question on kineticist

[count001]

My current blast (normal water) should do 5d6+x bludgeoning (and that's what it says on the damage roll).

My composite ice blast should do 5d6+x piercing and 5d6+y cold damage correct? When looking at the damage calculations each of those rolls get multiplied by one half. Can anyone tell me why that is happening?

Also, I have been told that elemental engine does not get elemental overflow (it says I get in it game, and it says the elemental engine loses supercharger as their ability for that archetype). Is that true? Where does the game say that? I bring this up because I do get the attack and damage bonus from EO, but I have not gotten the stats bonus (no, I do not get toggle buttons on my ability list to choose stat placements once I get 3 burn).

Any help would be appreciated! Thank you!

[Drake]

No, not correct. Compôsite blasts don't deal additional damage, they convert half of the physical damage into the corresponding energy damage. So for ice blast it's 5d6+x, with half being piercing, the other half being ice.

Yeah that's a display error, the ability bonus is replaced by the elemental burnout bonus. They should have removed EO and merged the attack bonus with burnout.
If you look at the description of burnout and EO, it's clear that it should have replaced it completely, the description even starts the same.

[count001]

Thanks for the response!

Under the description of kinetic blast it says physical and energy blasts start at and then increase by 1d6 damage (the physical also gets an extra +1) every two kineticist levels. Below that it says composite blasts start at and then increase by 2d6 every two kineticist levels (an extra +2 for physical blasts). Is that description also wrong?

Yes I noticed the same text on burnout and elemental overload, but I also get both of them appearing in my attack and dmg roll calculations, so I assumed we got both (because I am getting both!)

[Gralzeim]

Composite blasts definitely do more damage, at the cost of having a higher burn uh, cost. And in the case of most of them, yeah, the damage is split between two types, which is sometimes an advantage, but sometimes not.

That said, the Fire/Fire and Earth/Earth composite blasts don't split damage types.

[Raven]

Originally posted by Gralzeim:

Composite blasts definitely do more damage, at the cost of having a higher burn uh, cost. And in the case of most of them, yeah, the damage is split between two types, which is sometimes an advantage, but sometimes not.

That said, the Fire/Fire and Earth/Earth composite blasts don't split damage types.

To go more into this, there is two types of damage that happens; Energy and Physical. Physical blasts do more damage, but they have to overcome normal AC. Energy type does less overall damage, but they target touch AC (so in general a significantly higher chance to hit). When you have a composite blast that combines a physical+energy blast that will split the damage types. The math gets a little odd looking, but in so much as I've seen (and I play kineticist a lot), there isn't any errors in the calculations nor in its displays.

[hilburnashua]

Originally posted by Drake:

No, not correct. Compôsite blasts don't deal additional damage, they convert half of the physical damage into the corresponding energy damage. So for ice blast it's 5d6+x, with half being piercing, the other half being ice.

Maybe I am misunderstanding what you are saying. But as I understand kineticists if his base damage with a water blast is 5d6+10+x, then an Composite Ice Blast would inflict 5d6+10+x piercing and 5d6+10+x cold (since a composite ice blast is considered a physical blast despite part of it's damage being cold). This is how it has worked since Kingmaker and how it works in tabletop. Regular blasts deal 1d6+x per level, composite blasts deal 2d6+x per level.

OP, any chance the opponent you were fighting that you were getting the .5x damage multiplier had the ethereal property? That would reduce the damage by half.

At first I thought you said the damage was x1.5 so I was going to ask you to check if you had the Empower ability active.

[count001]

Originally posted by hilburnashua:

Originally posted by Drake:

No, not correct. Compôsite blasts don't deal additional damage, they convert half of the physical damage into the corresponding energy damage. So for ice blast it's 5d6+x, with half being piercing, the other half being ice.

Maybe I am misunderstanding what you are saying. But as I understand kineticists if his base damage with a water blast is 5d6+10+x, then an Composite Ice Blast would inflict 5d6+10+x piercing and 5d6+10+x cold (since a composite ice blast is considered a physical blast despite part of it's damage being cold). This is how it has worked since Kingmaker and how it works in tabletop. Regular blasts deal 1d6+x per level, composite blasts deal 2d6+x per level.

OP, any chance the opponent you were fighting that you were getting the .5x damage multiplier had the ethereal property? That would reduce the damage by half.

At first I thought you said the damage was x1.5 so I was going to ask you to check if you had the Empower ability active.

I do have empower activated, but I was leaving that out for simplicity sake. All of what you wrote is what I thought the damage for composite blasts should be, but I have gotten the 1/2 multiplier on every iceblast I have checked. This happens against gargoyles, kilbari (sp?) cultists at lost chapel, and other enemies. Wish I could post screenshots here to show it. (EDIT: Also, my water blast (bludgeoning) and cold blast (cold) does not get the 1/2 multiplier, so it doesn't make sense it to be happening because of a property of the enemy.)

I have joined the discord for Owlcat and am having people look into it there too. There does seem to be an issue right now, as another player tested on their kineticist and the same thing happened to them.

[count001]

Clarification, I didn't realize the cold damage counted as physical in composite blasts before your comment, so that part was new to me.

[fox5s]

Originally posted by hilburnashua:

OP, any chance the opponent you were fighting that you were getting the .5x damage multiplier had the ethereal property? That would reduce the damage by half.

That's my question as well. Another possibility is you are using one of the blasts that gets a Reflex save and they succeeded.

[count001]

Originally posted by fox5s:

Originally posted by hilburnashua:

OP, any chance the opponent you were fighting that you were getting the .5x damage multiplier had the ethereal property? That would reduce the damage by half.

That's my question as well. Another possibility is you are using one of the blasts that gets a Reflex save and they succeeded.

I was using empowered normal iceblast (no spindle). The only infusions I have are pushing, extended range, and spindle so far.

[count001]

Update: Using extended range does show the correct damage (10d6+27)(.5)(1.5) ! So this is only happening with normal iceblast.

[hilburnashua]

Ok just did a test run on my kineticist with Fire/Earth composite blast. What I am seeing is two entries for damage as the results of the attack. Fire is base 20d6 (lvl 20 composite blast)+ 6d6 (greater kineticist crown) +2d6(lesser kineticist rod) = 28d6+43 damage base. Then it is x.5 . The second entry is showing the bludgeoning damage and it is using the same formula. So that is as it should be since it is showing the total dice+x damage the blast does, then it is x.5 to show the damage dealt for that portion of the blast (fire) then the other entry is showing the other half of the damage. The physical damage is being reduced by the DR the creature has.

Just ran another test not using extended and I had the same results, so maybe this is a bug specific to Composite Ice Blast. Don't have the time to do a rebuild and test that atm.

[count001]

Interesting. Thanks for checking! Luckily I can just always use extended and all is good.