Base Kinesis has the following limitations:
Furthermore, the Suppress option of Base Kinesis adds the following limitations:
So if I'm an earth kineticist mining a tunnel, can I break off a bit of stone from the wall with my pick, and then suppress the rubble away? Or has the rubble become worked stone at that point and is therefore immune to Suppress?
If I can Suppress the chipped stone, how does that differ from chipping the stone into a specific shape with a chisel? It makes no logical sense.
If the rubble is considered worked stone because it had an outside force worked against it, then pretty much all loose stone one might encounter would be invulnerable to Suppress, since there is no such thing as a loose stone that hasn't been worked by an outside force. Making the ability useless also doesn't make any sense.
Where should we GMs and players be expected to draw the line? Where do you draw the line in your games?
Is there actually a rules and game mechanics question here? This feels more like an advice question:
How do I narratively describe the game mechanics so that they make more sense in-game? Need advice on ideas please.
What situations qualify for me to be able to use my abilities aa written is absolutely a rules question.
At the moment, this is all hypothetical. I had a curious thought, and was hoping to start a rules discussion about it. It doesn't strike me as the least bit implausible though. I can easily imagine the question coming up in play. The only time "technically" shows up in this thread is in this sentence and in your post, so I'm not really sure where you're going with that.
The only real difference between rubble on the ground and most stone statues is the amount of chipping. Heck, I can pick up a rock chipped off a wall and say "it looks kind of like a duck" and display it as a statue. But at what point does it stop being a viable target for Suppress?
At least with the examples of a lock, the metal was likely smelted, purified, and underwent other processes that alter its fundamental chemical composition. Same with the door, which is likely made up of treated wood boards.
But a stone statue? It might, if it needed additional support using other materials. If it's solid stone though? That seems less certain to me.
What about a banzai tree? It's shaped much like the statue. Would you allow Suppress on a carefully pruned banzai, but not the statue?
I'm merely trying to find a foundational basis on which I can play my kineticist characters with a little more confidence.
If I had to make a guess myself, I suppose the dividing line would be in whether or not the Craft activity of the Crafting skill was used upon the material. That would be simple enough and easily understood for most potential scenarios. There are still some logical inconsistencies in some cases, at least conceptually, but it's something.
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I love elemental magics and I've taken to thinking of this sort of issue as the Earthbender Problem. When you give a character the ability to manipulate earth and stone (and especially if you include metal), after a certain point no amount of conventional fortification can either hold them back or hold them in unless you start pulling up arbitrary lines what can and can't be affected (for example... platinum mechs... *shudder*). Of course, regardless why these arbitrary limitations must necessarily exist, it can still be rather dissatisfying to have arbitrary gaps in an otherwise fairly rational magic system.
Especially if coming at this question from a purely physical standpoint, there just is no answer that can possibly justify why things that have been intentionally shaped should become immune to manipulation but an object of similar description which was not is 'natural' because what is and isn't perceived as natural is not a state that exists outside of its relationship to our perception.
On the plus, on Golarion the mind is one of the fundamental forces of magic. What if the act of consciously shaping something instills it with a subliminal fragment of psychic meaning that flags its place in the cosmos as 'worked'? What if it's this bit of mental essence that gets attached to these objects which interferes with low-level primal magic such as base kinesis, much the same way any amount of actual magic does?
I haven't thought through if there are any further corner cases that cause this idea to break down, but as a plus I find it gives me a rubric for deciding on weird interactions, like breaking off a chunk of a statue separates it from the network of meaning that is attached to the idea of the statue, or maybe a piece of rubble that looks like a duck isn't worked, but if somebody were to keep it, with enough time and love sunk into its makeup, it too gains enough arbitrary meaning to count as its own thing.
I'd just treat it like the legal Fair Use test- you've got a few clauses that disqualify something from being a valid target. I'm skipping over magical, secured, and attended.
"Only natural forms of the element": is this in the form it was found in nature? If not, we're any changes superficial, or ones that left it still mistakable for being natural? If left in nature, would it be indistinguishable from the surroundings?
"Not durable, crafted goods": were tools used to alter the nature of the object towards an intentional design? Is more than 25% of the object's form the result of intentional shaping? Is the object "durable"? Typically an object is clearly durable if effort is needed to destroy it, and it clearly not durable if care must be taken to not break it. Could it be soldfor more as a result of the changes?
A chipped stone from mining is valid. It is the natural form, a stone. It was not crafted, i.e. intentionally shaped into another form with tools. It is not a good, something made for use or sale. It stops being a valid target once it's intentionally crafted as a good.
A bonsai tree intentionally skirts the limits of this, being essentially guided nature. The cutting directs otherwise natural growth. A useful tiebreaker here is the fact that the elemental plane of wood tends towards a bonsai tree nature, so it should probably be allowed. The elemental plane of earth does not tend towards statues. This one could go either way, though, and again, is intentionally ambiguous. Statues made to look like rocks would probably be in a similar spot.
I think part of the bonsai vs. statue confusion is because a carefully trimmed tree will grow naturally if left alone, but a statue will remain as it is. I would consider a carefully trimmed hedge to still essentially be natural form, where a chiseled stone cube wouldn't get the same allowance from me. I would not consider "gardening" to be "crafting", especially since there is plenty of crafting that can be done with wood.
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For practical game terms, "Is it an item?" and "Did it use Craft to make?" are useful shorthands. You'd probably get a different answer for the bonsai tree, but that's fine.
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I think the general rule of thumb here that could work, like QuidEst mentions, is if the Material that you're trying to interact with had ever been formed/modified/created by way of direct intentional work by way of a Crafting or perhaps even a Profession Skill function.
In that context I think that natural tunnels/caves/underground stone and earth would be perfectly usable and functional but if you're instead dealing with stone that was manually excavated and shored up with support beams/pillars/arches would NOT be eligible as they were formed/shaped with intention and were "manmade" for lack of a better term.
I'd just treat it like the legal Fair Use test- you've got a few clauses that disqualify something from being a valid target.
Love the mental image this just gave me of kineticist magic not working on artificial objects because of copyright protections disallowing it. If you can't manipulate a rock call up your rules lawyer and see if they know why.
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Also, as a personal gripe tangent, bonsai trees are awkward territory because whole living creatures never should have been made into an element. Sure, plant-controlling kineticists should exist in any version of the universe and it would have been messy to make a plant element wielder without making plants an element, but controlling wood as an element is like controlling bone as an element.
I'm merely trying to find a foundational basis on which I can play my kineticist characters with a little more confidence.
I don't think we can provide that for you.
The rules regarding Kineticist and Base Kinesis are deliberately left fairly open to interpretation. It means that it is rules legal to do a lot of really cool things with it - or very little at all. Depending on the needs of plot.
And that is how I would make the distinction. Base Kinesis has the restriction to only natural forms of the element in order to put plot armor on important things that the GM needs for the terrain, or the GM or other players need for their characters.
That doesn't work if you want the in-game narrative to take priority and drive the game mechanics - if everything in-world has to 'make sense'.
For example, if a Goblin finds a round rock and paints eyes and a mouth on it and names it Wilson, could an Earth Kineticist use Base Kinesis and delete the rock as part of an intimidation check? I'd probably allow it if the rock was otherwise unimportant.
But if that Goblin was a Cleric and the round rock with the painted on eyes and mouth was serving the purpose of being the Goblin's holy symbol and was needed for focus components of their spellcasting - then that same rock that the Earth Kineticist could delete in the previous example now instead has plot armor and is off-limits. Not because of the paint, but because of its importance to the character and the plot of the game.
No, it doesn't make sense from an in-game gamephysics perspective. The ruling isn't consistent. But it is fair. It leads to more fun and creativity because it allows Kineticist to do cool things without being too OP to be allowed to exist.