Evaluating the impulses

[Dubious Scholar]

I'm going to go over the various impulses here. For blasts, I'll be focusing in particular on their damage against comparable focus spells and abilities. Electric Arc is going to me my main comparison point. However, due to action economy, I feel that each additional action over Electric Arc should be another 20-25% damage (considering the ability to pre-load, split reload across turns, etc). Higher level stuff should offer some appeal over earlier things as well, but I don't think early impulses should be invalidated either since unlike spells you don't get to swap things out for free as more powerful stuff becomes available. Also, I feel focus spells become a better comparison at higher levels when casters can refocus more points at a time, though I'm uncertain of the right benchmark (Dragon Breath is the king here, being 1d6 less than Fireball at all levels).

I'll be doing this in chunks, one element at a time. I'm not claiming to be correct (except on my math), but this is my take on them after reading them and thinking about it.

Also, as a note - I generally want to praise the names on these. Especially the level 18 ones, which are just wonderfully evocative.

Air:
Level 1:
Aerial Boomerang:
This averages 5 damage at level 1 and adds 2.5 damage every two levels. The initial damage is a hair behind Electric Arc on a hit, but the scaling is identical. If this just hit once I'd say the damage was slightly too low. However, because it returns for another hit this is excellent output, assuming you can position to align the return stroke (but the potential value/difficulty of that is unclear to me). I don't value the hovering in place at all. As written it will never matter. I feel that it should said "enters or ends its turn" though because why don't you take damage for walking through it? But despite that I can't complain much - this is a very unique effect, the damage is respectable, the only thing I'd do is that one tweak.

Air Cushion:
Not much to say. Feather Fall for free as long as you've got air gathered. At 8th level your party effectively becomes immune to fall damage. Some interesting tactics are available with this, since not taking fall damage means you don't fall prone from a drop.

Fair Winds:
A respectable aura, this helps protect you and your allies by taxing enemy movement. If you pick up Aura Shaping at level 8 this seems like it should become respectable battlefield control.

Whisper on the Wind:
The first impulse I don't like. Message is not the most impactful cantrip. The saving grace is not needing line of effect. The scaling is a bit awkward, jumping from 120' to 500' at level 5 and then a mile at level 8. I still think this is going to be a rare choice, but it's not completely without merit. I doubt anyone but a dedicated gate has cause to spend a feat on it, however.

Level 4:
Flinging Updraft:
I was going to be negative on this until I noticed one critical detail - this isn't an overflow. However, not taking fall damage saddens me because it means you can't make them fall prone with it. The upside here is that this trivializes many obstacles in exploration mode and lets you reposition allies in combat. But it's borderline to me. The upgrade at 10 however... well, shuffling enemies and allies around at will like this is something nobody else can do. Overall, this is subtle but powerful and I'm more or less okay with it as is.

Soothing Breeze:
Basically focus healing. Averages 7.5 HP and adds 2.5 every two levels. This is more or less half a 3-action heal for four actions and that 10-minute cooldown. Your party will always enter fights at full health (much like focus healing). Respectable as an effect overall. The blowing stuff around mode is probably never going to be relevant and I'd rather replace it with a focused single target mode that does increased healing.

Level 6:
Clear as Air:
Invisibility is strong. You can easily precast this before fights and get the jump on people. Can't complain about the obvious utility here and there's not much else to say.

Storm Spiral:
We finally get another damage impulse to look at after a long list of utility. This averages 18.5 damage and increases by 6.5 every... 3 levels? Okay we need to talk, scaling on 3 levels is really odd and please don't do it. Literally everything scales every level or every odd level (i.e. spells and equivalents). So anyways, this caps out at level 18 for 39 damage on average. Now, for comparison... Electric Arc hits for 28.5 there (assuming +6 from stat becuase of apex), and goes to 32 at 20. A 10' burst isn't all that big, so it's probably safe to assume they'll both hit two targets or so (in reality though, it's much easier to aim Electric Arc). But the problem is this is a 3-action overflow, meaning you're spending double the actions of Electric Arc for only 30% more damage. The push is cute, but so small as to be mostly irrelevant imo. My suggestion here is to change it to starting at 4d8 (average 18 damage, basically the same) and scaling +1d8 every two levels, same speed as a spell. This is a significant gain in scaling, bringing it up to 49.5 average. That's now 50% more damage than electric arc... eventually. I think this perfectly reasonably for something you burn 4 actions on. It may still be somewhat low if we look at focus spells though.

Level 8:
Celestial Palisade:
The first of a set of impulses that replicate wall spells. This is a half-size Wall of Wind. Which... is not the most potent of walls. And you're spending 4 actions on it because overflow. And you have to sustain it. Oof. The difficult terrain is barely relevant as it's only one square wide, so this mainly just blocks ranged attacks and interferes with flying. Kind of narrow for the cost of 4 actions and an 8th level feat, so I'd have to suggest skipping it. Especially because it has to be sustained, eating another action each round. Bare minimum, drop the sustain, make it dismissable. And even then I don't think I'd take it.

Wings of Air:
Especially not when this is my other option. This is at-will flight with no restrictions at level 8, and it increases to cover your party at 14. This is amazing and there's no point even having another option at this level unless it's truly ridiculous. The only possible competition here is Aura Shaping, and whichever you didn't take you're taking at 10. This is an impulse I have absolutely nothing bad to say about.

Level 12:
Circulate Qi:
Another healing impulse. Not really for healing HP (it does not scale favorably there), but broad selection of conditions you can try to counteract. The problem is... you only get once chance. Ever. I'm really not a fan of that, at a minimum this should allow retrying the next day, because anything that lasts that long is going to see a caster throwing spell slots at it for basically free anyways (assuming you've got some downtime). As for the HP? Lay on Hands is healing 36 HP and can potentially be twice every ten minutes. Maybe in a pinch, but it's a heavy action cost by comparison. Definitely needs a little love I think.

Wiles on the Wind:
Ooh, trickery. Oh wait, it's just Fascinated. Fascinated is, generally, an incredibly weak condition in PF2. Being able to make arbitrary sounds is useful, however, even if the condition is worthless. This doesn't specify a duration, nor is it sustained? That seems like an oversight. No combat utility to this ultimately (because Fascinated is just awful). I really don't think this effect is worth a 12th level class feat.

Level 14:
Body of Air:
Gaseous Form but with scaling resistance. Not really sold on this, since it starts at just 10 and Gaseous Form has a lot of drawbacks. And is slow. Some utility for exploration of course, this can let you sneak into basically anywhere. Not sure on the resistance values, with it scaling that fast it feels like the base resist should be higher though. Ultimately I don't know where to put this, but it doesn't appeal to me personally.

Ferocious Cyclone:
A big linear wind blast. Averages 38.5 damage and increases by 5.5 every... 3 levels. Remember what I said about the last one that scaled this way? This tops out at 49.5. But this is only two actions, so I think it's okay? The push, as usual, isn't very relevant I feel. Now, my real suggestion here is thematic. Make this a fortitude save. You don't dodge this, you withstand it. Also, maybe make it a double wide line. Tornados are nasty beasts. Overall, it's not bad, I just think we should have at least one fortitude save here somewhere. Also, it should be noted that a double hit of Aerial Boomerang caps out at... 55 damage on average, which... all the other blasts need to do something extra to compete. Storm Spiral's thing can be easier aim and use. This? This feels like it should evoke the brutality of a tornado somehow? Ooh, make it so there's no save against push - nothing is alowed to stay within the AoE afterwards, it all gets shoved aside. That's a cute ribbon to put on this (instead of being double wide). Also, rewrite the base damage and scaling to not being level +3, please.

Level 18:
Infinite Expanse of Bluest Heaven:
The first of the epic named level 18 impulses. The question is if it holds up to the name. (Spoiler alert: At least it can't do as bad as water. I'll get there eventually) So the problem here is that this illusion is tiny. 10' burst within 60'? That's pathetic, especially since the illusion ends the second a creature leaves it. And the worst case effect is... fleeing, with a 50% chance of breaking the illusion. On a normal failure this ends once they stride and escape the tiny area. Honestly, this feels... really awkward. I would have the effect of the illusion persist for a round after they leave, at least (especially the flat-footed). Given the level of this it should probably be bigger as well (not TOO big without having the ability to exclude targets, but). Can enemies inside actually see out of it? The description sounds like they can't (nothing but sky), but it doesn't mechanically say that. If that's the case, it may be fine as is, since potentially sealing an enemy out of the fight lives up to the name (I'd say straight up can't be detected by vision, and is at least concealed to all other senses due to the disorientation?)

Crowned in Tempest's Fury:
This is a hell of a capstone, giving a whole host of benefits. You absolutely need to have Aura Shaping for this though to exclude your allies from the storm aura (I might change that to always exclude them). This is generally a broad spectrum buff, making you faster, zapping anything around you for 13 damage average (does this work if they enter because you move closer?), and boosting your air blast (a shame the base damage is so bad - this isn't enough to make it even the equal of unbuffed water or earth in damage, it's slightly above Fire now, but that should be fixed by buffing the base numbers, not a level 18 stunt). ...the problem is, this replaces any other aura. If you're not increasing aura size, I can see this being useful, but since you need Aura Shaping to exclude allies, which lets you use a 30' aura at this level, I'm unsure if I like this over Fair Winds. Additionally, since water can do 20 damage with a level 1 aura, this may need to hit a bit harder somewhere, or offer something extra... I'm unsure on where to call it there.

Overall, I think air impulses are good... aside from a couple exceptions. Aerial Boomerang kind of overshadows the other damage options by being pretty good (the two turn split hurts a little, but it's hard to fire overloads every turn to begin with). The solution here is to improve the other blasts, however.

[Xenocrat]

All the damaging auras, including the 18th level air one, do less damage than the 1st level water one. Sad!

[Dubious Scholar]

Oh jeez, for some reason I read that as adding to your existing aura. Oops. So many traits on it.

[Xenocrat]

Corrected my comment above to specify the water aura.

I’m pretty sure the fascinated feat has an easy to over look one round duration clause. Paizo loves terrible fascinate effects.

[Dubious Scholar]

Yeah, I pretty much ignore fascinated entirely when evaluating things because it's so weak of a condition. But while it says the fascinated duration is 1 round, it doesn't say the illusion itself is? So not entirely clear. If the whole thing is one round, then the whole thing is trash and useless.

[Verzen]

Dubious Scholar wrote:

I'm going to go over the various impulses here. For blasts, I'll be focusing in particular on their damage against comparable focus spells and abilities. Electric Arc is going to me my main comparison point. However, due to action economy, I feel that each additional action over Electric Arc should be another 20-25% damage (considering the ability to pre-load, split reload across turns, etc). Higher level stuff should offer some appeal over earlier things as well, but I don't think early impulses should be invalidated either since unlike spells you don't get to swap things out for free as more powerful stuff becomes available. Also, I feel focus spells become a better comparison at higher levels when casters can refocus more points at a time, though I'm uncertain of the right benchmark (Dragon Breath is the king here, being 1d6 less than Fireball at all levels).

I'll be doing this in chunks, one element at a time. I'm not claiming to be correct (except on my math), but this is my take on them after reading them and thinking about it.

Also, as a note - I generally want to praise the names on these. Especially the level 18 ones, which are just wonderfully evocative.

Air:
Level 1:
Aerial Boomerang:
This averages 5 damage at level 1 and adds 2.5 damage every two levels. The initial damage is a hair behind Electric Arc on a hit, but the scaling is identical. If this just hit once I'd say the damage was slightly too low. However, because it returns for another hit this is excellent output, assuming you can position to align the return stroke (but the potential value/difficulty of that is unclear to me). I don't value the hovering in place at all. As written it will never matter. I feel that it should said "enters or ends its turn" though because why don't you take damage for walking through it? But despite that I can't complain much - this is a very unique effect, the damage is respectable, the only thing I'd do is that one tweak.

Air Cushion:
Not much to say. Feather Fall for free as long as you've...

You should calculate damage based on action point.

Electric arc is 6.5 damage to two targets which is 13 damage for two actions so 6.5 dmg pee action.

Aerial is 2d4 = 5 damage using 3 actions which is 1.66 damage per action invested. In order to deal as much value from it, you need to hit at least 4 targets with Aerial Boomerang in order to be on par with Electric arc.

What are the chances of that?

[Dubious Scholar]

Part 2, covering earth.

Earth:
Level 1:
Geologic Attunement:
Okay, I've been corrected on this because I missed the difficult terrain part. This is good, for basically the reasons as the Air version. Tremorsense is neat, but without Aura Shaping it's limited. Turning off makes more sense when it also turns off the difficult terrain for you. Big difference is that this doesn't give difficult terrain in three dimensions, but that doesn't mean I don't like it.

Stepping Stones:
A clever mobility trick. Instant stairs or bridge, scales up with level. I think the size is perhaps a little conservative, and would start it one notch higher maybe, but.

Stone Shield:
A big old defense bonus. The hardness is very good. I think losing the gathered element is too much though as a penalty for the block? Maybe? ...I feel like spending two actions to recover from blocking is too harsh. I'd say you lose the shield but not the gathered element, personally (i.e. you keep hold of some fragments, enough to reform it again next turn)

Tremor:
So. 5 damage at level 1, 2.5 more every two levels. Same as Aerial Boomerang. A 5' burst is easy to place, may or may not hit two enemies. This is basically a slightly better Scatter Scree. The crit failure prone is cute, but won't happen a ton. I'm not sure the damage on this one holds up as well as Aerial Boomerang though, since it only gets the one hit in. This fails to do enough damage on account of the action cost. Easiest fix is to bump up the die to a d6, which would make it 7 damage, +3.5 per two, on par with Telekinetic Projectile. Alternatively, have it do something on a failed save, maybe flat-footed on fail, prone on crit fail. The higher chance of useful condition would make up for the damage easily.

Level 4:
Dust Storm:
Another aura. Standard concealment effects. Moving stuff 5' but not further from you is really iffy, I'd remove the restriction. As is though, I don't see this being useful without a way to negate the downside for yourself... I suppose Aura Shaping as written does do that though, and I think Oreads can negate it, so for that specific niche this becomes great.

Restoring Mud:
Interesting single target healing. Basically focus healing. I think this should be d8s though, because 3.5 per two levels out of combat is kind of bad. Not much else to say as it's a simple ability overall.

Level 6:
Igneogenesis:
This is a garbage ability. Stepping Stones covers any possible functional use of this already and does it better. I guess you can contrive some cases it's useful, but seriously. This is awful.

Rolling Boulder:
So... 9 damage, increasing by 4.5 every... g!% d&%mit 3 levels. Clearly something Paizo is trying out, but no. No no no no no. Anyways. The damage on this is horrifyingly low. Pushing something to the side one square is... not much and basically a ribbon. The prone is cool, but requires a 5' wide hall, so... super narrow effect and not really worth budgeting for power I think. Buff the damage up significantly. Only useful thing is this is a fort save, but at that damage what's the point. So yeah, needs more damage, should scale every two levels, second verse same as the first.

Level 8:
Spike Skin:
Stone Skin with bonus spike damage (ha ha). I like it, I don't see any real issues here. Buff up the front liner before a fight and have at it. Scales up slightly less than the actual spell, but probably better than it overall.

Swim Through Earth:
Earth's mobility feat. Having to hold your breath is annoying, but honestly? Burrow makes you damn near invincible, because nothing, and I mean nothing, has line of effect to you. Unless you're fighting earth elementals or ghosts or something very specific, or are in specific terrains this doesn't help in (wood floors, plane of air, etc), this is pretty potent.

Level 12:
Hurtling Rockfall:
Ow my head. An average of 13.5 damage to one square with 7 splash. The scaling is really wonky, I hate this kind of heightening, frankly. But it's adding a whopping 3 damage to the main target every two levels on average! ...God this is bad. And it doesn't even have an entry for 20, even though it's predictable what it should be. Earth continues to be mediocre for blasts.

Rock Rampart:
This is overpowered as hell as written. It's been brought up already, but this isn't overflow and it's only two actions. That has to be a mistake for Wall of Stone. I cannot see this lasting in the final print, it's just too good. If it had the 3 actions and sustain clauses of the other impulses in the set, it might be fine... but it would still be pretty good.

Level 14:
Assume Earth's Mantle:
Here's a nice big buff spell. Not getting rune bonuses means this doesn't actually work as heavy armor though, instead it's just worse than equivalent items. Being an apex item is kind of nuts, but it doesn't stack with the belt... unless your strength isn't 18. Because it turns out setting your strength isn't an item bonus. The pseudo-apex is neat, but otherwise this doesn't seem to do much good and I dunno... normal armor (will saves) might be better for you, so I think I'd just say this has X stats as armor, and inherits the runes of your actual armor, and balance it around that. Give it some extra to fort saves still if you want, but.

Stone Guardian:
This is cool. Summon a statue to beat up your enemies. It's not overflow either, which is great. And it doesn't use your MAP, even better. Attack bonus is on par with a player, though scales a hair worse, damage is respectable. Giving cover to all alies in reach is wonderful. If the enemy moves you just plop down a new one... uh... wait. This doesn't say you can only have one out, or a new one replaces it. And they don't share MAP. So anyways, get the feat for a free sustain and just have three of these beating up enemies, soaking hits, whatever.

Level 18:
Rebirth in Living Stone:
Another transformation. Temp HP is lovely. This provides a free earth element every turn, and since it's a free action instead of quickened this will stack with your level 19 ability... which is to say, it replaces it and lets you use Haste to stride or strike instead. Take the free sustain feat and have fun with your big die strikes and constantly refilling HP buffer. If you don't need to refill the buffer, you use some other overflow. This takes a second, but this is really good as is and I love it.

The Shattered Mountain Weeps:
Ah, here we go. The big capstone blast. 20' burst, 49.5 damage, then it keeps doing damage over time in the area (11/turn), anything that fails drops prone, the ground is difficult terrain, and it has 120' range. Both damage amounts go up 5.5 at 20. Finally we get a good earth blast, it's just all the way at 18. The number of times this tacks on one more way it sucks to be your target is nice. I'm not entirely sold on the damage (I might bump it all up just 1d10, or the initial hit, maybe?). If your other blasts were better this is the thing you'd open a fight with before switching to other tactics. Your other blasts just need to be better.

So overall... Earth is a mixed bag. It has some really good stuff, some really bad stuff, and good capstones. The blasts are desperately in need of more damage except for Shattered Mountain. We're seeing some trends here with blast damage, and I'm mostly happy with how the non-blast stuff is set up for impulses (though not all are perfect). Kineticists are likely to pack some solid battlefield control at higher levels here.

[PossibleCabbage]

Dubious Scholar wrote:

Geologic Attunement:

The "it turns off when you move" clause is about "you turn earth and stone in your aura into difficult terrain" which is the main reason to take the aura, depending on whether or not you expect to be fighting on the ground a lot. Since Earth has very short range, being able to keep people from running up to you is very useful.

I also think Assume Earth's Mantle is bad since it actually decreases your AC, Reflex, and Will saves compared to the +2 Greater Resilient Studded Leather you should own at level 14. You're basically trading -1 AC and -2 to Reflex and Will for a climb speed, the Apex effect for strength, and the bonus against tripping. The "free Apex" effect is neat, but it's weird this is an ability you use for offense.

What makes you think Rebirth in Living Stone gives you regenerating temp HP? Do you mean "just recasting it when your 40 Temp HP are gone"?

[Dubious Scholar]

Yep, missed the difficult terrain part, that makes the aura just as useful as Air's version and oh boy can kineticists bring the battlefield control.

Also didn't actually do the math on armor, so yeah. I stand by my recommendations for it though. But even then... I'm pretty sure I'd always take stone guardian over it, because that gives a 10' aura of +2 circumstance to AC (so a constantly raised shield) for all allies in it while it keeps punching bad guys.

In general, halfway through? Damaging impulses need more damage, and non-damaging impulses hit the mark 75% of the time. Universal gates are going to have a real hard time choosing some of these effects.

[Unicore]

I don’t think it will end up this way (at least I hope not), but I think damaging elemental impulses, especially overflow ones, have been designed around assuming they are getting boosted by stoke element. But that makes them a lot of actions and I doubt they are getting used that way very often in the playtest. If you do add the damage, it makes the damage a lot better.

[PossibleCabbage]

Even with Stoke Element Earth doesn't really get a good damaging AoE impulse before 18th. It's rare that you're going to hit more people with a 5'burst or a 30'line than you're going to hit with chain blast.

I think the Earth Wall being incredible is in part because your offensive impulses (except your basic blast and chain blast) are pretty weak.

[Xenocrat]

Igneogenesis is actually very strong in tight quarters. By filling a 5' square completely with stone (which presumably has standard stone HP and hardness, so it's not going to get get causally destroyed), you force large/huge creatures to squeeze around it or be unable to get at you.

It can completely block a 5' corridor. With natural stone HP/hardness.

That 5' block can have a shaped arrowslit, giving you improved cover. This works out in the open, too, although obviously easier to overcome it out there.

[Thaago]

Igneogenesis is a potentially brokenly good ability that needs to be clarified what exactly it can do.

"The object must be relatively simple in shape and can’t include any intricate parts, moving pieces, or fine details. It must fit within one 5-foot cube that’s adjacent to you, and you can make the object large enough to occupy the square. If you create the object underneath you or
another willing creature, you cause the target to rise into the air; you can’t create it under an unwilling creature."

So how about making a foot thick shell of stone around an ally that just got wailed on, with a hole in the back for them to get out of (hardness 14, 56 hp)? Or trapping an enemy (saving throw is only for UNDER an unwilling creature)? A lesser form of that: put up a wall around 3 edges and the top of the enemy space so that they can't retreat/move but you can still attack them. Or how about making a portcullis across a door (this one is more in the spirit of the ability). Or making instant cover. Out of combat you can take advantage of it being only one at a time and it going away when another is cast: make a trap by plugging a river or using it as a support pillar for a structure, or something like that.

[aobst128]

Thaago wrote:

Igneogenesis is a potentially brokenly good ability that needs to be clarified what exactly it can do.

"The object must be relatively simple in shape and can’t include any intricate parts, moving pieces, or fine details. It must fit within one 5-foot cube that’s adjacent to you, and you can make the object large enough to occupy the square. If you create the object underneath you or
another willing creature, you cause the target to rise into the air; you can’t create it under an unwilling creature."

So how about making a foot thick shell of stone around an ally that just got wailed on, with a hole in the back for them to get out of (hardness 14, 56 hp)? Or trapping an enemy (saving throw is only for UNDER an unwilling creature)? A lesser form of that: put up a wall around 3 edges and the top of the enemy space so that they can't retreat/move but you can still attack them. Or how about making a portcullis across a door (this one is more in the spirit of the ability). Or making instant cover. Out of combat you can take advantage of it being only one at a time and it going away when another is cast: make a trap by plugging a river or using it as a support pillar for a structure, or something like that.

I think it's meant to rise out of the ground in the shape that you decide in it's complete form, so a willing creature will always be above the thing and underneath would still mean underneath for enemies so they're not applicable.

[WWHsmackdown]

Unicore wrote:

I don’t think it will end up this way (at least I hope not), but I think damaging elemental impulses, especially overflow ones, have been designed around assuming they are getting boosted by stoke element. But that makes them a lot of actions and I doubt they are getting used that way very often in the playtest. If you do add the damage, it makes the damage a lot better.

Seems that way. As it stands though I don't bother getting stoke elements. The kineticist is way too action starved to spend yet more actions for a modest bump that needs reapplication after oferflows. Even if it was a class feature, the action cost would scare me from using it on anything outside of a dead turn. Ironically, I'm one of the single target gremlins and I still avoid stoke like the plague.

[Errenor]

Don't know where best to put it and not sure it deserves its own topic, but this bothers me a little:
evaluating the name of the IGNEOGENESIS feat I see that it should mean 'fire creation'. But the feat doesn't have anything to do with fire and even volcanoes really.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/igneo

[Verzen]

Dubious Scholar wrote:

Part 2, covering earth.

Earth:
Level 1:
Geologic Attunement:
Okay, I've been corrected on this because I missed the difficult terrain part. This is good, for basically the reasons as the Air version. Tremorsense is neat, but without Aura Shaping it's limited. Turning off makes more sense when it also turns off the difficult terrain for you. Big difference is that this doesn't give difficult terrain in three dimensions, but that doesn't mean I don't like it.

Stepping Stones:
A clever mobility trick. Instant stairs or bridge, scales up with level. I think the size is perhaps a little conservative, and would start it one notch higher maybe, but.

Stone Shield:
A big old defense bonus. The hardness is very good. I think losing the gathered element is too much though as a penalty for the block? Maybe? ...I feel like spending two actions to recover from blocking is too harsh. I'd say you lose the shield but not the gathered element, personally (i.e. you keep hold of some fragments, enough to reform it again next turn)

Tremor:
So. 5 damage at level 1, 2.5 more every two levels. Same as Aerial Boomerang. A 5' burst is easy to place, may or may not hit two enemies. This is basically a slightly better Scatter Scree. The crit failure prone is cute, but won't happen a ton. I'm not sure the damage on this one holds up as well as Aerial Boomerang though, since it only gets the one hit in. This fails to do enough damage on account of the action cost. Easiest fix is to bump up the die to a d6, which would make it 7 damage, +3.5 per two, on par with Telekinetic Projectile. Alternatively, have it do something on a failed save, maybe flat-footed on fail, prone on crit fail. The higher chance of useful condition would make up for the damage easily.

Level 4:
Dust Storm:
Another aura. Standard concealment effects. Moving stuff 5' but not further from you is really iffy, I'd remove the restriction. As is though, I don't see this being useful without a way to negate the downside for yourself... I suppose...

Tremors damage is way worse than scatter scree.

Scatter is 6.5 dmg. Tremor is 5. And scatter scree costs 2 actions instead of 3.

[Unicore]

Verzen wrote:

Dubious Scholar wrote:

Part 2, covering earth.

Earth:
Level 1:
Geologic Attunement:
Okay, I've been corrected on this because I missed the difficult terrain part. This is good, for basically the reasons as the Air version. Tremorsense is neat, but without Aura Shaping it's limited. Turning off makes more sense when it also turns off the difficult terrain for you. Big difference is that this doesn't give difficult terrain in three dimensions, but that doesn't mean I don't like it.

Stepping Stones:
A clever mobility trick. Instant stairs or bridge, scales up with level. I think the size is perhaps a little conservative, and would start it one notch higher maybe, but.

Stone Shield:
A big old defense bonus. The hardness is very good. I think losing the gathered element is too much though as a penalty for the block? Maybe? ...I feel like spending two actions to recover from blocking is too harsh. I'd say you lose the shield but not the gathered element, personally (i.e. you keep hold of some fragments, enough to reform it again next turn)

Tremor:
So. 5 damage at level 1, 2.5 more every two levels. Same as Aerial Boomerang. A 5' burst is easy to place, may or may not hit two enemies. This is basically a slightly better Scatter Scree. The crit failure prone is cute, but won't happen a ton. I'm not sure the damage on this one holds up as well as Aerial Boomerang though, since it only gets the one hit in. This fails to do enough damage on account of the action cost. Easiest fix is to bump up the die to a d6, which would make it 7 damage, +3.5 per two, on par with Telekinetic Projectile. Alternatively, have it do something on a failed save, maybe flat-footed on fail, prone on crit fail. The higher chance of useful condition would make up for the damage easily.

Level 4:
Dust Storm:
Another aura. Standard concealment effects. Moving stuff 5' but not further from you is really iffy, I'd remove the restriction. As is though, I don't see this being useful without a way to negate the

...

Tremors isn't as bad as it is being made out to be. Scatter Scree requires two contiguous spaces, which means no diagonals. That limits the opportunity for it to actually hit two enemies and it makes the difficult terrain half as useful as tremors. Tremors also gets to knock prone on a critical failure which is a very good crit rider. All for 1.5 less average damage than Scatter Scree?

If Gathering your element gets made half as interesting as another action (like you can stride half your speed or get some other passive ability while you spend the action to do it, I think Tremors is fine as it is. If gather element stays exactly the same and the damage on overflow impulses increases by 2, it is fine. With a 10ft emanation of difficult terrain from your aura (which I assume you would get started on round 1), you can easily steal an action or even two that you hit with this ability if you have positioned yourself well. I probably wouldn't bother using it unless I was in a position where I was pretty confident that the extra difficult terrain was enough to really cost a full action, which makes it a little situational, but that is mostly just because your earth blasts are nearly the same range and hit so hard, that it takes action denial, or severe pressure to act defensively to consider doing something else with your actions, at least for the first several levels.

[Verzen]

Unicore wrote:

Verzen wrote:

Dubious Scholar wrote:

Part 2, covering earth.

Earth:
Level 1:
Geologic Attunement:
Okay, I've been corrected on this because I missed the difficult terrain part. This is good, for basically the reasons as the Air version. Tremorsense is neat, but without Aura Shaping it's limited. Turning off makes more sense when it also turns off the difficult terrain for you. Big difference is that this doesn't give difficult terrain in three dimensions, but that doesn't mean I don't like it.

Stepping Stones:
A clever mobility trick. Instant stairs or bridge, scales up with level. I think the size is perhaps a little conservative, and would start it one notch higher maybe, but.

Stone Shield:
A big old defense bonus. The hardness is very good. I think losing the gathered element is too much though as a penalty for the block? Maybe? ...I feel like spending two actions to recover from blocking is too harsh. I'd say you lose the shield but not the gathered element, personally (i.e. you keep hold of some fragments, enough to reform it again next turn)

Tremor:
So. 5 damage at level 1, 2.5 more every two levels. Same as Aerial Boomerang. A 5' burst is easy to place, may or may not hit two enemies. This is basically a slightly better Scatter Scree. The crit failure prone is cute, but won't happen a ton. I'm not sure the damage on this one holds up as well as Aerial Boomerang though, since it only gets the one hit in. This fails to do enough damage on account of the action cost. Easiest fix is to bump up the die to a d6, which would make it 7 damage, +3.5 per two, on par with Telekinetic Projectile. Alternatively, have it do something on a failed save, maybe flat-footed on fail, prone on crit fail. The higher chance of useful condition would make up for the damage easily.

Level 4:
Dust Storm:
Another aura. Standard concealment effects. Moving stuff 5' but not further from you is really iffy, I'd remove the restriction. As is though, I don't see this being useful

...

Crit fails happen 5% of the time.

Scatter scree is also 2d4 if we assumed one of the dice always landed on a 4. And at higher level, assumed the dice landed on a 7.. somehow.

[Verzen]

It also takes 3 actions compared to Scatter scree 2.

With Scatter scree, I can attack with a bow for 1d8 damage + 1d4+3 using a fighter.

And if I hit one target, that's 10 damage using all 3 actions, twice as much as using 3 actions to deal 5 damage, for example.

[Gaulin]

I do like some things about tremor, but there are some issues. The damage is low, yeah. This is offset by the aoe, difficult terrain and prone on crit failure (or that's the justification for the damage at least). In the playtesting I've done it can be problematic - the 5ft burst makes it difficult to use if you have melee allies (or yourself) trying to flank enemies, the difficult terrain can be moved or stepped out of pretty easily unless the enemy is cornered, and again the damage is low (and considering for quite a while it's the only damaging earth overflow ability it would be nice to do decent damage) and only hits earthbound enemies.

If earth had a good overflow damage ability early it wouldn't bother me, people could just take it as a utility/control/chip damage feat, but as is for those who want to see half decent damage it is lackluster.

[Verzen]

The 1st level impulses should deal slightly more damage than the strongest cantrips

Let's use electric arc as the base.

Tremor should deal 1d4+con in a 5 ft burst instead of 2d4. 1d4+con = 6.5 dmg on avg per target. 2d4 = 5 dmg on avg per target. Furthermore, each lvl 1 overflow impulse should cost 1 action. Why 1 action? So I can gather elements, attack, then use my overflow in one turn. It would be just like attacking with a bow and using electric arc which literally anyone can do at level 1.

It shouldn't take a full round to do slightly less damage, albeit to a slightly bigger area than electric arc deals and still not get a chance to attack.

That gameplay is pretty undertuned.

[RexAliquid]

Errenor wrote:

Don't know where best to put it and not sure it deserves its own topic, but this bothers me a little:

evaluating the name of the IGNEOGENESIS feat I see that it should mean 'fire creation'. But the feat doesn't have anything to do with fire and even volcanoes really.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/igneo

If the rock you are moving is molten, the ability would be creating igneous rocks.

[Dubious Scholar]

I mean, yes, I did say Tremor needed to do more damage there. If it was a one-action overflow it would be fine of course, but that's true of so many of the damaging ones. So far only Aerial Boomerang and Shattered Mountain have enough output to be just fine as is I think.

On Aerial Boomerang - do you think end of next turn would be better for when it returns? It allows you to better control it, instead of it just almost always striking the same line a second time, but it also forces you to consider it when moving that turn.

[Verzen]

Dubious Scholar wrote:

I mean, yes, I did say Tremor needed to do more damage there. If it was a one-action overflow it would be fine of course, but that's true of so many of the damaging ones. So far only Aerial Boomerang and Shattered Mountain have enough output to be just fine as is I think.

On Aerial Boomerang - do you think end of next turn would be better for when it returns? It allows you to better control it, instead of it just almost always striking the same line a second time, but it also forces you to consider it when moving that turn.

I think it should only require 1 action to do Aerial boomerang and deal 1d4+con in both directions. It technically deals 2 actions total because you're using your gather element, but it deals about the same as electric arc at that point.

It's a slight bump up in damage potential and I think the chances of it hitting 4 enemies total is fairly slim to be better than electric arc.

Electric arc is 6.5 dmg against two enemies. So 6.5 dmg per enemy.

This would deal 6.5 dmg if it hits two enemies as well, but has more range and I think that would be fairly balanced. With the actions only costing 1 action, it would also allow me to move into a different position and fire an elemental blast as well and that kind of turn FEELS good to me. (Fire elemental blast. Use aerial boomerang. Move away)

I'd also be open to aerial boomerang returning and giving you a free gather element as well simply because.. it's a boomerang. It returns to you.

But I do not think taking two actions to throw it feels good since it takes a total of 3 actions, really.

2 to throw, 1 to gather. So if I am to use it's secondary return part as effectively as possible, I have to do this on two separate turns and I think requiring two turn set ups just feels bad.

[Xenocrat]

Errenor wrote:

Don't know where best to put it and not sure it deserves its own topic, but this bothers me a little:

evaluating the name of the IGNEOGENESIS feat I see that it should mean 'fire creation'. But the feat doesn't have anything to do with fire and even volcanoes really.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/igneo

It's named after igenous rocks, which form from magma that comes to the surface and then. I think they were going for the idea that it extrudes from the earth in a semi-liquid state, sets into the shape you choose, then freezes that way.

[Dubious Scholar]

Part 3, Fire. In which we visit the Boneyard every round for kicks.

Fire
Level 1:
Burning Jet:
Movement that doesn't trigger reactions. Straight line is a minor limitation most of the time, and you can't go airborne until 6th level. But at 10 this is pseudo-flight. The problem is the action cost... you're not really able to do aerial combat with this, it just lets you shrug off stuff in exploration. But for a first level feat that seems alright. No issues here.

Eternal Torch:
Continual Flame, basically. Note that this is actual hurting fire. If you want to be mean, this doesn't require a willing target, so set a spark orbiting someone and blackmail them to make it go away instead of burning their house down if they try to sleep. Anyways, evil options aside, this is... fairly minor utility except for fun interactions with one later option.

Flame Eruption:
So, this seems like it wants to be a 5' burst based on later text, which improves it slightly, primarily by doubling the effective hazardous terrain damage this can do. The damage is bad. 3.5 average, +3 scaling (stop it). Needs a bit more base damage and should just be +2 scaling, even if that means it goes to the same 2d4 and d4 the others do. But the hazardous terrain is interesting. Make this a 5' burst like the second paragraph implies and it's big enough to sometimes hit two things, sometimes force some hot feet, and bigger monsters are going to hate taking, effectively, your level in fire damage as they can't avoid walking over it twice. So yeah, bad as is, potential to be good, like most of the blasts I've gone over.

Warming Nimbus:
Gives protection against fire and cold damage, which are the most common energy types. Aura Shaping probably doesn't matter much since so many things that use them are resistant already. Good but situational. But I think it's fine for what it is, I just don't expect it to be taken except by dedicated gates or if a campaign has a lot of fire damage around.

Level 4:
Blazing Wave:
Now this I like. 12.5 average damage, scaling 1d6 every two(!) levels. This is basically the damage output of Telekinetic Projectile to everything in a 30' cone. Which makes it a good bit more damaging than Electric Arc (11 damage average here because of that +4 flat damage, but scales slower) and a 30' cone is enough to hit more than two enemies a lot of the time. Prone on crit fail is cute. This is solid and I have no complaints.

Desert Shimmer:
Permanent concealment for you, damage to enemies? I dislike seeing +3 scaling on the damage here, again. But this is fine, and Aura Shaping makes it great because your allies will get the benefit of concealment without drawbacks too... eventually. I think everyone wants Aura Shaping pretty much though, every element has some really nice aura for it. I don't know if making the scaling +2 is too much damage here but I doubt it with what water has, so just do that and I'm happy.

Level 6:
Crawling Fire:
Okay... this basically creates some second you that you can use as the source of blasts. Useful for things like cones and such, but it can be attacked just like you too. It isn't an overflow, and has no max distance though. So you can use this to dramatically increase your attack range (well, it only moves forward 40' a turn, but) and get rid of it to escape. I'm not sure I'd take it personally but it's unique and works fine, so no issues from the playtest perspective I feel.

Wandering Smoke:
Move through enemies, terrain, no reactions. And can be used on allies. The user gets concealment at the end and it's one-way, for a bit of protection. Smoke sight lasts a full minute though so your party could abuse this with smoke sticks. Overall I think this is fine.

Level 8:
Kindle Inner Flames:
Speed boost your party, bonus to reflex and acrobatics, and a one-time damage bonus to strikes. It's not overflow, either. Seems reasonable to me as a whole, if perhaps not always useful.

Solar Detonation:
Damage starts at 16.5 average and scales horribly with a +4 for 5.5 more. This finishes at 6d10 for 33 average. I don't like +4 scaling, I don't like +2 heightened either, not on blasts. They benefit from more granular damage increases. But this dazzles or blinds the enemies caught in it, which is a fair trade from raw damage, even if it only lasts a round (unless they crit fail, in which case it's a minute of blindness and sucks to be them - that pretty much takes a lot of enemies out of the fight entirely). I think I would switch this to 4d6 with another d6 every two levels - this then ranges from 14 to 35 damage, it's strictly a half-fireball. It may need to be a bit higher, start at 5d6 or even 6d6. But the dazzled/blind rider is potent even if it's a one-time deal... although there's an issue that it doesn't stack well with Desert Shimmer and that with Aura Shaping probably is just better, and you use Blazing Wave for your damage. So this may need to do something other than dazzled/blind. Difficult.

Level 12:
Architect of Flame:
A significantly weaker wall of flame. No 20 scaling hurts too. I don't think I'd ever take this, though not being sustained is a plus. I'm just not excited, and making it extra tall while even shorter (I assume it means to reduce length and not make this some 60' by 20' inferno) is unappealing. I question the need for the damage to drop this much mainly.

Furnace Form:
Initially this is just a way to empower a few strikes, and get some resists. The free action gather element is basically pointless since this isn't overflow, you can't overflow before your next turn afterwards, and then it ends. But once this empowers at 16 it all changes, because this lets you go wild. And, as noted for earth, this allows Haste to work on you while getting a free gather still, unlike the level 19 class feature.

Level 14:
Arrive in Conflagration:
This is a way to escape while hurting enemies. Or well, it would be if the damage was worth mentioning. Also +3 scaling but honestly, it's bad and stays bad. I would definitely boost that and make it +2 and such. The other issue is needing an open flame... did you take Eternal Torch? If you gave your allies some torches on their gear, this lets you warp to any of them. It lets you do all sorts of fun things with that. Light a rock on fire and throw it over a pit, etc. I'd fix the damage and that's all that needs to happen? Or possibly even remove it and make this not overflow, that's fine too.

Horrid Ignition:
The only impulse that's just an alternate elemental blast basically, but 3d6 persistent fire is nothing to sneeze at. This isn't even overflow. This gets the bonuses of all your other strike empowering stuff too (Fire has a lot of that, actually). And it enfeebles as a bonus, no save, which reduces most creatures accuracy a notch. No need to change anything here.

Level 18:
All Shall End in Flames:
KABOOOM. The emanation mode is cute, remember emanations can include you or not at your discretion. Since this has no persistent damage like Shattered Mountain, it needs to hit harder than 38.5 scaling to 44. Add some dice please, this is eating four of my actions. Now, the real trick is that phoenix rebirth shenanigan. But the problem is - you have to make a save against yourself, which is a gamble and I'm kind of iffy on that. I'd say you just take the damage rolled, or may choose to? At least that. The trick here is that at 19, you can do this every turn. And then you're dead between turns as long as it kills you, you revive, gather, explode again, etc. Unless something stops you with a reaction you immolate everything nearby endlessly while racking up frequent dier (dyer? who knows) perks with the Boneyard. Oh yeah, this id a Death effect, so... some stuff is randomly immune to it? But does it really need that trait? Monsters don't go to dying anyways, it's just so it kills the PC using it, isn't it? Needs another look for multiple reasons.

Ignite the Sun:
So this is Flaming Sphere's big brother. It's +1d6 to outgoing damage for your party (well, for you, for any other martials, and for spellcasters slinging fire, which is a lot). It's the ultimate light source. But it's only 14 damage on average, and that's before the reflex save. For comparison, Flaming Sphere is 11d6. Now, I don't know how much this needs to go up. It does half on success instead of none. It does damage to everything it passes through (30' flight), and it keeps. getting. bigger, up to a 50' burst (I do not think it should be enlarged to that point as a practical matter, that's a 100' across ball of flame, you've set the entire map on fire). ...thinking about it, this is an incredibly flexible AoE actually, I might give it just one more d6? Maybe one more at 20 too? That's 21 damage with basic reflex every round for every enemy plus 1d6 per time they're hit? Someone with experience playing at 20 would need to chime in on that. There's real potential here. Oh, also, this should count as actual sunlight I think. Make those vampires sparkle.

So overall, fire impulses have the usual mix of good and bad blasts (or rather, it has one really good one and the rest need help), a lot of good ways to boost your blast damage (and party strikes). The mobility options are... weaker generally, though Arrive in Conflagration has some options if you get clever about it. Boosting strikes is a unique identity for the element, and that's good. Fix the blast damage and I have no complaints.

[Dubious Scholar]

And the last part for water.

Water
Level 1:
Deflecting Wave:
A damage reduction reaction is cool. But as an overflow this is useless. Remove overflow and adjust the numbers if needed.

Tidal Hands:
I like the option of dual cones or a single big cone. The range on dual cones is short but it's flexible. Damage is fine, at 7 average, increasing by 3.5 every two levels. It's an AoE telekinetic projectile basically for one additional action.

Water Dance:
Donate movement to allies or zip along yourself. Not as useful on yourself (a fairly minor speed gain, and none at all for elves out of the water), but protects against reactions partially. The scaling makes this better over time, I'll complain about +3 all day long but it's more forgivable here I suppose

Winter's Clutch:
Cold damage equal to your level as an aura. The difficult terrain is interesting but I'm not sure how to grade it. Honestly the raw damage here is solid and you uh... you may want to find party members with cold resistance until you can exclude them with Aura Shaping (and a 30' cold field indefinitely is a nice way to open any fight - this offers no saves whatsoever)

Level 4:
Return to the Sea:
Utility, gives anyone a swim speed, but can't do it for a party until it upgrades. The benefit of ignoring underwater penalties to bludgeoning and slashing mean your ranged strikes can hit and is a useful benefit for party martials. No overflow trait, you can keep this going all day effortlessly. Not always useful, but trivializes aquatic combat if it is.

Veil of Mists:
Illusory disguise for 10 minutes, then 10m before you can use it again? I find the short duration awkward, otherwise this is basically just the same as the spell. Requires more creativity to abuse perhaps. Not much else to say, though I feel level 4 impulses are somewhat narrower for water than other elements.

Level 6:
Slippery Sleet:
Large area, long range... and only 10 damage average and 2.5 scaling for a 3 action overflow leaves much to be desired in the raw damage area. However, the area becomes difficult terrain and uneven ground, forcing most creatures to be flat footed until your next turn. The impact on movement and AC this brings mean it doesn't need as much raw damage, so it's probably fine as is? More testing required on if that's really enough... maybe bump some more damage in or increase the size of the area.

Standing Surf:
The last of the walls. Wall of Water is... useful against some things and much less so others. Being shorter is a problem, as is the extreme action cost with 3+overflow+sustain, so I think something needs to change here.

Level 8:
Lowland Fog:
This is great, until something attacks and then it just... doesn't do anything anymore? This should not cost 3+overflow I think. Shave off an action or two and it becomes interesting combat utility.

Torrent in the Blood:
Another focus healing alternative, but this one has a critical gap - you can't heal yourself with it because you can't include yourself in a cone. It should change to include you in it I think, but otherwise the healing is acceptable, the poison/disease cure is a good rider, etc.

Level 12:
Drowning Sphere:
It's not overflow which is helpful, and the sphere can be the source of melee blasts. I think this is probably fine as is. It's a much better option than Standing Surf for battlefield control.

Glacial Prison:
Oof. I do not like this. It sounds cool, but it's a lot of actions to eat 1-4 actions from an enemy, except attacking them removes the freeze so if that happens before their turn the failure doesn't even matter? I'd address that for sure. Possibly just make it stunned for one round instead of this whole petrified but it doesn't actually count stuff? Does a petrified enemy have the AC of an unattended object (5 lol) and eat critical damage? Because then I don't care, abuse delay and let a barbarian shatter them. (...do they shatter?). This has a few too many questions so yeah, just use stunned instead.

Level 14:
Barrier of Boreal Frost:
Oh hey there was another wall. This is... bad. 3+overflow, sustained, can't use the very useful dome mode of the spell... not feeling it. If the dome was available I could see using this for the unique application of summoning up a cage on enemies.

Sea Glass Guardian:
The last kinetic aura, and another damage source without saves for water. This does 8-16 damage as punishment for hitting you or allies in the aura, and you can choose the damage type when casting it. The problem is that your level 1 aura does 14-20 damage, even if only once, but punishes just being in the area. Of course, if a boss hits the tank three times this hits harder, so it's a trade off and I'd probably take both and choose based on the fight. I think this is fine as is.

Level 18:
Ride the Tsunami:
So, average of 44 damage, 60' cone. This needs to hit harder. The pushing is cute but unreliable. Repositioning as part of this is really useful, but I wouldn't really consider it for budgeting power - you're probably trying to be in a good spot to unload from before you use this, right?

Usurp the Lunar Reins:
The absolute biggest gap between how cool it sounds and how useless it is. If I want difficult terrain I've got Slippery Sleet already. Negating difficult terrain at 18 isn't a huge deal. This needs to be significantly reworked. My first pass at this would be to raise water level 10' in a 30' burst, holding it there, and it's greater difficult terrain (or difficult terrain if you swim, but the swim DC is class DC? Someone do the math if that's too much?). And then it's doing some amount of constant bludgeoning damage from debris being tossed around the raging waters. Basically no upfront damage but massive battlefield control to pin down enemies and such. Considering the size enemies can be at this level, possibly allow it to summon forth even larger amounts of water or grow in area when sustained?

Overall... I'm iffier on water as a whole. It has some desires to do battlefield control, but has the worst level 18 impulse, both walls are bad. It has good auras, and the usual issues on blasts. I feel like it has the most narrow utility compared to other elements - it takes more control effects where they'd get things with both in and out of battle uses. So I'd take a real look at that and what can be done?

[Xenocrat]

Glad to see the Get in the Sea meme get some love in 2022.

[shroudb]

A note on early Furnace form (pre-16):

the free gather can actually be useful in a dual element setup with water.

You start in fire, go into furnace mode, get your free 20 feet fly movement, use cycling blast to get the fire blast and the extra damage on it, cycle to water.
Now, you have your reaction to reduce damage primed and ready. If you get hit, use the reaction (overflow) and next turn you regather fire for free.
also, in exploration mode is basically full on flight mode for fire since you can keep casting it and fiery form gives fly 40.

[PossibleCabbage]

With Furnace Form and also Rebirth in Living Stone you get a free gather, and once you get permanently quickened at level 19 it appears that there should be some sort of strategy where "gathering twice in one turn" is desirable but I can't figure out what it is.

[Gaulin]

For earth at least I would say gather, overflow ability, gather, earth Shield would be a good use.

[PossibleCabbage]

Gaulin wrote:

For earth at least I would say gather, overflow ability, gather, earth Shield would be a good use.

Unfortunately, the two action overflow abilities earth gets are either pretty bad or are purely defensive.

[Xenocrat]

The free gather abilities for earth and fire are compatible with haste, which the 19th level ability conflicts with.

[PossibleCabbage]

Xenocrat wrote:

The free gather abilities for earth and fire are compatible with haste, which the 19th level ability conflicts with.

The 19th level ability doesn't really conflict with Haste, being Hasted past 19th just means that you can use your extra action to stride, strike, or gather.

[Dubious Scholar]

Yep. Which is why I call out the free gathers playing nice with Haste - you can then use your extra action to stride or strike, which are more generally useful I feel. You can Gather, Strike, Stride, 2-action Overflow for your turn, for instance.

I want to add one caveat to all this... or reiterate it I guess. I have something of a target for damage I was aiming for with suggestions. I tried to be consistent but I probably wasn't (I have some concerns if I pushed the numbers high enough on three action overflows compared to two and such). It's a conservative target, and I know I've seen people pushing for higher damage amounts than I've suggested here. I'm not entirely sure if this is enough damage to make blasts feel good or not overall, but I'm pretty sure anything less than this is bad.

I'm kind of annoyed Earth doesn't really have a single damaging impulse I like as printed before Shattered Mountain Weeps. I need to actually see Boomerang in play to make a final call (this is on my todo list), but I'm comfortable with Tidal Hands and Blazing Wave as early damage options for their elements (I would take Tidal Hands as my basic damage impulse on basically any build with water, in fact - I feel the flexibility and size of its AoE, plus the damage as printed, are absolutely worth the actions expended)

[rayous brightblade]

Dubious Scholar wrote:

Ferocious Cyclone:

A big linear wind blast. Averages 38.5 damage and increases by 5.5 every... 3 levels. Remember what I said about the last one that scaled this way? This tops out at 49.5. But this is only two actions, so I think it's okay? The push, as usual, isn't very relevant I feel. Now, my real suggestion here is thematic. Make this a fortitude save. You don't dodge this, you withstand it. Also, maybe make it a double wide line.

This is already a double wide line, the area is a 10 ft wide 60ft line. Most lines are 5ft wide.

[Dubious Scholar]

rayous brightblade wrote:

Dubious Scholar wrote:

Ferocious Cyclone:

A big linear wind blast. Averages 38.5 damage and increases by 5.5 every... 3 levels. Remember what I said about the last one that scaled this way? This tops out at 49.5. But this is only two actions, so I think it's okay? The push, as usual, isn't very relevant I feel. Now, my real suggestion here is thematic. Make this a fortitude save. You don't dodge this, you withstand it. Also, maybe make it a double wide line.

This is already a double wide line, the area is a 10 ft wide 60ft line. Most lines are 5ft wide.

Hah, whoops. Missed that width when reading it. Then my only real suggestion is to make this one a fortitude save I guess. ...and not do +3 scaling.

[Errenor]

What is the third effect of the SOOTHING BREEZE I wonder...

[Errenor]

IGNEOGENESIS 18: can you make a 5-square line (25ft) from you or 5-square column with you or someone adjacent on top of it?

[manbearscientist]

Dubious Scholar wrote:

And the last part for water.

I'm surprised to hear you relatively okay with fire, but antagonistic against better fire.

And that's what water is, for the most part. Better fire. I rest my case on Blazing Wave vs. Tidal Hands.

Tidal Hands is level 1 rather than 4, an arguably better damage type, and far more flexible in its area. This pattern repeats with Winter's Clutch and Slippery Sheet.

Water gets more, better, earlier. They have a joke of a level 18 feat, but they will do dramatically more damage as-written throughout the course of a campaign. And I don't know about you, but I've found far use for waterbreathing then torches throughout my 2E campaigns.

[Dubious Scholar]

Water isn't better fire. Tidal hands is better than blazing wave as printed, sure. But that's not enough to say water is better than fire. Fire has a lot of party support in combat that water doesn't. Water breathing is situational, party-wide concealment is not.

Edit: It appears that I missed that Solar Detonation has the Incapacitate trait. That's... just awful, seriously. Why? Just change the crit fail to blinded 1 round, dazzled 1 minute (which is weaker than Glitterdust, which is not incap) then.