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After obtaining a Grippli boon, i've been wracking my brain looking for an interesting build idea. [For PFS, likely]
Originally, i wanted to make a Sylph Kineticist- but a pyrokinetic frog, especially an emotionally unstable one, sounds like an interesting idea.
Looking over the Psychokineticist that came out in Horror Adventure.
Grippli's get a -2 Str/+2 Dex/+2 Wis, so with their inherit Wisdom boost, i was thinking this could work.
But the big question- is the Psychokineticist a worthwhile archetype?
tl:dr- PK trades Wisdom for Con, only gets a number of burn equal to Wis modifier, gets negatives to Wis-saves and skills instead of Nonlethal burn, [u]loses all abilities if immune to emotional based effects[/u] <<--wtf?!, gets an alchemical bonus to mental states when Aura is active [at later level].
In ways, it's comparable. The burn simulating WIS damage (by reducing your saves and skills) is similar to regular burn simulating CON damage (by reducing effective HP), but the WIS penalty is higher.
The inability to benefit from immunities, losing your abilities if you are under a fear effect, no longer gaining resilience to critical hits and sneak attacks, and the lower burn cap, however, are all significant drawbacks, on top of causing your Will save, the (debatably) most important save, to plummet. And all you gain from this is Sense Motive as a class skill and Psychic Sensitivity as a feat, which, together, probably wouldn't even be worth a trait.
So it's... okay for races that lack the constitution. But, honestly, I would take the lower constitution any day, so unless the race has a wisdom bonus and a constitution penalty, I would seriously pass on the archetype.
The one advantage is the higher HP total and I believe the archetype stacks with the Elemental Anhilator who suffers from being a melee combatant constantly taking damage.
...
It still sucks though. Don't take it.
Not very good.
One of the main problems here is that it moves the elemental overflow away from physical scores and over towards mental scores. This is a problem since the overflow not only boosted con, which determined things like DCs, but it also boosted dex, which is your attack stat.
Overflow plays two primary roles for the class:
1. Straight bonus to attack/damage. But I would not actually count this as a bonus. You are a class that does attack rolls, both ranged and melee... and you cannot get your weapon enhanced (since it is a spell). So I mostly count the straight bonus as a replacement for weapon enhancements.
2. Bonuses to your physical stats, with enough to go around to boost your attack stat, dex. Heck, I might even advise putting the +6 into dex instead of con. This part of the feature actually covers the standard '+3 to +5 bonus to attack' that most classes get. Without this part of the features... well... you are a 3/4 BAB class. You can't afford to NOT have it. This is what separates core rogues from bards, inquisitors, etc.
So overall... the psychokineticist is actually not suited to physical blasts at all. You want the energy blasts with their touch AC, where you hit or miss does not really need decent stats. This also has the advantage of giving you some blasts that are purely save based (since fire has some good ones)... but a lot of those also rely on dex for the saves involved...
So even before you get to weaknesses to mental stuff (Which includes completely wiping out your defenses, I might add), the tanking of will saves (which makes you weaker to stuff that targets you 'off switch'), and the loss of con as you 'casting' stat... this archetype blows just because it doesn't do anything for your dex.
If you could do anything while under a fear/emotion effect, it might be all right. But you can't even do a basic blast, so I'd pass. It makes a nice Cleric dip with Elemental Annihilator to get Wisdom to melee damage, though.
Now, if you're playing a Dwarf, Half-Elf, or other race that can easily boost will saves a bunch, this does give you a little more starting "free" burn than regular, since normally it's only Toughness that boosts your "free" burn.
If you could do anything while under a fear/emotion effect, it might be all right. But you can't even do a basic blast, so I'd pass. It makes a nice Cleric dip with Elemental Annihilator to get Wisdom to melee damage, though.
Now, if you're playing a Dwarf, Half-Elf, or other race that can easily boost will saves a bunch, this does give you a little more starting "free" burn than regular, since normally it's only Toughness that boosts your "free" burn.
You can't even 'not die' while under emotion effects, since your defense gets shut off. So you get squishier even than a regular kineticist with max out burn depending on the element- I mean... an earth user that puts everything into DR? They could take hits like they were nothing while you are just standing there getting pummeled while having twice the effective HP.
Your defence or other currently active effects only get shut off if you accept immunity to some mind-affecting stuff. Otherwise you just can't do anything, which I guess is bad enough.
Your defence or other currently active effects only get shut off if you accept immunity to some mind-affecting stuff. Otherwise you just can't do anything, which I guess is bad enough.
It is a bit hard to tell. The 'you lose use of your talents to emotion stuff' and 'you lose your abilities if you are immune to emotion sutff' are mentioned in the exact same sentence. The defense talents are mentioned in a following sentence that says 'this includes'. So it is hard to tell if it was referring to the second alone, or to both.
Ignoring that linguistic knot (which could see table variation due to interpretation), the defenses are labeled as wild talents. But the psycho does say 'use'...
Overall, I feel like this massive change in class mechanics could have used more than two sentences of explanation. Or at least an enter press to make them separate paragraphs. Just that one tiny thing would make things FAR clearer. Changes like this should not be shouted like the yells of an auctioneer trying to hypnotize people into making bids.
It doesn't seem like they get much back for all the penalties. They can't take as much burn, their Burn penalties are more severe (losing 1hp/level negates half the benefit of a +2 to Con while a -2 to all Will saves and WIS skills negates 2* the benefit of a +2 to Wisdom), and they lose the inbuilt fortification. Lower accuracy and HP due to the loss of the physical boosts and the lack of a need for Constitution too.
The one place I can see this excelling is in Gestalt with an arcane caster. The Alchemical Bonus to mental stats increases your save DCs, you get Fortitude and Reflex as good saves, you get 3/4 BAB, more skills, and the good will save offsets the burn penalty.
Make a Grippli Mesmerist.
Make a Grippli Mesmerist.
I, uh... what? Where did that come from?
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Make a Grippli Mesmerist.I, uh... what? Where did that come from?
Possibly a reference to Hypno-toad.
All glory to the hypno-- wait, where was I just now?
But yeah, it seems out of left field and not a good use of the poster's desires.
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All glory to the hypno-- wait, where was I just now?
But yeah, it seems out of left field and not a good use of the poster's desires.
Definitely, but if i was interested in making a Grippl Mesmerist- I'd ruin it and build a Toxitician- with possibly a dip into Brawler or Slater.
I'm still interested in building a Geniekin Kiniesticist [as per my old post on the matter]
Would a Sylph make a good with the archetype?
I would try a 7/16/12/13/18/7 build, possibly an aerokineticist [though, i want to try a non-linear element type.]
Short answer: no
Long answer: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!
Loses access to in class accuracy through DEX boosted... keeps HP to lower it's already weakest save, and gets a vulnerability to all the same things psychic spell users have which all are commonly Will saves... everything about it is poorly made.