Subutai1's page

Hi,

since both those tactics do similar things, I would like to discuss if the added bonus that Stupefying Raid gets is a worthy upgrade or not.

So the base is the same, which is 2 squadmates can Stride as a reaction. Note that the Stride of Stupefying Raid does not have to end in your aura, making it less restrictive movement-wise. However, since it has the Banner trait, you have to waive it around to give this command, making it a little bit more restrictive to the banners location. In both cases, affected squadmates have to start in your aura.

Now what really differs is that Stupefying Raid costs 2 instead of 1 actions and is an Expert Tactic. For that, you get an attempted Will save against all enemies the squadmates ran by. Failing this save gives those opponents the Stupefied condition. Multiple things I have a problem with here:

1. Stupefied is best applied on casters and those tend to have the best Will saves.
2. Emotion, fear, mental effects are often ignored since a good percentage of monsters are straight up immune against them.
3. Those strides do not ignore reactions, so "tagging" as many enemies as possible with those strides might be a bad idea.

All in all, I don't think wasting your precious Expert Tactics slot on Stupefying Raid is ever worth it compared to Form Up! Everyone who has played this game for a bit knows that the difference between a 1 action cost and a 2 action cost is very significant, so you better get something worthwhile out of it, which I don't think you do in this case.

Complaining is one thing, but I would also like to propose a solution that would be mechanically sound and still fit the flavor of this tactic. Add the following text to the effect:

-----
If both squadmates end their strides adjacent to the same enemy, said enemy treats the result of their check as one worse and on a fail, is additionally Confused for 1 round. A confused target is then immune to Stupefying Raid for 1 minute.
-----

Now Confused is a very strong condition usually, since it would allow an enemy to smack it's allies. In this special case it shouldn't be too bad though, since you have 2 party members parked adjacent to it. Sure, you could manipulate your initiative in a way that would allow your squadmates to still act and then walk away, but don't forget that any damage on the confused target allows it a check to shake the Confused condition and it would still be a big action investment moving away again. That way, at least it would be a tactic worthy to be called Expert and be possibly able to compete with Piranha Assault, which the current iteration of Stupefying Raid is not.

What are your thoughts on this tactic? Do you maybe have other ideas to make it more interesting?

For example, if you allow to use the Shield spell, you now force all 2-handers and 2-weapon users to grab the Shield spell which is as much anti-flavor than having to use a Shield on a caster.

My counter argument to that would be most, if not all dual weapon users already have easy access to Twin Parry or something similar, and 2-hand weapon users already had access to the Shield spell, so the only thing that would change here would be swapping 1 action for 1 reaction to raise it.

Subutai1 wrote:

Hi,

would it be that hard to add a sentence to this tactic which specifies that someone, who has the Shield spell can cast it as a reaction as part of this tactic? Casters are already neglected enough as is, why not add simple things like this to help them out a bit?

I see a significant difference between a Shield and the Shield spell: A Shield takes your hand whether you use it or not. So a Shield user will tend to raise their Shield by default and the Commander is just helping them with a tactic they already use. On the other hand, the Shield spell doesn't cost much (it's trivial to grab a Cantrip) so it can be seen as a one-action way of giving +1 to AC to the whole party (there's the question of the reaction cost but the Commander can aleviate that and many characters don't care about their reactions).

I feel that Shields Up! is hard to balance between too weak and too strong.

My problem with restricting it from the Shield spell is you just force your caster buddies to run around with a shield, no matter how anti-flavor that might be.

Probably they just forget. But I have a problem with abilities linked to shield spell. Now we have 2 shield spells available (Shield and Glass Shield) and over time we may get more.

So in the same way that we can complain about Shield spell is not into Shields Up! The same could be sair for primal casters that normally get access only to Glass Shield. Similar situation could be said to parry too.

Probably the current situation is enought once that its works for ongoing spells like Fire Shield and Kineticists impulses that given a Shield to allow be used with Raise a Shield than simply was adding abilities similar to shields to the tactics that may always miss something that can act like a shield or become full of things inside.

Fixing this now retroactively might indeed be more complicated. If the designers had enough foresight, they could have added the "Shield" trait to all such spells and Raise a Shield, Parry etc. That way, you would have a trait to call on such or similar activities. Whelp, in PF3 maybe.

Hi,

would it be that hard to add a sentence to this tactic which specifies that someone, who has the Shield spell can cast it as a reaction as part of this tactic? Casters are already neglected enough as is, why not add simple things like this to help them out a bit?

Subutai1 wrote:

Gobhaggo wrote:

Not necessarily Taunt+Strike, maybe even Taunt+Stride/Step/Hide/etc

That would be maximally anti-flavor.

Hide I can understand, but how is going "Hey, you! Come get some!" And then Stepping/Striding toward your enemy anti-flavor? That sounds like exactly the thing you'd want to do as a guardian, doubly so if that Step/Stride gets you in the enemy's face, and in range of your other reactions.

Would the move/step be limited to "towards the target", I would agree with you. As Taunt works right now, to use it optimally you would want to move/step away from the taunted target, which is anti-flavor.

And by the way, why would the Diehard feat even exist if it was just so bad?

This statement is quite ironic, considering that like 50% of all general feats, 70% of all skill feats and about 70% of spells in existence are straight up bad. This is talking from an optimizer perspective of course, I understand that most of those have their use flavor-wise, just not mechanically.

All this to say, we have enough bad in the game. Which is why I hope better feedback will give better options for future releases.

Subutai1 wrote:

remove Tough to Kill entirely from the class chassy, which is just a bad incentive to let the Guardian go down.

It's the second time I read something like this about that feature of the Guardian. It's not an incentive, it's a safeguard. It's like saying that we should remove Heal and similar spells because they are an incentive for getting hit.

A class feature that only triggers when you are lying in the dirt, bleeding out, is not a good feature, period. If you want to keep the feature and true to it's name I would change it to something similar to Orc Ferocity, where you can still act after using it and not just delay your death by 1 round.

Not necessarily Taunt+Strike, maybe even Taunt+Stride/Step/Hide/etc

That would be maximally anti-flavor.

Hi,

Blanket Defense at level 14 has direct anti-synergy with Paragon's Guard. As a shield user, you would want to pick both those feats more often than not. So here is the simple fix proposal for Blanket Defense:

Make it cost 2 actions and change the Requirements to: You have your shield raised. Remove "Raise a Shield." from the description of this feat.

I think the Guardian needs at least one core class feature at 1st level that makes their Strikes worth using. Simply being able to Taunt and punch someone at melee range in a single action I think would already make all the difference.

I like the idea of Taunt + Punch a lot, since right now, the last thing you want to do in melee is to taunt that melee target, so he can clobber you much more easily in return. Taunt right now is most effective from range and then running away, so the enemy only has debuffed targets in range, which flavor-wise is a horrendous design. A Tauntpunch for 1 action would be a nice trade-off (staying in melee) and action compression at the same time.

From my experience, the Guardian needs to move around a lot if they want to put Taunt and Intercept Strike to the best use. I think there's a lot of potential here to make the Guardian much more mobile, such as by removing the Speed penalty of heavy armor completely as several other players have suggested.

This is also a great idea. I would add ignoring movement penalties from shields as well, so Tower Shields become much more attractive.

Hi,

Playing a class that gives up it's own offensive potential to support others was, is and will always be unpopular. Paizo knows that as well, which is why the 2 most popular support classes are the most busted casters of them all budget-wise (Cleric and Bard). There is a steep price to be paid to do significantly less damage in a group that maybe already has a supporter, so basically half your party is support (Commander will have a similar problem). So to make the Guardian a class people will be interested in playing, will require him breaking the standard budget a martial class gets and right now, without having had the time to actually play this class yet, at least on paper it looks the budget this class is built on is way overvalued.

Ideas to blow the budget:

If a Fighter, the king of hitting, can start with expert proficiency in all non-advanced weapons, why can't Guardian, the king of defensive, start with expert proficiency in armors? As a Guardian you want to be the least attractive target on the battlefield for all enemies to hit on and then using your own mechanics to force enemies to hit you anyway. However, right now especially with taunt you become one of the most juicy targets to hit. Sure, you can choose crit resistance with Mitigate Harm, however the amount is very underwhelming and doesn't stack with all your other sources of resistance, which is another design flaw in this class.

Another idea would be to bump up the hit point level progression to d12. Why is this only utilized on Barbarians? A class that does little else than "tank" for their party surely deserves to be a little bit more beefy than your average Fighter. Give them that and instead remove Tough to Kill entirely from the class chassy, which is just a bad incentive to let the Guardian go down.

Since the Guardian falls off dealing damage with weapons, why not give him at least a class feat chain which improves his damage with shields? Here, you could either incorporate attacks with shields or damage reflection mechanics when blocking for example, or maybe both. Also, there is too little incentive to use Tower Shields, even though you would think this would be the class making the most use out of those.

If dealing decent damage is some weird anathema for Guardian, then why not make him a better Athletics user? Both Barbarian and Monk have access to permanent +2 circumstance bonus to one or multiple athletic maneuvers, Earth Kineticists get a similar permanent status bonus on those. Would it be that bad giving something similar to Guardian?

That's all my ideas so far. Once I get some actual gameplay in, I will either add new ideas or elaborate on the mentioned ones. What's your ideas to make better use of the budget of this class?

Hello,

everyone knows what this tactic is supposed to do, letting you get away from your enemies to get out of harms way. However, the way that it is written and the way actual combat in the game works, it leaves much to be desired, making it an option that will rarely be taken/used, if ever.

My first problem with it is, to be able to use it as written, your party is still in best shape: Everyone is standing and is free to step away. In an actual fight, the moment you want to retreat the most is when maybe one of your party members just got downed and another is maybe grappled/restrained/swallowed or similarly occupied. In such a dire situation that would scream for a retreat, this "retreat" does next to nothing.

Therefore, I would propose the following addition to this tactic:

----
Additionally, all squadmates can use their reaction to either Stand or attempt to Escape. Each squadmate can forgoe one Step free action granted to instead pick up an item.
----

With this addition, it would be an interesting "Oh shoot!"-button to get out the direst of situations. Note that someone still would have to heal the downed character for him to regain consciousness first. Valyrie's Charge does something similar but so much more and is supposed to be used offensively. This stays purely defensive and wouldn't step (pun intended) on the toes of Valyrie's Charge.

Also, it giving each squadmate 3 Steps makes sense for casters and ranged attackers to get out of reach. However, at very high levels, even 3 Steps are often not enough for that. Non-scaling abilities have always been a problem (example Champion's Reaction range, which just doesn't cut it in high levels). So making the number of Steps scale, for example starting with 2 at level 1 and getting an additional Step each 5 levels above the first would fix this and make this tactic useful even at high levels.

Yeah, I think the reason why it's progression is so bad compared to other classes/archetypes, is because

a) it can benefit from your tactics and many of those give you free actions on the side, so it does not eat up your free reaction

and b) it is not supposed to be a fighting companion, just a mount. As a mount, specializing in it is a trap and not really necessary, since you will almost never want to strike with it, as it shares your MAP and it does it's job fine already.

To be honest, from my experience no matter what animal companion you build, even the supposedly "overpowered" nimble full specialized AC is absolutely not worth the insane feat investment required doing all that for what you get out of it at the end. Every single class, even casters have better feats from an optimization perspective. And from a flavor perspective, all those feats are unnecessary anyway.

Mostly good fixes. Too bad Daze will stay useless, but I guess there are enough usable cantrips now.

I just want to underline that it's very easy to change the dying rules to be whatever the table you're playing at prefers, since this system intersects very little with other systems (basically just at the entering and leaving stages.)

Like if you want to make the Dying level you die at a different number, that's a ridiculously easy fix. Make it 10 or 100 if you want.

Which makes it so much more questionable why this new rule is the default. Experienced players and GMs know exactly what you are talking about and can adjust any rule just fine, even on the fly. So if for whatever reason the game would be to easy for those groups, they could just increase the difficulty to make it more lethal for them.

It is the new players that have understandably issues with "tweaking" rules, since they are the ones that are not yet confident in the system. This in return will lead to newer players/groups experience way more player deaths or TPKs than the game intended, leading to quitting the game before giving it a fair shot.

It just doesn't make any sense from a game design perspective, considering that PF2 is not a lethal horror simulation akin to Call of Cthulhu, where the lethality of the game is a key mechanic to show how worthless the life of your character is in the grand scheme of things. In PF2 you play a party of adventurers that become heroes over the course of adventuring, dying like flies just doesn't fit here.

Can someone check if daze has the same short description on the spell lists of the other traditions?

All 3 spell lists have the same short description:

Daze Cloud a creature’s mind to make it off-guard or slow.

Sounds infinitely more interesting than the actual spell effect. It could be possible that they forgot to replace the actual spell rules with the new ones and just copy/pasted the old rules by mistake. Would make more sense than nerfing the worst damage cantrip in existence.

If this isn't a mistake, then rogue has become the class with the best saves in the game. Even though Fortitude stays at Expert, you can just grab Canny Acumen as your level 15 general feat for Fort, so you have 2 master and 1 legendary proficiency save at level 17, with all 3 saves having success = crit success and one having crit fail = fail results.

Now rogues can basically poach the whole identity of monks with the exception of AC:

Best saves? Well rogues just overtook monks in that regard.

Unarmed attacks? Just go monk multiclass and grab one of the finesse stances. With the new Thief change that benefits Dex to dmg on finesse unarmed attacks, you now deal more damage with unarmed attacks than a monk could ever do using the same attacks they do.

Flurry of Blows you say? Just get level 10.

Move speed? Just use one of your way too many skill feats for Trick Magic item and get a wand for 2nd rank Longstrider (or new name Tailwind).

Ki spells? Well, you already are multiclassing monk, so just pick some up on the side.

Generally it looks like spells that deal physical damage have slightly higher damage to make up for the fact that they are trying to punch through the same resistance and weaknesses that martials deal with. Using Gouging Claw for your white room default seems ideal, but you should still pack ignition for different enemies.

Actually, you should still pack ignition even for vanilla targets. Remember persistent damage of the same type won't stack, so once you've landed a Gouging Claw it is better to crit fish with Ignition until they get rid of your bleed damage.

Agreed, this encourages a spell rotation even with cantrips during a fight instead of spamming the same cantrip over and over again.

The comparison that I draw is between Cleric and Rogue. Everyone knew that Warpriest had many problems, even Paizo. They did a great job fixing it with the Remaster. The end result is you finally have a real choice between choosing Cloistered Cleric or Warpriest, since both are legitimately fun options now.

On the other hand, the dumpster fire that was the Mastermind remains completely unchanged, even though it was basically in the same state as Warpriest. Sure, no one forces you to play it, but in its current state, it might just as well not exist at all. Missed opportunity in my opinion.

I want to know about the Fighter Dedication

Unchanged, except it no longer gives simple weapon proficiency, since every single class has it per default now.

Subutai1 wrote:

So far, my biggest dislike is the logic (or lack thereof) behind the balance shift of Rogue rackets. The by far strongest racket, namely Thief, got the biggest buff. Scoundrel and Ruffian got slight buffs and the weakest racket, so Mastermind (ignoring Eldritch Trickster), is completely unchanged. I don't consider fixing Recall Knowledge to finally work at all any buff to it whatsoever.

I understand that they had to hurry with Player Core 1 release and couldn't fix every single tiny issue the game had. But how do mess up something as obvious as Rogue rackets this bad? There is not a single person in existence that would consider Mastermind stronger than Thief or Ruffian, yet for whatever reason it was considered to be "fine" as is, not needing a single change. How?

What did Thief get?

They get DEX to damage to finesse unarmed attacks now, so for example Wolf Jaw from Wolf Stance, which are d8 agile, backstabber, finesse attacks, which are much stronger than any other attack a Thief had prior access to. Especially since Ruffians new martial/advanced weapon access is limited to d6 attacks, those weapons are a joke compared to Thief's access to those unarmed attacks.

So far, my biggest dislike is the logic (or lack thereof) behind the balance shift of Rogue rackets. The by far strongest racket, namely Thief, got the biggest buff. Scoundrel and Ruffian got slight buffs and the weakest racket, so Mastermind (ignoring Eldritch Trickster), is completely unchanged. I don't consider fixing Recall Knowledge to finally work at all any buff to it whatsoever.

I understand that they had to hurry with Player Core 1 release and couldn't fix every single tiny issue the game had. But how do mess up something as obvious as Rogue rackets this bad? There is not a single person in existence that would consider Mastermind stronger than Thief or Ruffian, yet for whatever reason it was considered to be "fine" as is, not needing a single change. How?

Player Core pg168 Rogue Resilience 9th - I dont believe the intent is to get Success = Crit Success when a save moves to Expert. That (in every other area) only happens when a save moves to Master.

Not completely correct. See Bravery class feature of the Fighter. It gives you expert proficiency in Will saves and success = crit success to fear effects.

This should definitely not be the default. From the perspective of a new player, the game is already sufficiently hard, especially many way overtuned official Adventure Paths. Making it easier to lose your character will likely lead to deterring new players. It will most likely contribute even more to the famous statistic that most players end their journey before level 3.

This being an optional rule for veteran players is perfectly fine though.

Yet you still loose other stance benefits like the Str "apex", large size and Armor in Earth action compression of Assume Earth's Mantle.

If it wasn't a lvl 18 impulse or if the designers would just remove the Stance trait in an errata so my optinion about it changes.

To be clear, you don't lose the other stance, since those stances do not compete with each other. They do different things for different builds.

Assume Earths Mantle is an offensive stance to make you a top tier grappler. The +Str is worthless outside of Athletics builds, since you will never use a weapon to deal damage. So this stance is ideal for pure Earth builds or Dual Element Earth builds that rely on battle field control in form of Grappling/Shove/Reposition/Whirling Throw.

On the other hand, Rebirth in Living Stone is a stance that makes you unkillable, especially if you build around it. A Wood/Earth build with both auras online and this stance active means at lvl 18 you not only get temp HP of 40 from this stance, but also 18 temp HP every single turn after. And if that is still not enough, you can poop trees for 90 damage absorption per turn. And you are still behind full plate AC. Being immune to crits, pushes and trips means you are an immortal immovable object for anyone wanting to play such a fantasy. No other class comes even close to this level of self supported survivability.

Edit: I forgot you also have 14 resist to all physical thanks to Spike Skin at that level.

Sure other capstone feats give you incredible aoe damage/control. But this feat is the defacto king of defense/survivability.

Rebirth in Living Stone: It's a strange impulse thats a stance and a sustainable impulse at same time. Considering that as a stance it competes with Assume Earth's Mantle only to get temp HP this doesn't worth at all.

You might want to read the stance again. Aside from some minor buffs, this stance makes you immune to critical hits. This ability alone makes you the tankiest character in the game against bosses, since they crit you all the time.

Sure you give up your grapple supremacy, if you choose this stance. But if your job in your party is to be the sturdy frontline tank, then there is no better feat in the whole game for it.

Look at what other tanks get to mitigate crits: Fortification (Greater). A lousy 35% to negate a crit, so anything but reliable. A crit immunity was unheard of before.

Honestly, given the 5-action setup and the fact that the damage isn't actually that outrageously high (especially if the berms only get one spike per face and no diagonal spikes) I'd be tempted to allow it. Sure, you can deal decent damage to goons. Good luck dealing with the Gargantuan-sized ancient dragon three levels higher than you in the same way (I think at level 15 you're rolling at +15 levels + 5 Str + 8 prof + 2 item + 2 status - 4 size = +28 against an ancient blue's DC 42 Fortitude to get off the throw, which is doable, but unlikely to happen consistently, especially since you have to grapple the dragon first and that takes another Athletics roll).

Some correction to your math: At level 15, your Str is +6 thanks to Assume Earths Mantle. Also an Ancient Blue Dragon is huge and since you are large, you only take -2 instead of -4 for the throw. So your Grapple value is 33 and your Whirling Throw value is 31. Grabbed on a 9+ (60%), Restrained on a 19+ (10%), and throwing on a 11+ (50%) are actually not that bad odds against a severe boss level creature.

The weakness of course is that the placement of the Berms is something you want to do first since it's three actions and overflow, then you move in and start grabbing people. In a white room, this is amazing, but in a realistic combat situation where monsters can choose to avoid the spiky areas until you put them there, it's more reasonable.

That's why you have to adjust your strategy on the fly for each fight individually. If your party has the range superiority over the enemy, then you want to use the Berms as a barricade to make it more difficult for your enemy to reach you, or to eat damage, if he wants to take shortcuts. Your party would of course hug parts of your Berm formation on the other side. So once the enemies reach you, both you and your enemies are exactly at the position you want them to be and you can start throwing.

If your enemy has the range superiority, then you use your Berms to cut of escape routes, so he either gets engaged in melee with your party members and therefore, eats AoOs or gets grappled by you. Spoilers: casters and ranged attackers do not like getting grappled. The alternative is he runs through your spikes and eats damage to get away from you, which is also fine. You always have the option to recast your Berms, which despawns the old ones and creates new ones.

You might of course also face any combination in between and also, the natural terrain of the battle map will vary every single time, so feel free to be creative with your placement.

Good thing is, as an Earth Kineticist Wrestler, you are both great in melee and range and should have plenty of tools at your disposal to adjust to the situation at hand.

Ravingdork wrote:

Subutai1 wrote:

It should actually look as follows, since you only spawn spikes from each side of a mound:

You sure about that? Last I checked, "adjacent" also took into account diagonal squares.

I'm not 100% sure about it, since the following two sentences in the text are somewhat contradicting for me, might be a translation error on my side:

"Sharpened wooden stakes protrude from each mound into adjacent squares. They can project from any of its sides; you choose which sides for each mound."

The first sentence suggests adjacent, so all 8 squares around it. However, the second sentence suggests that they can only project from it's sides, all of them, so for me sides are the square left/right/top/bottom, no? It is possible that this second sentence is only a descriptor for where the stakes originate, but they go beyond that wall of the mound to cover the diagonal squares as well. Might need some clarification on that.

Just to be safe I went with the fewer damage zones.

Small side note: Technically, the roof of the mound is also a side, so it should also be able to spawn stakes. Might be relevant if your GM rules that Whirling Throw is more of an arc than a line.

Subutai1 wrote:

It should actually look as follows, since you only spawn spikes from each side of a mound:

You sure about that? Last I checked, "adjacent" also took into account diagonal squares.

I'm not 100% sure about it, since the following two sentences in the text are somewhat contradicting for me, might be a translation error on my side:

"Sharpened wooden stakes protrude from each mound into adjacent squares. They can project from any of its sides; you choose which sides for each mound."

The first sentence suggests adjacent, so all 8 squares around it. However, the second sentence suggests that they can only project from it's sides, all of them, so for me sides are the square left/right/top/bottom, no? It is possible that this second sentence is only a descriptor for where the stakes originate, but they go beyond that wall of the mound to cover the diagonal squares as well. Might need some clarification on that.

Just to be safe I went with the fewer damage zones.

Converted to emoji to make it a little easier to visualize. Hopefully I got it right.

Thanks for the emojis, its quite hard to display rectangular zones with just letters. It should actually look as follows, since you only spawn spikes from each side of a mound:

⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜❎⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜⬜⬜⬜❎❎⬛❎⬜❎⬜⬜
⬜⬜❎❎⬛❎❎❎❎⬛❎⬜
⬜❎⬛❎❎❎❎⬛❎❎⬜⬜
⬜⬜❎⬜❎⬛❎❎⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜⭕⬜⬜⬜❎⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜Ⓜ️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜

Yeah whirling throw is wacko - I did similar math. At L20 it's like 255 to a single target with 5 actions of setup (3 to activate jagged berms, 1 to switch on Assume Earth's Mantle for grapple bonuses, 1 to grapple).

Small correction: Since you mentioned level 20, at that level you enter your stance as part of Channel Element as a free action. But yeah, before level 19, you of course have to pay those mentioned actions.

Regarding the action cost, it is indeed quite high and pays off maybe if you get off a Whirling Throw twice per fight. However, do note that against melee brutes, you also deny them actions with the throw, since they will have to use 1-2 move actions just to get back to you, or 1 action and eat at ton of extra damage by walking through the spikes.

I like this build because just looking at the single impulse Jagged Berms, every single fight will require you to think about the placement of the mounds. Against casters/ranged, you want to cut of their retreat paths. Against melees, you want to make it as hard as possible reaching you and your party and once they do, you punish them by throwing them into the pain zone.

And yes, you will have fights, where grappling is not an option, but then you are still a Kineticist and can throw around earthquakes, Spike Skin, Weight of Stone etc. and since you have the highest Str of all Kineticists, your melee Blasts (or Thrown with Weapon Infusion) still hurt a bit.

The thing I'd want with a grappler kineticist is the ability to use "Whirling Throw" (gained through the wrestler archetype) in order to throw people into the Jagged Berms I placed earlier. So I'd want either mono-earth or earth/wood.

Talk to your GM about how he handles the interaction between Whirling Throw and Jagged Berms, because it can get quite insane depending on what your GM says, with the potential of being the strongest single target damage ability a Kineticist has access to.

What I mean by that is, the wording of Jagged Berms: "For each square of wooden stakes a creature enters, that creature takes 2d6 piercing damage."

If your GM rules that Whirling Throw is pretty much a horizontal throw, then the thrown creatures would enter every single square between you and the target destination. Now if you have an example Jagged Berms placement like the following one:

-______________X
____________XXBX_X
_________XXBXXXXBX
-_______XBXXXXBXX
_________X_XBXX
________o___X
________K

You are the K, your target is o, B are the Jagged Berm mounds and X are the spikes from your mounds. You could throw the target through up to 6 damage zones, which at level 8 (earliest possible) would be 6x3d6, so up to 18d6 in addition to the Whirling Throw + Grapple damage of 3d6+8, so 81.5 dmg on average. Nothing would come even close to that damage, provided that those are optimal conditions that will not apply anywhere near as easily/often, but even with 4 squares, the damage would still be 15d6+8, ergo 60.5 damage, which is still the best single target damage you can achieve at that level. Since Jagged Berms scales with +1d6 per 2 character levels per square, the damage only gets more insane the higher you go.

If on the other hand, your GM rules that it is a curved throw, then you might only get the damage of a single square in which the target lands, which is still fine, since in that case you would want to throw your target centerish of above zone of pain. That way, your target would take less damage from your throw but more damage because of walking out of said zone.

Part of the issue I'm having trying to figure out a Kineticist grappler is "how are you going to get an item bonus to your grapple attempts" (the junction gives you a status bonus). The best I can come up with is "MC Monk for Gorilla Stance (compatible with armor, but it's a stance) and buy Handwraps."

By simply getting the standard Athletics items? I. e. Lifting Belt, Armbands of Athleticism etc.

The impulse is level 12, though, so you're spending over half your career behind the curve. Just pointing it out.

Since you make baseless claims all the time, here are the actual numbers:

Comparing to the 2 best grappler classes in the game, Monk and Barbarian.
At level 1-4 you are indeed behind by 1 point in Athletics, here you primarily Elemental Blast, unless you know you are facing a low Fort enemy that is easy to grapple and said grapple has a purpose.

At level 5-7 you are the best grappler in the game, being 1 point above everyone else.

At level 8-13 Barbarian and Monk take over by 1 point thanks to Furious Bully and Clinging Shadows Stance.

Level 14 you are equal.

At level 15-16 you are better by 1 point.

Level 17-19 you are equal.

Level 20 you are 1 point behind.

And this is comparing to the best grapplers in the game. Since you mentioned Fighters, those would be better level 1-4 and you would be better the rest of the game.

However, what puts you above all other grapplers is the ability to place your own hazardous terrain, which you can do starting on lvl 8. Said terrain gives you control over how your enemies move around the map and are also a great target for Whirling Throw or even Shove to make your playstyle not just gimmicky but also very effective.

If you want to see an example build for this, here you go: https://paizo.com/threads/rzs43udt&page=2?Who-are-your-Rage-of-Elements -PCs#90

I guess? Doesn't stack with heroism, though.

Sure, but as a grappler, you basically have a permanent auto-heightening Heroism for the primary purpose you need it, which is insane. Also, not every group has buff bots that do nothing else with their spell slots but buffing you.

And also grappling is...like. Sort of a bad use of an action for a kineticist? You have to sustain the grapple and stuff, and you have a very tight action economy.

This is where you are wrong. Just because you are a Kineticist, doesn't mean that all you can do is spam your Impulses every single turn. Especially with permanent damage zones like Jagged Berms, giving you full control over the battle field, limiting enemy movement. And once they reach you, you Grapple+Whirling Throw them into the spikes, double dipping your damage.

Later you spam Earth Quakes and can throw enemies into fissures that result from those. Now the enemy has to waste actions climbing and then walking through huge difficult terrain zones your throw around, doing little else.

The problem with skill junctions is they only make you trained, they don't upgrade proficiency. Burning a junction on that seems like a poor choice when you could get resistance/gate junction/impulse junction, especially since you already get plenty of skill feats and skill increases.

Who cares about the trained skill? The reason to take a skill junction is a permanent +1/+2/+3 status bonus to said skill, which more than compensates for the fact that you can only start with 16 in a skill attribute.

What do people think of the skill junctions? I initially wrote them off but fire and earth skill junctions are pretty nice. Earth builds that grab assume earth's mantle (like they should) have a lot of strength to work with using athletics along with the skill bonus.

Skill junction along with Assume Earths Mantle puts you on the same level as Monk and Barbarian in being the best grapplers in the game. Since you are able to put down your own hazardous terrain, you profit from being a grappler more than the other classes, unless their party can provide said terrain.

That protector tree ability of wood looks nutty to me on paper. It just acts a protective blocker of damage against strikes as long as one of your allies adjacent. Is there something I'm missing? That thing gets up to 90 to 100 hit points.

It's great damage absorption with 10 damage per Spell rank. Compare that to one of the best spells in the game, Heal, which heals 12.5 damage per Spell rank.

However, note that it can only block attacks. All those monsters that have special abilities or spells to damage party members will not care about your trees.

In a lot of ways, fire and air feel the most "put together" of the elements. Maybe that's just because they have the most mobility options between air impulse junction and lava leap, but the other elements feel clunkier and don't have as defined of a combat strategy.

I disagree. Earth is clearly the Grappler/Athletics Powerhouse, if you want to play the tank/battle field controller. Creating your own hazardous terrain and throwing/shoving enemies into it is something other classes can only pull off with the help of team mates. A Kineticist does this on his own.

If you wanna be a grappler, you go pure earth. +1 circumstance AC, +1 status Athletics (auto scaling) and aura junction to make you a better tank/controller is worth more than any dual+ gate and you want those bonuses online ASAP.

Earth Kineticists are actually insanely good grapplers. I would put them on par with Monks and Barbarians in that regard. Best part is, you can summon your own hazardous terrain and with Whirling Throw from Wrestler Archetype throw your grappled enemies into it.

My next char I wanna play is Rock Rock, the Dwarven Earth Kineticist Wrestler. Build goes as follows:

16 Str, 12 Dex, 18 Con, 10 Int, 14 Wis, 8 Cha

Level 1:
Single Gate => Earth, Armor in Earth, Tremor, Weapon Infusion, Unburdened Iron.

Very tanky from the get go. Some utility in form of Tremor/Weapon Infusion. At lower levels, it is still more effective to throw around Elemental Blasts instead of just grappling, but that doesn't mean you cannot do it.

Level 2-5:
Wrestler Dedication, Fleet, Crushing Grab, Expand the Portal => Skill Junction, Calcifying Sand.

Here, we start specializing into grapple and getting quite good at it.

Level 6-9:
Safe Elements, Toughness, Whirling Throw, Expand the Portal => Aura Junction, Spike Skin, Mountains Stoutness.

We tank up even more, get our Aura online, so enemies have a harder time getting away from us and get our key control tool in form of Whirling Throw.

Level 10-14:
Elemental Overlap => Jagged Berms, Incredible Initiative, Aura Shaping, Expand the Portal => Elemental Resistance, Rattle the Earth, Assume Earths Mantle.

Now we are king of battle field control. Jagged Berms allows us to throw our grappled enemies into hazardous terrain to boost our damage significantly and good placement of those mounds can also control how those enemies move around. Aura Shaping increases the difficult terrain around you significantly, making it very hard for non-fliers to get to your backline. Rattle the Earth allows you to spam Earthquakes like crazy. The fissures that result from it can be used for Whirling Throw targets, so your enemies have to waste actions not only to overcome all the difficult terrain (Aura + Earthquake), but also waste actions to climb (yes, even if the Grab an Edge). Assume Earths Mantle is the cherry on top for this build. Now you are large and have reach without the downside of getting clumsy. On top of that, you get a +1 item bonus to your strength, so basically an Apex item for free and 3 levels faster than anyone else!

So at level 14, your Athletics score is 29 compared to 29 of an optimal Monk or Barbarian grappler at that level. Level 15-16 you are slightly better than them and at level 20, they are 1 point better than you. So overall, I would say Earth Kineticist wins out, especially considering your other toys have insane synergy with your grappling abilities, much more so than the competition.

Small side note, if you play with Free Archetype, you get more toys to play with and some of your abilities come online a bit quicker.

The lack of free stance/blast on gather is going to mean that overflow is effectively more expensive in actions, I'm guessing there's no way to boost it with gate junction, and you have the classic halving of feat level, but yeah, that sounds about right.

Str-monk is also going to love that Earth Armor. Makes you a bit more picky about which stances you can use, but *worth* it.

The mentioned tree is not an overflow, so once you have channeled, you are free to spam it. I am certain that there will be plenty of other, similar options you can choose from.

Gisher wrote:

What does the kineticist multiclass archetype offer?

Not a lot. I think you can only get the proficiency to expert, access to a second element is a 10th or 12th level feat, and the blast doesn't scale without investing feats in it. You can add up to three dice to it for up to three feats. You don't get the free stance/blast when you gather your aura.

So it's strictly utility, I think, if you want something like a water or wood healing ability at mid to high level. There me be some good utility 1st/2nd level feats.

From the little bit I saw so far, there are plenty of solid/great impulse feats that are not offensive and thus, do not require a check. Those will be the best options for multiclass Kineticists. I can already see insane potential with classes like Monk, who can Flurry for 1 action and then still do utility stuff like throwing down a protector tree for cover/damage absorption with the remaining actions.

Since a lot of people in this thread compare Kineticist stuff to Electric Arc, please keep in mind that there is a good chance of Electric Arc getting nerfed with the remaster, bringing it down a bit and in line with most other damage cantrips. Or was there confirmation anywhere that Electric Arc is not getting touched at all and I missed it?

The Raven Black wrote:

AFAIK the Monk is the only Unarmed combattant who gets the benefit of precious metal on their unarmed attacks.

Animal Barbarian does not.

Wild Druid does not.

Fighter MC Monk does not.

It is a very big advantage right there. And it cannot be poached.

The big difference here is that all of those other options deal SIGNIFICANTLY more damage with their strikes which bypasses the need for special materials... and that bonus damage applies to all creatures not just those rare occasions where X or Y special material would be benifictial.

Not trying to say the precious metal progressing of Monks is bad, but it is also noteworthy that it progresses much much slower level-wise than weapon wielders that are specifically crafting/buying weapons with said material. For example, the monk receives Metal Strikes (cold iron/silver) at level 9. However, said material has a level of 2 for low-grade. Or for Adamantine strikes, which are level 17, whereas a standard-grade adamantine weapon is leveled at 11. This is a tremendous delay for the Monk, which he has no way to work around, whereas a weapon wielder can always decide whether he wants to buy/craft said weapon or not, as long as the minimum level requirement is met.

This slides Cleric out of top healer spot, and slides Storm Druid into top or second to top ranged DPS slot (need to think about how often a gunslinger crits before I'm sure on that).

Nonsense, a max Cha Cloistered Cleric with Positive Luminance will still be the premier healer, no matter how cute you try to be with your Lay on Hands. Healing Font is just that powerful.

Concerning Storm Druid, on low levels when you have a limited amount of spell slots, the better focus spells will really shine. However, the higher your available spells slots, the more obsolete focus spells will become, even with said change. They will still be better than cantrips, sure, but you will still want to use at the very least 1-2 of your highest or 2nd highest spells slots at the start of each fight, as those higher level spells are a lot more powerful than a low range single target damage spell, that gets hard countered by high reflex. Just compare Chain Lightning to same heightened level Tempest Surge, feels like a waste of actions in comparison.

The issue is more that some caster classes have to jump through a lot of hoops to get more than 1 focus spell and that some of those focus spells are incredibly situational. Meanwhile the Druid could have 3 focus points and tempest surge by level 4 to 6. It takes predominantly spell slot casters a very long time to have enough spell slots where throwing down 3 spells equivalent to tempest surge in an encounter is even close to an option more than once a day.

A spell casting focused Druid buff is a good thing imo, since right now, said Druid build cannot compete with equivalent variants of other CRB full caster classes (max Cha/Wis Cloistered Cleric, Maestro Bard, Crossblooded Evolution Sorc, Spell Blending Enchantment Wizard). So if this change bumps Druids more in line with those power houses, then I'm all for it.

Here is hoping that the other full casters that are lacking much farther behind (Witch, Oracle) get a much needed buff, so they can join those ranks as well.

The average quality of focus spells has improved over time, but there's a lot of lackluster ones from the CRB. Domain spells are the main issue there I feel, but there's others that are underwhelming.

It's pretty hit or miss overall.

So just like with everything else in PF2 (or any TTRPG for that matter)? Spells are hit or miss, items are hit or miss, feats are hit or miss.

I would argue this is by design, so the choices you make when building your character are meaningful. At the same time, you still have options that are subpar but flavorful. Not everyone wants to minmax every single character they build, but minmaxing is still possible within the given boundaries.

There is a stance oriented monk build that gets interesting with the level 10 Prevailing position feat, that is more of a defensive build monk. A +4 circumstance bonus to either AC or Reflex vs the triggering attack is almost ridiculous for tanky it can make a monk in a fight vs a solo monster. A follow up feat that does something interesting every time you enter a stance could be a cool way to support that. Like if mountain quake triggered automatically but only when you entered Mountain stance, and other stances had other abilities that trigger when you entered a stance, I think it would present a cool parallel and interlinking track to Ki spells.

As someone else already mentioned in this thread, the problem with all the stance switching feats is that they come online way too late. I would bet less than 5% of all PF2 players reach lvl 16+ with their chars, so feats at that range and higher are practically irrelevant.

To make all the stance switching stuff a real option for Monks, it would have to be in a level range between 4 and 10 with the apex feat for this build at 12, so other classes couldn't pouch it.