It’s nearing the end of a very long and difficult encounter. You and your friends have been skirting by your teeth, but something terrible has happened that turned the momentum out of your favor. Disintegrate has just hit your beloved cleric and is currently a pile of ashes. You’ve been focusing on using your powers of positive energy to take down the boss, but suddenly become the emergency healer. You have options at hand, and they require a bit of a sacrifice; unfortunately, it’s not a sacrifice you can make. Not wasting any more time considering the gravity of the situation, you decide to have your cleric take the burn because you’re tapped out on what you can accept. With the cleric back to life, you turn to take on the one responsible.
Kineticist Healing and You
https://://gty.im/1440471293
The Kineticist isn’t a class that wants to heal at first glance. The burn you take only comes off after 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep, and you can only take so much burn per day. Players don’t want to discuss the idea of whoever is on the receiving end potentially taking burn. Any ability you have will require you to take burn to use unless you possess the Kinetic Healing or Wood Healing wild talents; then, your target can accept burn. Two elements qualify for Kinetic healing, and only one type of blast qualifies for Wood Healing. A third one, Void healing, only heals creatures healed by negative energy.
Kinetic Healing is the version of this ability that Water and Aether can use. With a touch, you can heal a willing target with whatever amount your blast does. You can either choose to take the burn yourself or have the target accept it. As I had said in a previous article, burn is the amount of nonlethal damage you take. 1 point of burn is equal to the amount of hit die the creature possesses. Like spell slots, this burn is removed after a full night’s rest.
Wood healing is the phytokineticist’s version of kinetic healer. I’ll have to cover this element more in another article, but this element’s energy blast isn’t that useful in combat. It only hurts creatures that are harmed by positive energy, and it does nothing for anyone else. This ability gives your blast a little more utility but with a few limited uses of burn. The SRD specifically explains that gather power cannot be used on wild talents, only infusions, metakinesis, and some omnikinesis abilities. This would include the Wild Utility talents like Wood Healing, Void Healing, and Kinetic Healing if they require a burn cost to be paid. The only exception to this is if you use your Internal Buffer.
Healing Abilities
https://://gty.im/1387543903
While the Kineticist class isn’t primarily designed for healing, it offers some useful abilities. Breath of Life, Channel, Cure Wounds, and Restoration are just a few examples. Yes, these abilities come with a burn cost that can’t be easily mitigated, but they can be a game-changer. Unlike other more specialized talents, healing can be used during or after. In my view, the potential benefits of healing outweigh the temporary setback of burn, especially when your party is in dire need of it in the right situation, almost any fight.
This class has the ability to channel. Healing Burst allows you to heal everyone within a 30-foot radius of yourself. This is where the Positive Blast gets a gold star, as it’s the only blast listed in the text that heals the full amount of your blast. The caveat of Healing Burst is that you must accept the burn yourself. With the Kinetic Chirugeon archetype, you’ll eventually be able to use this ability twice in a round, one healing full and one healing half.
Kinetic revivification is another nice ability despite being more niche. With this talent, you can bring a person back from the dead, provided that it’s only been one round. This talent has a large cost, though. When using it, you or an ally normally take 1 point of burn in addition to whatever burn they’ll take from Kinetic Healing or Wood Healer. The Chirurgeon adds a twist to this because they can technically revive someone with this if it’s been a little longer. To know how long you have you take 3 and add the constitution modifier of the ally being revived, then subtract the amount of burn they currently have.
Another talent you have at your disposal is Kinetic Restoration. This is the most underwhelming healing talent you have, but it can recover 1D4 points of any physical ability damage for 1 burn. It can also improve the character if you have the fatigue level and kinetic Healer talent; you can heal and restore ability damage with one action.
Kinetic Chirurgeon
https://://gty.im/1640279164
The Kinetic Chirurgeon is an archetype for the kineticist, one of many. It’s especially relevant here as this archetype is specifically tailored to healing. While losing any infusions, you’ll gain Kinetic Healer or Wood Healer wild talents for free. Starting at 3rd level, your healing talents can be infused with a paladin mercy, using your kineticist level instead of paladin level to determine what mercy you can use.
Starting at the 5th level, instead of choosing mercy, you can choose to increase the amount you heal by an additional die, up to 3 at the 17th level. At the 9th level, you can choose to bring an ally back from the dead as if you were using the Breath of Life spell. This ability has an extra burn cost in addition to what it normally has with Kinetic Healer. Later on, you can heal yourself with a swift action, much like Lay on Hands, or choose to heal yourself and an ally with the same ability. Healing both you and an ally this way means that both of you must accept 1 point of burn apiece. A side note is that you can only use one of these abilities simultaneously. For example, you cannot bring someone back to life and heal them with extra dice. You’ll lose metakinesis and infusion specialist, but that is an easy cost if you try to make this class a healer.
The last ability the Chirurgeon changes is Internal Buffer. You’ll lose internal buffer but gain healing buffer. This doubles the buffer you get, so you can choose to heal your allies and accept the burn without actually accepting it. Internal buffer is capped at 3 points, which you can store in it; with this, that limit increases to 6. The biggest catch of this ability is that you can only use it for healing abilities. It does sound that amazing, but with internal buffer, once you have those points stored, they stay stored indefinitely until it’s used.
What’s the Verdict, Doc?
https://://gty.im/1421296435
I was skeptical when first researching the kineticist’s healing prowess. Using your blast damage to heal, the kineticist has decent healing potential. The burn is going to be the biggest drawback of a kineticist healer. For most of what this class can do, the kineticist has options to help reduce the burn cost on most of its abilities. However, when it comes to healing, the kineticist is a penny short. Even with the Kinetic Chirurgeon archetype and its increased internal buffer, the max buffer size is only available at the 16th level. Most campaigns I have played in have never gone above the 15th level. If you want to play a healer and are tired of rolling up a cleric, the kineticist might interest you. If you choose wood and take the positive blast, unless you are fighting undead, you won’t contribute at all in combat.
The kineticist isn’t built for traditional combat with 3/4 BAB and a D8 hit die. Its healing abilities are better described as an EMS. They’re meant to administer life-saving care on the spot until you get to a hospital. They are someone called in a state of emergency but aren’t like your primary care doctor, who can get more in-depth and will be better equipped for certain examinations.
Did you like this article? Check out my other element overview where I covered Air!
Also don’t forget to check out my other article where I get sentimental over dice here!
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