Kineticists possibly only saving grace

[mehs]

One of the main things wrong with kineticists is that they either need to turret or accept burn to actually be able to use their abilities, and while they are hyped as an endurance blaster, they run out of burn really quickly if they can't turret. To further this, burn can't be recovered by healing even though it exists as damage.

However, a full night's rest recovers burn, and this is where I believe I have found a way to actually play kineticists as having large amount of resources. Kineticists, being occult weirdo's and not casters, don't have any provision stating that burn can only be recovered once per day, so an item like a ring of sustenance or other which suitably shortens time required to get the benefits of resting could potentially allow kineticists to recover burn multiple times per day. At base it would still take 2 hours, but I'm also going off of an assumption that there is an item even better suited to this task than the ring of sustenance.

Thoughts?

[Silvercrys]

As far as I can find, two hours is the limit without 3rd party stuff or a generous interpretation of how healing (doesn't) work on the Astral Plane.

Some other options are:

Verdant Bloodline Sorcerer 3 (can get through feats or Variant Multiclass, I believe) [APG]

Unchained Monk 4 [Pathfinder Unchained]

Nap Stack, a 3rd level Cleric/Oracle spell [APG]

The Awakened from Stasis trait [PPC: People of the Stars].

[Dekion]

Given the specific wording of the ability and the item, I would say, that at first glance, you are correct. However, an argument could be made that the verbiage doesn't state that resting more than one 2 hour period in a day is equivalent to 8 hours of rest each time. Therefore, if you rest up to 8 hours, it's still only 8 hours of rest. It would truly depend upon you DM/GM interpretation, so you would have to ask them.

I personally want the complexity and the quasi-unique design of the Kineticist to work, and given their overall challenges, I would probably allow this...I mean 2 hours is still 2 hours, and it's still a sacrifice, even aided by a magic item that really only helps outside of combat. I'm also not sure the rest of the party would like stopping to rest for 2 hour stretches between fights, so it presents logistical challenges as well. In the end, I don't think your plan is exactly game-breaking.

[mehs]

Definitely helps better in situations where party has Crafters, party is travelling and you don't have to drive, or possibly you have abilities that let you act while sleeping.

Possibly combine with a custom magic item that can caat "keep watch" at will. Would let you include any time not doing "vigorous activity such as fighting" as time towards the 2 hr refresh rate.

[StSword]

I suggest looking at the legendary kineticist (http://spheresofpower.wikidot.com/legendary-kineticist#toc10), which has the in built solution- battle burn. Burn that goes away after five minutes.

But yes, I find burn like mechanics annoying. Even a wizard who uses up all their spells for the day doesn't fall in a coma for eight hours.

[mehs]

I suggest looking at the legendary kineticist (http://spheresofpower.wikidot.com/legendary-kineticist#toc10), which has the in built solution- battle burn. Burn that goes away after five minutes.

But yes, I find burn like mechanics annoying. Even a wizard who uses up all their spells for the day doesn't fall in a coma for eight hours.

Am trying to keep it as much as possibly to RAW friendly solutions

[Kurald Galain]

Am trying to keep it as much as possibly to RAW friendly solutions

It's pretty straightforward to just play a draconic sorcerer. You can't quite blast all day, but you can easily blast every single round of combat without running out.

Or failing that, use the 3.5 Warlock.

[KillianHawkeye]

But yes, I find burn like mechanics annoying. Even a wizard who uses up all their spells for the day doesn't fall in a coma for eight hours.

Assuming you put a little thought into having a lot of hit points, this shouldn't really ever happen. With a limit to burn of 3+Con modifier and a class with a d8 hit die, accruing burn that exceeds your maximum hp total should be almost impossible. Take the Toughness feat or your favored class bonus to hp and it's pretty much guaranteed to never happen.

In my own experience, burn isn't as big a deal as it looks on paper. Similar to how my experiences playing an item crafting wizard in 3.5 proved that paying xp for stuff isn't as big of a deal as it seems, actually. Don't forget that having a few points of burn actually makes you better at your job.

[ZamielVanWeber]

The problem with burn's HP reduction is that it means you have a lot less HP than you appear to. 3+Con mod vs d8 isn't suicidally low in PF but it does mean huge chunks of HP will be constantly missing and you can easily end up looking like you have a con of 10 on a bad day.

For some reason the kineticist devs failed to learn from the 3.5 wilder's mistakes and created a class feature whose downside scaled to class level but upside did not.

[mehs]

Funny thing happened. I am a kineticist in a party with a master summoner. While we did point buy, we also were able to roll to generate 3 numbers and pick one for a single ability score. So I got a 17 and put it in wisdom. Along with this, I have a trait to make sense motive a class skill and i took most of the general kineticist class skills.
The funny thing is that the summoner is trying to be a cop, but complaining that my guy is also a cop (which he would know if he ever read the backstory I was required to write) and has slightly higher bonuses to cop skills like perception, intimidate, sense motive (he has no ranks in intimidate).

tl;dr, a master summoner is complaining about a non optimized water kineticist (no archetype, no kinetic blade) being stronger than him.