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In order to keep these threads to a minimum and making it easier for the devs, I think it would be a good idea to put all of our fresh opinions in the same place. Let's try to make discussion around here as orderly as possible.
So far there are only 2: KingTreyIII and QuidEst
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On my part:
Things I like
Elements working like a sort of stance: You enter one, you get an element with its own stats and feats. You want to change? You change the "stance". Elegant.
Single element, double element or universalist: If you specialise, you get more benefits, if you don't you get versatility. The specifics could be impreved probably, but the base idea works IMO.
Impulse and Overflow. Cool dinamic: You can spend your "stance" for a powerful effect that has to be renewed for an action. You can use that as an opportunity too to switch elements.
Kinetic Aura: Giving incentives to stacking persistent effects is interesting. Combining effects usually leads to interesting situations.
Tons of utility feats: The system was missing a class that could add reusable general utility to a party. Most of them seem both interesting and powerful enough to compete with pure combat stuff.
CON as a main stat: Not much to say, I just like it.
Things I don't like
Little reason to care about CON as a main stat: It governs saves and that's it. It needs more than that for me to care about it as a main stat.
Non-elemental Blasts: I think this should be a must. At least having the option of doing Cold for Water and Lightning for Air, even if it is not from the get-go.
Everything is a class feat: Too many powers and very few feat slots, basically. It feels as if casters needed to pay a feat for every level of spells they get.
Bad damage: It is the playtest, so I don't really care much about this, but damage seems really low this time around.
Expert at 7: I'm thinking this might be an error, but if it is not, I think it is a mistake. If the class has martial stats, give it martial stats.
The Apex item incident, again: Another class that want 2 boosts for 2 diferent stats. This time around it is worse than Inventor, I think, since the amount of abilities that use the Class DC seems even higher.
Things I would change
First Blast after gathering energy adds CON to damage: Full CON for melee, half CON for ranged. Another incentive for using Overflow actions often and fix a bit the low-ish damage. Also makes CON more important for the class.
Gaining a Blast that deals elemental damage for Wind and Water as a feat: I think most people were expecting this.
Extra feats as you level just for elemental feats: Allows the Kineticist to grow wide, not tall.
Flexible Blast baked into the class: I predict this will be the most popular feat of the class. I think it would be best if it were a class feature or that the traits were baked into the specific strikes from the get-go.
Cycling Blast and Stoke Element: I really like the idea but I think it would be best if they were a class feature. Also, I think Cycling Blast should work the other way around, you gather, then you Blast (possibly asking you to swith to a different element that the one you used last this or the previous turn). I don't think you would ever want to gather without using an overflow action first.
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Fair enough, I'll throw my first impression post here rather than making my own thread.
Inner Gate seems like an interesting way to separate kineticists. More initial options for focusing on a single element vs. greater amount of choices when leveling up. I do think the Universal Gate seems to be worded poorly considering we'll have 6 elements total at the official release. Might be better to chose either the 4 western elements (air, earth, fire, water) or 5 eastern elements (earth, fire, metal, water, wood). Granted, this also doesn't cover any unusual elements people may want to appear down the line (aether, void, etc.)
But why does Universal get to change their 1st-level pick every day? Seems like this is trying to go the way of the Wizard and make Universal just better than being more specialized. Compared to dual gate, who get 1 additional 1st level feat (which can't change) in exchange for cutting their blast & options in half, this doesn't seem like a fair trade-off - especially when the earliest big distinction between the two after 1st level is an optional 10th level feat. Dedicated Gate seems somewhat tempting with +2 1st level feats & Stoke Element (Feat 6), but Universal seems to be just best otherwise.
Gather Element seems kinda weird in that it basically functions as a stance, without actually being a stance. The only difference seems to be having overflow abilities that forcibly end it.
Elemental Blast Very happy to see both melee and ranged supported from the start!
Extract Element ...seems highly situational. I'd imagine many players will forget they even have this ability the rare times it becomes useful. As far as I can tell, primary usefulness is allowing Fire Kineticists to not become completely useless against a fire elemental?
Elemental Weapon (Feat 1) Love the thematic, but I'm unsure how this works. Do you get the weapon damage dice / traits when making an elemental weapon? If no, the ability seems kinda useless and just flavor. If yes, then seems at the level of a must-take for elements like air (low damage dice) or earth (low range) to compensate for their downsides. Don't say I particularly like how it changes the damage type to match your element - since other than fire, most elements don't make a lot of sense with this (my earth sword or water spear deal bludgeoning damage). Also doesn't really help avoiding to use weapons if my earth kineticist still needs a backup non-bludgeoning weapon for any enemies where bludgeoning isn't very effective. [Current campaign I'm running is zombie-focused where players have learned they need to use slashing damage to keep up. A water/earth kineticist would be better off with a sickle than ever using their blast, even with this feat...]
Elemental Impulse Feats
Expected that the old elemental options would primarily become feats, no big surprise.
Air
Wings of Air returns! And without the prerequisites! Already love this element, near permanent flight is exactly what I want as an aerokineticist, and will be difficult to resist on any universal gate kineticists.
No Lightning Blast-style impulse? Really feel there should be a low-level impulse that lets you arc electricity at foes.
Earth
Stone Shield doesn't appear to have any limit on uses after using Shield Block? (other than needing to re-Gather Element) That seems like a very good ability.
Fire
Lots of burning, as expected.
Water
Love Winter's Clutch as a snow/ice kinetic aura at 1st level - but think there should also be some type of water (room temp) aura ability.
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Overall
Neither particularly attached or against CON as the class ability score, but I feel like the class ability should do something for the class. Right now, it seems like CON doesn't actually affect any Kineticist abilities - which seems wrong.
Dedicated Gate vs. Dual Gate vs. Universal Gate:
Feel like these need more to distinguish from each other rather than just 1-2 extra first level options and a few optional feats later on. Especially for Dual Gate, which is in an awkward spot between the two. At minimum, I think there should be a class feature at some level beyond 1st which has different effects based on which Inner Gate you took.
Personally, I'd expect the Dedicated Gate to be the best at using their element, Dual Gate to have an ability to channel both their elements simultaneously (using either element's impulses freely), and Universal having the flexibility of all elements, but needing to spend time to re-gather a new element in order to swap between them (trade-off compared to dual gate). Also see dual gate as having best ability to mix blasts, while maybe allowing universal gate a feat to select multiple impulse feats with the restrictions they have to be of a lower level and of different elements (to help the issue of limited feat slot restrictions when trying to maintain more than two elements in a build - let them be the most varied while not getting the flashiest at-level abilities).
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I did mine as a character building exercise.
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I'll throw my hat in too.
Proficiency
Overall looks fine, but I'm concerned about this being a Con KAS class that focused on one type of attack and doesn't start as an expert in that. The elemental blasts are literally the raison d'être of playing this class in the same vein as shooting a gun is the reason you pick up Gunslinger. The progression should, I think, look pretty much identical to Gunslinger (i.e. faster advancement in "elemental strikes" while other advancement is slower).
Alchemists are trained in "alchemical bombs." I think it's ok to make these elemental strikes a category of weapon and let the Kineticist have fun with them.
Key Ability Score
I was pretty vocal about this in the Thaumaturge playtest, but if we're going to get a martial class without casting that doesn't have Str or Dex as the KAS, then it needs to be a KAS that is very justified and plugs in all over the place in the class. It's honestly kind of baffling to me that after all this time we'd get another playtest where the class doesn't interact with its KAS at all.
Con for damage? Sure! Con for hit? Less excited about that, but also... Sure! But if Con is just class DC and hp, with no kind of "burn" mechanic or whatever, then Con doesn't justify itself, and the class becomes very MAD.
To be clear, I'm ok with Con as a KAS, but it needs to feel like this martial is a one-stop-shop with an 18 Con.
Gates
I like that you can pick one or more elements from the get-go. Universal seems a bit weak, and like it should maybe get a predetermined "Universalist" feat. Being able to channel multiple elements is great, but it's a big opportunity cost to lose two upgrades at level 1, in my opinion.
Gather Element
Seems fine. It's basically an elemental "reload" and a bit like a stance, in some ways. My first thought here is that if this has the manipulate trait, then the actual elemental blast itself shouldn't have the manipulate trait--probably remove this from "impulse" and just tack manipulate onto the things that need it.
Adapt Element
Seems pretty weak. Free prestidigitation but it's just sort of... there. Later levels it seems fine as a free thing, but I'd like to see a bunch of feats that let you upgrade and play with this more.
Extract Element
Fine, built-in way to try to bypass immunities is great. I think a failure should remove the clause about effects lasting only as long as you have the element gathered, though.
Feats
All told pretty decent. Some really fun flavorful stuff
Overflow
As is it mostly acts as a sort of pseudo-panache. Which is fine, I suppose, but this highlights an issue I have with the Con KAS: this would have been an opportunity to play more with the "burn" mechanic that the 1e Kineticist had. Drained is already a thing, and having the Kineticist take on drained 1 every time they overflow (in exchange for big effects) seems like a pretty easy 1:1 translation. Then allow the Kineticist to reduce their drained value by 1 with 10 minutes of downtime.
I think if we're going to have a class with a trait called "overflow", which channels raw elemental power through its mortal body, and which has other people "worr[ied] you will consume yourself with elemental magic, or lose control of its primal forces", it should feel like you can build towards riding the lightning a bit.
I think Psychic captured this really well with Unleash Psyche. I think Kineticist could meet Psychic and Oracle in the middle: let players freely push their Kineticist past its limits if they want.
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Overall, looks promising. The flavor is there and the basics seem workable, but it needs to embrace true martial proficiency for its elemental strikes and embrace the Con KAS so it can actually deliver on kickass elemental blasts. I want to feel like playing this class I can get to that knife's edge. Going supernova doesn't have to be pure damage dice, but things like advanced combat maneuvers, flurries of elemental attacks, more spell-like effects, etc.
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As I started reading the document my heart sank as I realized it was a martial class. Almost closed it right then and there out of frustration. But I read on and slowly started to really really like what I saw. I do find it funny (I feel vindicated a little) that so many posts and chats are upset about attack rolls and DCs being low, but that's bound to happen when a class tries to be both a martial and caster. It does as good as it can with it's proficiencies, though damage numbers seem to be all over the place. Anyway, onto a likely super long post about my thoughts.
Initial proficiencies - nothing too crazy here, but I'll parrot what others have said in that it really does need medium armor proficiency.
Con as a main stat - it doesn't bother me as much as it does others, but yeah it really doesn't do anything. Could be changed to be any other stat and the hit point per level go up to a d10 and it would be a net gain.
Class features
Impulse as a trait - little annoying that it has both concentrate and manipulate and few ways to deal with aoos, but I doubt that's going to change. Seems to be a trend lately.
Kinetic aura - really neat, don't know where the idea came from but a lot of great abilities come with this. Sort of like an aoe stance, lasting the whole fight, only 1 per round, etc.
Overflow - I like it a lot, it's interaction with impulse is an elegant solution to making big finishing moves. Sort of a mix of spell strike recharge and panache (but not really)
Inner gates - very cool ideas, I'm really glad this exists. My only takeaways after obsessing about it all day is that dedicated (and dual to a lesser extent) could use a boost. Maybe power up their exclusive feats, maybe give them higher level feats as bonuses (extra infusion feats for free at higher levels), I'm not sure. But universal being able to cherry pick from an enormous amount of feats and the versatility of having all the elements (not to mention the resistances and immunities they would get from elemental resistance/immunity) is really really strong.
Gather element - cool and flavourful. Maybe have this keep the manipulate trait but get rid of it on the impulse trait?
Elemental blast - I won't whine (anymore) about this not being a spell attack, after reading more of the class it really doesn't matter too much in the grand scheme of things. Pretty much everything about elemental blast is sort of boring to me, it's just a strike, just filler for the fun stuff. Doesn't even get any damage boosters or status it inflicts. Cool to have melee and range off the bat I guess.
Adapt element - little ability, but necessary and I'm very glad it's not a feat one would have to take. Good design.
Elemental resistance - pretty cool, likely won't matter too much except for fire (and maybe metal and plant? Not sure how those are going to work) but I do really like that features like this are extras and not in your feat bucket.
Extract element - while I see why this exists, I don't think it does enough to fix what it's trying to fix. Let's be honest, it's mostly for fire element (it would be for cold and electric but they aren't blasts, please make them an optional blast) but actual fire element things aren't super numerous. We need a solution for the other; devil's and other beasties immune to fire.
Critical element - I've seen the complaint about the water splash damage and it is a legit complaint. You definitely don't always want splash damage. Could probably also use some more numbers like how far the splash goes (likely just adjacent but would be good to squeeze in there).
Adapt terrain - kind of an odd one? Extremely specific, only thing I can really think of is spreading and putting out fires. I don't reeeally get why this is here, taking up page space, but Im probably missing something.
Elemental flexibility - so so glad for this. Such a good idea to put this in, thank you devs. Sort of thought this was going to be exclusive to fighter forever but man does kineticist need it. So many feats.
Pure adaptation - good, fun. Could see it being useful to every element, rarely fire.
Final gate - quickened to gather an element is huge. Very glad it's not a feat capstone. Once you get this I can see awesome stuff start happening.
Other notes on proficiencies - not going to harp on this much. It's a little odd to have
blast expertise at 7, but there is usually something wonky with martial/caster hybrids (especially when their key stat isn't their attacking stat). In my wildest dreams I would love a choice of being more martial or more caster (attack only goes up to expert but class DC to legendary, or stays as is now) but the class already has so much going on that I understand that likely won't happen (but like it wouldn't be that much work paizo). Greater juggernaut is probably the best save ability to have and I'm happy about it.
Kineticist Feats
Elemental familiar - yay! Glad it made it. Love that it has a couple specificities like elemental immunities and using your con stat.
Elemental weapon - meh. Needs some verbage about what runes it uses. Don't really like that some people feel forced to take this so they can avoid aoos, but I also don't care all that much either.
Flexible blasts - love it. Even though I don't care for the martial side of the class I love this. Being able to use either dex or str with a pretty unique trait is awesome.
Kinetic activation, voice of elements - both necessary and flavourful but I don't find them very exciting. I really don't see kineticist as a skill heavy class (it really isn't)
Blast barrage - boring, exactly the kind of thing you'd expect from martial kineticist
Command elemental - flavorful and good when it comes up I'm sure, but too situational for me.
Cycling blast - a huge selling point for dual/all element gates. A free attack on gather an element is very strong on a class that's already action starved.
Stoke element - would love to love this but it's in a wierd spot. I doubt it could be buffed too much more but it's also not really worth it? Dangerous sorcery is a lot better at first glance, being a low level, passive, and giving a higher damage boost most of the time, but it's also only on spell slots which isn't something you're going to do every turn (especially at your highest level). The feat needs a boost somehow though, ideally making it passive.
Aura shaping - depends on your other feat choices, this could be damn near mandatory or it could be worthless. But damn when paired with the right aura this might be one of the best feats kineticist has.
Chain blasts - meh. I think people are hyping this up too much. Yeah it's slightly different from what other martials get but not by much. Doubt many scenarios where all five would connect.
Deconstruct element - another way too situational feat (maybe not for fire?). Only once per 10 minutes, takes your reaction, and you have to succeed at the counteract check (with a lower chance than other casters to do so, remember). Another exclusive to the dedicated gate too. I don't think there's much that could be done to get me on board with this one, personally.
Fusion blast - power attack with bells on
Gather amalgamation - I get the feeling this is actually a very deep feat. Being able to pick from any of your element specific feats is really strong but also things like elemental resistance/immunity could be very useful.
Rapid reattunement - good for dual gate, better for universal. Not sure if you know this but kineticist has a lot of feats. All those situational feats get a lot more good looking with this... Water breathing, flight, burrow speed, all sorts of goodies.
Flowing kinetics - as an earth element person this feat makes me sad. It's very very good. One of many action economy cheats that higher level kineticist gets.
Steadfast kinetics - also good, don't get me wrong, but not nearly as good as flowing kinetics. You're still not going to be on the same level as champion or monk or anything, but ac is always nice. And it's passive!
Effortless impulse - another action economy cheat! Very glad to have it, didn't think kineticist would get this sort of thing. Some very strong impulses that hugely benefit from this.
Imperious aura - could be good. I think this might directly compete with effortless impulse however, as they have the same trigger. Kinetic auras also cost one less action to cast if your already under the effect of one, so that diminishes the value a little more. But, for a specific build I imagine this could be great.
Maelstrom blast - yaaaawn. Had to be here but ya boring
Nourishing gate - feats like this are often my favorites. Anything that can ignore things beings need to subsist are my jam. Buuut it has a lot of competition, and doesn't state that you don't need water (which I think is a mistake, I mean come on). Doesn't help that you can negate the need for food and water through the legendary survival feat. Not needing to breathe is very cool though (would've loved don't age as well)
Flawless element - kineticist is really spoiled in high level feats. Another action economy cheats. Really it comes down to how many overflow feats you have that cost three actions. But dang, the amount of action economy cheats at 20... Free sustain, quickened gather power, two action (normally three) overflow feat, free step or half speed stride, and still one action to do whatever you want?! Granted that takes a decent amount of feats but you have a few to spare because of elemental flexibility.
Omnikinesis - universal gate eat your heart out. Hope you know your class well. A single action to change a 8th level or lower feat among four elements could be amazing.
Earth element
Yeah I'm only going to do earth, sue me. It's my jam and I'm tired.
Geologic attunement - good at low levels, giving both tremorsense and creating difficult terrain. Glad paizo added the line about it being suppressed until the end of your turn if you move, very clever. I can see this feat being a bother until aura shaping is gotten (in which case huge power boost) but it's not like you have to have it on all the time. Good way to control the battlefield.
Stepping stones - not sure how I feel about this feat to be honest. It seems a bit complicated for what its trying to do. Would almost rather it has text closer to monks wind jump.
Stone shield - initially I thought this feat was too good, giving the character a reusable shield block, but costing an action in addition to making the PC gather power again once shield block is used (see: 2 actions) is actually a pretty big price to pay. Good to have the option, and being able to raise a shield is always welcome.
Tremor - tremor is actually pretty good. I scoffed at the damage initially (and no it's not great considering it essentially costs three actions) but it's ranged, target a (teeny) area, could possibly knock foes prone, and makes difficult terrain. All while expending nothing but actions. Shame it's bigger brother almost completely invalidates it though.
Dust storm - I really want to like this, and I do to a degree, but it has its flaws. You can't use geological attunement with it for precise tremorsense later in your PCs career (you can only have one aura going at a time), and while the radius would be huge with aura shaping I don't think you can really prevent your allies from being bothered by it. I think this is one of those auras that's better off without aura shaping, sadly. If you're interested in making a tanky earth kineticist though, concealment all the time is pretty cool (and the tiny reposition could be useful. Maybe.) Just make sure to focus on area attacks so it doesn't bite you in the bum.
Restoring mud - not the strongest impulse but good to have healing! Especially for out of combat or emergencies. Honestly feel like it could either be more healing or temp hp, or have less of a period where your allies can no longer be affected. Or some other rider, like a free persistent damage flat check. I dunno a little nudge into stronger territory.
Igneokinesis - I'm never a fan of these types of abilities. They're always too loose with what exactly can be done, and it always ends up gm fiat. I'm sure there are those out there who get into all sort of crazy shenanigans with these kinds of abilities, but not for me.
Rolling boulder - big let down of a feat for me, personally. Very low damage and pretty meh riders. Would love the damage to be higher and it be a little less specific (not a rolling boulder, just bludgeoning damage in a line so I can get away with hitting flying enemies or not worry about inclines and dumb stuff). Also quite a long time until the next damaging earth impulse, and I feel like level 6 a lot of classes get really fun toys but this isn't it.
Spike skin - awesome. A mini, but different, stoneskin that doesn't cost a spell slot. Perfect.
Swim through earth - Ah burrow speed. The great cheese. Kind of a bummer that it has to be sustained but it could be to help with the cheese. Does need a slowed value in there.
Hurtling rockfall - pretty cool feat. Didn't seem too strong to me at first, then I realized the initial target takes both the initial hit and the shrapnel, and yeah it's decent. Also reads to me like it doesn't have to target the ground, just a good old rock missile. I would like to see the shrapnel maybe do a smidge more damage and the initial hit a little less, closer to a 50/50 split. And I don't know why it doesn't scale at 20. But yeah I like it (maybe switch levels with rolling boulder?)
Rock rampart - yeahhhh this might be broken. We'll see. You do have to sustain is at least, but it's only two actions and not even overflow...
Assume Earth's mantle - what a crazy feat. It does so many things, and there's a lot that's unclear to me. It's overflow, costs three actions, and lasts a minute. You become large and can climb earthen surfaces. That's all clear. But using it as armor... Is it supposed to not benefit from armor runes? Is it less armor because you become large? The action economy and duration suggest it's not something you want to rely on, so maybe it is supposed to be a penalty. I do really like the item bonus to strength, bringing the class up to the level of other martials in the 'to hit' department, and leaving the kineticist to use their Apex item on con.
Stone guardian - normally I'm not a big summon fan but this is pretty cool. Doesn't hit that hard or often but has a lot of health, can block tiles, gives cover, and only costs two actions and isn't even overflow, and then sustain as needed.
Rebirth in living stone - one of two crazy level 18 feats for earth. Two actions to be immune to crits and precision, 40 temp hp (50 at 20!), and blast dice increase. I don't fully understand why it gives gather element as a free action at the start of your turns as you are already quickened to do that at 19 (is it that beneficial to do it twice in one turn?). I get the feeling that it's to trade with having to sustain the impulse but someone forgot that was already a class feature. Also you could just let it drop at the end of your next turn and use it again for 50 more temp hp I guess? That's a decent amount of temp hp when you have decent armor, are immune to crits and maybe even have concealment going!
The Shattered Mountain Weeps - could be my favorite feat in the game. No, it's not doing as much damage as a fireball at the same level. But 20 foot burst at 120 ft away is great range and area. 10d10 damage at 20 is very respectable for something you can do every turn. On a failure (not critical failure) creatures fall prone, and it says the sphere of earth that explodes appears overhead so I don't see why you couldn't target flying creatures either. And for a minute it deals 3d10 (@20) damage in that area and creates difficult terrain?! That is insane and the epitome of earth. Control and aoe damage all in a pretty little package. Sorry tremor.
I'm not as interested in the other elements and pretty sleepy so I'll stop now. The class has hugely grown on me and I can't wait to start playtesting.
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and the class becomes very MAD.
I agree with most of your points but I think this is being overstated a bit. Con is already one of the big three attributes. A fire or air kineticist can pretty much just focus dex/con/wis, which makes them about as MAD as a druid or rogue, aka not even a little bit. Not even remotely in the same boat as a thaumaturge or inventor trying to cover 4-5 stats on their own.
It only gets weird if you want to be Strength-based, and that's more just kineticists probably needing medium armor.
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If you need 18 Con to make your abilities stick and 16 Dex or Str to actually hit things, then you really have very little left over to set your character apart from other Kineticists.
Maybe MAD is the wrong term, but I dislike when the classes that want to be martial/half-martial and don't have a physical KAS don't plug the KAS into a lot of their basic class features. We keep getting this in playtests, and you'd think this would have been solved after Investigator.
If it's not a caster and it doesn't have the option to take Str or Dex as a KAS, then that non-physical KAS needs to somehow fill in for the lack of either Str or Dex, whether it's accuracy, or damage, or AC, or whatever.
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Mostly anemic abilities
Poor action econ in needing to "reload" after overflow, especially 3 action overflow abilities
Manipulate on everything drawing reactions
Non-attack core stat
Weird expert scaling (please be a misprint)
No action compressor, damage amp or accuracy fix
Gather element locking down a hand plus blasts having few or no useful traits
I'm sure I could find more to hate about this if I spent more time looking at it, so I think I'll just wait for the actual release.
Reminder Furnace Form takes 2 actions a round to keep up, unless you are level 16. And nothing in it indicates that it scales like Fiery Body.
Fire seems the worst element for damage. Unless you are trying to go Furnace Form and then spam Produce Flame which scales up to 11d4 damage, but also likely uses Cha for attack and only Trained proficiency instead of Dex/Str and your up to Master proficiency.
It takes the actions to get going like casting haste on yourself. Once you do get going, it pays off a lot. Sucks when you come across stuff resistant or immune to fire though. Produce flame is still gonna suck compared to your boosted blasts.Reminder Furnace Form takes 2 actions a round to keep up, unless you are level 16. And nothing in it indicates that it scales like Fiery Body.
Fire seems the worst element for damage. Unless you are trying to go Furnace Form and then spam Produce Flame which scales up to 11d4 damage, but also likely uses Cha for attack and only Trained proficiency instead of Dex/Str and your up to Master proficiency.
I am not entirely sure what you mean here. Until level 16 you never really get going as it takes 2 actions every round to use, which leaves you a max of 1 action to attack or move. Once you get to level 16 it is a little better. But other elements can get a bigger damage boost to their Elemental Blasts. Though admittedly the Earth one takes an action to sustain each round unless you have Effortless Impulse.
It is decent at 16th level, and it is the earliest of the abilities that can increase Elemental Blast damage. There are a few things that would make me like it better. Including if it had a 1 minute duration right at 14th level, and if it scaled to +2d6 fire damage to elemental blasts. But I would still probably prefer something fully fleshed out to be unique to the class like Crowned in Tempest's Fury.
Still really surprised Fire wasn't the element for a really damaging aura. Something at 18th that worked like Crowned in Tempest's Fury but maybe with more of a damage focus than CiTF would be nice. Maybe something like 4d6 fire damage a round in the aura, anyone striking them in melee takes the damage again, and +2d6 damage to elemental blasts or something like that.
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I like the core skeleton of the class, with the mostly-martial approach - but they deserve martial accuracy to go with it. Lacking access to cold and electricity damage on the basic Elemental Blast is a major flavor miss and my #1 piece of feedback; in a perfect world, acid, poison, and sonic damage all make it in somehow. Making the Elemental Blasts just be Strikes saves a lot of headaches and enables player fun; I think it’s the right move.
All in all, it has a shorter distance to travel than the Psychic did in playtest for it to be a class I like. I think the final class will satisfy the fantasy of an ATLA-style bender, which was always my hope.
…and of course, I’m hoping that the next playtest is Inquisitor/Intercessor-shaped.
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So let's me begin:
I will do my impression in a Good/Bad/Ugly system.
Oops, missed this thread when I made my own first impressions. I'll just link it here so everything can be in one place.
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Gather Element
I see two issues with Gather element as written in the playtest doc. Those being a) the effect on action economy, b) the manipulate trait. The action economy thing, I can get over. Sometimes, if you want to do a big, fancy trick, a little prep is needed. I still think it should be available as a reaction. This affects the action economy still, but in a less constricting way. The PC will be able to stride, step, what have you, then blast. But the manipulate trait is- Eeeeeh? Melee kineticist who want to use their base class feature will trigger reaction...
Just wanted to say that while gather element having manipulate is a pain, in my opinion a bigger problem is that the impulse trait has both the concentrate and manipulate traits. And impulse is one basically everything a kineticist can do, including elemental blast.
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Things I like
1- they are a martial switch hitter out of the gate that doesn't rely on focus points or limited spell slots.
2- I love the magical feel without being strictly magic
3- con as key ability is cool
4-i love the flexibility feats similar to fighter
Things I don't like
1- overflow is clunky
2- dedicated gate seems bad and universalist seems better than the other two due to the damage resistance class feature
Things I'm uncertain of
1- I'm uncertain if the damage is too low or not. Perhaps a way to invest into more damage that forces us to make hard choices on the support feats and such. Or just con to damage.
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Some more initial thoughts after spending some time on a rough test character building.
Kinetic Auras Seem rather action intensive, especially if you want to start a fight with one (i.e. Fair Winds). Nearly all of the 1st level kinetic auras seem to focus on difficult terrain - with Air being clearly superior to Earth (buffs allies instead of harming them). Strangely enough, the rules for Kinetic Auras don't seem to be attached to the element you currently have gathered or care about if gather power ends or switches - which seems wrong (and an indirect buff for Universalists). Would be really cool to have a feat / path advancement (for Dual Gate) that let you have 2 kinetic auras for different elements active simultaneously.
Elemental Weapon Due to how melee blasts provoke AoOs, this seems almost essential for anyone intending to be in melee frequently. I'd be okay with it if blasts were more a damage spike (i.e. Magus Spellstrike) but I don't think the class's most basic melee attack should provoke. Also don't like how current rules seem to incentivize going for a weapon with the two-hand trait. Even if melee didn't provoke - this feat seems a bit too good and almost essential for dedicated gate - either to increase damage for air, or grab more range for earth or water.
Cycling Blast While I see what this is trying to do, I think it is something that should either be part of a class path or removed. It seems too good to the point that dual-gate & universal-gate might as well not have a 6th level feat slot. Also dislike this being shared between dual-gate & universal-gate since it doesn't help to distinguish them. (Personally, I'd advocate for something like a dual gather element for dual-gate, letting them gather both their elements simultaneously and use impulses/blasts freely once they got high enough level. Universal would still still have access to more elements, but would have to swap between them and eventually get cycling blast as part of path to help the swap.)
Wings of Air While I love this feat, was very surprised to note that there is no requirement to stay in air element. Seems like this is a bit too good for dual-gate & universal-gate kineticists since they can activate flight and then swap to an element that can deal damage while keeping all benefits.
Cycling Blast While I see what this is trying to do, I think it is something that should either be part of a class path or removed. It seems too good to the point that dual-gate & universal-gate might as well not have a 6th level feat slot.
It shoots, then gathers, not the other way around. As it is, it is barely useful.
Since Adapt Terrain and Pure Adaptation are not real class features, I think all the gates can fit an action economy enhancer as a class feature. If Cycling Blast worked the other way around (and forced you to switch element) it would be amazing as a class feature for dual gate kineticists. For universalist I can see the level 10 feat they get working out as well with a few tweeks. No idea for single gate, though.
Edit: Just saw the "in either order" part. My bad and no idea how I missed that for this long.
Elemental Weapon Due to how melee blasts provoke AoOs, this seems almost essential for anyone intending to be in melee frequently. I'd be okay with it if blasts were more a damage spike (i.e. Magus Spellstrike) but I don't think the class's most basic melee attack should provoke. Also don't like how current rules seem to incentivize going for a weapon with the two-hand trait. Even if melee didn't provoke - this feat seems a bit too good and almost essential for dedicated gate - either to increase damage for air, or grab more range for earth or water.
How do you grab more range for earth or water with a one handed ranged weapon. Even the guns, if you had access, are not good.
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Edit: Just saw the "in either order" part. My bad and no idea how I missed that for this long.
Cycling Gate has the impulse trait, though, so you have to already have an element gathered to us it. In either order just means you can choose which element to use for the Elemental Blast - eithe the element you're in, or the element you're switching to.
It's a "free" blast if you have to blow an action to swap elements mid combat. Not great, but probably worth it if you don't expect to pick one element and stay in it during a fight, but also not worth it if you're going to use lots of overflow, since this won't work after overflow - the impulse trait prevents it.
How do you grab more range for earth or water with a one handed ranged weapon. Even the guns, if you had access, are not good.
Elemental Weapon Due to how melee blasts provoke AoOs, this seems almost essential for anyone intending to be in melee frequently. I'd be okay with it if blasts were more a damage spike (i.e. Magus Spellstrike) but I don't think the class's most basic melee attack should provoke. Also don't like how current rules seem to incentivize going for a weapon with the two-hand trait. Even if melee didn't provoke - this feat seems a bit too good and almost essential for dedicated gate - either to increase damage for air, or grab more range for earth or water.
Hand Crossbow gives 60ft range compared to your blast's 20-30ft.
Bows are also listed as "1+" hands rather than 2 hands, so I've view them as a valid choice (especially if abusing the two-hand trait is legitimate). That'd give 60-100ft range without having to deal with a crossbow's reload & gaining the deadly trait. The volley trait on longbows can also be mitigated by using your ranged blast within 30ft and the elemental weapon for 30ft-100ft.
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First impression is that the class seems kind of neat but the damage is terrible and the action economy needs some work. Reloading feels bad, which is why both Magi and Gunslingers have ways to do things while reloading. Kineticist needs that.
Many overflow skills have damage so low you need to spam them for them to make sense, but an action economy that makes them feel like you're supposed to bank on them for the perfect moment. These two facts run contrary to each other and just kind of feel bad.
... On the other hand:
It seems weird to simultaneously see "Con is a useless main stat because it only effects class DC so it doesn't matter" and "Kineticists need a better class DC progression because it's so important to them" ... sometimes even in the same post.
Because of this the class suffers from a severe MAD
Does it? Depending on your build you either want str/dex/con/wis or dex/con/wis.
The first build is pretty average and the dex build is tied with thieves and druids for being the least MAD build in the game.
The only real problem re: attributes is that you need to buy armor out of class if you want to be Strength-primary. Class could really use Medium as a default proficiency.
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How do you grab more range for earth or water with a one handed ranged weapon. Even the guns, if you had access, are not good.
Elemental Weapon Due to how melee blasts provoke AoOs, this seems almost essential for anyone intending to be in melee frequently. I'd be okay with it if blasts were more a damage spike (i.e. Magus Spellstrike) but I don't think the class's most basic melee attack should provoke. Also don't like how current rules seem to incentivize going for a weapon with the two-hand trait. Even if melee didn't provoke - this feat seems a bit too good and almost essential for dedicated gate - either to increase damage for air, or grab more range for earth or water.
Hand Crossbow gives 60ft range compared to your blast's 20-30ft.
Bows are also listed as "1+" hands rather than 2 hands, so I've view them as a valid choice (especially if abusing the two-hand trait is legitimate). That'd give 60-100ft range without having to deal with a crossbow's reload & gaining the deadly trait. The volley trait on longbows can also be mitigated by using your ranged blast within 30ft and the elemental weapon for 30ft-100ft.
Bows 100% do not work. They aren't 1 handed. Two handed trait isn't an abuse, it's how the rules work. And you pay for it with an action to grasp the weapon.
The Hand Crossbow would do Hand Crossbow damage dice. It would only do the damage type (bludgeoning, for water/earth) of your blast type.
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Because of this the class suffers from a severe MADDoes it? Depending on your build you either want str/dex/con/wis or dex/con/wis.
The first build is pretty average and the dex build is tied with thieves and druids for being the least MAD build in the game.
The only real problem re: attributes is that you need to buy armor out of class if you want to be Strength-primary. Class could really use Medium as a default proficiency.
I change my mind recently about MAD after some analises and tests. But not in a good way.
The MAD in the end isn't a real problem because due interact action in Impulse and due the Element Blast being an Impulse, do a Melee Kineticist it's a dangerous joke. It's worse than non-reach/range melee Magus if you face an opponent with some kind of AoO that activates with interaction you will trigger it with about anything you try to do!
So ignore MAD problem, the Kineticist as melee is impracticable.
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it doesnt help that our first con class has average fort and medeocre hp so they arent even the best at con things
Not exactly how elemental weapon works. It basically allows you to wield a standard simple or martial weapon along with your elemental blast. You would have your choice of either your hand crossbow strike or your ranged blast. They don't interact.
Correct - however your elemental weapon will use your elemental blast proficiency, letting you use martial weapons you are otherwise untrained with, and uses the same hand you're already using for your elemental blasts so it doesn't get in the way. The idea of getting more range is to compensate for the fact a water/earth dedicated gate is limited to 20-30ft for their ranged blast - which isn't much for ranged when a single move action will generally close that distance and PF2 is a lot more mobile than PF1.
Example: An Earth Dedicated Gate is typically limited to melee and 20ft blast. Adding Elemental Weapon (Hand Crossbow) triples their effective range to 60ft by using the crossbow attack. Within 20ft they can use their earth blast instead for the better damage dice. Then you still have a decent melee blast for anything that doesn't have an AoO. All of which uses the same hand and don't interfere with each other. For a switch hitter, having a decent range increment seems like something that is highly valuable, even if you have to drop a damage die for the farther attack.
Bows 100% do not work. They aren't 1 handed. Two handed trait isn't an abuse, it's how the rules work. And you pay for it with an action to grasp the weapon.
The Hand Crossbow would do Hand Crossbow damage dice. It would only do the damage type (bludgeoning, for water/earth) of your blast type.
I'm not so sure. Bows are wielded by "hold it in one hand and also have a hand free." What is a one-handed weapon other than a weapon which wielding requires one-hand? Looking deeper into the rules, the term "one-handed weapon" doesn't seem exactly well defined, which doesn't matter for melee weapons that are only listed as 1 or 2, but muddies the water for if a 1+ hand weapon is included.
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Granted, all of this might be meaningless since re-reading the Elemental Weapon feat I noticed it doesn't seem to have any mention of applying basic runes like the elemental blasts do. Which means it'd become a dead feat as you level up and your elemental weapon has increasing difficulty hitting/dealing damage. Which is probably worst for melee-focused kineticists (especially Air Dedicated Gate), since elemental weapon is currently the only way to not take AoOs with your typical attacks (or for air to have decent damage dice on a melee attack).
I'm not so sure. Bows are wielded by "hold it in one hand and also have a hand free." What is a one-handed weapon other than a weapon which wielding requires one-hand? Looking deeper into the rules, the term "one-handed weapon" doesn't seem exactly well defined, which doesn't matter for melee weapons that are only listed as 1 or 2, but muddies the water for if a 1+ hand weapon is included.
The problem is this "and also have a hand free." turns then as not 1-handed weapon. That's why bows don't qualify.
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it doesnt help that our first con class has average fort and medeocre hp so they arent even the best at con things
Legendary at 15, plus critfails are fails, plus normal successes are crit successes, plus half damage on failed fort save vs damage. I really don't know what more you could possibly want, there.
on HP... for a class that's meant to be at range for the most part, it's still pretty darned good.
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I legitimately have no idea how people were reaching the conclusion that you got double the class feats.
probably because the impulse abilities look a lot like spells and nobody blinks at a caster getting a feat and multiple spells a level.
it doesnt help that our first con class has average fort and medeocre hp so they arent even the best at con thingsLegendary at 15, plus critfails are fails, plus normal successes are crit successes, plus half damage on failed fort save vs damage. I really don't know what more you could possibly want, there.
on HP... for a class that's meant to be at range for the most part, it's still pretty darned good.
is it really meant to be at range? a lot of it seems to want you to go into melee (and then get AoO'd to bits).