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Exhaustive Power
You are capable of pushing beyond your limits at a heavy cost
Prerequisites: Kineticist level 3rd, burn class feature, elemental overflow class feature
Benefit: When you are incapable of accepting any more burn, you may sacrifice your own life force to empower your attacks. Instead of accepting a point burn when using infusions or metakinesis, you may convert nonlethal damage from burn equal to twice your character level to lethal damage. Lethal damage from this feat can't be healed, prevented, or redirected, but it still counts as burn for the purpose of abilities such as elemental overflow. This damage is removed by a full night's rest.
This feat cannot be used if the kineticist does not have nonlethal damage from burn equal to twice their character level.
Work in Progress. I wanted to add some flavor text along the lines of "Kineticists who overuse this feat develop horrific scars" or "elemental overflow manifests as deep wounds that bleed elemental matter" but the feat is already pretty wordy.
Tell me what you think!
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I would make the following changes:
1) Change it to "unavailable until you've taken maximum burn"
2) Change it to Constitution damage. Every point of "Exhaustive Burn" a kineticist takes results in 2 constitution damage. Given that the kineticist, to have reached this point, would have taken 3+con mod burn anyway, and each burn is effectively one less con mod for the purpose of HP, they should have a max health (assuming 100% FCB and Toughness) of 4 times level + 3, taking a hit to your ACTUAL constitution is going to hurt, and it's very likely to knock them out soon.
3) DON'T take the damage away with a night's sleep. This should hurt. You're literally destroying your own self in order to do this. Make it CON damage that can only heal naturally. No restoration spells. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever. Has to heal naturally. A HEAL spell, maybe, or a Wish, Limited Wish, or Miracle. So you do it for one burn today, it doesn't actually hurt you tomorrow, because you're only damaged 1 (you healed 1 overnight). But do it again tomorrow, and you'll be hurting the next day.
Like, I'm fine with a feat like this. But it should hurt. A lot. Kineticists are powerful; the only limit to their power is how much burn they can take. If you make overcharging easy, you're just giving them another button to push to get more powerful. And that's a risky proposition.
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1) Change it to "unavailable until you've taken maximum burn"
I'll consider adding this to the text. Thanks for the input.
2) Change it to Constitution damage.
I'm really iffy about upgrading it to Con damage. It accelerates the self damage just a bit faster than I'd like, though such a 'bucn out' could be an interesting angle. But what kills it for me is the fact that a lower Con means your abilities are generally less effective. It goes against the "flame burning brightest before it's extinguished" angle that I've been carrying in my mind's eye.
3) DON'T take the damage away with a night's sleep. This should hurt. You're literally destroying your own self in order to do this. Make it CON damage that can only heal naturally. No restoration spells. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever.
Hmm. How about making it so the nonlethal does not go away after a night's rest, but it can finally be healed by normal means? I think that might be a decent compromise. My original version involved the lethal damage 'downgrading' back to nonlethal after a night's rest, but I ultimately went against that because if it's nonlethal burn then it's just more burn for the next day, so there isn't really a downside.
I may want to call this extra damage by its own title to clarify conversation. 'Exhaustive burn' makes sense, but I think something like 'Desiccation' really drives the point home.
So, general structure of the feat will be:
- Usable when you're full on burn
- Gain one free Burn for infusions/metakinesis by converting two of your Burn into Desiccation
- Desiccation acts like Burn, except it is lethal damage. After a night's rest, the lethal is still there, but it can be healed.
Thoughts?
Way too powerful. Burn has a hard cap for a good reason. This breaks the burn economy by removing it, allowing a kineticist to potentially accept a significantly larger amount of burn than normal. Lethal damage isn't sufficient enough to balance it.
Way too powerful. Burn has a hard cap for a good reason. This breaks the burn economy by removing it, allowing a kineticist to potentially accept a significantly larger amount of burn than normal. Lethal damage isn't sufficient enough to balance it.so long as they aren't getting more buffs from elemental overflow it should be fine, its already a really bad class feature giving it a little love is fine i personally would love a feat that would allow those immune to non lethal to still use some burn abilities maybe reduce all things that cost burn by 2 burn for those immune to non lethal
Burn is meant to be a gating mechanism. Removing a gating mechanism's hard cap is almost always a bad idea.
Or you could make it actually do what the name sounds like. First time you use it you become fatigued for the day, the second time exhausted, and the third time unconscious.