One of my players had a character death and is going to build a kineticist. It's a new class for all of us and he is researching how to build one. I've never seen anyone play one, and reading the class itself and looking through the guide I don't think I have a very good picture of what is going on.
He wants to be a melee tanky character with utility, and I think he wants to do earth and aether but that's not set in stone right now.
So, at level 8, what can I expect from this character in a big picture sense? Or is there too much variation between the elements to say?
I'm guessing they do less damage than a barbarian or archer or the like, but I don't even really know how to estimate what to expect.
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As SLAs, the Kineticist's attacks ignore Damage Reduction, but bounce off of Spell Resistance. Demons/devils/what-have-you tend to have CR+11 SR, so the Fiendish template (only CR+5) will slow the Kinny down, and actual Outsiders will sneer at him by 8th level. Other than spell Penetration and Greater Spell Penetration, there isn't a lot the Kineticist can do about it. Most of the tools Wizards and Sorcerers use to get past Sr work on spells, not SLAs...
Note that a Kineticist gets 1d6 of elemental damage on every odd level:
1 - 1d6
3 - 2d6
etc. But at 7th level, the get access to a second elemental source and the the dice _double_, so that 4d6 goes to 8d6 if they are willing to swallow some burn. Thats:
4d6 - ave 14
8d6 - ave 28
Plus a metamagic like ability of Empower, increasing the damage by 50%.
8d6 - ave 28 -> 42
Standard range for the Kineticist is 30'. While your guy wants to go melee, when the time for a sniper comes along the Kineticist can take infusions granting range of 110' and 480'.
Note that if your Kineticist goes with a pure energy attack, it does less damage, but attacks Touch AC. melee or ranged.
At level 8? It depends on the powers he picks.
If he goes aether, then expect a sneaky guy with access to constantly (but lower bonus) invisibility. Also at ranged pick pocketing and lock picking. He might be able to grab flight if he ignores earth stuff. The defense from aether is nice, but it mostly just offsets the damage from burn.
In terms of damage... aether isn't 'great', since it doesn't have a good composite (you eventually get disintegrate, which is a big save based gamble; also, the resulting damage is similar to energy blasts). It can be 'enough', when you focus on the extra 50% damage meta on it. You would eventually want to switch to other blasts at higher levels.
If he goes earth, then high DR is the main feature. Some minor but notable abilities are a climb speed and tremor sense. Eventually they can earthglide at will... which can be troublesome, but not as bad as the ability to move earth (in which case, they can just make a hallway for the party to waltz through).
Damage is good. It lacks the weird features of aether, and both its blasts are physical blasts- which means more damage. At the highest levels (when there is a large amount of burn reduction), they can combine some good blasts (grasping earth+deadly earth, for several turn AoE crowd control; kind of a higher version of black tentacles).
There is also a very strong ability to act solo. Blasts can be used infinitely if you do not use burn, and these two elements have good evasion abilities (earthglide and invisibility). Combine that with 'ride the blast' (Which allows the user to move to the end point of the blast- hit the wall, and you are basically giving yourself jet propulsion), and they can run around very, very fast- some elements can go 100 mph depending on the power chosen (55 is more realistic). But they are slowed down if they have to drag a party along.
Actually, they make better villains- they can run around everywhere at high speeds (normal parties only go 40 per DAY) and they have an ability to murder hundreds of low level opponents personally- not some big natural disaster spell, but personally shooting blasts. It is hard to imagine an army with level 5 characters taking on a high level earth kineticist (the DR alone practically makes him untouchable, let alone the speed).
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An earth/aether kineticist is... a melee tanky character with utility. Shiroi and lemeres have a good run-down on the specifics. He might also be able to inflict minor status effects such as entangled when he hits an enemy.
With kinetic blade, being able to switch between melee and short-range fire is a very nice ability.
I haven't seen a kineticist at higher levels yet, but I've heard their accuracy can suffer compared to classes that can put plusses on their weapons.
If he's going Earth (and I think if he's throwing a weapon with aether instead of the pure energy version) he does more damage and ignores SR but he deals with normal AC and DR.As SLAs, the Kineticist's attacks ignore Damage Reduction, but bounce off of Spell Resistance. Demons/devils/what-have-you tend to have CR+11 SR, so the Fiendish template (only CR+5) will slow the Kinny down, and actual Outsiders will sneer at him by 8th level. Other than spell Penetration and Greater Spell Penetration, there isn't a lot the Kineticist can do about it. Most of the tools Wizards and Sorcerers use to get past Sr work on spells, not SLAs...
Correct, earth and aether (telekinetic) blasts are physical blasts and deal with DR, not SR. Rare Metal Infusion exists specifically to bypass DR, but if the character is taking both earth and aether they can't take that infusion (yet).
Also Spell Penetration works fine with SLAs.
If they want to be a tanky melee, maybe suggest that they use the Kinetic Knight archetype. It'll make them better at what they want to do and possibly make things a bit simpler in play due to being restricted to melee form infusions.
A regular Kineticist usually functions similarly to a blaster caster, hurling magical power from a distance, but they can alter their blasts piecemeal, adding different shapes and effects onto them. They often simultaneously deliver debuffs or control the battlefield while dealing damage.
I want to thank everyone for there responses. It actually sounds like a pretty cool class, just hard to get a sense of what it does from reading the class. And thanks for the kinetic knight tip, I think he will like that, since he complained about not being able to get whip until level nine, and not caring about ranged attacks
If he's going Earth (and I think if he's throwing a weapon with aether instead of the pure energy version) he does more damage and ignores SR but he deals with normal AC and DR.
However, DR and AC is not a major problem for kineticists- they often use one big blast at full AC. Ergo, it is enough damage in a single strike to blast through DR, and it has a high enough bonus to not care much about AC.
Now miss chances- those are the bane of a kineticist's existence. When you full attack, you might lose maybe 1 attack from a simple 20% miss chance. But if you use a blast, then you might lose your entire turn's worth of attacks to a single miss.
This is a problem for almost every kineticist that is not doing melee. Energy suffers from it too... unless you are doing AoE, no miss things like throwing fireballs. But then you have to deal with saves, which becomes its own mess.
Unless I've missed something AC is a big problem for kineticists. 3/4 BAB, no way to enchant the weapon, secondary focus on the attack stat (or losing Con to pump Str/Dex). Elemental Overflow helps but it's a patch, not a solution. At level 8 they're looking at +6 (BAB) +2 (EO) +stat (+1 EO) versus an AC of 21 (CR 8) or 24 (CR 10). Even if they start with a 20 and dump everything into it they're still rolling d20+15, a 25/40% miss chance (subtract 5-10% for a belt). More realistically we're looking at a 16 and no extra investment for d20+12 and a 40/55% miss chance. And with only one attack a round those miss chances hurt. That's not a 40% chance you miss, it's a 40% chance you waste your turn.
+1 Point-Blank Shot, +1 Weapon Focus(Kinetic Blast), and if you're really worried about accuracy, you're probably going to build your character to use an energy blast to target touch AC and/or use area-affecting form infusions.
I'm not saying accuracy isn't an issue at all, but it's not as bleak as you're calculating.
I retired my hobgoblin terra/hydro because kineticist after less than two months of play because it was clear he was better at everyone elses job than they were, except for the support (bard that focused on buffs spells).
Highest hp in the group plus DR, able to invest all the money that would go toward weapons into defensive items, powerful in melee (kinetic blade + weapon finesse) and also able to snipe from incredibly far away. Will saves were his one weakness.
If you player is a math whiz with a head for strategy, kineticist can be one of the most offensively powerful classes in the game, but you have to know how to manage your burn and squeeze the most uses out of your infusions, which is much more upkeep than many other classes.
If you ignore a lot of those calculations and just play them lightly, they're on par (and maybe a little weaker) than some others.
Unless I've missed something AC is a big problem for kineticists. 3/4 BAB, no way to enchant the weapon, secondary focus on the attack stat (or losing Con to pump Str/Dex). Elemental Overflow helps but it's a patch, not a solution. At level 8 they're looking at +6 (BAB) +2 (EO) +stat (+1 EO) versus an AC of 21 (CR 8) or 24 (CR 10). Even if they start with a 20 and dump everything into it they're still rolling d20+15, a 25/40% miss chance (subtract 5-10% for a belt). More realistically we're looking at a 16 and no extra investment for d20+12 and a 40/55% miss chance. And with only one attack a round those miss chances hurt. That's not a 40% chance you miss, it's a 40% chance you waste your turn.
If this does indeed turn into an issue how unbalancing do you think it would be if I gave him access to an amulet of mighty fists that instead affects his blast?
Unless I've missed something AC is a big problem for kineticists. 3/4 BAB, no way to enchant the weapon, secondary focus on the attack stat (or losing Con to pump Str/Dex). Elemental Overflow helps but it's a patch, not a solution. At level 8 they're looking at +6 (BAB) +2 (EO) +stat (+1 EO) versus an AC of 21 (CR 8) or 24 (CR 10). Even if they start with a 20 and dump everything into it they're still rolling d20+15, a 25/40% miss chance (subtract 5-10% for a belt). More realistically we're looking at a 16 and no extra investment for d20+12 and a 40/55% miss chance. And with only one attack a round those miss chances hurt. That's not a 40% chance you miss, it's a 40% chance you waste your turn.+1 Point-Blank Shot, +1 Weapon Focus(Kinetic Blast), and if you're really worried about accuracy, you're probably going to build your character to use an energy blast to target touch AC and/or use area-affecting form infusions.
I'm not saying accuracy isn't an issue at all, but it's not as bleak as you're calculating.
The fact that overflow is both a straight attack/damage bonus and a stat bonus always made it seem like it was meant to serve as both the 'weapon enhancement' mechanic and the 'rage/inspire/judgment/etc' mechanic.
Additionally, you are highly SAD and a single blast user always shoots at highest BAB. If you expect to hit with your second iterative as a bard (who has to split stats between 4 different stats), then even under the bleak view you can hit with your main blast.
This is particularly true since single blast users are unlikely to use power attack/deadly aim style feats. A rule of thumb I remember- power attack is not worth it if you hit for more than 60 damage per hit. And that is child's play for a kineticist.
3pp has done similar, it's not horrible but honestly it's unlikely the player needs this unless you see a real problem with his playstyle and build. Check out N.Jollys guide to the kineticist, it'll help you and your player a lot.If this does indeed turn into an issue how unbalancing do you think it would be if I gave him access to an amulet of mighty fists that instead affects his blast?
He is using that to build his kineticist. I looked at it and bounced off it pretty hard, along with the actual class page. It seems really opaque and I had a hard time getting even a broad idea of what it would do and how it fits in the game. So I came here to ask about it. We have a pretty unoptimized group, and I was concerned with this class throwing our group balance out of whack. I'm still not sure how it will work out, but I guess we will just have to see and go from there.
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In the grand scheme of things, kineticist damage output tends to be above average, but hardly top potential.
If you have a power attacking barbarian, smiting paladin, a well made slayer, or Gorrum forbid a good archer, kineticist seems like an okay backup artillery.
If you have a sword-and-shield fighter, a core rogue, a support caster, and an investigator, the kineticist will feel alarmingly overpowered. This is because the kineticist design is a beautiful tapestry of interwoven abilities that all feed off of one another through Burn. A lot of their damage is built in and you don't have to "opt in" to it with feats or specific items.
It's hard to see at first glance. I strongly suggest reading N. Jolly's guide before you even try to read the class entry, since it's much cleaner in presenting information. Then maybe build a 5th level test kineticist for funsies just to see how it works.
It's easier to understand through hands on experience with a little trial by error.