Kinetic Blade and Wielding

[Wonderstell]

Kinetic Blast:

At 1st level, a kineticist gains a kinetic blast wild talent of her choice. This kinetic blast must be a simple blast that matches her element. Simple blasts are listed with their corresponding elements.

As a standard action, the kineticist can unleash a kinetic blast at a single target up to a range of 30 feet. She must have at least one hand free to aim the blast (or one prehensile appendage, if she doesn’t have hands). All damage from a kinetic blast is treated as magic for the purpose of bypassing damage reduction. Kinetic blasts count as a type of weapon for the purpose of feats such as Weapon Focus. The kineticist is never considered to be wielding or gripping the kinetic blast (regardless of effects from form infusions; see Infusion), and she can’t use Vital Strike feats with kinetic blasts. Even the weakest kinetic blast involves a sizable mass of elemental matter or energy, so kinetic blasts always deal full damage to swarms of any size (though only area blasts deal extra damage to swarms). A readied kinetic blast can be used to counterspell any spell of equal or lower level that shares its descriptor. A kinetic blast that deals energy damage of any type (including force) has the corresponding descriptor.

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Form Infusions: Kinetic Blade:

You form a weapon using your kinetic abilities. You create a non-reach, light or one-handed weapon in your hand formed of pure energy or elemental matter. (If you’re a telekineticist, you instead transfer the power of your kinetic blast to any object held in one hand.) The kinetic blade’s shape is purely cosmetic and doesn’t affect the damage dice, critical threat range, or critical multiplier of the kinetic blade, nor does it grant the kinetic blade any weapon special features. The object held by a telekineticist for this form infusion doesn’t prevent her from using gather power.

You can use this form infusion once as part of an attack action, a charge action, or a full-attack action in order to make melee attacks with your kinetic blade. Since it’s part of another action (and isn’t an action itself), using this wild talent doesn’t provoke any additional attacks of opportunity. The kinetic blade deals your kinetic blast damage on each hit (applying any modifiers to your kinetic blast’s damage as normal, but not your Strength modifier). The blade disappears at the end of your turn. The weapon deals the same damage type that your kinetic blast deals, and it interacts with Armor Class and spell resistance as normal for a blast of its type. Even if a telekineticist uses this power on a magic weapon or another unusual object, the attack doesn’t use any of the magic weapon’s bonuses or effects and simply deals the telekineticist’s blast damage. The kinetic blade doesn’t add the damage bonus from elemental overflow.

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Are you still not considered wielding the Kinetic Blast even when using Kinetic Blade?

I'm aware that the language is pretty explicit, but it seems strange to attack with something "in your hand" that you aren't actually wielding.

Edit:
Quote by Mark Seifter - Strongly implies that you actually wield the Kinetic Blade, did this change during the playtest?

[Themetricsystem]

You never wield your Kinetic Blast, however, you can make a weapon that deals damage as IF it were your Kinetic Blast in the form of a Kinetic Blade which you do wield.

Bear in mind the weapon only exists during your initiative and NEVER during any other creatures turn flat-out so there are no AoO or other things of that ilk that can be used with it.

[Mark Seifter]

It's been a while, but as I recall, some playtesters found a list of bizarre things you could do if kinetic blast was considered "wielded" that were intended for manufactured weapons and not a blast effect, such as change an energy blast to do slashing damage and some other stuff that they brought up, so we added that line to specifically exclude those options.

[Wonderstell]

Honestly, I wanted to use a feat that required you to wield your weapon, so I'm pretty much the exact person that restriction was aimed at.

But I can see how Weapon Versatility for touch attack slashing blasts are a problem, so the restriction is probably needed.

[doomman47]

Why not just make it so if the blast would be turned into physical damage then it would hit normal ac like a normal physical blast?

[Wonderstell]

Themetricsystem wrote:

You never wield your Kinetic Blast, however, you can make a weapon that deals damage as IF it were your Kinetic Blast in the form of a Kinetic Blade which you do wield.

Bear in mind the weapon only exists during your initiative and NEVER during any other creatures turn flat-out so there are no AoO or other things of that ilk that can be used with it.

I had an idea of TWF-ing with the Kinetic Blade and a manufactured weapon, which would require wielding the weapon. Unfortunately it doesn't seem like it would work.

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doomman47 wrote:

Why not just make it so if the blast would be turned into physical damage then it would hit normal ac like a normal physical blast?

That does solve the Weapon Versatility exploit, but it's far easier to just make a blanket ban for future-proofing instead of playing "whack-a-mole" with every new unintended use of the class feature.