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So a number of people noticed felt the psychics playtest class design demonstrated one approach that paizo might take towards a future potential kineticist who wasn't a full caster. Mainly taking cantrips with a resource pool to boost those cantrips (focus points) which the psychic got more off than other classes.
What the playtest ended up showing though is that paizo are very wary of making strong at will options and of making strong encounter based options. The psychic cantrips which were a main stay of the class where pretty weak unaugment and augmented they were on average about as good as the current best cantrips (electric arc).
Given the class lost a spell per level to get this it left a pretty underwhelming class (less spells and weak focus spells). So I imagine if paizo were to pursue a kineticist it would probably end having similar issues.
Do people still expect paizo to adapt the kineticist to 2e and do you think it will look anything like what we saw from the psychic playtest ?
Meh, I'll weigh in after the psychic releases.
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I think they could make the Kineticist a bit stronger if it's just the cantrips and focus points. No spell slots. I could see them working with the action economy to make the cantrips stronger and more versatile. Also, from what they said after the playtest, the Psychic's cantrips may be in for a power boost .
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I think it has to come at some point, it's definitely in the running for most wanted class. But I don't think it's going to be as strong as people hope, mostly because of the psychic playtest as you've noted in the first post. Kineticist will need some form of casting, though it will be very limited. Possibly a few spell slots with limitations on what spells you can know, possibly focus spells, maybe simply x castings per day abilities. So I would assume it will have a similar balance to a psychic when it comes to at will damage, and 10d6 seems to be the limit when it comes to nearly at will damage. Seems the only way to make it stronger (which it seemed it was universally wanted that numbers needed a bump in the playtest) is to not make a psychics focus spells at will. I feel the only way around not being a weaker caster is to make a kineticist more of a martial (which thematically I hate but it seems to be the only way to do strong at will damage) but giving feats that allow attacks to damage an area, etc. Things like wild winds stance and wild winds gust.
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While Kineticist could resemble a Psychic, the tools already exist for the core chassis of a Kineticist. It could be a mutt combining those abilities if one wanted to scrabble one together now.
You could have Stances resembling Mountain Stance, Reflective Ripple Stands, or Wild Winds Initiate which emulate some of the basics for melee & ranged, though they might be class abilities rather than feats so the Stances could be superior or part of a package, w/ the feats adding breadth to how one could apply the element or secondary effects, i.e. movement penalties to one's cold attack.
Then yes, there are Cantrips which would come with each package, and perhaps would get a bonus when in a Stance that matches its element, or maybe can apply some of the same secondary effects (though then they'd have to align so there's little redundancy).
We can look at the Elementalist, Sorcerer, or Druid for some of their Focus spells. The main problem would be making fresh yet effective ones, though maybe they could be basic and apply the same secondary effects that bolster one's Stance or Cantrips.
That covers a lot of ground there and lays a foundation for higher levels where more invention would be necessary. One might unlock further abilities like combining Stances or improving one (like going w/ Air twice back in PF1). And the secondary effects could upgrade to, like the one where you can pierce several opponents in a line. (Upon further thought those secondary effects might have resemble Metamagic to limit how many get stacked into an attack/blast.)
Burn could be a mechanic for replenishing one's Focus points though I don't know how sticky it might be. Hopefully the casting would be Con-based, though perhaps with a Cha-based option too (though maybe limited to Spirit, Void, and similar choices?). Not sure how that'll interact with the Str/Dex components of PF1, or which side will get precedence as the class's key abilities.
So yeah, I don't see a need to replicate the Psychic's mechanics, at least no more than the Oracle's, Monk's, or that of other classes.
ETA: I see a Kineticist as using a martial chassis rather than a caster's. So much like a Monk except w/ theme-based defenses rather than superior proficiency and trading Monk class abilities which amplify unarmed Strikes for clash paths somewhat like a combination between an Instinct/Bloodline/Druid Order.
So in that vein the Cantrips would be secondary (though quite useful!) compared to actual ranged attacks using Dex (though maybe w/ a Con/Charisma bonus to damage).
As a reminder, power was something addressed in the playtest analysis blog, so we know the final psychic should be more powerful than the playtesting one was. I don't think a playtest psychic is a very good benchmark for how a kineticist would be power-wise because of this fact. It seems to be the design ethos of Paizo to make playtest classes focus more on their funky mechanics rather than power, for whatever metric someone is using to measure power, and then try to bring that class up to par in its final iteration.What the playtest ended up showing though is that paizo are very wary of making strong at will options and of making strong encounter based options. The psychic cantrips which were a main stay of the class where pretty weak unaugment and augmented they were on average about as good as the current best cantrips (electric arc).
Given the class lost a spell per level to get this it left a pretty underwhelming class (less spells and weak focus spells). So I imagine if paizo were to pursue a kineticist it would probably end having similar issues.
They did say that they would be removing the free amps when psyche was active though. So yes they're going to be stronger, but basically just regular focus spells. So nothing we haven't already seen really.
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So first, and this is important, the Psychic did still get two spell slots per level and associated spells known. That's a notable boost in power and flexibility for the toughest fights of the day. It's also a meaningful boost in flexibility for spending your low-level slots on utility.
As far as "as strong as people hope"... how strong do you think that people hope it's going to be? I personally hope that it's comparable with the low-power high-utility martials. It's going to have a lot of flexibility and utility effects for a martial, and I'd expect it to be costed accordingly, but that's still a few notches up from "bog-standard cantrip list plus focus spells."
Also... let's recall that there is a playtesting process. They're going to bring out the psychic (which is going to be somewhat juiced up from its playtest version) and they're going to see how people like it. Assuming they've done well in the post-playtest design phase, it wont' need a lot of errata. Then they're going to start with that (and with the similarly rebuilt Thaumaturge) when they go to make the playtest Kineticist... at which point they'll make adjustments based on that playtest. Paizo is... pretty good at this, really. I have every confidence that the thing that comes out the other end will be able to contribute meaningfully to the party, and feel satisfying to play. That's really my benchmark for "as strong as I hope".
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Honestly, I could see Kineticist as spell-focused (where their base cantrip might look like Elemental Toss, and then they have focus spells/amps for burn-like things and metamagics for infusions) or martial-based (where base attack looks like Monk's elemental stances, and then they might have stances or special actions of their own). I think both could work. It just really depends on the sort of design they want to go with.
I don't think they're going to have spell slots, though. I don't think it'd fit them well, even if it was something like the Elementalist spell list.
In the end, I think it's difficult to speculate right now just due to how many ways there are of accomplishing the design.
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I'm a bit pessimistic about what the class would look like in PF2, and the Psychic playtest definitely contributed to that.
- If the class is using any sort of casting, it's going to be locked to the proficiency progression of one of the casters. Spell attacks have some accuracy issues, but that wouldn't exactly be new.
- It seems likely to me that attack modifications will be competing with utility abilities in class feats. Classes don't have a lot of room on them for not-feat features. But, blast customization could be streamlined into your main customization feature.
- Utility spells in PF2 are locked down a lot more than in PF1, with shorter durations, added concentration, higher spell levels, narrower effects (although split effects do tend to be stronger), and rarity increases being frequent. I don't see Aether Architect, Gravity Master, or other the other big versatile abilities being the sorts of things PF2 would support, and I'm worried about things like Telekinetic Haul (the wild talent, not the PF2 spell) getting significant nerfs.
- The playtest had power issues stemming from semi-at-will, and was pretty much just combat stuff. It wasn't reassuring for Kineticist to me.
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I really hope we're looking at a martial rather than a caster. Kineticists were on the tougher side w/ many built to brawl. So yeah, normal attack rolls as a base w/ some attack AoEs (which some martials have already) for things like lines or adjacent targets. That's superior to having spell attacks being their bread-n'-butter.
That said, there should be multiple routes IMO so that one could go (much like in PF1). Then we could attack, spell attack, or target saves (or even all three). This, needing to be fresh, and the many elements/etc. make the Kineticist seem rather daunting to build! I wouldn't want to toss even more new mechanics like the Psychic's on top of this. Other than burn of course which I see best as a battery tool rather than for boosting (especially since PF2 avoids "going nova" so boosting would yield minor net benefits at best and likely hamstring the bread-n'-butter attacks).
maybe I am mis-remembering, but haven't we been told that the kineticist is not something that the developers are interested in bringing back anytime soon into PF2? I thought it was a class they were going to leave to 3rd party publishers, maybe forever.
I am interested to see how the final Psychic shapes up because it could be introducing a 3rd caster framework, but it seems like they tried out a lot of experimental stuff with that playtest and it is hard for me to guess what the final thing will look like. Once we see it, I am curious if it will be something expanded upon for other classes or if it will kind of remain their own unique thing.
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maybe I am mis-remembering, but haven't we been told that the kineticist is not something that the developers are interested in bringing back anytime soon into PF2? I thought it was a class they were going to leave to 3rd party publishers, maybe forever.
I am interested to see how the final Psychic shapes up because it could be introducing a 3rd caster framework, but it seems like they tried out a lot of experimental stuff with that playtest and it is hard for me to guess what the final thing will look like. Once we see it, I am curious if it will be something expanded upon for other classes or if it will kind of remain their own unique thing.
NOOOOOOOOOO!!!
Or at least I hope not.
What little I've heard was years ago when Paizo acknowledged Kineticist was frequently asked for (above several of the classes we have since gotten, and Psychic IIRC), yet they had not placed it in the development queue. I can understand that its flavor might not suit these themed expansion books and it doesn't have strong ties to anywhere in Golarion that I recall, yet hopefully Paizo will find a place for it. It was the class that allowed me the most freedom in concept development!
(Right now that's Summoner w/ Meld and its near limitless options for skins, but mechanically it's as bounded as most classes.)
It's been said that it will come at some point but they haven't found a spot for it yet.
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We likely won't know they're working on it until a playtest for it is announced, how soon we get it is likely a function of how many classes we actually get per year post G&G. As always though, I'm sure it won't be mechanically the same in 2e as it was in 1e, I definitely like the idea of them utilizing the cantrip and amp design for it if they go that route though. Built around at-will blasting with limited bursts of power via focus point expenditure.
Weird thought, but maybe they could introduce class specific skill feats for kineticist utility stuff.
I mean, I feel in the context of 2e, the kineticist is going to have to undergo something of a identity clarification/transformation. While the class itself is many things to many people, one of the core mechanics was at will blasting. The fundamental shift in cantrips and scaling in 2e might make that a problematic focus for a class, since at will blasting is already sort of a thing. Paizo has already shown they have some pretty innovative ideas for expanding on the cantrip mechanics with the Psychic.
I like the monk angle in terms of approach, which focuses on stance and communion with elements and such. I think some people are hoping for fighter proficiency and at will blasting, which seems extremely unlikely.
This will probably sound weird coming from me, but I’m increasingly less convinced that a kineticist specifically would be well served by being the cantrip caster I’ve been hoping for since…well, since PF2 was announced. The playtest psychic chassis, with arcane spells instead of occult and a suitable suite of new cantrips and amps to mimic options in PF1, and I think we’d have a pretty good elementalist blaster in front of us. You can even adapt elemental overload and burn to use the Unleash mechanic.
I do still want a purely cantrip caster, but I can wait for a new narrative slot to fill it. It just makes too much sense to take advantage of all the elemental spells both already released and not even written, rather than using a feat/focus system to do identical effects. Could even be wave casting, with all slots refreshing at the end of each combat.
I could see Burn as a form of Drained that ends after combat (or 1 minute/10 minutes). Depends on what one's getting for it of course and how it ties into issues of spamming.
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Kineticist would work well being the AoE and CC Martial, supplemented by their at-will not-cantrips blasting.
With the abundance of healing they could also bring back Burn, as long as it's normal damage or penalties and not "can't be healed no matter what".
That still leaves the "and you've got a bunch of utility" part out of the budget.
So you balance them like an AOE/CC martial with a significant utility sidebar, and still no daily slots. That... sounds like the closest comparable is actually bomber alchemist. By comparison...
+ They start being able to use their core attack style at-will from lvl 1 rather than having to wait for perpetual infusions
+ They get their utility effects largely at will as well
+ They don't have to go hunting for recipes
+ They get more blast shapes than "target plus splash". They probably get a bit more breadth in CC effects than the alchemist gets from their perpetuals... at least, if they build for it.
- Their utility abilities aren't going to be nearly as broad. They lose out on the buffs and the heals entirely, and what they have left is going to be named, numbered, and strongly themed. The alchemist has a catalog to buy solutions from. The kineticist has a small selection of hammers and must try to figure out how to turn their problems into nails.
- They won't get the daily bombs. The alchemist at higher levels is going to have more burst effectiveness, because "burst effectiveness" is what daily slots (and equivalent) are for. This also carves out the breadth of available CC types that the alchemist gets from their daily preparations.
Based on this... I'd expect them to have raw damage and CC that's a bit better than "bomber-specced alchemist throwing perpetual infusion bombs", with more control over the variety of AOE in particular. They'd have utility that's doing somewhat better than "healthy stack of cantrips", but not necessarily a lot better.. I'd expect that it would get enough better in each that playing the class didn't just feel frustrating and weak and bad. I'm thinking, though, that those are the benchmarks you start from and then move up from there.
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I just want 30ft d6+stat elemental blasts using martial proficiency. I'd be down with every style of blast aping wild wind stance of the monk.
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I'm sure I'm in the minority but I really really hope that whatever form blasts come in, they won't need weapons or magic items for their blast to scale. At least not something that can be taken away, could be something like magic tattoos that give effects of runes or something. Just please not handwraps. Ideally have it work like cantrips, just scale with your casting DC/spell attack, but we'll see.
I'd rather blasts/etc. weren't tied to Runes at all, at least not if that's going to lessen the power budget (which it should). It'd be odd IMO to have a Holy Rune on one's earthquake stomp (or whatever).
I'd rather they were either created weapons, even when skinned as unarmed attacks. Or maybe unarmed attacks which could be reskinned as created weapons (much like an Eidelon's), yet didn't work w/ Handwraps (and progressed fine on their own of course).
Even as created weapons, I'd rather separate them from Weapon Specialization since that applies to all weapons which would seem a bit odd IMO.
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Adding my voice to the chorus of "I don't want Kineticist to be a slotted caster, I want to be a martial that throws out my element of choice."
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I guess I don't really care strongly about the Kineticist in the end, as long as I get a slotless caster. Whether that is a Kineticist is pretty immaterial to me; I just want someone that throws out strong cantrips (and does not use unarmed attacks as psuedo-spells). Preferably multiple classes that support different playstyles.
Focus cantrips are fine, as long as I don't have to track slots.
Edit: if we go the ranged unarmed attack route, I'd rather they fill out the monk and add houses of perfection archetypes.
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Edit: if we go the ranged unarmed attack route, I'd rather they fill out the monk and add houses of perfection archetypes.
Or both. If we get an unarmed strike version of a kineticist, I'd want an archetype or 5 that drew heavily on the class's feats and features to represent monks from the houses of perfection, similar to the NPCs in Ruby Phoenix.
Weapon wise the trick was a conductive weapon, which would be nice to get in PF2. But I doubt they will convert that.
Something other than this: Conducting Rune?
If not that, then I agree, they'll call it something else if/when they convert it to PF2, otherwise it would sound too similar and have too similar a use case (amplifying elemental damage).
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I'm sure I'm in the minority but I really really hope that whatever form blasts come in, they won't need weapons or magic items for their blast to scale. At least not something that can be taken away, could be something like magic tattoos that give effects of runes or something. Just please not handwraps. Ideally have it work like cantrips, just scale with your casting DC/spell attack, but we'll see.
I agree with this sentiment but I think there's a really decent chance the class ends up scaling with handwraps regardless, just given the way Paizo has been handling mechanics.
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Making it it's own weapon means that Kinetic Blasts can change a lot more of the rules.
Yep, like I said, not really invested in this particular class, and this is why. Making kinetic blasts weapons, in any shape, instead of spells would be as unsatisfying and elicit the same “this is not a kineticist” reaction from me that spell slots gave you. As would having martial proficiencies, though I agree that if blasts were a weapon, that would be absolutely necessary, as would handwraps or diadems adding runes to the blasts.
The class that I want to see is still similar to the OP, with Amps, Unleashed (adjusted to be usable on round 1) with the drawback and boost baked in, even the ability to choose your main stat, which could tie into how burn manifests for you. The rest is just numbers, and are easy enough to tweak or adjust.
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I'll throw the 2 copper I've had since the 2e playtest days and say that they should get Primal spellcasting with Fighter proficiency, Con as a key stat, and focus cantrips as their blasts that have Words of Power style boost metamagic feats/focus spells that cause ancillary effects like DoT, AoE, or CC. I also (and this is where people call me crazy) have the idea you absolutely strip the built in feature list and give them a class feat every level in some form. They're the single most modular class in 1e, they should probably keep that in 2e in some form, but I'm okay with that NOT happening. Kineticist at it's core is a "war of attrition" class, and as long as that flavor gets carried over in some manner, I'll be happy with it.
I also (and this is where people call me crazy) have the idea you absolutely strip the built in feature list and give them a class feat every level in some form. They're the single most modular class in 1e, they should probably keep that in 2e in some form
I don't think it's crazy. but given how Eidolons were converted, I don't expect that to happen. If they tuned the class feats to be slightly less powerful than normal, which sounds like a fairly tough task, or gave alchemist proficiencies (which I can't imagine going over well, but I could be wrong), then I could see it.
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...It is really not hard to be better than an Alchemist. The alchemist is recognized by most people as the single worst class in PF2. Even in the best-case scenario its more there to help others than anything else.
Kineticist is all about being a strong blaster with utility. Not about being a buffer. Which is why it needs to have martial proficiency.
You have spotted the point I was trying to make, while apparently missing the fact that I was making it.
You don't get to be "Strong blaster with utility." - not past a certain point. Start with a Fighter. The fighter does consistent at-will DPR very, very well. Every thing that you want to do that is not that thing is going to cost you in doing that thing. You want to be at range? Less DPR. You want utility? Less DPR. You want built-in area effect? Your focused DPR goes down. Your total DPR probably goes up a bit. You want to slap control effects on those blasts? Less DPR. If you want all of those things then what you're looking at... might start looking more like an alchemist than it does like a fighter. It'll still be playable, and it'll still contribute meaningfully, but it'll contribute through utility and area-effect control powers with some damage rather than contributing by being a "strong blaster". You get what you pay for, and "strong blaster" is the sort of thing that costs enough that if you want all of that, you don't necessarily get anything else.
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I think being tied to runes would be good, because it means your to-hit probability is going to be hooked into the martial progression for real.
The fantasy of "can't take my power away from me" I get, but even monks rely on their handwraps. Maybe there should be a way to just tattoo fundamental runes directly onto yourself instead of using handwraps, to fulfill that fantasy better. Avatar certainly had people with glowy tattoos :)
Oh, and same thing I guess for putting armor runes on your skin instead of clothing. Though it'd probably still have to involve a dex max.
Also you might run into some friction with how to make these lootable, since the point is kinda that they're not. But then, NPC enemies can already have extra damage dice without having magic weapons so this isn't really that big a problem?
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Yeah, I expect the base damage will be low (less than a Cantrip) and at 30' (maybe 60', and maybe more damage in melee), but one-action (!) so you can spam it like a machine gun (maybe even Agile, so we're looking at shuriken & shortsword damage).
Then on top of that we might get the other effects, each costing an action, much like how Power Attack works except likely w/ more flavor, like Shove, Trip, conditions, extra range, etc.
Hopefully the single target stuff will be martial in nature, though I too wonder about whether it should be unarmed and tied to Handwraps (though there definitely are similar "ranged unarmed energy" examples w/ Kitsune and Monks).
Then on top of that there might be "Form" metamagic, so you could toss out a 2-action AoE for that low base damage, but it's at will, right? Bump it with a "Form" + a bump action + the base action for a decent 3-action reward. Hopefully these would have Con-based class saves (though I expect a Cha-based sub-class will exist too.)
And then there are Focus points (which I'd hope would be a part of this, though an Infusion-like per day mechanic could work too). These could provide either the above boosts (yet better of course) or even further boosts. Heck each option might have a "w/ Focus point" and "w/o Focus point" effect.
Burn could be tied to recovering Focus points/pseudo-infusion uses.
The buffs Kineticists got when undergoing Burn might be difficult to balance as a norm, but maybe as feat? Dunno how I feel about that.
Separately, I could see certain "types", i.e. Air, having specific paths. Like Air could get the extra range ability (or even extra extra range when they take that ability), but not such powerful melee stuff as Earth gets. And when they take the "Now I can Fly" feat (likely for a Focus point) maybe it lasts 1 minute for people w/ 1 "level" (or whatever it might be called) of Air, but 10 minutes for PCs w/ 2 Air investments. (In PF1, Kineticists could only invest in 3 over their career and redundancy.)