Why Kineticist is Awesome in Pathfinder 2e

welcome back everyone I'm the Bella gamer and we're back with another why this class is awesome which has been a while almost a year actually I think it has just been a year since the last why this class is awesome and I know this video is kind of coming out well after everyone else has done kineticist videos you're here because you either want to hear more about kineticist or you want to hear my take on it and as well I'm Gonna State this is not a in-depth video on all things kinetuses this is not like a two hour complete rundown of all their impulses or Feats or all that kind of stuff I'm just going to try to synthesize down to its base elements why the kineticist is such an interesting and fun class and as well that's kind of just a thing about the series is I initially made the series to really highlight the great things about many of the classes and kinetosis I feel a lot of people are already really hyped for and they don't really need this video but for people who might be getting into the game a little bit later and who don't know about the classes I think this is going to be the perfect video so if you could all do me a favor share this video around to anyone who's new who is looking into the classes of Pathfinder I'd really appreciate it so let's go ahead and get started so the kineticist is such an interesting class because it's essentially a hybrid between a fighter and a magic Caster but not like a Marcus it has fighter-like qualities while not necessarily being a fighter class and it has magic like qualities even though it's not a full magic class and that will make a lot more sense as we get into it but I will state the kineticist is the only class in the game and probably the only class ever to use Constitution as its major key attribute for the class now if you're not familiar with Pathfinder key attributes essentially where most of your class features kind of works out of so if you're a wizard your spell DC's your spell modifiers all that kind of stuff is based off of your intelligence and if you're a sorcerer it's based off of your charisma and for the kineticist it's based off of constitution meaning that a optimized or more optimized style of kineticist is going to have more HP than most classes in the game at least all the eight or lesser you know classes not including the few classes that go up to 10 or even 12 hp like the Barbarian I will also state that no matter how much you really invest in your Constitution as a kineticist it's not going to be the healthiest class in the game a barbarian who at least manages to get to 18 at any point in their Adventure is just gonna have more HP than you the HP is not the point of the kineticist it's more of a holdover from when kineticists in first edition used to have this burn mechanic where they could damage themselves to empower their abilities they don't have any more but this constitution is kind of a layover from that regardless there are people who wanted a constitution-based class and so we have a constitution-based class so you might be asking why Constitution what does it do for me Constitution is one of the less used attributes in the game up until this point really only affecting your character's HP and their fortitude DC well for the kineticist the Constitution modifier goes into their class DC which is something that all classes have but the kineticist is unique because it is the class the only class in the game currently that gets up to Legendary Proficiency in their class DC and they have a higher class DC overall compared to all other classes higher on average for their level so it doesn't really matter if you're focusing fully on Constitution you'll still be able to do all the things that Canada's wants to do because your major class DCS and abilities are going to be focused on your Constitution modifier though this does cause some issues as it doesn't make it really good for diversifying your character if you want to have other skill sets other abilities you're going to have to invest in some other attributes how a sorcerer or a Bard who uses Charisma can go into social skills more easily a kineticist is going to have a little bit more of a struggle but overall I don't think that's a big negative on the class it's just something that when you're starting the class for the first time you're really going to have to understand that in order to do things outside of kineticist you're going to not be as good as some of the other classes and that's okay because you get a lot of Versatility and utility through kineticist so kineticist is a class that allows you to gain magic like abilities without having to worry about spell slots they have such good utility due to this and they actually get more Feats than any other class in the game or at least Feats relating to their class and class abilities this allows them to have a pretty big toolkit to allow them to do a lot of things but let's go over it kind of Step by Step so you can understand what I'm talking about so when you start off as a kineticist the first thing you're really going to decide is what Gates or how many gates you want so there's two styles of kineticists at least at level one you can either be a single gate kineticist which has only a singular element they can pull Feats from an abilities and manipulate but they have enhanced abilities around that getting something called a impulse Junction which allows you to alter your care character whenever you use an Impulse with the trait of your singular element for instance if you have air you can actually stride or fly if you have a fly speed up to half your speed before you activate an Impulse whenever you're using an air impulse that's a very big thing and you could do it before or after the impulse allowing you to have pretty much unmatched maneuverability you can do this in tandem essentially with your blast every time you use one of your blasts which is a kineticist main form of attack you can move half your speed which is pretty huge and it's a really good motivator for people to select the single gate style of kineticists single gate is really good if you want to be someone who uses a specific element and kind of focuses predominantly on that but I will say even if you go single gate you actually still can get access to other Gates later and still get really the benefits of being a single gate the biggest difference is it's going to take more time for you to get more abilities and you're not going to have as much kind of flexibility with what you can do as some of the other classes but in exchange you get the more powerful single element style build which I think is very powerful then there's dual gate which you start with two different elements it doesn't do anything else but you do start with two and no matter if you pick single gate or dual gate you actually get two impulse Feats at level one if you're a single gate those two impulse feeds come from your element but if your dual gate one impulse must come from each of your elements so you can't pick two for instance in fire if you pick fire metal you have to pick one fire and one metal which is very interesting and I'll get to the elements in a little bit so you can kind of understand the benefits of each one I will say though that having multiple Gates is just as good even if they're not individually as powerful as the single git user so in order to use an Impulse which an Impulse is a Sentry just the unique action to use Elemental abilities that kineticist gets you need to first channel elements this gives you a kinetic Aura which is an aura that at first doesn't do anything it just makes it the parents to everyone around you that you're doing you know stuff so you can't necessarily do kineticist stuff secretly as you have this very obvious Aura effect around you but when you Channel elements it's actually really cool because for a single action not only do you get to uh prep yourself to use your abilities but you can also use a singular action blast which I'll mention here in a moment or a single action stance and stances are also impulses as well and most of what they do is kind of affect your aura so essentially you can activate an aura effect for a single action or you can have you you can blast as a part of channeling your elements this makes the kineticist flow really easily as they don't really lose action economy for activating this Aura now I will state there is something called Overflow what overflow does is after you use an Impulse that has the Overflow trait you lose your kinetic Aura and you have to re-establish it before you use any other impulses but as I mentioned before because you can Channel elements and blast or use an Impulse stance you really don't lose anything by using overflow except for the ability to use back to back multi-action impulses that are very powerful this is kind of the general balance of kineticist but it doesn't feel bad and it doesn't feel like the magus's spell strike which they need to use in action to recharge all the time which is an action that doesn't do anything most of the time this one allows you to essentially recharge and blast or attack as a part of it which is I think really really good and it makes Kinesis flow really really well now while I'm not going to mention everything about the Kinesis base abilities as I don't think they're necessarily important for how you look at the kineticist just know that you get some abilities that kind of help manipulate the elements that you're focusing on I will say that the elemental blast is a different story and it's the core elements of a kineticist the elemental blast is the straight up I'm just going to do damage with my kinetic Aura and I will also State due to how kinetic gates work you open a gate to a different plane of existence where the element rains this allows you to use fire impulses even underwater which is something that even spell casters can't do in the game without some kind of special features so kineticists it doesn't matter where you are whether there's no air whether there's your underwater or whatever you can still use your element pretty much no matter where you are this is designed specifically so that if a character goes a singular element they're never in a situation where they can do absolutely nothing because all their abilities have you know a trait that might not work in a set environment this is very important for GMS to understand as well as players as it pretty much just states that you can always use your element now whether an enemy takes the damage from your element that's a very different story but no environmental thing can at least affect your elements now for the blasts and kind of what I was leading up to you have a one or two action blast the single action blast allows you to either at a range dictated by the element or in melee strike an enemy with your element now when you do so you use your connect medicist class modifier to do so so no special attack modifiers no special attack like proficiencies this is all based purely on your class DC and modifier now as you can see here by the list I guess it'll be like over here yep the list over here of Elemental blasts it's either a D6 and it goes 60 feet or a d8 and it goes 30 feet so depending on what kind of Elementals you want to do or knesses you want to do you want to choose a distance that fits your play style but you can actually augment these with Feats later in the game so don't think that you can't be a long distance Earth user for instance if that's the way you really want to go now if you use the two action Elemental blast you actually add your Constitution modifier onto the damage and I forgot to mention as well if you're using an element in melee you add your strength to it as well so the kineticist is the only the class in the game currently that can add two attribute modifiers to their damage if they're striking in melee combat but even at a range you can still do a two action blast that adds your consultation modifier meaning that their damage overall just is pretty good depending on what blasts you do now your blasts also every four levels increase by a die so by the end of the game you're shooting enemies with 5D whatever of the element you're using this means that the elemental or the kineticist is always capable of doing some really good damage and because you can do this as a part of you know creating your aura channeling your elements you have a really good damage efficiency in the game which is really solid overall so I did mention earlier that kinetis gets a lot of abilities that or get a lot of Beats more than any other class they do not only do they get three feeds at level one two with the two impulse fees and one class B level one plus at fifth level and every four levels after that you get the ability to get another feat well I should say you always get a feat but depends on whether you're expanding the portal which is changing your gate and making it better adding a gate Junction which I'll show you a list over here on the side the gate Junctions change how your blasts or how your impulses work necessarily and when you're expanding the portal this allows you to essentially make the N elements that you can Channel even stronger this is kind of the kineticist overall modus operandi where the more you focus on an element the stronger that element gets now even if your dual gate you can Empower one of your Elements by expanding one of them and giving it a gate Junction now whether you do expand the portal or Fork the path which Fork the path allows you to get access to a new element you get a new impulse fee at your level or lower now if you're forking the path the new element you're selecting to add to your repertoire of elements you can use the impulse must come from that new element and it cannot be a composite impulse which composite impulses are special impulses that you can only select if you're using multiple Gates which is a benefit of the Dual gate that we mentioned before in any regard no matter what you're doing you're getting a new extra impulse fee at levels five nine thirteen and Seventeen giving you four additional Feats on top of what you're getting for our class already every even level this makes the kineticist pretty much always getting something new and interesting with their class pretty much every level with a couple of gaps where you know it's not a really big deal and the gate Junctions can allow you to customize your play style focusing on expanding a singular portal of an element that you use a lot for certain things critical blast is a really good one because it makes it so whenever you critical using your blast ability Elemental blast with that element you do something special if it's air for instance you push the target 10 feet or if it's fire the target takes a D6 persistent fire damage and you gain an item bonus to this fire damage equal to your item bonus to impulse attacks when you're using a gate attenuator which is a unique item that that Kinesis gets the gate attenuator allows you to essentially add item bonuses to your attacks it also increases your Constitution modifier which is really good overall the gate attenuator is essentially the same as the standard room weapon runes that other classes get you can think of it's a more complex item than that but we're not going to get into that in this video just know that the gate attenuator is what the kineticists use to add item bonuses to their attack which is very important so Kinesis has a lot going on they have different elements they can do they can either focus and make elements stronger or expand and give themselves more tools used in more situations it's a lot and you might need to watch a video a couple times to pick up everything just know that the biggest things is whenever you get a new element you're adding more tools to your kit whenever you focus on an element you're making those tools better so how it fits into your play style is very very important it's also important to mention that when you're blasting consider what your character's well defensive capabilities are a lot of people are very motivated to go with the strength kineticist route to do strength plus con modifier damage in melee combat but remember kineticist actually only gets up to light armor proficiency normally so without archetyping into a archetype that gives you like Sentinel that gives you extra armor proficiencies you're going to be a little bit prone to getting critical struck in combat and if you don't have decks to kind of match the light armor proficiency it gets a little messy the Kinesis suffers from what a lot of people call as mad or multi-atribute deficiency where they just don't have enough attributes modifiers to do what they want to do so you need to judge for your playstyle what you really want if you want to play a very loose long range style of kineticist then you don't really need to worry about much beside your con and maybe your dexterity for flight acrobatics if you're going air for instance but if you're being upfront in combat you might even want to take a bit of a downgrade in your con and boost your decks and strength so that you can survive more easily in combat there's also a variety of kinetic impulses that are good for melee combat and that you should keep in mind so overall the kineticist is kind of an advanced class in some ways but when you master it you get a lot of utility and versatility out of it and speaking of that versatility let's talk talk about Reflow elements Reflow elements is a unique feature I should say unique but it's how they can essentially can change their impulses to match the situation really good if you're using multiple elements as what it does is during your daily preparations you can change an Impulse you have to another impulse that you qualify for now it does have to be from the same Elemental trait but because most of the elements have multiple things that they can do this still gives you a lot of Versatility and what you can accomplish and it just allows you to be flexible considering you have so many Tools in your kit this extra flexibility just enhances the kineticist and on top of refill elements at level 17 you get double Reflow which allows you to do this with two impulses on your daily preparations rather than one so never feel like you're stuck in whatever impulses you select at level 11 and afterwards you're able to change them out for pretty much every day to the ones that you need so it's very good to understand that you're not stuck in whatever you're selecting another important thing to mention as well is your class DC lags behind other classes a little bit up until Level 15 when most classes get Mastery you also get Mastery in your class DC which is really good but up until about level 15 you're at well I shouldn't say up until Level 15. at levels five to seven because there's law classes that get expertise in their weapons around level five or so you're gonna get yours at level seven it's a two level difference but just know in those levels you're a little bit behind but you catch up real quick and you're one of the only classes that really gets legendary in their proficiency as with the fighter gets a lot earlier than other classes you at least get it at level 19 which most classes get only Mastery ever so something that's very important to keep in mind is you have some very potent ability to get your kinetic impulses off that is going to be a very core element as most kinetic abilities require the enemy to make a basic re or a basic saving throw which means even if they succeed they still take half the effect that's good for you because that means that you're always doing something with your impulses even if the enemy succeeds it doesn't do anything if the enemy crit succeeds but that's going to be a very rare occurrence and if the enemy ever fails you're gonna be in a really good spot to deal a lot of damage or to really mess with the enemies that's about a lot of what makes a kineta system before I get into some of my favorite Beats from canises let me tell you about the elements and generally what they're good at now all elements offer you some ability with utility or the ability to do some damage mostly area damage so what I'm mentioning here isn't the only things the elements are capable are doing but rather the strengths of each element remember it doesn't matter what elements you really select you're always going to be capable of dealing damage with them even if it's just with your Elemental blasts so don't feel like by selecting a specific element you're cheating yourself out of damage or even utility as all of them do provide some level of utility and damage each so first up is air air is the movement one many of their abilities move the character in some way or another even getting Infinite Flight at level 8 with cyclonic assaults very very powerful and with so many abilities to move themselves or even allies or enemies it is the ultimate in repositioning with some good attack abilities to do some damage as well it's really good for setting that kind of stuff up it also provides a variety of movement utility and other utilities as well as you can even you know arrest a fall stop yourself from falling to your death or an ally or even create things like Mist so overall it's very movement based with some utility kind of mixed in Earth is a has a heavy defensive Focus being the most offensively focused in the game it offers you lots of benefits whether it's giving you resistances to damage whether it's giving you extra AC or other abilities as well it has a big focus on terrain manipulation with some minor object creation even debuffing enemies doing things like sand throwing them in your enemy's face and all that kind of stuff the Earth element is really good for for maintaining yourself in combat you can make the battlefield difficult for your enemies to Traverse as well you can create simple but maybe even helpful objects to get to specific areas for your allies who you know might be a little bit movement impaired coupled along with their debuffing abilities the Earth is very good if you're very focused on being sturdy in combat while also aiding your allies fire is the most area damage focused in the game as or if for kineticists anyway as they have the most area-focused abilities this gives them a lot of ways to do damage do it in a different kinds of abilities I think they're also one of the only elements that get the burst area which allows you to shoot at a range and create a burst right most of them are like lines or cones meaning that you have to position yourself around your allies fire has a few that allow you to kind of position your explosions which is very handy being the most offensively based of the elements it's really good if you like doing damage but it does have some really good buffing capabilities that you can add to your allies as well so overall fire is really good in combat generally speaking as well as being able to offer extra benefits to your allies metal is kind of a diverse style of element as it has multiple pickings from others it has defensive qualities similar to Earth but it actually has a higher focus on creation utility being able to create things like weapons or armor or even objects that you might utilize it's very good for that fact and its creation ability is not something to look down upon especially because they have the ability to create precious materials which might be the weakness of enemies you're fighting they also have a really good offensive capability not to the same level as fire but more than some of the other elements making it overall a really good kind of balance with utility and combat capabilities a very good element in my personal favorite next up is water water is the healing focus of the elements which is really good and honestly not all of the elements can heal only water and wood can heal so it makes water really really good in as being like the overall team support not only that but a lot of their impulses focus on debuffing enemies and moving them around the battlefield which kind of has some air and Earth-like qualities overall water is probably the best support element though it could be argued that wood is just as good as the wood element has a creation focus it creates a lot of different things in the terrain you can create different kinds of objects it is really good at making objects in the field probably even better than metal as far as like scale is concerned and the type of objects though with the less like finesse you can't create small objects like metal can but you can do a lot of creating a lot of Battlefield manipulation similar to Earth and it has some pretty good healing not as good as water but it also has good support as well wood is kind of one of those elements that doesn't focus on anything in particular besides maybe creating things in the environment though it does a lot of things really really well so whatever elements you pick there's a lot of really good beats and impulses in them and I'll just share with you guys some of my favorites though I'm also going to look at some of the generic class ones as if you're a single element user you have a big focus on a singular element the class beats are actually some of the best for your character specifically as there are a lot of you know mono element style of Feats that require you only only to use a singular element so even if you're a single element user you're still going to have a lot of impact you can bring to the game so we're going to start off with one of my favorite features which is fearsome familiar it's really good the kineticists can have a unique familiar type called Elemental familiar it gets some unique traits and make it slightly different than other other familiars which I think is really cool but when you use the six level feats fear some familiar it allows you to turn your little buddy into quite a menacing foe as you can summon any l or you turn your familiar as if you were using the summon Elemental spell to create any creature of your level minus four the creature appears in the same space as you're familiar which then disappears for the duration of the impulse you can sustain this impulse up to a minute so you need to use actions to maintain this like a normal summoning spell and when the impulse ends The Familiar appears in the space where the elemental occupied now A Familiar can endure this process only so often so if you use this impulse on your familiar more than once per day it dies as soon as it Returns the second time say pretty much it's a once per day twice per day of your desperate though with normal for familiars if you spend a week you can get your familiar back though pretty much just consider you can use this once per day this allows you to create a lot of really interesting creatures using your familiar and it just says when the spell ends your familiar comes into the space so it doesn't actually specify if the creature gets killed for instance by the enemy that your familiar dies so honestly technically speaking if the enemies kill your your your fearsome familiar the spell ends and then your little familiar disappears in their space so I think that's pretty cool and it doesn't necessarily cost you familiar to use this ability which I think is very important and very potent now a really good feat and probably one of the strongest in my opinion is called chain infusion now infusions are unique abilities to kineticists I guess technically I think Alchemist also has an infusion ability anyway it's like metamagic what infusions do is for an action before you use Elemental blast you can essentially cause it to chain so you spend an action then you Elemental blast either one or two and when you use it if the blast hits you can attempt a new Elemental blast on a Target that's within range of the blasts range measuring from the new Target this can chain up to five times I believe yeah up to five times as long as they keep hitting now each attack does apply your multi-attack penalty but the benefit to this you have to consider is if this is like if you're using a one action blast right so you use chain infusion you use a one action blast if you hit the first enemy that cool that gives you a chance to hit a second enemy if you hit a second enemy cool that gives you a chance to hit a third enemy and you're not likely to hit the third enemy but as a singular action you essentially get to attack two enemies or I guess two actions cynically you get to hit two enemies within your range and it can go even higher it's a bit of a gamble but the fact that you have the ability to hit with five blasts makes it really good for dealing with like the chaff on the battlefield you hit the boss with your you know zero multi-attack penalty attack and then you just keep chaining to the chaff in the battlefield doing as much damage as you can and making your damage efficiency absolutely nuts all this for just an additional action it's really really good now I will say as well the chain infusion can't chain back to the same enemy twice so it has to be up to five different enemies but like I said this is really good for Boss Battles where there are a lot of Minion enemies running around launch half enemies running around overall chain infusion is just really good all right now I could go into some of the impulses from the various you know elements all together other but it they each kind of depend on what your play style is and so I don't think necessarily me mentioning them in this video is going to be super relevant instead let me talk about some of the composite Feats that are in the game because they're really really cool and they really make the kinetuses very unique in some ways as you get to kind of combine the qualities of two elements into a singular impulse reign of rusts uses metal which is one of my favorite is really cool it's three actions but you do a you create a a Red Cloud and a 10 foot burst up to 60 feet away which bursts is really huge because again not many of the elements get access to burst areas which I think is important to mention but you rain down corrosive rain on the enemies any enemies wearing any kind of like metal armor gets their movements restricted becoming clumsy one and considering that clumsy doesn't require any kind of reflex save or anything that's pretty huge now granted three actions to make an enemy clumsy one isn't necessarily that important but I will say if the enemy is wearing metal or is made of metal it also takes 3d6 damage damage no specific element the creature just takes damage with a basic fortitude a fortitude save against your class DC plus an additional D6 persistent damage if it fails the check damage from this impulse ignores hardness and because it doesn't have a particular like element it hurts anything it's better than even Force damage it's just pure damage now it's only damage if a creature is covered in metal or wearing metal or the like as it probably is like acid damage is like the attempt but it doesn't State specifically it's really good and it's very very interesting and there's a lot of enemies that wear armor and it's just a solid ability now yes it is three actions but I think it's definitely worth it to you know slow the enemies down deal some damage and I just love the aesthetic of the acidic rain kind of melting down on enemies very very good another really good composite feat to me is the ash Strider this is a combination of air and fire it's really good it's two actions but it does have the Overflow trait so you're not going to be able to use another ability until you Channel Elements which is really easy to do and honestly you could do it pretty much right after this if it's the first action on your turn but what happens is you dis-corporate you you turn into a cloud a whirling Ash and then you stride so it's two actions to essentially stride but if you have a fly speed you can fly instead and this movement doesn't trigger any reactions you can move through occupied spaces and even go through tiny cracks and ignore any difficult terrain and greater difficult train that wouldn't impede smoke this is a good ability even outside of combat as allows you to essentially go under a locked door as long as there's enough space for ash to get through which is most but not all you know a vaults Maybe not but most doors in a place you could totally just get on the other side real easy which I think is really really cool but on top of this on top of it being just a really good defensive action the first creature in whose space you move through and they don't impede you so you don't even have to treat it as difficult terrain they take 3d6 fire damage an additional uh D6 every two levels after that so pretty much every even level after that you would select after you would select this beep or well I guess technically it's based on character level oh I didn't mention that at all so anytime you see a heightened effect for any of the kineticist abilities it's using your kineticist level rather than like a spell level where normally you see heightened effects so for instance for ashtrider that has level plus two that means that for at six sixth level which is when you pick this one up and then every two levels after that or even if he's like this later at level six and then every two after that you would add a a D6 to the damage which is really cool it's a reflex Save which you know some enemies are good at some are not it's one of those kind of most enemies kind of have like a decent reflex in some regard but regardless it does damage in addition to being a really good defensive capability having really good utility to move and get to places you know that you would normally have a difficulty reaching and on top of all this when you're done moving you still have a cloud of Ash surrounding you and you become concealed until the start of your next turn meaning the enemies need to make a dc5 flat check to even hit you with actions this makes this really good defensively with some good offensive capability and really good utility mixed into the batch overall Ash Strider is just a good example of what kineticist is which is a class that kind of hits the marks all over the board when it comes to abilities defensive offensive and utility all mixed into a singular ability hopefully this helped you guys understand the kineticists and hopefully I got you hyped up for getting into Kinesis it's a very good class that is very good at what it does which is having a tool in its belt for any situation without needing to go if you're all the humdrum of setting up your spell slots like many of the casters do now while you don't have as many tools as casters do you also have better combat abilities that don't require you know the use of spell slots so you are just more sustainable in most situations and depending on what element you choose you can even have something like Infinite Flight which most casters can't even imagine having which it just makes the candidasis really really good so that's gonna be it for me like And subscribe if you enjoy this kind of content I'm going to be doing more of the rage development stuff know that I've done my week and and I can focus fully on work now you can all see all the great rage development stuff I have coming out right before the book releases to the public on August 5th or third August 3rd or 5th I can't remember whichever whenever Gen Con is which I think maybe is August 3rd anyway and any regard hope you all enjoyed good luck with your games leave the Bell like to me and I'll see you all next time bye

Channel: BadLuckGamer

Views: 2,980

Keywords: Character Creation, Pathfinder 2e, How To, Character Builds, Kineticist, Class, Best, Elementalist, Avatar, Bender, Ttrpg

Id: DqJj07H8ZKg

Length: 38min 41sec (2321 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 28 2023