How about a basic summary of the surki heritages. It would be neat to get a sense of the interesting buggos.
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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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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. 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.
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.
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.
As opposed to right now where they are the lowest DPS class in the game? 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.
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.
This is why white board math is never the end all. Jeesh.,It would also help if the white board math was actually, you know, correct. 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.
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.
Yeah. A good AoE Fear would work wonders for this. And God have mercy on them if that was from a Bard with Inspire Heroics. They'd likely survive each taking a single blast but they gettin' chained for sure.
Nop, about 56% of creatures are proficient in Acrobatics. It's basically a coin toss.Then you add into that creatures that have other forms or movement [like a shark not having acrobatics] and the number of creatures that have to worry about it are even less. It's a complex thing to figure out. Because how common they are to encounter can vary. Like one might encounter a lot of things with Acrobatics for balance in the mountains but fewer in the plains. Plus some campaigns might be undead focused. A plain count by itself isn't super telling of one side is more populated with very commonly encountered things.
If you have 5 targets, odds are they're below party level. Having 2 or 3 on level creatures would reduce it's value along with everything else you can do to them so the relative value of chain blast remains the same. As long as you have 2 or more targets, chain blast has higher value than your regular blasts. Of course if you are a universalist, you might find more value in gather amalgam at 10th level. My numbers were mildly off. At 10 against on-level high AC you have to roll 10. And that's not 50% that's 55% vs High AC on-level for. Against a fairly typical APL -2 monster in the same bracket it's actually 70% going to moderate bracket bumps that to 75%. Low bumps it to 85% APL -3 is 80% in high, 85% in moderate, and 95% in low. As far as backing up my claim his original math is off, he is sending level 1 stats at an AC of 18. Looking at the Building Creatures rules that's 1 lower than an extreme AC for a level 1 monster and isn't moderate until a level three monster. His math he claims is a common AC and comparing against is APL +2 for the stats he's using. So yeah. Factually not reflective of a monster those stats would run into more than two of.
I would like to point out that even a level 1 Kineticist wouldn't have a 40% hit chance against the stated 12 AC. It would be 50% at that level. I would also like to point out Chain Blast is a level 10 feat so comparing success chances with level 1 numbers is mildly odd. Comparing actual bonuses at the actual level of the feat reveals that even against an on level enemy with an AC in the High category you'd have a 50% chance to hit the first attack. And the majority of enemies are below party level. And remember that was the High AC. That was also without any buffs on the Kineticist or debuffs on any enemy. So the math of the original post is fairly off.
I think he's determining probability by multiplying 40% by itself and going through the motions of that method. Since 40% times itself is 16%.
That is what hero points are for!All you need to make it better than a standard 2 blasts is to hit the first one. 2 actions for 2 targets without map is already good. Sucks when the chain breaks at the first attack though. It's a good tool for managing action economy. Psuedo-AoE for when you aren't in position for the rest so you can just throw this out there and then get in position to Overflow next turn. Which is a pattern that gets a nice buff from Flowing Kinetics. Between the two impulses you can get a full stride split in half or two steps or step and half stride. Honestly Flowing Kinetics is really really good.
If the GM is putting a situation with a lot of enemies in front of the players and then hand waving it away or actively deciding to do something that would nerf someone on the team that's bad GMing and not a problem with the system. And it isn't hard to position for AoEs, the Kineticist has options for multi-target that doesn't hit allies, and more often than not if you do position for good AoEing the positions stay the way they are for the bulk of the 2-4 turn average fight and some of the longer ones.
The 1e Kineticist was not a high single target damage dealer. To the contrary it actually need burn to not have fairly low damage compared to martials and casters. And it made up for this in having high utility and cool tricks. Making it a fighter would be making it the reverse of what it was and boring. A master of manipulating primordial elements should be more than a guy that goes pew pew with lasers. Not to mention legendary attacks with blasts and fighter style feats isn't particularly balanced. That's just something that is more accurate than a regular martial all the time and if it deals energy damage is superior to weapons because it bypasses the most common resistances, and half the game it's as accurate as the fighter because it catches up in attacking score in the gaps of 5-9 and 15-20. And Earth has an ability that gives +2 STR baked in so they can get Apex benefits in 2 scores. So that's inherently a martial but better, especially if you have two element or the greater rune matching your elemental damage.
Don't gunslingers get a small amount of flat damage with guns? In theory you could give Kineticist the same thing. But that's kinda already Stoke Element. My point is you could just buff Kineticist's blast use but not the blast.
Sure but then you can't make ranged attacks unless you throw away your melee weapon.I'd love it if I could melee blast without provokingTake Elemental Weapon. Regular strikes made with it don't provoke, on some elements it hits anywhere from harder to way harder, and it'll be compatible with feats from outside the class like Power Attack and such. You see a lot of martials making ranged attacks with a melee weapon out without changing weapons? You want range just fire an overflow and regather. Only range limit the weapon puts on is on blasts. If you're dual element you can do it faster because they get a feat that let's them gather and fire a blast in one action.
I'd love it if I could melee blast without provoking Take Elemental Weapon. Regular strikes made with it don't provoke, on some elements it hits anywhere from harder to way harder, and it'll be compatible with feats from outside the class like Power Attack and such.
I more meant usable on literally anyone. People are fussing about the lack of accuracy and damage. Here's a thing that boosts accuracy and does a little damage while gathering an element. You could maybe tweak the numbers or effects if needed. As a bonus it gets past the issue with things that have the resist but not the typing. Plus give it another effect that's not necessarily damage to yourself if you use the action on yourself that sets you back in some way and boosts you. AKA a Burn mechanic. Then include feats to upgrade the various uses. I think it's worth pondering to address some issues people have with it maybe.
If you have a way to gain access to it you can. "It must be common, or you must otherwise have access to it." I know. You still wouldn't be able to make an electric one though as there's no actually electric blast. Just air.
The greatest travesty of this is while I can use Elemental Weapon to make a literal water gun I can't make an electric guitar (battle lute). Though I suppose being able to make a literal air guitar is also funny.
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