| Dubious Scholar |
I kind of spitballed this out in one of the other threads, but I figured I'd split it off and work through it more.
My thought here is to take a crack at Overflow feeling like too much of a downside and elemental blasts lacking damage to a degree in a single ability (and, as a separate ability, it can conveniently be something the dedication doesn't get, which gives the usual edge to main class builds).
The basic idea is that Overflow should enhance your elemental blasts. After you use overflow, you get +X damage per weapon die on elemental blasts (including elemental weapon) for some period of time. I'm not sure the exact amounts or time frames here, but there's a few obvious options:
1) Your next blast is boosted (promotes a playstyle of alternating the two, but doesn't help builds leaning one way or the other). Possibly include "before the end of your next turn" as a rider still.
2) All blasts are boosted until the end of your next turn (plays nice with agile blasts, isn't as punishing to miss, still promotes mixing up the two)
3) All blasts are boosted indefinitely. For this one to make sense, I'd mix it with a different idea I'd had - that Overflow would only partially deplete your element. You can use elemental blasts still but no other impulses until you Gather again. This is closest to being something like Arcane Cascade on Magus. Possibly turns off once you do Gather.
The actual damage amount is probably just a +1-2 or so? Option 1 would need a bigger boost probably, it's just the extreme case. I think the second or third options work best. The second option allows switching element for the blasts while having them boosted still (plays nice with a strategy of buffing with one element and blasting with something else). The third mitigates the action cost of overflow slightly and functions more as a stance. It also doesn't promote alternating as much since you just need to open with an overflow to activate the bonus, and then you only gather if you want to open up utility again (and then you want to discharge back into the boosted state?)
Even without the damage bonus, I like the idea of Overflow not locking out elemental blasts as a mitigation of the costs there. You still need to spend an action to use another Overflow or change element, but it lets you wait until it's more convenient instead of just having to do it right away to keep using your class features (and by delaying you also delay having to decide which element to gather, which is advantageous to the PC)
From a thematic perspective, I'm looking at this as Overflow impulses basically, well, overflowing. There's excess energy/elemental matter kind of just... around you? Not cohesive enough to just shape into a new impulse (except a blast?) without focusing on regathering it. And your blasts take on extra force from it by drawing some of that in extra. This mental image also leads to one other idea for a feat:
Steady Barrage (1 action)
Requirement: You have the Overflow bonus active
You Gather Element from the leftovers from your overflow, then use an Elemental Blast.
Basically, an action saver. You trade in your bonus for getting back into the normal gathered element state quickly, and then shoot a chunk of it out. The downside, again, is that you've given up the damage bonus in favor of speed - this allows you to use a 2-action overflow and then blast every turn for instance. I think it would probably limit you to gathering the element of your last overflow? Which is a non-drawback for dedicated gate I know, but thematically appropriate. Still possibly very attractive to other gates if you won't have to swap much?
Edit: Since there's not really any advantage from this to being a pure-overflow setup without strikes, maybe one other feat that lets you give up being able to use Elemental Blast in order to keep using Overflow impulses of the same element? Basically a stance, your last action / last action of prior turn was an Overflow, spend an action, can start bombarding with overflows without regathering, but only Overflow impulses and only the same element. Still has trade offs but allows someone to be basically the all day elemental mage build.