The last Kineticist of Porphyra filled in some blanks allowing the Kineticist to grow to be as robust as other classes. These blanks were pretty obvious but now we get into the slightly odd choices and elements that expand a bit past the 'bender' feel of the class. This starts with the first archetype, the Divine Conduit, that is somewhat of a Kineticist given it's power through divine intervention. It has to be good, has an aura of good and gets 'Kinetic Smite', effectively a Smite Evil for Kineticists. The rest of the powers pull a lot from the Paladin in some way except for a growing DR. Overall it gets cool powers that are well worth what they give up; elemental defense and a few wild talents for a mount, healing, smite, a defensive boost and DR. All in all I'd go for it over any kind of elemental cleric for the streamlined theme. The Dragon Pact Kineticist is a bit hard to read being littered with exclusive wild talents that give it various dragon form abilities and breath weapon abilities making separating wild talent rules text hard to separate from class feature description until you run into a new class feature. once the whole thing is sorted out you're left with a sort of spell-less Dragon Disciple. I like it well enough where I'd put it above normal Dragon Disciple, again for the streamlined theme. The fusion Kineticist is a bit of a yawn. Nothing wrong with it but it's just a basic 'two elements at level one' kind of deal which is great for early levels but it's not like you're lacking in that kind of option at mid levels for normal Kineticist. Its a grid to fill. The Hex Kineticist continues the theme of side-jumping Kineticist into mimicking other classes, this one obviously being a witch. By now this habit gives me the feeling that the kineticists non-spell magic system is being used to replicate a pseudo-Spheres of Power effect. They get a familiar that can later be an elemental gun, and Hexes.
There are new elements. Poison and whatever Viscera is supposed to be. I had to google that and I still don't quite follow how a viscera 'element' is supposed to work. I'm going to go with 'gross body kinesis' based on what the element does, but the point is that we're getting deeper into the non-element territory of elements to manipulate/produce and leaning closer to Pokemon elements. Poison gets an acid blast and Viscera shoots bones I guess.(I'm thinking Marrow from X-Men). The new composite blasts are obvious given the new elements but the new elemental defenses being a bit cool and powerful but a little situational depending on what you're doing so no better or worse than normal elemental defenses. It does open spell resistance and rotating energy damage resistance which is nice.
The new infusion wild talents have some of the same criticisms I had last time. Some of the talents are pretty powerful for what they do and at what level although I have to say that all of the overpowered looking ones seem to have an insane burn cost. If you're set on using them they can end a fight pretty fast but you're not going to be doing anything too interesting later. These are mostly status effect kind of deals like dealing ability score damage or continuous damage (crippling to enemy casters). The utility wild talents are less extreme but definitely keeps kineticist on the path of a themed caster rather than a thing-bender opening up things like making zombies. It also kind of sets it off more anti-caster abilities like the ability to force concentration checks, counterspells and continual damage.
Between all the new wild talents there's a focus on beefing up the new elements but lots of elements get some love with some cool effects so you're going to have to go digging even if you're just a vanilla kineticist focusing on one of the main elements.
From there we have some new feats. Some things that are pretty fun. There's one that I have a bit of a thing against, mainly because it opens cans of worms for cross company utility talents than anything abusive I can think of within normal or Porphyrian Kineticist options. There are some new magical items. Well a lot. Some of them I had expected to already exist but apparently they don't so there's a bonus on that front. After that we leave off with a sample Dragon Pact NPC before OGL text.
I felt like Kineticists of Porphyra had the theme of grid-filling, expanding the Kineticist class to elements and archetypes that seem like a natural fit or a logical extension for the class. Meanwhile KoP2 goes a bit off the reservation with it's elements and if I were to describe a theme it would be a distinct hatred of casters. On one front, the archetypes creepily seek to replace other casters and replace them as doppelgangers. Despite lifting mostly from the Paladin, if you're good aligned the divine archetype is a suitable replacement for divine casters in terms of themes. Then there's the Witch and Dragon Disciple branded ones. On another front a number of the new wild talents replicate spell functions to the extent that you can even perform some necromancy. If you can sort through the fiddly bits you basically can replace all casting with wild talent 'casters' and the flavor remains untouched. Then there are the talents that outright do bad things to casters, numerous ways to deal continuous damage, spell resistance, good counterspelling. Its like the Kineticist not only wants the option to beat casters to a pulp but take their place as a less diverse but 'all day' caster.
Whether or not this is bad depends entirely on how you feel about the Kineticist in general. If you love the class and want it to be a bit more thematically or to do something other than being a blaster caster then this is a pretty decent product. It gives you new and exciting things to do and although I mostly did a single read through, I have not found any real problems in terms of rules and typos.
I would give this 5 stars out of 5. I have somewhat of a sarcastic tone with this product but it really does open up quite a bit and gives more utility to handle more esoteric problems and do cool things. This book kind of brings them up a bit past simply being an elementalist which does kind of bring it out of it's niche but also evolves the class a bit. During the playtest I felt like the Kineticist and it's Wild Talents felt like Spheres of Power-lite and I can definitely feel it here as the class branches itself. These are things that I really like, hence the five star rating.
You can find this over on Paizo.com here.
No comments:
Post a Comment