Level 13 Playtest -- 1 Pyrokineticist, 1 Geokineticist, 1 Occultist, 1 Medium, 1 Mesmerist


Playtest Feedback


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These are my notes for a playtest of the five characters listed above.

Our party was built to be reasonably average, and not minmaxed. I was not aware of the details of each class when I came up with each encounter, so they were general encounters to test a wide variety.

We had:

Mox, the Dwarven Geokineticist
Maggie, the Dwarven Pyrokineticist
Viv, the Medium of Bear, Big Sky, and Cricket
Sylvia, the Mesmerist. Tower of Blood, the mirror image one, a few others that I'm forgetting.
Gabriel Silence, the Occultist of Abjuration, Transmutation, Divination, Conjuration, and Necromancation--y. He focused on skills and spells, as well as Minions.

The first encounter was one that was CR 13. A CR equal encounter. It took place in one of the 'stomachs' of a quarter mile wide undead abomination, and the stomach housed:


  • Pyrohydra
  • Rift Drake
  • Cyrohydra
  • Giant Lake Octopus that was hiding until the second turn, when it tried to pull the Occultist into the acid.

The map was 120+ feet long. About 15 feet on the party's side of walkable area, 20 feet on the opposite side. The rest was all open air, with a 20 foot drop before the acid "lake".

The party started out refreshed from fighting their way into the Abomination's body, due to GM Handwavium. The goal was to hit 4 encounters.

Prebuffs: Air Walk

Encounter:

The medium was in front with his 60' blindsense from focus points in his Divination focus, I believe, as they marched into the room. They could've used Greater Invisibility to go through, as none of the monsters had See Invisible. Some 40+ perception checks later, and they saw all the creatures.

Mox one init, and used Snaking Blast + Ride the Blast + the entangle blast + earth blast to attack the rift drake. He used a move action to reduce the burn to 0. He rolled a 31 against the rift drake's 20 AC. But the drake makes the DC 21 reflex save against Entangle. Mox is now right next to the rift drake, air walkin'.

Maggie used fireblast + extended range to burninate the Cyrohydra. Rolled a nat 12 on the touch AC, which alone beats the touch AC. Rolled 117 fire damage...which was multiplied by 1.5 for 175.5 damage. It was... very surprised, and very, very dead.

Sylvia the mesmerist was up net. She air walked over to the rift drake, stared at it, and then cast Oppressive Boredom. I have a new found disliking of that spell. The drake failed the DC on its next turn, thanks to the Stare.

Gabriel cast Phantom Steed, and hopped on.

The octopus moves into range, and Gabriel senses it. He then feels it as a tentacle thwaps him. It rolled 10, with a +16, for a total of 26. Missed Gabriel's AC of 30.

At this point, I realized I terribly misread the Hydra entries, because they had a poor reach, with slow move speed, and a breath weapon that was less than their reach. Realizing I sort of screwed up the encounter by putting the hydras at the far end of the chamber, the pyrohydra moved closer. Slowly.

Viv attacked the octopus, getting a total of +37 and +35 on her two attacks. She dealt 99 points of damage split over those two hits. Her 30' range helped tremendously, as it meant she could whack the octopus (technically, whacked the octopus' tentacles. They were waving around, as they do.)

Mox used Earth Blast + Kinetic Whip + Entangle against the rift drake. No AoO due to oppressive boredom. He got 34 to-hit, which easily hit the rift drake's AC. 51 points of damage. Rift drake got a total of 16 on the save against the entangle, so it was entangled. Mox rolled 39 damage on his iterative, and again the drake failed the save. It was now rooted in place.

Maggie was up. She rolled a 2, got a 23 against touch AC. She blasted the octopus for 60 points of damage.

Sylvia was up, and decided to feint the octopus. No one, even her, knew why she did this, but she did. Feinted with a 45. But first, she stared against it. Then she used Unadulterated Loathing, and selected Viv. Which made the octopus nauseated, since it only got 20 on its save.

Not really able to do anything, Gabriel cast Resist Fire on himself.

Rift Drake drools on itself.

The octopus tries to move down, but Viv's AoO against it kills it. Since it was a crit. And she did 100 damage on that crit.

The pyrohydra pounces against Viv, and this provokes an AoO for her. She has Combat Reflexes (and 30' reach), so she hits for 43 damage. He bites her once out of 8 times, because he has a +10 bonus on bites, and I think she had 32 AC. His one hit was a nonconfirmed crit, for 8 damage.

Viv attacks, easily hitting twice. She does 49 damage, and 44 on the second attack. This kills the Pyrohydra quite well.

At this point, the drake was bored and rooted in place, so we just fast forwarded. They all got across the stomach just fine.

Thoughts: Most of these monsters were CR 9 or 10. I wanted an encounter that was CR equal with a good number of monsters, to avoid the action economy issues of on CR equal enemy. The party absolutely used less resources than the oft-toted "25% of party resources per encounter". I think this was partially due to how good at the game the players are, partially due to poor reading on my part with the hydra's placement far back, and partially because the classes just... didn't need to use resources. The only spell cast that was actually necessary was Phantom Steed. The party would've whomped the enemies just fine without Oppressive Boredom, Unadulterated Loathing, and Resist Fire. The damage of the kineticist was surprisingly high to me, and it had no problem hitting. That was most likely due to the AC of CR 9 creatures, but the +5 AC that the average CR 13 creature has wouldn't have caused much of a difference. He still would've hit most of them. I think it was mostly player skill, followed by the classes handily handling the foes, and then poor placement of the hydras. The occultist didn't really do much. This was partially the build, for sure, since it avoided prebuffs etc. But it was interesting to see what a more "scholarly" occultist would look like. He later felt that the minion focus didn't make up for not selfbuffing to bash faces in. A delicate act to balance the two, I imagine, but something we noted. He did make most of the Knowledge checks, I believe, and that was really helpful.

Next encounter will be added in a bit.

Paizo Employee Design Manager

Yo!

I played the Occultist, and felt like I learned a few things.

1) The minionmancy of the Occultist isn't really up to snuff. I could have been putting almost anything in those squares to the same effect, which was a bit of a disappointment. The Advanced Giant Replicating Skeletons had roughly the same chance to hit as an appropriate level Commoner, with less damage :P
The conjuration ability to replicate a summon monster effect also wasn't up to par, as my monster options were all too low level for the encounter, and the unusual limitation on the effect actually meant that it had a shorter duration than just casting the spell unless I continually burned focus. I would like to see Servitor changed to actually stack with Summoning Focus, as it was, there was never a time when this was worth using.
This assessment may be slightly stilted due to the fact that this entire encounter occurred over a lake of acid, so there were few places I could have effectively placed my minions anyways.

2) Occultists make awesome skill-monkeys. Even better than Alchemists, with a larger list of class skills and unique options for augmenting their skill facility.

3) Divination rocks. Constant see invisibility and blindsense were some of my main contributions to the group, and the ability to add a +6 to any skill check (or attack roll, or ability check) is just awesome.

4) I didn't grab Evocation specifically because I knew that the Medium and Kineticists were going to have damage taken care of, but I kind of wished I had. Due to the anemic performance of my critters, I felt kind of useless. I was basically a Bard without Inspire Courage, and even the turn I wasted casting phantom steed wouldn't have been needed if I'd planned ahead better.

Conclusions:
I think next time I might build my character a little more "selfishly", maybe going for a melee build that whips up flank buddies and grapplers. I'd probably only take Necromancy or Conjuration, not both. Maybe even neither, as illusion has some minion options and more consistently relevant abilities.


Cheapy wrote:
Maggie used fireblast + extended range to burninate the Cyrohydra. Rolled a nat 12 on the touch AC, which alone beats the touch AC. Rolled 117 fire damage...which was multiplied by 1.5 for 175.5 damage. It was... very surprised, and very, very dead.

Damage for 13th level Fireblast is 7d6 + ~15 (+5 for CON bonus, +6 DA, +4 Feel the Burn), x1.5 (for empower) = 53 damage. How he get 117?

If im missing something, then this could fix my view of kineticist damage.


I'm looking into that, and will get back to you. It might've been 117 after the 1.5x (which still would've killed it), or maybe it was actually blue flame blast or something else. I'm not as familiar with the class as the player was. My notes just say that "pew pew fire + extended range" was used, which in retrospect, isn't the most helpful.

We finished our third encounter last night, and the damage of both kineticists was always very respectable through out every encounter. In some cases, I thought it was too high as well. The rider effects both kineticists were able to do helped take enemies out of the fight, if they didn't just die from the attacks.


Ah, that was empowered and already included the 1.5x. And contained a lot of high rolls.

Paizo Employee Design Manager

So it was 117 after all modifiers.

On a different subject, continuing session last night just served to reinforce the point that the Occultist's "minionmancy" options are not up to snuff. When we actually got to the CR 16 "boss fight" encounter, my skeletons and summoned creatures served the sole purpose of eating a couple attacks for us, contributing no damage or even meaningful battlefield benefits since they died so quickly. Only being able to pull single creatures from the summon monster V list at a level where other casters are getting the VI and VII lists makes a huge difference. And again, the skeletons from the Necromancy implement just aren't capable of doing anything but (briefly) filling squares at that level. The templates do nothing to shore up AC, hit points, or saves, and the STR boosts just aren't meaningful at that point in the game.

I did severely debuff the half-orc sorcerer we fought, but that's what glitterdust and an enemy biffing their save does for you. Being able to combo glitterdust with constant see invisibility made for a nice way for me to prevent enemies from avoiding or taking advantage of the party, but at 13th level serving as the party eyes seemed like a consolation prize.

Dark Archive

I don't believe you can use Deadly Aim for the touch blasts.


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Second Encounter:

Long narrow fleshy-bridge, with giant pit beneath it.

Creatures:
Bogeyman (30' fear aura = emotion descriptor = no psychic spells)
Baykok
Chernobue Qlippoth

The bogeyman about 25% across the bridge from the start of the bridge.

Qlippoth under the bridge, middle. Baykok far end of the bridge, under it as well.

The Encounter:


  • Baykok: 25+
  • Mox: 25
  • Sylvia: 24
  • Chernobue: 20 X
  • Bogeyman: 16 X
  • Maggie: 14
  • Viv: 12
  • Gabriel: 10

Baykok goes first. Moves into range, shoots 1 arrow at Mox. Gets a 34, and thanks to Mox being flatfooted (AC 26), he hits. Does all of 11 base damage, +2 negative energy damage. Mox' DR eats all but 1 point of physical damage though. Mox got 27 on his fortitude to avoid being paralyzed.

Gabriel identifies the Baykok with a 40.

Mox uses ride the blast, snaking blast, earth blast. 0 burn. Rolled a 7, and got 34. Did 79 damage to the baykok. Flew into sight of the chernobue so had to make the save. Rolled 11, total of 23. Made it.

Sylvia moved closer to bogeyman to stare. Rolled a 14, got a 28 on will-save (except not really, see below). Cast Hold Monster on bogeyman, but the bogeyman rolled very, very well and got 31 and saved.

Chernobue forced the save against Mox. DC 20. Mox got a 31. It flies up and tries to bite (for that sweet, sweet poison), but misses with an 18.

Bogeyman uses Quickened Phantasmal Killer. Sylvia makes the save with a 25. GM screwed up (and has since been sacked) and used another quickened Phantasmal Killer as a standard action. You can't actually do that. Sylvia fails and dies. (24 hours in real life we realized that she was forgetting to include the +8 to Cha from Towering Ego, so she wouldn't have died.) After this, the bogeyman retreats further to be far away and behind more cover.

Maggie flies up and uses Breath of Life (from a spring loaded wrist thing, of course). Brought Sylvia back to life, and there was some discussion on what her HP actually was at when she was dead. We resolved that though.

Gabriel uses a point from necromancy implement to summon a giant advanced human skeleton. Drops it behind the bogeyman. One claw hits and does all of 12 points of damage. Swallowed by DR. Primary use was to set up flanking for Viv and to block exit.

Baykok rapid shoots Mox, getting 31, 30, 34 (threat, but not confirmed). Mox makes the save against paralysis, takes piddling damage.

Mox uses kinetic whip against chernobue. He's now 10' away from baykok and chernobue, in the air. Averted his gaze, passes all the miss chances. Confirms a crit with a 37, does 110 damage after DR. 32 damage on the non-crit, having rolled worse on that one. Some consternation of the fact that the entire blast is multiplied.

My notes then say "blahblahblah". Not sure what that means, other than that I was tired.

The Chernobue Qlippoth moved 5' in, and tried to bite again. I wasn't playing to its strengths, but this was an encounter that was quickly made and honestly, the DCs of its spells were too low to affect them.

Bogeyman moves closer to viv, which is tough since she still has a reach of 30'. She crits on the AoO, dealing 99 damage. Sylvia's Vision of Blood triggers to auto-stun him, so he doesn't do much. The medium was very effective at denying area, and she seemed to crit a lot. (Turns out she had a keen fauchard. Explains a lot.)

Maggie shoots the baykok with a fire blast. I think she rolled a natural 19, so she obviously hit. It took 58 damage from this.

Viv attacks bogeyman, and easily hits it for 44 damage. She then moves up to the skeleton, to possibly hit the flying creatures on her next turn.

Gabriel casts haste on everyone but maggie, who is too far away. This is after he moves up to be in the middle of everyone.

Baykok does a horrifying howl to try and paralyze Mox, but mox gets a natural 14 on the saving throw, and easily saves. The baykok then moves out of threatened range to try and survive for another round, but Mox hits it with the AoO for 54 damage from his earth whip.

Mox does an earth blast + kinetic blade on the chernobue, and does 44 damage. This kills it though, so it falls to the bottom of the bit and goes splat.

Sylvia moves up to the Baykok and stares at it, thanks to psychic inception. It's odd that an undead can be affected just the same. I know it's for the best, but seems like doing a -1 when using psychic inception wouldn't be uncalled for. They're already doing something that's impossible, and that's benefit enough, IMO.

Maggie moves up and uses fire blast against the baykok. Rolled a natural 16, and it had so few HP that it would die from basically any blast. Which it did.

I have to run, so my own post-encounter thoughts will be posted later.

Paizo Employee Design Manager

Worth noting that that 12 points of damage my skeleton did, all of which was swallowed by DR, involved a critical hit. I'm fairly certain that was the only time any of the Occultist's critters actually landed a hit.

Going to try some tweaks on the character before the final encounter, see if stacking up Superior, Evolved, Skeletal, Augmented summons gets the critters up to par or if they're just too far behind the curve. That's a lot of resources to spend to get something functional though.


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Thoughts: This encounter went better. Again, to hit CR equal encounter, and still be somewhat challenging, I had to use lower CR creatures, which manifested itself in lower DCs. Kind of a mistake w.r.t. the Chernobue, but it still caused some mischief, so that's good. The baykok couldn't pierce the DR of its targets, and the DCs.

Oh, I didn't mention that everyone had False Life up, and Sylvia had Greater False Life. (And what a roll she had!)

This encounter was mostly a show of force by the kineticists and the Medium. The Occultist wasn't too useful, and the Mesmerist was just a bit more, being responsible for the Stunning that guaranteed the bogeyman was out. I think the stare may have caused the bogeyman to miss once.

Mox was extremely effective in this fight, without spending any resources. This is a bit concerning given that they're built around the management of a resource: burn. I'm also concerned about the kinetic blasts critting entirely, unlike just about every other increase dice per 2 levels ability, as it brings about the same sort of issues as a musket master critting, just at a slightly lesser level.

Occultist wasn't too effective again. It was great for identifying things and spotting them, but being the eyes and brains didn't seem like the most enjoyable. I'm starting to feel that a pure scholarly occultist isn't going to be doing too well unless it uses evocation or something, but even then that's using up a lot of resources fast.

Medium wrecked face again, thanks to reach. It's cool that there are ways to have purely passive abilities that take out some of the fiddly nature of the class. I look forward to seeing more of the spirits.

Regarding the mesmerist, I found it pretty interesting that she was able to pull off a 6th level caster without using a weapon for 2 encounters now. The stare helped a lot here, since it mean that she was always able to debuff and she could make up for the slower pace of spell level advancement combined with the need to split attributes amongst multiple scores.

Third encounter to come later.

Paizo Employee Design Manager

Yeah, evocation is probably the most reliable damage dealing option, and it syncs well with the wealth of skill points the Occultist gets since you can always use Knowledge checks to try for the element that'll be most effective, but the damage, like everything else in the class, scales too slowly to be competitive. Worse, evocation is probably the most expensive option available since you have to burn focus every round, to still not be as effective in combat as a non-TWF Rogue.


the 79 and 117(i understand it was vulnerable so 78) off a single blast are a bit tough to believe

as well as the 34 to hit off a 7(unless some serious outside buffs)

can you break it down a bit more? do your kineticists have a bunch of 30s for dex/con? actually I think even at 30 con the fireblast is more than is possible(even empowered and full ftb)

Paizo Employee Design Manager

I know everyone in the party was running with several buffs up at any given time, which I would pretty much expect from any 13th level party.


What +hit buffs did your party have on their spell lists to put on the kineticists? (I can't find any but I may have overlooked something)

Or are you saying that they UMD'd consumables for such buffs? If that's the case, it should really be mentioned in a playtest report.

Fuzzy numbers don't make for good data

Paizo Employee Design Manager

Occultist has UMD out the wazoo, so I know that Good Hope, False Life, and then Haste directly off his spell list were up. Mesmerist was running her debuffs which I think helps with to hit but not damage. I'm uncertain what else may have been going on with the kineticists as I was more focused on my Occultist and my fiancee's Medium.


The design team said that while theory crafting had its place, they greatly preferred playtests. Because obsessive note taking slows the game down significantly, and we wanted to get more encounters in, I didn't keep track of every bonus, sorry. I still haven't seen the characters either, since I wanted to ensure that my encounters weren't biased to show something.

Third encounter coming tomorrow, probably. It was a boss encounter, and they felt threatened. Finally!


playtest experience is really great, the problem is the numbers you're posting are consistently "too good to be true" which makes me want to dig more

sorry for being so critical, and trust me I've got a bit of cognitive dissonance going on about questioning you so much Cheapy, given your prior contributions and reasonableness, but stuff just isn't adding up right


Cheapy wrote:
Ah, that was empowered and already included the 1.5x. And contained a lot of high rolls.

Im going to assume the player used blueflame blast and took 3 burn to do this. Max damage from what I posted above is 85. That is assuming he rolled all 6's on his 7d6.

Paizo Employee Design Manager

Slacker2010 wrote:
Cheapy wrote:
Ah, that was empowered and already included the 1.5x. And contained a lot of high rolls.
Im going to assume the player used blueflame blast and took 3 burn to do this. Max damage from what I posted above is 85. That is assuming he rolled all 6's on his 7d6.

I think that's exactly right. It was the first encounter of the evening, so I know he was trying to max out his FtB pool.


Ssalarn wrote:
Slacker2010 wrote:
Im going to assume the player used blueflame blast and took 3 burn to do this. Max damage from what I posted above is 85. That is assuming he rolled all 6's on his 7d6.
I think that's exactly right. It was the first encounter of the evening, so I know he was trying to max out his FtB pool.

My issue here is that is not sustainable damage. I think at upper levels the kineticist can't keep up with damage which is their one trick.

Also I would like to see the two kineticist builds.


Keep in mind that as of right now, Vital Strike is legal to use with the Kineticist Blast; that would bring the damage in line with what has been posted.


Deadbeat Doom wrote:
Keep in mind that as of right now, Vital Strike is legal to use with the Kineticist Blast; that would bring the damage in line with what has been posted.

Vital Strike is legal with Kinetic Blade, not with Kinetic Blasts.

Kinetic Blade is simply activated as part of an attack action or full attack action. Kinetic Blasts are their own Standard Action, and thus not legal to Vital Strike.

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