Modified Kineticist Class: Looking for comments/suggestions

[Dornith]

My friends and I have a pathfinder game which meets about once a week when we're all together. The campaign is heavily story driven, with custom races for the setting and decisions made as often for IC reasons as much as mechanical.

My character is a cleric who due to his heritage and life events, has become a pacifist. He refuses to deal lethal damage to any living organism, using only merciful weapons/attacks and uses spells to protect his allies and avoid combat when able. Recently my character has had a personal event that I want to use as an opportunity to multiclass to Kineticist. The only problem is, this is my current build:


Class: Cleric 7 (Purity/Healing domain) (About to level up)
Race: Tiefling (Mostly the same as pfsrd)
Alignment: LG
HP: 26
Speed: 30

Ability Scores
Str: 8 (-1)
Dex 18 (+4)
Con: 6 (-2)
Int: 9 (-1)
Wis 20 (+5)
Cha: 8 (-1)

Armor Classes
AC: 14
Touch: 14
Flat-Footed: 10
CMD 18

Saves
Fortitude: 5
Reflex: 8
Will: 12

Attack Bonuses
BAB +4
CMB: +1

Feats:
Merciful Spell
Craft Wondrous item
Persistent Spell
Weapon Finesse

Naturally, the constitution modifier makes him unsuited for the class, but the GM and I both agree that we don't like major character developments being driven by stats sheets we rolled up 2 years ago. So now I'm working on a house-ruled version of it to be more applicable to my character. Ideally, I'd like it to be viable, but balanced, and also make sense in character.

For more details about how I plan to use the kineticist abilities, I plan to specialize in fire and use almost exclusively fire related abilities. My character would likely be very reluctant to use any of them because it's a vestige of his heritage which he tries to avoid. As such, any use of it would be a desperate situation/no other option. I would mostly want the utility abilities, since he wouldn't want to actually use the kinetic blast against an enemy (lethal damage and all). Also, I plan to stay mostly cleric, keeping 3 or 4 levels of cleric for every level of kineticist I take, so I don't plan to rely on it too heavily.

After reading over the class a bit (I admittedly have never played one before), it seems the constitution modifier really matters most with respect to burn and kinetic blast. As I said before, he likely wouldn't want to use kinetic blast much anyway so I'm not as concerned about that.

As for burn, I was thinking instead of 1pt nonlethal per burn, max at 3 + Con Mod, using 1 point of constitution damage, no max, and can only heal with 8 hours of rest. This would be the equivalent burn of a kineticist with Con 18 16 in terms of max burn, except it involves a much higher risk if I ever use it because I'd loose a lot more HP. I have items to keep him from becoming too much of a glass cannon (primarily a shaw of life keeping (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/wondrous-items/wondrous-items/r-z/shawl-of-life-keeping/)).

I think this idea would work out well, but I also don't have a lot of experience with this class. I'm not sure if that gives too much of an advantage or if burn is too important and it would be nonviable mechanically to use.

I'm also open to hearing other ideas as to how I could rebalance the class to work.

Edit: Forgot to I can't go to 0 Con.

[Kitsuneymg]

I'm also open to hearing other ideas as to how I could rebalance the class to work.

Use spheres of power instead. Destruction and/or the fire nature package. Elementalist is probably the class you want to use, although incanter would allow you to probably continue to advance domains if you wanted that.

You could also just use the feats basic and advanced magical training from SoP. That could give you a fire blast or whatever you want easily.

[Gnaeus]

1. Splashing kineticist is always going to be vastly weaker than cleric
2. Using kineticist for its awful, overpriced utility powers and not blasting is even worse.

Give Kenny full BaB and make burn cost one non lethal HP instead of 1/level, and let him pick utility powers freely from any element. You can't break the game splashing kineticist. You won't even be close to straight cleric in power.

[exelsisxax]

Don't. The kineticist is a garbage class, not even worth trying to fix at this point. As was said above, use spheres of power elementalist if you want to blast people. It's so much more useful than a dumpster fire that deals damage to itself.

[Dornith]

I'm looking into spheres now. I'm not sure how I feel about the flavor, since I kind of liked the idea of physically exhausting yourself to cast spells, but I if I feel strongly about it I can always find a way to house-rule it in with the GM.

It's a bit different from any of the magic systems I've used, and I've had trouble finding a well-organized wiki (d20pfsrd is surprisingly lacking in this area). From what I understand it goes like this (and please correct me if I misunderstand something or have mistakes):

Caster's get "Talents" which can be used to gain talents from a sphere you have. (Equivalent to spells)
You can give up a talent to gain a new sphere, and the abilities associated with it. (A bit like domains, but without bonus spells, and restrict what talents you can get)
Casting level determines range, save DC, power of spells, and MSB/D (used for competing against another caster).
Spell points can increase the power of abilities. Otherwise talents/abilities are unlimited.

[TheIronGolem]

I'm looking into spheres now. I'm not sure how I feel about the flavor, since I kind of liked the idea of physically exhausting yourself to cast spells, but I if I feel strongly about it I can always find a way to house-rule it in with the GM.

This (http://spheresofpower.wikidot.com/) is the most complete and organized wiki I am aware of regarding SoP.

Look into the Draining Casting (http://spheresofpower.wikidot.com/casting-traditions#toc39) drawback; it has a similar feel to the Kineticist's Burn. That's part of a larger system of optional modifications to the way magic works, which you can use to make the magic system conform with whatever thematic constraints your campaign needs to impose on casters.


It's a bit different from any of the magic systems I've used, and I've had trouble finding a well-organized wiki (d20pfsrd is surprisingly lacking in this area). From what I understand it goes like this (and please correct me if I misunderstand something or have mistakes):

Caster's get "Talents" which can be used to gain talents from a sphere you have. (Equivalent to spells)
You can give up a talent to gain a new sphere, and the abilities associated with it. (A bit like domains, but without bonus spells, and restrict what talents you can get)
Casting level determines range, save DC, power of spells, and MSB/D (used for competing against another caster).
Spell points can increase the power of abilities. Otherwise talents/abilities are unlimited.



In order:

Nearly. Some Talents give you a new sphere ability, others improve an existing ability.
Not so much "giving up" as "spending" like you would a feat. Spheres are more like schools of magic than divine domains, although they're organized along slightly different lines than the schools from core.
Yes, usually. MSB/MSD are basically the magic version of CMB/CMD, and caster level is magic BAB.
Semi-correct. Some abilities are unlimited, some can be enhanced by spending a spell point, and some cost one or more spell points to use at all.

[Dr_Dinosaur]

Everyone suggests using Elementalist, but what if someone wants to use a specific Kinteticist archetype?

[exelsisxax]

Everyone suggests using Elementalist, but what if someone wants to use a specific Kinteticist archetype?

My honest suggestion is to use the elementalist anyway. Between its own archetypes, the range of casting traditions, and the natural versatility of spheres i believe you can pull off anything a kineticist can do, but without the drawback of totally sucking.

[Manyasone]

Or... If spheres aren't an option. You can use the four kineticist of porphyra books to enhance the base crap class. Or use the legendary kineticist class template instead of the crap vanilla version. Either way, you'll have to third party it up to make it worthwhile

[Kurald Galain]

Don't. The kineticist is a garbage class, not even worth trying to fix at this point. As was said above, use spheres of power elementalist if you want to blast people. It's so much more useful than a dumpster fire that deals damage to itself.

Yeah, that.

Alternatively, if you want blasting power on a cleric, take one of the domains that gives you a blast ability (e.g. the Fire domain) and ask your GM for a feat that doubles its damage. That's comparable damage to a fifth level kinny with the advantage that you don't take five levels in garbage.

[lord pringle]

The Kineticist rules I run with are that they have full BAB, d10 hit dice, Burn deals them no damage and all Kineticists of Porypha books are allowed. It doesn't make them outstanding by any stretch of the imagination, but with those tweaks it's a fun class that can do its shtick, like Warlock or DFA.