Kineticist Elemental Familiar

[Picaboo32]

"You gain an elemental familiar with the trait of one of your kinetic elements"

Does it mean
1) You get a familiar with the elemental trait and (element) trait with 2 familiar abilities (Just like the leasy familiar druid feat)
2) You get a familair but his 2 abilties but they are locked to Elemental and Resistance
3) you get a familair with the Elemental free abilitiy +2 familair abilities
4) You get a familiar with 2 abilities. One of those must be Elemental but your other one is free to choose (ignore Resistance prerequisite)
5) Something else

[Finoan]

I can't answer the question objectively. The problem is that the wording of the feat is too vague.

As a personal preference I would have it match the Druid Leshy Familiar feat.

You would get the familiar with the Elemental ability permanently applied and not counting against your normal number of abilities. And ignoring the Resistance ability that the Elemental ability usually requires (it technically wouldn't gain the Resistance ability either, but it would be redundant anyway).

Specific overrides general, parity of class options, and all of that.

I can be easily convinced to have the Elemental ability not be given for free since it provides quite a bit more benefit than the Plant or Fungus ability that Druid gets. In that case, it would only cost one ability slot and you would still have one left to be freely chosen. I still would ignore the Resistance ability prerequisite.

[Finoan]

Options 1 and 2 are both problematic.

Quote:

1) You get a familiar with the elemental trait and (element) trait with 2 familiar abilities (Just like the leasy familiar druid feat)

The most recent version of Leshy Familiar in Player Core doesn't work like that. It doesn't just give the plant trait to the familiar. The current Leshy Familiar feat is closer to option 3.

Quote:

2) You get a familair but his 2 abilties but they are locked to Elemental and Resistance

As far as I can tell, Kineticist doesn't have any feats available to increase the number of abilities that the familiar has. You would be forced to use Familiar Master archetype or something like that in order to get a familiar that is mechanically functional and provides any benefit.

Spending a class feat on Elemental Familiar and then having to also spend another class feat and locking yourself into an archetype path is way too much build cost for the benefit or even the flavor.

[Easl]

It refers you to page 42, so you get the literal p42 "Elemental" trait + 2. That's it. Your familiar will have an elemental trait rather than the animal trait, but because the p42 ability says that, not because they get an elemental trait as some unstated bonus ability.

Finoan wrote:

Kineticist doesn't have any feats available to increase the number of abilities that the familiar has. You would be forced to use Familiar Master archetype or something like that in order to get a familiar that is mechanically functional and provides any benefit.

I'd assume anyone taking the level 1 feat does so because they plan to take Fearsome Familiar at level 6 (...which is also not a great choice, but there it is). But yeah a general kineticist feat bumping up the number of familiar abilities at some higher level would have been both welcome and not unbalanced.