Should I Ban Kineticist?


Skull & Shackles


I'll look at the obvious ones first:

Water - Get Control Water at will via Water Manipulator at level 6. Used offensively, this will end naval encounters. Water Manipulator can instead take 1/1000 of the volume normally affected by Control Water and move it elsewhere. At level 6, this is still 43.2 cubic feet (or 320 gallons!) of water. Pushing 40 cubic feet of water against the stern of a ship repeatedly would probably warrant any sensible GM to allow you to move at much faster speeds.

Air - Get Control Winds at will via Wind Manipulator at level 12. Any storms or other wind-related hazards are automatically nullified, and you can move your ship at incredible speeds with little effort on your part. Along the way, you've also gotten at-will Wind Wall, and you've had at-will Air Bubble since level 1. Oh, and you get Control Weather at will at level 16. (Doesn't seem quite as overpowered as Water since you don't get the big one until level 12, but you're still trivializing quite a lot of encounters and obstacles for free with this)

Fire - And I set Fire to the ship
Then twelve more, because it's at will.

Now we're left with 2 elements - Aether and Earth- less than half of the class' potential. Off the top of my head, Kinetic Haul lets me lift something super heavy like a cannon a hundred feet over the enemy ship and drop it. At level 4. Earth Kineticists have plenty of opportunities to be awesome while the PC's are exploring islands and caves, but the rest of the time, they're almost useless.

So at the end of the day, the only element that doesn't seem unbalanced in S&S is the Telekineticist, and that's still pushing it towards overpowered for creative players (You say shipwreck, I say Aether Puppet!). That's my take on it, anyway. Am I overestimating these factors? Should I ban the Kineticist?


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If you are careful to enforce the maximum range of the skills you will see that unless they are already grappling the other ship or could be jumping from one to another its hard to use any of the powers in broken ways. The dangerous powers you are worried about you need to compare to 6th level spells available to wizards and druids. You will quickly see that on an encounter by encounter basis a 12th level druid or wizard is far more dangerous in ship to ship combat if they prepare for it.

On a physics meets magic logic you need to remember that compared to a 30 ft schooner 320 gallons is a joke but on a small row boat its bad news. Anything requiring continuous use of an at will power should be considered exhausting. Think if you were to swing a sword 10 times a minute all day. If you did that all day your arm would be a wet noodle for the next couple of days and consequently your kineticist could have a splitting headache that made it impossible to gather energy the next day, a huge penalty.

There is no denying that a kineticist of any flavor makes a good pirate, with the possible exception of earth/earth but I put forward the power of move earth and stone shape to make or destroy a harbor, and what they bring to the table should make for many non standard solutions that could make an old AP interesting.


Thanks for the insight. I especially appreciate the thought that overly abusing the at-will-nature of some of the abilities to gain day-long benefits should come with some unignorable drawbacks.

Designer

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Even the regular control water to lower the water is devastating to enemy ships' ability to actually move to approach or escape (though you do need to concentrate or burn). Our hydrokineticist (air secondary) has been very powerful in this regard in this AP, but we don't usually encounter enough ships a day that a druid couldn't have done it too. His biggest boon recently was providing large bonuses on every challenge in the Regatta.


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Good to know, thanks for adding your own experience, Mark!

Designer

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No problem. If anything, if you find problems, perhaps consider just nerfing the entire spell control water in the AP for both casters and kineticists, as it's certainly the case that if either side has this spell, the other ship is immobilized automatically (and perhaps both ships if both have it). If you are considering that, I'd tell the players this ahead of time before they pick characters, and also mention that it would be to help the PCs against NPCs using the spell too, not just to weaken the PCs.

So far for us it's been OK since we built a ship for speed anyway and we mainly infiltrate ships with our officers so we avoid damaging the ship before sale, but I could see the spell causing problems (just the kineticist wouldn't cause much more than a normal caster with it).

Silver Crusade

So, toss some will save based stuff. That's where this class falls short really. They're durable and a pain in the butt (I'm driving my GM in another game INSANE with one). However, I had to work hard to shore up her will saves.


Lookout for Telekinetisists with the long range augment. Being able to untie rigging or use Disable Device to jam up a ship's wheel from 100+ feet away can be a nasty trick.

Silver Crusade

Doomed Hero wrote:
Lookout for Telekinetisists with the long range augment. Being able to untie rigging or use Disable Device to jam up a ship's wheel from 100+ feet away can be a nasty trick.

Yeah but so much fun


I think you're overreacting. Don't penalize a kineticist for devoting resources and time to doing something like improving the ship's speed.

Clerics, oracles, wizards, sorcerers, witches, and mid-level summoners and warpriests can create an entire crew, allowing them to slaughter enemy crews and use the corpses to pilot the ship back to town. That takes one spell, cast in one round, and it lasts for days. The benefit is piloting an entire ship. (Sure, you can ban the spell, but I'm using it as the best example.) It's not at-will, but it's better- fire the spell off, and then go do other things.

By comparison, an aquakineticist would need to spend every round just to speed a ship up or hold an enemy ship in place. Let them have their fun, and don't punish them on top of taking up their time. Certainly, let them know ahead of time what is reasonable for Water Manipulator to do in combat (for instance, restrict an enemy ship's movement, improve your own, or penalize enemy ship attack rolls for a set amount while penalizing your own at half of whatever that is).

(As for air, yeah, that's something casters have covered. Witch even gets it at-will earlier. Fire is basically at-will for everybody- longbows and pitch. I doubt the PCs want all their treasure destroyed, though.)


i had a Witch dominate naval fleet battles by using a 2nd level summon swarm spell a bunch of times to summoner 25 foot diameter cubes of butterflies, just to arm those trillions of butterflies with grenades and send them suicide bombing enemy ships. most enemy crews don't expect to be suicide bombed by trillions of butterflies, because of the sheer number you can fit inside a 25 foot diameter cube. let alone disperse the swarms into smaller suicide bombing groups to deal massive damage, literally had no fleet battles because the enemy fleet died long before they could get in firing range because of butterflies.


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Ilina Aniri wrote:
i had a Witch dominate naval fleet battles by using a 2nd level summon swarm spell a bunch of times to summoner 25 foot diameter cubes of butterflies, just to arm those trillions of butterflies with grenades and send them suicide bombing enemy ships. most enemy crews don't expect to be suicide bombed by trillions of butterflies, because of the sheer number you can fit inside a 25 foot diameter cube. let alone disperse the swarms into smaller suicide bombing groups to deal massive damage, literally had no fleet battles because the enemy fleet died long before they could get in firing range because of butterflies.

How are they carrying the bombs?


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Ilina Aniri wrote:
i had a Witch dominate naval fleet battles by using a 2nd level summon swarm spell a bunch of times to summoner 25 foot diameter cubes of butterflies, just to arm those trillions of butterflies with grenades and send them suicide bombing enemy ships. most enemy crews don't expect to be suicide bombed by trillions of butterflies, because of the sheer number you can fit inside a 25 foot diameter cube. let alone disperse the swarms into smaller suicide bombing groups to deal massive damage, literally had no fleet battles because the enemy fleet died long before they could get in firing range because of butterflies.

...WHAT?!


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Wow. I just... HOW?!


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There are so many things wrong with that.

Summon Swarm can't summon butterflies.
You can't summon a 25-foot diameter cube of anything.
YOU CAN'T CONTROL THE SWARM.
Butterflies can't carry grenades.
Butterflies can't prime/light grenades.
YOU CAN'T CONTROL THE SWARM.
Where did you get all those grenades and how did you afford them?
YOU CAN'T CONTROL THE SWARM.

Like... doesn't this game have rules?

Spoiler:
YOU CAN'T CONTROL THE SWARM.


Also a note on realism, it's almost impossible to actually light things on fire with longbows and pitch, even with dedicated fire arrows shooting at things like thatch roofs.

It was done historically, but rarely, and only when there wasn't something better to do, like shoot your longbow at enemy sailors. Ships have carried assorted fire based weapons, but they typically do not have nearly the range of a bow.


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Ilina Aniri wrote:
i had a Witch dominate naval fleet battles by using a 2nd level summon swarm spell a bunch of times to summoner 25 foot diameter cubes of butterflies, just to arm those trillions of butterflies with grenades and send them suicide bombing enemy ships. most enemy crews don't expect to be suicide bombed by trillions of butterflies, because of the sheer number you can fit inside a 25 foot diameter cube. let alone disperse the swarms into smaller suicide bombing groups to deal massive damage, literally had no fleet battles because the enemy fleet died long before they could get in firing range because of butterflies.

..wow...this must be the most extreme ignorance and disregard for the rules I have read on the forums in a long time.


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Maxxx wrote:
Ilina Aniri wrote:
i had a Witch dominate naval fleet battles by using a 2nd level summon swarm spell a bunch of times to summoner 25 foot diameter cubes of butterflies, just to arm those trillions of butterflies with grenades and send them suicide bombing enemy ships. most enemy crews don't expect to be suicide bombed by trillions of butterflies, because of the sheer number you can fit inside a 25 foot diameter cube. let alone disperse the swarms into smaller suicide bombing groups to deal massive damage, literally had no fleet battles because the enemy fleet died long before they could get in firing range because of butterflies.
..wow...this must be the most extreme ignorance and disregard for the rules I have read on the forums in a long time.

the GM just wanted a Quick Ending to a Fleet Battle he didn't want to deal with and let me narrate how we bypassed the fleet battle. because he cared more about the battle on board than he did about the Fleet BS.

so he was like, you have summon swarm and a lot of alchemist supplies? i answered and nodded, and he was like, describe how your trillions of butterflies nuke the enemy fleet.

it was a gross Violation of the rules. but the GM wanted to use cutscene power to the max because he didn't want to deal with running a naval fleet battle. so we said butterflies nuke the enemy fleet and i scratched off my summon swarm spells and the charges on my rod of widen spells. essentially, traded a bunch of 2nd level slots and some rod charges to bypass an encounter the GM did not want to run.


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Ilina Aniri wrote:
Maxxx wrote:
Ilina Aniri wrote:
i had a Witch dominate naval fleet battles by using a 2nd level summon swarm spell a bunch of times to summoner 25 foot diameter cubes of butterflies, just to arm those trillions of butterflies with grenades and send them suicide bombing enemy ships. most enemy crews don't expect to be suicide bombed by trillions of butterflies, because of the sheer number you can fit inside a 25 foot diameter cube. let alone disperse the swarms into smaller suicide bombing groups to deal massive damage, literally had no fleet battles because the enemy fleet died long before they could get in firing range because of butterflies.
..wow...this must be the most extreme ignorance and disregard for the rules I have read on the forums in a long time.

the GM just wanted a Quick Ending to a Fleet Battle he didn't want to deal with and let me narrate how we bypassed the fleet battle. because he cared more about the battle on board than he did about the Fleet BS.

so he was like, you have summon swarm and a lot of alchemist supplies? i answered and nodded, and he was like, describe how your trillions of butterflies nuke the enemy fleet.

it was a gross Violation of the rules. but the GM wanted to use cutscene power to the max because he didn't want to deal with running a naval fleet battle. so we said butterflies nuke the enemy fleet and i scratched off my summon swarm spells and the charges on my rod of widen spells. essentially, traded a bunch of 2nd level slots and some rod charges to bypass an encounter the GM did not want to run.

That would have been helpful to say in your original post, lol.


Not to mention show it has nothing to do with the topic at hand because it wasn't rule based. I believe it counts as a strawman at this point, yes?

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