| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Found something fun when I was sketching out my Sky King's Tomb character.
The 4th level impulse "Igneogenesis" and the 5th level Dwarf Feat "Sheltering Slab" go very nicely together. Be less than 5'tall (easy for a dwarf) and create your own vertical stone surfaces that prevent you from being flanked.
A lot of the "rock stuff" Dwarves get is redundant with being a geokineticist (like tremorsense and passwall are stuff you can just do) but not Sheltering Slab.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The key of the rule is the number of actions taken.
Exploration activities assume that you spend 1 action each round for 10 minutes to avoid getting fatigued. This is why you move at half speed. The same applies to martials who might try to do too many things, if they do too many for 10 minutes they will become fatigued. Kineticist is no different.
Is their ability to fly a single action? Congrats you don't get fatigued. Is it two actions with sustained? Well then you would either get fatigued after the duration expires or 10 minutes, depending on the interpretation.
* P.S. I agree that kineticist should be able to use their movement abilities for overland travel. But by RAW if its a 2-action ability that is not possible without explicit mention.
Hm.
Okay, I can see the argument there... though I feel like in that case, if you've hit level 12 and have gotten Effortless Impulse, you should be good to go, as the sustainment is literally effortless (and, in the fiction, being powered directly by your Gate without particular ongoing thought on your part).
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I'm definitely in the camp of sustaining an impulse is taxing, but casting one every minute isn't. Remember you as an exploration activity you can cast a cantrip such as detect magic, which is two actions and every round.
I was using detect magic as my specific example but any cantrip that's two actions or fewer can be an exploration activity to constantly repeat. I'm not using a specific cantrip that is a specific over general case.
I don't know why cantrips would be so different from a non overflow 2 action impulse, especially one that lasts fo a minute, but it seems like you've made up your mind. Which is fine, I'm not really looking to win any arguments I just wanted to say what my ruling would be, add my opinion to the chorus
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I was using detect magic as my specific example but any cantrip that's two actions or fewer can be an exploration activity to constantly repeat. I'm not using a specific cantrip that is a specific over general case.
I don't know why cantrips would be so different from a non overflow 2 action impulse, especially one that lasts fo a minute, but it seems like you've made up your mind. Which is fine, I'm not really looking to win any arguments I just wanted to say what my ruling would be, add my opinion to the chorus
You specifically CAN'T use Detect Magic as it's an exception: they made a generic Repeat a Spell exploration activity and that is what you'd base every non-detect magic spell off of. It's different in that unlike detect magic saying "You cast detect magic at regular intervals", repeat a spell says "In order to prevent fatigue due to repeated casting, you’ll likely use this activity only when something out of the ordinary occurs."
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
A lot of the "rock stuff" Dwarves get is redundant with being a geokineticist (like tremorsense and passwall are stuff you can just do) but not Sheltering Slab.
Seeing as they come from different feat silos (Ancestry and Class) that redundancy actually gives you a LOT of build versatility.
Not willing to spend a Class feat on it? Get it through your ancestry! Or vice versa. LOL.
Before I collapse into a puddle for the day, here's dual and mono builds for my old fire-blooded Sea Sorcerer (who I'd happily get to build as a sacred nagaji rather than homebrew a yuan-ti into) that I wrote up in Notepad last week because I'm very normal about this class, as previously shared on the unofficial Pathfinder Discord group:
Ashima build :>
Obvious 18-24 Constitution, 16-20 Charisma, Dexterity for AC and some Intelligence and Strength
Dual Gate, Water/Fire
- Water 1d8 bludgeoning/cold 30 feet
- Fire 1d6 fire 60 feet
Kinetic Feats
- 2 Kinetic Activation
- 4 Safe Elements
- 10 Aura Shaping
- 12 Effortless Impulse
- 16 Imperious Aura
Water Impulses
- 1
Tidal Hands 2A OOcean's Balm 1A (After Call the Hurricane)
- 1 Winter's Clutch 2A
- 5 -> 1 Deflecting Wave ReA (general feat)
- 9 Call the Hurricane 2A O (Fire junction)
- 13 Torrent in the Blood 2A O (Water jun.)
- 14 Barrier of Boreal Frost 3A O sus.
- 17 Sea Glass Guardians 1A S (Fire skill)
- 18 Ride the Tsunami 3A O
- 6 Steam Knight 1A Stance
Fire Impulses
- 1 Scorching Column 3A O
- 5 Flying Flame (Fire aura effect) 2A
- 8 Solar Detonation 3A O
- 20 Ignite the Sun 2A sus.
- Tidal Hands 1d8 Lv1->5d8 Lv 9, push 5 crit
- Scorching Column 1d6+1 Lv1 -> 4d8+7 Lv 10 -> 7d8+13 Lv 19, sustained +hazard
- Winter's Clutch 2d4 Lv 1 -> 6d4 Lv 9 -> 11d4 Lv 19, causes difficult terrain
- Flying Flame 3d6 Lv 5 -> 5d8 Lv 9 -> 10d8 Lv 19
- Steam Knight 2d6+halfLv Lv 6 -> +2d6 Lv 16
- Solar Detonation 6d6/+2d6 Lv 8 -> 7d8/+3d8 Lv 10 -> 12d8/+8d8 Lv 20, dazzles/blinds, incap.
- Call the Hurricane 6d8 Lv 9 -> 7d8 Lv10 -> 12d8 Lv 20, push 10 on fail (20 crit)
- Ocean's Balm 5d8 Lv 9 -> 10d8 Lv 20, heal
- Torrent in the Blood 6d8 Lv 13 -> 10d8 Lv 20, healing
- Sea Glass Guardians 5d8+12 Lv 17 -> 6d8+16 Lv 20, conditional healing
- Ride the Tsunami, 10d10 Lv 18, push 20 (40 crit), free movement
- Ignite the Sun 7d6 Lv 20, +1d6 fire to Strikes and fire spells/impulses
(Also in actual play I might enjoy Elemental Blast enough to take critical blasts)
(Two-element infusion making a d8 blast deal fire splash (?) and persistent is cool :3 )
Water only:
- Water 1d8 bludgeoning/cold/acid 30 feet
- 1 Tidal Hands -> Ocean's Balm
- 1 Winter's Grasp
- 1 Deflecting Wave
- 2 Kinetic Activation
- 4 Safe Elements
- 5 Winter Sleet
- 5 Versatile Blasts
- 6 Torrent in the Blood
- 8 Elemental Overlap (Rising Hurricane)
- 9 Call the Hurricane
- 10 Aura Shaping
- 12 Effortless Impulse
- 13 Sea Glass Guardians
- 14 Barrier of Boreal Frost
- 16 Glacial Prison or Steam Knight or Elemental Counter or Nourishing Gate or smth
- 18 Ride the Tsunami
- 20 Kinetic Pinnacle or Usurp the Lunar Reins
Or expand into Fire at Lv 9 instead (Solar Detonation is sick), I dunno I'm not your boss :akkoshrug:
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
The two interact actions can be done by different characters. So first turn it's three actions to create the thing and fire it. If you can get to interact actions from the rest of the party before your next turn, you can fire it again with your sustain action (which is free with a 12th level feat.) It's possible you have two people in your party looking for something to do with their third actions who won't find it difficult to stand next to the ballista.
A really fun character for a 10+ AP (like Ruby Phoenix) is the Fire+Earth+Water kineticist who grabs the earth armor at 1, the lava leap at 4, steam knight at 6, and the fire aura at 9.
Your normal routine is:
- Start Combat with your Rock Armor up.
- Lava Leap on people to get +2 circumstance bonus to your AC on top of your heavy armor, doing fire and bludgeoning damage (4d6 fire +3d6 bludgeoning at 10.)
- Rechannel your element, activating Steam Knight (a 1 action stance impulse.)
If whomever you jumped on doesn't die or run away, you get to blast them with steam at the start of the next turn. You can grab the fire impulse junction to turn the d6s on Lava Leap to d8s; the fire resistance junction is really good too. You can afford to be a bit of a berzerker here since you're effectively in full plate with a shield raised and you have a bunch of HP.
Another funny interaction that might be possible is I think allies can reload elemental artillery for you if they're adjacent to it. Place it next to the monk and buy your actions back lol.
Alternatively cooperate with the Ranger or gunslinger of the Party
(Mileage May vary) they got the special reload after all| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
The two interact actions can be done by different characters. So first turn it's three actions to create the thing and fire it. If you can get to interact actions from the rest of the party before your next turn, you can fire it again with your sustain action (which is free with a 12th level feat.) It's possible you have two people in your party looking for something to do with their third actions who won't find it difficult to stand next to the ballista.
Familiars with Manual Dexterity and Independent? Having a ballista that get reloaded by familiars and fired by a free sustain starts being *very* efficient. Is it legal?
I mean, the general policy of "Familiars are basically worthless. No, really, that doesn't work either" suggests that there's some reason why it doesn't work, but I don't currently see any rules that make it so.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I mean, the general policy of "Familiars are basically worthless. No, really, that doesn't work either" suggests that there's some reason why it doesn't work, but I don't currently see any rules that make it so.
I think they handled this for the Kineticist himself by ensuring that the class familiar feat can't get those abilities without going into Familiar Master archetype (my understanding is that the mandatory elemental trait eats up familiar abilities). Just enough of a poke in the eye to fit with standard Paizo familiar treatment, while giving a Rube Goldberg path to providing some limited utility and reason to target and kill the familiar.
I think they handled this for the Kineticist himself by ensuring that the class familiar feat can't get those abilities without going into Familiar Master archetype (my understanding is that the mandatory elemental trait eats up familiar abilities). Just enough of a poke in the eye to fit with standard Paizo familiar treatment, while giving a Rube Goldberg path to providing some limited utility and reason to target and kill the familiar.
I mean, the general policy of "Familiars are basically worthless. No, really, that doesn't work either" suggests that there's some reason why it doesn't work, but I don't currently see any rules that make it so.
I'm not convinced that you're correct about the elemental familiar, but even if you are, there's a simple fix - you play a Ysoki (for example) and have your ancestry-feat rat familiar do it. No need to dip into archetypes when ancestries will handle the load just fine.
Oh I missed independent. Yeah, that wouldn't work (except across two rounds). You'd need to spend an action telling your familiar with manual dexterity to load, then use a free action sustain to fire if you want to fire it every round.
For one expended action every round the ballista does good damage and range compared to your elemental blast. Whether this is worth the investment of an impulse, three actions in the first round, and not having your sustain or (lol) familiar available for something else is perhaps questionable.
For splitting actions, last time I checked you could not split actions between turns. You also could not split actions with multiple creatures unless specifically told you can do so.
Even you aren't so you as to apply this to loading crossbows, right.
So it just looks like a ballista? Or does it work like a ballista?
It looks like one and has its own rules.
"The ballista can be shot again, but it must first be reloaded by two Interact actions."
And "Each time you Sustain it, you can roll the ballista up to 20 feet, shoot it if it's loaded, or contribute 1 action toward reloading it."
Anyway, it's a bad ability unless you have a source of otherwise useless actions to spend reloading it. If you want to spend an impulse on single target damage there are better ways to get it with better action efficiency by buffing your elemental blast and using extra actions on multiple attacks with that.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Oh I missed independent. Yeah, that wouldn't work (except across two rounds). You'd need to spend an action telling your familiar with manual dexterity to load, then use a free action sustain to fire if you want to fire it every round.
For one expended action every round the ballista does good damage and range compared to your elemental blast. Whether this is worth the investment of an impulse, three actions in the first round, and not having your sustain or (lol) familiar available for something else is perhaps questionable.
The idea was to have two different PCs, each of which had a familiar with manual dexterity and independent, so that each was providing one of the reload actions. I believe that with the way the elemental artillery is worded, that should work.
I don't have the book in front of me, though.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Oh I missed independent. Yeah, that wouldn't work (except across two rounds). You'd need to spend an action telling your familiar with manual dexterity to load, then use a free action sustain to fire if you want to fire it every round.
For one expended action every round the ballista does good damage and range compared to your elemental blast. Whether this is worth the investment of an impulse, three actions in the first round, and not having your sustain or (lol) familiar available for something else is perhaps questionable.
The idea was to have two different PCs, each of which had a familiar with manual dexterity and independent, so that each was providing one of the reload actions. I believe that with the way the elemental artillery is worded, that should work.
I don't have the book in front of me, though.
I agree that would work. I don't agree that's a very good idea or use of PC build resources.
Elemental artillery is aimed and fired by a sustain action by the kineticist and can be reloaded by two interact actions with a note that the sustain can contribute an action to reloading it.
It's that last clause in particular that raises questions. It can be interpreted as letting you stagger the reload. If that's the case, a pair of independent familiars (have a ally's familiar help) can get your reloads in and you can just fire with the sustain. Very strong at 12+, but also provides a situation where familiars might not be awful as something other than a spell/focus battery so it's probably out for some reason or another.
But, if it does work that way, it's mostly just ok. The damage output you can get is roughly analogous to monofire but only at 12+. You're pretty mediocre from 1-11 too.
I agree that would work. I don't agree that's a very good idea or use of PC build resources.
Okay. Why not? I mean, we're talking about a couple of level 1 feats here (one from each of two different PCs). Depending on ancestries, they can even be ancestry feats. The way I figure it, "independent action familiars" are pretty much the classic case of "source of otherwise useless actions". Are you saying that it's so bad that it's not worth optimizing even with a source of otherwise useless actions?
(I mean, I don't know. I didn't pay all that much attention to the power before this. It's just that it hadn't seemed that that was what you were saying before.)
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The actual text is:
The ballista can be shot again, but it must be first reloaded with two Interact actions. The ballista lasts until the end of your next turn and you can Sustain the impulse. Each time you Sustain it, you can roll the ballista up to 20 feat, shoot it if it's loaded, or contribute one interact action towards loading it.
It's pretty clearly the intent that the reload actions can be spread across turns or characters.
I agree that would work. I don't agree that's a very good idea or use of PC build resources.Okay. Why not? I mean, we're talking about a couple of level 1 feats here (one from each of two different PCs). Depending on ancestries, they can even be ancestry feats. The way I figure it, "independent action familiars" are pretty much the classic case of "source of otherwise useless actions". Are you saying that it's so bad that it's not worth optimizing even with a source of otherwise useless actions?
Yes, except as a gimmick. The damage at level 6 is 3d12, average 19.5 average (120' range) and heightening is +d12 every three character levels. That's three actions. A level 6 two action elemental blast does 13 average damage, doesn't cost you this impulse, and still gives you an action free the first round. A second attack, with MAP will still average 9 if it hits. Unless you need the range, I don't see the general use case.
Maybe you do need the range on round 1. Maybe you have cheap actions on later rounds and expect to need single target focus fire. Maybe you overlooked all the much better sustain options in the class (edit: but not necessarily in earth/wood) and want to spend your free action on this instead.
I guess I'm partially overlooking that this is the metal/wood composite. If you're already commited to these two then maybe this is the best you've got given the range limitiations there and that you're probably not going to add air for Desert Winds to actually do some decent focused single target damage.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The Wood/Metal composite is fun, which is why people are going to want to use it.
Like if you have a caster in the party who wants to stand away from danger and has a 3rd action in the party who wants to play along, why not?
Correction: it's the metal/wood composite, not the earth/wood. Yeah, I'd never take this over various metal offensive options, or at level 14 the Alloy Flesh free sustain.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Well, if it does work, you can mostly bolt on metal/wood onto anyone for free damage in the 12+ range. I said before it was about similar to monofire, but nothing stops fire from grabbing metal and wood at 9 and 13 for the free damage.
If you're looking to not touch fire at all, that's when a loop of ballista x3 with hail of splinters, and regular blasts or the metal impulse mostly equate to fire's regular single target damage but with much less AoE. If you try it pre-11, I think the best 3 round combination I tried was hail of splinters+blast to set persistent bleed damage, ballista round 2, sustain shoot and either re-hail, retch rust or shard strike round 3 depending on if you want to re apply bleed, hit fort or just do a normal ref blast.
Of course, the ballista has an unlimited (10 minute) sustain duration so you can pretty easily cart the thing around while you explore which makes things much easier.
On the subject of metal though, the capstone says it makes every square in the area hazardous terrain. This would include the squares in the sky yeah? Which would make any large or bigger creature in the area absolutely terrified of taking a single step? Because that's how I'm reading it and that makes it positively beautiful.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The whole conjure a ballista or combat grindstone are just the height of cartoony silliness in my mind.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
About half of the composite impulses are silly memes rather than useful.
The whole conjure a ballista or combat grindstone are just the height of cartoonist silliness in my mind.
Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The whole conjure a ballista or combat grindstone are just the height of cartoony silliness in my mind.Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
Depends on who you ask. I'm not a fan.
Where are all the amazing composite ideas from 1e? They were interesting and practical, and unlikely to turn into a game disrupting joke.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
About half of the composite impulses are silly memes rather than useful.
Lava Leap is both! It's funny that the earth/fire/water kineticist who grabs lava leap and steam knight might be tankier than the solo earth kineticist, since they get a +2 circumstance bonus to AC from lava leap instead of a +1 from the earth impulse junction (so a shield, rather than a buckler.)