Goals:
- Make the kineticist class accessible and fun mechanically.
- Make the kineticist class accessible and fun thematically
Simple Blasts - Honestly most of these things are good enough as is. It's mainly the infusions and composite blasts that could use some rework. I would like to make one change with Aether having Force Blast as a simple energy blast that uses d4's in place of d6's.
Infusions Some need a rework while others just need to be reordered.
Another change would be that the simple blast you pick also comes with a level substance infusion that best matches the blast.
Here are some ideas:
Aether - Pushing
Fire - Buring
Water - Quenching
Cold - Chilling*
Air - Gusting
Electric - Thundering
Earth - Scattering**
Wood - Ivy***
Gravity - pulling
Negative - Draining?****
* Chilling is changed to be level 1 and burn 1, because as a first level spell, a damn wizard can stagger an enemy for a round with a snowball. Creatures that are resistant to cold temperatures as per endure elements or the feat endurance are immune unless you add an extra point of burn.
** Basically an infusion that makes your earth/metal/ice blase break upon impact and scatter caltrop-like pieces in a five foot square. Blast damage is halved.
*** Element:Wood. Covers your wood/summer/spring/winter/autumn blasts with a skin irritating resin that takes effect if the blast deals piercing or slashing damage. Basically a 1d4 round version of itching curse.
**** I'm thinking this should be a purely Void Based substance infusion that grants you a temporary hit point for dealing negative energy damage.
Obviously this means you cannot start picking Form Infusions until 3rd level but that should be fine because you get a pretty awesome option here:
Elemental Wave - Form Infusion, Universal, Level 1, Burn: 2, Reflex for Half
You shape your kinetic blast into a cone shaped burst. Physical Blasts deal half of your normal blast damage to creatures in a 30' cone. Energy blasts deal you full blast damage to enemies in 15' cone. Reflex DC is Dexterity based.
Misc. Changes - Fan of Flames and Spraying infusion are scrapped. Kinetic Blade and Kinetic Fist cost zero burn.
Burn (Ex) - this seems to be the biggest deal breaker when it comes to determining whether or not people want to play this class. Teh Scrappy Mechanic. On the one hand, it thematically represents the psychic nose-bleed trait and mechanically limits your a-magical magic. On the other hand, it requires a bit more book-keeping then your average spell caster with a mechanic the changes the core nature of non-lethal hp, it can turn your awesome telekinetic master into an even more fragile and limited glass canon than a wizard.
On the other other hand, being dropping from non-lethal damage avoids bleed-out and may save your life as the enemy focus's their attention on the rest of your party. This however is arguable because it depends on how cruel your gm may be. Suppose your kineticist loses conscious thanks to burn after receiving a pin-prick...while he was flying, cut to his head splattering on the ground and the Avatar being reborn light years away a week later (this may or may not refer to a version of Iron Gods where one pc was a version of Aang who was abducted by the Divinity and put in cryostasis before it crashed).
Of course altering how Burn works can vastly change core mechanics such Elemental Overflow. I've thought up the following options:
- Burn Pool: It worked with Magus, it worked with Investigator, it worked with every bloody thing. A kineticist has a pool of burn equal to her Con+3 that refreshes after eight hours rest. Everything else works as it did with elemental overflow depending on how much burn is spent. This may seem a bit overpowered when combined with Gather Power however and the specializations...we may need to get rid of one of those. Another problem is the thematic element off pushing one's limits. One idea is that using up all of a kineticist's burn puts her in the exhausted state and unable to gather power. She can rest for an hour to lower it to fatigued but one use of her wild talent or kinetic blast drops her back to exhausted and she still cannot use gather power until her pool is restored via 8 hours rest.
- Investiture 1: Burn works as normal with non-lethal damage per HD, however the amount of burn determines the maximum level of wild talents that you may use until it's removed. What does this mean? Take one point of burn and you can use your Level 1 infusions and utility talents for as much as you want for the rest of the day...meaning you cannot use an extended pushing kinetic blast unless you take on another point of burn. Thematically this would retain the flavor of the vanilla kineticist burn mechanic. Mechanically, this would be an extension of Elemental Overflow but it would obviously require a change in how burn is accrued. The maximum amount of burn per a day would be based on the effective caster level of the Kineticist instead of Con+3. Gather power would also break it a bit. For the low low price of a move action, you could use what is effectively a level 2 spell as your kinetic blast despite being level 3. Does the fact that you cannot gather power defensively make up for this? And don't even get me started on the Specialization Features.
- Investiture 2: A bit like mental focus and spells readied, you choose an infusion, composite, utility wild talent and take it's cost in burn but you can use it for free for the rest of the day. No change in anything else, if you want to use any other infusion or wild talent, you just use gather power. If you want to use extending and burn for flame blast, take 2 points burn and go to town until you get a good night's sleep. The pro is that you need to think about which wild talent you want to use for the rest of the day. Con is that your kineticist becomes closer to a caster with even more book keeping than vanilla.
- Leave As Is: Just take your character level multiply it by the number of burn and write it down as non-lethal damage. If you don't like basic math, why the hell are you playing a d20 Game for? Do something freeform! In essence, we assume the mechanic is loathed by scrubs and people who are unused to the idea of taking damage to make damage.
Internal Buffer - a very unnecessarily worded version of a once a day ability to mitigate Burn. And as overly complicated mechanically, it is just as ridiculous flavor wise.
Honestly, I'd prefer it be a feature that mitigates the non lethal damage taken from burn. Your buffer is how much burn you can take before it starts taxing you damage. It does not change the maximum amount of burn you can take, nor does it change how much you can take per a round but it does count for Elemental Overflow.
Basic Utility Talents - Really? Cantrip Spell-like abilities? What we need is an interplay of mechanic and theme that demonstrates an innate growth in the kineticist's control of her element. Utility Talents should be techniques she learns to implement from this control. To that end, I propose Core Talents that start off as basic in strength but grow in power as the kineticist grows.
Since this would be the equivalent of gaining free utility talents either this means spacing out utility talent gains or linking the growth of a core talent to something like elemental overflow. Personally, I prefer the latter because it fits with the visual appearance of EO.
Towards that end I made a proof of concept version of Telekinesis as a core talent:
Telekinesis – a telekineticist can use her power in place of physical strength for domestic purposes. She may attach strands of aether all items in contact with her person, using her Constitution in place of her Strength Score to determine her carrying capacity as well as for making Strength based ability checks (skills such as climb and swim remain unchanged).
As a standard action, she may concentrate her telekinesis to manipulate matter at a distance. She can any object or willing creature weighing 5 pounds + 5 per two levels of kineticist at close range as per the spell mage hand. Additionally, she can create a container of entwined strands of aether in order to hold liquids or piles of small objects of the same weight. You can dip the container to pick up or drop a liquid as a move action. If you possess the extended range wild talent, you can increase the range of basic telekinesis to medium range and increase the rate of movement to 30 feet per round, and if you possess the extreme range wild talent, You can increase the range of basic telekinesis to long range and increase the rate of movement to 60 feet per round. You can also use your basic telekinesis to duplicate the effects of the open/close cantrip.
Using telekinesis in this fashion or using an aether based kinetic blast returns her carry weight to being strength based until she spends a full-round action reattaching her aether strands to her encumbrance.
Elemental Overflow – You can perform any sort of fine manipulation you choose within close range, including attempting Sleight of Hand and Disable Device checks.
Elemental Overflow +2 – a kineticist increases the amount matter she may manipulate to 100 pounds per class level and may take a point of burn to increase this to 1000 per class level for 1 minute per class level.
Elemental Overflow +3 –You can perform combat maneuvers as telekinesis, but you use your Constitution modifier to determine your Combat Maneuver Bonus rather than your Intelligence or Charisma modifier. When performing dirty trick and steal combat maneuvers determine your Combat Maneuver Bonus using your Dexterity modifier instead of your Constitution modifier.
As you can see, I've effectively combined several aether-only utility talents with basic telekinesis and added a caveat that allows you to carry weight and pry door using your Con mod (with hopefully enough stipulation to keep it from being too SAD at level 1).
At first you can only use telekinesis move willing creatures and small objects in general directs. However, your manual control increases to the point of being able perform feats of dexterity from a distance (although not necessarily inconspicuously as elemental overflow has a visual effect). Then the strength of your telekinetic "muscles" begins to increase. Finally, you are capable of even moving unwilling creatures though not as per infusions like foe throw as telekinetic maneuvers is distinctly different from making a telekinetic blast that doubles as a bullrush, trip, double, awesome blow.
The only pitfall with this is similar to Investiture 1. A kineticist will effectively a Level 5 spell at 9th Level, albeit with at least 27 non-lethal damage.
Basically that's my starting point, I have some more ideas but this post is long enough.
