[Purple Duck Games] Kineticist of Porphyra (and guide) discussion


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Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

Does anyone have any solid builds or recommendations for the Elemental Avatar archetype? It fits really well thematically with a major NPC in a campaign I'm running, but there are so many options, analysis paralysis is definitely setting in.

Silver Crusade

ZZTRaider wrote:
Does anyone have any solid builds or recommendations for the Elemental Avatar archetype? It fits really well thematically with a major NPC in a campaign I'm running, but there are so many options, analysis paralysis is definitely setting in.

To help with that, can you tell me which KOP volumes you own?

I mean for me, Brutal Mutation from KOP 3 is pretty vital for Avatar to help buff the talents you can select with with EWT.

General advice wise, I generally like to focus on earth talents to start, although making sure you have the prereqs for wings of air ASAP is basically vital, so that might be a better starting point. Remember, retraining is VERY important. I'm talking about the class's innate retraining ability, although Ultimate Campaign retraining is also amazing.

Once you get Wings of Air, it goes into what you want to do more, although for infusion choice I'd go along with water infusions since they play nicer with spirit blast, and spirit blast should be your composite of choice. Fire's sadly the least power element you can really focus in, so for me, the important of elements is EARTH>AIR=WATER>Fire, where air and water is more on preference. Earth has a lot of utility to it, making it the best primary focus in my estimation, although with KOP 2/3 stuff, you can make a stronger case for air and water. I'd only focus fire if you're using KOP 3 stuff, as flame dancer and flame conduit make for some impressive ground mobility.


Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Hmm, gotta admit, I'm a bit curious...is there a particular reason that charged attacks and natural rush don't work with unarmed strikes being augmented by kinetic fist?

Also, if you have improved elemental limb, can you reshape limbs that are augmented via elemental limb, or is that only for permanent replacements? It feels like it might be the latter, but maybe you have your arms covered in elemental material you're reshaping? Got to admit, I was a bit surprised that telekineticists don't get access, since imagining something like a puppet arm being manipulated via etheric strings seemed pretty appropriate...though maybe that would be better as a magic item?

I was also a little surprised that oread elemental brethren can't pick up wood as an option, especially with the existence of the fertile soil alternate racial trait which seems to make it a somewhat thematic option.

In Which Luthorne Pointlessly Gripes For Too Long:
My other minor gripe is you don't really have much for void when it comes to gravity manipulation utility wild talents...you do have some infusions with high gravity and low gravity infusions (and I guess immobilizing infusion), but most of the utility wild talents seem to primarily focus on negative energy and darkness...which is fine and dandy, but I'd like it if messing around with gravity had some more options. Being able to jump as if you were in low-gravity, being able to run up walls and maybe even ceilings with subjective gravity (or giving others the ability to do it), reducing fall damage, increasing falling damage, creating an area of increased gravity that takes longer to travel through and can throw off ranged attacks, or creating an area with no gravity at all...People of the Stars talked a bit about some kinds of gravity, though there's the usual planar gravity rules, and spells like gravity sphere could be neat if you made utility wild talents that did similar things...maybe a gravity bow/lead blade style buff?

...but I'm going off on a tangent and it's probably my own fault for not saying it earlier. Life's been busy. And that is a very minor niche grumbling that went on for too long. But if you'll be adding more later, I'd definitely request some more gravity shenanigans for void...I think you've done a great job of letting a chaokineticist focus on being a negative energy specialist and do some pretty cool stuff on that side, but I'd like it if you could play a chaokineticist reasonably successfully as a gravity specialist too.

...also, this is extremely pedantic, but "amount of tears" in the first paragraph of the Dimensional Tear ability is...please use "number" for easily-countable things? Also it should be "dimensional veil", not "dimension veil", and in the second paragraph it should be "extradimensional" instead of "extra dimensional", and when you say, "kinetic blade, kinetic whip wild talent" shouldn't it be "kinetic blade or kinetic whip talent"?

Less pedantically, I'm a little confused about a few elements...specifically, when you say that objects and attacks used by someone who isn't a dimensional ripper exit in a random place, but that a dimensional ripper can control which they exit, does that mean that the dimensional ripper can always pick which they exit even if they didn't use it, overriding the usual random/boomerang portal effect?

Like, say Diamond Dandy the Dimensional Ripper pokes a few holes in space-time, escaping from Sam the Sorcerer whose wife Diamond has taken certain liberties with, using one of the dimensional tears as a way to block line of sight, moving ahead about 25 feet, while creating a third right behind Sam. Sam fires a scorching ray into the dimensional tear, assuming in his anger that it will go the same route Diamond did and hit him in the back. Can Diamond have it come out of the dimensional tear behind Sam, or is it random, or is it only random if Dandy doesn't decide to pick which?

Secondly, what happens if a dimensional tear is created on solid ground, but the solid ground is then destroyed, whether magically via disintegrate or create pit or what have you, or mundane methods such as digging a hole or a few kegs of gunpowder having been placed beneath it? Does it remain, or does it vanish since the requirement of it being on solid ground no longer exists?

Also also, I am presuming that if you get the dimensional tear class feature from taking the dimensional rip utility wild talent, you are counted as a dimensional ripper, and thus have the ability to control which tear you exit when using dimensional tears? As well as all the other stuff.

Oh, also, in the bookmarks under feats it lists "Kinetic Prodigy" as "inetic Prodigy".

Still digesting this, definitely some cool stuff, but that's some of the stuff that popped out at me.

Silver Crusade

Rather than quoting the post, I'll try to take each thing one at a time, like a hero.

Charged Attacks: Actually, I think that'd work better as an infusion, but it is something that could easily be added in the update.

Elemental Limb: It's the latter, and as for telekinesis, while it was originally considered for E. Limb, the fact that there's nothing for the limb to be made of aside from maybe force removed it from consideration, especially since force is only associated with expanded element aether.

Elemental Brethren: I can kind of agree with that, and I wouldn't have a problem making it an option in the revamp. I always thought of them as more of a rock race myself, but as my track record will state, I have no problem giving wood to things.

N. Loves Negative and Ignores Gravity (The Void Debacle): No, you're right here, and really there's such a fine line in gravity due to telekinesis. Both are kind of competing for similar design space since they have somewhat similar ideas (moving things without touching them), making them annoying to play around. It's too late for me to do a lot with KOP 3, but if/when KOP 4 comes out, this is definitely something I can look into including.

Consider this my protest that void is both gravity and negative instead of splitting them.

Pedantry: It's fine, consider it on the change doc!

Everything involving portals is hard to write: I knew when I first started writing things with portals that if I thought of a thousand different rulings, I'd still miss a thousand more.

As for this situation, I would say Sam's shot would be random, although I think I'd say if Diamond took Deceptive Tear, they could decide, since that is one of the benefits of Deceptive Tear.

And the tear would vanish, as the prerequisites for its existence are no longer met.

Also yep, you get EVERYTHING that goes along with the class feature. I specifically made the tears talents to work like that and because there was no way I was writing something as big as D. Tear without letting everyone take it.

Bookmarks are not my fault: Bookmarks are not my fault (but I'll let Mark G. know so we can get it fixed).

Thanks for the input, I'll be updating the doc with things like this, talking with Onyx and crew about new talent ideas, although as I said in the dev post for KOP 3, plans for a new one aren't really set at this point despite having a decent amount of content that could go into one, I'd like to see Horror Adventures first before delving too far into things.

I'll be adding these things to the clarifications and FAQ, the FAQ doc will probably get included once I talk with Shiroi and they tear apart everything I've worked so hard to build, leaving me a broken and handsome man.


So far I absolutely love the Endure Pain saturation ability.

And the Wakfu influence in D. Ripper. Glad to see my link was so helpful. ^^

Silver Crusade

Azten wrote:

So far I absolutely love the Endure Pain saturation ability.

And the Wakfu influence in D. Ripper. Glad to see my link was so helpful. ^^

I'm glad, that talent took 3 rewrites so that it actually made sense. It turns out there's a lot of ways to write something that are painfully garbled.

And yeah, your link was very helpful, it helped guide along the dimensional fury ability, especially the pounce addition to it, as it originally didn't have that.

Also while some of you may have noticed the chamber of compressed time is a lot like the hyperbolic time chamber, there's also an ability that directly shares its name with one from DBZ. There's a few references in this book that I had fun pushing in there.


Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Yeah, the unarmed attack thing mostly just seemed weird since you can already boost natural attacks/weapons with kinetic fist, so being able to toss in the benefits from charged attacks and natural rush only on natural attacks seemes to make natural attacks/weapons a lot better while leaving unarmed strikes out in the cold, so I was wondering if there was a particular reason I wasn't seeing...from my perspective, regardless of unarmed strikes vs. natural attacks/weapons, kinetic fist needs all the love it can get...especially since you probably have to take a feat to get unarmed strikes workable in the first place. Or possibly several.

N. Jolly has made five hundred rulings and N. Jolly will make five hundred more, just so he can be the man who put dimensional ripper at our doors~!

Yeah, I think you would have to be pretty small-minded to say you get dimensional tear but as not being a dimensional ripper you can't actually control it. But someone might.

And yeah, I think there is a lot of room for gravity doing things differently than telekinesis, but that may be because I've been watching too much on astronomy and similar stuff lately on Youtube. In general, for most of the split elements (electricity/wind, cold/water, gravity/negative energy), I'd like it if you could build a sustainable character focused around only one of those aspects if you wanted to before hopping onto another element, instead of having to mess around in both aspects due to lack of options for the other. One reason I've been loving all the new material you've been providing!


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

N. Jolly, I've got all three available. The NPC in question is a half-orc, so he's got the option of the human Extra Wild Talent Feat FCB, too.


Things I Like in KOP 3:

1)The above mentioned things. Again, just aswesome. The Genus Loci is creepy gross too. :)

2) Discharging Infusion. I've been wanting to do this with shocking grasp and create water for ages.

3) Dismissing Infusion. I like this one a lot. Does it work on anything extraplanar, or just Outsiders? Outsider(Native)?

4) Vital Blade. This is just.. Yeah, I'm changing a Gestalt character's feat plan now.

5) Dimensional Traveler and Improved are a welcome addition to the class. Thanks for this one.

6) Likewise, with Elemental Limb and it's Improved/Greater versions, I can play Clayface!

Silver Crusade

Luthorne wrote:

Yeah, the unarmed attack thing mostly just seemed weird since you can already boost natural attacks/weapons with kinetic fist, so being able to toss in the benefits from charged attacks and natural rush only on natural attacks seemes to make natural attacks/weapons a lot better while leaving unarmed strikes out in the cold, so I was wondering if there was a particular reason I wasn't seeing...from my perspective, regardless of unarmed strikes vs. natural attacks/weapons, kinetic fist needs all the love it can get...especially since you probably have to take a feat to get unarmed strikes workable in the first place. Or possibly several.

N. Jolly has made five hundred rulings and N. Jolly will make five hundred more, just so he can be the man who put dimensional ripper at our doors~!

Yeah, I think you would have to be pretty small-minded to say you get dimensional tear but as not being a dimensional ripper you can't actually control it. But someone might.

And yeah, I think there is a lot of room for gravity doing things differently than telekinesis, but that may be because I've been watching too much on astronomy and similar stuff lately on Youtube. In general, for most of the split elements (electricity/wind, cold/water, gravity/negative energy), I'd like it if you could build a sustainable character focused around only one of those aspects if you wanted to before hopping onto another element, instead of having to mess around in both aspects due to lack of options for the other. One reason I've been loving all the new material you've been providing!

I think making a utility could work, maybe an inverse to natural rush for unarmed strikes. Mostly I'm just in love with natural attacks, so it's hard to divorce that from my design. Just like if you let me, I'll put hexes into everything I write without any thought.

D. Ripper is my babby, but my babby has LOTS of issues with the rules. I'm sure 80% of the FAQ will be about it.

If you want to send me a PM or an email about ideas, I'll be sure to get to work on them, since I've watched far less stuff about gravity. I'm always willing to work with readers to make talents that people want to use, as I am the hero of the nation.

ZZTRaider wrote:
N. Jolly, I've got all three available. The NPC in question is a half-orc, so he's got the option of the human Extra Wild Talent Feat FCB, too.

Okay, then I'd ask what you want this NPC to do, but since we're talking KOP 3, DEFINITELY go Brutal Mutation. For an NPC, there's like no downside. Also NPCs don't get FCB unless you give it to them. As of late, I'm kind of addicted to the idea of a fire/earth based avatar who snags wings of air for mobility and then uses improved burning infusion with flame dancer to flit around the battlefield.

Azten wrote:
Things I liked in KOP 3

1. I think that came from the 3.0 epic level handbook crossed with some other ideas, it was the first one to be written.

2. It's one of those "Someone had to make rules for it" things that I thought should exist.

3. It's intended to work as the dismissal spell, so it should have the same range of targets.

4. This was one that seriously should have existed before, and in either the update or the next book, there'll be an upgraded version of it.

5. You're welcome, people were asking about these and I figured they kind of needed to exist. Now you can bamf, but I think I want to make a lower level version bamf later, or a teleport based archetype. It'd be a little redundant with D. Ripper though, so time will tell.

6. No joke, Clayface is my fave Batman villain. I LOVE protean villains like him and Carnage.

Any thoughts on adding Light to the D. Ripper family everyone? And as always, let me know what you think, and please drop reviews for anything in the KOP family. I'm going to see if I can talk with others about doing something special if we hit a certain review mark or something.


I think Aether, Time, and Void are all much more thematically appropriate to opening portals and going through them.


Doing a bit of a skeleton build for a Vital Blade kineticist. At level 15 you can qualify for Improved Vital Strike.

For the heck of it, and the image of hitting hard? Earth/Fire/Earth for Meteor Blast.

Now at 15th level a Simple blast does either 8d6 or 8d6+8. Composite does 16d6 or 16d6+16. Meteor blast? 16d6+48.

Now let's apply Improved Vital Strike. ^^

a Metoer Blast does a whopping 48d6+48 with Vital Blade.
Example: 48d6 + 48 ⇒ (5, 5, 2, 4, 4, 6, 4, 3, 5, 6, 1, 4, 6, 6, 3, 2, 6, 3, 4, 1, 3, 1, 1, 4, 6, 1, 5, 1, 3, 3, 4, 1, 1, 1, 1, 3, 6, 4, 6, 6, 6, 5, 2, 4, 6, 3, 6, 2) + 48 = 223
Something likely just died. :)

If Mythic? that +48 becomes +144.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
N. Jolly wrote:
Okay, then I'd ask what you want this NPC to do, but since we're talking KOP 3, DEFINITELY go Brutal Mutation. For an NPC, there's like no downside. Also NPCs don't get FCB unless you give it to them. As of late, I'm kind of addicted to the idea of a fire/earth based avatar who snags wings of air for mobility and then uses improved burning infusion with flame dancer to flit around the battlefield.

Essentially, he's a gifted young shaman adept who has access to all four primary elements, but is by no means a master of any of them. I see him as primarily focused on utility and defense; he's slow to anger, but when you push him far enough, he'll lash out with all the fury of a mid-teen with elemental powers and family issues.

He's a person of some importance who will be forced out of his element (if you'll excuse the pun) and is likely to gain the attention of several factions that will want to get him out of the way, whether by political or forceful means.

Due to the size and optimization level of my group, I've been giving all of my NPCs FCBs.


Whoops... I forgot to tell you that I got my copy, and I'll be reviewing it soon :P


Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Sent you a PM with some gravity thoughts.

And yeah, light seems more about light-speed movement to me, thematically. Time makes sense to me because it's space-time, so you could just argue that you're opening a portal through time that just happens to be at the same time which results in a spatial shift, void makes sense to me because they do gravity which warps space-time, aether is a bit odd but I guess I can buy etheric strings can warp space somehow. That's just my personal opinion, though.

Haven't had as much time as I'd like to poke at the material more than I have from what I've last said, though...


Azten wrote:

Doing a bit of a skeleton build for a Vital Blade kineticist. At level 15 you can qualify for Improved Vital Strike.

For the heck of it, and the image of hitting hard? Earth/Fire/Earth for Meteor Blast.

Now at 15th level a Simple blast does either 8d6 or 8d6+8. Composite does 16d6 or 16d6+16. Meteor blast? 16d6+48.

Now let's apply Improved Vital Strike. ^^

a Metoer Blast does a whopping 48d6+48 with Vital Blade.
[dice=Example]48d6+48
Something likely just died. :)

If Mythic? that +48 becomes +144.

Huh. Do you think that's a balancing problem? I could see splitting Vital Blade into two talents and only allowing Vital Strike on the first level, and IVS with the improved version, or potentially only allowing it to function as kinetic blade and not as whip. But then we're also talking about 15th level. You'll have the infusion's cost covered by infusion specialization by then, but you're still stuck paying 3 burn on the blast itself unless you're within 15 feet of the target (so you'd be able to 5-foot move, gather power as a move action, and use the blast as a kinetic whip, though technically you could up this by using kinetic form, enlarge person, and a surging wraps of suppressed size), you've already gathered power as a full-round the previous turn, or you have flame conduit.

Also, I think you're actually selling yourself a little short on the damage. Since the blast's damage itself is 2d6+6 (which is, as you noted, 16d6+48 at 15th), you could argue that the +48 is part of the weapon's damage, and thus is multiplied with vital strike. You could also add the damage from:

- your Con mod
- a red or green greater kineticist's diadem (+3d8)
- red or green teardrop ioun stone (+2d6+6)
- vambraces of overflowing power (+5)
- composite ring of elemental strength (+16)
- kinetic prodigy (+2)
- focusing glove with a damaging enhancement such as shock (+1d6)
- fire's fury (+5)

So, assuming only the dice totals are multiplied (and not the extra damage from it being a physical blast), and assuming you've minmaxed the everloving Jesus out of your meteorokineticist, you're dealing 51d6+3d8+82+Con (min 136+Con, max 412+Con, average 274+Con) before applying DR and fire resistance. One thing to keep in mind is that since it's fire and bludgeoning (as opposed to half fire, half bludgeoning), I believe a fire-immune mob would be immune to all but the damage added from the focusing glove.

Granted, I can't do calculations for mythic since I know nothing about it. But this is a pretty damn nice idea, and would work great with other tertiary composites as well (supernova in particular).


I was deliberately leaving out modifiers I couldn't be sure any given character with Vital Blade would have.

Vital Strike is very clear it only multiplies damage dice. You need Mythic Vital Strike to multiply anything else.


When it comes to Vital Strike, always assume the worst possible interpretation is true, because Paizo is terrified of it being useful.


Azten wrote:

I was deliberately leaving out modifiers I couldn't be sure any given character with Vital Blade would have.

Vital Strike is very clear it only multiplies damage dice. You need Mythic Vital Strike to multiply anything else.

*nod* That's fair, and your analysis seems to be spot on for anyone not factoring in any of the talents or magic items I mentioned. I do honestly think the additional damage from fire's fury should be factored in for anyone taking the fire element though; it makes absolutely no sense not to take it, and unlike the slew of magic items I listed, it's easy to just grab at 8th level.

Also, I should probably remind you of the fusion kineticist archetype. If you stick with meteor blast for this, you could take earth as your main and fire as your sub, and grab fire's fury at 2nd, composite blast technique at 7th, and vital blade at 9th. While you can't take full advantage until 15th (when you can get improved vital strike), you'll get access to the technique a little earlier.

Now that I think of it, void is probably the best option as primary element for this strategy due to gravitic boost if you're willing to increase the burn an extra point. Gravitic hellfire blast and gravitic supernova blast have the highest potential damage (48d10 at 15th) while gravitic subzero blast has the same average damage, but more stable with a higher minimum and lower maximum (48d8+48). You could also go with the elemental scion archetype and do this with gravitic void blast (48d10+16), which edges out the void tristalts by a little bit, though you're giving up the ability to take more than one element's talents for that extra 16 damage.

Silver Crusade

Azten wrote:
I think Aether, Time, and Void are all much more thematically appropriate to opening portals and going through them.

I can agree with this, it was mostly due to light speed travel that I was considering it.

ZZTRaider wrote:

Essentially, he's a gifted young shaman adept who has access to all four primary elements, but is by no means a master of any of them. I see him as primarily focused on utility and defense; he's slow to anger, but when you push him far enough, he'll lash out with all the fury of a mid-teen with elemental powers and family issues.

He's a person of some importance who will be forced out of his element (if you'll excuse the pun) and is likely to gain the attention of several factions that will want to get him out of the way, whether by political or forceful means.

Due to the size and optimization level of my group, I've been giving all of my NPCs FCBs.

Okay, if that's the case, I'd definitely go heavy earth focus here. Defense and utility is the name of the game for earth, with air for flight and water being your primary infusion element, probably grab kinetic blade and whip just for fun.

JiCi wrote:
Whoops... I forgot to tell you that I got my copy, and I'll be reviewing it soon :P

Awesome, looking forward to reading it!

Tels wrote:
When it comes to Vital Strike, always assume the worst possible interpretation is true, because Paizo is terrified of it being useful.

This is sadly very true.

I think Vital Blade is in a good place mechanically myself, the damage can get high, but nothing that the KOP ceiling isn't really used to at this point, so we're in pretty okay territory as far as that goes.

Seems like there's not a lot of glaring issues with KOP 3, Shiroi and the others are checking over the docs for any errors before we do the next edit run, so if there's anything anyone sees wrong with the book, let me know here in the thread.


I noticed something minor but weird with the Cloud Cover wild talent: It says it must be at least 30' above the ground, but has a maximum altitude of 10' per level. This means that at 2nd level (the earliest you could possibly take this talent) you can't actually use this ability, because it has to be at least 30' in the air but your maximum altitude is 20'.

It probably won't come up often, but that might need to be fixed--or possibly clarified, if I'm just reading it wrong.


wynterknight wrote:

I noticed something minor but weird with the Cloud Cover wild talent: It says it must be at least 30' above the ground, but has a maximum altitude of 10' per level. This means that at 2nd level (the earliest you could possibly take this talent) you can't actually use this ability, because it has to be at least 30' in the air but your maximum altitude is 20'.

It probably won't come up often, but that might need to be fixed--or possibly clarified, if I'm just reading it wrong.

Thanks, we'll add it to the changelog~


Just picked up KoP 2 and 3; will give them a read through when I can.

[Edit] Hmm... gonna have to figure out a way to get them on my kindle. Paizo downloads them in zip files and kindle can't open those.


My review for KoP3 is up on Paizo ^_^

Silver Crusade

JiCi wrote:
My review for KoP3 is up on Paizo ^_^

Aces, glad to see you liked it! There was a lot of new ideas floating around in this one, and saturations take up a lot of space. Still, I think mutations and combo wild talents were a fun direction to go with this one, and if/when KOP 4 comes out, I'll be looking forward to adding more.

Since we're not seeing a huge amount of changes pop up in the thread, I'll probably send in the change doc pretty soon. Let me know if there's anything you see that's confusing or needs clarification, and I'll make sure it's added to the doc.


N. Jolly wrote:
JiCi wrote:
My review for KoP3 is up on Paizo ^_^
Aces, glad to see you liked it! There was a lot of new ideas floating around in this one, and saturations take up a lot of space. Still, I think mutations and combo wild talents were a fun direction to go with this one, and if/when KOP 4 comes out, I'll be looking forward to adding more.

Assuming Onyx doesn't steal your job. :p

Silver Crusade

The amount of content Onyx has made exhaust me (in a good way). They're intense, but a bit wordy, which is really where my job comes in to make sure thing they don't go on for 4 pages with a single archetype. Even D. Ripper ran a tad longer than I wanted it too, and 80% of that archetype was the first ability.

It's good content though, so it's fun to sift through and find how to keep it under the word count. I still remember in KOP 2 they didn't even want to write the flavor text for their feats, and then with this one they're really busting out of their cage, doing just fine.


Binge reading KoP 2 and 3 and just got to Dimensional Ripper. Definitely going to require a few reads wrap my head around it totally, but I've got a few questions.

I haven't read any new talents or feats, but the archetype only lets you open up to two tears per action spent, correct?

Also, tell me if this is a legal option for a 20th level Dimensional Ripper, cause it seems to be so.

Round 1) open 2 tears as a standard, open 2 tears as a.move, open 2 tears as a swift for 1 burn via rapid tearing gained at 10th level.

Round 2) - Open up 2 tears as a move action
- Fire off a quickened blast as a swift action (with composite, AoE, infusions etc.), essentially firing 7 blasts (8 tears minus the one I fired through) at my 3 damage dice less than my full normal damage;
- Then as a standard action, I accept 1 burn to collapse all 8 tears together, forcing my target to make a DC 32 + con save (8 tears at +2 per additional tears beyond the first 2) or be disintegrated and take 58d6 (6*3d6) points of damage on a failed save?

So, at minimum, in two rounds, you hit someone for 21d6 in potential blast damage (only using simple blasts) and another 10d6 on a successful save, or 58d6 on a failed one, totaling 31d6 or 79d6 points of potential damage. Plus any other bonus damage, or course.

Is this all correct?


Since the D. Ripper is N. Jolly's baby, he'll need to confirm this (I'm still just a bit cloudy on it myself). You could technically create 8 tears, but I believe the amount you create in a single turn is also the maximum that can exist. Typically this is 6 by 19th level unless you've taken extra tear along the line somewhere.

What I find more effective though would be to create your tears as your move action adjacent to your target (with one adjacent to you instead), then use a vital blade gravitic void blast with MDS through your portal. As long as you have improved vital strike, you'll be dealing 60d8+20 damage this way with each hit. Multiply that by the number of tears you can create, and you've got the ability to almost guarantee an enemy is wiped off the planet for 5 burn and what is essentially a full round action. That's 400 damage as a BARE MINIMUM if you connect.

And if you're worried about burn costs, you can trade gravitic void for negative. Vital blade negative blast is still going to deal 30d6+10 per hit and will target touch AC, making it more likely to hit anything that relies on its armor bonus for its AC, and this deals a minimum of 200 damage, which at this point isn't necessarily lethal on its own, but is pretty damned nasty... especially considering this is, again, he LEAST amount of damage you can deal. For 3 burn. And if you supercharge ahead of time, since the burn for MDS is part of the kinetic blast, you're doing this every other turn for free.

N. Jolly, can you confirm my math's right here?


Oops, actually I was off, lemme correct that.

First, I forgot to factor in that MDS shaves off 3 damage dice, and secondly that energy blasts don't get the additional damage per damage die like physicals do. This means I'm reducing vital negative blade to 21d6 and vital gravitic void blade to 51d8+17.

However, I'm also not accounting for empower metakinesis. Since we aren't using quicken (and in fact can't, since quicken can't be used with vital blade), and the archetype trades out both of the other metakineses, empower's probably the best shot to reduce with metakinetic master. This means now both blasts are dealing half again as much damage (not counting the +17 on vital gravitic void blade). This means, assuming we can place 6 tears at a time, our damage output looks like:

[(21d6)*1.5]*5 = 157 min, 945 max, 551 average

([(57d8)*1.5]+17)*5 = 512 min, 3505 max, 2008 average

Yep, still nasty as all hell.


Hmm, nothing in the Dimensional Ripper archetype states a maximum number of tears you can create a round, at least, not as far as I've seen, only the number of tears you can create when you use Dimensional Tear. It also gives you the option to use different actions, but doesn't limit it to once per round.

I did catch something on another reading though: Improved Tearing increases the number of tears created by 1 at 7th level and again every 4 levels.

So, at 20th, he can create a total of 6 tears per action, meaning, theoretically, you could create 18 tears in round 1, and another 6 in round two. This boosts the save DC for the collapse by +44, and the damage by +66d6, all but ensuring your victims death. Only a natural 20 saves them, as you deal 371 points of damage on average. That's assuming they survived the 119d6+bonuses worth of kinetic blasts from the quickened blast you fired.

I opted for quickened instead of vital because vital is an optional talent, whereas everything laid out here is baked into the class/archetype itself.


As far as I can tell with Dimensional Ripper, the ability to rip up large numbers of tears in a round doesn't really seem to cause any problems... until 17th level. That's when things get crazy. Imagine, for example, a Dimensional Ripper as a villain played intelligently. He could pre-prepare battlefields by just opening up dozens, or hundreds or tears over time without taking burn as a standard action. Then, he need only accept 3 burn to launch x amount of blasts at a party.

On a narrative scale, you could write in scenarios where the Dimensional Ripper decides level a city, or fortress by creating 151 (or more) tears, then firing off, essentially, 150 kinetic blasts at a target. For the low, low, cost of 3 burn.

On a more practical side, imagine some of the nastier save-or-suck infusions out there, especially in void. The ability to layer on multiple blasts for a relatively low cost is astronomically powerful. I'm pretty sure there was one for void that dealt a small amount of con damage; I'm not sure if it's possible (still reading things over) but one could, theoretically, attach that to some AoE void blast, launch it through a dozen tears, and insta-vib a party or group of enemies because of the AoE con damage alone.

It's just, everything works fine and seems relatively balanced, up until Multidimensional Fury and Spatial Collapse come along. At least Spatial Collapse is a capstone, but even then, it's incredibly powerful.

Of course, this whole thing is totally moot if there is some limit to the number of tears one can open or maintain and I'm just totally missing it.

Silver Crusade

And here I was certain that I'd have more issues with D. Ripper, although I appreciate them being brought up. I assumed there was an understanding about the maximum number of tears, but it's not great to assume here, so the following changes have been made to the archetype, and will be reflected in the new errata.

-Add “A dimensional ripper can maintain a number of tears equal to twice the amount they can create in a round. If a dimensional ripper attempts to create another tear while they already have their maximum in effect, the oldest tear instantly closes.” to dimensional ripper’s description.
-Change ‘reducing the damage of each blast by 3 damage dice (if the dimensional ripper applies the kinetic blade or kinetic whip wild talent to their blast, all other tears must be within 5 or 10 ft. of the target respectively).’ to ‘reducing the damage of each blast by 5 damage dice (10 for composite blast.) If the dimensional ripper applies the kinetic blade or kinetic whip wild talent to their blast, all other tears must be within 5 or 10 feet of the target respectively.’ to multi-dimensional fury
-Change ‘For each additional tear used in a spatial collapse beyond the second, increase the DC by 2 and the damage taken on a failed save by 3d6.’ to ‘For each two additional tears used in a spatial collapse beyond the second, increase the DC by 1 and the damage taken on a failed save by 2d6.’ to spatial collapse

Originally I was going to have the max number of tears be equal to the number created per round, but the idea of having more just seems cool enough that I'm willing to increase it. I feel like multi-dimensional is more in line with metakinesis (twice) now as far as damage goes, and spatial collapse feels more fair here as well.

Let me know what you think of these changes, and if there's any others that should be included, since D. Ripper was always going to be the most ruling intensive archetype.


Question about all the errata, is this going to be in a separate document, or just updated into the original pdf's?

I haven't yet bought KoP 3 (should be soon though!), but I'm just curious as to whether or not I should just buy it now or wait until it's updated

Silver Crusade

sepik121 wrote:

Question about all the errata, is this going to be in a separate document, or just updated into the original pdf's?

I haven't yet bought KoP 3 (should be soon though!), but I'm just curious as to whether or not I should just buy it now or wait until it's updated

Fair question, these errata (as well as those being added to KOP 1/2) will be added to the document itself, so I'll be posting in the thread when the doc is errata'd so you can be certain you have the most recent printing. I figure that'll help keep KOP 1/2/3 in the top ten list for another week *WINK*

As always, let me know if there's issues with the docs, and if you get the chance, please give a review for the books.


The proposed changes look really good, even if I liked the mental image of a kineticist spending a minute opening up dozens of portals, before focus firing them all down on a target, like some sort of kinetic death star...

Anyway, Multidimensional Fury is still an extremely powerful ability, due to infusions. Some of them, especially from Void, are seriously nasty, but others also have odd interactions in the rules.

Aether: Bleeding infusion becomes a strong choice for Aether, if only because he can trigger bleed damage on a large number of enemies. Aether has some odd interactions, though. Foe Throw and Many Throw are the two biggies.

Foe throw lets you throw an enemy at a single target, while many throw lets you make an attack against every enemy within 120 ft. as long as no two are more than 30 ft. away. Imagine, a 17th level telekinetic Dimensional Ripper using Foe Throw. He could open up 5 tears as a swift action (1 burn), 5 tears as a move action (no burn), and then use Foe Throw to lift up 9 enemies, and then dog pile them on a single other enemy. Every thrown enemy would take only 3d6+bonuses in damage, but the single enemy takes 27d6+bonuses in damage, assuming the 9 targets failed their save. Or, in the case of Many Throw, you can attack 17 targets, 9 times, each one taking 27d6+bonuses in damage.

Oh, they also all take 3 points of bleed damage. It also costs nothing for these infusions because Foe Throw costs 3 burn, Many Throw costs 4 burn, and Bleeding costs 1 burn, and you have Infusion Specilization 5 at 17th level.

This also isn't taking into damage from Empowered (done for free by Metakinetic Master), or any Composite Blast.

Time: Time doesn't have the AoE potential of Aether, but it doesn't have the nastiest of the infusions: Decaying Infusion. Enemies struck by your blast take 2 points of con damage. Target a single enemy 9 times (you opened up 10 tears and can maintain a total of 10 at 17th level), the enemy must now make 9 saving throws (assuming every attack hits) and every failed save lowers his con by -2. Potentiall dealing 18 points of con damage in a single round. This pretty much kills everything not immune to con damage, because that's also a potential -9 to fortitude saves and 9*HD in lost hpas well.

Extremely nasty, extremely deadly.

Void: Void has access to decyaing just as Time does, so it's equally as terrifying. In addition, it also has Atrophy Infusion, meaning a potential loss of 18 strength or 18 dex instead. Not nearly as immediately deadly, but still very nasty.

All three of the elements can use Dismissing Infusion or Kinetic Bomb/Greater as well. I'm almost wondering if, maybe, you should not allow infused blasts to be used? Or maybe double the cost of infusions when firing through a Dimensional Tear? Dunno, but Multidimensional Fury is arguably the most powerful weapon the Dimensional Ripper has, outside of Dimensional Tear itself.

So, beyond that, I have two more things to bring up:

1) Can the dimensional tears really not be horizontal?

KoP 3 wrote:
These two dimensional tears stand 5 ft. tall and wide, must be placed vertically on solid ground...

If so, this does, I guess, avoid the whole issue of someone throwing down a Tear A at an enemies feet, dropping the out of Tear B, 50 ft. up in the air, then falling down to the ground, into Tear C, only to appear in Tear D, also 50 ft. off the ground, and then slamming into the ground for 10d6 points of falling damage. Or continuing on through 4 more tears and dealing 20d6 points of falling damage.

2) Secondly *fangirl scream* OMG, while flipping through KoP 1, 2, and 3, I noticed the cover on 3!!! That's a super clever picture there! I won't mention why, but it made burst out laughing when I noticed it.

[Edit] Oh, another thought, since you're reducing damage dice by 5/10, wouldn't it be simpler to just say the Dimensional Ripper deals damage as if she were a kineticist of half her level? I say this, because at 17th level, the kineticist has a 9d6 simple blast, and an 18d6 composite blast (potentially). At your proposed penalty (-5/-10) she deals 4d6 on a simple, and 8d6 on a composite. But it gets weird with composites like Force, because now she deals -1d6 points of damage (9d6 composite force blast -10 damage dice = negative 1d6 damage). Whereas, if it was just half her level (rounded down of course), she would deal 4d6 on a simple blast (no change), and 8d6 on a composite blast (or 4d6 on a force blast).

Just my thoughts on it.

Silver Crusade

Okay, got the KOP edit doc out again, although hopefully it'll be getting sent in soon.

I think I'll take your advice and make it so infusions can't be used with this ability, since as you're making clear, it's probably too powerful. I'll give it extended/extreme range, but everything else is probably too much.

1) You can if you take Deceptive Rip. Although my ruling for this is that you don't get the momentum bonus falling damage, despite you normally getting it from the source material. It's a mechanical decision to prevent things like this mostly.

2) You're not the first person to love that, I'm really happy with the cover myself.


I made an edit, by the way.

Silver Crusade

And added to the doc (the half level thing, it's a good way of putting it), I'll hopefully be sending out the change doc by the end of the day, also throwing in a few new talents, some of which Onyx deeply loved.

As always, drop a review if you can, and I'll keep working to make the best book possible for everyone here!


Just left a review for KoP 1, but it will probably be awhile before I review 2 and 3, I like to let things digest for awhile.

Silver Crusade

Tels wrote:
Just left a review for KoP 1, but it will probably be awhile before I review 2 and 3, I like to let things digest for awhile.

It's all good, take your time. It's funny, a lot of people have said in KOP 1 that it's basically "the list of things Paizo left out of OA."

Also I can admit that kinetic duelist was entirely self indulgent, I just really like kinetic blade. K. duelist slowly gets less important in KOP 2 though, which is a bit of a sad moment for me, but it does give you the chance to have a lightsaber, so yay!

KOP 1/2/3 will all be getting an update soon enough, and hopefully it'll help clear up some issues that I know some people have had.

Edit: If you could, would you let me know what's confusing about cerebral? The edit is coming out for all three, so if I can help clarify things for you, possibly errata to clear things, we can get things looking a lot cleaner.


The thing with Cerebral is hard w the burn actually functions. Is the condition permanent until you recover burn? Is there a duration? How long does it last if so? Do I still take non-stop damage? How much?

The duration of the conditions is the biggest issue. If it only lasts a short time, then the drawbacks of burn can be almost completely negated. After all, one the primary sources of burn is just fueling your defense/overflow, so you could charge up your defense, then wait out the conditions leaving you with no real drawbacks.

Part of the reason for this is the wording, "whenever you accept burn beyond your mental barrier" and then gives a list of what happens whenever you accept burn beyond your barrier. Due to the wording, it's a reasonable, though likely unintentional, interpretation to say, "whenever you accept 1 burn, you become dazzled" and believe you can keep accepting 1 burn a round and only become dazzled, never shaken or feebleminded. In a sense, you only gain a condition equal to the amount of burn you take for a given action. So if you take 2 burn on one round, you are shaken, and then 1 burn on the next round, you are shaken and dazzled, but you aren't subject to feeblemind.

But at the same time, it could also be interpreted that as long as you have x amount of burn beyond your mental barrier, then y happens, and you refer to the chart. But again, the duration matters. How long am I affected? Is it temporary? Permanent? What about when I take 3 burn? Do I need a heal, limited wish, miracle or wish to remove the foreboding? Or does it go away when I recover burn? Doesn't this mean if I have 3 burn I can no longer use any of my abilities, as I "can't cast spells" now?

If the conditions are only temporary, say for a number of rounds equal to the effective spell level of the blast/talent, it can be a trivial consequence, especially if the burn doesn't stack for incrementally worse consequences, such as in the first interpretation. But if they are permanent, or permanent until you recover burn anyway, it's pretty much more debilitating than vanilla burn is.

It's a hard one to balance.


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Side note, Void/Poison is really nasty. No save black tentacles (grasp of the void has no save) and cloudkill (deadly vapors) on top of it, neither of which costs any burn for me.

A 12th level poison kineticist is a total monsters because or deadly vapors. Also, the best pest exterminator in the world. If kobolds or goblins live near one, it's only because she wants them there.

Silver Crusade

That's fair, let me know if this helps:

-Add ‘until they recover burn (the following conditions are cumulative for each point of burn you accept beyond your mental barrier)’ to Psychological Burn’s description

So now it's clear that you're always dealing with them. Really, you can take an amount of burn to power your overflow, and dazzled is nothing, so only really past that are you in trouble. You are correct that being feebleminded means you can't cast, so the coma will only kick in if you're forced to accept burn from another source, like from kinetic healer or a dread soul.

The trade off here is that you have full HP, but you can use less burn. Overall, I'd say that you're going to have more health going cerebral, but you're on a tighter leash, so it breaks about even with a normal kineticist, but it also requires a lot less paperwork than one. Kineticist with scaling defenses or lackluster defenses will generally like cerebral more, while non scaling defenses and stronger defenses will probably not be a huge fan.

And yeah, poison/void can clean up trash mobs REALLY easily.


Black Tentacles doesn't have a save anyway. It's SR and CMD that defend against it.


Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Azten wrote:
Black Tentacles doesn't have a save anyway. It's SR and CMD that defend against it.

Actually, it ignores spell resistance too.

Silver Crusade

Luthorne wrote:
Azten wrote:
Black Tentacles doesn't have a save anyway. It's SR and CMD that defend against it.
Actually, it ignores spell resistance too.

I was pretty sure it did, seemed odd for a conjuration spell to have SR. I was wondering why Tels was pointing out it myself, since BT is so good due to all these reasons. Not as good as it was in 3.5, but still really damn good.


My mistake. Could have sworn black tentacles had a save on it. I guess this is what happens when you don't play for ~4 years.

Silver Crusade

It's all good, sometimes facts like that just slip the mind. What did you think of the clarification on Cerebral?

Onyx put in a good suggestion for Multi-Dimensional, it'll work like flurry of blast, in which only 1 application of a substance infusion can affect a creature at once, keeping it more in line with the base class's power level as well as everything else.

Wrapping up the edit doc now, so if anyone has anything else they want to talk about or discuss, now's the time to get it on the books!


Clears up any potential confusion I saw in it, and works about like I expected you intended it to.

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