My Experience Playing a Kineticist so Far


Advice


I'm really enjoying this class. I filled out index cards to help with the overwhelming amount of "stuff" the class requires you to keep track of - Yellow Cards are my Blasts, Red are my Form Infusions, Orange are my Substance Infusions, Green are my Utility Wild Talents, and White are my Burn Points. I have a new card for each point of Burn I accept, since so many different things change and require keeping temporary track of with each new point of Burn, like Elemental Overload's att/dmg bonuses, +2 Size bonus to 2 physical ability scores, x% chance to ignore crits/sneak attack, stacking Nonlethal damage, and so on.

I'm playing a Gnome Telekineticist, and I expanded into Air, making for a very utilitarian character. I mentioned in another thread that my character uses Copper Coins as his projectile for Telekinetic Blast, which is, well, a blast. Recently, I discovered a new love of masquerading around as inanimate, humanoid objects - Between Telekinetic Haul and Telekinetic Finesse, My GM deemed it reasonable that I'm able to move things such as scarecrows and training dummies like marionettes, and follow them while invisible. It's made for some very amusing antics. I literally scared a Spriggan to death when I floated the head of a previously killed Spriggan in front of him and shouted spooky threats in Gnomish, pretending to be a possessed head, making him run for it, and accidentally fall into his own spike pit trap.

Sorry, just kind of gushing - I do have a question. We're currently level 8, and I seem to be one of the best DPR's in the group, despite putting practically no investment into it (besides Point-blank Shot, Precise Shot, and Weapon Focus (Kinetic Blast)). I don't want to outshine other players in areas I've put in only a fraction of the investment as them. I understand the Kineticist is supposed to be a high-performing combat class, but I thought the Telekineticist was supposed to be a bit tamer in exchange for utility. Am I supposed to be doing a consistent 30-35 damage per hit at level 8? I should mention that this group's not exactly the optimizing type.


Damage at L8 sounds a bit low (depending upon CON), assuming that you have your size bonus to con fro burn, overflow and empower; I'm doing 3D6 +13 at L6 (point blank, 20 con with bonus) for an average of 25 + 12 empowered = 37 for my kinetic blast.

You should have a bit more damage that me, or a little less if your con is lower.

Doesn't seem excessive really: An archer should be putting out comparable or better damage at greater range, for instance.

Your party issue might be that the class has a high floor, low ceiling for optimisation: you don't get to push 'up' a lot as you're already in the right sort of place...

(and Three feats is not exactly 'hardly any' investment!)


santherus wrote:

Damage at L8 sounds a bit low (depending upon CON), assuming that you have your size bonus to con fro burn, overflow and empower; I'm doing 3D6 +13 at L6 (point blank, 20 con with bonus) for an average of 25 + 12 empowered = 37 for my kinetic blast.

You should have a bit more damage that me, or a little less if your con is lower.

Doesn't seem excessive really: An archer should be putting out comparable or better damage at greater range, for instance.

Your party issue might be that the class has a high floor, low ceiling for optimisation: you don't get to push 'up' a lot as you're already in the right sort of place...

(and Three feats is not exactly 'hardly any' investment!)

Totally forgot about Point-Blank Shot in my damage calculations, thanks for pointing that out. 30-35 was a quick recap in my head of the damage range I was rolling last night. On paper, I'm rolling 4d6+15 (+5 Con, +1 PBS, +4 Elemental Overload, +1 Con bonus) plus Empowered for an average of 43.5 (guess I was rolling pretty lousily!)


Cuup wrote:
santherus wrote:

Damage at L8 sounds a bit low (depending upon CON), assuming that you have your size bonus to con fro burn, overflow and empower; I'm doing 3D6 +13 at L6 (point blank, 20 con with bonus) for an average of 25 + 12 empowered = 37 for my kinetic blast.

You should have a bit more damage that me, or a little less if your con is lower.

Doesn't seem excessive really: An archer should be putting out comparable or better damage at greater range, for instance.

Your party issue might be that the class has a high floor, low ceiling for optimisation: you don't get to push 'up' a lot as you're already in the right sort of place...

(and Three feats is not exactly 'hardly any' investment!)

Totally forgot about Point-Blank Shot in my damage calculations, thanks for pointing that out. 30-35 was a quick recap in my head of the damage range I was rolling last night. On paper, I'm rolling 4d6+15 (+5 Con, +1 PBS, +4 Elemental Overload, +1 Con bonus) plus Empowered for an average of 43.5 (guess I was rolling pretty lousily!)

Its important to understand that as a damage dealer, the kineticist has a relatively high floor and low ceiling. What I mean to say is the 'minimum' damage you are going to do as a kineticist is higher then most classes even with very little optimization. You don't have to invest much to get 'pretty good' damage. At the same time, there is very little that isn't extremely apparent to do MORE damage as a kineticist. You don't actually have to invest a lot of character choices to reach the 'most' damage it can do either. Its all fairly straight forward.

What that means is if a group doesn't normally optimize much (which seems to be the case of 30-35 damage is surprisingly high at 8th level for you), then a high floor class like the kineticist is likely to seem rather strong. Meanwhile combat classes actually optimized for combat at that level will pretty easily blow those numbers out of the water.


Sounds like a great character so far, May I ask what level you started at? I am a huge fan of the class but have had some traumatic experiences with it at very low levels.

As for your level 8 damage, compare to an archer for a moment. At level 8 let's says a strength of +2 and for feats we'll do PBS, PS, RS, deadly aim and WF:long bow. Maybe a +1 bow? Dec would be 20ish and class features would add around +2 to hit and damage... these numbers are actually a little conservative to me but let's see how they turn out.

To hit (8 BAB, 5 DEX, 1 feat, 1 enhancement, 2 class/weapon training/rage/studied, -3 DA, -2 RS) +12/+12/+7

Damage (1D8+2 STR, +1 enhancement, +6 DA, +2 class) so, averaging 15.5 per hit with two hits per round landing an average of 31 damage. More if you land the third and hilarious if you manage a crit. Based on that I'd say you are right at the mark for level 8.


I throw my vote in for it's probably a party problem.
Aether kineticist is the weakest, but really only when composites are involved. Otherwise they are doing the same damage as any physical blast.

Your damage is always 1 big hit for xd6+y. the difference between an optimized blast and a non-optimized blast is weapon focus and higher dex/con.

So since it's obvious that dex and con are important you put points into them. Now your damage is set, can't really go low, can't really go high. This is a similar issue to the summoner, it was really easy to see which evolutions were really good and you easily could accidentally make a better fighter than a fighter.

High floor classes seem really good if the average optimization level is low or people are building less optimal characters that do something different, aka a charismatic/social fighter which has less combat power than a cha dumped fighter.


Chess Pwn wrote:
Aether kineticist is the weakest, but really only when composites are involved. Otherwise they are doing the same damage as any physical blast.

Even then, with empower as part of your common 'full attack', the simple blast doesn't fall too far behind the composite blasts. So you usually don't see problems with power until high levels where you can stack composite AND empower without crippling yourself.

So this is more of a 'this is basic kineticist damage' rather than anything. This is your 'full attack', and you can get it off easily since you are a ranged character. So this is partially an 'archery is strong in this system' problem as well.

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