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TECHNOLOGY OPTIONS for the Metal Kineticist. There doesn't need to be a lot of them but I'd like to see at least 1 or two things grounded in Golarion-based tech (Firearms, Gears, Mechanics, etc) and another few for more exotic Metal from the stars and interesting ways to interface with said Sky/Star-Metal.
Bah, who am I kidding, I hope they somehow find an extra 20 pages to cram in a whole section on Numeria in general into it.
I really want a kineticist with metal and fire to be able to attack by like, spontaneously generating and firing a little cannon. I think that would be cool.
And metal users should totally have feats to use different types of metal.
TECHNOLOGY OPTIONS for the Metal Kineticist. There doesn't need to be a lot of them but I'd like to see at least 1 or two things grounded in Golarion-based tech (Firearms, Gears, Mechanics, etc) and another few for more exotic Metal from the stars and interesting ways to interface with said Sky/Star-Metal.
Bah, who am I kidding, I hope they somehow find an extra 20 pages to cram in a whole section on Numeria in general into it.
I really want a kineticist with metal and fire to be able to attack by like, spontaneously generating and firing a little cannon. I think that would be cool.
And metal users should totally have feats to use different types of metal.
Fire/metal liquid metal kineticist would be terrifying and fitting. Mix kineticist with starfinders nanocyte a little and boom, awesome character
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What IS a Kinetiscist? Is it like using the Alchemy system from Full Metal Alchemist? I heard they don't use spell slots yet somehow do magic?Its class originally based around harnesing the power of the planes channeled through the ethereal plane using the power of their body. The class had no spell slots and was entitely based around using HP as a resources. You could use the base blast that auto scaled or spend either action or HP to empower your abilities up to the same power of a max level spell. They did not require having the element available as the source was their own bodies. But using their abilities did cause some manifestation in the same vein as carrie, the human torch, etc. They are less like Full Metal Alchemist and more like classic super heroes and psychics.
Due to the "elements" and ties to monk a lot of people view it as it being AtLA (Avatar the Last Airbender), but that is only a small subset of what the class can do.
If you want to read the original write up here you go: PF1e Kineticist. Its no exaggeration to say it was one of the most popular and thematic classes Paizo ever created, and very few games (if any) have created anything similar.
Wow that is so cool! I really want to play one now. Human Torch WOO!
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They also did a free public playtest of the 2e version and talked through the feedback they got.
I feel like that’s probably more useful hyping up Burn, a 1e class feature that doesn’t exist anymore, and a bunch of lore that’s been changed :p
The 2e Kineticist is an at-will elemental attacker who doesn’t use spells, with a lot of turn-to-turn flexibility; flavor-wise, they’re a living portal to one or more Elemental Planes, channeling that power through their bodies.
Yeah I would say that's a pretty good description except for the hp as a resource part (it was for 1e but the 2e version is going for a version of the class that can use their abilities as much as they want without it costing anything except actions). I always gravitated more towards comics and superpowers more than the vancian casting jawn, so kineticist is something I'm hugely looking forward to.
Have you actually played a magus or are you theory crafting? Yes people do use their slots for spellstriking it's one of the main reason some favor not raising INT to high. I know I personally prefer using cantrips for spellstriking because it let's you get 2 stats to damage since I only get 1 swing a round most timesI know I haven't seen slots used to Spellstrike since people figured out they could do so with cleric (and now psychic) focus powers. Who'd want to waste important resources like that?
I have seen magi take electric arc anyway though. That or the elf feat that gives you Electric typed acid splash.
Does this mean as a Magus you multiclass into Cleric at some point in order to gain access to their Domain Spells and then use their Domain Focus Spell to Spellstrike? Why not Druid? I heard Druids have amazeballs Focus Spells but Cleric Focus spells is kind of bad mostly across the board.
I don't know anything about Psychic. Didn't even know it was a class.
It usually goes: spells that require a spell attack = not great. Casters are better off targeting saves. So a druids tempest surge is an amazing focus spell.
But for magus it's the other way around: spell that require a spell attack - great, 'cause all you have to do is land ur strike and the strike + the spell hits.
With expansive spellstrike you can use save based spells. But you have to hit, and the target then has to fail their save = not that great.
Prior to the psychic, fire ray was top dog, as it requires an attack roll and scales really well.
It's much more impressive on a Magus than a cleric
Exactly, especially with how scaling has been changed in P2E...
Spells need to be heightened with higher slots to deal more damage. Why would I waste a higher spell slot for one Spellstrike?
Cantrips are usable at will, and since a Magus will mostly use Spellstrike every round, it is far better to not waste spell slots on this. Higher spells are more beneficial as utility spells for a Magus.
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More often than not, sure. But the best debuff to apply is still 'dead'. So if a high lvl shocking grasp achives that, then that's play.
When dealing with actual bosses / threats that is
Pedantry spoiler:
With the introduction of Codas in Treasure Vault I'm wondering if the same thing couldn't be done for kineticists. A staff-but-not that is loaded up with a bevy of spells that fit their element. I think it'd be fun support regardless of whether the kineticist will get spells in any of their kit.
That is pretty much what I'm hoping for. Give them caster like itemization, let kineticists spend their money on fun things like how casters spend most of their gold on scrolls, staves, wands, consumables, etc.
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I'm hoping each Kineticist gets to choose between two types of damage per element type from the get-go. Something like:
Basically this makes sense to either hit with the elemental side, or to physically use the element for physical damage. Specifically I really hope they equate Earth to Acid and Metal to Radiation (really would be great for more radiation type damage).
I'm hoping each Kineticist gets to choose between two types of damage per element type from the get-go. Something like:
Air - Piercing & Electricity
Earth - Bludgeoning & Acid
Fire - Slashing & Fire
Metal - Slashing & Radiation
Water - Bludgeoning & Cold
Wood - Piercing & Positive? Basically this makes sense to either hit with the elemental side, or to physically use the element for physical damage. Specifically I really hope they equate Earth to Acid and Metal to Radiation (really would be great for more radiation type damage).
We know that a bunch of those damage types are going to be mixes between two elements. That was part of the wargamer First Look. Like, there's going to be a subtype between each pair, and those 15 are going to be where we get a lot of the funnier damage types.
If i had to guess, I'd say Radiation is metal/fire, acid is metal/earth, poison is metal/wood, lightning is metal/air, or something like that. Having tried to slot these things into pairs myself I can say that there isn't an easy, obvious answer that makes everything work perfectly. I'd bet that they put a fair amount of thought into making the pairs work out okay, and we're not going to be able to just guess them. We also know that not all of the pairs map to a damage type exactly - Water/Fire has been revealed as Steam.
I'm going to bet that earth is B, metal is S/P, and wood is B/P. Water and Air... less clear. Might be more flexible. Fire is going to be mostly Fire.
I'd love to see a lvl 1 class feat that lets you just shift your damage type to whichever damage type it is that you actually want. It would make so many character concepts just work. Given what we've heard thus far, though, it doesn't sound like they went that way.
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Something that's been bugging me has sort of congealed after reading the replies here.
Is there a fundamental reason why the Kinetecist shouldn't be allowed to choose to deal B, S, or P with EVERY and ANY element whatsoever by default? Sure, it's a kind of "powerful" thing to be able to have such versatile physical damage types available to them right off the bat but... why can't that be part of how they are set apart from other Classes and unique? I mean, if the Thaum is able to just muddle through and INVENT made-up fake Weaknesses that just WORK on literally any enemy (A feature infinitely more powerful than flexible physical damage types) I don't see how allowing Fire/Water/Air/Earth/Metal/Wood Blasts to deal whatever type of physical damage they like could feasibly be considered too powerful.
Any element can narratively be described as dealing ANY of the physical damage types based on how it is used and... being the master of elements they should have the power to do this in a flexible manner.
Why can't Air deal Piercing damage? Surely anyone who has used a powerful air compressor in the past has been warned about how dangerous it can be to put your skin near or against the air.
Why can't Fire deal Bludgeoning damage? Explosive fires/explosions are 1% heat and 99% concussive force.
The narrative justification to retain only one (or even two) damage types per element is just super duper weak and instead of ADDING to the themes and flavor the Class/Element it actually takes away from it.
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I'm hoping each Kineticist gets to choose between two types of damage per element type from the get-go. Something like:
Air - Piercing & Electricity
Earth - Bludgeoning & Acid
Fire - Slashing & Fire
Metal - Slashing & Radiation
Water - Bludgeoning & Cold
Wood - Piercing & Positive? Basically this makes sense to either hit with the elemental side, or to physically use the element for physical damage. Specifically I really hope they equate Earth to Acid and Metal to Radiation (really would be great for more radiation type damage).
Love energy and physical options. Hate the options you picked, partly because of nostalgia, but still.
Namely: Air should be bludgeoning not piecing; Earth should be any physical not just bludgeoning and earth really shouldn't have an energy type; Fire really shouldn't have a physical type; Metal should naturally allow any physical type, not sure on radiation as a damage type; Wood should allow any physical type.
If radiation become a type, it really should be part of a Blightburner class archetype that makes the entire class revolve around radiation. (Note original Blightburner was a Geokineticist).
I tried spreading it out fairly evenly on the physical damage so each is represented twice (and none more versatile than another without feats). Earth, Water, and Wood seemed pretty obvious to me and then I tried fitting the others in.
Air piercing is from the expression that the "wind is blowing right through me." Fire due the visual of being "licked by the flames" expression. Metal as it often has a sharp edge and easy to cut with it.
Honestly my main goal is 2 fold. Give all elements both a physical and elemental damage type to choose from, and to bring radiation damage into the mainstream.
Wood could have Poison damage ;)
Aether should be considered, with [Modular] and Mental
Deific should also be consider, with Divine and either Positive or Negative.
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The more common expression for air is "the wind is blowing me away" which is bludgeoning, not piercing. Also being "licked by the flames" is not being...I'm hoping each Kineticist gets to choose between two types of damage per element type from the get-go. Something like:
Air - Piercing & Electricity
Earth - Bludgeoning & Acid
Fire - Slashing & Fire
Metal - Slashing & Radiation
Water - Bludgeoning & Cold
Wood - Piercing & Positive? Basically this makes sense to either hit with the elemental side, or to physically use the element for physical damage. Specifically I really hope they equate Earth to Acid and Metal to Radiation (really would be great for more radiation type damage).
Love energy and physical options. Hate the options you picked, partly because of nostalgia, but still.
Namely: Air should be bludgeoning not piecing; Earth should be any physical not just bludgeoning and earth really shouldn't have an energy type; Fire really shouldn't have a physical type; Metal should naturally allow any physical type, not sure on radiation as a damage type; Wood should allow any physical type.
If radiation become a type, it really should be part of a Blightburner class archetype that makes the entire class revolve around radiation. (Note original Blightburner was a Geokineticist).
I tried spreading it out fairly evenly on the physical damage so each is represented twice (and none more versatile than another without feats). Earth, Water, and Wood seemed pretty obvious to me and then I tried fitting the others in.
Air piercing is from the expression that the "wind is blowing right through me." Fire due the visual of being "licked by the flames" expression. Metal as it often has a sharp edge and easy to cut with it.
Honestly my main goal is 2 fold. Give all elements both a physical and elemental damage type to choose from, and to bring radiation damage into the mainstream.
Well, sayings are colloquial and used in differently and in different frequency depending on the area. Saying the wind is blowing right through you typically denotes how the wind is piercing you and making you colder (more commonly used in colder areas with big dips of wind chill factor). The licked by flames is typically seen visually as a slashing motion of the flames (such as a flare up on a camp fire where you didn't get an ember, but the flare up brushed you) as I agree and never said it should be bludgeoning.
Also, JiCi suggested poison damage for Wood, which I like as it is probably more universally used than positive and I think Wood will probably have feats to do positive damage.
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With Wood being changed to represent a new elemental plane instead of the first world wouldn't be surprised to see the positive stuff largely dropped altogether.
Or maybe not who knows.
It's noteworthy that the primal lifestuff of the First World forests and the Wood Elemental stuff of the wood elemental plane act very differently. First World forests are very chaotic. Elemental Plane forests are very ordered. They're tapping into different kinds of power.
Similarly, elemental metal has a lot of themes around rust and rot and corrosion and decay, which is why I'm thinking that poison makes sense as metal/wood. Alternately, poison might be something like metal/water, and metal/wood might be disease.
I agree that elemental wood doesn't feel very "positive energy" to me.
On the other hand, the design charts from the playtest analysis list wood as the most healing-centric element. So maybe they will integrate some of that into their design of the wood plane.
On the other hand, the design charts from the playtest analysis list wood as the most healing-centric element. So maybe they will integrate some of that into their design of the wood plane.
Fair... but healing can be "order" as well as "positive". Like, it's obviously the most life-oriented, as it's the only element that actually references living things, and that's going to be part of it, but "you have horrible wounds" could also be seen as "your body has bits that are not in the places that they're supposed to be" and fixing that problem being a matter of returning things to their proper place. ("Protip: Your blood is supposed to be inside your body." "Ohhh.")
My issue is that positive energy doesn't hurt living creatures, which consist of 99% of encounters.
I know that Wood, back in P1E, had a Positive Energy Blast, but in P2E, it could be changed to Poison, which can be easily reflect with all the venomous plants and such.
Unless I'm misunderstanding what you mean, they are doing air, water, fire, and earth. And it would be kinda weird to have kinetisits that draw from non elemental planes in a book about the elemental planes. They will probably get to the other eventually.To add to this sentiment. They really caught me by surprise when they said they wont do: Aether, Air, Wood, Water, Fire, Earth, Void.I'm just hoping that Negative and Positive show up sometime, eventually. They were some of my fave kineticists in 1E, conceptually, but were hampered by being in a supplement and not getting the most robust support.
Also, I doubt we're going to be seeing radiation getting its own damage type. If we were then the blightburn bomb would have sported it already, and instead it does real nasty poison.
The book is adding new elemental planes of wood and metal from the five wuxing elements in China, and the kineticist will be able to use those. Besides that I agree that aether and void would be weird inclusions for this book, they sound interesting enough to be added in something later though.
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I really really really really want void back
I'm very happy with the initial choices we're getting, very much in line with what they are going for.
That said, my favorite in 1e was Aether, so I get wanting ot and Void back. I suspect we'll get both back in the future with an appropriate book. Perhaps with a Dark Tapestry book or one about the Great Old Ones (I can dream).
I get the feeling that the Kineticist is going to get nerfed heavily... when in reality, it should be elevated to reasonable levels:
- IIRC, you will be able to shoot a Blast like a weapon (up to 3 Strikes).
- I'd love to be able to take 2 or 3 actions to shoot a stronger blast, combining damage. For instance, instead of launching 3 Blasts that deal 1d8, have the ability to shoot a Blast that deals 2d8 as a 2-action Strike, or 3d8 as a 3-action Strike.
- I didn't see many Shape Infusions, when I could see any Kinecist of any element be able to transform their Blast into a line, cone, burst, etc.
- Gather Element needs to slack off with required hands. I'd take that you need 2 hands at first, but at 8th level, it can be only one hand and at 16th level, no hands.
- If they want to have weapon compatibility with the Blast, just make it less complicated and "less attracting". Seriously, P1E Kineticists were abusing Kinetic Blades/Whips with high Dex and Con, but Str 3.
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I get the feeling that the Kineticist is going to get nerfed heavily... when in reality, it should be elevated to reasonable levels:
- IIRC, you will be able to shoot a Blast like a weapon (up to 3 Strikes).- I'd love to be able to take 2 or 3 actions to shoot a stronger blast, combining damage. For instance, instead of launching 3 Blasts that deal 1d8, have the ability to shoot a Blast that deals 2d8 as a 2-action Strike, or 3d8 as a 3-action Strike.
- I didn't see many Shape Infusions, when I could see any Kinecist of any element be able to transform their Blast into a line, cone, burst, etc.
- Gather Element needs to slack off with required hands. I'd take that you need 2 hands at first, but at 8th level, it can be only one hand and at 16th level, no hands.
- If they want to have weapon compatibility with the Blast, just make it less complicated and "less attracting". Seriously, P1E Kineticists were abusing Kinetic Blades/Whips with high Dex and Con, but Str 3.
- It's not getting nerfed from the playtest version. The overall conclusion coming out of the playtest was "This is a bit undertuned. Here are the specific pain points." Overall, I think we're going to see it nudged up a bit
- From the information I've seen, whether it will be possible to blast three times per round is still entirely unclear. All we really know about it is that blast is going to be a con-based impulse in some fashion, and they're going to try to make "blaster" a feasible build. If you've seen something I haven't, then I'd be happy to know more.
- I don't necessarily agree on number of hands. Like... what would they use them for? There's no need for weapons, no real use for staves, wands, or scrolls... having "manage your element stuff" be one handed could be nice to allow for tools and elixirs, but other than that?
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If one is hoping to see exact copies of abilities from 1e, yeah you're likely to be disappointed. Specific things like infusions or having 3 strength and using whips is not going to happen unless significant changes are made (which we have no reason to think those things will happen, given the playtest retrospective).
That being said, a lot of the themes are there and the mechanics get close. No there's no infusions, but you can get feats to attack all foes in a cone/all in reach/chain lightning style. Individual elements have plenty of ways to deal damage in an area or other fun things too. It also sounds like elemental weapon is going to stay in but it's not going to be 1e style where the damage is as strong as a blast, though you could make a finesse weapon pretty easy.
As far as blasts themselves go, it's probably the thing I'm most curious about. All we've been told is that they're likely going to work similarly to a cantrip, but what similarities we don't know. Are they doing to have the attack trait, are they going to use con to hit and damage, are kineticists getting spell attack/DC, how many actions is it going to be, is it going to scale in damage like a cantrip, there's a ton of things they could use from cantrips but we don't know what the devs are going to take and apply to blasts.
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A single element focused (fire) blaster that I won't feel awful playing! <3
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- I don't necessarily agree on number of hands. Like... what would they use them for? There's no need for weapons, no real use for staves, wands, or scrolls... having "manage your element stuff" be one handed could be nice to allow for tools and elixirs, but other than that?
Back in P1E, you could NOT hold an item while gathering energy for your next blast or talent. That included a manufactured weapon for AoO, a shield or whatever.
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- I don't necessarily agree on number of hands. Like... what would they use them for? There's no need for weapons, no real use for staves, wands, or scrolls... having "manage your element stuff" be one handed could be nice to allow for tools and elixirs, but other than that?Back in P1E, you could NOT hold an item while gathering energy for your next blast or talent. That included a manufactured weapon for AoO, a shield or whatever.
The PF1 kineticist is no longer particularly useful as point of comparison. The baseline to be making predictions from now is the playtest kineticist. The playtest was close enough to good that the changes from it won't be all that severe, and a lot of the changes that we will see have been signposted in the post-playtest analysis.
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How prominent do we think radiation damage is going to be? I always thought it was a very interesting damage type and wish 1e had done more with it. It would also make the Android Ancestry feel a bit better with their resistance to Radiation.
I'm thinking (hoping?) the metal elemental plane will open up for an abundance of Radiation damage spells/items/blasts given how they've described it.
Could be interesting to see things like heavy DOT and persistent damage types as well as good debuffs like enfeeble and drained conditions mixed in to damage to go with the theme.
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How prominent do we think radiation damage is going to be?
Has there been any mention of radiation outside wishful thinking by some posters here? Because unless there's been something I've missed my guess would be not at all. Maybe some abilities that do poison damage with a nod to radiation conceptually or something?
In the tiny amount of research I've done, Ayrzul, lord of earth who is on the cover, dwells in the Blistering Vault which is full of deadly radiation. So there's that at least