| Romanus |
Played a level one human aerokineticist yesterday. Campaign was Cyphermage Dilemma. Party make-up was a me, rogue, witch, Druid w/tiger companion, and Titan maul barbarian.
I had good dice, so I'd say I hit about 75% of the time. I chose the straight up air blast to avoid SR and immunity issues at higher levels, but I'm aware that if I have cold dice, I'm gonna wish I had that touch attack. I may take it at level seven just to have it. But it's a tough choice. At-will touch w/SR and immunity issues requiring two more feats (spell penetration and greater SP, on top of PBS and Precise Shot), or an attack which ignores SR but is a ranged attack. I'm glad I took PBS and PS, that's for sure. Combat was fun, and since I used a blast infusion I think I played burn right (I never used my spear or dagger, kept both hands open, and avoided hp loss?) and using the pressurized blast to shove people into walls and off the deck of a ship was fun. I mean, you can't hit everything every single time...
Problem was, I didn't have much else to do. My perception skill was ok, but the Druid's was obviously better, same with stealth and the rogue. The lack of skills was frustrating, to say the least. And very scattershot. Heal? Perception? Stealth? It felt all over the place in that regard. And two skill points? Ouch. That hurts. And fly? Nice, but useless until level six. It's like the class is kind of a survivalist, but if that's the case, it needs more fleshing out. And definitely more skill points. I got one extra point for my level and one two from my intelligence, but my favored class points went straight to HP. I ended up using stealth the most, which would make more sense if my air guy could I don't know, turn invisible or something later on.
Build-wise, this is a bear of a class. You need con for blasts and HP, dex to actually hit anything, and definitely intelligence to buff the skills up. Strength isn't necessary for my build, and a couple of points in wisdom give me a will save I didn't really need this time. I used charisma as my dump stat, but actually had a lot of fun playing the socially awkward guy. It worked for me RP-wise. Better than any other character I've played recently, actually.
I think you need to check the warlock and soulknife classes to see how to fix this one. They're good examples of how you can take a limited class (warlock's eldritch blast and the soulkife's psychic blade) and give the character some really good flavor. I'm also not convinced this is really an "occult" character at this point. Flavor-wise it doesn't really fit, but I'm ok leaving it there to ensure I can keep it around.
Overall, I'd say that if you're going to make this a speciality class, make sure it can do what it's supposed to.
Overall, I'm gonna keep playing it, got the boon and will be interested to see where it goes. I'm invested.