Unleash the power of the elements! Whether using the new Kineticist class, or empowering your existing characters with new elemental rules, spells, creatures, and items, Rage of Elements will bring primal fury to all of your games.
I started building a Pathfinder 2E (Remaster) compatible kineticist and found a few potential bugs in the character build process.
issues with the level 1 Kineticist class feat Elemental Familiar might be due to confusion with the level 4 Elementalist Dedication archetype. The class feat does not appear when I search for ROE feats.
elemental familiar class feat enables the companion & familiars tab correctly, but I don’t think I was correctly shuttled to “Select Familiar Abilities.” This was confusing because you don’t really get a choice with this feat (it has to be an elemental familiar). Also, while elemental familiar was “acquired” - it appeared as if other options that I shouldn’t have been able to pick were selectable (like Aeon Wyrd which required 3 abilities)
it was also confusing to start with “select familiar abilities” instead of select element type. The elemental type should be selected first so that abilities options that conflict can be prevented
elemental type options should be limited to the traits (elements) selected during the Kineticist class process. it would be nice if it auto-selected (“acquired”) the correct element if your kineticist can only use one element
the trait “elemental” replaces “animal” in the trait list → I think this means that you shouldn’t have access to traits that would also overwrite animal (like plant, dragon, etc.)
i believe the elemental familiar should be small not tiny
I’m not sure about this - but are elemental familiar suppose to get/be restricted to the same-named ability (i.e. air elemental familiar should have air ability allowing it to be invisible). Perhaps this is meant to be optional; I do wonder if you should be restricted from choosing element abilities that are not matched to the elemental type (or perhaps not one of the elements you have access to)
Also, it’s a small thing but it would be nice if it were possible to “equip” elemental blast (so you can see it under primary or offhand). I guess that means it would need to be an item, so I guess that could get confusing.
Oh - and the familiar should use your level + constitution modifier instead of the 3 + your level (if it’s higher) for Perception, Acrobatics, and Stealth. At least this should be a selectable option
After looking this over a bit I think that most of these issues are actually how it’s intended to function.
I’m not sure I fully understand this first statement, which feat doesn’t appear for you? I was able to find Elemental Familiar without issue.
Options you wouldn’t normally be allowed to pick should be denoted by a red circle with a slash through it. We leave them available as options because some GMs may make an exception for a player and we don’t want to restrict those options.
I agree that it’s unintuitive but it’s second on the list because it’s a subset of the Select Familiar Abilities section.
This I believe is a bug and I’ve filed a ticket for further investigation into why Plant/Dragon don’t have a similar “forbidden” symbol next to them.
I don’t see anything saying that they get a size upgrade to small.
I believe they are intended to be restricted to their elemental ability but this is a case where we allow anything to be selected because someone may decide to allow a Water familiar to take the Air ability for instance.
And finally I’ve also filed a bug report for the familiar using Level+3 to determine skills instead of Level+Con.
Thanks for the response! Sorry if I’m just wrong, first time building a kineticist.
During character building, the Level 1 Kineticist Class Feat (Elemental Familiar) is available and shown correctly. For some reason, when I used the search bar or went to the Feats table, only the Level 4 Archetype feat (from Rage of Elements or Secrets of Magic) came up. When I did the search today, the Level 1 class feat appeared. The feats page in particular lags a lot for me, so perhaps I didn’t wait long enough.
Understood, and I agree that people should still be able to make the selection with the note that it’s usually not allowed. I still don’t see the red circle next to any of the non-applicable options under element selection or under familiar ability selection.
Understood.
Thanks.
The text for the Class Feat (Level 1) is different from the Archetype Feat (Level 6), so I was referring to the language for the Class Feat (Archives of Nethys). “A small creature made of elemental matter springs forth from your kinetic gate.” It might not make a functional difference, but I mention it because I don’t see an option on the character sheet to override the size of your familiar (it case it does apply).
Got it - I could definitely see from the RP perspective that you want a consistent “character” for your familiar. Since kineticists can change their familiar’s element once per day, it’s definitely easier to just change the trait instead of changing the whole familiar.