Easl's page

The Wizard is, IMO, in a situation where it could be fixed with some effectively compulsory low-level feats, which can occupy less page space (though admittedly, 'this class only gets good if you grab these specific feat from a non-core book' is kinda dumb but hey, here we are).

Personally I'd like more/better focus spells. The feats might be boring, but they can be useful. One of our players typically uses Reach Spell multiple times per session.

Glad to know that you have never encountered a GM that was actively trying to make the game harder for everyone by 'being fair and running the game as written'.

I've certainly had disputes with other players and GMs, but nothing this obtuse. 'When you attack from horseback with this widget' clearly connotes 'you can attack from horseback with this widget.' If someone doesn't recognize that and they need that message stated in a separate sentence, then I would argue that they are the ones not being fair to their players. English is simply not used in a way where every specific point, every factoid, gets its own separate sentence. Neither do the rules need to be. At least, I used to think that was the case. Maybe I was wrong.

I don't see the need to demand such exact parsing. "While you are mounted..." is sufficient to explain that this specific longbow has an override over a general long bow quality. "You may use it while mounted. While you are mounted..." would just be excess verbiage connoting exactly the same thing.

Except following one Shove might keep you adjacent to one of the others you already had been adjacent too. Shoving that one might lead you the other direction to a second one you'd been adjacent too. And so on in a pinwheel of pushing. I don't think that suits the feat though and wouldn't allow the first follow to begin with, partly because it feels like all the Shoves are concurrent (even if they need to be mechanically distinct in order).

Well a pinwheel path might not be suitable, but if you have opponents to your NW, N, NE on a grid, you could shove the N one back, stride into their former position, then shove the two opponents now W and E of you away from you.

I think that would be very in keeping with the name of the Feat. However it still seems maybe not rules as intended. The most natural (to me) reading is that you make the (up to) five rolls as a single thing, then you move.

This ability taken raw opens the user up to serious risk.

Rolling 5 times gives plenty more opportunity to crit fail and land prone.

You don't have to target 5 people. Target less if you want to be more careful...with high reward, comes high risk. With all-five targeting there's about a 23% chance you roll at least one 1.

And thus, all threads arrive as they are supposed to: with Wizard talk.

I've been thinking about casters in general in a 3rd edition and how to make the balance between them clearer. So for example, every single one of them could start with the exact same slot progression, same spontaneous, same slot+1 repertoire. Then you distinguish by class feature: clerics get their +4 heal slots, sorcs get their +rank damage, etc. The wizard, in this sort of framework, might get slot+4 repertoire as it's class thing. That's their broader knowledge of magic and 'prepared for everything' schtick.

I don't mind the one creature part as the swarms of archons and elementals used by power gamer summoners was pretty hated not just by DMs, but by players.

I sure wish the one creature you summon was more fearsome in combat.

With sustain being one action, it has to balance against third actions. A summon attack 3-5 points behind is exactly that.

They could probably make a balanced 'full level' summon if the sustain took 2 actions, and that would balance out because it wouldn't allow casters 'double full attack' with spell and creature. But if they did that, I'm sure players would complain about how full level summons were terrible because they have to spend 2 actions to keep them up ;)

Not sure of RAW, but on thematic grounds a Dr. Frankenstein zapping a Dying patient with electricity absolutely should wake them up but then, absent additional medical intervention, allow them to collapse again. Oh the tragedy. Shake your fist at the gods and zap them again. :)

I'm going to be blasphemous and say new things that have nothing to do with PF1.

Lets get more gish options that blur the weapon and casting proficiency lines.

We have three-ish. Magus, Summoner, arguably Kineticist.

Magus makes the best template for homebrewing more, IMO, as it would require the least amount of change. The chassis already begins with the armor and weapon proficiencies you want, plus spellcasting, and it reaches Master in all three (weapons, spells, and armor). That package is balanced by the wavecasting so you're not going to be slinging spells with the rampant enthusiasm of a full caster, but...gish. Anyway, it would be pretty easy to swap out the Magus' class features for different class features and tweak things like prepared->spontaneous or INT->WIS/CHA to make a gish that plays entirely differently, but is pretty safe in terms of game balance since the combat encounter proficiencies are in line with a class we already have.

Another option would be to create a warpriest-like subclass option or class archetype for other full caster classes. Again, if you stick to the Paizo template for what they did with warpriest, you should end up with something not OP since it would be consistent on proficiencies with an option we already have. Warmage wizard sounds cool.

Yeah, Summons were copies even in PF1.

This wasn't changed in PF2.

Okay, thanks!

PF2 changed Summon spells so they create simulations of creatures, not summon actual creatures...

Castilliano, do you have a cite for that? I'm not seeing it in the 'Summoned' section of spell descriptions (PC1 p301). Now the spell lists use the word 'conjure', but the actual spell descriptions consistently start out with "You summon a creature that has the ______ trait...". That seems pretty clear: you are summoning something, not creating a simulacrum.

Additional texts in some spells (see specifically "Summon Monitor", PC1 p361) also seems to point to this being a real critter. Urgathoa doesn't prevent her followers from creating illusions of psychopomps, but she does care if her followers summon one.

I don't think it needs a class. Commander seems like a good thematic fit: you're going to be running your business and ordering your caravan guards around.

PS to my own post and and public service announcement: it looks like Pathbuilder has Commander and Guardian now. Though they could've dropped a few days ago and I just now noticed...

In a level 1-10 campaign with free archetype, getting the blast up front is probably good enough to just be able to eschew weapons all together.

It counts as a magic spell. So if a caster is looking for some backup way to affect things that their magic can't affect, it's maybe not as good as an enruned finesse weapon. Martials OTOH, gain a way to do anytime spell damage of a nonphysical type. Which is probably useful 1-10 since the standard +1d6 elemental property runes don't become available to purchase until level 8. Plus, who doesn't like CON on a martial?

Archetype ideas for unique feats and abilities. Maybe? I haven't given much thought to this:

-Daily preparation gives some number of extra 'free uses' of Prescient Planner and Prescient Consumable. Or maybe more potent uses.
-New ways to more rapidly improve Attitude conditions. Or maybe bonuses to those rolls if the archetype doesn't include increased proficiencies (but not both).
-Crafting: always considered to have formula and tools??? "I checked the warehouse and found some pieces in stock."
-Crafting: level bonus to what you can make (i.e. 1 higher than your level or something)
-Companions seem like a good fit (Horse, servant), so a feat improving that might be useful.
-Increased proficiency to Diplomacy, Society. Putting this last because it's not terribly unique, but I'm sure it's something people would value in an archetype.

I don't think it needs a class. Commander seems like a good thematic fit: you're going to be running your business and ordering your caravan guards around.

Not only but also that starting at level 13 arcane/primal casters can cast Fiery Body and casts ignition as one action what means that you do 8d4 (20 avg) damage as your 3rd-action. If you have Shadow Signet you also can choose to attack Fortitude or Reflex if you know the enemy weakest defense.

Well that SHOULD be better than a cantrip, EB, or archetype dedication feat, it's a rank 7 spell lol.

I still disagree with you, because you are implicitly and falsely framing an extremely limited narrative function as the sole valid function of simple damage traps, when I am pointing out this limitation as a point of criticism.

In other words: simple damage traps can serve a useful plot purpose if used correctly, but could also achieve a far greater variety of purposes, both narrative and mechanical, if their damage weren't so easy to erase. Agreed?

I disagree with 'extremely limited narrative function.' They can serve a whole bunch of functions, just not the one function you are primarily concerned about - i.e. softening up a party before a fight.

But here's something else to consider. One thing you haven't mentioned in complaining that PF2E simple damage traps don't do this as well as traps in other system is Medicine. Paizo has an extremely buff form of nonmagic between-encounter healing. So if you really want to intersperse minor 'trap' encounters between major 'combat' encounters and have them matter, removing some Medicine feats might be a more elegant solution. Because that would affect all traps. As other posters noted much earlier, your ideas of condition traps suffers from the fact that at higher levels, Medicine can heal those between encounters too. So maybe Medicine's effectiveness is your root problem, not traps. Consider telling your players that Continual Recover and Robust Recovery won't be available in your game - that will make both damage traps AND condition traps more meaningful and attention-getting, and maybe they Search more now.

In other words: simple damage traps are not a good fit for every campaign or play style, but could be a much better fit for many more campaigns and play styles if their mechanical function were made to work better with PF2e's model of HP attrition. Agreed?

I kinda agree with Finoan that FP2E doesn't have a strong model for HP attrition between major encounters, this is something you're mostly trying to add. Thus what I see you doing here is creating a new play style, then pointing out that some traps as written don't support this play style, and calling that a flaw in them. Which it isn't. If you homebrew stronger attrition into your game, then it's up to you to homebrew tools to support it.

Easl wrote:

Well now that cat's out of bag about DA (remastered) being made, I'm crossing my fingers that thaumaturge hand use (or even just the text) might be simplified. But, not holding my breath.

Hold on... Back up! What's this about Dark Archives Remastered!? Where? When?? How long do we have to wait???

You can't just casually say something like that, man!!!!!!!

Sorry lol, it hit the threads like a month ago.

Unicore wrote:

Can someone explain to me how a caster who doesn’t want to invest the heavy wealth investment in a weapon and weapon runes, or anything into STR isn’t better off with elemental blast as a third action, resourceless attack option?

The Ostilli Host says hi. For the low, low price of one 2nd-level dedication feat, you get an auto-scaling, single-action bit of damage that also involves a basic save using your class DC (oh, and it scales better too).

Coolness! I don't have HotW so this was new.

Requires Surki ancestry. Is uncommon.

But if RD is good with those requirements, and is looking specifically to add a blast and not some broader character concept, then the ostilli archetype is likely a better choice. Early on EB gives you a couple things ostilli doesn't (60' range for a few elements to start with; access to nonphysical damage types to start with), but ostilli's feat chain takes care of those issues by 6th level and gives you more vertical blasting power later on. The archetype doesn't have the flexibility of "pick an impulse" archetype feats or access to Weapon Infusion's 100' range and melee tricks, but those could be a secondary concern for RD - if what they're really going for is just a 3rd action regular range powerful blast, ostilli looks good.

How does taking more time to complete the same amount of adventuring create more risk? What even is the element of risk here? You're still not really elaborating on where the time pressure here is coming from, which is a touch fishy.

I told you exactly why, but maybe you missed it. Because our GM may introduce new hazards or monsters based on clock time, particularly at night. In our games, the world keeps spinning and the villains keep carrying out their evil plots, even when the characters do nothing.

If your table creates some kind of time pressure that makes every 10-minute activity count from start to finish, that's great, but also not a universal, much less the default.

I agree it is not universal. That's what makes the value of such traps to different campaigns a table issue. Right?

yet here you are, still insisting that I'm trying to take away your toys

You've said you're not arguing for Paizo to remove or change basic simple traps. But you started by arguing (or, sounding like you were arguing...) that they are nothing but speed bumps, unfit for purpose, etc. and I disagree with you there. They can be very fit for purpose...when the GM pays attention to the second part of the sentence you quoted, and doesn't ignore it.

It is also separate from simple hazards themselves, meaning that a GM looking at simple damage hazards may find themselves unaware of the guideline advising against using those as solo threats.

Here is an example of exactly what I'm talking about. This is your argument and it is not an argument to add more content. That quote is a criticism of the current content, and implies you think it should be rewritten, changed, or improved. That's where we disagree.

Sure, a GM who drops a listed hazard into a dungeon without reading the GMC section on how to use hazards may find their traps less effective. I don't see this as a big problem. It's user error, not a bug in the program.

Let me give you another example: your response to karys.

I'm not sure this is really topical when the topic is one of game design, not just use at the table. I'm really not a proponent of having the GM fix the game at their table, in this case by specifically avoiding a huge swath of simple damage hazards presented to them as valid options for traps, and I would personally prefer things to be made to work at the design level.

Again, you are clearly not arguing for merely more new traps. You are arguing the current section is broken because it needs the GM to fix it at the table. Which is I think the point some folks disgaree with you about. As far as I can tell, nobody is arguing against your suggestion that Paizo add more traps with effects different from damage.

Quote:

I'd only quibble that that "effective use" is not limited to "affects the next combat." Traps can play many more roles in a scenario than just making the next combat harder. To go back to unicore's example, if the characters get from the trap that there are trapping monsters ahead, and that's what the GM wanted them to get from it, then the trap has been effective.

No objections from me there

I think we're good then. This was my main point of disagreement with you.

Simple damage traps can serve a useful plot purpose, used correctly. Agreed?

They are not a good fit for every campaign or play style. Merely one tool in the toolbox which GMs should take or leave as appropriate for their game. Agreed?

Paizo publishing more, different, unique hazard content (like persistent condition traps) would be welcome. Agreed?

Well now that cat's out of bag about DA (remastered) being made, I'm crossing my fingers that thaumaturge hand use (or even just the text) might be simplified. But, not holding my breath.

what I am describing is based on my own play experience, where the party rarely if ever found themselves needing to go that far into the evening, because they had more than ample opportunity to go through the dungeon, run the encounters, and solve the puzzles long before then.

So clearly our play experiences are different; our party adventures into the (in-game) evening, this creates more risk, and this makes simple traps more effective plot devices. Yours does not, your GM doesn't add risks in the evening, so simple traps are not good plot devices for you. This seems to me to clearly be a table difference. But I think you don't see it that way? I am not sure why you don't. The GMC provides a wide variety of tools exactly because campaigns are different; each GM is supposed to select the ones that make sense for their campaign. It is not expected that every hazard will be useful for every campaign. Arguing that simple traps are ineffective because they are not effective in games where characters don't adventure deep into the evening or always have time to heal, doesn't resonate much with me. OTOH, arguing that it would be a nice add on Paizos' part to publish additional persistent condition traps, for those campaigns that do have plenty of healing time, yeah that resonates. Advocate away.

The guideline for how to use them is not itself a hard-set rule, and merely serves to underline that the design of simple damage traps does not lend itself to them being easy to use as a GM.

A GMC statement does not have to be mechanical to be important. The second part of the GMC statement isn't mechanical, but if GMs ignore it they'll find their traps less effective. Conversely, and here is the point where I think we disagree, if the GM pays attention to that advice, simple traps can be effective at a variety of things (adding tension, inducing a pause, communicating information, setting a tone, etc.).

Quote:

Is your hope with persistent condition traps to give junior GMs a tool that requires less thinking? I.e. something that junior GM can just grab and drop in, and be assured that Paizo has baked in the next-scene-relevance for them?

Yes, actually. Not to the extent that the GM should pretend to be some random dungeon generator and throw traps and monsters without any regards for pacing or narrative, but certainly to the extent that a GM should not need to have a high level of system mastery nor extensive knowledge of the full list of hazards to be able to competently craft a map that includes simple hazards and puts those hazards to effective use.

Publication of more such traps would be useful for everyone. Whose gonna argue against "moar content!" Not me. I'd only quibble that that "effective use" is not limited to "affects the next combat." Traps can play many more roles in a scenario than just making the next combat harder. To go back to unicore's example, if the characters get from the trap that there are trapping monsters ahead, and that's what the GM wanted them to get from it, then the trap has been effective.

Unicore wrote:

I feel like your suggestion is very likely to just turn into "this might work once or twice and then players will just change their style of play to accommodate it."

From the instances where I've included hazards that do apply persistent conditions, you're absolutely right... except the change in playstyle was beneficial. Instead of not really caring about what they were doing during exploration because most traps didn't matter, party members started having a member Search.

Okay so that explains a lot. Search, Scout, Detect Magic, and Avoid Notice are the most standard exploration activities my party has "running." Yes if you as GM want your table group to pay more attention to Search, I can see how you've started looking to add in traps that will make the next combat harder if they don't. That sounds like a good solution to (dare I say it?) your table issue.

You went from "Kineticist archetype is really strong due to impulse attacks and Timber Sentinel" to "actually impulse attacks aren't that great" and then tried to frame me as if I had been the one to bring up the issue you raised. Unless you somehow completely forgot what you had said only a couple of hours before and also done a complete U-turn on your opinions, this is you stating a deliberate falsehood.

I think the Kineticist archetype is strong enough not to need any change. And I think it is a pretty common occurrence to use archetype abilities for defense and utility because the DC you get from an archetype tends to be lower than your class DC. The two statements together neither create a falsehood, nor are they inconsistent.

You then suggested an alternative way to structure the kin archetype, one where EB gets its damage progression as part of the dedication and it's the impulses which are restricted. A sort of vice versa of what Paizo chose to do. So I responded to that comment by telling you how I might do that. I agreed with you (<- merits acknowledged!) that 'full damege progression EB given at dedication' could work under a different archetype structure. I did not agree with the idea of halving class level to get impulse level as a good compensation for that.

This opinion is also not a falsehood when combined with my previous comments. I still don't think the archetype needs to be changed. I still think archetypes are often used for no-roll buffs and the like. But as a 'what if', I am happy to discuss the pros and cons of different ways to structure the archetype.

***
Trying to bring this back to Ravingdork's OP, here's my summary advice for you, Ravingdork, on how to make archetype EB work as written: select an element that gives you a damage type you don't normally access, through runes (martials) or spell selection (casters), so it is valuable when your primary class attacks meet resistance/immunity. If you are intent on using EB, versatile blasts (for extra elements) and weapon infusion (for range and various other buffs) would be an obvious way to improve it. Though I generally agree with other posters on this fora that you are 'swimming upstream' here.

Your own terms set the stage late in the evening during a day of dungeon crawling; because there are 24 hours in the day and six 10-minute periods per hour, it therefore stands to reason that an average adventuring party starting their crawl at a typical hour up until that time would have already had more than ample time to take as many breaks as they needed.

This was an actually played event I'm describing. The wounding happened around 7pm clock time. We had to make a decision then, and that decision had consequences and felt meaningful. Damage created a meaningful plot decision. I am really not seeing a cogent argument out of the claim that the party's ability to start adventuring at 9am clock time somehow makes the 7pm decision not tense, not interesting, or not relevant to the plot. It's not like we could use any of that past time to clear the recent wounded condition.

Heck, given that wounded is a condition and you're arguing for more condition traps, and I described how this condition ratcheted up the tension and made our decision meaningful, isn't this the sort of thing you want more of?

GM Core wrote:

Often, a simple hazard that merely damages its target is little more than a speed bump that slows down the game without much added value, so think about the purpose of your hazard carefully, both in the story and in the game world, especially when it’s a hazard that a creature intentionally built or placed in that location.

You can debate this as much as you want; the rules themselves explicitly point out that simple damage hazards are likely to achieve nothing on their own.

IF the GM doesn't think about how to use them. "Think about their purpose" is also an explicit part of the rules.

Look if you want to add more condition traps, that's your prerogative. Please post some of your ideas, I'm sure the community would love to have more 3rd party hazard content. But discussing what GMC says, IMO it is saying they can be speed bumps if the GM doesn't think about their purpose. The obvious advice being: 'GMs, think about their purpose when you add them in.' Is your hope with persistent condition traps to give junior GMs a tool that requires less thinking? I.e. something that junior GM can just grab and drop in, and be assured that Paizo has baked in the next-scene-relevance for them?

Forgive me if the tone came off as brusque, but I do genuinely find it offensive when people deliberately state falsehoods and then accuse others of making them.

I did not deliberately state any falsehood. Point out where you think I did, and if I did, I'll apologize. And for the future, I suggest we not assume malice where miscommunication will explain something. Actually, if none of us ever assume malice period the boards will be a nicer place.

Easl wrote:

I have never said the archetype is OP.

So what's this, then?

Easl wrote:

Mildly disagree. Meaning you're right that EB is probably too conservative but the ability to use a single archetype feat to pick up an evergreen attack impulse or something like protector tree is quite strong IMO. So considering the archetype as a whole, I don't think that it needs more power.

Perhaps OP is an exaggeration,

Yes exactly. It is an exaggeration of what I said. 'Strong, I don't think needs more power' implies I don't think the archetype needs to be changed by Paizo. "OP" implies almost the opposite - that I do think it needs to be changed by Paizo. Since I don't think the archetype needs to be changed, telling the world I called it "OP" is both denotatively wrong (I never said that) and connotatively wrong (I never meant that). But taking my own advice, let's just chalk that up to a miscommunication, yes?

That's fair. My main point of reference is spell slots, which on archetypes cap at 8th-rank as opposed to the 10th-rank spells main-classed spellcasters get, so to me it stands to reason that impulses that cap out at essentially 9th-rank spells should probably not be quite that strong on a MC archetype.

Got it. That suggests maybe even at third way to revamp the archetype. I.e. full EB as we've discussed, then max out impulses at L18 which is functionally equivalent to about 8th rank spells.

Timber Sentinel is a bit of an oddity because it functions at full spell rank, not rank-1. Not sure why they did that, but I probably wouldn't revamp the the entire archetype rules just to fix that one case. 'Hard cases make bad law', as the saying goes.

Easl wrote:

Simple traps are very functional. The rules are well set out and easy to follow. A fireball rune or Hidden Pit is much easier to GM than a combat. You can run things like that out of the box and they work perfectly fine.

This is demonstrably untrue, as GM Core has to explicitly state in its guidelines that using simple damage traps in the way you just described would generate nothing more than speed bumps for the party, thus making them "nuisance hazards" as others have described.

We obviously have different definitions of "functional". When you say the trap rules are not functional, I ask if the rules set lets me use it as is. It does. I ask if the rules are incomplete, unclear, or require excessive GM adjudication. They do not. Thus, the simple trap rules are functional. You're using the word to mean something like "I want to use simple traps as a plot device to create attritive loss. They do not currently work well for that specific plot use. So I don't consider them functional."

The problem with that logic is that there may be many plot uses for simple traps, and you're only measuring functionality around the one use you like the most. So a GM might simply want a speedbump. Or for a group that places a high premium on story over combat, it can be a useful story element. Unicore suggested how a simple trap can be used by the GM to provide the players with information/forewarning about monsters further into the dungeon. That's another potential plot use.

So they are functional in a rules-mechanical sense, and they are even functional as plot tools for many things a GM might want to do...just not the one use you want to put them to. So yup for your use, you'll need to modify them. I disagree that this means the simple trap rules are nonfunctional. They are a tool in your GM toolbox. The fact that they are not the perfect tool for attritive ability loss /= nonfunctional...especially since Paizo probably never intended this tool to be used that way. They gave you a screwdriver, you're trying to hammer with it. Not the screwdriver's fault it doesn't do that well.

If your group personally feels the time pressure even in absence of stakes and plays accordingly, more power to you, but blaming everyone who doesn't feel the same way as you doesn't strike me as a particularly constructive or empathetic way of broaching this discussion.

I'm not blaming you for anything. I'm pointing out that the pressure the clock puts on the player is a table by table variance and thus not something Paizo needs to address in the rules. Our GM likes to introduce additional dangers at night if the characters are foolish enough to camp out in an unsafe place. So the clock time matters. It adds pressure. It makes it a tense and meaningful decision whether to wait an hour in the evening to do more healing or just go go go before the GM decides to throw something else our way. Your group doesn't feel any clock pressure, so I guess your GM isn't doing that. That's a table difference.

Easl wrote:

Also, where did you get that straw man? I agree it's more than needed. It's also not anything I said.

I think at some point we need some kind of PSA where simply pointing out to someone how their logic doesn't work even on their own terms is not a "straw man";

My example was the group feeling tension to decide between waiting an hour between 7pm and 8pm clock time to clear Wounded or going right now. It works on my own terms. If you change my example to claim my group can wait 11 hours and do 66 heals, no that doesn't work. But then again, that's not my terms.

The point is, your adventuring day as you've described it is not only lacking in time pressure, it is so tremendously lacking in time pressure that a party engaging the dungeon on your schedule could spend more than half the adventuring day doing nothing and still be able to recover every time as needed.

You're describing the "9am to 8pm rest" example again - an example that you simply made up. I never described our adventuring days like that, and they are not like that. Yes it is true that a GM that allows 11 hour rests between scenes means there is little clock pressure on that group. But that example is an incorrect exaggeration of my description of a situation where our group felt tension between wait an hour to clear Wounded, or go on. And to remind you of the point of that example, you keep saying that these speedbumps don't serve any plot purpose but in this case it certainly ratched up our tension. To risk an extra encounter later when we may be more injured, or to go into the next encounter wounded. That's a pretty good plot decision for a simple trap to introduce, don't you think?

so you were today years old when you were insisting that the Kin MC archetype was OP because of its attack impulses, something you're denying now. What changed since?

Not really appreciating the aggresiveness.

while I definitely think they shouldn't scale as well on a MC archetype as on a main class Kineticist, I also do think they can be allowed to scale continually without being hard-capped at certain levels. Also, why would you want impulses to scale as well on a MC Kin as on a main-class Kin?

I'm fine with archetype impulses scaling the same way as class impulses because I personally think them topping out at [Caster at same level highest rank -1] is sufficient to control the use of the archetype and keep it from being OP. That's my opinion. You seem to disagree. No problemo.

This is completely irrelevant to the basic fact that combat in PF2e is well-designed enough that even a random monster encounter can generate some baseline level of tactically engaging gameplay when run by the rules. Whether or not players prefer puzzles has no bearing on this minimum level of basic, out-the-box functionality,

Simple traps are very functional. The rules are well set out and easy to follow. A fireball rune or Hidden Pit is much easier to GM than a combat. You can run things like that out of the box and they work perfectly fine.

Its sounds to me like your issue is with liking the crunch of combat over the more freeform problem solving of skill checks. Which is fine, but that is not a functionality issue. Wanting more crunchy rules for your trap encounters is indeed a preference issue.

I play most of my games on Foundry and in my experience it absolutely is true....If your party started the dungeon crawl at 9 AM and somehow ended up dawdling until 8 PM, that's 66 Treat Wounds' worth of exploration activities, which I'm sure you'll agree is slightly more than is needed...

Right, so this is play group issue then rather than a rules issue. If my play group is feeling the pressure from that clock and yours isn't, that's not a 'Paizo needs simpler timekeeping and more lasting impairments' problem, that's a 'Teridax's group's GM needs to add some threat with more oomph to make them move forward' issue.

Also, where did you get that straw man? I agree it's more than needed. It's also not anything I said.

I also think the abuse potential really comes specifically from utility impulses like Timber Sentinel, rather than impulses that rely on your MC Kin class DC that caps out at expert:

That's kinda true of all archetypes though; lower DC means they are comparatively good for defense and buffing. So that's what players often do; use archetype and ancestry spells for no-fail buffs and party-target effects, shifting them out of their class set to focus the class abilities more on things that require contested rolls.

Maybe you see that as a problem, or simply a fact of the game system. But either way, it's not an issue specific to the kin archetype.

MC Kineticists end up with a power scaling on those impulses that can exceed the kind of power you'd get in far more limited amounts from a spellcasting archetype.

This is true. I would not do your suggestion of kin level = half class level. Too restrictive for my taste. I'd give full EB progression in the dedication feat like you, but then I'd replace those EB feats with 'advanced impulse (4)', 'expert impulse (12)' and 'master impulse (18)' where the effect of the feats is to let your impulses keep advancing. So maybe without any of those feats, your maximum level for impulse effects = your level or 4, whichever is lower. With Advanced, it's your level or 10. With Expert, it's level or 16, then with master, it's level or 20. I'm sure some folks would complain about the feat tax, but as you discuss, it seems to make more sense to gate impulse effectiveness than to gate EB damage.

extremely few GMs will keep 24-hour time in painstaking 10-minute segments.

With use of Foundry and other on-line tools, it's getting much easier. Our GM does exactly what you claim is "painstaking" and there's no pain at all. In fact, it's easier for him than freehanding it. Click a button, the clock increments, and the computer notifies everyone of changes in all ongoing status effects (your disease roll is due, you're no longer immune to treat wounds, etc.).

As someone who suggests more lasting impairments, this helps your traps too. Because again, it removes the need for you or the players to manually keep track of when the impairment rolls will come up. GM clicks a button, clock increments and boom everyone knows if they have to roll, if they've lost their immunity to treat wounds, etc.. As a long time pen-and-paper player, I see this as a great benefit. It lets a GM "do it right" and prevents the inevitable, unintentional fudging of time that happens when groups freehand it.

just dropping party level-appropriate monsters will always generate some minimum level of enjoyable and interesting tactical gameplay.

Disagree. There are plenty of players who would prefer a new puzzle requiring both different player ideas and different skill checks over another combat. Much combat is good. All combat and nuthin' but combat can become boring for some folks (while for others, that's why they play). I'm not saying you're wrong for your table, but I'm saying your assumption that all play groups would prefer a monster encounter to a trap encounter requiring different skill checks is just that - an assumption.

the system simply does not allow these kinds of damaging traps to have any meaningful impact if the party can just Treat Wounds each time.

My experience playing on Foundry is that this is not true for such platforms. The system keeping track of the day clock and various ability timeouts makes it pretty meaningful. Yes, the party can still choose to stop and rest however long they like (at least, in many cases). But the game tracking various ongoing effects makes resting much more real feeling. Players don't want that game clock to go from 7pm to 8pm just so Bob can remove Wounded 1 and get back a few HP. And having that day clock constantly there also makes it much easier for the GM to come up with natural, negative consequences for taking long breaks every time one of the characters drop a few HP.

To answer the question directly: impulses by design synergize very little with mechanics external to the Kineticist, and for a far lesser feat investment you could just take a cantrip and deal more damage. I guess it does have the advantage of being able to trigger a weakness to energy damage as a single action, but at that point you're still better off Striking with a weapon that has a damage property rune, even as a caster, as your attack will be more accurate and likely to be more damaging still.

Yeah that's probably the best way to use it, as a weakness dial. If you're a martial and you already have an idea of what runes you want to take, take a kinetic element that gives you a different type. Likewise with casters; pick a different kinetic element than what your go-to slot blasts are.

But I generally agree with the other posters; kin FA's strength is in impulse selection. It's very good for that since they autoscale with character level.

In this respect, I think the Kineticist archetype is balanced slightly too conservatively, and you could just let Elemental Blast auto-scale without it disrupting balance.

Mildly disagree. Meaning you're right that EB is probably too conservative but the ability to use a single archetype feat to pick up an evergreen attack impulse or something like protector tree is quite strong IMO. So considering the archetype as a whole, I don't think that it needs more power.

I think the guidance in GM Core is solid on this. It reminds you that pure damage isn't a good choice for a standalone simple hazard, and that you should rather think about narrative consequences, alerting surrounding enemies, or impactful changes to the environment as a result of triggering them. It even indirectly suggests imposing conditions that can't just be easily removed out of combat (by saying that imposing conditions which CAN be removed easily is a bad idea). So, seems already in complete agreement with what you're saying.

Thumbs up for narrative consequences. Personally I like the idea of alerts, blocked exit, and party-splitting traps (let's call them 'tactical') best out of damage, conditions, or tactical traps. Though party splitters make more work for the GM so maybe save those for home campaigns. (Temporarily) cutting off the exit or moving part of the party to a place they haven't mapped likely raises the tension a lot more than simple damage or sickness.

IMO traps also work better when they're incorporated into a larger encounter. "Don't step on these squares" can be a cool and interesting tactical puzzle if it's combined with "...while trying to get to the monsters shooting bolts at you." Whereas as a standalone, somone steps on the tile, takes a bolt to the face, everyone tells the GM they avoid those tiles from now on, and (as someone else said) that coolness is downgraded to just a 30-second roleplay speedbump.

IMO both are solid. Sorc is probably a bit better if your fun comes from blasting and casting, while druid is probably better if you want 'caster plus'.

You might also want to consider WIS vs. CHA and what sort of character you want to play. Do you want to be the team's medic? It's an important skill and has some of the best skill feats in the game. Wisdom also increases your perception and initiative. OTOH, do you want to be the team's negotiator? Diplomacy, Deception, and Intimidation are really useful and demoralize makes for a decent third action in combat.

It's a shame you don't know what that third player is going to play. For the party, it's probably better to have one CHA and one WIS character rather than two characters good at the same things.

As to table variation, just look at this thread for the many (presumably good faith) interpretations of what this map does. One person thinks that ALL it does is give a +1 to survival checks, others like me think it basically changes the face of warfare. Some think it would show all of a dungeon, some think it would show the entrance as a dot, some think it would show nothing at all. This thread already demonstrates the massive table variance there will be with this item.

Well, if you really think Paizo's text as written changes the face of warfare, and that "a reasonable level of detail" means this 3-mile-per-inch map shows every level of a dungeon and can be used to see details down to 5' squares, then I guess as a GM you can always fall back on 'uncommon' and not make it available to characters without some appropriate questing.

kineticist stance break with any overflow action

so each turn they can use all shall end in flame and 1 elemental blast

5d8 plus 15d6 per turn at level 20

with 20 from aura weakness 15 from fire junction

I think you've got the dice upgrade reversed. Fire's aura junction only works on impulses of at least 2 or 3 actions. So it would be 5d6 + 15d8.

the justification for kineticist have much worse damage than caster was always that they can do it all day

that is not impressive when most fight are decided in first 3 or 4 turn

I don't think the kin was ever intended to out-dpr casters using top slots. In fact, it's pretty clear from looking across all the impulses that the general design is 'damage like a [one rank less than top rank] slot.' To be an impressive kineticist, you need to be contributing to the party with all-day utility as well as all-day blaster. You are not a dpr specialist, you're more of a generalist.

This is just common player bias. Give some roleplayers a new class, and the very first thing they will do is try to strip out as much non-dpr character and theme from it as they can, and instead focus every build resource on cranking out just pure dpr. Then declare that the class stinks if it can't hit the tip top dpr of the best currently existing classes. To which i say: be prepared for constant disappointment. The devs rarely design new classes with that sort of flat, single dimensional view of a class in mind.

But yes I think Deriven and you bring up a good point about how the value of 'all day' drops off as level increases and casters get more slots. It would also obviously be of lower value in parties that retire for the day as soon as their top slots run out. The first is maybe worth fixing by relooking at L15-20 impulses. The second is just a play group/table issue.

Tridus wrote:

but the idea that you can be sitting in Absalom and this thing will show Gauntlight Keep and then also show every floor in detail below Gauntlight Keep is just not how paper maps work.

Maybe. Its unclear. Some maps absolutely do show multiple layers

map of Titanic

More of the massive table variation

On this magical map, the titanic would be 0.05 inches long. About the size of a pencil dot. So nope, they aren't going to see the layout of the ship on this map, not even if multiple layers are given on it. That would just be 3 dots in a row.

I agree with you - sort of - about table variation. But it seems to me a GM would have to try really hard to read the decription in the absolute most player-friendly, game-destructive way possible to run into such trouble. "It's not a pencil dot, it's infinitely magnifiable right down to atomic structure! It's not a flat map, it's every layer you ever want to see all the way down to Golarian's core!" Just...no. Why would any GM ever do that? There's nothing in the description to give any such indication that that's what's meant. Paizo uses standard English. You are supposed to use good judgment. Infinitely magnifiable all layers isn't "with a reasonable level of detail." In my mind, being able to see 5' x 5' details on a map where the entire Titanic is the size of a pencil dot isn't even an edge case, it's just clearly not reasonable.

The way we play, we often make the opponent move to use. It's much, much wiser to let the opponent spend move actions to engage while you spend offensive actions against them or delay until they reach you to spend offensive actions against their move actions.

Why are you GMing your enemies that way? Why aren't they using the same logic and plinking at the party with fireballs while forcing the party's melee fighters to come to them? Why aren't they observing the party, then moving out of sight to come ambush them from behind? For that matter, depending on the campaign, why aren't they just retreating out of range? The only enemies rushing forward should be the ones who have an in-game reason to actively want to kill the PCs and which don't have an obviously better way to get at them. But in most/many cases of APs, it is the Party which is motivated to go after the monster. The monster often could care less about the party and will only react if they view the party as a threat (or a snack).

Do your road bandits wave at the carriage from 200' feet away? Hopefully not. The classic bandit encounter is that the carriage isn't aware it's under threat until their archers are in place, hidden, and the lead bandit steps out of the woods 10' from the carriage. While that's just one specific case, pretty much most foes should be behaving in an analogously tactical manner.

Now it's perfectly fine to use PF2E more like a miniatures battle game, where you just assume that at the initiative roll the two sides are set up and motivated to fight. But if you do that, it doesn't make sense to start one team in it's combat range while out of the other's combat range. If you do that, it's not wonder your PC's clean the clocks of hard encounters - you've skewed the starting battlefield conditions to give them a major advantage that no miniatures tactical combat game would give.

Everyone having one evens out, but not in a way that makes the game more interesting. "Everyone has infallible intelligence on troop movements within multiple days of their present location" removes a bunch of strategic options, including trying to keep movement secret by finding and taking out the enemy scouts.

It's also worth pointing out that Golarion is far more advanced than Earth pre-WWII in terms of mapping and cartograhpy, because of other magic that already exists independent of this one magic item. We had trouble with accurate mapping because we didn't have good navigational aids, objective measures, airships, and people that can fly up to just about any height, look down, and survey the land. Golarion already has all those things. Plus the Pathfinder Society, a globe-spanning organization dedicated to exploration. So this item may not be the in-play kingdom and army 'game changer' everyone makes it out to be, because Golarion kingdoms and armies could already own/create good local maps, and use clairvoyance like effects to scout out enemy troop movements. This is a "party sized" item because armies with L7 Wizards likely don't need it.

Easl wrote:

Major roads, check. Forests, check. County borders, check. Your house? No. The number of people standing around outside (i.e. army size)? No. The 10' diameter entrance to some cave? Absolutely not.

You think a major road would show up but a dungeon wouldn’t. But most dungeons are a LOT bigger than a road in Golarion. So, why?

Because this is a surface map, and dungeons are underground. If you GM'd this, would the map show mantle subduction zones or the core of the earth? No, right? That would be absurd, right? So why would you think it would show underground passages?

The surface feature of a dungeon is it's entrance. For example, for AV, it's the keep/lighthouse. But going by 5' squares, the map of the keep and surroundings is probably around 300' (i.e. 60 squares or so) on each side. On a 3 mile per inch map, that means the keep would be 0.019 inches across. And that keep is a pretty big thing as far as dugneons go: if a dungeon is a natural cavern, the cave mouth might only be 10, 20, 50' wide or so. So divide that 0.019" by 30, 15, or 6 to get their size on the map respectively. Such dungeons will be merely unlabeled dots at best.

There is going to be an absolutely huge amount of table variation with this item. I hope PFS, at least, outlaws it for exactly that reason

You are probably right there, because a lot of people are innumerate or at least choose not to think through the math on these things even if they have the skills needed. I would not be at all surprised if PFS made a ruling on it.

Tridus wrote:

Not a chance. The sheer amount of land shown on this map means that even if the physical map is fairly large, a normal size dungeon is going to be a dot...

"That's okay. I also bought a magnifying glass!" - Player

It's not an electron microscope. I mean you can run magic the way you want, but I'd GM a magically drawn map as being drawn with human-standard pens and pencils. So any feature smaller than a pencil tip or fountain pen line is not 'need a microscope to see the details', it is instead 'nothing but a blob of ink/doesn't exist on the map.'

pauljathome wrote:

I think you guys are SERIOUSLY underestimating the value of accurate maps especially when combined with troop deployments. In anything approximating real world pre Ww1 warfare this is a game changer, a massive force multiplier. There is a reason that accurate maps were considered valuable military assets.

And it has massive gaming implications. Hexcrawls just got very, very seriously affected. Hidden dungeons just vanished from the world.

Maybe.

A GM would be within their purview to say things that aren't general knowledge wouldn't be marked on this map

Nowhere in the description does it say it puts pins in interesting locations. So it doesn't. What you see is a reasonable level of detail for a 36-mile-wide map about the size you can hold in your hand. And again re: Paul's concern about dungeons, they'd be smaller than a pencil dot on a map this size. So they're just not going to show up.

Look, GoogleMap your home town. Zoom it out until the screen size is about 36 miles across. See what it shows. The features marked on that map is what counts as "reasonable level of detail." Major roads, check. Forests, check. County borders, check. Your house? No. The number of people standing around outside (i.e. army size)? No. The 10' diameter entrance to some cave? Absolutely not.

Casters at high level can use things like chain lightning and howling blast often enough that it feels at will.

Yeah that's fair. Again though, high level play is not the norm, so I think the big community ask for an all-day blaster is coming from the part of the community that mostly plays L1-10, where 'all day' really makes a bigger difference. The kin meets that need very well.

I would also probably not improve the high-level kin by giving them more dpr - either AoE or single target. Why not? Because 'big dpr' is something many classes can do. It's not very unique. You know what's unique? Casting Timber Sentinel every combat, multiple times per combat. Going invisible and flying at will. Those are the things that casters, no matter how many slots they have, don't do. So assuming I agree with the premise that high level kins need a buff up (I'm not sure I do agree, but let's run with that), I'd rather see them get a few utility impulses that high level casters get envious they can't cast at will. No high level sorcerer is going to be envious of all day fireball, because as you say, they have that in practice even if not in theory. So give the kin something a high level sorcerer wishes they could cast all day, but can't, because doing so would take up too many slots they need for blasting.

This is probably one of those "magic does what the rules say and nothing more" situations. The map's passive provides +1 bonuses to survival and relevant RK checks, that's it. Yes it's a map, but in the rules if you want to translate "I use the map" into some skill check, then it's getting you +1 on the skill check.

Plus as multiple people have noted (special thanks to Xenocrat), the scale of it would render a bird's eye view of the floor of an entire megadungeon like AV into a single square mm or less. Even if the characters have a microscope, as a GM I would reject the argument that they can see the layout of a dungeon with it = "reasonable level of detail." In a 3 miles = 1 inch scale, reasonable level of detail = being able to see features half a mile across.

I as a DM should not have to spend my time modifying adventures where I have to first figure out a class is weak, figure out why, then specifically design encounters so that class doesn't feel weak while I don't have to do this for other classes that are well designed to perform out of the box.

I somewhat disagree in principle. A good DM should always spend some time thinking about how to make encounters more fun for the specific characters in the campaign. This is not merely my opinion, it's Paizo's. GMC p76: "Variety in encounters is essential to let players try new tactics and give different PCs chances to shine as they face foes with weak points they’re uniquely suited to exploiting."

Paizo is really good at providing a solid 'out of the box' APs. However the Kineticist class was designed and released after the vast majority of PF2E's APs. So yep, this is exactly the sort of situation where DMs might need to think through whether adding this character to an AP never designed with it in mind might require some tweaking to optimize...player fun.

The single target problem is specific to the kineticist.

Oh really? So comparing Rogue to, say, Witch wouldn't identify that the Witch is comparatively "suboptimal" at single target damage?

IMO Kineticists are best compared to casters, not Rogues. Pretty much no full casters do as much single target damage as top tier martials do.

I'm never going back to a casual table again. I like prepared players that run fast and coordinated and can slip in and out of character when appropriate...

That's fine! However...kineticist was designed as a casual player class. I.e. Players who want the feel of a blasting caster but without the complexity or difficulty of slot management. That's it's design concept. Not 'a caster that goes toe to toe with martials in it's single target dpr capability.' We already have one of those - the Magus.

To wrap this up, I would love to see some single target tools for the kineticist that allow them to ramp damage or scale up debuffs to match other classes in single target fights.

Yeah I could see a class archetype which trades out some of the "baseline" kin utility for stronger EB. Paizo could also do it with a feat chain because that kinda "bakes in" that being better with EB requires not taking impulses that give you other capabilities. There's already a number of impulses that buff EB, but none of them buff damage up to a Rogues weapon+rune+sneak attack damage. Some part of the problem is that there are several EB buffs in stances, but stances can't be stacked.

If anyone has a forum you can go to where people discuss the numbers and how to maximize them for PF2, let me know. That's more of what I'm looking for: mechanical discussions where the players are pushing the numbers and know when a class is performing weakly because they check the numbers in play.

I think a 'min-max for coordinates group combat' thread is a good idea, because clearly there's part of the player base that wants to do exactly that. But classes which don't min-max for specific combat roles as well as others IMO don't necessarily have a design flaw and they don't necessarily need to be updated or fixed, because min-maxed for a specific combat role is probably not the sole goal Paizo goes for in class, archetype, feat, etc. design.

I mean, the investigator is an obvious counter-example to those sorts of assumptions, right? It makes it very clear that Paizo does not design every class to be min-maxed for combat or a specific combat role. Non-combat archetypes such as Dandy are another clue that the game system as a whole is not trying to makes sure every choice can lead to an 'equally good at combat' character or that the system is attempting to slot every single character into being best at some specific tactical role in combat.

One consequence of having broader design goals is that not everything works equally well for high level 'we do combat simulator and that's all we do' games. Some class, archetype, feat, skill etc. choices are going to naturally fall by the wayside if that's your group's focus. But as I said, that's not a flaw in the system (...IMO...), because the system is designed to serve a wider player base.

I don't like to see a class underperform compared to other classes in combat as that leads to an unsatisfying play experience. It makes it so players ignore a particular class when it becomes obvious the class is weak and won't be able to outperform some other class doing the same role.

Yes but this is an infinite treadmill, which the players and GMs can choose to 'step off' any time they want. If one player optimizes solely for some specific type of combat, then this forces the other players to do that too, or risk the situation where every encounter is too easy for one person while just right for everyone else (or just right for one, too hard for the others). It puts the GM in a similar bind too. So the decision of whether to optimize specifically for combat is something that needs to be made by the group, and yes absolutely it will affect what classes and class combinations will do best in that group. PF2E is well balanced, but it's definitely not "every class will do equally well in every possible tactical role" balanced.

I also think HolyFlamingo has a good point about group composition. Classes are probably not designed just or primarily around your groups' super tight everyone-has-a-specific-tactical-role play style. Classes need to be viable for pick up games between strangers, for inexperienced players, for players who want to leeeeroy, for groups that don't coordinate their picks, etc. etc... the whole shebang. I think the kin does that pretty well. But yes I would likely agree that if your group wants to plan out it's tactics before the game even starts and assign specific roles to each ("you're the healer. I'm the blaster...") and play at high levels, then maybe the kineticist may not fit well in that sort of campaign.

When I see some area of weak performance for a class at a certain level range that is causing severe underperformance compared to another class in extremely common situations in adventure design, I feel I have to say something.

Fair, but are you applying the "must be great at doing single target melee damage to bosses, or I count it as underperforming" metric to other casters? Because they all kinda fail on that metric. I think it is perfectly fine for the game to have some classes be better at AOE damage, others at single target, others at utility, and also generalists (can switch hit between those) and specialists (can't switch hit as well, but better at the one thing they do). I don't think a class must be top tier at all three simultaneously to avoid the 'underperforming' label. The kin is closer to a generalist, with a more AoE+utility focus, at least in my opinion. So it falls down in single target damage. And as a generalist, yup, if you pick one specific role out for that player to fill, kin is probably never going to be top of the class list at that role. Unless the role is "fire off 100 fireball-like blasts in the next 40 encounters without ever stopping for a breath." :)

***

Having said all that, I think it's perfectly fine to bring up gripes about high level balancing between classes, as I suspect that in development and playtesting, the high levels were not a Paizo focus as much as the lower levels.

We rarely play less than level 12 to 15, so we usually start early always setting up for the higher levels.

That's kinda unusual, and may partially explain some differences of opinion.

Because of PF2E's ability to respec in downtime, if you're playing in a campaign game where downtime is available, it doesn't make much sense to take some feat/spell/etc. which is not too useful at the moment but will be very useful 5-10 levels later. Take the thing that's valuable now, respect later. It's not a game where a player 'playing through' lower levels absolutely must take things at L3-6 because they want to have them at L15-20. Heck, in most games you won't even get to L15-20, so you're often better off just ignoring those combos.

Archetypes are a bit more 'sticky', obviously, so Rogue archetype may still be a solid choice for anyone. But keep in mind that in a FA game, by L15 you are 3 feats into your second archetype and poaching feats is dependent solely on level, so it doesn't necessarily have to be the first archetype you take.

It may or may not help, but when you call out who is up in initiative also, call out who is next up. Gives the player a moment to focus without the spot light being on them.

Seconded. Maybe even be a bit heavy-handed to start. I.e. "Alice, your turn next. Bob, you're after Alice so now is a good time to think about what you're going to do. Now, Alice..."

Another thought: my son likes to take notes/make a journal for each session. He often does it during other action (we play on Foundry, so this does not disrupt the flow...I would guess the other players rarely even notice). While typing it in while other people take their turns is not entirely kosher because yes it means he's not paying attention to other people's plans or tactics, at least it's relevant to the game. Since the other players read his journal between sessions, that's a positive contribution to the game overall.

So NoGoodScallywag, if your two players absolutely positively must do something while another player takes their turn, maybe suggest they do something like that, as it's at least game-relevant?

To me it's the argument itself that's questionable. The idea that a whole category of very common fight should just be something the Kineticist struggles to be relevant in is... weird? I'm not sure how that makes the game better.

I'm not sure I follow. It's a caster-equivalent, and most caster classes struggle to be relevant if the comparison metric is "melee dpr against single target bosses." so yeah it would be nice (for the kineticist class) if the k. could do that as well as a top-line martial...but does it need that capability to be a viable, contributing class? Is it a disappointing failure as a class by not having that? I would say no.

It hasn't been that uncommon for me as a GM to see a kineticist land an AoE on three targets (ostensibly a good moment for them) only for the Barbarian to wade up and overkill 1-2 enemies with enough damage that the kineticist's contribution never mattered (admittedly this is mostly at low levels and parts of this thread are talking about high levels).

Our low-level kineticist is contributing quite well, precisely because they can trigger weaknesses so regularly. Base damage, there's no comparison; martials win. Add +5 or +10 to the K's 1a blasts (with no MAP) - especially at lower levels - and it's quite a good 3rd action "two" in your "one two punch."

Personally, I would bet that this is why it scales so bad. The devs assume it's being used along with a 2a damage impulse, so they wanted it to be about as useful as other 3rd actions, not be as useful as another classes' primary mode of attack.

It would be pretty easy, though, to create either a (bigger?) feat line or a class archetype that specializes in making EB better. The goal of either would be to balance the gain of EB becoming a competitive primary attack feature by making it 'cost' some of the classes' utility.

I think the utility argument is a bit peculiar too. While some kineticists have great utility, the OP's example involved a pyrokineticist and a rogue.

Yes this is true. But as my example shows, there may be more than one way to build a good single-target melee kineticist. :)

I think many players will see more fun out of a kineticist if they use a few tricks to give okay damage while allocating a bunch of their impulses for other things. The fire build kinda uses every build resource to boost dpr. Which accomplishes the purpose (boosting dpr) but as you say, at the cost of giving away a lot of the classes' utility. Of course, there are players who like just maximizing dpr, so it's good the class can be built that way. But it's a bit of a 'you can't get both' situation. To maximize dpr via the fire build requires a bunch of mid-level build resources which may compete with other utility impulses you would enjoy taking and regularly using.

An average rogue thief by 15 with an elven curve blade doing 3d8+11 plus 2d6 plus 3d6 sneak for a total range of 19 to 65 per action with automatically applied riders.

Whereas a kineticist at level 15 is using flying flame or solar detonation if fire for even single target dmage.

If I wanted to build a single target melee specialist Kineticist, I'd probably go Air/Earth with Str maxed right after Con, and use Desert Wind with Two Element Infusion, Versatile Blasts, and Weapon Infusion. I'd be taking Fork the Path for a wider variety of blast types and general utility. At L15, here's what that Kineticist looks like (in part):

- 4d8+14 melee 1a blasts (10 DW + 4 Str = 14) for 18-46 per action. Not rogue-level, but closer I think than what Deriven calculated? Pretty darn good for a caster-type with no use from weapon runes.

- You get to add your choice of agile, backswing, forceful, reach, or sweep to your attacks each round. The rogue may have access to one or more of these via feats, weapon selection, or runes, but they very likely don't have all of them and cannot switch them at will the way the kineticist can.

- You will blast with two different damage types. One must be electricity, cold, or slashing, but the other can be anything from any of your other elements...at L15, this gives you a wide variety of possible second elements. (Example: air/earth/fire/wood gives you access to electricity, cold, slashing, bludgeoning, piercing, poison, fire, and vitality). In contrast, the Rogue likely has 3 or so different damage types going due to runes, but they are static and cannot be switched. Here, the rogue is probably coming out ahead again if the boss's weakness matches up with the rogue's runes. But across many different bosses with many different resiliencies and weaknesses, the flexibility of the Kineticist is likely pretty darn valuable.

-I know this is a melee comparison, but it's worth pointing out that the kineticist can instantly flip over to ranged and attack at up to 100' range for it's EB, though that loses them almost half their damage (the +14 disappears). Rogues likely can't do 100' range instant change, and this ignores all the other ranged impulses the Kineticist might use instead if their prey suddenly teleports/moves of melee range.

But, honestly, I have little interest in building such a K. because as several others have pointed out, why are you trying to reconstruct a single target melee martial with a class designed for ranged AOE? The whole premise is questionable, kinda like asking "why doesn't this screwdriver hammer nails as well as the hammer?"

A very tanky front line earth/air kineticist using DW to add oomph to it's melee attacks is cool. But it's not cool because it DPRs as much as the rogue, it's cool because it dprs okay WHILE STILL having all the other fun kineticist tricks up its sleeve. It's another gish type, and like all gish types, does two or more things well instead of one thing extremely well.

Let's say you're a 20th-level Untamed Druid with a +6 Strength, and you've used untamed form to enter monstrosity form and use the cave worm form. With fully-upgraded handwraps of mighty blows and master unarmed attack proficiency, your attack modifier is +37, a +1 over, say, a Barbarian. Your most powerful attack deals an average of 39.5 damage, and with a 10% increase from the better accuracy that goes up to 43.45.

Now, let's go back to that Barbarian. You're wielding a greatsword, which at 20th level and with full runes will deal 49.5 damage. Already, we're 14% over the transformed Druid, but we're only just getting started...

What value do you give the druid having full casting while that Bar has no casting? Is "I can also cast chain lightning" worth - to you - more or less than getting +14% on single action martial attacks?

I think full caster access to the primal list is more valuable than that. You?

Say for example you're doing a move, and I offer to let you store some stuff in my house until you get settled. I then sell the house along with everything inside it and keep all the money. Did I do something wrong? Or is that perfectly fine because you took the risk of putting things in my house while I was providing you the service of storage?

That's much more inapt than Gisher's.

Let me give you a real life example of a 'bad move' deal, with me as victim, but to point out that it's "just" a bad deal, neither theft nor unethical. I got a moving company to move me, but it was a cheap one, I was young, and I didn't read the fine print. The contract stated that for any loss/damaged goods, they would pay me a flat fee per pound. I had a bunch of collectibles - small, expensive things. They disappeared in move. I got that flat fee per pound for them. About, I'd say, 2% of their value. Now their disappearance could have been theft, but the company paying me that low amount is not theft. Because I agreed to it. Bankruptcies are old, well-established law. Every decent corporate counsel should be ready to advice their CEO of what a partner going bankrupt will entail for their company. If a company does like me and takes a risk that exposes them to significant loss in the case of something going wrong, and then gets stung for it, well that stinks but they aren't getting stolen from. Caveat emptor goes for services and partnerships too.

I really wish we could start over and make it simple and not in the multibillion dollar companies favors....without also destroying the financial systems we're comfortable with as end users (which would absolutely be impossible).

That complexity creates a whole ton of benefits for regular folk. Without the ability to monetize and share (i.e. buy and sell down) risk, banks would be unwilling to loan most people money so you can forget owning a house. Small businesses would be much harder to start. Goods would likely be more expensive and there would be fewer of them. Paizo/Diamond is a good example: consignment is cheap and takes much of the work off Paizo. Without a consignment deal, third party sellers might charge more (because without consignment deals, they buy down the risk of <100% of stock selling with a higher profit margin on the units that do sell), and because Paizo would have to negotiate with all those third party sellers directly, there would likely be fewer third party sellers at all. Goodbye, local TTRPG stores. The system would be much more in favor of "money makes more money" than it is now, because the only ones able to take business risks would be the groups that have a lot of capital to start with. Yes, the downside is that when something goes wrong, more people than just the responsible party pay for their mistake. Much more rarely, we have something like the housing crises where there is a cascade failure and lots of people get hurt. But it's probably still true that, even including such events, economies grow faster and people become more prosperous using this system than not using it.

Having said that, yeah it could definitely be tweaked. For bankruptcy, for instance, it would be nice if the priority of creditors generally did a better job of favoring (lawyer fees first then) 'first in' rather than 'biggest investment'. That would put us little guys on the same theoretical footing as the big guys. But maybe some bankruptcies already do that? IANAL, and as you say, it's complex.