Amartinez's page

The fluff and items range from good to alright, but everything else is sorta meh. The new spirits for the Medium are pretty cool, as well as some of the Stare feats/tricks for the Mesmerist, but other than that...

I'll be honest. I wanted more kineticist talents when I bought this book, and I was nothing but disappointed. Oh gee, more ways to melee as a kineticist - as though there weren't a half-dozen archetypes that did pretty much the same thing. Oh look, *more* blasts that expand the use of your kinetic blade! Oh look, *feats*! Like there aren't *enough* feats, and these simply add a few spells as kineticist talents.

It was alright overall, but frankly, I would've saved the 10 bucks.

I swear, some of these books have talents from previous volumes, which annoys me a bit. As far as the *new* stuff, IV has several pretty bangin' talents/archetypes - I'm a huge fan of someone using arrays, or whip-like blasts against foes :3

My favorite part of this, actually, is a nice little talent that helps dual-blast elements (air, water, etc), preventing you from being locked out of certain infusions/talents because you chose "ice" instead of "water" at Level 1.

All in all, it's worth the $3.99, but it doesn't have quite as much a bang as the earlier volumes. If you're a fan of the Porphyra line of kineticist books, you'll be pleased with it.

Oh man, I *wanted* to like this so much...

As an idea, this is *amazing*, but...

First off, your kinetic blast is downgraded to 1d4 + CHA mod (for physical; elemental is even worse, at 1d4), and *never* increases. At all.

OK, fine, it's a sneak attack class, right? Except you gain sneak attack die at a slower rate, and if you use it with the jutsu blade (essentially, a free Kinetic Blade talent that lets you full attack, and use Vital Strike), those awesome d6s are turned to d4s.

The worst part is, its *clear* from the jutsu/talents you get that the class *wants* you to use the Blade Jutsu as a bread and butter (increase crit threat, increase area of effect, increase damage to 1d8+cha wooo). The only thing is, your damage sucks just, so bad. I'm sorry, but I don't really care if I can turn my blast into a cone/line at will if it's only doing 1d4+cha, with reflex save for half damage, that's just pathetic. Even if you choose the talent to get a composite blast, the damage is still worthless (2d8, f'ing, woo).

Some of it sounds like they want you to go towards being a two-weapon fighter, which is fine, but then don't take this class.

Also, can't take ninja tricks till Master Tricks. Can't get utility talents till Master Tricks (at level 10, what).

So, to sum this up, your sneak attack sucks, you don't have any access to rogue talents/ninja tricks till level 10, your damage output will lag behind...name a class, and you can't even do any of the super-fun controller/elemental utility stuff a kineticist can do.

I know that damage isn't everything (I've seen whole fights changed with a single use of Sow Thought, or Enlarge Person, or Forbid Action; Mass), but, to me, this is clearly a class that is supposed to bring the pain, only it fails tremendously at doing so.

What's really disappointing to me is that I loved the crap out of the last Kineticist product they put out. I was really looking forward to this, and then it turns out to not really do anything that well, and gives up pretty much everything that makes the Ninja and Kineticist great on their own.

The only things that're good (but not 7$ good) are the ideas. Seriously, the *idea* of the class and its various archetypes are *spectacular* - but not enough.

When the kineticist came out, It was obviously going to be akin to the Avatar benders. With the expansions of 3rd-party books, it's become not only that, but the equivalent of a superhero-class of sorts, and this continues the welcomed trend.

With the Mind sphere, you essentially have Jean Gray, or any number of telepathic heroes, though honestly, the artistic kinetics were what really stood out to me. I've always been a fan of strange powers, so a paper or ink-based class strikes me as obnoxiously fun :3 (especially after watching Read or Die).

I heartily recommend this book, and await with baited breath to see what comes next.

So, I probably can't say much that hasn't already been said, but holy crap, holy crap, even if you have a passing interest in the Kineticist, you should buy this.

The archetypes are all awesome, and the new elements definitely add new playstyles for your character. The best things though?

1) An archetype that is mental-based, and you take mental status ailments if you go over your Burn limit.

2) A new bunch of low-level powers. I can't...can't tell you how irritated it was to realize that there were some elements that only had a couple lv 2 powers, and they tended to still be Universal, not anything unique.

So, I was kind of hoping that this would be something *other* than just another bunch of spells. Yeah, a lot of them are cool (and if you're just looking for a bunch of spells, more power to ya'), but frankly, there's nothing all that special here.

Maybe I'm being a buzzkill, but the fluff was lacking, and I'd been hoping it would've focused on alternate casting, magical traditions, or (long shot I know) maybe some content for the Occult classes (specifically, the seriously lacking Kineticist). Again, while for the price, the spells weren't horrible, but after stuff like the Weapon Master's Handbook, and the Ranged/Melee/Dirty Trick handbooks, this is seriously weak-sauce.

Mostly a good book, but a few things:
1) Many creatures were previously released in other books, which is a really cheap thing to do when you're charging money for a new product.

2) Some creatures will have 1-3 entire pages dedicated to every aspect of them (Ex: Apostate Devil clocked in just shy of two full), while others will have one freaking sentence (Ex: Astral Dragons). It was seriously annoying to have some monsters fully flushed out, while others felt lazy, and were nothing more than a stat block and a picture. While that might be alright if I was just looking at this on a free website, when I'm paying money for a product, it'd be nice if they'd actually put consistent effort into *every* creature.

3) The player races were dumb. The Android is the only remotely cool one, and that was (again) released previously. The other races are either hyper-niche (deep one hybrids that take stat drain if they're away from water too long, and when they get old enough, die, and become a deep one, for example), or bland, and uninteresting (ex: a dark elf that always has to flee from its people, because fluff, or a lizard dude who just sorta is lame).

Again, it's a good book, full of some seriously cool and fun stuff (robots, and crabs possessed by samurai souls, which, I'm not being sarcastic, really one of my favorites), but do *not* buy a hardcover version of this. I bought the PDF, and I will say, had I paid almost $50 for a physical book, I would've been majorly pissed at the sometimes lackluster writing and re-printed creatures, rather than just annoyed.