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I do kind of like the idea of the elemental barbarian taking the kineticist archetype to grab the armor+shield ability from wood/metal which gives them shield block a shield that doesn't occupy a hand. The elemental blast would just be a backup ranged attack.
Okay. Why are people saying that the shield doesn't take a hand? My read of it (from skip/pausing through nonat's presentation to look for the excerpts) was that you needed a hand free for it but that you could still use that hand for impulses. From the barbarian's perspective, that's not at all the same thing.
Living bonfire sets up a bonfire in a 10ft square within 30ft and you can have your wood blasts come from it instead of you. When you do, it deals +1d6 fire damage (I wonder if this gets boosted to 1d8 with the fire impulse junction since the bonfire itself is fire+wood). Level 4 feat, and scales by another d6 per 5 levels.
How do you rate the damage? Where do you think they will end up on the tier?
Living bonfire sets up a bonfire in a 10ft square within 30ft and you can have your wood blasts come from it instead of you. When you do, it deals +1d6 fire damage (I wonder if this gets boosted to 1d8 with the fire impulse junction since the bonfire itself is fire+wood). Level 4 feat, and scales by another d6 per 5 levels.How do you rate the damage? Where do you think they will end up on the tier?
With the right party, I'm sure wood/earth abusing jagged berms is top of the line. The ability to just inflict free damage over and over by moving an enemy in and out of a square is fantastic. That the blocks you make with the ability double as wall squares that restrict movement and that there are zero restrictions on where you can place them (it has a 120ft cast range with unlimited duration until recast) only make it better. Not sure how I'd route it yet though. Probably dual earth/wood, pick up auto prone on earth crit at 5 (hilarious as always) and berms on 6.
As mentioned, this isn't even slightly self contained, but at 6 you can rake an enemy through a kill square for 2d6 per berm (you get 6 for a total of 12d6) no save piercing damage per entry into the square. Doesn't take much to see how easily you can abuse this. Scales hp per block by 10 and damage by 1d6 every two levels. That means 18d6 at 8, 24d6 at 10, etc.
For standard stuff though? It's probably in line with CRB martials or close enough to it. I'll probably sit down with it properly this weekend.
Edit: the exact wording says for each square of wooden stakes a creature enters. If these need to be discrete squares, instead of stacking all your stakes in one square, this gets less good as you'll need to do bigger pushes to really get the damage, but it still retains its properties as a wall, and you can still eviscerate larger creatures easily by hitting squares at different height levels.
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One note on jagged berms... if I'm understanding correctly, there's a feat that lets you just get access to all of the hybrid impulses of one of your elements without having to take the second element of the hybrid. So if what you really want is the berms, you could go Earth or Wood. That lets you go all self-contained with the (Jagged Berms + Water impulse junction) that much earlier. Combos pretty well with that Winter Sleet stance too.
One of the things I'm noticing is that there's going to be a bit of an art to deciding what junctions you get on what elements, and even when. Like... if you're only dipping into an element for one-action effects, then you don't need an impulse junction. If there's one of your elements that you're mostly not using for attacks, there's no need for a crit junction. Jsut like with the question of whether or not to open up the element in the first place, there's a real sense that if you're willing to tighten down and restrict your options a bit, you can get that much more power in the options you kept.
One note on jagged berms... if I'm understanding correctly, there's a feat that lets you just get access to all of the hybrid impulses of one of your elements without having to take the second element of the hybrid. So if what you really want is the berms, you could go Earth or Wood. That lets you go all self-contained with the (Jagged Berms + Water impulse junction) that much earlier. Combos pretty well with that Winter Sleet stance too.
One of the things I'm noticing is that there's going to be a bit of an art to deciding what junctions you get on what elements, and even when. Like... if you're only dipping into an element for one-action effects, then you don't need an impulse junction. If there's one of your elements that you're mostly not using for attacks, there's no need for a crit junction. Jsut like with the question of whether or not to open up the element in the first place, there's a real sense that if you're willing to tighten down and restrict your options a bit, you can get that much more power in the options you kept.
As I understand it that feat is only if you're sticking to a single element
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Yeah, a level 8 feat that can be taken as many times as you want that allows you to pick up composite impulses, with the caveat that it must be lower level (so level 6 impulses at level 8, level 8 impulses at level 10, etc.).
It also has singular element as a prerequisite.
Do we think tremors initial damage is wrong (the 1d8), the heightening is wrong (1d10), or it's a wonky mix of the two?
Also would anyone mind saying the benefits that ferrous form gets you?
In my mind, the berms character is largely support outside of a great blast when you've got de/buffs going since at 9, a crit will pin+prone which is the same thing bola shot crits are doing. It'll also be the last auto prone crit spec in the system after flail/hammer gets nerfed.
Earth has some nice features like tremorsense, burrow, a psuedo-stoneskin, wall of stone, a psuedo-apex in earth's mantle and a decent defensive reaction.
Wood has a 30ft cone 2 action overflow which is convenient to reactivate with a blast afterward, and also deals half its damage as bleed, a great defensive tree, a swiss army heal that can also accelerate non-combat healing, a wall, and an AoE damage impulse with healing equal to 1/2 the highest damage dealt.
All in all a decent suite of powers. Probably go half-elf for general training, tree, earth AoE and weapon infusion at 1, sentinel at 2 for plate, [anything] at 4, calcifying sand at 5 with earth expansion (crit), berms at 6, 2 element infusion at 8, wood expansion at 9 (crit) along with multitalented (psychic), mighty bulwark at 10, effortless impulse at 12 if you plan on taking a sustain impulse later on, fork air at 13 and take cyclonic assent for party flight or expand earth for rock rampart or whatever else you might want, earth mantle at 14, [anything] at 16, pick a capstone or whatever at 18 and either a second one at 20 or the usual permanent quickened feat.
Well, that's a bit of a rough draft I suppose but it's a good enough starting point. Especially since you can swap one (later two) impulses at a time at daily prep. Gives you prone+pin on crit, fort and ref targeting, personal physical resistance reaction, a psi spell, max AC, free sustain, all-day party flight, and good blast typing with bludgeoning, piercing or vitality and later slashing or lightning plus whatever you choose at the end. And the berms, obviously.
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Do we think tremors initial damage is wrong (the 1d8), the heightening is wrong (1d10), or it's a wonky mix of the two?
Also would anyone mind saying the benefits that ferrous form gets you?
1d10 would be so nice.
Ferrous form gives you resist 10 phys (except adamantine), immunity to: death, disease, drained, fatigue, healing, non lethal, paralyzed, poison, sickened, vitality, void. Any effects on you with any of those tags get suspended and resume when spell ends (duration doesn't tick down). You are subject to rust effects (neat). Fists do 1d10, metal spells get +1 damage die, you can cast needle darts at will (the impulse that grants this cuts this effect out). You also don't need to breathe, your bulk doubles, and you automatically sink in water and are too dense to Swim (yes, capital S swim).
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Knights of Last Call do a deep dive on the Kineticist (4 1/2 hours stream).
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Knights of Last Call do a deep dive on the Kineticist (4 1/2 hours stream).
Ahhh. Some interesting details here.
In particular, there's a bit of a soft choice to make between stance impulses and overflow impulses. If you use stances and don't use overflow, you can just keep the stance up. If you use overflow, but no stance, then whenever you channel, you get a free blast. If you use overflow and stance, though, then the stance is down for however long (could be almost an entire round, if it was a three-action overflow) and if you want the stance back again when you bring things back up, you have to give up the free blast for it.
The form of your blast is specifically customizable. So... like, if you want to be a strongly ice-themed water kineticist, having the bludgeoning damage be "I smashed him with a chunk of ice" is entirely legit according to the rules.
I had not realized that the critical junction is only for the elemental blast itself. Still cool, but much more specific in usage.
Are there some cool weapon runes?
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1d10 would be so nice.Do we think tremors initial damage is wrong (the 1d8), the heightening is wrong (1d10), or it's a wonky mix of the two?
Also would anyone mind saying the benefits that ferrous form gets you?
Yes but this probably is wrong. Usually overflow impulses are giving 1d8/2d4 per 2 levels. Maybe the designer wanted to make tremors more strong but it's unlikely. IMO probably was an error but I still don't read this. This is really 1d10 per 2 levels?
Ferrous form gives you resist 10 phys (except adamantine), immunity to: death, disease, drained, fatigue, healing, non lethal, paralyzed, poison, sickened, vitality, void. Any effects on you with any of those tags get suspended and resume when spell ends (duration doesn't tick down). You are subject to rust effects (neat). Fists do 1d10, metal spells get +1 damage die, you can cast needle darts at will (the impulse that grants this cuts this effect out). You also don't need to breathe, your bulk doubles, and you automatically sink in water and are too dense to Swim (yes, capital S swim).
This form have one big problem. It's immune to healing! Is this dismissible?
1d10 would be so nice.Do we think tremors initial damage is wrong (the 1d8), the heightening is wrong (1d10), or it's a wonky mix of the two?
Also would anyone mind saying the benefits that ferrous form gets you?
Yes but this probably is wrong. Usually overflow impulses are giving 1d8/2d4 per 2 levels. Maybe the designer wanted to make tremors more strong but it's unlikely. IMO probably was an error but I still don't read this. This is really 1d10 per 2 levels?
On the other side for it the wood overflow level 1 impulse has half the damage be persistent on a 30 foot cone while the water overflow level 1 is either two 15 foot cones or one 30 foot while tremors is a 10 foot burst so I could really see it going either way (the fire and metal ones I have a harder time comparing it to since metal is three actions three attacks while fire is three actions d6 cylinder with danger ground)
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Knights of Last Call do a deep dive on the Kineticist (4 1/2 hours stream).Ahhh. Some interesting details here.
In particular, there's a bit of a soft choice to make between stance impulses and overflow impulses. If you use stances and don't use overflow, you can just keep the stance up. If you use overflow, but no stance, then whenever you channel, you get a free blast. If you use overflow and stance, though, then the stance is down for however long (could be almost an entire round, if it was a three-action overflow) and if you want the stance back again when you bring things back up, you have to give up the free blast for it.
The form of your blast is specifically customizable. So... like, if you want to be a strongly ice-themed water kineticist, having the bludgeoning damage be "I smashed him with a chunk of ice" is entirely legit according to the rules.
I had not realized that the critical junction is only for the elemental blast itself. Still cool, but much more specific in usage.
Quite honestly, after watching the entire stream, the consensus of the panel seems to be that this is the best designed class in the game, with an excellent action economy and will probably make other classes feel bad about themselves, especially casters with their limited spell slots.
On the one hand, that's good, because well designed classes are always good for the game. OTOH, I think a lot of players of Sorcerers, Wizards, etc., who can prepare one Fireball per day as a level 10 spell, will feel a bit left behind when they see the Kineticist spamming his (awesomely named) high level powers all day long.
Kinda makes me wonder if the classes in the Remaster shouldn't have gotten another development pass. Well, still a chance left for the classes in Player Core 2, I guess. ^^
kineticists do also have the thing where unlike casters they have to give up feats to get impulse variety, even having to give up a level 18 or 20 feat in order to get the highest tier impulses at all, without giving up class feats you have 2 level 1s, 1 4 and under slot, 1 8 and under slot, 1 12 and under slot and 1 14 and under slot (using the max level of the impulses themselves at that point since there's no for example level 16 impulses for the slot you get at level 17 that I noticed in the stream)
Yeah, a level 8 feat that can be taken as many times as you want that allows you to pick up composite impulses, with the caveat that it must be lower level (so level 6 impulses at level 8, level 8 impulses at level 10, etc.).
It also has singular element as a prerequisite.
The funny part about this is all the composite impulses are lower than level 8. I'm assuming this is just for future-proofing.
Also: there's an issue with Roiling Mudslide. It talks about "each creature in the area", but then doesn't define an area.
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Future-proofing makes me wonder how much stuff for kineticist is actually going to show up in the future, casters get new spells, martials can get new weapons but then kineticists get their own unique new third thing
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Are there some cool weapon runes?
As far as I've seen, there is only a single weapon rune in the book, to let you use weapons underwater easily.
EDIT: Just did another check. There's another wood-themed one that can immobilize the enemy on crits. That seems to be it.
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Future-proofing makes me wonder how much stuff for kineticist is actually going to show up in the future, casters get new spells, martials can get new weapons but then kineticists get their own unique new third thingI feel eventually we would get Aether and Void with both being classic elements in the real world that also show up in 1e
That would be peachy keen.
What happen to Aerial Boomerang if don't have enough space to it stays at 60 feet? The impulse breaks when hits a wall? Or stays closer to allow you to pull it in next round?
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I would take the "In the final square of the line it whirls" to mean that it just kinda stays at however far your line ends so if that's a wall closer than 60 feet it just stays at the wall, it doesn't appear to say anything about breaking or disappearing from collision
I was reading Cyclonic Assent and is basically the playtest Wings of Air renamed and reflavored to looks like Red Tornado/Ciclone DC characters flight ability. So beware GMs once that kineticist may trivialize your ground chalanges specially after level 14 when they can basically make the entire party fly resourceless.
Just to point out that it's extremely cool what they did with it that now you can control the return path.
Even if it does cost an action, it's so easy to hit now at least one enemy on the return.
It's mechanics+flavour all in one.
It become very effective to force opponents to use actions to move way from the line of effect between you and the boomerang otherwise they risk to take this impulse twice per turn (2d4 per 2 levels when you pull it (1-action) + 2d4 per 2 levels when you "cast" another one (2-actions)).
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Ferrous form gives you resist 10 phys (except adamantine), immunity to: death, disease, drained, fatigue, healing, non lethal, paralyzed, poison, sickened, vitality, void. Any effects on you with any of those tags get suspended and resume when spell ends (duration doesn't tick down). You are subject to rust effects (neat). Fists do 1d10, metal spells get +1 damage die, you can cast needle darts at will (the impulse that grants this cuts this effect out). You also don't need to breathe, your bulk doubles, and you automatically sink in water and are too dense to Swim (yes, capital S swim).This form have one big problem. It's immune to healing! Is this dismissible?
Yes, it can be dismissed.
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Future-proofing makes me wonder how much stuff for kineticist is actually going to show up in the future, casters get new spells, martials can get new weapons but then kineticists get their own unique new third thing
I'm going to guess few to none, at least as far as new impulses are concerned.
- There's a specific rule for how if you have no impulses left to take, your junction impulse turns into a feat. Adding new impulses woudl thus mean retroactively making certain characters illegal.
- Impulses are feats, rather than spells. "get a bunch of new class feats" isn't as common a thing. If they *do* get new impulses, it'll be at the "new class feats" level of influx, rather than the "new spells" or "new gear" level.
- The Kineticist already has a pretty explicit balance of flexibility vs power going on, and from the looks of things it's pretty fine-tuned. Adding new impulses would mean cramming a bunch of additional flexibility into each individual element, which seems like it would warp that pretty quickly.
Now, I'd expect that we'll see more kineticist gear eventually, but adding a bunch of new impulses seems unlikely. If we *do* get new impulses, I'd expect that they'll be limited to specific APs and the like.
Ferrous form gives you resist 10 phys (except adamantine), immunity to: death, disease, drained, fatigue, healing, non lethal, paralyzed, poison, sickened, vitality, void. Any effects on you with any of those tags get suspended and resume when spell ends (duration doesn't tick down).
I understand about suspended durations, but what about instantaneous healing, death effects, or void damage? Do those hit you when the duration drops? (And trigger the 1 hour cooldown on the relevant impulse.)
I understand about suspended durations, but what about instantaneous healing, death effects, or void damage? Do those hit you when the duration drops? (And trigger the 1 hour cooldown on the relevant impulse.)
Ferrous form gives you resist 10 phys (except adamantine), immunity to: death, disease, drained, fatigue, healing, non lethal, paralyzed, poison, sickened, vitality, void. Any effects on you with any of those tags get suspended and resume when spell ends (duration doesn't tick down).
Only active conditions/effects when the spell is cast/impulse is used get suspended. New effects run into the immunity and just don't apply.
When the form expires, the old effects resume with no change to duration. Meaning if it was going to last for another 5 rounds before you activate the form, it'll last for 5 rounds when the form expires.
Oh that makes Alloy extra great then, I thought the 1 hour cooldown could get triggered against my will by getting hit by something I'm immune to while it's up.
I'm curious if Fiery Body got changed in any form with the book release. The Furnace Form feat aludes to it but has this weird part in which it boosts the damage of your fire spells, which in most cases does nothing for a fire kineticist. Having a class feat giving you an effect you cannot make use of feels off.
I'm also curious about how Furnace Form and Ignite the Sun are supposed to work together. The latter buffs all other impulses with an extra d6 (or d8 if you have the single gate effect), so would Furnace form deal under the effects of Ignite the Sun and the single fire gate effect 4d8 retaliation damage and extra 1d6 + 1d8 damage with unarmed attacks? The second part feels weird, but after giving it some thought I can't find another way to read the interaction.
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All I want is void at this point. I've always loved void as an element.
Ironically, entire new elements wouldn't have the same sort of balance problems. Now, it's not a trivial amount of work. You're looking at two pages just for the base impulses, a hybrid impulse for each of the existing elements, a blast, a set of junctions, and a decent chunk of flavor text to talk about the social and psychological implications. They'd also need to have an interesting role/theme on the crunch side that both wasn't covered by any of the existing elements and could mix in interesting/worthwhile ways.
So... basically what it comes down to is the question if whether it's worth it for them to release this new element (or elements) rather than do whatever else they could be doing with that block of dev time and page count. Based on my best understanding of their previous prioritization decisions, that's going to be a hard sell, but not an impossible one.
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The void (and aether) elements are a natural fit if they want to do another planar book about the overlapping inner planes (Creation's Forge, the First World, the Netherworld, and the Void.) But I doubt we'd see it before them. The "Outer Planes" book seems a much more likely candidate for "next planar book after Rage of Elements."
I think in terms of "adding more impulses" you'll see a few of them crop up in the backmatter of APs because "people have a fun idea for one" much like how we've gotten a few monk styles in unexpected places.
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Can anyone spoil if there's a wind/wood combination impulse and what it does?
Think it is called Tree of Duality, but I can't see what it does, my only decent source of info is that Knights of Last Call video. Has something to do with spreading pollen and spores, but don't know the specifics.
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I'm hoping that Kineticist gets the Summoner treatment. Summoner is one of the few classes that keeps getting expanded. They got a new Eidolon in Book of the Dead and a new one in Rage of Elements. Eidolon is basically to the Summoner what the Element is to the Kineticist. If we get an element every other rulebook (within a limit of course) that would be fantastic.
It may be a pipe dream, but I'm going to hold to it.
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void and aether were both really cool and could fit into the current planar cosmology, but I'd caution tempering expectations. Just for perspective's sake... RoE has one page total of non-kineticist class specific elements. We haven't even gotten anything like a new Investigator Methodology or Swashbuckler Style in three years and those only take up a paragraph... and while we're there, ask synthesist summoners how they're feeling about that class archetype.
Would love to see void, but fully assume the Kineticist is in its finished state and will never be expanded upon.
I'm so excited for this. Once I get my hands on it I'm gonna make some radiation inspired impulses - should I stick to metal/earth, or throw in fire? This will definitely go on Infinite. :)
I hope all classes going forward are just as INTERESTING as this is. Certainly I'm going to think a lot of future casters will not be exciting, but I'm someone who does not actually care about spells and values classes for their unique features (I think psychic is great!), But I would love to be proven wrong!
void and aether were both really cool and could fit into the current planar cosmology, but I'd caution tempering expectations. Just for perspective's sake... RoE has one page total of non-kineticist class specific elements. We haven't even gotten anything like a new Investigator Methodology or Swashbuckler Style in three years and those only take up a paragraph... and while we're there, ask synthesist summoners how they're feeling about that class archetype.
Would love to see void, but fully assume the Kineticist is in its finished state and will never be expanded upon.
Not while we're in Middle PF2 anyway. I expect that we'll start seeing at least some of that stuff once we start getting into Late, but I'd expect that it take at least another two to three years for us to get to that point (and I refuse to wish it sooner).
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Can anyone spoil if there's a wind/wood combination impulse and what it does?Think it is called Tree of Duality, but I can't see what it does, my only decent source of info is that Knights of Last Call video. Has something to do with spreading pollen and spores, but don't know the specifics.
Level 6, 3 action impulse. 60ft range, 10ft emanation. Lasts until end of next turn, but can be sustained for 1 minute. Living allies in the area or that enter it gain 3d4 hp and are immune to the effect for the next 10 minutes. Enemies are dazzled, no save. If they leave the area, they stay dazzled until the start of their next turn. Healing scales by 1d4 every two levels.
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Hmm not sure how I feel about it.
Numbers seem kinda low and I can't figure how dazzle fits with either wood or air.
It does both heal and debuff though...
Air actually has a number of mental effects and illusions. In this case, it is flavored as hallucinogenic spores.
Edit: one of my favorite air impulses is clear as air. The base version is regular invis that needs to be sustained, but the 10th level version only degrades to concealed on a hostile action before going back to full invis and the level 16 version is full on invis (4th). Only grants concealment if used more than once in a 10 minute period, but one you have the free sustain you can keep it up effectively forever.
At a guess the first pass for every combination impulse was to look at "which category the two elements are both good at" and do something on those lines.
So if you look at the chart from the Kineticist Playtest Analysis blog there's some that stand out. Wood+Earth is going to be creation or defense (sums to 7), Fire+Metal is going to be about destruction (sums to 7). But for Air+Wood they don't really have overlapping themes.
The actual impulse is probably just combining Air's skill at trickery and Wood's skill at healing.
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Btw, how does the air elemental body spell work exactly? The one from the level 12 kineticist feat. I'll probably end up playing an air kineticist in the near future, so I'm very curious to know how that one works.