Aklerion's page

Just the whole idea of burn seems inelegant in 2e. I actually kinda liked it in 1e. It made kineticists die less since you were taking nonlethal. You would end up going unconscious long before you hit 0 so you wouldn’t bleed out. The only time you had to worry about dying was massive damage, or an enemy coup de grace while you were unconscious. So it wasn’t nearly as much of an issue.

In 2e without having nonlethal damage you actually are more likely to die when you accept burn. I feel like it would be way to hard to get the balance just right of what’s worth the risk without being too much.

graystone wrote:

Temperans wrote:

If what you are going for is a kineticist that relies on the basic blast for everything sure you might spend all the burn on your defenses and all day abilities. But if you want to use the big explosions you would have to pace yourself and think about when to use burn. The fact you didn't see it does not mean it didn't exist I know very well that I had character that went with both styles of play.

You are ignoring that 'big blasts' require a save and you're missing out on +3 to their DC by not filling overload out. So I saw it but I understand that a 3 difference in DC's is fairly substantial if I actually want them to fail the saves.

Temperans wrote:

Does it really matter if you are missing +5 to hit when you are dealing 10x more base damage?

Yes, yes it does. If it misses, x1 and x1000 deal the same damage: 0.

Temperans wrote:

Burn let you pick at any point what you wanted to do, but instead of spending feats you were spending your HP. You like it being passive abilities and not deal with the HP loss. I liked being able to use the active abilities as needed while getting stronger from the sacrifice.

LOL IMO this just isn't true. You lose bonuses to hit, damage, DC on your saves, elemental defences, 2 saving throws and a 35% chance to ignore crits... These aren't trivial things no matter if you are using your base blasts or using big blasts. Burn reducers like Infusion Specialization, Supercharge, gather power, Composite Specialization and Metakinetic Master are what allows you to spend burn on big blasts and stuff, not hoarding your burn for a rainy day and ignoring your overflow bonuses and Elemental Defense.

A +3 they wouldn't get in PF2 because very few things get that bonus in PF2.

In PF1 a +15 really wasn't that bad a to-hit except vs the toughest opponent. At which point you would use a save based ability. In PF2 that point is mute since everyone has the same to-hit and burn isn't likely to get a bonus to hit....

I have to completely agree with graystone on this. Not having your burn buffs up made you worse than most other characters of the same level as the class was balanced around the burn buffs. I love the kineticist, had a blood one that just died sadly, but without the burn I wouldn’t have been able to even be competitive in the later levels.

Also you mention how much damage the kineticist does but it really wasn’t that much. About 50 damage in one attack give or take in your example, and that’s all you’ve got. Unless you were using kinetic blade that was all your attacks. Any form of archer or gunslinger would blow that out of the water. Full attacks were just too good.

That’s what the elemental overflow was for. A bonus to hit was to ensure your only attack each turn didn’t miss, bonus damage to help you keep up with the damage of a full attack, and a bonus to your stats to help both of those things and give you some added defense.

But I’ll stop this discussion here as it doesn’t any use when talking about 2e. I personally hope there is no burn added to 2e. It just feels too inelegant for pathfinder 2e.

Aklerion wrote:

The class dc is a bigger issue though. It needs to scale higher and maybe even a bit faster. I’ve ran 80 combats with the kineticist so far. 10 combats at each level levels 1-8 and honestly I’m in love with the class. It just needs a few tweaks to really make it shine. I actually have a small list of things I’d like to see changed and class dc scaling is one.

As an aside, how the hell did you run 80 combats in what, 33 hours? I'm not doubting you, that just seems logistically difficult

Well I didn’t have work and I started testing as soon as I’d read the class. I have a ton of 2e experience so it wasn’t difficult. I built a kineticist and then used several characters I have built to run a party. I put them up against a number of different monsters of varying levels in different circumstances. I used a program to roll hundreds of each dice so I wouldn’t spend time rolling them and could just reference the next number on the list. My roommate helped with that part by organizing the lists by dice type and printing them out.

From there it was pretty quick. Low level fights are super swingy and quick so levels 1-3 went by extremely fast. And the characters I used are all characters I’ve used extensively so I knew the combat patterns without needing to take a lot of time to think.

Also I don’t sleep much so that helped.

My tests aren’t perfectly accurate of course. 1 person running an entire combat can be very different from a party. I can synergize more and there’s always the potential for bias. But it does give me a pretty good representation of the damages and effectiveness of things even with the flaws. I do plan on testing with actual people soon I just wanted to get some data for everything out the gate.

Off topic this is actually very similar to how I balance encounters when I’m a dm. If I want to see if a homebrew monster I made is too much or if I’ve put my players in an unwinnable situation I take all their character sheets and run the combat 10-20 times and see what happens.

You’ll find after you do this a bit it goes fast. Combats are much quicker without table talk, dice rolling, time spent thinking about tactics, monologues, RP, etc.

My only real accuracy concern when it comes to strikes is no expert until level 7. Levels 5-6 won’t be pleasant. Having a 16 in your striking stat really isn’t a problem though as we’ve seen from thaumaturge and inventor.

The class dc is a bigger issue though. It needs to scale higher and maybe even a bit faster. I’ve ran 80 combats with the kineticist so far. 10 combats at each level levels 1-8 and honestly I’m in love with the class. It just needs a few tweaks to really make it shine. I actually have a small list of things I’d like to see changed and class dc scaling is one.

Anyone else have their order still pending? I live like an hour away from Paizo so I understand my orders are most likely shipped last but this is definitely the longest it's taken for an order to ship to me.

Still pending here as well, over in another thread they said they'll get all the orders shipped out by the 29th unless something happens.

Aklerion wrote:

sincerely wrote:

Verlaunte wrote:

Anyone else feel like you wont get the apg until the 29th?

*raises hand and weeps*

I'm feeling like I won't get mine until mid-August if my normal luck holds up. Though if I don't have it by the 30th I'll probably crack and buy the pdf then

I was kind of hoping that just getting the one thing in my order would be pretty easy to pull off but no luck. If mine's not out by street date I'll probably do the same, just snag the pdf. Though... the SRD is supposed to be updated for the street date, so I might just hold off? Still a week to go, who knows!

Joan H. a CSR posted in the July 2020 New Releases and Subscription Shipping thread that as of right now it looks like it all will ship by the 29th

Verlaunte wrote:

Anyone else feel like you wont get the apg until the 29th?

*raises hand and weeps*

I'm feeling like I won't get mine until mid-August if my normal luck holds up. Though if I don't have it by the 30th I'll probably crack and buy the pdf then

Throne wrote:

Any more info available on Aasimars?

What lineages are available?
How do they work; do you just pick one, or is it down to a feat pick?
What non-feat racials do they get, if any? Darkvision?

It was mentioned upthread that they get a permanent flight option at 17. Is there an earlier short-duration flight option available? (Prereq for the permanent wings?)
What other angelic-flavoured options do they get, beyond spell-likes?

(Playing one in an upcycled Tyrant's Grasp, just a human with no racial feats at the moment, so interested what I have to look forward to)

The Aasimars get Angelkin, Lawbringer, and Musetouched as possible lineages -- these are optional ancestry feats that you can only get at first level (but can skip if you'd prefer some other ancestry feat instead).

Most of their non-feat abilities are those of their "other" ancestry, but it does kick up your vision one step (so it gives you low-light vision, or if your ancestry already gave you low-light vision, it gives you darkvision).

Prior to the level 17 permanent flight option, there is an earlier short-duration flight option available at level 9 (which is actually a prerequisite for the level 17 option), which gives you 10 minutes of flight once per day.

Most of their ancestry feats are spell-like abilities, but there are a couple exceptions. For example, there's a level 13 feat which gives all your weapons/unarmed strikes the good and magical traits, and makes them inflict an extra point of good damage. There's a level 9 feat that gives you a +1 circumstance bonus to saves against divine effects. There's a level 5 feat that gives you resistence 5 to one kind of energy. And a couple other things.

Ventnor wrote:

Misko wrote:

Could I get some more info on the riding drake, other than it being Uncommon?

I, too, would like to know a little more about the Riding Drake. As in, does it actually have some draconic stuff going on?

The riding drake is an interesting mix...

Well now I feel stupid. I didn’t realize lineages were done as fears. That makes a lot more sense. Thanks a lot!