Goblinsaurus's page

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?

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.