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The weapon is still the gathered element and can be used
for impulses, is expended for overflow impulses, and so on.
It can also be used for Elemental Blasts or standard Strikes
(provided they’re melee blasts or Strikes if you choose a melee
weapon or ranged blasts or Strikes if you choose a ranged
weapon).
The whole part about Elemental Blasts seems needlessly restrictive, especially after saying the weapon can be used for Impulses.
I also question why you'd want to use the weapon for a melee blast when you can do a strike. In most cases the strike will deal more damage than the blast, furthermore the blast provokes while the strike doesn't. The only thing exception I can think of is maybe if you choose Air for the versality of damage and reach.
It's actually not really unnecessary.
This is the way the designer used to prevent melee Elemental Weapons from being unable to make long-range Blasts and long-range Elemental Weapon not being able to be used for melee blasts. This way it forces the player who is using an Elemental Bastard Sword, for example, to have to use Gather Element again to be able to make ranged attacks or prevent an Elemental Pistol from allowing melee Blasts.
It is a way of simulating the change of weapons that a martial artist needs to use when changing from sword to bow for example and preventing the change from being completely free for the kineticist.
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I for one understand why they did it, YuriP. It still diminishes both a potential strength of the class as well as the fun of playing a kineticist.
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Well as far as why you would want to blast instead of strike, Some of the blasts are agile and conversely there's also the option of forming an agile weapon. That way you can hit with the more damaging of the two and then follow up with the agile one of the two.
More universally speaking, it's not entirely clear if you use weapon damage for impulses that make you attack with blasts.
Also provoking isn't usually a huge deal unless you run into one of the rare monsters with more than one. It's rare until higher levels and not an all the time thing even then. It's also easily played around, especially at higher levels. Hell the default play patterns everyone recommends you do all the time help thwart them.
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I for one understand why they did it, YuriP. It still diminishes both a potential strength of the class as well as the fun of playing a kineticist.
I don't disagree with you. I just showed my understanding of why the designer did it.
That said, I think it's pretty bad too. In the end this practically renders the Elemental Weapon useless, since its main advantage would be to be able to fight melee without suffering AoO, being forced to spend an action to switch to the normal Gather Element, which is a handling action also ends up greatly limiting the usefulness of the weapons. Elemental Weapons.In fact, this is the main reason why my players haven't used Elemental Weapons in my Playtests. Because I warned them in advance that if he was going to use a Bastard Sword Elemental for example and they needed to do a range Elemental Blast he would have to spend an action doing Gather Element.
In other words, the only advantage that remained for the Elemental Weapon was being able to make 1d12 attacks with an Elemental Bastard but that requires strength, and it would have to deal with the low AC or it would have to be with less hit or less Con and if you face an opponent with AoO it could neither use Stone Shield nor even Deflecting Wave as the reaction itself is an Impulse and therefore causes AoO.
That's why we just ignore Elemental Weapon. In fact we are just ignoring melee kineticists at all.
I for one understand why they did it, YuriP. It still diminishes both a potential strength of the class as well as the fun of playing a kineticist.I don't disagree with you. I just showed my understanding of why the designer did it.
That said, I think it's pretty bad too. In the end this practically renders the Elemental Weapon useless, since its main advantage would be to be able to fight melee without suffering AoO, being forced to spend an action to switch to the normal Gather Element, which is a handling action also ends up greatly limiting the usefulness of the weapons. Elemental Weapons.In fact, this is the main reason why my players haven't used Elemental Weapons in my Playtests. Because I warned them in advance that if he was going to use a Bastard Sword Elemental for example and they needed to do a range Elemental Blast he would have to spend an action doing Gather Element.
In other words, the only advantage that remained for the Elemental Weapon was being able to make 1d12 attacks with an Elemental Bastard but that requires strength, and it would have to deal with the low AC or it would have to be with less hit or less Con and if you face an opponent with AoO it could neither use Stone Shield nor even Deflecting Wave as the reaction itself is an Impulse and therefore causes AoO.
That's why we just ignore Elemental Weapon. In fact we are just ignoring melee kineticists at all.
Rapier is still better than most of the elements if they are DEX and they would still be able to use impulses that have range and don't fire a blast, which most elements have.
Mind you they'd still need to Gather afterward but honestly how often do people that choose to spec into melee make ranged attacks? You're calling something that solves a major problem and can boost the damage too terrible just because if they specialize the element towards melee they have to do an action to switch weapons like everyone else does if they have a melee weapon out.
And also Elemental Weapon is good for playing at range too.
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Look, I think you're getting it wrong.
First, if the idea is to focus exclusive on melee, then why not just pick up a real weapon instead of Elemental Weapon?
Also, using finesse weapons in melee makes no sense without the damage bonus or a high die, you are basically having the same efficiency as attacking from afar with a higher risk and wasting a feat.
Not to mention focusing solely on melee with kineticist is simply subpar, especially if you have to deal with AoO, where you know using any Impulse will generate one. You're practically stuck in a situation where you need to distance yourself to do anything other than a Strike.
As for using Elemental Weapon ranged, what is this one-handed ranged weapon that has no reload to be better than a Blast?
I think the idea is:
I have an Air Kineticist with elemental weapon and have built for strength.
I take arial boomerang, elemental weapon, fair wind, and air cushion.
I make my Weapon a War Hammer (Some will argue for bastard sword here for a D12, but I am not sure I believe that to be the intention, nor that it matters).
Now I can attack adjacent enemies with a D8+4 weapon, enemies with reach with a D4+4 weapon that is agile (but provokes AoO if that matters), or spend 2 actions to throw my boomerang and then one to regather it, possibly connecting a second time if the enemy doesn't move out of the way, which might be difficult when closing in on me if I have already cast Fairwind in the first round.
This build actually could get away with a Fighter MC and picking up weapon feats and an Ao0, sticking around to pick up Utility and Impulse save feats, but no real blast feats from within the class.
As for using Elemental Weapon ranged, what is this one-handed ranged weapon that has no reload to be better than a Blast?
Technically bows are one handed. But the rules on ammo are kind of confusing to me, like do you have to use gather element to reload?
If you choose a ranged weapon that uses ammunition, you must still reload the weapon using the normal number of actions, though the only type of ammunition you can use with the weapon is elemental ammunition forged in your inner gate.
Like what does forged in your inner gate even mean? Like are they trying to say you have to use Gather Element to forge a new piece of ammo? That sounds like you have to spend an action just to reload it and than another action to fire.
As for using Elemental Weapon ranged, what is this one-handed ranged weapon that has no reload to be better than a Blast?Technically bows are one handed.
No bows are technically 1+ handed. So they're not 1-handed weapons, they might not be exactly 2-handed, but they sure as hell aren't strictly one-handed.
This is why bows do not qualify for Elemental Weapons or Implements.
But the rules on ammo are kind of confusing to me, like do you have to use gather element to reload?
If you choose a ranged weapon that uses ammunition, you must still reload the weapon using the normal number of actions, though the only type of ammunition you can use with the weapon is elemental ammunition forged in your inner gate.Like what does forged in your inner gate even mean? Like are they trying to say you have to use Gather Element to forge a new piece of ammo? That sounds like you have to spend an action just to reload it and than another action to fire.
My understanding is that the ammo is created automagically, but you still need to cock the weapon. That would be the flavor excuse for the number of actions.
Mechanically the designer just doesn't want you to ignore the time lost with reloading.
Hm. The way I had interpreted Hand 1+ is that it requires one hand to wield but two hands to use a Strike with. Though, with how it's explain in the book it could be interpreted as being a 2 handed weapon that lets you use one hand for other actions.
That alone needs a rules clarification. It feels like all the limitations they put on Elemental Weapon makes it not worth picking up just so you don't have to deal with it. Might as well just pick up a mundane weapon.
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Hm. The way I had interpreted Hand 1+ is that it requires one hand to wield but two hands to use a Strike with. Though, with how it's explain in the book it could be interpreted as being a 2 handed weapon that lets you use one hand for other actions.
That alone needs a rules clarification. It feels like all the limitations they put on Elemental Weapon makes it not worth picking up just so you don't have to deal with it. Might as well just pick up a mundane weapon.
The definition for wielding basically boils down to holding it the way you need to in order to use it and you need two hands to fire, which is the use of item.
As for the point in using Elemental Weapon instead of a normal weapon? You can pick a martial weapon and it uses your unarmed proficiency with it. You only come to with simple and unarmed progression normally.
Also it would use the same runes as your blasts presumably as it would scale illogically poorly if it didn't.
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Also it would use the same runes as your blasts presumably as it would scale illogically poorly if it didn't.
Illogical or not this is based on an assumption that the designer has forgotten. But for Elemental Weapons by RAW they don't accept runes! You can ctrl+f the document, you won't see any mention saying that elemental weapons inherit runes from handwraps nor that you can apply runes to them.
So reading a Reddit thread gave me an idea. But I am not entirely sure how some of these feats would interact. And since this idea focuses on Elemental Weapon this thread seemed like a good place to put it.
So I saw someone talking about using Cycling Blast to regather element and create a new Elemental Weapon gun that is already loaded, thus getting around needing to spend actions to reload.
This would of course require Dual Element, or Universal Gate, and having taken Elemental Weapon at least twice for elemental guns.
I am not sure if you could use the gun's strike in place of the Cycling Blasts's elemental blast. My assumption is not so you would have to shoot, cycling blast to switch elements and then use third action to shoot again. Dealing with normal MAP of course. If on the other hand you can use the Elemental Blast from Cycling Blast as a ranged gun strike that is much better and as far as I can tell you can use Cycling Blast basically every action.
Another idea, requiring even more class feats, is also grabbing Flexible Blasts in the hope that you can somehow do Str based Ranged Elemental Weapon attacks. This is another one where I assume not, but it would be a cool idea to use a Str based gun shot.
Of course all this would use up a lot of class feats which means not much in the way of Impulse feats.