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Gaulin wrote: I would actually consider 'playtesting' legendary games kineticist as a (extremely loose) way to see how a class that focuses more on spell attacks and dcs works against the chassis in paizos kineticist. Obviously there are a ton more factors, and legendary kineticist might be a bit overtuned while paizos is maybe undertuned, but it could be a fun comparison. That was my original intent with this, but people were more interested in arguing over homebrew vs 3rd party.
Not sure if there's an online srd version of the PF2e Legendary Kinecticist available to compare it with the playest version; definitely not on PF2e D20PFSRD that I've seen.
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There are questionable ways that are not SRDs. The internet always finds a way to make things free its only a matter of time.
But the basic gist of that version is this:
* Elemental blast is 1 action cantrip with the flourish trait. They scale like cantrips, and have a few special rules foe what spells are on your "spell list".
* Instead of impulses that let deal different damage types you have infusions. Infusions are 1 action focus metamagic that change how kinetic/elemental blast function. For example, Air Blast is a 60ft spell attack to deal Xd6 damage +Con on a crit success it acts as Gust of Wind, you can use the 1st level Line infusion to instead deal Xd6 in a scaling line (20ft base 200 ft max).
* Instead of utility impulses and overflow you just have regular feats. For example instead of Slippery Sleet (Level 6, 3 action overflow) with fixed DC they have Slick (Level 2, 2 action flourish) with full DC: Slippery Sleet has better range, area, and damage however Slick is effectively just the Grease spell that you can cast at-will while still having a 3rd action.
* Instead of gather power being a requirement, its a way to ignore focus point cost. Burn lets you ignore focus point but instead of sacrifising an action now you become stunned 2 at the end of the turn (similar to Playtest Psychic).
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Legendary Kineticist has a much better action economy with considerably fewer 3 and 4 action abilities. It also lets you mix and match much more then the playtest version. You also have elemental defense and gather power does more than just reduce focus points. However it has the issue of using focus points (yuck), lower HP (base 6+con), and no infusion of level higher than 6.
Playtest Kineticist by comparison has the good ideas of Elemental Weapon doesn't disappear and can be any weapon (including their traits), Ability to pick finesse/forceful for blasts, Kineticist Aura (which are interesting but need a bit of work), having a stronger ability if you spend more actions (overflow just need tweak to make the action cost worth it). Some very unique feats that Legendary Kineticist lacks (ex: Stepping Stones).
Some hybrid between the two would be interesting to see, even if just purely for getting new ideas.
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I was reading here. And interestingly, many of the suggestions I've been seeing (and making) have been implemented in Legendary Kineticist (I swear when I made them I still hadn't gotten the PDF and read it):
Legendary uses a caster chassis, 6HP per level, up to expert in defense, up to legendary in kineticist spellcasting. But wear light armor as well.
He is a cantrip caster indeed
In addition to Nature, he gets an extra skill based on the element he initially chose. (I saw someone making just that suggestion in the topic about skills)
Legendary has no such thing as universalist, in fact it starts with just a single element (Elemental Conduit) that not only defines which elemental feats you have access to, but also what your Elemental Defense will be. However, starting at level 6 he gains access to other elements by purchasing the Expanded Element feat, allowing him to not only get the cantrips of another element, but also the combined cantrips of the 2 elements he has. What is very interesting because access to new elements is gained over time in a progressive way (it is possible to become universalist this way but more consume all class feats up to level 20).
The "extra" elements besides the 4 basic elements are, aether, cold and electricity. Instead of metal and wood.
His Elemental Defense is a very interesting concept by the way, instead of giving resistances like the playtest, or extra resistance abilities with some suggested in the threads about it, it actually defines your saves. Ex.: Air and fire change the Reflex proficiency to expert while earth and water do it with Fortitude. And they progress with the levels until they become legendary, with similar effects to Improved Evasion and Greater Juggernaut, but this progression is slower reaching only level 17 instead of 15.
Additionally via Elemental Conduit, it gains Elemental Defense Power depending on the chosen element, which can give various passive or reactive defensive abilities. For example Air gives a stat bonus to AC against projectiles and thrown things, earth gives resistance to physical damage, fire gives a reaction against unarmed attacks and the like like claw and jaw attacks that return damage and leave the opponent fatigued or water which bonus of circumstance in AC and saves against fire attacks and at higher levels a reaction that gives concealment or even total concealment against 1 attack.
Legendary Kineticist Spellcasting provides its magic power through kinetic blasts which are actually Cantrips and typically are somatic only, but there are verbal ones as well. They are also "Cast a Spell" so they have no problem interacting with the rest of PF2's magic system.
As already pointed out by Temperans they have a system called Infusions, but they don't actually replace the Impulses as it may seem when reading the post above, in practice what they replace is the Overflow system itself. Because Infusions in practice operate like Amps, improving damage, AoE or adding new effects to Cantrips.
To not spend focus points it has 2 mechanics, the Accept Burn that can be used instead of a focus point and in practice is a much more severe kind of Overflow, because it causes Stun 2 ] on the character and the Gather Power where the Legendary spends an extra concentration action to not use a focus point. The interesting thing about these 2 and the focus points is the very interesting way they can be used tactically. If your character needs to use a 3rd action for any reason, he can use either the focus point or the Accept Burn, but obviously he will spend a focus point, or lose the reaction and two actions on the next turn because of the Stun.
Blasts are 1-action somatic cantrips with the attack trait that typically deal 1d6 or 1d4 (interestingly, the earth blast is 1d4, because it allows the player to decide the type of physical damage) and progress normally as any other 1st-level cantrip (1 die for each spell level), except the electric one because it's weird (it's against AC rather than reflexes and from 2nd spell level onwards his die changes to 1d12 and he progresses every 2 spell levels thereafter) and as such can be modified by Shadow Signet.
Interestingly all blasts are flourishes, so you can't attack with them more than once in the same turn. Instead the class expects you to use Infusions and Gather Power or Accept Burn together, which makes it all very interesting because they actually allow you to modify the blasts to something totally different, for example Cone/Line Infusion turns blasts into cone attacks and changes the attack roll against AC to a reflex save.
Infusions are actually a very unique mechanic from Legendary and extremely interesting (unlike Playtest's Impulses which are basically a nerfed copy of the mechanics of focus cantrips). Each infusion is so interesting that it deserves to be talked about separately, the other cool thing about Infusions is that they are obtained in a similar way to class feats (you choose 1 at the first level and you get more at each odd level) but without competing with them, avoiding the problem that playtest kinetics have which is the low amount of feats for the number of Impulses.
Legendary's elemental weapon is actually an Infusion (Weapon Infusion) and is much more interesting than the Elemental Weapon. Instead of choosing a weapon from the game, you build your own, it starts a weapon 1d6+its spellcasting modifier (but you normally use str or dex to attack) has the finesse trait and lasts for 1 minute, as it is an Infusion, the characteristics of the blast it is based on, for example, if Fire Blast is used, the weapon deals fire damage and can give persistent damage on a critical hit, the earth weapon allows you to choose the type of damage between the 3 physical types and so on. In addition, her Heightened effects are not limited to increasing damage, but also new traits for the weapon allowing you to assemble the ideal weapon for the moment it was cast. Unfortunately not everything is perfect (it's a good thing) and Weapon Infusion is limited to 1-hand (although the extra damage from the spellcasting bonus makes up for it) and is undone if you use another Blast, you don't receive item bonus (only damage increases by simulating striking runes) and Legendary's spellcaster chassis doesn't help melee fighting, but it's still an interesting option for multiclassing.
Infusions also provide an interesting and clever way to increase the damage of legendary Blasts. Focused Infusion for example will simply provide hit bonus and extra d6 state bonus to damage alternately. In the end, they make blasts a very relevant form of damage since at level 19 the Legendary Kineticist in practice has the hit of a warrior, with attacks of 13d6+7 damage, it's not a fireball, but it's damage range, compared to a warrior with a full rune longbow.
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Things that can be inspired by Legendary Kineticist as suggestions for IMO improvements:
The elemental weapon as one could allow you to build your own weapon, choosing traits and improving the damage dice and/or providing more traits to use as you level up, seems to me to be something much more interesting and much more flavorful than replicating an existing weapon. Especially firearms with moving parts and ammunition that are something too complex for a kineticist to copy like nothing just because he has access to them.
Receiving Boosts in parallel with class feats (odd levels). Higher level players, especially multi-element players tend to complain about the lack of fleat slots, especially for higher level boosts.
Progressive access to gates. Instead of choosing between dedicated, dual, universalist, make the player who wants access to more than one element get it via feats. To compensate for the extra feat consumption, just follow the above idea of providing an extra feat for Impulses at every odd level as I suggested above.
Automatically provide hybrid blasts as the kineticist gains access to new elements. Legendary Kineticist himself gives examples such as Magma (air+earth), Mud(earth+water), Plasma(air+fire), Rain(air+water), Sandstorm(air+earth), Steam(fire+water).
Use Con for stat bonus on hit and damage from Blasts
Allow the use of focus points as an alternative to Overflow without removing the Overflow itself (thus allowing the use of more actions at critical moments), especially at levels lower than 19.
Add feats to allow compressing gather actions with other actions, like Gather+Stride similar to Running Reload and even more like for example a Gather+Blast with risk of losing the gather in case of failure (it would work like a Risky Reload in practice).
Recent threads in Kineticist Class
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