PF2 Kineticist Handbook

Introduction

The Kineticist is a “not-caster”. They fight very much like a spellcaster, relying primarily on named features that scale very similarly to heightening spells. However, unlike a spellcaster, they have no limited resource like spell slots of Focus Points. The Kineticist’s powers are truly bottomless, making them fantastic at persisting through long adventuring days. Even better, their options are diverse enough that they can fill nearly any role within a party (short of some skill-based roles, which they can still fill with some sacrifices). The Kineticist’s most natural roles are as a Blaster and a Striker, but depending on options they can easily expand into Controller, Support, and can dabble as a Healer and a Scout.

You don’t get a subclass as a Kineticist. Instead, you choose one or more “kinetic elements”. Initially this comes from the Kinetic Gate feature, allowing you to choose between a single element or two elements, immediately allowing you to choose between specialization and diversification. Every 4 levels thereafter, Gate’s Threshold allows you to expand upon this choice, allowing you to again choose between specializing in your previously-selected element(s) or diversifying into a new element. This allows your Kineticist to exist on a sliding scale between specializing in a single element or diversifying into all 6 by level 17.

The class also exists in an interesting place in the real-world history of Pathfinder. Rage of Elements is the first major supplement published following the 2023 OGL Controversy, and following the “Pathfinder Remaster” announcement which occurred in the wake of the controversy. The text of Rage of Elements was written to be fully compatible with the updated rules text in the remaster, which hasn’t yet been published, though Paizo has shared a preview PDF to fill that gap. As such, some of the rules terms in our support for the Kineticist may feel unfamiliar, but we’ll do our best to also note the pre-remaster terminology.

Be sure to also read our other supporting articles for the Kineticist:

Table of Contents

Disclaimer

RPGBOT uses the color coding scheme which has become common among Pathfinder build handbooks.

  • Red: Bad, useless options, or options which are extremely situational. Nearly never useful.
  • Orange: OK options, or useful options that only apply in rare circumstances. Useful sometimes.
  • Green: Good options. Useful often.
  • Blue: Fantastic options, often essential to the function of your character. Useful very frequently.

Kineticist Class Features

Key Ability: Constitution. This gives you decent hit points despite only 8+ hp per level.

Hit Points: Despite only 8+hp, you should have decent hit points thanks your Key Ability.

Proficiencies: The Kineticist’s most important proficiencies are good, but you basically can’t use weapons and your Perception and Will saves leave defensive gaps.

  • Perception: Among the worst progressions in the game.
  • Saving Throws: Fantastic Fortitude saves, decent Reflex saves, absolute garbage Will saves. Don’t dump Wisdom.
  • Skills: 4+Int is standard, but with no dependency on Intelligence you’re not likely to have a ton of skills.
  • Attacks: Only Simple weapons, and you never go past Expert. But it really doesn’t matter; if you’re attacking with a weapon, something has gone horrendously wrong.
  • Defenses: Only light armor, but your proficiency progression is decent. If you’re worried about AC, look at one of the Impulses that give you armor.
  • Class DC: The Kineticist’s Class DC follows the same progression as full casters like the Wizard. You can also get a magic item to get an Item Bonus to your attacks, but that won’t impact your Class DC.

Kinetic Gate: Your first major decision point within the class, and you immediately get to choose between specialization and diversification. You’ll also get two Impulse Feats based on your decision here. Keep in mind that if you later use Gate’s Threshold to Expand the Gate, you can choose an Impulse Junction, so you’re not locked out of Impulse Junctions if you opt for Dual Gate at level 1.

Single Gate: Specializing in a single gate means that you also get an Impulse Junction at 1st level.

Impulse Junctions activate when you use an Impulse of the chosen element that takes 2 Actions or more. This excludes the 1-Action version of Elemental Blast and any Stance Impulse, but the 2-Action version of Elemental Blast and many other Impulse options will trigger your Impulse Junction.

You only get one Impulse Junction per round, so you don’t get to trigger two Impulse Junctions by using a Composite Impulse. In fact, Composite Impulses aren’t addressed at all, so it’s not perfectly clear how they work with Impulse Junctions. I think the intent is that you can choose either element, but watch for Errata in case I’m horribly wrong.

  • Air: Free movement before or after you use the Impulse is fantastic, allowing you to move into position to better use your Impulse without spending another Action to Step or Stride. If you’re built to fight at range, the free Step is a great way to get out of melee in order to avoid provoking Reactions. Remember that most Ancestries have 25-foot speed, so getting a permanent +5 speed bonus (such as from the Fleet General Feat) will improve your half-Stride by a full square. Also consider a wand of Longstrider.
  • Earth: More AC is always nice, but it doesn’t stack with a shield, cover, or many other common AC bonuses. Still, Earth doesn’t get an armor impulse
  • Fire: Not super exciting, but consistently useful.
  • Metal: Fantastic for melee builds. Looks for ways to pad your durability while still allowing yourself to be hit (Shield Block, temporary hit points, etc.) and go looking for trouble. For ranged builds, this is largely useless.
  • Water: Fantastic if you have ongoing area effects and can force enemies into somewhere dangerous, but remember that you can also use this on allies to do things like pull them out of a grapple.
  • Wood: A big pad of temporary hit points, but since the duration is so short the incentive is clearly to refresh the temporary hp every turn. This is great for a melee build, but ranged builds likely won’t need the temporary hp often enough to make this feel meaningful.

Dual Gate: Two elements at first level means that your Elemental Blast and your other Impulses are much less likely to be ground to a halt by creatures who resist your favorite element.

Kinetic Aura: Managing your Kinetic Aura is a central, crucial part of playing a Kineticist because “You can use an impulse only if your kinetic aura is active and channeling that element”. You essentially can’t function while your aura is down, so if you start combat with your aura down, your first order of business is almost always to get your aura running. Fortunately, the Channel Elements also allows you to use a Stance or a Elemental Blast in the same Action, so it’s barely an inconvenience. Even so, if it makes sense to keep your aura going outside of combat there’s little reason not to do so beyond the need to hide by not having a sphere of magical nonsense running all the time.

In its base form, the aura is essentially a chore with a fun cosmetic effect. But depending on your choices of Class Feats, you can add several exciting effects to your aura. Some of these are harmful (ongoing damage, etc.), while others are helpful, allowing you to build an aura that suits your play style. If you plan to go this route, be sure to take Safe Elements so that you can exclude targets from the aura’s effects in order to avoid harming allies and/or buffing enemies.

Many of the feats which modify your Aura will be Stance feats. Accoridng to the Stance trait, “A stance lasts… until its requirements (if any) are violated.” Frustratingly, the Kineticist’s Stance feats all omit requirements for the feat. They do have the Impulse trait, which means that they can only be activated when your aura is running, but RAW it appears that your stance doesn’t end when your aura does. It’s possible that you can resume your aura, use the Action to make a Elemental Blast, and keep your prior stance running.

You can also modify your Kinetic Aura with Aura Junctions when you get the Gate’s Threshold feature at level 5 and every 4 levels thereafter. Aura Junctions include cool stuff like imposing weakness to fire damage from your fire impulses.

While your Kinetic Aura will generally stay running throughout combat, Impulses with the Overflow trait will end the aura. These Impulses are frequently powerful burts like Hail of Splinters or Walk Through the Conflagration. Remember that you can’t use other impulses while your aura is down, so getting it back up as fast as possible is important. If you plan to use Overflow Impulses, it may be wise to avoid feats which add effects to your aura since the two groups of options will be perpetually opposed to one another.

Impulses: Impulses are your not-spells, and they’re the Kineticist’s central mechanic. They work a lot like spells, and things that resist spells also resist impulses, but they’re not spells. They automatically improve as you gain levels in the same way that cantrips do.

While you do get Elemental Blast and Base Kinesis for free, the majority of your Impulses come from class feats, so be sure to see our Kineticist Class Feats Breakdown.

I’m not sure if Impulses can be counterspelled.

Elemental Blast: Your go-to offensive options, Elemental Blast is versatile and remains useful for your whole career. However, other Impulse options will frequently deal considerably more damage.

Elemental Blast’s damage does leave something to be desired; 1d6 or 1d8 damage with no modifier isn’t impressive even at low levels, but by using the 2-Action version you can add your Constitution modifier to the damage. You can also dive into melee to get Strength added to the damage, but be sure that you’re built to survive that tactic. You add damage dice every four levels, which is faster than martial characters will add Striking Runes, so at high levels your Elemental Blast may actually outpace a comparable weapon user.

If you pick up the Versatile Blasts feat, you add a third damage type to each of your chosen elements. Two-Element Infusion allows you to combine the benefits of two elements, potentially allowing you to get a favorable damage type, the larger d8 damage die, and 60-foot range all on one blast. You can further modify your Elemental Blast with feats like Weapon Infusion and Chain Infusion.

  • Air: Good range, and resistance to both damage types on the same creature is rare, but the damage die is small.
  • Earth: Short range, and two physical damage types. Creatures with resistance to one physical damage type often resist all physical damage, which means that having these two damage types is rarely an improvement over having just one of them.
  • Fire: Good range, but small damage die, and only one damage type option. Fire resistance/immunity are common, so you may struggle unless you rely heavily on Extract Element.
  • Metal: Short range, and two physical damage types. Creatures with resistance to one physical damage type often resist all physical damage, which means that having these two damage types is rarely an improvement over having just one of them.
  • Water: Easiest to compare to Air. Water has shorter range and Cold resistance is more common than Electricity resistance, but Water gets a slightly larger damage die.
  • Wood: Resistance to Vitality damage (positive damage pre-remaster) is rare, so you have and easy damage option in nearly every situation, and you also get the larger damage die.

Base Kinesis: Ignore the laws of conservation of matter and will your element(s) in and out of existence. It’s hard to comprehensively describe everything you could do with this because it’s just so incredibly open-ended. At low levels you’ll do things like create small piles of sand or fill a waterskin with water, but as you gain levels and the Bulk limit increases you can do things like fill barrels of water while traveling through deserts or create pockets of breathable air while exploring the depths of the ocean. Unfortunately, because the specific effects and the nature of Bulk are intentionally vague, your GM may also limit the feature’s usefulness by interpreting its effects in a restrictive manner. Your GM might not like you creating 4-Bulk rocks directly above your enemies.

Extract Element: Against small numbers of enemies, this makes element damage considerably more reliable. The resistance for creatures that are normally immune is good, but not so much that you can’t still damage them with your more powerful Impulse options, though switching elements is still a better idea if you can do so.

Against crowds, you won’t have enough Actions to justify spreading this around.

Gate’s Threshold: A major decision point in your build, plus you get a few extra Class Feats as you gain levels. Just as with Kinetic Gate at level 1, you choose between specialization (Expand the Portal) and Diversification (Fork the Path).

Expand the Portal: Specializing in a previously-selected element gets you access to Gate Junctions (including Impulse Junctions), which add additional effects to your existing Impulses in addition to giving you another Impulse Feat. This allows you to focus more on specific tactics, such as using your Kinetic Aura for hit-and-run tactics with Air or to get even more damage out of fire impulses.

Gate Junctions:

  • Air:
    • Critical Blast: Great for repositioning enemies, but that’s not always impactful. Ideally you can push enemies into position so that you can hit more targets with an area effect, or you push an enemy away from you or another squishy ally.
    • Elemental Resistance (Air): Rare.
    • Elemental Resistance (Electricity): Fairly common.
    • Aura Junction: A 10-foot speed bonus can be a big tactical advantage if you’re lining up area effects or if you need to move to flank. Combined with Air’s Gate Junction, a 10-foot speed bonus means that your half-Stride gets another square of movement. But that one or two squares isn’t always impactful, and you can get the same speed bonus from a Longstrider wand.
    • Skill Junction: Experienced Smuggler is extremely situational.
    • Impulse Junction: See Kinetic Gate, above.
  • Earth:
    • Critical Blast: Knocking foes Prone is always great, but forcing flying enemies to fall just 20 feet likely won’t be enough to get them on the ground.
    • Elemental Resistance (Earth): Rare.
    • Elemental Resistance (Poison): Extremely common.
    • Aura Junction: Great if you want to force enemies to remain melee with you. Definitely grab Aura Shaping to expand the area of difficult terrain.
    • Skill Junction: With only light armor and no need for weapons, what exactly are you hauling?
    • Impulse Junction: See Kinetic Gate, above.
  • Fire:
    • Critical Blast: Consistently effective. I don’t think the weakness from Fire’s Aura Junction applies to this since it’s damage from Persistent Damage rather than directly from an Impulse, but maybe we’ll get Errata that clarifies.
    • Elemental Resistance (Cold): Fairly common.
    • Elemental Resistance (Fire): Extremely common.
    • Aura Junction: More damage! Be sure to take Aura Shaping so that you can keep as many enemies in your aura as possible.
    • Skill Junction: Charisma is one of the Kineticist’s only two dump state options, so you likely don’t have the Charisma to make Demoralize effective.
    • Impulse Junction: See Kinetic Gate, above.
  • Metal:
    • Critical Blast: Consistently effective.
    • Elemental Resistance (Electricity): Fairly common.
    • Elemental Resistance (Metal): Rare.
    • Aura Junction: Too situational. The vast majority of enemies don’t rely on weapons or manufactured armor.
    • Skill Junction: What are you planning to repair? A shield? That’s what Metal Carapace is for. Maybe this is helpful if you have other allies relying on shields or other chronically breakable equipment, but Gate Junctions are a powerful resource and this just isn’t good enough to justify the cost.
    • Impulse Junction: See Kinetic Gate, above.
  • Water:
    • Critical Blast: A bit of extra damage. This is nice for handling crowds, but it might also hurt you and your allies, which makes it hard to use Elemental Blast if anyone you care about is in melee.
    • Elemental Resistance (Fire): Extremely common. It won’t stack with the Aura Junction, so I don’t recommend taking both.
    • Elemental Resistance (Water): Rare.
    • Aura Junction: Great for protecting you and your allies. It won’t stack with the Elemental Resistance option, so I don’t recommend taking both.
    • Skill Junction: If you want to fight in water with any sort of frequency, you need to get a Swim speed. Even if that was somehow impossible, you should not be using weapons, so Underwater Marauder is outright useless for you.
    • Impulse Junction: See Kinetic Gate, above.
  • Wood:
    • Critical Blast: The ground is a surface. Immobilizing enemies on a crit is amazing. Sure, the DC to escape is trivially low, but that’s still an Action that they’re wasting to do so, which puts you and your allies at a huge advantage against.
    • Elemental Resistance (Poison): Extremely common.
    • Elemental Resistance (Wood): Rare.
    • Aura Junction: A tiny quantity of temporary hit points. I’m never going to complain about temporary hp, but at this quantity it’s rarely going to feel impactful. If you take this, I strongly recommend Aura Shaping so that you can keep as many allies inside the aura as possible. This may be worthwhile in parties that rely heavily on Minions because distributing the temporary hp to more creatures means that you’re getting more benefit without additional cost.
    • Skill Junction: Borderline useless.
    • Impulse Junction: See Kinetic Gate, above.

Fork the Path: Add another element and pick an Impulse Feat for it. Keep in mind that this also allows Composite Impulses since the Impulse just needs to have the matching trait.

Reflow Elements: A great way to experiment with new Impulses or to diversify your options if you added a new element later in your career. Remember that it uses the normal rules for retraining, so you need to select an Impulse that’s of the same or lower level.

Also impotant: you cannot replace Composite Impulses via the Reflow Elements feature, so if you need to replace one you’ll need to use the normal rules for retraining.

Double Reflow: Changing Impulses likely won’t be something that you do every day, so doing it twice per day is rarely an improvement.

Final Gate: This takes a little examination to decipher exactly what it does.

If, and only if, your Kinetic Aura is down at the beginning of your turn, you can Channel Elements as a Free Action. Channel Elements allows you to make a 1-Acton Elemental Blast or activate a Stance Impulse. This means that for you can make an Elemental Blast or activate a Stance as a Free Action at the beginning of your turn.

To maximize the benefits here, you want to have your aura turned off between turns, which means using Overflow Impulses frequently. If you depend on your aura’s benefits outside of your turn, you’ll likely only use this feature at the beginning of combat.

Many classes get a 20th-level feat which gives you an extra Action which you can only use for specific things. Kineticists get Kinetic Pinnacle, which also allows you to use Channel Elements, Elemental Blast, or activate a Stance. If you take the feat, you can reasonably use 5 Actions in a turn every single turn without resorting to things like Haste.

Kineticist Attributes (Ability Scores)

Typical Kineticist Attributes

Constitution and Constitution accessories.

Str: If you plan to fight in melee, you want a bit of Strength to add to your Elemental Blast and potentially for combat maneuvers like Shove. But keep in mind that Strength only adds to Elemental Blast; your other Impulses won’t benefit. If you want to avoid the -1 penalty to Strength/Dexterity skill checks from most light armor, you’ll want 10 or 12 Strength depending on how far you want to go with Dexterity.

Dex: In light armor, you need decent Dexterity to pad your AC, but since you’re not using it for attacks, you might do just fine with 16 for your whole career depending on how you want to handle armor. You might go up to 18, but I wouldn’t bother taking it to 20.

Con: Max it out. It’s your Key Ability, plus hit points, plus Fortitude saves.

Int: Skills are nice, but they’re very down on your priority list. Dump Charisma first, but don’t plan to invest boosts here.

Wis: Your Will saves and Perception need some help.

Cha: Dump.

Armored Kineticist Attributes

If you plan to take either Armor in Earth, Hardwood Armor, or Metal Carapace, the +2 Dex Cap on the armor is going to impact how you allocate your attributes.

Str: Hardwood Armor and Metal Carapace both have a Strength requirement of 14 to avoid the skill and speed penalties, and Armor in Earth’s Strength Requirement is 16. You’ll want to meet whichever you plan to use.

Dex: Get 14 for Hardwood Armor or Metal Carapace or 12 for Armor in Earth, then stop.

Con: Max it out. It’s your Key Ability, plus hit points, plus Fortitude saves.

Int: Skills are nice, but they’re very down on your priority list. Dump Charisma first, but don’t plan to invest boosts here.

Wis: Your Will saves and Perception need some help.

Cha: Dump.

Kineticist Ancestries and Heritages

The Kineticist absolutely needs a Constitution Boost, but otherwise there’s a lot of room to experiment. Easy options include the Dwarf and the Human.

For more help selecting an Ancestry and Heritage, see our Kineticist Ancestries and Heritages Breakdown.

Kineticist Backgrounds

You want a boost to Constitution, then either Strength, Dexterity, or Wisdom depending on your priorities. The Kineticist doesn’t have any clear skill-based roles, so look for skills and skill feats that work with your specific Attributes.

If you’re having trouble deciding, here are some suggestions:

  • Herbalist – A great to way to add some extra healing to a class that gets very little of it.
  • Fire Warden – Good for melee builds that plan to use Athletics in combat.
  • Prisoner – Great for a high-Dexterity build with Scout skills like Stealth and Theivery.

Kineticist Skills and Skill Feats

You get Skill Increases at 3rd and 5th level to raise skills to Expert, increases at 7th, 9th, 11th, and 13th level to raise skills to Master, and increases at 15th, 17th, and 19th level to raise skills to Legendary. That means that you can maximize at most three skills, and the rest of your skills might not advance beyond Trained.

You get Skill Feats at even-numbered levels, giving you a total of 10 Skill Feats (and maybe another from your Background) by 20th level. Generally, you want to invest these feats in the same skills which you are choosing to maximize, though in some cases you may want to grab feats from skills which don’t require that you be more than Trained.

  • Acrobatics (Dex): Borderline useless.
  • Arcana (Int): Intelligence is a hard Attribute for the Kineticist. Only take this if you plan to use Arcana with Trick Magic Item.
  • Athletics (Str): Potentially useful for melee builds that might benefit from things like Trip.
    • AssuranceCRB: Remove the need to worry about your lacking Strength score or item bonuses or whatever else. This won’t be good enough to consistently Grab/Shove/Trip enemies of your level, but against slightly lower enemies it’s often enough.
  • Crafting (Int): Kineticists don’t have any specific dependence on items like shields or alchemical items. If you do take Shield Block (potentially useful for earth enthusiasts since Armor in Earth doesn’t give it to you), you might take this.
  • Deception (Cha): Charisma is likely your dump stat./li>
  • Diplomacy (Cha): Charisma is likely your dump stat.
  • Intimidation (Cha): If nothing else, Demoralize is nice. Still, Charisma is likely your dump stat.
  • Lore (Int): Too numerous and too vaguely-defined.
  • Medicine (Wis): While a few Impulses provide bottomless healing on a 10-minute cooldown, the Kineticist doesn’t have any built-in way to remove status conditions or handle things like Poison. Your Attributes also don’t support many interesting skills, so Medicine is a good fallback. If you’re short on skills and want to use Medicine, consider Natural Medicine.
  • Nature (Wis): You’re Trained for free and, it’s a good knowledge skill. You’re not a cleric, but hopefully you have decent Wisdom to support Perception and Will Saves.
    • Natural MedicineCRB: A great way to stretch your limited skill increases.
  • Occultism (Int): Intelligence is a hard Attribute for the Kineticist.
  • Performance (Cha): Basically useless.
  • Religion (Wis): Similar to Nature, this is a useful knowledge skill and you should have a bit of Wisdom to make it worthwhile.
  • Society (Int): Intelligence is a hard Attribute for the Kineticist.
  • Stealth (Dex): A staple skill in any party, and most Kineticists will have at least decent Dexterity. With a bit of investment, your Stealth can easily surpass your Perception modifier, making it a good choice for Initiative.
  • Survival (Wis): Borderline useless
  • Thievery (Dex): A staple skill in any party, and most Kineticists will have at least decent Dexterity.

General Skill Feats

  • Trick Magic ItemCRB: Access to wands and scrolls can get you access to a lot of great buffs and utility options that will complement your class features.

Kineticist Feats

Kineticists get more class feats than classes typically do, getting feats at all the usual levels (1st level and every even-numbered level), a second Impulse Feat at 1st level, plus a total of 4 extra impulse feats whens you get Gate’s Threshold and at each 4th level thereafter.

For more help selecting Class Feats, see our Kineticist Class Feats Breakdown.

General Feats

  • Canny AcumenCRB: Your proficiency in Perception doesn’t hit expert until level 9 and never increases again, so this can improve your Perception for big chunks of the level range. Unfortunately, it won’t help your Will saves until level 17 because they hit Expert at level 3 then stop advancing.
  • Incredible InitiativeCRB: Like a spellcaster, you’ll have options to control the battlefield, and going first allows you to do that before your enemies and allies get into a tangled melee and make it hard to put up walls and other obstacles.
  • Shield BlockCRB: Generally a good feat, but the availability of Metal Carapace and Hardwood Armor makes Shield Block much less appealing since you can get both a disposable, scaling shield and Shield Block from an Impulse. If you’re going entirely for Earth, you might take Shield Block since Armor in Earth doesn’t grant it.

Kineticist Weapons

Under absolutely no circumstances should you intentionally use a weapon.

Kineticist Armor

Your choice of armor comes down to two questions:

  • Are you planning to take an armor Impulse (Metal Carapace or Hardwood Armor)? If so, the decision is made and you don’t need other armor. Otherwise, you’re in light armor.
  • Do you care about the -1 penalty from heavier light armor options (studded leather, etc.)? If so, go for whatever armor has a Strength Requirement matching your Strength. Otherwise, go for Studded Leather.
  • Padded ArmorCRB: A good starting armor if you’re at 10 Strength at level and don’t want the -1 check penalty. Plan to upgrade at higher levels when you can put another Boost into Strength and upgrade to Studded Leather.
  • LeatherCRB: Your go-to option if you plan to take Dexterity to 18.
  • Studded LeatherCRB: Dex Cap of +3, Strength Requirement of just 12, +2 AC. A great split between a reasonable Strength Requirement and not needing to invest heavily in Dexterity. You can easily fill out this armor at level 1.
  • Impulse Armor (Metal Carapyce or Hardwood Armor)RoE: The heaviest armor that the Kineticist can manage without an archetype. You’ll likely need 14 Strength to avoid the check and speed penalties unless you take Unburdened Iron, but with the Dex Cap of just +2 you’re more able to afford the 14 Strength.

Archetypes

This is not a comprehensive list of archetypes which might be useful for this class. For more on archetypes, see our archetype handbooks.

  • Champion: Easy to compare to the armor impulses. Champion gets you heavy armor, but your proficiency won’t keep pace with your light armor proficiency (even Diverse Armor Expert only gets you to Expert) as you progress. The armor impulses also get you a disposable shield and the Shield Block feat for free, so they’re extremely efficient by comparison.

Kineticist Multiclass Archetype

The Kineticist Multiclass Archetype offers access to Impulses, and basically nothing else. Your Elemental Blast is functionally useless, and your proficiency never goes past Expert, so expect any offensive options to be completely unusable. Instead, look for defense and utility options.

The Elemental Instinct Barbarian has a unique synergy with the Kineticist archetype, adding the Rage trait to Impulses which match your chosen element, and thereby allowing you to use those Impulses while raging. This offers some magic-adjacent options which barbarians may find extremely helpful.

  1. Kineticist Dedication: You get one element, a weakened version of Channel Elements and a version of Elemental Blast that doesn’t advance on its own. Expect to turn on your aura and keep it running at all times to avoid the Action tax to activate it in combat. Expect to never use Elemental Blast.
  2. Base Kinesis: Base Kinesis is conceptually very cool, but it’s also very GM-dependent, so you can’t guarantee that it will be useful.
  3. Through the Gate: Your first chance to get an Impulse Feat. Many low-level options work very well without caring about your proficiency, and those are your best options. It appears that your Impulses still improve at the normal rate, too.
  4. Advanced Element Control: You use half your level for purposes of prerequisites, but not for how your Impulses improve as you gain levels.
  5. Improved Elemental Blast: Your proficiency can’t go past Expert, and this is not nearly good enough to potentially take it 3 times. Absolutely not.
  6. Add Element: Adding a second element means that you can access more Impulses. The Impulse granted by this feat is required to be an Impulse specific to your new element. If you want a Composite Impulse, you’ll need to take Through the Gate after taking Add Element.
  7. Expert Kinetic Control: Expert proficiency this late in the game really isn’t enough to make Impulses reliable.