Goblin ?Feat: Burn it!

[ElementalofCuteness]

Would the Goblin feat Burn It! Apply to Kineticist's Fire impulse feats?

[Baarogue]

Burn It! as printed in the CR p.48, emphasis mine wrote:

Fire fascinates you. Your spells and alchemical items that deal fire damage gain a status bonus to damage equal to half the spell's level or one-quarter the item's level (minimum 1). You also gain a +1 status bonus to any persistent fire damage you deal.

The first part is limited to spells and alchemical items. It would not apply to impulses

The second part is any persistent fire damage you deal. It would apply

As I have not seen the remastered Burn It! I cannot answer to its future utility

[HammerJack]

Remaster doesn't change what Burn It! affects. It still doesn't affect Impulses outside of persistent damage.

[Guntermench]

That's somewhat unfortunate.

[ElementalofCuteness]

A total of +5 Damage on all Fire Impulses would not be horribly powerful, it just be interesting I think.

[PossibleCabbage]

ElementalofCuteness wrote:

A total of +5 Damage on all Fire Impulses would not be horribly powerful, it just be interesting I think.

It would have the knock-on effect of "Goblins are the optimal ancestry for pyrokineticists" which is a thing they've generally tried to avoid when it comes to class/ancestry combinations.

The reason it applies to spells and alchemical items is that spells and alchemical items do a wider array of damage types than a given kineticist's impulses do. Like arcane *cantrips* do acid, cold, electric, fire, void, or BPS damage depending on which one you pick. A single gate pyrokineticist does only fire damage until level 5 at least.

[breithauptclan]

I've already seen people saying that Goblin is mandatory if playing a Flames Oracle. So I'm not sure that Pyrokineticist is any worse.

I will agree that the rules as written do not have Burn It! interact with Kineticist Impulses. But I will also mention that you don't have to strictly follow the rules in your home games. Impulses are close enough to spells for me as a GM.

[Red Griffyn]

Before people go off shouting the sky is falling and that every fire bender must be a goblin consider these computed damage turns:

DPR Calculations

The optimal turn for a fire kineticist is not going to care about +1 to +4 on a 50-60% hit. The best turn is flying flame in your aura (especially expanded aura at L10, with a single strike). MOST (like 75%+) of your damage is from the aura, not a paltry +1 to +4 status bonus with 50-60% chance to hit on a single strike. Even in a strikex3 pattern it doesn't matter vs getting a second target in your aura.

The best turn you can have will likely be spending that 3rd action to move instead of striking so you get 2+ enemies in your aura and then use flying flame to hit as many enemies as possible to re-trigger the weakness.

Effectively the feat is giving you a 5-10% DPR bump on a sub-optimal play loop. Its fine to let it work. I don't think it does based on the reading RAW, but the Burn-it feat is flavourful and absolutely on point with goblins. If I was your GM I'd let it work.

[Karneios]

I feel like you could make an argument with the "some things that affect spells also affect impulses" clause mostly because I think that only coming into play when it hurts the kineticist feels bad

[Chrono]

So the big issue is that it's a status bonus.

Even if it applied to some impulses, it would not apply to their 2 action blast, which also uses a status bonus to add their con to damage. It WOULD apply to persistent burn from a later Junction, though.

I was doing a bunch of math comparing it to other burn it options, and it's not really straightforwardly comparable. Average damages won't tell the whole story.

I don't think it's 'broken' per se if you want to allow it, but there's definitely reasons why you may not want to establish precedent that impulses 'count as spells'.