Much like how the water aura is "you're making it snow" whether you're indoors, in the interior of a volcano, or whatever since that snow is coming from the elemental plane of water through your internal gate" I wonder if we shouldn't make the earth aura also create difficult terrain everywhere, just by by spilling loose rocks and gravel all over in your vicinity."
Just rip open your gate wide as you use an Aura so that winds rips from you to help yourself and your allies while hindering your enemies, winter's chill pouring out of you in the area of your aura to damage your enemies and hinder them by the sudden snow fall that appears not out of thin air so much as out of your wide open gate, your Earth gate fills the ground around you with earth and sand or stone erupting out of your gate and shifting ever so slightly as needed to provide difficult terrain for your enemies while not hindering your allies and through this new coating of earth and sand you can sense the location of invisible enemies, your Fire Gate releases the heat from the heart of a terrible desert causing the air to shimmer in the heat and dealing damage to your foes.
But yeah I feel like the Auras should have more of a connection to the gate thematically, and maybe mechanically. In some cases the effect might seem to actually come from your body but in many it could be that a copy of your open gates appears beneath, or above as needed, you.
Fair Winds could be the winds coming from your body, or it could be a copy of your gate opening up above you, or perhaps below you but not replacing the ground with air, or maybe even a combination of above and below with the winds raging from both ends.
Crowned in Tempest's Fury already mentions taking a storm and turning it into a crown so take a crown from within your gate and pull it out as a copy of your gate that is both a portal to your inner elemental storm and the stormcloud itself formed into a crown.
Geologic Attunement have it open a copy of your gate beneath you that either attunes to the earth beneath you causing it to shift and change to hinder your enemies while giving you information through it, or change the ground beneath you in its area into earth, sand or stone, while doing the same things to the new earthen ground beneath you as it does to already earther ground.
Dust Storm would also probably open a copy of your gate beneath you, producing sand and dust if there isn't already any there so that it can get agitated and swirl and storm to conceal and move as usual.
Warming Nimbus seems like it makes more sense to just continue to emanate from the character rather than opening a copy of the gate below or above. That said I don't see any mention of protecting against extreme temperatures, but maybe resistances already cover that? Then again not having an aura up constantly makes that kind of thing less useful. Almost feels like this one should provide a hot or cold fire shield to anyone in the aura effected by it, so the Kineticist and their allies hopefully once Shape Aura comes online.
Desert Shimmer could just continue to come from the body, but this one actually feels like you could have the gate open above or below the body and have the intense heat emanate from there. Honestly while the concealment can be useful the damage on this is just sad.
Winter's Clutch almost seems like it would have to have a copy of your gate open above or below you in a way. Above you to have the chilling blast of cold air and the falling snow, or below you to also have the chilling cold air fill the area and the snow just appearing on the ground. Kind of sad the snow only fills 3 squares and disappears at the beginning of your turn, would be nice if you can leave some snow where you pass until it melts like normal.
With Sea Glass Guardians you currently have a creature of water or ice appear and flow around you. I like the flavor of that but would probably rather you open a copy of your gate beneath you that creates a thin layer of water, maybe an inch or half an inch, not necessarily enough to hinder people but enough to be thematic and have the Sea Glass Guardian leap from the water to attack and then return into the water, or have shifting tendrils/pseudopods of water and ice that lash out of the water that is clearly not deep enough for such.
I'll just point out that it's not like Ranger can't already be flying every fight starting at level 7 with the APG.
???
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I'll just point out that it's not like Ranger can't already be flying every fight starting at level 7 with the APG.???
Animal Feature focus spell is what they mean, I think.
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I'll just point out that it's not like Ranger can't already be flying every fight starting at level 7 with the APG.???
Animal Feature heightened.
I still have concerns about the 17th level feature of automatically getting immunity to a given element. I mean sure, three of the four elements are (relatively) short lists as of now. But it seems doubtful it will stay that way, and even now fire has a pretty long list of effects. I've seen a few feats that would make it pretty easy to swap elements in ways they could attack and then switch back to an appropriate element without much in the way of cost.
I don't think getting immunity to an element is a real issue is the interpretation that it could be an Elemental Resistance expansion making the char immune to creatures with any elemental trait. Especially fire.
When you’re connected to an Elemental Plane, you’re protected from that element. While you have an element gathered, you gain resistance equal to your level to damage from a source that has that trait. For example, if you had water gathered, you would gain resistance to a Strike from a water elemental or damage from a hydraulic push spell.
Elemental Resistance gives the kineticist resistance not only against effects with the same trait as its gathered element, but also from the source to the damage itself.
Your elemental resistance becomes full immunity. While you have an element gathered, you’re immune to effects with that trait; you can voluntarily allow them to affect you.
Here we have a confusing situation. The flavor text (which is not always is flavor, some in-game abilities sometimes lack flavor text, and there is no formal definition of what is flavor and what is the rule) seems to suggest that Immunity is a natural increment of resistance, but after that it says that apliest to effects but no more mention the source imply that immunity isn't applied from the source as resistance just for effect with the trait (usually just fire once earth/water/air aren't damage types).
IMO this needs more clarity or the designer may add energy type alternatives for elements other than fire as suggested in other topics. As a cold option for water, acidic option for stone, energetic option for air. In this way, elemental resistance can be changed just to effect only instead of source.
Incapacitation does not really matter in solar detonation though, you are using it when going against like 3 enemies, they will pretty much be your lvl or lower.
even a creature with Acrobatics will have a hard time making 3+ savesReflex save against fixed DC15? Easily autosuccess from level 7.
They will still be flat-footed, without saves. And depending on the number of attacks/saves (Bosses, for example), they would be forced to roll several times in a single round. A lucky Nat 1 might be good.
However, the fixed DC 15 is weird as hell. It should definitely scale, even if it remains well below average. For example, I good scale would be following your character's Class DC proficiency, trained 15, Expert 20, Master 30.
Given that 56% of current creatures have Acrobatics, the higher DC might not be something insanely strong, for example, if the vast majority of creatures didn't have acrobatics, thus virtually no chance of saving at higher DCs.
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Well, on the one hand I think I understand why the DC is fixed - it's a 'normal' environmental effect, which usually don't have scaling, levelled DCs.
Maybe, but it's worth pointing out there's no standardized DC for uneven ground in the first place. The DC15 is specific to slippery sleet.
Feels more like it's just a feat that missed an editing pass and someone forgot to add DC scaling to its heighten effect.
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Harkening back to the immunity thing, that aspect feels overtuned to me. I'm a bit iffy on immunities in general. I think it was Mark who pointed out that granting immunities disengaged a player from that aspect of the game because it's something they no longer need to care about other than to make sure it's present as often as possible so they won't take damage, and that makes sense to me.
If anything I'd rather see the elemental immunities reduced to full-level resistance rather than expanded to encompass other damage types.
i mean that helps out with fire but like, im not sure i would take immunity to [air] effects even as a level 1 feat