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Incidentally, demons aren't actually immune to fire. That's devils. Getting through energy resistance would be a super neato power though and help specialists a lot. There's another precedent with Outer Dragons' breath weapons being able to treat immunity as resistance 20 and wearing down regular resistance. What I'd like to know is if kineticists could get resistance or immunity to their own element somehow.
That's essentially what Ride the Blast does, actually. You can just fluff it as a rocket punch/kick/whatever.
Given that Feel the Burn is getting some buffs, I don't think having a cooldown option is out of the question. Like take a full round action or a minute to wind down your elemental awesomeness by one burn point. Long enough that you can't really do it in combat without getting in trouble, short enough to avoid 15 minute adventuring day. Expand on it more as a high-risk high-reward mechanic where you have the option to dance on the edge of unconsciousness to throw more weight around. Then again, this would effectively give the kineticist super healing powers, and if that's undesirable then Elemental Healing needs to be nerfed hard, given a whole separate limiting mechanic, or scrapped altogether.
** spoiler omitted ** Movie plot spoiler: I like that idea. Maybe they also see the Outer Gods and Great Old Ones as competition and seek to supplant them for stewardship of the Dark Tapestry.... or they just want to tear them down and enforce the fundamental idea of nothing being of any significance in the great void. Not humanoids, not Mi-Go, not Star Spawn, Cthulhu, or even Azathoth.
I'd figure magical feats would still be interesting things to see, just not necessarily in the same way as a real world magician's sleight of hand and illusions. Also consider that this could vary on the local culture and education where one is performing. The layman doesn't necessarily know much about magic besides that it exists and some folk can do crazy s#*@ with it.
When it comes out, would someone please specify _which_ four alien cultures are described in the technology article by David Schwartz? This pleases me immensely. If nothing else, it's this stuff that makes me love this game.
Regarding alternatives to burn, perhaps rather than something like grit, ki, or arcane resevoir, Kineticists have a buffer zone of burn that lets them pull their fancy tricks, but going over this buffer causes them to take nonlethal damage. The buffer regenerates by hour or during an extended rest period.
Alchemy is SCIENCE! I suppose you could consider them "supernatural" but they're not magical at all in the sense of arcane, divine, or psychic.
This idea may have been mentioned already, but I'd like to add in my two cents on the Pyrokineticist issue. Right now they are the most limited in functionality since they can toss fire around and that's about it, while the others can do elemental or bludgeoning damage and the terrakineticist can choose between slashing, piercing, and bludgeoning. One idea I've had is that pyrokineticists can fiddle with thermal energy in general rather than just toss fire around - which basically means that they could draw heat away from a target, effectively dealing frost damage rather than fire damage. It's slightly different from what a frost-oriented hydrokinetic does in that the hydrokineticist is exploiting thermodynamics of phase change to deal cold damage by (I imagine) making frost out of ambient moisture and hurling it at a target. The pyrokineticist fiddles with thermal energy while the hydrokineticist fiddles with phase change. It's pretty counter-intuitive and awkward from a thematic standpoint, but it'd give pyrokineticists a bit more versatility. Might make for an interesting archetype if it doesn't fit with vanilla kineticist. Another option would be to give them a Combustion/HeatExpasion blast option that lets them deal bludgeoning damage, in which they direct lots of heat into a combustible object, or into air causing it to rapidly and violently expand. This could also provide an alternative route to using plasma composite blasts, I guess. Regarding blasts in general, I support the idea of some kind of kineticist focus magic item that lets them put more oomph (in the form of enhancement bonuses or even weapon enchantments) in their blasts.
So the brain collectors... Are they Movie plot spoiler: Migou? I bet they're Migou.
Savage Tech's rage says that increases to strength apply to dex instead at higher levels, but I *think* they mean the bonuses to constitution are transferred to dex as described at the beginning of the feature.I'm not so sure about that. I took it to mean that, for example, if I take Strength Surge, that it boosts my Dex instead of my Strength, in keeping with the archetype's ranged focus. Aaah, I hadn't thought of that. Good point. I thought it was referring to Greater and Mighty Rage for some reason. Still though, some clarification on the Cyber Soldier's features would be nice.
Reading through this now, neat stuff, but there's at least one outstanding issue. Paizo needs to step up their proofreading and editing, two examples being the cybersoldier's Cybernetic Combat feature and the Savage Technologist's rage feature changes. Cybernetic Combat flip flops on whether the bonus applies to just attack bonuses or damage bonuses, and doesn't indicate that it's both as I believe in intends, and also specifies that it doesn't stack with the bonus from a class feature that it outright replaces anyway. Savage Tech's rage says that increases to strength apply to dex instead at higher levels, but I *think* they mean the bonuses to constitution are transferred to dex as described at the beginning of the feature. I'm pretty sure I get what's meant to be conveyed in these features but it's still a little confusing and, frankly, irksome. This isn't even a unique problem to this book, as in past books it's apparent that there's communication issues amongst the staff. Having said all that, neat book.
If magic and science both work, and magic can't be explained by the current ken of the world gained from science, then magic operates under some higher order of physical law, and the world we live in and that is studied by science is a special case of those higher laws. In a world or story where "magic" and "science/technology" exist side by side and their conflict is thematically important, magic serves to highlight the things we don't know about the universe and have yet to truly comprehend, while science and technology covers the stuff we do.
An Android oracle, eh.... That's interesting. Curious what kind of mystery they would have, though. Lore maybe? A new one based round technology?
Also can you clean up the gun scavenger part of this a bit? From the looks of it you said you lose the ability to fix your gun in favor of modding it but it's a little garbled. Glamered... for your gun, which you will be firing in combat. I don't understand. Why is that a thing?
It's okay, Hastur only comes out when you say "Hastur" three times. Hastur won't appear on the first mention.
I second the Artificer and Shapeshifter ideas.
I agree with my fellow blue alien dog friend above. Well met, fellow space dog monster.
This is my first post and I'm using it to say that October cannot come fast enough. |
