According to the rules, a telekineticist could lift a small house by taking the right powers, but the second a kobold as much as touches it with his pinky it becomes immovable. What kineticist needs is the kind of play testing where players ask the question "does this make sense or does it feel immersion breaking?" That helps build core assumptions of how the class should work, at which point different statistics and progression tables can be tested.
ALL DAY!
Why do you care about all day when all you need is on demand? All day powers are as effective as on demand powers if, and only if the situation that is applicable to said power is very frequent. Being able to breathe under water all the time is about as useful as having one water breathing spell prepared for the day.
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Yea pyros don't breathe smoke or can be fully immersed in lava with no issues unlike a hydrokineticist with greater waterdancer. Geos with earth glide still gotta hold their breath.
Hydros can create water and submerge themselves with no issues at level 1. Can breathe in it at level 10 if they so choose.
I want my pyro to be walking around on fire all the time, but then I got people throwing questions/complaints at me like:
"Are your clothes and magic items on fire or taking damage? It's not like those things have energy resistance or immune to fire."
"How do you hold scrolls? Or other note-taking devices."
"Your burning body's light is giving away our location."
"If you swim in lava you're eventually gonna be burned to death."
"It's counter-productive to the game for you to set everything on fire just so you can feel like you're in your element. That village did nothing to you." I guess 99% of games involve the party NOT adventuring into a fire zone for a whole adventuring day. The potential 1% is going to the Plane of Fire.WHERE. IS. THE. JUSTICE?
Actually, by the rules a kineticist who has accepted burn manifests their element on their body unless they consciously suppress the effect. So a pyrokineticist should definitely just be constantly on fire. I think Seifter specifically mentioned this example when explaining that point.
That's just elemental overflow. I meant using a burning infusion on myself or using another means of "lighting one on fire" for an actual 1d6 fire damage to simply be ignored thanks to heat adaptation and 3 points of burn. Or better yet, fire immunity.
Hydrokineticists don't even actually get hurt by water just for being submerged in it and demanding to be able to breathe the stuff sooner than a pyro ever could with fire/smoke (currently never).
Hydrokineticists don't even actually get hurt by water just for being submerged in it and demanding to be able to breathe the stuff sooner than a pyro ever could with fire/smoke (currently never).
"But this other thing isn't the same, so you can't want to fix this!"
Are you serious? Is this your "gotcha!" moment? Sure. Giving fire kineticists the ability to not choke on their own flames would be good. Make it a part of fire sculpting or something.
The class is about manipulating water. NOT BREATHING WATER! The class successfully manipulates water. Therefore the class is successfully doing the thing it's all about. Breathing water is not what the class is all about.But for you, the real injustice should be Fire and Wood, neither get the ability to breath in their elements.
Breathing water and going underwater is not the focus of the class.
So interacting with bodies of water is not the focus of the class literally named "water"
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You don't seem interested in honest discussion, so I'll take my leave. I'm sorry you're upset with some of the design choices of the class. I hope you come up with houserules that your GM/group is amenable to. (I recommend a 1st level talent that mimics air bubble, perhaps scaling from limited duration to unlimited later on.)
I'm not being entirely serious about the "breathing in one's element" thing since I don't expect it as a given for a kineticist to get it. Plus even if it's available in low levels and not part of some combo ability packaged with another talent, there's an opportunity cost on picking that talent over more useful utility (or infusion if via Extra Wild Talent feat) talent. Still it shouldn't be built right into basic kinesis talents either as that'll be way more useful for some elements than others: most useful for hydro and void and earth and phyto (I guess?), than pyro or aero or aether (who breathes aether?).
Kineticists are supposed to be emulate elementals, what with pulling matter from the elemental planes and increasing percentage chance to ignore critical hits or sneak attack depending on burn points. Elementals can skip on the whole breathing thing cuz they're frickin' elementals. Kineticists are whatever they start type/subtype they start as in character creation, not actually turn one into an elemental and get all perks of that monster type.
Hydrokineticists don't even actually get hurt by water just for being submerged in it and demanding to be able to breathe the stuff sooner than a pyro ever could with fire/smoke (currently never)."But this other thing isn't the same, so you can't want to fix this!"
Are you serious? Is this your "gotcha!" moment? Sure. Giving fire kineticists the ability to not choke on their own flames would be good. Make it a part of fire sculpting or something.
So interacting with bodies of water is not the focus of the class literally named "water"
They're interacting with it. It's called swimming. Look, they're pretty decent in it with a talent. They become even better swimmers with a second talent. Oh! A second interaction, creating it out of nothing!
Can geos live underground breathing in dirt? Nope. Pyros with fire? Nope. Hydros with water? With a talent? Void with void? Talent. Phytos with plant matter? Nope, well ignoring photosynthesis, I guess. Should they? Elementals don't get "breathe element" automatically so why should a kineticist? Some kineticists can at certain levels with talents. Not that big a deal.
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It's just "I can create and move water around powers" simply don't actually lead themselves to "magically breathing underwater".
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Wearing a pointy hat doesn't naturally lead to being able to summon Angel's, what's your point?
Maybe that being able to summon water and move it around doesn't imply innate ability to change the laws of physics (yea yea physics in a world of magic, blah blah blah) to suddenly allow being able break down the molecular composition of the water to make it breathable. Nor does it innately imply that your body physiology changes to be able to breath the O2 from the water like a fish.
Wearing a pointy hat doesn't naturally lead to being able to summon Angel's, what's your point?
You've got that backwards; you don't summon angels because you wear a pointy hat, but you do wear a pointy hat because you can summon angels.
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Wearing a pointy hat doesn't naturally lead to being able to summon Angel's, what's your point?
Tell that to my occultist :P
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A class being called "water kineticist" does not mean that any conceivable power that interacts with water/ice in any way fits them thematically. The swim thing makes great thematic sense - they use their kinetic powers to make the water push them around rather than swimming themselves in the traditional manner, and they get it early because it seems like one of the first things you could do with that kind of power. Turning water into something you can breathe*, which is the only way that using kinetics to get water breathing makes thematic sense, sounds like a much more difficult thing to do.
Meanwhile the air guy just needs to use his air moving powers to move some air near his head and hold it there. Seems like it should be much easier for him, right?
There is no theme problem here at all, assuming you look past the word 'water' and examine how the class is actually meant to manifest its powers in-world.
*presumably by continuously manipulating the water around his head into a perfluorocarbon that allows liquid breathing.
Meanwhile the air guy just needs to use his air moving powers to move some air near his head and hold it there. Seems like it should be much easier for him, right?
Dunno. Water guy keeping a pocket of not-water around him doesn't seem particularly more difficult than air guy keeping a pocket of not-water around him.
I do think it is worthy of mention that page count is a very limited thing and kineticist already took up a giant amount of the book.
I mean, my unchained kineticist takes up 30 pages on it's own before even reaching utility wild talents.
According to the rules, a telekineticist could lift a small house by taking the right powers, but the second a kobold as much as touches it with his pinky it becomes immovable.
This is only half true. The kineticist can keep lifting something that gets touched. They can't initiate a lift on a "house" already being touched though, which is kind of weird.
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Arcutiys did have other points though in which the class had issues, again with the very tight tuning of a lot of features to avoid breaking. It's a hard call to have a more easily broken but less restricted class or the class that we have now which is harder to break but suffers on a freedom level.
It's an interesting dichotomy. I think that ultimately a designer in that situation, when possible to do so beforehand (sometimes it's impossible because you miss a loophole), should pretty much always choose the latter, since in groups that don't try to work collaboratively on balance (like my home group does; work collaboratively that is) but instead have one GM as the main person looking at balance, it's socially far easier to get a group to agree to loosening a restriction than it is to get them to agree to fixing a loophole or exploit they wanted to exploit, and even if you fail to reach an agreement (or, indeed, don't notice the issue beforehand until or unless it starts affecting play) you fail gently with a restriction but loudly with a loophole.
You know, Waterbenders don't actually have the ability to breathe water. They just bend the water away from their heads as they enter to bring some air with them, and then use their bending to swim fast enough that they don't stay under for that long.
It's an interesting dichotomy. I think that ultimately a designer in that situation, when possible to do so beforehand (sometimes it's impossible because you miss a loophole), should pretty much always choose the latter, since in groups that don't try to work collaboratively on balance (like my home group does; work collaboratively that is) but instead have one GM as the main person looking at balance, it's socially far easier to get a group to agree to loosening a restriction than it is to get them to agree to fixing a loophole or exploit they wanted to exploit, and even if you fail to reach an agreement (or, indeed, don't notice the issue beforehand until or unless it starts affecting play) you fail gently with a restriction but loudly with a loophole.
I can definitely see the thought process on that, now that you laid it out for me. While I sort of agree, I think it went a little too far in that direction, in a way that it kind of cut in with the flavor more than I'm comfortable with. I dunno, but I think it's reasonable to put it on the GM to stop something too silly, like finding some exploit to stack two dozen kinetic covers on top of eachother so you can climb up something. I didn't see a lot of the restrictions as necessary as the author erred the side of
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The existence of the Chaokineticist is the straw that broke the camel's back. If it was just Aero, sure, we're going to judge worthiness of waterbreathing talents by in-world physics, that works. The problem is when negative energy guy gets it because "void". You've made it a pure thematic thing, and that means Hydro has more of a right than any of them.
If Hydro can't have it because breaking down water molecules with psychic powers is too complex, then Chao can't have it because their explanation doesn't even exist.
If Chao gets it because gravity -> space, then Hydro gets it because water -> water.
Can't have it both ways. Equal Opportunity Breathing NOW!!!
Hopefully one day we'll get a Planar Adventures hardcover with additional utility wild talents of the five elements.
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Or a nice, big Ultimate Kineticist book. Not Occult, just Kineticist. An entire book, so page count is much, much less of an issue.
The potential...
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It's an interesting dichotomy. I think that ultimately a designer in that situation, when possible to do so beforehand (sometimes it's impossible because you miss a loophole), should pretty much always choose the latter, since in groups that don't try to work collaboratively on balance (like my home group does; work collaboratively that is) but instead have one GM as the main person looking at balance, it's socially far easier to get a group to agree to loosening a restriction than it is to get them to agree to fixing a loophole or exploit they wanted to exploit, and even if you fail to reach an agreement (or, indeed, don't notice the issue beforehand until or unless it starts affecting play) you fail gently with a restriction but loudly with a loophole.
As I've said before, I like the class, although I can see the problems others are having with it. There was a lot of 'aha!' moments in my guide where I saw where you clarified things to prevent abuse, and really, I agreed with most of them. But the points raised in the thread's original post still are valid. Even the claim was is that they wanted to like the class.
Personally, I think we could get a water breathing talent in a later book, it's something that would make sense a lot earlier for theme.
Is it weird I think electricity blast also should be useable underwater without penalty...?
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Is it weird I think electricity blast also should be useable underwater without penalty...?
I think it does already; only fire has special rules underwater out of energy types (Disclaimer: This is off the top of my head and I didn't actually look it up). If electricity had any kind of special rule for underwater, it would probably be to disperse out into a low damage AoE.
I think it does already; only fire has special rules underwater out of energy types (Disclaimer: This is off the top of my head and I didn't actually look it up). If electricity had any kind of special rule for underwater, it would probably be to disperse out into a low damage AoE.
All ranged attacks take accuracy penalties underwater by default.... though I suppose that might make sense with electricity since it'd be going everywhere and thus harder to aim.
I think it does already; only fire has special rules underwater out of energy types (Disclaimer: This is off the top of my head and I didn't actually look it up). If electricity had any kind of special rule for underwater, it would probably be to disperse out into a low damage AoE.All ranged attacks take accuracy penalties underwater by default.... though I suppose that might make sense with electricity since it'd be going everywhere and thus harder to aim.
Ah yes, was forgetting it would potentially apply as an "attack with another ranged weapon" independent of damage type; I was focusing on the chart for bludgeoning/slashing/piercing. Yeah, there's definitely a reason that FAQ on when spells and abilities count as a weapon is ultra hairy. It'd make sense from the dispersal in electricity, yeah, and I guess water's high specific heat would mean that fire and cold would be "absorbed" by surrounding water, so to speak. But that's just stuff I'm saying because I can try to use science to justify lots of things, hehe.
You would save a lot of word space if you made the flame jet/self telekinesis act as the levitate spell and the greater versions act as the fly spell.
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You would save a lot of word space if you made the flame jet/self telekinesis act as the levitate spell and the greater versions act as the fly spell.
That changes the effects a lot... not like it's just a wording change.
Ah yes, was forgetting it would potentially apply as an "attack with another ranged weapon" independent of damage type; I was focusing on the chart for bludgeoning/slashing/piercing. Yeah, there's definitely a reason that FAQ on when spells and abilities count as a weapon is ultra hairy. It'd make sense from the dispersal in electricity, yeah, and I guess water's high specific heat would mean that fire and cold would be "absorbed" by surrounding water, so to speak. But that's just stuff I'm saying because I can try to use science to justify lots of things, hehe.
I would agree if cold was separate from water. But since they are connected it feels like frozen water so I think a line in water itself saying that all it's associated blasts suffer no penalties would be best.
I don't really mind lacking underwater breathing till 10. In fact I like that Undine make for natural Water Kineticists picks for that reason. But the blasts problem bothers me.
That changes the effects a lot... not like it's just a wording change.You would save a lot of word space if you made the flame jet/self telekinesis act as the levitate spell and the greater versions act as the fly spell.
Like only being able to use Flame Jet and Self TK to move up or down only, not any other direction.