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Have we just backdoor turned kineticist into a variant class by locking it out of the mythic rules?
Or is the panic I keep seeing passed around groups and chats I'm in unfounded and the class actually does work with the mythic system?
I'd worried when Rage of Elements came out that this would be a 'one and done' book and Paizo would thereafter act like the class never existed. It does get mention in newer APs on the 'what class is appropriate or not appropriate' for this or that adventure. But if that's the extent to which it ever get mentioned again, is it essentially 'done' and not actually part of the 'game canon' anymore?
Do we need errata, or just someone to re-read the mythic rules and explain how it wasn't actually left out?
Have we just backdoor turned kineticist into a variant class by locking it out of the mythic rules?
Or is the panic I keep seeing passed around groups and chats I'm in unfounded and the class actually does work with the mythic system?
I'd worried when Rage of Elements came out that this would be a 'one and done' book and Paizo would thereafter act like the class never existed. It does get mention in newer APs on the 'what class is appropriate or not appropriate' for this or that adventure. But if that's the extent to which it ever get mentioned again, is it essentially 'done' and not actually part of the 'game canon' anymore?
Do we need errata, or just someone to re-read the mythic rules and explain how it wasn't actually left out?
The Kineticist as RAW is, as far as I can parse, not compatible with mythic play. I’ve seen some good homebrew for it, but until either Mythic or Kinet get an errata to fix the EB issue, there’s nothing for the Kineticist to utilize with their impulses or EB.
Ok, I haven't seen the specifics yet, but are you saying that the book explicitly prohibits Kineticists from participating in Mythic play, or are you saying that it merely doesn't specifically mention the class in the book. (i.e. it doesn't feature a class archetype like it does for ranger/vindicator)
Because my understanding is that it presents new mythic archetypes, a couple new classes good for Mythic but not necessarily requiring it, and some new class archetypes to give classes some Divine spark to them.
It wasn't my understanding that Kineticists should be prevented from being able to participate in mythic play, but it doesn't surprise me that they didn't get a featured class archetype in this divine book. I don't think it reflects at all saying that Paizo won't provide new content in the future for Kineticists that makes sense in the future.
Every book in the future won't have a piece for every part of every past book. Otherwise future books would never have enough room for any kind of real theme, nor likely enough room to actually make any growth feel like it is really even significant.
As it is, as the game gets more mature, it will mean the newer classes may need to have larger starting page counts to compete with some of the options available to older classes. I think with Rage of the Elements being a pre-remaster, but remaster-compatible at publication it will definitely get future support, when and where appropriate.
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Ok, I haven't seen the specifics yet, but are you saying that the book explicitly prohibits Kineticists from participating in Mythic play, or are you saying that it merely doesn't specifically mention the class in the book. (i.e. it doesn't feature a class archetype like it does for ranger/vindicator)
Because my understanding is that it presents new mythic archetypes, a couple new classes good for Mythic but not necessarily requiring it, and some new class archetypes to give classes some Divine spark to them.
It wasn't my understanding that Kineticists should be prevented from being able to participate in mythic play, but it doesn't surprise me that they didn't get a featured class archetype in this divine book. I don't think it reflects at all saying that Paizo won't provide new content in the future for Kineticists that makes sense in the future.
Every book in the future won't have a piece for every part of every past book. Otherwise future books would never have enough room for any kind of real theme, nor likely enough room to actually make any growth feel like it is really even significant.
As it is, as the game gets more mature, it will mean the newer classes may need to have larger starting page counts to compete with some of the options available to older classes. I think with Rage of the Elements being a pre-remaster, but remaster-compatible at publication it will definitely get future support, when and where appropriate.
Basically the biggest issue is that there’s no specific mention of where Elemental Blasts or Impulses work with the archetypes presented.
As a Kineticist doesn’t strike or cast spells, there’s no way for them to really take advantage of feats that require one of those with their main weapons.
It’s less “can’t play mythic” and more “have no consideration in the text for their specific thing”
To be very honest the way the Kineticist and to a lesser extent Magus is set up is what ultimately kills them for Mythic. Since as what was stated about Elemental Blasts and Impulses are unique things they don't support Mythic and to a lesser extent Spellstrike is also such a unique ability that it doesn't get raised to Mythic meaning you will unfortunately never get a mythic spellstrike unless you count perhaps the Guardian's Calling level 6 mythic feat but that might be exclusively on Strikes. Ya no, it doesn't work cause it calls out a "Strike" not the next strike with a weapon.
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A Sure Strike spellstrike will be about as accurate as a mythic Strike (less at some levels/AC targets, more at others) and do more damage if it hits with a good spell, just at a considerable action cost. It's true some of the higher level destiny feats that grant mythic strikes also add on other effects, but overall it seems fine.
One great thing for a Magus is the feat that exchanges a mythic point for a focus point pool refresh. You can just burn through them with abandon both on spellstrikes and conflux single actions to recharge your spellstrike.
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This is kind of the issue I mentioned when I said the kineticist has "parasitic design". It not functioning with any of the already established ways of doing things makes it bad at archetyping, and poor at using mythic rules
A Sure Strike spellstrike will be about as accurate as a mythic Strike (less at some levels/AC targets, more at others) and do more damage if it hits with a good spell, just at a considerable action cost.
So, as a tactic, it does less damage per round and is harder to bring into play. But yes, tell me more how it "seems fine"!
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This makes the assumption that mythic is now the standard mode of gameplay as opposed to a niche modifier that should only be allowed when the GM wants a specific feel for their game. I agree that the incompatibility is a problem but it's more like if, hypothetically, kineticist was incompatible with the dual class variant rule somehow.
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Conversely, should a highly hyped new release to narratively explore campaign world-affecting stories not include all classes clearly, simply and effectively?
It seems that kineticists have somehow slipped through either development or editorial cracks (or both). That isn’t great, professionally or institutionally for the company. People might say it is a small thing, but it is the entirety of the point of the company. Not just interaction with dual classing.
Why aren't there feats that allow to treat impulses as spells and blasts as strikes is beyond me...
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It’s a huge word burden on post-ROE content (and requires constant ad hoc and semi arbitrary decisions whether to allow) and allowing it that way from the beginning would have screwed with Kineticist balancing if current and future multiclass metastrike and spellshape feats could be applied to blasts and impulses.
Dare I ask what would happen balance-wise if blasts could be treated as Strikes and impulses as Spells?
You guys make it sound like the Kineticist would simply break the game, mostly because they have unlimited usage of their abilities.
Dare I ask what would happen balance-wise if blasts could be treated as Strikes and impulses as Spells?
You guys make it sound like the Kineticist would simply break the game, mostly because they have unlimited usage of their abilities.
This is how the playtest kineticist worked, and the blasts were pretty bad, but I did like them being ranged unarmed strikes so that they worked with more stuff
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The playtest really shows the way some people think they want something without really being able to understand the full impact of the system.
People were really upset about striking with blasts and wearing handwraps. so instead we get blasts that are their own unique action and gate attenuators. A change that accomplishes almost nothing positive but cut off the class from almost every form of support.
All because people freaked out about 'strikes' ... a really impressive bit of self sabotage.
Dare I ask what would happen balance-wise if blasts could be treated as Strikes and impulses as Spells?
Worth noting that impulses are already treated somewhat as spells, just mostly only to the kineticist's detriment. Immunity to magic, bonuses to saves against spells, and effects that prevent or restrict spellcasting all work on impulses too.
But since using an impulse is not the Cast A Spell activity they're walled off from most of the good stuff.
But to answer directly, kineticists are a pain in mythic and you really have a much more limited pool of feats and options you're allowed to benefit one.
Magus isn't nearly on the same level. Yeah, they're bummed that Mythic Strike doesn't work with Spellstrike, but so is every martial that relies on specialty activities to function. But that's okay we can just not take that feat as a Magus.
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The playtest of Kineticist GAVE it more interaction with the system. People got (somewhat justifiably) annoyed because making blasts of fire "unarmed strikes" meant that they functioned like unarmed strikes, complete with bizarre stuff like Handwraps of Mighty Blows. Which made minimal sense.
I disagree with this so hard. I saw no complaints about this. If anything it strengthened the Avatar like fantasy of the class, and the only complaint I saw is the damage was abysmal
Stuff like eye beam and spitting venom being range unarmed strikes makes perfect sense. You are making a strike at someone from ranged while unarmed. The handwraps improve it because they have magic runes. This is all fine and works fine, and the kineticist should have just stayed working this way
The issue is that by walling blasts off from the existing rules Rage of Elements opened up a Pandora's Box of unintended consequences. This is one of them. The system was never made to accommodate anything beyond the caster/martial divide of "casts spells" or "stabs people with a sword". That's why psychics are spellcasters rather than psionics being its own thing.
And this just simply isn't true. Psychic is a spellcaster because it was one in the first game, and came in the same book as the kineticist which had the tech to not be a spellcaster and have bespoke magical abilities. The Paizo wanted the psychic to cast spells
Yeah I just recall that being a common complaint (which I think the devs actually mentioned at one point, but I can't dig it up offhand). Personally, neither that nor "venom spit runes" is my hill to die on, though I will say that I do think the version of kineticist we got is probably the best class in any RPG I've ever seen.
The kineticist certainly works as a class, but the reason the blasts don't work like unarmed strikes is two fold, one is that they didn't use con for the attack roll as unarmed strikes making the class mad, and two is that this allowed them to increase the damage without worrying about other classes using them for this or that and it being overpowered. Personally I wanted to be able to use a kineticist dedication on a magus instead of the very disgusting thing I do with eyebeam that requires 2-3 archetypes to get even close to functioning okay. Which is basically my only issue with the kineticist, I plays by itself. It gets very little from swapping feats for archetype feats, it doesn't synergize super well with many or most ancestry feats, and now it doesn't really do much at all with mythic. It's like infect in Scars of Mirrodin draft
I think the monkey's paw situation also applies to people wanting to burn (I use that word advisedly) mythic points to do a mythic strike or mythic proficiency with various magus or (especially) kineticist options. I do not think it's obvious that the other martials or spellcasters should be regularly doing this more than once per mythic encounter, or that the results (especially at higher levels, and ESPECIALLY against mythic resilience) of doing so are going to be that impressive.
Barring some shenanigans or defeating one mythic opponent in a multiple opponent encounter, you're only going to have a max of three mythic points to fuel your abilities.
Everyone can use one of those to reroll a bad save or skill check at mythic proficiency, and may be scared not to keep one in reserve for that purpose if they're a build with one or more weak saves or that is especially scared of being swallowed whole and needing to escape. Increasing some basic strikes across three rounds and YOLOing your defenses may not be the wisest course.
There's also the feat to no sell damage that brings you to 0 HP or death effects that kill you outright. If you select that one, which I imagine many will, you definitely want to keep a mythic point in reserve to use it. If you're saving a point for that, and a point for a disastorous save or desperate Escape, you've only got one point left for any offensive options you have anyway.
That said, there are some really good "use one and only one mythic point" offensive options that give you a mythic strike plus other stuff to go along with it. As a particularly strong example, Eternal Legend has a 18th level feat that grants an extra reaction for 1 minute, and that reaction allows a mythic strike every time it's used against a new opponent. Getting four mythic strikes across four opponents across four rounds for one mythic point is something quite good that a kineticist can legitimately be jealous of. (So buy a weapon and invest in strength, maybe?) But I'm not sure there's that many of these abilities that are that generally desirable and don't have considerable opportunity cost or other limitations like 1/day restrictions.
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The playtest of Kineticist GAVE it more interaction with the system. People got (somewhat justifiably) annoyed because making blasts of fire "unarmed strikes" meant that they functioned like unarmed strikes, complete with bizarre stuff like Handwraps of Mighty Blows. Which made minimal sense.I disagree with this so hard. I saw no complaints about this. If anything it strengthened the Avatar like fantasy of the class, and the only complaint I saw is the damage was abysmal
To popularly slightly misquote Pauline Kael: "I can’t believe Nixon won. I don’t know anyone who voted for him."
People did in indeed hate the handwraps applying to blasts in the playtest.
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Yeah I just recall that being a common complaint (which I think the devs actually mentioned at one point, but I can't dig it up offhand). Personally, neither that nor "venom spit runes" is my hill to die on, though I will say that I do think the version of kineticist we got is probably the best class in any RPG I've ever seen.The kineticist certainly works as a class, but the reason the blasts don't work like unarmed strikes is two fold, one is that they didn't use con for the attack roll as unarmed strikes making the class mad, and two is that this allowed them to increase the damage without worrying about other classes using them for this or that and it being overpowered. Personally I wanted to be able to use a kineticist dedication on a magus instead of the very disgusting thing I do with eyebeam that requires 2-3 archetypes to get even close to functioning okay. Which is basically my only issue with the kineticist, I plays by itself. It gets very little from swapping feats for archetype feats, it doesn't synergize super well with many or most ancestry feats, and now it doesn't really do much at all with mythic. It's like infect in Scars of Mirrodin draft
I feel like they could have fixed that more easily by saying "your strikes with elemental blast use CON for their ability score."
There's nothing egregiously wrong with Handwraps since Summoner already uses them for the Eidlon and Untamed Form Druids can also use them to try to boost attack (but ignore striking runes). This could have worked the same way. Instead we got a new item that basically does the same thing except because its a new item it's totally seperate.
I wasn't around for that playtest so I couldn't say how it went down, but sometimes player feedback is just wrong. This is one of those times: making a class that basically doesn't interact with any other system in the game at all effectively totally isolates it from any new systems.
It would definitely be hard to fix now, though, given the size of the errata required.
I wasn't around for that playtest so I couldn't say how it went down, but sometimes player feedback is just wrong. This is one of those times: making a class that basically doesn't interact with any other system in the game at all effectively totally isolates it from any new systems.
I don't believe any players offered this solution. In fact I think more people said "maybe we just let kineticist choose str or dex instead of con", or said "we need more reason to use con as a key ability score". Kind of what is going on with the soldier on SF2 rn, and why I hope in a potential 3e they just combine con and strength into one stat. This situation reminds me a bit of the Witch and Magus. The witch did not have hex cantrips during play testing but it had strong focus spells, 4 slots per level, but could not choose the divine list. People, like myself said, "hey I felt the witch's identity was at will ability, could they get focus cantrips?" Then the monkey's paw curled and we got the abysmal version of the witch in the APG. Similar the Magus functioned very awkwardly with spellstrike requiring 2 separate attack rolls which feels weird and bizarre. When we got the actual class it turned into a clunky slot machine and lost the ability to basically do the 1e spellcombat thing. kineticist faired the best, but I still have the gripes I mentioned. Typically the designers see what we identify as problems, but sometimes the solutions are either too cautious or replaced one problem with a different worse problem(like the magus having a slightly inconvenient thing of rolling 2 d20s when spellstriking being replaced with a class that has the worst action economy in the game)
I remember the kineticist playback feedback period and people were definitely wanting kineticist to be its own thing kinda like it was in 1e. Like some even felt that it felt too much like spellcaster :p
It always was, always has been and is still now a spellcaster. The role it plays in a party is a spellcaster role
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Spellcaster is more a method than a role.
My kineticist mostly grapples and uses melee and ranged attacks while wearing sturdy armor.
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I remember the kineticist playback feedback period and people were definitely wanting kineticist to be its own thing kinda like it was in 1e. Like some even felt that it felt too much like spellcaster :pIt always was, always has been and is still now a spellcaster. The role it plays in a party is a spellcaster role
The *usual* role is a spellcaster role. I've got an Earth Kineticist/Stalwart Defender that is 100% tank.
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Yeah, I've definitely seen more tank/controller kineticists than I have " spellcaster analogue" kineticists.
But to answer directly, kineticists are a pain in mythic and you really have a much more limited pool of feats and options you're allowed to benefit one.
This, we know.
If Impulses were treated like Spells, it would be like Casting a Spell OR Impulses would be treated as spells for feats.
If Blasts were treated as Strikes, then these wouldn't be eligible for Runes, BUT would be treated as strikes for feats.
Yeah, I've definitely seen more tank/controller kineticists than I have " spellcaster analogue" kineticists.
Controller is certainly a spellcaster role, especially for groups. kineticist abilities are all at-will spells, they even get to use scrolls, staves and wands. Plenty of spellcasters can wear heavy armor, and we got warpriests after all
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Kineticist is in its own private space because people wanted unlimited effects, both attacks and utilities, within the restricted scope of Elements.
The only way to grant this in a safely future-proofed way was to divorce Impulses from both weapons and spells.
I expect Mythic to be errataed. Not Kineticist.
Does that mean that even the playtest version of Kineticist wouldn't have been able to mythic strike?
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Correct, Elemental Blast was its own bespoke action. However, by picking up Elemental Weapon as a 1st level feat, you would get a weapon that used your Elemental Blast proficiency but could make normal Strikes, so stuff like Mythic Strike would be fine with those.
(Side note but I find interesting that it seems people don't hoard their playtest pdfs like I do. Its very interesting to see how design changed, for better or worse.)