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In my kineticist combat video today, a fire kineticist had the Fire aura junction in effect, giving weakness to fire damage. She used Solar Detonation, which does fire damage. In the video, a target takes the damage and it increases due to the aura.
Solar Detonation is also an Overflow ability.
One commenter says:
"16:46 why would the fighter take the extra fire damage? The Aura went out with the overdrive didn’t it?"
Here is the text of the Overflow trait:
Overflow: Powerful impulses temporarily overdraw the energy of your kinetic gate. When you use an impulse that has the overflow trait, your kinetic aura deactivates until you revitalize it (typically with Channel Elements). Extinguishing your element this severely is taxing, and consequently, you can use only one overflow impulse per round, even if you reactivate your kinetic gate.
I think logic and intuition say that the aura of fire doesn't suddenly get "sucked up" when you overflow, before an explosion hits the target. Also, your aura needs to be in effect for you to do the Impulse to begin with, so I'm assuming it's in effect throughout the resolving of your Impulse.
And that's how I responded. I just want to put out there that I'm saying this is how to run it. But if some dev is reading this, or if anyone else thinks otherwise, let me know.
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Agree with your interpretation. From a writing perspective I think having them expire before doesn't make sense because you haven't used the overflow at that point. You're in the process of using it, but it's not used until the action is complete, when the aura expires.
From a game balance perspective, many auras directly or indirectly improve impulses and having overflow impulses be unable to receive those benefits would be a significant penalty that does not seem factored into the way they're designed.
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There's also a time problem in if Overflow finishes the aura before the Impulse resolves. The fact that the Impulse requires aura to be used.
In general in PF2 the active action effects are resolved before an trigger happens unless explicitly stated the otherwise.
Agree with both.
Yes, will run it this way. The only reason not to, would be if Overflow abilities seem overpowered. But in the combat demo it was quite costly to lose the aura. So I'm thinking this was the intention. Ending the aura would make 3-action Impulses that overflow (which make you end your turn without your aura) significantly weaker.
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Yeah I think the logic is that "the impulse won't do anything if the aura is down, so insofar as the impulse has an effect the aura is still up." The book specifically calls out how you can still sustain when your aura is down, so that's not an exception.
Plus the fire kineticist not wanting to use their biggest explosions because their aura doesn't apply in those situations doesn't seem like the intended design.