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One of my PCs is a wood kineticist, and has the impulse that lets him just boom-grow trees. Like any tree . . . and it stays there. So he could presumably just grow acres of apple trees, and then use base kenesis to make them fruit again after all the fruit is picked? Plus, like, also, there's the mission in chapter 3 about needing peach wood, I guess that's solved without any rolls? Man that spell and ability is super overpowered in certain situations.
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Assuming that you're talking about timber sentinel note that it does NOT specify that the kineticist gets to specify what kind of tree is grown. So if the GM thinks this is problematic they have an easy solution.
But yeah, I don't think paizo considered the potential world altering non adventuring uses of some kineticist abilities.
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My wife had played the lotus leshy water-and-wood kineticist Monet in my A Fistful of Flowers mini-campaign. For her day job, Monet created water gardens for her fellow leshies to enjoy. She used Timber Sentinel to conjure trees for those gardens. The only restriction I put on the kind of trees is that she had to choose from local species.
Nevertheless, my wife has thought about details and knows of another possible barrier to creating fruit via fruit tree conjuration. What season is it? Fruit trees bear fruit in the fall. If the season is winter, the trees will be bare. If the season is spring, the trees will be flowering. If the season is summer, the fruit won't be ready to eat yet.
Creative Director
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Assuming that you're talking about timber sentinel note that it does NOT specify that the kineticist gets to specify what kind of tree is grown. So if the GM thinks this is problematic they have an easy solution.
But yeah, I don't think paizo considered the potential world altering non adventuring uses of some kineticist abilities.
Considering that the bulk of Season of Ghosts was outlined, concieved, and written before Rage of Elements was finalized, nope—we didn't have the luxury of doing so. But that said, the point of the peachwood tree situation is that they're not common in the area, so just as summon spells don't let you summon uncommon monsters, I'd rule that this timber sentinel power wouldn't let you create uncommon or rare trees.
As for the "I'll just grow apple trees to feed folks," assuming you're talking about the Timber Sentinel ability, note that this works similar to the protector tree spell, which has a duration of only 1 minute, so I'd say a GM is well within their rights to say that any food or fruit produced by the tree vanish as well, making this not a great spell to feed folk. You can compare this spell to create food, which is a higher level spell, and as such I would rule that any side-effect food created by a protector tree would have to be less than that provided by create food... or even beyond that, rule you can't create a tree with food on it with this ability simply because it's beyond the scope of the original intent, when compared to a higher level spell. Any effect that creates food should probably use the core spell create food as the baseline for power.
That said, if a PC in a game does have a fun and interesting way to solve a problem in any adventure that minimizes an encounter or plot point, you as the GM should take that as an opportunity to support that PC's unexpected idea/ability/mechanic and reward them with a simpler solution than the encounter or adventure anticipated. You'll likely want to bolster other parts of the adventure to make up for shortfalls of tension or XP opportunities or the like but the way to do that works best on an individual table where the GM can adjust things to match their party's makeup.
There's already mechanics in the adventure for how to "Aid Harvest" though. I think the simplest and least disruptive way to model a PC growing magic apple trees or creating magic food to help out would be to let that PC attempt the Aid Harvest activity using a skill check appropriate to their spellcasting tradition, perhaps with a +2 status bonus to the roll, if they want to spend that activity time casting spells or using other magical powers to augment the town's food stores. This lets the player sidestep the normal skill rolls to use one, in theory, they're better at, and gives them a little boost for having the exact right magical solution for the problem at hand without minimizing that element of the game.
There's a lot of ways to address this creative solution, but as long as you reward the PC for coming up for any creative solution in a way that doesn't minimize the adventure's story or challenge, that's the best solution.
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Creative Director
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James, for kineticists, the tree stays if you plant it somewhere it can grow. Still, I like your solution for giving them a bonus in Aiding the Harvest.
In which case a single tree is still hardly enough to feed an entire town, and would still need to obey the laws of seasonal blooming, and so on and so on. Having it give a bonus to Aiding the Harvest remains the best call, since that's what you're doing by planting trees like that.
Contributor
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You can endlessly create trees. You can have an entire orchard if you put in the time. But yes, I agree that it would need to obey the laws of seasonal blooming, and it still has to be planted in suitable soil. And yes, a diet of just fruit would not be balanced as a long term nutrition option.
So I'm not arguing with you about the in-game bonus, just clarifying the kineticist mechanic. I've never found planting a bunch of trees to be game-breaking and kind of love the fantasy of a wood kineticist reforesting the world wherever they go.
Hugs,
Hmm
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Creative Director
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You can endlessly create trees. You can have an entire orchard if you put in the time. But yes, I agree that it would need to obey the laws of seasonal blooming, and it still has to be planted in suitable soil. And yes, a diet of just fruit would not be balanced as a long term nutrition option.
So I'm not arguing with you about the in-game bonus, just clarifying the kineticist mechanic. I've never found planting a bunch of trees to be game-breaking and kind of love the fantasy of a wood kineticist reforesting the world wherever they go.
Hugs,
Hmm
I'm cool with the idea of a powerful character fixing an environment, but this, to me personally, feels akin to the idea that a 1st level 1st edition cleric could cast the create water cantrip all day long and undo a desert in time (something we fixed in 2nd edition by limiting the number of times per day you can cast create water by making it not a cantrip). To me, that sort of capability should be something for high level characters to pursue and accomplish, otherwise it's so easy that it breaks verisimilitude for me that low-level NPCs haven't just solved this problem on their own already. It robs us of potential storylines to let magic solve situations to easily.
So regardless of how many trees a kinitecist can make according to the RAW, for the sake of the adventure's story it should manifest simply as another downtime option for that character to pursue to Aid Harvest. Otherwise it runs the risk of minimizing the story and robs non-kineticist PCs the chance to feel like they're helping.
If I were running a wood kineticist ina Season of Ghosts game, I'd let the player know asap when they create their character that if they use the impulse again, the previous one ends and no ordinary tree remains until you reach a higher level (perhaps 9th?) at which point your trees become permanent. Compare being able to make a permanent tree and all its wood you could harvest for fuel or materials to, say, the creation spell, which is 4th level and the wood created by that spell is only 1 hour in duration. It seems unfair to let a 1st level ability outshine a 4th level spell as what is essentially a side effect, to me at least.
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In fact the level 0 Base Kinesis ability allows you to 'create infinite wood'.
Base Kinesis
[two-actions]
Impulse Kineticist Primal
Source Rage of Elements pg. 16
It's trivial for you to create some of your element or alter a portion of it that already exists. Choose one of your kinetic elements to affect. This impulse has a range of 30 feet, and the Bulk of the target must be negligible or light. The GM decides what Bulk the element is. You can't affect an element that's magical, secured in place (like a stone mortared in a wall), or attended by a creature unwilling to let you.
Choose one of the following options, though the GM might allow you to make similar small alterations. Base Kinesis can't deal damage or cause conditions unless otherwise noted.
Generate You bring an ordinary, non-magical piece of the chosen element from its elemental plane. The element can be used for any of its normal uses. For example, air can be breathed by an air-breathing creature, and fire casts light and can ignite flammable substances.
So many shingles... You will clearly need to be 5th level before you can create infinite 2x4s.
Seeing as Willowshore was a logging town in the middle of a forest, I don't see infinite wood being as immediately plot busting as infinite food... it does say ordinary example of wood, not one crafted into a specific functional shape (albeit shingles aren't a very complex shape to carve anyway)
They can use the 1e explanation for the wood kinetesist drawing from when the First World grind against the elemental planes.
I would say you can't just go an orchard, unless you have orchard ready soil and land! Willowshore is a developed logging town, surrounded by wild spaces. To get enough space for an orchard, you'd need to clear enough existing trees for the new trees, and I'm sure some of the local loggers would have opinions about that.
So you say - how about that empty pasture over there? The reason it doesn't already have trees in it is because of crappy soil, shallow rocks underground, poor irrigation, etc. So it's not "where a tree could grow" for the sake of the spell.
"Aid Harvest" seems like the best way to handle this, I agree. It's a combined effort from local NPC loggers, NPC farmers, and the PC to even get the fruit trees going at all in orchard sized amounts.