The GM’s Guide to the Kineticist
(or Help! I Don’t Understand This Kineticist Statblock!)
Jen McTeague
As material comes out for Pathfinder, Paizo has always been looking for ways to incorporate that material in the enemies as well as the PCs. After the APG was released, the GenCon PFS releases included a cavalier, oracle, summoner, and a witch, immediately bringing these classes to the forefront. While everyone needed a little time to wrap their heads around these mechanics, GMs as a whole picked up the classes fairly quickly. As Pathfinder gains more and more classes, they’ve slowed down the rate at which they are introducing them into adventures, and while some GMs ran into trouble, the GMing community as a whole seemed to be keeping up.
Enter the kineticist. This class seems to have broken the pattern. The first time this class was introduced as part of a PFS scenario, there were tons of people who were complaining that they didn’t really understand how to run the enemy and that they couldn’t make heads or tails of the class. When you talk with a bunch of GMs who have this problem, a couple of different themes rear their head.
It’s so different from everything else. This is very true. Most new classes aren’t entirely new mechanics. The mesmerist has stare and mesmerist tricks, but it also has spontaneous casting like a bard. The psychic is a 9 level spontaneous caster, and the psychic disciplines are similar to bloodlines, so if you know how to play a sorcerer, you’re good to go. Kineticists have no mechanics that any other class gets, so it’s hard to get a hold of.
It’s not written well. Because the class introduces this whole different subsystem that isn’t anywhere else, it spends a lot of time clarifying things and trying to close loopholes, but it doesn’t do a great job of explaining the class to someone who’s never seen it before.
It’s super complex. Actually, it’s not that complex. It’s certainly less complex than a full caster, especially at higher levels. It just looks really complex, partly because of the reasons listed above, but also because some common abilities have a different name because you get them in a different way. You might see “Flesh of Stone”, but that’s just giving DR/adamantine. “Fan of Flames” sounds weird, but it’s giving a 15ft. cone of fire, much like burning hands. All it takes is a little bit of time looking stuff up, and you can translate most of the kineticist’s abilities into terms you already know.
This document is designed to help you get around these three problems. It explains each of the class features in simpler terms in order to get at the core of what they do. It organizes the abilities differently to help explain how everything fits together. It provides a step-by-step guide for how to prep and how to look up materials in order to get a better sense of what a particular kineticist can do. Hopefully, with this guide, you can quickly become an expert in running a kineticist from behind the GM’s screen.
In order to be able to effectively run a kineticist, you need to understand four abilities: burn, defense wild talents, elemental overflow, and kinetic blast. Below is a quick explanation of each one.
Burn is the kineticist’s resource, much like arcanists have arcane pool points and monks have ki points. They have a limit to the amount of burn that they can accept each day, which is listed in the burn entry under SQ. Each point of burn that they accept deals nonlethal damage to them equal to their total HD. (If a creature has racial HD or classes other than kineticist, these still count for the purpose of calculating burn damage.) This doesn’t change the kineticist’s maximum hit points, which makes it much more likely that they will be knocked unconscious rather than killed.
When a kineticist hits level 2, they gain a defensive wild talent. Each one of them provide a scaling benefit, with an additional benefit if the kineticist spends some burn. There is a list for the main five elements on the PRD, so you can go look up the one that applies to your kineticist and make some quick notes. These talents are always on unless you want them not to be.
When a kineticist hits level 3, they gain a benefit for having burn. They get +1 to hit and +2 to damage for every point of burn that they have, up to a maximum of +1/+2 per three levels. In addition, at 6th level as long as they have three points of burn, they gain +2 size bonus to two physical stats and fortification of 5% per point of burn. (There are advancements for higher levels, but if the NPC is greater than 10th level, you probably should look at more than this page.)
This is the bread and butter of the kineticist. Each kineticist has a basic blast, and it can be found under the Kineticist Wild Talents Known section of the stat block. This blast is a SLA that can be used at will as a standard action. The blast is considered to be a spell level equal to half the kineticist’s level, and the concentration check is based off of Constitution. The blast is a ranged attack with a range of 30 ft. There are two kinds of kinetic blasts: physical and energy.
Physical Blasts (air, earth, telekinetic, water) - These blasts attack normal AC and are affected by DR, but not by energy resistance and SR. They deal 1d6+1 damage for every odd level, plus the kineticist’s full Constitution modifier.
Energy Blasts (cold, electric, fire) - These blasts attack touch AC and are affected by energy resistance and SR but not DR. They deal 1d6 damage for every odd level, plus half of the kineticist’s Constitution modifier.
For more details on these blasts, check out the kinetic blast section of the PRD.
Combining these four pieces of information together, here’s a gameplan for how to run a bare-bones kineticist.
That will be good enough for you to get the feel of the kineticist while doing a bare minimum of prep. The encounter won’t be as powerful as it normally is, and given that we’re ignoring a significant chunk of the kineticist’s class features, one would hope that it wouldn’t be as powerful. If you have some more time, and want to learn more about the kineticist, then read on.
Given the class’ heavy focus on kinetic blasts, we’ll be dividing this section around the kinetic blast. Each of the individual class features is listed under its own heading, so you can navigate to individual class features if you know most of the class features but need guidance on one specific one.
One important detail to note about Burn that wasn’t addressed above - there is a maximum amount of burn per round that you are allowed to spend. This limit starts at 1 and goes up slowly as a character levels up. A kineticist’s current limit per round is listed next to burn in the SQ section of the stat block.
At 7th level, a kineticist gains a composite blast when they gain expanded element. This blast works exactly like the normal kinetic blast, with two exceptions: they do more damage and they cost burn to use. You can see the full text of the particular composite blast on the PRD.
These wild talents give the kineticist additional effects to their kinetic blast. Whenever a kineticist uses a blast, they can add the effects of one form infusion and one substance infusion that they have. Form infusions tend to change the shape or range of the blast, while substance infusions tend to add extra effects onto the blast. Each of them have a burn cost that gets added onto the burn cost of the kinetic blast. If the infusion requires a DC, it is 10 + ½ lvl + Con mod if it is a substance infusion, or 10 + ½ lvl + Dex mod if it is a form infusion.
If the kineticist is 7th level or higher, be careful! Not every infusion can go to every kinetic blast. Each infusion lists which blasts it can go with in its entry on the PRD.
If the kineticist has the metakinesis ability, then they gain some options for adding metamagic to their kinetic blasts for the cost of some burn. At 5th level, they gain empower for 1 burn. At 9th level, they gain maximize for 2 burn. At 13th level, they gain quicken for 3 burn. At 17th level, they can get two blasts with one standard action for 4 burn. They can use as much as they want for each blast, but they are limited by their maximum burn per round.
As a move action, the kineticist can reduce the cost of a blast wild talent this turn by 1. As a full round action, the kineticist can reduce the cost of a blast wild talent next turn by 2. These two effects can be combined. (In general, the full round action version is rarely used, but the move action is quite common.) This FAQ clarifies that it will also reduce the cost of infusions, metakinesis, and anything else added to a blast wild talent, but it won’t reduce the cost of utility wild talents.
This increases gather power’s move action reduction to -2, and the full round reduction to -3.
This reduces the total cost spent on infusions for each blast by 1. This increases by 1 for every three levels above 5th.
This abilities stores burn for the kineticist to use later on wild talents. It holds 1 point at 6th level and 1 more for every 5 levels the kineticist has. Spending burn from the buffer doesn’t trigger effects that care about spending burn, but points from the buffer can be spent in excess of the maximum per round. Each wild talent can only get one point from the buffer. (It is usually safe to assume that the kineticist starts the day with the buffer full unless the adventure says otherwise.)
This reduces the burn cost of composite blasts by 1 point.
This reduces the burn cost of one type of metakinesis by 1 point. (The ability should specify which one.)
Utility wild talents encompass a wide variety of effects, from always-on benefits to activated abilities that allow the kineticist do spell-like effects thematic to their element. Some rare ones even do affect a kinetic blast. Unfortunately, there’s really no shortcut to these, you just need to spend a quick moment reading over them. There’s a description of all of them on the PRD.
Okay, so now we have a quick description of all the class features, what should your plan for prepping the NPC look like?
There you go! You’ve prepped the kineticist! On the kineticist’s turn, pick the blast and infusions you want to use, make sure that it fits in the max burn per round, and fire away!
For some people, that explanation was enough. But for others, an example is necessary. So let’s give one.
This example will use the statblock of Elsbeth Higgenstrom, linked so you can have two windows open.
Our first step for prepping is to find the max burn total and max burn she can accept per round. This is written at the bottom under SQ and we can fill out the top boxes on our cheat sheet. (8 max, 3 per round)
Next let’s look at the defense & utility talents:
Cool, so after a little bit of looking stuff up, it looks like Elsbeth has a couple constant spells up, and most of her utility wild talents are there for defensive buffs. Make some notes so that you remember them, and you should be good for these talents.
Next is to figure out how much burn the kineticist is accepting precombat. If the stat block has already done this, then it will be in the Before Combat line of the Tactics section, the same place where you would find precombat buffs. Elsbeth’s stat block does in fact include this already, so we can skip this step. (Most prewritten statblocks will already include this step, but this is there on the occasion that they didn’t decide to do include this information.)
Next up is to double check that the attack and damage numbers include elemental overflow. The Before Combat section of Elsbeth implies that it is included, and the Base Statistics section including attack and damage values of the blasts certainly imply that they are already calculated in, but it’s worth checking the math real fast. The easiest place to check is going to be the attack bonus because that is consistent between all the blasts.
Looking at Elsbeth’s stat block, we see that she has taken 3 points of burn, so her elemental overflow should be at +3/+6. Her attack bonus is +7 BAB, +4 Dex +3 elemental overflow for +14, which matches with the attack bonuses that we are given, so we are good here.
Next up is the kinetic blasts. Thanks to expanded element, it seems that Elsbeth has three different types of blasts - air is a basic physical blast, blizzard is a composite physical blast, and cold is a basic energy blast. Make a note of each of them on the cheat sheet at the top so they’re easy to find. Include the attack lines in the notes so that you only have to reference one sheet when blasting.
Now we just need to list all the items that can affect a kinetic blast. Fortunately we can use the headers of the previous sections as a checklist.
Once you have written all this down, you now have a complete cheat sheet for everything that can possibly affect a blast. Now in play, all you have to do is go down the sheet, pick the abilities you want to use, calculate the cost, and blast away!
A copy of Elsbeth’s filled out sheet is linked here for your convenience. (docx, pdf)
This guide was created by Jen McTeague. You can find her at her website or on Twitter as @mersiamnot.
If you wish to talk about this guide or leave feedback, you can visit its Paizo thread for discussion.
For additional reading or a more player-focused guide to the kineticist, check out N. Jolly's Guide to the Kineticist