Targen's page

Have you ever played the game Magicka? Gather Power and composite blasts in particular remind me of it.

Sphynx, the same logic can't be applied to normal burn because hoarding 1 point of normal burn a day costs you the use of 1 burn every day for your level's worth of HP (which isn't worth it, I agree). Keeping a point in your internal buffer only costs 1 burn per adventuring period (the period between holidays) for your level's worth of HP, no matter how long that adventuring period is. The only time you get to spend less this way is the day immediately after a holiday. If you get holidays every second day there's no extra cost associated with spending everything available to you. That's optimal. If you have holidays every few days it might still be worth it to spend as much as possible, but the longer the period between holidays the less of a return you get for spending all. I don't know how frequently most parties get a day off, though, so I guess it's DM/campaign-specific.

Also, if you're confident that you're close to the end of an adventuring period (fighting the BBEG or whatnot) you could still spend the extra point, having had the extra health for most of your adventure. And it's probably more useful to have in a boss fight than against the first thing you meet on the road on day one.

I agree with everybody, purple ratings are good.

Ah, that's a good point regarding the ring.

Sorry, I might be misinterpreting your comments on internal buffer in the guide. It still sounds like you're treating it as "spare burn", ie just a way of exceeding usual daily burn, particularly in your comments about "not spending as much the day before". My point is that if you treat it as a way of spending extra burn, then yes, you'll hardly ever get to use it because you won't have any burn left over most days. If you treat is as a way to delay burn until night time, you can benefit from it every single day.

Put it this way: if you can accept 9 burn in a day and you have 1 point in your internal buffer, you could spend 9 points of burn and 1 from the buffer for a total of 10 (which is what it sounds like you're talking about, sorry if that's wrong) and have nothing in your buffer tomorrow, -or- you could spend 8 points of burn and 1 from the buffer, and then have enough to still have a buffer tomorrow. It's almost exactly like getting Toughness three times for free over the course of the class, which is nothing to sneeze at.

It doesn't sound at all like you're stating that in the guide - as it says, you've only occasionally used IB. If you're going to spend the same amount of burn every day anyway, why not use internal buffer and get free hp while you're doing it?

Glad to see such love for the TK, and thank you for the guide! Still a couple of small things which may need changing though:

- Under metakinesis where you say gather power is the only way to avoid burn for metakinesis before level 19; internal buffer can do this too. I realise this is a bit nitpicky, but worth considering.

On the topic of internal buffer, I disagree with your statement that if you have burn to spare at the end of the day, you didn't use it efficiently. It's just moving costs around. If you have an extra point from internal buffer, you have an extra point of burn to spend. If you just keep spending your full normal amount of burn each day but subsidise it with your internal buffer (so actually accepting 1 less burn), you have your internal buffer's worth of burn to spend at the end of the day on your internal buffer. On an average day you won't get to spend any more burn than you usually would, but you get to avoid taking a bunch of nonlethal damage until right before you go to sleep, when you no longer care as much. If necessary you can use the extra burn for emergencies, but otherwise it's just free hp. That's a really good thing! If you have kinetic healer, you can delay the cost of healing 1-3 times a day until you don't care any more (unless your gm likes interrupting your sleep with night time encounters, of course). Or you can just mmake better use of metakinesis.

- Under many throw you say you get 120' range even if you don't have extended range, but it's a prerequisite. I think all the 120' form infusions list it as a prereq.

Also, may I suggest Ring of Sustenance as a decent item to have? It means not having to worry as much about taking too much burn before you go to sleep.

Does the telekineticist's Kinetic Blade do damage to the object being held like their normal blast does? That could be problematic.

Targen wrote:

Mark Seifter wrote:

Targen wrote:

Hello! I have a couple of questions about the kineticist. Apologies if this is the wrong place to ask or if these have been asked before; I'm sort of new here and I haven't been able to find them, respectively.

The questions:
1. It seems strange that force, of all blasts, should not be associated with the pushing infusion. Is this intentional, or was it accidentally left out?

2. By RAW, it looks as though the pushing infusion can be combined with the wall form infusion, which could be extremely cool. If this is the case, would the bull-rush attempt push the creature back and prevent them from crossing the wall? It's nice to imagine this combination could be used to stop creatures from crossing the wall altogether, doing damage every time they try. It'd also be cool to think incorporeal creatures could be bounced back by a force wall (cough cough) like some sort of ward, although I guess they could just go over the top. :P

...

You could also use quicken, potentially. To really mess with them, you could quicken the first wall, then ready an action to make the second wall, so they weren't expecting dealing with two.

You could do the latter, but I think that might be the only way to do it - any wall-infused blast disappears as soon as you use another. :( So it's not useful againdt multiple foes. Could always set up an entangling wall and then pick them off one by one with entangling blasts, though. Or an entangling whip and Combat Reflexes.

I'm a little puzzled. How come people keep bringing up "as if in one hand"? There's nothing in the description of mage hand which suggests it's like a hand, any more than ghost sound uses a ghost. It's a neat name for light telekinesis.

Mark Seifter wrote:

Nearby wasn't defined due to having to shorten to copyfit ... A simpler way to handle it would just be to say your square or adjacent squares.

Hmm, just realised the implications for Foe Throw - there'd be almost no way of using the infusion without provoking an Attack of Opportunity! :P Might be better to treat it as "within 15 feet", representing a single move action's worth of distance under basic telekinesis.

Huh... hadn't noticed the extended/extreme range option on basic telekinesis. Well, now I'm just not sure.

Incidentally, it might be a good idea to say include in errata that telekinetic blast involves bringing the object back to you - I've read multiple posts and guides now which mention being able to overcome cover by shooting from different angles as one of the few strengths of the blast over others.

Targen wrote:

Hello! Just a couple of points:

Quote:

Extreme Range - While you are unlikely to need this so much for the kinetic blast, it is important for the basic telekinesis, telekinetic haul.

Extreme range is a form infusion; it can only be applied to blasts, not Utility Talents like basic telekinesis.

No but basic telekinesis is modified by it.

Oops, you're right. I've just noticed that.

Hello! Just a couple of points:

Extreme Range - While you are unlikely to need this so much for the kinetic blast, it is important for the basic telekinesis, telekinetic haul.

Extreme range is a form infusion; it can only be applied to blasts, not Utility Talents like basic telekinesis.

Self Telekinesis, Greater - ... This is almost as good as Wings of Air, with the exception that you can fall with this one if you spend your move action doing anything else, like gathering power.

Flame Jet, Greater (upon which Self Telekinesis, Greater is based) states you don't need to take an action to hover. The reason Fly is better than this is because ST requires you to move in a straight line (no corners) and you aren't actually flying, so you probably can't do anything fancy with the Fly skill.

Ah, another question... (Tell me if it gets annoying, please.) If I'm making a disable device check to open a lock with Telekinetic Finesse, do I need lockpicks to avoid suffering the increased DC (not having appropriate tools)? I suppose one could argue that subtle telekinetic control is as at least as good a tool as a pick.

... because extra wild talent sucks, even though you still need at least one copy.

... Then, at 7th level you pick up foe throw, and extra wild talent for whatever crap talent you feel like having for three levels.

Why not just pick touchsight to begin with? Expanded Element doesn't give you the Extra Wild Talent feat, it just gives you "an additional utility wild talent or infusion of her choice from that element, as if from her infusion or wild talent class feature, as appropriate."

Although if it were Extra Wild Talent, you wouldn't be able to pick a low level wild talent and retrain up, because when you retrain it has to be a wild talent of the same level or lower.

By the way, if you're ever looking for extra utility talents to put in a splat book, I would very much like to see one that allows the control of more objects when using basic telekinesis (increasing with caster level), with a combined weight up to the normal maximum weight. Not entirely sure what a balanced rate of increase would be (1 object per 1-3 CL?), but it would be pretty cool! :D I like utility talents, they really bring out the flavour of the class.

Nearby wasn't defined due to having to shorten to copyfit ... A simpler way to handle it would just be to say your square or adjacent squares.

Hmm, just realised the implications for Foe Throw - there'd be almost no way of using the infusion without provoking an Attack of Opportunity! :P Might be better to treat it as "within 15 feet", representing a single move action's worth of distance under basic telekinesis.

Targen wrote:

Hello! I have a couple of questions about the kineticist. Apologies if this is the wrong place to ask or if these have been asked before; I'm sort of new here and I haven't been able to find them, respectively.

The questions:
1. It seems strange that force, of all blasts, should not be associated with the pushing infusion. Is this intentional, or was it accidentally left out?

2. By RAW, it looks as though the pushing infusion can be combined with the wall form infusion, which could be extremely cool. If this is the case, would the bull-rush attempt push the creature back and prevent them from crossing the wall? It's nice to imagine this combination could be used to stop creatures from crossing the wall altogether, doing damage every time they try. It'd also be cool to think incorporeal creatures could be bounced back by a force wall (cough cough) like some sort of ward, although I guess they could just go over the top. :P

3. The text for telekinetic blast specified that "You throw a nearby unattended object at a single foe as a ranged attack." However, "nearby" is never actually defined - does this mean "within the blast range", or is it meant to be really quite close to the kineticist (regardless of form infusions applied)?

4. On the topic of telekinetic blast, do items I have in my hand count as unattended for the purpose of the blast? I know they're -technically- attended by me, but I'm not going to try to stop myself from blasting them.

5. Sorry, it turns out I had more questions than I thought. Kinetic healer says I can heal an amount equal to my kinetic blast's damage. Does this mean any water/aether blast I can get my hands on, or specifically a simple blast? (So hydrokineticists with ice blasts get to heal at a rate of 2d6 + 2 / level?) What about bonuses from sources like aetheric boost and overflow?

Thank you!

You can totally do pushing as long as there is a clear direction to push. A pushing wall could be quite fun (though a bowling or entangling wall...

Great! Thanks for such a speedy reply. Still curious as to whether "force" should be on the list of blasts associated with the pushing infusion.

Now I come to think of it, what would be even better than a wall infused with entangling would be -two- adjacent walls infused with entangling. Creatures would become completely immobile after the second wall.

(Edit: If you had a second kineticist on hand to create the second wall.)

Oh, uh... Also, if you have both Force Ward and flesh of stone, which applies first? Under normal circumstances I'd assume DR before THP, but fluff-wise an attack would hit the force field before hitting the stone skin, and it's hard to say an attack is considered not to have hit if part of it was absorbed by your skin. :P

Oh, also: I'm a little unsure as to how the burn option for telekinetic haul works. Does it only interact with the basic kinesis use of Haul, or also the blast? Do I accept the burn and then enjoy Xtreme Haulage for the next n minutes, only spending move actions whenever I want to move any object? Or do I accept it when I first select an object to lift using basic kinesis and then have to accept another point when I start trying to move another object? (If it's the latter, I assume burn can only be accepted to increase the limit on basic telekinesis?)

Thank you again.

Hello! I have a couple of questions about the kineticist. Apologies if this is the wrong place to ask or if these have been asked before; I'm sort of new here and I haven't been able to find them, respectively.

The questions:
1. It seems strange that force, of all blasts, should not be associated with the pushing infusion. Is this intentional, or was it accidentally left out?

2. By RAW, it looks as though the pushing infusion can be combined with the wall form infusion, which could be extremely cool. If this is the case, would the bull-rush attempt push the creature back and prevent them from crossing the wall? It's nice to imagine this combination could be used to stop creatures from crossing the wall altogether, doing damage every time they try. It'd also be cool to think incorporeal creatures could be bounced back by a force wall (cough cough) like some sort of ward, although I guess they could just go over the top. :P

3. The text for telekinetic blast specified that "You throw a nearby unattended object at a single foe as a ranged attack." However, "nearby" is never actually defined - does this mean "within the blast range", or is it meant to be really quite close to the kineticist (regardless of form infusions applied)?

4. On the topic of telekinetic blast, do items I have in my hand count as unattended for the purpose of the blast? I know they're -technically- attended by me, but I'm not going to try to stop myself from blasting them.

5. Sorry, it turns out I had more questions than I thought. Kinetic healer says I can heal an amount equal to my kinetic blast's damage. Does this mean any water/aether blast I can get my hands on, or specifically a simple blast? (So hydrokineticists with ice blasts get to heal at a rate of 2d6 + 2 / level?) What about bonuses from sources like aetheric boost and overflow?

Thank you!

Thanks for your opinions, everybody. Hayako, I'm a little puzzled as to what you mean when you say the corresponding magic gives you +10 on disguise checks - Magic Jar is the closest thing to Mind Switch that I know of (I am less familiar with magic than with psionics), and it doesn't grant any disguise bonus. Disguise Self does, but that's just creating an illusion to disguise yourself - you're still using the disguise skill to determine the quality of the illusion.

That's what I would have thought. My main concern is that the synergies table from 3.5 has bluff giving a bonus to disguise checks "to act in character". I haven't found anything apart from this about acting in character but I thought it might suggest some sort of precedent.

Hi all,

Can anyone tell me what skill is used for checks to impersonate someone while you're in their body, using effects like Mind Switch and Magic Jar?

Thanks.