Pathfinder Is Still Bad

[Lurky Lurkpants]

You could move Composite Specialization down to a more reasonable level and then improve it later to bring the base cost of Composite Blasts to zero. You could also make Internal Buffer refill every morning rather than making you fill it the night before (or possibly have to take a day off).

You might also consider allowing Utility Wild Talents be prepared like spells. I'm not certain there are enough to make this a reasonable thing, but I'd think the utility would be a lot higher if you could upgrade to a high level Utility later instead of being stuck with a jump bonus your entire career.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

I'm not sure there needs to be much more reduction in burn costs for kinetic blasts. Maybe move them to earlier in the progression as most of them are extremely high level, but at level 20 you are throwing maximized composite blasts with 6 burn worth of enhancements for free already every round. Perhaps just say that composite blasts start at 1 point of burn to start, which means you do a regular blast as a standard and take a whole round to do a composite, but in a pinch you can take some burn and shoot off a composite as a standard. Also, if the class's role is dealing damage then go fucking nuts with it. As written you add 1/3 of your burn to hit and twice that to damage with kinetic blasts. Instead of flat damage let's just add d6's instead.

There also needs to be a way to get around ER. Although the physical blasts don't matter (the earth simple and earth/earth composite blasts both strike as magic weapons and don't interact with energy resists at all to give one example), someone who picked fire or other touch attack type will be useless against things immune to it. But even then the physical blasts are neutered by DR types (perhaps rule that they strike as a weapon with an enhancement equal to your elemental overflow bonus in terms of overcoming DR)

Also regarding the utility wild talents: there needs to be more and they need to be more compelling. Defense wild talents should be boosted based on burn you have rather than burn spent specifically on them, and there flat out needs to be more of them. Quite a few elements simply don't have high level talents (air is a notable example).

[Silent Wayfarer]

There also needs to be a way to get around ER. Although the physical blasts don't matter (the earth simple and earth/earth composite blasts both strike as magic weapons and don't interact with energy resists at all to give one example), someone who picked fire or other touch attack type will be useless against things immune to it. But even then the physical blasts are neutered by DR types (perhaps rule that they strike as a weapon with an enhancement equal to your elemental overflow bonus in terms of overcoming DR)

This. I thought the Blue Flame Blast would let you bypass fire resistance, turns out it just bypasses SPELL resistance. Lame.

[virgil]

Is there any value in the use of PF's dueling counter as a substitute for the standard counterspell rules in 3.X?

[RelentlessImp]

Is there any value in the use of PF's dueling counter as a substitute for the standard counterspell rules in 3.X?

Not having to take a stupid series of feats so you can counterspell as an immediate action?

[virgil]

Is there any value in the use of PF's dueling counter as a substitute for the standard counterspell rules in 3.X?

Not having to take a stupid series of feats so you can counterspell as an immediate action?

No extra feats, just allowed to spend an immediate action to both identify and choose to counter a spell being cast, resolved as per the link.

[RelentlessImp]

You asked for the value in it; in 3.X you have to take a stupid series of feats (or cast Battlemagic Perception from Heroes of Battle) in order to counterspell as an immediate/free action. Using the duel rules would let you bypass that, which is valuable.

[GâtFromKI]

The Kineticist looks needlessly complicated.

So 1 burn is 1 nonlethal damage/level. But when you have 3 burn, you can gain +2 Con, and therefore 1 HP/level, which means the third burn is basically free for some reason. and if you are an eather kineticist, you have a shield giving 1HP/level; and if the shield is depleted you can take one burn, so 1 nonlethal wound/level, to gain 1 temporary HP/level and increase the max of the shield to 1.5 HP/level.

And then you have abilities that reduce the cost in burn of some powers, but not all...

This class is only about dealing damages with elemental blast, why does it need so many fiddly manipulations of your HPs ?

[Braenwe]

And now their shitty video game has failed.

http://massivelyop.com/2015/09/02/pathf ... ire-staff/

Here is some crying and sniveling if you need it.

https://soundcloud.com/duffy-swiftshado ... evens-9215

[RelentlessImp]

When asked what the community can do, she suggested that continuing to play and pay the early enrollment subscription, inviting new players, and treating new players well is most helpful.

"Give us your money for our shitty game and get others to pay it because we're only interested in your fucking money, you dumbasses."

As clarification, 3 people working on a project as big as an MMO is only doomed to failure. Three FUCKING PEOPLE. For an MMO. You know, something that requires dedicated teams of programmers, writers, and artists? Then again, the art assets look like EQ2, so maybe they can just crib off Daybreak now.

[OgreBattle]

They would've found more success if they made their game look like Minecraft.

[Chamomile]

When asked what the community can do, she suggested that continuing to play and pay the early enrollment subscription, inviting new players, and treating new players well is most helpful.

"Give us your money for our shitty game and get others to pay it because we're only interested in your fucking money, you dumbasses."

This seems unduly harsh. If someone asks what the community can do to help support a product, odds are excellent that the answer is sincerely going to be "get as many people to buy it as you can." The product may well be doomed to failure, but the question wasn't whether or not there's any hope for the product, but rather whether there's anything the community can do to help.

[RelentlessImp]

The question should be "Is the project on the level" and the answer, when I looked it over the first time, was a resounding 'no'. Taking money for an unfinished project in the first place makes it even less legitimate, despite Steam's Early Access bullshit (which has its own baggage I won't go into here). Now they want you to keep paying for an unfinished product in the hopes that somehow, losing all but three team members of the project and throwing money at it will somehow make the last 25% of the game magically appear - because three people sure as fuck aren't delivering it.

Asking for another one or two million (as if asking for five bucks - seriously, that's the tone here) to finish the game? More like asking for one or two million to pocket and close the project down about six months down the line and claim that "there wasn't enough support".

[Antariuk]

The comment about Ryan Dancey leaving for "unrelated reasons" two weeks prior to Paizo pulling the plug makes me a but curious. What will the Steve Jobs of MMO marketing do next?

[TOZ]

I'm pretty sure they don't intend to keep the team at just three people. Not that I think anything will change with new blood considering they are keeping on with the original design document.

[nockermensch]

And now their shitty video game has failed.

http://massivelyop.com/2015/09/02/pathf ... ire-staff/

1) Be the publisher of a crunchy tactical combat RPG that's only a thing because another crunchy tactical combat RPG dropped the ball.
2) Announce you're making a MMO.
3) The MMO has nothing to do with the things that made your RPG successful
4) Pretend you're surprised when the MMO fails.

My avatar is mfw.

[Rawbeard]

I keep forgetting this was a thing.

[Longes]

The Kineticist looks needlessly complicated.

So 1 burn is 1 nonlethal damage/level. But when you have 3 burn, you can gain +2 Con, and therefore 1 HP/level, which means the third burn is basically free for some reason. and if you are an eather kineticist, you have a shield giving 1HP/level; and if the shield is depleted you can take one burn, so 1 nonlethal wound/level, to gain 1 temporary HP/level and increase the max of the shield to 1.5 HP/level.

And then you have abilities that reduce the cost in burn of some powers, but not all...

This class is only about dealing damages with elemental blast, why does it need so many fiddly manipulations of your HPs ?

The general opinion of the rules-savvy PF dudes is that kineticist is a shit flavored shit that is worse than a monk. Most likely designed by multiple dudes who didn't talk to each other, and then hit by a nerf bat.

[Lurky Lurkpants]

Pretty much, though we know the design lead was Mark Seifter (the guy who got SKR's old job). There aren't a lot of data points to go on of course, but given that his other class was the Medium and their problems are similar I'd be tempted to attribute the issues to him. They both have resource mechanics that punish you (Burn's nonlethal damage, Influence's penalties or turning into an NPC), they are both overcomplicated for what they are doing, and they are both pretty weak.

It could be a coincidence, of course, but for now I'm thinking that is just how he is designing.

[Longes]

The theory about two designers comes from the Elemental Overflow ability. Having Burn reduces your health. But Elemental Overflow gives you bonuses if you have lots of Burn. One could think that this is a clever cost/benefit mechanic, but this is pathfinder we are talking about.

[rasmuswagner]

Pretty much, though we know the design lead was Mark Seifter (the guy who got SKR's old job). There aren't a lot of data points to go on of course, but given that his other class was the Medium and their problems are similar I'd be tempted to attribute the issues to him. They both have resource mechanics that punish you (Burn's nonlethal damage, Influence's penalties or turning into an NPC), they are both overcomplicated for what they are doing, and they are both pretty weak.

It could be a coincidence, of course, but for now I'm thinking that is just how he is designing.

I'm on the Paizo forums, and the motherfucker can't even give a straight answer about the Kineticist's Caster Level or lack of same.

[ishy]

I did happen to come across Mark talking a bit about it here

This is as much the community's guide as it is mine, and I want to provide you the best guide that I can. Consider this the first time something involving the kineticist actually listens to feedback! (Kidding, Mark...)

I'm not sure what the kidding is; is the idea that you are poking fun at the people who were saying that?

I should note that I haven't gotten a lot of hands on time with the class since the playtest, so hopefully soon I'll be adding more personal experience to this than before.

I know people are saying that they're glad for a guide to come up so early, but I would actually say it's possible you may want to wait until you get more play experience before writing a guide, at least from my personal guide-writing experience; I tended to not write guides until I was familiar with a class from a lot of play, so I could be more sure of myself in rating different abilities. Sometimes subtle things can lead to big differences in play (for instance, gather power reduces the cost of metakinesis, which the guide currently seems to be saying is not the case; this is generally a big deal for damage).

Cool, I'd be glad to help out along the way!

:Rereads the final wording of metakinesis. Spits out drink.:

Woah! Metakinesis's wording is much more unclear than it should be; it's muddled where the cost lies and doesn't specifically say it raises the cost of the blast like infusion. It was supposed to, but copyfitting is a harsh mistress, I guess. I can completely see where you took that away from reading the ability; I wonder why the other people talking about the class hadn't asked me that yet (given there's been a big debate about the class's capabilities, I would have expected someone who disliked the class to point that out by now, given the exact wording). Excellent catch! I will confirm that things that modify your blast all add up to form the cost of your blast.

Yeah, hands-on experience couldn't notice that for sure; mostly only messageboard discussion about metakinesis. Hands-on experience may change your opinion on internal buffer, though, perhaps. I know I found it much more useful than I had initially expected it to be when I got into crunched situations.

I remembered your posts in the playtest thread, so I knew you helped me out playtesting for sure; though I think I mentioned metakinesis and gather power back then, it was a long long thread where it was hard to find any one thing, and anyway the text probably changed in copyfitting since then.

It's fine, I've done some third party class creation, and seeing what happens when formatting strikes (a harsh, harsh mistress) can be rather jarring. Perhaps this would be a good call for an errata to the wording for that, I'll try and make sure to send a message to the PFSRD about this correction, linking your response to it as well.

Trust me, I don't want to have this be a harsh critique of anything, I want to provide a complete and flavorful guide for people who want to play this class. Any designer intent that I may be missing or misreading (I am only one person doing these) would be appreciated. I'm attempting to write the parts that I can do from reading alone first, as to not misrepresent the class's in game strengths. But the nice thing about guides is I can always come back and clear things up after correction.

EDIT: As for buffer, I can see the value, but it also seems like a smaller benefit. This isn't a bad thing, we all need to fill every level, but I'm sure once I'm in more actual games with it I'll be able to give it an accurate rating. Not like I expect to be finished in a day with this. It'll take at least 2.

Copyfitting was...an especially harsh mistress for this class. It was hard for me to win over even the number of pages the kineticist got, and then I refused to cut any of the current wild talents for space, so copyfitting was really brutal. I'll add this one to my FAQ list for OA clarifications.

And yeah, don't we both know it about guides and revise, revise, revise!

As for internal buffer, in addition to the typical filling it before going to sleep to get more stuff the next day, there's the fact that it doesn't count as taking burn, and the per-round limit. Since I've been playing with the final version for quite a while now, there have been times this saved my bacon by letting me alpha strike 1 burn more worth of stuff in the same round (since it wasn't taking burn) past the usual per-round limit, to pull off a quickened blast and a composite full attack with kinetic blade. It was pretty useful, though I do try to avoid situations where I'm in need of such a big attack anyway (but the GM was making our poor level 13 group fight a group of 4 CR 14-16 enemies led by a 3rd party CR 17 monster with the AC of a CR 25 and attack bonus and damage of CR low 20s, so we needed it!)

[CapnTthePirateG]

Is this the guy who writes fighter guides telling people to take Weapon Specialization?

(tbh I have no idea what feats fighters actually take in Pathfinder)

[Username17]

the GM was making our poor level 13 group fight a group of 4 CR 14-16 enemies led by a 3rd party CR 17 monster with the AC of a CR 25 and attack bonus and damage of CR low 20s, so we needed it!

I have no idea what this is supposed to mean. Monsters of CR 20+ do not have standardized attack and defense numbers. Hell, monsters stop having remotely standardized attack and defense numbers many levels before that. But in the over-twenties range there isn't even an accepted set of baseline encounters that you could draw spurious correlations and extrapolations with and from. Everything in the over twenties is a Steve, I have no idea how you could tell that a monster had the AC of a 25th level monster. Actual 25th level monsters don't have the AC of a 25th level monster!

Is he ranting about This Thing like it's established law rather than an untested set of suggestions someone pulled out of their smelly asshole?

Edit: Just for completeness, the actual set of attacks and defenses of monsters is to be found Here. If you care, you can compare to the guidelines, but they really aren't that similar.

-Username17

[Orca]

Is this the guy who writes fighter guides telling people to take Weapon Specialization?

(tbh I have no idea what feats fighters actually take in Pathfinder)

To be fair, that guide was for the PF core rulebook only, and fighters using that alone might as well get weapon spec. But yes, that's him.

He does seem to like numerical analysis, and that needs numerical inputs, so I'm betting he is using This Thing. GIGO though.