Phantom of the OP-era:
A Guide to the Pathfinder Spiritualist
By CockroachTeaParty and Nova Wurmson
Introduction
Of the six new classes introduced in Occult Adventures, the Spiritualist might be the most complex. It is a ‘buddy’ class, like the Summoner and the Hunter before it, and thus has double the new rules to wrap your head around. The Spiritualist is a spooky psychic spellcaster; your powers lean towards the necromantic, as your mind allows you to channel the powers of life and death. In addition, the Spiritualist commands the services of a Phantom, a departed soul that refuses to go to the afterlife for any number of reasons. Not actually undead, the phantom is a strange ethereal outsider with many of the iconic powers and abilities of a proper ghost.
At first blush, the Spiritualist seems quite complex, with a steep learning curve. You have to juggle psychic casting, understanding the various states your phantom can be in, and keep track of lots of odd bonuses and modifiers as your ghost buddy enters and exits your head. This guide will help you sift through your options, understand the weirdness of your tethered phantom pal, and hopefully give you some character inspiration for this amazingly flavorful and fun class. Soon you’ll be switching your phantom from ectoplasmic to incorporeal manifestations like a pro, or sprouting slime tentacles and eviscerating your foes with a rusty scythe (yes, that’s a thing you can do).
Like many of the new Occult classes, the Spiritualist is surprisingly open-ended and filled with possibility. Whether you’re a grim avenger fighting alongside your phantom ally, a mystic master of the realms beyond communing with departed souls, or a twisted necromancer enslaving unwilling spectres, the Spiritualist will add spooky ambiance and unorthodox tactics to any adventuring party. ~CTP
Nova’s Thoughts: Hey! As you might have noticed, this guide is a collaboration between two incredibly attr optimizers. Optimization is heavily influenced by your group’s play style and experiences, so the bonuses for you are that you get two perspectives, as well as a significantly higher level of completeness and prooofreading, while each of us didn’t have to try to write an entire guide to the aforesaid highly complicated class by ourselves.
The flip side of the whole situation is that there’s often not a right or wrong answer to each optimization question - in times where one of us had a dissenting opinion or even just additional musings and preferences, we often just included everything, calling it out in “Nova’s Thoughts” and “CTP’s Thoughts” sections. If you otherwise need to know what one of us specifically thought about a subject (for properly labelling feedback, hate mail, etc.), assume that any portion of the guide that is 65% or more snark by volume is most likely mine.
A Note on Color Rankings
Colors are pretty! To help quickly tell your brain what we think is good and bad, we used the following color rating scheme:
Table of Contents / Links
Ability Scores and Races
The spiritualist has a wide variety of builds available to it, but before you even get thinking about those, you need to answer one simple question: Wisdom or Charisma? The base spiritualist is Wisdom-based, but the Fractured Mind archetype swaps their casting modifier and a few fluffy spell-like abilities - essentially putting you in a position where Wisdom or Charisma is purely a personal decision and every race that grants a bonus to Wisdom or Charisma is an option for a spiritualist.
Wisdom
Charisma
The general ability breakdown is as follows:
Basic Build Goals
Races
Core Rule Book
Featured Races
Uncommon Races
Other Races
3rd Party Races
Dreamscarred Press
Spiritualist Class Features
Chassis: ¾ BAB, d8 HD, good Will and Fortitude save, simple weapons+kukris, saps, and scythes, light armor
Your chassis is close to a cleric’s, with crappier armor proficiency but slightly better (if odd) weapon proficiencies. Racial weapon proficiencies are quite valuable for combat-focused spiritualists; it’s not that kukris or scythes are bad weapons necessarily, but you’re a bit shoe-horned otherwise.
Skills: 4/level
The spiritualist's class skills are Bluff (Cha), Craft (Int), Fly (Dex), Heal (Wis), Intimidate (Cha), Knowledge (all) (Int), Linguistics (Int), Profession (Wis), Sense Motive (Wis), Spellcraft (Int), and Use Magic Device (Cha).
-Notably absent: Diplomacy.
Without an INT focus, spiritualists will find their skill ranks in somewhat short supply, so pick a specialization. UMD is an amazing class skill to have, well worth it if you have a decent CHA. Intimidate can be the cornerstone of your build, since your spell list and phantom abilities have lots of fear-stacking synergy. If you have a good CHA, you can function as a pretty solid party face, but you’ll want to pick up Diplomacy through a trait if you can.
1 - 6 Psychic Spellcasting
If your phantom represents 50% of your strength, your spellcasting represents the next 30-40%. Your spell list is surprisingly deep for a 1-6 caster, and psychic magic has lots of nice perks (no verbal or somatic components, ever!). Your spell list contains offensive and defensive buffs for yourself, your allies, and your phantom, as well as lots of solid debuff and fear spells, most of them from the necromancy school. If the Mesmerist is the occult version of 3.5’s Beguiler, the Spiritualist is channeling the Dread Necromancer in many ways.
Like all 1-6 casters, your main struggle will be rationing your modest daily allotment of spells. As a psychic caster, you’ll need to defend against negative emotions and fear that can disrupt your emotion components. Thankfully, with your phantom riding around inside your head, you’ll be more resistant to these threats than most other psychic casters.
For Those Unfamiliar with Psychic Spellcasting: Psychic spellcasting has no verbal components - you don’t need to say fancy words to cast, you can cast fine in an area of silence, being deafened doesn’t affect spellcasting, etc. - and no somatic components - you don’t have to wave your hands around, it’s not affected by arcane spell failure on armor, you can cast while pinned, etc.
Instead, your spells can have thought and emotion components. If a spell has a thought component, any concentration check has its DC increased by 10 unless you spend a move action to negate this increase. If a spell has an emotion component, it can’t be cast while suffering from a negative [emotion] effect (such as fear). This is why it’s important to have a way to remove and prevent emotion effects (such as Logical Spell+remove fear) as a psychic caster.
Phantom
Like the summoner’s eidolon or the hunter’s animal companion, this is the reason you’re probably playing a spiritualist. You get your own personal ghost buddy! How cool is that? The phantom is closer to an eidolon than an animal companion, but comes with its own slew of strange and unique abilities. Your phantom can exist in multiple states, whether it be ectoplasmic, incorporeal, or hiding inside your consciousness. It can serve as a fighter, a bodyguard, a tank, or a mobile debuff with its own actions and initiative.
Like all ‘buddy classes,’ the phantom instantly makes the spiritualist more complex than its compatriots. It pays to know what you’re doing, since you’ll be taking up twice as much time at the table when it comes to combat (and leveling up). Thankfully, aside from picking feats, skills, and emotional focus, your phantom’s progression and mechanics will prove relatively straightforward. You won’t have to worry about juggling evolution points or picking new tricks for your Handle Animal skill. It’s worth noting that you don’t have access to a Resilient Eidolon-style feat - once you’re down, your phantom is gone, barring some emotional focus-specific abilities (like Zeal’s Steadfast Servant ability).
It should be repeatedly noted that your phantom cannot wear armor or wield weapons, and any magic items you place on it fall off if you move it into your consciousness. Like an eidolon, you share item slots with your phantom; for example, if you’re wearing a magic ring and your phantom’s wearing another magic ring, neither of you could benefit from a second ring. If you seek to equip your phantom with gear, it’s going to require a bit more juggling as your buddy phases in and out of existence. Feel free to deck your phantom out if it’s staying summoned all day, though.
Shared Consciousness
When your phantom isn’t fully manifested (or out and about doing things), it resides inside your head. While there, it provides a number of awesome passive buffs. First, it provides temporary Skill Focus to two skills based off of its emotional focus. More importantly, it provides a solid boost to saves against mind-affecting effects, which are a threat to your psychic casting. Lastly, once per day if you fail a save against such an effect, you can shunt it to your phantom instead of letting it affect you. Until this mind-affecting condition is removed or expires, you can’t benefit from the other bonuses your phantom provides, so use this ability with caution.
Etheric Tether
Like eidolons, your phantom must remain within a certain distance of you or it is banished back to the ethereal plane for 24 hours. Your tether is more restrictive than an eidolon’s in many ways, since not only can it be broken by moving too far away from your phantom, but it also can be severed if you lose line of effect for too long. This restriction is here to prevent you from abusing your phantom’s incorporeal nature; you can still use your phantom for short-range scouting, but you can’t use it to safely map an entire dungeon.
Bonded Senses
For a limited number of rounds per day, you can perceive what your phantom perceives. This is nice, but hardly necessary, since you’re in constant telepathic contact with your phantom regardless.
Bonded Manifestation
Starting at 3rd level, this ability lets your phantom partially manifest even when it’s riding around in your head. This ability starts off kind of meh, but gets pretty cool at level 8, and only continues to get more useful from there.
Post level 8, you can manifest ectoplasmic tendrils that replicate your phantom’s slam attack, usable as a swift action. This adds two additional attacks to your attack routine, increasing your melee offense notably. It’s best on a more combat-focused phantom such as Anger, Hatred, or Zeal, though Anger takes the cake for its increased die size. This is really the only damage-increasing class feature the Spiritualist gets (aside from buff-spells).
If you use an incorporeal bonded manifestation, you can attack incorporeal creatures with impunity post level 8, and eventually it provides invisibility. At level 18, you yourself can become incorporeal, which is quite the potent tool indeed.
You can only use bonded manifestation a limited number of rounds per day, but you’ll always be able to use it more than Bonded Senses.
Spiritual Interference
While near your phantom, it provides some nice defensive bonuses after level 4. This is more useful if you’re fighting alongside your phantom, just be sure to remember you have this ability!
Detect Undead
The first of several spell-like abilities the spiritualist picks up, this unlocks detect undead at will. In a spooky, occult-y game, this can be a useful ability indeed, especially if you lack a paladin or inquisitor in the party. Never hurts to just have this up as an early warning system.
Phantom Recall
Unlike the hunter or summoner that get consolation prizes if their buddy dies, a spiritualist is simply screwed. This ability is extremely useful for getting your phantom out of a pickle for subsequent healing. It’s often safer to just suck it back into your skull, where very little can actually harm it. You get more uses of this ability as you continue to gain levels, but you should nevertheless use it judiciously.
Calm Spirit
While thematically appropriate, your next SLA is even more niche than the first one. Still, it’s there if you need to calm down some ghosts.
See Invisibility
See invisibility as a 1/day SLA at 9th level isn’t earth-shattering, but it’s still pretty handy. Oddly, it always has a 10 min. duration regardless of your level.
Fused Consciousness
After level 10, a spiritualist’s mind will be nigh-unassailable, because now you gain the benefits of Shared Consciousness even when your phantom is fully manifested. Your phantom will still need to be in your head if you want to use Bonded Manifestation, but aside from discretion there is very little reason not to have your ghost buddy out and about.
Greater Spiritual Interference
The defensive benefits increase for you, but more importantly your phantom can now share them with your other allies. Again, remember you have this, as it’s easy to forget.
Spiritual Bond
You’ve always had the option of tanking your own hp to save your phantom, but this late-level acquisition allows your phantom to return the favor. Should you risk death through hp damage, your phantom can divert the damage and take it itself. Handy for keeping you alive, which helps keep the phantom ‘alive.’
Call Spirit
It’s a 1/day clue, plot-dump, or other source of handy information. Sure.
Dual Bond
If you’re still making heavy use of Bonded Manifestation, rejoice, for your daily usage has nearly doubled. Next level you can become incorporeal, so this is a choice little late-game perk.
Empowered Consciousness
Your capstone is pretty tame. While your phantom’s in your head, you’re flat-out immune to mind-affecting effects and possession, but you’re already nearly immune from Fused Consciousness regardless, even when your phantom is fully manifested. Still, this is handy if you’re going to the Aboleth/Succubus circus or whatever.
Spiritualist Feat Selection
Without a source of bonus feats, a spiritualist will find themselves quickly starved for feats, particularly if you’re trying to be good at a particular fighting style. Two-weapon fighting or archery are particularly feat-thirsty, and even basic melee builds like a STR-based two-handed Power Attack build might have to spend resources on better weapon and armor proficiencies. Fitting in feats that improve your casting or phantom are that much harder for such characters.
For more caster-leaning spiritualists, there’s a bit more freedom of choice; you can probably afford to take some of the more thematic or fluffy feats for the class.
General Feats
Additional Traits (APG): Some traits are really amazing. Handy for expanding your class skills, shoring up saves, or boosting initiative as well.
Combat Casting: This is of most value to melee spiritualists that might find themselves casting in close quarters.
Distant Delivery (OA): 30 ft. is a reasonable amount of space to work with, but a bad-touch specialist might enjoy the extra 20 ft. this feat affords you. You’ll want to retrain it post level 12, since you won’t be able to deliver touch spells at distances greater than 50 ft.
Emotional Conduit (OA): This feat gives you a bonus spell known per spell level, based off of your phantom’s emotional focus. The value of this feat thus depends on your phantom. Spells not normally on your class list are marked with an asterisk*.
This feat is more attractive to caster-leaning spiritualists that aren’t burdened by combat tree prereqs. Outside of pages of spell knowledge and similar items, this is one of the few ways to get more spells known. Of the options here, Fear and Zeal have the best bang for your buck.
Expanded Arcana (APG): There are a lot of great spells on the Spiritualist list. This feat lets you grab more spells known, thus expanding your options. It’s better to select this at higher levels, since you can ‘learn’ 1st and 2nd level spells for relatively cheap via pages of spell knowledge / spell lattices.
Focused Phantom (OA): Unlike Combat Casting this feat applies to all concentration checks, but it doesn’t work if your phantom isn’t by your side (or in your head). Most attractive to a master of a Dedication phantom, you can safely skip this.
Phantom Fighter (OA): You can just have your phantom go incorporeal to fight other incorporeal creatures, you don’t need ghost touch. That just leaves you with a more restrictive version of Ectoplasmic Spell, which you could just learn instead of this feat.
Phantom Fortification (OA): If you’re in a campaign featuring a lot of rogues or something, this might have a use, but it’s pretty niche.
Shared Soul (OA): This is a higher level pick when death effects become more common. More useful in an undead-heavy campaign.
Spell Focus/Greater: Most of your save-or-X spells are necromancy, making this and its greater version solid choices for caster-leaning spiritualists. Also helps keep up with 9th level casters’ save DCs.
Spell Penetration: This is a good choice for higher level games when SR becomes more of a common occurrence. Metamagic is more difficult for you than a full caster, so this feat and it’s improved version are likely a better choice than Piercing Spell.
Spell Perfection (APG): This is kind of like the capstone feat for most spellcasters, and spiritualists are no exception. Metamagic reduction is brokenly good - you could use it to forever-quicken a 3rd level or lower spell, or apply a metamagic feat to a 6th level spell, for example. The bonus to Spell Focus is just icing on the cake.
Spirit Symbiosis (OO): This feat allows you to temporarily switch your phantom’s emotional focus by casting speak with dead. It opens up a great deal of versatility for you; with some forewarning, you can tailor your emotional focus as long as there’s a corpse handy. Probably most useful to Fear phantoms, since lots of things are immune to fear.
Spiritualist’s Call (OA): On the one hand, enhancement bonuses for your phantom’s ability scores can be troublesome to acquire, due to magic item slot sharing/juggling complications. This feat provides a slew of bonuses, but it only lasts for 10 minutes after the 1 minute manifestation ritual. Situations where this will be useful are going to be extremely specific and somewhat uncommon. You’ll typically be better served by using long-duration buffs and keeping your phantom around.
Steadfast Personality (ACG): For fractured minds, this feat helps alleviate MADness by allowing you to ignore WIS entirely and still have a great Will save.
Toughness: For a melee spiritualist, this feat helps compensate for your d8 HD.
Vigilant Phantom (OA): This couples well with the Lookout teamwork feat, but is otherwise a bit too specific in the bonus it provides; Skill Focus (Perception) is +3 to Perception checks all the time, for example.
Combat Feats
Armor Proficiency (Medium +): For non-DEX builds, you may wish to consider grabbing slightly better armor proficiency.
Bludgeoner (UC)/Enforcer (APG): The classic combo. Bludgeoner lets you deal nonlethal damage with bludgeoning weapon with no penalty, Enforcer lets you make free Intimidate checks when you deal nonlethal damage with a bludgeoning weapon. Excellent for a demoralizing build.
Dazzling Display: With all of your fear-based abilities, a demoralizing build can be quite effective, especially for a fractured mind with higher CHA.
Deadly Aim: An archer (read: an elf or half-elf) will want to pick this up eventually, once the essentials are obtained.
Dimensional Agility/Assault/Dervish/Maneuvers/Savant - Dimension door is on your spell list, so you qualify for these. A combat-focused spiritualist without many feats they need to invest in can get a teleport+full attack Dervish.
Furious Focus (APG): This is a nice companion to Power Attack.
Improved Initiative: Is there a guide out there where this isn’t blue? Always worth picking up if you can.
Lunge: Another solid melee feat that affords you some extra casting security.
Piranha Strike (PC: SLC): Basically Power Attack for finessable light weapons. A DEX-based build is a decent option for a melee spiritualist wielding kukris.
Point-Blank Shot (Rapid Shot, Precise Shot, Manyshot): These are the foundational feats for an archer build, and there are many more solid archery-related feats beyond these.
Power Attack: The king of melee feats is a solid addition to any STR-based build.
Slashing Grace / Fencing Grace / Dervish Dance (ACG / ACO / ISWG): It’s a little tough to meet the prereqs, but these feats allow you to get DEX to damage. Unfortunately, you can’t do two-weapon fighting with these, or use a shield bigger than a buckler.
Nova’s Thoughts: If your group allows 3rd party, there’s always Deadly Agility from Dreamscarred Press’ Path of War. If not, consider an agile weapon for Dex to damage.
Vital Strike/Improved/Greater/Devastating Strike (UC) - Vital Strike keeps you on the move, and goes to good if you can crank your size category enough to make it sting. Yes, full attacking will almost always be better, but it gives you an option in case you can’t. You can’t get Great Vital Strike without multiclassing into full BAB classes more than you probably should (as it will devastate your phantom’s progression). Devastating Strike is only really worth it if you already have Improved and/or Greater.
Weapon Finesse: DEX-based melee is a decent option for the light-armor- restricted spiritualist.
Weapon Focus: It’s a prereq for Dazzling Display, and it’s not bad for your ¾ BAB chassis.
Metamagic Feats
You’ve got two things working against you when it comes to metamagic feats: you’re not a full caster, and thus have fewer spell slots to work with, and you’re a spontaneous caster on top of that, so using metamagic in combat is cumbersome. Thus, you’re best off relying on metamagic rods. That said, there are a few that are worth consideration, particularly for caster-focused builds.
Extend Spell: Possibly the most popular metamagic feat, this is an old standby that’s great for buffing before a dungeon delve. A lesser rod of this is nice and cheap, so you can probably skip it.
Intuitive Spell (OA): You can negate the downside of thought components with a move action; using this feat will take a full round action. Grab a rod if you can spare some extra cash, otherwise don’t worry about it.
Logical Spell (OA): The big weakness of psychic magic is emotion components. There are ways to defend against negative emotion effects, but inevitably something’s going to get through. This is handy in rod form, but you won’t regret simply knowing this feat either.
Quicken Spell: The huge mark-up makes it unattractive for 6th level casters without metamagic reduction. On the other hand, rods of it are incredibly good.
Persistent Spell (APG): Your spells force a second saving throw. It’s solid as a feat, but it’s amazing as a metamagic rod or with metamagic reduction (like Spell Perfection).
Selective Spell (APG): You have some good AoEs (i.e. black tentacles) that it can be nice to be able to use without worrying about allies.
Teamwork Feats
For spiritualists interested in fighting alongside their phantoms, there are a few decent teamwork feats out there.
Lookout (APG): If your phantom has max ranks in Perception, this is a handy feat for ghost and master. Ambushes suck, and this feat is extra insurance against getting caught with your pants down.
Outflank (APG): This is one of the rare solid Teamwork feats, useful if you plan on fighting alongside your phantom as a flank buddy.
Precise Strike (APG): Another damage boost for flank-buddy phantoms (and their master), likely of most interest to Hatred phantoms.
Stick Together (PC: MTT): Straying too far away from your phantom can be an instant dismissal. This teamwork feat gives a phantom and its master a bit more tactical freedom and breathing room, but it must be used wisely.
Spiritualist Spell Selection
As a 1-6 caster, a spiritualist’s psychic spellcasting is a major factor of their overall strength. Their spell list is surprisingly robust, and opens up a number of different strategies and builds.
Spiritualists that plan on fighting alongside their phantoms will probably be best served with buff spells, both for themselves and their ghost. A ‘party cheerleader’ spiritualist will benefit from many of the same choices.
If you’re aiming for a more offensive caster build, there are lots of good options for debuffing. Fear, curses, bad-touch spells; there’s plenty of variety for causing your foes grief. This couples well with debuffing phantoms such as Fear or Despair.
The spiritualist can fill in for a secondary healer, getting access to lots of useful healing and status-removal spells. It couldn’t help to have a few of these around just in case - but even just having spells like cure light wounds on your spell list means you can grab wands or scrolls.
For less scrupulous characters, a spiritualist can embrace the darker side of necromancy to become a true minion-mancer. With their phantom in the vanguard, a spiritualist can become a frightening master of undeath, supplementing their ghost companion with skeletons, zombies, or worse.
Most spiritualists will end up mixing and matching, which is well advised, and you can round out your spells with some useful general utility spells. Your spells known are a precious commodity, as are your daily spell slots. Thus, buff spells will often have better ‘adventuring endurance,’ which is why a melee build is quite attractive. However, combo’d with a debuff phantom, an offensive caster spiritualist can compete with the mesmerist when it comes to crippling your opponent’s wills.
Below I point out the more noteworthy spells on the spiritualist list; there’s a lot I didn’t cover, mostly because they’re of niche or middling use, but you can certainly tailor your spell selection to taste. ~CTP
0-Level Spells / Knacks (6 Known)
You don’t have to sweat your selection of knacks too hard. Grab stabilize, guidance, and detect magic, and the rest is basically gravy.
1st-Level Spells (6 Known)
There are some solid staple spells at this level for spiritualists of all stripes. Your choices this level are similar to those of an oracle, with debuffs, defensive buffs, and healing in the mix. Whether through a rod or the actual feat, you’ll want to grab remove fear and Logical Spell as insurance against fear shutting down your psychic casting. Nothing else is 100% mandatory this level, so pick according to the needs of your build.
2nd Level Spells (6 Known)
This level is great for bad-touch spells. Incorporeal phantoms will suddenly have all sorts of nasty surprises to deliver. Ghoul touch is perhaps the most outright deadly, but there are lots of great options that don’t allow saving throws. Minionmancy comes online this level for enterprising necromancers, as does a few staple spells like invisibility.
3rd Level Spells (6 Known)
Haste and fly are must-haves this level, and there’s lots of other great staples such as dispel magic, slow, and heroism. This is also the point at which you can pick up speak with dead, to unlock the power of the Spirit Symbiosis feat.
4th Level Spells (6 Known)
Several of your nastier spells come online as you finally reach double digits. Confusion, etheric shards, and possession are standouts on the offensive, while dimension door, greater invisibility, and freedom of movement muscle their way onto the defensive/utility stage.
5th Level Spells (5 Known)
Some powerful spells come online for you here, potentially game-changing ones if your party hasn’t yet gained access to things like teleport. There’s nothing that jumps out to me as particularly necessary, but phantom limb can provide a cool offensive boost to your phantom, as can undead anatomy II.
6th Level Spells (5 Known)
You’ve reached the apex of your psychic power! While you won’t be competing with most 8th level spells, you have some solid choices here. It’s hard to argue with greater dispel magic and heal for all-around usefulness. Most play styles get at least one fun ‘capstone’ spell, such as banshee blast for fear builds or create undead for necromancers.
Sample Spell Selection:
Below is a selection of spells for a 20th level Spiritualist, picking generally useful spells, assuming the phantom is being buffed for general combat. This selection is for a good or neutral party, and is thus avoiding evil necromancy spells.
1st:
remove fear, shield, mage armor, telempathic projection, touch of gracelessness, obscuring mist
2nd:
resist energy, lesser restoration, false life, invisibility, ghoul touch, stricken heart
3rd:
haste, heroism, speak with dead, greater magic fang, displacement, slow
4th:
confusion, dimension door, etheric shards, possession, greater invisibility, freedom of movement
5th:
phantom limb, breath of life, dominate person, overland flight, shadow body
6th:
disintegrate, greater dispel magic, getaway, heal, true seeing
Phantoms
A spiritualist’s phantom represents a significant portion of their strength. Depending on the spiritualist’s build and the nature of the phantom, it can serve as a flank-buddy, a tank, a damage-dealing brute, a scout, or a mobile force multiplier (as a debuffer, buffer, or sometimes both). Like the summoner’s eidolon or the hunter’s animal companion, the spiritualist is at their strongest when working with their phantom, and is most vulnerable when their phantom has been banished back to the ethereal plane.
Unlike the summoner and hunter, who have fallback options to rely on should their companion creature be temporarily knocked out of the game, the spiritualist is simply screwed out of roughly half their class features should misfortune befall their phantom friend. However, unlike the summoner or hunter, the phantom has the advantage of two ‘safe states.’ The first is when the phantom is residing in the consciousness of the spiritualist. When the phantom is in the spiritualist’s head, it provides passive buffs and the opportunity to use bonded manifestation, but is otherwise safe from harm (unless the spiritualist dies, but that’s bad for everyone on the team!). The second safe state is when the phantom is incorporeal. It takes some effort to harm incorporeal creatures, so in situations where a spiritualist is concerned for the safety of their phantom, they can have it go incorporeal as an extra form of security.
Phantoms have more in common with eidolons than they do with animal companions; indeed, phantoms refuse to work with eidolons, so a multiclass summoner/spiritualist can’t have both of their buddies out at the same time. Like eidolons, phantoms are outsiders (instead of undead), and have a nearly identical stat progression in terms of BAB, HD, saves, and buffs to abilities and defenses. An eidolon is much more customizable than a phantom (even unchained eidolons), having a flexible system of points to tweak and alter the eidolon to suit its summoner’s needs. The only difference between phantoms is their emotional focus and their feat and skill selections. All phantoms have two slam attacks, and can’t even use weapons or armor, so they’re harder to kit out with magic gear. Also like eidolons, they do not heal naturally, so you’ll need to use magic to cure what ails them, or else use the Heal skill during downtime.
In the end, an eidolon or animal companion will wind up a better fighter than most phantoms, although certain kinds of phantoms are no slouch in combat. Phantoms have the advantage of their weird ectoplasmic/incorporeal nature, allowing them to scout through solid objects and avoid dangers that a more physical being would have to deal with. Depending on their emotional focus, they also get a slew of interesting abilities, often in the form of offensive or defensive buffs for their master and allies, or debuffs for their enemies.
When I use the word ‘you,’ I am referring to the spiritualist master of the phantom.
Phantom Quick Links
Phantom Basics
All phantoms start with the same basic stat block, which is pretty straightforward. The phantom’s emotional focus determines its good and weak saves, which Skill Focus feats it has (and can provide for its master), and often comes with a bonus feat thrown in.
In general, Fortitude and Will are the two preferred saving throws, as most of the abilities that would kill the phantom outright, return it to its home plane, or disable it run off of those. However, every phantom is going to get at least one of these, so it probably won’t be your deciding consideration.
Phantoms are usually the same size as their master or one size smaller, although a small or smaller spiritualist can have a phantom one size bigger; basically, a halfling or gnome could have a medium sized phantom.
Before we go any further, it’s worth discussing the four different states your phantom can be in.
Banished: This is what happens should your phantom be reduced to negative CON hp (slain), or if your etheric tether is broken (that is, if your phantom is beyond the range limit or you’ve lost line of effect with it for too long). This is bad! When the summoner’s eidolon is gone, they still can use their summon monster SLA, and the hunter receives a boost to his summoning and an extra animal focus to apply to himself. As for the spiritualist…
Thus, you want to avoid having your phantom banished if at all possible. You can sacrifice your own hp to prevent your phantom from being ‘killed,’ and once you get the Phantom Recall class feature you can suck your phantom back into the safety of your own head as an immediate action. You’ll also always want to be mindful of how distant you are from your phantom, and you can’t go too crazy with scouting through walls or your etheric tether will break.
In Your Head: This is the ‘default’ state for your phantom, and it’s not a bad one, either! When your phantom is riding along in your consciousness, it has two things going for it:
Importantly, your phantom isn’t idle in this state. While chilling in your brain, it provides passive buffs. You gain a pair of Skill Focus feats, a solid bonus on saves against mind-affecting effects (especially useful when emotion effects can shut down your psychic casting), and the ability to shunt a negative mental status to your phantom once per day (you lose the other bonuses until the negative status is removed from your phantom when this happens, so use caution). Thus, a spiritualist with a ghost in his brain is a tough nut to crack mentally, providing a nice defense against threats to your psychic magic.
Starting at 3rd level, your phantom can partially manifest while residing in your head, providing either weird ectoplasmic goo powers or a modicum of incorporeality’s defensive and stealth benefits.
At 10th level, the phantom always provides its mental defenses to the spiritualist even when fully manifested.
>> Below are the ‘full manifestations.’ These require a 1 minute ritual in order to ‘summon’ your phantom, so it’s best done out of combat. It’s easy to miss, but once fully manifested, a phantom can be switched between ectoplasmic and incorporeal as a full-round action. It’s risky to do in the middle of a fight, but you don’t have to re-summon from scratch if you want to switch your phantom’s abilities. <<
Ectoplasmic: Your phantom puts on some ‘muscle,’ gaining a semblance of physicality in the form of a spooky slime body. This is the default combat state for most phantoms, as it allows them to damage creatures and directly interact with the material plane. While your phantom enjoys DR while ectoplasmic, this is a more vulnerable state than incorporeal, for your enemies can damage the phantom without jumping through hoops. In general the phantom’s AC will be lower in this state, because it doesn’t add its CHA mod as a deflection bonus.
Importantly, your phantom can still move through solid objects while ectoplasmic, and it has a farther range on its etheric tether (100 ft. as opposed to 50 ft.). It’s more risky since it can be harmed more easily, but the ectoplasmic phantom can potentially scout through solid objects farther than when incorporeal. You still need to be wary of spending too many rounds without line of effect to yourself (the spiritualist), but this is still a useful tool.
Note that at ranges farther than 50 ft., the spiritualist has to concentrate every round to maintain the etheric tether. You don’t want to do this during a fight, so be sure to keep your phantom close at hand when danger is near.
Incorporeal: While incorporeal, your phantom can’t go farther than 50 ft. away from you, and it can’t damage creatures on the material plane with its slam attack. In general, your phantom won’t be dealing much physical harm while incorporeal, but it will also be much harder to harm by the same token. Your phantom isn’t useless while incorporeal; it can still Intimidate enemies, and most phantoms have an aura or other ability from their emotional focus that still functions while incorporeal. This is often the superior combat state for phantoms that aren’t built for damage dealing. If your phantom can ‘draw aggro,’ you can either force your enemies to waste attacks on your incorporeal shade, or suffer penalties for not attacking them.
Your phantom has a higher AC when incorporeal: the natural armor bonus is switched to a dodge bonus, and it also gains its CHA mod to AC as a deflection bonus. An incorporeal phantom will have a scary touch AC. Smart enemies will probably try to avoid attacking your incorporeal phantom, but if they do it’s going to be that much harder to even land a hit.
Although the scouting range is shorter for an incorporeal phantom, it is inherently more stealthy; no ectoplasmic residue, and the ability to move in perfect silence makes for quite the sneaky scout. It can’t be sensed by scent or most other super-senses, and doesn’t trigger weight-based traps. Eventually the incorporeal phantom gains a modest fly speed, opening up its scouting ability into three dimensions. Fun fact: incorporeal creatures cannot fall or take falling damage, so you might be able to rules-lawyer your phantom’s ability to cross gaps and gorges before it has an actual fly speed.
Phantom Skills
Some of your phantom’s skill points are automatically assigned: they have max ranks in the two skills tied to their Skill Focus feats based on their emotional focus. The rest of their skill points are free to assign where the spiritualist wishes, reflected by their deceptively low number of skill points on their advancement chart compared to an eidolon.
All phantoms share a number of class skills, plus one bonus proficiency of the spiritualist’s choice. They gain automatic proficiency in their Skill Focus-linked skills as well.
With limited skill points to spare, it’s tough picking a good bonus class skill. Try to tailor it to your emotional focus, especially if your focus frees up points you’d be spending on Perception, Stealth, or Intimidate. Diplomacy is potentially useful if you want to use the Antagonize feat. Acrobatics could be helpful for a melee phantom that plans on being ectoplasmic most of the time.
Base Phantom Abilities
Below I just want to point out some of the useful bits of information that apply to all sorts of phantoms.
Link: A spiritualist is always in telepathic communication with their phantom. Even when the phantom’s in your head, it can use its mental skills and provide a second opinion on events. It’s also a great tool for scouting. Even though a phantom shares magic item slots with you, this is unlikely to matter much, since your phantom can’t bring items with it when it goes into your head, and it has trouble using items while incorporeal.
Share Spells: Like a summoner’s eidolon, a phantom can receive personal-range spells from the spiritualist and be targeted by spells such as enlarge person regardless of its actual creature type. This is most useful for phantoms you plan on using in battle; spells such as shield can give your phantom a decisive defensive edge, for instance.
Deliver Touch Spells: Beginning at 3rd level, your phantom can deliver touch spells while within 30 ft. of you (eventually 50 ft. at 12th level). It can do this even while incorporeal, which is cool! Even if you don’t plan on using bad-touch spells, this can still be a useful way to deliver healing spells or touch-range buffs to your allies. This ability can also be used to heal the phantom as an immediate action.
Ability Score Considerations: Phantoms gain bonuses to their DEX and CHA scores as you level up. Your phantom gains three ability score increases over the course of its career, which you can place wherever you wish. I recommend putting a point into CON to boost your phantom’s hp, especially if you plan on fighting with it while ectoplasmic. An INT boost can get you a bonus skill point per level. Finally, a single point to CHA will bump up its modifier, useful for phantoms that favor incorporeality. With three odd scores in their basic stat block, you can spread out your ability increases between all three, or focus on one for a +2 bonus in the stat of choice. You can also bump up one of the odd scores and increase an even score, such as DEX.
Emotional Foci
Aside from feats and skill selection, the biggest choice when it comes to your phantom is which emotional focus to use. The emotional focus you pick determines the role your phantom will excel at in combat. Some, such as Anger, make your phantom into more of a damage dealer, while others, like Fear or Despair, turn your phantom into a mobile debuffing platform. We’ll do a full breakdown of the various emotional foci below, but here’s the TL;DR version:
Emotional Foci by Role
Damage - Anger and Hatred
Debuffing - Despair, Fear, Pride, and Remorse
Bodyguards - Dedication, Greed, Jealousy, Lust
Buffing - Dedication, Zeal
Which emotional focus is the best? Really, they all come down to personal preference - except Remorse, which lags behind those in its role until high levels. As long as you understand your phantom’s abilities and optimize around them to use them effectively, you’ll get good results out of all of them.
Pay particular attention to a phantom’s good and bad saving throws. It’s difficult to acquire magic items for your phantom, so aside from spells their saving throws will quickly start to trail behind the rest of the party. Their weak save in particular will often be a massive liability for a phantom, particularly a poor Will save. While a phantom can be retracted into the spiritualist’s mind to protect it should it become scared, confused, or charmed, it’s likely going to be out of commission for the rest of the fight, and perhaps even the adventuring day. Use caution around threats that target your phantom’s weak save!
It’s worth noting that if you learn the spell speak with dead and pick up the Spirit Symbiosis feat, you can use said spell to temporarily switch your phantom’s emotional focus to a new one of your choice. This is a cool ability that affords you some flexibility; concerned about a nasty Will-save heavy encounter? Switch to a Dedication phantom and armor your brain. Fighting stuff immune to fear? Switch your Fear phantom out for something more generally useful, such as Zeal.
Occult Realms Update: Occult Realms introduced the Greed, Lust, and Pride phantoms. Much like Remorse, most of them lag behind the utility of the ‘core’ phantoms, with the exception of Lust. Lust is very competitive with Jealousy for a general tank phantom. Greed and Pride are certainly functional, but they’re not quite as robust as some of their peers. Greed in particular lacks focus, reliant as it is on external buff spells. This can of course produce a powerful fighting companion, but somewhat fittingly, Greed will require a higher investment in personal magic power.
Nova’s Thoughts: A significant number of phantom abilities allow saving throws, but the saving throw is based off your phantom’s hit dice and Charisma. Your phantom automatically gets a scaling bonus to Charisma, but the results can be lackluster. In short, do not count on these abilities triggering frequently unless you invest resources like a +6 Charisma item and Ability Focus. For example, the monster creation guidelines recommend a level 20 creature’s primary ability DC be about 27 - at level 20, it’ll be about 22 - appropriate for a CR 14 creature. With Ability Focus and a +6 Charisma item, it’ll hit 27. Whether or not it’s worth it depends on many factors, such as the frequency with which the ability can be used and the action economy behind the ability. Also note that debuffing phantoms like Despair will knock their foe’s saves down, providing an effect DC increase not reflected in these numbers.
Here’s a quick guide to these saving throws by spiritualist class level (assuming no items, feats, or level-up stat boosts in Charisma):
Spiritualist Level | Phantom Saving Throw DC |
1 | 11 |
2-4 | 13 |
5-6 | 14 |
7 | 15 |
8-9 | 16 |
10-11 | 17 |
12 | 18 |
13-14 | 19 |
15-16 | 20 |
17 | 21 |
18-20 | 22 |
Anger
Role: Melee damage dealer, secondary tank.
Skills: Intimidate & Survival
Good Saves: Fort. & Will
Strength Focus: DEX and STR are basically swapped with an Anger phantom, and it gains a scaling bonus to STR instead of DEX. An Anger phantom will thus have lower defenses and stealth, but it saves you a feat on Weapon Finesse and does more damage without jumping through hoops. If you’re mostly going to be “wearing” your phantom, this is a straight upgrade to your Ectoplasmic Bonded Manifestation swift action attacks.
Powerful Strike: Free Power Attack, and an Anger phantom’s slams count as one size category larger. This is a great baseline ability for damage dealing. Stacks with Improved Natural Attack, too.
Aura of Fury: This is a bit of a ‘scorched earth’ aura, creating a double-edged sword that benefits and penalizes enemies and allies indiscriminately. As an aura, it’s of relatively limited use, perhaps most useful for a spiritualist that fights with their phantom in order to bring down an enemy quickly before they can retaliate. Used selfishly, or by the phantom alone, it equates to a simple +4 to attacks, which is pretty nice. The aura takes a swift action to activate, and a free action to end, so the phantom can just have it on during their turn to mitigate risk. Remember, it equates to a +4 swing in attack rolls for you and your opponents, if they can benefit from it - you’re playing with fire if you leave it on all the time.
Ferocious Mein: A 1/day quickened enlarge person and rage for your phantom. Useful if enemies get the drop on you and you don’t have time to buff, it helps your phantom do what it’s good at doing: smashing things. At 18th level it also gains frightful presence, but this is unlikely to be useful, since it’s based off of the phantom’s HD, which will always trail behind its master’s (at level 18, it can only affect creatures with 13 HD or less).
Furious Wail: The Anger phantom’s ‘capstone’ is a 1/day 9th level spell in the form of wail of the banshee. While this is pretty metal, it’s problematic. The range on wail is short, but has a 40 ft. radius spread and is non-discriminatory. Since you’re probably going to be within 50 ft. of your phantom, getting this ability off without catching yourself or your allies in the radius is going to be dicey. Oddly, this ability is probably best used as a panic button while your phantom is scouting alone, hopefully with a solid wall between it and your living friends.
CTP’s Thoughts: The Anger phantom is the main damage-dealer of all the phantoms, making it closest to a regular eidolon or animal companion. Its job is to get into melee and punch things, ideally after getting buffed up to the nines. It’s enough of a threat that enemies have to pay attention to it, which makes it a decent tank as well. The main weakness of the Anger phantom is its lower defenses compared to other phantoms, and the fact that it’s going to spend most of its time ectoplasmic. You’ll have to devote resources to protecting it, as well as patching it up after a scrap.
While you can build your spiritualist to fight alongside the Anger phantom, it’s probably the best fighter for spiritualists that want to hang back and stay out of the fray. A more melee-leaning spiritualist will certainly enjoy the ectoplasmic bonded manifestation after 8th level, adding pummeling slime-fists to any attack routine. The Anger phantom isn’t subtle, but is pretty good at what it’s supposed to do. The eidolon or animal companion have the advantage of using permanent magic items to pump up their stats and options, so your angry ghost pal will be heavily reliant on buff spells to help it overcome odd DR types, etc. Eidolons will usually have more attacks to throw around, as will many animals, so the Anger phantom will never be quite the murder machine as its living cousins.
From a flavor standpoint, I like the Anger phantom. There’s lots of reasons to be pissed after you die, and the Anger phantom gets to take out its frustration on your enemies. It probably won’t be very pleasant to interact with, so you’ll definitely want to hide it during social encounters.
Nova’s Thoughts: Anger is (unsurprisingly) sort of the “barbarian” of the phantoms: It smashes things. If you want a phantom that smashes people, take it; if not, keep moving. The closest thing to micromanagement you’ll need to do is reminding your GM that yes, you’re Power Attacking, and you’re turning off Aura of Fury at the end of every turn.
Dedication
Role: Bodyguard, defensive buffer.
Skills: Diplomacy & Sense Motive
Good Saves: Ref. & Will
Iron Will: Not only does the Dedication phantom get Iron Will as a bonus feat, but it provides it to its master when it’s in their head as well! The master of a Dedication phantom is nigh-impervious to mental harm when sharing consciousness with their ghost pal.
Dutiful Strike: Whenever its master is attacked, a Dedication phantom retaliates with extra fervor. This ability is more useful if the spiritualist is fighting alongside their phantom, fighting shoulder to shoulder.
Defending Aura: Although the range is very short, this is a solid defensive buff. Again, it’s of most use to a master fighting alongside their phantom.
Devoted Servant: Should you be caught with your pants down, a 12th level spiritualist can instantly manifest their Dedication phantom. This is a nice clutch ability.
Steadfast Devotion: Immunity to mind-affecting effects and possession, as well as banishment or dismissal. This is a solid defensive capstone for your ghosty-ghost.
CTP’s Thoughts: The Dedication Phantom is best used as a melee buddy and mobile defensive buff. Be sure to take advantage of Spiritual Interference! This phantom helps shore up defenses, allowing its master to concentrate on offense. You’ll need to as well, since the Dedication phantom’s main weakness is damage output.
This is a weaker choice for an offensive caster-leaning spiritualist. If you’re staying out of the fray, you won’t get the full benefits of this phantom’s abilities, although it can still serve as a nice defensive bastion for your allies; it’s probably best to keep it incorporeal in this case.
From a flavor perspective, the Dedication phantom has tons of built-in drama. Whether it’s the spirit of a devoted parent, ancestor, or even a departed lover, the Dedication phantom is perhaps the most benign of all the phantoms, and likely the least freaky once you get used to its presence.
Bonus points if your phantom is Bill Cosby or Patrick Swayze.
Nova’s Thoughts: Never want to have to worry about losing your emotion-component spells? Look no further. You get the standard +4 vs. mind-affecting abilities plus Iron Will - at level 1, that’s a +8 modifier before Wisdom modifier; a dwarf with a Wisdom of 18 would be rocking a +14 Will save against mind-affecting spells. Keep your noggin locked up like Fort Knox. It’s not bad against physical threats either.
Despair
Role: Debuffer
Skills: Intimidate & Stealth
Good Saves: Fort. & Will
Power from Despair: A despair phantom receives an attack and damage boost against any target suffering from a fear or sadness emotional effect. Remember that you have this, especially if you’re keeping your phantom ectoplasmic! At level 7+, this is always on (except against opponents immune to fear effects) as Aura of Despair triggers it.
Miserable Strike: Essentially a melee debuff when your phantom is in the thick of fighting. Sadly, I don’t believe it triggers Power from Despair, unless your GM rules that it counts as a ‘despair effect.’
Aura of Despair: This is more like it! No save, just suck. Perfect for softening up targets for your spells.
Despairing Shout: Crushing despair 3/day isn’t too shabby, although the save DC isn’t likely to be too difficult. Still, it’s fun to spam while your phantom’s incorporeal.
Inescapable Despair: By the time you get this, Miserable Strike isn’t really much to write home about.
CTP’s Thoughts: Of the two primary debuffer phantoms (the other being Fear), the Despair phantom is a bit more inherently user-friendly. The main draw is Aura of Despair. Just let it hang out while incorporeal, spamming Intimidate and making enemies around it suck. It’s probably more attractive to caster-leaning spiritualists that want help landing their save-or-X spells.
From a flavor perspective, the Despair phantom is likely to be one of the most depressing, and possibly annoying. You could play it for laughs, a sort of ‘Eeyore’ ghost, or you could delve into gothic melodrama and wallow in overwhelming bleakness.
Nova’s Thoughts: Dis pear...so delicious. Seriously, though, this is kind of the debuffing equivalent of Anger. Do you want to drop your enemies’ saves? Take it. If not, there’s better choices.
Fear
Role: Debuffer
Skills: Intimidate & Stealth
Good Saves: Reflex & Will
Stealthy - It’s better than not getting a bonus feat, right?
Horrifying Strike: Creatures hit by the phantom’s slam have to save or be shaken (doesn’t go beyond shaken). It forces the save with every attack, which is decent.
Increase Fear: Increase fear in a 20ft. radius as a swift action; allows a saving throw. The good news is that your phantom probably doesn’t have anything else to do with its swift action and their saves are already going to have taken a hit from their previous fear condition. The bad news is that if they make their original save, you’ll never get the chance to escalate it.
Frightful Attack: Creatures hit by the phantom’s slam have to save or be frightened. Strictly an upgrade from Horrifying Strike+Increase Fear, as you can get everything done in one saving throw. You can still choose for them to be shaken for some reason - perhaps if you don’t want them to run.
Shelter Allies: The spiritualist always gets fear immunity if the phantom isn’t banished, and all allies in the fear aura get immunity to fear.
Nova’s Thoughts: If you want to meddle in fear effects, you can do worse than a Fear phantom. However, a melee build dedicated to something like Bludgeoner+Enforcer with unchained skill unlocks will almost always do the job better. It’s not bad certainly, but if you just want to tank your opponents’ saves, go with Despair.
CTP’s Thoughts: The Fear phantom is a more tactical debuffer choice than Despair, requiring a bit more strategy for set-up. Fear is a good choice for a caster-leaning fear build; your phantom softens targets up for any number of your fear spells. I believe Despair is ultimately more useful for a larger variety of builds in the end.
If you’re going for a fear-based caster build, be sure to pick up Emotional Focus. You’ll get early access to staple spells such as fear, as well as frightful aspect as a 6th level spell, which is awesome for you or your phantom.
For flavor, the Fear phantom is (unsurprisingly) spooky. It’s very close to your ‘standard’ ghost, all rattling chains and eerie wails. Its got a lot of hooks as a ‘victim’ when it was alive, inviting mystery or intrigue. It could also represent a person who let fear control their lives, now tortured after death by their psychosis.
Greed (OR)
Role: Melee combatant (buff dependent)
Skills: Appraise & Sleight of Hand
Good Saves: Fortitude & Reflex
Eye of Avarice: Your phantom will know the price of things! The buff to ID-ing magic items is nice.
Ruthless Combatant: Same base combat perk as the Zeal phantom; better than nothing.
Assume Effect: This ability increases the efficiency of your spell slots, allowing you to get double your money on buff spells a (very) limited number of times per day. Best used on higher level spells.
Covetous Aura: Greed waits a long time for an aura, but it might be worth the wait. In combat, this aura is of nebulous use. However, its real value is when your party is casting a sequence of buffs. Even though it’s limited to 2nd level or lower spells, if you time things correctly your phantom can receive an incredible variety of buffs at no cost in resources. Work with your party; spells like barkskin, shield of faith, resist energy, or heroism (from a bard or skald) can significantly boost your phantom’s stats. The more friendly casters are in your party, the more valuable this becomes.
Take It with You: The Greed capstone is pretty tame, if for no other reason than it requires your phantom to ‘die,’ which is something you want to avoid. However, should the worst come to pass, the phantom can ‘pass on’ a number of still-active buff spells to its spiritualist master, which is nice. Considering they might very well be sharing the same spells (with the same durations), this is of even more questionable use.
CTP’s Thoughts: The Greed phantom is pretty sub-par compared to most other phantoms; it’s completely reliant on external buffs to determine its combat effectiveness. If you’re starting play at high enough level for Covetous Aura, and your party contains multiple casters, the Greed phantom is an interesting magnet for buffs. It extends the efficiency of spell slots, but that’s about it.
From a flavor perspective, a greedy soul likely has lots of selfish reasons to linger on the material plane. It likely shares similar quirks with a Jealousy phantom, resenting the living’s ability
Hatred
Role: Melee damage dealer, limited buffs
Skills: Acrobatics & Perception
Good Saves: Fortitude & Reflex
Weapon Finesse - This almost certainly would have been your first feat. Lets you move on to something more interesting sooner.
Hated Target: Move action (or a swift action at level 7) to dedicate an opponent as a target, granting a +2 bonus to attack rolls and +½ HD to damage (min 1.) - both untyped. Applies a penalty when attacking other targets until level 7. The action cost hurts when switching targets, but you’ll always be happy to have it.
Hateful Aura: Creatures within 10ft. that hurt the phantom or its spiritualist take damage equal to the phantom’s Charisma mod. There’s no limit to the amount of times this can activate in a round, and it doesn’t allow a saving throw. Nice against creatures with a large number of attacks (i.e. Monks, natural attackers, archers), but it’s rarely going to be the deciding factor in combat.
Sneak Attack: 3d6 sneak attack against your hated target (5d6 at level 18). That’s nothing to sneeze at, especially when you can be a flanking buddy for your phantom. If you VMC (variant multiclass) rogue, you could be sneak attack pals.
Shared Hatred: Allies get a +2 to attack and +4 to damage (untyped) against your hated target, you can designate a hated target while incorporeal, and you can make slam attacks against a hated target while incorporeal. Being able to fight unhindered while incorporeal is huge - you take 50% damage from non-force effects, you ignore natural armor, shields, and armor, ignore penalties for fighting in water, can’t be tripped or grappled, and get Charisma to AC as a deflection bonus, and I’m leaving out some things. Expect your GM to blink and sputter a few times and demand to see the book the first time you try this out.
Nova’s Thoughts: It starts off decent, but it scales into a fairly monstrous assassin. It’s my pick for a damage-focused phantom.
CTP’s Thoughts: The Hatred phantom is the thinking-man’s combat choice. Weapon Finesse as a bonus feat is a godsend, and it makes a great flank-buddy. My main critique of the Hatred phantom is the long wait for sneak attack; it has trouble competing against the Anger phantom until that point, as far as raw damage output is concerned.
Flavor-wise, the Hatred phantom is up there for one of the more spooky choices. It could be relatively benign (the spirit of a goblin-hating dwarf, for instance), but leans towards darker souls.
Jealousy
Role: Bodyguard
Skills: Appraise & Bluff
Good Saves: Reflex & Will
Deceitful - Your phantom can just chill in your mind. No reason to put fake moustaches on it (though it could be amusing to put a sheet with two eyeholes over it and tell people it’s a ghost costume).
Jealous Combatant: Creatures the phantom attacks take a -2 penalty if they don’t attack the phantom. Useful for its role.
Hateful Aura: Causes enemies within 20 ft. that don’t attack the phantom or include it in AoEs to be staggered until the end of their next turn on a failed save. That means if someone tries to full attack the spiritualist and fails their save, their full attack is over for their turn (and it’ll be tough to escape next turn). There’s no once per day per creature limit or even a 1/round limit: Every time they’re in range and don’t target the phantom, they have to save vs. staggered. A level 20 full bab archer with haste and Rapid Shot will have to make six saving throws to get their full attack off. There’s no “offensive” spell limitation, so technically the enemy cleric who casts bless or cure light wounds would be subject to it, though I would recommend players and GMs assume that it’s meant to be there.
Retribution: Bonus damage against people that attack the spiritualist. Useful, but doesn’t blow the doors off.
Mine to Take: 1/day, the phantom can swap places with the spiritualist as an immediate action to take a blow or nasty effect. Can be used while incorporeal, which is fancy. Just be careful not to move yourself into a more dangerous position (i.e. if your phantom was engaged with a more dangerous enemy on the other side of the battle).
Nova’s Thoughts: It’s a very solid tank - crank the saving throw for Hateful Aura as much as possible, and you can really screw with opponents that rely on full attacks.
CTP’s Thoughts: I was somewhat surprised to discover the Jealousy phantom functioning as a tank, but it makes sense in a way. It’s actually pretty good at what it does; I’d be inclined to keep it incorporeal once Hateful Aura comes online. This is a decent choice for a more caster-leaning spiritualist that wants to keep enemies off their back.
There’s a lot of fun flavor potential here. A Jealousy phantom will be inclined to ham it up, seeking the spotlight and attention whenever possible. This might make it something of a liability, but it’ll certainly be entertaining.
Lust (OR)
Role: Tank, Debuffer
Skills: Bluff & Diplomacy
Good Saves: Fortitude & Will
Constitution Focus: The Lust phantom will have more hp than any other phantom, but pays for this with a much lower AC. You’ll want your Lust phantom incorporeal most of the time to compensate.
Alluring Presence: Right out of the gate, Lust gets a great tanking ability. It’s only once per round (taking an immediate action), but it’s a great way to redirect attacks at the (ideally incorporeal) phantom. Pump up that Diplomacy modifier!
Mine Alone: Another awesome defensive perk, benefitting the spiritualist as well as the phantom. The threat of charms and compulsions drops significantly.
Aura of Ecstasy: This aura is non-discriminatory and very short range, but it’s a nasty penalty on a failed save. There’s no reason not to send your Lust phantom into the enemy’s grill.
Sinful Command: The DC won’t be great, but a 1/day 9th level spell in the form of dominate monster is nothing to sneeze at.
CTP’s Thoughts: Lust just might be a more pure tank than even Jealousy. Jealousy is a more active participant in combat, while Lust simply hangs around and hogs attention. It’s an even more defensive choice than Jealousy, designed to soak damage. Keep it incorporeal at all times; it’s not here to deliver damage. At higher levels it doubles as a debuffer, becoming a true nuisance to your foes.
While a Lust phantom can be a disturbing and unusual departed soul, I think it has even greater potential coupled with a fractured mind spiritualist. A manifestation of the spiritualist’s darkest desires is really cool!
Pride (OR)
Role: Skirmisher, debuffer
Skills: Perception & Intimidate
Good Saves: Reflex & Will
Resolve: Immunity to fear is nice, but this is extremely fragile. Don’t count on this ability at all.
Flagrant Disregard: A sort of ‘power attack’ ability, boosting accuracy at the cost of defense. Annoyingly, it requires a swift action to use.
Vainglorious Oration: What’s nice about this ability is that the enemy does not get a save, making Pride a decent choice for a fear-stacking build post 7th level. The enemy needs to remain close or else the debuff fades away, however.
Overwhelming Confidence: Doubling a morale bonus is great, but it’s tied to the Resolve ability, and actually penalizes having a morale bonus should you lose Resolve (read: fail nearly any roll). This discourages the casting of morale bonus spells, rather than encourage it, in the end.
Illusion of Perfection: This is a pretty tame capstone, providing nothing but a damage buff. It’s okay if you like your phantom in the thick of things, but it’s hardly earth-shattering. It also eats up swift actions, which is a bit frustrating.
CTP’s Thoughts: The Pride phantom sure likes eating up swift actions. The best thing going for it is Vainglorious Oration, which is a nice no-save debuff. Otherwise, it’s a bit too reliant on the fragile Resolve ability. It’s a functional general-purpose phantom, but it lacks a certain amount of focus.
The Pride phantom is likely to be pretty annoying, but it also has lots of comedic potential (built in mechanically, no less). The departed spirit of a famous hero or villain could lead to lots of interesting flavor.
Remorse (OO)
Role: Debuffing
Skills: Perception & Sense Motive
Good Saves: Fortitude & Will
Antagonistic - Antagonize is a divisive feat whose power sways heavily depending on how your GM enforces it. If you’re going to use this phantom, be upfront with your GM about it and don’t use the feat outside of combat.
Long-Suffering Strike: The phantom’s attacks force their target to make a save; failure means attacks against that target get a +1 to attack and damage. Without the save, or if it scaled in any way, this could be decent.
Aura of Regret: Enemies within 10ft. take a -2 penalty to skill checks, CMB, CMD, and caster level checks. If you’ve got an ally with a CMB focus, this could come in handy a little. Most of the time, it’s forgettable.
Keening: Terrible remorse once per day (but in a 30ft. cone instead of one creature); the spell inflicts the staggered condition even on a successful save, so this is a decent (if limited) AoE crowd control ability.
Utter Misery: Long-suffering strike gets upgraded into an all-day, every day, every attack Stunning Fist. At max level with haste, that’s 4 attempts on a full attack to stun a target for a round. Very, very powerful.
Nova’s Thoughts: This one starts off pretty awful, but becomes amazing at 17th level. I wouldn’t suffer through 16 levels for it, but if you’re starting at a very high level or can retrain, I’d give it a look.
CTP’s Thoughts: You’re stuck with the Remorse phantom if you take the Fated Guide archetype, so think it through. Compared to Fear or Despair, it lacks real teeth as a debuffer.
It has compelling flavor potential, especially as a repentant evil soul, but it’s in the running for crappiest phantom mechanically, level 17+ notwithstanding.
Zeal
Role: Buffing, secondary damage dealer
Skills: Acrobatics & Survival
Good Saves: Fortitude & Reflex
Tracking - +½ HD to your phantom’s Survival to follow tracks. One of the most forgettable parts of being a Ranger, now on your phantom!
Ruthless Combatant: Improved Critical+. Not bad, but not reliable.
Determination Aura: Allies within 20ft. gain a +2 competence bonus to attack rolls and saving throws. Doesn’t stack with a bard’s inspire courage, but if your party didn’t have a competence bonus to attack rolls or saves anyway, this is very good.
Steadfast Servant: Your phantom stays when you’re unconscious or asleep. Give it a wand of cure light wounds or some ranks in Heal in case it needs to save your life. Even better than the summoner’s Resilient Eidolon feat.
Zeal’s Resolve: Reroll 3 attack rolls/saving throws per day as a free action. You get to pick whether to use this ability after you’ve already failed, which is an important distinction.
Nova’s Thoughts: It’s a very decent all-round phantom. It doesn’t have the heights of damage or defense that some of the other phantoms can reach, but it doesn’t have too many low points either.
CTP’s Thoughts: The Zeal phantom is the only ghost I’ve seen in play. Determination Aura is awesome, and even the tracking ability has come in handy a few times. The Zeal phantom is not a heavy damage dealer, though. It actually functions pretty well incorporeal most of the time, just providing passive buffs and spamming Intimidate. I agree with Nova that it’s a solid all-purpose phantom that will function well for most parties. It’s biggest weakness is the poor Will save; it has a tendency to get banished back to the Spiritualist’s head whenever mind-affecting threats show up.
From a flavor standpoint, the Zeal phantom is likely the next most benign phantom after Dedication. Of course, it could also just be obsessed, and wind up being an asshole. It’s got good ‘unfinished business’ hooks for a wide variety of backstories.
Phantom Feats
Aside from skills and emotional focus, feats are your primary way to customize your ghost pal. Sadly, there’s a number of ‘feat taxes’ that most phantoms are going to have to take, which makes the actual number of free feats even smaller than they appear at first blush.
If you’re interested in teamwork feats, see the Spiritualist Feats section.
Ability Focus (Bestiary): This feat is vital for certain types of phantoms with special attacks or auras that have a saving throw DC. Despair, Fear, Jealousy, and Remorse will benefit from this feat a great deal.
Bludgeoner (UC)/Enforcer (APG): The classic combo. Bludgeoner lets you deal nonlethal damage with bludgeoning weapon with no penalty, Enforcer lets you make free Intimidate checks when you deal nonlethal damage with a bludgeoning weapon. Slams do bludgeoning damage, and they’re the only form of attack available to your phantom.
Combat Reflexes/Bodyguard (APG)/In Harm’s Way (APG) - Combat Reflexes is always a decent feat, but with your phantom’s free Dexterity scaling, they can pretty easily achieve a solid number of attacks of opportunity. Bodyguard provides a use for those attacks of opportunity to defend the spiritualist or another high-priority target. In Harm’s Way is so-so as-is, but it depends heavily on your GM’s interpretation of it: If your phantom just take the full damage without respect to its defenses, the feat just OK. If the damage is resolved as if the attack originally targeted your phantom, then it’s amazing, because your phantom can use it while incorporeal to redirect the attack and halve the damage.
Dazzling Display: This is a great option for Intimidate-spamming phantoms, especially if they spend most of their time incorporeal. Excellent for debuffers like Fear or Despair.
Improved Trip/Grapple/Dirty Trick/Etc.: Unfortunately, your phantom’s BAB is always going to be too low to really take advantage of a dedicated CMB build. If you’re dead set on it, start with Dirty Fighting from the Dirty Tactics Toolbox to circumvent the worst of the prerequisites.
Improved Unarmed Strike/Feral Combat Training (UC): A choice for high level phantoms only - possibly retraining. Improved Unarmed Strike does absolutely nothing for your phantom, and Feral Combat Training doesn’t really, either. The benefit is that you can use your slam attacks for unarmed strike feats like style feats.
Improved Initiative: In Pathfinder, going first often means winning - getting your phantom where it needs to be, when it needs to be there is invaluable.
Improved Natural Attack (Bestiary): Most phantoms have trouble with damage output; this feat helps them with this problem. This feat is probably the single biggest damage boost a feat can provide as long as you have a way of increasing your phantom’s effective size, such as Anger’s Powerful Strike ability. Improved Natural Attack is one of the very few ways to increase your phantom’s slam damage if you plan on using ectoplasmic bonded manifestation at level 8+ for the two swift action attacks per turn. Here’s how your phantom’s natural attacks will stack up (numbers in parentheses represent average damage):
Spiritualist Class Level | Base Phantom | Phantom with Improved Natural Attack | Phantom with +1 size modifier | Phantom with +1 size and Improved NA | Phantom with +2 size** and Improved NA |
1-4 | 1d6 (3.5) | - | 1d8 (4.5) | - | - |
5-8 | 1d8 (4.5) | 2d6*(7) | 2d6 (7) | 3d6* (10.5) | 4d6* (14) |
9-12 | 1d10 (5.5) | 2d8 (9) | 2d8 (9) | 3d8 (13.5) | 4d8 (18) |
13-16 | 2d6 (7) | 3d6 (10.5) | 3d6 (10.5) | 4d6 (14) | 6d6 (21) |
17-20 | 2d8 (9) | 3d8 (13.5) | 3d8 (13.5) | 4d8 (18) | 6d8 (27) |
*Requires retraining to have Improved Natural Attack at level 5. The phantom qualifies at spiritualist level 5, but doesn’t get a feat until spiritualist level 6.
**Such as an Anger phantom with Ferocious Mein active.
Improved Spell Sharing (ACG): If your GM allows your phantom to count as a companion creature for purposes of qualifying for this feat, it’s really really good, especially for spiritualists that plan on fighting alongside their phantoms. It saves you spell slots and potentially improves action economy as well.
Iron Will: If your phantom has a poor Will save, this is a wise pick, especially as you approach the mid to upper levels. Banishment or dismissal are basically save-or-dies for your phantom, and you’ll need every edge against them you can. It’s even worth considering on a strong Will save phantom if you can fit it in. Dedication gets it for free.
Lunge: Lunge is a nice feat on its own, but it’s really useful for phantoms by extending the range of Spiritual Interference. If you’re flanking with a Lunging phantom, for instance, you can still benefit from the defensive bonuses of Spiritual Interference even while 10 ft. away. Once Greater Spiritual Interference comes online, it helps spread the love to your other allies in melee. Combos well with Combat Reflexes.
Piranha Strike (PC: SLC): The wording of this feat implies that it can be used with natural weapons, which gives DEX-focused melee phantoms a much-needed boost to damage. The alternative would be cranking your phantom’s Strength enough to qualify for Power Attack, but it’s much more efficient to go with Piranha Strike.
Signature Skill (PU): Allows your phantom to pick up an unchained skill unlock. The obvious one is Intimidate for a fear-based build, but Stealth and Acrobatics also stand out. Remember that you’ll never get the 20th skill point unlock for a phantom (as it only has 15 HD).
Skill Focus: Skill Focus (Intimidate) is quite helpful for phantoms that plan on spamming demoralize attempts. Skill Focus (Perception) is awesome on a Zeal or Dedication phantom as it keeps guard, or just to prevent unpleasant surprises in general.
Toughness: One of the main feat taxes for phantoms, especially if you plan on fighting with them while ectoplasmic. Even with a d10 HD, phantoms are going to be behind the rest of the party in terms of actual number of HD, and will need every boost to their hp you can manage. If you’re planning on mostly relying on an incorporeal or mind-bound phantom, this isn’t quite so vital.
Weapon Finesse: If you plan on having your phantom fight, you’ll pretty much have to take this. It’s one of the main feat taxes for phantoms, since they really only have melee attacks and gain a scaling bonus to DEX. The only two phantoms that don’t have to worry about this feat are the Anger and Hatred phantoms; Anger uses STR as its main attack stat, while Hatred gets Weapon Finesse for free.
Weapon Focus (slam): Pumping up your phantom’s attacks is always useful, and there are few ways to do this outside of buffs or magic item juggling. Importantly, this is a prereq for Dazzling Display, which can be effective for phantoms with a solid Intimidate modifier.
Archetypes
Ectoplasmatist
There are some archetypes that make you wonder how badly the designer must have hated the original class that they decided to just discard the whole thing and make their own.
Welcome to the Ectoplasmatist, the soulknife/magus/spiritualist guy.
The first thing we should note is that, oh yeah, you lose your phantom and everything that goes with it, which is about 90% of your class features besides spellcasting. This is obviously a huge raw power loss. The question is, can the features the Ectoplasmatist provides make up for it? The answer is often “no,” without conscious and heavy optimization.
If you want to deal respectable damage, you’re pretty much locked into shocking grasp+Magical Lineage+Intensify Spell and a level 0 touch-range spell. The only way I’ve found to do that is Samsaran, pulling shocking grasp and touch of fatigue from the occultist’s spell list. Why? You’re a combat, focused medium BAB class with no damage increases and no bonus feats. If you just want to play a Wisdom-based, combat-focused, 2/3rds spellcaster without a pet, try Inquisitor or Warpriest for a class with actual combat-enhancing features. The ectoplasmatist has to use his Spiritual Combat to making up for losing just about everything else from his class.
That being said, Spiritual Combat’s ability to full attack while casting a spell, combined with the range increases of ectoplasmic lash mean that you can still put out a moderate amount of damage while continuing to cast every turn. There’s no reason you can’t full attack and throw out a debuff, buff, or other support spell - it’s just that you could be throwing out those support spells from a safer distance while your phantom goes to town with its own set of actions if you’re not that interested in melee.
Ectoplasmic Lash
You get a unique weapon with a scaling enhancement bonus and some special abilities. You must be using it to get the full benefit of the archetype’s abilities, so the only time you might theoretically might not be using it is level 1 and perhaps when you need a ranged weapon or need to pierce damage reducing. The bad news is that you’re stuck with it; the good news is that it’s pretty decent.
Here’s a quick comparison of the enhancement bonus compared with the Dreamscarred Press Soulknife, the magus’s arcane pool, the warpriest’s favored weapon, and the automatic bonus progression variant from Pathfinder Unchained:
Enhance- ment Bonus | Ectoplasmatist Level | DSP Soulknife Level | Magus Arcane Pool | Mindblade Magus Weapon | Warpriest Favored Weapon | Automatic Bonus Variant |
Masterwork | - | 1 | - | - | - | - |
+1 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 3 | 4 | 4 |
+2 | 6 | 6 | 5 | 6 | 8 | 9 |
+3 | 10 | 9 | 9 | 9 | 12 | 14 |
+4 | 14 | 12 | 13 | 12 | 16 | 15 |
+5 | 18 | 15 | 17 | 15 | 20 | 17 |
As you can see, ectoplasmic lash is fairly competitive, at least as far as enhancement bonuses go. The mindblade magus stands out as a serious competitor, as it also had 6th level casting.
Your weapon takes a full-round action to summon, but has no duration and doesn’t disappear after leaving your hand. Summon it at the beginning of the campaign and sheathe it like any other weapon. Only re-summon when you need to switch forms.
You can summon it in light form, one-handed form, or two-handed form. Light form is for Dex builds, one-handed for Str. You can’t use Spiritual Combat (i.e. your primary class feature) while using your two-handed form, so it’s only useful to Str builds at levels 1 and 2, and possibly if you’re out of spells for the day; it’s nice having a proper 2d6 damage two-handed for levels 1 and 2.You won’t be two-weapon fighting with light form past level 2 (if at all) - Spiritual Combat requires 1 hand free.
It’s worth noting that Slashing Grace won’t give you Dex to attack with the one-handed form, and Dervish Dance (a magus favorite) only works with scimitars - if you want to use the one-handed form, Str is the only way to go.
The niftiest feature of the ectoplasmic lash is its scaling reach - +10ft. (!) at level 8. This means you can full attack a foe who can’t reach you, and then they won’t even be able to 5ft. step to full attack you back next turn. It also means you can use Spiritual Combat to full attack while casting a spell and not provoke attacks of opportunity with your spells. This reach also stacks with everything, including size increases. It provokes attacks of opportunity from levels 4-7, so avoid using it to attack creatures with a size advantage over you or a reach weapon. You can also manipulate objects with them. Neat?
Your various weapon forms count as your alignment at level 6, become ghost touch weapons at level 8, and gain two bonuses as the spirit-bound blade spell at levels 12 and 16.
So when we total that up, that’s a +5 weapon, ghost touch (+1), and two spirit-bound blade bonuses (+1 each)=+8 weapon. A little disappointing until you remember that you also gain +10ft. of reach while using them, and I would definitely consider each +5ft. reach equal to or greater than a +1 special quality. Is it the absolute most powerful weapon in the game? No, but it will take care of your weapon budget, freeing that money up (often a quarter of your WBL or more) for things like enhancement bonuses to your physical ability scores.
Spiritual Combat
This is almost word-for-word Spell Combat and Spellstrike class features of the magus. The long and the short of is that you can full attack and cast a spell with a single full-round action (not even using up your swift action), and when you cast a spell with range “touch,” instead of getting a free touch attack, you get a free weapon attack to channel the spell.
The way a magus uses this is to use shocking grasp with Magical Lineage and Intensify Spell to make full attacks with a bonus attack that stacks with haste and deals +1d6 electricity damage per magus level, maximum +10d6. The spiritualist doesn’t have shocking grasp on their list, unfortunately, and the only way I’ve found so far to add it is with the Samsaran race. Thankfully, the occultist has shocking grasp on their spell list, and they’ve got plenty of goodies on their spell list to choose from (enlarge person, lead blades, planar binding, etc.). Make sure to take touch of fatigue so you have an all day/every day way to trigger the bonus attack from Spiritual combat.
The spiritualist does have useful touch-range spells to choose from (harm, anyone?), but you really want a solid first-level spell to carry you the whole game without eating up your upper-level spells known. Remember: The spiritualist has an amazing spell list; you want to be cramming your list known with goodies like haste, fly, dispel magic, invisibility, dimension door, heal, and the like, not constantly needing to trade up for a slightly better damage spell.
As an aside, definitely look to take Spell Perfection for your primary attack spell. I’m a fan of Spell Perfection (shocking grasp+Quicken Spell) because it gives you a bonus attack with the shocking grasp rider damage as a swift action - at level 20, with haste, your attack routine becomes Full BAB/ Full BAB (haste)/ Full BAB) (shocking grasp)/ Full BAB-5/ Full BAB-10/Full BAB (quickened shocking grasp). Even if just the full BAB attacks hit, that’s a minimum of (1d8+Str+5)x4+20d6 electricity damage.
Ectoplasmic Armor
At level 4/12, you gain a +4/+6 armor bonus to AC, and at level 12, this bonus has the ghost touch property (meaning it applies against incorporeal creatures). You’re proficient with light armor, so this will very rarely be relevant - if you’re caught without armor, if you’re attacked by an incorporeal creature at level 12+, or if for some reason you don’t wear armor (such as a VMC monk - but you’re almost never going to VMC monk, because then you wouldn’t be using your lash). Generally, just buying and wearing armor is going to be superior to this.
It’s worth noting that you don’t get the shield bonus from Ectoplasmic Bonded Manifestation that a normal spiritualist would be expecting, so shield bonuses (such as from a shield spell) become something to seek out.
Nova’s Thoughts: This archetype has real potential, so it’s a shame that you’re restricted to one race to function optimally. If your GM is kind and allows you to get shocking grasp and a level 0 touch spell (even arcane mark) from another source, this archetype can actually mix with Fractured Mind - it doesn’t use Wisdom except for spellcasting and the drop-attack-roll-for-bonus-to-concentration effect you should never be using anyway. If you just want to play a spontaneous psychic magus and aren’t concerned about getting the spiritualist’s broad but support-focused spell list, check out the mindblade magus, which also gets fun things like the ability to spell combat with its two handed form, and the ability to summon specific weapons instead of generic light/one-handed/two-handed weapons.
CTP’s Thoughts: I don’t think you need shocking grasp to make this archetype work. Let the magus be the magus. I see this as more of a ‘I like bad-touch spells a lot’ archetype, cutting out the phantom as the middle man. You’ve got at least one solid touch attack spell per spell level. Touch of gracelessness is pretty brutal at level 1, and remains nasty throughout your career. Pimp your save DCs for ghoul touch and you won’t need extra damage; you or your allies can just deliver coup-de-graces to your paralyzed (and smelly) foes. While you won’t be out-damaging the magus, you’ll be laying on lots of nasty debuffs from the safety of whip-range, with better out of combat utility on the side. The magus spell list doesn’t contain a lot of the spiritualist’s bad-touch spells, so it winds up a very different style of combat-magic blending. Again, I am reminded of melee builds on a dread necromancer from 3.5; indeed, you could still make undead minions to fill the gap left behind by the phantom if you are so inclined.
Fated Guide
Well, if you want to step into the vast, renowned fantasy world of [redacted], look no further than the fated guide. Kidding of course, but the archetype grants the Deific Obedience feat, which really does nothing for you unless your group has Inner Sea Gods (as it references non-OGL material not available on the SRD or in Occult Adventures). The fluff is cool - you’re helping the phantom discover its life and find peace.
You get disrupt undead and sanctify corpse as spells known - better than nothing, I suppose. You are also locked into the Remorse phantom, which is much worse than nothing, because Remorse is one of the least desirable phantoms until very high levels. Your phantom gets Deific Obedience instead of Antagonize, which I mostly call a net gain because of the rules issues with Antagonize.
You then drop either your ectoplasmic or incorporeal bonded manifestations to gain a unique “thanatopic bond.” This mostly grants mediocre-to-bad abilities like pseudo-Diehard at 8th, antilife shell at 13th, and a positive energy (damage only) touch attack at 18th. For the original two bonded manifestations, ectoplasmic is consistently good, and incorporeal grants lots of goodies later - it’s hard to imagine wanting to give up either of them for thanatopic.
You lose seen invisibility and call spirit for a +4/+8 untyped bonus at levels 9/16 vs. banishment, dismissal, and similar effects, which is mostly a net gain (trading situational active abilities for a situational, enormous passive bonus against something very bad).
Nova’s Thoughts: Now here’s the kicker: Remember the bit about thanatopic bond mostly granting mediocre to bad abilities? Well, it lets you speak with dead, as the spell. It’s a major, major stretch of RAW, but if you could talk your GM into letting you use Spirit Symbiosis in conjunction with this, you could switch out your phantom’s emotional focus on the fly, taking this archetype from having the most restricted phantom by emotional focus to the most freely customizable phantom by emotional focus. I like the idea and would probably allow it in a campaign (requiring the two full rounds to use it and the normal minute to re-summon it to ectoplasmic form), but your group’s enforcement of RAW will vary. If you just want some religious fluff, onmyoji will generally give you better bang for your buck.
~CTP’s Thoughts: Having access to Inner Sea Gods, I can safely say that Deific Obedience is largely pretty ‘meh.’ There are a few decent ones, but they depend on the deity in question. If you’re evil, they’re mostly terrible, since they often require blood sacrifice or other outlandish things. The good to neutral ones are easy enough to execute and usually grant some sort of fiddly-to-decent passive bonus. It’s time consuming regardless, though.
Fractured Mind
Though it has already been discussed under Races, it’s important to look at this archetype in detail. First and foremost, it swaps out Wisdom for Charisma for your spellcasting, inverting your stat choices and shaking up your build in many ways. When it comes down to it, it’s mostly personal preference.
With that in mind, it’s important to look at the spell-like abilities that get swapped around; all daily uses are assuming level 20. The saving throw DCs for these spell-like abilities are equal to 10 + 1/2 the fractured mind's spiritualist class level + the fractured mind's Charisma modifier, rather than being based on the spell's level.
Random spells of note:
Spell-Like Abilities by Emotional Focus
Class Level | Base Class | Anger | Dedication | Despair | Fear |
5 | detect undead (at will) | enlarge person* (4/day) | command* (4/day) | bungle* (4/day) | bane* (4/day) |
7 | calm spirit | rage* (4/day) | spiritual weapon (4/day) | stricken heart (4/day) | mad hallucination* (4/day) |
9 | see invisibility (1/day) | longstrider* (3/day) | bless* (3/day) | doom (3/day) | doom (3/day) |
16 | call spirit | shout* (2/day) | death ward (2/day) | crushing despair (2/day) | phantasmal killer (2/day) |
(Continued)
Class Level | Base Class | Hatred | Jealousy | Remorse | Zeal |
5 | detect undead (at will) | doom (4/day) | sanctuary (4/day) | doom (4/day) | bless* (4/day) |
7 | calm spirit | inflict moderate wounds (4/day) | resist energy (4/day) | inflict pain (4/day) | spiritual weapon (4/day) |
9 | see invisibility (1/day) | bane* (3/day) | entropic shield* (3/day) | stricken heart (3/day) | divine favor* (3/day) |
16 | call spirit | bestow curse (2/day) | spell immunity(2/day) | mind fog* (2/day) | freedom of movement (2/day) |
* Spells not on the Spiritualist’s class spell list; every emotional focus gets at least one.
CTP’s Thoughts: Fractured Mind is a great archetype, not because it is better or worse than the standard spiritualist, but because it opens the class up to a much wider variety of races and character concepts. If you don’t like the baggage of having a mopey dead ghost-thing following you around, but like the idea of having some messed-up part of your character’s own mind manifesting as a freakish monster, this archetype gives you the full green light to do so. Most phantoms are going to resemble humanoids, but a fractured mind’s phantom could be anything you could imagine; while mechanically the same, you could have some hideous nightmare beast, a demonic mirror image of your character, etc.
Geist Channeler
Interesting fluff - basically, you channel things closer to a vestige (to those familiar with Tome of Magic) instead of a ghost/petitioner thing. The crunch, however…this archetype is a straight downgrade from the normal spiritualist. It’s a shame.
Geistform Phantom - No ectoplasmic form, half the slam attacks, can’t deal damage at all to corporeal creatures until 5, and can’t deal full damage to corporeal creatures until level 10.
Emotionless - Technically, you have no emotional focus. Crunch-wise, it’s more like a unique emotional focus, with Knowledge (arcana) and (religion) for the associated skills, Reflex and Will for the good saves, and Iron Will as a bonus feat. Unfortunately, it doesn’t get Dedication’s “you get Iron Will when it’s in your mind.”
Unnerving Touch - This is exactly like Fear’s Horrifying Touch, but worse because you don’t get two attacks to trigger it twice. Ok, being able to use it as a touch attack is situationally useful, and it lasts 1 more round. Weee.
Poltergeist's Knack - Telekinesis as a spell like ability, starting at 3 times per day. Can’t use the combat maneuver option, unfortunately.
Spectral Protection - Spend your action to prevent incorporeal creatures from approaching you. Maybe if it was a passive aura, or could be activated with a swift/free action it might be worth it.
Malevolent Possession - Your phantom can possess people. It’d be really useful if this could have come online sometime before 17th level.
Spiritual Manifestation - Can’t use the ectoplasmic bonded manifestation, either.
CTP’s Thoughts: I like to think of this archetype as the 9th emotional focus. The other emotional foci are either dark, violent, or passionate, so it’s nice to have a more neutral or detached option.
It’s basically a debuffer like Fear or Despair, but lacking real teeth. Unnerving Touch is a functional set-up for a fear stacking build, but the lack of a more generally useful combat aura prevents it from keeping pace. Ultimately, you’re depriving yourself of half of the phantom’s features and abilities, and not really getting anything in return.
Haunted
This is an odd archetype. Instead of bonded manifestation, your phantom gains the ability to drain its master of power, growing bigger and nastier in the process. While the phantom is super-charged, the spiritualist is nauseated, which mega-sucks. This archetype is primarily of interest to Anger phantoms, which are STR-based. Let’s take a look:
3rd level: +2 natural armor coupled with an immediate-action enlarge person. It’s important to note that this triggers on an immediate action from the phantom on the spiritualist’s turn, and it’s a free action to dismiss on the phantom’s turn. The phantom could wait to activate this ability at the end of its master’s turn, then dismiss it at the end of its own turn to allow its master to act.
If you cycle rounds in this way, the spiritualist suffers few negative consequences. However, this eats up your phantom’s swift action every round (relevant for an Anger phantom using Aura of Fury), and it’s more difficult to take advantage of the enlarged phantom’s improved reach for attacks of opportunity, etc.
8th level: For double the cost in spell slots, the phantom can cast any of its master’s spells as a swift action. It can’t do this on the round it activates Usurp Manifestation, since that takes an immediate action from the phantom, but it does take the sting off of the hit to action economy you take from having a nauseated master. Again, this prevents Aura of Fury cycling as well.
13th level: Basically heroism while usurp manifestation is active. Considering the duration on heroism, this is only useful if you’re caught with your pants down.
18th level: Extra DR and some decent SR while using usurp manifestation. Not bad.
CTP’s Thoughts: Hmm… If you weren’t planning on using bonded manifestation (implying you’re a caster-leaning spiritualist), and you’re taking the Anger phantom as a punch-smash-meatshield, this archetype gives you enlarge person for your phantom with better action economy. It’s simple enough to cycle Usurp Manifestation, but once 8th level and Aura of Fury come online, it’s starting to interfere with your phantom’s swift actions.
The main strength of the spiritualist, like any buddy class, is the action advantage of controlling two characters and having them work together. Having the spiritualist so heavily gimped during Usurp Manifestation robs you of this advantage, even with the other bells and whistles attached. If your game is sticking to low levels, such as E6 or something, this archetype is actually pretty decent. Post level 8, though, and you’re starting to shoot yourself in the foot.
For NPCs, this can make for a really memorable villain. The spiritualist could be little more than a victim, bullied into serving the phantom’s whims.
Onmyoji
In the end, this archetype is about giving up several useful abilities for some cleric spells. It’s a big investment, big reward kind of option - make sure that you’re actually getting cleric spells that are worth it out of the equation and that you couldn’t get what you want by being samsaran.
Divine Spellcasting - Sort of strange, but it’s moderately interesting. Verbal and somatic components are more familiar, and arguably easier to work around than emotion components.
Spiritual Resistance - Trade the frequently helpful shared/fused consciousness for a more conditional bonus against fey, incorporeal undead, and outsiders. Outsiders do make up a huge portion of mid to high level enemies, and fey tend to make up a decent portion of low level enemies, but this is all campaign dependant. If you’re only ever fighting humanoids, this is abysmal. If you’re plane hopping, ghost-busting, etc., this could be semi-useful.
Divine Teachings - You’re losing the useful greater/spiritual interference, but you’re gaining 6 spells from the cleric list (one of the largest and possibly the second best list after the wizard/sorcerer list). Only being able to cast them while your phantom is in your consciousness is a little annoying, but you probably weren’t going to be casting planar ally in combat anyway.
Shadow Caller (UI)
Like the Geist Channeler, this archetype is a sort of ‘super emotional focus’ with some other bells and whistles, focusing on stealth and shadow-spookiness over the more traditional ghost abilities of the standard spiritualist. Shadow callers are at their best when fighting opponents at a disadvantage in the dark; if you’re going to be fighting enemies with dark vision (especially devils), you’ll be shooting yourself in the foot here.
Shadowcaster: Some bonus spells for your spell list, and a CL buff on shadow and darkness spells. It’s an upgrade to your casting.
Shade: Instead of a phantom, you have a shade. It functions in most ways as a phantom, but inhabits your shadow instead of riding along inside your head. It has no emotional focus, instead receiving auras and abilities through the archetype itself. With good Ref. and Will saves and Lightning Reflexes as a bonus feat, it has a decent defensive spread. Intimidate and Stealth as its bonus skills and Skill Focus is ideal for stealthy scouting and fear stacking tactics.
Weakening Touch: The baseline ability for your shade, it’s okay. The STR debuff works whether your shade is ectoplasmic or incorporeal, giving it something to do in either form. No save to negate, but it’s a minor penalty overall.
Umbral Shroud: The shade’s aura ability provides concealment and improves stealth, but the limitations from Shadow Bound means opportunities to use this will be scarce until you get the upgrade at level 17.
Shadow Caster: The 1/day limitation kind of sucks, but there’s a lot of versatility wrapped up in these spells, and it improves with age. It’s a nice ace in the hole.
Midnight Shroud: This late-game improvement to Umbral Shroud is excellent insurance vs. forms of magic that might otherwise combat your various darkness abilities. It finally allows your shade to manifest and move around with some regularity, although you’ll still be more limited than a standard phantom.
Inhabit Shadow: Rather than improving your mental defenses, your shade enhances stealth and provides (or improves) darkvision while inhabiting your shadow. Shadow callers thus have less formidable mental defenses, but hopefully the stealth improvements keep you out of trouble to compensate.
Shadow Bound: Here’s where we enter Suck Town. The shade is even more restricted by its ‘tether’ than a standard phantom, to the point where manifestation is almost unworkable. However, a shade can ignore any tethering limitations as long as it and its master are in total darkness. This is naturally quite risky, and without phantom recall there’s not a lot you can do should an enemy pop off a light source at an inopportune time.
Shadow Jump: You lose phantom recall, but you gain a shadow dancer’s teleport ability while your shade inhabits your shadow. It’s a nice ability to be sure, and considering the limitations of Shadow Bound you’ll probably want your shade close at hand regardless.
See in Darkness: You lose see invisibility and gain see in darkness a limited number of rounds per day. Considering how often you’ll be popping off things like deeper darkness, this is a handy ability to have.
Umbral Aura: You’ve already given up the normal mental defenses of a phantom, so losing fused consciousness is par for the course. This ability is a solid boost to your defenses and stealth capabilities, however.
Living Darkness: Your immunity to mind-affecting effects only works while using incorporeal bonded manifestation, but you also gain a nasty incorporeal touch attack. This new capstone is something of a wash.
CTP’s Thoughts: The main thing working against this archetype is the limitations imposed by the Shadow Bound ability. Your abilities and usefulness are extremely dependent on illumination levels, and while you can control those to a certain extent, it’s never going to be total control. You face a sort of catch-22: if you’re fighting enemies without darkvision, you’ll be dealing with a lot more ambient light sources, and if you’re fighting enemies with darkvision, a lot of your defensive abilities are rendered moot.
Considering the risks to your shade when manifested, you’ll often be better served keeping it in your shadow, relying on your own spellcasting and bonded manifestation. Of course, your shade lacks a ‘killer edge’ like the Anger or Hatred phantoms, so it’s only going to be so useful in combat regardless.
You’ll be amazingly stealthy, so use that to your best advantage. You’ll be an excellent scout and spy; pursue Intimidation to help soften targets for your spells. On those occasions when things are nice and pitch-black, you can split off from your shade and tag-team enemies as they helplessly fumble in the dark.
Ideally your allies will be able to operate in the dark; otherwise, think carefully before allowing your friends to light torches. I like the flavor of this archetype a great deal, but in the end it’s got less raw offensive and defensive power.
Zeitgeist Binder (UI)
Playing in an urban game, and want a spiritual tie to your city? The Zeitgeist Binder might just be what you’re looking for. It is very comparable in power to a regular spiritualist (more specifically a fractured mind), but is somewhat dependant on remaining within a single community.
Settlement Aspect: As well as an emotional focus, you pick an aspect of your chosen community for your zeitgeist to embody. This determines your bonus SLA’s like a fractured mind, but you can only use them while in your chosen community. Below are the various SLA’s; ones not on the spiritualist spell list are marked with an asterisk*.
Settlement Avatar: You lose the scouting utility of bonded senses and the defensive benefits of fused consciousness, but you gain a free teamwork feat with your zeitgeist and an interesting ability to observe anything related to your zeitgeist’s settlement aspect within a certain distance. You can use this as a ‘crime sense’ for instance, or gain the ability to eavesdrop on any party with a Society zeitgeist. This is a relatively open-ended ability, and rewards creativity. Think enough outside the box, and it becomes a pretty useful spying tool.
CTP’s Thoughts: This is a fun and flavorful archetype for an urban campaign, certainly. A zeitgeist is probably a lot less scary than a phantom, but if it comes from a particularly nasty city or neighborhood it could be just as disconcerting. There’s a lot of RP potential here; work with your GM to really embody spirit of your chosen city.
Multiclassing
Your casting and main class features (read: your phantom) are very dependent on your actual spiritualist levels, so multiclassing is generally discouraged (as is the trend in Pathfinder). However, considering your capstone is pretty mild, and few games ever even reach the upper teens, snagging a few levels in another class can sometimes be worth consideration.
A level in a full BAB class will get you better weapon and armor proficiency; remember, heavy armor does not interfere with psychic casting. A paladin dip is potentially attractive for a fractured mind with their CHA bonus. If you took a level of Cavalier with the Ghost Rider archetype, you could have a ghost horse!
Level 8 is a decent point to break away from Spiritualist, since that’s the level your phantom’s aura and your ectoplasmic bonded manifestation come online. An incorporeal phantom passively providing their aura can be helpful, especially auras that don’t allow saving throws such as Despair, Dedication, or Zeal.
One class you should never ever take is Summoner. It specifically states that eidolons and phantoms do not get along, so you’ll never be able to have two buddies out at a time. This would theoretically shut down a gestalt build as well, which is unusual but worth mentioning.
Variant Multiclassing
Variant Multiclassing (or VMC) was introduced in Pathfinder Unchained. It provides an alternate way to mix and match class features from various other classes without actually multiclassing. Instead, you pay the cost of half (!) your feats.
For the feat-starved Spiritualist, this is not something to be taken lightly. It’s easier on more caster-leaning spiritualists that don’t plan on pursuing an important chain of combat feats.
The main draw of VMCs as opposed to regular multiclassing for the spiritualist is that you maintain character level=class level for the purpose of your spells and phantom. Being that your spells and phantom comprise about 90% of your power, you really don’t want to endanger their progression.
From a flavor perspective, VMC can be fun for any spiritualist, since the fluff of the class is that you can’t ‘choose’ to be a spiritualist: it’s a phenomenon. A VMC spiritualist could be any other sort of character that just happened to resonate properly with a wayward phantom. Such a character could pursue their newfound powers with curiosity, or perhaps hold a grudge toward their phantom and their own rotten luck.
Alchemist: Even with a modest INT, this provides a number of interesting tools. Caster-leaning spiritualists get a nice offensive option with bombs, and melee spiritualists will love mutagens.
Nova’s thoughts: I prefer barbarian for the melee spiritualist, because rage comes online faster (by 10 levels!), gains customization through a rage power, and eventually advances to mighty rage. Mutagen can be maintained throughout the day as long as you have downtime between combats, though.
Barbarian: Great raw stats for a melee-focused spiritualist, but beware of the inability to cast while raging. One rage power is pretty decent, but you can also funnel your (admittedly very limited) feats into things like Extra Rage Power, Extra Rage, Raging Blow and the ever-necessary Raging Vitality.
Bard: This is an interesting choice for a fractured mind that wants to be a ‘party cheerleader’ or party face. You can hang back and use bardic performance to boost your allies and phantom in combat, and it will alleviate some of the squeeze on your skills.
Cavalier: If you’re interested in teamwork feats, the Tactician ability is a great way to get more bang for your buck. The various order abilities and Challenge are nice perks for combat spiritualists as well.
Cleric: Best on a fractured mind, certain domain powers can unlock fun tricks. Travel and Luck have pretty solid boons, for instance. Perhaps more importantly, you get a nice little reservoir of healing or anti-undead AoE damage. A good choice if you’re saddled with healing responsibilities.
Druid: Why not double-up on buddies? Become a one-character army and acquire an animal companion. You’ll want to pick up Handle Animal as a class skill through a trait if you can. Limited wild shape is icing on the cake.
Magus: Magus is good with just about everyone, though slightly less so in the spiritualist’s case with their lack of Int focus. The arcane pool brings flexibility and raw power, and there’s not really a build that wouldn’t want at least one magus arcana. It’s a way to pick up spellstrike for non-Ectoplasmatist spiritualists, but remember that it only works with spells on the magus list, like vampiric strike and chill touch.
Monk: If you want to try your hand at unarmed fighting for some reason, you might as well go VMC monk. You’ll need to rely on mage armor and other spells for defense, since you can’t wear armor. The biggest issue is that it’s a Catch-22: You need a bunch of feats to take advantage of what VMC monk brings you (as most monk-themed feats are stacked with prerequisites), but you have to give up half your feats to get VMC monk. Clear with your GM whether you count as a monk for the purpose of feats - if you do, it grants you much quicker access to vital feats like Pummeling Charge (monk level 8 vs. BAB +12) and much better interaction with feats like Stunning Fist (attempts per day = monk level).
Oracle: There’s a bit more synergy here for fractured minds, although regular spiritualists can find lots of goodies as well. You can pick up heavy armor proficiency, healing, metamagic… lots of options. The Haunted oracle curse is quite thematically appropriate. Be very careful about the restricted revelations list and limited scaling, though.
Rogue: Can couple well with the Hatred phantom, although becoming a sneak-attack duo doesn’t really come online until level 12 (the latter half of your career). Remember before you try to dual wield that you won’t have Weapon Finesse+Two Weapon Fighting until level 5 without a human bonus feat.
Sorcerer: There are lots of goodies for fractured minds here. You can pick up a familiar, gain various SLA’s, or nab passive defenses. Not all bloodlines are dependent on CHA, making this an option for regular spiritualists as well.
Wizard: Grabbing a familiar is nearly worth the price of admission alone (and note that familiars are not on the list of creatures the phantom won’t play nice with). Certain school powers are also handy, such as divination (+½ level to initiative!) or transmutation.
Nova’s Thoughts: I wrote a whole guide on VMCs! As a general note, be extremely careful about the level you take a VMC. Many of them are worthless until a certain point or after a certain point. I’ll let the guide explain more, but I highly recommend sticking with pure spiritualist (or whatever you base class is) until the correct entry level and then retraining.
Items
There is exactly one spiritualist-specific item in Occult Adventures: Spirit Revivification Powder. For 800g a pop, when you summon your phantom, you heal it completely. The problem is that a wand of cure light wounds is 750g - an average of 275 HP worth of healing. A phantom with all level-up points in Con, a +6 item, Toughness, and the human favored class bonus is going to have 207 HP. Paying more for less healing? Not a good choice. Sure it’s 5 minutes to burn 50 charges, but in game terms, 1 minute and 5 minutes are basically identical. If for some reason you find a series of feats/items/etc. that allows your phantom to exceed 275 HP, it might be worth it to keep one around. But buy a wand of cure light wounds as well.
A Spiritualist’s equipment needs are relatively straightforward. Consider taking a peek at my Psychic guide’s equipment section for some ideas, as well as my thoughts on several items introduced in Occult Adventures.
Homebrew
If Paizo ever makes feats or magic items like this, consider taking them:
Boon Phantom - Boon Companion for phantoms. Would make multiclassing so much more doable.
Extra Bonded Manifestation - You can use your bonded manifestation an additional six rounds per day (as Extra Rage).
Implement-Bound Phantom - Your phantom develops a deep attachment to magic items you provide it with; whenever it enters or leaves your consciousness, it does not drop all magic items it wears or carries.
Morphic Phantom - Evolved Familiar for phantoms.
Resilient Phantom - Resilient Eidolon for phantoms.
Wandering Phantom - The maximum distance your phantom can be away from you increases to Medium (100ft. +10ft. per class level, halved for incorporeal phantoms).
Warrior Phantom - Your phantom can wield weapons and wear magic armor. Perhaps only if they have the ghost touch property?
Emotional Conduit - Greed, Lust, and Pride phantoms don’t have a list of bonus spells for this feat (as far as I know). Below is a proposed list:
Greed: 1st—blood money, 2nd—demand offering, 3rd—locate object, 4th—envious urge, 5th—covetous aura, 6th—analyze dweomer.
Lust: 1st—unnatural lust, 2nd—seducer’s eyes, 3rd—lover’s vengeance, 4th—sadomasochism, 5th—dominate person, 6th—waves of ecstasy.
Pride: 1st—delusional pride, 2nd—eagle’s splendor, 3rd—smug narcissism, 4th—mirror transport, 5th—seeming, 6th—greater heroism.
Additions to the spirit-bound blade spell: Below are three options for Greed, Lust, and Pride phantoms in combination with this spell (I’m not sure if they received any in Occult Realms).
Greed: The weapon also gains the mighty cleaving special ability.
Lust: The weapon also gains the countering special ability.
Pride: The weapon also gains the courageous special ability.
Fractured Mind Spell-like Abilities:
As far as I know, the new emotional foci in Occult Realms don’t have corresponding SLA’s for the Fractured Mind archetype. Below are some suggestions:
Greed: identify (5th), create treasure map (7th), floating disk (9th), shrink item (16th)
Lust: detect charm (5th), enthrall (7th). tap inner beauty (9th), charm monster (16th)
Pride: moment of greatness (5th), mirror image (7th), youthful appearance (9th), unbearable brightness (16th)
Spiritualist Roleplaying Ideas
The spiritualist, perhaps more than the average class, gives you one giant question to answer through your backstory: How did you and your phantom become connected? What follows is a list of ideas to get your creative juices flowing:
