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Every wild talent has an effective spell level. A kineticist can always select 1st-level wild talents, but she can select a wild talent of a higher level only if her kineticist level is at least double the wild talent’s effective spell level. Kinetic blast and defense wild talents are always considered to have an effective spell level equal to 1/2 the kineticist’s class level (to a maximum effective spell level of 9th at kineticist level 18th).
Foe Throw
Source Occult Adventures pg. 20
Element aether; Type form infusion; Level 3
nope. still level 6
You get wild talents at even-numbered levels and you get access to new effect levels at even levels. Getting wings of air at 6th level works. The one that's annoying is infusions, you get new infusions at odd levels but still get access to new effect levels at even levels. So you can get a 3rd level form infusion like foe throw at 7th level if you expand into the same element, or at 9th if you choose a different element to expand into.
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I like the class I just think it was poorly designed and very, very poorly written
There are a lot of competing goals in writing any class or archetype. The kineticist is very well designed when it comes to extensibility (by including “infusions” as a wild talent, one feat - Extra Wild Talent - covers a variety of choices) and for closing off loopholes. But it’s really poor on the understandability front. Mainly because of the loophole closing.
On the particular question of odd/even levels:
1. I wonder if Mark Seifter (the designer of the Kineticist) originally had the utility and infusions all occur at even levels. But decided that that made the odd levels kinda boring. (Another design goal: make something interesting happen at every level.)
2. Retraining is an option to get infusions at even levels.
3. Human alternate favored class bonus for kineticist is 1/6 of a wild talent, so that can also result in even-level infusions.
4. Again, completely agree that it could have been written much clearer. The infusion progression works from a power perspective. But it contradicts what we learned for years from other classes. While wizards get 4th level spells at 7th level, kineticists don’t get 4th level infusions until 9th level (barring retraining or FCB).
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I think one flaw is calling the infusions talents. . .
From a design space perspective making everything a wild talent is quite clever. It leaves you lots of room to create future material.
For example, you could create an infusion with text like “you may only use this infusion if you accepted at least one point of burn from an earth wild talent since the start of your previous turn.” It doesn’t matter if it was infusion, utility, blast, or defense wild talent. If infusions weren’t wild talents you’d have to spell out exactly what worked and didn’t work, and you’d then cause a problem if you wanted to create another type of wild talent down the road. (Regional wild talents for example, or archetype-specific wild talents.) If you do want to limit it, it’s just a word or two more like “you may only use this infusion if you accepted at least one point of burn from an earth defense wild talent since the start of your previous turn.”
While it’s a clever solution for future-proofing, the problem is that it requires completely understanding the categorization of the various kineticist abilities. Which, as many threads like this can attest, is not very intuitive. Just in the base class you’ve got blasts (simple and composite), defense, utility, and infusion (form and substance). All of which are wild talents but have wildly differing rules for when and how you can use them.
Gather power reduces the burn cost of blasts including infusions, not of wild talents in general. Kinetic healer is not a blast or an infusion.