light vision isn’t particularly exciting, but it’s at least better than normal vision. The low HP means you’ll be at greater risk using any of the melee cantrips. Despite the low HP, for Tangible Dream psychics, this ancestry is yellow (**) because of the potential for increased range on imaginary weapon. Versatile heritages will improve this ancestry, although since it doesn’t offer much, you’re generally better off with most any other non-red ancestry. It does, at least, offer shortbow access if you want some capability to Strike at range, which is a decent pairing with a stronger versatile heritage.

Heritage:

Snaptongue (**): The heritage itself will require some creativity to get use from it, but primarily its value lies in giving you access to the Long Tongue feat.
Windweb (**): No fall damage is decent. Considering you’d otherwise need to climb or use, at a minimum, feather fall, it’ll save you and/or your party some resources occasionally.

Ancestry feats:

(1) Grippli Weapon Familiarity (**): If you’re planning to take Psi Strikes, the shortbow is one of your best options for Strikes. You don’t have the proficiency for weapon Strikes to be a core part of your build, but it’s an extra choice for a third action at least.
(1) Nocturnal Grippli (***): Darkvision is always good.
(5) Grippli Glide (**): It’ll never become flight, but gliding is occasionally useful. You won’t ever be able to increase the distance you can move with it, though. Requires the Windweb grippli heritage.
(5) Long Tongue (***): It’ll only increase the range of your touch spells by 5 feet, but when you have so little HP, every advantage to keep enemies away from you counts. This is a pretty powerful upgrade for imaginary weapon, especially considering that the amped version doesn’t require your targets to be adjacent to each other. If you are going Tangible Dream to take advantage of this range, it may be worth using voluntary flaws to drop some combination of DEX, WIS and INT (if CHA-based) or CHA (if INT-based) in favor of CON. You’ll almost certainly want the Toughness general feat, too. For Tangible Dream psychics, this feat is the entire reason you pick the grippli ancestry and, as such, is blue (****). Requires the Snaptongue grippli heritage.

Hobgoblin (***)

For the free abilities, CON/INT/free boosts are good for INT-based builds, although the WIS penalty is always tough. If you don’t want to suffer the WIS penalty, or are playing a CHA build, you’re better off with two free ability boosts. Darkvision is always good to have, too. You could get away with a versatile heritage here, although there are enough good feats for you not to need one.

Heritage:

Elfbane (***): Bonuses on all saves as a reaction is good for every build. Making it into a +2 against arcane spells is icing on the cake.
Steelskin (**): Slightly easier (10% improvement) recovery checks for most persistent damage. Anything to help keep your HP above 0 is useful for you since you don’t have much.

Ancestry feats:

(1) Cantorian Reinforcement (***): Your campaign may or may not have much in the way of poisons and diseases. If it does, you’ll love this feat. Diseases in particular can be really nasty. Additionally, even if they don’t come up much, the much easier ability to overcome virulent afflictions is very helpful. This is especially valuable considering you don’t have much HP.
(1) Hobgoblin Weapon Familiarity (**): If you’re planning to take Psi Strikes, the shortbow is one of your best options for Strikes. You don’t have the proficiency for weapon Strikes to be a core part of your build, but it’s an extra choice for a third action at least. Oscillating Wave psychics will have the most damage versatility with the shortbow coupled with Psi Strikes.
(1) Sneaky (**): A little extra movement while Sneaking may occasionally help keep you safer, assuming you’re investing in stealth.
(1) Stone Face (**): A little extra protection against fear effects will help keep you from being debuffed from time to time.
(1) Vigorous Health (**): Drained really sucks for you. It’s only a 20% chance, but being able to shrug the condition off sometimes will help keep you alive.
(5) Runtsage (***): There are several good goblin ancestry feats. In particular, Oscillating Wave psychics can get Burn It! when they take this feat. Goblin Scuttle and Twitchy are also good immediate choices.
(9) Agonizing Rebuke (***): If you’re invested in intimidation, you almost certainly want this feat. Doing free mental damage on top of the frightened debuff is solid. It’s much better if you have a bard maintaining Dirge of Doom or a swashbuckler with Antagonize in your party. The mental weakness from amped daze is somewhat helpful with this feat as well, which anyone can take advantage of with Parallel Breakthrough.
(9) Cantorian Rejuvenation (***): It’s two actions for a relatively small heal once per day, but with your low HP every bit helps. Additionally, the temp HP can help keep you safer when using Strain Mind. Distant Grasp psychics will have a somewhat harder time with this feat since they don’t inherently get any single-action cantrips.
(9) Pride in Arms (***): Since you’re almost always going to be in the back line, being able to give your frontline friends some temp HP as a reaction to keep them on the frontline is a useful tool.
(9) Squad Tactics (**): This feat will depend on party composition. That being said, if you’re using one of the melee cantrips, knowing for sure when a target will be flat-footed for maximum nuke chance will help you decide when it’s worth wading into melee. It’ll also ease your positioning requirements sometimes, occasionally removing the need to flank. With particularly favorable positioning, you may even be able to hit two flat-footed targets with imaginary weapon.
(13) Can’t Fall Here (***): Extra support as a reaction once per day is nothing to sneeze at. Keep an ally up and able to get away from danger, perform a healing action, or whatever the case may be to get them back in the encounter. The temporary HP makes it even more valuable.
(17) Cantorian Restoration (***): Effectively being able to cast breath of life once per day as a reaction is a strong party support tool.
(17) Rallying Cry (***): This is more or less the effect of a heightened haste, except your allies get the choice to Step in addition to Stride or Strike. Plus, they get temporary HP. Rad. It’s only once per day, but that’s the same as an innate spell.

Kitsune (**)

As an ancestry with no baseline ability flaw, you might as well just take two free boosts. Low-light vision isn’t too exciting, but it’s at least better than normal vision. There aren’t a ton of great feats with this ancestry. Luckily, giving up your Change Shape action for a versatile heritage isn’t particularly damaging unless you really want to Impersonate often.

Heritage:

Celestial Envoy (**): Bonuses against saves as a reaction are nice, but this only functions against divine spells. It also doesn’t have any language stopping you from using the reaction when it wouldn’t do anything, meaning you may waste your reaction if you use this effect. The tailless alternate form will be more valuable for deception in social situations.
Dark Fields (***): If you have the CHA to pull off demoralize, this heritage will remove your need for Intimidating Glare and give you temp HP once per hour to boot. Helpful for overcoming the damage from Strain Mind. The alternate form will be more valuable out in nature, which is generally less useful than a tailless alternate form.
Empty Sky (**): One of three innate divine cantrips, selectable daily, all of which are on the occult list. You probably don’t want daze since you can get the psi version of it, but offloading some utility for forbidding ward or ghost sound can free up your repertoire picks. Since those two don’t have saves associated with them, you won’t need Ancestral Mind to make them functional. The tailless alternate form will be more valuable for deception in social situations.

Ancestry feats:

(1) Foxfire (**): A little damage versatility and an attack you can use for Psi Strikes. Although I don’t have it listed since it gives generic element damage resistance, you could pick the Frozen Wind kitsune heritage to instead deal cold damage with this attack.
(1) Kitsune Spell Familiarity (**): One of three innate divine cantrips, selectable daily, all of which are on the occult list. You probably don’t want daze since you can get the psi version of it, but offloading some utility for forbidding ward or ghost sound can free up your repertoire picks. Since those two don’t have saves associated with them, you won’t need Ancestral Mind to make them functional. You gain this feat automatically with the Empty Sky kitsune heritage. Currently the only way to meet the prerequisites for Kitsune Spell Mysteries, listed below.
(1) Star Orb (**): An immobile familiar that requires you to take the Innate Surge master ability. Familiars can be good if you take an archetype to invest in them, just be aware of the inherent limitations of this particular familiar. At the level you get it, you don’t have access to any innate spells that are only once per day, rendering the Innate Surge master ability useless until at least level 5.

(13) Killing Stone (**): Cloudkill once per day (technically twice, if you use Innate Surge) at its minimum level isn’t the most exciting innate spell, but it’s still at least an area control tool with some damage added on. At the level you get access to it, it’s already two spell levels behind. With Ancestral Mind you can get some extra Unleash damage on it.

(5) Hybrid Form (**): Most of this feat is flavor which your GM may or may not run with for deception purposes, but that’s not hard-coded into the feat. The mechanical value here is being able to use Foxfire in either of your forms.
(5) Kitsune Spell Mysteries / (13) Kitsune Spell Expertise (***): Extra innate spells are generally pretty good. All of your options with this feat are already on the occult list but, given your limited number of spells per day, any extra spells are helpful. You can swap between any one of the three during daily preparations. Likewise with the Kitsune Spell Expertise. If you’re building for an INT-based subconscious mind, you’ll want Ancestral Mind to keep these spells’ associated saves as high as possible. If you have the Star Orb feat, you can use the spell you select twice per day. If you have both feats and the Star Orb feat, you can only use one of your innate spells twice per day.
(5) Shifting Faces (**): If you’re really leaning into the deception aspect of your Change Shape action, you may want a little extra oomph to it once in a while for out-of-combat deception shenanigans. This feat will not work with the Dark Fields kitsune heritage.

Kobold (***)

For the baseline abilities, DEX/CHA/free are good for CHA builds, but the CON penalty compounds the issue of your low class HP. If you don’t want to deal with the CON penalty or want to play an INT build, you’re better off with two free ability boosts. As a low HP ancestry, you’ll really want to stay away from the front lines. Darkvision is always good, though. The Spellscale heritage, Kobold Breath/Dragon’s Breath, (Elite) Dracomancer, and Dragonblood Paragon are your strongest options and will nicely complement the psychic kit.

Heritage:

Dragonscaled (**): Access to one of five damage resistance types is decent and it opens up the Dragon Disciple archetype.
Spellscale (***): Also gives access to the Dragon Disciple archetype, and you get an arcane cantrip as an innate spell. Awesome. You know you want electric arc.

Ancestry feats:

(1) Cringe (**): It’s not much damage reduction, but if you’re in a position to be taking crit Strikes, anything helps. Generally, you should just stay away from this kind of battlefield position, but sometimes enemy movement is out of your control.
(1) Dragon’s Presence (**): You have a good will save. More often than not, you’ll end up getting successes and thus crit successes on fear effects. Turning failures into crit failures is rough, though. A (relatively common) situational boost to your Demoralize attempts is a handy benefit.
(1) Kobold Breath / (9) Dragon’s Breath (***): A little extra readily-accessible damage versatility and blasting capability is welcome on any build. Being able to choose to do extra damage for a longer cooldown once you have Dragon’s Breath gives you a bit more flexibility with your breath.
(1) Scamper (**): You should do all you can to not be in a position to use this feat. If and when that happens, though, having some extra speed and extra AC against movement-triggered reactions will help keep your low-HP self alive. If you felt like being highly risky and built to use imaginary weapon, this will help you get away a bit more safely after casting it.
(5) Ally’s Shelter (**): This feat will really depend on party composition and positioning. If you have party members at range who have better fortitude or reflex saves than you, you’ll like this feat.
(5) Winglets / (13) Hatchling Flight / (17) Wyrmling Flight (**/***/****): Winglets will increase the distance of your Leap action. Past that feat, fly speeds are always good.
(9) Briar Battler (**): Being able to Take Cover and protect yourself a bit better in most difficult terrain will be occasionally useful.
(9) Dracomancer / (13) Elite Dracomancer (***): Innate spells are always good. Depending on your draconic exemplar, you may have some great choices. Bear in mind that, if you’re getting spells that rely on saves and are an INT-based subconscious mind, you’ll want Ancestral Mind as well. Below are some of your better options:

Black: alarm, ray of enfeeblement, true strike (1); blur, glitterdust, invisibility (2); slow, stinking cloud (3); clairvoyance, dimension door (4)
Blue: alarm (1); invisibility, mirror image (2); hypnotic pattern (3); clairvoyance, dimension door (4)
Green: true strike (1); mirror image, see invisibility (2); locate (3); clairvoyance, dimension door, stoneskin (4)
Red: ray of enfeeblement, true strike (1); comprehend language, resist energy, see invisibility (2); grease, haste (3); crushing despair, invisibility, stoneskin (4)
White: ray of enfeeblement, true strike (1); invisibility, resist energy (2); earthbind, haste (3); dimension door, freedom of movement (4)
Brass: alarm (1); mirror image, resist energy (2); earthbind, locate (3); confusion, dimensional anchor, dimension door (4)
Bronze: alarm, true strike (1); comprehend language, mirror image, resist energy (2); slow (3); dimension door, solid fog (4)
Copper: fleet step (1); glitterdust, invisibility, see invisibility (2); haste (3); confusion, stoneskin (4)
Gold: alarm, mending, protection (1); restoration, resist energy, see invisibility, silence (2); haste (3); restoration (4)
Silver: alarm, bless, protection, true strike (1); augury, restoration, see invisibility (2); wall of wind (3); freedom of movement, read omens, restoration (4)

(9) Dragonblood Paragon (***): Getting an extra cast of your first- (true strike) and second-level innate spells from Dracomancer or potentially dealing a relatively high chunk of persistent damage (or both) is solid.

Leshy (**)

For the baseline abilities, CON/WIS/free boosts and an INT penalty are workable for CHA builds. If you don’t want to skimp on skills or plan to play an INT build, though, you’ll be better off with the two free ability boosts instead. Low-light vision isn’t too exciting, but at least it’s better than normal vision. Relying on sunlight rather than food (or darkness, for Fungus leshies) is a minor benefit, but may come up in more survival-heavy games. You could comfortably get away with a versatile heritage here to spice up the feat list a bit.

Heritage:

Fruit (***): A little extra daily healing for you or a friend. It doesn’t specify whether it lasts more than a day, only that a new fruit grows each day.
Fungus (***): Darkvision is always great. Note that it changes the way your Plant Nourishment works.
Leaf (**): No fall damage is decent. Considering you’d otherwise need to climb or use, at a minimum, feather fall, it’ll save you and/or your party some resources occasionally.
Lotus (**): Lessening some reliance on athletics to be able to cross water is decent for a class that has zero need for STR.
Root (**): You should really stay away from positions where an enemy can Shove or Trip you, making those bonuses somewhat moot. The extra HP, although small, is somewhat helpful though.

Ancestry feats:

(1) Ageless Spirit (**): A little extra skill flexibility/capability if you decided to stick with the INT penalty.
(1) Leshy Superstition / (9) Lucky Keepsake (*** / ****): The circumstance bonus to saves as a reaction is great no matter what, especially because you don’t have a ton of options for your reaction. Getting this bonus more-or-less permanently is even better.
(1) Seedpod (**): The ranged unarmed attack granted by this feat is an okay way of utilizing Psi Strikes. The range will put you in danger, though. You might see some use from distortion lens if you want to rely on this, but you’re still limited by your weapon proficiency progression. Occasionally imposing a speed penalty will help keep you and your allies safer from time to time.
(1) Undaunted (***): Emotion effects are common and you have a good will save. Shrug off those effects with ease. Note that the circumstance bonus will not stack with Leshy Superstition/Lucky Keepsake.
(5) Leshy Glide (**): It’ll never become flight, but gliding is occasionally useful. You won’t ever be able to increase the distance you can move with it, though. You can get around the Leaf leshy heritage requirement if you have the Cat Fall skill feat, which doesn’t require much acrobatics investment.
(9) Bark and Tendril (***): Innate spells are always a welcome addition. Barkskin isn’t particularly exciting since it never heightens, but entangle is a useful control spell.
(9) Solar Rejuvenation (**): You really want to be at full HP at the start of every encounter. This will help you get there more easily. It’s not necessary provided your party has the resources to heal everyone up to full as needed in exploration mode. By this level, they probably do, but still, it can’t hurt to have a little extra guaranteed HP.
(17) Flourish and Ruin (***): Innate spells are always a welcome addition. Field of life won’t be a ton of healing, but it’s passive and you can position it for allies to easily take advantage of it. Tangling creepers is a strong area control tool.
(17) Regenerate (***): Keep a frontliner from dying. They can still go unconscious, but regenerate is a strong spell you wouldn’t otherwise get.

Lizardfolk (**)

Since the baseline abilities include STR/WIS/free boosts and an INT penalty, you will be better off choosing two free ability boosts in all cases. Breath Control isn’t the most amazing general feat, but it’ll help you against inhaled effects (poisons, mostly). The claws are meaningless to you. If you really like this ancestry, consider a versatile heritage. There are a few good feats here, but a versatile heritage will give this ancestry some much-needed versatility.

Heritage:

Cloudleaper (**): No fall damage is decent. Considering you’d otherwise need to climb or use, at a minimum, feather fall, it’ll save you and/or your party some resources occasionally. Also note that you need to have enough room to open your flaps in order to negate fall damage.
Frilled (**): This heritage is effectively the same as Intimidating Glare, although you can spend two actions to Stride adjacent to an enemy and make them frightened 2 rather than frightened 1. You don’t generally want to be near enemies, though.

Ancestry feats:

(1) Bone Magic (****): Choose an innate primal cantrip. You want electric arc.
(1) Consult the Stars (**): A little extra skill flexibility/capability if you decided to stick with the INT penalty.
(1) Parthenogenic Hatchling (***): Your campaign may or may not have much in the way of poisons and diseases. If it does, you’ll love this feat. Diseases in particular can be really nasty. Additionally, even if they don’t come up much, the much easier ability to overcome virulent afflictions is very helpful. This is especially valuable considering you don’t have much HP. This feat will also be helpful in more survival-heavy campaigns where hunger and thirst are a bigger factor.
(5) Guided by the Stars (****): Once per day free action to take the better of two rolls for a skill check or save. This is great despite its limited frequency.
(5) Iruxi Glide (**): It’ll never become flight, but gliding is occasionally useful. You won’t ever be able to increase the distance you can move with it, though. Requires the Cloudleaper lizardfolk heritage.
(9) Terrain Advantage (**): Depending on your spell picks, you can create difficult terrain fairly easily. Those spells are frequently useful ways to set up for blasting spells, but you could instead use them to lock down a single target (or two, with imaginary weapon) and ensure an easier hit via the flat-footed condition. The problems are that, by using this combination, you’re burning area spells on one target (or two, with imaginary weapon - a better expenditure of area resources) and that it’s possible the difficult terrain you create will become a hindrance for your party martials to reach a single target. That said, debuffing a target for a higher chance of critting while Unleashed can be a worthy use of spells, especially considering the scaling limitations of spell attacks. If you’ve got someone else in your party on whom you can rely to create difficult terrain with some consistency, this feat becomes more valuable.
(13) Primal Rampage (***): Innate spells are always welcome additions. Freedom of movement and stoneskin will both serve to help keep you alive in bad situations, and you can even cast them both in the same turn for three actions.
(17) Bone Rider (***): Mask of terror as an innate spell is a great way to debuff and deter enemies from attacking you.

Nagaji (**)

An important point up front, in case it matters to your GM: Nagaji are currently listed as both rare and uncommon in the Impossible Lands PDF. Since the baseline abilities include STR/INT/free boosts and a WIS penalty, you will be better off choosing two free ability boosts in all cases. 10 HP is a welcome buffer to your small HP pool. Low-light vision isn’t particularly exciting, but it’s better than normal vision at least. The fangs attack does you no good. This ancestry doesn’t offer much in the way of heritages. Consider a versatile heritage if you particularly like the ancestry.

Heritage:

Sacred (***): The fact that you get the circumstance bonus to resist any effect that would result in you becoming Grabbed, Restrained, or Prone is quite good.

Ancestry feats:

(1) Cold Minded (***): Emotion effects are common and you have a good will save. Shrug off those effects with ease.
(1) Nagaji Spell Familiarity (***): Daze is the least attractive of the options here, but you can at least swap between detect magic and mage hand on a daily basis. Both of these are useful spells and alleviate the need to load utility into your class-granted cantrips.
(1) Serpent’s Tongue (**): You don’t really have the perception to get a ton of mileage from an imprecise sense, but they tend to be useful on occasion.
(1) Water Nagaji (**): Although inhaled poisons/effects may not come up often, Breath Control is a useful feat to help shrug off their effects. Side benefits of a swim speed and better survivability in the water aren’t much on their own, but as a total package, it’s a decent feat, if situational.
(5) Nagaji Spell Mysteries (***): Requires you to have an innate spell from your heritage or another ancestry feat. The only choice that really matters here is fleet step since charm and heal won’t scale, but extra movement speed is always nice.

(13) Nagaji Spell Expertise (***): As with its prerequisite, there’s only really one consistently useful spell here: blink. Control water will occasionally be useful, but subconscious suggestion is going to fall off quickly due to its incapacitation trait.

(5) Skin Split (***): Persistent damage is a notorious PC killer. Being able to outright end it without a check, even at the cost of two actions, is a noticeable safety benefit. Just be aware of your limitations on when you want to use this - namely, post-Unleash.
(13) Disruptive Stare (****): While not every spell has the concentrate trait, enough of them do that you’re almost certainly going to get value from this spell. Debuffing your target’s spell attacks/DCs or outright disrupting their casts for a reaction is an outstanding tradeoff.
(13) Pit of Snakes (**): More or less a poor man’s black tentacles. It’s a pretty good control effect, although the three actions required are somewhat limiting. Unfortunately, since it’s not an innate spell, there’s no way for you to use this to prime Unleash. That said, since it’s not an innate spell, the Stupefied condition can’t cause you to lose the effect, although it will decrease your spell DC.
(17) Breath of Calamity (***): Although it can’t heighten beyond seventh level, chain lightning is a decent blasting spell and still deals respectable damage into the highest levels given the technically unlimited number of targets. Adding a chance to inflict the Blinded and (less useful) Deafened conditions is a welcome cherry on top.
(17) Prismatic Scales (***): Prismatic armor is a decent defensive spell, although it will never heighten to provide the 10 resistance.

Orc (***)

As an ancestry with no baseline ability flaw, you might as well just take two free boosts. Darkvision is always good, too. Much of the orc’s feat set revolves around staying on your feet and out of the dying condition, both of which are valuable if your build relies on imaginary weapon. Even if you’re not relying on imaginary weapon, the warmask and superstition feats give some meaningful improvements.

Heritage:

Battle-Ready (***): CHA-based subconscious minds in particular will appreciate the free intimidation trained proficiency and Intimidating Glare.
Hold-Scarred (***): 12 HP and Diehard are valuable tools to balance out your low class HP somewhat.

Ancestry feats:

(1) Orc Ferocity / (13) Incredible Ferocity (***): If you get yourself into danger and get brought down to the dying condition, these feats can help you stay up and get away from danger more easily. If you or someone in your party can create magical tattoos, the One Hundred Victories tattoo is great alongside Orc Ferocity, especially with the hold-scarred orc heritage. NOTE: If your GM is running the wounded rules from the GM screen rather than the CRB, staying up with wounded 1 is more deadly than waiting for an ally to heal you and you should not take this feat chain.

(5) Defy Death (***): Basically Toughness, except it also stacks with Toughness. This is universally great. Not quite as strong as dwarf’s Mountain’s Stoutness, but still, being harder to kill is a thing you almost certainly want considering your low HP. This is especially the case if you plan to use imaginary weapon frequently.
(9) Undying Ferocity (***): Temporary hit points to make it that much more likely that you stay in the fight.

(1) Orc Superstition / (9) Pervasive Superstition / (13) Spell Devourer (*** / **** / ***): Bonuses on all saves are good for every build and even better when they’re permanent. Temporary HP is great, although it’s limited to the end of your following turn. Despite the limited duration, you can put the temp HP to good use with Strain Mind.
(1) Orc Warmask (***): Dubious Knowledge can be a useful feat to augment Recall Knowledge-related skills which you roll frequently. Mostly, it’ll be INT-based subconscious minds that can get use out of this feat. Occultism is a given, but you can also get good value from the arcana mask if you invest skill proficiency increases in arcana. A readily-available item bonus to your chosen skill once you have enough gold is nice too.

(5) Mask of Power (**): Phantom pain won’t scale, but it’s decent for a couple levels. Getting an extra daily cast of fear or especially true strike as innate spells is nice.
(5) Mask of Rejection (**): Rerolling a failed save as a reaction with a +2 bonus is good, although it’s only against one tradition. There’s nothing limiting you from using the reaction, which means you may waste your reaction if you use it against an inapplicable magic tradition.
(9) Mask of Pain (***): It’s only once per day per target, but doing a bit of extra damage as a reaction is solid. You’ll need to be invested in intimidation, but CHA-based subconscious minds should have no problem there. There is slight synergy between this feat and amped psi daze because of the imposed mental damage weakness.
(13) Mask of Fear (***): Removing fear and any secondary fear-related conditions is great.

(5) Victorious Vigor (***): Considering how much blasting capability psychics tend to have, chances are good you’re bringing enemies down to 0 HP with some regularity. Getting temp HP as a reaction to doing so is valuable, especially in combination with Strain Mind.

Ratfolk (**)

With only 6 HP, you want to stay far away from the frontline. For the baseline abilities, DEX/INT/free and a STR penalty are great for INT builds and workable for CHA builds. If you don’t care about INT on a CHA build, you’ll be better off taking the two free ability boosts instead. Low-light vision is nothing exciting, but at least it’s better than normal vision. Since the baseline ability boosts/penalty are good but the feats are lacking, a versatile heritage certainly wouldn’t go amiss with this ancestry.

Heritage:

Deep (***): Darkvision is always good.
Desert (***): Get a speed boost if your hands are free. Useful, and your hands are likely to be free.
Longsnout (**): An extra imprecise sense might be useful in tandem with Homing Beacon, but as usual you’re limited by your poor perception progression.
Sewer (***): Your campaign may or may not have much in the way of poisons and diseases. If it does, you’ll love this heritage. Diseases in particular can be really nasty. You’re also immune to a common early-level (and deadly) disease: filth fever. Additionally, even if they don’t come up much, the much easier ability to overcome virulent afflictions is very helpful. This is especially valuable considering you don’t have much HP.

Ancestry feats:

(1) Rat Familiar (***): Familiars are good. You’ll have to pick a rat as your familiar, but none of its ability choices are limited or pre-selected. If you ever want to make it better, though, you’ll need an archetype.
(1) Skull Creeper (***): Getting intimidation trained will be useful for CHA-based subconscious minds. Getting Intimidating Glare and easy access to a +1 item bonus to intimidation once you have enough gold are handy benefits.
(1) Tinkering Fingers (**): Craft isn’t a great skill, but if you’re playing an INT-based subconscious mind, overcoming the need for a repair kit to Repair items will help with your bulk limitations. If you have someone in your party using shields, this will be a helpful feat.
(9) Uncanny Cheeks (**): If you find that you often have an immediate need for a useful consumable that you forgot or otherwise weren’t aware you should purchase, having Prescient Planner and Prescient Consumable will be useful for you. Additionally, if you have the Cheek Pouches feat, it’ll remove the bulk limitation on Uncanny Cheeks. On its own, Cheek Pouches doesn’t do much for you though.
(13) Skittering Sneak (**): If you’re investing in stealth, being able to move at full speed while Sneaking will be valuable to you.

Tengu (***)

As an ancestry with no baseline ability flaw, you might as well just take two free boosts. 6 HP means you want to stay away from the frontline as much as possible. Low-light vision is nothing exciting, but at least it’s better than normal vision. The beak attack is meaningless to you.

Heritage:

Jinxed (***): Curses are nasty and misfortune effects are annoying. Being able to overcome either more easily is a welcome upgrade. Being able to occasionally ignore the doomed condition will help keep you alive from time to time as well.
Mountainkeeper (**): Undead are relatively common, but disrupt undead will be limited to only undead. Still, adding a cantrip you couldn’t otherwise get and which frequently targets a weakness on the enemies it can hit is nothing to sneeze at.
Skyborn (***): Eventually leads to flight, and flight is good.

Ancestry feats:

(1) Mariner’s Fire (**): If you don’t want to spend a 6th (or higher) level class feat to get psi produce flame via Parallel Breakthrough, this is an alternative method to do so.
(1) Squawk! (**): CHA-based subconscious mind builds may appreciate the ability to mitigate critical failures on out-of-combat face skill checks and Bon Mot.
(1) Storm’s Lash (****): Electric arc as an innate primal cantrip. You want this if you’re playing a tengu.
(5) Eat Fortune / (13) Jinx Glutton (**): Fortune and misfortune effects aren’t exactly common, but they’re easy to spot and tend to be bad for you and your party when enemies use them. Counteracting an enemy’s action as a reaction without having to make a counteract check is great despite its frequency. Jinx Glutton eases this restriction to once per hour.
(5) Long-Nosed Form (**): If you’re playing a CHA-based subconscious mind and want some extra out-of-combat value for your deception, you can Impersonate more quickly with this feat and won’t need a disguise kit.
(5) One-Toed Hop (**): This feat makes your vertical Leap effectively a Step that can overcome 3-foot high terrain. Depending on your campaign, this will allow you some flexibility in certain terrain to keep yourself safe if and when you have to move away from an enemy.
(5) Tengu Feather Fan / (9) Wind God’s Fan / (13) Thunder God’s Fan (*** / **): These give you gust of wind, wall of wind, and lightning bolt, respectively. Lightning bolt will not scale. Each feat adds one use per day of any of the available spells. Given that you have more limited spells per day than most casters, having a couple additional control tools and an extra blasting tool are decent additions. One fact worth noting here is that you’re using Interact actions rather than Cast a Spell - it does not have the usual spell components of whichever spell you cast.
(9) Soaring Flight / (17) Soaring Form (***): Requires Skyborn heritage, but grants flight for 5 minutes per day from the first feat, then permanent for the second. By 17th level, you have other ways to get flight, but it eases your group’s consumable/spell slot requirements. You could instead take Constant Levitation, but it’s up to you whether you’d rather spend your heritage and two ancestry feats or a single high-level class feat to get permanent flight.
(13) Harbinger’s Caw (***): Only once per day, but forcing an enemy to roll twice and take the worst as a reaction can get you out of a tight spot.
(17) Favor of Heaven (***): Spirit blast won’t scale, but it’s still a hefty amount of damage and eases your spell slots. Resistance to good and evil damage is nice to have depending on your alignment. With the amount of dice rolled for this spell, it synergizes somewhat well with the Precise Discipline subconscious mind’s Impose Order feat.

Vanara (*)

As an ancestry with no baseline ability flaw, you might as well just take two free boosts. You’re not likely to see much in the way of hand use limitation, but the prehensile tail may occasionally be useful for you. The low HP doesn’t exactly do you any favors. Other than a couple decent heritages, this ancestry has very little to offer that benefits you. The only way to make this ancestry viable for you is through a versatile heritage, but if you’re playing it for a versatile heritage, why not just pick a different ancestry?

Heritage:

Ragdyan (***): Gaining a divine cantrip gives you access to alignment or positive damage.
Wajaghand (***): Emotion effects are common and you have a good will save. Shrug off those effects with ease.

Ancestry feats:

(1) Canopy Sight (**): Low-light vision isn’t particularly exciting, but it’s at least better than normal vision.
(1) Sudden Mindfulness (**): The trigger requiring you to save against something that makes you Dazzled is situational, but being able to render the target Flat-Footed in response for a reaction is decent.
(9) Rakshasha Ravaged (**): It’s only against occult spells, making it situational, but a passive buff to saves is welcome.

Rare ancestries

Anadi (*)

For the baseline abilities, DEX/WIS/free are workable for any build, but the CON penalty compounds the issue of your low class HP. If you don’t want to deal with the CON penalty, you should instead choose two free ability boosts. Despite offering a strong heritage, you can replicate the Adaptive anadi heritage’s effects with a general feat. If you want to be a spider person, you’ll be best off taking a versatile heritage. Also note that you don’t start off speaking Common.

Heritage:

Adaptive (****): There are lots of good first level ancestry feats that you can gain through Adopted Ancestry. The human ancestry’s Adapted Cantrip is a standout choice.
Spindly (***): Extra movement is always valuable, especially for a class with low HP that wants to stay well far away from the front line.

Ancestry feats:

(1) Reassuring Presence (***): Removing debuffs from allies is a great support tool, and the frightened condition is common.
(1) Studious Magic (****): If you chose the Adaptive anadi heritage, you may already have electric arc and can choose something else. Otherwise, if you chose a different heritage, a different ancestry for Adopted Ancestry, or an ancestry feat besides Adapted Cantrip, you can use this feat to get electric arc.

(9) Studious Adept (***): Humanoid form will mostly be useful out of combat. Mirror image is nice for an innate spell even if it’s available somewhat late.

(9) Strand Strider (**): A climb speed of 25 feet is decent. The fact that you can cast spells while in spider shape means you can get some utility from this feat.
(13) Webslinger (**): An area control tool on par with 2nd level web once per ten minutes and for three actions. It’ll be okay, but it’ll eat your whole turn.

Android (***)

For the baseline abilities, DEX/INT/free boosts and a CHA penalty are good for INT builds. CHA builds should instead choose two free ability boosts. Low-light vision isn’t particularly exciting, but it’s at least better than normal vision. Having a bonus to saves against diseases and poisons is helpful since they’re relatively common. Not so much for radiation, but it comes free with the ancestry. If you’re CHA-based, you won’t want to rely on Bon Mot due to the penalty from Emotionally Unaware. The performance and Sense Motive penalties are negligible. None of the android heritages are particularly exciting, meaning a versatile heritage is a good choice for this ancestry.

Heritage:

Artisan (**): Craft isn’t the greatest skill, but if you’re playing an INT-based subconscious mind, you could do worse than getting Specialty Crafting.
Polyglot (**): Can be useful if you plan to emphasize the face skills and makes the Multilingual skill feat worth taking. Multilingual is helpful if you plan to use Bon Mot frequently or to augment Demoralize in the rare cases where Intimidating Glare won’t work. Naturally, this is most useful for a CHA-based psychic.

Ancestry feats:

(1) Cleansing Subroutine (**): Your campaign may or may not have much in the way of poisons. If it does, you’ll love this feat. Additionally, even if they don’t come up much, the much easier ability to overcome virulent poisons is very helpful. This is especially valuable considering you don’t have much HP and because you get a circumstance bonus to save against poisons and diseases from the ancestry. Unlike most similar feats, though, the Android ancestry requires two feats to cover the improvements to reductions against both poisons and diseases.
(1) Emotionless (***): Emotion effects are common and you have a good will save. Shrug off those effects with ease. Unlike most similar feats, it specifies that it functions against both emotion and fear effects, broadening its value.
(1) Nanite Surge / (13) Consistent Surge (***): These feats can help make the meaningful skill checks stick. Consistent Surge makes the buff happen much more frequently.

(5) Protective Subroutine (****): Being able to get a +2 status bonus to saves as a reaction is excellent.
(9) Offensive Subroutine (****): +1 status bonus to attack rolls as a reaction is solid. Note that it says attack rolls, not Strikes, meaning it also functions on spell attacks.

(1) Nightvision Adaptation (***): Darkvision is always good.
(1) Proximity Alert (***): Since your perception isn’t great, getting a +2 to perception-based initiative checks (most of them) is helpful.
(1) Radiant Circuitry (**): Effectively the light cantrip, but for half as many actions and with no need to take up a repertoire cantrip slot.
(5) Advanced Targeting System (***): Not only are innate spells great, true strike is a strong spell.
(5) Inoculation Subroutine (**): Your campaign may or may not have much in the way of poisons and diseases. If it does, you’ll love this feat. Diseases in particular can be really nasty. Additionally, even if they don’t come up much, the much easier ability to overcome virulent afflictions is very helpful. This is especially valuable considering you don’t have much HP and because you get a circumstance bonus to save against poisons and diseases from the ancestry. Unlike most similar feats, though, the Android ancestry requires two feats to cover the improvements to reductions against both poisons and diseases.
(5) Nanite Shroud (**): Concealment will help keep you alive sometimes considering it imposes a miss chance, but the fact that this feat requires two actions means you’re going to have a hard time using it alongside your spells. Especially difficult for Distant Grasp psychics who don’t get any one-action psi cantrips.
(9) Repair Module (**): Fast healing once per day can keep you in the fight when you really need it. It isn’t a ton of HP, though.
(13) Revivification Protocol (***): Instantly recover from dying once per day, with all the usual side effects, for a free action. Not bad, especially for a class with such low HP.

Automaton (****)

As an ancestry with no baseline ability flaw, you might as well just take two free boosts. Not needing food or water is a minor benefit, but may be more valuable to you in survival-heavy games. Reducing the amount of rest per night you need is good, but you still won’t make a great sentry due to your poor perception. Low-light vision isn’t particularly exciting, but it’s at least better than normal vision. With two free boosts on offer, this ancestry offers a wealth of great feat and heritage choices.

Heritage:

Hunter (***): Get a speed boost if your hands are free. Useful, and your hands are likely to be free.
Mage (****): As always, getting innate spells from other traditions’ spell lists is quite nice. The arcane list has a lot to offer (electric arc).
Sharpshooter (**): If you like Psi Strikes and plan to take the Energy Beam feat, this heritage can give you some turn-to-turn versatility. It’ll allow you to overcome range penalties and use your ranged Strike more easily on turns when you don’t want to cast (post-Unleash while stupefied). Your Strides will cover more distance for you to get in close to an enemy where you won’t suffer a range penalty, but you don’t want to be in close to enemies. You still won’t have good weapon proficiency progression, but it has a use case.

Ancestry feats:

(1) Arcane Communication (***): You already have access to message, but this means you don’t have to spend actions for your nonverbal communication. The enhancement gives it a 10 foot range, which is pretty good. Silent communication is frequently a valuable tool.
(1) Arcane Eye (****): Darkvision is always good. The enhancement allows you to cast see invisibility once per hour as an innate spell. Outstanding.
(1) Automaton Lore (***): Although there aren’t many standout ancestry Lore feats, the enhancement on this one deserves a mention. Its enhancement can increase either Arcana or Crafting to expert or master. Proficiency increases outside of your usual level-related increases are rare. Plus, arcana is a frequently useful skill.
(1) Energy Beam (**): The ranged unarmed attack granted by this feat is an okay way of utilizing Psi Strikes. The range is long enough to mostly keep you out of harm’s way. Don’t bother with the enhancement - you aren’t taking this for its damage die, just to have a means of delivering Psi Strikes damage.
(5) Arcane Safeguards (***): Bonuses on all saves as a reaction is good for every build. Being able to just about ignore arcane spells is even better. With the enhancement granting temp HP, you can also use this to protect yourself against the damage from Strain Mind.
(5) Magical Resistance (***): Especially once enhanced, this is a decent chunk of resistance against a common (or three) damage type(s)
(9) Arcane Camouflage (****): Innate spells tend to be good, and blur and invisibility are no exception. Considering that your AC will never be the highest, having other defensive tools is a huge benefit. Especially nice once enhanced, since you get two casts of each at a more effective respective duration or level. Requires the Hunter automaton heritage.
(9) Arcane Propulsion (***): Fly speed is always good, and the enhancement effectively makes it permanent. Not as good as other ancestry flight feats since it requires actions to activate, but you’ll still appreciate flight. It’s up to you whether you’d prefer to spend two ancestry feats or one high-level class feat for permanent flight.
(9) Core Attunement (****): Any one first and second (or lower) level arcane spell, each cast once per day, as innate spells. Awesome. Even better enhanced when you can pick one each a fifth or lower and a sixth or lower arcane spell. This feat gives you a ton of good innate spell choices. Requires the Mage automaton heritage.
(9) Lesser Augmentation / (17) Greater Augmentation (***): The Lesser version is how you augment your 1st and 5th level ancestry feats. Also allows you to swap your enhancement between feats with a week of downtime. There are plenty of good choices to enhance, but this is also competing against other really great 9th level ancestry feats. The Greater version works similarly, but with 1st, 5th, 9th, or 13th level ancestry feats. You can also use Greater to enhance Lesser for less of a downtime requirement when swapping out your 1st or 5th level enhancements.
(9) Rain of Bolts (***): Some extra blasting capability once per day, your choice of a cone or emanation, and with scaling damage. Not bad. Requires the Sharpshooter automaton heritage. Enhanced, you can use it once per hour and do significantly more damage with a material type (adamantine, cold iron, or silver, your choice). Considering the decently-sized dice pool, this feat synergizes somewhat with the Precise Discipline subconscious mind’s Impose Order feat.
(13) Arcane Locomotion (***): A movement speed of your choice between climb and swim, either at 20 feet of speed. Not bad. The enhancement, however, allows you to increase your land speed by 5 feet and bring your chosen movement speed type up to equal your land speed. That’s where the real money is: 35 feet of base movement speed for the Hunter automaton heritage is quite good, even if it comes online very late.
(13) Astral Blink (****): Fourth level dimension door once per hour as an innate spell. Yes please. The enhancement allows you to treat your Strides as teleportation effects instead with the expenditure of your dimension door, keeping you much safer from harm.
(13) Core Rejuvenation (***): Once per day being able to shrug off the dying condition will help you get away from a bad situation more readily. The enhanced version will give you a heaping pile of temp HP on top of this effect, keeping you safer and/or giving you a tool to fuel Strain Mind. NOTE: If your GM is running the wounded rules from the GM screen rather than the CRB, staying up with wounded 1 is more deadly than waiting for an ally to heal you and you should not take this feat.

Conrasu (**)

For the baseline abilities, CON/WIS/free and a CHA penalty are workable for INT builds. CHA builds should instead choose two free boosts. A little extra healing once per day is decent for you depending on your group’s healing resources. You’ll likely appreciate it more at early levels. Having high ancestry HP is helpful too. This ancestry has some great heritages, but not many feats you can put to good use. Unfortunately, that means a versatile heritage won’t fix its issues and you’re better off with another ancestry. If you really like this ancestry, you can take a feat of some value at every level. It’ll rely on Psi Strikes, but you could build Conrasu Weapon Familiarity (1), Ceremony of Knowledge or Ceremony of Sunlight (5), Ceremony of Aeon’s Guidance (9), Ceremony of Sun’s Gift (17) and maximize your ancestry feat value at all available levels but 13. Also note that you don’t start off speaking Common.

Heritage:

Rite of Invocation (****): Access to an arcane cantrip is always great.
Rite of Knowing (***): Considering that you’re probably playing an INT-based subconscious mind with this ancestry, you’ll have some Recall Knowledge capability to put this heritage to good use. Turning a success into a crit success once per day is helpful in a clutch situation where information matters. Pair with Dubious Knowledge for a guaranteed result.
Rite of Light (***): Being able to transfer the baseline ancestry healing to an ally drastically improves its utility, allowing you to contribute to healing a higher HP ally who may require more time and/or resource expenditure to bring that back to full. It’s still only once per day, but useful regardless.

Ancestry feats:

(1) Ceremony of Protection (**): You have access to shield, but this can be a backup option if you feel the need to improve your AC from time to time while shield is unusable.

(9) Ceremony of Fortification (**): A little resistance to a common physical damage type. You probably won’t need the resistance often and it only applies to the next Strike to hit you.

(1) Conrasu Weapon Familiarity (**): If you’re planning to take Psi Strikes, the shortbow is one of your best options for Strikes. You don’t have the proficiency for weapon Strikes to be a core part of your build, but it’s an extra choice for a third action at least. Oscillating Wave psychics will have the most damage versatility with the shortbow coupled with Psi Strikes.
(5) Ceremony of Knowledge (***): Untrained Improvisation is a great general feat. You likely won’t have much need to plug skill gaps with an INT-based build, but it’ll at least let you get cheesy with Lore.
(5) Ceremony of Sunlight (***): A buff to the HP healed by your daily ancestry heal. Better with the Rite of Light heritage to be able to grant the improved healing to an ally if needed.
(9) Ceremony of Aeon’s Guidance (***): Augury once per day is pretty good. Calm emotions will be worthless because of its incapacitation trait and inability to scale.

(17) Ceremony of Sun’s Gift (**): Your party will no longer need to heal you between encounters provided you have access to sunlight. If your party is tying resources into healing, this feat will be much more useful, but if someone in your party is investing in medicine it’ll just save time. Party-dependent.

Fleshwarp (**)

As an ancestry with no baseline ability flaw, you might as well just take two free boosts. 10 ancestry HP will help you survive a bit better. Low-light vision is nothing too exciting, but it’s at least a slight upgrade over normal vision. Getting a permanent circumstance bonus to saves against diseases and poisons will also help you survive a bit better as well. The feats available here will generally pair best with builds that focus on CON and/or WIS. If you particularly like fleshwarps, consider a versatile heritage, especially because there are no level 17 ancestry feats otherwise.

Heritage:

Cataphract (**): Mostly useful for games that won’t play up into the levels where you get expert unarmored proficiency. Light armor will provide your squishy self with a bit of extra and much-needed defense.
Created (**): Not needing to eat is a minor benefit to your funds since you won’t need to buy food, and you won’t need to rely on survival or society to subsist. Improving your permanent circumstance bonus to saves against diseases (not poisons) will likely come up often enough that you’ll appreciate having it.
Surgewise (**): Free trained skill of your choice and an okay Occultism skill feat.
Technological (***): Emotion effects are common and your will save is good. Shrug off emotion effects with ease.

Ancestry feats:

(1) Deepvision (***): Darkvision is always good.
(1) Startling Appearance (**): Intimidating Glare is among the best skill feats. It is a skill feat, though, which means it’s not exactly hard to come by. If you find your build starved for skill feats early on and if you want an extra trained skill, you could take this instead of Deepvision.
(5) Gaping Flesh (**): Imposing sickened is a nice way to make it harder for enemies to harm you. It’s only once per day, but it can help get you out of a tight spot for a reaction. It may also make enemies waste actions if they try to spend an action to overcome the condition while still adjacent to you.
(5) Powerful Guts (***): Sickened is a common enough condition that being able to throw off higher stacks of it with relative ease will make your action economy much friendlier. Plus, less save attempts needed to overcome those higher stacks.
(5) Uncanny Awareness (**): An imprecise sense can be helpful with Homing Beacon but, as usual, your perception still won’t be great.
(9) Embodied Dragoon Subjectivity (***): Innate spells are always nice, and both feather fall and phantom steed provide fantastic utility. Unfortunately, the level for phantom steed isn’t specified, which means you probably can’t ever use it for a fly speed. Consult your GM.
(9) Slip the Grasp (***): You don’t want to be grabbed. This can help quite a bit. In particular, ignoring the multiple attack penalty for a second Escape attempt is great.
(13) Augment Senses (**): Improved Seek areas may help with Homing Beacon, but you’re still limited by your perception.
(13) Spew Tentacles (****): Getting black tentacles as an innate spell is excellent even if you already have access to it. You can center it on yourself to create a deterrent against enemies since you can safely stand in this version.

Ghoran (**)

As an ancestry with no baseline ability flaw, you might as well just take two free boosts. Low-light vision isn’t terribly exciting, but it’s at least a bit better than normal vision. The reliance on sun is easily overcome and may reduce your need to Subsist or spend money on rations. There’s not a whole lot here that’s too terribly exciting for you. Luckily, this ancestry can afford to give up its heritage in favor of a better versatile heritage.

Heritage:

Ancient Ash (**): One of few ways to gain automatic skill progression, although it only goes to expert.
Enchanting Lily (**): If you’re playing a CHA build, it’s probably a free skill. Diplomacy tends to be nice to have regardless. The generally-available bonus to Make an Impression will help your face role endeavors, too.
Strong Oak (***): The fact that you get the circumstance bonus to resist any effect that would result in you becoming Grabbed, Restrained, or Prone is quite good.
Thorned Rose (**): Decent if you’re frequently in melee - namely, if you’re relying on imaginary weapon. Punishing enemies who Strike you and potentially applying persistent damage to them isn’t bad, although it’s only once per day without feat investment. Note that there is an error here - this feat describes the persistent damage as bleed damage in one place and piercing damage in another. It’s probably supposed to be bleed damage.

Ancestry feats:

(1) Ancient Memories / (9) Endless Memories / (13) Eternal Memories (** / ***): You’ll primarily want these feats on an INT-based subconscious mind build. That being the case, you likely have everything you want to be proficient in at trained proficiency already, meaning Ancient Memories may not be that exciting for you. I recommend using it for lore flexibility prior to Endless and Eternal Memories. Once you get those feats, however, being able to raise one of your trained skills to expert proficiency is great. Eternal Memories’ flexibility will once again allow you to flex into a lore skill as needed, but more readily than just at the start of any given day.
(5) Murderous Thorns (**): One of its prerequisites, the Hidden Thorn feat, isn’t all that great and this feat doesn’t make it much better for you. If you chose the Thorned Rose heritage, though, this feat will allow you to use its reaction once per hour instead of once per day.
(9) Perfume Cloud (**): Once per hour defensive tool that can Dazzle and potentially blind a creature, plus limiting the range of their vision on a failure or worse. Use this and run away. It’ll be hard to fit into your usual action economy due to its two action requirement; either you generally won’t have good options with which to prime your Unleash on your first turn, or you’ll have to take up precious actions that would otherwise benefit from the Unleash damage buff while Unleashed. If you take this feat, expect to use it post-Unleash while you’re stupefied since it won’t suffer from the debuff.
(9) Solar Rejuvenation (**): You really want to be at full HP at the start of every encounter. This will help you get there more easily. It’s not necessary provided your party has the resources to heal everyone up to full as needed in exploration mode. By this level, they probably do, but still, it can’t hurt to have a little extra guaranteed HP.
(13) Violent Vines (***): Murderous vine won’t ever heighten and its level isn’t specified, but it’s at least a decent ranged single target control tool. Plus, innate spells are almost always welcome. Even better, it’s usable once per hour.
(17) Ghoran’s Wrath (***): Nature’s reprisal won’t ever heighten and its level isn’t specified, but it’s a strong and large area control tool which only affects your enemies and deals passive damage to boot. Plus, you can use it once per hour unlike most innate spells.

Goloma (**)

As an ancestry with no baseline ability flaw, you might as well just take two free boosts. You won’t have the perception progression to make good use of Eyes in Back, though. Getting the best perception features from this ancestry will require you to take Canny Acumen (perception), meaning the perception improvements won’t matter as much for levels 11-16. The defensive and perceptive benefits of the ancestry are hard to ignore, though. Additionally, having a 30 foot baseline speed is quite nice. This ancestry will work best in a group that doesn’t have a highly perceptive class like a ranger or rogue, especially if you build to rely on WIS. Consider a versatile heritage for this ancestry. The ones that grant a feat for further increased speed will tend to be good choices. Also note that you don’t start off speaking Common.

Heritage:

Farsight (**): Only gives low-light vision, but sets you up to take a feat for darkvision.
Frightful (**): Intimidating Glare is among the best skill feats. It is a skill feat, though, which means it’s not exactly hard to come by. If you find your build starved for skill feats early on and if you want an extra trained skill, you might appreciate this heritage.
Vigilant (***): Every group wants someone with detect magic, and the proficiency buff to perception against magical traps is very useful for a poor perception progression class. Consider taking Canny Acumen (perception) to really make use of this heritage.

Ancestry feats:

(1) Goloma Courage (***): You have good will save progression, and fear effects are common. Shrug off fear effects with ease. It even provides a greater bonus against demoralize attempts. Although feats like this are fairly common among the various ancestries, this is among the best.
(1) Pierce the Darkness (***): You’ll need to be a Farsight goloma, but darkvision is always good
(1) Watchful Gaze / (9) Constant Gaze (** / ***): Not being flanked is always beneficial. Think of this as somewhat of a total defense option: shield (or Raise a Shield if you have it) + Take Cover + Watchful Gaze to really shut down an enemy offensive.
(5) Ambush Awareness (***): The equivalent of both Incredible Initiative (perception only) and Pilgrim’s Token from one feat.
(9) Defensive Instincts (**): You have access to shield, but this can be a backup option if you feel the need to improve your AC from time to time while shield is unusable.
(13) Arcane Sight (**): It’ll let you execute two exploration activities at once, but only Search and Detect Magic. Your perception will need some help in the form of WIS investment and Canny Acumen (perception) to make the most of this feat.
(17) True Gaze (***): Getting true seeing once per hour for a single action is solid, but you still have to contend with the fact that it’ll be limited by counteract checks in its otherwise most useful situations.

Kashrishi (***)

As an ancestry with no baseline ability flaw, you might as well just take two free boosts. Imprecise senses aren’t the most useful for you with your poor perception, but they’re an occasionally useful tool. Emanating dim light from your horn won’t do you much good without feat support or a versatile heritage. That feature is at least readily available to you with your bounty of spells bearing the mental trait. This ancestry provides several highly useful and synergistic feats. As such, it’s very nearly blue. The only points holding it back from a blue rating are the fact that the heritages, while decent, don’t offer anything particularly amazing, and that it doesn’t offer much in the way of spells outside of the occult tradition. Versatile heritages may be difficult to fit into this ancestry because it offers so very many good ancestry feats, but the especially good ones (changeling, sylph, tiefling) are workable.

Heritage:

Nascent (***): Extra ancestry feats tend to be a nice addition.
Trogloshi (***): If nothing else, it potentially frees up a cantrip slot. Plus, compared to the light cantrip, it costs one fewer action to activate. With your ready access to mental spells, you’ll even get a little extra range out of the light from Crystal Luminescence.

Ancestry feats:

(1) Community Knowledge (****): You rely on plenty of skill actions for which a +2 status bonus is a welcome addition. Demoralize and Recall Knowledge spring to mind immediately, but you’ve got lots of options with this feat.
(1) Crystal Luminescence (***): Basically replaces the light cantrip with a single action, but you can also passively activate it with the same effects that would otherwise activate the default Glowing Horn ancestry feature - in your case, mental spells, for the most part. Potentially even better with the Trogloshi heritage, assuming you want/need the extra light range.
(1) Emotional Partitions (***): Emotion effects are common and you have a good will save. Shrug off those effects with ease.
(1) Open Mind (**): You get an extra occult cantrip, possibly freeing up some utility or offense in your repertoire. You may or may not feel the need for an extra cantrip depending on your group composition.

(5) Unlock Secret (****): If nothing else, it’s an extra use of true strike once per day. Otherwise, having a flexible choice in what you gain for an innate spell gives you some other good options. See the spells section for a breakdown of good choices.

(9) Transcendent Realization (****): If nothing else, more true strike. The fact that you can choose a spell up to third level is even better.

(13) Reimagine (**): Easier retraining via dreaming potential if you feel that you need retraining.

(5) Well of Potential (****): One free focus point recharge per day is downright amazing, even if it takes an action to do so.

(5) Empathic Calm (****): Getting a scaling innate calm emotions is excellent on its own. Sanctuary is a welcome addition as well.
(9) Fortified Mind (****): You don’t have to worry too much about the Fascinated condition, but potentially being able to shrug off becoming Stupefied is excellent, if unlikely.
(9) Telekinetic Slip (***): It’s only once per day, but the Grabbed condition is very bad for you. Having a better chance to remove the Grabbed condition is a reaction is a welcome benefit.
(13) Kashrishi Revivification (***): If bad goes to worse and an enemy puts you into the dying condition, you can get out once per day without making a check. You’ll still be wounded, but it’ll give you a chance to get away from the bad situation that caused the problem in the first place. NOTE: If your GM is running the wounded rules from the GM screen rather than the CRB, staying up with wounded 1 is more deadly than waiting for an ally to heal you and you should not take this feat.
(17) Cleansing Light (****): Use this feat post-Unleash once per day to automatically remove your Stupefied condition, plus provide some potential group support via debuff removal and a no-save area Dazzled condition which only affects enemies.

Poppet (***)

For baseline abilities, CON/CHA/free are good for CHA builds, but the DEX penalty is rough. If you don’t want to deal with the DEX penalty or plan to play an INT build, you should instead choose two free ability boosts. Darkvision is always good, as are bonuses to saves against the long list of effects from the Constructed trait. The fire weakness sucks since fire damage is pretty common, but you can overcome that with a feat if you feel the need. A versatile heritage wouldn’t go amiss here - good feats, but not many great heritages.

Heritages:

Stuffed (**): No fall damage is decent. Considering you’d otherwise need to climb or use, at a minimum, feather fall, it’ll save you and/or your party some resources occasionally.
Wishborn (***): Emotion and fear effects are common and you have a decent will save. Shrug off those effects with ease.

Ancestry feats:

(1) Helpful Poppet (****): Aid is a great way to use a third action. Being more likely to succeed/critically succeed and essentially unable to critically fail is outstanding. Synergizes well with Infinite Eye’s omnidirectional scan and Gathered Lore’s Recall the Teachings.
(1) Quadruped (****): 30 feet of movement speed is always nice.
(1) Shiny Button Eyes (***): Basically Canny Acumen, which will help overcome your perception limitations somewhat. The bonus against illusions is situationally helpful, but we already liked Canny Acumen so it’s just icing on the cake.
(1) Wash Out (***): Your campaign may or may not have much in the way of poisons and diseases. If it does, you’ll love this feat. Diseases in particular can be really nasty. Additionally, even if they don’t come up much, the much easier ability to overcome virulent afflictions is very helpful. This is especially valuable considering you don’t have much HP.
(5) Cunning Tinker (***): Builds in a party with someone using a shield will love this feat. Mending as an innate spell is very helpful to keep that low-INT tank’s shield in working order. The real kicker is that you can use this mending to heal yourself, and it scales.
(5) Histrionic Injury (**): You really want to stay away from melee, but if a bad situation arises and something can melee Strike you, this feat will help you get revenge. Debuffing a target’s will save with the stupefied condition will make it that much more likely that you or an ally can land a potent spell crit.
(5) Sealed Poppet (***): Does away with your fire weakness. Very nice. Note that you can’t have the Stuffed poppet heritage if you want this feat.
(13) Reanimating Spark (***): If bad goes to worse and an enemy puts you into the dying condition, you can get out once per day without making a check. You’ll still be wounded, but it’ll give you a chance to get away from the bad situation that caused the problem in the first place.
(13) Squirm Free (***): You don’t want to be grabbed. Getting to Escape as a reaction means you may be able to just get away from the problem before it becomes a worse problem, and you won’t have to deal with the MAP.
(17) Restitch (***): Keep a frontliner from dying. They can still go unconscious, but regenerate is a strong spell you wouldn’t otherwise get.
(17) Soaring Poppet (**): It’s not much of a fly speed, but it has no prerequisites and enables you to fly without having to use up a 16th or higher level class feat.

Shisk (*)

As an ancestry with no baseline ability flaw, you might as well just take two free boosts. Darkvision is always good. Be aware that shisks do not automatically speak common. The only feat of any merit at first level is Shisk Lore. It’s a similar issue at later levels: the feats worth taking tend to be generic. Either be willing to accept that you’ll mostly have situational and/or generic ancestry feats available to you or give up the excellent Spellkeeper heritage for a versatile heritage. Without a versatile heritage, there’s very little of value here that you couldn’t get elsewhere. If you’re playing a high-level campaign, it’s a bit more valuable of an ancestry for INT builds.

Heritage:

Lorekeeper (***): Automatic skill progression is always good even if it stops at expert.
Spellkeeper (****): Access to a primal cantrip is always great.

Ancestry feats:

(5) Bristle (**): You have access to shield, but this can be a backup option if you feel the need to improve your AC from time to time while shield is unusable.
(9) Dig Up Secrets (***): You already have access to hypercognition, but it’s a good spell (specifically for INT builds) and innate spells are almost always welcome additions.
(13) Secret Eyes (***): You already have access to prying eye, but it’s a good scouting spell and innate spells are almost always welcome additions.
(17) Fountain of Secrets (****): Free Recall Knowledge check every round. Awesome for INT builds.

Shoony (*)

Low ancestry HP means you’ll want to stay far from the front line. For the baseline abilities, DEX/CHA/free are good for CHA builds, but the CON penalty compounds the issue of your low class HP. If you don’t want to deal with the CON penalty or plan to play an INT build, you should instead choose two free ability boosts. Low-light vision is nothing too exciting, but it’s at least a slight upgrade over normal vision. Being able to more easily overcome inhaled and olfactory effects will be situationally useful. This ancestry gets better with a versatile heritage, but still doesn’t offer very many good feats.

Heritage:

Bloodhound (**): An extra imprecise sense might be useful in tandem with Homing Beacon, but as usual you’re limited by your poor perception progression.

Ancestry feats:

(1) Esteemed Visitor (**): Being unable to crit fail Gather Information and Make an Impression while in settlements will be useful from time to time.
(1) Handy with Your Paws (**): A little better capability to repair your champion buddy’s shield, although it loses value once your party has magical shields.
(1) Scamper Underfoot (***): You’ll need to invest in acrobatics, but adding a circumstance bonus and some utility to your Tumble Through action will help keep you out of trouble.

(5) Tough Tumbler (***): Somewhat improves the action economy of Tumble Through (if you crit fail) and helps keep you a bit safer should you trigger a reaction.

(5) Loyal Empath / (13) Steadfast Ally (****): Being able to Aid an ally’s will save is awesome. Being able to do so without using an action to prepare on your turn is even better. Synergizes particularly well with Infinite Eye and Gathered Lore.

Skeleton (**)

For the baseline abilities, DEX/CHA/free and an INT flaw are good for CHA builds as long as you’re willing to skimp on skills. If you don’t want to short your skill list or plan to play an INT build, you should instead choose two free ability boosts. Low-light vision isn’t too exciting, but it’s at least a slight upgrade over normal vision. Given that you’ll heal from negative energy, either your party will have to be very prepared or you’ll have to rely on soothe, medicine with a skill feat, and possibly Emotional Acceptance’s Unleash action. Not needing to eat may be a benefit, but you’ll have to collect bones to keep yourself healthy. Immunity to death effects is pretty great, as is the circumstance bonus to saves against diseases and poisons. Reduced sleep requirements may help your party out with guard shifts, although your perception still won’t be great. You have a couple good heritages on offer, but not many applicable feat choices. A versatile heritage will fix the feat issue somewhat, at least.

Heritage:

Fodder: Extra speed is always great.
Sturdy: 10 ancestry HP and Diehard are valuable tools to balance out your low class HP somewhat.

Ancestry feats:

(1) As in Life, So in Death (****): Adopted Ancestry on its own is already a great feat and can get you the coveted human feat Adapted Cantrip. Getting the ability to passively disguise yourself as not being undead will likely be quite valuable for you since undead don’t tend to have great reputations in Golarion.
(1) Collapse (***): Being able to negate a critical hit’s extra damage is huge. Compare this to, say, shield in terms of preventive value. You really don’t want to be in position to use this feat, but sometimes things go sideways.
(1) Undead Empathy (**): With a CHA build, this can really expand your capability to talk your way out of situations. It’ll very much depend on how willing your GM is to let you talk your way around encounters, though.
(5) Past Life (***): Additional Lore will make your chosen Lore scale automatically, plus the extra trained skill can help you get around the INT penalty somewhat.
(17) Necromantic Heir (***): Being able to cast harm once per hour as an innate spell is good, especially because you can use it to heal yourself.

Sprite (***)

For the baseline abilities, DEX/INT/free and a STR penalty are great for INT builds and workable for CHA builds. If you don’t care about INT on a CHA build, you’ll be better off taking the two free ability boosts instead. The low HP and tiny size mean you want to stay well far away from the front line, especially because of the reach considerations for your size. Low-light vision isn’t too exciting, but it’s at least somewhat better than normal vision. A versatile heritage is a good idea.

Heritage:

Draxie (**): Subtle communication tends to be useful, but technically all builds have access to psi message.
Luminous (**): Essentially the light cantrip, freeing you up to pick a different cantrip.
Nyktera (***): Your perception isn’t great, but getting a 60-foot cone to seek and, within the 30 foot range, a circumstance bonus to do so are nice ways around that detriment. Since the circumstance bonus effectively puts you on par with a master proficiency perception class, you can potentially get some mileage out of Homing Beacon if you’re frequently fighting invisible enemies. Even better at later levels if you also take Canny Acumen (perception).
Pixie (**): Allows you to overcome the inherent 0 foot reach that sprites have, although you’ll still have to contend with low HP if you want to do anything with touch spells.

Ancestry feats:

(1) Corgi Mount (**): You are restricted to the Scent ability, but it’s a decent familiar ability. It still provides some flexibility and Scent is useful. The big drawback here is that you can’t ever give it different movement speed types. If you ever want to make it better, you’ll need an archetype.
(1) Evanescent Wings / (9) Energize Wings / (17) Hero’s Wings (** / ***): Solves some reach problems for the use of Interact with the first feat. One minute of fly speed every hour from the second feat and permanent fly speed from the third. Flight is useful, although you could just get permanent flight at level 16 with a class feat.
(1) Fey Cantrips (**): A few cantrips you normally have access to anyway. You may still like being able to offload some of your cantrip utility into innate cantrips.
(1) Sprite’s Spark (**): A bit of damage and damage type versatility at range and which works with Psi Strikes, should you choose to use it. Oscillating Wave psychics will have the most overall damage diversity provided they have a heritage other than Draxie, Luminous, or Pixie.
(5) Fey Disguise (**): Illusory disguise may or may not be useful for you depending on your campaign, but getting a scaling version as an innate spell is decent if so.
(9) Fey Magic (***): Faerie fire and invisibility may already be on your spell list, but they’re good spells and you like innate spells. The level isn’t specified for this invisibility, so consult with your GM. It should almost certainly be second level.
(13) Fey Skin (***): You should be staying away from weapon Strikes anyway, so the cold iron weakness shouldn’t come up too often. Otherwise, the extra HP gained and ability to heal yourself a bit during 10 minute rest periods will be helpful for you.
(13) Invisible Trickster (****): 4th level invisibility once per hour as an innate spell is outstanding. Even if enemies have abilities to counter it relatively easily, they have to waste actions and resources to counter an ability that is very light on resource expenditure.

Strix (**)

As an ancestry with no baseline ability flaw, you might as well just take two free boosts. Low-light vision isn’t particularly exciting, but at least it’s somewhat of an improvement over normal vision. You also get near equivalents to Quick Jump and Powerful Leap without having to invest in athletics. There are a few good feats here, but still, you should consider a versatile heritage.

Heritage:

Nightglider (***): Darkvision is always good.

Ancestry feats:

(1) Nestling Fall (**): No fall damage, provided you can act, is decent. Considering you’d otherwise need to climb or use, at a minimum, feather fall, it’ll save you and/or your party some resources occasionally.
(5) Fledgling Flight (**): It’s not much, but flight is flight. Particularly valuable with Nestling Fall or, to a lesser extent, Cat Fall.
(5) Thrown Voice (**): You already have access to ventriloquism, but getting it as an innate spell will expand your spells to give you some out-of-combat diversion and deception tactics.
(9) Ferocious Gust (***): You get the equivalent of a control spell once per hour. Decent.
(9) Juvenile Flight / (13) Fully Flighted (*** / ****): 10 minutes of flight per day from the first feat, permanent flight from the second. You gain permanent flight at level 13, unlike most other ancestries, making these feats an actual meaningful choice against Constant Levitation at 16.
(9) Rokoan Arts (**): Speak with animals comes up relatively often as a useful spell, but usually at earlier levels. Considering you get it and status at level 9 at the earliest from this feat, you may find their utility lacking. Regardless, innate spells are generally a good idea and you may find uses for them.
(9) Wing Step (***): Being able to Step twice with one action to get away from danger is valuable for you.

Vishkanya (*)

As an ancestry with no baseline ability flaw, you might as well just take two free boosts. Low-light vision isn’t particularly exciting, but it’s at least better than normal vision. The innate venom feature isn’t likely to come up for you given that you shouldn’t really be using a weapon. Maybe a shortbow if you can find a way to get proficiency, but the action economy is a limiting factor given that a shortbow Strike is generally a means of occupying a third action alongside a spell. Since the heritages aren’t too exciting, consider a versatile heritage if you really like this ancestry.

Heritage:

Elusive (**): Less effective than similar heritages since the bonus only applies to Escape checks, but it’s better than nothing. The Squeeze benefit is situational at best.
Old-Blood (**): For an INT build, either of the available skill feats will give you some face role capabilities with less reliance on CHA.
Scalekeeper (**): For an INT build, getting a free action Recall Knowledge once per day is decent.
Venom-Resistant (**): Your campaign may or may not have much in the way of ongoing poisons. If it does, you’ll love this feat. Even if they don’t come up often, the much easier ability to overcome virulent afflictions is very helpful.

Ancestry feats:

(1) Alabaster Eyes (***): Darkvision is always good.
(1) Lesser Enhance Venom (**): A bit more damage from your innate venom. Also allows you to Envenom once per hour rather than once per day. The frequency also carries over to other feats which allow you to modify your innate venom.

(9) Moderate Enhance Venom (**): More damage. At this level, it’s actually a decent amount for a single action, especially if you can reliably pick out targets with poor fortitude saves which will continue to suffer from the poison. Also allows you to Envenom once per ten minutes.

(5) Restoring Blood (**): Change your innate venom to give a bit of healing. Note that its frequency cannot scale past that granted by Moderate Enhance Venom.
(13) Venom Purge (**): You’ll really want to invest fully into medicine if you plan to take this feat so that you have the best possible chance of succeeding at the required Counteract check. If you do invest in medicine, you can remove some nasty effects from yourself with relative ease.

Half-human heritages

If your GM uses the variant rule to allow any race to be a half-elf or half-orc, consider these to be the same as versatile heritages. Otherwise, RAW, they are only available as heritage choices for humans.

Half-elf (****)

See the elf and human ancestries for information about their feats. Note that half-elves can take the human ancestry feat Multitalented without having to worry about the archetype’s ability score prerequisites, which makes this potentially a fantastic option if you want to take an archetype. Naturally, if your GM is using the variant rule for half-elves, this won’t be available to you if you choose half-elf for any ancestries other than elf or human. Both ancestries give quite a few innate magic feats, giving you quite a few options in how you want to build out your innate spells.

Ancestry feats:

(1) Elf Atavism (***): Access to some of the more useful elf heritages like cavern elf for darkvision (although this does require you to have low-light vision as a prerequisite). In the right campaign/circumstances, it can combine well with Wandering Heart.
(1) Sociable (**): Hobnobber is a decent skill feat, but it is still an easily accessible skill feat. This feat will be a better choice on a CHA build without much in the way of trained skills.
(5) Inspire Imitation (**): You’ll likely find the most use for it from intimidation, but it’ll depend largely on party composition and your group’s skill picks. You may also find value with Recall Knowledge skills. Combines very nicely with the human feat Group Aid.
(9) Pinch Time (***): Although you can only cast it on yourself, gaining haste as an innate spell is good.

Half-orc (* / **)

See the orc and human ancestries for information about their feats. Being able to cherry pick the best of both worlds provides for quite a few outstanding choices.

Ancestry feats:

(1) Monstrous Peacemaker (**): There are a ton of non-human humanoids in this game system. How common they are will depend on your GM, but you’ll at least get some use from this feat. With a CHA build and diplomacy, this can be valuable for you.
(1) Orc Sight (***): Darkvision is always good, although you’ll have to find a way to get low-light vision to meet its prerequisites.
(1) Overlooked Mastermind (**): Chances are, you’re going to get yourself into trouble at some point. With a CHA build and diplomacy, this can help get you out of bad situations.

Uncommon versatile heritages

Aasimar (***)

Ancestries that already have low-light vision will cause the aasimar heritage to give you darkvision, which is always good. Otherwise, you get low-light vision. This heritage also opens a large list of useful feats, which can complement ancestries without much in the way of feat choices.

Ancestry feats:

(1) Celestial Eyes (***): Darkvision is always good.
(1) Emberkin (**): Fire damage is fairly common, but it’s still a situational feat.

(9) Peri Magic(***): Status takes some creativity to be useful, but glitterdust as an innate spell is great.

(1) Halo (**): Essentially the light cantrip, freeing you up to pick a different cantrip. Note that you can suppress the light, which is not the case with most similar effects.

(5) Healer’s Halo (**): Heal an extra 1d6 HP as a reaction after any creature has healed from positive energy. It’s not a lot, but as a reaction it doesn’t exactly hurt your action economy. The ten minute immunity period lines up with normal out-of-combat healing windows. This feat will become less useful into the middle and higher levels. Find other reactions you can use and then retrain this if you take it.

(1) Lawbringer (***): Emotion effects are common and you have a good will save. Shrug off emotion effects with ease.
(1) Musetouched (***): Casters really don’t like the grabbed condition. This can help quite a bit.

(9) Azata Magic (***): You already have access to both glitterdust and remove paralysis, but they’re useful support spells and you like innate spells.
(9) Call of Elysium (****): Movement speed is universally useful. Note that this does not stack with speed granted from an ancestry feat such as Nimble Elf, but should stack with Fleet. This also provides a passive, free buff to allies’ movement speed if they start their turn next to you.

(5) Empyreal Blessing (***): We already have access to bless, but it’s a solid addition for an innate spell.
(9) Celestial Wings / (17) Eternal Wings (***): Flight is always good. As usual, permanent fly speed at 17th level. If you take Constant Levitation at 16, you won’t want these feats, but there is at least less of a feat tax in this instance.
(13) Aasimar’s Mercy (***): Two flexible support-oriented debuff removal spells per day as innate spells from your choice of three spells. Solid.
(13) Purge Sins (**): It’s only once per day, but doing away with ongoing afflictions using only a skill check is a great way to conserve your spells. You’ll need to rely on religion and WIS to carry it off, but it synergizes well with ancestries that grant a feat or baseline feature to more easily overcome poisons and diseases.
(17) Celestial Word (***): An extra innate blasting spell, limited to good damage, but that you otherwise wouldn’t have access to and which potentially hits neutral creatures. Especially useful considering that evil creatures are common enemies.
(17) Radiate Glory (***): A 20% or 50% miss chance against you once per day for one minute is pretty good.

Aphorite (**)

Ancestries that already have low-light vision will cause the aphorite heritage to give you darkvision, which is always good. Otherwise, you get low-light vision. There are a few good feats here, enough to patch up an otherwise lackluster ancestry.

Ancestry feats:

(1) Internal Cohesion (**): Essentially extra HP once per day from a failed Treat Wounds check. It’ll be better at earlier levels. Also could prevent you from dying or getting into a worse dying condition level from a crit fail allied Battle Medicine.
(1) Lemma of Vision (***): Darkvision is always good.
(5) Offensive Analysis (***): True strike is among the better spells you can use. Getting it as an innate spell will be beneficial for you.
(9) Analyze Information (***): You already have access to hypercognition, but it’s a good spell (specifically for INT builds) and innate spells are almost always welcome additions.
(17) Channel the Godmind (***): For when you absolutely, positively must detect enemies and hidden things.

Changeling (***)

Ancestries that already have low-light vision will cause the aasimar heritage to give you darkvision, which is always good.This is a decent heritage if only for the fact that it gives you access to electric arc. The fact that it gives you several other strong options makes this a solid choice for a versatile heritage. Do note that the level 17 feat is only available if you also have a May feat and Invoke the Elements. Keep that in mind if you’re planning to use this versatile heritage with an ancestry that wouldn’t otherwise get a level 17 feat. That’s not too much of a restriction considering you almost certainly want to take Virga May.

Ancestry feats:

(1) Callow May (**): Getting a skill feat for an ancestry feat on its own isn’t too exciting. Being able to make enemies flat-footed against you for a round when you roll deception for initiative is decent, though. It’s not likely that the effect will come up often in most campaigns, but if you’re in a more social-heavy campaign it may be helpful. Or if your GM is extra forgiving on which skills you can use for initiative.
(1) Dream May (**): The extra HP from a night’s rest isn’t much, but overcoming Drained and Doomed more easily is decent. The bonus to saves against sleep effects is situational, but you’ll occasionally be more resistant to an annoying or debilitating control effect.
(1) Hag’s Sight (***): If you didn’t already get darkvision from the heritage itself, you get darkvision, which is always good.
(1) Maiden’s Mending (***): It’s not a ton of temp HP, but it can help as a buffer for Strain Mind. It’s even better coupled with Moon May or, better yet, Virga May.
(1) Moon May (**): You may feel that you’re all set on cantrips, but if you want some extra flexibility, getting guidance for an ancestry feat is alright.
(1) Virga May (****): The whole reason to take the changeling versatile heritage. Combine with Maiden’s Mending for reliable temp HP every encounter.
(5) Called (***): Mental effects are fairly common, plus being able to better resist being controlled.
(5) Mist Child (**): This one will really depend on your build and as such is rather situational. If you’ve got a reliable means of being concealed or hidden (Invoke the Elements), it’ll be a helpful defensive tool.
(9) Invoke the Elements / (17) Stormy Heart (****): Invoke the Elements is sort of like an innate spell given its once per day frequency and two-action usage. The concealment prompting a miss chance is a decent defensive benefit, too. Unlike a spell, it won’t suffer the failure chance from being Stupefied, but it also can’t be used to prime Unleash. Consider this a post-Unleash defensive tool. It’s a decent deterrent on its own, but coupled with Mist Child, you’re either forcing a slightly harder-than-normal miss chance or punishing an enemy for daring to get close to you. Being able to use this effect once every ten minutes with Stormy Heart is noticeably better.
(9) Occult Resistance (**): Chances are good that you’ll be at least an expert in occultism. Passively getting a bonus to saves against occult effects is situational, but good enough on its own. If you know you’ll run into occult effects frequently, it’s much better.
(13) Hag Magic (***): Innate spells are almost always nice to have. Augury is a good enough addition on its own. Charm is a poor choice due to the incapacitation trait. You get access to a few extra choices if you have one of the Brine, Callow, Dream, or Slag May feats. Brine and Slag May are terrible choices for you, but they do both give access to spells you couldn’t otherwise cast (acid arrow or water walk, or earthbind, respectively). If you like the Callow or Dream May feats, though, you could instead choose from entangle, outcast’s curse, wall of thorns for Callow May, or nightmare for Dream May. Outcast’s curse and nightmare are occult spells, making the Callow May flexibility the strongest of the four options. That’s not saying too much, though, since even Callow and Dream May aren’t terribly strong ancestry feats on their own.

Dhampir (**)

Ancestries that already have low-light vision will cause the aasimar heritage to give you darkvision, which is always good. Dhampirs heal from negative energy, so be aware of that and pick spells accordingly. Luckily you have access to soothe and can heal yourself with Emotional Acceptance. Also be aware that the rules surrounding negative healing are a giant mess. Consult with your GM on how they plan to handle negative healing. Your best option here is the Adhyabhau / Feed on Pain feat chain, but no matter what it’s a situational heritage since you’ll have to be sure your party is willing to build around your negative healing. Otherwise, there are lots of mediocre or situational feat choices.

Ancestry feats:

(1) Adhyabhau (***): Emotion effects are common and you have a good will save. Shrug off those effects with ease. Plus, how cool is it being a psychic that’s descended from psychic vampires?

(5) Feed on Pain (****): Readily available temp HP considering how easy it is for you to deal mental damage. This can help keep your squishy self alive, especially for the fact that you present a healing challenge, and pairs well with Strain Mind. It scales much better than most other temp HP-granting effects since it’s related to how much damage you deal.

(1) Eyes of the Night (***): If you didn’t already get darkvision from the heritage itself, you get darkvision, which is always good.
(1) Nocturnal Charm (**): Better in a social game, but if you’re playing a CHA build you’re probably pulling at least some kind of duty as the party face. Bonuses to Lie, Gather Information, and Make an Impression covers most of your responsibilities as a face.
(1) Old Soul (**): Two extra trained skills is unlikely to be useful for an INT build, but may help you feel better and be able to contribute more often on a low-INT CHA build.
(1) Ru-Shi (*): While normally I wouldn’t list a feat that’s this underwhelming, it’s a prerequisite for a decent feat. Getting trained in society is alright if you’re in a game where you’re frequently using Recall Knowledge against humanoids, although if you’re doing that you’re likely playing an INT build and don’t need the extra skill. Eye for Numbers is among the weaker skill feats, sadly.

(5) Hopping Stride (***): Being able to overcome difficult terrain more easily and fully avoid floor-based traps is solid. It’s much better if you’re building on an ancestry that gives you 5 or 10 extra feet of speed, plus the Fleet feat. Without those features, you’re basically just getting an extra 5 feet of movement per Stride in difficult terrain plus the sometimes trap avoidance capability. There is no mention of greater difficult terrain in this feat, though. You’ll really only want this if you don’t plan to ever get Constant Levitation, though, since you can’t retrain Ru-Shi. You’ll have a relatively dead first level ancestry feat from levels 16-20 even if you do retrain out of Hopping Stride.

(1) Straveika (**): You don’t have great perception. Getting a bonus to Sense Motive may help you overcome that issue somewhat in the face role. Also satisfies the prerequisites for the Taste Blood feat.
(1) Svetocher (**): Drained really sucks for you. Treating it as one level lower if and when you get it will be helpful when that particular situation arises. Getting trained in diplomacy will be alright for CHA builds, too.
(5) Necromantic Physiology (**): Not quite as robust a feat as its counterparts which help overcome virulent afflictions, but diseases are somewhat common and frequently nasty. Getting a +2 to overcome them is a solid bonus.
(5) Taste Blood (**): Requires you to be a Cel Rau (too situational to list here), Straveika, or Svetocher. If you’ve got an ally willing to let you use this and a ready means of getting rid of the Drained condition, this feat is solid. Otherwise, it’ll mostly be useful if you can convince your GM to have a bloodbag NPC around for you to drink blood from whenever you need. The value of this feat will also depend on the level of humanoid you can drink from and whether you’re both willing to commit evil actions and have the capability to readily render enemies restrained or unconscious. Given the right conditions, though, having ten minute duration temp HP is a nice buffer for Strain Mind. That’s a lot of ifs, though. Plan and discuss accordingly.
(9) Night Magic (***): Animal form at second level by the time you have access to this is nothing short of terrible, but obscuring mist is a good addition to your kit, especially because you don’t normally have access to it.
(9) Slip into Shadow (**): Your only choices for this spell are darkness and penumbral shroud and it has a soft requirement for you to invest in stealth. Still, potentially imposing a 20% miss chance for enemies without at least low-light vision and otherwise being able to impose a 50% miss chance while Hiding is a decent defensive benefit.
(13) Daywalker (**): Sort of overcomes the issue of needing negative healing. If you’ve survived to this level, though, you and your party clearly have figured out how to deal with the negative healing. You may feel no need for this feat, or it may be a godsend to allow your party to retrain out of the feats they picked to support you.
(13) Form of the Bat (**): Pest form is generally terrible, but you’ll get a relatively slow fly speed once per hour. If and when you get Constant Levitation (three levels after you get access to this feat) you’ll want to retrain.
(17) Symphony of Blood (***): Vampiric exsanguination is a decent blasting innate spell once per day. Much worse if you’re frequently fighting undead. Also a means of getting temp HP to provide a buffer against Strain Mind. Provided you have Ancestral Mind (which, if you’re taking this feat, you absolutely should), if you cast it while Unleashed, you’ll get 7 more temp HP due to the damage buff.

Duskwalker (***)

Ancestries that already have low-light vision will cause the duskwalker heritage to give you darkvision, which is always good. There isn’t a heaping pile of good feats with this heritage, but enough to be worth choosing. Generally, this heritage is much stronger in an undead-heavy campaign.

Ancestry feats:

(1) Chance Death (***): Getting an extra chance once per day to not die is awesome, especially for a first level feat.
(1) Gravesight (***): If you didn’t already get darkvision from the heritage itself, you get darkvision, which is always good.
Nosoi’s Mask (***): If you’re playing a CHA build, you certainly couldn’t go wrong investing in intimidation. Intimidating Glare is one of the best skill feats in the game, too. Plus, you’ll be able to get your first intimidation item bonus with relative ease.
(1) Willing Death (**): Only really good if you have a means of providing temp HP for yourself (amped ray of frost), but keeping an ally from dying is always great so long as you have the (temp) HP to spare. Even then, it’s a risky feat, so be careful.
(5) Shoki’s Argument (***): Undead are common enough enemies that you’ll appreciate having access to disrupt undead. With Ancestral Mind and some extra Unleash damage, being able to absolutely nuke undead with a positive damage weakness will feel great when you get to take advantage of the combination. Even better if you’re in an undead-heavy campaign. Getting trained in diplomacy (or, more likely by this level, any other skill) is an alright addition.
(5) Ward Against Corruption (***): Death effects are scary if not the most common. Getting a bonus to save against them and disease, plus against all effects from undead, is great considering how relatively common undead are. Much better in an undead-heavy campaign.
(9) Duskwalker Magic (***): Gentle repose won’t be as frequently useful as augury, but still, augury alone is enough to make for a good feat.
(13) Resist Ruin (***): Death ward as an innate spell is pretty solid, plus you get passive negative energy resistance. It’ll be better in undead-heavy campaigns.
(17) Olethros’s Decree (**): You’ll need an ancestry that has a feat which grants proficiency in some kind of bows (read: shortbows; you could get longbows from the Duskwalker weapon feats, but you’re much better off with a shortbow). Being able to drop an extra 60 damage on top of a Strike once per day is pretty good if you do invest your feats as such, though. Coupled with Psi Strikes, you can get a good chunk of damage on a single Strike per day. Be aware, however, that you’ll need to be Quickened somehow or cast a single-action spell prior to Psi Strikes in order to pile all possible damage onto the Strike.
(17) Yamaraj’s Grandeur (***): Sort of like an innate spell since you can use it once per day. It’s a solid blasting tool if you’re into that sort of thing. Also carries a relatively heavy amount of persistent damage which hits over an area.

Ganzi (*)

Random resistance to acid, electricity, or sonic damage and a bonus to saves against effects imposing the controlled condition. There just isn’t enough here for it to be worth taking over another versatile heritage, though. The fact that it doesn’t provide a level 17 feat also means this heritage won’t generally be a meaningful improvement to the ancestries that could put paid to a versatile heritage. You can make it work, but it’ll take some careful decisions about what you want it to add to your build. Consider this more of a flavor pick.

Ancestry feats:

(1) Ganzi Gaze (** / ***): Low-light or darkvision depending on what you had prior to taking this feat. Low-light vision isn’t too exciting, but darkvision is always good.
(1) Irrepressible (***): Emotion and fear effects are common and you have a good will save. Shrug off those effects with ease.
(1) Vestigial Wings (**): Two skill feats is a decent trade out, especially because you don’t need to be trained in acrobatics and because Cat Fall is a great feat.
(5) Amorphous Aspect (**): The bonus to Squeeze isn’t much to look at, but the bonus to Escape is good depending on whether or not you’re trained and/or invested in acrobatics.
(9) Anarchic Arcana (***): Two daily randomized innate spells is pretty good, and it’s a solid list of spells.
(9) Glory and Valor! (**): If you’re using a shortbow (meaning two ancestry feats are spoken for from your baseline ancestry) and Psi Strikes, getting some healing once per day for Striking isn’t bad.
(13) Alter Resistance (***): Adding not only some flexibility but on-the-fly (once per hour) swapping to your daily randomized resistance is a solid improvement over the baseline.
(13) Arise, ye Worthy! (***): Getting breath of life as an innate spell is a solid addition to any build. Some extra support capability and the ability to resurrect a dead ally is strong.

Ifrit (**)

Fire resistance and lesser effects from environmental heat effects. Although there is a feat tax for darkvision if you don’t take this heritage on an ancestry with low-light vision, the fact that it provides a path to get there is a meaningful improvement over other versatile heritages that only ever grant low-light vision and ancestries that never grant vision improvements. Also keep in mind that, if you take this heritage to go from normal vision to darkvision, you’re effectively swapping out a low-light vision feat for fire resistance, which is a meaningful trade.

Ancestry feats:

(1) Cindersoul (***): Persistent damage is a notorious character killer. Dropping the flat check DC to overcome three of the most common persistent damage types is solid, especially if you or an ally bothers to spend time to reduce the DC further.
(1) Elemental Eyes (***): You’ll have to build on an ancestry that grants low-light vision or have Ember’s Eyes to take this feat, but darkvision is always good.
(1) Ember’s Eyes (***): You can take this up to twice to gain, first, low-light vision, and second, darkvision. If you already have low-light vision, you only need to take it once for darkvision. Darkvision is always good.
(1) Inner Fire (***): Useless for Oscillating Wave psychics, but a solid cantrip addition for every other conscious mind.
(1) Molten Wit (***): Round out your list of CHA-based skill capabilities. Neither feat is particularly exciting, but they’re nice to have in your kit.
(1) Sinister Appearance (**): Trained proficiency in intimidation plus Intimidating Glare, one of the best skill feats. If you’re playing a CHA build and are starved for skills, this may be a helpful feat. The bonus to Impersonate a tiefling is situationally helpful.
(5) Heatwave (**): Fire damage is fairly common, but this isn’t the most reliable means of gaining concealment. Imposing a 20% miss chance for a turn is an okay defensive tool at the cost of taking fire damage.
(5) Noble Resolve (***): Mental effects are somewhat common and tend to be nasty. Getting not only a passive buff to save against them, but also awareness of who used them, is quite valuable.
(9) Charred Remains (***): THIS RATING IS ONLY FOR OSCILLATING WAVE PSYCHICS. For all other conscious minds, this feat is almost completely useless and requires a means of accessing spells with the fire trait such as an archetype or Trick Magic Item. For the oscillating wave psychic, though, this feat adds some control capability to a blasting spell once per day. It does also have some synergy with the lizardfolk ancestry’s Terrain Advantage feat, allowing you to force targets to be flat-footed to you while in the difficult terrain. Both are level 9 feats, though, meaning the combination won’t get off the ground until at least level 13.
(9) Efreeti Magic (**): Enlarge and illusory object as innate second level spells aren’t the most exciting innate spells, but it rarely hurts to have more innate spells in your kit.
(9) Miraculous Repair (**): Occasional MacGuffin repair.
(13) Planar Sidestep (***): It’s only once per day, but reducing incoming damage from a melee Strike by 25 is a big swing in your favor. Even if you rarely end up near melee, it’s a great emergency tool. Especially useful if you rely on imaginary weapon and/or touch spells.
(13) Radiant Burst (**): Being able to potentially blind nearby creatures once per day may be useful, but there are some positioning considerations. You don’t want allies nearby when you use it and you really don’t ever want to be in a position where you’d want to use this feat in the first place. Still, sometimes fights go sideways and you may appreciate having a tool to blind surrounding enemies to enable your escape.
(17) Blazing Aura (****): Giving your allies the Quickened condition for a round and blasting your enemies in a fairly large emanation as a reaction is a strong effect, even if it is only once per day. Even without the emanation, trading your reaction for likely 3+ allied actions is quite strong.

Oread (*)

Ancestries that already have low-light vision will cause the oread heritage to give you darkvision, which is always good. This heritage doesn’t offer much beyond vision improvements, though. Almost everything about this heritage is available elsewhere. If you really like it, though, there are a few decent options. It’s also got a fairly weak level 17 feat, meaning it doesn’t complement the ancestries that could use a versatile heritage very well.

Ancestry feats:

(1) Dustsoul (**): Becoming trained in survival isn’t too exciting, but gaining the ability to subsist on dirt may be helpful.
(1) Elemental Eyes (***): If you didn’t already get darkvision from the heritage itself, you get darkvision, which is always good.
(1) Steady on Stone (**): Rubble and stone- or earth-based difficult terrain are somewhat common. Ignoring them will help keep you out of danger from time to time.
(5) Noble Resolve (***): Mental effects are somewhat common and tend to be nasty. Getting not only a passive buff to save against them, but also awareness of who used them, is quite valuable.
(5) Treacherous Earth (**): Creating a square of difficult terrain for an action may help keep you or an ally safer sometimes.
(9) Earthsense (**): An extra imprecise sense might be useful in tandem with Homing Beacon, but as usual you’re limited by your poor perception progression.
(9) Miraculous Repair (**): Occasional MacGuffin repair.
(9) Shaitan Magic (***): Both glitterdust and resist energy are solid innate spell additions, even if you do already have access to them.
(13) Planar Sidestep (***): It’s only once per day, but reducing incoming damage from a melee Strike by 25 is a big swing in your favor. Even if you rarely end up near melee, it’s a great emergency tool. Especially useful if you rely on imaginary weapon and/or touch spells.
(13) Shaitan Skin (***): Having three casts of stoneskin per day provides much more frequency than the average innate spell-granting feat. Getting some damage resistance will help you stay alive and get away from danger.
(17) Stone Form (**): 7th level polymorph spells will be somewhat dangerous for you considering that your AC will be crit-prone. It’s pretty much the cutoff for polymorph value from this level to 20, but if you really like the idea of being able to polymorph you may enjoy it.

Suli (*)

Ancestries that already have low-light vision will cause the suli heritage to give you darkvision, which is always good. There just aren’t many good feat options with this heritage. Your best bet is the Elemental Bulwark chain. Note that there is no level 17 feat, meaning this versatile heritage won’t solve the level 17 feat issue with some of the weaker ancestries which could really use a versatile heritage.

Ancestry feats:

(1) Dualborn (***): Resistance to two common damage types is helpful. Your choices in this feat have interactions with several other feats.
(1) Elemental Assault / (13) Continuous Assault (**): If you’re relying on a shortbow (meaning two ancestry feats are spoken for from your baseline ancestry) and Psi Strikes, you can add some damage and versatility to your shortbow Strike once per day. Continuous Assault makes it available once per hour.

(9) Tetraelemental Assault (**): The king of damage versatility, provided you can land your Strikes. This will help you go fishing for weaknesses. Unfortunately, you still need to rely on your poor weapon proficiency and suffer through a heavy feat tax to get to this point.

(1) Elemental Embellish (**): Trained proficiency in intimidation and the equivalent of Intimidating Glare. You may or may not feel those two features are worth an ancestry feat slot. They are among the best skills and skill feats, though.
(1) Elemental Eyes (***): If you didn’t already get darkvision from the heritage itself, you get darkvision, which is always good.
(1) Scholar’s Inheritance (**): Crafting isn’t great most of the time, but alchemical crafting is its best use. If you want to lean into your crafting and sometimes supply your party with alchemical items, you can’t go wrong here. It’s just hard to justify focusing one of your precious dedicated skill proficiency increases on crafting, even with an INT build. It’ll also depend on how much downtime your game has. Additionally, you’re getting a trained skill and a skill feat at the cost of an ancestry feat slot. You may not feel that this trade is worth it.
(5) Noble Resolve (***): Mental effects are somewhat common and tend to be nasty. Getting not only a passive buff to save against them, but also awareness of who used them, is quite valuable.
(5) Elemental Bulwark / (13) Improved Elemental Bulwark (***): As a reaction, you gain resistance to the triggering damage type with no uses per day limitation. Solid. Dualborn restricts this to your chosen types, but its resistance stacks with the resistance granted from this feat.
(9) Janni Hospitality (**): Where normally create food and create water are hard to justify on a spontaneous caster, getting them as innate spells makes them much more likely to get used. Still, Subsisting isn’t exactly difficult. You may feel no need for these spells in your campaign.
(9) Janni Magic (**): Enlarge and speak with animals as innate second level spells aren’t the most exciting innate spells, but it rarely hurts to have more innate spells in your kit.
(9) Miraculous Repair (**): Occasional MacGuffin repair.
(13) Planar Sidestep (***): It’s only once per day, but reducing incoming damage from a melee Strike by 25 is a big swing in your favor. Even if you rarely end up near melee, it’s a great emergency tool. Especially useful if you rely on imaginary weapon and/or touch spells.

Sylph (***)

Ancestries that already have low-light vision will cause the sylph heritage to give you darkvision, which is always good. The fact that you can use this heritage to gain a fly speed with only two feats makes it a meaningful choice no matter what, even for ancestries that don’t grant flight, cutting down the feat investment for most of those ancestries from three to two. It’s up to you whether you feel better spending a class feat or two ancestry feats for a permanent fly speed.

Ancestry feats:

(1) Elemental Eyes (***): If you didn’t already get darkvision from the heritage itself, you get darkvision, which is always good.
(1) Smokesoul (**): If you have a reliable means of gaining concealment or becoming hidden, this feat will help keep you safer.
(1) Swift (****): Movement speed is universally useful. Note that this does not stack with speed granted from an ancestry feat such as Nimble Elf, but will stack with a higher baseline ancestry speed.
(1) Wind Pillow (***): You may or may not care about the fall distance reduction component, but it does pair nicely with Cat Fall prior to legendary Acrobatics proficiency. The real money is in getting Powerful Leap without having to be trained in Athletics. Adding some oomph to the Leap action is a nice mobility improvement.
(1) Wind Tempered (**): The types of damage this protects you against are situational, but the fact that it turns successes into crit successes against them is strong.
(5) Noble Resolve (***): Mental effects are somewhat common and tend to be nasty. Getting not only a passive buff to save against them, but also awareness of who used them, is quite valuable.
(5) Cloud Gazer (**): Situational, but fog tends to be a relatively common magical concealment tool. Overcoming the miss chance will be helpful from time to time.
(9) Djinni Magic (***): Gust of wind and invisibility are solid innate spell additions.
(9) Inner Breath (**): Certain locations (water environments) and inhaled poisons will render this a useful feat, but it is situational by nature.
(9) Miraculous Repair (**): Occasional MacGuffin repair.
(9) Wings of Air / (17) Eternal Wings (***): Flight is always great. Considering it only takes two feats to get permanent flight, you may feel it’s a worthy tradeoff to take a 16th level class feat other than Constant Levitation.
(13) Airy Step (***): Providing concealment for you and your friends, which also applies to the triggering effect, plus being able to Step to a different location or Escape and Step, for a reaction is quite good for action economy purposes.
(13) Planar Sidestep (***): It’s only once per day, but reducing incoming damage from a melee Strike by 25 is a big swing in your favor. Even if you rarely end up near melee, it’s a great emergency tool. Especially useful if you rely on imaginary weapon and/or touch spells.
(17) Storm Form (**): 7th level polymorph spells will be somewhat dangerous for you considering that your AC will be crit-prone. It’s pretty much the cutoff for polymorph value from this level to 20, but if you really like the idea of being able to polymorph you may enjoy it.

Tiefling (***)

Ancestries that already have low-light vision will cause the tiefling heritage to give you darkvision, which is great. There are quite a few good feats from this heritage. The fact that you can use this heritage to gain a fly speed with only two feats makes it a meaningful choice no matter what, even for ancestries that don’t grant flight, cutting down the feat investment for most of those ancestries from three to two. It’s up to you whether you feel better spending a class feat or two ancestry feats for a permanent fly speed.

Ancestry feat:

(1) Beastbrood (**): Although INT builds probably don’t need the extra trained skill, you might appreciate a little more skill diversity. It’ll also enable you to perform some face functions on an INT build via Courtly Graces. You’re spending an ancestry feat slot to get features you have easy access to otherwise, though, so you’ll probably only want this if you’re feeling starved for skill feats.

(9) Rakshasa Magic (**): Humanoid form and illusory creature aren’t generally the most valuable of innate spells, but if you’ve got a bent for deception and distraction and/or are playing in a more social encounter-oriented campaign you’ll find some value in them.

(1) Fiendish Eyes (***): If you didn’t already get darkvision from the heritage itself, you get darkvision, which is always good.
(1) Faultspawn (***): Bonuses to saves are always welcome, even if you have to use a reaction to get the bonus.

(5) Towering Presence (**): If you’re frequently using touch spells, you may like the extra reach. Also useful for imaginary weapon. The Clumsy condition is tough, though, since it’ll hurt your AC. RAW, the extra damage won’t apply to imaginary weapon since melee damage has a definition which includes the use of a weapon or unarmed attack.
(9) Asura Magic (***): Blood vendetta won’t ever scale and death knell is somewhat hard to use. That said, innate spells are always welcome - one of these even has the benefit of being cast as a reaction and, even without scaling, still deals a respectable amount of persistent damage.
(17) Dominion Aura (**): Passive area damage, but your allies can suffer that damage too. Still, you can also passively cause enemies to be knocked Prone, and have some control over adding extra range to the emanation. If you’re building into feats that cause area damage when you Unleash, it’s a decent addition. That said, it’ll be hard to time: the two actions required to initiate it will be difficult to fit into your action economy prior to the end of Unleash. It’s a potential way to stay lethal while avoiding the penalties of being Stupefied post-Unleash, at least.

(1) Grimspawn (**): Chances are, you won’t need Diehard. Unless, of course, you plan to be in melee using imaginary weapon. This feat will help you somewhat in overcoming the risks of getting into melee on a 6 HP class.

(9) Daemon Magic (***): Death knell and false life are both solid additions to a kit built around using imaginary weapon, and useful even outside of that case.

(1) Nimble Hooves (****): Movement speed is universally useful. Note that this does not stack with speed granted from an ancestry feat such as Nimble Elf, but will stack with a higher baseline ancestry speed.
(1) Riftmarked (**): Any one trained skill since you’re automatically trained in occultism. The Oddity Identification feat is situational, but provides a big bonus when its situation comes up. You may not feel the need for an extra trained skill or an extra skill feat since you’re likely playing an INT build if you’re investing in occultism.

(9) Qlippoth Magic (***): Blur and silence are both great innate spells even if you already have access to them.

(1) Shackleborn (**): Fast Recovery is a strong general feat, although you may not feel the need to trade out an ancestry feat for a general feat. You can, at least, circumvent the 14 CON requirement to take it.

(9) Velstrac Magic (***): Both telekinetic maneuver and web are solid control tools to add to your innate spell kit, especially because you couldn’t normally cast web.

(5) Devil in Plain Sight (**): If your GM is harsh about tieflings, this is a good way to not be noticed as a devil in normal society.

(13) Finest Trick (**): You can get away with some useful non-combat things by impersonating people.

(5) Devilish Wiles (**): Charm has the incapacitation trait for a reason. This spell can be powerful if you’re creative in its use. Gaining it as an innate spell is helpful. Note, however, that it will fall off fairly quickly because of the incapacitation trait.
(5) Fiendish Resistance (***): Resistance to a common damage type is helpful.
(5) Malicious Bane (***): You already have access to bane, but getting it as an innate spell can be helpful.
(9) Fiendish Wings / (17) Relentless Wings (*** / ****): Flight is always great.
(9) Light from Darkness (**): Passively getting a bonus to saves against divine effects is situational, but good enough on its own. If you know you’ll run into divine effects frequently, it’s much better.
(13) Fiend’s Door (****): Even if you can cast it already, getting fifth level dimension door as an innate spell is awesome.
(13) Idol Threat (***): There are some drawbacks to this feat, namely that the required Beastbrood lineage isn’t all that useful for you. It’ll be difficult to meet the conditions for this feat’s use, but boy is it strong. On top of a bonus to Demoralize, you also pack the Flat-Footed and Stupefied debuffs into a single Demoralize attempt. Even if it’s only once per day for any given target, this feat turns an already excellent single action into a massive single target debuff bomb.

Undine (*)

You gain a swim speed and can breathe in water. Although there is a feat tax for darkvision if you don’t take this heritage on an ancestry with low-light vision, the fact that it provides a path to get there is a meaningful improvement over other versatile heritages that only ever grant low-light vision and ancestries that never grant vision improvements. Also keep in mind that, if you take this heritage to go from normal vision to darkvision, you’re effectively swapping out a low-light vision feat for a swim speed and water breathing. Naturally, this heritage is more valuable in an aquatic campaign. Oscillating Wave psychics in aquatic campaigns in particular will appreciate the Steam Spell metamagic feat, allowing them to use their fire spells underwater. You don’t gain much that you couldn’t get elsewhere, though. You can make it work if you really want to, but it doesn’t add much to your build.

Ancestry feats:

(1) Aquatic Eyes (***): You can take this up to twice to gain, first, low-light vision, and second, darkvision. If you already have low-light vision, you only need to take it once for darkvision. Darkvision is always good.
(1) Brinesoul (***): Once per day you can punish an enemy for Striking you, dealing persistent damage and debuffing them. Solid.
(1) Elemental Eyes (***): You’ll have to build on an ancestry that grants low-light vision or have Aquatic Eyes to take this feat, but darkvision is always good.
(1) Mistsoul (**): If you have a reliable means of gaining concealment or becoming hidden via “fog, haze, mist, or smoke,” this feat will help keep you safer.
(1) Native Waters (**): Hard to use outside of aquatic campaigns, but if you can find a reliable source of water in which to submerge yourself, being able to more readily overcome the Fatigued and Drained conditions is great.
(5) Noble Resolve (***): Mental effects are somewhat common and tend to be nasty. Getting not only a passive buff to save against them, but also awareness of who used them, is quite valuable.
(9) Marid Magic (***): Hydraulic push and obscuring mist are both valuable control tools for your innate spell kit, especially because neither is normally available to you. Obscuring mist combines well with Mistsoul.
(9) Miraculous Repair (**): Occasional MacGuffin repair.
(9) Strong Swimmer (**): If you care about your swim speed, this feat will bring it up to match your normal speed.
(13) Planar Sidestep (***): It’s only once per day, but reducing incoming damage from a melee Strike by 25 is a big swing in your favor. Even if you rarely end up near melee, it’s a great emergency tool. Especially useful if you rely on imaginary weapon and/or touch spells.
(17) Tidal Shield (***): This is a powerful group defensive benefit.

Rare versatile heritages

Beastkin (**)

This heritage is restricted to humanoid ancestries. It also grants the Change Shape action, which gives you a jaws Strike in your hybrid shape. You don’t much care about getting a jaws Strike. While there are very few good feat options, the few that are good are very strong. Don’t pick this with a weaker ancestry unless you can pick one or two ancestry feats that are also very strong. Your list of good choices here is just too small to really augment a poor ancestry.

Ancestry feats:

(1) Animal Senses (*** / **): A choice of sense is good. Darkvision is the best choice assuming you don’t already have it. Otherwise, an imprecise sense may help with Homing Beacon, but is still limited by your poor perception. Note that this is restricted by your animal type, up to your GM’s discretion.
(5) Greater Animal Senses (** / ****) Although gaining an imprecise sense is limited by your poor perception, taking this feat a second time makes the sense precise. That’s very good and very much helps overcome the perception progression issue. This is, hands down, the best feat to leverage for Homing Beacon and, even without taking that class feat, stands well on its own. Note that the availability of this feat is up to your GM since the animal you choose must have access to one or the other of echolocation or tremorsense.
(9) Pack Tactics (**): You’ll need a party heavy with melee, but if that is the case then you can more easily make targets flat footed for imaginary weapon. Additionally, having more people around for your enemies to Strike will potentially keep you safer when you do wade into melee.
(17) Animal Swiftness (****): Increased speed, plus the choice to either get permanent fly speed equal to your normal speed or, if you have Constant Levitation, a climb or swim speed instead. If your chosen animal can’t have any of the three movement speeds, you gain an additional 10 feet of speed instead. All of these are good options, if not outright excellent.

Reflection (**)

The baseline benefit of being able to automatically Impersonate your progenitor is highly situational. Much of the benefit to this heritage lies in intrigue and deception. I will not list any of the social feats here because their purpose is clear and not applicable in the average game. If you are in a social-heavy campaign, this heritage will be much better suited for it. There are comparatively very few good feats in this heritage. Although the few meaningful choices are good, you’re almost certainly better off picking a heritage with more choices or sticking with your ancestry’s heritages.

Ancestry feats:

(1) Mirror-Risen (***): Even at a once-per-day rate, turning a critical Strike into a normal success or a success into a failure will help keep your squishy self alive.
(1) Warped Reflection (****): With the right party and an agreeable GM, this has very strong debuff potential. A bard keeping up Dirge of Doom or a swashbuckler making smart use of Antagonize can keep the frightened condition on an enemy and thus keep the stupefied rider effect on as well. Even without that, though, it’s basically a better version of Demoralize. To top it off, since you’re a caster, you have the best possible progression for this effect’s DC.
(5) Mistaken Identity (***): Making yourself frightened kind of sucks, but being able to potentially exchange one round of frightened instead of a nasty mental effect is a pretty decent trade.
(17) Reflect Foe (***): Getting duplicate foe as an innate spell that eventually scales is solid. It’s effectively a free summon spell per day that has some additional value in deception for creative players.

Conscious Minds

For the most part, the conscious minds are relatively close to each other in terms of power and functionality. I do not have color ratings for them because of this, and because of the fact that subclasses in PF2e are generally designed to fill a specific party role. I don’t feel that it’s fair to compare subclasses against each other when they are designed to perform different functions. You should hopefully be able to get an idea of how useful any given subconscious mind is from their cantrip color designations.

The Distant Grasp

If telekinesis is your jam, this is your conscious mind. It focuses around control effects, mostly pushing/shoving enemies. This conscious mind only adds one spell you wouldn’t otherwise have access to: implosion. Doing a flat 75 points of damage to a target (basic save math applies) with a two action spell isn’t amazing for a ninth level spell, but being able to sustain it and pass that damage around to different targets every turn with a single action is pretty good. Note that none of your naturally granted psi cantrips are single action casts, meaning you’ll get less bang for your buck from some amp feats compared to the conscious minds with single action cantrips.

Standard psi cantrips: Mage hand and telekinetic projectile are both solid picks for any build.

Mage hand (***): The baseline improvement for mage hand gives freer bulk limits to it, allowing you to manipulate more objects at range. Adding both a Shove and a speed penalty with the amp are solid single target control additions. Disarm sucks, though.
Telekinetic projectile (***): (U) The range increase to 60 feet is nice. As with mage hand, being able to force a target to move away when amped is a valuable single target control addition. Adding improved scaling damage while amped turns this into a reliable damage dealer, making it one of the stronger single-target cantrips.

Unique psi cantrips:

Telekinetic rend (***): (U) The damage scaling isn’t amazing on its own, but it’s a readily accessible AoE with decent size/area coverage. Being able to select the damage type is valuable. Adding a potential stun and some extra damage when amped is okay as well - you could stun two (or three, when heightened) targets if your targets are unlucky. It’s not the strongest blasting tool, but it’s pretty good for a cantrip.
Vector screen (**): It blocks a very small area. It’ll be situational based on the terrain setup, even when it heightens to cover ten feet and resist/block more effects. Even amped, making the screen last for a minute won’t change the fact that its positioning requirements render it highly situational. Plus, unless you know for a fact that you’re going to be fighting enemies with projectile weapons often, you’re going to get relatively little use from this spell. It does give you potential for extra range on your telekinetic projectile, although 60 feet is probably going to be enough for you most of the time. It’s okay for a cantrip, I guess.
Dancing blade (***): The damage scaling is pretty good for a melee Strike, but you’re still using your spell attack modifier, which will scale relatively poorly versus enemy ACs. Still, not bad for a cantrip. Adding some single target control or a buff to AC against the target’s Strikes is a solid amp. Additionally, since you use a physical weapon for the Strike and the weapon’s properties apply to its damage type, you get value from various materials to overcome resistances or target weaknesses. Use this spell to prime your Unleash, then Sustain it while Unleashed to have a damaging third action.

The Infinite Eye

This conscious mind focuses on buffs with a slight emphasis on dispel magic. All of the granted spells are available on the occult spell list. None of the granted psi cantrips can take advantage of Unleash damage. As such, Infinite Eye builds could really stand to gain some damage options for their cantrips, making ancestries that give you access to electric arc plus the Ancestral Mind feat, as well as the Parallel Breakthrough feat, even more valuable than for other conscious minds.

Standard psi cantrips: Detect magic gets used all the time and guidance is a decent single-action buff, albeit limited in frequency.

Detect magic (***): The baseline improvement lends itself well to dispel magic usage. Knowing the exact location (and item, if targeting a creature) of a magic effect’s origin gives you an edge in removing said magic effect. Additionally, since you become “aware of any creature in the emanation affected by a spell or carrying a magic item, and you determine the main location of magic within any magical hazard in the emanation,” you get some useful out of combat value. Auto-detection of magical traps and magically invisible creatures is good, plus magic items become much more common at later levels. Getting a +1 to saves against a creature or item when amped is icing on the cake, but the biggest drawback here is the two action cost for a +1.
Guidance (****): Extra range is helpful, although going up to 120 feet is unnecessary in most cases. When amped, being able to apply guidance both as a reaction and without the cooldown period is a significant improvement over the normal cantrip, as does the heightened effect eventually making it a +2 bonus. Additionally, the fact that the trigger condition requires that using the cantrip would improve a check’s outcome by a step means you can’t accidentally waste a focus point.

Unique psi cantrips:

Glimpse weakness (***): More-or-less free damage for a single action, without even having to amp it. This is a great addition to a caster’s toolkit, giving you a meaningful third action that has no penalties and only requires any one unspecified party member to successfully Strike your target. Its language even allows this damage to be doubled should the next successful ally Strike be a crit. At first, the amp has a significant risk (25%) of wasting a focus point, getting worse at levels 3 and 4 where a focus point may actually make the spell do less damage. This risk goes down as it becomes less likely that you roll minimum damage, and at all levels the average damage is an improvement over the baseline. Whether or not you think that’s worth a focus point, well… you’ve got other options. Still, while it doesn’t look like a lot of damage, an ally on whom you can rely to land a crit will pump out 30ish extra damage for a single (amped) action of yours starting at level 17. That’s nothing to sneeze at. Let your fighter/way of the sniper gunslinger friend know you love them. Be aware, however, that casting this while Unleashed will not increase its damage due to the fact that it has a duration. Also note that, although it looks like you could stack this spell, the duplicate effects rule seems to imply that trying to do so would only refresh the duration rather than give multiple instances of the spell’s damage at once. That being said, the duplicate effects rule does have language implying that it only applies to friendly effects, so consult with your GM.

Level	Baseline damage	Amped range	Amped average
1	2	2-5	3.5
2	2	2-5	3.5
3	3	2-5	3.5
4	3	2-5	3.5
5	4	4-10	7
6	4	4-10	7
7	5	4-10	7
8	5	4-10	7
9	6	6-15	10.5
10	6	6-15	10.5
11	7	6-15	10.5
12	7	6-15	10.5
13	8	8-20	14
14	8	8-20	14
15	9	8-20	14
16	9	8-20	14
17	10	10-25	16.5
18	10	10-25	16.5
19	11	10-25	16.5
20	11	10-25	16.5

Omnidirectional scan (****): If you invested in WIS, the free Seek will be nice in some situations. It’ll pair well with the class feat Homing Beacon. That’s just a little extra bang for your buck, though. The baseline version of this spell allows you to spell attack to aid an ally with absolutely no chance of penalizing said ally. Especially with ancestry feats invested in Aid buffs (namely, human and/or half-elf), you can really help a buddy out with this cantrip. The fact that it’s first available at level six means you don’t need to worry much about the default DC 20 to Aid. Amped, you passively know your target’s relative save values, plus give a bonus to attacks and damage against it for your whole party, and increase the value of your Aid bonus. Amazing. All of this for a single action.
Foresee the path (***): The baseline version of this cantrip effectively allows you to give a limited Attack of Opportunity, sustained for up to a minute, to one ally at the cost of one of your actions. It’s a pretty good trade considering it allows an ally to overcome the MAP or, in the case of an ally with use of Attack of Opportunity, a significant bonus to their reaction’s attack roll. Amped, it’s difficult for you to fail to grant this benefit, and you can grant it to multiple party members eventually. It’s a helpful buff regardless of your party. Rogues (and their parties) with a mind for tactics can set up to have flanking on this reaction to be able to get their sneak attack damage. The biggest drawback here is that it relies on your perception, which is not great. If you plan to make good use of this cantrip, you’ll want to invest in WIS.

The Oscillating Wave

Prepare to do fire or cold damage. In succession. This is your blasting-focused conscious mind. Every single spell you gain from this conscious mind is stolen from another spell tradition you wouldn’t otherwise be able to access. Burning hands provides mediocre, albeit early, blasting capability. Heat metal gives you the ability to deter an enemy from holding onto something made of metal, plus persistent fire damage. Fireball is a blaster staple across many decades and generations of D&D-style TTRPGs for a very good reason. Fire shield is passive damage and deterrence against enemy attacks, plus cold resistance. Cone of cold is big angry blaster damage. Flame vortex is big angry blaster damage under finer control. Fiery body is an angrier version of fire shield plus better action economy on non-psi produce flame. Polar ray drops the drained condition on your foes for massive single target damage. Meteor swarm is yet another iconic staple of blasting, turning swathes of foes into burnt paste fit only for Beavis and Butthead inhalation. It’s not that another spell caster couldn’t do all of this, it’s that you can do all of this blasting and still have access to the absolutely fantastic, versatile, flexible occult spell list, plus psi cantrips. The most harsh aspect of gaining all these awesome blasting spells is that you have a more limited number of spells per day compared to, say, a wizard or a sorcerer. Luckily, you have some gnarly psi cantrips at your disposal. Be aware that your unique psi cantrips do not interact with Conservation of Energy.

Standard psi cantrips: As with all of the other spells, neither produce flame nor ray of frost is normally available on the occult spell list. Spell diversity is always welcome.

Produce flame (** / ***): (U) The baseline alteration to this cantrip drives you toward a melee playstyle (which is not a great idea, but amped ray of frost helps somewhat) for slightly more damage. Amped, your produce flame spell attacks go from scaling d4s to scaling d10s for damage at range or from scaling d6s to scaling d12s for melee, both of which include a fire splash damage effect that doesn’t hurt you. Not bad. At spell level 1, your average damage is the same whether or not you amp it: 1d4+4 and 1d10+1 both deal 6.5 damage on average, while 1d6+4 and 1d12+1 deal 7.5 damage on average. If you’re able to hit a second target with the splash damage, the amped version is a bit better. Once you get past spell level 1, the amped version scales better due to the increased damage die. This spell receives a split rating because the baseline upgrade doesn’t do you much good, but the amped version is good damage.
Ray of frost (** / ***): (U) The baseline range increase is unlikely to matter. Not many fights happen at 180 feet of distance between combatants. The amped version has the same damage difference as produce flame, but there’s no melee component to increase the damage further. What matters most if you do plan to go melee is the fact that the amped version gives you temp HP, giving you a little more staying power for the round or two when you feel it’s right to wade into melee. Split rating because the baseline increase doesn’t do much, but the amp can help mitigate your low HP. Additionally, at spell level 1, the amped version does less damage on average than normal: 1d4+4 averages to 6.5 where 1d10 averages to 5.5. At later spell levels, the amped version scales better due to the increased damage die.

Unique psi cantrips:

Thermal stasis (***): Ready resistance to both fire and cold damage as a single-action cantrip is pretty great, especially considering it scales at an additional +2 resistance per spell level. Amping it makes it last a minute, which is an okay use of a focus point.
Entropic wheel (***): Scaling damage bonuses for your fire and cold spells. You have lots of those, so there are plenty of ways to apply this extra damage, especially on blasting spells. It doesn’t affect the damage from mindshift effects. This cantrip is better in longer encounters since it takes a bit to scale, even amped, and in encounters with many targets since each of them will take the extra damage. Unfortunately, it doesn’t heighten, so eventually you’ll get more bang for your buck spending focus points on your other cantrips.
Redistribute potential (****): (U) Scaling damage of different, selectable types, plus selectable debuffs, is solid for a cantrip. Making it a significantly larger AoE with better scaling damage when amped is even stronger.

The Silent Whisper

No new spells here. This conscious mind doesn’t have much of a deliberate, cohesive purpose to it, but the cantrips it has are pretty good. “Generic spellcaster with a few different tools” is a fine thing to be, especially considering that shatter mind is a strong blasting spell which couples quite well with Unleash damage. Considering that forbidden thought is your only single target damage cantrip, an ancestry that grants electric arc + the Ancestral Mind feat or the Parallel Breakthrough feat wouldn’t go amiss in your build.

Standard psi cantrips: Daze and message are already on the occult spell list and not that strong on their own. Luckily, the amps are pretty good.

Daze (**): The baseline is just extra range. A subpar spell with extra range is still a subpar spell. Amped, the damage is a little better, but if you’re going for single target damage with an amped cantrip, you’re better off with a different conscious mind. Also note that “the spell’s damage changes to 1d10.” This means your casting mod is never included in this cantrip’s damage. The real money from the amp is in the will save penalty, especially because it lasts until the end of the enemy’s next turn. You can help set up another caster in your party or potentially have a better chance with a feat that has the mindshift trait. Speaking of which, the mindshift trait also allows you to follow up on the mental damage weakness. It won’t be a ton of extra damage, but since mindshift feats allow you to change an effect to mental damage, you might as well take advantage of it. If you want every person in your party to be able to benefit from the weakness and / or debuff, consider delaying until after your target’s turn so that there is a full round before the weakness / debuff clear off. Do note a significant drawback of this cantrip: it has a duration, meaning it will not receive the damage buff from Unleash your Psyche. Also, if you’re playing a CHA build, Bon Mot is a stronger will debuff, though amped daze’s will debuff can’t be removed by the target like Bon Mot’s.
Message (****): For once, the range increase is quite useful. Specifically, it’s a good upgrade over normal message because you can ignore physical barriers and still communicate with your allies. Amped, you can give one ally a reaction in exchange for one of your actions, which is pretty awesome if said ally doesn’t normally use a reaction. Especially prior to level 6 when most frontliners don’t have a reaction, it’ll be great. Gymnast swashbucklers will love you for their easy panache.

Unique psi cantrips:

Forbidden thought (**): (U) The requirement to select a target’s action is pretty doable, but it’s still not much damage on its own. Amped, at least it can stun your target. Still, there are better psi cantrips out there.
Shatter mind (****): (U) Finally, some decent damage. It’s a cone-based blasting tool which, when amped, can drop an AoE stupefied condition in a 60 foot cone on top of its amped damage. That’s a pretty large area for a cantrip. It also only hits enemies, letting you blast with impunity. Just be aware that, if you’re relying on this cantrip as your primary blaster nuke, mindless enemies are going to be able to ignore you. Shore up your blasting capability with other tools if you want to focus on blasting.
Contagious idea (****): Both buff and debuff capability with up to 3 targets (if amped). This is a really solid psi cantrip. Renewable temp HP plus the ability to decide whether it’s better to protect allies or debuff enemies is pretty great.

The Tangible Dream

Only one new spell with this conscious mind: blade barrier. It’s a decent area control tool, as are most wall spells. This conscious mind is mostly oriented toward control, although it does have an excellent damage option in imaginary weapon provided you can either survive in melee (difficult) or build around increasing your range on touch spells. Some of your options to do so include ancestries which grant some form of reach, spectral hand, a spellcasting multiclass archetype dedication plus a class feat for Reach Spell (sort of, as you can’t simultaneously use metamagic and amp a spell), the druid archetype with the leaf order and the Leshy Familiar + Leshy Familiar Secrets feats as well as the Spell Delivery familiar ability, the sorcerer archetype with the aberrant bloodline and the Basic Bloodline Spell feat, and any other means of gaining a familiar with the Spell Delivery ability (notably, the familiar master archetype).

Standard psi cantrips: dancing lights provides okay out-of-combat utility and shield helps keep you safe in a tight spot. Both are occult spells, but they’re alright additions to your known spells.

Dancing lights (**): The baseline improvement removes most of the annoying parts of the spell other than the fact that it needs to be sustained. It also fully removes the range restriction, although no mention is made of line of sight or other typical physical restrictions on spells. Amped, you can Dazzle creatures, although the critical failure effect is absolute garbage. The Fascinated condition is borderline worthless. I don’t recommend spending focus points on this cantrip.
Shield (****): Being able to use this cantrip to buff an ally’s AC is great, plus you can use your own reaction to reduce your buddy’s incoming damage. The amped version makes the cantrip function more like a real shield where you can Shield Block more than once and keep the AC bonus and damage reduction across three turns. Being able to increase shield’s hardness if you need to is even better. Especially for the fact that you can deploy this buff on your friends, it’s a pretty awesome defensive tool.

Unique psi cantrips:

Imaginary weapon (*** / ****): (U) The damage is high and the push effect is a good single target control tool. Being able to hit two targets and have even better damage when amped is very strong. The problem is that you have to get into melee, which puts you at serious risk as a class with the least class HP in the game. This is very much a high risk, high reward cantrip. If you’ve got the right damage mitigation and/or avoidance tools and the right party to back you up, you can pump out some solid damage with it. The best way to leverage this spell is through means that allow you to deliver it with some measure of range.
Astral rain (**): (U) The baseline version is going to be easy for enemies to avoid and the damage isn’t too exciting. It’ll be best in situations where you can block an avenue of approach. Amped, the burst area version is slightly better area-wise and allows you to Sustain to move it around. Still not amazing, but it's a punitive/deterrent AoE. With the right group and situation, that can be a valuable tool. If nothing else, you may be able to force extra movement out of enemies to avoid the area. Weirdly, this spell doesn’t have a listed duration, which means it technically qualifies for the Unleash damage. Its amped effect can be Sustained, though, which is a property of duration. RAW, you can buff it with Unleash damage, but be aware that it may be an oversight.
Hologram cage (***): The baseline version more or less forces enemies to move out of or away from the area where you place it in order to target you. Mostly, it’ll be effective against ranged enemies. The amped version provides a physical barrier for significantly better area control. Treat this spell as a wall spell and you’ll get lots of mileage out of it. Be aware, however, that the amped version is not immune to crits or precision damage by RAW. An enemy Striking it is very likely to break through it with one hit. Still, forcing them to do so not only taxes their action economy, but increases their MAP.

The Unbound Step

Enlarge is the only new spell available for this conscious mind. It’s a pretty good buff provided you have someone in your party doing melee damage, and you probably do. Unsurprisingly, most of the cantrips have to do with mobility. On its own, that seems a little lackluster, but it combines quite well with several of the class feats. Additionally, caster mobility is valuable considering most of your turns will include a two-action cast. Maximizing the value of each Stride (or, in the case of this subconscious mind, sometimes each teleport) is frequently useful.

Standard psi cantrips: Although you already have access to phase bolt and warp step, they’re both decent cantrips.

Phase bolt (***): The baseline damage isn’t too great and the situation that offsets the low damage isn’t terribly common. Luckily, the amped damage is high enough that this cantrip becomes a competent single target damage tool. If you are able to reduce an AC circumstance bonus while the cantrip is amped, you’re attacking a target with a -3 to its AC, which is quite good. Being able to ignore some piercing resistance will be useful sometimes as well. Occasionally, it might be nice that it functions similarly to dimensional anchor, assuming a crit. That aspect is unreliable, though.
Warp step (***): Just like the normal cantrip, it’s primarily an “oh shit” tool if and when you’re badly out of position. You must Stride twice if you use it, but the baseline version gives you a +10 to your movement speed rather than the usual +5. It’s okay, but you won’t be able to accomplish much else with your turn. It’s much better amped when you can cast it with a single action, especially because the single action cast still lets you Stride twice. The amp heightened version keeps you much safer, allowing you to teleport rather than risk reactions.

Unique psi cantrips:

Distortion lens (**): Despite having a sustained duration, the baseline version of this spell has no reason to be sustained. It’ll mostly be useful to support a party member using thrown weapons or other ranged weapons with very limited range increments, but boy is that a situational and action-heavy function. It penalizes enemies that use ranged weapons provided you have good or lucky positioning, but that’s unlikely to come up often, especially given its limited area and automatic enemy knowledge about the imposed range penalty. Amped, you can give your allies a little extra movement or penalize an enemy’s movement. The improvement to ally movement can help them overcome one square of (greater) difficult terrain, at least. It can also help an ally in situations where climbing, swimming, or flying (specifically, if their fly speed is lower than their normal speed) and can’t move as far as their normal speed. Once again, it’s primarily useful as a support tool, but you’re still mostly trading an action for an ally to have 5 extra feet of movement with one Stride. Meh. Maybe your melee buddies will appreciate a little extra movement every now and again to enable a Stride-Strike-Stride turn. You’ll probably want someone in your party to have wall spells to get any mileage out of this cantrip.
Ghostly shift (***): Again, the baseline doesn’t really require you to sustain it, but it’s still damage reduction. You probably aren’t generally in a position to expect damage often, but it’s something to help keep you alive considering your low HP. Being able to move through and harm enemies with the amped version is a nice tool to help you better position yourself. You might like this from time to time if you take imaginary weapon with Parallel Breakthrough, but generally staying up near an enemy after a melee spell attack is not a great idea. The feat’s language seems to imply that it’s a spell you can only cast on yourself, but it does have a range of 30 feet and “Targets: 1 creature.” If the range/targets rules are correct rather than the feat’s language (it’s very much an unclear either/or) then you can apply this cantrip to your allies, improving its utility by quite a bit.
Tesseract tunnel (***): While this cantrip is not particularly well-defined, the teleportation trait means that a creature interacting with the entrance portal you open instantaneously moves from the entrance portal to the exit portal. How it enters and how much movement is expended for doing so isn’t defined, so I assume that it effectively links two squares: a creature Strides into the square with the entrance portal and immediately transports to the square with the exit portal, no additional movement required. The amped version just gives more flexibility, allowing either portal to be entrance or exit and lasting the full minute without Sustain. It’s a good way to assist with your party’s positioning, or your own if you have one of the feats that causes emanations to erupt from you. If you have the good fortune to be in a party with heavily tactics-oriented players, they’re going to love this cantrip.

Subconscious Minds

Your subconscious mind dictates your key ability score and gives you a psyche action which you can take while Unleashed. It’s not often that combat goes beyond 3-4 rounds. Consider Unleashing in the second round of combat and when best to use your psyche action. Also consider what you want your role in the party to be. Whether you choose an INT-based subconscious mind or not, you still only get, at most, three skills at legendary proficiency. A CHA-based subconscious mind will allow you to focus on intimidation and/or diplomacy, two of the best skills in the game for both in- and out-of-combat utility. An INT-based subconscious mind will give you more capability with lore skills and three of the five common Recall Knowledge skills as well as some extra trained proficiency skills. Considering that neither ability contributes to a save, I’d personally rather be a CHA caster, but you may like the psyche action for any given subconscious mind.

Ability priorities

No matter what, you don’t care about STR, and you want some DEX and CHA to help keep you alive. If you want to maximize your AC, you’ll need to take the Armor Proficiency feat until level 13 when your unarmored proficiency goes up to expert. Without that feat, you’re entirely reliant on DEX for your AC. You also want some CON to try to overcome your low class HP, though. 16 DEX at level 1 isn’t mandatory by any means, but you may feel more secure. Bare minimum 14 DEX and 14 CON for an efficient, somewhat-survivable build. It can be a good idea to put ability boosts into WIS for the improved will saves, too.

CHA build priorities: STR / DEX / CON / INT / WIS / CHA

As a 2+INT trained skills class, you may feel restricted on your skills. That said, as a CHA build, you only really need either diplomacy (plus Bon Mot) or intimidation to be fully effective. Any other skill proficiencies can go wherever you like, making it fairly easily to build around the skill limitation. As such, you can fully ignore INT if you like. It can be a good idea to put your DEX to good use with an investment in stealth so that you have a reliable exploration mode option.

INT build priorities: STR / DEX / CON / INT / WIS / CHA

The INT build will help with skills a bit, but you won’t have much need for CHA. You can squeeze it in if you like, but at a bare minimum you’ve got a fairly reliable third action in encounters with occultism Recall Knowledge rolls plus an exploration mode option in Investigate. You don’t really need to add any CHA to support face functions or demoralize, but it’s doable if you’re willing to let WIS slip.

Emotional Acceptance

CHA key ability with a psyche action that allows you to either help an ally save against mental effects, which are fairly common, or give them a bit of healing, both associated with a 10 minute immunity to either effect imposed on your target after each use. The mental effects may be hard to predict, but everyone likes bonuses to saves. The healing is a little bit behind a one-action heal spell and will find use as a relatively low-resource expenditure third action. Having flexibility with your third action on any given round is nothing to sneeze at. This subconscious mind’s level 10 class feat is very strong and will buff your skill and attack (spell attacks included) usage, albeit only in combat.

Level 10 feat: Emotional Surge (*****)

Gathered Lore

INT key ability with a psyche action that allows you to use occultism to Aid anything. Aid is a good third action regardless of your ancestry, although some have ancestry feats which will provide noticeable synergy. Additionally, this subconscious mind’s level 10 class feat is tied to Recall Knowledge. It provides a good self-buff to attack rolls and your AC against the identified creature’s next attack that stems from the outcome of the Recall Knowledge check. This subconscious mind can provide some powerful buffing capability, especially in campaigns that have lots of creatures where occultism will apply.

Level 10 feat: Scour the Library (***)

Precise Discipline

INT key ability with a psyche action that is effectively Raise a Shield, but which also applies to reflex saves (and which has no follow-on equivalent to Shield Block). It’s really straightforward. Do you want to sometimes have more AC / reflex or not? Coupled with The Tangible Dream conscious mind, you can provide some solid defensive benefits for yourself and / or another party member while Unleashed. This subconscious mind’s level 10 class feat will allow you to force slightly above average damage from your effects while Unleashed, which will feel good to risk-averse players and technically allow you to maximize damage over a long time (notably, with spells that damage 2+ targets, and more so with more targets).

Level 10 feat: Impose Order (**)

Wandering Reverie

CHA key ability with concealment for yourself. Defensive like Precise Discipline, but with a miss chance instead of an AC bonus. Same logic applies. This subconscious mind’s level 10 class feat is weird and hard to use, but may reward creativity.

Level 10 feat: Dream Guise (**)

Class feats

Level 1

Since psychics don’t get a class feat at level 1, you’d need the human ancestry’s Natural Ambition feat to get any of these feats right off the bat. Otherwise, these are effectively second level feats since they’ll compete with your actual second level feats for level 2 class feat selection.

Ancestral Mind (****): This feat gives you some extra flexibility with your innate spells if you’re building to incorporate any. Namely, it’ll make Unleash your Psyche’s damage increase apply to your innate spells. Electric arc is a great choice if your ancestry gives you the option to pick it up. It’ll also allow INT-based psychics to put their innate spells to good use. Conscious minds without much in the way of offensive cantrips will especially want this feat. The Infinite Eye has none that qualify for the Unleash damage buff and The Silent Whisper’s single target options could use some love. Tangible Dream psychics may like it to have damage dealing options that don’t require them to be in melee. Unbound Step psychics will appreciate having AoE options (read: electric arc).

Counter Thought (**): Getting a counterspell effect at level 1 is pretty solid, although it comes with some limitations. You can only counter spells with the mental trait which, fortunately, there are quite a few of them and they tend to be nasty debuffs. Additionally, you have to expend a spell slot - a resource that comes at a premium for you. Shutting down enemy debuffs is good, especially as a reaction, but be aware of the limitations.

Mental Buffer (**): Mental damage isn’t terribly common. If you can reliably expect to encounter mental damage in your campaign, it’s worth taking. Generally, though, it’s a pretty situational feat.

Psychic Rapport (***): You may be built for a secondary CHA focus if you have an INT-based subconscious mind, but primarily this feat will be useful for builds with a CHA-based subconscious mind. If you’re taking it, you also want Bon Mot and/or the various skill feats that improve Demoralize. This feat will set you up for success on your third actions since you’ll be even better at in-combat related CHA skills. It’s also got good out-of-combat utility, assuming you’re able to cast your spells without aggravating the NPCs on the receiving end of your face skills.

Level 2

Cantrip Expansion (**): You may or may not feel the need for extra cantrips. At first level, you get three occult cantrips of your choice, two from your subconscious mind (which are almost all occult), and your unique psi cantrip (plus an extra unique psi cantrip at levels 6 and 10). Chances are, you’ll be all set on cantrips, but you can get two more if necessary.

Mental Balm (****): Frightened is a common enough debuff to make this feat okay, but it’s still situational and costs a focus point. Being able to counteract the stupefied condition, however, has some merit. Per the Counteracting rules: “If an effect’s level is unclear and it came from a creature, halve and round up the creature’s level.” The fact that this amp will occur on a cantrip means that it’ll be automatically heightened to the max spell level, making the counteract check fairly easy. The feat isn’t particularly clear on whether a spell like contagious idea, which has flexibility in whether or not it targets all friendlies, is applicable. I’d rule that it is, but consult with your GM. Bottom line: being able to remove your own stupefied condition with a cantrip and a focus point is rather good, even if you have to risk the Stupefied spell failure chance. Shield is a particularly good choice for this amp feat because anyone can gain it through Parallel Breakthrough and it only takes a single action. Plus, you can choose not to use the Shield Block reaction, meaning you don’t set off a cooldown period like you would automatically with guidance (although guidance is also a decent choice). Do consider the opportunity cost, though: prior to level 5, if you reserve a focus point for after you leave your Unleashed state, that means one of your two Unleashed rounds won’t get a damage bonus on an amped cantrip. That’s not necessarily a bad thing if you cast a spell from a spell slot which could benefit from buffed Unleash damage, but again, consider opportunity cost. A noticeable drawback to consider with this feat is that you still have to overcome the flat check from being Stupefied in order to cast the cantrip you’ll amp for the Mental Balm effect. As such, it’s best paired with a single action psi cantrip so that you minimize wasted actions should you choose to go this route.

Psi Burst (*** / ****): It’s not a lot of damage, but having more options for your third action is always good. The fact that it doesn’t interact with the MAP is pretty cool too. If nothing else, it’ll let you fish out which targets your Assurance (athletics) ally can or can’t target for easy trips. Alternatively, you could fish for a low will save using the mindshift trait and/or capitalize on the standard psi cantrip daze’s mental damage weakness. Oscillating Wave psychics can instead make this damage fire or cold, as well as have an easy means to cycle their Conservation of Energy if needed. Only usable while Unleashed (implying encounter mode) since it has the psyche trait. As you get into higher levels, the damage becomes very respectable.

Warp Space (**): This is sort of a better Reach Spell, except at the cost of a focus point and without the metamagic action tied to it. It doesn’t double your range like Reach Spell would, but you do get an extra 30 feet out of it for any psi cantrip with a range and can potentially overcome cover or other spell-limiting terrain effects. In most cases, you’re probably better off just using the normal amp effects for your psi cantrips.

Level 4

This is a good level to take an archetype if you feel you’ve already gotten what you want for your second level feat, especially if you’re a human (or have Adopted Ancestry) with Natural Ambition and have taken the best of what’s offered at first and second level. There aren’t many strong feats at this level.

Astral Tether (** / ***): As long as you’re never more than 60 feet from the ally you choose, you can prebuff with Astral Tether and not worry about using the action in combat. The wording on this feat is a bit tricky, though: “Whenever you would gain a benefit from a psychic amp, you can have the amp affect the tethered creature instead. You can do so only if the amp grants a distinct benefit, not if it alters the amped spell.” A good example of this functioning appropriately is The Infinite Eye’s detect magic amp, being able to transfer the status bonus to saves to your tethered ally. Consider this feat a means of transferring personal buffs gained from amped spells to your allies. It’s a decent feat, but will depend very much on your conscious mind.

Homing Beacon (**): Being able to make invisible enemies concealed instead is good, but it’s hard to put this feat to use. You have to know where your targets are because it has to have one or more targets, meaning you can’t use it on, say, The Silent Whisper’s shatter mind. Since invisible creatures are undetected until you Seek, you’ll only want this feat if you’ve got tools to support finding invisible creatures. Imprecise senses may help depending on what they are and the environment of the encounter. You’ll certainly want to invest in WIS because, unfortunately, you have terrible perception progression. Additionally, even if you amp a spell like contagious idea, you can still only make one invisible target concealed. Useful feat, but hard to use.

Psi Strikes (**): Much like its cousin Bespell Weapon, if you’re frequently using a weapon to Strike for your third action, you can get some extra damage out of this feat. As with most casters, it’ll pair best with a shortbow, should you be of an ancestry that grants proficiency in shortbows. If you have access to guns, an air repeater or long air repeater can be an acceptable substitute. Some ancestries can give you a ranged unarmed attack, which will work with this feat. The fact that it’s force damage isn’t going to give much flexibility to target weaknesses, but it’s also generally not resisted. The little bit of flexibility you do get is in the mindshift trait, allowing you to make it deal mental damage instead. Oscillating Wave psychics can instead deal fire or cold damage. You can pair this with the standard psi cantrip daze effect for a little extra damage off of the weakness. This feat will work best with a subconscious mind that eventually gives you attack buffs from your level ten feat.

Thoughtform Summoning (**): If you want to focus on summoning spells, this feat will make them somewhat more durable. Force and mental damage aren’t common enough that you’ll have to worry about those weaknesses often. If your GM isn’t metagaming their encounters, the creatures you fight are unlikely to recognize that your summons even have those weaknesses. Resistance to physical damage and better freedom to move through enemy spaces and provide your melee allies flanking is a beneficial tradeoff for the weaknesses. It’s not metamagic, which means you can apply this buff without an action. Even if your summon eats a reaction to get into flanking position, that’s a reaction one of your allies didn’t have to eat. The spell final sacrifice makes this feat fairly straightforward: turn 1, you cast your summon and squeeze whatever value you can out of it, then Unleash on turn 2 and cast final sacrifice on your summon.

Note: Summoning isn’t exactly a strong point for psychics, final sacrifice aside. Even if you’re using summoning spells to prime Unleash, Sustaining them while Unleashed is rough on your action economy. Summoning spells can’t apply your Unleash damage bonus. Most Unleashed turns, you’ll want to use a damaging spell in order to get the damage bonus. Damaging spells are typically at least two actions, leaving you a choice: you can Sustain the Spell and cast something else, Sustain the Spell and do some other useful Unleashed action (like your subconscious mind’s Psyche Action), or drop your summon partway through the Unleash. Understand that focusing heavily on summoning is going to lock you out of some of your kit. This fact makes it hard to fit this feat into a build. If you’re going to do so, you’ll often need to seriously consider which of those three Unleashed turn choices will be most valuable in combat. Those considerations will work best alongside good knowledge of which summons will be valuable for a given situation and for how long. With a very limited spell repertoire and the occult spell list’s very small number of summoning spells, those are all difficult considerations.

Violent Unleash (**): Free action (sort of) to do a decent burst of damage is pretty good. It effectively takes an action to use, though, since you become stunned 1 for doing so. It does feel particularly punishing since you lose one of your precious actions while Unleashed. You also have to be up near enemies in order to get maximum value from it… and it can only happen at the start of your turn since it’s tied to Unleash your Psyche. That being the case, it’s likely you’ll have difficulty keeping your allies out of this feat’s effects. With the mindshift trait, you can change the damage to mental and the save to will, which will give you some control over whether and how likely it is that your surrounding friends will be able to crit succeed on the save. Oscillating Wave psychics can instead deal fire or cold damage and retain the reflex save.

Level 6

Inertial Barrier (***): It should be fairly easy to predict which of your allies is going to take physical damage. Slap this amp on a buff like psi guidance and give one of your allies a nice buffed turn.

Parallel Breakthrough (****): There are lots of good options with this feat, considering you have access to any one of five unique psi cantrips or ten standard psi cantrips, all improvements included. Want a bit more offensive capability on your buff-oriented Infinite Eye build? Take produce flame. Want to fill out your reactions with a great option? Take guidance. This feat is excellent and can augment any build.

Sixth Sense (**): Automated haunt finding, sort of. It’s situational by design. Your campaign may or may not have much in the way of haunts. Regardless, you have poor perception progression. You’re unlikely to do well with this feat, but it has its place in the right campaign.

Steady Spellcasting (*): You mostly don’t want to be in melee. If you’re in a position such that you need this feat, you’ve got bigger problems. Step or Stride away. Plus, the DC 15 flat check means you have only a 30% chance of executing the spell. For Tangible Dream psychics, this feat is yellow (**) because of imaginary weapon. At least it provides some protection for them since they’re incentivized to get into melee. Oscillating Wave psychics who want to use the melee version of produce flame can justify it as well, but less so since produce flame doesn’t have to be melee.

Strain Mind (***): Emergency focus points. Awesome. You don’t have much HP, though. Consider choosing an ancestry with more HP, having the Toughness general feat, and an investment in CON if you plan to frequently use this feat, plus an awareness of your party’s in-combat healing capabilities. Unlike most emergency focus point feats/features, this one is available once per hour, which is fantastic. For comparison, at level seven, your fourth level focus spells will cost you 16 HP. If you’re playing a hold-scarred orc with a +3 CON mod, you’ll have 82 HP. That’s just shy of 20% of your HP on a fairly HP-focused build. You can overcome this issue, but chances are you’ll need some help from your party to do so. You could slot soothe and/or endure to keep yourself healthier. Additionally, Oscillating Wave psychics can put the temp HP from amped ray of frost to good use, although you’ll have to predict your focus point expenditure on the turn following ray of frost due to action economy limitations. In general, effects which grant you temp HP will create a meaningful buffer to take advantage of this feat. The heal from Emotional Acceptance’s Restore the Mind will help as well. For a comparison of some common options to deal with the Strain Mind damage, see the table below. The ray of frost column includes in parentheses the temp HP gained from Unleash damage. Both heal and ray of frost are averages due to the involvement of dice rolls.

Level	Restore the Mind	Endure	1-action Heal	Amped Ray of Frost (Unleashed)	Strain Mind max damage
6	14	15	13.5	8.25 (11.25)	12
7	16	20	18	11 (15)	16
8	18	20	18	11 (15)	16
9	20	25	22.5	13.75 (18.75)	20
10	22	25	22.5	13.75 (18.75)	20
11	24	30	27	16.5 (22.5)	24
12	26	30	27	16.5 (22.5)	24
13	28	35	31.5	19.25 (26.25)	28
14	30	35	31.5	19.25 (26.25)	28
15	32	40	36	22 (30)	32
16	34	40	36	22 (30)	32
17	36	45	40.5	24.75 (33.75)	36
18	38	45	40.5	24.75 (33.75)	36
19	40	50	45	27.5 (37.5)	40
20	42	50	45	27.5 (37.5)	40

Level 8

Although Mental Static is quite good, you could get away with an archetype feat at this level.

Brain Drain (*): It’s an emergency focus point and a strong debuff, but the fact that it takes two actions means you’re spending one of your two Unleashed turns getting a focus point back. Unleash your Psyche is when you want to spend focus points to take advantage of the damage buff rather than spend the spellcasting portion of your turn getting a focus point back. It might find some use on builds with archetype-granted focus points, but even then you can technically get around the “only recover one focus point” restriction by only spending focus points on amps and then refocusing again. It’s a little better at level 20 if you take Twin Psyche, but even then three of your turns should be dedicated to amping something. Using your fourth Unleashed turn to get a focus point back won’t matter much. You could maybe justify using it to fuel an amp like Mental Balm outside of Unleash, but the opportunity cost is a problem. You’d be taking three turns which, in many cases, is all of the encounter if not more, to take advantage of the Unleash damage once, get a focus point back, and get rid of the stupefied condition.

Dark Persona’s Presence (**): With a 30 foot emanation, you can comfortably stay away from the front line and still get use from this feat. Unfortunately, it also affects your allies. The fact that it’s a free action when you Unleash is great for your action economy. Since enemies can’t go below frightened 1 while in your emanation, it’s a powerful effect. The problem will be in positioning. A 30 foot emanation also means it’ll be hard for your allies to not be in it. If you’re confident the only allies in your emanation will be able to crit succeed on their save, it can be helpful, but mass debuffing your party is not a good idea.

Mental Static (***): Considering your excellent will save progression, you’re probably getting a lot of critical success on will saves, although it only functions against mental effects. You don’t have a lot of reactions. Adding one that gives you free damage without a roll involved is great, albeit limited. If you’re fighting tons of mindless creatures, you won’t want it, but otherwise it’s a decent feat.

Remove Presence (**): Effectively becoming invisible to a creature is good, but after using this amp you’ll erase its effects if you use any hostile actions. Not hostile actions specifically against the target, any hostile actions. It’ll mostly be useful in single target fights to keep you safe for a round or two while you apply non-hostile control effects. You might also see some value from it in getting a particularly dedicated enemy off your back. Most of the time, you’re probably better off just using your normal amps.

Thoughtsense (**): You don’t really have the perception to put an imprecise sense to good use, but this feat may be a useful heads up for, say, invisible or hidden creatures. It’ll help a bit if you’re using Homing Beacon.

Whispering Steps (**): It’s basically a Shove added onto whatever cantrip you amp in place of the usual amp effects. Not amazing for an 8th level feat, but forcing enemies to move and consequently spend their actions is helpful.

Level 10

If you’re not playing an Emotional Acceptance build, this is another decent level for an archetype feat.

Dream Guise (**): (Wandering Reverie only) At a bare minimum, it gives an ally a free Step. That alone might be useful to help them get into a better position. Otherwise, the effects aren’t particularly exciting. It forces enemies to flat check in order to specifically target one or the other of you, but either way, one of you is still getting hit with something. It may be useful to help protect an ally with a poor will save to redirect that effect to yourself, or reverse in the case of fortitude- and reflex-targeting effects. It may be hard to predict when those effects are incoming, though, and may require dangerous positioning for one or both of you. If you plan to be in melee, you could potentially redirect damage to your champion friend. The fact that it breaks as soon as either you or your designated ally acts at all is fairly limiting. At least it’s only a single action to achieve the effect. Only usable while Unleashed (implying encounter mode) since it has the psyche trait.

Emotional Surge (*****): (Emotional Acceptance only) One action for a +2 to attack rolls (spell attacks included!) or skill checks for a round? Yeah, this one’s strong. Psychics tend to have a fair number of third action options, but this one takes the cake. Even if you have a bard in your party constantly applying Inspire Courage, it’s still worth it to take this feat because it will almost always outshine the Inspire Courage attack buff. If you picked the Emotional Acceptance subconscious mind, you absolutely want this feat. Only usable while Unleashed (implying encounter mode) since it has the psyche trait.

Impose Order (**): (Precise Discipline only) You’ll do slightly more damage than average on the turn you use it. Larger pools of smaller die size will be where this feat provides the most value, and especially so against multiple targets. For comparison, although 9d4 and 6d6 have the same damage maximum, a 9d4 roll already has a higher average (22.5 vs. 21) and a higher tendency to roll near the average. With this feat, 9d4 would do 27 damage (5.5 damage gained for an action) and 6d6 would do 24 damage (3 damage gained for an action). .5 damage per die over an average roll isn’t much damage added for a single action, meaning you’ll need large dice pools and / or multiple targets for Impose Order to keep up with a comparable damaging single action. Considering how quickly the heightened levels of inner radiance torrent scale your d4s worth of damage, it pairs well with this subconscious mind (assuming you reliably hit two or more targets with the two-action version). If you’re risk-averse and want to guarantee slightly better-than-average damage at the cost of an action, you’ll probably like this feat. Only usable while Unleashed (implying encounter mode) since it has the psyche trait. Table for damage comparison and practical use display (via inner radiance torrent):

Level	Psi Burst avg. damage	Impose Order # of dice rolls needed to equal Psi Burst avg. damage	Inner radiance torrent 6-action damage dice
10	12.5	25	20d4
11	15	30	24d4
12	15	30	24d4
13	17.5	35	28d4
14	17.5	35	28d4
15	20	40	32d4
16	20	40	32d4
17	22.5	45	36d4
18	22.5	45	36d4
19	25	50	40d4
20	25	50	40d4

Scour the Library (***): (Gathered Lore only) Recall Knowledge, but with a buff attached. Hopefully you don’t really need the AC, but the bonus to your attack rolls also applies to spell attacks. With a focus on INT, chances are very good you’re investing in at least one of arcana, occultism, or society and using them in combat. More useful against lower level enemies where you have a higher chance of a crit success on the Recall Knowledge. Given that it’s tied to Recall Knowledge, this feat has diminishing returns due to the associated increasing DC, but Unleash doesn’t last long enough for that to really matter much. Only usable while Unleashed (implying encounter mode) since it has the psyche trait.

Signature Spell Expansion (***): If you really like some of your 3rd and lower level spells and have a hard time choosing which should be the signature spell, this feat is for you. It doesn’t give you any extra spell slots, but will give you more flexibility in how you use the ones you do have. This combines particularly well with Conscious Spell Specialization if you’re choosing the spells granted by your conscious mind as signature spells, as well as with Unlimited Potential.

Level 12

This is another decent level for an archetype feat.

Foreseen Failure (***): This feat sort of gives you a do-over if a spell you cast critically fails. You still lose the spell slot, but it gives you a chance not to waste the turn. Not bad. Sometimes the dice are cruel masters. This feat will help you mitigate bad luck occasionally, plus potentially gives you some knowledge about your target’s AC or saves.

No!!! (**): It’ll be hard to time this right because it’s mostly useful if you’re Unleashed. If that’s the case, it will allow you to use your subconscious mind’s granted psyche action as a reaction, or any other psyche action you’ve gained from feats (your level 10 subconscious mind feat or Psi Burst tend to be good choices). If you’re not Unleashed, it’s a worse version of Unleash your Psyche: you do it as a reaction and it lasts less time. That’s only valuable if you have rider effects that might make a difference (which are few and far between, and hard to use to boot) occurring immediately rather than on your next turn, but regardless: hard to time.

Psi Catastrophe (**): A 20-foot emanation means you’ll have to be close to the front line of an encounter to get full use from this feat. You don’t want to be in or near the front line. It’s decent AoE damage, though. It’s not quite on par with a spell, but it also doesn’t require resource expenditure. The big drawback is that it’ll also hit your allies. If those allies have strong reflex saves and a class feature that turns their reflex successes into crit successes, it’s safer to use. Consult with them before you pick this feat. In the right group, it’s a solid pick. You could do mental damage and target will saves instead, but your frontliners are less likely to be able to easily overcome the will save. Oscillating Wave psychics can instead do fire or cold damage and retain the reflex save. Only usable while Unleashed (implying encounter mode) since it has the psyche trait.

Level 14

Conscious Spell Specialization (****): Extra spell slots for your conscious mind-granted lower level spells. Nice. More spells per day is very welcome, even if they are lower level. Infinite Eye builds in particular getting an extra use (or more, if it’s a signature spell) out of true strike will appreciate this feat. For said Infinite Eye build, be sure to also have Parallel Breakthrough to gain a psi cantrip that can benefit from true strike.

Deep Roots (***): The occult spell list has quite a few spells that meet the criteria for this feat. As with many of the feats that modify your spells, the fact that it’s effectively metamagic but without an action expenditure requirement is very good. It isn’t a ton of damage and only occurs on a target’s crit fail will save, but free damage is always good.

Shatter Space (****): Finally, an awesome amp feat. You can target any creature with this effect so long as the amped spell was a two-action (or more) spell. The fact that you can decide whether or not the creature this effect surrounds is targeted by the effect means you can put it on front line allies. Want your barbarian to have a space-ripping emanation for a turn and cannonball their way into a gaggle of enemies? This amp is for you. You can also place it on harmful effects to give an AoE damage rider effect to whatever nasty surprise you want to slap on an enemy, with the ability to include the targeted enemy in the effect’s damage.

Level 16

Constant Levitation (****): Permanent flight. Absolutely excellent, and having a speed boost while Unleashed is even better. This is great for everyone. Granted, there are quite a few ancestries that get you permanent flight at level 17. This feat frees up the ancestry feat selections required to build through those feat chains, if you look at this from an opportunity cost angle. Similar exchange with party buffs. Sure, your wizard buddy could give you fly for an hour at this level, but having this feat means one less person that needs a spell slot to fly. More fireball for your wizard friend.

Target of Psychic Ire (***): Basically adding a few rounds of persistent bludgeoning damage as a rider on one of your two-action (or more) amped spells. By this level, your target is taking 8d4 (scaling to 9d4/10d4 later) bludgeoning per round, which is pretty good for passive damage.

Wandering Thoughts (****): Teleportation whenever you cast while Unleashed. Solid. It’s a good way to keep yourself out of harm’s way, especially for a free action. This also means you don’t necessarily need to use your third action to Stride, freeing you up for any of the other great choices you have for a third action.

Level 18

All in your Head (***): Chances are, your will save is stronger than your fortitude or reflex. Although you don’t get the success -> crit success or crit fail -> fail upgrades you normally would, being able to use your will to save against any effect as a reaction while Unleashed is quite strong. If you’ve invested heavily in both DEX and CON and haven’t touched WIS at all, you won’t want this feat, but otherwise it’s generally worth taking.

Cranial Detonation (***): Chain reaction bludgeoning damage emanations from the corpses of your enemies. Awesome. It’s a fair bit of damage and it’s a free action. Just be careful of your allies. Consult with them and try to make sure that you’re only using this feat around allies who can easily crit succeed on their reflex saves. Alternatively, you can put the mindshift trait to use and deal mental damage instead, but your frontliners are much less likely to be able to easily overcome the associated will save. Oscillating Wave psychics can instead deal fire or cold damage and retain the reflex save. This feat is strong, but it puts allies at risk. Only usable while Unleashed due to the psyche trait.

Deepest Wellspring (** / ***): Finally, the ability to recover three focus points per refocus. At this point, you have a ton of options as to how you spend your focus points. It’s late enough that you’ve already spent most of your campaign relying on a 2-point (or even 1-point, if you’ve built into an archetype with focus point expenditure) recovery that you might be fine sticking it out for the last three levels without this feat. All that said, depending on how your GM rules the psychic’s refocus procedure, all this feat may do for you is reduce your refocus time from 20 minutes to 10 minutes. If they’re strict about the interpretation of the rules entry “you regain 2 Focus Points when you Refocus, up to your maximum of 2,” though, you’ll be glad to be able to get back up to 3 focus points more than once per day. This feat is markedly better if you have an archetype that relies on focus point usage and if you frequently use your archetype’s focus spells.

Level 20

Become Thought (**): Physical damage resistance in exchange for mental/spiritual (disclaimer: not a damage type) damage weakness, free illusory disguise, and an automatic resurrection on yourself once per year. It’s not the strongest capstone, but it’ll help you survive most encounters a bit better, plus some readily available out-of-combat utility.

Mind Over Matter (****): Extra 10th level spell slot. More spell slots are always good, and tenth level spells are very powerful.

Twin Psyche (****): Double duration on Unleash your Psyche. Four rounds is enough for most encounters. Powerful stuff.

Unlimited Potential (***): You sort of get unlimited spell slots for spells of fifth level and below, provided they have no duration. The problem there is that those spells are mostly offensive in nature, meaning they won’t do a ton of damage or will have significant limitations if they have the incapacitation trait. For the few that don’t fall into an offensive category, this feat basically turns them into cantrips. That’s pretty good.

Skills

This section contains a general breakdown of how useful it is for a psychic to invest in any given skill. Lore is not considered here due to its wide variety of options and narrow usage, although INT builds will do best with lore skills. For CHA- and INT-based skills, the overall rating exists for the corresponding subconscious minds; these skills will not consider whether you are playing the opposite key ability (for example, intimidation’s rating will not reflect its value for INT builds).

Acrobatics (**): Most useful for flight, assuming your GM enforces aerial maneuvering, and for Tumbling Through to get you out of bad situations. Not many useful skill feats here. It’s much better if you have the acrobat dedication.

Arcana (****): Hands down the best INT skill because of its legendary feat. Plus, its targets for Recall Knowledge come up frequently, it’ll be useful for identifying magic items and effects, and it has several good skill feats which will frequently counter enemy spells.

Athletics (*): You don’t have any reason to invest in athletics whatsoever. You have no need for STR. You may want to get it to trained proficiency for terrain hazards if you’re playing an INT build and have spare choices for trained skills.

Crafting (**): Crafting is a clunky system that’s hard to put to good use. If you invest quite a few feats into it, you can sort of craft more efficiently than buy items, and it does at least let you put recipes to good use if you can’t otherwise find the items you’re looking for. More useful if someone in your party is using a shield that needs frequent repairs. You could also take the alchemical crafting skill feat and occasionally supply your party with consumables. Also fits well if you take the talisman dabbler dedication.

Deception (**): Primarily useful for feinting and creating a diversion, but you don’t really need to do either of those. It does also have some value for lying in social situations. You’ll need it if you plan to put the sixth level spell mislead to good use.

Diplomacy (***): Commonly used in social situations and has one particularly strong skill feat: Bon Mot. You can debuff your enemies prior to your Unleashed turns and try to stick heavy damage with crit failed will saves.

Intimidation (****): This skill has some of the best skill feats in the game, commonly gets used in social situations, and provides one of the best third actions in encounter rounds: demoralize.

Medicine (**): While medicine is a useful skill, your turn-to-turn action economy will be hard pressed to work Battle Medicine in. Out of combat, you’ll provide some useful healing during ten minute blocks, and it supports use of organsight. You don’t have a whole lot of use for WIS other than to beef up your will saves, though.

Nature (**): If you can fit it in, it’ll help shore up your Recall Knowledge capabilities. If someone in your party has high WIS, though, you can safely skip this skill. It has very little going for it in terms of skill feats.

Occultism (***): A few good skill feats and value in Recall Knowledge. If you’re playing a Gathered Lore build, this skill is purple (*****).

Performance (*): The worst skill in the game, hands down. No really useful skill feats and very little utility besides. If you’re playing a goblin with Goblin Song or a sprite with Catchy Tune, you’ll need to focus on performance to keep those feats relevant, though.

Religion (**): Much like nature, if you can fit it in, it’ll be helpful for Recall Knowledge. Unlike nature, this skill actually has some useful skill feats. You still don’t have a whole lot of use for WIS, though.

Society (***): Not a lot of great skill feats, but humanoid enemies tend to be pretty common enemies or NPCs of interest. So much so that society frequently comes up for Recall Knowledge.

Stealth (***): If you’re investing in DEX, and you certainly can and should do so for the AC, stealth will come up often enough in exploration mode that you’ll appreciate having some investment in it.

Survival (*): Not your lane, and not much in the way of skill feats to boot.

Thievery (**): Thievery doesn’t tend to come up often. Useful if you’re relying on umbral extraction and/or umbral graft often, though.

Noteworthy skill feats

Repeated knowledge-related skill feats (Quick Identification, Recognize Spell, etc.) are only described in Arcana, but will be listed in each relevant skill section. Certain differences will be noted in Nature since it’s alphabetically before Religion, and in Occultism since certain feats will be less useful there. As with the Skills section of the guide, ratings assume that your build has the relevant ability score as a key ability. In the case of Quick Identification and Assured Identification, you don’t need to take them more than once in different skills.

The ratings below are made independently of other skills’ feat values. All are self contained and compared against other skill feats within each individual skill itself. For a rating of which skills are valuable as compared to each other, see the above Skills section.

(1) Assurance (***): Best used for a Recall Knowledge skill (namely, arcana or occultism) or, if you plan to focus on it, medicine. Be aware of where and when an automatic 10 on a check is useful. Recall Knowledge in combat against mooks 2 and sometimes 1 level below you (see this post for reference) can benefit from Assurance, as can medicine’s treat wounds skill action. There are some other fringe uses, such as diplomacy or intimidate for the make an impression or coerce skill actions, respectively. Prerequisite for Automatic Knowledge.

(1) Dubious Knowledge (***): Get useful information from your Recall Knowledge checks even on failures. It won’t help with crit failures, but still - even with the false information peppered in, you’ll get so much more mileage out of each Recall Knowledge.

(2) Automatic Knowledge (***): You get a free Assurance-modified Recall Knowledge check using whichever skill you selected for Assurance (assuming that skill associates with the Recall Knowledge action) once per round. That’s a solid way to gain information about your enemies.

Acrobatics

(1) Cat Fall (****): It prevents damage at a scaling rate and potentially relieves you from having to use spells to arrest your fall or reduce/remove fall damage.
(7) Kip Up (****): If you ever get knocked prone, being able to get up from prone both as a free action and without triggering reactions will keep you much safer.

Arcana

(1) Arcane Sense (**): If you don’t feel that you can squeeze detect magic into your build, no one else in your party has it, and you plan to invest in arcana, you can effectively get a more slowly-scaling version of detect magic.
(1) Quick Identification (***): Much better at master proficiency when the time spent is negligible compared to that of your party’s time expenditure during ten minute exploration periods, but still, speeding up your magic item identification potentially allows you to identify all magic items you find while everyone else is refocusing or Treating Wounds. Also enables you to get back to your own refocusing quickly.
(1) Recognize Spell (***): Being able to identify spells as a reaction and potentially get a bonus to save against them is solid. Prerequisite for Quick Recognition.
(1) Trick Magic Item (****): Being able to cast arcane spells from items is an awesome addition to your kit. Just be aware that you’ll have a lower proficiency to cast these spells.
(2) Assured Identification (***): Being unable to misidentify items is frequently useful, even if you are heavily invested in the skill.
(7) Quick Recognition (****): Getting a free action once per turn to Recognize a Spell and potentially get a bonus to save against it is outstanding.
(15) Unified Theory (****): While it doesn’t outright replace the other Recall Knowledge-related skills, it does a whole lot to cover their uses. At a bare minimum, it’ll make your Quick Identification, Trick Magic Item, and Recognize Spell/Quick Recognition function for all spell traditions, as well as Recall Knowledge if it’s in relation to learning something tied to the magic tradition.

Crafting

(1) Alchemical Crafting (****): If you’re investing in crafting, you might as well be able to make alchemical items since they’re some of the most useful consumables in the game.
(1) Crafter’s Appraisal (**): If, for some reason, you’re not investing in another Recall Knowledge skill which can identify magic items, you can offload that skill action on to crafting. Maybe you’re doing a build that focuses on stealth, acrobatics, and crafting. It’s not optimal, but you can make it work a bit better with this feat.
(1) Improvise Tool (**): Basically just saves you some bulk and a hand. If, for some reason, you don’t have your book with crafting recipes handy, you can still craft a few basic items.
(1) Quick Repair (**): Cuts down repair times if someone in your party has a shield or if you’re frequently fighting enemies that can destroy your party’s armor. Useful to get you back to identifying magic items and/or refocusing more quickly.
(1) Specialty Crafting (****): The way to make it a bit more likely that you get crit successes on your downtime crafting checks and speed up/cheapen crafting costs. Most useful for an alchemy specialty, but you can take it more than once if you plan to craft other useful items like armor and weapons. Prerequisite for Impeccable Crafting.
(2) Magical Crafting (****): Necessary to keep the skill relevant.
(2) Tattoo Artist (***): Functions the same as Specialty Crafting, but for magical tattoos. A few of those are useful.
(7) Impeccable Crafting (****): The most necessary feat to keep the skill functioning. On top of the +2 circumstance bonus you receive for your specialty crafting choice, your successes all become critical successes, drastically improving the crafting process/time investment for specialty crafts.
(7) Inventor (***): If you have trouble coming across the recipes you need, you can just make them instead. Technically gives you access to any and all common items, provided you have enough downtime.
(7) Rapid Affixture (**): If you and your group frequently use talismans, this will cut down your time spent putting them to use and let you get back to other exploration activities. Much better if you’re using the Talisman Dabbler archetype.
(15) Craft Anything (**): Opens up a few limited options, but this feat doesn’t actually mean you can craft anything.

Deception

(1) Charming Liar (**): You could just use diplomacy instead, but if for some reason you’re not focusing on diplomacy, you’ll occasionally be able to lie your way into improved attitudes.
(1) Lengthy Diversion (**): You’ll have to also be focusing on stealth for this feat to be of any use. If you are, though, you can ease the number of stealth actions required to stay hidden.
(1) Lie to Me (***): If you’re investing in deception, you might as well grab this feat since your perception progression is poor.
(2) Confabulator (**): Becomes better as your proficiency in deception goes up. You’ll either need to lie frequently (which, if you’re focusing on deception, you probably do) or invest in stealth. Mechanically, stealth is the better of these choices. Either way, though, you’ll be more likely to pull off lies in social situations or more likely to stay hidden in encounters.
(2) Discreet Inquiry (**): This feat will only be useful if you’re in a campaign or scenario where it matters that your adversaries are unable to discover what you know and/or what information you’re seeking. Additionally, you’ll have to invest in diplomacy in order to gather information.
(2) Quick Disguise (**): If you’re in a campaign where you frequently need to infiltrate or act under disguise, this feat will help ease some of your spell usage and free up repertoire slots.
(7) Doublespeak (***): Secret communication is frequently useful. Spell-free secret communication is even better.

Diplomacy

(1) Bargain Hunter (**): If you’re strapped for downtime activities, you can turn diplomacy into a pseudo-Earn Income skill with this feat. It’ll only be valuable when you’re shopping for items, though. If you take it at first level, you’ll have 2 more GP to work with when buying initial gear.
(1) Bon Mot (****): Although it has linguistic restrictions, this is among the best skill feats. Imposing a -2 or -3 to will saves with a single action from a first level skill feat is outstanding.
(1) Group Impression (***): Turning groups of unfriendly NPCs to indifferent, or from indifferent to friendly, even if temporarily, can make a powerful difference in the roleplay aspect of the game.
(1) Hobnobber (**): Information gathering is good, but you don’t really get the information gathering value out of this feat until master proficiency when you can no longer crit fail to gather information. Prior to that point, the improvement to your gather information speed may or may not matter depending on your campaign and GM.
(1) No Cause for Alarm (**): Best used post-unleash while you’re stupefied, even if the debuff will apply on your diplomacy check. At least you won’t have to worry about the flat DC to lose a spell. Situational, though.
(2) Discreet Inquiry (**): Same as the deception feat, but more valuable in diplomacy since it only relies on diplomacy rather than both deception and diplomacy.
(2) Glad-Hand (***): If an NPC isn’t too keen on talking for a full minute, you can get some words in immediately to try to soften them up, improve their attitude, and make them hear you out.
(7) Evangelize (***): Not quite as heavy of a will save debuff as Bon Mot, but stupefied affects more than just will saves. It does have the same linguistic limitation that Bon Mot does. This feat can help you shut down casters and potentially debuff CHA-based adversary attempts to sway crowds or other listeners. You’ll have to follow a deity or a philosophy, though.
(15) Legendary Negotiation (**): It’ll be hard to pull off because of the penalty to your diplomacy check, but you potentially end encounters with this feat. Usable post-Unleash, although your diplomacy will suffer further because of the stupefied debuff.

Intimidation

(1) Group Coercion (***): Making groups of NPCs do your bidding is frequently useful. Unfriendly NPCs can be coerced into doing what you want, and you’ll often run into unfriendly NPCs. You can technically even coerce hostile NPCs, although they’re unlikely to give you the minute of time required to do so. Coercing groups of hostile NPCs is much easier if you also have Quick Coercion.
(1) Intimidating Glare (****): Completely overcome the linguistic limitation of demoralize. Demoralize was already one of the best skill actions in the game. Making it more widely usable is fantastic.
(1) Quick Coercion (***): Making NPCs do your bidding with only a round of conversation makes it much easier to coerce them since they won’t have much opportunity to simply walk away from you, or start hitting you and your allies.
(2) Lasting Coercion (**): This feat massively extends the amount of time that your coerced targets will do your bidding. Still, it’s not likely that you’ll need NPCs to follow your intimidating instructions for a week.
(2) Terrifying Resistance (***): Getting a bonus to saves because you demoralized a spellcaster is solid. That’s a 2-3 point swing on their casts provided your target tries to cast something on you while it’s frightened.
(7) Battle Cry (****): Not only do you get a free demoralize at the start of every encounter, making your Unleash-priming spell more likely to land its effects, you eventually get to demoralize as a reaction whenever you critically succeed at an attack roll. Although you don’t have a high chance of critting, this feat specifies attack rolls, meaning spell attacks count.
(7) Terrified Retreat (***): Taking a target out of the fight for a round (and change, for its actions spent returning, if at all) is a decent control tool. You and your party may find fleeing targets annoying to deal with, though.
(15) Scare to Death (****): Outright killing enemies with intimidation is great, even if it’s hard to pull off. This feat does have a linguistic limitation, though. At least it makes targets frightened 2 on a success, which is a noticeable improvement over demoralize.

Lore

(1) Additional Lore (***): Getting an extra, automatically scaling, lore skill can be useful if you have a good idea of which lore will be useful.
(2) Battle Planner (**): If you have expert proficiency in warfare lore, you can sometimes use it in place of perception for initiative. Useful, if situational since it requires a minute of prep pre-encounter. If you got warfare lore from the Additional Lore feat, the expert proficiency requirement will be easily met.
(2) Unmistakable Lore (**): Best used in combination with Untrained Improvisation. Regardless, being unable to crit fail lore-based Recall Knowledge checks will stop you from gaining false information. You’ll need at least one lore skill at expert proficiency. If you have the Additional Lore feat, that’s an easy way to meet the requirement.

Medicine

(1) Battle Medicine (***): Battle Medicine is a great feat, but you’ll have a hard time using it in encounters. Maybe post-Unleash, although the stupefied penalty will apply to your medicine check to do so. If you’re planning to take the medic dedication, which eventually offers an archetype feat that will make it possible to Stride and use Battle Medicine with a single action, this feat is a requirement for it.
(1) Forensic Acumen (**): Can help a bit with Recall Knowledge in exploration mode.
(1) Inoculation (**): Helps overcome diseases over time. Considering you only ever get to expert fortitude proficiency, diseases can be scary for you.
(1) Risky Surgery (***): Good chance to turn your treat wounds skill action check into a crit success.
(1) Stitch Flesh (**): Necessary if you’re the party medicine-user and someone in your party is playing an undead character. Otherwise, don’t bother.
(2) Continual Recovery (****): Necessary if you’re the party medicine-user. If you’re just a backup, you’re better off using the aid action and can skip this feat.
(2) Godless Healing (***): Nice addition to your treat wounds or Battle Medicine heals. Since you don’t need to worship a deity, you can easily get away with taking this feat. Prerequisite for Mortal Healing (which is a good feat, but not covered here) if you follow the Laws of Mortality philosophy.
(2) Robust Recovery (**): Similar concept to Inoculation.
(2) Ward Medic (****): Necessary if you’re the party medicine-user. If you’re just a backup, you’re better off using the aid action and can skip this feat.
(7) Advanced First Aid (**): Much like Battle Medicine, being able to remove conditions in encounters is solid. The problem is the same, though: you don’t really have the actions to support using this feat until after Unleash your Mind drops off, at which time the stupefied condition will penalize your medicine roll.
(15) Legendary Medic (***): Being able to remove some of the nastiest conditions out of combat without expending resources (other than time) is solid.

Nature

(1) Natural Medicine (**): If you’re willing to accept the limitations of Treat Wounds without any feat support, you can combine the value of a core Recall Knowledge skill and a bit of healing. The only improvement you can make with Natural Medicine is the extra HP at higher proficiencies, though. You can’t ever replicate the effects of, say, Continual Recovery or Ward Medic unless you also get to the required proficiencies with the medicine skill.
(1) Recognize Spell (**): Same as the arcana version, but relies on WIS, so not as naturally useful.
(1) Trick Magic Item (**): Same as the arcana version, but relies on WIS, so not as naturally useful. Applies to primal spells rather than arcane.
(7) Consult the Spirits (**): You can get some good information from this feat, but it relies on WIS, so is not as naturally useful as the occult version.

(7) Quick Recognition (***): Same as the arcana version, but relies on WIS, so not as naturally useful.

Occultism

(1) Deceptive Worship (**): Situational, but cults come up somewhat often. In the right campaign, this can be a very useful feat.
(1) Oddity Identification (***): Considering how many occult spells have the mental trait, this is a solid buff to Identify Magic.
(1) Quick Identification (***): Same as the arcana version.
(1) Recognize Spell (***): Same as the arcana version.
(1) Root Magic (***): Once-per-day bonus to an ally’s save. It’s not a ton, but every little bit helps, and it’s not tied to any resource expenditure. You can’t use it for yourself.
(1) Schooled in Secrets (**): Situational, but cults come up somewhat often. In the right campaign, this can be a very useful feat.
(2) Assured Identification (***): Same as the arcana version.
(7) Bizarre Magic (**): Your GM may or may not make enemies try to identify your spells. If so, this feat will be quite useful to keep them in the dark. If you’re relying on Thoughtform Summoning, you may be able to keep your summons safer from having their weaknesses targeted.
(7) Consult the Spirits (***): Sort of like augury, giving you some potentially useful information that’s not tied to resource expenditure. At legendary proficiency, you can use it much more often.
(7) Disturbing Knowledge (**): Demoralize for the INT-based build. Also has a chance to confuse enemies, which is one hell of a debuff. Unfortunately, it takes two actions, which means you’ll be unable to cast a spell on turns you decide to use this feat. You could use it post-Unleash and just deal with the penalty to INT-based checks, skirting around the chance to have spells disrupted.
(7) Quick Recognition (****): Same as the arcana version.

Religion

(1) Pilgrim’s Token (***): Going ahead of enemies who tie your initiative is solid.
(1) Recognize Spell (**): Same as the nature version.
(1) Trick Magic Item (**): Same as the nature version.
(7) Battle Prayer (**): You can do a bit of alignment damage with a single action and potentially target a weakness.
(7) Consult the Spirits (**): Same as the nature version.
(7) Quick Recognition (***): Same as the nature version.
(7) Sacred Defense (***): Readily available temp HP once per hour for a single action. It isn’t a ton and the DC starts off pretty difficult to beat, but they last for a minute and can help mitigate damage from Strain Mind.
(15) Divine Guidance (**): Much like Consult the Spirits, gaining information to help you drive the plot forward tends to be useful, especially if you get information that helps keep you and your party safer. This feat’s value and outcomes are entirely up to your GM, though.

Society

(1) Courtly Graces (**): Removing reliance on CHA can be good, but this feat only functions with nobles. Situational, but useful in the right campaign.
(1) Glean Contents (**): Quickly picking up information from written documents may be useful to help you gain important plot information. Depending on your campaign, the ability to get information from sealed documents may also be useful, but even in a situational feat, this effect is the more situational of the two.
(1) Multilingual (**): It’s hard to predict which languages you’ll need to use. That being said, some of your spells have linguistic limitations, and a number of useful CHA-based skill feats do as well. This feat is noticeably better with a heritage or ancestry feat that allows you to gain three languages from Multilingual.
(1) Read Lips (**): Situationally useful, but gathering information tends to be good.
(1) Sign Language (**): For the most part, your allies will need this feat as well for it to be of any use. Adversaries who see you and your party communicating nonverbally will likely be suspicious of you, but it’s still good to have nonverbal communications amongst your party members.
(1) Streetwise (***): You can outright replace diplomacy for the purposes of gathering information, which is a rather useful feature of diplomacy. Additionally, being able to potentially just Recall Knowledge (in familiar cities) and skip Gather Information altogether, without stopping you from going out and gathering information, is a solid improvement.
(15) Legendary Codebreaker (**): If your GM allows it, you can read any written language with this feat, giving you a much broader capability to gain information from written documents.
(15) Legendary Linguist (***): This feat just about removes linguistic limitations, provided you can figure out your target’s mode of communication.

Stealth

(2) Shadow Mark (***): If you’re focusing on stealth, you might as well use it a) for initiative, since your perception progression is poor and b) to help keep you undetected at the start of encounters, thereby keeping yourself safer.
(7) Foil Senses (***): There are plenty of creatures out there with senses other than sight. If you’re sneaking around and keeping yourself safe, this will be an extra layer of protection.
(7) Swift Sneak (****): Maximizing your movement speed while hidden will be a fantastic improvement to your stealth. Prerequisite for Legendary Sneak.
(15) Legendary Sneak (****) The capstone of stealth and mandatory if you’re investing in it. Passive Avoid Notice while in exploration mode, plus you no longer need cover or concealment to hide or sneak. Major defensive benefits here.

Noteworthy general feats

(1) Adopted Ancestry (*** / ****): You get access to an additional level 1 class feat if you choose the human ancestry for evental access to the Natural Ambition feat. See the Ancestries section of the guide for other good choices - there are quite a few despite being limited to the common ancestries.

(1) Armor Proficiency (**): This can help shore up your AC prior to level 13 when you get expert unarmored defense. At that point, you should retrain this feat.

(1) Canny Acumen (***): Fortitude and perception are good choices. If you take this feat at level 3 (or at level 1, if human), it’ll be valuable from levels 3 (or 1) to 8 and 17 to 20 for fortitude or from levels 3 (or 1) to 10 and 17 to 20 for perception. If you have time to retrain out of this feat during the dead levels, it’s a good idea to do so.

(1) Diehard (***): An extra buffer to help counteract your low HP.

(1) Fast Recovery (***): Having some help against virulent diseases and poisons is a noticeable improvement over the norm, especially considering how quickly afflictions can become lethal for you.

(1) Feather Step (**): Being able to Step away from a threatening enemy (as long as you’re not in greater difficult terrain) will help keep you safer if you frequently find your GM placing you in encounters with terrain effects. If you have an ancestry feat or class feat that gives you a permanent fly speed, you can retrain this feat.

(1) Fleet (****): Extra movement speed is always valuable.

(1) Incredible Initiative (***): Going before enemies is useful and this will help overcome your poor perception progression somewhat.

(1) Toughness (***): An extra buffer to help counteract your low HP.

(3) Ancestral Paragon (*** / ****): Some ancestries have several fantastic first level ancestry feats. See the ancestries section of the guide for good choices.

(3) Keen Follower (***): More useful for CHA builds since you’ll have fewer skills, but still useful regardless. Often comes up for stealth and athletics, although it can also be useful if you’re Following the Expert on someone who’s investigating.

(3) Thorough Search (**): Although you don’t have a whole lot of reason to invest heavily in WIS, this feat can help bring you up to a similar perception level of those in your party with master proficiency. If your build incorporates a focus on WIS, you may appreciate this feat.

(3) Untrained Improvisation (***): Recall Knowledge is an untrained action. Lore skills are skills. You are now able to use any and every Lore your mind can come up with. Since highly specific Lores automatically get the -5 DC modifier (Very Easy), Gathered Lore builds can use this feat to always have an appropriate lore skill handy for Recall Knowledge checks. Even outside of lore skills, being able to attempt any untrained skill action with some chance of success is solid. All that said, this interpretation of Untrained Improvisation may well fit under the “too good to be true” umbrella rule. Talk with your GM. Even if you don’t get Lore skill cheese from this feat, it’s still a solid addition to any build, giving you a chance (even if slim) to succeed at most skill actions.

(7) Numb to Death (**): Although you’ll have to have died once and have Diehard, it’s another layer of defense against your low HP. Ideally, though, you stay away from positions that are likely to get you killed in the first place.

(11) Incredible Investiture (**): If you like having a whole bunch of cheaper magic items for their effects rather than skill bonuses, this feat will enable that playstyle.

Spells

Keep in mind that, starting at level 3, you get a signature spell for every spell level. Choose spells that synergize with your build type. Since your flexibility is limited as a spontaneous caster, consider getting some of the better spells as scrolls. Also note that these spells are, for the most part, written with a conscious mind-neutral perspective. If you’re playing a conscious mind with a solid array of options to take advantage of the Unleash damage buff, you’re more free to take utility spells with your spell slots. Additionally, understand that while many support spells are rated yellow (**), there generally isn’t anything inherently wrong with those spells or with taking them - you just have such a limited repertoire that you’ll have to be choosy about which support spells you take, if any.

Cantrips

All mentions of Parallel Breakthrough in this section are a generalization. If you already have the psi cantrip version of one of the below cantrips from your conscious mind, consider the corresponding regular cantrip of red (*) value and ignore any mention of Parallel Breakthrough; it doesn’t apply to you.

Approximate (**): You’ll have to get creative with it, but information tends to be useful. If you’re trained in society, you could just take Eye for Numbers instead for the same effect without eating up a spell slot or two actions per use.

Bullhorn (***): (C) Helpful with Coerce primarily, but there are also a few ways you can get mileage out of your performance skill. Ensuring that you will be heard is useful, too.

Chill Touch (**): (U) You’ll probably want either Reach Spell or a familiar to really get mileage out of this spell. Its range of touch makes it a dangerous option for you to be proactive. You can usually use it if an enemy has approached you and is already in range, then Stride away. Typically, targets with good STR that want to get close to you will also have good fortitude saves, so you’ll have a hard time landing the enfeebled condition. Still, if and when you can land it, enfeebled is a great condition to inflict. It’s got some additional utility against undead, meaning it’ll find more value in undead-heavy campaigns.

Dancing Lights (**): Having to sustain this spell and keep the lights close to each other are some noticeable limitations. Additionally, you can get the psi (read: better) version of this cantrip with Parallel Breakthrough if you really want it.

Daze (**): (C) The damage isn’t very high, but the range is good. Inflicting stunned is great for a cantrip. It doesn’t scale well, but you shouldn’t be using this for the damage. Get your group’s Recall Knowledge checks in and try to stun low-will save targets. This is a decent control tool. All that being said, you could just get the psi version through Parallel Breakthrough.

Detect Magic (***): A staple of exploration, someone in your party should have this. It’s available to every spell tradition, so you won’t necessarily need to take it. Treat this more as a radar effect for magical items and effects. Coordinate with your group. Additionally, you could instead get the psi version through Parallel Breakthrough.

Forbidding Ward (***): This is a strong support cantrip, although the nature of your Unleash means you want to focus on damage tools. Still, you could justify taking this for rounds after Unleash while you’re stupefied.

Ghost Sound (**): (C) Mechanically, it doesn’t do anything, but creative players and accepting GMs can put it to good use distracting or diverting enemies outside of combat.

Guidance (***): This applies to lots of things, including initiative if you can line it up around the very short duration. The fact that it’s a single action to give someone a +1 status bonus up to 30 feet away is great. The hour-long immunity after using the bonus is fairly limiting, though. Additionally, you could instead get the psi version, which is significantly stronger, via Parallel Breakthrough.

Haunting Hymn (**): (U) Basically daze in a small cone AoE, but with a much worse debuff. Getting some blasting capability with a cantrip is decent, although most conscious minds already get some kind of cantrip blasting capability.

Infectious Enthusiasm (***): (e) Primarily useful for the will save buff for you and one other person, although buffing CHA-based skills (read: intimidation) is decent too, namely if someone else in your party can Demoralize. If you’re relying on Psi Strikes, it can help buff your Strike to add the Psi Strikes damage as well as buffing an ally’s Strikes.

Know Direction (*): Just have someone use survival.

Light (**): It’s useful, but there are quite a few ways to get some kind of light effect, especially because this is on every tradition’s list. Coordinate with your group. You’ve also got lighting capability with dancing lights.

Mage Hand (** / ***): This cantrip is almost always useful, but it’ll depend on player creativity and whether or not you want to get the psi version via Parallel Breakthrough.

Message (***): (i) It’s on all but the primal list, but having a subtle means of communication is frequently useful. You could instead get the psi version via Parallel Breakthrough.

Phase Bolt (**): (U) It’s not much damage and the situation it overcomes is… well, situational. Consider taking the psi version via Parallel Breakthrough instead.

Prestidigitation (** / ***): There’s not a whole lot you can explicitly do with it, but creative players will be able to put it to good use.

Protect Companion (**): You’ll want an archetype to get the most use out of this. If you don’t have an archetype to enhance some type of minion, this is only worth taking if you choose an ancestry that grants a familiar. This spell functions very similarly to shield, but for your minion.

Read Aura (***): A staple of exploration, someone in your party should have this. It’s available to every spell tradition, so you won’t necessarily need to take it. Treat this as your ability to focus in on specific magic items. Coordinate with your group.

Read the Air (**): You’re not likely to be good at both diplomacy and society, but the bonuses to both for the purposes of, respectively, Make an Impression and Recall Knowledge may be very useful in tandem, especially in a more intrigue- or social-heavy campaign.

Shield (***): A single action defense buff is great. The cooldown after using it for the Shield Block reaction is somewhat harsh, but for a cantrip it’s still a great tool to have. If you’re planning to rely on this cantrip often, though, you should really consider getting it through Parallel Breakthrough. Prior to level 6, it’s great. Luckily, you can retrain spells out of your repertoire.

Sigil (*): You’re going to have to be pretty creative to get any value out of this.

Summon Instrument (*): Performance is hard to get use out of if you’re not a bard, but if you find that you’re running into a lot of enemies that use concentrate actions, you can somewhat control them. At 5th level, this spell will give you an item bonus to performance checks. Likely this will be most useful on a sprite or goblin built around Catchy Tune or Goblin Song, respectively, but it’s still a cantrip that expects you to focus on the worst skill in the game.

Tame (**): (C) It’ll only work on tamed animals, but being able to bypass, say, a nervous horse picket line or a guard dog will occasionally be useful.

Telekinetic Projectile (***): (U) Decent single target damage, although if you want to lean into this spell you’ll be better off getting it via Parallel Breakthrough.

Time Sense (**): Although knowing the exact time whenever you like is more flavor than function, getting a bonus on an attack roll, perception check, saving throw, or skill check is solid. The issue is that, in order to get the bonus, whatever you’re trying to do “requires extremely precise timing.” That’s a fairly limiting rule phrase, meaning the cantrip is designed to be situational. The benefits are pretty good, though.

Warp Step (**): You’re essentially dedicating your turn to getting away from danger by using this cantrip. That’s fine considering you’re very squishy, but it prevents you from doing much else on the turn in which you use this cantrip. Additionally, you could just get the psi version via Parallel Breakthrough.

Wash Your Luck (**): Your group will need someone doing Recall Knowledge so that you’re aware of any misfortune effects, although even that is kind of an outlier on the type of info you’ll typically get with Recall Knowledge. There aren’t a whole lot of misfortune effects in the system, but it’ll be handy to be able to cancel them out if and when they come up.

Level 1

Agitate (**): (C) Sort of action control, although chances are your enemies won’t mind having to Stride. Still, it does limit them from Stepping and has potential for decent damage. If you have someone in your party with Attack of Opportunity or a similar reaction, eliminating the Step option can help get extra damage on your target. Decent spell alongside the right party composition.

Alarm (**): It’s a useful spell, but given your limited daily spells and blasting-focused Unleash class feature, you’ll be hard-pressed to fit it in.

Animate Dead (**): Summoning spells can be useful (mostly for versatility), but you’ll need to talk to your party and GM to make sure they’re okay with necromancy. Note that this spell does not have the evil trait, but the undead trait does state that such creatures “were infused after death with negative energy and soul-corrupting evil magic.” Summons are also difficult to use with the psychic’s kit.

Animate Rope (*): Someone in your party is likely to be good at athletics. You can accomplish just about everything this spell does between an ally with a grappling hook and tanglefoot. You may like the extra range at higher levels, but it’s still hard to justify taking up a precious repertoire slot with this spell.

Anticipate Peril (***): Bonuses to initiative are always welcome, especially status bonuses which will stack with the circumstance bonus from the Scout exploration activity. Nicer at higher levels, but still a good pick for a first level spell since you’ll want those loaded with utility the higher level you are.

Bane (**): (C) You don’t really want to be close enough to enemies to be able to apply this debuff. Still, it can function as a deterrent and a decent round 1 spell to set you up for Unleash in the second round.

Biting Words (***): Decent single target damage tool. Your spell attacks won’t scale too well at higher levels compared to weapon users. Sonic damage is solid, though. Unfortunately, it won’t work with Unleash because of its duration, but it’s not a bad choice for a round 1 spell to set up for the round 2 Unleash.

Bless (**): (C) It’ll be better with a party more heavily focused on ranged attacks (which includes spell attacks) since you don’t want to be up near enemies buffing your melee allies. It’s a decent round 1 spell to set up for the round 2 Unleash.

Breadcrumbs (*): Useful if you have a scout ranging far ahead of your party, but otherwise, all it does is let enemies know someone glittery is in their territory. Plus, you don’t really have the repertoire slots to justify taking a pure utility spell that, frankly, doesn’t offer much utility.

Charm (***): (C) This is a fairly strong single target control tool and provides utility out of combat. You’ll need to have it as a signature spell or take it at the highest available level in order for it to retain its value due to the incapacitation trait.

Color Spray (**): (C) It’s a strong control tool, although you’ll have to be in a less-than-desirable position to be in range to use it.

Command (***): (C) This is a powerful control tool. You can effectively squeeze two wasted actions out of it on an enemy’s failed save by telling them to do something that will require an extra action for recovery. Forcing them to flee or drop prone accomplishes this. Even better as a fifth level spell when it becomes an area control spell. At lower levels, it’s best used in encounters when they include a fewer number of enemies than you have in your party since two actions given for two actions taken is more efficient against an enemy group with less total actions. It has the added benefit of not having the incapacitation trait, meaning it’s a decent long-term pick for a first level repertoire slot.

Concordant Choir (****): (U) Although the baseline damage is somewhat weak, this spell has a fair bit going for it. It can benefit from Unleash damage, making it a meaningful pick for one of your Unleashed turns. Each target struck is that much more value out of the damage buff. You can also decide whether it’s a single target, single action spell, meaning you can use it inside an Unleashed round to get the damage buff on both this spell and on another spell or an amp. Your other choices are between two area effects and sizes, either a smaller burst or a larger emanation. Chances are, you’re not going to get a whole lot of value out of the emanation since it’ll be hard not to hit your allies and you don’t want to be off on your own as a squishy solo target. Regardless, it packs a lot of flexibility and deals sonic damage to boot. You could certainly do worse for a choice of first level signature spell. See the shadow projectile description in the third level spells below for a means of maximizing Unleash damage alongside concordant choir.

Déjà Vu (***): (C) Decent single target control. Forcing a target to be much less able to adapt to the battlefield can take a target out of the fight, plus punish it with a debuff for deviating from the forced actions. It’ll have to be heightened to remain relevant due to the incapacitation trait.

Draw Ire (*): (C) The absolute last outcome you want from a spell is to encourage an enemy to attack you. That said, with appropriate party play around the spell and smart positioning/terrain usage, you can get some value from it. Just be aware this spell is quite risky.

Echoing Weapon (**): Best chosen if you have a fighter or ranger in your party that’s building for maximum number of attacks per turn. You may or may not need extra capability to do single target damage. If you do, you’ll like this spell more. Otherwise, you can safely give it a pass.

Endure (***): (C) The solid wall of temp HP you get from this spell provides a meaningful buffer against the damage from Strain Mind. Plus, you’re squishy. Having a single action spell that can keep you alive in the face of predictable damage will come in handy. This spell is somewhat less useful for Emotional Acceptance builds since you don’t have to expend a spell slot for comparable healing (provided you’re Unleashed). See the table in the Strain Mind feat entry for a comparison of endure, Restore the Mind, heal, and ray of frost versus the damage from Strain Mind if you would like a more in-depth comparison.

Fear (***): (C) A strong debuff and a chance to make low-will enemies flee. Highly useful control tool that becomes an area control tool very early on. Your build may not have space for control tools, though.

Floating Disk (***): Your STR modifier is almost certainly either 0 or -1, meaning you may have bulk issues. Floating disk carries more bulk than you could with ant haul and lasts the same amount of time, but has other restrictions. Namely, it’s not described how you keep the disk within 30 feet of you. Talk to your GM.

Gravitational Pull (**): You really don’t want enemies getting closer to you, but it can be a useful tool to pull enemies out of their hiding spots and/or force them into a place where your party martial(s) can crush them.

Grim Tendrils (***): (U) Line effects can be hard to pull off, but the damage is decent and has a chance to cause persistent damage. Not a bad blasting spell, although you may like concordant choir more.

Ill Omen (***): Misfortune on an enemy’s first attack or skill check. Smart enemies will force it on the skill check so they can potentially avoid the MAP on subsequent Strikes, but that’s assuming they even know what the spell is and does. Use it on a priority target to help keep them from critting you or your party.

Illusory Disguise (**): (C) You don’t have many repertoire slots to spare on pure out-of-combat utility spells, but it’s a first level spell. Eventually you’re going to want to avail those first level slots for spells that will see use at higher levels of play. If you’re in a social/intrigue campaign or if you’re in the party face role, you may find some value here.

Illusory Object (**): (C) You don’t have many repertoire slots to spare on pure out-of-combat utility spells, but it’s a first level spell. Eventually you’re going to want to avail those first level slots for spells that will see use at higher levels of play. The second level heightened effect makes this spell much more resilient against disbelief. It’s situational by nature, but you may find use for it if you’re creative.

Imprint Message (*): Just use a skill to pass secret message, or message to communicate without speaking aloud.

Invisible Item (**): (C) You don’t have many repertoire slots to spare on pure out-of-combat utility spells, but it’s a first level spell. Eventually you’re going to want to avail those first level slots for spells that will see use at higher levels of play. If you expect to do or have someone in your party do much infiltration where they’ll need hidden weapons and you don’t want to rely on deception, you’ll find use here. It may also be helpful if you have a powerful need to hide a MacGuffin.

Item Facade (*): (C) Why not just take invisible item instead?

Kinetic Ram (***): Keeping enemies away from you is a worthy use for a first level spell, especially because it never needs to heighten.

Liberating Command (**): (C) Although the text in the spell says “an ally,” the Targets are “1 creature.” Consult with your GM on whether this means you can use it on yourself. I’d say it does given that 1 creature can be you. If that’s the case, it means you can potentially get yourself out of the dangerous situation of being grabbed. Not bad for a first level slot that doesn’t need to scale, but it is still situational.

Lock (**): If your GM frequently sends enemies at you who like to steal your party’s belongings, you’ll appreciate someone having this spell. You’re better off getting it as a wand, though.

Lose the Path (**): (C) Difficult terrain for one enemy’s single Stride, or possibly force that enemy to Stride somewhere else on a crit fail save. If you want a single target control spell, there are much better ones out there. The most redeeming feature of this spell is that it doesn’t need to heighten.

Mage Armor (*): Scales more slowly than armor runes, but it does replace their gold cost if you don’t care about armor property runes. That being said, you’ll have to expend progressively higher spell slots in order to keep mage armor on par with fundamental armor runes, and there are levels where it falls behind. You don’t have many of those to spare, and you most definitely do not want to spend a tenth level spell slot on AC every day when you could just get runes instead. It's okay from levels 1-3 prior to armor runes, but it still takes up a precious spell slot when you have very few of those.

Magic Missile (****): (U) Decent unavoidable single target damage, and has some interactions with certain creatures to boot (will o’ wisps, for example). If you target multiple creatures with it, you can also deal Unleash damage to each creature once. The great part about this spell is that you can squeeze it in as a third action while Unleashed and take advantage of Unleash damage a second time in a round. See shadow projectile in the third level spells below for a means of using magic missile to maximize Unleash damage. Note that, while it’s not normally worth heightening magic missile to even spell levels, it can be worth doing so as a psychic for extra Unleash damage.

Magic Weapon (**): Best if you have a martial in your party using a d12 damage die weapon. More or less useless past party level 5 or so.

Mending (**): Best used if someone in your party has a buckler. You can’t use this spell to repair shields of 1 bulk (most of them) until you’re able to heighten it to second level. It’s a somewhat niche utility pick and you don’t have many repertoire slots to spare.

Message Rune (*): Unless you’re leaning heavily into a scout/infiltrator role, you won’t find much use for this spell. Even still, its whole purpose exists so that you can leave a pre-recorded message before you go off and do something else. It’s not like you can pass new information across it.

Mindlink (*): Most of the time, there isn’t really a time limit on communication. If you frequently find yourself in pressing situations where you need to rapidly convey a large amount of information, you’ll get value. Those situations are usually so few and far between that you’d be wasting a slot in your repertoire with this spell.

Object Reading (**): If you’re in a game with lots of MacGuffins or possibly spirits and haunts, you’ll get some value here. Otherwise, give it a pass.

Penumbral Shroud (*): If someone in your party has light sensitivity, you should probably just get this spell as a wand. Otherwise, it’s a difficult-to-use single target debuff tool to inflict either the equivalent of Dazzled or Blinded.

Pet Cache (*): You don’t have a familiar or animal companion. Even if you take an archetype or ancestry to get one, this spell will have such rare utility that it’s generally not worth taking.

Phantom Pain (***): (C) Damage, persistent damage, and a debuff. Solid single target offensive tool, although its duration renders it ineligible for the Unleash damage buff.

Pocket Library (***): Readily accessible scaling buffs to Recall Knowledge. It’s a limited number of times per day, but with the 24 hour duration it’s a pretty strong buff, assuming you’re building for INT.

Quick Sort (*): The situation where this spell will come in useful is rare. Don’t waste your repertoire slots on spells you won’t use.

Ray of Enfeeblement (**): Most enemies that you want to impose enfeeblement on will tend to have good fortitude saves. Unfortunately, it also requires a spell attack. Enemies get two chances for this to not land. If it hits on the spell attack, the effect is useful even on a save. It doesn’t scale, so it can still be a decent long term pick.

Restyle (*): This is about as effective as a cantrip. Unless you really can’t find a use for your first level spell slots, don’t bother. Don’t waste your repertoire slots on spells you won’t use.

Sanctuary (***): Keep yourself safe while you’re stupefied post-Unleash. It’ll restrict your actions, but most of your hostile actions are ones you want to avoid using while stupefied anyway.

Schadenfreude (**): (C) Your fortitude and reflex saves may not be very strong. If you find that you’re crit failing saves with some frequency, you may want a tool to get retribution for those crit fails. Stupefied and possibly stunned are decent debuffs to impose as a reaction, and the spell never needs to heighten. You’re generally better off spending a hero point than suffering a crit fail save, assuming you have any to spare.

Seashell of Stolen Sound (**): Situational by nature. Could be useful for a creative player, more so if you’re able to infiltrate and dig up dirt on enemies. More useful at higher levels since it doesn’t need to scale.

Share Lore (**): Entirely dependent on how frequently applicable your lore skill(s) is/are. Giving your allies a chance to Recall Knowledge is potentially strong. Note the one minute cast time.

Sleep (**): (C) The area is small. You won’t get much use out of it in combat unless you heighten it to 4th level. Still, it can be a good out-of-combat tool to avoid hazards like guard posts. If you find it useful at 4th level and beyond, know that you will need to learn and cast it at a higher level for it to stay relevant because of the incapacitation trait.

Soothe (**): (C) It’s not quite as much healing as heal and you’re limited on repertoire slots. If you want to perform healing functions in your party, it’ll be best for you to play the Emotional Acceptance subconscious mind. That said, it is a good support tool that comes with a status bonus to saves against mental effects with decent duration.

Spirit Link (*): You don’t have the HP to pull this spell off.

Summon Fey (***): Summon spells can be useful (flanking, HP sponges, general versatility) and this one in particular has at least one option at every level. Fey also tend to have useful secondary effects like the pugwampi’s unluck aura or the grodair’s muddy field for difficult terrain. All that said, summons are difficult to use with the psychic’s kit.

Synchronize (*): Sigil, but at the cost of a spell slot and a repertoire pick.

Thicket of Knives (*): (C) You shouldn’t be in melee to get any of this spell’s value.

Thoughtful Gift (*): At best, you’re eliminating a Stride to hand off an item at the cost of a spell slot and a repertoire slot. You can’t even use it to force an enemy to take an item.

True Strike (*****): It only works on spells with a spell attack roll (psi imaginary weapon, psi telekinetic projectile, psi phase bolt; all available via Parallel Breakthrough), but this spell is a thing of beauty for maximizing your damage while Unleashed. One action to have a fortune effect on your spell attack and fish for a crit. There’s potential to hit harder than a fighter with certain amped psi cantrips.

Unseen Servant (**): Functions a lot like mage hand, although it doesn’t have as many limitations.

Ventriloquism (**): (C) You don’t have many repertoire slots to spare on pure out-of-combat utility spells, but it’s a first level spell. Eventually you’re going to want to avail those first level slots for spells that will see use at higher levels of play. This spell will give you a tool to deceive your enemies. You may or may not find that useful.

Level 2

Animated Assault (***): Decent blasting tool. The damage scaling isn’t amazing, but the fact that you can Sustain it to either keep dealing area damage or block off an enemy path of travel is useful.

Animus Mine (**): The trigger for this spell is situational, but the damage is strong for a single target spell.

Augury (***): It’s always good to have some information about what’s coming up and whether you and your party are on the right track.

Befitting Attire (*): (C) There’s no mechanical benefit from this spell. Your GM may or may not make a big deal of your clothing in certain social situations. Regardless, you don’t have the repertoire slots to support taking this spell.

Blistering Invective (***): (C) It’s language-limited, but it can put out a heap of persistent fire damage and a debuff to boot. Solid single target spell.

Blur (***): (C) A 20% miss chance against you isn’t a ton, but it’ll help keep you alive sometimes.

Calm Emotions (****): (C) With failed saves, you can outright take creatures out of fights with this spell. The psychic class may be built more for blasting, but this spell is quite strong. Enemies can break the effect on their allies if they recognize what the spell is, but that does also mean the affected creatures must be “subject to hostility” from their allies in order to break out. No matter what, you’re wasting an adversary’s actions. It does have the incapacitation trait, meaning it’ll need to be heightened to stay relevant. Start a fight with this spell to try to take out a good amount of enemies in one fell swoop, then Unleash on the second round to mop up the survivors.

Charitable Urge (**): (C) Sort of functions like command, except with the incapacitation trait. Your target can give up any item in its possession. At worst, that means you’re wasting its actions to make it possibly Stride to the nearest creature and then Interact to retrieve and/or hand over an item. Still, you can accomplish nearly the same effect with a level 1 spell.

Comprehend Language (**): The heightened effects are better, allowing you and possibly your allies and/or NPCs to all speak the same language. It does specify that the language you magically understand must be one you’re “hearing or reading.” That puts a bit of a damper on the spell. If your GM dismisses that as flavor text, comprehend language is much more useful and pairs well with blistering invective.

Continual Flame (*): For the most part, you can just use an everburning torch or light instead. The only value here is that you can potentially passively counteract darkness effects, if you’ve spent the gold and the higher level spell slot ahead of time to have it up and ready. If that’s something you want, just get a scroll.

Darkness (***): Darkvision is common, but this can still be a decent area control tool. Greater darkvision is less common, making the heightened version more useful more often.

Darkvision (***): Darkvision is always good. It sucks having to use a spell slot on it, but it’ll come up often enough that you’ll be glad you have it. If your ancestry and/or heritage grants you darkvision, you can safely skip this spell.

Deafness (*): Deafness isn’t a particularly great condition to inflict on enemies. Don’t waste your repertoire slots on low-value spells.

Death Knell (**): Your GM may or may not make enemies do recovery checks. If so, this spell can help guarantee that they die. The temp HP is hard to gain and never scales, but temp HP is a nice buffer for you. That said, you’ll have to get close to a dying enemy, which likely means getting close to living enemies. You don’t want to do that. That said, status bonuses to attack and damage are good, especially because there isn’t a limit on which damage rolls receive the buff.

Dispel Magic (**): Disable magic items outside of combat or disable ongoing spell effects in combat. It’s not a reaction, so you won’t be able to counter direct offensive magic, but there are still plenty of applications. Still, it’s pretty situational. It also needs to be heightened to stay relevant because of how counteract checks work.

Empty Pack (**): (C) Like most other effects that render items invisible, it’s a situational spell. You may find it useful while infiltrating or disguising yourself. It’s hard to justify letting it take up a valuable repertoire slot, though.

Faerie Fire (***): The better version of Homing Beacon. A no save spell that reveals hidden/invisible creatures in a small burst.

False Life (**): You like temp HP. Although this spell gives a smaller amount than endure, they’re much more readily available. You should consider this spell for a different purpose than endure, though. You can predict Strain Mind damage, making endure’s larger amount of temp HP most valuable in that situation or in similar predictable damage situations. False life is more of a general tool to cover for the fact that you have such a small amount of class HP and should be considered more of a general survival tool. With false life up at maximum level each day, you’ll have a “starting HP” around that of an 8 HP class. Granted, they’re temp HP, so once they’re gone, they’re gone. With all that said, false life a) won’t truly patch the issue of you being a 6 HP class and b) takes one of your very limited highest level spell slots per day if you want it to remain relevant.

Feast of Ashes (**): It’s going to be most useful on targets you expect to escape from an encounter, but inflicting the fatigued condition is strong. The range is too short for you to really be able to get use from it outside of combat, even with Reach Spell. Unless you expect a lot of targets to escape, you won’t really need to heighten it. It’s only an average of 17.5 damage per spell level for its entire week-long duration (plus 1 point of damage from starvation at the end), so your target is probably going to survive the damage.

Final Sacrifice (***): (U) Best paired with animate dead if you don’t want to have to deal with the evil trait. This spell does a big pile of area damage. The fact that it more or less requires a summon spell cast before it isn’t actually as big a deal for you as it is for most other casters. You could easily open an encounter with animate dead on the first round, Unleash on the second, and cast final sacrifice to really maximize its damage. If you build around summoning, this spell is a strong pick and well worth choosing it as a signature spell.

Gentle Repose (**): An early means of keeping a dead ally revivable, although that shouldn’t generally be your responsibility as a psychic. Consider getting it as a scroll if no one else in your party can cast it. You’re not a one-trick pony, but your number of tricks is too limited to consider this spell a meaningful addition to your repertoire.

Ghoulish Cravings (*): It just takes too long to do anything meaningful. Plus, with the evil trait, it’s likely going to shift your alignment to evil. Do you really want a bunch of ghouls running around anyway?

Hideous Laughter (***): (C) Slowed is a great debuff, even if it is a single target effect. Taking a target’s turn away plus debuffs with a crit fail save is even better.

Humanoid Form (**): Primarily useful for infiltration and deception. You don’t have a whole lot of spare repertoire slots to support a secondary focus like this, but considering how many other tools you have access to which accomplish these effects, you may want to squeeze this spell in.

Illusory Creature (**): Although not a summon, this spell functions similarly. It can provide flanking and do damage just like a summon, although enemies can get rid of it simply by Striking it. Its scaling size is a meaningful change from summoning spells. It’ll provide flanking much more easily, although it can’t move and doesn’t have reach. The illusory creature has a number of drawbacks you’ll need to play around, but it can do mental damage, meaning it can take advantage of the slight mental damage weakness from psi daze.

Inner Radiance Torrent (****): (U) Although the area is a line and thus difficult to place optimally, this spell does a lot of damage once it’s heightened. If you’re going to use it while Unleashed, it’s best to do so with the two or three action version rather than the two round version so that you can maximize the Unleash damage buff. The only RAW way to use the two round version is to use both Unleashed rounds on this spell.

Instant Armor (*): Needs an archetype or general feat to be of any use. The general feat will stop being of any use past level 13. All it really does is make it so that you can more easily put your armor on when you’ve been woken up.

Invisibility (***): (C) Being invisible will keep you safer. Better at 4th level when it doesn’t break upon use of a hostile action.

Knock (**): Locked doors are a frequent issue, but they’re not necessarily your issue. It’s a good utility spell, but you don’t have much space for pure utility spells. Consider getting this spell as a wand or a few scrolls.

Loose Time’s Arrow (***): Combines well with The Unbound Step’s tesseract tunnel. As long as you have two or more allies on whom you can cast this spell, it’s a net gain of actions. Cast it on the first round of combat to prime your Unleash for the second round and take advantage of the extra Stride or Step.

Lucky Number (** / ***): Only useful when you roll a low number as your lucky number. When that is the case, though, being able to reroll once per day is on par with the Lucky Halfling feat and very strong.

Magic Mouth (*): (C) You’re going to be hard pressed to find a use for this that you couldn’t otherwise accomplish with message.

Mimic Undead (**): This spell will depend on whether or not your campaign has a large number of undead in it. If so, this spell is a cut above the other deception/infiltration/disguise spells.

Mirror Image (****): (C) You’re squishy and this is one of the best defensive lower level spells. It doesn’t need to heighten, giving it long-term value as well. Especially good for Tangible Dream builds getting into melee with imaginary weapon.

Misdirection (*): (C) Auras don’t come up often enough for this spell to have much value.

Paranoia (***): (C) Decent single target control tool that will outright shut down an enemy in a support role and remove flanking and a few other group-oriented effects as options. Better heightened when it becomes an area control tool.

Persistent Servant (*): You don’t have the spell slots for frivolous spells.

Phantasmal Treasure (*): (C) Fascinated is a near worthless condition. Don’t bother. It’s not worth spending spell slots to fish for a crit fail save, which is the only time this spell does anything.

Phantom Crowd (**): (C) Scaling amounts of difficult terrain is an okay control tool, although it may do nothing if enemies save against the spell. Goblins with Goblin Song and sprites with Catchy Tune can use the corresponding actions and simultaneously Sustain, but that does require that you focus on performance.

Phantom Speed (***): Extra speed plus being able to ignore some of the more annoying types of terrain, as well as an eventual fly speed, and a bulk limit that becomes more or less negligible, are all pretty great. You will have to Command an Animal to get it to move, but it’s not really specified how you control it. It doesn’t have the summoned trait, but it’s a magical creature. If your GM rules that you need to use nature to Command it, this spell is not worth taking. Otherwise, it’s got quite a few benefits.

Reaper’s Lantern (*): The effects just aren’t worth getting close to melee. Slightly better if you’re in a campaign where you frequently fight undead, but still, you’re too fragile to risk being near the front line.

Remove Fear (**): (C) Fear effects are fairly common, but you’re no cleric.

Remove Paralysis (**): Paralysis is a nasty debuff even if it’s not as common as, say, fear effects. Still, you’re limited on repertoire slots, so choose wisely.

Resist Energy (***): If you can reliably predict the type of damage you’ll be taking between acid, cold, electricity, fire, and sonic, you’ll be able to mitigate some of your squishiness. Considering that INT builds are an option, you may have some Recall Knowledge capabilities to help you make decisions on how to use this spell.

Restoration (***): Remove your own stupefied condition post-Unleash. Be aware that you can only do this for yourself once per day and that you’re effectively spending an entire turn readying yourself to get back the fight, on the third turn of the fight, which is usually around the time when any given combat is concluding.

Restore Senses (**): Deafness generally isn’t too bad to deal with, although a fair number of occult spells have a linguistic or auditory component. Blindness is really annoying, though, and worth curing. Still, you’re limited on repertoire slots.

See Invisibility (**): The last thing you want is some invisible powerhouse Striding right up to you and caving your skull in. That said, it’s a utility spell and you don’t have many repertoire slots. Consider getting it as a wand.

Shatter (*): (U) Destroying objects doesn’t come up often enough to be worth filling a repertoire slot.

Silence (**): (C) It’s fairly weak as a second level spell, but heightened to fourth it becomes much more useful. Primarily out of combat, but the situation where a silent combat needs to occur arises frequently enough.

Sonata Span (**): Budget vertical mobility pre-fly.

Sound Burst (***): (U) Deafened isn’t useful often, but occasionally being able to stun in an area on top of the Unleash-viable area damage is decent.

Spectral Hand (****): You don’t have a whole lot of touch spells, but there is one noteworthy example: imaginary blade. Being able to lay down that heaping pile of damage at range is no joke, especially because you can start combat by casting this spell to prime Unleash, then use it to cast Unleash-buffed imaginary blade without ever putting yourself into melee. Outstanding, and anyone can use imaginary blade via Parallel Breakthrough. Also, note that nothing in the spell mentions the hand Striding or otherwise using a move action. There is a mention of crawling in the text, but it’s unclear whether that means the Crawl action (which has a very limited speed, unlike the 120 foot range of this spell) or is just flavor text. If your GM rules that it’s just flavor text, it will be very difficult for your hand to get killed. Even if it’s ruled as a specific mechanical action which triggers movement-based reactions, you can get some useful information by letting your hand get killed and not many enemies have those reactions to begin with.

Spirit Sense (*): You don’t have the perception to support the decision to take this spell.

Spiritual Weapon (**): It’s not the strongest spell, but it’s a bit of relatively easy damage for a third action on every turn you Sustain it.

Status (*): You’ll be hard pressed to find a use for it.

Summoner’s Precaution (*): You’re not a summoner and you don’t want an eidolon from the archetype.

Summoner’s Visage (*): You’re not a summoner and you don’t want an eidolon from the archetype.

Telekinetic Maneuver (**): Some control functionality, but you’re generally better off letting your martials handle this function given the action economy differences. Better at later levels when your second level spell slots are more freed up.

Thundering Dominance (* / **): (C) You’re not a summoner and you don’t want an eidolon from the archetype. If you have an animal companion from an archetype, it’s better, but you’ll need to have a companion with good intimidate.

Timely Tutor (* / **): You’re not a summoner and you don’t want an eidolon from the archetype. If you get a familiar from an ancestry or archetype, it’s better, but it’ll still be limited to a lore skill.

Touch of Idiocy (**): (C) You don’t want to get into range to be able to use a touch spell. If you have spectral hand it’ll be more readily usable. This is one of the rare spells where the target’s success on a save will completely negate it, which is unfortunate. That said, stupefied is a strong condition if you can land it.

Umbral Extraction (***): (C) It’ll be risky because you’ll have to be in reach of your target in order to steal. That said, denying your enemies a spell and using it against them is quite strong. The fact that you can do so up to three times is even better.

Vomit Swarm (****): (U) Decent damage in a fairly large cone plus a chance to apply a debuff. Among the better low level blasting spells, especially because Unleash damage applies.

Warrior’s Regret (***): (C) It’s not quite persistent damage, but it’s close. Punish your enemies for dealing damage to you and your party or force them not to deal damage. Solid single target damage and control spell.

Level 3

Agonizing Despair (***): (U)(C) Decent single target pile of damage and the equivalent debuff of fear to boot. Among the better third level spells. If you don’t have much in the way of single target damage options in your conscious mind’s psi cantrips, consider this spell blue (****).

Behold the Weave (***): It’s a solid single target control tool with the potential to waste enemy actions. At seventh level when it affects all enemies in a fairly large emanation, this spell becomes blue. Fortunately, if you’re using this spell, you’ll want to keep it heightened as much as possible anyway since it has the incapacitation trait.

Bind Undead (*): The level of creatures you’ll be able to control will not scale well. Additionally, you have to heighten it to keep it even somewhat relevant. If you like this spell and have it as a signature spell, consider retraining it around level 7. At early levels, it’s an okay way to take a single undead out of a fight completely. Still situational because it only functions against one creature type, even if that creature type is relatively common.

Blindness (***): Useful single target control tool, especially if an enemy decides to stick to you. You’re squishy; imposing a 50% miss chance is a significant detriment to a target that’s out to turn your meager HP into a pile of mush.

Bottomless Stomach (**): It’ll help with your (or an ally’s) bulk limitations, but at this level you have access to magical storage items. If you really like this spell, consider getting it as a wand or scroll(s).

Bracing Tendrils (**): If you’re avoiding melee combat, and you should be, it’s unlikely you’re getting shoved much. There are some dangerous situations where a shove will cause you to have a bad day, though: getting shoved into a pile of enemies or getting shoved off a high place. It’s a bit better if you frequently rely on imaginary weapon.

Claim Curse (*): Casting this spell does little to nothing to mitigate the existence of a curse in your party. Plus, you really don’t have the repertoire slots to justify taking it.

Clairaudience (**): Provides some scouting utility. Consider getting a scroll if you think it’ll be useful.

Cozy Cabin (**): Useful if you frequently encounter weather hazards. Only sleeps three PCs technically. Someone will need a bedroll to squeeze in the average party. Less useful in a smaller party, and already hard to fit into your build. Consider getting it as a wand if you really like it.

Cup of Dust (*): Fatigue is an okay debuff, but the rest of this spell’s effects are rarely going to come up for you. It takes too much time for the damage to build up.

Curse of Lost Time (**): While the clumsy and enfeebled conditions, coupled with some damage for constructs, are a solid debuff combination, the touch range will be difficult for you to work around. It’s a good spell, but dangerous to use.

Day’s Weight (***): Debuffs STR, AC, and saving throws for a single target. Solid way to take one target down a peg, and a strong area debuff at sixth level. You could open up an encounter with this spell to prime Unleash and take advantage of the debuffs while Unleashed on your second round.

Distracting Chatter (**): (C) The value of this spell will mostly depend on the enemies you’re fighting. If you don’t often fight enemies that use auditory effects (which doesn’t tend to come up often), you’re using a third level spell to make an enemy flat-footed. There are more resource-friendly ways to achieve that outcome, but if you have a rogue in your party they may appreciate it.

Dream Message (*): (C) Don’t use a spell slot on it. If you frequently need to communicate over long distances while an ally is sleeping somewhere else (which you probably don’t), just get it as a wand.

Enthrall (*): (C) Fascinated is a terrible debuff. Don’t waste a spell on it.

Familiar’s Face (**): Although it’s a good scouting tool, you’d need an ancestry feat or archetype to gain a familiar. Still, it’s a utility spell for which your build may not have room.

Focusing Hum (**): (C) Helps mitigate your stupefied condition post-Unleash. That being said, either you cast this while Unleashed to make it easier to cast after it falls off (costing you the damage buff value of Unleash), or you play efficiently and cast it post-Unleash, meaning you’ll need to succeed at the flat check to get this spell up in the first place.

Ghostly Weapon (*): If incorporeal creatures come up often enough that you rely on this spell, your allies should just have the ghost touch rune anyway. If your campaign sits somewhere in the middle ground of incorporeal creature frequency, get this as a scroll.

Glyph of Warding (*): If you find the need to protect a container or area with magical traps, just get a scroll. Not worth taking up a repertoire slot.

Gravity Well (**): Although it nicely groups enemies for blasting, you’re unlikely to be able to personally take advantage of the enemy positioning since they’re likely to move before you can get another spell off. That said, forcing enemies away from you and, if your group has one, enabling another blaster are useful tools.

Haste (***): Everyone likes extra actions. Use it on yourself to prime Unleash and have an extra Stride for positioning while Unleashed.

Heroism (***): (C) If there isn’t someone in your party providing status bonuses often, you’ll appreciate the bonus for your spell attacks. Plus, the perception bonus applies to your initiative, the saving throw bonus will help keep your small HP pool full, and you’re likely to get value from the skill checks for either CHA- or INT-based skills in encounters.

Hypercognition (***): CHA builds will like this spell less, but INT builds are likely investing in at least occultism. Since this is a single action spell, it’ll help with your long-term action economy by frontloading the Recall Knowledge checks you were probably going to make anyway.

Hypnotic Pattern (*): (C) Area Dazzled condition is okay, but the fact that any power budget goes toward making targets fascinated is terrible.

Impending Doom (****): A great spell with which to prime your Unleash, loading a heaping pile of ramping debuffs onto a single target with some damage to boot. Set up your own Unleash damage bursts with those debuffs.

Invisibility Sphere (**): (C) Group-wide invisibility is a good function for a utility spell, but it’s still a utility spell.

Lashing Rope (*): The damage is really poor for this level and scales poorly. Additionally, while it’s almost certainly RAI that you can Trip with this spell, it most certainly is not RAW. It also requires you to target rope or a similar object, which will be heavily situational whether or not that exists, or require actions for you to get a rope out and place/throw it somewhere. Additionally, since it’s sustained, you can’t get extra Unleash damage - not that you’d want to since it isn’t much of a damage spell. There’s some weird mention of Attack of Opportunity, which sort of implies that you can take the Attack of Opportunity reaction with the animated rope while this spell is active, but it’s so poorly written that it is in no way clear how it’s supposed to work.

Levitate (***): Being able to avoid difficult terrain and have early vertical mobility are both pretty good. You can mitigate the attack penalty by using spells without a spell attack, such as agonizing despair or, if applicable, psi cantrips like shatter mind.

Mind of Menace (**): (C) Mental effects are situational, but being able to potentially completely shut them down is a good way to keep yourself safe from them.

Moth’s Supper (**): Passive healing will help keep your party’s resources intact and help save time while in exploration mode, assuming time is frequently a limiting factor for your party.

Oneiric Mire (***): (C) Difficult terrain plus a potential speed penalty will help you keep enemies grouped for blasting. Use this to prime Unleash. See sea of thought below for a comparison of the two spells as they serve a similar function.

Ooze Form (***): Your AC will be godawful, but at the tradeoff of immunity to critical hits. You’ll get athletics, which you’re unlikely to have, and which will give you some mobility options in and out of combat. Resistances to some common damage types and temp HP will help keep you alive and healthy. Precise motion sense is a strong way to overcome your perception limitations. Your speed will be terrible, but your eventual reach will be another means of keeping you healthy. Being able to impose conditions with your attacks will also be useful. All of this should be considered for post-Unleash turns. You’ll have to risk the flat check once to get the spell up, but after that your stupefied condition won’t matter muche while you’re an ooze. It scales to eighth level, meaning it’ll stay relevant throughout the game.

Organsight (**): You’re unlikely to have good medicine and you most likely won’t have the actions available to really put medicine to good use in combat. With that said, it does combine well with imaginary weapon or spiritual weapon.

Paralyze (***): (C) Taking away a target’s turn and making them flat-footed, and potentially doing that for four rounds, is a great way to prime an Unleash, assuming you have a spell attack to take advantage of the flat-footed condition. Potentially taking away up to ten creatures’ turns at seventh level is much, much better.

Phantom Prison (**): (C) It’s a decent single target control spell, but it gives many opportunities for the target to overcome the effects. It’s also a three action spell.

Roaring Applause (***): (C) Fascinated is pointless, but slowing an enemy is frequently useful. Slowing up to ten enemies with a single Sustain action at sixth level is much better.

Rouse Skeletons (***): Mobile difficult terrain with passive damage is a solid control + blasting combination, even if you can’t buff it with Unleash damage.

Sculpt Sound (*): (C) It’s rare that stopping auditory effects is useful, and it’s not worth occupying a repertoire slot in the hopes that enemies will crit fail their saves for the stupefied condition.

Sea of Thought (***): Although the burst isn’t very large at lower levels, it becomes better when heightened due to the ability to select a burst size and keep enemies in position for blasting. Compared to oneiric mire, which serves a similar purpose for you, you’ll eventually (fifth level) affect a larger area with the potential for creatures to waste actions standing up from prone, but without difficult terrain to better keep them in place. Before fifth level casting, sea of thought affects a smaller area than oneiric mire. Additionally, enemies will only have one chance to overcome the speed penalty with this spell, compared to the numerous chances afforded by oneiric mire.

Secret Page (*): (C) You don’t have enough room in your repertoire to justify picking this spell. It’s far too situational.

Shadow Projectile (****): (U)(C) The blue rating assumes someone else in your party frequently makes ranged attacks (ranged spell attacks count). I highly encourage you to talk with your party at character creation about someone being dedicated to ranged attacks because of this spell. The fact that it is damage dealt by a reaction which can benefit from Unleash damage makes it a wonderful addition to your kit, skirting the action economy somewhat to maximize your Unleashed damage output. Retroactively making an enemy flat-footed to your ally’s attack is icing on the cake. Coupled with a two action spell and a single action concordant choir or magic missile, you can apply your Unleash damage buff three times in a round. Alternatively, targeting three enemies with a three-action magic missile plus using shadow projectile lets you apply four instances of Unleash damage in a round. Like with magic missile, while you normally wouldn’t get any benefit from heightening shadow projectile to even spell levels, doing so while Unleashed will capitalize on the fact that Unleash damage scales with spell level.

Shadow Spy (**): Scouting-oriented utility.

Shift Blame (*): Technically, you can use this spell to make an enemy believe that one of their allies tried to intimidate or attack them, but that’s about all the use you can get from it. Whether or not that actually accomplishes anything is up to your GM.

Slow (***): Taking away enemy actions is a welcome control tool. Even better when you can slow up to 10 creatures at sixth level. Prime your Unleash with a debuff.

Threefold Aspect (*): Not even an infiltration tool because the bonus only applies to you impersonating yourself.

Time Jump (***): A decent means of escaping a bad situation, especially because your movement from this spell doesn’t trigger reactions. Best on a build relying on imaginary weapon. If you have psi warp step, you’ll appreciate it significantly less, but at least for levels 5 and 6 before psi warp step heightens, time jump has the advantage of not triggering reactions.

Time Pocket (*): There are lower level spells that accomplish the same thing, and it was already of situational value at the lower levels.

Vampiric Touch (**): (U) It’s a good amount of damage and temp HP is always beneficial for you, but the range of touch makes it dangerous to use. Casting it while Unleashed will also buff the amount of temp HP you get, so you may feel the reward is worth the risk.

Wanderer’s Guide (*): Overland travel limitations don’t tend to come up often. Even if they do come up frequently in your game, this is a pure utility spell.

Web of Eyes (**): If you’ve got someone in your party with magic that can pierce invisibility or locate creatures, and/or if you’ve got someone in your party with ridiculously high perception, the rest of the group will be able to benefit. Still, it’s a utility spell.

Whirling Scarves (***): Scaling attack deterrence. A 20% miss chance against you (and better against ranged attacks) isn’t a ton, but negated damage is always beneficial. Plus, you can debuff a melee enemy’s attacks, making it more likely for you to get away from them safely if they have a movement-triggered reaction. It’s basically a better version of blur.

Level 4

Bestial Curse (**): You can penalize casters by forcing the flat check for manipulate actions, but it’s not a huge debuff. Day’s weight applies a similar debuff load for a lower level spell slot, but you may like the idea of forcing casters to occasionally waste spells.

Blink (***): Scaling damage resistance and a consequence-free escape tool. If you’re hurting for defensive options, you can’t go wrong here.

Bloodspray Curse (***): Combine with telekinetic projectile or imaginary weapon for extra damage and a chance at persistent damage. Also combines well with spiritual weapon.

Chroma Leach (***): Enfeebled, drained, and the potential to stop your target’s movement. Decent single target debuff and control tool.

Chromatic Armor (**): Randomized resistances and the potential for passive Dazzle on targets that attack the person you buff. It has the potential to be useful, but doesn’t fit well with what your class kit does.

Chromatic Ray (**): (U) The damage doesn’t scale very well and you get a randomized effect. Additionally, heightened to sixth level, there’s a 50% chance it doesn’t do damage, meaning you can’t rely on it to take advantage of the Unleash damage buff. It has some useful effects, but is unreliable.

Clairvoyance (**): Scouting utility.

Confusion (***): (C) Confused is a strong debuff, although the target can overcome it unless it crit fails its initial save. Even better when it’s heightened to target up to ten creatures.

Countless Eyes (**): Perception buff for one of your allies (since you can’t put it to very good use) and immunity to flanking. Not the strongest buff and this class generally isn’t built for buff casting.

Dimension Door (***): Long range escape tool and provides some vertical mobility. Consider getting it as a wand.

Dimensional Anchor (**): It’s cast as a two action spell rather than a reaction, meaning you’ll have to know ahead of time whether your target has the ability to teleport. Also, the whole purpose of the spell is to keep your target from escaping. Sometimes, you may want to just let your target run away so that you don’t have to expend the effort to kill them. As such, if you feel the need for this spell, consider getting it as a wand or scroll.

Dull Ambition (*): (C) Your foes are unlikely to care much about their downtime activities being difficult to accomplish, and you’re not likely to get this spell off before encounter mode. Maybe if you’re in a primarily social campaign.

Enervation (***): Area effect persistent damage plus the potential for drained and/or doomed conditions. Doomed may or may not matter in your campaign, but this is a whole pile of persistent damage to throw around if you’re able to hit multiple targets.

Fey Form (**): There’s some utility here with the movement speeds, but this spell has a few factors working against it. First, it doesn’t heighten. Its relevance will quickly fall off. Second, it has very little to keep you safe. Even the dryad choice, which doubles the amount of temp HP you get, adds a weakness to the most common energy damage type (fire) on top of the inherent cold iron weakness, and doesn’t grant reach. In fact, none of the options grant reach. Additionally, while you can use manipulate actions, the spell does not specify that you can cast spells, meaning that’s not an option for you while polymorphed. In exchange, for the most part you’ll gain a resistance and either a speed buff or a different speed type, plus a melee attack that will roll fewer damage dice than your martial allies. Not amazing for a fourth level spell, but it’s got some value.

Fly (***): Flight is always good. It’s not as fast as your normal speed, but it’s still vertical mobility.

Gaseous Form (**): Slow flight and some infiltration utility with a bit of damage resistance, at the cost of not being able to use most meaningful actions.

Implement of Destruction (***): (C) Decent pile of persistent mental damage. Throw this on your fighter to have a chance to land doomed on your target. Synergizes with amped daze to capitalize on the weakness multiple times.

Infectious Melody (**): (C) Potentially waste enemy actions and spells, plus hamstring the most common skill action used in encounters. Situational, but powerful against casters, especially CHA casters.

Invisibility Curtain (**): (C) Easier invisible mobility than that afforded by invisibility sphere. Much stronger at seventh level, assuming you have a fair number of ranged combatants in your party, when you can stay invisible while attacking from behind the wall.

Mirror’s Misfortune (**): It only penalizes two attacks (or four, on a crit failed save) and it isn’t too hard for enemies to figure out which of you is the double, considering the limitations on the actions your mirror double can use. Misfortune is a pretty strong debuff, at least.

Morass of Ages (**): Although the emanation isn’t very large at first, you could use this spell to prime Unleash and Sustain it on later turns for a larger emanation. Just be sure your allies know to stay away from you. At 15 feet or so, that’s enough range that the difficult terrain and potential slow + restrain will be valuable without causing much trouble for your allies.

Nightmare (*): Most of the time, you’re not going to have enough advance warning about the enemies you’ll encounter for this spell to matter.

Ocular Overload (**): (C) Imposing a 20% miss chance (or 50% with a crit failed save) is okay, but not particularly strong for a fourth level spell. The real value is in the action economy. You can safely pre-buff with this spell given its ten minute duration, and then impose a debuff with a reaction, freeing up your turn.

Outcast’s Curse (*): (C) Mostly a spell for social/intrigue campaigns.

Painful Vibrations (***): (U) Strong single target sonic damage, plus a good debuff and a somewhat subpar debuff.

Pernicious Poltergeist (***): Sustained flexibility between single target damage, area damage, and debuffing. Although it can’t receive the Unleash damage buff, it’s still a good way to prime Unleash. Additionally, there’s nothing stopping you from reapplying frightened 2 in the area as often as you want. The damage doesn’t scale well, but you could easily leave this as a fourth level spell and rely on its ability to inflict frightened.

Phantasmal Killer (****): (U)(C) Strong single target damage and the potential to outright kill your target. This spell is a great choice for a signature spell at this level.

Ravenous Portal (*): You could use it to stop an enemy from escaping your party for a level or two, or to shield your own retreat, but it doesn’t scale at all. Even at the level you get this spell, the mimic is already a fairly low-threat creature. Your enemies, for the most part, won’t have much trouble killing it.

Remove Curse (**): Curses suck and you want to get rid of them. That said, it’s still a utility spell.

Replicate (**): (C) Mostly, replicating an ally will give you a safe way to use their skills. The problem is, your party member already exists to do everything your minion can. It’s not particularly fun for a group to have their strengths overrun by someone else’s spell. If your party members are willing participants, you can, say, replicate your party rogue and safely scout with the minion. If you’re replicating an unconscious enemy, you can also get away with some infiltration and deceit. Regardless, this is a utility spell, even if it is one with potential for creative and effective use.

Resilient Sphere (**): Stop an enemy from approaching or running away, or protect someone from a fair amount of damage. It doesn’t scale, but the equivalent of 40 temp HP is strong at all levels, if restrictive. Consider getting it as a scroll or three.

Sanguine Mist (***): Cloud concealment and sustained area damage. You can initially be in the cloud and ignore the damage, but on subsequent turns you are no longer immune to it. There are other area spells that have stronger sustained damage, such as pernicious poltergeist, but it’s still a decent spell for its added defensive benefits.

Seal Fate (**): Give your target a slight weakness and potentially outright kill it assuming your GM enforces recovery checks for all enemies. It’s not much of a weakness, but you do have a lot of choices - unfortunately, mental damage is not one of them.

Soft Landing (**): Basically group-wide feather fall. Utility. Consider getting it as a scroll if you think you’ll need to use it.

Spell Immunity (**): It’s hard to predict which spell you’ll need to nullify. Plus, you’ll have to heighten this spell for it to remain relevant due to the counteracting rules.

Suggestion (****): (C) You can outright take a single creature out of an encounter. Much better heightened to eighth level when you can target up to ten creatures. Requires heightening to stay relevant due to the incapacitation trait.

Telepathy (**): Silent communication is good, but you have access to message. This will be more expedient, but at the cost of a spell slot and a repertoire slot.

Tortoise and the Hare (***): Simultaneously removing enemy actions and granting an extra action (or more, on a crit failed save) to an ally is strong, even if it doesn’t have much synergy with your class kit. Additionally, this spell has long term value: it doesn’t need to heighten and stays just as potent casting it as a fourth level spell. Use it to prime your Unleash.

Umbral Graft (**): (C) Similar to umbral extraction, but you steal buffs instead of spell slots. You can store a buff and place it on an ally with a single action or immediately place it on yourself. The touch range is risky, as always. You’ll want to heighten this spell to keep it relevant since it requires counteract checks. Unlike umbral extraction, despite the 3 round duration, you can only steal one buff. It’s not quite as versatile or durable a spell as umbral extraction, although the overall action economy is comparatively better.

Vampiric Maiden (***): (U) Somewhat lower damage than similar single target damage effects, but you can use it at range (unlike vampiric touch) and get temp HP back. Unleash damage will give you extra temp HP, too. Plus, it’s got some control capability. Solid.

Variable Gravity (**): You won’t want to use the High Gravity variant often, but the Low Gravity variant will help your mobility, both vertically and horizontally. The strongest effect is the doubled distance on your Leaps, up to your max speed, making it much easier to cross over ground-based hazards or openings in the ground. Still, it’s a utility spell and you have access to fly.

Veil (**): (C) Magical group disguise. Utility spell for infiltration and deceit.

Winning Streak (**): Best used if someone in your party is heavily built toward buffs and/or debuffs to have a higher chance of keeping a player-to-player crit streak going. If luck goes your way, it’s a very powerful buff, but that’s the issue - it relies on luck.

Level 5

Aberrant Form (**): It only scales to sixth level. It won’t remain relevant much past that point. Not much here is appealing to you, but if you want a battle form after you’ve come out of Unleash your Mind, you’ve got a few perks. A bit of temp HP, increased speeds and potentially a climb or swim speed, melee damage roughly on par with martials for a few levels, reach, an athletics modifier, large size, and the Grab action. You’ll have to contend with the flat check for being stupefied if you plan to use this spell optimally, though.

Abyssal Plague (*): It’s got a range of touch, which automatically makes it risky. It’s also got the evil trait, meaning repeated use may shift your alignment. It can deal evil damage, but unless you’re fighting good creatures often, that’ll be useless to you. Otherwise, you can make a target drained 1 or 2. Not much going for it, even if you can find a meaningful target to stick it on, then leave them alone for the disease to do anything to them.

Bandit’s Doom (*): It does roughly the damage of a fourth level spell, scales slowly, and imposes doomed, which may or may not matter. All of this only occurs if someone tries to steal the item on which you’ve placed this curse. All of those factors make for a difficult-to-use spell.

Banishment (***): If you’re dealing with lots of creatures from other planes, you can outright remove them from encounters. They’re not terribly uncommon - fiends feature pretty frequently in campaigns.

Black Tentacles (***): Area control and passive damage. Solid. Use this to prime Unleash.

Blink Charge (*): You shouldn’t be using a melee weapon or trying to get into melee range with it.

Blister (***): Ranged cone area damage, which you can activate as needed. Decent blasting spell, even if it can’t be buffed with Unleash damage.

Chromatic Wall (***): Walls tend to be strong, and this spell is no exception. The problem is its random nature. That said, with a savvy party that can force enemies back into the wall to suffer its effects multiple times, you’ll generally do fine with any of the effects. Typically, any given party has at least one character with good athletics for a near-guaranteed Shove here and there. Heightened to seventh level, you can passively and repeatedly drop some significant debuffing spells on enemies passing through the wall.

Cloak of Colors (**): (C) Decent defensive spell if you need one. Blinding enemies is great, although frankly, blinded is a better condition than the stunned 1 enemies get hit with on a crit failed save. Additionally, you’ll have to heighten this spell to keep it relevant due to the incapacitation trait. All that said, you’ll be picking this spell under the assumption that enemies will be able to get within melee range of you. You never want that.

Crushing Despair (***): (C) Inflict slowed and reaction denial. Ensure your own and your allies’ safe movement around enemies and take their actions away to boot. Much better heightened to seventh level when you can hit multiple enemies within a cone. Prime Unleash with this spell.

Death Ward (**): Although it’s a strong buff, generally your role doesn’t include buffing. If you have space in your build, though, go for it.

Dreaming Potential (**): (C) Retraining is frequently useful, but you just don’t have the repertoire slots to justify taking this in one of them. Consider getting it as a wand since you only need to cast it once per day.

Etheric Shards (****): Passive damage, plus difficult terrain that even affects flying and incorporeal creatures, punishing enemies for moving at all, whether toward you or away from your big scary fighter. This spell is a great tool to lock enemies into an arrangement that will enable your blasting, plus area denial to keep them away from you and any other squishies. Use it to prime Unleash, then drop a heavy damage area spell while Unleashed.

Forceful Hand (**): The positioning for the cover provided by this spell requires you to predict the direction of enemies’ attacks. In order to get the most out of the cover, you’ll have to go against your nature and not use actions with the manipulate or attack traits. Doable post-Unleash, but at that point combat has gone on for three rounds already. You’ll get more options as you heighten the spell. As you heighten it, its versatility increases, allowing you to use athletics actions and eventually Strike (or Strike and grapple/constrict) without interacting with the MAP. All of these are good features, but you’re using high level spell slots to accomplish similar outcomes to those of a martial who otherwise has significantly less resource investment.

Glimmer of Charm (***): (C) The lowest attitude a creature can have toward you is hostile, meaning that a creature’s failed save on this spell will render them neutral toward you. It is only toward you, not your allies, but as a class with low HP, that’s not necessarily a bad thing in encounters. The fact that you can potentially remove enemies from the fight by making them helpful to you, meaning you may be able to get them to turn on their otherwise allies, is quite powerful. This spell is among the better defensive spells.

Hallucination (**): (C) Even heightened to target more creatures, this is a utility spell that will require creativity.

Illusory Scene (**): (C) Utility spell to deceive enemies.

Inevitable Disaster (**): (U) Although it’s a lot of damage, it’ll be hard to predict if a fight will last long enough for it to matter. If you’re casting this on your first turn of being Unleashed (the second round of the fight), you may have a clearer picture of whether it’s worth it or not. Also valuable on fleeing enemies.

Invoke Spirits (**): Poorly-scaling mobile sustained area damage and a low chance to inflict frightened 2 and fleeing. Other than the fleeing condition, which can be annoying for you and your party even if it does neutralize enemies for a round or two, you can accomplish a more impactful version of these effects with pernicious poltergeist.

Mariner’s Curse (**): Although permanent sickened condition is good long-term, most of your interactions with the enemies you want to curse will be limited to 2-4 rounds. It is nice knowing that your debuff won’t fall off during an encounter, at least.

Mirror Malefactors (***): (C) Sustaining 7d8 (or more, if heightened) per turn is solid single target continuous damage. It also can take advantage of the psi daze mental damage weakness. Plus, it’s got a debuff component for as long as you can keep the effect going.

Portrait of the Artist (*): (C) Utility spell with very little utility.

Prying Eye (**): Scouting utility.

Quicken Time (**): Any creature becomes quickened in the area, meaning your enemies can benefit from it. It’ll be more useful in a party with a ranged martial or two because you can position it away from enemies. The concealment is similar to that of a cloud spell.

Repelling Pulse (**): Although you want to keep enemies away from you and the damage is decent, with a 30 foot emanation you’re likely to hit at least one ally.

Rewinding Step (**): If you have the time to prep and cast this before an encounter, it’ll give you a strong mobility tool. Those cases tend to be few and far between.

Rip the Spirit (***): (U) Having a choice as to how many actions you use in casting a spell is usually beneficial. This spell is almost purely damage, with the drained condition also reducing your targets (or targets’) HP. It’ll be hard to pull off the 30 foot emanation since it will usually hit at least one ally, but this spell will be a reliable source of single target damage at a bare minimum.

Secret Chest (*): You have access to equally functional lower level spells that accomplish the same effect, and you really don’t have the repertoire slots to justify this spell.

Sending (*): Just use psi message.

Shadow Blast (***): (U) Although the damage isn’t terribly high for an area damage spell of this level, its flexibility is useful to overcome resistances or target weaknesses. Plus, the flexibility in area type is handy.

Shadow Siphon (**): (C) Solid defensive tool, reducing incoming spell damage by half for you and your allies. You accomplish this with a reaction, which makes the action economy fairly easy to work around. Although you’ll need to heighten it to keep it relevant due to the counteract check, the inherent bonus to counteract checks will mitigate that need somewhat. As good of a defensive spell as it is, though, psychic is generally not a group utility class, especially because of the limited number of spell slots.

Stagnate Time (***): Area slow. Slow was already good; applying it to even two enemies is an equivalent exchange of actions and will significantly hamper your enemies in an encounter. Use it to prime your Unleash.

Strange Geometry (***): (C) Randomize enemy positions, potentially turning them completely the wrong way, and create aerial and/or terrestrial difficult terrain. These effects not only serve to funnel enemies as you like, but also provide a means of grouping enemies up for blasting.

Subconscious Suggestion (**): (C) Utility spell that requires you to predict an appropriate trigger without involving hostile action. Useful, likely to come up a few times in most adventures, but situational nonetheless.

Summon Entity (**): Summon spells can universally provide flanking and soak damage for your party. This particular summon spell doesn’t have a lot of great options, though. For the most part, the save DCs for the effects these creatures can create are 5 or more lower than your spell DC. Some effects are useful like the chuul’s grab and subsequent effects. Be picky about your choices if you want to use this spell.

Synaptic Pulse (***): (C) Although a 30 foot emanation effect usually puts allies at risk, this spell only hits enemies. A 30 foot emanation is a pretty generous area. If one enemy is hit and fails its save, or if two enemies are hit and both succeed on their saves, you’ve reached a wash in terms of action exchange. Considering how likely it is for you to hit more enemies than that, chances are you’re taxing enemies for more actions than you give up in casting the spell. Good all around. It does have the incapacitation trait, meaning you’ll need to keep heightening it to keep it relevant. Use it to prime your Unleash.

Synesthesia (***): While the failure chance imposed by flat checks for concealed targets or concentrate actions is decent, the real debuff here is clumsy 3. The speed penalty is a nice addition. A -3 to AC is huge no matter what, not to mention the slew of penalties associated with the clumsy condition and the other debuffs on top of it. Use it to prime your Unleash, then capitalize on the AC debuff with a spell attack.

Telekinetic Haul (*): Moving an object with magic is too situational to be worth taking up a repertoire slot.

Temporary Glyph (*): You won’t often find yourself in a situation where a magical trap will help you.

Wall of Flesh (*): Walls are usually useful control tools, but this one isn’t immune to critical hits, making it very easy for enemies to overcome. It has control, damage, and scouting functions, but isn’t likely to stay up long enough for you to make much use of them. You can use potions/elixirs to keep the wall alive, but outhealing the damage it’ll take from crits is likely to be a waste of your time and effort.

Level 6

Awaken Entropy (****): Damage flexibility, area type selection, ramping burst size, ramping damage, and the potential to act as a pseudo-wall make for one great blasting spell. It won’t be able to take advantage of your Unleash damage, but this spell is still a great way to prime Unleash.

Blanket of Stars (**): (C) Mostly stealth utility, but with some defensive benefit. Not bad for a utility spell.

Blinding Fury (***): (C) Decent way to deter an enemy from sticking to you. It has the incapacitation trait, so it’ll need to be heightened to remain relevant.

Cast into Time (***): (U) Solid area damage and a debuff. It’ll be a bit hard to pull off safely because of the short cone range.

Chromatic Image (***): (C) Mirror image with some retributive damage and a potential debuff. The damage isn’t very high, though, making it hard to choose this spell over mirror image itself or another sixth level spell instead.

Collective Transposition (***): Offensive and defensive uses simultaneously. Get yourself out of danger and your martials into position, or yourself out of danger and an enemy further away from you and/or closer to your martials. If you really like the feats that trigger emanations when you Unleash, you could sort of use this spell to set up positioning for your Unleash. There will still be a turn between you casting this and the Unleash, though, meaning you’ll really need to communicate with your allies to make it work.

Feeblemind (****): (C) This is a huge single target debuff and a great way to prime your Unleash. It does have the incapacitation trait and will need to be heightened in order to remain relevant, but the debuff is big enough to be worth it.

Mislead (**): (C) You’ll have to be creative and have invested in deception, but you can seriously keep yourself safe with this spell if those two factors exist.

Phantasmal Calamity (****): (U)(C) The stunned condition can completely shut down an encounter, although enemies will have to fail both a will and reflex save for that to occur, plus a will save to recover at the end of each of their turns. Otherwise, the damage is solid and benefits from Unleash. You can’t go wrong with this as a blasting spell and it’s well worth taking for a signature spell. Just be careful of your allies because it creates a 30 foot burst.

Poltergeist’s Fury (**): Even with the stipulation that allies turn successes against this effect into critical successes, it’s still dangerous to use around them. With a 20 foot emanation, you’ll be limited on positioning. It is a somewhat effective deterrent against enemies closing in to melee with you, though, and the lesser cover will help your AC a bit.

Repulsion (***): Since you can control the range of the emanation up to 40 feet, this is among the most effective deterrent spells. The drawback, of course, is that it can affect allies, but with your control over the emanation size you can avoid that as needed. Stopping enemies outright from approaching you is a great way to prevent harm to yourself.

Scintillating Safeguard (**): Up to 50 damage prevented across you and your allies via resistance to physical or energy damage. It’s not a ton of resistance and you generally don’t have much reason to build for support functions, but if you like it, it’s not a bad spell by any means.

Spellwrack (**): Harm enemies for buffing themselves. Hard to predict, but it’s quite a bit of persistent damage which may potentially waste enemy actions.

Spirit Blast (***): (U) Heavy single target damage, although constructs will be unaffected. If you’re hurting for single target damage options by this level, it’s a great pick and should be considered blue (****).

Suspended Retribution (***): Although the damage is limited by a conditional outcome, it’s a ton of damage, and it shouldn’t be too hard to predict what an enemy will do to trigger it. Compare spirit blast: 16d6 damage plus 2d6 per level. That averages out to 56 plus 7 damage per level. Suspended retribution does an outright 70 damage and increases by 10 per level. That said, spirit blast can benefit from Unleash damage, bringing those numbers up to be about on par with each other.

True Seeing (**): It’s a decent duration buff and massively helps overcome your perception issue but, chances are, by this level someone else is already perfectly capable of covering your group’s perception needs.

Unexpected Transposition (*): Avoid being in a position where you need to use this spell. You’ve already got access to other tools which accomplish a similar effect, although getting to do so as a reaction is a decent upgrade over them. Better for builds that rely on imaginary weapon.

Vampiric Exsanguination (****): (U) A strong blasting spell that gives temp HP, of which both the damage and temp HP can be buffed by Unleash.

Vibrant Pattern (***): (C) Area Dazzled or blindness conditions with little room for enemies to overcome the blindness. Decent defensive tool for you and your party, and a bit of area denial to boot.

Wall of Force (***): Wall enemies in where you can easily blast them. Use it to prime Unleash.

Zealous Conviction (**): (C) Some temp HP for a large number of creatures and a bonus to will saves against mental effects. Support isn’t generally your role, but your party may appreciate the buff if you’ve got room for it in your build.

Level 7

Duplicate Foe (**): Basically a summon, but at a higher level and without any of a summon’s features. It’ll be more durable against an enemy’s effects than a summon will due to higher AC and saves, but it loses HP every round. The biggest drawback is that it may not follow your commands, making this a potential waste of a spell.

Energy Aegis (**): It’s not much resistance for this level, but it covers quite a few damage types and has a day-long duration. Not really your job to be support, but if you have space in your build it’ll pay out over time.

Force Cage (***): Creatures have a chance to escape when you cast the spell, but if you can lock all of your targets inside the cage then it provides a strong setup for your blasting. Use it to prime Unleash.

Inexhaustible Cynicism (****): (U)(C) Stop enemies from buffing each other, remove their ability to flank, and either deal unavoidable mental damage or waste enemy actions. Solid control and blasting spell that can benefit from Unleash since it doesn’t deal persistent damage.

Mask of Terror (***): (C) Passive reapplication of frightened 2 which may waste an enemy’s actions, plus acts as a potential deterrent for enemies trying to use hostile actions. Even better heightened to 8th when it becomes an area control spell. Use this to prime your Unleash so that your target(s) is/are debuffed for the Unleashed rounds.

Momentary Recovery (*): Even if you are playing an Emotional Acceptance build, you won’t want to use this spell. You generally won’t have much in the way of healing or support capabilities that you could use on yourself as a result of this spell. Emotional Acceptance builds would have to be Unleashed to use their Restore the Mind action, during which you should be using offensive spells rather than momentary recovery.

Prismatic Armor (**): Slightly better version of chromatic armor, granting you all of that spell’s resistances, and blinding enemies rather than dazzling them. You’ve got other, better deterrent and area denial spells to prevent them from getting close to you, but it’s still an okay defensive spell.

Prismatic Spray (***): (U) The saves will be randomized, meaning this spell doesn’t rely much on Recall Knowledge, but also meaning you can’t take advantage of knowing a creature’s low save. The damage is decent and hits in an area, and you can potentially land a huge amount of damage or two nasty debuffs on a target if you roll an 8 for a beam. It’s a good blasting spell which, while random, also brings some debuffs into the mix.

Project Image (**): (C) It may draw some attacks off of you, but it’s too fragile to stay up long.

Retrocognition (**): It’s a divination spell, meaning you could potentially get quite a bit of useful story information to progress the plot. That said, it can harm you and is a utility spell. Get a wand or a few scrolls if you really like this spell.

Shadow Raid (***): (C) The continuous damage is decent and the area is large, providing strong area denial, plus giving you and your allies concealment from enemies inside the effect. Also wastes enemy actions if they try to disbelieve.

Telekinetic Bombardment (***): (U) Good area damage and potential to waste enemy actions, plus being flat-footed while prone, and a bit of area denial with difficult terrain.

Tempest of Shades (****): Chances are very good that more than a few of your enemies are getting double debuffed with this spell. Use it to open in an encounter and prime Unleash.

Time Beacon (**): Basically exists to let you walk back a turn if you set off anything nasty. You may just waste a seventh level spell slot by casting this, and you shouldn’t be the one in your party out fishing for reactions, traps, and curses anyway. It may keep you safe sometimes, though. Consider getting it as a scroll.

True Target (****): Basically the juiced up version of true strike, and up to four creatures (including you) can benefit from it.

Visions of Danger (***): (C) Area damage and denial with a chance to waste an enemy action on disbelieving.

Warp Mind (**): (C) Confusion is a strong debuff, but the only difference between this and the confusion spell is that it’s harder for enemies to overcome warp mind. The opportunity cost is pretty large going from a third to seventh level spell for the same condition on a single target.

Level 8

Canticle of Everlasting Grief (***): (C) Take away a target’s circumstance and status bonuses, deal an okay amount of single target damage, and lay down a heaping pile of the frightened condition. Depending on the buffs your target has and tactics it uses, you could easily make a 5-7 point swing in its rolls between stripping buffs and frightened 3. The crit fail effect even partially strips bonuses from other enemies near your target. Not bad for a single target spell at this level.

Disappearance (***): (C) Become undetected and make it very difficult for your enemies to find you. It’s a strong defensive spell with a ten minute duration, meaning you can easily pre-buff for a dangerous encounter. You could instead put the effect on an ally.

Dream Council (*): (C) The need for planet-wide communication doesn’t tend to come up terribly often. Get a scroll if you think you’ll need it.

Falling Sky (***): (U) Force enemies into an area where you can more easily blast them, plus keep them there between being prone and stunned. The damage to flying enemies is icing on the cake, and it can benefit from Unleash damage if you so desire. Use this to prime Unleash or, if you’re fighting all or mostly flying enemies, smash them to the ground with extra Unleash damage.

Maze (**): Single target control that can completely remove one enemy from an encounter. At this level, you’ve got quite a few choices that can achieve a similar outcome.

Prismatic Wall (***): A much more resilient version of chromatic wall, simultaneously applying all of its effects to any creature trying to pass through. That’s a lot of damage and debuffs for an enemy to try to survive. Enemies do get saves against each effect, but seven effects is a hefty penalty to try to overcome. Enemies can counteract each layer, but it will require quite a few spells for them to do so. Use this to prime Unleash, then blast foes as they try to overcome or pass beyond the wall. Enemies do have one major counter to this spell, though, and at this level quite a few of them have access to it: flight.

Scintillating Pattern (**): (C) Confusing creatures in a burst is a strong control tool, but you’ll Dazzle any allies within twenty feet of the burst. Your melee party members will hate it.

Spirit Song (****): (U) This spell deals a large amount of force damage, although it can’t harm constructs.

Spiritual Epidemic (**): Enfeebled and stupefied don’t do a whole lot to complement each other, but if you’re facing divine and/or occult casters frequently you’ll get a lot of mileage from this spell.

Uncontrollable Dance (**): (C) You could potentially take a single target out of an encounter completely, but at this level you have several other spells that can achieve a similar outcome.

Unrelenting Observation (*): Scouting utility. At this level, you shouldn’t be picking utility spells. There aren’t enough remaining levels to ease the burden of a repertoire slot selection.

Level 9

Bilocation (*): Since your double shares your hit points and conditions, all this spell does is put you at risk.

Foresight (***): Readily available fortune against hostile effects or misfortune on attacking enemies as a reaction. It’s a strong defensive spell with an hour duration.

Overwhelming Presence (***): (C) Waste enemy actions, at least one per round, and potentially cause them to trigger reactions from your allies. Fascinated is useless, though.

Prismatic Sphere (**): Prismatic wall as a sphere, but much smaller. It’ll help counteract flying enemies, although it’ll be hard to position appropriately.

Proliferating Eyes (**): Powerful scouting utility. It’s strong enough that it may be worth taking depending on how much you feel your party needs surveillance and how likely it is that you think your target will spread the eyes in an area you want to see.

Resplendent Mansion (*): Fancy living quarters for you and your party, but pure utility. Get it as a wand if you want to use it.

Telepathic Demand (*): (C) It’ll be hard to pull this spell off given the prior telepathic contact requirement. Plus, it’s just telepathic suggestion.

Unfathomable Song (***): (C) A strong list of randomized area debuffs. Use this to prime Unleash.

Unspeakable Shadow (***): (C) Long-lasting frightened condition, starting at a high value, plus wasting one or more of the target’s actions per turn and a chance to outright kill them. Not bad.

Voracious Gestalt (***): Decent sustained area damage plus area denial, and you can select the affected targets. You can even ramp the area size if you’re able to personally kill creatures or they die from the spell’s damage.

Wail of the Banshee (***): (U) Only hits enemies, does decent area damage in a large emanation, and can inflict the drained condition. At this level, drained will cost enemies quite a bit of HP. Plus, you can apply an extra 18 (or 20, if heightened) damage to each target while Unleashed.

Weird (****): (U)(C) Lots of damage, Unleash applies, and you can potentially outright kill targets. Plus, you select your targets out to a massive range of 120 feet, leaving your allies safe from your mental murderous urges.

Level 10

Alter Reality (***): Access to any seventh level or lower spell, or any ninth level or lower occult spell, or function somewhat similarly to wish. There’s a lot of versatility here, even if it is replicating lower level spells.

Fabricated Truth (**): You could potentially shut an encounter down with this spell, or even alter enemies’ perception of reality to be on your side instead. It’s hard to predict how useful this spell will be, though.

Fated Confrontation (*): Do you want to match up one of your allies against a solo boss enemy? Terrible idea. Do you want to match up one of your allies against a mook they can handle? Why not just blast the mooks instead?

Indestructibility (**): You’re basically just removing yourself from combat for a round, other than to receive buffs/healing from allies. If you’re under extreme duress, it might help get you back into the fight.

Nullify (**): Best used if you have temp HP to absorb the damage, but you get to stop up to a ninth level spell as a reaction. The problem is, you’re giving up a tenth level spell to stop a ninth level spell. Not necessarily a great trade, even if the action economy is efficient.

Shadow Army (***): Okay amount of continuous area damage plus a condition of your choice over a large burst. Good area denial and debuffing, making this spell a good choice to prime Unleash.

Time Stop (**): If you have control spells, you can use this spell to set them up. You can also use this to quickly clear off your Stupefied turns and get back into Unleash, although you'll either have to do that on your last Unleashed turn and waste its damage boost or risk the Stupefied flat check to lose a tenth level spell.

Archetypes

Below, I have listed some of the acceptable and, in some cases, even good choices for archetypes should you want to use one. Not all archetype feats are listed, just those that are acceptable or stand-out choices.

Multiclass Archetypes

Druid deserves an honorable mention for the leshy familiar’s eventual (level 8) feat-based 15 foot reach as a means of delivering touch spells (imaginary weapon), although beyond that it doesn’t offer much to the psychic.

Champion (**)

The biggest issue with this archetype is that you’ll need STR. You can afford it on a CHA build, but having both STR and CHA requirements will be too much for an INT build to squeeze in. Unfortunately, you don’t generally have much need for STR. It’ll mostly be helpful in exploration mode, although it does open up the use of a propulsive ranged weapon provided you get access from your ancestry. That said, the archetype does provide some useful features. Heavy armor will make your DEX much easier to leave low, or you could take medium armor to worry less about STR penalties and speed loss. Or just be a dwarf with Unburdened Iron. Several of the feats provide value to you, many of which will use your reaction and enable spell casting and action efficiency on your turns. If you take the Shield Block general feat, you’ll also have use for the various shield-improving feats considering your hands generally aren’t occupied (unless you’re using a shortbow).

(2) Champion Dedication: Armor and two skills. For a CHA build, having some extra skills will likely be useful.
(4) Basic Devotion: Gain a first or second level champion feat.

Deity’s Domain: An extra focus point and a potentially useful focus spell. None of these spells will benefit from Unleash damage. Keep that in mind when choosing.
Desperate Prayer: Emergency free action focus point recharge in an encounter once per day. Yes please.
Ranged Reprisal: If you’re using a shortbow, you’ll be able to use your champion’s reaction if and when you get one, although it’ll require you to be within 15 feet of the front line. If you’re risking imaginary weapon and don’t have a means of giving it a 30 foot range, it can’t hurt to pump out some extra damage and protect your allies. Requires LG alignment.
Splinter Faith: Much more versatility with Deity’s Domain, although the spell you take will scale a level behind all your other cantrips/focus spells.
Weight of Guilt: Debuff versatility with your champion’s reaction if and when you get one. Like Ranged Reprisal, you’ll have to be within 15 feet of the front line to use the reaction. Getting stupefied 2 on an enemy with a reaction before you Unleash is no mean outcome, though. Placing enfeebled 2 on a target that wants to mow you down will help keep you alive, too. Requires NG alignment.
Divine Grace: You’re squishy. Getting a +2 to your saves as a reaction is a great way to keep yourself alive.

(4) Champion Resiliency: Extra HP are always welcome.
(4) Healing Touch: Non-class focus spell and a single action means of healing yourself, plus easy between-encounter healing. Unlike most other single action heals, though, it’s useless for Strain Mind since you’d just be burning the focus point you just gained.
(6) Advanced Devotion: Gain a champion feat up to half your level. There’s nothing here worth replacing your level 20 class feat, but there’s good stuff if you’re playing with the free archetype variant rules.

(8) Accelerating Touch: Extra speed to get you or an ally away from danger when you lay on hands.
(16) Advanced Deity’s Domain: An extra non-psychic focus spell. Like Deity’s Domain, there are quite a few good options out there, even if it comes online late.
(16) Quick Shield Block: One free reaction every round to use Shield Block. Efficient and helps keep you safe.
(20) Litany Against Sloth: Take away your enemy’s reaction, making your retreat away from them safer, and take away an action or two with the slowed condition.

(6) Champion’s Reaction: Extra damage dealt with your shortbow or damage reduction for your allies, plus this feat is required if you want to use Ranged Reprisal or Weight of Guilt.
(6) Divine Ally: Only really useful for the shield ally so your shield prevents more damage, assuming you’re taking this dedication for shield usage.
(14) Diverse Armor Expert: Keep your armor relevant, albeit a level later than when you gain expert unarmored proficiency.

Oracle (**)

Although the curse effects are annoying, there are a few useful features here. Divine spell slots to offload your utility and some useful feats capture most of the value. If you’re planning to take an oracle archetype, you’ll want to do so on a CHA build.

(2) Oracle Dedication: Religion and a skill based on the mystery you choose, plus two divine cantrips. You could comfortably load these cantrips with utility spells like detect magic and light so that you have more offensive choices in your psychic spell slots to benefit from Unleash. Otherwise, you could get disrupt undead and/or divine lance for a bit more damage type versatility. Mysteries below:

Ancestors (*): Nope. Your Unleash turns are too precious to risk losing spells from the curse.
Ash (*): Nope. You’re too squishy for it to be worth risking a penalty to CON-based checks. You can survive the speed penalty for the most part, but you have enough means of applying debuffs that you don’t really gain anything by adding ashen wind to your focus spells.
Battle (*): Nope. Too restrictive, forcing you to make a Strike each turn. Even with a shortbow, that’ll be hard to manage.
Bones (***): Doable, and soul siphon is a decent focus spell for you (once you have access to it). Just remember you won’t get extra damage for it during Unleash and that it’s not a great way to recover from Strain Mind damage. The minor curse is annoying, but with your low HP your allies shouldn’t have to spend too much extra time on Treat Wounds. Much less of a restriction if you have a champion in your party for lay on hands spam. Medicine isn’t a particularly exciting skill for you, but maybe you could Aid your party medic every now and again.
Cosmos (**): Enfeebled is manageable for you since the only STR-based value you even kind of care about is encumbrance, which the Enfeebled condition does not impact. You’re unlikely to see much ill effect from your penalties to saves against Grapple, Shove, and forced movement provided you’re staying away from the front line (which should, for the most part, already be a priority). Spray of stars isn’t a terribly exciting focus spell, but landing Dazzled on a few enemies in the first round of combat is an okay way to prime Unleash. Becoming trained in nature won’t provide much value for you, but you might carry off a Recall Knowledge every once in a while.
Flames (**): Although dealing with concealed enemies beyond 30 feet can be annoying, it only really matters for spell attacks. Acrobatics is occasionally useful, especially if you have room in your build (and you probably do) for some DEX. Incendiary aura isn’t so large that it’ll be difficult for allies to maneuver around, and the persistent damage is decent provided enemies are trying to get close to you. It’s a decent deterrent. Goblin builds with Burn It! can do a little extra persistent damage with the spell.
Life (*): Nope. You don’t have the HP to sustain use of life link.
Lore (**): The -4 to initiative after using brain drain once for the day is annoying, but your initiative probably already sucks and you may or may not notice much difference. You’re already trained in occultism, meaning you get a free trained skill of your choice - not bad for a CHA build. Brain drain isn’t a ton of damage, but it’s a bit of single target offensive capability and a Recall Knowledge check using your target’s skills. Tough to predict what skills they have, but if you can make an educated or Recall Knowledge-backed guess, it’s not a bad way to prime Unleash.
Tempest (*): Too risky to rely on tempest touch for damage.
Time (***): The scariest part of the curse is the penalty to saves against effects which impose the Fatigued or Slowed conditions on you. Otherwise, Enfeebled is just as manageable as it is for the Cosmos mystery. You’re already trained in occultism, meaning a free trained skill of your choice. Temporal distortion, although a randomized debuff, only takes one action, lasts a long time if your target fails, and has the universally useful Clumsy and Stupefied debuffs. You could easily work this into your opening turn to prime Unleash considering it leaves your other two actions free.

(4) Basic Mysteries: Gain a first or second level oracle feat.

Glean Lore: Gives you a non-psychic focus spell which unfortunately relies on the religion skill. If you’ve got some investment in WIS, you’ll appreciate this spell more. You can easily use it relatively consequence-free (other than the fact that it advances your curse) in exploration mode if you feel the need to expend focus points as such. Plus, it’s sort of like a hybrid between augury and Dubious Knowledge - it’s got a lot of potential to give you story-driving information.
Reach Spell: Although you can’t amp a spell and apply metamagic, it’ll give you some ranged choices for non-amped touch spells like imaginary weapon or produce flame. Also useful for chill touch, touch of idiocy, curse of lost time, vampiric touch and, to a lesser extent, umbral graft.
Widen Spell: Turn those ten foot burst spells that have lots of value but not much area into better blasting tools.
Domain Acumen: Another means of getting a non-psychic focus spell. Good choices include cloak of shadow (Cosmos; you’ll need stealth), fire ray (Flames), dazzling flash (Flames), and delay consequence (Time).

(4) Basic Oracle Spellcasting: One spell known per accessible spell level. You’ll get 2nd level spells at level 6 and 3rd level spells at level 8. Each of these can be cast once per day. Offload some utility and/or choose spells that will function as useful Unleash primers in round 1 of encounters.
(4) First Revelation: The third means of gaining a non-psychic focus spell at level 4. See the dedication feat for a breakdown of useful focus spells by mystery.
(6) Advanced Mysteries: Gain an oracle feat up to half your level. There’s nothing here worth replacing your level 20 class feat, but there’s good stuff if you’re playing with the free archetype variant rules.

(8) Bespell Weapon: The more versatile cousin of Psi Strikes. Considering how much of the psychic kit relies on cantrips, though, you may be happier with Psi Strikes.
(8) Divine Access: There’s a massive list of spells potentially available from this feat. I’ve got a spreadsheet here that breaks it down by deity and by spell. You only get three from this feat and they’ll cast from your divine slots, meaning you’ll get shortchanged choosing any deity that grants a ninth level spell. It does provide a lot of spell diversity potential for your oracle spell repertoire, though.
(8) Vision of Weakness: Another non-psychic focus spell, this time without a save associated. In encounters, for a single action you’ll learn your target’s weaknesses (if any), lowest save, and get a +2 status bonus to your next attack roll against it (which includes spell attacks). Not a bad haul, even if it does advance your curse. Use it during Unleash to help fish for a crit.
(20) Quickened Casting: You won’t be able to use it on amped cantrips, but you can reduce the casting actions of spells up to eighth level once per day. The language doesn’t specify that it only functions based on the highest level spell slot per tradition or per spell source, only the highest level spell slot.

(8) Mysterious Breadth: An extra spell known and an extra spell per day for all but your two highest available oracle spell levels.
(12) Expert Oracle Spellcasting: Initial access to 4th level spells, plus 5th level spells at level 14 and 6th level spells at level 16.
(18) Master Oracle Spellcasting: Initial access to 7th level spells plus 8th level spells at level 20.

Rogue (**)

You won’t care so much about the class features, but this archetype will help you be more of a skill monkey. For an INT build, you can put a few feats here to good use to turn you into a full-functioning party librarian, provided you invest in WIS.

(2) Rogue Dedication: Stealth or thievery plus one skill of your choice, trained proficiency in light armor (which won’t matter to you from level 13 on), and trained proficiency in rogue class DC. The class DC won’t mean anything to you, but at least it’s a couple skills and an AC bump for just over the first half of a full 20 level campaign.
(4) Basic Trickery: Gain a first or second level rogue feat.

Nimble Dodge: Extra protection against a single attack (including spell attacks) once per round for a reaction is solid.
You’re Next: Another decent reaction, easing your action economy to Demoralize and giving you a bonus to the check to boot. Considering that you’re likely focusing on some blasting capability, you’re probably going to drop enemies to 0 HP often enough to see this feat come up with some frequency.
Mobility: Basically allows you to turn a short Stride into a long Step. It’ll help you get away from danger more easily, especially if you have at least 30 feet of speed.

(4) Sneak Attacker: You’ll also need the Magical Trickster feat to get full value from this feat. Prior to level 8, you can add a bit of damage to shortbow Strikes provided your party can reliably make enemies flat-footed. It’s not much damage, but if you’re getting it often it adds up.
(6) Advanced Trickery: Gain a rogue feat up to half your level. There’s nothing here worth replacing your level 20 class feat, but there’s good stuff if you’re playing with the free archetype variant rules.

(8) Dread Striker: A reliable means of making enemies flat-footed which, even if you’re not using Sneak Attacker/Magical Trickster, is a great way to help land your spell attacks like imaginary weapon or produce flame. You’ve got tons of tools to impose the Frightened condition on enemies. Even better if you’ve got a bard in your party running Dirge of Doom often or, to a somewhat lesser extent, a swashbuckler with Antagonize.
(8) Magical Trickster: Allows you to deal sneak attack damage with your spell attacks. Same flat-footed requirement applies.
(12) Light Step: Considering how many options you have for creating difficult terrain, you can kind of kite around it with this feat. Also allows you to escape a bad situation more easily if enemies have you caught in difficult terrain.
(12) Watch Your Back: For a very minor cost, debuff an enemy’s will saves against Fear effects. You have a lot of those, not least of which is Demoralize. Synergizes very well with the occult spell list, CHA builds, and the Dread Striker feat.
(16) Nimble Roll: Requires Nimble Dodge and allows you to apply its bonus on reflex saves as well. Also allows you to move away from danger as part of the reaction depending on the attack’s/save’s outcome, although as a Stride, meaning you may still trigger movement-based reactions.

(8) Skill Mastery: You won’t get more than three skills to legendary proficiency, but you’ll have much more that you can do with your skills considering that you can get up to five to master proficiency.
(12) Evasiveness: Master proficiency reflex save much earlier than you could get it via Canny Acumen.

Sorcerer (***)

Access to any spell tradition, even if it caps at eighth level spells and won’t benefit from Unleash, gives you quite a wide variety of options. For any bloodlines that use the occult spell list, the spells you cast from your sorcerer repertoire will share proficiency progression with those from your psychic repertoire. Like most spellcasting archetypes, you’ll have access to non-psychic focus spells. You’ll want to play a CHA build if you plan to take a sorcerer archetype.

(2) Sorcerer Dedication: Provides some flexibility in trained skills gained, plus two cantrips. Offload some utility onto these cantrips or take advantage of offensive options you couldn’t otherwise get (gale blast for arcane or primal, divine lance for divine, etc.). Note that you can select your bloodline’s cantrip for one of the granted cantrips. Bloodlines below (including their respective initial bloodline spells, even though those require another feat):

Aberrant (****): Intimidation is great and you’re probably trained in it already, giving you one free skill pick. Occultism provides a free skill pick no matter what. Tentacular limbs is effectively a much, much better version of Reach Spell since you can use its additional action for increased range on amped touch-range cantrips (imaginary weapon, melee-improved damage of produce flame). Plus, it primes Unleash with a single action. Occult spell list.
Angel (*): Although psychics aren’t really built for support, there is some value here. Religion will be somewhat hard for you to utilize, but diplomacy is great on a CHA build and may result in a free trained skill if you were already planning on using it. Angelic halo will be useful if someone in your party frequently relies on heal, making each cast heal for a bit more on any ally inside your emanation. The drawback here is that it’s an emanation of 15 feet, potentially putting you in danger for trying to maximize its effect. All that said, you’re generally not going to want to build for support. Divine spell list.
Demonic (*): Melee-focused. Not worth it. Divine spell list.
Diabolic (*): The skills aren’t that exciting and diabolic edict doesn’t last long enough to justify the focus point. Divine spell list.
Draconic / Wyrmblessed (*): Melee-focused. Not worth it. Arcane or divine spell list, respectively.
Elemental (**): Nature is nothing special, but intimidation is great and probably will result in a free skill pick. Elemental toss will be decent on builds that rarely, if ever, rely on spell attacks due to the MAP. Otherwise, having some single target damage for a single action is not too bad. Primal spell list.
Fey (**): Nature is nothing special. At least deception keys off of CHA, even if it doesn’t have as good of skill feats/actions for you as the other CHA-based skills. If you’re not using Bon Mot or a similar status penalty-imposing effect/action, and if enemies are grouped nicely, you’ll see some debuff value out of faerie dust as a single action cast prior to casting a blasting spell. Primal spell list.
Genie (*): Arcana is hard for a CHA build to put to good use, deception is okay but the weakest CHA skill, and genie’s veil is a support spell that won’t provide much value for your build. Arcane spell list.
Hag (***): Deception is okay, but occultism is an automatic free pick. Jealous hex is a great way to prep for Unleash damage, although your target gets a save to overcome it every round. Occult spell list.
Harrow (***): Performance is the worst skill in the game, but occultism is at least a free pick. Unraveling blast is a decent single-target damage spell which scales well, can inflict debuffs, and benefits from Unleash damage. Though this spell looks like a good candidate for Impose Order, it’s a trap - Psi Burst will always do more damage for the single action than Impose Order would alongside unraveling blast. Occult spell list.
Imperial (**): While arcana and society are useful skills, a CHA build will have a difficult time fitting in the INT needed to make them function. Ancestral memories will give you skill flexibility, but only to a maximum of expert proficiency. It’s nothing too exciting, but will give you some value in exploration mode. Arcane spell list.
Nymph (*): Diplomacy is good and may give you a free skill pick, but nature is nothing special. Nymph’s token is purely a support spell, which you’ll have a hard time fitting into your build. Primal spell list.
Psychopomp (**): Intimidation is great and likely a free skill pick, but religion is hard to support. Sepulchral mask is a deterrent, albeit one that starts off with the smallest possible emanation. It does at least debuff enemies’ will saves against emotion effects, and can benefit from amped daze’s mental damage weakness. Divine spell list.
Shadow (**): Occultism is a free skill pick and stealth is always useful. While you have access to plenty of great shadow spells that would set off dim the light’s trigger, it’s purely a defensive spell. Occult spell list.
Undead (*): Intimidation is great and likely a free skill pick, but religion is hard to support. You likely won’t find much use for the focus spell. Divine spell list.

(4) Basic Blood Potency: Gain a first or second level sorcerer feat.

Blessed Blood: Gives some spell flexibility if you choose a divine bloodline, assuming you worship a deity.
Dangerous Sorcery: Doesn’t stack with Unleash damage and only applies to spells cast from spell slots, but it’ll keep your damage up a bit outside of Unleash. Gives more value to damaging spells cast on round 1 in order to prime Unleash, although you may want to conserve those slots for the comparatively extra Unleash damage.
Reach Spell: Although you can’t amp a spell and apply metamagic, it’ll give you some ranged choices for non-amped touch spells like imaginary weapon or produce flame. Also useful for chill touch, touch of idiocy, curse of lost time, vampiric touch and, to a lesser extent, umbral graft.
Widen Spell: Turn those ten foot burst spells that have lots of value but not much area into better blasting tools.

(4) Basic Bloodline Spell: Grants you your bloodline’s initial bloodline spell. See the dedication feat for a breakdown of each bloodline’s spell value.
(4) Basic Sorcerer Spellcasting: One spell known per accessible spell level. You’ll get 2nd level spells at level 6 and 3rd level spells at level 8. Each of these can be cast once per day.
(6) Advanced Blood Potency: Gain a sorcerer feat up to half your level. There’s nothing here worth replacing your level 20 class feat, but there’s good stuff if you’re playing with the free archetype variant rules.

(8) Arcane Evolution: The only even halfway decent arcane bloodline for you is Imperial. That said, getting flexibility with your sorcerer repertoire is no small benefit. It’s not going to increase your number of spells per day, but the fact that this feat turns you into a semi-prepared caster gives you quite a bit of versatility with your sorcerer spell slots.
(8) Bespell Weapon: The more versatile cousin of Psi Strikes. Considering how much of the psychic kit relies on cantrips, though, you may be happier with Psi Strikes.
(8) Divine Evolution: An extra heal or harm per day at your highest sorcerer spell level will be a nice bit of extra healing for you in a pinch, or a bit of extra damage. Only available on divine bloodlines.
(8) Occult Evolution: Unfortunately, it only works on your sorcerer spells, but flexibility is always valuable. Plus you get trained proficiency in an extra skill.
(12) Advanced Bloodline: Get your bloodline’s advanced spell, assuming you have your basic bloodline spell. Decent options are aberrant whispers (Aberrant), angelic wings (Angelic), elemental motion (Elemental), fey disappearance (Fey), horrific visage (Hag), blinding beauty (Nymph), steal shadow (Shadow), and drain life (Undead). By this level, you don’t necessarily need another non-psychic focus spell, but if you like your bloodline’s advanced spell, they tend to be decent choices.
(16) Bloodline Resistance: Passive status bonus to save against magic. Not bad, even if it comes online late.
(16) Crossblooded Evolution: Although your sorcerer spells max at eighth level, getting access to any one spell as a sorcerer spell is solid.
(20) Quickened Casting: You won’t be able to use it on amped cantrips, but you can reduce the casting actions of spells up to eighth level once per day. The language doesn’t specify that it only functions based on the highest level spell slot per tradition or per spell source, only the highest level spell slot.

(8) Bloodline Breadth: An extra spell known and an extra spell per day for all but your two highest available sorcerer spell levels. It works especially well with Arcane Evolution.
(12) Expert Sorcerer Spellcasting: Initial access to 4th level spells, plus 5th level spells at level 14 and 6th level spells at level 16.
(18) Master Sorcerer Spellcasting: Initial access to 7th level spells plus 8th level spells at level 20.

Wizard (***)

Gaining a spellbook will make it much easier for you to be able to squeeze in utility spells. Your wizard spells’ saves won’t be as high as those from your psychic repertoire, but it’ll improve your daily longevity. You’ll want to be playing an INT build if you plan to take a wizard archetype.

Wizard Dedication: You get a spellbook with four cantrips, which is excellent for versatility even if you can only prepare two per day. Load up with all those utility cantrips you weren’t sure you could fit in your build and then some. With an INT build, chances are good you’re trained in arcana, meaning you’re likely to have a free trained skill. Since you pick your spell school at this level, I have their values listed below even though you require another feat to get their focus spells:

Abjuration (**): Even if it only ever buffs you, extra AC will be valuable for how squishy you are. Especially useful if you manage to Sustain it long enough to maximize its radius and buff your allies as well. Although the fact that it’s tied to a Sustained duration is a bit of a double-edged sword, having options for your post-Unleash actions that you can’t fail is valuable. Your Unleashed turns will require you to make some decisions about whether or not it’s worth Sustaining, though.
Conjuration (**): If you’re building into Thoughtform Summoning and focusing on summon spells, you can give them a little more oomph with augment summoning. The action economy will be tough to get it out, though, since you’re likely casting a summon spell to prime Unleash, then using your third, non-damaging action during Unleash to Sustain the summon. More workable if you have, say, magic missile as a single action spell to be able to get the Unleash damage once in the round you cast augment summoning.
Divination (*): While it’s nice to have foreknowledge of what you’ll roll, and to reveal secret rolls, diviner’s sight just doesn’t stack up to the other schools’ focus spells.
Enchantment (**): Charming words stopping your target from taking hostile actions against you for a round is a good way to get out of danger and only takes one action. The problem lies in the action economy. If you’re using this during Unleash when you’re most likely to be targeted by an enemy, you want to be casting two action heavy hitter spells, meaning you won’t be able to both cast charming words and Step/Stride away (unless Quickened). More workable with magic missile’s single action cast.
Evocation (*): Force bolt is a trap option. It looks good, but its reliance on a focus point is a matter of opportunity cost. You should instead use magic missile for the same effect since it gets buffed with Unleash damage.
Illusion (***): Placing difficult terrain in a scalable size gives you flexibility of action economy, area denial, and control to keep groups of enemies together for subsequent blasting. As such, warped terrain is a good way to prime Unleash. Also synergizes with the lizardfolk ancestry’s Terrain Advantage feat.
Necromancy (***): Call of the grave is single target and relies on a spell attack, but imposing the Sickened condition on a target is a good way to prime Unleash.
Transmutation (*): Your martials may occasionally appreciate the skill buff from physical boost, but it’s hard to predict incoming saves. Plus, your role isn’t really to buff allies.
Universalist (***): Although hand of the apprentice is somewhat similar to dancing blade, the fact that you can deal the weapon’s damage and get its critical specialization effects is quite solid for a single action. Like dancing blade, your weapon’s material type will apply; unlike dancing blade, your runes will also apply. You can also add Psi Strikes damage to it.

(4) Arcane School Spell: This feat is how you get the above focus spells, except for Universalists.
(4) Basic Arcana: Gain a first or second level wizard feat.

Hand of the Apprentice: This feat is what gets Universalists the hand of the apprentice spell.
Reach Spell: Although you can’t amp a spell and apply metamagic, it’ll give you some ranged choices for non-amped touch spells like imaginary weapon or produce flame. Also useful for chill touch, touch of idiocy, curse of lost time, vampiric touch and, to a lesser extent, umbral graft.
Spellbook Prodigy: Learn a Spell faster and with less severe consequences for failure. Useful, considering that spell versatility is one of the most attractive options of the wizard archetype.
Widen Spell: Turn those ten foot burst spells that have lots of value but not much area into better blasting tools.

(4) Basic Wizard Spellcasting: One spell known per accessible spell level. You’ll get 2nd level spells at level 6 and 3rd level spells at level 8. Each of these can be cast once per day.
(6) Advanced Arcana: Gain a wizard feat up to half your level. There’s nothing here worth replacing your level 20 class feat, but there’s good stuff if you’re playing with the free archetype variant rules.

(12) Spell Penetration: Reduce enemy status bonuses to saves against your spells. It’s always nice to debuff enemies, and this one’s passive with no save attached. It won’t work against all enemies since those without a status bonus to saves won’t lose anything, but still, those caster resistant enemies will be less annoying.
(12) Split Slot: Extra versatility for your second highest wizard spell level.
(16) Advanced School Spell: Dread aura (Enchanter) is your best bet because it’s a no-save Frightened 1 condition against only enemies in a 30 foot emanation. Life siphon (Necromancer) is a decent choice as well, allowing you to heal yourself a fair amount when you cast necromancy spells from your wizard slots.
(16) Universal Versatility: Requires you to have the Hand of the Apprentice feat. Gives you access to all of the initial school spells, albeit only one of them per day. You do have the freedom to choose between them on a day-to-day basis, though, and versatility is the name of the game here.
(20) Quickened Casting: You won’t be able to use it on amped cantrips, but you can reduce the casting actions of spells up to eighth level once per day. The language doesn’t specify that it only functions based on the highest level spell slot per tradition or per spell source, only the highest level spell slot.
(20) Scroll Savant: Assuming you have expert proficiency in crafting and the Master Wizard Spellcasting feat, you’ll get two extra wizard spells per day of sixth or lower. Master crafting proficiency adds a third extra spell and legendary, a fourth. All scrolls created from this feat have to be of different spell levels, though, so the maximum bang for your buck that you’ll get is an extra sixth, fifth, fourth, and third level wizard spell per day.

(8) Arcane Breadth: An extra spell known and an extra spell per day for all but your two highest available sorcerer spell levels.
(12) Expert Wizard Spellcasting: Initial access to 4th level spells, plus 5th level spells at level 14 and 6th level spells at level 16.
(18) Master Wizard Spellcasting: Initial access to 7th level spells plus 8th level spells at level 20.

Other Archetypes

Acrobat (***)

You’ll want at least 14 DEX with this archetype, but chances are very high you have that.

(2) Acrobat Dedication: One of precious few ways to get automatic skill proficiency increases. Acrobatics isn’t the most exciting skill, but it comes up often enough to be useful. Having a better capability to Escape, Grab an Edge, or Tumble Through to get away from danger is useful.
(4) Contortionist: Quick Squeeze isn’t much good. If, however, you’re ever in a situation where you’ve been Grabbed, being able to Escape and then retaliate against the flat-footed offender is a good way to potentially pick that offender off so they can’t Grapple you again.
(6) Dodge Away: Getting away from danger is great, and with a circumstance bonus to AC to boot. You’re going to automatically be a master in acrobatics a level after you gain access to this feat, so it gives you a 10 foot Step very quickly - and for a reaction, at that.
(7) Graceful Leaper: This is a skill feat, meaning it won’t take up a class feat slot. Lessening your reliance on athletics to overcome terrain obstacles is a welcome improvement.
(10) Tumbling Opportunist: If you’re caught out of position and need to get past an enemy, leaving them Prone after you Tumble Through provides a similar benefit to the effects of Contortionist. Plus, said enemy will have to spend an extra action to Stand Up in order to come after you again.

Archer (**)

If you want to use a shortbow to capitalize on Psi Strikes, this archetype provides some additional means to put that shortbow to good use.

(2) Archer Dedication: Removes the requirement to have ancestry feats supporting shortbow usage.
(4) Point-Blank Shot: Extra damage from your shortbow whenever you’re within 30 feet of your target.
(4) Quick Shot: Although your hands aren’t generally going to be occupied by anything other than a shortbow, if you do find them somehow occupied, this feat will make it easier to get the shortbow out.

Beastmaster (***)

Animal companions provide a means of distracting enemies from you, keeping the damage on your companion rather than on you. Command an Animal is a good choice for a third action, especially post-Unleash while you’re stupefied. Once mature, your companion can even act independently to Stride or Strike once per turn. You could use it as a mount as well, but you’re best off using an animal companion with the mount special ability if you plan to do so. Orcs can potentially gain a riding drake companion via an ancestry feat. There are feats in this archetype which grant non-psychic focus spells. Additionally, there are some useful support benefits for various companion types.

Support benefits:

Apes and hyenas allow you to inflict the frightened condition
Bats impose a penalty to enemies’ attack rolls
Beetles allow you to inflict the Flat-Footed condition or Shove enemies
Birds inflict persistent bleed damage and the Dazzled condition
Camels can inflict Dazzled at range
Capybaras give you a circumstance bonus to hit
Cats and terror birds allow you to inflict the Flat-Footed condition
Crocodiles impose a -10 foot speed penalty and can stop enemies from flying
Dromaeosaurs open up several options for flanking positions
Horses eventually give a whole lot of mounted movement
Legchairs give you lesser cover against all attacks
Moths reduce the DC to hit Concealed/Hidden creatures
Pangolins inflict persistent bleed damage, increasing for nimble/savage
Riding drakes give mounted movement and extra blasting capability
Scorpions eventually give an easy means of inflicting the grabbed condition
Shadows hounds become Concealed and cause you to become Concealed
Snakes shut down enemy reactions
Vultures allow you to inflict the Sickened condition
Wolves allow you to impose a -5 foot speed penalty and can eventually knock enemies Prone

(2) Beastmaster Dedication: Gain an animal companion of your choosing, plus access to the Call Companion action, to be used if/when you have multiple animal companions.
(4) Additional Companion: Not necessary, but can give you some versatility in your support action effects. Also enables your use of the later feat Beastmaster’s Call.
(4) Heal Animal: Heal your companion in combat if absolutely necessary.
(4) Mature Beastmaster Companion: Larger size, better stats, and the capability to take some independent action for your companion(s).
(8) Incredible Beastmaster Companion: Conventional wisdom is to make your companion(s) Nimble, although you can choose independently for each companion. Another layer of better stats.
(10) Enlarge Companion: Turn your companion into a Huge-sized obstacle for enemies to get past. It’s a decent way to prime Unleash.
(12) Beastmaster’s Call: Easy access to the support benefit of any of your non-active companions. Requires you to have more than one companion.
(14) Specialized Beastmaster Companion: There are several good specializations available and you can choose independently for each of your companions.

Blessed One (**)

This archetype is mostly based around support. You do get some selfish effects that enable you as a psychic, though. Namely, Elucidating Mercy.

(2) Blessed One Dedication: Grants you lay on hands, giving you some ability to heal yourself in combat (as usual, not a good follow-up to Strain Mind) and, more importantly, to “spam” healing between encounters for the purposes of both healing your party and fully recovering your focus points.
(6) Accelerating Touch: Passive speed buff on your lay on hands.
(6) Mercy: Allows you to counteract Fear and Paralysis effects with your lay on hands. You’re not likely to be using this effect on your allies much, though, meaning you’ll mostly be using it to counteract Fear effects on yourself.
(8) Invigorating Mercy: You don’t care too much about the Enfeebled condition, but Clumsy makes critical hits even more likely against you. Counteracting it will be helpful.
(10) Greater Mercy: Adding Blinded, Deafened, Sickened, and Slowed to the list of conditions you can counteract gives you much more versatility with lay on hands.
(12) Blessed Denial: Reduce your allies’ conditions as a reaction when they receive said conditions. Unfortunately, it’s allies only, so you can’t reduce your Stupefied condition with this feat when you come out of Unleash.
(12) Elucidating Mercy: This feat, however, does allow you to counteract your own Stupefied condition, in addition to Confused. You’ll have to risk the flat check from Stupefied in order to cast lay on hands, but it’s worth it. Replaces the need for Mental Balm, albeit at a much later level. The tradeoff is that, if you’re not playing one of the conscious minds that gives you a good option for Mental Balm, you won’t also need Parallel Breakthrough to support it.
(14) Affliction Mercy: Add curses, diseases, and poisons to the list of effects you can counteract.

Captivator (**)

Since this archetype exclusively uses innate spells, the spells you gain here will benefit from your spell attack modifier/DC. The big limitation is that you only gain spells from the enchantment and illusion schools, many of which are rated as subpar for what psychics generally do. That said, if you want a reserve of utility spells for exploration mode use or social/face functions, you’ll appreciate what the captivator archetype has to offer. One key difference with this archetype as compared to other caster archetypes is that its spells go up to ninth level. You also don’t get signature spells, although there is still a means of heightening your spells that is, in some ways, superior to signature spells. Note that this archetype is available starting at level 4. If you’re playing with free archetype rules, you’ll either have to choose a different archetype for your first 3 feats (dandy is a good choice because it’s easy to exit) or work something out with your GM. If you plan to take a captivator archetype, you should do so on a CHA build.

(4) Captivator Dedication: Two extra utility cantrips, somewhat freeing up your psychic cantrips for damage. Also has the potential to raise your deception or diplomacy to expert proficiency.
(4) Basic Captivator Spellcasting: Sort of like class archetypes’ spellcasting feats, except you gain the spells from this archetype as innate spells rather than through spell slots. Unfortunately, since you don’t gain them from an ancestry or heritage, they don’t benefit from Ancestral Mind. I’m not going to list out all of the useful spells here as they’re all included and marked with a (C) indicator in the Spells section of the guide. Do note, however, that the ratings in that section don’t quite match their actual value if you gain them from this archetype. Spells that benefit from Unleash damage, for example, will not do so if cast as captivator innate spells and are less useful because of this difference. Many utility spells, however, are slightly more valuable because the whole value of this archetype lies in having utility spells outside your normal slots.
(6) Captivating Intensity: Effectively extra spell slots, allowing you to cast each innate spell you’ve gained from the archetype one extra time per day. Interacts with Heightened Captivation.
(8) Countercharm: Where normally this kind of feat wouldn’t be terribly useful on a spellcaster archetype, the fact that you a) have spells you don’t necessarily care about in combat and b) have spells as high as ninth level means you can actually get some mileage out of counteracting enemy spells.
(8) Heightened Captivation: You can take this feat as many times as you like and, every time you do so, whichever spell you choose to heighten is automatically heightened to your maximum captivator spell level every time you cast it. No retraining your choices, but there are several good Incapacitation effects that can get some use from being permanently auto-heightened. If you cast a spell a second time in a given day via Captivating Intensity, the second use is heightened to two levels below your maximum spell level. If you’ve got room for this feat, you want it. It makes several of those control spells you otherwise wouldn’t take due to your signature spell/slot limitations much more palatable.
(10) Expert Captivator Spellcasting: Functionally the same as any other expert spellcasting feat, except the spells you gain are innate.
(10) Reactive Charm: Although a first level spell as a reaction isn’t very strong on its own, it’s exceptionally potent combined with Heightened Captivation. Hit them with a max level charm and make them suddenly not want to feeblemind you any more.
(14) Effortless Captivation: Free Sustain every round for innate spells you cast from this archetype.
(16) Master Captivator Spellcasting: Two levels earlier than other equivalent feats and finally scales you up to ninth level spells at level 20.

Familiar Master (***)

Familiars provide several abilities that will enhance your psychic features, with the added benefit of being able to change out their abilities daily. Below is a non-exhaustive list of good choices for both familiar and master abilities; not included are some of the more commonly useful abilities like speed types, resistances, and extra HP. If you’re taking this dedication to leverage imaginary weapon through Spell Delivery, be aware that this ability is rather dangerous for your familiar. It will have to use its actions entirely to deliver the spell, leaving it no actions to retreat away from danger until the following turn.

Familiar abilities: Ambassador (CHA build), Fast Movement (combine with Spell Delivery), Second Opinion (INT build), Spellcasting, Threat Display (CHA build, replaces Intimidating Glare)
Master abilities: Cantrip Connection, Familiar Focus, Spell Battery (extra true strike), Spell Delivery (imaginary weapon)

(2) Familiar Master Dedication: Either gain a familiar or make the familiar you gained from an ancestry into an enhanced familiar.
(4) Enhanced Familiar: If you got a familiar initially from the dedication feat, you’ll need this to make it into an enhanced familiar. Enhanced familiars gain four abilities instead of two.
(4) Familiar Mascot: While you normally want to stay away from support options, being able to passively support your party with your familiar, assuming you’re not personally taking advantage of all its ability slots, is a nice-to-have.
(8) Mutable Familiar: Add some versatility to your familiar’s more generic abilities.
(10) Incredible Familiar: Six abilities instead of four.

Loremaster (**)

Really lets INT builds lean into a librarian role, becoming able to Recall Knowledge on anything using Loremaster Lore.

(2) Loremaster Dedication: Allows you to use Loremaster Lore for any Recall Knowledge, easing the need, and associated WIS requirement, for nature and religion. Loremaster Lore also eventually scales to expert proficiency once you reach legendary proficiency in occultism. For an INT build, that’s not a big ask.
(4) Loremaster’s Etude: Grants you a non-psychic focus spell. You’re less likely to use this in encounters, though.
(4) Orthographic Mastery: Skill feat, meaning you won’t need to take up a class feat with it. Similar to the effects of the dedication feat, allowing you to apply Loremaster Lore for Decipher Writing as well.
(4) Quick Study: Somewhat hard to nail the right lore skill, but if you can, it’ll potentially give the Very Easy DC modifier on your Recall Knowledge checks rather than the Easy modifier afforded by Loremaster Lore.
(8) Assured Knowledge: Assurance for Recall Knowledge in any skill in which you have expert proficiency.
(14) Enigma’s Knowledge: The stronger version of Assured Knowledge (which is a prerequisite), allowing you to use Assurance for any Recall Knowledge check.
(16) True Hypercognition: Almost the same as the hypercognition spell, but with no resource expenditure.

Scroll Trickster (**)

Extra spells per day is nothing to sneeze at, even if they only scale up to seventh level. If you plan to take the scroll trickster archetype, it’ll function best on an INT build.

(2) Scroll Trickster Dedication: Gain the Trick Magic Item feat, a good bonus to use the feat, and remove the chance of a critical failure when using it. Primarily going to be useful for arcane scrolls since you’ll have the INT to back it up, but with the circumstance bonus you may also be able to get away with nature and/or religion for their respective spell traditions. Regardless, Trick Magic Item does have some action economy issues - namely that you have to Interact to draw a scroll if it’s not already in your hand, and even if it is, that’s your whole turn used to Trick Magic Item and Cast a two action spell.
(6) Basic Scroll Cache: This is where your extra spells per day come in. You can create scrolls of whatever school you want; if you create scrolls of occult spells, you won’t need a check to activate them, but regardless of tradition, scrolls function off of your spell attack modifier/DC.
(8) Skim Scroll: Eases the Interact requirement to get a scroll out of whatever container you keep it in, but you’ll still spend a whole turn using Trick Magic Item to Cast a two action spell.
(12) Expert Scroll Cache: Extra scrolls per day reaching up to a maximum of a fifth level spell.
(18) Master Scroll Cache: Extra scrolls per day reaching up to a maximum of a seventh level spell.

Sleepwalker (**)

You gain a few useful scouting/information gathering functions with this archetype, giving you some encounter mode value.

(4) Sleepwalker Dedication: Gain a one minute buff to will saves (higher against mental effects) at the cost of a penalty to perception checks and initiative rolls. Not a bad trade-off, and this feat enables several others in the archetype.
(6) Infiltrate Dream: It’ll be hard to use because you’ll have to sneak up on sleeping creatures and it takes ten minutes to activate, but you can gain some valuable information in the right circumstances.
(6) Vision of Foresight: Single action to give yourself a reroll on an upcoming saving throw or skill check. Set yourself up for better chances at landing a (crit) Bon Mot/Demoralize, at a bare minimum.
(8) Waking Dream: Confuse a single target with a non-psychic focus spell.
(12) Oneiric Influence: If you’re able to Infiltrate a Dream, you can use subconscious suggestion on your target without having to expend resources.
(14) Dream Logic: You can potentially stop encounters before they start with this feat, passively stopping adversaries from noticing you’re up to no good.
(18) Ever Dreaming: Your Daydream Trance gains an unlimited duration and becomes a free action, plus you aren’t debuffed while sleeping and can react to the world while asleep (albeit while Slowed 2).

Talisman Dabbler (**)

There are quite a few useful talismans out there. The list below is for personal use specifically, but if you want to take on a more support role, there’s no better way to do it than to hand out the consumables before encounter mode where you want all your actions for yourself. As such, there are other useful talismans out there, just not for selfish purposes. If you invest in crafting and make your own talismans, you will be able to get the affixture/removal speeds for the ones you craft, not just the freebies you get every day.

Item 1 / Level 2: Hunter’s Bane, Jade Cat, Monkey Pin
Item 2 / Level 4: Crying Angel, Effervescent Ampoule, Onyx Panther
Item 3 / Level 6: Feather Step Stone, Snapleaf, Matchmaker Fulu (CHA build), Venomous Cure Fulu
Item 5 / Level 10: Shark Tooth Charm, Eye of Enlightenment (INT & shortbow build), Fulu of the Stoic Ox
Item 6 / Level 12: Ghostbane Fulu (shortbow build)
Item 7 / Level 14: Grim Trophy (CHA build), Murderer’s Knot (shortbow build)
Item 8 / Level 16: Gallows Tooth (CHA build, imaginary weapon), Stormfeather
Item 10 / Level 20: Iron Medallion

(2) Talisman Dabbler Dedication: Two talismans per day, plus you know four formulas, and don’t need a formula book to learn/keep recipes. More efficient on affixing and removing talismans.
(4) Quick Fix: Much more efficient affixing and removing, with you getting the legendary crafting proficiency value of Rapid Affixture at level 12 automatically rather than needing the crafting proficiency at 15+.
(8) Deeper Dabbler: Four talismans per day, six per day if you take it again at level 14 or higher.
(14) Talismanic Sage: Gain the ability to simultaneously affix two talismans to a single item, which you couldn’t otherwise do.

About the psychic & the guide

Ancestries

Common ancestries

Dwarf (***)

Elf (****)

Gnome (****)

Goblin (***)

Halfling (***)

Human (****)

Uncommon ancestries

Azarketi (*)

Catfolk (***)

Fetchling (*)

Gnoll (**)

Grippli (*)

Hobgoblin (***)

Kitsune (**)

Kobold (***)

Leshy (**)

Lizardfolk (**)

Nagaji (**)

Orc (***)

Ratfolk (**)

Tengu (***)

Vanara (*)

Rare ancestries

Anadi (*)

Android (***)

Automaton (****)

Conrasu (**)

Fleshwarp (**)

Ghoran (**)

Goloma (**)

Kashrishi (***)

Poppet (***)

Shisk (*)

Shoony (*)

Skeleton (**)

Sprite (***)

Strix (**)

Vishkanya (*)

Half-human heritages

Half-elf (****)

Half-orc (*** / ****)

Uncommon versatile heritages

Aasimar (***)

Aphorite (**)

Changeling (***)

Dhampir (**)

Duskwalker (***)

Ganzi (*)

Ifrit (**)

Oread (*)

Suli (*)

Sylph (***)

Tiefling (***)

Undine (*)

Rare versatile heritages

Beastkin (**)

Reflection (**)

Conscious Minds

The Distant Grasp

The Infinite Eye

The Oscillating Wave

The Silent Whisper

The Tangible Dream

The Unbound Step

Subconscious Minds

Emotional Acceptance

Gathered Lore

Precise Discipline

Wandering Reverie

Class feats

Level 1

Level 2

Level 4

Level 6

Level 8

Level 10

Level 12

Half-orc (* / **)