Top five things that need to be fixed for Kineticist

[JiCi]

Balance would be required, but then again, it's not out of the question either.

[magnuskn]

JiCi wrote:

Balance would be required, but then again, it's not out of the question either.

That is a statement which applies to about every new ability for every class you can introduce into the game. ^^

[Gortle]

It is clear that balance is supposed to be a power limit in PF2. There is not a required minimum for any ability.

There are plenty of sub par abilities that many people take anyway because they like the flavour. That is perfectly fine. As long as nothing exceeds the ceiling they have set for themselves.

The floor is the bass class itself.

[Squiggit]

Sanityfaerie wrote:

- Additional impulses in existing elements: Here's where I take issue.

This is a take I can't really get. Additional impulses seems like the most obvious low hanging fruit for future expansion. There are a lot of clear thin spots because of how light each element is, a perfect place for expansion without necessarily adding power creep.

It's basically the same principle as adding more spells and archetypes, which have been a nice way to expand magic classes but hasn't really shattered balance in the way you're supposing new impulses would have to here.

[JiCi]

The diference is that non-cantrip spells are limited by their slots, while impulses are not. If you give the equivalent of a 1st-level spell as an impulse that scales up, that's gonna be more powerful than its spell counterpart.

[MEATSHED]

Squiggit wrote:

Sanityfaerie wrote:

- Additional impulses in existing elements: Here's where I take issue.

This is a take I can't really get. Additional impulses seems like the most obvious low hanging fruit for future expansion. There are a lot of clear thin spots because of how light each element is, a perfect place for expansion without necessarily adding power creep.

It's basically the same principle as adding more spells and archetypes, which have been a nice way to expand magic classes but hasn't really shattered balance in the way you're supposing new impulses would have to here.

Yeah also most of the kineticist feats are impulses, 18 aren't, effectively 17 because one of those feats is elemental overlap which just gives you an impulse.

[Squiggit]

JiCi wrote:

The diference is that non-cantrip spells are limited by their slots, while impulses are not.

Yeah that's how they're designed.

[Sanityfaerie]

Squiggit wrote:

Sanityfaerie wrote:

- Additional impulses in existing elements: Here's where I take issue.

This is a take I can't really get. Additional impulses seems like the most obvious low hanging fruit for future expansion. There are a lot of clear thin spots because of how light each element is, a perfect place for expansion without necessarily adding power creep.

It's basically the same principle as adding more spells and archetypes, which have been a nice way to expand magic classes but hasn't really shattered balance in the way you're supposing new impulses would have to here.

The difference is that "available archetype options" and "available spell options" are already not a real limiting factor, nor were they intended to be. There are a lot of archetypes out there, and the space they describe is plenty large enough to fit more in. There are a lot of spells as well. Like, the Elemental tradition, which is generally accepted to be a way to cripple yourself by limiting your options, has 257 spells in it. Every one of the real traditions has significantly more. So yeah... taking Divine's 353 spells and cranking it all the way up to 380 or something isn't really going to move the needle all that much.

Kineticist elements have 15 each (plus hybrids). That's few enough that questions like "How many stances does my element have?", "How many reactions does my element have?" and "How many two action non-overflow damage dealing impulses (other than blast) does my element have?" clock in with answers of about 1-3. That's few enough that you might look at a reaction, figure it's a bit rubbish, and still be tempted to take it because it's something, and if you don't take that, then the only way you're going to get a reaction to work with other than Shield Block is to pull it out of your ancestry. That's true about *everything*. At this point, the only way to add a meaningful number of impulses without meaningfully increasing the power ceiling of the class is to make them all just terrible. No one wants that.

Now, if we had, say, 60 for each element? There'd be enough there that the constraints of the option space wouldn't be that big a deal, and just adding more wouldn't do all that much. At 15, though, that particular power limitation is very real, at least for one-element and two-element kineticists. Once you get out to 4 or so, it's not nearly as big a deal, but then you're paying for that flexibility by not taking junctions.

Now... it's not necessarily all that big a deal. Once junction is the price to get another 15 options opening up, and the thematic differences between elements mean that that's worth more than 15 additional impulses within existing elemental themes would be. Still, it wouldn't surprise me if "give me 20-30 more impulse options in this element" was worth about one junction... but "one junction" isn't nothing.

[Squiggit]

Quote:

At this point, the only way to add a meaningful number of impulses without meaningfully increasing the power ceiling of the class is to make them all just terrible. No one wants that.

Or they could just... add options that exist within the general balance framework they've already established for the class.

You know, like they try to do for literally every option they add to the game.

Quote:

There are a lot of archetypes out there, and the space they describe is plenty large enough to fit more in.

I mean, the reason there are a lot of archetypes is because Paizo keeps printing them. That's the point.

Quote:

Every one of the real traditions has significantly more. So yeah... taking Divine's 353 spells and cranking it all the way up to 380 or something isn't really going to move the needle all that much.

What if you doubled the number though? Because the Divine list has gotten more than twice as big since the CRB dropped.

[Sanityfaerie]

Squiggit wrote:

Quote:

At this point, the only way to add a meaningful number of impulses without meaningfully increasing the power ceiling of the class is to make them all just terrible. No one wants that.

Or they could just... add options that exist within the general balance framework they've already established for the class.

You know, like they try to do for literally every option they add to the game.

Quote:

There are a lot of archetypes out there, and the space they describe is plenty large enough to fit more in.

I mean, the reason there are a lot of archetypes is because Paizo keeps printing them. That's the point.

Quote:

Every one of the real traditions has significantly more. So yeah... taking Divine's 353 spells and cranking it all the way up to 380 or something isn't really going to move the needle all that much.

What if you doubled the number though? Because the Divine list has gotten more than twice as big since the CRB dropped.

I'm honestly not sure if your failure to grasp this is deliberate or not. I will try to explain one more time.

Have you attempted to build a kineticist, restricting yourself to one or two elements? Have you not seen how you're limited by lack of options? It's not *badly* limited, but things like "hey, I don't really have a good aura for my build" or "my available reactions are kind of anemic" or "I really don't have a lot of options that aren't overflow".

There's a point where additional options aren't a big deal. That's what you get once you have enough options that you can basically get whatever it is that you want, and anything new is just a different or more interesting way to do more or less the same stuff. Spells are way past that. Yes, 353 spells is enough that cranking it up to 700 wouldn't do all that much. It would probably push the line a little, because while Paizo is very good at this whole "balance" thing, they're not perfect... bit it wouldn't do much.

15, though, is a very different story. I was just doing some math on a different thread, and the fact that Wood specifically doesn't have a polymorph effect that can boost its kinetic blast limits the max possible damage you can deal with kinetic blasts. Earth, Fire, and Metal all have one, but Wood does not. Similarly, there's no way to directly boost any blast other than Air with an aura stance that does not involve a polymorph effect. Now, that was a weirdly niche bit of optimization, and not all that significant in and of itself, but it illustrates the point. Adding more impulses is going to make more things possible and more things easy. It's going to result in more powerful kineticists overall.

I'll put it another way. Consider Divine spells. We.... basically know what Divine spells can do. There are enough of them out there to have pretty thoroughly defined the space, and if you want to make a bunch more spells, it's pretty easy to make a bunch more spells that fit into the space without pushing the boundaries, and without letting Divine casters do anything that's all that much different or better than those that came before them. To put it another way, a cleric who just has access to the divine list from the core rulebooks can sit at table next to a cleric who has access to everything ever published, and there's not going to be that big a difference between them in terms of what they can do.

That's just not true with the kineticist. We also have at least a vague idea of what each of the elements is supposed to be able to do, but 15 impulses simply isn't enough to map it out fully. If you add, say, 8 impulses to each element, there's going to be some stances in there, and those stances will be doing things that those elements couldn't do with stances before. There will be reactions that will switch at least a few builds over from "I get no use out of my reaction, because I have no reaction impulse worth buying" to having a reaction that works very well for them. You'll have effects that people were having to awkwardly staple together four elements for now fitting comfortably into two or three. They can't just give you more of the same because there's not enough "same" space to just give you more of it.

Now, as I've said, if the Kineticist were weak? This would be a great way to fix that. Filling out the impulse list with different impulses of similar quality would nudge the overall power level of the class up in a smooth, elegant way, and you could even tune it so that some elements got a bit less and others got a bit more while giving them the same number of additional impulses to play with.

That's not the impression that I get, though. We don't have kineticist players out there taking about how they feel overshadowed by casters, or how frustrating it is trying to be a kineticist healer. No one has been complaining about how playing a Kineticist sucks. Now, it's early days yet. Maybe it'll come out as the bloom drops off the rose. Maybe they are a bit weaker than they should be, and adding extra impulses is the perfect way to fix that... but that's not what people are saying. They're saying that they want more impulses while pretending that it's not a power-up, and it's just not so.

...and with that, I think I'm done trying to explain this point. You get it or you don't.

[Squiggit]

Sanityfaerie wrote:

I'm honestly not sure if your failure to grasp this is deliberate or not. I will try to explain one more time.

Quote:

...and with that, I think I'm done trying to explain this point. You get it or you don't.

Why is your first instinct to assume incompetence or malice when someone doesn't buy into your narrative? Does "Yes we understand your point it's just not particularly compelling or worth worrying about from my perspective" not even factor in as a possibility? That seems... kind of presumptuous?

It's not like it's a particularly novel concern.
"What if Paizo balances them poorly and there's massive power creep?" What if there isn't?
"New options will enable new combos" Yeah that's normal. Cool, even. Awesome. That's what we want.

Quote:

Have you attempted to build a kineticist, restricting yourself to one or two elements? Have you not seen how you're limited by lack of options?

Presumably that's part of why people want to see more options printed, yeah. Again, similar to how options were relatively constrained in the CRB and have gotten less so.

Quote:

15, though, is a very different story.

What about 12, then?

That's how many dedication feats we had in the CRB. Now we have 162 (so we'd need 1600 more kineticist feats to match that ratio, which probably isn't happening). Some of them are really good, and even enable new combos. Hell, you basically couldn't get heavy armor properly until they added blatant power creep post-core via a dedication. But the game keeps going. It's not a big deal. In fact the game is largely better because of these expansions.

So a few new kineticist impulses? Cool. Go for it. More build variety? More options for players unfulfilled by the current spread? Minimal balance impact unless Paizo wants to shake up the balance? These are good things.

[The Raven Black]

Balance is easier to maintain when you change only one dimension of the game, ideally with low interactions with the rest.

I do not know much about Kineticist, but I feel there can be many interactions between the different dimensions of the class. In such a case, anticipating and balancing an additional option's interactions with the rest of the class can become devilishly hard.

[Calliope5431]

The point @Sanityfaerie is making is that the kineticist's extremely limited options per element actively constrain what certain builds can do if they go mono-element. It encourages diversification, just like how getting impulse junction + other junctions encourage expanding the gate you already have. Adding more impulses per element, unless extremely carefully balanced, could disrupt that. For instance, by adding a really solid reaction to Wood...now Wood doesn't have to shop outside their element for one. You've just made Wood more powerful, even though all you did was "add another spell-equivalent."

It'd be the equivalent of adding heal or an equally powerful healing spell to the arcane list. Or adding synesthesia or an equally powerful debuff to the divine list. Or meteor swarm to the occult list. You said that "Paizo adds spells all the time", but I think we can all agree - they don't do THAT sort of thing. There is NOTHING on the arcane list in the same league as heal .

Unlike spell traditions, kineticist is WAY more niche, so someone is a lot more likely to do that sort of thing accidentally, and add healing to Fire or a strong reaction to Wood. That is the concern with adding more impulses to existing elements. Some random AP author is going to think of some "thematic" impulse without consulting with the original designers of kineticist and thus throw the class balance out the window purely by accident.

[JiCi]

Squiggit wrote:

JiCi wrote:

The diference is that non-cantrip spells are limited by their slots, while impulses are not.

Yeah that's how they're designed.

Which is something to be cautious of if they add new impulses.

If you give the equivalent of Mirror Image to an element as an impulse, it will be used way more often than the spell version, which isn't a cantrip.

[The Raven Black]

Calliope5431 wrote:

The point @Sanityfaerie is making is that the kineticist's extremely limited options per element actively constrain what certain builds can do if they go mono-element. It encourages diversification, just like how getting impulse junction + other junctions encourage expanding the gate you already have. Adding more impulses per element, unless extremely carefully balanced, could disrupt that. For instance, by adding a really solid reaction to Wood...now Wood doesn't have to shop outside their element for one. You've just made Wood more powerful, even though all you did was "add another spell-equivalent."

It'd be the equivalent of adding heal or an equally powerful healing spell to the arcane list. Or adding synesthesia or an equally powerful debuff to the divine list. Or meteor swarm to the occult list. You said that "Paizo adds spells all the time", but I think we can all agree - they don't do THAT sort of thing. There is NOTHING on the arcane list in the same league as heal .

Unlike spell traditions, kineticist is WAY more niche, so someone is a lot more likely to do that sort of thing accidentally, and add healing to Fire or a strong reaction to Wood. That is the concern with adding more impulses to existing elements. Some random AP author is going to think of some "thematic" impulse without consulting with the original designers of kineticist and thus throw the class balance out the window purely by accident.

I am like 100% sure the devs have pretty clear guidelines on what spells should do for each level and Tradition. And even more strict guidelines about what each element's impulses should do.

So, we might see new impulses for existing elements, but they will fit within these design parameters.

[Sanityfaerie]

The Raven Black wrote:

I am like 100% sure the devs have pretty clear guidelines on what spells should do for each level and Tradition. And even more strict guidelines about what each element's impulses should do.

So, we might see new impulses for existing elements, but they will fit within these design parameters.

Your first sentence is quite true... but it goes deeper. There's the constraints of what each element's impulses should be able to do, based on the identity of the element, and there's the constraints of what each element can actually do right now with the 15+hybrid impulses it actually has at the levels it actually has them. The latter is a lot more constrained than the former, to the point that I'm pretty sure that any attempt to make anything actually interesting would be outside of those constraints.

I have faith that Paizo would stay inside the first set of constraints. I don't believe it's possible for them to stay inside the second set while making even a small to moderate number of impulses that are actually interesting enough to be worth the trouble of writing.

The difference in spells is that there are enough spells by now that the two sets are functionally equivalent. For kineticist impulses, they're really not.

/***********/

I am apparently really bad at this "not saying anything more about it" thing. At least it was shorter this time.

[Squiggit]

Calliope5431 wrote:

It'd be the equivalent of adding heal or an equally powerful healing spell to the arcane list.

Something they haven't done so far. Which is why it's kind of goofy people are suddenly treating it as an inevitability if the kineticist gets any future support.

[Perpdepog]

Squiggit wrote:

Calliope5431 wrote:

It'd be the equivalent of adding heal or an equally powerful healing spell to the arcane list.

Something they haven't done so far. Which is why it's kind of goofy people are suddenly treating it as an inevitability if the kineticist gets any future support.

In fairness to those who are concerned about this kind of thing, the whole of the arcane tradition covers a lot more thematic ground than abilities tied to one of six specific elements. I mean, isn't that what multiple threads have been about lately? The fact that traditions are too broad in the kinds of effects they can have apply, which makes it hard to specialize?

Now the kineticist is here, and its whole thing is specializing, or paying for your generalization with a lack of focus, which ... yeah. That's going to constrain the kinds of effects that can be placed where, and means the guidelines for adding new effects are going to be more rigorous and easier to step over.

I'm not overly concerned about adding new stuff myself, I've got faith in Paizo's writers to reign in any big issues after this much time making their game, but I can see where someone might be concerned.

[Calliope5431]

Squiggit wrote:

Calliope5431 wrote:

It'd be the equivalent of adding heal or an equally powerful healing spell to the arcane list.

Something they haven't done so far. Which is why it's kind of goofy people are suddenly treating it as an inevitability if the kineticist gets any future support.

I don't think it's an inevitability. I think it's more likely than arcane/divine/whatever tradition getting those sorts of spells, because the "thematics" of those traditions have been defined for decades. "Wizard does not get real healing" has been pretty much gospel since AD&D. So it's a lot less likely the writers are going to put a healing spell on the arcane list.

In contrast, the kineticist is NEW. The original class might have been PF 1e (with a dramatically different set of mechanics...), and sure there are some broad ideas that people associate with each element, but it's not like "fire does not get healing" is gospel in the same way that "wizard doesn't get healing" is. For goodness' sake, there's a fire spell (not impulse, but still fire) that provides healing in Rage of Elements, cauterize wounds .

And I have a hard time believing that new kineticist impulses are going to get the same kind of scrutiny that spells do, since they affect only a single class rather than every single class that uses that spell's tradition.

[magnuskn]

Calliope5431 wrote:

I don't think it's an inevitability. I think it's more likely than arcane/divine/whatever tradition getting those sorts of spells, because the "thematics" of those traditions have been defined for decades. "Wizard does not get real healing" has been pretty much gospel since AD&D. So it's a lot less likely the writers are going to put a healing spell on the arcane list.

Funnily enough, that used to hold true for the Sorcerer as well, but since Paizo re-made the Sorcerer into a not purely arcane list class, but rather able to choose its spell list, you can just get one to three whatever spells from the other lists via Crossblooded Evolution and its upgrade feat, i.e. getting Heal and make it a signature spell as an arcane list Sorcerer is totally possible now.

Things change. However, in hopefully happening expansions of the impulse list, I think the devs will leave healing impulses to water and wood and probably anything targeting Will defense to air.

[Calliope5431]

magnuskn wrote:

Calliope5431 wrote:

I don't think it's an inevitability. I think it's more likely than arcane/divine/whatever tradition getting those sorts of spells, because the "thematics" of those traditions have been defined for decades. "Wizard does not get real healing" has been pretty much gospel since AD&D. So it's a lot less likely the writers are going to put a healing spell on the arcane list.

Funnily enough, that used to hold true for the Sorcerer as well, but since Paizo re-made the Sorcerer into a not purely arcane list class, but rather able to choose its spell list, you can just get one to three whatever spells from the other lists via Crossblooded Evolution and its upgrade feat, i.e. getting Heal and make it a signature spell as an arcane list Sorcerer is totally possible now.

Things change. However, in hopefully happening expansions of the impulse list, I think the devs will leave healing impulses to water and wood and probably anything targeting Will defense to air.

This is true. Though it's also true that the sorcerer is only 20 years old, having been born in the 3.0 PHB and thus having less history than the wizard.

And who knows? Maybe fire will get healing, earth will get a fly speed, everyone will get Will-targeting abilities, and metal will...not be as niche. We'll have to wait and find out.

[Ravingdork]

Calliope5431 wrote:

And who knows? Maybe fire will get healing, earth will get a fly speed, everyone will get Will-targeting abilities, and metal will...not be as niche. We'll have to wait and find out.

I certainly hope not! If everybody gets everything, then what even is the point of differentiating anything with different names?

Too much sameness will probably doom this game like it did D&D 4e.

[Karneios]

What doomed 4e was a lack of OGL and Mike mearls sabotaging it and it still sold better than pathfinder, your own problems with it dont rewrite what happened to make it some kind of gotcha in discussions for you to keep bringing up, you could easily make your point about sameness without even bringing it up like you're either trying to start an edition fight or just shame the other side for being like the "bad" d&d

[Calliope5431]

Karneios wrote:

What doomed 4e was a lack of OGL and Mike mearls sabotaging it and it still sold better than pathfinder, your own problems with it dont rewrite what happened to make it some kind of gotcha in discussions for you to keep bringing up, you could easily make your point about sameness without even bringing it up like you're either trying to start an edition fight or just shame the other side for being like the "bad" d&d

Also another company publishing content compatible with the old edition. giggling

I'm sure 3.x would have sold less well if there'd been a large-ish company that kept publishing AD&D 2e. That stuff was POPULAR.

[Ravingdork]

Karneios wrote:

What doomed 4e was a lack of OGL and Mike mearls sabotaging it...

I'm not familiar as I stopped playing 4th Edition shortly after Arcane Power released. What did Mike Mearls do to sabotage it?

Karneios wrote:

...your own problems with it dont rewrite what happened to make it some kind of gotcha in discussions for you to keep bringing up...

Whoa man. Calm down. I'm just calling it like I saw it. That is, everyone I knew, and plenty more besides, were losing interest because there wasn't enough variety in classes. Playing a rogue was not really all that different than playing a fighter then playing a wizard.

I'm sure there were a variety of contributing factors that put 4e on that path in any event.

Karneios wrote:

...you could easily make your point about sameness without even bringing it up like you're either trying to start an edition fight or just shame the other side for being like the "bad" d&d

I never said it was bad, just doomed. Nor do I want to start an edition war or shame anyone (not that it would have been much of a fight). Please don't reframe my statements into something they are not.

[MEATSHED]

Ravingdork wrote:

Karneios wrote:

What doomed 4e was a lack of OGL and Mike mearls sabotaging it...

I'm not familiar as I stopped playing 4th Edition shortly after Arcane Power released. What did Mike Mearls do to sabotage it?

Mearls is kind of famous for his preference for casters, especially wizards and not liking fighters that much. This fed into the design for essentials were martials didn't really do anything beyond hit stuff, with fighters suffering the most, not even getting special at-will attacks, instead getting a bunch of stances with passive effects

Quote:

Karneios wrote:

...your own problems with it dont rewrite what happened to make it some kind of gotcha in discussions for you to keep bringing up...

Whoa man. Calm down. I'm just calling it like I saw it. That is, everyone I knew, and plenty more besides, were losing interest because there wasn't enough variety in classes. Playing a rogue was not really all that different than playing a fighter then playing a wizard.

I don't really see how you can say playing a wizard, rogue and fighter are the same in 4e and not say the same about playing a rogue and fighter (or playing most martials) in 3.x beyond just wanting to justify not liking 4e and not just wanting to say that you don't like it.

[Calliope5431]

Okay, people, let's not get personal here and try to stay on topic with the thread. The 4E arguments have been heard before, many times.

Honestly, I'm sort of curious if people think we'll see more elements added, period. Is the kineticist flavor flexible enough for that?

[MEATSHED]

Given the flavor of the gates I could see holy and unholy gates working.

[Perpdepog]

I could see another element or two coming in at some point. Void is the one I'm personally hoping for because I always thought it was cool, but was rather lackluster in 1E.
There is a fair amount of room to move elements around on the chart Paizo used to pole on elements' different areas of expertise. The question will be if an element that doesn't super specialize in one thing will be able to compete with the ones that do. An element that goes for a mixture of damage and defense, but doesn't do damage spikes like fire or metal, or have defenses like earth or I think water, might struggle, at least in the court of public perception.

[magnuskn]

Calliope5431 wrote:

Okay, people, let's not get personal here and try to stay on topic with the thread. The 4E arguments have been heard before, many times.

Honestly, I'm sort of curious if people think we'll see more elements added, period. Is the kineticist flavor flexible enough for that?

I absolutely think so. Also, since you can at best unlock six gates during the 20 levels you get, more elements doesn't automatically mean more power.

[Gaulin]

Personally my hopes for future kineticist support is more impulses per element and/or kineticist feats. Would also love a faq for some stuff like tremor (can it hit things not on the ground, what's the deal with damage scaling?) and kinetic pinnacle working with effortless concentration. An actual errata for things like the aoe of roiling mudslide will come in due time I'm sure.

[Karneios]

my guess for the most likely avenue of more things coming (and that I am quite interested in seeing) is in an overlapping planes book, getting void/vitality/aether from the void/heaven's forge/ethereal plane (the third is the biggest maybe of this)

[Errenor]

Gaulin wrote:

Would also love a faq for some stuff like tremor (can it hit things not on the ground, what's the deal with damage scaling?)

Exactly. I played today with an earth kineticist player and we got on a ship. So now what? Did his character just lose his sole area impulse? GM allowed it to work, but I'm not sure all GMs would be so permissive. Also the usual: is it a full-blown burst, or only on the surfaces? Do fliers get a release?

[Ed Reppert]

The class description specifically says that a kineticist can use his element even when he is in an environment not so good for it. The example given is a pyrokineticist under water.

[Karneios]

Specifically from the kinetic gate

Your kinetic elements function even in environments where they normally wouldn't. For example, you could use fire actions underwater even though that's normally not possible, and you could create air in a vacuum.

[Gaulin]

It's definitely something that can vary between gms, hence my hope for a faq for it. Personally I would love to take it but I'll skip it if it's going to vary between games.

[Errenor]

Ed Reppert wrote:

The class description specifically says that a kineticist can use his element even when he is in an environment not so good for it. The example given is a pyrokineticist under water.

Yeah, sure, I know about that. Is it the absolute ruling for every situation though? Yes, fire under water is rather convincing. And probably they couldn't say that even more clear. But still... Does Tremor work in the air? Under water? In vacuum :) ?

And the 3D burst question remains, though it is connected to the previous one.

[Sanityfaerie]

...and if you're using Rattle the Earth to create 10-foot-deep fissures... like, that could have all sorts of implications on buildings, boats, bridges, and so forth.

[Gaulin]

Yeah earth is my favorite element but I'm not a fan of a lot of the mechanics of some earth impulses. Only three damaging impulses and each one problematic in their own way; tremor has weird scaling and GM variation, weight of stone is decent utility but for three actions the damage is pretty lacking, and tSMW aoe dot could be a pain for your party.

And then you have rebirth in living stone which has its own issues. Control is where earth excels but it's a little lacking in other areas, imo. Best to pair it with another element to do decent damage or more defenses.

[Karneios]

There are certainly some problems involved like tremor having the damage mismatch that I imagine will get addressed whenever errata happens and weight of stone is weirdly small because it's a diameter not radius (I have this problem even more with fire's scorching column) but if a GM decides to make tremor not work in a variety of environments that's them deciding to run it against the rules given and I think you've got bigger problems there

[arcady]

YuriP wrote:

Weapon Infusion + Versatile Blasts goes from less versatile to one of the most versatile single element builds:

Air: Electricity, Slashing, Piercing*, Bludgeoning* or Cold**

*Get with Weapon Infusion
**Get with Versatile Blasts

But in general getting a physical and an energy damage type is enough to deal with 99% of the opponents except resistance to all except some precious material and of corse golems and will-o-wisps.

I assume that if you get Weapon Infusion and make your blast Bludgeoning, Piercing, or Slashing that does NOT get around the Will-O’-Wisp magic immunity.

Will-O’-Wisp has the Air trait. Can an Air Kineticist use Extract Elements on it, or again magic immunity?

[Dubious Scholar]

Blanket magic immunity really just doesn't make conceptual sense. As exemplified by the simple question of rocks. A barbarian chucks a rock and does damage. A kineticist chucks a rock harder and it bounces off, because it was thrown with magic.

[Applied_People]

Counter Elements counteract level needs to scale.

[Invictus Fatum]

Applied_People wrote:

Counter Elements counteract level needs to scale.

It does scale. It is an impulse and the counteract rank is half your impulse level rounded up. Impulses auto-level.

[Captain Morgan]

arcady wrote:

YuriP wrote:

Weapon Infusion + Versatile Blasts goes from less versatile to one of the most versatile single element builds:

Air: Electricity, Slashing, Piercing*, Bludgeoning* or Cold**

*Get with Weapon Infusion
**Get with Versatile Blasts

But in general getting a physical and an energy damage type is enough to deal with 99% of the opponents except resistance to all except some precious material and of corse golems and will-o-wisps.

I assume that if you get Weapon Infusion and make your blast Bludgeoning, Piercing, or Slashing that does NOT get around the Will-O’-Wisp magic immunity.

Will-O’-Wisp has the Air trait. Can an Air Kineticist use Extract Elements on it, or again magic immunity?

I think the answer is "work with your GM to find an answer." Wisps are very unlikely to show up again post-remaster. Maybe Paizo has replacement in mind, but I'm skeptical it will be as easy to insert into old adventures as the golem fix.

[Dragonhearthx]

arcady wrote:

I assume that if you get Weapon Infusion and make your blast Bludgeoning, Piercing, or Slashing that does NOT get around the Will-O’-Wisp magic immunity.

Will-O’-Wisp has the Air trait. Can an Air Kineticist use Extract Elements on it, or again magic immunity?

your impulses are considered magical. And if you could extract element a creature that has immunity to magic. They would get resistance equal to the creatures level to any impulse from that keneticist.

[Ed Reppert]

Hm. Humans (I would extend this to Humanoids) are about 70% water, yet they do not have the Water trait. Can a Kineticist use Extract Elements on a human(oid)?

[Captain Morgan]

Ed Reppert wrote:

Hm. Humans (I would extend this to Humanoids) are about 70% water, yet they do not have the Water trait. Can a Kineticist use Extract Elements on a human(oid)?

Made of an Element: Some kineticist abilities work on creatures made of an element. A creature made of rock, sand, or dirt is made of earth, but a creature wearing metal armor wouldn't be considered a metal creature. If it's unclear whether a creature is made of an element, the GM decides.

So entirely up to your GM, but I'd certainly expect most to say no. The ability is meant to be used on water elementals, which are definitely more than 70% water.

[Reza la Canaille]

This sounds awfully close to the age old "I use create water to fill my opponent's lungs (which are definitely a container) and kill him instantly" shenaniganery.

I'm gonna go with "No".

[The Raven Black]

Ed Reppert wrote:

Hm. Humans (I would extend this to Humanoids) are about 70% water, yet they do not have the Water trait. Can a Kineticist use Extract Elements on a human(oid)?

No. But Fremen can.