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I wonder if some infusions can be combined a la Conceal/Silent Spell. It's certainly an interesting thought, but I'm not sure it'd be balanced applied to a wider field of possibilities.
One other thing that might also be interesting is looking at how troop attacks work, and considering Kineticist attacks in a similar fashion. The particular one I was thinking of in this case was the Hellknight Cavalry Brigade, and their action versatility.
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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.
The problem is... casters get to slide out from under that to a degree by targeting weak saves, and by having effect on fail. I don't think it makes much sense to have Kineticists targeting will saves. I'm not sure that an item bonus makes a lot of sense, but they need *something*.
Actually, that would be an interesting "burn" mechanic, if you liked the name, but wanted to throw out nearly everything else about it - let you take small amounts of damage for small buffs to hit, but make it after the die is rolled, so that you know if it's enough to push you to the next degree of success. Have it kick in at about the same rate as item bonuses. So, you're at a level where you have two points of this. You make an attack, you miss by one, you burn an HP and you hit.
I tried to be a good noodle and read the backlog of discussion, but TLDR! So I'll just semi-ignorantly shove my vaguely solicited opinion in like everyone else :P
- What I do what:
- *At-will smacky-smack with firebolts or ice chunks, that hurt a bit more than cantrips but less than a broadsword. Probably 1 action, but maybe you can do something like Ring of the Ram and use multiple actions to add extra dice or something..?
- *Weird edgy idea that I've mentioned once or twice a year back or so: Few base features, class feats every level. NOW HOLD YER HORSES BOY, LET ME CLARIFY! You get your level 1 grab-bag of "here's all you can do" and somesuch, and then at level 3 you get proficiency bump, level 7 second element/better element + proficiency get. Level 13 more proficiency get, level 15 or 17 third element get/improve/proficiency get. That's it, that's all, that's the only thing you get baked in. Everything else you could ever want or need, is a class feat! That's sorta how it was in 1E with talents and traits and whatever else those were called.
- *I'd like to blast infusions work like either normal meta-magic or focus meta-magic, with things like increase range, AoE, wall, persistent, those sorta things. Some free action, most take 1 action, some maybe even taking 2 extra actions o-ho!
- *Burn I would like implemented, alongside gather power, as a quick and dirty refocus type activity. Gather power takes 1 action and give you 1 temporary Focus Point that expires at the end of your turn, 3 actions gives you 2 focus points that expire at the end of your next turn. Burn is a free action that lets you fully get back all the focus points you would get from a refocus activity, but you take drained+=1. You get rid of (AND HEAL!) from this when you preform your next Refocus activity, as well as regain your focus points.
- *I'd like to see them as a Con based "caster", with high Fort and Will, and I'll even go crazy and say they should join the barbarian as a 12hp/lvl class, since they're kinda supposed to be inhumanly durable to handle all this strain.
Not sure if I have enough text to say what I don't want, but I'll simplify it as: Spell slots bad, no! And please don't need items beyond armor, they're like wizards who don't need staves, so they should be able to stay broke and still wreck people on the battlefield.
The problem is... casters get to slide out from under that to a degree by targeting weak saves, and by having effect on fail. I don't think it makes much sense to have Kineticists targeting will saves. I'm not sure that an item bonus makes a lot of sense, but they need *something*.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.
Again I know I'm in the minority, but having legendary casting would only put kineticists behind martials by one. I think that's reasonable considering kineticists are sure to have cool riders on their blasts/target areas/whatever. Just looking at how other similar classes exist (Not to bring up a sore subject, but see alchemist) it sort of makes sense for me.
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My hope is that the items they get are more like alchemist goggles. Not a flat bonus, but still beneficial. Then we could get things like diadems but not be punishing ourselves by not getting it.
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Here are things that need to be fixed for an eventual Kineticist upgrade:
- No more focus on Constitution, or at least lessen it. I swear, your typical Kineticist was extremely durable and agile, but couldn't lift a 5 lbs rock.
- Energy blasts should focus on Dexterity, and Physical blasts should focus on Strength.
- Remove the Burn; this was largely contested during P1E's playtests, to the point where the devs had to step in and reinforce how they will not change the Burn mechanic. Essentially, you take non-lethal damage, but it cannot be healed outside of a 8-hour rest.
- Infusions were not equially distributed. For instance, Electric Blast barely had some.
- Kinetic Blade and Whip were broken. Imagine throwing 3 Fireballs at one opponent without its ability to half or negate the damage. Yikes... This also made weapons obsolete, and there were not many viable options to channel your entire Blast damage through a weapon.
- Earth and Aether were missing Energy blasts, while Fire was missing a Physical blast. One major oversight was that Fire couldn't be used with the Elemental Annilihator, because it required a Physical blast. Fire is destructive, so it felt pretty off.
- There was no option to enhance a blast through magic. Basically, the Kineticist could have used something similar to Solarian crystals in Starfinder.
The way I see how they could make the Kineticist is to give them the corresponding cantrips for free to represent the Kinetic Blasts;
AIR:
- Gale Blast (Air / Physical)
- Electric Arc (Electricity / Energy)
AETHER:
- Telekinetic Projectile (Aether / Physical)
- Haunting Hymn (Sonic / Energy)
DIVINE (New):
- Divine Lance (Divine / Special [Aligned])
- Disrupt Undead (Positive energy / Energy)
EARTH:
- Scatter Scree (Earth / Physical)
- Acid Splash (Acid / Energy)
FIRE:
- New Light-related cantrip (Light / Physical)
- Produce Flame (Fire / Energy)
WATER:
- Spout (Water / Physical)
- Ray of Frost (Cold / Energy)
VOID:
- New Gravity-related cantrip (Gravity / Physical)
- Chill Touch (Negative energy / Energy)
WOOD:
- Tanglefoot or damage-dealing upgrade to it (Wood / Physical)
- Puff of Poison (Poison / Energy)
After that, the Kineticist gets 2 lists: one for infusions and one for talents. Each deals non-lethal damage, but it can healed and can be reduced by spending one or two actions before Blasting. Infusions can alter all Blasts, but stronger ones become exclusive to Physical or Energy Blasts, and then only to specific elements, but all shape-altering infusions should apply to all Blasts.
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My biggest want for a kineticist is a blaster with no spell slots, since I have players who want to play blasters and don't do well with spell slots. Behind that, I would really like Kineticist to have some burn-like mechanic as their primary limiter. Magic that is physically dangerous to the caster is a trope that I like and would like to see here again. PF1's burn mechanic wouldn't work with PF2, but I think there's something to work with and trust the developers are more clever than me in coming up with a fun one. Maybe some sort of custom scaling debuff? Constitution or Strength based magic for the kineticist based on the idea that Kineticist magic is rooted in the body and is a physical practice would also be cool.
I like the idea of blast and burn being the class mechanics. Blast being a modular damage option that starts at d6/d8 and multiclass dedication makes it d4/d6. Burn only goes to the class proper and the feats center around tailoring your blast or adding utility. No idea what to mechanically do with burn though. Also, martial accuracy with item bonuses from hand wraps or diadems or whatever they want to use. Martial accuracy will give people who want to blast the baseline for a non caster class.
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I like the vague idea of burn, that you can tax your body by pushing through too much energy at once. It matches having Con as your key stat because it's really about how much energy your body can properly handle.
It seems to me though that the general style of PF2 is a bit less on daily pools, and a bit more on encounter pools. I could see burn as being a bit like focus, that it's something you can (mostly) reset in between encounters. Or alternatively, burn is what you do when you're out of focus but you desperately want to use another focus power - you can take burn to emulate focus points. If you're just simmering along in easy encounters you won't need to do that, burn is your redline option in heftier fights.
PF1 burn had the interesting effect that it was a lot of nonlethal damage, so it was comparatively rare for a kineticist to actually die from damage because they got knocked out through lethal+nonlethal. If PF2 uses burn and it eats into your HP and it's something you mainly use in difficult fights where you also take more regular damage, then we also need a similar way to ensure burn doesn't just make things worse, but may actually knock you out safely.
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I'm not super invested in Kineticist, but here's a couple mechanics that would make me more interested in it:
1) Support for a melee-focused Kineticist build, using elemental-powered fists or applying powered effects to weapons the Kineticist is wielding, or maybe just surrounding yourself with dangerous elemental energy.
2) Environmental manipulation — part of the fun of blasting is all the explosions and destruction you leave in your wake. Would add a lot of narrative fun to the class as well, to see how your powers alter and change the world around you in its very landscape. Should Kineticist go the route of choosing an element, it would be cool if they could shape that element in different ways when it is nearby, creating pits out of earth, freezing water to make difficult terrain, concentrated gusts of wind to auto-push characters that end their turn in a space, etc. Maybe this can work through use of a Solarian-esque attunement system, even manifesting elements nearby if they're not already present. If "burn" is present in the class, it would also be cool if this created negative effects on the immediate environment surrounding the caster as well, like setting a fire kineticist's square on fire, and that of any nearby allied character.
With powers to grow and to break the world around them, this class would have strong themes around creation and destruction, shifting focus from "my powers bring me consequences" — which is Oracle's narrative turf — to "my powers bring consequences to the world around me."
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1) Kineticist needs the focus on constitution as a base. If you want a class archetype that removes it fine, but the base should 1000% be reliant on Con. Also what Kineticist were you playing with? That class didn't dump Str, not really; Not to mention that Aether has the biggest carrying capacity of any character.
Its sole focus on Constitution made the other stats worthless, with Dexterity being the second one being used.
2) Why should Kinetic Blasts focus on Str or Dex when they are that blasts. It doesn't matter what material they are made off, that is why they dealth Con based damage.
When I see "Physical", I think of "Strength", not Dexterity.
3) Burn is the main way for the class to get power and it was an entirely flavorful and optional thing (you just don't get as strong). Removing it defeats the point as that power is what makes the Kineticist interesting. "Do I take burn now for some power, or wait for when I needed?"
You could literally exhaust yourself and pass out. You could take as much nonlethal damage as your current HP, so everytime you took lethal damage, you were closer to falling unconscious.
You want to keep Burn? Fine, but make it healable by normal means.
4) Infusion were fine not all blasts need to get every single infusion.
Bolt and Chain were the ONLY shape infusions that worked on the Electric Blast, and no, you couldn't replicate Lightning Bolt or Ball Lightning with the Torrent or Explosion infusions.
Line, Cone, Ball, Chain, Cylinder and whatever other shape should be applicable to every blast.
5) Broken? Kinetic Blade costs a point of burn to activate unless you maneuver things and it's only for 1 round. It is mechanically no different than a Rogue swinging with a bunch of Sneak Attack damage.
Dude, at 5th level, the Kineticist received Infusion Specialization 1, which reduced infusion costs by 1, so your Kinetic Blade costs ZERO Burn point. You could literally spam Blade or Whip every round, and since some Blasts used touch attacks, it was a huge joke.
6) Conductive weapon let you pass full damage and substance infusion. We might not get it in PF2 cause of balancing but it was a thing.
This is wrong. Conductive weapons channelled spell-like abiltiies according to whether these were melee or ranged. Technically, a longsword couldn't channel a Fire Blast, but a bow and arrow could. For the longsword, you would need to channel a Kinetic Blade, which is a melee attack. However, since Kinetic Blade interacts with AC according to the Blast's properties, and that Energy blasts strike with touch, Kinetic Blade outclassed any manufactured weapon.
7) Not all elements need access to all damage types. It's what makes things interesting.
Again, each element having both a Physical and an Energy Blast would have been ideal, and again, the Elemental Annilihator doesn't WORK with Fire, of all elements used to annilihate :S
8) The Kineticist's Diadem literally increased your damage by 1d6 per tier.
and yet, you cannot slap Keen, Bane or Disruption, or Seeking, Penetrating or Distance.
9) There is a lot more to the divine plane then their alignment. Hard forcing it removes Paizo's ability to create flavorful class archetypes. Ex: Elysiokineticist. Not to mention that Wood element is the one to have Positive Energy while Void has Negative Energy. While sound is not an energy associated with the Astral plane (Aether). Or the fact that the closest to a cantrip on a Kineticist are the various basic kinesis, not the blasts.
- The Positive Blast had to be the most worthless Blast out there. It only damages undead, and I'd like to point out that on the Positive Energy plane, living creatures could be damaged with the energy, mostly due to an overload.
- How many times have we seen psychics screaming their lungs out or sending shockwaves when using their powers? That's why I paired Sonic with Aether.
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You could literally exhaust yourself and pass out. You could take as much nonlethal damage as your current HP, so everytime you took lethal damage, you were closer to falling unconscious.
I mean yeah, that's literally the point.
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CON as the main proactive stat was actually overvalued in being unfairly punished with the sorry excuse of burns. I mean, as it has no other proactive functions like skills, it's no way even half as broken as a potential DEX to damage situation...
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I would definitely welcome a melee/"energy weapon" Kineticist - let me scratch the Solarian itch!
You could literally exhaust yourself and pass out. You could take as much nonlethal damage as your current HP, so everytime you took lethal damage, you were closer to falling unconscious.I mean yeah, that's literally the point.
The problem is that if you fell unconscious, you were out for possibly 8 hours, because you couldn't heal Burn points outside of a full-night rest.
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The problem is that if you fell unconscious, you were out for possibly 8 hours, because you couldn't heal Burn points outside of a full-night rest.You could literally exhaust yourself and pass out. You could take as much nonlethal damage as your current HP, so everytime you took lethal damage, you were closer to falling unconscious.I mean yeah, that's literally the point.
Don't do that then.
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Then fix burn, not remove it.
It could be moved from a core mechanic to an optional class feat, that way people that want to punch themselves in the face to power up can to so and others can play it without doing so.
That wasn't something PF1 really allowed, as Elemental Overflow is what kept you relevant and it needed a specific amount of Burn: no more and no less. It lead to a weird need to burn yourself as quickly as possible, often before you'd actually need the ability that you burned for, so you where fully powered up and then never burned again until the next day. As it worked in PF1, it sure didn't fill any narrative niche I ever wanted/needed to play.
Overclocking is a common enough mechanic and thematic in animation, games, and comics so there's definitely a call for it.
That was NEVER Burn though... PF1 Burn wasn't "Overclocking" when you got out of bed in the morning and Burned, not when you where in a fight. If you played it like actual overclocking, then you'd miss out of those bonuses to attack, damage and stats for the first few attacks of the day.
So like I said, it needs to be fixed to work well with the P2 system, not done away with entirely.
OR, as I said, the third option of making it optional. There are plenty of Bender themes that do not involve Overclocking so, IMO, there isn't a need to enforce that link. I'm not against people having the option to Burn, I just don't want it to be the ONLY option. I'm looking for a Kineticist that works fine on it's own and has an option for those that want burn [class feat, class archetype, ect]: the PF1 burnless option was... really BAD.
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Agreed that having a burnless option would be good for people who don't like burn. But I disagree with anyone that wants to remove it outright. The two easiest solutions I can think of are making burn a feat. Or making burnless a class archetype.
Of which I think class archetype is the better option because it lets Paizo mess with a lot more of the class to balance the burnless option, and it will already cost a feat anyway to get it.
I'd much rather have burnless be the base so that the class works well that way unlike how the PF1 archetype wasn't good at all. So if it's an option like a feat or archetype, I'd rather see those be to gain burn. I want to see them get the burnless option playing well out of the box.
Or they could just have 2 subclasses built into it, one with burn and one without.
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These threads always make me wonder if the complexity of the class and passionate 1e kineticist fans are a big part of the reason the class isn't out yet. It seems like everyone has their own view of what the class should look like, so many people are split on how it should be.
4) Ball lighting is literally just the "Mobile Blast" infusion. Also you are clearly not reading the Kineticist page. Otherwise you would know about the Bolt infusion, which let you create 1 vertical column; Or the Wall infusion that lets you quite literally make a wall of electricity.
Which btw, you missed the fact that no blasts get a 120-ft form infusion outside the Wall infusion, and few get a cone. Kineticists is not supposed to be the best at AoE, that is what casters are for.
and yet, I cannot replicate Lightning Bolt, because the Torrent infusion, which is a 30-foot line, cannot be applied to Electric Blast. The Bolt infusion is the Call Lightning spell, and unless you're fighting goblins on top of each other, it's not good for crowds.
5) Again, it's no different than a Rogue getting sneak attack damage. Its literally the same scaling, in fact used to fall behind rogues by 1d6, 2d6 if the Rogue really went for it. It also reduces you range and prevents you from using all the other form infusion during for that round.
The sneak attack worked only if the Rogue is flanking or the target is denied of its dexterity modifier (flat-footed). There are already enough restrictions.
Kinetic Blade? The restriction is that you cannot keep active, so you couldn't use it for attacks of opportunity. That's it. The damage output was so high that it outclassed other weapons. Physical blasts dealt with damage reduction and Energy blasts dealt with resistances, but that's something the target has to have, not you.
The Rogue has to be positioned in a specific way to sneak, the Kineticist doesn't need anything else.
6) Conductive lets you add more damage than your regular energy blasts allow. That's the point. Its effectively making an energy blast into a physical one, while also taking advantage of all the weapon properties. Also thrown and weapons with the Sharding enchantment lets you do ranged blasts with melee weapons.
Read it again:
"A given character can use this weapon special ability only once per round (even if she has several conductive weapons), and the power works only with magical abilities of the same type as the weapon (melee or ranged)."The Kinetic Blast is ranged, so you need a Conductive ranged weapon. In order to make it work with a melee Conductive weapon, you need to infuse Kinetic Blade to make it work. However, who in its right mind is going to trade a melee TOUCH attack for a REGULAR melee attack?
7) That archetype is all about destroying with physical things so that they can benefit from weapon feats, it is not about making energy blasts better. Also, it's an archetype it's not supposed to fit everything but to specialize.
The Omnicide deals fire damage, but you CANNOT use the Fire element for Devastating Infusion??? That doesn't add up.
"For some kineticists, nothing in life is as sweet as destruction and pain. Elemental annihilators pursue only uses of their powers that harm others."
How being an arsonist NOT fit that criteria again?
8) See conductive enchantment.
and it still doesn't work. That's like hoping to receive a gauntlet enhancement to bestow enhancements onto thrown weapons. That's what the Kinetic Blast needed.
Yes, there's Focused Blast, which give enhancement bonuses to attack rolls, but you need to Burn. If I could just get a +5 Kineticist Crystal that grants a +5 enhancement on any attack roll with the blast (melee and ranged), that's one thing I don't need to Burn for.
9) Kineticist is not a Psychic. They are not the same even if they behave similarly. Also shouting is usually not what causes the problem, it's the telekinetic power, shouting is usually just a show of emotion. Like say the Many Throw infusion.
Aether is similar to psychic powers, come on now.
Also, Positive blast does exactly what it says on tin. The fact positive energy behaves differently on the Positive plane is meaningless because Wood element is based on the First World.
Positive Blast is just useless unless your campaign is centered around fighting undead all the time, and when it comes to healing, Water did a much better job.
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Not that anyone really needs my two cents, but I feel like I would really like to see the Kineticist end up as a Con-based class, or at least optional Con or a mental stat (Cha?) because I love the idea of a class whose supernatural gusto is not based on their mental scores as a sweet twist.
I would like to see Burn come back, but definitely with a few fixes. It strikes me as one of the most unique parts of the class. Currently there are ways to play an elemental specialist who doesn't have any way to over-tap their endurance (especially with Elementalist archetype). That said, as an Avatar fan, I can see why people would want a more martial elemental slinger that doesn't hurt themselves. Among the most important things to fix about Burn being the need/advantage of intentionally triggering Burn at the start of the day to trigger bonuses.
Aside from that, I very much appreciate the sheer aesthetics of Gather Power allowing you to charge up your attacks. I would also greatly appreciate having functional 'weapon-like' energy wielders make a return, whether in the form of the elemental fist or elemental blade or both.
Also I found the very minor utility abilities very enjoyable. Nothing says 'telekinetic' like a character who functionally has the Mage Hand spell always-on. Even if telekinetic haul did cause more slow downs than any other ability just from checking to find out how much a decent-sized boulder or portcullis actually weighs and whether it was within the limits of our android's control.
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Not sure why, but the thread about the Kineticist's Themes made me see the class as the Caster counterpart to the Martial Thaumaturge.
Not as a slot caster, mind you, but as a caster-chassis Class that runs counter to the other caster tropes. And, in this view, having CON as a KAS makes a lot of sense.
With a limiter based on physical fitness / health and status, with the optional ability to go beyond it at great physical cost.
Great mental cost could be a thing too BTW.
Note : I loved the concept of the PF1 class but never got to build one. So, I am quite unfamiliar with the terms many here casually sling. Sorry about that ;-)
Agreed that having a burnless option would be good for people who don't like burn. But I disagree with anyone that wants to remove it outright. The two easiest solutions I can think of are making burn a feat. Or making burnless a class archetype.
Of which I think class archetype is the better option because it lets Paizo mess with a lot more of the class to balance the burnless option, and it will already cost a feat anyway to get it.
I'd much rather have burnless be the base so that the class works well that way unlike how the PF1 archetype wasn't good at all. So if it's an option like a feat or archetype, I'd rather see those be to gain burn. I want to see them get the burnless option playing well out of the box.
Or they could just have 2 subclasses built into it, one with burn and one without.
My experience with the Overwhelming Soul was that it was borderline busted and our GM had to rebalance some encounters to make it less OP. And a grand majority of people like/want/enjoy the design of Burn, and want it to be the default, and I can't really understand why you want it as opt in only. Oracle curses aren't opt in only, do you have a problem with them? I do think a few different subclasses, one or two of which support no burn (or a class archetype) would be fine, but by and large I'd like it to stay as the default method of Kaio'Ken-ing your way through the problem.
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My general framework of what i think it could look like
12 hit die
con primary stat
good fort and will poor ref (debatable)
master perception
master unarmed and simple
master medium (maybe light?)
legendary class dc
there are four tags associated with the class
[Burn] These are abilities that either cost focus or have usage limits, a the kineticist can choose to ignore those costs/limits in exchange for burning themselves. When burned a kineticist has weakness to all energy damage outside of their main subclass type equal to half their level.
[blast] which is a tag and new weapon group of unarmed ranged weapons, the kineticist gains access to basic blasts either from feats or their subclass, and they are have access to all of their blasts any time they have both hands availible.
The critical specialization of the blast is that the target gains a weakness to the damage type of the blast, the weakness amount is equal to the number of die rolled.
[Composite] This is a tag for blasts that combine other blasts, once a kineticist has "composite blasting" (level 7ish) they automatically gain any blast they have the prerequisites for. All composit blasts are also burn effects.
[not-infusion] These are effectivly free action focus metamagic that can alter the propeties of your blasts, they can be used by spending focus, or they can burn the kineticist to add them to a blast for free
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Personally, I'd like to see:
-stances or similar for elements, and feats the modify the unarmed attacks for like the standard elemental attacks
-focus spells/cantrips for big powers and utility powers
-burn as an opt in feature that inflict conditions on the user for even bigger effects, but can be ignored by people who dont want to interact with it
-reward for either focusing on one element, but also have the choice to diversify into multiple elements, with each element being a subclass
-able to bend elements for utility effects (making simple structures with stone, extinguish/reshape fire, etc). My biggest gripe with the summoner actually is how little support the class has for utility, and that was something I dont want to see repeated in the kineticist
-at the risk of being called a weeb; some dynamic, ATLA type feel
-variable tradition sources. We need divine as a choice for elysian infused (a xlass archetype, perhaps?), though arcane handles the 4 elements + telekinesis, and probably primal for things like wood
-at the risk of being called a weeb; some dynamic, ATLA type feel
-variable tradition sources. We need divine as a choice for elysian infused (a xlass archetype, perhaps?), though arcane handles the 4 elements + telekinesis, and probably primal for things like wood
I think kineticist should stay firmly occult if it has a tradition at all. I've mentioned before but kineticist is based on something in """""real""""" occultism which is attuning yourself to something outside of the material world, and using yourself as an anchor to connect that thing with the world of the living.
Kineticist is not about bending the world around them avatar style, you are syphoning raw energy and forces from the outer planes using your body as a bit of wire to allow these forces to flow from their origin, through you and out into the world around you and maybe wrangling a bit of control in the process. this is why burn is a thing, none of this is your power, you are just a conduit, a little bit of wire through which this outside power flows and if you aren't careful with the flow that energy is destructive to your body.
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Given that the kinetecist ties directly to elemental forces of nature and reality I think that Primal is far more fitting, shoot, even the elemental Sorcerer Bloodline is assigned as Primal.
There are non-standard elements such as Positive and Negative energy that I think fit being set as Occult given the source of those energies being the outer planes but for nearly all other options put forth from 1st ed I think Primal is a better fit.
Potentially they could be given an option between the various Traditions and this can give the PC a different specific Focus Spell or other Ability depending on their choice that fits the themes of the Tradition though.
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I mean, you could also do the thing that the monk does where you choose between primal and occult (in the monk's case divine and occult).
The pyrokineticist, hydrokineticist, aerokineticist, and geokineticist would be primal, but the telekineticist, chaokineticist, arakineticist, elysiokineticist, and pyschokineticist might make more sense as occult.
There's no reason you can't make the class accomodate both Nature and Occultism depending on other choices, since that's just a choice of tertiary stats.
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-reward for either focusing on one element, but also have the choice to diversify into multiple elements, with each element being a subclass
-able to bend elements for utility effects (making simple structures with stone, extinguish/reshape fire, etc). My biggest gripe with the summoner actually is how little support the class has for utility, and that was something I dont want to see repeated in the kineticist
This. And honestly everything else you just said. I'd love to play a class like this. Utility of elemental powers inside and outside of combat is what I'm most interested in for Kineticist — "the battlefield is your sandbox" type feel.
the thing I'm trying to say is that a kineticist isn't using an "elemental ability" at all, they are using a planar one by connecting themselves to other planes. this is not a case of attuning themselves to natural forces or the world around them it is a case of attuning themselves to alternate planes of reality. the fact that some of those planes are full of fire which happens to be good at killing things does not make the technique a primal agility.
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The occult spell list doesn't have a lot of elemental magic in it. Then again, aether like stuff and telekinesis is more on the occult side of things. It might be interesting to construct the kineticist as quite firmly on an axis between those two and very much not divine or arcane.
I do want ATLA vibe dynamic feeling, a bit freeform utility power. But PF2 has toned down utility magic a lot and I think in exchange for all-day blasting, you're not going to be the king of precise utility magic. So maybe along with an emphasis on occult/primal magic sources, your utility powers are also fairly unsubtle and imprecise. Useful, and flexible in their scope, but very much scoped.
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the thing I'm trying to say is that a kineticist isn't using an "elemental ability" at all, they are using a planar one by connecting themselves to other planes. this is not a case of attuning themselves to natural forces or the world around them it is a case of attuning themselves to alternate planes of reality. the fact that some of those planes are full of fire which happens to be good at killing things does not make the technique a primal agility.
I agree, although even then, the Kineticist is still ultimately interacting with the elemental planes, this primordial origin of primal magic. The ethereal plane angle kind of feels like it was shoehorned to make the class have a stronger link to the "occult adventures" theme. At the very least, the theme for this class should be broad enough that a strong connection to the natural world could give you similar powers. Plus, occult already has two primary caster-type classes, while primal is stuck with the Druid, for now. Would be nice to give the primal part of the setting a little more love, especially since we'll be fresh out of Dark Archive occult options extravaganza by the time this class presumably has the chance to roll out.
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...I agree, although even then, the Kineticist is still ultimately interacting with the elemental planes, this primordial origin of primal magic. The ethereal plane angle kind of feels like it was shoehorned to make the class have a stronger link to the "occult adventures" theme. At the very least, the theme for this class should be broad enough that a strong connection to the natural world could give you similar powers. Plus, occult already has two primary caster-type classes, while primal is stuck with the Druid, for now. Would be nice to give the primal part of the setting a little more love, especially since we'll be fresh out of Dark Archive occult options extravaganza by the time this class presumably has the chance to roll out.
occult just has bard tho? what is the other one you are thinking of? in either case keneticist isnt a primary caster to begin with
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occult just has bard tho? what is the other one you are thinking of? in either case keneticist isnt a primary caster to begin with
Psychic. And Kineticist seems like it'll be primary caster-adjacent. If it goes slotless, it'll occupy a unique role in the design space that's more reminiscent of a primary caster than anything else, probably.
Because it will also lack a lot of utility options other spellcasters have access to, I think it also makes a little more sense to give Kineticists a strong breadth of utility abilities to do things other than shoot/punch enemies, especially considering 2e has this implicit focus on giving characters things to do outside of combat.
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primary caster ajacent? Kineticist in 1e was purely a martial who just used energy as their weapon, and that is the mechanical design space most (though not all) poeple seem to want, I see its closest mechanical cousen to be the monk, not any form of caster.
also i feel very stupid for having forgotten the psychic
primary caster ajacent? Kineticist in 1e was purely a martial who just used energy as their weapon, and that is the mechanical design space most (though not all) poeple seem to want, I see its closest mechanical cousen to be the monk, not any form of caster.
also i feel very stupid for having forgotten the psychic
Really? I didn't realize it was primarily martial...d20 describes its combat role as: "Kineticists generally use their powers to assail their foes from range, but based on the way their talents develop, they can channel their kinetic abilities for a variety of situations." Granted, I've only skimmed the class so far, and played a bit with Kaessi in the Kingmaker PC game, so you probably know more than me. I'm mainly operating off the assumption that people want to play Kineticist to blast things at range without using slots. But hey, I love the Monk angle, and that sounds a lot like the Kineticist character I'd want to build for myself, for that AtLA flavor.