Kineticist 3 (cold) [PFS]: The Enigma Vaults


Playtest Feedback


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Slick, human kineticist.

st10dx17cn16in10ws13ch10

Traits: Reactionary (+2 init), Indomitable Faith (+1 Will saves)

F+6/R7/W+3

HP: 33 (30 after burn).
AC: 21 FF17 T13

Feats: Point-blank shot, Precise Shot, Toughness.

Skills: Per+5 Stealth+7, Prof(brewer)+5, UMD+5, K_Arc+1, K_Planes+1

Rest of party:
Aahz aasimar seeker life oracle
Naiar lore oracle
Natean cavalier (greataxe)
River Song kin 3 hydro (slick and heal)
Marcus magus

1: Knowledge history and ability to comprehend/speak Ancient Azlanti. Slick unable to contribute as he lacks both skill points and class skills.

2: Fight with pair of skeletons. Slick fires his cold blast and discovers that they are immune to cold, so he switches to his sling. The magus and cavalier make short work of them. Magus moves up, swift enchants his weapon and crits. The cavalier sticks to his greataxe, powering through the DR.

3: Strange humanoid boss and her 4 minions.
Shaman succeeds with confusion curse, taking her out of the fight.
Slick fires and hits a minion, to find out that they are cold resistant.
He then switches to flanking support only for rest of the fight. The magus and cavalier quickly chop through the opposition. Oracle heals during and after the fight.

4: Exploring strange exhibits. Slick does not have detect magic, nor does he posses a relevant skill to help identify all the objects. The shaman, magus, oracles and cavalier all possess relevant skills.

5: Fight 3 akatas (blue doggies). Slick shoots and find out that they are also immune to cold. As the cavalier and magus proceed to chop through them, Slick drops kinetic cover forcing the akata to reposition, denying the mob a full attack but that is his only contribution the entire fight.

6: Fungi room. Party members rolled badly and failed to identify these creatures. Slick unable to id because he doesn't have the skill at all. During combat Slick finds out that they are also cold resistant. Slick only succeeds in damaging one on a lucky crit.

7: Boss fight. Tough fight. Flying invisible summoner with negative energy channeling, free grapple with auto-sneak attack, self-healing and multiple wands and scrolls. In melee he has 4 attacks for +14 to hit plus grab which grants extra auto sneak damage plus a special attack rider that causes 1d4 ability damage to a stat of his choice. And also the boss is cold-immune. Most of the party ended up with ability damage. Magus charges in. Boss turns invisible and starts summoning. Oracle drops glitterdust, revealing the boss, but blinding the magus. Boss summons 3 dretches. Slick shoots at one and find out that they are heavily cold resistant. Cavalier takes a full attack and ends up grappled and taking ability damage. Slick gambles that the glitters and gear on the far side of the room has something useful and he is right. Total defense to make it across then runs back taking 3 AoO's and hands off a fire elemental gem to another party member who uses it. The fire elemental barely damaged anything but it did buy the party some breathing room. Shaman lands confusion curse which literally saves the party as they can focus on the other summons and let the boss fight himself and a summons. Slick could only total defense, flank, and block this combat. Boss recovers from his confusion and drops several negative channels almost wiping the party before the cavalier finishes it off.

8: Two Ooze fight. Party fails to id and goes in swinging. Oracle tries daze and we find out it's an ooze and immune to mind-affecting. I shoot and find that this is the first fight where the foes isn't cold resistant or immune. Yay!

Summary:
Out of combat:
The kineticist was unable to contribute out of combat due to lack of skills. As he levels up I have been taking non-class knowledge skills but with 2+ points per level it will be a while before he can even make trained checks.
In combat: out of 6 fights, 5 were against cold resist or cold-immune opponents. Does not appear other blast options until level 7 and Expanded Element. Currently in such combats he offered moral (aid/assist action) support or use a sling or light crossbow. Once in a while he dropped a kinetic cover or a slick. As as he levels up, and flying foes become more prevalent the effectiveness of his non-scaling Slick decreases rapidly. While the kinetic cover hp does scale, not having the area it affects or having the options of other shapes (sphere, cage) limits its utility. Though it is a fun role-play device.

Out of 8 rounds where he did fire, only 3 shots did any damage making (2, 7 and 15 points) his running (across all plays) effective combat accuracy to 17 out of 41 total combat rounds or 41%.

Thank you for the continued opportunity for the playtest!


Not really relevant to the playtest but the Boss should have been immune to Confusion due to Plant traits.

That thing is nasty.

Designer

redward wrote:

Not really relevant to the playtest but the Boss should have been immune to Confusion due to Plant traits.

That thing is nasty.

That thing is super nasty. I don't use/allow chain constricts, and it was still a horror and a near TPK in my run. If he hadn't been focused on the cleric who continuously dissed his deity derisively throughout the adventure but was also nearly tapped out and was thus a poor choice of target, I'd say a TPK would have been fairly likely.

Spoiler:
It didn't help that the sorcerer started the fight by using the treacherous bag of tricks


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
Mark Seifter wrote:
redward wrote:

Not really relevant to the playtest but the Boss should have been immune to Confusion due to Plant traits.

That thing is nasty.

That thing is super nasty. I don't use/allow chain constricts, and it was still a horror and a near TPK in my run. If he hadn't been focused on the cleric who continuously dissed his deity derisively throughout the adventure but was also nearly tapped out and was thus a poor choice of target, I'd say a TPK would have been fairly likely.

** spoiler omitted **

Okay didn't know about the plant part I was just playing and I only learned about the creature's abilities as they came up in play. Hurm that would have meant it would have had 4 additional rounds of actions...meaning a dead character or possible TPK.

And about that other thing, yeah one of our "curious" players did that, triggered it and ran like heck out of the room, leaving the rest of us to deal with it. It worked out and we all had a good laugh though. :D

Overall I have to say I really enjoyed the kineticist...the GM said he felt really bad that almost everything was cold-immune/resist but I actually appreciated it because these are the things I want to find out in playtest. It forces the player to be more adaptive and creative on top of identifying areas to be addressed. I almost gave in and took bow proficiency as a feat but I believed that just wasn't thematic and it just felt wrong.

I'm actually on the side of not giving automatically both types of blasts per element because of what that does to the single blast element foci such as earth. Though not sure what other solution works better at this time (other than taking up a bow.)

Thanks again Mr. Seifer for the opportunity to test this class!

Community / Forums / Archive / Pathfinder / Playtests & Prerelease Discussions / Occult Adventures Playtest / Playtest Feedback / Kineticist 3 (cold) [PFS]: The Enigma Vaults All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.
Recent threads in Playtest Feedback