Ectar wrote:
This is actually not as bonkers as it seems on a surface level. A reroll where you keep the higher result is worth a +5 to just hitting and often 1-3 to critting. This basically just gives you a +8 if you are trained, then gets weaker the better you are at the skill. You'll mostly be using this at Expert or Master, which it's only netting you +6 and +4 respectively.
Well CS got back to me about how my order for Player Core 2 is showing red text that it's waiting for backordered products. They said nothing's wrong and it's just taking a long time to get orders out. Even though that doesn't really make any sense to be causing that red text that doesn't normally appear when it's just pending normally. So here's hoping it's fine and not a glitch like that other poster said they've gotten before.
singingzombies wrote: The Order Authorization window hasn't closed yet right? They started 7/12 but still being generated today? I've noticed by Order hasn't been generated yet and was also nervous that my Subscriptions aren't working as expected. As stated earlier in the thread, order generation was delayed to today due to the announcement of the Starfinder adventure lines merging.
The item is an alchemist bombs listed in a section shortly after the other bombs and it mentions dealing acid damage and "listed splash damage" and lowering resistances by an amount based on the bomb's type. But there's no listed splash damage and no information on how much resistance each tier lowers.
cheezeofjustice wrote: On the bright side the file size on my AP download seems to be corrected consistently but it's bouncing me back and forth between Personsalizing and Ready and not letting me download. I found a solution to my problem! I went to the store page and where it said "click here to see your downloads for this order" and the download worked in that spot where it only had that. I had just moments prior tried the main downloads pages with my everything on it for a 5th time today. Either they fixed it in that small window or I found a workaround. Try it out. I got a functioning file unlike some that got the file to show up as big on the page but ended up with the broken file.
Jay159 wrote:
Part of me wonders if the volume was at least a glimmer of the post OGL rush. I mean, I figure not only did most current subs get it but a bunch of new players from the OGL thing we waiting for the Remaster books. So the numbers were probably pretty chonky.
Cosmo wrote:
Does this mean all orders that haven't gotten a shipping notice are delayed until the 27th or is it possible they might still pop a shipping notice?
Jackson Wood wrote:
I emailed customer service about needing to omit the GM Core and the AP subscription from this order cycle but I accidentally didn't put a subject in the subject line. Will that cause any issues? I know some companies don't open emails without a subject line.
Raelysk wrote: Still waiting, despite payment authorization on Wednesday (I don't actually remember ever having more than one day between payment authorization & shipping before) :( Weirdly I got charged about half an hour ago and nothing shipped. Never had that before but it's good to know it does happen sometimes? Hopefully it's not some weird issue this time since you are having a long one
Captain Morgan wrote:
Also the damage difference against non-metal opponents between it and Horizon Thunder Sphere is at worst 4 points, EVER. Not per rank. EVER. The gap doesn't widen. And HTS has a better minimum damage by an amount equal to the rank of the spell. So against a large swath of enemies the damage is basically the same. And HTS is better on a crit and comes with alternate casting modes so it's like, multiple spells.
So it just seems like some rewording, shuffling of materials for clarity and I wouldn't be shocked if they threw new errata in there for all the books. It doesn't seem like a 2e Unchained. Just a "Hey we need to get these out of the OGL and into the ORC so let's dev some improvements in" It would not shock me if they change some terms that are grey area legally.
Hopefully we still get item bonuses on Elemental Blast if it's going to be similar to spell attacks but not one. Because the accuracy of spell attacks does not scale at all well and Kineticist doesn't get True Strike to help. Also hoping they use martial weapon proficiency rather than Class DC as that would help accuracy a smidge. Part of the reason Spell Attacks suck is the proficiency with them goes up slower in addition to no item bonuses but they go against the same thing weapon proficiency does. Am sad to see Elemental Blast as a weapon go strictly Elemental Weapon since that did some interesting things in combination with Elemental Weapon, but it's fine as long as it can be used more reliably than spell attacks. Also very glad to see we won't be locked to one or two elements from the get go. It seemed weird to not keep the 1e version's style of starting with one and then expanding or specializing. Especially given that style fits well in the progression of 2e classes getting a game changer class feature somewhere in the mid-levels.
It's in a very similar chassis to Inventor, but with no damage booster as of yet. It's damage is roughly comparable in some builds according to another thread's mathing it out. They likely didn't include an Overdrive as the kineticist gets some wilder utility stuff and they were trying to get a feel for where the sweet spot is in trading damage for utility. I am fully expecting a single target damage bump so it fits in the ballpark of where the thaum and inventor are at. Which is okay damage, but not a specialist in that and good utility options. Some people throw out "The AoEs are terrible because mages do it better!" The kit isn't designed to be what you'd pick to be a full on mage. It's waht you pick to be a class that hits things with a weapon-like thing and have some mix of utility and AoE. You don't pick a Thaum or Inventor to play the role of a wizard.
nick1wasd wrote: I don't see why they can't have Master to attack and Legendary to DC, since that seems the 'easiest' proficiency bump you could give the class to make it mathematically compete with other martials on accuracy. Give it upside down Fighter scaling, starts Expert in DC/Trained in rolls, ends Legendary in DC/Master in rolls; seems to be a decent way of potentially going about it, because then you can just control how strong the DC based mechanics are, independent from the roll based mechanics. I, personally, don't really want/care for Legendary in attack rolls, because that just seems overkill. But Legendary in DC? Heck yeah, seems to fit the bill of how the class should work just fine imo Honestly the main problem people had with the original suggestion of this thread was starting them in Expert and also making the blasts based of Class DC progression, as that is basically just giving fighter accuracy and full mage casting on DCs and better in fact because no mages start expert casting. I could get behind Kineticists eventually hitting Legendary Class DC. Starting Expert in it? That's probably a no from me.
If you form an elemental weapon you can only do blasts of the same type (other impulses are not limited that way). This does have it's benefits either way. As it's usually an increase in damage, you could pick a ranged weapon on earth to have better range if you need it, etc. Think of it as specializing your blast to a range rather than losing an attack mode, as you can just switch back if you need to for the same action cost as drawing a weapon but better because it kinda also stashes the weapon mode for free rather than you needing to drop a weapon to save the stashing action. It can also be neat in some combinations. Like if your blast is agile and you aren't at risk of provoking you can swing with bigger weapon then agile melee blast. Or technically if your blast isn't agile you can do the same picking an agile weapon. Perhaps one with the parry trait for extra functionality? Oo. Dwarf earth Kineticist that forms an earth Clan Dagger and has those Clan Dagger feats could be flavorful now that I think about it.
Onkonk wrote:
Fighters mostly get better action economy on things other people can already do such as grab and trip, etc. More crit specs and stuff. Barbarians can get access to elemental damage, breath weapons, size increases, throwing up to huge objects around. Monks get really high speed and a free twin attack feat, potentially ki spells for magic effects that also gives them baked in spell proficiency so they can be okay at innate spells. Kineticist is basically one more notch into the utility range where inventor and Thaum are. Where they pay for accuracy to get wilder utility. (And yes I know the inventor and Thaum have damage increasing things. This is a playtest, the Kineticist will get numbers increased) Fighter being lower utility for increased skill at hitting things doesn't mean they don't get interesting and helpful things. It means they aren't allowed to do crap like fly and stuff or get ki spells, etc.
Grave Knight wrote:
The definition for wielding basically boils down to holding it the way you need to in order to use it and you need two hands to fire, which is the use of item. As for the point in using Elemental Weapon instead of a normal weapon? You can pick a martial weapon and it uses your unarmed proficiency with it. You only come to with simple and unarmed progression normally. Also it would use the same runes as your blasts presumably as it would scale illogically poorly if it didn't.
aobst128 wrote: One potential issue would be tengu feather fan which could give you electric arc with this hypothetical boosted proficiency. Other notable ones are kobold breath and the elemental dwarf AOE. There's also a tenancy in newer stuff to have archetype options scale off the higher of your Class DC or Spell DC. So essentially the change suggested in the original post would give an attack option on par with a fighter's accuracy from legendary scaling and also legendary scaling in those things.
YuriP wrote:
Rapier is still better than most of the elements if they are DEX and they would still be able to use impulses that have range and don't fire a blast, which most elements have. Mind you they'd still need to Gather afterward but honestly how often do people that choose to spec into melee make ranged attacks? You're calling something that solves a major problem and can boost the damage too terrible just because if they specialize the element towards melee they have to do an action to switch weapons like everyone else does if they have a melee weapon out. And also Elemental Weapon is good for playing at range too.
Darksol the Painbringer wrote:
Yes. An attack cantrip that scales off fighter tier proficiency and gets item bonuses from runes is a bad thing because that means they are as accurate as a fighter and gunslinger and attack with elemental damage. Even if it were only fire, the kineticist could just go dual element and be better than fighter against the majority of enemies in the game and just as good against fire resistant enemies. Not to mention also enchant a ranged and melee option with one set of runes. Plus, Extract Element is still in the class for some of the fire resist enemies. Also, you know what is an astronomically more common resistance than fire? Resistance to physical damage. Also you're judging their mastery of the elements solely on their pew pew laser and ignoring the rest of the class. Mastery of the elements isn't just PEWPEWPEW lasers and attacking. A kineticist can use the elements to move people around the battlefield, create walls, make fields of difficult terrain, etc. In order to be fighter/gunslinger the kineticist would need to be far lower utility and thus far far less a master of the elements by every other metric than PEWPEWPEW. The Kineticist is one of the most requested ports from 1e and was middle of the road damage with cool utility powers. They should just buff the playtest's single target damage and move on. NOT force it into a class chassis the original was the exact opposite of and remove a big part of its core identity. A master of the elements class that only shoots lasers is boring and doesn't live up to the fantasy. If they are going to give me the option to play a master of the air element I better the heck be able to fly and make tornadoes. If I am given a master of earth I better be able to walk through the earth and mess with the ground. If they want to make a magic fighter they should make a new magic pew pew class with no baggage or expectations.
Well as far as why you would want to blast instead of strike, Some of the blasts are agile and conversely there's also the option of forming an agile weapon. That way you can hit with the more damaging of the two and then follow up with the agile one of the two. More universally speaking, it's not entirely clear if you use weapon damage for impulses that make you attack with blasts. Also provoking isn't usually a huge deal unless you run into one of the rare monsters with more than one. It's rare until higher levels and not an all the time thing even then. It's also easily played around, especially at higher levels. Hell the default play patterns everyone recommends you do all the time help thwart them.
Even if you can get your legendary proficiency in them via picking the group unarmed strikes are in (since blasts use your unarmed strikes proficiency) they aren't in the brawling group so the fighter can't get crit spec with them. In fact I suspect blasts having their own crit spec is on purpose for that and other reasons. They also don't count as weapons so they can't be used with things like Power Attack. The only use they would have for it is spending another feat to give the ranged form Brutal. Well that and having access to a weapon that deals fire damage. Which is one reason I think the base blasts should all be physical and there be some Kineticist only thing that unlocks energy damage for them. Though elemental weapon might have weird interactions in fighter hands.
Verzen wrote:
It is also the only class in the game in playtest state. Gunslinger literally didn't even have Way reloads in the playtest. Magus Spellstrike took 2 attack rolls to function. Most classes get buffed before full release and it's simple to give Kineticist better single target damage without making it a better fighter.
Verzen wrote:
This would literally turn the Kineticist into a fighter that attacks with Constitution and presumably elemental damage, which is inherently better than physical. Which in the structure of the game even if the cantrips we're physical the accuracy would consume power budget so it would be lower utility. And high accuracy, high single target damage at the cost of utility is the exact opposite of what the Kineticist was in 1e. A class whose entire gimmick is a mastery of elements should probably do more than shoot lasers and they should probably not rob one of the most requested ports of one of the key parts of its identity.
Key ability score being different from attacking score changes the power budget its abilities can have. If it were statted like a regular martial it would have to have a regular amount of utility, which can't fit in things the playtest kineticist can do. I would rather have lower accuracy sometimes and way more utility personally. Just tweak the numbers a little to bring it up to the proper balance for the class chassis it's in. It gets some accuracy back in other places with some feats. Mind you those are multitarget. But Chain Blast pretty much gives you a +4 or +5 on your second attack and +8 to +10 on up to five attacks after that by removing the MAP on them.
Kelseus wrote:
Well, technically it's correct, it's just got the wrong data in it. If there is any situation where you are fighting three APL +2 enemies with moderate AC or multiple on-level foes with extreme AC that's valid math. Mind you that won't happen nearly as often as was implied. Not shockingly a lot of the time in this system when a person is mad about something and tries to throw math at it to prove their point it's wrong because the system uses very precise math to balance everything. Making it really hard to use math against it. Like a certain infamous YouTuber that made a big deal of a 60% damage difference that didn't really exist and gave one side a +24% boost in damage by not including a trait on the weapon. Making the math wrong by around 84% due to not having the correct data in a correct formula.
Unicore wrote: Shock runes on chain blast are as awesome as they are thematic and can actually be a decent way to stack some damage on the hardest target to hit as you target enemies around them It's very fitting to almost meme degree that the water element splash crit works really well with the shock rune arcing. If you managed to crit multiple clumped people that would be... Must... resist... saying... it would be shocking....
While some might say some abilities like the basically perma-flight are too strong I kinda like that the Kineticist is the best at some of the tools it has. It doesn't have nearly the breadth of a caster but when it has a similar tool from control of elements it's a bit better if only by proxy of being at will but often just generally. Kinda feels like this class focused on elemental manipulation as its gimmick is able to in some ways use elements better than a caster. I feel like they got the general feel of the 1e version right with the format of the class. And Elemental Weapon is deceptively versatile and I keep finding new ways to use it. Lastly, I was wondering how they would balance some of these feats for the archetype. But then I realized a lot of the auras that are great are only busted with a feat to exempt your allies that would be high level in archetype. The perma-flight option? It's at a level where to grab it in archetype you'd be about the level flying ancestries get unlimited flight. That's good craftsmanship right there. Already has some balances in there! Lol.
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