the best defensive power I have found is kinetic cover. It is a physical barrier that has twice your level in hp (with no hardness). As currently written, it covers one face of a 5' square, and stays around until destroyed. This means that given time, you can fill a hallway with little translucent or opaque (depending on your element) walls that provide total cover. With even a 30' long hallway, you can delay enemies for a while, as they would only be able to (at max) drop two walls a round (and maybe not even that, depending on the level of the kineticist and the creature attacking the wall).
It gives some interesting potential for crowd control, and total cover is awesome.
See, we seem to be arguing remotely viable physics vs "the rules don't say anything so it doesn't happen". I'm not saying the Hydro *should* do these things, I'm saying that without special wording of the ability, they *do* do these things, because that's what moving this much water around would do. It's not even so much a rule of cool vs raw thing, it's a reality vs game mechanics thing. Example, the peasant rail cannon.
Spoiler:
The peasant rail cannon is a procedure where a large number of humanoids are paid, intimidated, charmed, or otherwise coerced to stand in a line, each 60 feet from the nearest other humanoid. A cannonball is passed from the person at the back of the line, who moves, moves, and hands the cannonball as a free action to the next person, who now takes their turn. Since a round is 6 seconds, this cannonball will move 10ft/second per person in the chain, eventually reaching relativistic speeds.
This thought experiment is an example of game physics vs real physics. In this case, any reasonable dm chooses to use real physics, saying that the ball cannot be used that way.
So as you can see, rules vs reality does not always go in favor of rules.
Except reality and physics have little to do with game mechanics. Spells and abilities do what they say they do, and they don't do things that they don't say they do, especially in regards to real world physics. Electricity attacks do not generally spread through conductive materials (shocking grasp's bonus aside),being struck by a colossal creature does not usually knock even a diminutive creature flying, and cold is an energy type rather than a lack of energy.
All true. But you seem to be indicating that game mechanics is always more important than realism. In which case, the peasant rail cannon works in your game. Sometimes the rules bow to physics. In this case, there is such a huge discrepancy between rules and physics, that I feel the rule should change. Hydro shouldn't have this ability, with this wording, because it's so far from reality that it can't possibly be interpreted correctly without losing sense of what's just happened, and if it's interpreted correctly it's a very flawed and overpowered mechanic.
Unlike cold being handled as an energy rather than an absence of heat, or electricity failing to react normally to metals, or knock back only occurring on impacts that clearly state it as such, which all bend physics in wonky ways to make them easier to work with... this flatly destroys physics, and immersion. It forces you to make a hard decision to ignore all common sense for the sake of balance. Or to ignore all sense of balance for the sake of common sense. That is a problem.
Personally, I feel like rewording it to allow control water as is, and adding a separate ability to move much smaller amounts of water in a smaller area of influence (say, 1 foot cube per level within 30 feet) would be more reasonable.
Can you change the ability of Move Earth by chance?
This is how it is atm
MOVE EARTH
Element earth; Type Sp; Level 4; Burn 0
Prerequisites kineticist level 6th, kinetic cover
Saving Throw see text; Spell Resistance no
As a standard action, you can push or pull a 5-foot cube of earth
or unworked stone within 30 feet, moving the cube 5 feet in
any direction. You can create raised platforms, stairs up a cliff,
holes, or other useful features. If you move the earth beneath
a creature’s feet, it can attempt a DC 20 Reflex save to leap
elsewhere and avoid moving along with the earth.
I think that if we altered it a little, it might make this ability a bit more useful or clear.
Shape Earth
Element earth; Type Sp; Level 4; Burn 0
Prerequisites kineticist level 6th, kinetic cover
Saving Throw see text; Spell Resistance no
As a standard action, you can alter the shape of the earth or unworked stone within 30 feet. You may shape 1 square foot of earth or stone per level of kineticist at any one time. You may create holes, stairs up a cliff, spikes, raised platforms or other useful features. If you create a hole or raise the earth underneath a creature, that creature can make a reflex saving throw to leap elsewhere to avoid moving with the earth or falling into a hole. If the earth is shaped into spikes, any creature that is pushed or falls into the spikes takes 1d6 damage per every 2 kineticist levels.
I read the one based upon hit points as well. Am I right to assume that if you take the toughness feat this will also add to the strangth of the field. And could you give it damage reduction through feats would hit point base feats stack onto this? My players and I were discussing this last night.
Would you please be more specific so we can provide a clear answer for you?
Toughness does not increase any effect of this class, to my knowledge. It only gives you more HP, it does not affect your con mod, so it doesn't let you use blasts more often or increase your damage. Which field are you referring to? And any form of DR does not affect burn. Burn can never be avoided, sent away, cured, reduced, or anything else. Burn always hits, and always does full damage. You might get a DM to let you Wish or Limited Wish burn away, but never DR.
Toughness DOES (in a way) increase the effectiveness of kineticist, but it does not increase DC or burn limit. What it does do is that if your con is +6, then your burn limit is 9.. Reaching 9 burn brings you dangerously close to passing out.
On a d8 char, using 7 burn, that's pretty much like having a con of -1.
So 7 + 4*8 = 39 avg HP which is very low. So toughness does help to provide more HP to make burn less painful, which acts like a buffer.
Quote:
Burn can never be avoided, sent away, cured, reduced, or anything else.
Don't count your chickens before they hatch! No way of knowing if there will be a feat to assist with burn. I am predicting there will be, though!
Burn can never be avoided, sent away, cured, reduced, or anything else.
Don't count your chickens before they hatch! No way of knowing if there will be a feat to assist with burn. I am predicting there will be, though!
So far the closest we've come to a way to reduce burn is a burn buffer, where you put spare burn at the end of the day in a small cache to use in desperate times. We've also seen major reductions in burn cost in Mark's potential update, mostly by making Specialization not rely on choosing between form/substance and by increasing the effect of gathering energy and allowing a full round to gather energy for the next turn. All of which means a good damage boost for the class, but none of which indicates that any burn actually taken wouldn't hurt or would hurt less. Frankly I think it would be a bad idea to reduce the damage from burn or to make it healable, in any way, shape or form. This is a very limited resource and if you mitigate the damage it becomes less harshly penalized. Lessen the penalties, and I feel burn would become too powerful. It's a delicate balance.
Burn only makes unconsciousness closer for the kineticist, not death. What if there was an option to keep fighting while unconscious? Something like being possessed by an elemental spirit that fights off his enemies until the threat is gone. This could unlock some near death abilities, and produce a great "elemental rage" theme.
All true. But you seem to be indicating that game mechanics is always more important than realism. In which case, the peasant rail cannon works in your game.
Except that even moving across a country within a 6 second span, the cannonball doesn't do anything, so you just get a cannonball somewhere really quickly.
Shiroi wrote:
Sometimes the rules bow to physics. In this case, there is such a huge discrepancy between rules and physics, that I feel the rule should change. Hydro shouldn't have this ability, with this wording, because it's so far from reality that it can't possibly be interpreted correctly without losing sense of what's just happened, and if it's interpreted correctly it's a very flawed and overpowered mechanic.
But we're talking about a universe where someone can say some words, move their hands about in a specific pattern, and cause fiery explosions, without any outside agency (they don't need combustable materials). To me, that screams "our world and golarion have similar, yet distinct, physics systems." That says nothing of things like mage hand, which allows someone to countermand gravity with their mind, or protection from energy, which makes someone immune to fire.
Shiroi wrote:
Unlike cold being handled as an energy rather than an absence of heat, or electricity failing to react normally to metals, or knock back only occurring on impacts that clearly state it as such, which all bend physics in wonky ways to make them easier to work with... this flatly destroys physics, and immersion. It forces you to make a hard decision to ignore all common sense for the sake of balance. Or to ignore all sense of balance for the sake of common sense. That is a problem.
The other problem with basing game mechanics on physics is that we have an incomplete understanding of our universe. What we have right now is a set of theories based on observations that we have made for the last 300 years or so. In another hundred years, who knows what we'll actually know about the state of the universe? Could you imagine them releasing errata to all spells and powers when a new physical law is created?
I'm just saying that I prefer at least a vague attempt at physics in my games. It doesn't make much sense to me to allow thousands, and millions of pounds of water to be thrown around at those speeds without some kind of impact or similar effect. There for, I would rather fix the ability than to overlook the problem by saying that "a lack of rules on the situation somehow neuters the giant tsunami from being lethal".
Given that Feel the Burn is getting some buffs, I don't think having a cooldown option is out of the question. Like take a full round action or a minute to wind down your elemental awesomeness by one burn point. Long enough that you can't really do it in combat without getting in trouble, short enough to avoid 15 minute adventuring day. Expand on it more as a high-risk high-reward mechanic where you have the option to dance on the edge of unconsciousness to throw more weight around.
Then again, this would effectively give the kineticist super healing powers, and if that's undesirable then Elemental Healing needs to be nerfed hard, given a whole separate limiting mechanic, or scrapped altogether.
The problem there is needing to make sure the wording of the ability states clearly that even if you are, say, 3 burn past your Elemental Overflow cap, it still reduces your benefits from overflow. Then, you make an infinite heal factory. If you avoid those problems, congratulations you just gave us maxed out defenses. All of them. So tri-element gets three maxed defenses for a 30 minute concentration routine in the morning. That's your full HD worth of DR, a great miss chance from air, awesome HP that regens and saves you from on hit effects from tele, amazing shield ac from water, and/or burning things for a lot of damage. All of this, plus anything else permanent. Recovering burn is a cool idea, but you can't let anyone keep the benefits of it if you do so. So you'd have to keep track of "x points of burn in this, and now my overflow is empty and my shield is now this, and oh look I need more burn so let's drop a little of that". It gets complex, and in many ways way too powerful. I can now use my omega strike level of burn for the alpha strike of every encounter with a few minutes between fights. That can be a problem when I'm a walking AoE damage/status machine.
Suggestion
Rather than choosing at the beginning of the day whether to increase defense permanently for the day, make it an option of choosing to max out for 1 burn as a 1 time deal OR choosing to permanently buff up for the day with burn.
So it's the difference between front loading or reactive.
For example.
I am an Earth kineticist. I am level 10, so my DR = 5. I can choose to put in 5 burn at the beginning of the day to make it DR = 10 OR if I have DR 5 and someone attacks me, I can choose to spend an immediate action to give myself max defense (DR = 10) for 1 turn.
One other idea, when we toggle the defense off, we heal the burn. So the burn is analogous to our concentration of keeping an ability active...
This will also allow me to max out fire and not feel like I have to turn it off when I shake the captain of the guards hand.. then if I toggle it on by how it is currently set up, I take additional burn.
So I think that if you toggle it off, this should heal the burn used...
If you choose currently to spend burn on an all day ability, and shut that ability off, when you turn it back on (within the same day) it comes back exactly as it was. You don't have to take all that burn again if you choose to suppress the ability for a while.
He's wanting to change the whole ability to basically provide cover. Here's the thing, the Aero defense is presently designed around ranged attacks being most of what you get attacked with. The optimal build (and the coolest normally) includes flying. You just don't get in melee with an Aero. 960 foot range and flying. You laugh at grounded opponents, and their pathetic 50%+ miss chance bows, and range penalties. Also you kite like mad, turning and using rtb to be wherever you feel like in one turn. Only indoors is this a problem. Since the theme of the ability is wind surrounding you and knocking small projectiles off course, it doesn't flavor well with providing miss chances to melee. I do agree a cover ability would be nice... but Shroud already claims that for water.
Oh man, didn't know this discussion was still open, I have a lot to mention here.
First of all, this NEEDS to be a full BAB class. HP and to hit wise, it's almost mandatory for any of the normal attack roll blast.
I'm honestly not in love with how burn works myself, at least the way it is now. Maybe I'm misreading it, but you pay burn each time you do a talent that requires it? That seems like if you want to do anything fun, you'll be paying out a LOT of burn, something that just doesn't really jive for me since we're already working with a d8 class, and the 'non lethal per level' is basically dropping them a hit die size per use, almost making them a d4 class by the end of it all. For me, I'd rather have a number of 'burn' points that could be used on certain things. Let me give an example.
Korra is a 10th level Kineticist, and as such, she has 4 'burn' points to spend. If she puts 2 points in composite blast (Metal), she takes that burn all day, but she can also use that composite blast all day without paying anymore burn.
I could see this only working for blast, since most of the burn uses for other skills are for pushing one's self (which means taking burn there would allow them to always push themselves), which in the example I gave, means Korra could leave 2 'burn' points open to push herself with these other talents. Otherwise, we're literally just in an arms race for the best way to reduce talents.
I'd even allow these to work for metakinesis with Empower/Maximize/Etc, as well as reducing the impact of burn to 1/2 level, making burn only apply after 2 points of it had been taken. This class can very easily burn itself out, and needing to do so in order to use Feel the Burn to full potential is a danger really no other class has to go through in order to get their boost.
I do really like this class now, but the playtest version really makes it so only touch attacks are viable and reduction is the only way to make fun powers viable. I'd rather see the power of composite blast dropped and make them more easily used than have them be once a day tricks due to burn cost.
Re: Korra... If Korra uses Metal all day for no extra burn, is there ever any reason for her to use a move action to gather energy again? The current system means you have x damage available with a standard action, and more damage available with a move and a standard (full attack action equivalent). What you imply should happen would cause the Kinetic Blade/whip to become far more powerful (an extra hit more than ranged attacks, when they're already ahead), increase the HP of the class (which makes capping your burn less severe, not honestly a huge issue but for a class with this much invested in Con and the ability to choose not to use all your burn it can make a big difference in how people use burn).
Composite blasts deal almost double damage, closer to 3x damage when you add empower meta. This happens routinely with a move action at about the time Blade/Whip pick up their third iterative. The way to look at it isn't "I have this awesome ability that hurts me for no reason". It's "I have access to an ability as much as 7 levels before I should have it, but it hurts me to use it early". Look at where your damage is with a full attack (move to gather and then standard to hit), and compare that to other classes. Not your standard vs their full attack.
Also, look back a few pages for marks post mortem, he's added some massive overhauls. We get 2 reduced burn from gather at later levels, and can spend the previous turn to gather more still (for every other turn rocket launcher type damage). We get better burn reduction from specialization (it flat reduces burn by x, instead of choosing to specialize in forms or substances). We even get Kinetic Form's stat bonuses as part of Elemental Overflow (the new name for FtB) that we can assign pretty much at will (con and Dex anyone?). This is all his updates that the higher ups haven't fully cleared, but he's basically rewriting the class and they have to order him (after the fact) to fix anything they aren't happy with. That's close to a guaranteed win for most of it, because they'd have to really hate it to make that kind of decision.
I do like that idea for Aethers defense, Nox. I like it how it is now too (because I love being immune to mummy rot for a good portion of my health bar), but a scaling SR would be great for Aether as they use a force field in the Ethereal Plane to reject non physical attacks.
We even get Kinetic Form's stat bonuses as part of Elemental Overflow (the new name for FtB) that we can assign pretty much at will (con and Dex anyone?).
@Shiroi, didn't know about the changes, I'll have to check them although I stand by d10 hit die. Even for a con focused class, it still feels like they're taking a lot of burn. Mind giving me a link to the post please?
On the subject of elemental defenses, I'm wondering if they shouldn't be coupled with Elemental Overflow/Feel the Burn. As it is, it's generally a terrible deal to invest burn in defenses, especially for earth (My favorite element has to be hit with a physical attack that doesn't bypass adamantine DR a number of times equal to their level to even break even with their investment!). Not a big deal though, since the defenses are awesome enough right out of the box, and Elemental Overflow already is giving stat boosts+damage boosts+maybe attack boosts (Not sure if that was replaced by the stat boosts, or merely augmented by it).
We even get Kinetic Form's stat bonuses as part of Elemental Overflow (the new name for FtB) that we can assign pretty much at will (con and Dex anyone?).
What do you mean exactly????
The size bonuses from kinetic form are becoming part of Elemental Overflow, it was listed as part of the pending changes.
We even get Kinetic Form's stat bonuses as part of Elemental Overflow (the new name for FtB) that we can assign pretty much at will (con and Dex anyone?).
What do you mean exactly????
The size bonuses from kinetic form are becoming part of Elemental Overflow, it was listed as part of the pending changes.
I do really like this class now, but the playtest version really makes it so only touch attacks are viable
This is something that came up a lot in the playtest but really is just not true. You're undervaluing the fact that the Kineticist only needs the first iterative to hit; my own Geokineticist played both at 1-5 for PFS play and 14 for a module run at home had zero issues getting that hit in.
Damage and utility are the primary areas of concern for the kineticist, not accuracy.
I do really like this class now, but the playtest version really makes it so only touch attacks are viable
This is something that came up a lot in the playtest but really is just not true. You're undervaluing the fact that the Kineticist only needs the first iterative to hit; my own Geokineticist played both at 1-5 for PFS play and 14 for a module run at home had zero issues getting that hit in.
Damage and utility are the primary areas of concern for the kineticist, not accuracy.
Damage without accuracy isn't damage, it's fluffy of misses. While I can agree that they mainly need to worry about getting their first attack roll to hit, steady damage needs to be important, or else you get issues like the Rogue where sneak attack theoretically does a lot of damage, but the accuracy isn't high enough to make that damage matter. Perhaps elemental overflow will make this a non issue, but it's still something that deserves notice.
Earth: DR or Save bonus
Fire: backlash or evasion
Water: Armor or fast healing
Air: miss chance or uncanny dodge
This.... Mark Seifert. This guy has a good idea right here. =)
Addressing the accuracy issue. If anyone has ever played MMOs, in order to maximize damage, hit must be maximized. One miss reduces damage by a lot.
So as a sample to that guys idea..
DR 1/ every other level
Save = 1/ every other level
Each one you can throw in 1 burn to increase it by 1. So at level 20, it can get up to +20 on each save, better than a paladin... But at the cost of (at most) 200 HP which you probably would have lost throughout the day if those saves weren't in place... This seems balanced to me!
I do really like this class now, but the playtest version really makes it so only touch attacks are viable
This is something that came up a lot in the playtest but really is just not true. You're undervaluing the fact that the Kineticist only needs the first iterative to hit; my own Geokineticist played both at 1-5 for PFS play and 14 for a module run at home had zero issues getting that hit in.
Damage and utility are the primary areas of concern for the kineticist, not accuracy.
Damage without accuracy isn't damage, it's fluffy of misses. While I can agree that they mainly need to worry about getting their first attack roll to hit, steady damage needs to be important, or else you get issues like the Rogue where sneak attack theoretically does a lot of damage, but the accuracy isn't high enough to make that damage matter. Perhaps elemental overflow will make this a non issue, but it's still something that deserves notice.
No, that's what I'm saying, the Kineticist's ability to hit is just fine, it's the amount of damage she does when she hits that is an issue. In my level 14 playtest I was hitting on a 4 or less more often than not.
Geo can dig a massive pit, 20x20, 60 ft deep overnight, fill the bottom with spikes, use kinetic cover over the top, and let the archer make his 3 attacks to blow 3 cover panels and the Geo take the 4th, sending a cluster of enemies to the bottom all the hard way. *grins*
I doubt much, I'd scale by level, something like 10 lbs/lvl. Actually... that's the first time I've really thought about it. 10 lbs feels right, 0 hardness 2 HP feels about in line with paper if I remember correctly. Should be pretty fragile. But as a more normal trap you can let their own weight break it. Reflex negates, et cetera.
It would be awesome to use that way, but the text of kinetic cover says one face of a square, and that sounds like it means for the cover to extend vertically from the plane of the battle grid. I know one GM who would definitely allow it, and another who definitely would not.
I would argue the semantic of a square, which in a 3d world (which this must be as flying, swimming, or digging vertically are allowed) could mean any angle imaginable. It's literally a 5x5 sheet that I can see no physics worthy reason needs to be set to some particular world grid. In fact, if it was so, I would almost never get lost in the wilderness again. Since in theory every "square" of a grid is arranged the same, this would let you place the wall on "my right side" every 100 feet or so. If your position relative to the angle of the wall changes, you've gone off course. As long as you don't go off course by far enough that "my right side" is no longer the same compass facing, you're maintaining an extremely accurate direction. See what I mean? Squares is a game mechanics term that doesn't make sense at all in reference to this power.
It doesn't explicitly state that it has to be supported by the ground, however look at what it is. Last I checked, mud and earth, or even water and ice, doesn't stay freely floating. Aether would be the only feasible element for the free floating platforms, and even then I'd think a concentration check would be necessary to keep it afloat. (Though to be honest I would likely allow the others with a higher DC)
On top of that if we are saying its paper thin, you could only use them as a trap or as cover like suggested, not as a way of making stairs or the like. Making it less useful as a utility power outside of combat.
It also doesn't state how long the effect lasts, leaving me to believe it is meant to be active for one turn, which would make most of the ideas raised on how to use this moot. That said, if it does only last one turn, it should be usable as a reaction/immediate action rather than a standard action. If, however, it is meant to last longer than a turn it needs specified how long.
Considering a duration wasn't included, I assume that it's meant to be permanent. And if it's permanent rather than instantaneous (As is likely, seeing as a telekinetic barrier isn't going to be around without magic, and water isn't going to stand at all) it's possible that the barrier is supported by magic, and could be free floating so long as it's not broken or dispelled.
Suggestion for kinetic cover.. make it 1 face per level. So if I am level 5, I can create a box around an enemy, in which they have to break out of the box to get out.. OR I can create areas to make it more difficult for an enemy to attack a character without needing to just make a 5 foot step away. It would offer more utility I think.
Has anyone played around with PRC creation while the playtest is waiting for the final book?
I have an idea in my head for a Yu-Yu Hakusho based archetype for the Monk, but not any thoughts on Prestige classes. As a side note, I now have to watch all of Yu-Yu Hakusho again... purely for the research of course.
Can I get a reply from devs on this one;
Kinetic blade + kinetic healer...
One is form and one is substance. So can you in essence can you full attack at 20th level for 10d6+con mod x3?
