Edwin the Undead's page

So I just had a play session with an exemplar and spent a few hours talking about it. Exemplar is really cool! Things that came up in the following discussion that have helped mold my opinion of exemplar.

1. (According to my mathy friend this argument is less mine) they perform above curve compared to other martials of similar role (I think they did the math in comparison to barb) so something to bring their DPR more in line with other martials. I'm not exactly sure how to do this as I'm not a math wizard.

2. My thought is give exemplar a focus on simple weapons and give them medium armor. This prevents the sentinel feat tax for exemplars not wanting to use dex.

But why simple weapons only? Now they wouldn't be trapped in simple but I think the idea of a weapon with a divine nature that only they can bring out really sells it. Feats let you have twinned weapons, give them the thrown trait (or improve it), and I think it would be cool if exemplar leaned into that with more feats giving their simple weapons features that only they can bring out along with crazy abilities to go with it!
On top of this it gives an emphasis to ancestry weapon feats. You are THE goblin exemplar with the MYTHICAL DOGSLICER or a Dwarf with your divine sparked clan gun. Or this unassuming shortbow which can actually fire up to 300 feet in its first range or something crazy like that! I think this restriction would add to the fantasy of a godly weapon that only you can use to its full power.

3. Less numbers more cool shit. When I saw the exemplar hitting for big numbers it was cool. But I think it is cooler to get to do unique and interesting things. Smash the battlefield so that there is difficult terrain, being able to scoop up all your fellow martials with your titan bracers and carry them into battle! Being able to hold a person down because only you can pick up your weapon. Along with things you get later like the Teacher of Heroes which leans on a more int/wisdom skill character (unless you want to only identify like planar creatures). Along with features they get that give free feints or domain spells that pull from charisma.
I think reasons to take these and support these routes and an emphasis on cool divine feeling stuff vs numbers.

Love to hear your own experiences with exemplar. Also want to know what y'all think and how you've been feeling about exemplar on your own ends!

This is a little outside the playtest but something that crossed my mind as with all classes Animist will certainly get an Archetype. My question is how will its unique features manifest?

Given Basic Spellcasting gives only one spell slot per level. Would it have two one for the Animist Casting and one for the Apparition Casting? I think that would be a bit OP given that would mean this archetype would dip into more spells than any of the others.

Personally I think I'd like it to only be the apparition spellcasting as it would be pretty interesting. Your spells would be limited but change per day and then allow feats later on that let you take advantage of learning lores or accessing their focus spell.

Just a thought as I think the class is really cool that I've already started wondering how to blend it with other classes!

So Kineticist martial growth rate is kind of strange. I've only been able to experiment in little combats and not take part in full campaigns for them (lacking time and friends). But those two levels their elementals blasts trail behind every other weapon feel kind of arbitrary. I think giving them the level 5 expert isn't going to be a big deal.

But onto the point of something I would like to see expanded in a full kineticist. A more martial expression of them following the elemental weapon feat. Imagine being able to dual wield elemental short swords or 2-handing a fire forged battle axe?

It just stands out to me that the Elemental Weapon feat is just kind of there. It also has to compete with Flexible Blasts which will be of higher value to any other kineticist, I do think picking giving your elements Flexible or Brutal should probably just be a natural feature of them. Back to Elemental Weapon though it basically gives access to one (one handed) martial weapon to your Kineticist and that is cool! I think it could use some more fleshing out though.