Kineticist - First Draft

[thegreatone5224]

Hello everyone!

I was originally working on converting the Pathfinder Kineticist but it has kind of turned into its own thing. While the trace of Pathfinder are most differently present (such as the burn system) I have also greatly customized it to look and feel more like something that would found in 5e.

I've been working on this just over a week now and I would love to get some opinions on it so that I can find and correct places that are potentially unbalanced or underpowered. I would also love to hear suggestions on creative new features that could be used for each Archetype. I had a hard time figuring out what to do with the Healing archetype for the level 15 and 18 features.

Thanks for the comments everyone!

kineticist v1.0 (http://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/BkNiUXNKM)

Edit: Updated link to use Homebrewery

[Lalliman]

It looks generally solid. I've seen much shoddier iterations on the Kineticist. Frankly, Pathfinder's version is pretty shoddy itself. There are a few issues though.

I can't really tell how Stored Power is supposed to work. Is your reserve filled automatically, or do you have to fill it first like in Pathfinder? If it's the latter, then it suffers from the same problem that it does in PF: It doesn't actually do anything unless you cheat the system by filling it up the day beforehand.

The wording on Expanded Element is confusing. I can't tell what the "burn 2" part refers to and whether you get it at 9th or 18th. From my PF knowledge I'm guessing that's the cost for using Composite Blast, but it also seems to offer the option of using it as a non-composite, which seems like a superior option in most cases.

Then there's this part:


If you chose the element selected in Elemental Energy both times, you gain advantage on attack rolls with that element. If you chose different elements, you gain the Elemental Advantage feature for your secondary element.
For one, never give permanent advantage on attacks. Secondly, this is very confusingly worded. It's clear that you get advantage if you chose the same element twice, but does this not occur until 18th level, since that's where it's listed? And even if you choose three different elements, you apparently still get advantage on whatever your second element was? What the f*ck?

Lastly, the composite blast seems to suffer from the same thing that it did in PF, which is that it doesn't give enough bang for its burn cost. When you get it at 9th level, it costs 2 burn in return for raising your DPR from 2d6+10 to 4d6+20. (Assuming I interpreted that correctly.) So your potential damage is increased by 17, but you take 18 unrestorable damage to make it happen. "Potential" is the key word here: your extra damage still has a chance to miss, be resisted, or be healed away, while the HP reduction is automatic. It's a very hard sell.

The Annihilator is quite terrible. Their first feature is not really a benefit, it just lifts the unnecessary restrictions on Kinetic Blade. Given that there is no inherent benefit to melee combat (other than getting Opportunity Attacks, which Kinetic Blade doesn't give unless you're an Annihilator), why does it cost 1 burn and a bonus action to begin with? That's a steep cost for something that's worse than your normal Kinetic Blast in 99% of situations. The Annihilator also offers nothing to make up for the fact that he has to be a Strength based character with only light armour proficiency. And Flurry of Annihilation suffers from the same problem as Composite Blast.

For the redo, make sure that a blade-wielding kineticist can function as a passable combatant right off the bat, then add further benefits in the Annihilator class.

Blaster and Chirurgeon seem alright.

Edit: The ability to mimic Greater Restoration would be a good high-level ability for the Chirurgeon.

[thegreatone5224]

Thank you for your feedback! I'm glad things look pretty good the first time around as I did and redid things quite often. Finding the correct wording as been a challenge as the books don't seem to be consistent with the way they word things.

Your Chirurgeon suggestion is pretty good, I'll look into possibly adding it in there.

To address a couple of your questions:

I can't really tell how Stored Power is supposed to work. Is your reserve filled automatically, or do you have to fill it first like in Pathfinder? If it's the latter, then it suffers from the same problem that it does in PF: It doesn't actually do anything unless you cheat the system by filling it up the day beforehand
I agree that it was pretty trash in PF so I wanted it to start full and replenish on short rests so you never had to worry about completely being out of resources. This allows it to compete a bit better with the other classes.


The wording on Expanded Element is confusing. I can't tell what the "burn 2" part refers to and whether you get it at 9th or 18th. From my PF knowledge I'm guessing that's the cost for using Composite Blast, but it also seems to offer the option of using it as a non-composite, which seems like a superior option in most cases.
You are correct with your assumption. In PF selecting the same element would result in a composite blast for your element, I just removed that part for simplicity.


For one, never give permanent advantage on attacks. Secondly, this is very confusingly worded. It's clear that you get advantage if you chose the same element twice, but does this not occur until 18th level, since that's where it's listed? And even if you choose three different elements, you apparently still get advantage on whatever your second element was? What the f*ck?
Yeah, maybe I should just limit the advantage to like 3 times and replenish on a short rest or something of that nature. The second element doesn't get advantage. It just gives you the Elemental Advantage feature for the second element, in other words, some additional utility.


Lastly, the composite blast seems to suffer from the same thing that it did in PF, which is that it doesn't give enough bang for its burn cost. When you get it at 9th level, it costs 2 burn in return for raising your DPR from 2d6+10 to 4d6+20. (Assuming I interpreted that correctly.) So your potential damage is increased by 17, but you take 18 unrestorable damage to make it happen. "Potential" is the key word here: your extra damage still has a chance to miss, be resisted, or be healed away, while the HP reduction is automatic. It's a very hard sell.
It seems like your interpretation is correct. Do you have a suggestion as to how this could better be handled? I thought about changing it to a 1 burn cost but I wasn't sure so I left it as is.


The Annihilator is quite terrible. Their first feature is not really a benefit, it just lifts the unnecessary restrictions on Kinetic Blade. Given that there is no inherent benefit to melee combat (other than getting Opportunity Attacks, which Kinetic Blade doesn't give unless you're an Annihilator), why does it cost 1 burn and a bonus action to begin with? That's a steep cost for something that's worse than your normal Kinetic Blast in 99% of situations. The Annihilator also offers nothing to make up for the fact that he has to be a Strength based character with only light armour proficiency. And Flurry of Annihilation suffers from the same problem as Composite Blast.
I was mainly look for an out when you are a ranged fighter suffering disadvantage due to melee combat. It was designed to be situational but I can see where you are coming from. I don't see it being used often but I can see where I would use it depending on the situation. I had also considered have Flurry of Annihilation cost 1 burn but I went on the conservative side.

[thegreatone5224]

Annihilator now has medium armor prof. Composite Blast and Flurry of Devastation now grant advantage.

[thegreatone5224]

Does anyone else have some critique for me?

[brainface]

Hit Dice: Should they be d10? 5e inflated a lot of hit point dice a step, but then, so does pathfinder. This is a very monk like class, that's d8. But it eats its own hitpoints for lunch so... \o/
Saving throws: Generally classes have one "good" save (dex, con, wis) and one bad one (str, int, cha), i.e. the fighter is strength and con saves, the cleric is wisdom and charisma saves, etc. Some classes can gain more than one good save, but it's generally a higher level ability. I'd suggest switching wisdom for charisma (for force of personality) or strength (kineticists seem like the sort of type you're not going to be able to hold in place for very long)

It's unclear if the Earth kineticist chooses Bludgeoning, Piercing, or slashing when they choose their elemental energy feature or for each attack. This seems pretty important for elemental advantage resistance in particular--if the intent is they get resistance to all physical damage types and eventually immunity that's a little much in my opinion. (Personally, I'd limit it to just bludgeoning, and even then it seems like a strong ability. Would it half all falling damage? Make you immune to falling? Immune to damage from things falling _on_ you?)

Elemental Energy
I feel like kinetic blade should be a default option for use with the attack action, and burn to use it as a bonus action.
So you can attack twice in melee or ranged, and spend a burn to get another attack as a bonus action, similar to a monk with flurry of blows?

Fighting Style should be called Elemental style to match the table, or vice versa.
Protection: I'd remove the earth restriction. I could definitely visualize an interposing gust of wind, tiny force field, flash of fire, tiny water wall, etc.

Stored Power/Internal Buffer These need to have the same name. ^^ I'm also not really clear on the function. Is it essentially free burn?

Expanded Element: I'd remove the ability to specialize in the same element repeatedly. It seems unnecessarily complex.
Aetheric Boost: Advantage is... good. I'd pick something else? Ignore cover? Just the reroll one damage die bonus?
When you pick a secondary element, are you able to use the kinetic blast of that secondary element, or just the composite blast?
If you can, the damage type mixes aren't really that good, they're trappings at best (other than aetheric boost, which is simply great.) They could use a minor effect added to them, or perhaps really just written as "Your kinetic blast takes on an appearance that is a mixture of all elements you have mastered," which seems like the actual goal. You could also have them be pure dtypes kinecists ordinarily can't access--something like radiant for fire+aether, add in acid, psychic, necrotic, thunder wherever they make sense?
If the main point here is the burn 2 option, then, well, ignore me. Also, does this ability potentially work with the surgeon's healing?

Annihilator
Devastating Combination:
Flurry of Annihilation seems like a bad idea. Thematically it's awesome, in actual usage it looks like a 5 minute adventuring day sort of ability--If you use it, you're going to want to take that long rest real soon.

Devastation: Is burn in the original class? I may hate burn. Burn seems like the spikeist of spike out damage mechanics. It sounds neat but i can't see it playing as anything other than "Okay! I killed everything guys. Time to sleep because I'm useless now."

Blaster
Extended Range: See, I like burn here. Here it's "I need to go a leeeetle bit further and i'm willing to bleed for it." It's situational and not obvious.
Infusion Yeah i still hate burn. I'm willing to die on that hill. Obviously the options need elaboration on their mechanics, but I'm guessing that's 2nd draft material
Gather Energy: I almost like burn again? I'd also simply make it a bonus action for well, simplicity's sake. It feels like allowing action/bonus action choice is a complexity for rare corner cases sake. I suppose you could take a bonus action, action, next turn bonus action, spend all burn, but... I don't know. I'm going to continuously argue for simplicity here. ^^
Kinetic Cover: Interesting. Burn seems okay here too? I feel like the true test would be seeing it in play. Definitely looks like a fun ability to try to use to its maximum potential.
Kinetic Beam: Huh. I don't know about the scaling, and i still hate burn. I'm just going to keep saying that. Let's see
8 burn maximum for 5 con, 2times your burn times kinecist die is... 16d10 energy damage? Lightning bolt could be dealing what, 13d8 damage in a bolt at that level? This is a little higher with a heck of a drawback.

Chirugeon
Kinetic Healer: So you burn and you can... miss your ally target? I'd definitely change the targetting on this at the very least. Or really something along the lines of:
"Burn 1: you can heal an ally within 60' an amount of hitpoints equal to your Kinetic Dice plus your dexterity modifier". If you want it to be usable during attacks... make it a bonus action?
Healing Burst: I'd change this to "creatures of your choice" personally
Controlled Healing: I'd... remove the burn cost? It seems pretty inefficient.
Healing Mastery: A simple bonus, obviously helpful, I like it. I'm not sure how much throughput they'll have at this level though, compared to a traditional healer?

Random thoughts:
Man I don't like burn, and i feel like i can be pretty critical of it here because it's in the original class. Reading it off the SRD, it looks like the max burn you can have per day is 3+ con modifier, okay, that makes it a little better, but still, hitpoints as essentially spellslots seems like it can get pretty squirrely, particularly when you can start burning through them quickly.

If it's possible to unsell you on burn (and make the class design a lot more complex for you!) I'm going to try to sell you on using... ki points, or something that works like ki points but is called something else. Then you can look at the sun soul monk for numbers. You may also want to look at the celestial warlock's healing pool for the surgeon, if I can unsell you on using the character's hitpoint pool to heal other characters.

Of course if the idea is to make it play as much as the original kineticist as possible, just in a different game system, then you kind of want to keep burn as is. You couuuuld make it sacrifice hit dice instead, but that likely has its own problems.

I think you could also make the class use dexterity and constitution for everything if you wanted. Monk allows dexterity for all attacks and wisdom for all saving throw dcs, unless you particularly want strength-based kineticists to be a thing.

Sorry if this seems like a very critical list, I think I'm hitting a mental wall of "This class was originally designed for pathfinder," and pathfinder really makes a lot of different design decisions, flexibility in build decisions vs simplicity for instance.

[thegreatone5224]

Thanks for reviewing the class! I've been thinking about all the points you made for awhile now and trying to think of a better way to accomplish it. The one thing I loved about the original kineticist from Pathfinder was that utility burn caused persistent or persist until dismissed type of effects but my DM is extremely against anything of the nature. This class basically became inspired by the PF Kineticist as opposed to a direct port.


Hit Dice: Should they be d10? 5e inflated a lot of hit point dice a step, but then, so does pathfinder. This is a very monk like class, that's d8. But it eats its own hitpoints for lunch so... \o/
Saving throws: Generally classes have one "good" save (dex, con, wis) and one bad one (str, int, cha), i.e. the fighter is strength and con saves, the cleric is wisdom and charisma saves, etc. Some classes can gain more than one good save, but it's generally a higher level ability. I'd suggest switching wisdom for charisma (for force of personality) or strength (kineticists seem like the sort of type you're not going to be able to hold in place for very long)

I've considered this a lot. With d8s at level 20 after burning everything you only have around 68 HP left which I can't really see getting you to far so a d10 would greatly correct the problem. As to the saves, I didn't realize there were good and bad saves, so I'll probably change Wis to Str.



It's unclear if the Earth kineticist chooses Bludgeoning, Piercing, or slashing when they choose their elemental energy feature or for each attack. This seems pretty important for elemental advantage resistance in particular--if the intent is they get resistance to all physical damage types and eventually immunity that's a little much in my opinion. (Personally, I'd limit it to just bludgeoning, and even then it seems like a strong ability. Would it half all falling damage? Make you immune to falling? Immune to damage from things falling _on_ you?)

It was per attack. You have a good point for the resistance/immunity portion, I didn't take that into consideration and will have revisit that a bit.



Elemental Energy
I feel like kinetic blade should be a default option for use with the attack action, and burn to use it as a bonus action.
So you can attack twice in melee or ranged, and spend a burn to get another attack as a bonus action, similar to a monk with flurry of blows?


This is something that my DM mentioned but I felt like that ability should be reserved for the Annihilator.



Fighting Style should be called Elemental style to match the table, or vice versa.
Protection: I'd remove the earth restriction. I could definitely visualize an interposing gust of wind, tiny force field, flash of fire, tiny water wall, etc.

I understand where are coming from but I was trying to prevent multiclass stacking with Fighting style. Maybe I can just say that in the feature.



Stored Power/Internal Buffer These need to have the same name. ^^ I'm also not really clear on the function. Is it essentially free burn?

It was meant for free burn



Expanded Element: I'd remove the ability to specialize in the same element repeatedly. It seems unnecessarily complex.
Aetheric Boost: Advantage is... good. I'd pick something else? Ignore cover? Just the reroll one damage die bonus?
When you pick a secondary element, are you able to use the kinetic blast of that secondary element, or just the composite blast?
If you can, the damage type mixes aren't really that good, they're trappings at best (other than aetheric boost, which is simply great.) They could use a minor effect added to them, or perhaps really just written as "Your kinetic blast takes on an appearance that is a mixture of all elements you have mastered," which seems like the actual goal. You could also have them be pure dtypes kinecists ordinarily can't access--something like radiant for fire+aether, add in acid, psychic, necrotic, thunder wherever they make sense?
If the main point here is the burn 2 option, then, well, ignore me. Also, does this ability potentially work with the surgeon's healing?

I've been considering change the fundamental mechanic of burn. I thought about making them into something like power dice that equal your kinetic blast die as many of the abilities just ask you to roll more dice of the same type. Then allowing actual "burn" to get more dice before a long rest. I've also considered just redoing most of the burn abilities to feel more like extended range in a sense.



Annihilator
Devastating Combination:
Flurry of Annihilation seems like a bad idea. Thematically it's awesome, in actual usage it looks like a 5 minute adventuring day sort of ability--If you use it, you're going to want to take that long rest real soon.

Devastation: Is burn in the original class? I may hate burn. Burn seems like the spikeist of spike out damage mechanics. It sounds neat but i can't see it playing as anything other than "Okay! I killed everything guys. Time to sleep because I'm useless now."

Given I just created an Annihilator to play in my DMs campaign, I've quickly come to realize this problem as well. I actually find it difficult to accept using burn when I'm in the front lines. If I was further away I don't think it'd be too big of a deal but when your sitting the face of the enemy, every hit point is a life saver.



Blaster
Extended Range: See, I like burn here. Here it's "I need to go a leeeetle bit further and i'm willing to bleed for it." It's situational and not obvious.
Infusion Yeah i still hate burn. I'm willing to die on that hill. Obviously the options need elaboration on their mechanics, but I'm guessing that's 2nd draft material
Gather Energy: I almost like burn again? I'd also simply make it a bonus action for well, simplicity's sake. It feels like allowing action/bonus action choice is a complexity for rare corner cases sake. I suppose you could take a bonus action, action, next turn bonus action, spend all burn, but... I don't know. I'm going to continuously argue for simplicity here. ^^
Kinetic Cover: Interesting. Burn seems okay here too? I feel like the true test would be seeing it in play. Definitely looks like a fun ability to try to use to its maximum potential.
Kinetic Beam: Huh. I don't know about the scaling, and i still hate burn. I'm just going to keep saying that. Let's see
8 burn maximum for 5 con, 2times your burn times kinecist die is... 16d10 energy damage? Lightning bolt could be dealing what, 13d8 damage in a bolt at that level? This is a little higher with a heck of a drawback.

Out of all the archetypes, this was probably my favorite one. It almost felt like a DBZ character in some regards. I understand the want to reduce complexity, and I've thought about doing this as well. The idea behind Gather Energy was basically to next fully run out of options and to minimize the burn intake without losing that precious HP. I actually thought Kinetic Beam was a bit overpowered. By group typically doesn't play with spellcasters in any game so I wasn't fully aware of lighting bolt. Seeing you compare the two I don't see Kinetic Beam being too useful when lightning bolt does the game more efficiently.


Chirugeon
Kinetic Healer: So you burn and you can... miss your ally target? I'd definitely change the targetting on this at the very least. Or really something along the lines of:
"Burn 1: you can heal an ally within 60' an amount of hitpoints equal to your Kinetic Dice plus your dexterity modifier". If you want it to be usable during attacks... make it a bonus action?
Healing Burst: I'd change this to "creatures of your choice" personally
Controlled Healing: I'd... remove the burn cost? It seems pretty inefficient.
Healing Mastery: A simple bonus, obviously helpful, I like it. I'm not sure how much throughput they'll have at this level though, compared to a traditional healer?

Yeah, we usually play as if the target doesn't resist, there is no need to roll to see if it connects so I didn't really consider it a possibility. I'm pretty shaky with anything past level 12 as we don't typically play past that level. I can theory craft a bit and Kinetic Healer can rival Power Word heal when it is used at high level spell slots but falls short of Cure Wounds as it should.



Random thoughts:
Man I don't like burn, and i feel like i can be pretty critical of it here because it's in the original class. Reading it off the SRD, it looks like the max burn you can have per day is 3+ con modifier, okay, that makes it a little better, but still, hitpoints as essentially spellslots seems like it can get pretty squirrely, particularly when you can start burning through them quickly.

If it's possible to unsell you on burn (and make the class design a lot more complex for you!) I'm going to try to sell you on using... ki points, or something that works like ki points but is called something else. Then you can look at the sun soul monk for numbers. You may also want to look at the celestial warlock's healing pool for the surgeon, if I can unsell you on using the character's hitpoint pool to heal other characters.

Of course if the idea is to make it play as much as the original kineticist as possible, just in a different game system, then you kind of want to keep burn as is. You couuuuld make it sacrifice hit dice instead, but that likely has its own problems.

I think you could also make the class use dexterity and constitution for everything if you wanted. Monk allows dexterity for all attacks and wisdom for all saving throw dcs, unless you particularly want strength-based kineticists to be a thing.

Sorry if this seems like a very critical list, I think I'm hitting a mental wall of "This class was originally designed for pathfinder," and pathfinder really makes a lot of different design decisions, flexibility in build decisions vs simplicity for instance.

I have to agree with pretty much everything you said. I've been browsing other homebrew classes for 5e and a lot of people are able to get a theme done and it feels great to read and generally seems great to play as well. Then when I go back to my conversion I can see all the short comings of using burn to fuel everything, especially if you use it too often. I was thinking about just reworking burn in general.

My new idea is to use power dice to fuel abilities while "burning" to get them back faster than normal. I feel like this would still meet the feel of the class, especially given that in path finder many of the utility wild talents didn't even require burn while infusions generally made that happen. It would allow players to spam their abilities and exhaust their resources before having to "burn" to get more out of themselves.

Finally it seems that using the fighters Extra attack may have been a poor choice as they are the only one to get soo many extra attacks without expending resources. I will probably bring it back in line with other classes which will require some balance changes to the rest of the features.

Again I greatly appreciate the feedback.