So You Want To Play A Kineticist - Pathfinder: WotR

[Music] what's going on everybody mortum here this time bringing you a look at the kineticist class in pathfinder wrath of the righteous so kineticists are quite a bit different than most other classes in the game and as a result it can be a little confusing playing them especially when it comes to things like taking feats and understanding what does and does not affect their kinetic blasts kineticists operate off of a few different unique mechanics specific to their class the primary two being kinetic blasts and burn now kineticists basically channel various amounts of energy through their body and this manifests itself as kinetic blasts which is how they actually do their damage kineticists don't actually use a physical weapon even if you are playing the archetype kinetic knight which uses a melee form of the kinetic blast you are still not actually using a physical weapon so first things first let's start talking about what a kinetic blast actually is and the answer is it's a lot of things or at least it can be it can be a melee attack it can be a ranged attack it can be a touch attack it can be combinations of those things it can be a melee touch attack it can be a range touch attack or it can just be a standard ranged or melee attack so that works depending on which element you've chosen because kineticists will choose an element at character creation which is their starting element they will pick two more later at 7th and 15th level that's important for reasons we'll get into but we'll start with the basics depending on the element you chose you'll have access to either an energy or a physical blast at the start of the game or potentially depending on your archetype you'll be forced to pick a specific one but that's important to understand because what determines the type of a kinetic blast and the type of attack role you were therefore making depends on the type of kinetic blast you actually chose here kinetic blasts are typically physical or energy physical blasts are just a standard ranged attack however they can be melee if you are using the kinetic blade infusion now that is primarily for the kinetic knight most other kineticists will not be using that at all but i just want to mention here that it is a possibility to use this in melee now most kinetic blasts are going to be ranged attacks and again either energy or physical physical again is just a standard ranged attack emphasis on the word standard you cannot make full attacks as a kineticist that is important when it comes to looking at feats and things because while even if you are using the melee version kinetic blast can in fact benefit from regular feats that affect weapons even though we are not actually wielding a weapon any feat that affects you making a full attack is useless because you cannot make a full attack you can only make standard ranged or potentially touch attacks now kinetic blasts themselves require you to have at least one free hand to use it however for reasons we'll get into later you typically won't even have a shield or anything in your off hand though technically in order to use the blast you will need one free hand now regardless of which type of blast you're using i do want to mention you will always do full damage to swarms who are typically immune to regular physical damage but even if you are using a physical kinetic blast you will actually do full damage to a swarm regardless but that said let's talk about the difference between physical and energy blasts physical blasts are ranged attacks they will deal damage equal to one di6 plus one plus the kineticist constitution modifier typically speaking its constitution depending on your archetype that may change to a different type of attribute but baseline its constitution furthermore the damage for any energy blast will increase by one d6 plus one for every two kineticist levels beyond the first so at third level you'd be doing two di6 plus two moreover and then we have energy blasts energy blasts are range touch attacks they get their damage the same way for the most part however it's one d6 plus half the kineticist constitution modifier and you don't get that extra plus one at the end and then we have the slightly more complicated composite blasts composite blasts combine elements to form a new type of blast so this will happen when you start hitting level 7 in level 15 and you can pick a second element so for instance say you have water or air or something like that then you would do a charged water blast which is electricity and physical damage in that case but the crux of composite blasts is it will actually do both types of damage however typically speaking the blast itself is still either physical or energy just as a baseline but you'll do separate types of damage plus it will do a great deal more damage because it's usually about double because you get the damage from both sources now you might think composite blasts are just at a baseline better than regular blasts and while damage wise that is certainly true that's where we start looking at a concept called burn so in order to basically keep kineticists from doing just insane amounts of damage and frankly just being a little more interesting we have the concept of burn burn as a concept is when the kineticist is over exerting themselves to channel more power now typically speaking everything a kineticist does cost burn however those costs can be reduced even down to zero thus mitigating the effects of burn through various means however having burn or not having it can be beneficial depending on your archetype and the things you are trying to do but the important thing to remember is that burn is what makes the kineticist also a glass cannon because even if you have a very high constitution because you want obviously a decent constitution since most of this runs off of your constitution modifier you will still be a glass cannon because of what burn does when you accept points of burn you take one per character level points of non-lethal damage this damage can't be healed by any means other than resting which will remove all burn and its non-lethal damage it can't be reduced or redirected if you are incapable of taking this damage without dying you simply cannot take it because it won't let you accept the burn you can also technically only take one per round though that limit does rise as you level up to ultimately two at six level and then an additional point every three levels after that a kineticist can also only take a total number of burn equal to three plus your constitution modifier now that by itself makes it a little interesting but then we have elemental overflow elemental overflow is unfortunately not actually on your class sheets when you're looking at character creation you get it at third level and you can find it by looking under your abilities you will get it but it's not actually shown at the class menu which can make a little confusing but at level three you'll pick up elemental overflow which does a bunch of stuff and modifies what you can do with burn so basically whenever you take burn you'll receive a bonus to your attack rolls with your kinetic blast equal to the total number of points of burn you currently have to a maximum of plus one for every three kineticist levels you possess so if you were a level six kineticist and you had two points of burn you would get a plus two to your attack rolls however keep in mind your max health is going down with every bit of burn because of that non-lethal damage you're taking that cannot be healed as you level up this starts having even more effects at six level when you have at least three points of burn you will gain a plus two size bonus to your physical ability scores of your choice physical ability scores being strength decks and constitution you also get the chance to ignore the effects of a critical hit or sneak attack equal to five percent for every current point of burn at eleventh level with five points of burn the size bonuses increase to plus four for one attribute and plus two for a second and then at sixteenth level with seven points of burn these bonuses can be plus six to one plus four to another and then plus two to the remaining ability score now that by itself is like the very basics but we're not even done going over the basics because then we have the more interesting class stuff like infusions so while those are the base mechanics infusions alter your kinetic blasts in various ways to make them more interesting while your standard melee kinetic blast is just like an attack with a weapon and your standard ranged attack is similar to an arrow infusions alter that so it can be then like a cone effect or perhaps a straight line effect or a spindle as they call it as well as many other things if you are not a kinetic knight this is where you will get your potential melee attack infusion though i wouldn't recommend that just generally for regular kineticists you can also get aoe blast infusions that will change it now these do a few things they force you to take burn in exchange for actually being able to use the infusions on top of your blast infusions can also do more basic stuff like just grant you extra range it can increase the range of your blast from 30 to 50 feet for instance but modifying your blasts in any way requires burn composite blasts require you to take burn now you can find your burn just above your ability bar right where your spell menu would normally be and if you mouse over it you can see the total amount you are allowed to have and the total amount that you actually have now once you start hitting enough burn to actually get your elemental overflow bonuses they will actually pop up as abilities in your ability flyout menu that you will then need to activate to actually get the bonuses there so when we're actually looking at the little fly-out menus of our blasts the little number in the right corner that normally represents spell slots for most classes actually represents the points of burn using that would cost us so right now these are all at zero why is that that is because we are using gathering power gather power essentially lets you channel your own power to reduce the costs of burn for what you are doing potentially up to quite a bit which varies by the type of gather power you're using as well as your actual class and archetype so gather power low lets you use a move action to gather energy and reduce the cost of a blast by one though never lower than zero to be clear medium lets you use a full round action which is your entire round so you wouldn't get to attack that round to gather energy to reduce a blast cost by two and then high lets you make a full round action and a move action so moving into your next turn now to reduce the total burn cost by three this is important to understand and it's a big reason why we can never make a full attack as a kineticist because hey all of it's just a standard action mind you are connect blasts however using gather power takes at least your move action as well i will say there are mythic abilities that will actually cause your character to take even more burn cost away by just using the same thing for instance kinetic overcharge will turn gather power low into something that takes two points away instead of just one so this is where you kind of start to see the full picture as a kineticist what we're basically going to be doing is channeling elemental energy together and separately into our blasts those blasts are going to potentially cause us burn depending on how much of infusions and things we've used which can then alter our kinetic blast to do very interesting things now kinetic blast by themselves as you can see here will do a ridiculous amount of damage but you are very much so a glass cannon you will only get one attack per round that means your chance to hit is everything as a kineticist because if you miss your nuke then it doesn't do you any good so mitigating your attacks can be everything that's why a lot of people like to use the energy blasts because energy blasts unlike the physical blasts will use touch ac which is typically much lower than regular ac ac of course being armor class which is effectively the number you have to clear in order to actually hit something touch ac is much lower because that just means the attack that you are performing really just has to touch the target it doesn't actually have to let get past their arm or anything it just has to touch them now this is where i want to talk about feeds generally speaking your blast will benefit from feats you can pick up weapon focus for kinetic blast for instance which you definitely want to do because it's the only thing your character is going to be using and also i did forget to mention dublin back real quick gather power is actually something that requires both of your hands to be free which is why typically you won't even be using a shield as a kineticist because while you can use your blast with one hand free what you cannot do is use gather power without both hands free but that brings us to our feats now that we've kind of talked about how the class actually works feats are a little more touch and go some of them apply some of them do not you have to be careful with the wording on some of them because things like point blank shot will actually affect your ranged attack rolls for this because all point blank shot does is give a plus one bonus on attack and damage rolls with ranged weapons within 30 feet this will give you a bonus to your kinetic blast because it is a ranged attack roll and that's all point blank shot needs you to do in that same vein precise shot will also affect your ranged attack rolls with your blast because you are technically shooting at an opponent engaged in melee and thus gives you a ton of chance to hit because you're not taking a -4 penalty on your ranged attack roll however you do have to be careful because any feat that requires you to actually use a physical weapon or make a full attack to receive the benefits of that feat is unusable for a kineticist because you do not have a physical weapon nor will you be making a full attack other feats are undesirable simply because they make you take penalties to your chance to hit for instance deadly aim will affect your ranged attack role of the kineticist however you wouldn't want to take deadly aim in my opinion because it requires you to take a penalty to your chance to hit or your attack roll and again we're only getting one attack per round so if you miss you just miss and while you do a ton of damage as a kineticist missing that attack roll is simply not a good time so i personally would never use feats like deadly aim especially if you're running a physical blast build because the because the less likely you are to hit as a kineticist the worst off you are now that said we are not done yet now we are going to talk about wild talents wild talents are kineticist talents basically they are often tied to your elements that you have chosen as a kineticist they are similar to spells but they are drawn from your psychic talent which is what gives you your kinetic blasts anyway now again what you can choose here actually very much so depends on the element you picked though there are a few that are universal kind of regardless for instance skilled kineticist which gives you a bonus equal to half your kineticist level on skill checks that your primary element added to your class skill list everybody can pick that kind of regardless kinetic restoration which lets you basically use lesser restoration but only on yourself and at the cost of burn or for instance kinetic revivification which will let you essentially use the breath of life spell on an ally who died within two rounds but that one's only tied to the water element so with that out of the way let's talk the archetypes for the kineticist and what they actually change so base kineticist is kind of everything i just mentioned to you but then we have these six archetypes first up we have blood kineticist this is going to give you some specific infusions to replace some of your infusion choices as well as forcing you to take the water element at level 1 and the water element a second time at level 7. now this is an interesting one because the blood kineticist primarily revolves around physical ranged attack roles with a first water blast and then at level seven your blood blast which is a composite blast that deals exclusively one physical type of damage which is unusual for composite blasts it says it deals electricity damage but that is not true it only deals bludgeoning damage but we also get unique infusions that allow us to deal bleed damage as well as cause our kinetic healer wild talent to actually not cost any burn and then at level 20 they become immune to bleed poisons disease sickened and nauseated and then we have the dark elementalist dark elementalists actually use their burn as well as a couple of things a little differently so for starters they use their intelligence instead of their constitution modifier and they get different savings rows than the rest of the kineticists so they have a high will score but a low fortitude and reflex which is usually the reverse moreover they get soul power as it's called which kind of changes the burn up so a dark elementalist instead of using regular burn can only take three points of burn period regardless of what their intelligence modifier does what their intelligence modifier actually does for them is that a full round action they can gather up the souls of dead creatures and unload their burn onto those spirits and their bonuses from elemental overflow actually come from how many times a day they've done that so it kind of just changes all those things around just a little bit for a lot of flavor though functionally it largely works the same way except you only get three burn and you're using rack soles which allows you to offload your burn onto souls which then gives you your elemental overflow bonuses then we have elemental engine elemental engine in my opinion is one of the best kineticist archetypes period simply because it is the base class with extras for the most part they just lose a supercharged ability at level 11 however it gets replaced with better stuff so starting at level three they will get their elemental overflow like normal however when they are at maximum burn it doubles those bonuses and when they use gather power they reduce their burn cost by an additional point just as a class which then can stack even further with the mythic ability that also reduces burn costs so elemental engines can just do a ton of stuff and not take any burn at all even when they are at maximum burn which is where they want to be because then they get double attack and damage roll bonuses so this is a class that revolves around basically having maxed out burn all the time and still being able to use their abilities in spite of that then we have kinetic knight so kinetic knight will instead of being able to use ranged blasts at all they are forced to use the kinetic blade infusion at all times kinetic blade basically turns your kinetic blast into a melee attack moreover the kinetic knight here will actually be able to make full attack actions in order to make regular melee attacks with their kinetic blade as that is kind of the point moreover they get the ability to use like medium and heavy as compared to just the regular light armor that most other kineticists get simply because they have a very high dexterity bonus normally so basically it's kind of like a melee version of the kineticist however you do lose quite a bit for instance most kineticists actually get metakinesis as well which is just like metamagic however the kinetic knight will not be able to use metakinesis as well as loses several infusion options and we have overwhelming soul overwhelming soul changes the constitution modifier requirement to charisma however you can't accept burn at all but through various means they get the option to reduce burn more than normal so they get the overwhelming power ability which actually just replaces elemental overflow and gives you a plus one bonus to your attack and damage rolls with your kinetic blasts however it won't apply to anything that does not apply the damage bonus from elemental overflow such as kinetic blade which is the main downside to all of the melee kinetic stuff by the way it simply doesn't get the bonus from elemental overflow then we have the psychokineticist they swap out their constitution modifier requirement for wisdom and their burn mechanic changes to mind burn rather than taking damage from their burn costs they take a penalty to their saving throws they can take an amount to burn equal to their wisdom modifier just flat just their flat wisdom modifier otherwise it works the same but again the penalties go to your saving throws rather than give you damage which on higher levels of play like unfair that's a big deal because you're not really going to want to have low saving throws but that's kind of what the archetypes themselves do so now let's talk about some mythic stuff real quick and kind of some suggestions so for the mythic stuff you might be wondering what mythic path you should pick as a kineticist because they again use their powers very differently so i want to mention that technically there's no wrong choice all of the mythic paths are designed to work with every class however you won't necessarily get all the bonuses from every path depending on what you pick for instance the angel mythic path gives you sword of heaven which allows you to imbue weapons with extra power though it specifically mentions that you have to be holding that imbued weapon and then demon for instance allows you to turn into other demons and stuff which isn't really useful for us when we're trying to use our kinetic blasts and they also get bonuses to natural weapons which as someone who typically wouldn't be in melee isn't good for us either though you will actually still get the benefits from demonic rage lich can be pretty decent as you will still get your summoned companion that you get from lich powers as well as all the undead companions you will still get to choose your lich powers which honestly do all sorts of stuff that can affect things that aren't your kinetic blast and therefore are still pretty useful however that said personally i think the best choice for a kineticist is actually the azada and that is simply because kineticists can actually make use of everything that the azada offers the dragon companion they can use the bard songs most of the azada superpowers are still relevant to the kineticist they also get to share teamwork sheets with their entire party so azada is just a very strong pick for kineticist in my opinion though again to stress there is not technically a wrong decision now as for mythic abilities and feats mythic feats are basically the same as the actual feats themselves that kind of just carries over they're just slightly improved versions for the most part that said for your mythic abilities you want to focus on the kinetic specific abilities because most of that is going to give you the stuff that's actually going to affect you such as again the overcharge ability which reduces your burn costs by using gather power as well as abilities that will let you use two separate infusions at the same time as well as an ability that will let you use two substance infusions at the same time substance infusions are usually the infusions you get from your archetype as opposed to the infusions you choose as you level up there you go guys there is a look at the kineticist and kind of some general guidelines to how they work and how to play them overall it is a much more complicated class than just the vast majority of the classes in pathfinder but that said they're one of my favorites they make incredible damage builds that is what they do best now personally i don't like kinetic knight but it's okay but kineticists by themselves just do a ton of range damage if you set them up properly but again they only get that one attack per round so that's kind of their weak point is they're really only going to get that one attack and if they miss it you know sucks to be you so you really have to focus on making that attack role as successful as possible every time which is why most people tend to lead into the energy builds some of which don't even require an attack role at all but the ones that do require attack role typically focus on touch ac which makes them even more likely to hit because touch ac is lower than regular ac now i want to leave you guys with the probably biggest tip i can give you for playing a kineticist and that is simply play them in turn based while i certainly enjoy real time with paws with a kineticist you have to manage your kineticists infusions and everything to manage their burn to manage their elemental overflow everything they do revolves around how many move or full round actions they're taking with gather power and all of that is much more easily managed because all of your infusions or toggle abilities that you turn on and off per blast to manage your burn in things which is just so much easier to do in turn based i simply do not recommend playing a kineticist in real time with paws it's going to make it much more difficult for you but with all that said guys i hope you enjoyed the guide if you found it helpful or anything like that please leave a comment down below i'd love to hear about it like comment share all that youtube jazz regardless of any of it truly just thank you so much for watching may you wander in wisdom and have an amazing day [Music]

Channel: Mortismal Gaming

Views: 110,433

Keywords: Mortym, Mortismal Gaming, Pathfinder, WotR, Wrath of the Righteous, Kineticist, Build, Gameplay, Guide, Mechanics, How To

Id: mXXrit69YGY

Length: 23min 45sec (1425 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 19 2021