NoTongue's page

Meirril wrote:

Korafireheart wrote:

So i have a level 6 teifling pyrokineticist with 6 levels in kineticist. Im wanting multiclass into a kifemaster rogue, as my character has come upon some fancy daggers shall we say amd id like to make more. Im wanting to make several enchanted daggers. (I was inspired by liam o brians character in critical role campaign one as well as a homebrew npc). I was looking for advice on building it while keeping in mi d that shes a smuggler and probably should take the smuggler rogue talent aswell as i plan on converting her to a desnan in the future aswell as that she will become a mythic heroe with the trickster path in the future. I have her build planed out but id like some other ideas on a build or if theres anything i shouldnt do.

What exactly do you want your Kineticist to do that adding Rogue levels would enable? If you can accomplish that without adding non-Kineticist levels, you'll be better off.

Actually that more or less applies to any character class. You only dip if the dip makes your character accomplish a goal. If you aren't actively chasing a goal, dipping into other classes just makes your character weak for no tangible benefit.

Also what about the daggers makes you want to abandon your blasts? If you could explain that it would help a bit. Something tells me that whatever the daggers can do, in the long run it isn't going to be as good as improving your blasts. Unless the GM just gave you something stupidly overpowered for a 15th level character when you're 6th level.

Honestly i thought it would be fun to combine the classes to be able to be big and loud with my blasts and to be sneaky and do rogue things as well. Im taking knife master becuase i got my hands on a +2 flaming throwing dagger, corrosive throwing returning dagger that does bleeding damage, and ive commisioned a shocking masterwork blood crystal dagger that also does additional bleeding damage. I wanted to use them cause i thought they were cool and it would...

From what you I understand the party acquired daggers and you are going to multiclass into a character that will be really bad at using them and having a criminal background doesn't = rogue.

I've played a wizard thief who stole to fund his potion addiction, a Rogue class is just a bunch of mechanics, you can be a lawful good lord with nothing but levels in rogue or slayer.

I think the common answer is that it's going to be no, it's in no way OP in terms of damage or healing.

As Cabbage is sort of getting at and what may have happened is that you may have seen a kineticist player use abilities in ways they cannot, spiking the damage they do.

Here's a simple list.

Utility powers - Nothing lowers the cost of burn for these.

Metakinesis and composite blasts - Gather power can lower the cost for these.

Infusions - Gather power and infusion specialisations can lower the cost of these.

Kinetic Invocation was so horrible, why spend a feat so you can choose to get a spell as a wild talent when it should have been a wild talent to begin with. Also not all wild talents function like specific spells or completely as the spell they were based on.

It doesn't help that none of the kineticist archetype were any good or all that interesting.

I'm with you on that one. A feat slot and a talent slot all for the ability to gain extremely limited access to a very limited selection of spells.

I don't think they ever really took into account how high a cost unavoidable burn is. I mean if you told a player they could get access to one of these spells once a day for 2 feats they wouldn't touch it, adding permanent health loss for the day each time you use it is a trade down.

If you ever see Kineticists in practice it's burn for defense and elemental overflow cap and that's it. I've used burn twice beyond that and regretted it one of those times when I though the day was all but over.

I get the impression this is based on a discussion you had with one guy because this is in no way true, haste is one of the most heavily recommended spells in the game if not considered thee best.

Enlarge person, bless, resist energy, fly, telekinetic charge, heroism and so on.

You are not going to get a "GOOD" guide based entirely around buffing anymore than you are going to get a "GOOD" guide based entirely around save or die spells because there is no reason for caster to limit themselves.

I would always go school. The extra spell each level prepared is incredibly useful for an arcanist on top of the school abilities, well worth 3 exploits.

I agree with dumping Charisma,you still have the option of burning a spell slot with a negative charisma modifier.

A positive charisma modifier is only really useful for the Occultist archetype who in their case are burning spell slots to turn points into summon monster spells.

On Daedalus recommendation of fiendish proboscis only even humor the idea if you play at a very high powered table. It's a very poorly designed game breaking exploit.

A high level Kineticist can invest a truly staggering amount of resources into their HP (it only takes 3 days to retrain an HD), so something like 400+ at level 18 is not inconceivable.

I'm only speaking for myself here but I've never known a GM to allow that, in fact I've never even known a player to ask.

If there is one thing I would never recommend other players do it's things that could come across as rules cheesy.

A friend of mind holds that not all Liches are originally evil, but with taking that step into undeath their morals turn to dust and the longer they live, the more apparent their negative personality traits become. He had an NPC that disliked elves in life. When that NPC became a lich, his dislike grew into racism and then into kill-on-sight hatred. Otherwise he was a very polite and hospitable wizard.

By lore Liches are very much evil.

They could be neutral for most of their normal life but at some point decided that they where willing to kill for power and intentionally warp their way of thinking by corrupting their soul. There is more than one way to become a Lich, but by lore it makes it clear that everyone of them requires sacrifice or some incredibly evil deed.

As always you can alter the lore however you want, you can make demons a bunch of fun loving pranksters who don't really want to harm anyone. If anything a Lich is by default worse, they made a choice to become what they are, most demons did not.

I still greatly disagree Wheeldrake. It allows you to suggest a course of action, it doesn't make a target believe anything you tell them and then suggest how to act on it. It's giving the spell more power than it should have in my opinion.

However, I get the sense that we can't resolve the discrepency between our opinion (I'll admit I'm not really opening to changing mine) so rather than argue about it a whole bunch I will merely stress to anyone reading that you should always talk to your GM about using these sorts of spell well before attempting to use them in game so that neither of you are particularly surprised about what happens or have vastly different expectations on how things work.

Actually one of the main reasons I'm asking is the current DM is lenient so I'm worried about pushing the envelope.

When I first started playing the DM was awful and would regularly use suggestion on the party fighter to "kill their allies" in our ignorance we didn't realize that was beyond the limits of the spell.

It’s probably not a good idea to mix that archetype with save based spells either.

Old thread but hopefully not old enough to show my build that attempts to do just that

Peri Blooded Aasimar Arcanist (Occultist)

Take the alternative racial trait for Aasimar, crusading magic that gives them +2 against spell resistance

STR - 7
DEX - 14
CON - 14
INT - 18
WIS - 09
CHA - 16

Traits:
Fate's favored, with four leaf clover and later a lucky horseshoe
Irrepressible (use charisma instead of wisdom for charms and compulsions)

Feats & Exploits:
1st - Spell Focus: Conjuration
3rd - Augment Summoning
3rd - [Ex] Potent Magic
5th - Improved initiative
5th - [Ex] your choice, I took familiar, most may take quick study
7th - Your choice, I took improved familiar
9th - Extra exploit: School knowledge, void school
9th - [Ex] Metamagic knowledge: persistent

2nd level spells you can drop the create pit spell or glitterdust

3rd level spells you drop aqueous orb

4th level spells you can drop black tentacles, with potent magic and some cheap alchemical items you can get +3 to the grapple

5th level spells can be the topic creators planeshift or persist a 3rd level spell

The purpose of the familiar is that you spend 750gp and give it a 50 charge wand of Ill Omen, that's almost like a free persist on single target.

The void school lets take a colossal chunk out of your opponents saves and AC, now you may think this only helps you personally when you can quicken spells but if you have some of the summons out with good or high DC save spells or abilities they will almost certainly land.

ScrollMasterRob wrote:

Pathfinder is suffering from 3.5 problems. Every new class is more powerful than what came before. Every new monster is cracked out to deal with the new classes. A core character has serious problems with the new mods. A new character class steamrolls through the old mods.

... no?

Yep, most certainly not. If anything Pathfinder is doing the opposite. They seem to have this fear of power creep which has them produce an abundance of things that are both weak and mechanically forgettable.

One of the most interesting and popular classes they've produced in some time is the Kineticist, it's not particularly strong and I've made a thread about how some of the elements have mechanically boring powers for a large chunk of the early game but people love the theme behind the class.

We then had the Shifter, people had expectations of some sort of multi changing shifting class and paizo produced an extremely mundane animal shifter, by their own admission, a newby shapechanger (this late in the edition)

At this stage I think they should be making more experimental classes, even if they are harder to balance they can put them out there and make the community aware that long term balance can come from their feedback, I don't think the community would mind.

No . That is a list of why it COULD fail as a GM I would know if any of those applied in any situation and it would be determinable by appropriate means. As I specifically said I did not know the situation in your game so I could not say if any applied.

There should be no such thing as a generic minion , all of them are defined by the group, organisation and society in which they exist within the game. So this minion may have had good reason not to surrender possibly not know to you, or of course you could have a bad GM.
(Another possible reason is GM convenience. We have pointless minion A if he surrenders my players will mess around for an hour arguing about Killing him/taking him with them/letting him go/taking him back to town, or waste more time interrogating him about things he does not know, possibly this arguement will cause ill feelings among the players certainly it will waste the rest of my gaming time. Not a great reason but sometimes making things convenient saves a lot of effort)

You contradict yourself with the second paragraph where you justify "finding" a reason. Which again falls under the problem that if the DM can just drum up some reason for a character not to be suggested when they require. If they had been pinned, put to sleep or something with less vague limitations the DM couldn't turn around and say no.

If wasting time is an issue the DM can just flat out say you won't learn anything worth while.

Generic minions, random encounter tables.

Your suggestion to surrender may not have been reasonable in that situation , a short list of why surrendering could be unreasonable as I don't know the circumstances none of these could be valid

-- Religous fanatics Heave if they die, Hell if they surrender
--Samurai/Huscarls Other honour bound cultures again death is better than dishonour
-- Minions of a really evil person, if they fight they die if they surrender and get caught they and their families die horribly
-- Your group has a reputation fair or not for not taking prisoners so if he surrenders he dies anyway, may as well go down fighting and try to take one of you with him
-- Mental compulsions stronger than your suggestion spell

Your making a list of reasons as to why it should fail and I would consider that the issue, if you are set on the spell failing as a DM you can always "find" some reason.

From my example a generic minion was magically compelled to surrender, the DM "found" a reason in that he may die if he surrenders, as I pointed out he didn't surrender, he died a few seconds later to no one's surprise, the people he didn't surrender to.

NoTongue wrote:

Also with your interpretation the DM could just turn around and say there is honor in dying, the compulsion fails.

I feel your pain. Sadly, there is no cut and dried RAW answer to the question of what constitutes a "reasonable" suggestion. It's always goint ot be subject to DM veto, however you word it.

Best thing is to have a long talk with your DM to help determine what *he* considers to be reasonable, and how he plans to adjudicate it, so that you can get at least some mileage out of the spell.

But there is no rule you can point at to tell your DM that is ruling was wrong.

Would have been nice to use but for me and this is may be true for most people, it's not worth it to complicate a game over one spell. Best just leaving the spell to the sidelines rather than make things harder than they need to be.

Maybe you should have said: "It's a lost cause, and there's no honor in dying. These guys are honorable and will respect you if you surrender."

IMHO the spellcaster is supposed to put at least a little effort into making his suggestion seem "reasonable".

Even Obi Wan said "these aren't the droids you're looking for, move along" rather than just "let us pass".

How about no. When a simple "surrender" actually makes sense without the aid of magical compulsions I shouldn't need full embellished speeches.

The first level spell command would have had more impact.

Also with your interpretation the DM could just turn around and say there is honor in dying, the compulsion fails.

Edit: I may have even embellished it at the time, the end result was the same.

I'm asking because I've had what I consider a particularly bad example of what I consider a really bad interpretation.

The fight was almost over, only one guy left, I use suggestion, they fail the save. My suggestion "you should surrender" The DM's interpretation is that the guys thinks they may die if they surrender. Never mind that there was a near 100% certainty that they would die by not surrendering and what do you know, he doesn't surrender and dies.

“The suggestion must be worded in such a manner as to make the activity sound reasonable. Asking the creature to do some obviously harmful act automatically negates the effect of the spell.”

I would submit that getting a guard to attack his king would be one that would be at least somewhat difficult to make sound ‘reasonable’ at least unless the guard harbored some resentment toward him to begin with...

That's your personnel interpretation. Neither the PC's or even the DM will have the life story of random guard number 25 or ratfolk rogue number 3.

Can threats be added in? "Kill the king or as a wizard I will make it my life's mission to end your family".

Is a magical suggestion that the King is an imposter reasonable?

These could sound be considered a reasonable request to some.

This has been asked before but has anyone ever addressed it in a rough official way. I could see how this spell could cause headaches in PFS with people having different interpretations.

A 4th level version of the spell that's only addition is that it has a triggering mechanism gives the impression that you could get a guard to attack a king, does that mean you could suggest that one of bad guys minions attack him?

Both are mechanically uninteresting.

The Medium gives you the option of picking what poor mans version of an existing class you want to play each day but there you will still need to specialize so will almost always stick with one.

The Spirtualist could have been a very interesting Unchained/Vanilla Summoner archetype, making a class out of it was stretching things. Given the existence of the 3.5 Binder, if they had just mimicked that, with each spirit offering unique abilities, it could have been very popular.

Is there a decent benchmark for what the actual limitations of suggestion actually are. I've been put off using it ever since I had a DM quibble about what it could do until uselessness.

Edit: The spell Triggered suggestion says this.

For example, you could use triggered suggestion on a palace guard to make him attack the king the next time he and the king are alone, and the guard would not remember the suggestion to do so until the trigger occurred.

Or to look at it another way if you cast Plane Shift on player to send them to the abyss, they can't sent to the abyss.

If you cast Plane Shift on an Eidolon, it winks out of existence, it's a summoned creature that is no longer in range of the person who summoned it.

Anything that removes the Eidolon from the player just causes it to disappear.

For NPC's you don't want to focus on strictly the best. You sort of need to find the balance for a challenge without going into walk over or overkill territory.

Black Tentacles is a good spell against players from a higher level NPC.

Defensive spells like mirror image are good or invisibility greater

If you really wanna annoy players then the spell Etheric shards cast is a amazing, if you look at the duration in can be cast long in advance.

There are save or lose spells like suggestion, Mydriatic Spontaneity, confusion, dominate person or possession, how much you want to use them is up to your own judgement.

Of course being an NPC it doesn't hurt to go through the Psychic spell list and use more flavorful spells. Looking now and there's a spell called shamefully overdressed but if that's too comical then this spell called wall of bone or fleshworm infestation.

Psychics are the strongest of the Occult classes so ability shouldn't be an issue. One annoying thing is how sucky the Kitsune favored class bonus is for Psychics and Mesmerists, it really should have been the same as what they have for the Sorcerer but paizo are doing the opposite of a power creep, power decay.

If you are playing a Kitsune and a spellcasting class that specializes in mind effects then go for that.

Spell focus enchantment along with the ability Psychics get to spend points to enhance the DC's of mind control spells. You can also pick up a power that lets enhantment spells work on undead.

Color spray is a mind effect so although spell focus enchantment won't work for it the Psychic class ability to boost mind effecting DC's will which will help until it starts to become useless but by then you will have better options.

Get aversion, normally a 3rd level spell but 2nd for Psychics. Your DC will be higher as it's enchantment and you can say they are averse to their armor or clothing so it shuts them down on a failed save and weakens them even if they make it.

Also try and make room for silence, it doesn't affect Psychics so you can cast it on your self.

Suggestion is also a good choice, 2nd level for psychics instead of 3rd.

If you need to you can use the physical push ability of self-perfection to gain a bonus to initiative.

The price for such an item would be incredibly high considering how powerful the effect is and based on similar items.

Gallant Armors 54'000 gp there is way of the mark based on existing magical items.

A ring of Freedom of movement is a permanent 4th level spell on a ring, it costs 40'000. Now the major difference is that spell lasts 10 minutes a level and is a lot more situational but it is still considered a very good ring.

Improved invisibility only lasts 1 round a level and it is considered a very good spell because invisibility that doesn't turn off is a very powerful effect.

It would be incredibly expensive, I'll just put it this way, if your Rogue is on the wrong side of level 10 it shouldn't be on the table unless your playing a high powered game.

Throw in a full around action to use your super charge gather energy, and you can do it for free. Then you could charge again as a move action the next round to get 2 more points of burn to work with.

This is not a defense of an ability. Charging for a full round is something a player never wants to do.

You do nothing over a round which gives opponents a free turn and the kineticist class makes a point of highlighting that you make yourself a big target while charging that can lose it all to a hit and take burn.

Even after all that what you may get to use on turn 2 is not as good as someone who just spent 2 turns attacking.

At some point in the future I will be playing a character that will require a labor force or squad of workers to carry out tasks and I would prefer not to depend on animate dead as the default giving it's heavy RP requirements.

There was a thread before but that got heavily bogged down in the cost benefit of undead vs paid labor. But it still had some good ideas.

The idea is to find what classes, feats or items can give you a reliable squad of workers. I will list what I think are usable so far.

ANIMATE DEAD

Pro's: Very cheap / it's easily accessable for many classes / you can have undead that will rarely be permanently put down / rules that allow them to be customizable / all that's really required from the player is that they know one spell / they are combat effective when required.

Con's: EVIL, could conflict with classes and backgrounds of other players, almost no one tolerates there existence. No intelligence.

POPPETS

Pro's: relatively cheap / customizable

Con's: easily destroyed / no intelligence / requires a feat to make.

BROODMASTER SUMMONER

Pro's: no cost / intelligent and skilled / easy to replace / customizable

Con's: a very heavy cost in class features that requires you compromise your classes combat effectiveness especially at higher levels / limited in range, required to be near the player.

OTHER CONSTRUCTS

Pro's: option of having intelligent constructs / customizable

Con's: very high monetary cost / multiple feats required.

Looking for any other ideas.

Yup, should've mentioned I chose Dual Talent. If I get the book Blood of Angels before I get to use this character, I'm going to swap out human for a Geruda-blooded Aasimar. Though I'm curious about the "Scion of Humanity" Alt Racial. Does that grant me the ability to use the Human favored class bonus?

Yes but I wouldn't consider the favored class bonus worth. Especially if you get Ki Leech.

Dimensional Agility is a very strong feat chain once you've got all the pieces. You will almost always get a full attack and opponents will almost never get one against you if they even get a chance to attack.

You can also retrain a feat between level 9 and 11 to get earlier access.

Make sure to get this item

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/rings/ring-of-ki-mastery/

Avoron wrote:

Actually, it does look like those spells would become unavailable after the hour is up, on the basis of this FAQ.

FAQ wrote:

The spell slots of a class can only be used to cast spells that appear on the spell list of that class.

I didn't see that FAQ; that's good to know.

So what spells aside from escape spells are worth putting on a Contingency?

You can use it to get a buff spell active as a free action once a day.

Kitsune Fey Sorcerers have silly high DC saves for enchantment spells.

The Misfortune ability of a dual cursed Oracle is silly OP given that an extra reroll is roughly the equivalent of +5 on your save DC.

This is more powerful for high levels when you can quicken or for when working with others but the void wizard can devastate an opponents saves and AC for a round with a -1 for every 2 caster levels you have. If he's coupled with another caster you could make extremely powerful opponents drop with real ease.

You will be fighting large creatures in mountainous terrain or hilly terrain I assume so mobility and ranged options are good.

As a Halfing I second Sorcerer and Unhained Summoner.

Other recommendation is Kineticist. This is a tricky glass to build and for some is hard to initially get the hand of but very easy to play once you do.

I wouldn't recommend spindle with a physical blast. You only do half damage.

You will need to gather power to not take burn just to do your damage split across 2 targets when you would be better off empowering and doing even more damage that's more likely to hit against one.

I would strongly recommend you take another element at 7, it may push back foe throw but kineticist is front loaded in it's good options. There's not mush left after you take haul, finesse and invisibility.

If you take air you can get a proper flight speed at level 10 and if you take the electricity blast it will work a lot better with the wall infusion.

If you are picking Half-Orc for the luck racial trait you can eventually mimic that with a slotless magic item.

A Half Elf has the same FCB as the Half Orc and they can get an exotic weapon proficiency feat for free. Get yourself a nice little Fauchard reach, d10, 18-20 crit range. Reach being the most important attribute so you can really take advantage of your permanent size bonus.

I had a vanilla monk with a custom magic necklace of anti magic field. All they gotta do is jump on and grapple nearly any mage.

I've known a DM that uses anti-magic fields like this. That's not so much challenging players than it is rendering them useless with no chance to resist.

vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

An Unchained Monk with the Dimensional Assault feat chain. Pick the prime fighting spot. The Monk can teleport in and out of the room or behind obstacles and they will never know where he's coming from.

Issue with this is that you could easily kill a single player so you may want to spread the attacks around.

This will keep them on there toes.

https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/m/mydriatic-spontaneity

I've known about the spell for some time and I think it's really good, at this point if I where to play a Psychic it would be for the fact that they get this spell a level earlier than other classes.

There is even a mass version for Psychics at level 6.

It's not a mind affect so it doesn't need to worry about immunity to mind effects.

It's a will save so it can affect undead and even constructs who are not actually immune to being nauseated.

It seems like a great spell for shutting down a target and then large groups at later levels.

A Bard with the Archetypes Duettist and Soundstriker can do some serious damage in later levels. The duettist Bards familiar can use the same songs so when you gain the ability to use the 4d6+charisma song from soundstriker you can churn out some competitive damage in the later levels. They also keep inspire courage.

You say Jack of All Trades but you will need to decide some form of specialization, be it ranged, melee or spells. Feats are a finite resource.

I highly doubt it was intentional. Just unfortunate.

When it comes to possession the new bodies is treated as your own. You ignore all magical items on your own body and would if the new body was wearing magical items you would gain their benefit.

As to the downside it's not really that big of a deal.

Possession or greater possession, if your intent is to continually use the body then the former just requires you store your body somewhere safe.

Offensively greater possession is better, you are using it more to take out a bad guy mid fight without the risk of being killed, you won't be as concerned with looting your own body.

Medium easily.

It was clearly inspired by the popular Tome Of Magic Binder class which at the beginning of each day let the player equip spirits that defined their class features. Abilities it granted had the excellent once every 5 rounds mechanic instead of the almost omnipresent x times per dat mechanic of pathfinder. Abilities where built around flavor and theme.

The medium is a pale uninspired shadow. You can choose to become a poor mans version of a few classes at the start of each day.

A wizard that prioritises INT (all of them) can easily have 9 ranks a level. Easily. That is almost impossible for a fighter that still wants to hit things well.

I agree that as a fighter I want to hit stuff with my sword. But I can't hit stuff with my sword if it's flying, or if it teleports, or if its invisible. Or a bunch of other things that wizards have ways around, but the fighter relies on the wizard for.

Pathfinders not a PVP game and all experienced melee players actually do prepare for the most common obstacles when they think they will arise. They do eventually acquire one of the many methods of flight and one of the many methods to see invisible opponents.

You can teleport away to save a character but in many situations that means you've lost the game.

NoTongue wrote:

A lot of bad advice in my opinion.

Sounds like there is nothing wrong with the PC and people are doing the standard thing of suggesting a player be punished and weaknesses be exploited.

Unless there is more to this he seems like a standard front line fighter type that took down a lesser melee foe higher CR or not.

If a challenge comes up that targets will saves or touch AC then he could suffer for it, but that's part of the game. Fights being tailored to exploit weaknesses is not.

I don't think anyone is suggesting that OP completely work to negate the PC. Providing punctuated challenges to standard tactics is very reasonable, particularly when it's a major encounter. The PC should certainly feel that their primary tactics generally work if they're effective tactics, but steamrolling every encounter with those tactics should not be a typical experience or even a desirable one really.

My advice before about rebuilding included one of the most satisfying and talked about encounters of the entire AP, where the PCs started pulling out every random trick and item to defeat the encounter. Horns of Blasting that they had previously found but not sold were suddenly popping out and other PCs than the inquisitor archer found themselves being the primary means of dealing with the opponent. The inquisitor started taking unusual steps (literally, with Slippers of Spider Climb) to go retrieve her bow. The players felt better about the encounter because it provided a reasonable challenge, but didn't feel unfair - everything could be dealt with, but it required something other than "buff the archer" for the first time in a long time. The flying telekineticist was effectively immune to that rebuilt monk's whole schtick, the cleric was relatively unscathed, but the frontline occultist and inquisitor archer really struggled, which was just a good experience for them.

A lot of APs have minimally varied encounters. In Hell's Rebels, there's a book-to-book transition with the...

Except they are. There are many comments saying to build encounters to exploit weaknesses.

That your pre-built fight worked out well is anecdotal. The DM himself admits they are new. They should wait until they are familiar with the system.

In my system most people average at level 3 with the more skilled people having higher levels. Leader of a town guard being level 5 for instance. A general of an army being in the mid teens.

These people have peaked, players have no limit in how skilled they can become.

I consider characters to become tougher and approach superhuman when they are in the levels 10+. Although shaped like a human the parties fighter can still wrestle a giant.

A lot of bad advice in my opinion.

Sounds like there is nothing wrong with the PC and people are doing the standard thing of suggesting a player be punished and weaknesses be exploited.

Unless there is more to this he seems like a standard front line fighter type that took down a lesser melee foe higher CR or not.

If a challenge comes up that targets will saves or touch AC then he could suffer for it, but that's part of the game. Fights being tailored to exploit weaknesses is not.

Would anyone ever seriously play another sort of kineticist?

Consistent control over what their character can do and the ability to mix elements.

Although I do think this archetype is a rare example of modern pathfinder archetype that is actually really interesting. The best thing about it is can give you access to highly situational powers that you normally would never pick for fear of being stuck with powers that are useless 90% of the time.

If your game includes 9th-level casters, I just don't see why you'd consider the Summoner's level of power a problem.

Outside of clear exploitation I've never seen 9th level casters overshadow a melee character who still remains the focus of the put the bad guys down.

Catharsis wrote:

On the topic of making do with the Wood element: You do get Impale, which is the most damaging AoE available (if you hit). I suppose you could then branch into Fire or Water for an energy blast with a composite. Too bad Terrakineticist locks you into taking Verdant Blast along with it, which manages the heroic feat of being a less useful addition than Aetheric Boost...

So how good are the forest-specific features if you actually are in the forest...?

A lot of them are pretty good, IMO. For example:

Brachiation gives you a climb speed equal to your base speed which you can use to swing from tree to tree. Pretty nice if you're in a forest; easy way to get away from melee attackers so you can blast from a distance, or to get up to people sniping at you from trees.

Greensight allows you to see through 60' of plant material. That's amazing in a forest for spotting potential ambushes, seeing things that have been hidden in the forest, or setting up ambushes yourselves. And if you're in any kind of hedge-maze dungeon set-up (like the goblin lair in Burnt Offerings) you have an almost nuclear advantage to figure out exactly what's waiting for you, and how you can travel to avoid them.

Woodland Step and Wild Growth at will are a great combo in forests. You can make large areas of terrain difficult for enemies to move through, and trivially move through it yourself, making it easy to set up hit-and-run tactics, or escape.

I would consider all these situational powers even in a forest. If these where my 3 utility powers for the first 7 levels I would quickly get bored of the character.

Greensight is the utility version of new spell no one has ever needed. Does anyone have an instance of ever being told that they can't see the enemy because they are hiding in a bush?

I wouldn't recommend dips as full casters it's the sort of thing you will come to regret. May look nice as a build but going so long with weak spells can be annoying. You want level 4 as soon as possible. More levels in Psychic will mean higher levels spells with higher DC's, better affects and more points to put in the class ability that increases save DC's for mind affects. It will also mean you will have access to other control or buff spells for when enchantments just won't do, haste, black tentacles, early access telekinesis.

Psychics get suggestion and aversion earlier, both really good enchantment spells. Aversion either takes someone out of the fight or lands sickened on a save.

If you ever make it to level you want to get this beauty of a spell.

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/e/etheric-shards

It's part of the reason Synthesist is banned in Pathfinder Society. It's strictly less powerful than a regular summoner

I think people who say this forget that surviving is still a requirement.

The Synthesist is less powerful when it comes to output but from playing one I was you are all but unkillable with little effort. Extremely high AC with the edilons natural armor coupled with some volutions, extra save bonuses and the hit points of 2 characters.

In no such terminology, wizards are better at casting. They do not change casting time when using meta magic feats, and they gain access to higher spell levels one level sooner. And they have more spells per day.

And bonus feats.

Arcanists get greater exploits tho...

The Arcanist can prepare metamagic feats which does not increase casting time, it's listed in the class. It's only applying metamagic to a spell that wasn't prepped with it originally that up's the casting time.

An exploiter wizard doesn't have more spells per day.

The big advantage of wizard is earlier spell access.

The difference in actual spellcasting is this, a wizard can prepare more potential tricks in a day, each slot can be individual.

An arcanist that has dimension door, emergency force sphere and black tentacles will rarely need to worry about not getting a use out of his 4th level spell slots.

An exploiter wizard will probably only prepare something like dimension door and emergency force sphere once each. During the day emergency force sphere could be of no use, wasted spell slot or he uses it in one dangerous situation and really wishes he had another later that day.

Yep, from actually playing one, seeing it in play and from hearing stories of others dealing with it the Summoner was the most consistently powerful class from 1-20.

I think one of the worse defenses for it not being op was how often it would be compared to Schrondingers wizard. The Summoner would be casually crushing threats and passing out buffs on the same turn from 1-10, when most games end.

What's people's opinion about the Terrakineticist in general? Sounds like tons of paperwork, and I'm not sure how sensible it is. For instance, isn't it counterproductive to get cold-based weaponry in a cold environment, where enemies are most likely to be cold-resistant...?

On the other hand, I could see how having a whole hydrokinetic suite at your disposal for that aquatic stint in your campaign could come in handy (Ruins of Azlant, I'm looking at you).

As you said it seems great for utility otherwise I would give certain very area specific abilities a glance like many of the wood powers.

Have I missed something or is it's only downside it's unpredictability and removal of ability to potentially mesh element powers at the same time. Is there some hidden limitation I missed "your powers are at -4"?

Sleep's normally a Medium range (matching Flesh to Stone), so I'm assuming this spell would be the same since the OP didn't mention any changes aside from removing the HD cap. Good point on the ease of companions waking people up, though personally, I don't think that's enough of a boon to drop it all the way to 5th Level.

It's considerably weaker when you put in other factors.With the exception of worrying about equipment flesh to stone is far superior.

Sleep is an enchantment effect, the higher up you go the more creatures have high resistance if not outright immunity to enchantment. Far less creatures resist transmutation. Enchantment should be ahead of the curve in save or lose in the same way evocation should be ahead of conjuration in damage.