(Updated) (10th level Fire Kineticist ) Really could use some Advice

[Nosta]

I Want to make a cool pyromancer character but I am unsure what is needed to be not just good but great at using fire

My Race

I am unsure (1: i know con is needed and i know a good one stat wise is Dwarf but i'm just not a fan of them)

I was considering ifrit for flavor but idk if its worth it

and lastly human cause well Human

I could use advice on my talents both infusion and utility

[StSword]

1- You should choose your element for the type of damage you want to do and what elemental defense you want.

While there are general trends, that really depends on your DM.

The ability to do fire damage is great if your DM will throw a lot of cold creatures at you, less so if they throw a lot of fire resistant or immune creatures, yes?

Are you limited to official elements or can you stray into 3pp? Here's a link to a wiki (http://spheresofpower.wikidot.com/elements) that has not all, but quite a few of third party elements that have been produced.

Of the official elements, all things being equal, Void is probably the best offense wise it can do negative energy damage that ignores the immunity of the undead, the defense is rather conditional, though, a chance to ignore critical hits/sneak attack damage, emotional affects, and negative energy resistance. But you will be wearing heavy armor and a shield with this archetype...

Defense wise, the benefit of water will overlap not stack with any enhancement bonus you have to armor, so you can either use that to get armor with low enhancement bonuses but stacked with armor qualities, if your DM allows one to arrange for that sort of thing of course, or spend your money elsewhere.

A kinetic blade is a kinetic blade is a kinetic blade, so you can describe it as looking like anything you want, but it's not going to affect any stats.

As for your last question, I don't think of myself as enough of an expert on kineticists to have suggestions.

I am however aware of multiple guides, so perhaps this one (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?432093-Sucking-Counts-as-Airbending-Right-A-Guide-to-the-Kineticist) or this one (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?436943-Mastering-the-Elements-N-Jolly-s-guide-to-the-Pathfinder-Kineticist) would prove helpful to you?

[Kris Moonhand]

I second Void, though Air is very good for crowd control. With Air's Reach, you can double the range of your whip, giving you a 20 foot threatened area as a medium creature that you can use to perform trips and such.

EDIT: Oh, and if your DM allows the Porphyra elements, Time is a very good one for a solo melee kineticist. The ability to self-haste, massive Initiative bonuses, and single-target control Infusions are absolutely choice.

[StSword]

I second Void, though Air is very good for crowd control. With Air's Reach, you can double the range of your whip, giving you a 20 foot threatened area as a medium creature that you can use to perform trips and such.

EDIT: Oh, and if your DM allows the Porphyra elements, Time is a very good one for a solo melee kineticist. The ability to self-haste, massive Initiative bonuses, and single-target control Infusions are absolutely choice.

And Time has pretty choice simple blasts and elemental defense- untyped damage so it ignores damage reduction and energy resistances, and a miss chance is nothing to sneeze at.

[Rynjin]

1.) I'm going to go against general consensus so far and say Earth and Air are probably the best choices.

Void does not, as those guys said, ignore an undead's immunity to negative energy damage for one thing:





Element void; Type simple blast (Sp); Level —; Burn 0
Blast Type energy; Damage negative energy

You blast your foe with negative energy. This blast and its composite blasts never heal creatures, even if they would normally be healed by negative energy (though such creatures still take no damage).

Earth and Air provide much better Utility Talents than Void, and much, MUCH better Infusions than Void. The only unique Void utility talent that is worthwhile to me is See In Darkness; everything else it shares with other elements like Fire and Air. Its Infusions fare even worse, being generally very weak.

Earth and Air both provide low level, effective AoE options and unique and powerful Infusions to help overcome a variety of obstacles. Void does not. Both also have better Defense talents.

2.) Your Kinetic Blade can look like literally anything you want. However, there is no mechanical benefit or drawback to it. A sewing needle of concentrated electrical energy and an enormous hammer of the same both do your normal Blast damage as appropriate for Kinetic Blade.

3.) For Earth: Impale, Magnetic, Rare-Metal, Entangling, and Fragmentation are standouts. For Air: Synaptic, Torrent, and Gusting are good. You get most of the Universal Infusions that are good for free as a Kinetic Knight, which is rad.

[StSword]

Mea culpa.

If third party material is available, the Aetheric Assailant has abilities that are rather synergistic with a kinetic knight.

The ability to sacrifice the ability to hit touch AC with kinetic blade to channel the kinetic blade through a weapon, to add weapon damage and make all class abilities, feats, magical enhancements, etc that apply to the weapon apply to the attack.- Kinetic wielding

The ability to channel a kinetic blast into a shield to gain energy resistance, or a miss chance with aether.

To make cleave attacks with kinetic blade.

To use kinetic blade to wield weapons from afar.- Improved kinetic wielding

To channel their kinetic blast into their armor for damage reduction.

And finally, with their capstone ability at level five, get a free trip attack when getting a critical hit when using kinetic wielding or improved kinetic wielding.

It doesn't give talents, but it does advance kinetic blast damage.

Of course, that all requires that 3PP material is allowed, and that one cares enough to buy the book.

[torrasque666]

To those saying it can be any weapon, RAW no. It does have limits. But then again, its not like it inherits any properties or anything so there's no reason to actually apply said limits.

[Rynjin]

To those saying it can be any weapon, RAW no. It does have limits. But then again, its not like it inherits any properties or anything so there's no reason to actually apply said limits.

Yeah, technically it's a "non-reach light or one-handed weapon" but a GM would have to be really petty to enforce that given it literally doesn't matter.

[Nosta]

so I updated and changed too wanting to do a pyromancer character

please see opening post

[Silvercrys]

I Want to make a cool pyromancer character but I am unsure what is needed to be not just good but great at using fire

My Race

I am unsure (1: i know con is needed and i know a good one stat wise is Dwarf but i'm just not a fan of them)

I was considering ifrit for flavor but idk if its worth it

and lastly human cause well Human

I could use advice on my talents both infusion and utilityFor races, some of the Tiefling Alternate Heritages have Con bonuses; Devil-spawn is probably my pick, +2 Con, +2 Wis, -2 Cha. You can also trade your elemental resistances for resistance to one element and a +1 natural armor bonus, and your Spell-like Ability for a +2 to Initiative.

Human is also fine, as usual, bonus feats are always strong.

Ifrit works, but the Ifrit heritage with a Con bonus (Lavasoul) has a Dex penalty which is almost as bad as a Con penalty since you use Dex to aim and for initiative, so regular Ifrit is probably better. You can get a racial trait with a +4 initiative bonus and another one that can combo with the infusion that can catch people on fire to give you +1 to your next attack roll when you catch them on fire, which isn't bad (though the infusion that catches people on fire ~probably isn't very good even with the +1 to hit from Fire Starter, 1d6 damage per turn isn't much past level 3 or so).

As far as infusions, you probably want the two Utilities that give you flight (I think you can take one at 6 and the other at 10, Flame Jet and Greater Flame Jet?) but I haven't played Kineticists before so other than that I'm not much help, sorry.

[KillianHawkeye]

So... are you starting at level 10?

I've been playing a pyrokineticist for a while but I'm only level 7 (started from 1). Just got my Expanded Element class feature so now I have EVEN MORE FIRE!!! MWA HA HA HA HA!!!

*Ahem*

Anyway, burning infusion is cheap and always good fun. Fan of flames is a good shape at low level, but I've got Extended Range and Eruption now, too. Basically, though, you probably want at least a few different options for shape infusions.

For utility talents, you have some more room to choose. Flame Jet is a must if you want to be able to fly like Iron Man (and get Greater Flame Jet if you're already going to be level 10). Personally, I'm also a fan of Heat Adaptation.

As for race, anything with a Con boost is best for the extra hit points and because it affects pretty much everything. Human is fine for that, though. Remember that you can boost your physical ability scores even further with elemental overflow as you accumulate more burn.

Feats. Take Extra Wild Talent as much as you can, unless you need combat feats or something like that. Are you still going to be a Kinetic Knight or just a regular Kineticist? I play pretty much with just ranged powers, and everything is a touch attack unless you combine fire with some other element, so I didn't need any combat feats whatsoever.

That's all I have off the top of my head. Have fun and set stuff on fire! :smallwink:

[Nosta]

So... are you starting at level 10?

I've been playing a pyrokineticist for a while but I'm only level 7 (started from 1). Just got my Expanded Element class feature so now I have EVEN MORE FIRE!!! MWA HA HA HA HA!!!

*Ahem*

Anyway, burning infusion is cheap and always good fun. Fan of flames is a good shape at low level, but I've got Extended Range and Eruption now, too. Basically, though, you probably want at least a few different options for shape infusions.

For utility talents, you have some more room to choose. Flame Jet is a must if you want to be able to fly like Iron Man (and get Greater Flame Jet if you're already going to be level 10). Personally, I'm also a fan of Heat Adaptation.

As for race, anything with a Con boost is best for the extra hit points and because it affects pretty much everything. Human is fine for that, though. Remember that you can boost your physical ability scores even further with elemental overflow as you accumulate more burn.

Feats. Take Extra Wild Talent as much as you can, unless you need combat feats or something like that. Are you still going to be a Kinetic Knight or just a regular Kineticist? I play pretty much with just ranged powers, and everything is a touch attack unless you combine fire with some other element, so I didn't need any combat feats whatsoever.

That's all I have off the top of my head. Have fun and set stuff on fire! :smallwink:
I'll be starting level 5 but most the games my group play don't go pass level 10

And what do mean more fire? O.o

[StSword]

I'll be starting level 5 but most the games my group play don't go pass level 10

And what do mean more fire? O.o

Taking expanded element- fire, so you get the double fire composite blast "blue flame blast" to do twice the fire damage per kinetic blast.

Since you've chosen your element, I just wanted to warn you that fire resistance and immunity is seen as rather common in Pathfinder, so be sure to take some talents that allow you to alleviate that problem.

[JerichoPenumbra]

Not an optimal suggestion, but one that I think would be fun is if your GM allows variant multiclassing, VMC into monk and take the Elemental Ascetic (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/alternative-rule-systems/occult-adventures/occult-classes/kineticist/archetypes/paizo-llc-kineticist-archetypes/elemental-ascetic-kineticist-archetype/) archetype. Flurry of blows with flaming fists!

[Manyasone]

Well, if you want to play an ifrit fire kinetic, maybe consider reading this (http://spheresofpower.wikidot.com/elemental-brethren) archetype

[KillianHawkeye]

I'll be starting level 5 but most the games my group play don't go pass level 10

Okay, so you can't fly or take Extra Wild Talent yet, but keep those in mind when leveling up.

The most important thing about level 5 is that you unlock infusion specialization. This lets you reduce the burn cost of a kinetic blast that has infusions applied by one (not one for each infusion, just one overall). This basically makes it free to add burning to all your attacks, or to use a shape infusion whenever you want (or to make more expensive infusions cheaper later on). If you combine it with using a move action to Gather Power, you can do both without accumulating burn.

You also get the Empower metakinesis, which isn't an infusion, so you'll need to use Gather Power if you want to pass up the burn cost.

As for Gather Power itself, personally I haven't used it more than the initial Move Action to reduce burn by one point. I feel like doing more than that costs too much from an action economy standpoint. It's better to not move in a round and still attack than to spend a whole round charging up for a bigger attack the next turn.

Keeping track of your various ways of reducing burn will be an important aspect to keeping your attacks as powerful as you need them to be. But don't be afraid of burn. Having a little is actually a good thing, as you get a bonus on attacks and damage from Elemental Overflow, and starting at 6th level having at least 3 burn will start boosting your ability scores.

And yeah, if you come across a situation where burning everything doesn't work, you'll have to rely on your party members.

[Rynjin]

When you hit level 7, I highly recommend you take any Expanded Element other than fire. Pretty much anything is better than dual element fire, since they have no options that bypass energy resistance in an efficient way.

The Composite Blasts for other elements are pretty neat too. Grabbing Earth would let you shot magma, or Water for steam.

Keep in mind playing a Kineticist that Blasts are subject to Spell Resistance, so using Energy blasts gives you THREE points of failure (AC, SR, and Energy Resistance), so having a physical Blast backup is essential.