Can someone explain to me how the kineticist class actually works?

[spacemancoco]

It just seems like a total lottery with this class, sometimes the attack goes off, sometimes it doesn't, what am I missing?

[Khryst]

spell penetration.

the energy blasts need to overcome the spell resistance of the enemy and damn near every enemy has spell resistance.

you have multiple ways to increase your chance to do it, the spell penetration feats (mythic version too) be an elf, half-elf with Dual heritage background, so and and so forth.


please take note this "problem" isn't unique to Kineticists, as any spell caster has to deal with this.

[Rainnd]

Kinecticist have two types of elements, physical and energy (earth, air for example are physical and fire lightning are energy). To land a physical blast you need to go through enemy AC. To land energy blast you need to go through ranged touch AC, spell resistance and elemental resistance.

[spacemancoco]

I know, but what I don't understand is the whole burn mechanic along with gather power, it seems everytime I try to shoot a blast it just gathers power and then the next turn I can sometimes pull one off

[Cruddy]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXXrit69YGY

Try the first 4-6 minutes of this vid, it greatly helped me understand the class basics.

[Soft Lockpick]

You fire your laser.

[Draken]

Originally posted by spacemancoco:

I know, but what I don't understand is the whole burn mechanic along with gather power, it seems everytime I try to shoot a blast it just gathers power and then the next turn I can sometimes pull one off

There are three stages of 'gather power'.
One is a move action that reduces burn by 1.
The next is a full action that reduces burn by 2.
And the third is a full action and a move action and reduces burn by 3. This of course takes 2 turns to do because you can't do a move and a full action in one turn.

If the 'gather power' would reduce the burn cost to 0 the kinetic blast is fired off immediately after the 'gather power' action is completed.

So if you take a standard kinetic blast that cost 0 burn and add the push infusion with adds 1 burn, you can do a move action 'gather power' and then fire of the blast as standard action after that.