Occult Archetypes is from publisher Legendary Games, a brand that frequently produces great products. Often they are divided into different categories based on Paizo adventure paths they allude to plug into but also in-house settings and entire modes of play under Pathfinder. In this case this is an 'occult plug-in' meaning that its all about Occult Adventures and the options that it presents with new archetypes and other options. There are a little over 20 archetypes in its 40 pages (along with some reprinted rules such as spells from the Technology Guide and Wizard elemental schools).
Being rather young classes, the Occult classes definitely need some room for growth and flavor and this product brings it.
The Kineticist archetypes brings us a radiation-based kineticist that's alignment-locked into non-good. One gives us a kineticist with some psychic spells. But other than that I feel like the archetypes are mostly cosmetic in the sense that they don't change any of the basic dynamics of the class although there are some cool concepts with importing some class features like channel energy and the oracle's curse. That's not to say that they are boring. There's some concepts that are mostly a matter of flavor but are really cool, like the archetype that sources the Kineticist abilities from an item rather than the character itself producing a kind of Green Lantern feel.
Some of the Medium's archetypes are obvious. Get a druidic caster mode and a psychic caster mode with archetypes to support it and also a short archetypes that tweaks a little with a lot of impact.
Mesmerist gets just two but I wasn't terribly interested in them. They give some new flavor to Mesmerist when the class is pretty narrow but I feel represent a flavor already handled by other classes. One even sprinkles a bit of Bard in there which is just blasphemy to me.
I'm a bit biased against the Psychic so this one is pretty subjective but I really am not feeling the archetypes inside. They are most pretty much a psychic only kind of like another class, particularly gaining some items from Wizard and Monk like Wizard Schools, Wizard Elemental Schools, all good saves and evasion. One even gets prepared casting. If you already a fan of the Psychic class these are pretty aggressively interesting changes that expand expectations of how the class operates but I kind of saw the Psychic as a different casting Sorcerer so adopting class features from other classes just transfers the class's boringness to a class other than Sorcerer.
The Spiritualist is another class that feels like a New Coke version of another, in this case the Summoner, and this book doesn't help by presenting an archetypes that makes the spirit even more like an eidolon. But there's also two other archetypes that give something new are imported from the occultist which are more exciting.
There's a revision on how to deal with psychic abilities with monsters to make it more in line with how spell like abilities work in monsters along with revised entries for those abilities from the more recent psychic creatures. I do have a beef with this. Not the fact that they did it or anything but there's a table for that right in the middle of the Psychic's archetypes that takes up a full page instead of it being right after the page that explains it, which is slightly confusing. Also I'm not fond of mixing some GM information in archetype books (player information) unless its a bigger book that covers a broad amount of categories of a topic. Especially since it's about six and a half pages of stuff I may or may not use really.
On a rules and rules language front I didn't notice any problems with Occult Archetypes. There are a few archetypes that are inspirational and open up new concepts and others I feel reeks of gridfilling mechanics onto the new classes. Overall its a worthwhile buy. At it's worst about half of it contains interesting archetypes that bring you closer to new concepts that you may have had trouble with before and at it's best almost all the archetypes give you a new dynamic to it's respective class and you can easily make psy-like abilities work the same way other spells work instead of being something new and weird. Honestly most of the things that I was less than thrilled with is a victim of how expanded Pathfinder is to me. Like the very concept of a fiend hunter mesmerist gives something new to the mesmerist but between almost all the divine classes, Slayer and Ranger I think I've had my fill of the concept and I don't see what the Mesmerist brings to it. But on the other hand the Mesmerist has something new to do that's interesting. Meanwhile there's straight gems like the Poison Earth Kineticist that uses radiation. I want to give this a 4 out of 5 because there's a significant chunk that I don't really care about but I think that if I look at it objectively its a solid product that expands what the occult classes can do without being huge nerfs or being overpowered so I'm bumping it to a 5 out of 5 for what it is.
You can find this over on Paizo.com here.
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