13th Age Character Builds: Focused-Rebuke Occultist

Occultist

by ASH LAW

The occultist is an odd class—there is only ever one occultist in any campaign. The occultist is The occultist, singular.

As the occultist you’ll need to pay careful attention to what is happening at the table. Most of the occultists powers involve rewinding time, nudging reality, and so forth. Your powers all interact with and are triggered by the actions of others, so you’ll be keeping a constant eye on what is going on at the game table.

As an occultist you get more talents than just about any other class: six compared to the usual three. Your choice of talents is far more important than your spell selection to what your character can do—after all your spell selection can be chosen anew at the start of each day. In addition, your flexible recharge feature lets you pick a new spell when one recharges instead of recharging the same spell (in effect you roll to recharge spell slots rather than spells). So with the spells listed in occultist builds I’m listing the spells that you are most likely to pick at the start of each day, rather than the totality of occultist spells that you might use throughout the day.

Focused-Rebuke Occultist

Download Focused-Rebuke Occultist character sheets here.

This build is intended to maximize your potential damage output by making enemies vulnerable to you, increasing your chances of karmically rebuking them, and enabling you to target the lowest of MD or PD.

In battle whenever you start a turn with focus you should immediately use a quick action to cast karmic rebuke, then use your standard action to regain focus. As soon as you cast an interrupt spell and lose focus you should use your superior rebuke talent to attempt a free karmic rebuke. The rest of the tactics for this character involve staying out of melee combat, but close enough to the fight that you can be effective with your interrupt-action spells.

Oh, and by using unwinding the soul we increase the chance of critting (paired with superior rebuke that gives us a lot of potential crits).

Talents

Brain-Melting Secrets

When you hit an enemy with a psychic attack they can’t attack you on their next turn unless you are the only nearby enemy. As we are going to try for the maximum rebukes possible that means we’ll also shut down potential attackers from targeting the occultist. The adventurer feat makes this talent play nicely with warp flesh.

Superior Rebuke

With the feat that we’ll take at 1^st level this talent gives a 30% chance of casting karmic rebuke whenever you lose focus. At champion tier rebukes also happen 20% of the time when you roll initiative (but see the racial choice for how we’ll get that number higher).

Unwinding the Soul

On a natural 11+ spell attack make the target vulnerable to your attacks until the end of the battle.

Warp Flesh

Twist your spells to target PD instead of MD if that would work better for you, and get bonus temporary hit points with that feat.

Icon Channeler (gained at 5^th level)

You lose three icon dice (giving you only one at champion tier and two at epic tier) but you always get a ‘free’ 5 result which you can apply to any icon when you roll your icon dice.

Otherworld Shadow (gained at 8^th level)

Your shadow is a companion to you, taking attacks on your behalf.

Race

Humans with their quick to fight racial power tend to act first—meaning that you’ll be able to get focus early in the battle. That extra human feat is going on improved initiative to further improve the chances of getting initiative early and to make up for the low Dexterity of this build. At champion tier, the human racial power meshes nicely with the champion feat for superior rebuke—increasing the chances of an early rebuke to 40%!

Attributes

Intelligence is sovereign for this character, with and Wisdom it’s equal consort: Str 8 (-1) Con 10 (0) Dex 8 (-1) Int 19 (+4) Wis 19 (+4) Cha 8 (-1).

1^st level

Attributes: Str 8 (-1) Con 10 (0) Dex 8 (-1) Int 19 (+4) Wis 19 (+4) Cha 8 (-1).

Racial Power: quick to fight

Talents: brain-melting secrets, superior rebuke, unwinding the soul, warp flesh

Spells: karmic rebuke (class feature), better yet-here, moment of karma, brilliant comeback, inevitable fall

Feats: improved initiative, superior rebuke

2^nd level

Spells (1^st level: karmic rebuke (class feature), better yet-here, moment of karma, brilliant comeback, inevitable fall, timely mistake), new feat (brain-melting secrets).

3^rd level

Spells (1^st level: better yet-here, moment of karma 3^rd level: karmic rebuke (class feature), blood for blood, fortune smiles, strike of the last breath), new feat (warp flesh).

4^th level

+1 to three attributes (Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom), spells (3^rd level: karmic rebuke (class feature), better yet-here, moment of karma, blood for blood, fortune smiles, strike of the last breath, brilliant comeback), new feat (unwinding the soul).

5^th level

New talent (icon channeler), spells (3^rd level: better yet-here, moment of karma, blood for blood, 5^th level: karmic rebuke (class feature), crooked step, stifle, fortune smiles), new feat (superior rebuke).

6^th level

Spells (5^th level: karmic rebuke (class feature), better yet-here, moment of karma, crooked step, stifle, blood for blood, fortune smiles, strike of the last breath), new feat (brain-melting secrets).

7^th level

+1 to three attributes (Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom), Spells (5^th level: better yet-here, moment of karma, blood for blood, fortune smiles, 7^th level: karmic rebuke (class feature), crooked step, stifle, arcane loop, liberating blow), new feat (unwinding the soul).

8^th level

New talent (otherworld shadow), spells (7^th level: karmic rebuke (class feature), better yet-here, moment of karma, crooked step, stifle, blood for blood, fortune smiles, strike of the last breath, arcane loop, liberating blow), new feat (superior rebuke).

9^th level

Spells (7^th level: better yet-here, moment of karma, crooked step, stifle, 9^th level: karmic rebuke (class feature), blood for blood, arcane loop, liberating blow, hasten fate, rewind the skeins), new feat (brain-melting secrets).

10^th level

+1 to three attributes (Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom), Spells (9^th level: karmic rebuke (class feature), better yet-here, moment of karma, crooked step, stifle, blood for blood, fortune smiles, arcane loop, liberating blow, hasten fate, rewind the skeins), new feat (unwinding the soul).