However many the GM requires.
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So having been on both sides of this, the way you deal with "A Kineticist wants to prepare to resist a siege" the better standard than "what do the rules strictly allow" and more "how to thread the needle between making the kineticist player feel powerful, but also not trivialize the challenge."
Like with igneogenesis and enough time you can construct 100' solid stone walls in front of deep moats. You don't really want the sieging army to just look at that, and decide to go home since it's not worth it.
But in this specific case I would not that "there's a bunch of trees" is probably to the benefit of the sieging forces, since it provides them cover from arrow fire and materials for siegecraft. So I would probably rule something like a conversion rate between "hours spent in exploration mode" and "number of squares you make difficult" knowing that this will eventually benefit the attackers.
Well Timber Sentinel works by making a protector tree, which is said to be a medium tree. So it's roughly the same size as a medium creature (is how I interpret it). Medium creatures don't take up their whole square, but impede creatures from passing through, though it's unclear if that's because the game gets weird if you do, or because the square is actively defended, or what.
But ultimately Possible Cabbage has the right of this. You want the player to feel like the ability is useful, but not trivialize something. A kineticist can make one a round, moving in between. But eventually doing this will exhaust the character. As doing anything repeatedly would. There are 60 minutes per hour, and 60 second per minute. And a round is 6 seconds. That works out to 600 rounds a hour. So, theoretically one could make 600 trees in an hour.
Continuing the train of thought, one tree per square probably isn't enough to do anything. Maybe 3 is. So maybe you can make 200 squares per hour into difficult terrain. *shurg*
Don't really know if that's too much or too little.
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Don't really know if that's too much or too little.
That's far more than any full caster could hope to accomplish at most any level.
Don't really know if that's too much or too little.That's far more than any full caster could hope to accomplish at most any level.
I mean that problem is a result of how they wrote the kineticist power.
The tree remains a permanent non-magical tree when the power is used again.
It's simply a factual statement that if a kineticist spends one hour using the power they can make 600 trees. You could maybe argue that they can't put multiple protector trees in the same square. In which case they can't create any difficult terrain. Which is an unsatisfying answer. And even if you say it takes 6 trees, that's still 100 squares of difficult terrain which is still more than any spell caster can do. Of course, the kineticist can only do trees (with this power). And those trees can't be used on all terrain (or in air).
Which leads back to Possible Cabbage's point. You probably need to work with your GM/players to figure out some compromise that doesn't make the power useless, but also doesn't allow them to do too much.
But honestly a kineticist can make their own grove of trees every hour. I could see wood kineticists and druids being good friends.
I would say the most important question about this is if the players are able/willing to spend days on this, some hours, or just minutes.
While the Timber Sentinel can be very useful for that task, I'd point out to the party that anyone w/ a shovel could also create difficult terrain quite quickly.
Be sure to mention that the timber could still be a very useful tool/means to help enable the Kineticist's goal.
Perhaps even let them make a Wooden Palisade as per the mechanics of the L6 Feat w/ enough downtime and a crafting check, while the rest of the party digs up the difficult terrain.
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This won't make a huge difference, but you can't just extrapolate from encounter mode speeds (a minute or so at a time) to exploration mode speeds (hours) like that. In encounter mode everything is sped up to its max.
If you used Claxon's method to find how far you can travel in an hour (i.e. Striding 20-30' every two seconds) you'll get figures much larger than are given in the table for exploration traveling (PC1 p438) by a consistent factor of three.
So, I'd take out at least a factor of three from the exploration-mode tree-generation.
This won't make a huge difference, but you can't just extrapolate from encounter mode speeds (a minute or so at a time) to exploration mode speeds (hours) like that. In encounter mode everything is sped up to its max.
If you used Claxon's method to find how far you can travel in an hour (i.e. Striding 20-30' every two seconds) you'll get figures much larger than are given in the table for exploration traveling (PC1 p438) by a consistent factor of three.
So, I'd take out at least a factor of three from the exploration-mode tree-generation.
Completely fair, but we don't have much guidance on this topic. The only thing I can think of for guidance is that sustaining for 10 minutes makes you fatigued. Although it doesn't mention how long you need to rest. Let's suppose you can work for 9 minutes 54 seconds and then need to rest for 10 minutes 6 seconds (so in 20 minutes you have 10 productive minutes). That drives you down by roughly half.
And as someone else pointed out. Unless you make this a thick line of trees, you're not going to stall an enemy very long.
Also, realistically there is a reason why castles always were surrounded by big clearings. Because even if the trees would slow enemies, it provided wood for siege engines and cover for an advancing enemy. Honestly digging moats (whether whet or dry) would be preferred. Or even make a motte and bailey with a wooden palisade. Or additional ring walls with all the wood you could create. But planting a forest close to your castle isn't going to go well.
Yeah, the Phytokineticist is useful in a siege both because of their ability to produce fresh, untainted food as well as their unlimited ability to create trees *as a building material". But if you're churning out trees to be turned into pallisades or shafts for spears and arrows, then the limiting factor is going to be more "how fast can you process a tree into useful material" than "how fast can you grow trees."
One reason there was a wide open space around basically all castles in addition to the aforementioned "you don't want to give the invaders cover or materials" is that wood is also very useful to you.
[...] So, I'd take out at least a factor of three from the exploration-mode tree-generation.Completely fair, but we don't have much guidance on this topic. The only thing I can think of for guidance is that sustaining for 10 minutes makes you fatigued. Although it doesn't mention how long you need to rest.
"You recover from fatigue after a full night’s rest."--PC1 p444. Also, when fatigued "You can’t use exploration activities performed while traveling, such as those on pages 438–439."
I'm thinking tree-making takes at least as much energy as repeatedly casting detect magic, so you won't be able to do it (on any scale larger than encounters) while fatigued. And I can't think offhand of any magical way to de-fatigue.
...to make a 5' square difficult terrain?
Let's say the party is preparing for a siege, and there is an area that they want to make difficult to slow them down, how many trees would be needed to accomplish the task?
"The GM might determine that the tree disappears immediately in certain inhospitable situations."
IMO, more than 1 tree per 5' would be inhospitable. They just can't grow that close.Now.. extend kinesis could grow a small tree into a slightly bigger tree.
So combined I would allow 2 turns to make a square of difficult terrain.
But continued casting is exhausting. So it depends on how much time you have.
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IMO, more than 1 tree per 5' would be inhospitable. They just can't grow that close.
As someone who has grown up on a Christmas tree farm in a family of foresters, I can say with confidence that they absolutely CAN grow that close.
We've had trees grow to 50+ feet in as little as two square feet of soil.
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As someone who has grown up on a Christmas tree farm in a family of foresters,
A Ravingdork origin story! Much is now clear.
[...] So, I'd take out at least a factor of three from the exploration-mode tree-generation.Completely fair, but we don't have much guidance on this topic. The only thing I can think of for guidance is that sustaining for 10 minutes makes you fatigued. Although it doesn't mention how long you need to rest."You recover from fatigue after a full night’s rest."--PC1 p444. Also, when fatigued "You can’t use exploration activities performed while traveling, such as those on pages 438–439."
I'm thinking tree-making takes at least as much energy as repeatedly casting detect magic, so you won't be able to do it (on any scale larger than encounters) while fatigued. And I can't think offhand of any magical way to de-fatigue.
Right, but technically it's sustaining that causes fatigue, not the casting (as far as I recall). But I agree that it's reasonable to say constant exertion like that could cause it. But that's why I also mentioned that the solution is to create trees for about 10 minutes and then rest for 10 minutes. No need to exhaust yourself.
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Oh, you mean how long you need to rest to avoid becoming fatigued in the first place, not to recover, got it. I agree, we have no guidance, but "half the time" does sound reasonable.
(BTW I was using detect magic not as an example of causing fatigue but as a specified exploration activity you can't do while fatigued.)
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I just re-read the spell, and it says the tree appears in "an unoccupied square". I guess the question then becomes, what counts as 'occupy'? Every square on the planet is occupied by something. If we assume the statement only counts in encounter mode, does a former Protector Tree 'occupy' the square it's in?
"Is a puzzlement"!
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I nominally take occupied to refer to a creature but mileage may vary.
Yeah, the spell says "unocccupied" specifically to point out that you can't conjure a tree underneath, say, the ogre thus inconveniencing/impaling them.
Basically if something would need to move out of the way of the tree in order for the tree to grow there, you can't grow a tree there.
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So having been on both sides of this, the way you deal with "A Kineticist wants to prepare to resist a siege" the better standard than "what do the rules strictly allow" and more "how to thread the needle between making the kineticist player feel powerful, but also not trivialize the challenge."
I think this is the key question. Suppose your current adventure is about preparing for a siege. The enemy army is expected in the coming days and all the PCs have some time to do some preparations.
Now, you could get sidetracked into the exact crafting rules and spend some time researching how for your could fast-craft a ballista, and whether the formula would be available and all kinds of super detailed nitty gritty stuff. But that takes a lot of time, and will inevitably result in some people happening to be useless. And some other people happening to have something they can do every round that really adds up.
I think a better way is to treat this as a Victory Point system. Say that you can spend a four-hour block working on this or that activity to make useful preparations for the siege. Someone might be preparing buckets of arrows drenched in oil to shoot at the attacking army. Someone else might be coaching the local peasants to divert a river to create an improvised moat. And the kineticist is making a lot of trees to break easy cavalry charge lanes. The thing is, for every four-hour block, the GM has people roll an appropriate check and if they succeed, they earn points for the team. The more points the team has when the enemy arrives, the better their situation will be.
Then, a kineticist will definitely be contributing, and probably has an easier time finding ways in which they can so do. But they're still in the same ballpark as other people. Perhaps the fighter is using warfare lore to drill the local militia and the ranger is figuring out firing lines and where the cover spots will be.