There's no real indication they're doing anything but kicking around concepts at this point, but I'm going to go ahead and start this thread to get the kids off my lawn.
So, like it says on the cover, what do you want to see in a kineticist?
My personal wants:
-Run off focus instead of burn. Worst case, your top level abilities can use a font/infusion like mechanic. Anything except either spell slots or dropping your HP with unhealable damage in a game where it is possible to have full health after each fight (now that lethal and non-lethal damage are no longer separate).
--to clarify, focus would be used to reduce actions or empower a basic at-will ability, which would most likely be a focus cantrip.
-Kinetic blasts as spell attacks, not unarmed strikes, and using Con as their spell attack ability.
-Arcane flavored. I think using the power of the kineticist's mind to reach through the ether to reach elemental planes most closely matches arcane's combination of mental and material essences, as well as follows the description of PF1 kineticists, which was: "At 1st level, a kineticist chooses one primary element on which to focus. This element determines how she accesses the raw power of the Ethereal Plane, and grants her access to specific wild talents (see below) and additional class skills."
--This hits something of a flavor mismatch when you use either Wood element or Elysian infusions, but I'm willing to live with it.
As reference points, I strongly suggest looking at the Azerketi ancestry and some of the unarmed strike feats in the ancestry guide, which shows some of the ideas the developers are kicking around. I personally would prefer some of those not be moved forward, but I wouldn't be shocked if they did either.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Okay. Here's *my* list:
- Customizable upgrades to attack effects. Probably best handled through class feats. Let one character build out their party friendly close-blast, while another stacks debuff effects on their long-ranged snipe.
- Powers are interesting, but constrained - varied, but not too varied. I'd like to have more than just various forms of attack. We should have *some* magic that could be used for utility purposes - but it would be a few specific useful things that you could do, rather than a broad range.
- Most of the beef of the class is at-will. No meaningful daily resources.
- Random idea: use the focus powers not as direct abilities, but as further power upgrades that you could use to customize each fight - each lasting a minute or ten, and giving some ongoing useful effect or augmentation to your other kineticist abilities. If we make sure that you're getting more than two or three of them, then "which boost powers do I use for this fight" suddenly becomes an interesting part of the class's tactics
- Pick an element, you get that one element, and that element is meaningfully constraining to the powers you can pick up. There shoudl be things that a hydrokineticist can do that a pyrokineticist will never be able to manage, and vice versa.
At a basic level, I've been told that Kineticist is where I get my specialized at-will caster, and darnit, I want my specialized at-will caster.
Ah, a decent point.
-I want the kineticist to be a template that can be used to create other non-slotted casters, or even casters with some spell slots but extremely limited in what spells they can pick up. It might be difficult to cram an illusion specialist or a necromancer into the kineticist wheelhouse, but using either class archetypes or an entirely new class on a similar chassis, I think it might be possible.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
As for me to start:
1. Focus is not sufficient to be a class's main thing, at best it should be an important supporting piece that people can choose to dive deeper into. Focus >cantrips< on the other hand could work, and might be a natural place to put some elemental themed, Kineticist-only attack cantrips.
2. Ability to pick Primal or Arcane as the tradition for their effects, in a similar vein to how monks can choose Divine or Occult.
3. Ability to pick "Firestarter" vs "Avatar" style gameplay. "Firestarter" might use Con and come with the hurt-yourself baggage and "Avatar" might use Cha or Wis and come with more monk/martial art themes. The hurt-yourself baggage can be handled in a million different ways than just HP damage, including PF2's handy dandy conditions.
I agree with most of your points. I'd very much enjoy a con based caster that uses single action spell attack cantrips, and modifies them with metamagic to get the bursts and the like.
Burn should 100% be focus, with some powers having a debilitating dichotomy-esque backlash instead of permanent hp drain.
I disagree on arcane, or rather, arcane only. Arcane is amazing flavor for, say, FMA inspired kineticists, but ATLA has more of an elemental flavored ki trapping which is better suited for primal or occult. I think the best way is to give most of the elements two options for tradition to allow people to customize their relationship with their powers. Some things might be locked; elysian being divine only, but there's not really a reason to restrict basic elements to arcane only. The four western elements are pretty comfortable as arcane/primal, but the chinese elements, if maintaining fidelity to the sources mythology, are more primal/divine.
A concern I have with being able to pick your tradition is that I would like to see this class get full caster proficiency, and that seems like it might be too good with non-situational focus cantrips and the ability to multiclass. The with proves it is a possibility, but I still have concerns.
So I'd rather the base class be just arcane, but also class archetypes be readily available that would let you easily change that to any of the other 3 traditions.
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I agree with most of your points. I'd very much enjoy a con based caster that uses single action spell attack cantrips, and modifies them with metamagic to get the bursts and the like.
Burn should 100% be focus, with some powers having a debilitating dichotomy-esque backlash instead of permanent hp drain.
I disagree on arcane, or rather, arcane only. Arcane is amazing flavor for, say, FMA inspired kineticists, but ATLA has more of an elemental flavored ki trapping which is better suited for primal or occult. I think the best way is to give most of the elements two options for tradition to allow people to customize their relationship with their powers. Some things might be locked; elysian being divine only, but there's not really a reason to restrict basic elements to arcane only. The four western elements are pretty comfortable as arcane/primal, but the chinese elements, if maintaining fidelity to the sources mythology, are more primal/divine.
I agree with the single action cantrip with extra actions for extra effects. To balance, maybe have adding an effect requires a Flourish.
This way, if you want, you can attack 3 times, applying MAP of course, or make it stronger for a cost.(I actually wish all attack cantrips were like that).
I would have them as tradition less, using their class DC for their effects.
And their attack rolls?
Burn could be handled bin a similar way to the Oracle Curse (increase the more focus points you use, reset on a short rest to base stage +1, full reset on long rest).
I like the idea of 1 action focus Cantrip with metamagic to add effect.
I would have them as tradition less, using their class DC for their effects.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I feel that a "Class DC" focused class should be a bit less magical. Brawler, Marshall, or even Solarian would be able to use class DC quite well. I would also like to leave open the possibility of there being good mechanical support for multiclassing kineticist with real casters.
1) No focus, use a different mechanic (a la Swashbuckler panache).
2) No magical tradition, Kineticist stuff is unique to kineticists.
3) The analogue for focus is about pushing yourself too hard, and your well is as deep as you want to push yourself.
4) Kinetic blasts are not spells, thus not cantrips.
|
Kinetic Focus Cantrips (KFC)- You gain one UNCOMMON one that's unlocked ONLY through your Primary Element at level 1. You are provided with 2 additional COMMON KFCs at level 1 and learn a new one every other level. These should ALWAYS be a bit better (short situational circumstances) than the element generic KFCs. The Uncommon KFC is tied to a specific element and has unique stuff that matches the flavor of the element.
The COMMON KFCs need to all be 100% functional for EVERY flavor to Kineticist. The traits and damage types done by these KFCs should vary by the type of "Blast" (or whatever it will be called) they're using which can easily be ensconced in a singular table where all the elements are listed/defined as they are released.
Focus Points maxed out at a pool of 3 points right at level 1. The Kineticist can either spend 1 point from their Focus Pool to apply an Infusion they've learned or they can spend an Action prior to using said infusion to "Gather Elements" and reduce the Burn/Focus cost of the next Focus Spell they cast before the end of their turn. The Kineticist is also offered a Reaction usable once per encounter whereby they Refocus and gain 1 (or two points with feat investment) FP by draining their own life/ki/chi/mystical-magic-life-smoke dealing them the damage that cannot be reduced, redirected, or prevented in any way equal to 2x Character Level.
Infusions are NOT what they were previously, they don't modify your existing KFCs or other Infusions/Focus Spells but instead are specific effects that work much like Focus Spells and they could even poach a TON of them from the CRB and APG to fill out the list. They could be interesting buffs, unique attacks, mobility enhancers, debuffs, healing, or anything in-between.
Those are just my thoughts, I'm probably wrong about it in one way or another but the following is my absolute MUST items: NO SPELL SLOTS WHATSOEVER - MUST HAVE LEGENDARY CLASS DC/TRAINING IN THEIR PRIMARY ELEMENT (Matching if not EXCEEDING the pace Fighters are Trained with Weapons) - EXPLICITLY NON-MAGICAL
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
For posterity, and not to yuck any yums, but I want to pop in and say I have close to zero investment in the "Kineticist" moniker or any occult nature for the class. I have never had a player approach the 1e class from a Stephen King or, I dunno, X-Men standpoint aesthetically. More often it's been "I want to be a fire mage," and slightly less frequently they flavor it as something from Avatar, the Last Airbender. Mostly, though, it's a player wanting to just be an elementalist blaster mage without all the other spells gumming up the works. Again, I get that people like the occult themes, and I don't think those have to disappear, but I think the powers can be more source-agnostic than necessarily psychic/occult and still fit the bill.
That said, mechanically, I like the idea of the class starting with basic template abilities (attack, defense, movement) which can be played with depending on the element and feats you pick up. So if you go for an earth-themed character at level 1 you get such and such adjustment to the basic one-action attack, a tailored bonus for the defensive ability, and a slow climb speed for the movement. Then as you level those necessarily improve in set ways and can be modified or expanded with feats.
"Burn" I don't think is necessary as a mechanic. I think it's fraught. Even the Oracle's Curse route seems like we've been there and done that. Instead, I'd like to see something more similar to the playtest Inventor's Overdrive(?), where the class has a way to try to keep pushing itself higher and higher until it caps out and has to come back down. Though, unfortunately I guess now we have the Inventor doing that, but I'd rather it be a "How far can I push this before I have to stop?" rather than "If I go any further I'll literally explode."
Focus points can be for magic-adjacent abilities, and ideally I think they'd come in themed packages, or multi-modal focus spells/abilities. For example, a focus spell that does a small cone as 1 action, then a line as 2 actions, then an explosion as 3 actions, based on the element; one that's a 1 action leap, 2 action levitate, 3 action flying move; or, I dunno, a 1 action trip, 2 action blind (for a round), 3 action obscuring mist effect. Lots of possibilities to pack in effects.
I feel like with this class the more they let things stack onto templates the more successful it'll be, letting the players flavor things how they like. Is it Avatar super-ki bending? Or is it telekinetic? Maybe it's just a fire wizard. Doesn't matter--it's all in the same chassis.
The primary abilities should be at will, with a small number of focus abilities available.
Gather power returns as a way to really interact with the action economy.
Most of your abilities have 1, 2 and 3 action variants (perhaps with a high level class feat that allows you to go to 4 actions while quickened or over two turns, though this seems like it's probably too hard to balance).
Your basic blast would be a 1 action single target attack with say 30ft of range and ok damage.
Each element would have a 2 and 3 action version with extra effects such as better range, small AoE or additional effects like knocking enemies prone or setting them on fire.
There'd be class feats that add new options with their own action cost you could use instead of the basics.
At say level 10 you'd get a class feature that reduces the action cost of your favourite blast by 1 (to a minimum of 1) so you could add an extra effect to it.
Maybe as a burn alternative you could pay a focus point to reduce action cost.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I'd also like to see the penalty for "overexerting yourself" to be something you roll on to see what muscle you pulled or whatever. Pure "unhealable HP damage" wasn't great, but it needs to be something thematically.
I'd love to see it as a class archetype. For different types of casters, removing the spell slots chassis, and make it a cantrip-based caster, with focus spells to improve blasts, and all elemental powers in class feats.
And absolutely not based on Constitution, which always had this illogical feeling to it. Having the class be a polyclass archetype, a bit like Arcanist-style casting is supposed to be in SoM, is the way to go. Plus, it would give other approaches to existing classes, instead of increasing the number of available classes.
I see a lot of people saying the kineticist is not magical... Well, by nature it is. Blasts and other powers were SLA and Su in 1st edition, not Ex. Making them nonmagical would be a total nonsense.
That concept (an archetype that gives up spell slots for other power-ups) could be interesting, and I'd dearly love to be able to play with a cantrip-based witch, but I don't think that should be used to trample Kineticist. Kineticist is its own thing, with enough weight behind it, that trying to shoehorn it into a class archetype off of caster is liable to lose something valuable. Also... let's take it one step at a time. Let them figure out how to fit a cantrip caster into the game balance properly with Kineticist *first*, before they start trying to do it with the extra challenge of also having it largely conform to a previously existing class.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
-Single action cantrips, like a witches but good. Having variable effects would be cool, like Spirit Object.
-Meta-magics as infusions.
-Burn bad. No required punch to the face to power up: any burn type mechanic should be 100% optional and the base class should work fine without it [like no Elemental Overflow requiring burn to give you ALL your powerups].
-Really, it can't be said enough: burn bad.
-If there is an ability to alter existing spells to a different element, PLEASE, PLEASE avoid the super lame sorcerer method of making all the damage Bludgeoning. :(
-Proficiencies: master casting, expert armor
-Gather Power: works as a pseudo-Automatic Bonus Progression, buffing damage and hit numbers.
-Stat: variable like the rogue. Con for the burn user, wisdom for the ascetic, charisma for the innate user, str for your muscle user [punching/stabbing type] like kinetic knight, int for those that study for their powers like dark elementalist, dex... not sure.
-tradition: occult and primal are easy ones. Divine seems to be a possibility with ascetics since Monks can pick that.
Have you guys checked out the 3rd party Kineticist by Legendary Games? It's a bit verbose but comes with a lot of things some of you guys are asking for:-
- 1 action attack cantrips,
- altering them with metamagic tied to a focus pool,
- circumventing the focus point requirement with burn, which gives the stunned condition instead of taking health or lowering stats,
- con based,
- no spell slots, and
- legendary spellcasting proficiency.
I can't speak to the balance on it as I have never seen one in play but they seem fun for the most part. A link below for the interested:-
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product_reviews_info.php?&reviews_id=46227 2&products_id=321926
I have. It’s alright, but not what I prefer (not that I’m going to get exactly what I want short of writing it myself). The Elemental Host 3pp comes closer to what is personally like to see, including some options that hadn’t occurred to me to want.
A concern I have with being able to pick your tradition is that I would like to see this class get full caster proficiency, and that seems like it might be too good with non-situational focus cantrips and the ability to multiclass. The with proves it is a possibility, but I still have concerns.
So I'd rather the base class be just arcane, but also class archetypes be readily available that would let you easily change that to any of the other 3 traditions.
I mean, is this really an issue? Arcane is already accepted as one of, if not the best tradition. Being able to pick a different is a sidegrade at best.
If we are worried about poaching the cantrip, my presumption is that it's a single action for roughly an on level weapon strike and it's class features and feats that are turning it into a force of destruction, so like, the cleric is multiclassing to basically get a filler action that's only slightly better, if not the same as a ranged weapon
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Pretty sure I'm in the minority but I actually like burn as a concept. I think we could do without required, start-of-day burn but using your HP bar as an offensive resource is cool. But I'm one of those freaks who uses physical skills in SMT games without worrying about it.
I think Burn should be supported to some degree by the class. That style of play definitely appeals to some and is important for various concepts. (I personally don't like it, however.)
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Pretty sure I'm in the minority but I actually like burn as a concept. I think we could do without required, start-of-day burn but using your HP bar as an offensive resource is cool. But I'm one of those freaks who uses physical skills in SMT games without worrying about it.
I like burn conceptually, and would love to see a dragon age esque blood mage that casts bgger spells at the cost of hp; the big issue with burn was the uncurable except via long rest hp drain, which puta it squarely in the "totally not worth it" camp 95% of the time. I'm absolutely cool with a temporary max hp drain that wears off after a 10 min rest or so, though
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Pretty sure I'm in the minority but I actually like burn as a concept. I think we could do without required, start-of-day burn but using your HP bar as an offensive resource is cool. But I'm one of those freaks who uses physical skills in SMT games without worrying about it.I like burn conceptually, and would love to see a dragon age esque blood mage that casts bgger spells at the cost of hp; the big issue with burn was the uncurable except via long rest hp drain, which puta it squarely in the "totally not worth it" camp 95% of the time. I'm absolutely cool with a temporary max hp drain that wears off after a 10 min rest or so, though
That might not be too bad. One of the oracle curses works that way, with a drain that doesn’t wear off until you refocus.
I think Burn should be supported to some degree by the class. That style of play definitely appeals to some and is important for various concepts. (I personally don't like it, however.)
I don't mind it as something that can be taken but I'd rather not see it auto attached to the class in any way. So, for instance, someone could take a subclass that allowed it or took a feat to do it and I'd be totally cool with it: Not so much if the basic play mechanic had anything to do with it out of the box. I'd rather not go back to the days of the Underwhelming Soul where you lose out on +6 damage, +6 size bonus to one physical ability score, a +4 size bonus to a second physical ability score and a +2 size bonus to the remaining physical ability score because you took the option to avoid burn... :P
the big issue with burn was the uncurable except via long rest hp drain, which puta it squarely in the "totally not worth it" camp 95% of the time.
*Nods* I would expect burn to work something like the Quicksilver Mutagen but instead of 'while the mutagen lasts" it can't be healed until the temporarily immune ends so that it can be set at 10 min or an hour.
I could talk about kineticists all day, thank you for making this thread (even if it was just to declutter the other one).
Agree with most of what's being said here, most people are on close to the same page with a lot of stuff, which is good to see.
My personal must haves:
1. At will blasts, being able to be modified at will to do cool stuff like target a line, an area, function as adamantine, coat the target in faerie fire, whatever. I would also very much like for both form and substance infusions to be back, but that might be a little complicated.
2. Mostly itemless, at least offensively. Not to bring this argument here, but casters don't need anything to help with their offense (no striking runes, no potency runes) and get legendary proficiency, and that is what I would like kineticist to get.
Other things I don't feel super strongly about, but thoughts nonetheless:
1. Burn, I personally don't care that much about. Could be focus, could inflict a status penalty, could be a daily thing. It's fun and I enjoy it, but it's not a deal breaker in any form for me. Exception being if using burn gives the user bonuses to attack and damage, as elemental overflow from 1e (especially if it's an item bonus).
2. Gather power I don't think is really needed with the action economy of 2e. Just make infusions akin to metamagic, as others have said.
3. Damage could be tricky. At will damage, at range, with potential spikes will be hard to balance against martials. I feel kineticist should do less damage than martials (unless in a specific situation like probably aoe damage if the kineticist is built that way) but have cool utility depending on their infusions they spend feats on. And more damage than cantrips.
4. Kinetic weapon I would really like to see back, but it's not a must have. Just would be really cool. Make it so it isn't formed as a specific weapon (what it is is up to the player, but it's more for flavour than mechanics) just a finesse weapon. Maybe spend further feats to give the weapon more properties like reach.
5. Utility. Don't have any specifics for this one, but at will utility stuff is always great. At will air bubble for an air kineticist, etc.
If burn exists, then using it is gonna be better than not using it. Maybe it could simply act as a way to forgo the action cost of gather power or other metamagic-esque boosters, so the risk/reward balance is less clear cut.
To be fair in order to get all those bonuses you had to be at least level 16 and take at least 7 points of burn. Thats is 112 out of a max of 240 HP for Con 24 (7 burn). Being able to get those stats for free would be problematic.
Sure but it scaled upwards and you started behind the 8 ball as soon as 3rd level...
But you are in luck. PF2 does not give attribute bonuses anymore outside of Apex items. And those are even capped to just +2.
*shrug* talking about equivalently large bonuses for the game in question: the particulars of that is or isn't in tPF2 is meaningless to the point. You could replace attribute bonuses with item bonuses of +3, +2 and +1 to skill based skills of that stat instead if you really need something similar in PF2 much like mutagen bonuses to 'stats'.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Burn needs to be back, since the Kineticist is fundamentally about "channeling planar energy through your body" and "doing too much of it" is going to stress your body in some way.
But overexerting your body could mean a bunch of different things.
That might not be too bad. One of the oracle curses works that way, with a drain that doesn’t wear off until you refocus.
I think my favorite way of handling self damaging magic though was guild wars 2's necromancer, who's blood spells inflicted a condition on themself as part of the effect. Like, you noticed it, but it didn't have the same revulsion as losing 10% of your hp. And even in the case of the drained 2 curse, knlwing that it was just until the end of the fight made it go from "this is strictly last resort" to "I'll use it every fight as long as it'll make a difference"
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
From the sounds of things, any sort of serious "burn" mechanic would be better as a series of class feats. Possibly give the class some reasonably deep Focus point exploitation options, and then make burn something that you could do to yourself to keep paying for those things after the focus points ran out - there's obvious utility there (of the sort that people might be willing to spend class feats for) but not so overwhelming that one couldn't choose other feats instead. Then you could have expansion feats that would eventually let you start getting bonuses based on the amount of burn you were under.
I also tend to think that with kineticist, people are lookign for more options. The standard martial basically chooses skills, gear, stats, and feat progression. The standard magic class chooses all of those, but also chooses their known spells. I'm thinking that Kineticist wants to be more to the "magic class" side of "how many things am I choosing as I design this" than the martial side... or at least halfway in between. I feel like the desire to Kineticist is the desire to customize, and if we can manage to fit more a la carte customization into the class without breaking the power curve, then that's all to the good.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
If burn exists, then using it is gonna be better than not using it.
Sure. I just don't want it built into the expectations of the class: ie I don't want OTHER aspects of the class to be curtailed because of a burn option. Or another way to out it, I don't want look at the class, see burn and think 'this is why we can't have nice things'.
But overexerting your body could mean a bunch of different things.
The simplest way would be temporarily immune: make burn trait and using a burn ability gives you temporarily immune to burn abilities of 10 min. You level a bit and then you get the ability to use another burn ability while you have immunity but then the immunity jumps to 1hr. Something like that can work.
From the sounds of things, any sort of serious "burn" mechanic would be better as a series of class feats.
That would be my preference... Actually, cross that out. My preferred would be a class archetype for burn so that the base class gets balanced out without it.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
One thing I'm concerned about is that the Kineticist did not have much to spend money on in PF1 besides "armor, and other defensive items" and "anything that makes your stats higher". Because (besides like 2 really expensive items) nothing would make you any better at blasting.
If the Kineticist is a whole class based on "hitting people with wads of rock, or fire bolts, etc." but it inherits all of the accuracy problems that spell attack rolls have without the option casters have to choose different spells, that's going to be an issue.
Alchemist alchemical items is honestly the closest thing to kineticist burn. Just need to make sure its not as bad as actual alchemical items.
Or uses burn...
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I think kineticists can/should have focus spells... but it's not going to be a replacement for any of their core mechanic. It's just a PF2 feature that might make sense to have some feats based around... but focus points are not a substitute for burn or anything else on their own.
IMO the biggest problem with Burn was the fact that you were often best off just taking a bunch of it at the start of each day to power up your class features.
Having an ability to push your limits in a dangerous way is neat, but mostly I saw people hitting their benchmarks for defense/stat buffs and then often largely ignoring it afterwards.
I think the trickiest part of the kineticist might be blast shapes. Having a variety of blast options was a big part of being a kineticst while PF2 seems to be really wary about giving out multi-target abilities to martials. A lot of the options that currently exist are high level, limited in usability or require outside support to start making sense. It sort of feels like an unwritten rule that there needs to be some sort of limitation or cost on things that hit 3+ targets.
I mean they could use elemental overflow again to just give them equivalent to item bonus though its not a particularly graceful or 2e solutionOne thing I'm concerned about is that the Kineticist did not have much to spend money on in PF1 besides "armor, and other defensive items" and "anything that makes your stats higher". Because (besides like 2 really expensive items) nothing would make you any better at blasting.
If the Kineticist is a whole class based on "hitting people with wads of rock, or fire bolts, etc." but it inherits all of the accuracy problems that spell attack rolls have without the option casters have to choose different spells, that's going to be an issue.
... Alchemist and Investigator are based on getting a conditional bonus.
Alchemist alchemical items is honestly the closest thing to kineticist burn. Just need to make sure its not as bad as actual alchemical items.
I don't think that's really a concern. Alchemist items are weaker as a consequence of mass production combined with the fact they can be applied to allies.
I think regarding Kineticist, I might expect to see 1 action basic blasts, 2 action form infusions, and 1 action substance infusion metamagic. I guess you'd unlock some infusions naturally at odd levels (tied to element), and then class feats would give you more infusions or wild talents.
I definitely think damage similar to Quicksilver Mutagen is the cleanest way to handle burn, though I could definitely see something similar to Flame Oracle's curse effects as an alternate method.
Regarding the spell attack roll problem, I think we can do it similar to how alchemist bombs have the item bonus baked in, since getting those hit rolls consistently is a lot more required for Kineticist.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
One thing I'm concerned about is that the Kineticist did not have much to spend money on in PF1 besides "armor, and other defensive items" and "anything that makes your stats higher". Because (besides like 2 really expensive items) nothing would make you any better at blasting.
If the Kineticist is a whole class based on "hitting people with wads of rock, or fire bolts, etc." but it inherits all of the accuracy problems that spell attack rolls have without the option casters have to choose different spells, that's going to be an issue.
Surely a controversial opinion, but I think it would work well to have spellcaster progression and not be able to add item bonus to attack. Kineticist is mostly ranged, has a lot more utility than martials, and will likely have some burst. Martials should be more accurate, deal more damage versus a single target, and should care more about their weapons.
Casters are in the same boat anyway. They don't need items for offense, don't see why it's really a different case. It's also a cool niche for a caster martial hybrid like kineticist, and matches up with their pf1 style.
I don't think that's really a concern. Alchemist items are weaker as a consequence of mass production combined with the fact they can be applied to allies.
I think regarding Kineticist, I might expect to see 1 action basic blasts, 2 action form infusions, and 1 action substance infusion metamagic. I guess you'd unlock some infusions naturally at odd levels (tied to element), and then class feats would give you more infusions or wild talents.
I definitely think damage similar to Quicksilver Mutagen is the cleanest way to handle burn, though I could definitely see something similar to Flame Oracle's curse effects as an alternate method.
Regarding the spell attack roll problem, I think we can do it similar to how alchemist bombs have the item bonus baked in, since getting those hit rolls consistently is a lot more required for Kineticist.
I was talking about the penalties. But I agree that Kineticists should have their item bonus built in.
Hmm what do you mean 2 action form infusion? That seems too prohibitive. I can see variable action however. I also think substenance infusion should not cost an action in addition to form infusion. That would make the blast too poor. (The same criticism I gave the Kineticist from legendary games)
My thought was that something like Fan of Flames, Explosion, Torrent, etc would be two actions, with ones like the range-increasers being built in as you go up in level. Though now that I think about it, that would also kinda conflict with PF2's design in some ways (in that walls/other permanent battlefield control things are 3 actions).
I think if we equate substance infusions to metamagic, they are almost always going to have to cost an action. Though there are some exceptions with the more specific types of metamagic, PF2 design generally suggests that should cost an action, though a free action flourish might also work for some of them.