| Snessi |
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Hi Paizo forum,
Those active on reddit may recognize this post (minus little adjustments), and I’ve already linked it in the errata suggestions thread, but since that’s easily overlooked, I’m re-posting here so people can contribute more easily that aren't active on reddit and also not clutter the errata suggestions thread. I hope that is alright. TL;DR at the bottom
I am, personally, really glad we’ve gotten a lot of well thought through errata recently. Some are a bit controversial still in their most recent version, but a lot has been important clarifications and changes. With the dust settled around those, I feel the need to raise attention to another place that I hope is a construction site over at Paizo, that I hope we hear about in the next round. None of these points are supposed to be new. I just feel tired of all the little and larger issues, and all the fiddling and homebrew fixes we apply to make sure that the kineticist functions by the side of everyone else.
The purpose of this is to showcase how much of kineticist/rage of elements could do with a thorough re-read, not to claim I have the perfect solutions for everything. Some mentions may be a bit unnecessary. And I’d mostly like to complete this list with more points of clunky mechanics others have experienced, so that there is one big list to look up what the player base (or parts of it) would like to have someone look over again. There are two main points, and then a list of little issues below. Let’s go.
Integration into the system
Kineticist uses impulses. Not blasts. Not strikes. I wasn’t around the playtest times when it’s said that that was what people desired specifically, but we have had the class out for quite a while now, and the consequences of this decision are apparent. Indeed the class has a very unique playstyle, and I love it for that, but being no strike and no spell effectively locks them out of large chunks of the game.
It started with issues to find items worth picking up, not everyone can fit kinetic activation in or even wants to use spells, and spells also aren’t valuable to use next to impulses when limited to some elements; Outside of that, item limitations mostly results in just stocking up on more skill items, and a few evergreens like boots of bounding. Then there’s archetypes, free archetype being very popular, too, and while there is a list of archetypes that function well on most kineticists, it is much, much shorter than what you’re probably used to from playing other classes. This is especially true if you do not seek out power with your archetype, but want to just make a flavorful one work. You can still find them, they’re not bad, there just isn’t the variety.
These were true already when kineticist was released. But since then, the game has been expanded. And with these expansions, there have been no guidelines at all how kineticist is supposed to interact with them.
Commanders got tactics to support their party. Their power directly relies on their party being able to use those tactics. They call for strikes, they allow spells, but no impulses. The only part kineticist can use here is movement, and, for the subset that happens to spec into athletics, some maneuvers (so the melee ones, likely wood, earth and metal, but rarely the other elements). Importantly, though, unlike if the melee kineticist was a melee martial, because they can only use the athletics part of the maneuver, that also limits the use of the tactics. For example, Double Team can only be used between two melee characters when the enemy is next to the kineticist, not the other way around.
Then there was mythic. Mythic rules have a lot of issues. They’re the worst for Kineticists. Maybe look at this reddit thread if you want to see how and why.
Neither of these is a big enough issue that the class crashes and doesn't function. But the main, underlying problem is, that Paizo decided to implement a third system besides strikes and spells and then found that adjusting all new content to work with this third system also is too much work. That's understandable, but then there needs to be some kind of future proofing to make sure that the class keeps being supported by all the new content being pushed out. Any new class, any new mechanic, is at danger for Kineticists to just not work. When you create something in a system that is developed continuously, you have only two options, you either continue to check consequences and interactions with changes that come out, or you create one blanket solution so you don’t have to actively check everything. If you do neither, you introduce a system that becomes more and more deprecated the further you develop.
I do not care which of these solutions comes in place, but it’s safe to assume at this point it won’t be active development. Leaving us with the need to find a blanket solution. And keep in mind you can always spell out exceptions to a blanket solution when one particularly bad interaction arises.
Luckily, this issue has been around the whole time since release, and if you search the subreddit, you find lots of accounts of people homebrewing such a blanket solution.
Counting blasts as strikes and/or impulses as spells.
Some people limit by how many actions they use or not, allow only non-overflow as place-ins, decide whether they count them as cantrips or as ranked spells for commander tactics, all kinds of variants have been tested. I’ve looked out for them a lot, but I haven’t heard of anything one of these rules breaks, and a lot of people use this house rule.
Reactive strike is about the strongest option it opens up. Retributive strike, too, but since it would count EB as a Strike, not a weapon or unarmed attack, the use would be more limited. Also, that’s mostly an issue of champion reactions being too easy to get.
I suggest 1 action EB as Strike, 2 action EB as cantrip or activity with subordinate strike, and all other impulses as ranked spells, so both interactions with commander are fine, but also no overly dangerous follow up for the confused condition. But that’s just my preference.
To work with commanders, mythic rules, archetypes, items, and just generally to make sure that while everyone’s feat pool increases, as the option creep progresses, the kineticist isn’t left behind.
Dealing with counters
It's not a bad thing when your normal routine is challenged now and then. Resistant and immune enemies can do that. But Kineticist suffers disproportionately strongly, it's not just some extra damage blocked like with precision damage where weapon damage still ensures you can contribute something, and they're limited in their options to swap between damage types compared to casters. When there is a series of such monsters, such as devils that aren't only immune to fire but resistant to physical, even a dual gate Kineticist or one who picked up backup types through weapon infusion can suffer badly. Most have a hard time with ghosts, as there is no access to ghost touch nor the damage types that they don’t resist for most elements. For most enemies there is some Kineticist that can still handle them, but each has enemy groups they will suffer against drastically. Wisps are the worst offender, and unlike casters, Kineticist have no impulse at all that can affect them, not even extract element when they have the air trait.
I wish to see the floor of performance raised on Kineticist. The ceiling is fine, they can fill just about any role if you build for it, and also their damage, when unhindered, is competitive enough with blaster casters. But the floor, when you get countered, is too rough. The class relies fully on their choice of class feats, there is little room for some niche solution in the back pocket, and different elements provide different amounts of it. And even when you have backup options, like speccing into healing, that doesn’t mean that your party needs that constantly in an encounter where you’re countered. Skill actions like demoralize may be restricted by cooldown, too.
In principle the tools to overcome this are already there: extract element is a single action that can be used to reduce an immunity to a resistance or remove a resistance on a resistant enemy. It's a fortitude save that the enemy may not crit succeed, one action per enemy (while the class is mostly aoe focused), and it soft locks you out of overflow impulses, as the effect stops when the gate closes. Extract element is not an “I don’t care” button, it just makes an abysmal situation into a frustrating, but manageable one.
It also has a requirement that the enemy must have your elemental trait or be made of that element. This requirement locks most enemies you would want to use it on out of the list of applicable targets. It is, just like the issues mentioned about integration into the system, heavily campaign dependent on how hard a problem this is. But much like the system integration problem, it’s just not a good, viable design if a class is that much dependent on the exact campaign you’re playing.
What I would hope to see here is lifting that requirement of what can be targeted with extract element. Maybe give enemies that don't have the elemental trait/made of element a bonus to their save. And allow it to target wisps specifically.
oversights, clarifications, and overly weak impulses
There are some impulses that don't quite work how one would probably expect, have unclear interactions, maybe oversights, or maybe just deserve to be made actually useful. Not all of these need errata, homebrew fixes or rulings are mostly simple, some of these are just pedantic. My point here is more to illustrate how much could use a thorough re-read.
Kindle inner flames and Ghosts in the storm are similar stances that give martials in the aura a rune, among other things. However, since some errata, runes granted by abilities can only be used to suppress existing ones on a weapon, not apply additional ones that a weapon normally couldn’t carry, unless otherwise noted. For kindle inner flames that means that the upgrade actually is a loss, because the fixed 2 additional fire damage would stack with whatever damage a weapon dealt, and then from lvl 12 onwards, it only allows people to maybe change a damage type when one of their runes isn’t otherwise needed. Downgrading with lvl increase seems unreasonable, so it should imo get the text to allow it as an exception from the max rune rule. And because ghosts is clearly an analogous stance of kindle for a different element with a different starting level, I believe it should apply there, too.
Furnace form downgrades at leveling up to 16 in combination with effortless impulse. Furnace form lets you fly when you sustain the impulse, and effortless impulse gives a free sustain per round, allowing the pc to get one free fly action when selecting both. At 16, furnace form turns into a duration impulse instead, which is nice freeing up that action, but it means losing the free flight option. This could be fixed if from 16 it had a duration but could still be sustained.
Steam knight has a couple effects, one of which dealing damage to targets you leap over (and that haven’t been damaged by the start of turn aoe). It also sets your leap distance to your land speed. Clearly, leaping over enemies is intended gameplay in this stance, but it is never specified how that's supposed to work. By strict RAW, you would have to first leap vertically, then horizontally, unless you just so happen to be standing on a cliff above your enemy. The damage is so low, though, that 2 actions and only affecting a faraway target seems unlikely to be the intention, any 2 action impulse overshadows that. With such a large leap distance, it’s also easy to argue you could or should be able to leap in 3d, not just horizontally and vertically, akin to the jump spell, but if that’s intended, it is never defined. Or maybe the implication is one should just be able to horizontally jump over creatures that aren’t too large?
There are lots of free actions for kineticists to pick up that trigger at the start of turn, with one wording or another. Some are feats, but one is a basic class feature, and it would be very weird for basic class features and important high level class feats to block each other so much, especially as kineticists have only very few high level class feats per element to pick from. It bears the question which are intended to be used together and what order of operations is allowed, or are they all, even when using different wording for the same trigger, applying to the same trigger? If I haven’t overlooked any, we’re talking about:
- steam knight (lvl 6 class feat): “At the start of each of your turns, you can emit steam as a free action”
- effortless impulse (lvl 12 class feat): “Trigger: Your turn begins”
Imperious aura (lvl 16 class feat): “Trigger: Your turn begins” - all shall end in flames (lvl 18 class feat): “If you die to this impulse, you return to life at the start of your next turn in the same space.” (Not worded as free action but order of operations is important here)
- final gate (lvl 19 class feature): “You automatically use the first action of your turn to Channel Elements as a Free Action”
Pedantic, but aerial boomerang, lightning dash, ride the tsunami and potentially more impulses have a weirdness that they specify a line, with movement or the boomerang hovering in the end, but do not technically allow to shorten it. Can they be shortened? What if a boomerang hits a wall, is it allowed to hover in the last space before the wall or does it fizzle away, can one use 3d angling against the floor to shorten? Though most people seem to allow shortening aerial boomerang, for example, I know that’s not treated like that universally.
Weapon infusion allows for the following traits on an elemental blast: agile, backswing, forceful, reach, sweep. However, agile already covers lowering map, and it's not clear whether a second weapon infusion in the same turn counts as the same weapon for the wording of these traits. Can one first use back swing and then agile to combine the bonus and the reduced map? Sweep is always redundant with agile. Forceful might also not do anything if each weapon infusion is meant to create a new weapon.
Clear as air, does the cooldown of 10 minutes start with using the impulse or when the invisibility wears off?
Large leaps and jumps: Many impulses with leaps have distances of around the PC’s speed or auto scale. Often they are allowed to be used in “any direction”. Does that still only include the directions “horizontal leap” and “vertical leap” or does it include 3d movement as in the jump spell, that could be used for leaping over enemies, airbursting the aoe, etc? Do boni to leap distances apply, such as powerful leap, boots of Bounding, etc? This would affect the following impulses:
Flinging updraft: Make someone leap 30ft in any direction, +15 every 2 levels, or half when resisting. Specifies what happens when not ended on solid ground
Burning jet: leap up to 40ft in any direction, specifies falling
Lava leap: Leap up to your speed, does not specify ending in air
Steam knight: Leap up to speed, specifies what happens when not ended on solid ground
Volcanic escape: Leap up to half your speed in any direction, does not specify ending in the air
Elemental overlap allows one to select a composite impulse when being single gate. What happens if a Kineticist chooses to fork the path on a higher level than when the feat was taken? Does the prerequisite of being single gate disable the feat retroactively? Does it only apply at the level the feat was taken?
Does persistent fire damage from, for example, critical blast junction, count as fire from your fire impulse for the purpose of the aura junction? Does the fire damage of living bonfire count, as the extra damage comes from the bonfire (which is a fire impulse), or not, as it applies to only wood blasts? Does extra fire damage granted to allies by Kindle inner flames or ignite the sun count? Is that still the case when the extra damage is a flaming rune added to their strikes instead of plain, added damage?
Body of air gives two things: the normal vapor form, and a reaction to trigger it when targeted by an attack. Vapor form comes with resistance 8, but it removes the armor bonus to AC. This includes runes and the defaults armor bonus, so minimum of 3 AC at lvl 14, or 4 as soon as the strongest rune is on the armor, if the Kineticist is wearing light armor. If they are dual gate with one of the armor elements, this can, in the extreme case, reduce your AC by 7 or 8 from heavy armor plus runes. You have to trigger the reaction before knowing the enemy's roll and it doesn't apply to aoe. Using the reaction, despite the resistance, will make you take more damage instead of less, and should never be used as is. As a 14th level feat, this therefore gives you a situationally useful out of combat spell at will, plus an unusable reaction
Not ambiguous by the rules, but rulings vary for flying flame. It uses a capitalized Fly action, but I've seen disagreement whether this aoe should count going up as difficult terrain, and double the length of the aoe when using downward/with backwind. Flying is actually pretty easy for a kineticist at higher levels to get so extending its range for going down is pretty strong.
Living bonfire is never worth the action cost unless you can set it up before combat which is unlikely. The extra damage is too weak. Ash strider seems like an almost strictly worse version of lightning dash, it is only more versatile in where to move, but you most likely have air impulse junction to move before or after the impulse anyways.
Rain of rust specifies no damage type, which may or may not be intentional to affect metal creatures which often have hardness. The metal critical blast junction explicitly clarifies it is untyped against metal creatures. Retch rust’s persistent damage, uses slashing damage and is affected by hardness normally. It’s all pretty inconsistent.
Earth impulse junction specifies that your aura is difficult terrain when moving away from you. Does this include flying away, as the earth swirls in your aura, or only impedes ground based movement?
As the kinetic aura is only 10ft by default, earth aura junction (difficult terrain when moving away) doesn't hinder enemies from leaving diagonally without being affected. Aura shaping changes this from lvl 10, but it’s weird that the effect relies on a feat so much.
Winter sleet and roiling mudslide make enemies fall if they move other than crawl or step. It's interesting if it's intentional that stand is not listed as a safe action.
Gate attenuator spells do not all make sense. First, it's weird for their special item to include damage spells, when the damage they deal will be outscaled by their impulses almost immediately. Why cast pummeling rubble at rank 1 until level 11 when it deals 2d4 damage? Most rider effects are available otherwise from impulses. Utility spells make more sense, or if the spells provided would heighten automatically like impulses. Even worse, some of them are just almost or fully identical to impulses of the element, like earthquake on the lvl 17 item and rattle the earth, a lvl 12 feat that scales up into becoming a full earthquake later.
The apex version of the gate attenuator is also almost a trap item. It heightens your constitution normally, but so does any other CON-based apex item. Your combat stats are identical to any other CON apex item, the gate attenuator gives you a 1/day spell of that fixed rank, any other apex item gives you a unique effect. You're ususally better off just taking any other one, and getting the spell you wanted on a wand with kinetic activation if you care so much about that one per day spell.
It's specified in the class that impulses work also in an environment where they normally wouldn't, such as fire impulses under water or air impulses in a vacuum. Does that include, for example, earth impulses like tremor or sand snatcher to be cast in the air?
This one’s a longer topic and I only want to mention it here, but Ravel of thorns, jagged berms, rain of razors, just like spells with hazardous terrain and movement of larger enemies are weird when it comes to creatures that are larger than medium. I am fairly certain I have seen a clarification somewhere that being larger should not trigger more damage from walking through more squares, however the wording of spells and impulses on this is inconsistent and finding that information is not easy. This is more of its own topic to collect also all the spells where this is a question, and/or provide a general purpose rule somewhere, but I'll mention it here anyways.
Now, here are the most popular additions from the reddit comments:
“I am going to piggy back off your post to mention Metal Carapace and Flash Forge. Metal carapace is an armor that crumbles on a critical hit making you even more vulnerable to further attack and effectively slowed 1. It simply does not function as an armor in any capacity. Flash forge gives you a tool with a constant random chance of breaking, completely negating the reason you'd want a tool in the first place. Self-defeating design like this really really rubs me the wrong way. Looks good and flavorful at a glance and is horrible in practice.“
“Another issue I have with kineticist is that Base Kinesis is clearly intended to be the kineticist's out-of-combat interaction tool to make up for its awful skills, but it simply starts far too weak and scales far too slowly, in addition to the issues with fire and air not really having bulk and air base kinesis not allowing electricity manipulation and water base kinesis not allowing ice manipulation. The number of times my GM has tried to throw an environmental puzzle at specifically me, only for me to tell him that I can't do it because Base Kinesis doesn't let me manipulate ice or because the Bulk I can affect is simply far too low for me to accomplish this particular task, is very high. Eventually the GM got frustrated and gave up giving me water-based environmental puzzles because I kept having to tell him I couldn't engage with them. imo, instead of its current scaling, I would have Base Kinesis start with 1 bulk at level 1, and have its bulk limit increase by 1 and its range increase by 10 feet at level 4 and every 3 levels thereafter.“
“Besides all complaints here, one thing that gripes me is with the archetype. Why do you have a feat tax for Base Kinesis? As in, why does the dedication grant the Kinetic Blast (a combat action that almost nobody will ever use because of bad scaling) for free, but Base Kinesis (a flavorful roleplay power with no balance needed) require a level 4 feat? Honestly I would give Base Kinesis bundled with the dedication as well, or worst case scenario, switch those two around (Kinesis with Dedication, Blast unlocked with a Feat).“
“[...] Water not including Cold and Air not including Electricity also has very bad interactions with Kinetic Activation.”
“The Armor impulses have no reason to fall off every ten minutes - they could follow Mystic Armor's example and last until next spell prep. Weapon Infusion is a mess. You have to summon a new weapon (as a free action) each attack, and as you say, the options you pick are redundant. Blazing Armory is a better template to modify - conjure an actual weapon, let you use your Impulse Attack, and it meshes with other existing systems instead of being entirely standalone. Hail of Splinters has a bleed effect with a basic save - most effects with bleed riders explain what happens on successful save - do they take xd4/2 bleed? Extract Elements (Wood) doesn't necessarily work on a lot of Plant creatures, because the wood and plant traits interact in unclear ways. The older a creature, the less likely it is to have all the traits it probably should.“
TL;DR
There are so many points where kineticist, as written, is clunky. I really hope for errata for rage of elements, maybe after impossible magic. The worst offenders are system integration, which a lot of people have already used a house rule for to count EB as strike and/or impulses as spells, it’s really well playtested. And also the ability to use kineticists in a wide variety of campaigns easily because they suffer so much from resistances and immunities, which is important when that happens on a commonly occurring type of monster (looking at you, AV). I would hope to be able to use extract element one day not only against creatures with elemental trait or made of element, but as a general tool to keep functioning, even if that comes with a bonus to the enemy’s save.
Lastly, there are a bunch of feats and minor inconveniences that could use some looking at.
Whether any of these are an actual issue in a game depends on tons of factors. I don’t claim I have the perfect solutions for everything, I just wish the class was performing a little more consistently. And if there are other contents of rage of elements that you think could use some errata, I’d love to see them commented, maybe having all of the issues with rage of elements in one place is the push needed for someone to have a thorough look at this book.