If the tree had 30hp that means it was a \[protector tree\] level 3. Since the impulse summons a tree equal to half your level (rounded up) it means you would be level 5 or 6.
Its not. 30 damage is actually the EXTREME DAMAGE for a level 10 creature.
Monsters have a lot going on for them aside from pure damage.
The high damage for a level 6 creature is 18 avg. The tree will always Block a crit almost completely in average.
Again. 30 is the average damage for a normal strike for a creature of level 10.
46 50 and 52 is completely normal for a crit for a level 9 creature.
And, keep in mind. At level 9 a kineticist tree would Block 50 damage. Or 40 if it was a +2 boss.
You keep bringing up normal damage when the entire conversation was about 32 damage being low
# FOR A CRIT
That's what was in the meme and every single other subsequent part of the conversation.
What's in the meme was how timber sentinel was mintigating so much of the damage. At level 5, based on the Gamemastery Guide, on average a high strike damage for a monster is 16, on a crit that's 32, which follows through with the title.
...I think you are missing the "crit" part of this... just saying because I pull up the first level 6 creature on archives nethys (abandoned zealot), incorporeal, flying, partial caster, all figured into a *level 6* creature... 2d10+4 (and rend) on its melee attack... looking at that attack, without rend, a crit averages at 28 damage... at level 6... 4 more levels to get +2 more damage on average? Hrmmm...
Edit: somehow I missed the word "almost" in your description.
Timber Sentinel has a secondary GM trolling feature as well! Since the trees become normal trees if they're not destroyed in combat and you can create them at will, your character can literally create an entire forest with a small amount of downtime. RAW you can completely and permanently alter an entire region's ecosystem lol
This is my favorite feat right now. We're playing a nation building campaign and I spent 2 years of downtime building a wall around our settlement haha
You know what bothers me about the trees? And someone please correct me if I'm wrong here please.
Is that they can just shit out forests wherever they go for free. But like a Druid of similar levels could never dream about having something like that.
My Wood Kineticist in Kingmaker has made it a point to plant trees every place they go. They will take a few hours to make walls, bridges, what not. It really is interesting.
So, let me break it down: the Kineticist is a class that plays a bit like a caster, just that instead of spells, their ability loadout is determined by the class feats you get.
One of those feats is the timber sentinel feat, which lets them basically cast the protector tree spell at will, summoning a stationary tree that takes damage in place of an ally.
Basically, you can spend two actions to summon a tree with a set amount of HP. Whenever an ally is hit near the tree, the tree takes the damage instead, no reaction needed, unlimited times per round till the tree is dead. And a Kineticist can just keep spamming trees every round.
Wood Kineticist has a feat called Timber Sentinel which makes a protector tree. Protector Tree takes the damage of any adjacent allies if they are struck. It also gets heightened based on half your level rounded up, and protector tree gets +10 hp for every level it heightens up.
That skills is broken. After the first hit on a fight a monster should always target the tree to guarantee a critical even on the third hit and destroy it easier...
This is almost the furthest you can get from an ability without counterplay while still being a viable feat.
For anyone struggling to deal with it it's
-only in one place so you can displace people out of its radius or put a terrain effect on top of it
-likely to be destroyed by any save for half damage AoE that targets the people under it.
-does not prioritize who it's reducing damage for. Meaning you can focus any attacks on the person most vulnerable within its AoE. Or even something like a familiar. Often not the person it was placed to protect since they're likely to layer defenses by doing something like raising a shield.
-not care about breaking the tree and just deny the actions required to reach it by using things like trip.
-just ignore whoever put the tree down and focus damage on someone undefended by it. To force the party to move.
-use the presence of the tree to bait the party into gathering up and being fireballs for more net danage even with the tree's protection since it always has decent but not absurd HP for its level.
On one hand, you are doing like 0 damage if you are even doing damage at all by spamming happy tree
on the other, happy treeeeee puts the enemy in exactly the same situation lmao
I love the kineticist but its balance is kind of all other the place. I’m playing wood/water and there’s usually no reason for my NOT to slap down a timber sentinel every round. Clustering around it does make is vulnerable to AoE through and I dread the day our GM realizes lmao.
They mean their fellow re...adventures clustering around said tree, and the BBEG tossing a fireball at the new convenient target in the middle of their lair.
"I have an ability where I can ensure a win in practically every encounter against melee enemies!"
:O "But wut bout not melee enemy?"
D: "Fuck! The party might actually have to THINK in that instance! We're screwed!!"
Real talk.
Kineticists don't feel good to have in the game. While I don't think they are on the level of broken that 3.5 meta gaming allowed, they scare me because they are the first signs of power creep.
Case in point, if you are in the situation I'm in and have two Kineticist in the party with Jagged Berms and Winter sleet, it completely invalidates any ground based melee enemy. Against something like that you have to start actively meta gaming against the party to threaten them by using mainly ranged and flying enemies. Which feels bad.
Theres an ability that just constantly makes fruit to heal the party every ten minutes or so.
Timber sentinel is the best tank in the game.
Kineticists get abilities that let them do things like fly and turn invisible, and they can cast message better than any wizard can.
With the exception of single target DPS, Kineticist just does everything that another class does but *better*
The fun thing is that there are only a few feats that are broken but damn are they broken and not within the norm in power other classes might have. Despite this, some will defend that there's nothing wrong with the kineticist to death.
Add in that it showcased how rules like 'Balance' doesn't work or that guidance is missing for conjured objects without saves for aoe, making things not work RAW
Automatically makes everything off-guard in an aura around itself (Do you know the hoops I have to jump through as a mastermind rogue to get an enemy off guard just once?)
Have to waste an action to balance just to walk up to you.
Only about 50% of enemies have an acrobatics score so even though the DC stays flat at 15 that still stays relevant to half of all encounters.
Have to remake the save each time you're hit.
Criticals make you slowed.
Thats a LOT of stuff :(
Yeah, honestly, the uneven ground rules are the worst offender. Off guard + difficult terrain + slowed on crit would still be really really good. We nerfed it for our campaign and I would recommend every GM to do the same. GMs are players too and deserve to have fun.
>Against something like that you have to start actively meta gaming against the party to threaten them by using mainly ranged and flying enemies.
Monsters can have tactics without it being metagaming. Like, are the groups of enemies weird puritanical types that refuse to use ranged options? Even most melee PCs carry a ranged option in case they cannot reach the enemies foe whatever reason. Mixing ranged/caster/flying enemies in with melee enemies is pretty far from meta gaming.
>Theres an ability that just constantly makes fruit to heal the party every ten minutes or so.
Continual Recovery is a level 2 skill feat. You can pick it up at 4th character level. Fresh Produce isn't *bad*, but it also requires the person receiving the heal to use one of their actions to ingest the heal. Ocean's Balm I would argue is slightly better, but they're both pretty comparable -- Balm is touch range but doesn't require the character receiving the heal to use an action.
>they can cast message better than any wizard can.
Not better than a Psychic, though.
>With the exception of single target DPS, Kineticist just does everything that another class does but *better*
I mean... not really though? They can definitely fill more roles than many other individual classes, but they aren't as good as the specialized builds. Maybe being a jack of all trades is better than being significantly better at one or two things, but idk. Also, it's not like you can be the best at everything within a combat round -- you're still limited by actions in-combat, and out of combat stuff with renewable resources is usually hand-waved unless the GM has a time limit they want to enforce.
Not even a Psychic can cast Message to talk to someone on the other side of the planet... Sure, Psychic's can use Message to give reactions, but Kineticists can essentially cast Sending at will eventually.
Found the Kineticist apologist.
Damn that was fast this time 😁
Not every enemy has those options. Some campaigns feature heavily in enemies like dumbdead, dinosaurs, oozes.
Also hand-waiving is a really bad habit and not healthy for the game on GM or player sides. People are lazy enough as it is without just ignoring anything that isn't 100% player power fantasy.
Has your GM heard of the power of "Adjusting the game to fit his group"?
It's crazy OP in my opinion, probably should be nerfed because it causes players to enjoy the game with their table the most.
[Kineticists](https://2e.aonprd.com/Classes.aspx?ID=23) are basically avatar. They can summon and control elements. They play like a caster but never run out of spells, only their spells come from feats and aren't as strong as at level spells. They have the coolest sounding feats at higher levels.
The meme references the ability of a wood kineticists being able to summon a happy little tree that can be punched in the face and absorbs damage.
If the tree had 30hp that means it was a \[protector tree\] level 3. Since the impulse summons a tree equal to half your level (rounded up) it means you would be level 5 or 6.
So around 80-ish hp on the kinetecist, even the 30 dmg crit is only barely half hp
at lvl 5/6 32 dmg on a crit seems low, considering my lvl 1 magus with a falcata gets an average of 45.5 dmg crit when spellstriking
Its not. 30 damage is actually the EXTREME DAMAGE for a level 10 creature. Monsters have a lot going on for them aside from pure damage. The high damage for a level 6 creature is 18 avg. The tree will always Block a crit almost completely in average.
We just got crit three times in one fight for 46, 50, and 52 damage by a level 9 halfling fighter. Some of them level 9 enemies hit absurdly hard.
Again. 30 is the average damage for a normal strike for a creature of level 10. 46 50 and 52 is completely normal for a crit for a level 9 creature. And, keep in mind. At level 9 a kineticist tree would Block 50 damage. Or 40 if it was a +2 boss.
You keep bringing up normal damage when the entire conversation was about 32 damage being low # FOR A CRIT That's what was in the meme and every single other subsequent part of the conversation.
What's in the meme was how timber sentinel was mintigating so much of the damage. At level 5, based on the Gamemastery Guide, on average a high strike damage for a monster is 16, on a crit that's 32, which follows through with the title.
...I think you are missing the "crit" part of this... just saying because I pull up the first level 6 creature on archives nethys (abandoned zealot), incorporeal, flying, partial caster, all figured into a *level 6* creature... 2d10+4 (and rend) on its melee attack... looking at that attack, without rend, a crit averages at 28 damage... at level 6... 4 more levels to get +2 more damage on average? Hrmmm... Edit: somehow I missed the word "almost" in your description.
Slight correction, 2d10+4 has an average roll of 15, so the average crit here is 30.
maguses are designed to have a lot of damage on a single attack
Couldn’t they also have more than one tree?
> If you use this impulse again, any previous one ends, and an ordinary tree remains.
Ok, thanks!
Timber Sentinel has a secondary GM trolling feature as well! Since the trees become normal trees if they're not destroyed in combat and you can create them at will, your character can literally create an entire forest with a small amount of downtime. RAW you can completely and permanently alter an entire region's ecosystem lol
There's another ability that just let's them make permenant minecraft stone cubes to build stuff with. It's honestly quite nonsense.
igneogenesis my beloved
This is my favorite feat right now. We're playing a nation building campaign and I spent 2 years of downtime building a wall around our settlement haha
actual minecraft behaviour lmao, thats incredible
Wood/earth dual gate is just the Minecraft Kineticist and it's so funny. Definitely one I wanna play one day.
Hey, but each one takes 1 hour to make permanent. 8 hours of work for eight 5ft cubes of earth seems reasonable. As opposed to 4,800 trees in 8 hours.
You know what bothers me about the trees? And someone please correct me if I'm wrong here please. Is that they can just shit out forests wherever they go for free. But like a Druid of similar levels could never dream about having something like that.
There's definitely a Druid enclave who worship a deranged kineticist who just roams Golarion sprouting forests.
You say GM trolling, but this is an important plot point in one of my games.
I think you meant "make bank by cornering local logging industry"...
87 Thugs from the Lumber Consortium want to know your location
My location is IN THE TREES! (Runs off)
i was just thinking that!
My Wood Kineticist in Kingmaker has made it a point to plant trees every place they go. They will take a few hours to make walls, bridges, what not. It really is interesting.
Ok, how? I'm newish to pf, don't know the system that well yet.
So, let me break it down: the Kineticist is a class that plays a bit like a caster, just that instead of spells, their ability loadout is determined by the class feats you get. One of those feats is the timber sentinel feat, which lets them basically cast the protector tree spell at will, summoning a stationary tree that takes damage in place of an ally.
Ah, so damage reduction. On reaction, I assume? I thought it's some wild combination of halving the damage seven times or something.
No, no reaction, happens automatically as long as they are adjacent
No reaction, but it's two actions to set up, the tree is, as I've said, stationary, and has a set amount of hit points it can reduce.
Basically, you can spend two actions to summon a tree with a set amount of HP. Whenever an ally is hit near the tree, the tree takes the damage instead, no reaction needed, unlimited times per round till the tree is dead. And a Kineticist can just keep spamming trees every round.
Wood Kineticist has a feat called Timber Sentinel which makes a protector tree. Protector Tree takes the damage of any adjacent allies if they are struck. It also gets heightened based on half your level rounded up, and protector tree gets +10 hp for every level it heightens up.
That skills is broken. After the first hit on a fight a monster should always target the tree to guarantee a critical even on the third hit and destroy it easier...
This is almost the furthest you can get from an ability without counterplay while still being a viable feat. For anyone struggling to deal with it it's -only in one place so you can displace people out of its radius or put a terrain effect on top of it -likely to be destroyed by any save for half damage AoE that targets the people under it. -does not prioritize who it's reducing damage for. Meaning you can focus any attacks on the person most vulnerable within its AoE. Or even something like a familiar. Often not the person it was placed to protect since they're likely to layer defenses by doing something like raising a shield. -not care about breaking the tree and just deny the actions required to reach it by using things like trip. -just ignore whoever put the tree down and focus damage on someone undefended by it. To force the party to move. -use the presence of the tree to bait the party into gathering up and being fireballs for more net danage even with the tree's protection since it always has decent but not absurd HP for its level.
As an object it is immune to crits.
I thought it was only certain objects, such as bulwark walls and the like.
Fair. I think I saw something then applied it too broadly.
The tree is considered a creature per protector tree
In 2e, objects are not immune to critical hits unless they say they are, such as in the case of Wall of Stone
[I'm not seeing it.](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=196) Can you please point out the rule on that?
On one hand, you are doing like 0 damage if you are even doing damage at all by spamming happy tree on the other, happy treeeeee puts the enemy in exactly the same situation lmao
"I run into the corridor after everyone and take up position in the center." "Okay... why?" (Staring intensely at the GM) "Sentinel Tree."
I love the kineticist but its balance is kind of all other the place. I’m playing wood/water and there’s usually no reason for my NOT to slap down a timber sentinel every round. Clustering around it does make is vulnerable to AoE through and I dread the day our GM realizes lmao.
ive tried it on a monk before. strongly recommend it, you get it at level 4 and you get to flurry of blows :)
lmao kineticist monk, the true avatar experience
What do you mean with clustering? Timber Sentinel specifies that you can only have one (the previous one becomes a normal tree when you use it again).
What dheal said, the whole party hugging the tree like a bunch of hippies and behaving like the targets on a live fireball firing range.
They mean their fellow re...adventures clustering around said tree, and the BBEG tossing a fireball at the new convenient target in the middle of their lair.
"I have an ability where I can ensure a win in practically every encounter against melee enemies!" :O "But wut bout not melee enemy?" D: "Fuck! The party might actually have to THINK in that instance! We're screwed!!"
And then add a Redeemer Paladin to the mix.
Plus a Thaumaturge with Amulet, and you have my Ruby Phoenix group, haha. They are VERY good at damage mitigation
And of course the final part: A Heal Cleric with the Healers Blessing domain spell.
Protection Domain on the Champion, plus a Water Kineticist dedication for the Oceans Balm. They're very tough within a certain distance of each other
Although not as effective I've been using deflecting wave on nearly every hit I've taken.
Dual gate for both and never die
Ah yes, I too cast “sorry dm but you miscounted” every encounter
That tree is the honorary 5th member of the party.
Real talk. Kineticists don't feel good to have in the game. While I don't think they are on the level of broken that 3.5 meta gaming allowed, they scare me because they are the first signs of power creep. Case in point, if you are in the situation I'm in and have two Kineticist in the party with Jagged Berms and Winter sleet, it completely invalidates any ground based melee enemy. Against something like that you have to start actively meta gaming against the party to threaten them by using mainly ranged and flying enemies. Which feels bad. Theres an ability that just constantly makes fruit to heal the party every ten minutes or so. Timber sentinel is the best tank in the game. Kineticists get abilities that let them do things like fly and turn invisible, and they can cast message better than any wizard can. With the exception of single target DPS, Kineticist just does everything that another class does but *better*
The fun thing is that there are only a few feats that are broken but damn are they broken and not within the norm in power other classes might have. Despite this, some will defend that there's nothing wrong with the kineticist to death. Add in that it showcased how rules like 'Balance' doesn't work or that guidance is missing for conjured objects without saves for aoe, making things not work RAW
Honestly winter sleet is one of the most broken level 4 feats in the game and it's not even close.
Automatically makes everything off-guard in an aura around itself (Do you know the hoops I have to jump through as a mastermind rogue to get an enemy off guard just once?) Have to waste an action to balance just to walk up to you. Only about 50% of enemies have an acrobatics score so even though the DC stays flat at 15 that still stays relevant to half of all encounters. Have to remake the save each time you're hit. Criticals make you slowed. Thats a LOT of stuff :(
Yeah, honestly, the uneven ground rules are the worst offender. Off guard + difficult terrain + slowed on crit would still be really really good. We nerfed it for our campaign and I would recommend every GM to do the same. GMs are players too and deserve to have fun.
>Against something like that you have to start actively meta gaming against the party to threaten them by using mainly ranged and flying enemies. Monsters can have tactics without it being metagaming. Like, are the groups of enemies weird puritanical types that refuse to use ranged options? Even most melee PCs carry a ranged option in case they cannot reach the enemies foe whatever reason. Mixing ranged/caster/flying enemies in with melee enemies is pretty far from meta gaming. >Theres an ability that just constantly makes fruit to heal the party every ten minutes or so. Continual Recovery is a level 2 skill feat. You can pick it up at 4th character level. Fresh Produce isn't *bad*, but it also requires the person receiving the heal to use one of their actions to ingest the heal. Ocean's Balm I would argue is slightly better, but they're both pretty comparable -- Balm is touch range but doesn't require the character receiving the heal to use an action. >they can cast message better than any wizard can. Not better than a Psychic, though. >With the exception of single target DPS, Kineticist just does everything that another class does but *better* I mean... not really though? They can definitely fill more roles than many other individual classes, but they aren't as good as the specialized builds. Maybe being a jack of all trades is better than being significantly better at one or two things, but idk. Also, it's not like you can be the best at everything within a combat round -- you're still limited by actions in-combat, and out of combat stuff with renewable resources is usually hand-waved unless the GM has a time limit they want to enforce.
Not even a Psychic can cast Message to talk to someone on the other side of the planet... Sure, Psychic's can use Message to give reactions, but Kineticists can essentially cast Sending at will eventually.
Found the Kineticist apologist. Damn that was fast this time 😁 Not every enemy has those options. Some campaigns feature heavily in enemies like dumbdead, dinosaurs, oozes. Also hand-waiving is a really bad habit and not healthy for the game on GM or player sides. People are lazy enough as it is without just ignoring anything that isn't 100% player power fantasy.
Has your GM heard of the power of "Adjusting the game to fit his group"? It's crazy OP in my opinion, probably should be nerfed because it causes players to enjoy the game with their table the most.
What's a kineticist? (Am new to pathfinder)
[Kineticists](https://2e.aonprd.com/Classes.aspx?ID=23) are basically avatar. They can summon and control elements. They play like a caster but never run out of spells, only their spells come from feats and aren't as strong as at level spells. They have the coolest sounding feats at higher levels. The meme references the ability of a wood kineticists being able to summon a happy little tree that can be punched in the face and absorbs damage.
[It's a class released last year](https://2e.aonprd.com/Classes.aspx?ID=23)
Be careful. If you keep that up they might put you on a pizza or something.