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If you use Kinetic healer can you use your familiar to Deliver the Touch required to Heal someone?
If you can, could you also have your Familiar take the Burn from the Kinetic Healer instead of you?
It be nice to have for any Overwhelming Soul Archetype users Given they can only heal themselves with it if they use their Buffer. I'll ask my GM personally if he's ok with it, but i wanted to see where this discussion will go, since i find it interesting.
NOTE: for simplicity sakes assume Familiar was gained from Greater Elemental Whispers.
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Considering this is a SLA and in all other ways, a spell-like ability functions just like a spell. It would be correct in assuming that it functions like a touch ranged spell for the purposes of meeting the requirements for a Familiar to be able to, at the very least, Deliver the Touch required for healing with Kinetic Healer.
However as far as the familiars ability to take the Burn is up for Debate. I'd allow it in my games if any of the Kineticists took the Overwhelming Soul Archetype, but any other type of Kineticists is stuck with taking the burn because they can. At best an Over Soul can heal himself 3 times a day using their oh so valuable free buffer.
I think it is pretty clear given the language regarding burn that the kineticist is 100% meant to take it, and not be able to shed it, in all cases ... except for the one (or two?) where it is specifically called out that someone else can take it instead.
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Hence Kinetic Healer, where it is, the only other case I can think of where a Kineticist can shed their burn is a Dark Elementalist.
Plus I like to think that the bond between you and your familiar is the kind where this could happen. It's not terribly broken either, even without the restrictions I gave it, it has others as well. To be able to do this in the first place you'd have to take two Talents to get the familiar or three feats or a level dip. Even one level dip into anything for Kineticist is harsh. Slows progression for talents and damage. Though I could see a level dip into Urban Barbarian.
Just saying, it's clear that the Devs didn't put this into account when they made the Elemental Whispers Talent. How many other things could a familiar deliver through a touch that Kineticists get? Not much I'll tell you that, unless we get into the Kinetic Invocation territory but that hadn't even come out yet when they made Whispers.
I'm not even askin for a Dev response to this. I personally would like to see how other GMs would handle this kind of question concerning Kinetic Healer and a Familiars ability to take burn for their master. Or if any others would disagree with my opinion on the ability to deliver the touch for Kinetic Healer.
There's a lot of gray area about when a SLA counts as a spell or not, so expect a huge heaping of table variation about whether the familiar can even deliver your SLA touches at all. That said, the second part of the question is also very uncertain. Personally, I believe the intention is merely for the familiar to be a vehicle for the spell. The caster is still the master and the caster would take any penalties of the spell.
My advice for those with GEW familiar is to just give it the Emissary archetype, so you don't need to worry about the share spells and deliver touch spells abilities.
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I think I got greedy asking for more concerning Familiar taking the Burn. Now all I want to know is if the Familiar can deliver Kinetic Healer at all. So far it sounds reasonable according to the rules as written that this is how it works in Society play. No argument, that’s how it works, end of story. That’s what I’m telling everyone that I play with at every pathfinder society event from now on and will go out of my way to bring it up even if there is no Kineticists at the table.
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Considering this is a SLA and in all other ways, a spell-like ability functions just like a spell.This is a misrepresentation of the issue though.
Although in many ways, spell-like abilities work like spells, as you say...
That is not the same as an ability that interacts with a spell also working with a spell-like ability.
All metamagic feats are perfect examples of this.
So whether an ability for delivering a touch spell would work for delivering a touch spell-like ability, is in no means a given.
A couple things, Metamagic feats are a a clear exception to this, I agree with you there but they are by no means a good example as to why this doesn’t work. Kinetic Healer and Elemental Whispers are both class features of the same class. There is no reason to doubt their intended interaction.
On top of that, SLA’s are in fact affected by the Spell Focus Feat should the SLA be a Spell. So bringing up feats holds no bearing into this conversation. Given, as I mentioned above, we are talking about two class features that belong to the same class and belong in the same category even. Utility Wild Talents. And feats seemingly function both ways concerning SLA’s. In regards to whether they do or do not interact with SLA’s.So you are infact presenting a misrepresentation of the issue by bringing up the interaction of feats and SLA’s. It should not be brought up again and as it stands Kinetic Healer still interacts with Deliver Touch Spells through Familiar from Elemental Whispers and from other sources. To include Multiclassing and Improved Familiar Bond familiars.
As there is nothing to suggest that they do not function otherwise.