various ideas

[Martialmasters]

this post is for various ideas ive had, been inspired by from others, or have seen on here that seem good to me. feel free to tell me why they are bad or would need revision in general. helps gain perspective for me on things i might not have considered. feel free to post your own ideas too!

1- Medium armor, currently kineticist needs a feat tax and be human to start level 1 as a strength based and not risk getting torn apart before you can even pay a medium armor proficiency feat tax at later levels. considering you have a couple elements that largely are strength based, it makes no sense as they already have the flexible blasts as a feat tax just to use ranged options.

2- remove impulse trait for basic blasts, currently everything this class does provokes attack of opportunity. now, abilities are fine, but basic strikes of the class shouldn't be provoking. at least for the melee portion of the class's blasts. you can flavor it as with it being so close to you its as natural as swinging a weapon or something.

3- give a damage bump through gather elements. example. let the class do their basic blasts without gather energy. but with gather energy apply half your con to damage on blasts. apply full con to damage on overflow impulses that do damage with saves. this would apply a small but noteworthy damage boost to the class, and i do not think it should need a skill check to achieve as we already have that with extract element in order to be functional vs certain enemies. plus not every class needs to be inventor.

4- make shield feat somehow not proc attack of opportunity, in the very least, not the reaction portion.

5- currently gates are not very distinguished beyond limitation of elements available and starting feats. perhaps a little something to ebb them out more from one another? im not sure what here. dedicated should perform BETTER than dual/universal at there one element, currently they do not seem to. Dual should be able to cycle between the elements the fastest. Universal is already the most versatile.

6- im not sure as to the point of elemental weapon if its still limited to a one handed weapon. other than if you wanted different weapon traits like reach on earth with a flickmace.

7- if melee blasts not provoking attack of oportunity is too much, we should be forced into modes, costing an action, to switch between ranged and melee blasts, so there is a resource cost in terms of actions used. so we dont have to suffer attack of opportunity reactions for basic strikes.

feel free to add your own, im not going to critique anyones ideas in this thread personally. though i may ask questions on them. rather this would be a thread to house ideas.

[Temperans]

1) Agreed on medium armor.

2) Agreed on removing impulse, but it could just be removed period. Right now the impulse trait is literally just "has X element gathered with the manipulate and concentration traits unless told otherwise". Seems weird to have a trait thar can be replaced with a requirement of "you have your element gathered" (if even that is needed.

3) Agreed on letting use blast without gathered energy. But I think con to damage should just be a basic part of blast and not a part of gather. Also basic blasts (Always single target) should probably deal full con and overflow have 1x up to 2x con (depending on AoE or Single target) that would put it on par with Stoke bonus.

4) Agreed with the shield should not be provoking AoO.

5. A) Agreed dedicated should be the best at using their element and universal should be the worst, this is a classic case of specialization vs jack of all trades. Between YuriP and me we figured that instead of hard gates giving Kineticist something closer to order exploration and bard muse with 5 bonus feats from level 1 to 20 could work. This allows kineticist that keep with 1 element to get really good at it, while kineticist that spread out are able to get much more versatility.

REMINDER:Kineticist already gets 5 bonus feats just for impulse (3 1st level and 2 for elemental flexibility), this is basically redistributing those feats across all 20 levels instead of front loading them: Loosing the ability to change 2 feats for a high average feat level.END REMINDER

5. B) I think that it would be fitting that if you pick an element you would get the relevant composite/hybrid element. This is why picking more than one element would be much more versatile. Ex: Picking water twice might give you 3 options for a blast (cold, water, and the composite) but picking water, fire, and earth would give you 6 options (water, fire, earth, mud, steam, and lava) picking 5 elements would thus give 20 different options.

6) Right now it seems like getting different traits is exactly the point, also the fact you no longer provoke. I disagree that it should only be 1 weapon when Druid's (and anyone who archetyped druid) can use Verdant Weapon to create any weapon they are proficient with even being able to transfer runes with just a 10 minute break. It would be fair for Kineticist to also have a similar ability and being able to switch to any weapon they are proficient with even transfering runes in 10 minutes (not 1 day like in the playtest). This is specially true when Wood kineticist shows up and somehow Druid would be better at it than Wood kineticist directly manipulating that element.

7) That sounds fair, normally it does cost an action to switch grip thus switching from ranged blast to melee weapon would make sense. But to be honest, if they are going to have elemental weapon be a strict upgrade for melee kineticist they might as well just make ranged kineticist the default and provide more feats to support melee kineticist.

8) Given that gather power was a thing to deal with burn, there are at least three ways to handle it:
A) Gather is a trigger for activating the class stance (similar to Monk Stances and Swashbuckler Panache) this would be the way to activate the various auras and some impulses that kineticist can get.
B) If impulse is gone, then they could provide a basic effect for 1 or 2 action (equivalent of a cantrip) and the use gather to amp those abilities. This would make it closer to the psychic for better or worse. But it would make the class more versatile since you can choose not to gather. Overflow abilities would still require that you have gathered first.
C) Gather mitigates self damage from your abilities. This would quite literally be the equivalent of spending actions to get resistance to your abilities, specially if they cost HP to activate. For example if overflow were 2 action but had a cost of your level in damage bypassing resistance and immunity, gather power would be an action to reduce the damage taken. Paizo could then scale the HP with more powerful overflow abilities, you would thus need more gather power before you could properly use those abilities without taking damage.

9) Make add more single target abilities. AoE and utility is good and kineticist should have it. But they should also have access to single target abilities.

[Verzen]

The best way for dual to cycle between elements is just to combine them.

Give each impulse both traits and damage types. This way you just need to gather element one time. You don't need to worry about which stance you're in and which abilities are active or available or if you can do a reaction.

It's odd that stone shield or deflecting wave is only active if I have either element gathered. Combining the two so stone shield has the water trait or deflecting wave has the earth trait if I'm earth/water allows me to just use either ability as long as I've gathered.

There's far less book keeping involved and I think this would make it simpler as well.

[Verzen]

Temperans wrote:

1) Agreed on medium armor.

2) Agreed on removing impulse, but it could just be removed period. Right now the impulse trait is literally just "has X element gathered with the manipulate and concentration traits unless told otherwise". Seems weird to have a trait thar can be replaced with a requirement of "you have your element gathered" (if even that is needed.

3) Agreed on letting use blast without gathered energy. But I think con to damage should just be a basic part of blast and not a part of gather. Also basic blasts (Always single target) should probably deal full con and overflow have 1x up to 2x con (depending on AoE or Single target) that would put it on par with Stoke bonus.

4) Agreed with the shield should not be provoking AoO.

5. A) Agreed dedicated should be the best at using their element and universal should be the worst, this is a classic case of specialization vs jack of all trades. Between YuriP and me we figured that instead of hard gates giving Kineticist something closer to order exploration and bard muse with 5 bonus feats from level 1 to 20 could work. This allows kineticist that keep with 1 element to get really good at it, while kineticist that spread out are able to get much more versatility.

REMINDER:Kineticist already gets 5 bonus feats just for impulse (3 1st level and 2 for elemental flexibility), this is basically redistributing those feats across all 20 levels instead of front loading them: Loosing the ability to change 2 feats for a high average feat level.END REMINDER

5. B) I think that it would be fitting that if you pick an element you would get the relevant composite/hybrid element. This is why picking more than one element would be much more versatile. Ex: Picking water twice might give you 3 options for a blast (cold, water, and the composite) but picking water, fire, and earth would give you 6 options (water, fire, earth, mud, steam, and lava) picking 5 elements would thus give 20 different options.

6) Right now it seems like...

That's a VERY interesting idea..

But let's take it an interesting step forward. Each overflow impulse ability costs 1 action... + HP.

Gather element would let you gain resistance against your next overflow ability equal to twice your level. This stacks infinitely.

So let's say I'm level 1.. I want to cast an overflow ability. I gather elements twice for a 4 resistance against at my next overflow ability that costs 6 hp. I only take 2 hp in damage. I could have spent the entire turn gathering element to reduce it by the whole 6 for my 2nd turn if I wanted.

The more you level up, the more ypu can simply cast lower level overflow abilities easier. This is a real elegant solution.