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Goblinsaurus wrote:

Kineticist loses out at any combat to a any 3/4 BaB character that just takes archery feats as it levels.

It's burst potential is extremely low, and even then it has to practically kill itself in order to do burst damage. It also has to do the same if it wants to inflict conditions on enemies, use utility abilities, or really do just about anyting.

The utility abilities that it gets are lackluster at best, and those that are decent still require an extremely high cost for what you get.

It's a class that lacks legitimate damage, utility, skills, durability, and really anything worthwhile. Any caster, literally any caster, outdoes it by a huge margin. Hell, most martial classes can outdo it at most things, and any of the partial casters still laugh at it.

Hey, I kind of like my at-will flight at level six, especially combined with a free miss chance vs. projectiles and 240ft. attack range. Hitpoints are good even after three points of burn (last one is negated by a size increase to Con and it grants +2 Dex), and damage is as much as I do on anything outside of a rage class. I took every feat I'll ever need for my build at level one as a human, leaving me with room for stuff like VMC.

You know who else likes those abilities? Any caster with Fly and Blur on their list, because for all serious purposes the duration that they'll have on them may as well make them at-will unless you're doing marathon megadungeons.

Goblinsaurus wrote:

Kineticist is just about the worst Paizo class printed, short of NPC classes, and even then the Adept gets spells.

Which is kinda funny, given the absolutely massive amount of feedback that the Kineticist playtest had. Seems a bit odd to have a playtest, have people give a huge amount of well-written proofs about how a class performs, have them give suggestions on how to fix it, and then have it still turn out to be trash.

But hey, at least that Psychic got buffs, right?

....You do realize kineticist got a big power boost between Playtest and Print right?

You do realize that the entire class is still a steaming-hot pile of garbage, right? "Buff" or not, the entire burn mechanic is 100% awful.

Goblinsaurus wrote:

Kineticist is just about the worst Paizo class printed, short of NPC classes, and even then the Adept gets spells.

...what?

Kineticist loses out at any combat to a any 3/4 BaB character that just takes archery feats as it levels.

It's burst potential is extremely low, and even then it has to practically kill itself in order to do burst damage. It also has to do the same if it wants to inflict conditions on enemies, use utility abilities, or really do just about anyting.

The utility abilities that it gets are lackluster at best, and those that are decent still require an extremely high cost for what you get.

It's a class that lacks legitimate damage, utility, skills, durability, and really anything worthwhile. Any caster, literally any caster, outdoes it by a huge margin. Hell, most martial classes can outdo it at most things, and any of the partial casters still laugh at it.

Kineticist is just about the worst Paizo class printed, short of NPC classes, and even then the Adept gets spells.

Which is kinda funny, given the absolutely massive amount of feedback that the Kineticist playtest had. Seems a bit odd to have a playtest, have people give a huge amount of well-written proofs about how a class performs, have them give suggestions on how to fix it, and then have it still turn out to be trash.

But hey, at least that Psychic got buffs, right?

Have your other players tried getting good and learning how to make competent characters?

I could solo bonekeep with a 7th level aerokineticist without using a conductive weapon. At will flight with an extreme range weapon is is very very good.

And that's relevant to how it does in any other situation at all... how? Giving an extreme corner-case example where it's possible to do passably doesn't make the class less s##@ overall.

Goblinsaurus wrote:

Cyrad wrote:

The book's not even in stores yet and people are already complaining about it. Maybe give it a little time?

The book is already released and people have access to it. It doesn't take several months to run simple math on how classes match up, or to see when something is falling drastically behind other characters.

Classes are more than math and DPR. Way more.

Yeah, they are. Classes are their features, their utility, their debuffs, crowd control, movement, skills, and everything else.

And the Kineticist is bad at them all. The classes that it's supposed to fill a similar role to, namely Magus/Alchemist/Warpriest? All of them beat it out by a massive amount, even when the Kineticist is spending burn constantly to try and catch up, which actively hurts it for using it's own abilities.

The book's not even in stores yet and people are already complaining about it. Maybe give it a little time?

The book is already released and people have access to it. It doesn't take several months to run simple math on how classes match up, or to see when something is falling drastically behind other characters.

Goblinsaurus wrote:

Meanwhile the Kineticist is sitting around looking at the Monk and being envious that it gets fun things.

Yeah, because at will flight at 6th level or line-of-sight teleportation aren't any good, you have to be jealous of slow fall. Right...

Yeah, because "At-Will" is really that big of a bonus when a caster of equivalent level is getting the same abilities earlier than you and for longer than they'll need them to, on top of getting a massive selection of spells to emulate every class feature you have considerably better than you in every single conceivable way.

Wait, that's wrong. If the ability is awful, it doesn't matter if you can use it all the time, because it's still useless. Go look at any of the Kineticist builds popping up, and you'll see a remarkable trend that they ALL make use of Conductive Weapons to use the blast, because nothing else lets them stay even remotely competitive at all.

If the Kineticist was competitive with the Fighter on DPR there would be a problem. I don't see Fighters dispelling magic or putting up grappling walls of fire.

Except the Kineticist doesn't really get to actually do any of that either, because what few methods it might get access to in order to do that are extremely expensive, not worth the investment, and actively make you worse during the day because Burn literally, tangibly makes you closer to passing out or dying.

The Kineticist doesn't do good damage. It doesn't get good crowd-control. It doesn't get good utility, debuffs, self or group buffs, summons, knowledge, or anything useful. It gets some minor degree of mobility, but it's features don't actually make good use of what mobility it gets.

Also, to Rynjin, it isn't even truly At-Will abilities. A Fighter or any martial character gets, effectively, At-Will attacks it can use, but those aren't completely awful. They get feat support, enchantments to boost them, items to help, and a bunch of other stuff. Through items, you can even get most of the 'utility' abilities that the Kineticist tacks onto it's blast. Blasts are a cool ability that the mechanical execution fails entirely for, because in order to do anything even close to good damage, you have to sacrifice all utility and accept a substantial amount of Burn, and even then, you fall behind other classes by a very wide margin. If you want to get the 'utility', then you sacrifice your damage, and your utility is still not even as good as the weaker spellcasters, or a class like the Alchemist, which is more or less the exact spot the Kineticist is competeing with. 3/4 BaB, some utility features, some damage stuff, meant to be versatile. Except it isn't.

The emotion component for Psychic Spells explains that whenever a caster is under the effects of a non-harmless effect with the emotion or fear Descriptor they can't provide the emotion component.

A friend has suggested that this means Intimidate, which causes the shaken condition, can shut down psychic spellcasting.

Is this true? My understanding is that the shaken condition itself lacks an actual "Fear Descriptor" and does not actually invoke this clause in the Emotion Component.

Yep, it's true. And it's probably one of the easiest ways to shut them down.

Oh, wait, they get in-class immunity to fear effects through at least two ways.

Meanwhile the Kineticist is sitting around looking at the Monk and being envious that it gets fun things.

Goblinsaurus wrote:

The book has next to zero feat support whatsoever for Kineticists, and this is what gets printed?

The feats they do get are really cool, and beyond what I'd normally expect from a feat (Delayed Blast and Interweave Composite Blast in particular). This one makes for characters that will be remembered after they're gone.

1) Kinetic Leap and Kinetic Counter are both fairly worthless. One is a waste of an action in most cases, and can mostly already be done by the base class anyway. The other is a bonus to jump, except for the fact that the class gets multiple sources of Flight, rocket-boosts, earth-glide, climb speeds, and multiple other movement modes.

2) Delayed Blast does nothing. There is no reason to use Delayed Blast when you could have just used the blast on that turn anyway, and the only time that there is a reason to use it, namely as an ambush, you could instead just Gather Power for more burn reduction and gain better effects from it. The limiting factor of it being one delayed blast ever is a nerf that's unneeded.

3) Nobody is going to remember the character that exploded when it died just because it lightly slapped you in the face as it withered out of existence.

Don't like, don't take.

How, exactly, does this excuse poor design again? I seem to have missed the part where not being forced to take an option means that it's alright for literally worthless abilities to be printed instead of something that would make the class at least worth something.

Are you sure the title shouldn't read "Methods to break the Kineticist"

Okay in fairness I haven't seen the DRP olympiad, but it is a class that can blast alllllllllll day, and blast relatively hard. Maybe its nova isn't as nova as you might like, but ALLLLLLLL day is huge.

Whoa there buddy, lets back up a second here. A kineticist, even one build for the maximum possible DPR, falls behind anyone who just takes archery and pumps their Dex and Str a little. Considerably behind it, while having to take non-lethal damage to do so, which means that the entire "Oh hurr durr it can blast all day so it needs to be bad at it!" thing is a point that's a blatant lie, because it can't do it all day unless you want to be doing the damage of an anemic rogue.

Compare it to anyone actually focused on damage at all, and they'll ruin it. A Barbarian, Smite-Archer, Ranger, Zen Archer, or even Fighter Archer will outdo it by miles, and what little versatility the Kineticist gets doesn't come close to making up for it.

It is there for NPC suicide bombers.

Not all options are there to buff the PCs.

Some of them are there to hose you when an NPC takes them.

Except that it doesn't even do a good job of that. It's a 5ft blast for barely any damage at all, and it makes you actively worse at combat before you die.

The book has next to zero feat support whatsoever for Kineticists, and this is what gets printed?

With Occult Adventures recently released and there being so much buzz about it, I was excited to get my hands on the book and start reading through. Overall, it's seemed decent, though still with a fair number of issues.

But one thing, at least that I've seen so far, stood out. One feat that's so mind-bogglingly bad that I just don't understand how it came about. I can't see any conceivable purpose for it at all, even for a Kineticist NPC to throw against your PCs.

Parting Blast
When you die, your body explodes in one final, destructive
kinetic blast.
Prerequisite: Kinetic blast class feature.
Benefit: You can accept 1 point of burn to prepare a
kinetic blast that automatically triggers upon your death.
If you are killed at any point before your burn is removed,
your body instantly erupts in an explosion that deals an
amount of damage equal to that of your simple blast to
all creatures in a 5-foot radius. A parting blast destroys
your body, which might prevent any magic that requires
an intact corpse.

You need to die to use it. You need to accept burn to activate it, on the off chance that you die. It deals damage in a 5ft radius of your body, only the damage of your Simple Blast so it's barely even the equivalent of a single attack from any other character, and it won't hit anything not in direct melee with you. And if that wasn't bad enough, it completely destroys your corpse so that you have to use high-level magic to resurrect yourself.

Why was this feat printed? Why did this absolute waste of page-space get through editing?

Quintin Belmont wrote:

The MAth has been done. In terms of Damage potential, the Kinetecist is competing with an Expert with a bow. Burn is a needless mechanic that punishes you for bohwhat your class is designed to do and what Wizards get for practically free. While Gather Power at first seems like it can allow you some recovery, its far to risky of a mechanic for a combat oriented class and handicaps your action economy, and the open-hand requirement basically castrates some builds. Add in the Burn restriction and suddenly you are being forced into wasting more of your action economy to get back that burn in order to actually use your abilities and to make them not be complete feces.

Build me an 11th expert that can do 53 damage every round until the end of time, while flying in a cloud, with a 40% flat dodge chance vs projectiles and evasion.

Build me an 11th level expert that can 5 foot step into the floor and start flinging 6d6+12 at you from Improved Cover with constant Stoneskin.

I can keep going.

You do realize that 6d6+12 is an average of about 33 damage, which at level 11 is absolutely pitiful and close to a waste of an action? A Kineticist could literally grab a wand filled with blasting spells and do more than it's own class abilities.

ANY class could do it. All it takes is UMD. It is a class that is, literally, in every way, replicatable and SURPASSABLE through UMD, and you can get classes that will have better base features than it.

Hargert wrote:

QuidEst wrote:

- Move action to reduce burn (allowing for free Empower and eventually free Maximize).
- Infusion specialization greatly reduces high-level burn.
- If Aether takes a point of burn, it refills its temporary hitpoint pool the same amount.
- Every point of Con bonus over what you'd normally have can be treated as a free point of burn to spend, and Toughness is a once-only Extra Burn feat.
- As you level up, 3rd, 5th, and 7th points of burn don't count because they're negated by +2 Con. So 100 points of nonlethal from your starting hp at 20 would actually be 8 burn- not far from your model. (Plus, it comes with a total of +8 to hit and +15 damage, and a 40% chance to negate crits and sneak attacks.)

In addition…
- Low feat investment. (Just enough get Precise Shot.)
- Better to-hit.
- Burn-free utility options include things like at-will telekinesis, constant flight, and unlimited line-of-effect teleportation.

Plus…
- Don't like burn? Overwhelming Soul gives you the bonus to attack and damage (minus stat changes) for free, plus a few points of burn to spend without taking damage.
- Want another option? Elemental Annihilator gets full BAB attack in melee using a weapon that runs on Con rather than Str.

All great points, my only wish is that for some of the forms to either be more accessible vs locked to an element type or come online a little earlier. Other than that it looks you can make some very effective builds. I hope they expand the powers over time or give new elements.

I will say only this: I have asked the fine folks on the development team to keep me apprised of kineticist-related topics, and as such, I can tell you that not only did Owen have something amazing planned for kineticists in Occult Origins, that I was like "Yes, let me write that for you please!" but also, he agreed, and furthermore, he went the extra mile got extra wordcount for it in order to make sure it could keep its full potential. I won't spoil Owen's (and...

Why did you let them kill the kineticist, Mark? That playtest thread had 4,000+ posts alone, detailed feedback from hundreds of people, and the entire board had at least 50+ other threads with breakdowns of how the class did.

Everyone who looked at the class said that Burn should be replaced by a different mechanic, and that it wasn't worth it for what it does. And that's exactly the case. Even spending as much burn as you can, the class doesn't do comparable output in any category to any other class. It does not compete in damage, utility, crowd-control, debuffing, healing, buffing, summoning, mobility, social, or stealth. It doesn't do any of those roles well, even.

Even with houserules that fairly strict GMs might allow, the class still underperforms by a severe amount.

Archetypes made for it have abilities that should have been things the class was allowed to do from the start, like the Annihilator having full BaB and getting to do flurries of blasts.

And for that matter, why is Flurry of Blasts from the base abilities so absolutely god-awful? It can't multi-stack debuffs, it does abysmal damage, it's not even as good as the other blast shapes at spreading debufs around. The ONLY decent use for it seems to be Pushing Infusion, and even that isn't particularly impressive.

Why does it feel like this class got ignored and thrown under the bus despite having around twenty entire pages of features? People were looking forward to it. They were excited. You were GOOD in the playtest threads, you supported people, you were reasonable and friendly and helpful and you gave us hope that the Kineticist might be passable, at least that it might be a low Tier 4 class, or at minimum high Tier 5, but it isn't. I feel bad saying it, but this is the single biggest disappointment that I have seen come out of Paizo in the entire time that I have played this game, all the way back through 3.5 with Dungeon and Dragon Magazine.

The quality of this game and the developers of it, at least aside from you Mark, have been declining rapidly for quite some time. Books have been printed with massive, sweeping errors. Errata gets pushed out that was never needed in the first place, while blatantly overpowered classes and abilities are left untouched.

Why? What happened? You all were supposed to be the people who kept 3.5 going and made it good and fixed it, not the ones who looted it's corpse and raised it as a rotting zombie.

I'm not even mad at this point, anymore. I was at first when things started to decline, but now it's just... disappointment. The fans trusted you all, and you let us down.

Tels wrote:

You can also take the feat Extra Wild Talent (see first page) at 7th level so you can have both wild talents.

Except that the feat on the first page restricts you to 1st level talents until you hit level 10.

Which is pointless and overly restrictive, especially to a class that already lags VERY far behind basically everything else in the entire game. The feat should work like the other Extra X feats, and let you select any that are available.

Goblinsaurus wrote:

Why not just make Composite Blasts not require burn? Like, what's the benefit of them having burn? Even without burn, they don't make the class OP in combat. It gives them at least something they can sorta do. You still need to expend Burn on Form/Substance/Improvements.

They double your damage output.

Galnörag wrote:

kestral287 wrote:

A Kineticist can actually only eat 3+Con mod in Burn per day, so even with 140 HP that Kineticist is locked into 8 Burn tops.

Not withstanding HP, I would say an Kineticist could easily have more. 18 Con at level 1, 4 stat boosts and a +6 item for 28 con at level 16. With (on a higher point by) a 20 start and a 30 finish.

I came out to 32 as my 20th-level's end-game Burn, with the potential to go higher if he used Kinetic Form on a Water elemental instead of an Air (but that's reaaaally tanking his to-hit rates). But the original posited Kineticist had a Con mod of +5.

They double your god-awful damage output that puts an anemic Rogue in a good light. Go look at the math done on the class. That doubled damage still doesn't even TOUCH the damage of other classes.

Why not just make Composite Blasts not require burn? Like, what's the benefit of them having burn? Even without burn, they don't make the class OP in combat. It gives them at least something they can sorta do. You still need to expend Burn on Form/Substance/Improvements.

Goblinsaurus wrote:

20d6+40(20d6 base Metal blast, +1/die Aetheric Boost)+Con of say 8 for 20d6+48 base. Mythic and Improved Vital Strike for 60d6+142. You're already eating one burn for that alone. Maximize+1 burn. Quicken for another, NON-VITAl STRIKE, blast at 20d6+40.

Depending on whether you can get two Vital-Striked blasts at once, which I'd doubt, you're looking at either ~1130 damage, or 632+20d6+40 for about 760 damage. If it's Maximised still, it goes up by an average of about 40 damage. That's 800 damage at the cost of 6 burn. 800 damage at the cost of 120 damage to yourself that can't be healed at all, and you're got far less chance of hitting than other striker-role characters.

Meanwhile, other damage dealers are doing the exact same thing at no damage to themselves, while also having more skills, utility, hit points, higher chances of hitting, from higher ranges potentially, and with more ease of bypassing DR.

for the double vital strike this is how I got it

At 17th level, by accepting 4 points of burn, she can
use her kinetic blast twice with the same action, when
using a double blast, all additional enhancements apply to
both of the doubled blasts.

this also means that I can use a wand of true strike to enhance both of them the turn before to put my hit with a dex of 20 at 44 so 42 at 960ft (my miss chance is 25% at worst). which is beyond perception range of everything so they are flatfooted to me and can't retaliate if they survive. my heatlh after take all 240 burn damage is still at 263 (yeah kinetic body) which matches that of a fighter with a 20. con score at lvl 20. if i'm doing a 1100 damage why the hell do I care if it has DR it is not going to save it from dieing. about the only thing that has more hitpoints than me is a barbarian or a fighter/paladin tank, non of which are going to out nova me.

Even with the Vital Strike houserule, it only manages to do comparable or more than a focused damage dealer in corner circumstances, and at great cost to itself. It also hits the burn-cap for the day near-instantly with it, and only gets one round of it. And after that it gets... nothing. At all. If it gets Vital Strike and the other fixes, since Mythic is normally disallowed despite it being the only thing that makes Vital Strike remotely worth taking, it could do up to about 120d6+40 or a bit more. Once per day, at the cost if a large chunk of it's health. Meanwhile, the other classes that can do damage can do the same exact thing for well over 10 rounds a day, and often at similar range or better.

The problem here is that the class doesn't even do seriously well if it gets favorable houserules. Even with things that aren't allowed in normal games, it still only manages something that's good in combat once per day. It gets one big shot, and then it limps along doing basically nothing for the rest of the time. It doesn't get skills to make up for it. It doesn't get utility abilities past a certain point because what little it DOES have are not honestly that useful.

Even if given pretty much the most favorable circumstance, it's still miles behind in literally every way.

Mythic Vital Strike should not be a factor in determining the balance of the core game.

It's an example to show that even under an EXTREMELY favorable circumstance and a number of buffs, the class /still underperforms/ and gets outdone hard, and can only even do THAT much at large cost to itself.

quick math for lvl 20 kineticist with improved vital strike and mythic vital strike

ranged nova

20d6+34+(10d6+17)+40d6+68 so far 0 burn maximixe and double make 6 burn
(120+34+77+240+68)x2=1078 thier is only one enemy that i can find on D20 that has enough hitpoint and DR to survive this and its a CR 39.

20d6+40(20d6 base Metal blast, +1/die Aetheric Boost)+Con of say 8 for 20d6+48 base. Mythic and Improved Vital Strike for 60d6+142. You're already eating one burn for that alone. Maximize+1 burn. Quicken for another, NON-VITAl STRIKE, blast at 20d6+40.

Depending on whether you can get two Vital-Striked blasts at once, which I'd doubt, you're looking at either ~1130 damage, or 632+20d6+40 for about 760 damage. If it's Maximised still, it goes up by an average of about 40 damage. That's 800 damage at the cost of 6 burn. 800 damage at the cost of 120 damage to yourself that can't be healed at all, and you're got far less chance of hitting than other striker-role characters.

In order to do that, you're eating 1 Burn from Maximize, 1 Burn from Composite, 4 Burn from Doubleblast, and reducing that by 1. So a total of 6 points of burn, the absolute maximum that you can get.

Meanwhile, other damage dealers are doing the exact same thing at no damage to themselves, while also having more skills, utility, hit points, higher chances of hitting, from higher ranges potentially, and with more ease of bypassing DR.

If your end-game Kineticist is only doing 20D6+40 over the course of a round of combat...

... He needs to close to melee. I worked out the nova option at about seven-eight times that.

Why should you be required to close to melee when any comparably built melee character will either be 2hing and doing, still, well over double your output with no cost to themselves, or when any Archer regardless of class can do as good or better than you at longer range than you?

The answer isn't "Use this one specific build that works", the answer is "Make the class not horrible enough that you absolutely NEED to use the absolute minmax build that /still falls massively behind/ anything else that does damage.

If you're going to claim 7-8 times that? Go build it out and show us.

So was building an aetherist..

so at lv 7 you can pick up Expanded element Aetherist.
This lets you use aetheric boost which costs 2 burn and/or force blast for 2 burn. right?

Is there any way prior to lv 15 to lower those burn costs?
As near as I can tell TKers can only get the TK blast, then Boost then Force Blast as far as pure TK attacks go (well and of course theblade stuff. However that only works TK blast which could be augmented with Aetheric boost; but you couldn't use Force Blast since that isn't a simple blast listed in Blade/whip right?)

Is there any substance infusions for Aetherists? As near as I can tell thre aren't any that apply. Just many form types--but you can only apply one form per use no matter what right? (man.. I would love incrased range and foe throw. or many throw and foe throw)

I mean outside of the mage hand and the improved version (at which point I'll honestly be dropping crap on people or potentially having bags of alchemical weapons dropping on some things heads)

EDIT: That wyld talent that makes the mage hand work for 100lbs per TK level.. Re reading that it doesn't seem like that actually increases what you can throw via TK blast does it? Thats disappointing haha

Pretty much, yeah. Honestly, the Burn mechanic is kinda useless and cripples the class. Other classes get to do a ton of damage and utility at literally zero cost other than using charges off an ability. Kineticist needs to both burn points of Burn it can take, and then soak up nonlethal damage.

If Burn was, instead, changed to something like 1 point per level non-primary blasts, going down to 1/2 level if you pick up Expanded Element in your own element, and the burn reduction abilities came online earlier, it might not be completely terrible. If you got a pool that you can use to safely soak burn, and then ABOVE that pool it did damage to you? That'd be good.

But as-is? It's kinda extremely limiting and doesn't add anything other than flavor, and mechanically it sorta cripples the class to some extent. Sure, you can reduce the cost of Forms and Infusions and that's GREAT. It comes online too late to make the class even somewhere CLOSE to remotely competitive in damage, and in order to get something that (Assuming both Vital Strike AND Mythic Vital Strike work) would be STILL less damage by a large amount than traditional damage dealers, they need to soak upwards of 3 points of burn. Snaking Metal Entangling Infusion with Aetheric Boost burn cost: 2(Snaking)+2(Metal)+2(Entangling)+2(Boost) for a total of 0(Snaking)+1(Metal)+0(Entangling)+1(Boost) which is minimum 20 damage to do, at level 20, 20d6+40. That's damage that a Sorceror is doing with a middle-level spellslot, no damage or risk to themselves, and that damage is PATHETIC compared to what's actually needed at that level. That's damage that gets ROUTINELY laughed at because it's worthless compared to actual damage dealers, and to do even THAT much you're eating minimum 20 damage. If you want to do something vaguely approaching respectable damage (Which any even remotely competently built Archer, Gunslinger, or properly built melee character will outdo by MILES still), you'll need to Maximize it. Now you'll do 160 damage, at the cost of 40 unhealable non-lethal damage to yourself and knocking two points off your burn pool. You're doing this at a far lower attack bonus than a comparable class, and you're doing far less than half the damage of them. An Alchemist at that level is chucking 7 bombs for around 10d6+20 with varied elemental damages, against touch AC on all of them, and gets AoE for free. In terms of the argument of "You get it all day, that's OP!" no, it isn't. if you can do something all day, but you can't do it well at all, it doesn't matter. When it comes down to it and you need to be able to, in order to pull your weight in a party and quite bluntly to survive as a character, you need to be able to put out something worthwhile. That Alchemist? He'll reliable hit on nearly all his attacks. That's about 60d6+120 right there. The MINIMUM damage it does? It beats the Kineticist. That Alchemist also gets utility all over the place aside from bombs, and can apply a variety of status effects with his bombs. And he can buff the party. And he can function as a Rogue with skills.

And the Alchemist isn't considered OP. They're considered fairly middle-ground in terms of powerlevel.

Rynjin wrote:

You gain a few things:

-Multi-target options.
-Vital Strike compatibility
-Potentially higher damage (if all hit and even out to about average 16d6+2*Con is an average of 56 plus double mods, versus a flat 48 plus one mod).
-Better image (Mustang or Avatar-esque repeated fire throwing > Spirit Bomb)

Wouldn't Vital Strike be too much, though? Admittedly, it would only bring the blast damage to Fireball levels, but doing it for free, all the time, every time might be somewhat excessive...

Then again... Blasting is all the Kineticist does. So maybe it's okay.

Again, go look at the damage comparisons. A Kineticist needs to burn their own HP to put out even remotely respectable damage, and that's if Vital Strike is added in too. A Fighter, Barb, Gunslinger, Ranger, or other damage-dealing class can do easily more (I'm talking 30-50+ more DPR as a baseline.) than a Kineticist, all day, no penalty, often from range, and with better class abilities for out of combat features as well.

blackbloodtroll wrote:

Someone is going to hate me for saying this, but I just don't want this to be the next Rogue.

It won't be. Rogues get skill points and lots of class skills.

It is too early to judge the classes full range of utility. We all know a lot of abilities are being held in reserve until the book launches. Some of them may wind up hideously overpowered or worthless.

What we can all agree on is, the class needs 4-6 skill points/level if it is not going to receive a significant damage boost.

Change it to 4-6 skill points per level AND a significant damage boost, and I'm more or less with you. The math currently done on the class supports that it won't, even under favorable houseruled conditions, outdo or come terribly close to optimized damage dealers. Serious damage dealers get 2h Str bonuses, dual-wield damage bonus stacking and multiplication off double weapons, and ranged characters getting consistent full attacks and +2 attacks pet round to get better use of abilities.

If buffed in damage, it would do slightly more damage than the other utility classes, and retain less utility than they do. That seems to be an appropriate niche of it. It retains mobility, damage, and some utility. It wouldn't absolutely excel in any given area, but at the same time it doesn't end up suffering horribly in one either. It would give it a balance.

Rerednaw wrote:

Mark Seifter wrote:

...

That said, if anyone can find a build that is outperforming a topped-out fighter archer without spending burn, please let me know so I can make some adjustments. It is my intention that such a build should not exist. That gives me lots of wiggle room for more cool utility stuff, skills, and that kind of fun stuff!

I have to say I love the Kineticist.

However I don't expect one to be a DPR king by any means.

Yup! I just wanted to make sure to let everyone know that it was my express intention that we're not going to be doing more than the archer, thus giving breathing room for cool powers. If we do actually do more through some combination I didn't think of, then it's something to address!

Quoting this both so it can get referenced again, and so that it can get the attention from Mark once everything's alright and he's taken care of his family.

The Kineticist, even assuming favorable houserules like Vital Strike, Mythic Vital Strike, and other helpful things like items to boost it's damage still falls behind characters with even a mild degree of optimization. An optimized archer of any sort will easily outdamage one. If it does get fixed, it can manage to do decently respectable damage, and assuming it gets a little utility/refines the utility it has(Like Move Earth being given some form of scaling so it retains it's usefulness), it'll actually be a pretty well designed class that gives a good mix of utility and flavor, while still performing well enough in combat to give it a good area. It won't step on anyone's toes or take a role from another class, but it would provide a good middleground for people that like the flavor of it.

Once I'm less tired, I can see about working up some actual builds with things and doing a comparison of current-Kineticist and hourseruled/errataed-Kineticist, and compare them to a semi-stock build for a similar role class like Fighter/Alchemist. Probably should be able to do that tomorrow, unless someone beats me to it, and I'd really appreciate people trying to look them over once I get them up to see what flaws they might have.

kestral287 wrote:

Rynjin wrote:

Yeeees, however, you have to remember that the Alchemist can toss anywhere from 1-4 (7 if you use TWFing) Bombs a round.

A Nova option, certainly, but 2-7x the damage versus a single target (or identical damage to 2-7 additional targets) is pretty clearly superior.

Especially when saying the third iterative is unlikely to hit is untrue. Remember, AC goes up the higher level you go...but conversely Touch AC tends to go DOWN.

Even unmodified that third attack has a +2 to-hit. When the average Touch AC of CR 16 foes is about 10, that's still quite a good chance of hitting if for some reason the alchemist has 10 Dex, no Point Blank Shot or Targeted Bomb Admixture or other buffs.

Then toss in that the Alchemist is far more flexible when it comes to damage types (up to getting pure Force damage as an option easily available), and the Kineticist fares favorably when compared to the Alchemist in anything BUT damage as well, and it's clear there's a balance problem with the Kineticist.

I wouldn't exactly say that me saying the third iterative "may not be a given" is the same as "unlikely to hit".

The entire discussion is assuming iteratives for the Kineticist, so he's looking at four blasts as well-- and comparing a Kineticist who would have to drop nothing but two Wild Talents into this to an Alchemist who threw in three feats for the TWF chain on top of two or more discoveries isn't exactly a straight comparison.

So four blasts vs. four blasts, Ref saves vs. Touch AC, Kineticist has the superior blast radius, Alchemist has negligibly-superior damage, Alch can swap blast types at the cost of handing the Kineticist an even larger advantage in blast radius, Kineticist has superior range, radius, and splash damage... Seems straightforward even without a number crunch, within the confines of "clear a room of mooks", a Kineticist with Explosion and Iteratives wins out.

Now, whether or not that's a problem is an entirely different can of worms,

...

Do keep in mind that in order for it to do good DPR with things, it's required to eat a very large amount of burn to do so. At best, you're looking at somewhere around 3-4 burn each time, unless you can select an infusion to reduce the Burn cost of without having it.

Also, Fire is still the most heavily resisted/immune element in the game, which really IS a serious mark against it.

Sidenote, if Manythrow allows you to target all of the attacks against the same target, then a telekineticist can actually be relatively decent at damage. At best, you're looking at ~100d6+200 damage to a single target, at the cost of about 5 Burn base.

Would a possible idea to make focusing on a single element be that, if you only focus on one, you only take 1/2 level in damage for each Burn? Or make it so that at level 10, you get a feature for your Primary element that reduces the burn damage by 1/2 if the blast has your element in it.

Man, I want my Roy Mustang Pyrokineticist concept to work.

I need to find ways to improve accuracy.

I want this class to work, really bad.

If it gets boosted up a little bit, you'll totally be able to do that. And that's what I'm trying to advocate with all of the posts, making ideas like this playable without being severely underpowered.

Rynjin wrote:

Yeeees, however, you have to remember that the Alchemist can toss anywhere from 1-4 (7 if you use TWFing) Bombs a round.

A Nova option, certainly, but 2-7x the damage versus a single target (or identical damage to 2-7 additional targets) is pretty clearly superior.

Especially when saying the third iterative is unlikely to hit is untrue. Remember, AC goes up the higher level you go...but conversely Touch AC tends to go DOWN.

Even unmodified that third attack has a +2 to-hit. When the average Touch AC of CR 16 foes is about 10, that's still quite a good chance of hitting if for some reason the alchemist has 10 Dex, no Point Blank Shot or Targeted Bomb Admixture or other buffs.

Then toss in that the Alchemist is far more flexible when it comes to damage types (up to getting pure Force damage as an option easily available), and the Kineticist fares favorably when compared to the Alchemist in anything BUT damage as well, and it's clear there's a balance problem with the Kineticist.

I wouldn't exactly say that me saying the third iterative "may not be a given" is the same as "unlikely to hit".

The entire discussion is assuming iteratives for the Kineticist, so he's looking at four blasts as well-- and comparing a Kineticist who would have to drop nothing but two Wild Talents into this to an Alchemist who threw in three feats for the TWF chain on top of two or more discoveries isn't exactly a straight comparison.

So four blasts vs. four blasts, Ref saves vs. Touch AC, Kineticist has the superior blast radius, Alchemist has negligibly-superior damage, Alch can swap blast types at the cost of handing the Kineticist an even larger advantage in blast radius, Kineticist has superior range, radius, and splash damage... Seems straightforward even without a number crunch, within the confines of "clear a room of mooks", a Kineticist with Explosion and Iteratives wins out.

Now, whether or not that's a problem is an entirely different can of worms, but it's enough to at least...

Explosion doesn't work with Iterative attacks. Kineticist, unless they use a Kinetic Whip/Blade/Fist, does not get iterative attacks with blasts. This is one of the biggest problems with it as far as damage goes.

Also, just to point out, Alchemist can get ~7 bombs at 10d6+Int+a few other bonuses, for about 70d6+63 as an entirely unoptimized build. That's 133 splash in a large area. That will, easily, beat out a Kineticists damage. EASILY. Even an optimized kineticist. The kineticist will be doing at best 10d6+1/2 Con in a 20ft area at 120ft. That'll average ~45ish damage. The unoptimized alchemist well over doubled that as it's minimum damage. The alchemist also gets Extracts, other discoveries, can change it's damage type often with great ease, and can also apply conditions like Staggered with it's abilities. And it also gets more skills, and is on the same BaB/HD as the Kineticist.

Mark posted this in the Medium topic and ask someone to post it here.

Mark Seifter wrote:

On a sadder note, earlier today I've had a death in the family. I'll be on a transcontinental flight early tomorrow. You may not see much, or any, of me for a few days. Someone in this thread who reads this please let the kineticist thread know; I don't have time to read the 40+ posts that are new since last time I read it, and if I click into that thread to post, it won't keep my place. I read 100% of the posts you guys make, and I want to make sure I don't miss even one of them, so I'm counting on you medium testers.

Please throw a few dice for me and keep being awesome. Talk to you all later in the week.

~Mark

Best wishes to Mark and his family, and I'm sorry that he had something as unfortunate as that happen.

Is it really necessary to be so offensive, to speak to a fellow poster like that.

So far the posters on this playtest forum have been amicable and polite to each other. And the playtest has benefited from such mutual respect.

There is always the Gaming Den (I'm sure Frank Trollman's followers will welcome such disrespectful behavior).

Was it really necessary for him to ignore any of the math that's been done on what he's attempting to talk about, refuse to check his facts at all and provide faulty data to back up a claim that's blatantly false, and attempt to discuss something that he very clearly neither understands nor can be bothered to take the time to look at with more than a cursory glance?

For that matter, was it necessary for you to disregard any sort of the actual content of the posts I've made simply because you view them as disrespectful despite having actual points in them, which I've backed up with information that proves exactly what I've said? Not to mention that every other playtest that's been done, theorycrafting too, has said exactly what I've been saying.

I'm sorry that I might get a bit heated here, but the fact that people are blatantly ignoring any of the issues that the class has and attempting to hide behind the shield of accusing people of minmaxing rubs me the wrong way entirely. To anyone that I might have been disrespectful for, I'm sorry that you were offended, but the points that I've made have been entirely valid thus far. I've looked into it and given you step-by-step breakdowns of the math behind it, and provided examples disproving what Artanthos attempted to lie about in order to discredit any argument I might make.

For the sake of the quality of the game, actually read through what I post. Look at the arguments made. Look at the math and examples backing them up. Please, feel free to disprove them. In fact, I encourage you to do exactly that. I would love nothing more than to see someone point out to me a way for this class to be not only flavorful, but actually good. Show me the math and facts that prove your point that it can do respectable damage. Show me where the utility it gets comes from. I will eagerly, gladly await seeing it.

But if, as has happened thus far, you're going to look at the arguments and points laid out and supported before you, and do nothing more than claim that they don't exist, aren't valid, or discredit them by waving them off as claiming to, as Artanthos attempted, say that they're attempts to make a broken class? Then I can do nothing more than to ask you to stop posting and leave the discussion, because you're contributing nothing helpful to it on either side. If you are going to get involved in a playtest and willingly discuss it, you are under an obligation to read the information provided to you and to understand what you are talking about. Not doing so is disrespectful not only to the people that you're talking with, but to the developers themselves and the material itself, not to even touch on it reflecting poorly on you for not taking the time to understand what you're talking about. It shows a severe lack of any caring or respect for the material being discussed or the people making it, and a disregard for the effort put into making it.

I'm excited for this class and, quite simply, this is the sort of class that I've been looking to find for almost the entire time that I've been playing D&D, in any of it's various interpretations. I enjoy this game immensely, both as a player and a GM, and it is because of that that I'm here now and attempting to be involved in this playtest. It would not be inaccurate to say that this game is somewhat of a passion of mine.

The Kineticist, and the other classes in this book, are extremely flavorful and are, from a fluff standpoint and as a basic mechanical concept, very well thought out so far. But that said, they are not as good as they can be currently. There are issues with all of the involved classes, and many people have attempted to point them out so that they can be addressed and fixed. My wish in all of this is not to make a class that will shatter the balance of the game, but to allow a class which many people enjoy from a flavor standpoint to be a viable, helpful addition to the game so that it can get enjoyed. With tweaks to the mechanics, and testing of those tweaks to see how it works out and compares to other classes, the class could very well become something that's truly well-made and will stand point as good design. It's nearly there now, on some levels. But if we truly do care about this game, and more specifically about this class, does that not mean that we have some form of duty to work for the refinement and improving of it to fit it's intended role and function, both as a community aiding eachother, and as people who want to see this class be enjoyable to play and not just as a flavorful concept?

TheRamza wrote:

Artanthos wrote:

Mark has already flatly stated that kineticist will not deal fighter/barbarian/archer damage and if we find a way to deal that level of damage it will be removed.

I'm seriously questioning what the point of this class is at this point. Every feature of the class other then Wild Talent are blasting specific abilities. Most of the Wild Talents are blasting specific abilities. The class burns it's HP in order to be better at blasting. The class only has 2 skill points and no other reason to invest in int and several reasons not to.

If the class isn't allowed to be better then others even when permanently burning HP's for each day what is the point? Other then permanent fly or earth glide or air walk, etc what does it do better then anyone?

What is the point of any class that does not deal enough damage to one-shot a APL+4 opponent?

APL+4? Really? You can stop posting anytime now, thanks. 80-90 DPR won't one-round a CR appropriate CR10 encounter, let alone a CR+4.

To prove exactly that: https://sites.google.com/site/pathfinderogc/bestiary/monster-listings/drago ns/dragon/chromatic-red/young-red-dragon
https://sites.google.com/site/pathfinderogc/bestiary/monster-listings/outsi ders/rakshasa/rakshasa-common
https://sites.google.com/site/pathfinderogc/bestiary/monster-listings/aberr ations/fleshwarped/fleshwarp-ghonhatine
https://sites.google.com/site/pathfinderogc/bestiary/monster-listings/aberr ations/gug
https://sites.google.com/site/pathfinderogc/bestiary/monster-listings/undea d/pale-stranger

Oh, look, not a single one has below 110 HP. And they're all CR10.

And just to yet again drive home that you're pulling things out of your rear and aren't actually reading anything, giving thought to opposing facts, or even bothering to check your own, lets give example CR+4 encounters.

https://sites.google.com/site/pathfinderogc/bestiary/monster-listings/drago ns/dragon/chromatic-red/adult-red-dragon
https://sites.google.com/site/pathfinderogc/bestiary/monster-listings/undea d/demilich
https://sites.google.com/site/pathfinderogc/bestiary/monster-listings/human oids/giants/giant-true/giant-ocean
https://sites.google.com/site/pathfinderogc/bestiary/monster-listings/const ructs/golem/golem-brass
https://sites.google.com/site/pathfinderogc/bestiary/monster-listings/magic al-beasts/xanthos
https://sites.google.com/site/pathfinderogc/bestiary/monster-listings/monst rous-humanoids/rokurokubi

Yet again, not going to get one-rounded, even by the higher-tier damage dealer.

Oh, and as ANOTHER point, most of those either have heavy resistance, immunity, or DR that the Kineticist will have additional trouble bypassing above what the fighter needs to get through.

The Kineticist is a class that has low survivability thanks to it's Burn ability and NEEDING to use it to do anything that's even remotely respectable damage wise. It lacks staying power throughout the day because of that, even moreso than a caster would. Even when heavily optimized for doing damage, it falls very far behind. To make up for this, it gets... nothing. The solution to fixing the class isn't simply to buff it's damage up harder than a fighters, or to give it more utility than a wizard, it's to give it a MIX.

You seem to be under the mistaken impression that I'm arguing that the class needs to do something insane like 500DPR while getting 6th-level equivalent casting or similar. All I'm arguing for is that it should, if built towards it, be able to get some degree of actual damage output. It's MAIN ABILITY, and the MAJORITY of it's Wild Talents ALL focus on doing damage, making it easier for you to do damage, or making your damage do interesting things. If it isn't a damage class, then what in the hell is it? It certainly isn't a skillmonkey or utility character, since it lacks those almost entirely. It doesn't even get buffs it can hand out to the party aside from a few relatively tiny ones.

Huh...

Well I think considering the aim is "one blast" a round (ranged anyway)
Vital strike would be pretty awesome for this class. So would things like Shot on the Run.
Both of which don't qualify due to the SLA -standard action nature of the blasts right? It would be cool if there was a way to do that..
considering Kinetic blade already allows for iteratives (right?) allowing vital strike shouldn't be any real problem on the old DPR scale... would it? As it stands its a lot like Bombs on an alchemist except they eventually can full attack whic hthese guys can not. So really.. Lets just go with the idea of "big bang attack!" once around stuff. Just go full DBZ on it.

For myself,
Raising skill to 4 or 6,
Changing burn a little (I still like this idea (which would really really require working by someone who understands the mechanics better) alternate burn idea since then you can actually kep Feel the Burn on
and possibly allowing Vital Strike or Shot on the run type things in specific, would make a really cool kiting scout nitch for this character.

Kinetic Blast only counts for Iteratives if you use Kinetic Whip, Blade, or Fist. Otherwise, no.

In addition, as http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic#TOC-Spell-Like-Abilities-Sp- says for Spell-Like Abilities, the action to activate a SLA is a standard action, unless it's listed as something else in the abilities description. Kinetic Blast could easily be changed to require an Attack Action to use, which would fulfill exactly the same role and open up Vital Strike so it can at least do some sort of damage.

I'm seriously questioning what the point of this class is at this point. Every feature of the class other then Wild Talent are blasting specific abilities. Most of the Wild Talents are blasting specific abilities. The class burns it's HP in order to be better at blasting. The class only has 2 skill points and no other reason to invest in int and several reasons not to.

If the class isn't allowed to be better then others even when permanently burning HP's for each day what is the point? Other then permanent fly or earth glide or air walk, etc what does it do better then anyone?

Pretty much exactly this. The class doesn't do good DPR even with favorable houserules, doesn't get good skills, doesn't get much utility, and doesn't get anything like spells.

I get that there are people here who just dislike things for the sake of disliking it, but if they're not going to actually look at the numbers behind it and read into it, then quite frankly they need to stop posting. The playtest is meant to address the problems with the class. The problems have been clearly stated, laid out, backed up with examples of the math, and put RIGHT THERE for everyone to see.

The class does not do good damage. It does not have the utility it claims it should. The majority, if not nearly all, of it's abilities focus on doing damage. Yet the developer of it says it won't do comparable damage to other classes. Why? Why would you make a class and very clearly throw it a bucket of damage-dealing abilities, and then slap people who try to do that? It isn't even made up for in utility, versatility, spells, neat little tricks it can do, or anything else.

Goblinsaurus wrote:

Zwordsman wrote:

Mark has already flatly stated that kineticist will not deal fighter/barbarian/archer damage and if we find a way to deal that level of damage it will be removed.

Are you reading my posts at all? The Kineticist DOESN'T do comparable damage to them. Even an optimized kineticist loses out HARD to an unoptimized, unbuffed fighter. I'm not in any way saying that the kineticist needs to be the highest DPR class or something similar, but you can't make a class that's based around blasting things and then have it's blast be literally worthless when compared to other damage dealers. It's role is to do damage and have utility. Right now? It doesn't have either. It fails out to a FIGHTER in terms of damage, let alone comparing it to a Barbarian or Paladin or other class that's /good/ at blowing things up.

It needs buffs. It need, honestly, fairly large buffs. A class that's meant to do combat and yet still has issues hitting things without sinking it's entire resource pool into doing so, still doesn't do decent damage against appropriate encounters, and has to hurt itself to even get a chance at doing so in the first place is not a class that will perform well. And that's not even touching on things like the issue of Energy Resistance, Immunity, Damage Reduction against alignments or extra weapon bonuses besides just Magic, or the fact that it's utility is lackluster at best currently. Aside from Air getting Fly at level 6(Everything else can also get it by then too. Spells are good like that.), it doesn't get much.

@Goblin

Mark said he didn't want Kineticist to be doing Fighter damage, so what we should be focused on is making Kineticist have more utility and possibly more damage.

As it is currently its DPR has trouble beating a Bard Archer's.

It... doesn't do fighter damage, though. It doesn't even come close to fighter damage, even when heavily optimized to do so. Even if it DID come close to it, it'd still run into the problem of not having enough to-hit to reliably do so, and it's still squisher than the fighter. AND it needs to hurt itself in order to use those abilities that let it even do that much.

At level 10, an optimized for damage kineticist is going to be doing at best maybe ~90 DPR, maybe up to ~110 if it gets some way to buff it's damage or Mythic Vital Strike is allowed by a GM. This is assuming average of 3.5 rounded to 4 on rolls, otherwise it'll drop considerably down to ~80.

At level 10, a Fighter, which is fairly commonly held as a poorly made class and doesn't even do more than middlingly good at dealing damage compared to similar classes, will be looking at likely landing 2-3 attacks per round. Each attack will be doing, at that level and assuming the build from earlier and a Greatsword, 2d6+10(Str 2h)+4(Weapon Training+Gloves)+2(Weapon Specialization)+1(Enhancement)+9(Power Attack) on the first attack for a total of 2d6+26 on the first attack, and 2d6+30 on the next two. That's unbuffed at all. If the fighter gets buffed to be larger, gets any sort of +damage buff or +hit buff, or any sort of increase at all, which is very likely and he can make FAR better use of than the kineticist, it'll increase. Assuming even that much, that's a flat out 6d6+86 damage BASELINE. That's 110 DPR unbuffed, melee range, not fully optimized. If it's ranged, go ahead and jack that up about 30 points MINIMUM to account for two more attacks, and then add in that you'll now make even more insanely better use of any buffs than the Kineticist can ever do.

Did anyone do any math with vital strike lines? That'd be a really amusing way to blast through resistances (immunity is immunity. Not a problem to me, but i also support the idea of using your el ement to blast other stuff so it falls on them or something)

Hmm I'm gonna start a thread on my idea for alternate burn to see the holes in it that I likely missed

A rough breakdown of it at about level 10 would be that, assuming a decent power blast like Metal(Which you're accepting Burn to use in the first place at level 10), you'll be looking at 2d6+2+Con(Assume a 22 for simplicity, +2d6+2 for every 2 levels past 1 so 8d6+8. Total damage: 10d6+16. Assuming that Vital Strike is allowed to work with non-Whip/Blade blasts, and that the +2d6+2 isn't bonus dice but instead base damage of the ability unlike bombs, Vital Strike gives you 20d6+16 at level 10. Average of ~90 damage per round at level 10. Something like a fighter will outdo that pretty handily, as will a barbarian, ranger, or paladin. Vital Strike working with the ability makes it COMPETITIVE, not BETTER than a fighter. If it doesn't work, or you can't use blasts as full-attack, the class doesn't do damage at all. It lacks the utility to make up for the lack of damage.

Put simply, if the class doesn't get it's utility shored up and it's damage buffed so that it's actually worthwhile to try doing damage with it? The class will be useless. Not in the "b-but it needs d12 HD and 5000000 damage to be good!" useless, but in the sense that it lacks a niche to fill, lacks the utility to be broad in it's abilities, lacks damage that's comparable to even unoptimized damage dealers, and lacks the skillpoints to even be able to make a skillmonkey out of it. If it ISN'T buffed up in a number of different ways, the class will be a 1 level dip for casters so that they can pick up Telekinesis Force Ward and become immune to all negative conditions via a regenerating pool of temp HP that outright gives immunity to all SoL/SoD spells that don't do damage.

I've managed to get the to-hit bonus on my aerokineticist up to +17 at 10th level, +18 with point blank. This is with a starting DEX of 16; a min-max build would be looking at a +20 to-hit bonus at the same level. This is accurate enough to reliably hit with physical attacks and should hit touch AC on a 2+ for most encounters.

In the process, I pushed her AC high enough to survive as a front-line melee character. I would feel comfortable playing with her as her build currently stands. She may not be "The Best," but I feel I could hold my own.

The big worry I still have is, no utility.

Go ahead and give a breakdown of it, please.

A character that would be doing an equivalent role at level 10, for example a fighter for simplicity, would be looking at: +10(BaB)+2(Weapon Training)+2(Weapon Focus and Greater Weapon Focus)+7(Str of 24 which is entirely within reason for a character of 10th level)+1(Magic Weapon, entirely possible to get a +2)+2(Gloves of Dueling). That alone is +24, and at level 10 is at +24/+24/+19 for a full attack, assuming any sort of Haste/Speed ability which is core. That's unbuffed, only assuming feats and a decent bit of WBL. If you include buffs or serious optimization to boost the damage, it raises even higher. If you choose a class that's actually good at doing damage and beating something's face in, like Barbarian or Paladin, it shoots straight through the roof. The damage you'll be doing is going to be mostly flat bonuses to damage and will easily be able to breach +20 damage per attack or better, and you've got three attacks. Even on a vaguely optimized Fighter, you'll still beat out a Kineticist on both to-hit and damage. A Fighter. A Barbarian, Paladin, or Magus, or heck even most other classes with a damage focus, will beat the damage of a kineticist out. And many of them also have spells, passive buff abilities, Rage powers, or other boosts, even for out of combat things.

Being able to use Vital Strike with this sort of attack even has some rules precedence in the Bestiray. There's a creature (the Jabberwock, I believe) that has a Su eye laser thing it Vital Strikes with.

It's a Su ability, but I'm unsure whether you can actually Vital Strike with it.

Also, there's a relevant part in the Spell-Like Ability description.

A spell-like ability has a casting time of 1 standard action unless noted otherwise in the ability or spell description. In all other ways, a spell-like ability functions just like a spell.

If Kinetic Blast had, as it would benefit greatly from and effectively needs in order to put it on par with other classes in terms of damage, a part of it's decription that said "This ability functions as a Spell-Like ability, but activating it is an Attack Action unless otherwise noted in it's decription(Kinetic Whip/Blade/Fist)." then it would fix up a lot of the issue.

If you want to fix it, that's simple to do. Fix up the abilities like Move Earth to scale with level, for example change it to 1 5ft cube base +1 more per five levels.

Up the HD to d10 and give it full BaB. Burn cost stays the same because it's already a big limiter, and it'll do it's job well to prevent people from being able to just go full supernova every round all day.

4+Int skills because there is absolutely zero reason that any character in the game should have 2+Int unless it's an Int focused class. Playing something that has zero skills isn't interesting or enjoyable, and you can't even give the argument of "Rogues need their niche!" because Ninja, Bard, Inquistor, and Slayer all exist.

Make it so Telekinesis has actual Composite blasts in line with the other blasts.

Give a Wild Talent that has a prereq of 10th level or more that lets you ignore 1/2 Kineticist Level in Energy Resistance, so that you can make an elemental blaster and not be entirely useless. Have a second Wild Talent with the other as a prereq that lets you either treat Immunity to an element as 1/2 damage, or treat it as Resist 30 or similar. You lose effectiveness against the enemies, but you aren't ENTIRELY useless.

Change Extra Wild Talent to work like every other Extra X feat, and let you select any that is normally available to you.

Allow Blasts to count as weapons for the purpose of feats, and keep it as a SLA but retool it to use Attack actions, with Kinetic Whip/Blade/Fist still being required to use Full Attacks with them. In addition, the Attack Action of it lets Vital Strike finally have a use.

Vital Strike being usable lets the feat finally have a remotely viable build that will use it and not fall behind drastically, and even WITH using Vital Strike with full blast damage, you'll still not beat out other optimized damage dealers in either to-hit or damage.

Give an item an ability to enchant your kinetic blasts, like the Kinetic Bracers proposed earlier in the class.

Guranteed, there are going to be people that will cry that none of this needs to get done. Remember the last class that got an ability like this, the Warlock? Remember how it was generally considered to be terrible, until Eldritch Glaive came about and unlocked the ability to do full attacks, and there were always the tricks with Hellfire Blast to up your damage? Those existed because it was NEEDED to do so in order to keep your character even remotely competitive. If the blast DOESN'T recieve buffs in the line of something like what I've said, the class isn't going to be able to really do terribly much. It'll be the class equivalent of the 1d6+1/2 level Sorc/Wizard powers which nobody picks up almost ever, because they're worthless.

The class has GREAT flavor and a ton of people love it. The design is already actually fairly good. But please, PLEASE don't just play it hyper safe and not fix up the problems with it. The things outlines in this post, and MANY others on the boards, are legitimate issues with the class that it's going to need to get fixed in order to actually be seriously playable. It doesn't get spells, it doesn't get infinite damage loops, it doesn't get more utility than other classes. Even with these changes, it's at best on par with other classes in terms of damage, and it gets to keep it's utility and fun aspects without being useless.

Overall, the class seems like it's actually fairly handy. It's flavorful and generally looks to be relatively well made, though it does still have it's share of issues that are going to pull it down a lot.

The issues that I've noted so far are:

Mono-element problems. The only real way that you're doing respectable damage is either Sand or Metal, and only then if you soak regular burn damage. I suspect there will end up being feats or abilities to reduce this, and there already are to some extent, but as it stands this ends up putting the Kineticist fairly far behind other similar damage dealers.
As an example: Take a level 9 Kineticist and level 9 Archer Fighter. Assuming statblocks of Kineticist having 20 Dex, 22 Con, and any other stat for it being irrelevant for this purpose, and the Archer having a 22 Str, 20 Dex and others being irrelevant for this, you'll come out roughly as follows. Archer gets 5 attacks per round (2 base +1 Rapid Shot +1 Manyshot +1 Haste) at a bonus of +15/+15/+15/+15/+10(+9 BaB, +1 Weapon Focus, +2 Gloves of Dueling, +1 Enhancement, +2 Weapon Training, +5 Dex as a baseline), and will do roughly 1d8+(+1 Enhancement, +4 Weapon Training/Gloves, +6 Str, +2 Weapon Spec) for a total of 1d8+13. That's fairly low-end, and if you really try and optimize for it at all you can decently easily beat that hard. Deadly Aim alone would up your damage by 4 points for only -2 hit. Average damage, assuming 4 hits and Deadly Aim, will be roughly ~80 damage. Clustered shots will help with DR, and arrows can be made of various materials to help bypass any material based DR.

A Kineticist can get, barring Whip or Blade shapes, one attack per round for 2d6+2+7(Con)+8d6+16 for a total of 10d6+25, at normal AC. You'll be looking at roughly +6 BaB, +1 Weapon Focus, and not really terribly much else barring you pumping your Dex up via items. You can't get Gloves of Dueling, you can't Enchant your blast, and the only other real option you have is buffing via spells or having the party caster buff you. For the sake of argument, say you hit. You'll do roughly an average of about 60 damage.

Barring some alternate way to boost your to-hit and damage, you're falling behind the Fighter in terms of damage even. Even if you go for a Touch blast, you're still doing fairly poor damage, or you're dealing with Fire damage and the associated immunities and resistance which are the single most common in the game. Against any class like a Ranger, Paladin, or even a Gunslinger, the Kineticist only falls behind further in terms of damage. This isn't taking into account that in order to put out even this much burst, the Kineticist needs to soak Burn damage with no way to resist it, and only has a d8 hit die to do so with.

The class appears to be based around blasts and combat, yet it's surprisingly lackluster at it. It's got a medium HP pool which it uses as it's resource, a medium BaB when it needs all the To-Hit bonuses it can get due to not being able to access a good half of them like any other Striker type can, and yet again falls into the trap of having 2+Int skills on a class that doesn't prioritize Int. It ends up coming together in a class that, even when optimized (At least as it currently stands), manages to fall behind the Fighter, which is commonly recognized as sub-par at best.

It's a class that basically screams for needing Full BaB, d10 HD, and 4+Int skills at minimum, and unless it ends up able to use blasts as part of a full-attack or attack action by default, yet still keeping them as SLAs for purposes of anti-magic, it's going to rarely if ever see play at many tables simply due to it not being able to hold it's own. At low levels, it can be a reasonably competent blaster and do okayish, but past somewhere around level 4-6 or so, it tapers off extremely hard and never really picks up again.

Once we end up seeing the feats given in the book, Extra Wild Talent get revised to work like all the other Extra X feats and let you select any talent available to you, and where it ends up going through playtest, it might be good. But unless it gets some changes, it's going to end up relegated, at least mechanics wise, down with the Rogue and Monk in terms of being thematically cool but still fairly sub-par or even outright bad in terms of ability.

I had an idea recently thanks to a couple sources of inspiration, and I was thinking about how I might be able to use it in a game a friend would be running soon. However, I'm not quite sure how to go about statting it up with the ARG.

The basic idea is a soldier that fell in battle, and has managed to make a pact to be returned to life to avenge himself and his comrades. I was thinking some sort of either soul bonded to a suit of armor might work, but I'm not quite sure how to go about statting that. What would be a good way to represent this using the ARG?

If you were to have a large sized character in this AP, would it cause a lot of problems?

A sudden windfall of 25,000 Gold? I would probably use it to buy the land in a mountain area where I found some sort of valuable ores and set up a mine. I need SOMETHING to fuel the materials needed in golem creation, and this helps that out pretty nicely.

Just going to point out that I said "Not play-by-post."
By which I mean, I am not going to participate in a play-by-post game, at all. That isn't how the game is, in my opinion, meant to be played, and I won't be doing it.

Actual campaign, not play-by-post. 20-25 Point Buy preferably. I'll play just about anything you can come up with. Skype or IRC would be the prefered thing to use for the campaign for me. Skype: Grom2.0 I'll be on most days.

Does Pathfinder Channel Energy count for 3.5 feats like Divine Metamagic, or would you need to actually take Turn/Command Undead as a feat for it to count as?