Telekinetic haul augments Basic Telekinesis, which acts as Mage Hand, which can only effect unattended objects. I guess the crux of this question is when an object stops counting as unattended.
By accepting 1 Burn, I can use Basic Telekinesis to lift an object weighing up to 1000lbs/level. If my friend and I are standing on a carpet, can I use Basic Telekinesis to lift the carpet and "fly" us around Agrabah all night, or is the carpet no longer considered unattended while someone stands on it?
It's attended. If it were not, actual magic carpets or flying broomsticks could be telekinetically stolen from under the rider. It would also be a better version of your tenth level "flight" power, admittedly at the cost of either burn or concentration.
That was my line of thinking. Thanks for confirming.
What you can do is activate TK Haul on the carpet before you step on it. Spells don't check their target again after they are cast.
I feel like any GM who was paying attention wouldn't let that happen...
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I feel like any GM who was paying attention wouldn't let that happen...
Why? Lots of spells work like that. Look at Haste. "Targets one creature/level, no two of which can be more than 30 ft. apart". Do you think Haste gets dispelled if one of the targets gets more than 30 ft away from any of the other targets?
I feel like any GM who was paying attention wouldn't let that happen...Why? Lots of spells work like that. Look at Haste. "Targets one creature/level, no two of which can be more than 30 ft. apart". Do you think Haste gets dispelled if one of the targets gets more than 30 ft away from any of the other targets?
That's still fundamentally Haste - the intention with the 30' caveat, I assume, is to make it a round-one spell, not something to be cast in the midst of battle, after everyone has spread out. With TK Haul, you've just given yourself Mass Fly, several times per day, at level 4, with the extra step of "OK, NOW we can step on the carpet." Meanwhile, the Kineticist NEVER gets the ability to let anyone but himself fly, as far as I know, and even then, it's level 6 at the earliest, as an Aerokineticist. That's why.
Traveling with TK haul isn't as good as you make it sound. It's a standard action to maintain and you have to spend a move action to actually move the carpet. And by default it can only move 30 feet. So it's a full round action to move 30 feet. That's fun, but not powerful. Comparatively, if I were flying with the fly spell I could double move 120 feet as a full round action. Or I could choose to move 60 feet and still have a standard action to do something useful.
Edit: And those aren't all of the issues with using TK Haul that way. Look at the rules for spells that require concentration and you will see that this is not the sort of thing you want to rely on during a combat. Also it doesn't have the built in parachute effect that fly spells have when it ends, so you better have some feather-fall-like effect handy at all times.
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Traveling with TK haul isn't as good as you make it sound. It's a standard action to maintain and you have to spend a move action to actually move the carpet. And by default it can only move 30 feet. So it's a full round action to move 30 feet. That's fun, but not powerful. Comparatively, if I were flying with the fly spell I could double move 120 feet as a full round action. Or I could choose to move 60 feet and still have a standard action to do something useful.
Edit: And those aren't all of the issues with using TK Haul that way. Look at the rules for spells that require concentration and you will see that this is not the sort of thing you want to rely on during a combat. Also it doesn't have the built in parachute effect that fly spells have when it ends, so you better have some feather-fall-like effect handy at all times.
There's a lot of enemies that can't fly and have poor ranged capabilities at level 4, so your poor maneuverability wouldn't necessarily be a problem, and the fact that you need to concentrate isn't exactly a problem if all your buddies are up there with you, firing arrows at the enemies.
Even ignoring that, having exclusively-out-of-combat Mass Fly at level 4 negates a wealth of problems that PC's at that level would normally have to deal with in more creative ways. It can easily bypass other combats that would otherwise require you to deal with in order to advance. I'm not saying that PC's shouldn't be rewarded for bypassing encounters, but at that level, it could almost certainly be all of them - not to mention any high walls, bodies of water, pits, narrow ledges, or sneaking past literally anything while outside; all passed without a single skill check - how fun...?
What you can do is activate TK Haul on the carpet before you step on it. Spells don't check their target again after they are cast.
This is correct. You can carry stuff around via TKH. It's not the best use your actions, but you can do it.
Abilities should be useful. TK Haul is already good for bypassing obstacles even without carrying party members. You just need a few ropes and grappling hooks.
And I don't think you've really looked at the hazard of in combat use. Maintaining a spell means you need to pass concentration checks as if you were casting a spell. So, every time anything bad happens to the telekineticist, you stand a fair chance of getting knocked out of the air. And telekineticists have a naturally low will save, so there's another danger. Also consider doing this in a real game, would you rather have your party of 4 taking on a challenge using all of their abilities or a party of 4 with one basically taken out of the fight?
I also agree that the OP is over exaggerating the relative usefulness of carrying party members around. It's cool, but it's not game breaking or even particularly powerful.
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Well, at 100 lbs per level, one could lift a boulder or simular object with beings on top to float them somewhere.
If you using burn to up that to 1000 lbs, though, that may be dangerous of the Telekinetisist looses concentration. (even if the burn cost is mitigated)
I would think it would be situational, like using the ability to get past obstacles or something rather than using it like overland flight.
Well, at 100 lbs per level, one could lift a boulder or simular object with beings on top to float them somewhere.
If you using burn to up that to 1000 lbs, though, that may be dangerous of the Telekinetisist looses concentration. (even if the burn cost is mitigated)
I would think it would be situational, like using the ability to get past obstacles or something rather than using it like overland flight.
If you use the burn, you no longer need to concentrate. You can't mitigate the burn cost, though, unless you have a way of paying in advance (elemental buffer) or removing it after taking it (the new Int-based archetype in Horror Adventures). The concern is more likely the time running out.
As a GM, I actually like the step-on-the-formerly-unattended-object interpretation because it allows for telekinesis to overcome obstacles without causing a lot of other problems. Glad to have checked the thread again!
I think you would need to keep using burn (or Gathering Power to mitigate it) to keep the object over the amount of 100 lbs per level afloat.
Sort of like Yoda lifting the X-wing from the depths of the swamp.
You can't gather energy to mitigate burn from utility talents. You'd have a minute per level that you could maintain that higher weight after spending a point, and if you needed longer, you'd want to spend a second point before the first expired.
It would seem to me that if you target an unattended carpet, you certainly could move that carpet. That carpet is a valid target as long as it doesn't weigh more than the limit (1000 lbs/level.) So now you have a carpet you can telekinetically move around.
That doesn't help you at all with moving party members. They are not that object. If they try to hold on to that object and prevent it from moving, then it might be a contest of some kind, which might indeed prevent the carpet from moving, but in any event, the carpet not having anything like a CMB or the ability to do maneuvers is absolutely unable to move PCs.
(I would also note, that even if the above wasn't the case, unlike a magic carpet it wouldn't give you anything like a secure and stable place to stand)
If attended stuff suddenly drops, you'd better hope you aren't standing underneath it when a bird lands on it.
It could be argued that the spell itself makes the object count as attended. It is being held by your mage hand after all.
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So... once I lift something, it drops?
The limit is already there, 100 lbs per level, or 1000 when using the Burn (or mitigating it). So if those standing on the boulder I used as an example plus the weight of the boulder exceeds the limit, down it goes.
Would lifting the carpet make it stiff enough to carry people?
That depends on if the telekinetic force being applied to lift it is spread out evenly or focused on one point.
Which is to say, it's reliant on something not mentioned by the rules, though I imagine a telekineticist is capable of both.