When the playtest was released the Flame Jet power for fire kineticists inspired me to make Tsuna from "Katekyo Hitman Reborn!" using Kinetic Fist. Upon release I found the Elemental Ascetic archetype and figured it would fit him perfectly - his best skills (Perception and Sense Motive) are both Wisdom-based, his training methods certainly fit the monk archetype (climbing cliffs, sparring on low stamina, learning self-control, etc), and it would let him do Kinetic Fist from level 1. I didn't realize until much later that this archetype gives up way too much for what it gains.
For free Kinetic Fist and Flurry you lose access all targeted ranged blasts and Elemental Overflow - Tsuna only has 1 ranged attack and the Ascetic can still use it so that didn't matter much, but the loss of Elemental Overflow means lower physical stats and no in-class attack bonus, putting it solidly in Chained Rogue levels of accuracy. You also lose that crit and sneak attack negation, meaning you're actually more vulnerable in melee than normal. Tsuna's signiture move, the X-Burner, would be stronger using the normal kineticist due to the loss of Elemental Overflow. That is a hard pill to swallow.
For WIS to AC and a scaling AC bonus (up to +4) you lose Elemental Defense. While the bonus AC seems worthwhile you cannot wear armor of any kind, meaning without a DEX/WIS build you have rather low AC early on. You also lose access to all the defensive utility talents like Heat Wave and Shimmering Mirage that require your elemental defense.
You lose 3 infusions for the ability to take burn to increase your Kinetic Fist damage dice. I suppose if you use a Composite blast on your Kinetic Fist you could get up to +6d6 (or +7d6 if the diadem boosting your blast to 21d6 is legal for Kinetic Fist) and then increasing the dice size could be neat, but after running the numbers it's still pretty weak.
Assuming a Composite Fist adds 6d6 damage, boosting the dice to 6d12 costs 4 burn and gives you 18 more damage (6d6=21, 6d12=39). Using Empower instead costs 1 burn and gives 10 more damage (9d6=31). That 3 burn is definitely not worth 8 damage per hit.
2 Burn gives me Maximize for 15 damage (6d6=36). 3 Burn gives me Empowered Maximize for 25 damage (36+3d6=45), Targeted Dispel Magic (Unraveling Infusion) on every hit, or Will Save vs Blind (Flash Infusion) on every hit. These are all better uses of your burn than increased dice size on such a low number of dice.
After working out details on the build I came to the conclusion that what I see as an iconic example of the Elemental Ascetic would be better represented by a Kineticist with a 1-level Monk dip. So what's the deal? Am I missing something? How would you go about building this character?
I saw no reason any Kineticist wouldn't be better served by dipping into Unchained Monk instead.
I would argue that you are better off taking the unarmed Magus archetype. At least that way you are not tied to one energy type.
Also note, that Elemental Ascetic has the same wording in their Flurry of Blows as the warpriest. You are not using your level as your BAB with the flurry. You would be better off with a no-archetype Kineticist with IUS and TWF feats, or at best, a one level dip in Monk/Brawler/Unarmed Fighter
I must be missing something about this.
Flurry of Blows (Ex)
At 1st level, a sacred fist can make a flurry of blows attack as a full-attack action. This ability works like the monk ability of the same name, except the sacred fist's attack bonus from warpriest levels does not count as his warpriest level.This ability replaces sacred weapon.
Elemental Flurry (Su)
At 1st level, an elemental ascetic gains Improved Unarmed Strike as a bonus feat. He gains the kinetic fist form infusion and it costs 0 points of burn instead of 1 point of burn. When using the kinetic fist form infusion with a full attack, he can make a flurry of blows as the monk class feature. He must use only his fists to make this flurry, no matter what other abilities he possesses.
My read is that they are different. The Elemental Ascetic is "as the monk class feature" and the Sacred Fist is "like the monk ability of the same name, except the sacred fist's attack bonus from warpriest levels does not count as his warpriest level". If the Elemental Ascetic gets errata'd later, that's one thing. But as it stands it appears that you use your Kineticist level as your BAB when using Elemental Flurry.
Or am I reading this wrong?
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The ascetic is intended to grant full BAB, unlike sacred fist (that and the potential for a decreased reliance on burn are why it doesn't use overflow), though it's true that not having the effective monk level tag makes it ambiguous.
The ascetic is intended to grant full BAB, unlike sacred fist (that and the potential for a decreased reliance on burn are why it doesn't use overflow), though it's true that not having the effective monk level tag makes it ambiguous.
This is good to know, I'd have never have thought they'd get full BAB. Is there a way in the wording to know if you'd get full bab or not from a flurry copy?
The ascetic is intended to grant full BAB, unlike sacred fist (that and the potential for a decreased reliance on burn are why it doesn't use overflow), though it's true that not having the effective monk level tag makes it ambiguous.This is good to know, I'd have never have thought they'd get full BAB. Is there a way in the wording to know if you'd get full bab or not from a flurry copy?
It says it's flurry like a Monk, and they get full BAB on flurry.
The ascetic is intended to grant full BAB, unlike sacred fist (that and the potential for a decreased reliance on burn are why it doesn't use overflow), though it's true that not having the effective monk level tag makes it ambiguous.This is good to know, I'd have never have thought they'd get full BAB. Is there a way in the wording to know if you'd get full bab or not from a flurry copy?
It really should have said to treat your kineticist level as your effective monk level, and ideally that's how you would know. As far as I know, there is really no default for abilities like that, though, and the intent has varied when I've collected abilities missing those tags to bring up with the PDT when compiling errata. In sacred fist's case, I'm guessing it originally intended to have full BAB in order to match the pseudo-full-BAB that warpriest's beta version had at the time, and then due to the wording being ambiguous, the necessity of a change didn't register in later passes after the warpriest changed to its final version, but that's pure speculation. In any case, I'm trying to make sure that we more often call out this kind of thing in the future, but it looks like that's one where I didn't catch it.
The ascetic is intended to grant full BAB, unlike sacred fist (that and the potential for a decreased reliance on burn are why it doesn't use overflow), though it's true that not having the effective monk level tag makes it ambiguous.
Well now, that changes things a bit. With Full BAB flurry the lower physical stats aren't as important since you shouldn't be taking burn as often and you have a higher attack roll than normal. Our group uses the Unchained Monk though, which has no Level=BAB clause since they already get Full BAB. We might have to houserule that.
The change to flurry helps a bit, but I still think that a dip into monk or a monk-like class would be better for many builds. you give up a lot for ascetic.
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The ascetic is intended to grant full BAB, unlike sacred fist (that and the potential for a decreased reliance on burn are why it doesn't use overflow), though it's true that not having the effective monk level tag makes it ambiguous.Well now, that changes things a bit. With Full BAB flurry the lower physical stats aren't as important since you shouldn't be taking burn as often and you have a higher attack roll than normal. Our group uses the Unchained Monk though, which has no Level=BAB clause since they already get Full BAB. We might have to houserule that.
Even if you use the unchained monk for monk (and the unchained other classes too), when an archetype or feat or something gives you a class feature, if it doesn't say unchained, by default it gives the feature from the vanilla class. As usual, I am 100% for home groups altering that default and figuring things out for your own game though! If you want to tinker, one possibility is just using Unchained flurry + full BAB.
But yeah, one of the "secrets" of ascetic is that you can actually take far less burn and still do your stuff, allowing you to use Wis if you feel like it for DCs and stuff or even if you feel like it just keep using Con and have more effective hp than everyone else.
The ascetic is intended to grant full BAB, unlike sacred fist (that and the potential for a decreased reliance on burn are why it doesn't use overflow), though it's true that not having the effective monk level tag makes it ambiguous.Well now, that changes things a bit. With Full BAB flurry the lower physical stats aren't as important since you shouldn't be taking burn as often and you have a higher attack roll than normal. Our group uses the Unchained Monk though, which has no Level=BAB clause since they already get Full BAB. We might have to houserule that.Even if you use the unchained monk for monk (and the unchained other classes too), when an archetype or feat or something gives you a class feature, if it doesn't say unchained, by default it gives the feature from the vanilla class. As usual, I am 100% for home groups altering that default and figuring things out for your own game though! If you want to tinker, one possibility is just using Unchained flurry + full BAB.
But yeah, one of the "secrets" of ascetic is that you can actually take far less burn and still do your stuff, allowing you to use Wis if you feel like it for DCs and stuff or even if you feel like it just keep using Con and have more effective hp than everyone else.
That's one thing I noticed - with no Elemental Defense or Overflow there is no pressure to take Burn if you can avoid it. That coupled with the ability to use WIS for your class features means you can safely take an average CON score without gutting your ability to function. A silver lining if I've ever seen one.
Guys? What stops you from getting the elemental defence by just expanding your base element at 7th and taking Expanded Elemental Defense as a wild talent?
Guys? What stops you from getting the elemental defence by just expanding your base element at 7th and taking Expanded Elemental Defense as a wild talent?The fact that the archetype forbids it.
fair enough, i had not seen that line during my initial reading
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This archetype looks like one of the few niche cases that could benefit from taking the VMC Monk option from Pathfinder Unchained. Most characters are turned off by the armor prohibition, but an Elemental Ascetic does not wear armor anyway. The 3rd level ability is a scaling unarmed damage, and the 7th level ability is evasion -- a nice start for this archetype. At 11th level he gains a ki pool (so he can unlock his chakras in addition to other goodies), at 15th level he gets an AC bump, and at 19th level he gets Improved Evasion. None of these abilities are wasted on an Elemental Ascetic except for the minor detail of already having Improved Unarmed Strike as a bonus feat.
Can you get feats that require "Flurry of blows" with an Elemental Ascetic. I' guessing not, but i don't loose anything for asking.
Can you get feats that require "Flurry of blows" with an Elemental Ascetic. I' guessing not, but i don't loose anything for asking.
im not entirelyy sure, since you do gain the ability to PERFORM a flurry of Blows though the name is slightly diferrent.
The verbatim name of the ability doesn't matter as Long as the ability explicitly works as flurry