cheezeofjustice's page

cheezeofjustice wrote:

As written if you feint by using another ikon and move your spark into your ikon you just made yourself worse at feinting with any weapon ikon that has an attacking Transcendence because you can only Feint after so you can only Feint on MAP attacks. 50% of the melee weapon ikons would make that require a max MAP attack. Which IS in fact an anti-synergy.

I don't have any idea what you're trying to say here, sorry. But this is what I meant by these epithets not having anti-synergy:

1. First action Spark Transcendence with any non-weapon Ikon (for example Gaze Sharp as Steel to give yourself precision damage on your next Strike that hits).

2. Move your spark into a weapon Ikon (let's say Gleaming Blade for instance).

3. Feint as a free action using The Cunning epithet effect.

4. Use your second action to Strike with your immanence bonus damage, an off-guard target, and bonus precision damage.

This whole process also works with the other epithets you say have "anti-synergy" like The Brave, and several other ikons.

If the only Spark Transcendence effects you have picked for your character give you MAP or don't combine well with the free actions you get from these epithets, then they obviously aren't the right choice for your build. You should just pick one of the other epithets that would work better for you.

Just because there's a specific rotation in your mind that you can't do RAW with these epithets doesn't mean they need errata. There are a lot of things like this in PF2E, that don't work in every situation or on every build.

So... in your own example the Feint benefits a normal attack. None of your special attacks. Then you slam into the issue next turn: Because you put your spark into your weapon...

1 - You use Gleaming Blade's Transcendence. The Cunning triggers AFTER so your folk hero fencer can't exhibit The Cunning on the signature attack of their signature weapon.

2 - The Cunning triggers. Like 50% of the melee weapon ikons the only follow-up attack it can benefit is a max MAP attack. So if your martial character puts their spark into their weapon (the only way to get your class damage bonus) they essentially shut off the ability for the epithet that Feints to support attacks worth making. The only practical use for The Cunning in this situation is to Sneak to cover. Specifically Sneak because Strides break hidden.

But hey, if you don't choose one of the HALF of the melee weapon ikons that cause you to go to max MAP you have a decent use for feint. And to be fair the Create a Diversion has way fewer of this MAP issue among the ranged icons. But that still doesn't make this less weird.

Several classes have an action compression thing that combines a class mechanic with an action. They all work with the special attacks of the class.

For The Brave? Well if you put your spark in your weapon you can only invoke The Brave to move away from things you hit. Just because that sometimes has a good use doesn't mean that's not conceptually odd. It's also weird game design. A warrior putting his spark into his weapon makes "The Brave" only move away? "If you want to be The Brave and use the title to move into battle at the start you better not put it in your weapon and lead with your weapon's special attack!" That is weird. Why is it so hard to convince people that even if it's useful sometimes it's odd that THE BRAVE putting his spark in his weapon flips the default flavor?

I can't make this any clearer.

- The Brave putting his spark into a weapon with an attack transcendence locks him into only being able to use The Brave to move away from something he hits with it. That's weird.

- The Cunning not being able to feint with basically any in-class special attacks and SO MANY weapon ikons preventing you from feinting to support your first attack if that weapon has your spark is weird. HALF the melee weapon ikons make that a max MAP attack.

Of all the classes with abilities like these, why is Exemplar locked out of using two of them with special attacks unless they archetype? Why does the exemplar have to take an archetype to use The Brave to move towards an enemy and special attack them? Why does the exemplar need an archetype to use The Cunning to CaD or Feint a special attack?

Their damage boost from weapon ikons isn't drastically better. Their weapon transcendences aren't drastically stronger and can't be used consecutively when those similar attacks can be. Is it the fact they can get 3 ikons that are about feat strength for free? Well... compared to many martials they don't have particularly powerful feats until the mid levels so that somewhat balances out.

No amount of flailing around saying "but you can stab people with normal attacks so it's fine" and implying I'm bad at building characters won't make it any less weird that The Brave moves you away from the target of special attacks, and The Cunning can't feint your special attacks.

Now. This thread is for bringing things that might need consideration for errata to Paizo's attention so THEY can discuss it and I've done that. I don't have to stick around getting told to git gud. So I'm leaving before I get heated.

cheezeofjustice wrote:

**TL;DR for Ease of Dev Use:** Because most Root Epithets trigger "after you Spark Transcendence" they often can't directly support ikon attacks and in one case with a Root Epithet that is supposed to be supporting melee attacks with one of its functions actually creates anti-synergy with HALF the melee weapon ikons. As it stands The Cunning and arguably The Brave are better with attacks gained from outside the class than the ones from in the class.

Suggestion: Just make all Root Epithets trigger "before or after" like The Deft does.

All of these Root Epithets work fine if you use them after you Spark Transcendence with any Ikon besides a weapon Ikon, and Shift Immanence into a weapon Ikon in order to Strike with your damage bonus before your turn ends. You will likely be using at least one Spark in any given combat encounter this way.

In my opinion there is no "anti-synergy" and no need for an errata. I think you aren't expected to be able to make use of your Epithet abilities every single time you use Spark Transcendence - with the Deft being the only exception, because of the Reload action tax feeling really bad if you don't get some sort of action compression with it.

As written if you feint by using another ikon and move your spark into your ikon you just made yourself worse at feinting with any weapon ikon that has an attacking Transcendence because you can only Feint after so you can only Feint on MAP attacks. 50% of the melee weapon ikons would make that require a max MAP attack. Which IS in fact an anti-synergy.

And the fact an Exemplar has a feint they can't use on any of their special attacks is weird. Them having a damage bonus from an weapon ikon doesn't change that. Nearly every martial has a damage bonus. It would be weird if Fencer Swashbuckler feints didn't work on any of their finishers. It would be weird if Fighter didn't get their attack bonus on their attack feats.

It is weird that a class has an ability to feint that doesn't work on any of the class' special attacks.

**TL;DR for Ease of Dev Use:** Because most Root Epithets trigger "after you Spark Transcendence" they often can't directly support ikon attacks and in one case with a Root Epithet that is supposed to be supporting melee attacks with one of its functions actually creates anti-synergy with HALF the melee weapon ikons. As it stands The Cunning and arguably The Brave are better with attacks gained from outside the class than the ones from in the class.

Suggestion: Just make all Root Epithets trigger "before or after" like The Deft does.

----

Some of the Exemplar's Root Epithets have awkward timings, chiefly The Cunning.

"after you Spark Transcendence" means you would do the effect after your Transcendence resolves. Since you can't Spark Transcendence more that once a turn that means that other than the one that reloads there's no Root Epithet that can directly support a special attack you gain from your class on the turn you invoke it. Not even The Cunning, which does a Create a Diversion or Feint.

The legendary duelist using his famed Gleaming Blade can't invoke the power of his legend to cannily strike using the signature attack of his signature weapon. Only the attack he does after that. Which is going to be at max MAP because Flowing Spirit Strike counts as two attacks. So the special attack of his weapon actually gets in the way of him using his class feature with the current timing.

Half the melee weapon ikons cause this to happen by the way. A feint class feature has anti-synergy with HALF THE MELEE IKONS.

Another awkwardness is in flavor. The only way any Root Epithet can directly support an ikon special attack is for The Brave to move you into a flank after you hit something or The Cunning to be invoked in a situation Create a Diversion lets you hide. Both need you to wait until next turn to use the weapon ikon attack.

Let me repeat that in another phrasing: the only way for a Root Epithet of the folk hero class to directly support the class' ikon special attacks is to move away from an opponent. One of them requires hiding to do it.

As it stands The Cunning and arguably The Brave both support special attacks from outside the class better than the ones within it.

Arguably the objectively correct way for Thogar the Cunning to get Gleaming Blade's attack and start his legend to prove himself worthy to lead his nomad tribe is to pick a different Weapon Ikon and take Dual Weapon Warrior to get the similar Double Slice.

Which unlike Flowing Spirit Strike he could use every turn and on the same turn as other ikons. With Double Slice he can Thousand Sandals (spark to Fetching Bangles), Feint, Double Slice. Next turn pull an enemy with Fetching Bangles (spark to Mortal Harvest axe), feint, Double Slice. Next turn Double Slice, Reap the Field for three full accuracy attacks and now this is the first time his Epithet whiffs.

Gleaming Blade's Flowing Spirit Strike can't do any of that and can only be done every other turn. So... would being able to Feint or move as a free action before you swing Flowing Spirit Strike be particularly overpowered? Not really IMO.

If it would be then other adjustments should be made so it doesn't rather than a feinting class ability being left working this wonkily with melee weapon ikons.

Just look at it as not every epithet being "optimal" for every ikon (and vice versa). Which is not necessarily a bad thing.

The Cunning is a class ability that literally has a function to support melee attacks, but not only can't support any attack the class gives you but for HALF the melee weapon ikons the feint is worse when you use your weapon Transcendence because the follow-up attack that can get the feint will be at maximum MAP.

I absolutely will not look at that and say "well not every epithet is optimal for every ikon".

It is objectively weird that a feature that supports melee attacks can't support the melee special attacks from your class and is counterintuitive with half the melee weapon ikons.

"York the Cunning" cannot dashingly feint as he goes in for the signature strike of his legendary gleaming blade. He can only be canny on regular jabs and things he picked up elsewhere. Actually his blade's signature ability gets in the way of him jabbing with cunning.

That is objectively weird conceptually.

Regarding logistics and balance of The Brave and The Cunning:

In general, these Epithet abilities look to be general purpose utility abilities and action compression. Yes, there may be some that are not as useful for a particular build than others are. The Deft being a noteworthy example - that ability would not be very useful on a character specializing in melee weapons.

The Cunning specifically has multiple functions that can benefit your attacks but in the "after" timing can only actually benefit regular Strikes and attacks you gain from outside Exemplar. Some of which are situationally stronger than ikon versions and fairly easily accessed.

And I am not sure that saying an epithet that only does something for ranged weapons is bad for melee builds is a great example to explain the logic of a class feature that has a feint not being able to support any special attack you gain from your class.

Both the moving of the spark and the effect of your epithets use similar phrasing of "after you Spark Transcendence". Which to my understanding means they happen after the Spark Transcendence has resolved.

For your spark leaving an ikon and entering another this is usually smooth an only has mild drawbacks like when an non-weapon ikon has an attack Transcendence (Bands of Imprisonment for example).

That isn't the case with things like Root Epithets The Brave and The Cunning. Which have weird implications.

If Root Epithets trigger AFTER the Transcendence that means The Brave moves you away from your current target and The Cunning literally can never assist a Transcendence that is an attack. That just seems off.

Is the spark move meant to be "after you Spark Transcendence" but then the Epithets supposed to be "when you Spark Transcendence"?

Horrible that these corporate twerps think they can just take stock they don't own and/or got on credit and sell it without paying you.

They should either not being able to do it or beyond forced to consider you a debtor they have to repay with the liquidation.

Even then the liquidation will hurt book companies because the stock will be liquidated for pennies and will end up in clearance stores that won't give any of the sales to the publisher will also selling them cheaper.

Buy direct, folks! Avoid clearance emporiums for books if Diamond gets away with this. They are basically trying to fence stolen goods!

Oh thank god maybe people will actually read the mythic rules now instead of just listening to kneejerk reactions on Reddit that critique Mythic Resilience outside the context of the rules to the point of pointing at a monster that a caster could easily solo and crying out "Look, this example in the book is an exception to the rules so I'm right that the mythic rules screw casters!"

I'm interested to see how in the world this system is going to be balanced. Not that original Mythic ever was, but with the tight math being such a selling point of the 2E system, this preview seems to fly in the face of that.

Mythic proficiency sounds bonkers, even if limited in scope and number of uses per day.

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.

Happens occasionally. Usually gets fixed quickly.

Well. Only a couple hours until I'm in the end of the week club and in danger of not getting my PDF until release or later

Hopefully mine ships today. Still showing that "waiting form backordered products" for my PC2. O imagine the shipping window got expanded due to the delays but legit this is the first time I ever got that text and the first time I have ever been this late in the queue.

Occurs to me my last post might have sounded a little more hostile than I meant it. So I apologize if that's the case. I'm just being a worrywart about a weird thing that someone said was a glitch that needed fixing from their experience.

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.
I would hate to be stuck in limbo past the shipping window for no reason.

Is anyone else getting a "Waiting for backordered product" on their Player Core 2 order or is that just me?

Weird. My pending order is saying they are waiting for backordered products and all I have on it is Player Core 2.

What the?

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.

My assumption is they meant for each player to track their points separately but to determine winners there's also a combined total for teams.

Well better they be overzealous about your security than under I suppose.

Does it seem possible/plausible for an Awakened Animal to be a Dinosaur?

Awakened Animal is sort of a "be whatever you want if the GM is fine with it and use the abilities and sizes presented here that match best" thing.

How about a basic summary of the surki heritages. It would be neat to get a sense of the interesting buggos.

Do the Ancestries have only two boosts or do any of them have 3 Boosts and a Flaw?

If you are comfortable revealing it what's the two skills you get from the Surki's ancestry lore feat?

Weird to assume we're never getting any new options for existing classes when we're literally getting double digit new class archetypes and subclasses by the end of the year.

Hm. Now if only fascinate wasn't crazy easy to break.

Every book so far has been a delight to read through and I am eager to run it.

I like the plot so much I am literally writing a book featuring a party going through it (with things in the plot being affected by me physically running the characters through the game).

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.

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.

Quote:

Getting into numerating the various issues that caused this, both foreseeable and not, smacks to me of making excuses for what happened, when I would much rather make solutions for the people that it is happening to.

Once this is resolved, can we get the post-mortem on this anyway? I suspect it might be funny on some level, and I'm a sucker for process/infrastructure failures.

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.

Hello! I know y'all are wanting to know what going on with your subscription shipment and I am here to give everyone an update.

We have gotten an immense amount of support for the release of the Pathfinder Player Core and Pathfinder GM Core, and we couldn’t be more humbled and grateful for this amazing outpouring from the Pathfinder Community. Seriously… you folx are the best!

Unfortunately, however, this added volume is coming in at the same time as a perfect storm of other issues (both foreseeable and unforeseen) and this has resulted in an overall delay in orders leaving the warehouse. Due to some internal shipping issues, a number of orders were erroneously marked as “shipped” but have not yet left the warehouse. Furthermore, a number of customers rightfully reached out to CS about the delay, and we set them up with replacement orders, not realizing that the order being replaced is still waiting to be picked up. The real catch here is that we are unable to determine which orders have left and which are still waiting to go out.

On behalf of the CS team, and all of Paizo, I sincerely apologize for these errors. Rest assured that we have taken steps to address the issue to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.

Now, for the plan forward, here is what we are going to do:

• As we cannot determine which “shipped” orders have arrived at their destination, which have left and are still on their way, and which are still awaiting pick up, we need to re-establish a baseline shipping estimate that will cover all existing shipped orders. We will now consider the shipping window for all orders that “shipped” since Nov 1 to have left the warehouse on Wednesday, November 22nd. Please note that we will be closed for the holiday on Thursday the 23rd and Friday the 24th. This should account for both orders that have yet to leave as well as the general holiday-related shipping slowdowns and give all orders, even ones that have yet to leave, all the necessary time to arrive before we give them up...

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?

Gotta say my customer service experience adjusting my order to ease the financial burden was probably the best customer service interaction I have ever had.

Give them a raise. I feel incredibly valued as a customer.

Our apologies for an update later in the day for many, but it does look like we will be getting authorizations in motion tomorrow as early as we are able. I have edited the original post to reflect this at this time.

If folks are looking to do modify their subscriptions to opt out of what's currently upcoming, please do reach out to us in Customer Support so we can assist. Thank you!

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.

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

I'm a little confused about that bolded note. Why would we be getting double copies of the remaster books?

Does it have to do with Special Edition subscription or something?

All of those other spells have more nuance to what they do than Shocking Grasp did. There's only so much you can do with "reach out and shock someone you touch" to make it conceptualy different. If they go the Falling Stars route, they will probably create a new spell which deals a different type of damage but in similar amounts. Something like "burning palm, deal 4d6 fire damage with a spell attack roll."

Also... you can still use Shocking Grasp, you know? It won't be fundamentally incompatible with the remaster. Archive of Nethys isn't removing it, nor will your old rule book be altered. I imagine pre-remaster content might not be viable for PFS, but home games should be fine. Heck, even PFS might still allow it, since tons of books and spells won't be getting remastered. Parsing out which is which may not be worth it when the real problem of publishing rights isn't impacted by table play.

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.

I want, I need. The things these covers do to me.

I need to go pen a freaking love song about these.

Do the whole set like this.

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.

Mine already shipped, good luck everyone :)

Good to know they are starting to go out. We normally get some notice that the okay to start shipping has been given but I didn't see one this time. So your comment puts me (and likely a few others) a little at ease.

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.

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.

Higher base damage and lower accuracy is worse against higher level foes. Fighter does about the same damage as barbarian against a same level foes but lower levels (or stuff like flat-footed) favors the barbarian more while fighter performs better against higher ac foes.

And honestly I don't think boosting accuracy means they get less interesting stuff either, again looking at the fighter compared to many other martials they get powerful riders like Knockdown, are better at using critical specialization abilities, can even make enemies slowed with their attacks and gets very powerful disrupting tools. I don't think the barbarian neccesarily gets a lot more interesting and powerful riders to their attacks.

Not that I am married to having legendary progression on stuff but I think it seems like a bit of a made up problem that if you boost accuracy that means acrually that you have to make them suck anyways.

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.

Hm. The way I had interpreted Hand 1+ is that it requires one hand to wield but two hands to use a Strike with. Though, with how it's explain in the book it could be interpreted as being a 2 handed weapon that lets you use one hand for other actions.

That alone needs a rules clarification. It feels like all the limitations they put on Elemental Weapon makes it not worth picking up just so you don't have to deal with it. Might as well just pick up a mundane weapon.

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.

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.

So your answer is - Fighters should be better at elemental blast than kineticist and wizards should be better at elemental damage than kineticists?

I can be against the idea of making them better fighters without implying they are fine.

I literally said they should buff the playtest.

Harder if you are turned into a fighter and thus don't have anything but lasers due to system balance around accuracy.

Ravingdork wrote:

I for one understand why they did it, YuriP. It still diminishes both a potential strength of the class as well as the fun of playing a kineticist.

I don't disagree with you. I just showed my understanding of why the designer did it.

That said, I think it's pretty bad too. In the end this practically renders the Elemental Weapon useless, since its main advantage would be to be able to fight melee without suffering AoO, being forced to spend an action to switch to the normal Gather Element, which is a handling action also ends up greatly limiting the usefulness of the weapons. Elemental Weapons.

In fact, this is the main reason why my players haven't used Elemental Weapons in my Playtests. Because I warned them in advance that if he was going to use a Bastard Sword Elemental for example and they needed to do a range Elemental Blast he would have to spend an action doing Gather Element.

In other words, the only advantage that remained for the Elemental Weapon was being able to make 1d12 attacks with an Elemental Bastard but that requires strength, and it would have to deal with the low AC or it would have to be with less hit or less Con and if you face an opponent with AoO it could neither use Stone Shield nor even Deflecting Wave as the reaction itself is an Impulse and therefore causes AoO.

That's why we just ignore Elemental Weapon. In fact we are just ignoring melee kineticists at all.

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.

cheezeofjustice wrote:

Verzen wrote:

I think this class would have a lot of its issues fixed if it got expert class DC at level 1, changed the elemental blast from a combat ability into more of a 1 action attack cantrip that is based off of class DC, and got up to legendary in class DC much like how fighter gets expert in weapons at level 1.

You could even make it so they can still use runes on a sort of conduit item that allows them to add runes to their elemental blast.

This then would allow the kineticist to actually specialize in one aspect and that's blasting. Right now it tries to be a martial and a spellcaster(sort of) and does neither of them really well and causes the entire class to be worse off. If we need to focus, we should focus on this aspect and make it so when it comes to blasting, they can land them relatively consistently compared with other blasting options.

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.

Is that necessarily a bad thing? Gunslingers already cheated off the Fighter with having Legendary in Firearms at the same scaling of Fighters. So we have precedent that it's okay for other classes to have the same scaling as others, so long as it isn't a complete overwrite of the class. Even despite that, as it stands, a Kineticist with Legendary Class DC wouldn't be any better than or poach from any class because 1. It doesn't exist yet, meaning it's not stepping on anyone's...

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.