Kindaul's page

FYI, Nethys has updated his Archives with the Kineticist and he so kindly organized the elements and their associated wild talents by level AND linked to each one. Oh, Nethys, how I adore thee.

The organization alone makes figuring out the kineticist just that much easier. Trying to read through the class with my PDF was giving me a headache.

Lol, had the same issue, definitely could have been organized better.

Imbicatus wrote:

N. Jolly wrote:

I guess I'd ask how you get around total concealment against a target then. That's still a 50% miss chance on a physical blast, and those aren't numbers I feel like playing against. I'm not saying it's terrible, I'm just trying to warn people that it's not blindsight and not to treat it like blindsight.

Unlike normal Termorsense, the talent removes the miss chance:

Quote:

TREMORSENSE

Element earth; Type utility (Su); Level 3; Burn 0
You can take a move action to gain tremorsense 30 feet for 1 round
on any earth or stone surface that you touch. You can accept
1 point of burn to increase the duration to 1 round per kineticist
level you possess. While benefiting from this tremorsense, your
earth blasts and composite blasts that include earth components
don’t suffer a miss chance from concealment or total concealment
against creatures you detect with your tremorsense.

...well noodles, I did not see that. Okay, Tremorsense/Earth Glide/Kinetic Whip confirmed for best combination.

But is it actually possible to make attacks from within the ground like that? It would make sense from a flavor standpoint, but can you actually attack through solid matter with your blast even if it's an earth blast? For your blasts they are spell like abilities which like spells require line of effect to your target(even glass or walls of force will stop you from targeting things with any spell unless the spell specifically states line of effect is not required). But blade/whip allow you to make regular attacks that deal your blast damage, does this effectively remove the requirement of line of effect?

I think when you deny class abilities that are listed as being available at 7th until they hit 9th lvl when they now have a new set of available abilities and only the option of choosing one is absolutely terrible class design. Just think if a sorcerer was told that at lvl 6 instead of getting 3rd lvl spells he gets one of his mediocre bloodline abilities and now must wait until lvl 8 for 3rd lvl spells, and can only pick 1 new spell at lvl 8. It's the same thing, so why is the kineticist the only one boned in this regard? Not to mention lack of energy composites outside fire and numerous other issues that you can only hope are oversights and not intentional pointless restrictions. This class has much more to worry about besides it's very apparent rough edges. But hopefully over time as more material is released this class gets the love it needs. Since it has in itself it's very own mechanics, you really can't expect it to be at the same lvl as all the other classes who get to draw from a very large pool of source material to power up.

That is true if you go hardcore RAW looking at the ability. But for combat maneuvers there is a rule that says a combat maneuver is an attack roll and as such you apply all bonuses you have to attack rolls(abilities,buffs,feats etc.) as long as those bonuses apply universally or to the weapon you are using to perform the maneuver.Kinetic blasts are also considered to be weapons for the purpose of weapon focus and whatnot. So in that sense overflow bonuses and weapon focus should apply at least. But as you said, who knows what's what with this game anymore? Haha.

"Your bonus on this check is equal to 2 + your kineticist level + your Constitution modifier" It actually says "Your bonus", black tentacles specifically refers to the tentacles having their own CMB. RAW I believe I am correct in my assumptions that overflow bonuses and any other bonuses you can grab to CMB or attack rolls that affect your kinetic blast will apply. But RAI could be as you say, however it was intended is unclear at this point then.

Edit: Also yeah I didn't realize human FCB was actualy 1/6th of the Extra Wild Talent Feat as opposed to just 1/6th of a Wild Talent. So dumb, wonder why they were so keen on keeping people from having too much fun with this class lol.

The Grappling Infusion damage is NOT dependent on succeding on the grapple check, but the opposite. You first roll the save against the base blast, and then, if any amount of damage is been dealt, you make the grapple check.

Given that it can only be used with Deadly Earth, Wall or Cloud, it will always cost at least 6 burn points (for the wall) or 7 for the other 2. A bit too much to be worth it if you ask me, since the bonus on the check is not impressive and can't be improved in any way.

I think the bonus is a little better than you may think.

At lvl 12 which is the earliest you can grab Deadly Earth with the human FCB it would look something like this with weapon focus and assuming max overflow bonus.

2(Huge)+10(Con)+12(Lvl)+4(Overflow)+1(Focus)=29 CMB
You could even grab Gauntlets of Skilled maneuver for a fairly cheap +2 if you want and Bred for War trait is another +1.

CR 13 creatures have anywhere in the 30's for CMD with some exceptions. Since this will more likely be a crowd control option for larger numbers of less powerful enemies anyways and given the 120ft range this is a decent option to possibly disable ranged attackers whether it be an enemy caster who hasn't gotten off the ground or a group of archers. With the grapple not only keeping them from acting but doing damage round after round they fail to escape.

Edit: Ah yeah I missed that the grapple check only happens when the blast deals damage. Makes a little more sense now, although would it have killed them to specifically say it can't perform any grapple actions other than maintain? Not to mention a clarification on it's CMD would be nice although I would imagine it is indeed just 10+CMB like black tentacles. But you never know :)

Kindaul wrote:

So how exactly does the Grappling infusion work? It only calls out not being able to pin or move. But do you get your blast damage that you infused with grappling as part of a successful grapple check on your turn similar to black tentacles? Or is the damage limited to that of the blast it was used with, like when a creature enters or ends it's turn in the affected area for deadly earth? Also, what is the CMD to break the grapple? Would it be 2+Lvl+Con+Dex+10 as normal. Or again like black tentacles does it lack a Dex bonus?

Grappling is a substance infusion

It NEEDS to be paired with a form infusion (one of the 3 form infusions mentioned)

So you have a SINGLE blast like a grappling deadly earth earth blast.

Deadly earth modifies your damage as it says, grappling doesn't, so you do damage as per your blast, modified by deadly earth, modified as per grappling (no modification)

If you had a form infusion p.e. that said "your blast deals half damage" and paired it with a substance infusion that also said "it deals half damage" then you would end with a blast that did 1/4 damage.

As for the cmd, I'm guessing like most such cases it's cmb+10

Thx, but that doesn't really answer my main question of does damage happen when you successfully maintain the grapple as well as dictated by the associated infusion eg. Deadly Earth? Effectively doing deadly earth damage when you maintain the grapple on your turn and then doing the same damage again if the creature fails to leave the affected area on it's own turn. I imagine it's limited to dealing damage on the creatures turn after the first round as deadly earth dictates. But it isn't exactly clear, as it only specifically prohibits the move and pin options for a successful maintain grapple check.

So how exactly does the Grappling infusion work? It only calls out not being able to pin or move. But do you get your blast damage that you infused with grappling as part of a successful grapple check on your turn similar to black tentacles? Or is the damage limited to that of the blast it was used with, like when a creature enters or ends it's turn in the affected area for deadly earth? Also, what is the CMD to break the grapple? Would it be 2+Lvl+Con+Dex+10 as normal. Or again like black tentacles does it lack a Dex bonus?

Azten wrote:

I understand the percentages. That does not stop you from taking more burn the better you get at anything. Your hit points don't stop you from taking more burn, do they? No.

You get worse because you take more nonlethal damage because you gain a level.

Yep, you take more damage from burn the higher you get. While the percentage is the same it sure FEELS worse and there is no way to spin it that you get better at taking burn as you level.

I feel like the Internal Buffer should have had something to do with this(instead of the wonky and borderline useless waste of a class ability it is). Something like you can charge it by taking up to 3 points of burn. Then as long as your buffer is charged it reduces the amount of non-lethal damage you receive for each point of burn you accept by 1 per buffer point. Then increases to 2 per buffer point at lvl 11. You can also spend points from your buffer in the same way you currently can. But it can only be charged once per day and remains charged indefinitely until you choose to spend the points or something.

I understand why the damage is reduced, it's the amount that seems silly to me. This class is supposed to be about versatility and options, but it sure seems like they really want to punish the class for it. Like I said if they would have just did a 25% reduction then physical magma and steam eruptions would do the same damage as blue flame eruptions. They both get a reflex save for half so they should do the same damage. Fire still gets the option of doing simple fire blast eruptions free of charge all day long, or empowered ones if you're lvl 8. Where as with with the other earth or air related options you generally need to spend some burn to use eruption until lvl 11. With such a big reduction in damage it really turns you off mixing elements when you'd be better off just doing fire/fire or earth/earth since impale has no damage reduction and yet Torrent for some reason with the exact same effect(except Torrent allows a save where Impale is an attack roll) again punishes physical blasts with a 50% reduction. I mean if you don't want your versatile class to mix and match and have fun with it's options, then just say so. Don't provide the illusion of options when really you have a very select few good combinations and the rest are unnecessarily gimped. If they allowed you to obtain more composite blasts it would seem a little less restrictive maybe, but you're stuck with 1 or 2 simple blasts and one composite until much higher lvls. Then the infusion options your limited to selecting based on your choice of composite blasts gets further reduced by gimped options like eruption and torrent physical blasts... I just don't see a reason for it at all.

Wow I just realized that aside from Aether stuff, Blue Flame is the only energy composite blast. . . This class really could have used 2 more pages of stuff to flesh it out and really make it what it deserves to be.

Anyone else feel the Eruption and Torrent infusions are overly gimped in their use with physical blasts?

If we assume an 8 Con at lvl 8 for sake of simplicity and +2 overflow bonus.

Composite Energy blast eruption/torrent gets you:

8D6+8(1/2 Con + 4 overflow)=36 Empowered: 54

Physcal Blast gets you:

8D6+20(8 Con + 4 overflow + 8 blast damage)=48/2=24 Empowered: 36

That seems to be a pretty significant disparity for no reason since they both go against the same save. One is affected by energy resistance and the other by DR.

If you instead reduce the damage for using a physical blast by 25% you end up with 48*0.75=36 Empowered: 54. The exact same damage as energy, same saving throw, each affected by a different damage mitigating mechanic. Kind of feels like the 50% reduction was just tacked on without any thought or consideration at all for the sake of convenience or out of laziness. . .

So if I'm using Kinetic Blade/Whip, am I able to use metakinesis to empower the blast damage I am doing with each attack? So at lvl 8 being able to get 2 attacks for empowered blast damage minus the elemental overflow bonus damage?

I wasn't talking about an optimized fighter for damage, just the usual two handed sword basic fighter that benefits from an enlarge person spell (through potion or wizard friend).

He could be starting with 16 STR, and he still have more than half his feats, equipment and every skill points free for spending.

Mythic is ridiculous in most cases, because martials will do so much damage that any appropriate encounter will be deleted by one hit. Not from the whole party, just by doing the standard "move + one attack. You're dead. Next !".

I'm pretty sure an optimized fighter can reach 200 or more damage at the same level, whatever the point of doing this may be.

I read this and laughed, you sir are greatly misunderstanding something. I believe you think that Mythic Vital Strike allows you to multiply your damage by the number of each individual damage die rolled. This, while RAW is sort of correct, is grossly unintended. By "weapon damage dice you roll" it refers to 2d6 in the case of a great sword being a single set of weapon dice. So the 3d6 great sword while enlarged does not allow you to multiply your damage by the 6 dice rolled, but by the 2 sets of 3d6 weapon dice you roll. Any DM that lets this go as you seem to have interpreted it would be insane to think that such a disparity between weapons that happen to use multiple dice for their weapon damage and those that only use one is 1 is working as intended. Please correct me if I have misunderstood how you are doing that damage though.