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I'm somewhat new to playing the kineticist class and I haven't been able to figure out how this is supposed to work.
I'm playing a wood kineticist and at level 2 I get the flesh of wood defense power:
Your skin toughens like timber, turning aside some blows. You gain a +1 enhancement bonus to your existing natural armor bonus. By accepting 1 point of burn, you can increase this enhancement bonus by 1. For every 3 levels beyond 2nd, you can accept 1 additional point of burn to further increase this enhancement bonus by 1 (to a maximum of +7 at 20th level).
So according to the talent progression, at level 5 I can accept 2 burn to get a +3 enhancement bonus to natural armor at level 8 I can accept 3 burn for +4 natural armor, etc.
However, this lags behind the actual burn I can accept per round by 1 level. I can't actually accept 2 burn per round until level 6, 3 burn until level 9 etc.
Is there some way to increase the amount of burn that can be accepted or a way to reduce the burn of a defense talent? Gather power only works on blasts, so that is not an option.
Does the specific text of flesh of wood override the general text of burn limit per round?
Or, is this a case of the designer of the wood element not keeping the burn limit per round in mind when they designed the defense talent and I'm stuck waiting one more level to actually be able to use the increased bonus?
Investing burn into a kineticist's defense talent lasts all day. So if you want to power up your defense talent, you accept one point in one round, one point in the next round, and so on until you have accepted as much burn as you want to.
Since this lasts all day, there's no reason to do it during combat when you can just do it at breakfast when other people are doing their daily preparations.
Generally speaking, particularly if you are using a physical blast, you will want to have as many points of burn at the start of the day as it takes to maximize your elemental overflow benefit. At level 6, for example, you would want three burn to maximize your elemental overflow: +2 to hit and damage, and then +2 to a physical stat on top of that. The language in the defense talent "for every 3 levels beyond 2 you can accept 1 additional point of burn" serves to limit both how much you can get from your defense talent, and how much burn you can sink in there. So a 6th level phytokineticist will only be able to invest 2 burn into flesh of wood, so to get that third point you would need to use a different source of burn.
The "burn/round" limit really only affects blasts, as it serves to cap how much you can "nova", it really has no impact on what you're doing out of combat. Action economy, after all, doesn't matter during breakfast.
What Mr. Cabbage said. You wake up in the morning and invest 1 burn into your defense for +1 nat armor. Then you invest 1 more burn for another +1 nat armor. Then you have that bonus all day until you wake up again tomorrow. Now you go through your whole day with at least 2 burn towards your daily max and don't have to worry about doing it in combat.
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OK, can someone help point me to where in the rules it says you can take longer than the stated action to activate the power and spread out accepting the burn over multiple rounds? I would think that since the power takes an immediate action to activate, you would have to pay all the burn as part of that immediate (or swift) action. I never heard of any rule that says you can take longer to activate a power than it actually requires.
The ability says "You can take one burn to increase the effect."
So I wake up, I have Flesh of Wood so I get +1 NA.
Round 1, I accept one burn, I increase the effect by 1, one plus one is two, so I have +2 NA.
Round 2, I accept one burn, I increase the effect by 1, one plus two is three, so I have +3 NA.
Repeat as needed.
The key is that the benefit from your elemental defense never decreases until your burn for the day is removed. So you could wake up, add 1 to it, spend an hour reading a book, add one to it, run a marathon, add one to it, eat a big meal, add one to it, and so on until you hit the cap specified by the ability.
You can only do it one at a time since the ability says you can spend 1 burn to increase it by 1. But the benefit is also semi-permanent, you keep the bonus until your burn is removed e.g. after you sleep 8 hours. This means you spend 1 burn to give it a +1. Then some time later, either immediately next or minutes/hours/whatever later you can spend 1 more burn to give it another +1. As the ability says, they will all stack up to a maximum stated by the ability and based on your class level.
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OK, I think I figured out the problem. The wording on flesh of wood could be better. I hadn't read any of the other elements since I knew I wanted to play a phytokineticist, so I hadn't compared any of the other talents.
The miss chance increases by 5% for every 5 kineticist levels you possess beyond 2nd. By accepting 1 point of burn, you can increase the miss chance by 5% until the next time your burn is removed. You can continue to accept points of burn to increase the miss chance further, up to a maximum of 75%.
By accepting 1 point of burn, you can increase the bonus by 1 until the next time your burn is removed. You can increase the bonus multiple times in this way, but it can’t be increased by more than 50% of its starting value.
Both of the above make it clear that the process of accepting burn can be repeated every round.
You gain a +1 enhancement bonus to your existing natural armor bonus. By accepting 1 point of burn, you can increase this enhancement bonus by 1. For every 3 levels beyond 2nd, you can accept 1 additional point of burn to further increase this enhancement bonus by 1 (to a maximum of +7 at 20th level).
Nothing here makes it clear that you can continue to increase the bonus round after round by continuing to accept burn. The way I read it was you decided how much burn you wanted to accept (up to the limit for your level) at the time you activated the power. I think given the way most abilities work in Pathfinder (you activate something and you make all the decisions required at that time) is what threw me off.