Hello everyone!
I am prepping a backup character I may (probably will) need for a Second Darkness game I am in.
I like the idea of an at-will blaster type, and want to stick in that vein. Something like a 3.5 Warlock.
We already have a blast exploit-focused Arcanist, so that is out. I recently played a Bomb-focused Alchemist too. We have SEVERAL fights in a given adventuring day, and I am more than happy to give up some blast power to have the ability to keep blasting through 4-5 fights a day.
So, since I have never played, nor been at a table with someone playing a Kineticist or Calamity Caller Warpriest, can you give me any advice on these, or any other, at-will blaster types?
I'm an experienced enough player to handle anything you can throw at me.
We're 9th level. EDIT: The rest of the party are a barbarian, ranger, cleric, and arcanist.
Help me out, fellow Paizo fans!
Being that this is advice, and since you're saying you already have a blaster focused character in the party, my advice to you is don't do the same thing.
I don't know what other character are in the party, but you should try to bring something different to the table, rather than bring more of the same.
I'm playing an Archer Slayer, so there isn't any worries about that. The rest of the party are melee characters.
A Barbarian, Ranger, and Cleric of Cayden.
But I appreciate your advice Claxon. I won't be stepping on any toes. We were all told make two backup characters, one that fills a similar role as our current character, and one that is different.
As Claxon said, I'd suggest bringing something different from the rest to the party... Which Kineticist can do pretty easily! It's surprisingly easy to build a kineticist to be drastically different from another kineticist. If you're party is lacking a strong frontline presence, I'd suggest going Kinetic Knight with earth/aether/earth or earth/earth/earth, as it'd net you the amazing DR earth gives you. Force gives you a useful shield of temp HP that only goes away if taken out all in one blow.
If you're group is in need of a more rogue type, aether/air/water can do you wonders. At will invisibility will never be bad, and aether gives you a lot of good utility options on combat.
If you're dead set on going blasting however, my suggestion would be straight fire/fire/fire. Fire arguably has the best blasting infusions, and with a bonus 1/3 point of damage per level if you go half orc favored class bonus, you'll be able to put out some pretty hefty damage. You'll need to go all the way though, to be able to get through fire resistances and eventually fire immunity.
Calamity callers have the slight problem that their blasts are single target (well, one option is a square and all adjacent ones) and at 9th level it can do full 10d6 power blasts just 4/day. The rest will be 5d6 damage, strictly single target. You have way better backup options than a kineticist being a warpriest but the blasting is worse.
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If you're dead set on going blasting however, my suggestion would be straight fire/fire/fire. Fire arguably has the best blasting infusions...
Standard disclaimer on going fire/fire/fire:
If you expect to face devils with anything remotely resembling some common frequency you are strongly encouraged to not go fire kine unless you enjoy being at best, a walking smokescreen or crossbowman.
As the player of a 15th level fire/fire/water kineticist, my advice is go fire/water/fire. At 7th level you pick up the ever spamable Kinetic Healing, and you can get substance infusions to tag along with your blast that stagger, etc your opponents. Note that Suffocate can be a lot of fun when you hit 12th level.
Also, things that are immune to fire usually only have resistance to cold of 5/10, so you maximize your cold blast (which, like fire, is ranged touch).
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If you are interested in a skill monkey, a Fighter 4/Investigator 5 can be a fun combination. The Fighter part is either ranged or melee; the opposite of the Ranger. This stiffens the Investigator up with more hit points, better armor & weapons, and BAB. (Though it may make him a bit MADD.)
At 5th level, the Investigator picks up the Quick Study to add Studied Combat dice to one attack every round.
At 7th level you pick up the ever spamable Kinetic Healing...
Please enlighten me as to how Kinetic Healer is spammable, given that you cannot reduce its Burn cost; either you or the recipient is taking a point of Burn unless you use a point from your limited Internal Buffer, and you cannot heal the nonlethal damage from Burn (until it disappears when the Burn is removed).
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It's spammable, but not unlimited.
Yes, you push a point of Burn onto your fellow party member, but she isn't carefully managing her burn levels the way you are. She takes 1 hit point per level, which is likely to be 9, (like the Kineticist). But this is non-lethal, which doesn't cross over with regular damage. So a party member can take 90% of the hit point total in non-lethal with no consequences. The only reason I do not say 99% is you do (very rarely) run into someone/thing that deals out non-lethal damage at 9th level...
Say you have a 9th level Fighter with a 14 Con, she's going to average 5.5*9 + 18 HP. That's 49.5 -> 49, + 18 => 67 HP. She can accept 7 Burn from healing (7*9 = 63), or 6 if she is being cautious. Since Kinetic Healing heals per Kinetic Blast, you gather power for a full round + move action in the second round and heal with an empowered composite blast. At 9th level that yields 10d6*1.5 + misc bonus (depending on energy or physical type of blast). For energy blasts that's 52 +2/3 hp back; for physical blasts that's 52 + 10 + 4/5/6 hp.
At minimum that's 6*(52+2)=324 hp. Just how many hp do you expect your party fighter to burn through before getting 8 hours of rest (or two hours with nap stack)?
If someone wth 67 HP takes 63 nonlethal damage, 4 more HP of amy kind of damage - lethal or nonlethal - drops them. Most fighters prefer not to be that vulnerable.
1 burn is probably OK, but somewhere between that and the max of 7 burn, that fighter is going to feel the pinch.
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Hmm. I just checked the nonlethal damage rules and you are correct AVR. The judges in my area don't stack them...
The fighter above probably doesn't want more than two/three points of burn. Classes with 8/6 sided hit dice probably only want 1 except in a pinch. Still, when you come out of fight with 3 out of 67 hp left, getting 54+ hp back in two rounds can be a big benefit. That's the equivalent of being tapped with a Wand of Cure Light wounds 10 times.
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The text does say 'Kinetic Blast' as against 'Composite Blast', so you are probably right there. But I see no reason why metamagic cannot be used to enhance the blast. For that matter, I did not include Elemental Overflow into any of the previous calculations as it is quite variable... but EO is something that just happens when you have Burn. Nothing to turn on, or consume an action. So if you have it, it should add to the healing. At 9th level, the Kineticist might want to run around with three Burn to get the size bonus of +2 to two physical stats (including Con, of course), so that would be +6 to the healing.
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Well if you want a reason for why you can't meta healer, I'd start with the fact Utility Wild Talents (like Healer) are all pretty strictly unmodifiable beyond what the text says it can do.
Incorrect: nowhere in the Occult Adventures book does it say that Wild Talents can't be modified.
The section on metakinesis says "Metakinesis (Su): At 5th level, a kineticist gains the ability to alter her kinetic blasts..."
The section on Elemental Overflow says "Elemental Overflow (Ex): At 3rd level, a ... She also receives a bonus on damage rolls with her kinetic blast equal to double the bonus on attack rolls..."
Kinetic Healer heals the amount of damage you Kinetic Blast would do. That is (level/2)d6*(metakinesis bonus, if any) + (varying mods per physical/energy) + Elemental Overflow. Nowhere in the description does it say 'base Kinetic Blast' or 'unaugumented KB', etc.
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So, since I have never played, nor been at a table with someone playing a Kineticist or Calamity Caller Warpriest, can you give me any advice on these, or any other, at-will blaster types?
At this level, with 4-5 fights per day, you could consider a Draconic Sorcerer. It's not quite at will but you can easily have twenty castings of Scorching Ray per day, at least five of which with Empower Spell. With the Spell Spec feat, that's 12d6+12 damage each (54 damage, 81 with empower), which should be substantially more than the arcanist, warpriest, or kinny are doing.
That said, of the classes you mention, don't underestimate the action economy advantage that Fervor gives; and the warpriest is clearly going to win in terms of both utility and healing.
At 9th level, the Kineticist might want to run around with three Burn to get the size bonus of +2 to two physical stats (including Con, of course)
"Might want to"? That's actually the basic intended function of Elemental Overflow. It's why you can accept Burn to up your Elemental Defense or activate all-day Wild Talents; you're meant to have that Overflow buff by default. Accepting Burn mid-day is for those emergencies where you need to nova and you don't have any Internal Buffer left.
Then feel free to explain what the cost for doing that is. At least if it were me, I'd figure a huge spanner in how to calculate the burn cost of healer like say metakinesis might warrant a few words considering approximately nothing else in the utility section behaves that way.
Metakinesis increases the Burn cost of a blast. You're not using a blast (only basing the healing amount on the blast), so you cannot increase the cost of the blast. Therefore, you cannot use Metakinesis with Kinetic Healer.