Kinetic Vanguard — v7.7.0 Changelog

v7.7.0 is a cleanup pass. No mechanics changed — this patch fixes ordering errors, math errors in play patterns, stale feature names, and misleading labels that have accumulated since v7.0.0.

Feature Ordering Fixed (Main Doc)

All three disciplines in the main document now list features in correct level order: 3rd → 7th → 10th → 15th → 20th. Since v7.0.0, every discipline listed the 10th-level feature before the 7th-level feature. The player sheets were fixed in v7.6.2 but the main doc was missed. Now consistent everywhere.

• Cryokinesis: Snow Chains (7th) now appears before Frozen Ground (10th).
• Pyrokinesis: Flare (7th) now appears before Fiery Blast (10th).
• Psychokinesis: Vectored Thrust (7th) now appears before Explosion/Implosion (10th).

Play Pattern Math Corrected (All Player Sheets)

Several sample turns had wrong Psi costs (Overload tier was being added to base Psi — OL only affects Blood Tax, not Psi) and wrong Blood Tax totals (missing individual OL contributions). Fixes by sheet:

Cryokinesis Level 10 — The old pattern used Frozen Ground (a full Action) as "Attack 2" mid-Attack-action, which is illegal without Action Surge. Rewritten to use Glacial Spike T1 + Snow Chains T0 instead. Budget corrected to 4 Psi / BT 12.

Cryokinesis Level 20 — Psi costs corrected: Snow Chains T2 (3 → 2), Arctic Tempest T2 (4 → 3), Absolute Zero T2 (4 → 5).

Pyrokinesis Level 10 — Blood Tax corrected from 28 to 32 (was missing Flare T1 Blood Tax).

Pyrokinesis Level 20 — Firestorm T2 Psi cost corrected from 4 to 3.

Psychokinesis Level 10 — Blood Tax corrected from 2×PB = 8 to PB + 3×PB + PB = 20 (was missing Explosion/Implosion T2 Blood Tax entirely).

Psychokinesis Level 20 — Two stale feature names replaced: Burst → Concussive Surge, Mind Crush → Mind Blast. Effect descriptions updated to match. Mass Levitation T1 Psi cost corrected from 4 to 5.

DM Quick Reference

• TK Slam damage range corrected from 6–8d10 to 8–13d10.
• AT III–V Psi cost column corrected from "3" to "2–3" (Reactive Barrier costs 2).

AT V Label Cleanup (Main Doc)

The Subclass Feature Table and Psi Cost Reference previously singled out Reactive Barrier as the default AT V pick. Since all six AT options are equally valid at any AT slot, the label now just reads "pool pick" — matching the actual AT V rules.

Documents

Kinetic Vanguard by NixNinja. © 2024–present. Attribution license — free for non-commercial use with credit.

Kinetic Vanguard v7.8.0 — Empathic Sense Rework

One change this patch, but it's a deliberate one.

What Changed

Empathic Sense (7th level) used to be fully passive — read surface emotions, get Advantage on Insight, and permanently add your Psionic Ability modifier to passive Perception against anything hostile within 60 feet. That last part was doing too much for free.

Starting in v7.8.0, the feature splits:

Still passive (always on):

• Perceive surface emotions within 60 ft (excludes undead/constructs)
• Advantage on Wisdom (Insight) checks against creatures in range

Now active (costs attention):

• Bonus action to activate, requires Concentration, lasts up to 1 minute
• While concentrating, add your Psionic Ability modifier to passive Perception against hostile creatures within 60 ft with readable emotions
• PB uses per short rest

Why

The old version gave you a permanent threat radar with zero cost. At 7th level that's strong. At 10th+ — where you have Steeled Mind, Frozen Ground, Vectored Thrust, Firestorm, Gravitic Press, Dazzle, and Mass Levitation all competing for your concentration slot — it was quietly the best passive in the kit, because it never asked you to choose.

Now it does. Sharpening your senses to detect hostiles means you can't simultaneously maintain a combat concentration effect. That's a real decision: do you walk into the dungeon with your radar up, or do you keep Vectored Thrust running? You can't do both. The PB-per-short-rest limit means you also can't just flicker it on and off every room — you need to pick your moments.

The emotion-reading and Insight advantage stay free because those are flavor and social tools. The combat-relevant piece is the one that now has a cost.

Documents

This patch also includes all v7.7.0 fixes (feature ordering, play pattern math, stale references). See the v7.7.0 changelog for details.

Kinetic Vanguard by NixNinja. © 2024–present. Free for non-commercial use with credit.

Kinetic Vanguard v7.8.1 — Empathic Sense Retooled

Quick follow-up to v7.8.0. Same feature, sharper design.

What Changed

Empathic Sense (7th level) got split in v7.8.0 into passive and active halves. That was the right call, but the passive side was still doing too many things (emotion reading, Insight advantage, hostile detection) and the active side had a flat 60 ft range with no scaling. v7.8.1 cleans both up.

Passive — PAM to Passive Insight

One line: you add your Psionic Ability modifier to your passive Insight score.

That's it. No emotion reading, no Advantage on Insight checks. Just a clean number that rewards your mental stat investment and makes you harder to deceive, bluff, or ambush in social contexts. It's always on, it never competes for anything, and your DM can use it as a DC gate without you needing to roll.

Active — Telepathic Threat Scan

Bonus action. Concentration, up to 1 minute. PB uses per short rest.

While concentrating, you sense the presence and direction of creatures within range that harbor hostile intent — provided they have readable emotions (undead and constructs are still invisible to this).

The new piece: range scales with Overload.

At base, you're scanning a single room — enough to know if the guy across the table wants you dead, not enough to sweep a dungeon corridor. T1 gets you a comfortable combat radius. T2 gives you the old 60 ft back, but now it costs 3×PB in health and your concentration slot. The range you had for free in v7.7 is still there — you just have to bleed for it.

Why This Is Better

The old design had two problems. First, the passive was a grab bag — emotion reading and Insight advantage and hostile detection all stapled together. Splitting "detect lies" from "detect threats" makes each half do one thing well. Second, the active had no Overload interaction, which made it the only 7th-level-or-later feature in the kit with no tier scaling. Now it plugs into the same risk-reward system as everything else.

The 15/30/60 ft progression also creates an actual decision tree. Walking into a negotiation? T0 is free and tells you if the person across from you is hostile. Entering a dungeon? T1 scans a room for the cost of a few hit points. Need full battlefield awareness? T2, but now you're paying real health and locking your concentration — the same slot that could be running Frozen Ground, Firestorm, or Vectored Thrust.

No Psi cost. The PB-per-rest limit and concentration tax are enough.

Documents

This build includes all fixes from v7.7.0 (ordering, math, stale references) and v7.8.0 (initial Empathic Sense split).

Kinetic Vanguard by NixNinja. © 2024–present. Free for non-commercial use with credit.

Kinetic Vanguard v7.10.0 — Vectored Thrust Refactor

Playtesting surfaced a clear problem: nobody used T0 Vectored Thrust. The base tier gave you a 1-foot hover at walking speed that ignored difficult terrain, and T1 gave you actual flight. In practice that meant every Psychokineticist who wanted to fly just paid the Blood Tax for T1 on activation and called it a day. T0 was a vestigial niche — flavorful, but skippable.

v7.10.0 rebuilds the tier progression so every step is worth taking.

The New Tiers

Same bonus action activation. Same 2 Psi. Same Concentration, up to 10 minutes. Standalone feature, so Blood Tax still fires on activation with no attack roll.

What Each Tier Does Now

T0 is real flight, for free (in Blood Tax terms). This is the big shift. You spend your Psi, pay no HP, and you're airborne at 30 ft. That alone is a meaningful battlefield change — you ignore ground difficult terrain, pits, Spike Growth, Grease, the works. For most encounters, T0 is exactly what you need.

T1 adds survivability. Paying PB in Blood Tax gets you no opportunity attacks while flying. If you're weaving in and out of melee range to deliver Manifested Strikes and then retreat, this is the tier you want. It's the "fly like a hummingbird around the melee" upgrade.

T2 is the monk-speed nova. 3×PB Blood Tax gets you 60 ft fly speed. At those levels you rival a Way of the Open Hand monk or an aarakocra. Combine with Phase Step for absurd battlefield mobility, or use the raw speed to get between zones when your party is spread thin. T2 also inherits T1's no-OA clause — paying for T2 gives you everything.

Why This Is Better

The old design had T0 doing something weird (low hover) and T1 doing something obvious (real flight). That's backward — your base tier should be the thing you reach for first, and your Overload tiers should be the things you pay to escalate into. Now T0 is the obvious pick, T1 adds a specific combat benefit, and T2 gives you something genuinely exotic.

It also cleans up an inconsistency. Every other Psychokinesis feature used its T2 for "something bigger or more dangerous" — TK Shove T2 pushes farther and Prones, Explosion/Implosion T2 adds damage, Telekinetic Slam T2 hits harder and stuns. Vectored Thrust T2 used to just remove opportunity attacks, which is a defensive clean-up rather than an escalation. Now it does what T2s are supposed to do: make the effect bigger.

What You Lose

One thing to flag: the old T0's "ignore ground-based terrain hazards while hovering" niche is gone. If you were using VT specifically to float over Spike Growth or skip prone-causing surfaces without committing to flight, that trick no longer exists as a distinct option. It's absorbed into the new T0's full flight, which does the same thing — but players who liked the "low hover" flavor will notice.

If this is a loss worth restoring, speak up and it can come back as a T0 ribbon.

Also: "Fly speed 30 ft" is a flat number, not "equal to walking speed." If you're playing a Wood Elf, Centaur, Tabaxi, Bugbear, or anyone else with a walking speed above 30, T0 and T1 are technically slower than running on the ground. T2 gets you back to 60 ft, which is faster than any non-magical walking speed. This is intentional — the clean number matters for DM tracking — but it's worth knowing if you're building a speed-oriented race/subclass combo.

Updated Play Patterns

The Psychokinesis Level 11 example turn now reads "Fly speed 30 ft, no opportunity attacks" instead of "Full fly speed equal to walking speed." Level 10 and Level 20 play patterns on the Psychokinesis player sheet have been updated to reflect the new effect language.

Documents

Previous patches: v7.9.0 (feat compatibility ruling), v7.8.1 (Empathic Sense retool), v7.7.0 (cleanup pass).

Kinetic Vanguard by NixNinja. © 2024–present. Free for non-commercial use with credit.

Today this thread achieved its first 2500 views. I am honored. Thank you. I would like to credit my muses, great and small, for this. It would not have come together as fast and as clean as it did without them.

Once again, thank you!

-Nix

Kinetic Vanguard v7.11.0 — The Save-or-Suck Pass

Five features got their teeth checked this patch. The design principle: when a player spends Psi and commits to a package, something should happen even on a successful save. Save-or-suck is fine for capstone spells and big single-target nukes. It's not fine for 2-Psi riders you're expected to use every combat.

Here's what changed and why.

Flare (7th · Pyro)

Old: T0 was "save or Blinded" with nothing on success. T1 added 1 MS die of fire damage on failed save only. T2 upgraded to "save or Incapacitated," again nothing on success.

New: T0 now guarantees 1 MS die of fire damage, with the save for Blinded on top. T1 bumps the damage to 2 MS dice. T2 still upgrades Blinded to Incapacitated.

Why: Flare was the worst offender in the 7th-level rider slot. It asked you to spend 2 Psi on a feature that could whiff entirely on a single Con save — typically the target's best save on bosses. Now it mirrors Mind Blast's structure: damage always lands, the condition is the save-gated upside. This turns Flare into a reliable "blind and burn" package that scales to T2's full Incapacitated lockdown when you want to commit Blood Tax.

Snow Chains (7th · Cryo)

Old: T0 was "save or Restrained" with nothing on success. T1 added a cold DoT that only triggered while Restrained. T2 upgraded to Stunned. The Cryo mirror of Flare's problem.

New: T0 guarantees speed 0 until the end of your next turn (no save). The Con save now decides whether the target is also Restrained. T1 adds "can't take reactions on a failed save." T2 still upgrades Restrained to Stunned.

Why: Two fixes in one. First, graceful failure — even when the target makes the save, they're stuck in place for a turn, which matters for Cryo's lockdown identity. Second, the cold DoT on old T1 is gone. Tracking per-turn damage ticks on creatures you'd already Restrained was a hassle for DMs and rarely meaningful against bosses (who either died fast or had the HP to shrug it off). This version is cleaner and rewards the same commitment.

The DoT removal is part of a broader direction: Kinetic Vanguard shouldn't be asking DMs to track counter stacks. Glacial Spike's speed-reduction tracking is already more bookkeeping than I'd like, and if I could cleanly refactor that too I would.

Explosion/Implosion (10th · Psycho)

Old: "All creatures within 15 ft must make a Strength save or be knocked Prone. Creatures other than the target are also pushed 15 ft away from or pulled 15 ft toward the target." The movement was gated on the save.

New: Non-target creatures within 15 ft are automatically pushed 15 ft away or pulled 15 ft toward the target — no save applies to the movement. All creatures in the AoE (including the target) then make a Strength save or be knocked Prone.

Why: This was the most egregious design-intent mismatch in the whole class. The feature's entire identity is the scatter/collapse — "Explosion to scatter a cluster, Implosion to collapse it inward." But the movement was a coin flip. A successful Str save negated the repositioning, which is the one thing you picked Psychokinesis to do. Now the repositioning always happens; the Prone is the save-gated cherry on top.

Mechanically this is also thematically tighter: telekinetic force shouldn't politely ask whether you want to move. If a 10th-level Psychokineticist decides to yank the boss toward the fighter, the boss gets yanked. The boss just might not also hit the ground.

Concussive Surge (AT pool)

Old: "Con save or 2 MS dice force damage + no reactions." Damage and condition both gated on the save.

New: 2 MS dice force damage always lands. Con save decides whether the target also loses reactions. T1 and T2 unchanged in structure (Restrained / Stunned instead).

Why: Among the three on-hit AT picks, Concussive Surge was the only one where damage whiffed on a successful save. Psychic Lance's 4d8 lands regardless. Mind Blast's 2d8 lands regardless. Concussive Surge was charging the same 3 Psi for the same slot and could deliver nothing. With damage now guaranteed, it's a legitimate third pick instead of the obvious skip.

Reactive Barrier (AT pool)

Old: Bonus Action, no Concentration. 4×PB THP (6×PB at T1). Reaction blast shoved melee attackers 10 ft. T2 added Prone on the shove.

New: Bonus Action, Concentration, up to 1 minute. 6×PB THP (8×PB at T1). Reaction blast unchanged — still shoves. T2 replaced: while the barrier's THP remain, you have resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage from weapon attacks. Barrier ends on concentration drop, THP depletion, or duration expiry, whichever first.

Why: Two problems with the old version. First, the THP scaling was too low — 16 at level 11, 24 at 17 — for a feature gated behind AT pool competition. Second, no concentration cost meant it trivially stacked with any other sustained feature, which broke the design tension every other Psychokinesis concentration feature lives under. Adding concentration and buffing the THP makes it a real choice: tank up now, or keep Frozen Ground / Firestorm / Vectored Thrust running?

The T2 change is the flavor win. "Prone on the blast" was a minor control bump. Blade Ward-style physical resistance turns an active T2 Reactive Barrier into a legitimate "shrug off the incoming weapon damage" tool. Combined with KV's existing psychic resistance, a T2 Vanguard behind the barrier is shrugging off physical and mental damage — a real defensive power spike that costs real resources.

Worth flagging: this changes who wants Reactive Barrier most. Previously it was a neutral pick. Now Pyrokinesis and Cryokinesis players will weigh it against their discipline's concentration features more carefully — and Pyro especially, since Firestorm is the Pyro concentration feature and RB now fills the "survive the burn window" role cleanly. Psychokinesis players will probably skip it, since Vectored Thrust and Mass Levitation already own that discipline's concentration slot.

What's Not Changing (Yet)

A few features are on the watch list but aren't in this patch:

• Glacial Spike's speed-reduction stacking — mentioned above. The counters are light but still counters. Low priority.
• Telekinetic Shove T0 — also save-or-nothing, but the "nothing" is a failed 5-foot push, which is a non-event. Acceptable as a 3rd-level ribbon that's free via Psionic Instinct.
• Mass Levitation — structurally save-or-suck, but it's a 20th-level 5-Psi capstone with Concentration. Capstones get to be big-swing spells.
• Dazzle — inherits save-or-suck from the base spells (Charm / Suggestion / Hold Monster). You chose to spend your whole Action, different risk calculus.

Documents

Previous patches: v7.10.0 (Vectored Thrust refactor), v7.9.0 (feat compatibility), v7.8.1 (Empathic Sense retool), v7.7.0 (cleanup pass).

Kinetic Vanguard by NixNinja. © 2024–present. Free for non-commercial use with credit.

Tested, needs:

preferably one more out of combat ability

starting equipment/core traits table

flavortext perhaps

needs multiclass rules

class features table

really janky in anti-magic field, half of the abilites work and the other half don't

hope this helps!

Other recommendation: class specific magic items along the lines of the rod of the pact keeper

Kinetic Vanguard v7.11.1 — War Caster, Spelled Out

A small documentation patch. No mechanics changed.

What Changed

The Feat Compatibility design note in the main rules has been expanded with a deeper, more explicit ruling on War Caster. The original v7.9.0 callout said the right thing in one sentence, but "War Caster doesn't apply" kept coming up in playtest as a question — usually because players were reading the feat through a Kinetic Vanguard lens and finding the second clause (advantage on Con saves) and assuming it must work somehow.

It doesn't, and v7.11.1 says exactly why.

The Ruling

Manifested Strike is a magical ranged weapon attack, so any feat or feature triggered by "ranged weapon attack" applies normally — including Sharpshooter, the Archery fighting style, and Elven Accuracy. That part hasn't changed.

War Caster is explicitly incompatible. You must be able to cast spells to benefit from any part of the feat. Kinetic Vanguard features (including Manifested Strike and all psionic Discipline and Advanced Training abilities) are not spells. This means:

• The reaction to cast a spell on an opportunity attack cannot be used. You have no spells to cast.
• The advantage on Constitution saving throws applies only to maintaining concentration on spells. It provides no benefit for concentration on any Kinetic Vanguard features — Frozen Ground, Firestorm, Vectored Thrust, Gravitic Press, Reactive Barrier, Mass Levitation, none of them.

Even Dazzle — the one Advanced Training option that lets you cast charm person, suggestion, or hold monster — does not grant actual spellcasting ability for the purposes of War Caster. It is a psionic class feature that happens to duplicate spell effects. The spell-likeness is the output, not the source.

Steeled Mind (+ your Proficiency Bonus to concentration saves) is the subclass's intended concentration defense. Resilient (Con) stacks with Steeled Mind and is strongly recommended at higher levels for reliable concentration.

The v7.9.0 rulings on damage-type feats (Crusher / Piercer / Slasher don't apply) and the Crossbow Expert / Gunner adjacency partial are unchanged.

Why This Matters

There's a tempting reading of War Caster that goes: "I have a class feature called Reactive Barrier that requires Concentration. War Caster gives me advantage on Constitution saves to maintain concentration. Therefore War Caster helps me maintain Reactive Barrier." That reading is wrong, but it's wrong for a subtle reason — the feat's text limits the advantage to spells, not to concentration generally. If you're reading the feat in isolation it's easy to gloss over.

Kinetic Vanguard's whole identity rests on the idea that psionics are not spells. Concentration on Frozen Ground is mechanically the same action as concentration on Hold Person, but they sit on different sides of the spellcasting line. That distinction matters for Counterspell, Antimagic Field, Detect Magic, and now also for War Caster.

The new callout makes the ruling explicit so DMs don't have to relitigate it at every table.

Documents

Previous patches: v7.11.0 (save-or-suck pass), v7.10.0 (Vectored Thrust refactor), v7.9.0 (initial feat compatibility ruling).

Kinetic Vanguard by NixNinja. © 2024–present. Free for non-commercial use with credit.

Kinetic Vanguard v7.12.0 — Psychic Resistance Out, Blood Tax Now Resistible

A small but philosophically significant patch. The 3rd-level Psychic Resistance class feature is gone. In exchange, Blood Tax is no longer un-reducible — it remains psychic damage and now interacts with standard psychic resistance rules like any other source of psychic damage in the game.

What Changed

Removed: Psychic Resistance (3rd level). The class no longer grants free passive resistance to psychic damage at character creation.

Removed from Blood Tax: the "cannot be reduced by any means" clause.

New ruling: Blood Tax is psychic damage (it always was), and any source of psychic resistance — racial, item-based, spell-granted (Mind Blank, etc.), or any future source — halves it as standard 5e/5.5e resistance does.

The Blood Tax warning boxes in all five documents now read: "Self-damage bypasses Temporary HP. Psychic resistance halves it normally." The "bypasses Temp HP" half stays. The "cannot be reduced" half is gone.

Why

This is a 5.5e alignment patch as much as a balance change. The 2024 ruleset moved away from special-case carve-outs in feature text — phrases like "this damage cannot be reduced," "ignores resistance," "bypasses temporary hit points" — toward "features do what they say, and standard rules apply on top." The old Blood Tax cannot be reduced clause was exactly the kind of 5e-era exception 5.5e prunes. Making BT a normal psychic damage source that interacts with normal resistance rules is cleaner, more consistent with the rest of the system, and removes a "but actually" rule players had to remember.

The free passive Psychic Resistance was a related artifact. It existed largely so that enemy psychic damage wouldn't double-tap a Vanguard who was already eating Blood Tax every turn. But it created an awkward edge case — the class had resistance to psychic damage except its own — that needed a sentence of explanation in every iteration of the rules. Removing it eliminates the carve-out, and the new BT-resistible rule means a Vanguard who wants to be psychically tough can build for it instead of receiving it for free.

Net Effect by Tier

Tier 1–2 (levels 3–10): Net nerf. You no longer have free resistance to enemy psychic damage, and there are essentially no in-game sources of psychic resistance available at these levels. If a mind flayer or intellect devourer shows up in tier 2, you eat full damage from their psychic attacks now.

Tier 3 (levels 11–16): Roughly neutral. Some races and uncommon magic items grant psychic resistance, but it's still not common.

Tier 4 (levels 17–20): Net buff. Mind Blank (8th-level spell) is on the table, certain legendary items grant psychic resistance, and a Vanguard who can source resistance now halves their own Blood Tax — a meaningful damage mitigation that scales with the cost they're paying. Combined with Overload Mastery (18th level, negate one Overload's BT 1/short rest), a high-level Vanguard with a psychic-resistance source becomes substantially more sustainable in long fights.

That tier curve is intentional. The class loses a defensive freebie at low levels but gains a real reward for investing in psychic resistance at high levels — exactly when Blood Tax math gets scary.

Worked Example

A level 18 Cryokinesis Vanguard (PB +6) lands a T2 MS + T1 Glacial Spike package on a hit. Old math:

Blood Tax: 3×PB (T2 MS) + PB (T1 Spike) = 24 hp self-damage, irreducible

New math, no resistance source:

Blood Tax: 3×PB + PB = 24 hp (same)

New math, with a source of psychic resistance (Mind Blank, item, etc.):

Blood Tax: 3×PB + PB = 24 → halved → 12 hp

And if you also burn Overload Mastery to negate the T2 MS's 18 hp, then halve the remaining 6 from T1 Spike:

3 hp self-damage for a full T2/T1 nova. That's the upper bound of what a fully kitted-out level 18+ Vanguard with all the right toys can do.

This is genuinely powerful, but it requires three things to line up: a high-level character, a psychic resistance source from outside the class, and the Overload Mastery short-rest charge. That's the kind of build payoff the class should reward.

What Stays the Same

• Blood Tax still bypasses Temporary HP. Deflection Screen and Reactive Barrier soak external damage; they don't soak BT.
• Overload Mastery (18th) still negates one Overload's BT entirely, 1/short rest. It stacks with psychic resistance — negate first, then halve what's left.
• Concentration startup exception still applies: BT from the activation that starts a concentration feature does not trigger a concentration check.
• Psionic Instinct still waives Psi cost for the first rider per Attack action, with BT still applying if Overloaded.
• All discipline features, all Advanced Training picks, all numerical values: unchanged.

A Note on Multiclassing

If you were leaning on the old Psychic Resistance to make a multiclass Vanguard tankier against enemy mind-influencing damage, that crutch is gone. The class is now exactly as vulnerable to psychic damage as any other Fighter. If your DM uses a lot of mind flayers, gibbering mouthers, or aboleths, this is a real change to factor into your build.

Conversely, if you were avoiding Aberration Hunter / Mind Blank / Telepathic feat combinations because Psychic Resistance made them feel redundant, those options now have a clearer payoff: they reduce your Blood Tax in addition to protecting against enemy psychic damage.

Documents

Previous patches: v7.11.1 (War Caster clarification), v7.11.0 (save-or-suck pass), v7.10.0 (Vectored Thrust refactor).

Kinetic Vanguard by NixNinja. © 2024–present. Free for non-commercial use with credit.

Kinetic Vanguard v7.13.0 — Carve-Out Cleanup, Pass 2

Continuing the direction set in v7.12.0: take the special-case carve-outs out of the rules and let standard 5.5e behavior take their place. Three changes this patch.

1. Manifested Strike Crits Now Work Normally

Old rule: "On a critical hit with an Overloaded MS, add one die equal to the base (non-Overloaded) MS die." So a level 11 T2 Overloaded crit deals 1d12 + 1d8, not 2d12.

New rule: On a critical hit, double all damage dice as normal.

Why: This was the most "but actually" rule in the entire class. Every new player had to be told that crits don't work the way they work in literally every other corner of 5e. The rule existed (introduced in v7.6.1) because Overloaded crits felt too strong, but the result was a hidden penalty that punished players for getting one of the best things that can happen on an attack roll. A T2 Overload already costs 3×PB Blood Tax. The 5% chance of a crit on top of that should feel like a reward, not a "well, technically..."

The new math: a level 11 T2 Overloaded crit is 2d12 + mod. A level 20 T2 crit is 2d20 + 2d12 + mod. Yes, those are big numbers — that's what crits are supposed to be. You paid the Blood Tax. You earned it.

2. Blood Tax No Longer Bypasses Temporary HP

Old rule: "Self-damage bypasses Temporary HP and cannot be reduced."

New rule (post v7.12.0 + v7.13.0): "Psychic resistance halves Blood Tax normally."

That's the entire warning text now. Both halves of the old carve-out are gone. v7.12.0 dropped the "cannot be reduced" half by removing free Psychic Resistance and letting external resistance sources halve BT. v7.13.0 drops the "bypasses Temp HP" half by treating BT as normal damage that goes through the THP layer first.

Why this matters in play: Temporary HP-generating features now function as legitimate Blood Tax mitigation tools.

• Aid (3rd-level cleric/paladin spell): 5 THP per recipient at base, more at higher slots
• Inspiring Leader (feat): Cha mod + level THP per short rest, party-wide
• Heroism (1st-level): THP equal to caster's spell ability mod each turn while concentrating
• Reactive Barrier itself (KV's own AT pick): 6×PB / 8×PB THP under concentration

A Vanguard in a party with a Bard or a buddy who took Inspiring Leader gets meaningfully more sustainable nova turns. A Pyrokineticist can stack Reactive Barrier and their party's Aid as a layered defense before going into a Firestorm activation. This opens new build dimensions that the old "BT bypasses everything" rule explicitly closed off.

It also makes the v7.12.0 framing fully consistent: Blood Tax is normal psychic damage. Resistance halves it. THP soaks it. Items that boost incoming damage mitigation work on it. Standard rules apply, full stop. No more mental overhead for players or DMs trying to remember which damage-mitigation tools work and which ones don't.

3. "Multiclass-Resistant" Claim Removed

The Class Identity sidebar in Section 06 used to include the bullet "Multiclass-resistant by design." It's been removed. The subclass multiclasses fine — there's nothing about its structure that prevents it. Saying otherwise was misleading.

Net Effect

This is a power buff at every tier, but the size of the buff scales with how built-up the character is.

Tier 1 (3rd–4th): Crits are a tiny bit bigger when Overloaded. THP from Aid (the only THP source likely available) is now a real mitigation tool. Small buff.

Tier 2 (5th–10th): Crits matter more as die sizes grow. Inspiring Leader becomes available at level 4. Reactive Barrier is now in the AT pool (15th, but you can plan for it). Modest buff.

Tier 3 (11th–16th): This is where the changes start to compound. T2 Overloads become available at 10th, so the crit rule change directly applies to the highest-damage attacks the class can throw. Reactive Barrier is online from 15th. Substantial buff.

Tier 4 (17th–20th): Combined with v7.12.0's psychic resistance interaction and Overload Mastery, a fully kitted-out Vanguard at level 18+ now has multiple stacking layers of Blood Tax mitigation: Overload Mastery negates one OL's BT entirely, psychic resistance halves the rest, and THP from party buffs absorbs whatever's left. The class becomes substantially more sustainable in long fights at high levels — which is exactly when the math starts demanding it.

That's the design intent. The class trades free defensive freebies at low levels (gone since v7.12.0) for build payoffs at high levels (rewarded in v7.13.0). It's a cleaner curve, more in step with how 5.5e structures defensive scaling.

Worked Example — Level 18 Cryo, Full Stack

Same Vanguard from the v7.12.0 forum post: level 18 Cryokinesis, PB +6, lands a T2 MS + T1 Glacial Spike package on a hit.

Pre-v7.12.0: Blood Tax = 24 hp, irreducible, bypasses THP. Eat 24 hp every nova hit.

Post-v7.12.0 with psychic resistance source: 24 → 12 hp.

Post-v7.13.0 with psychic resistance + 20 THP from a party Inspiring Leader rest buff: 24 → 12 → THP soaks all 12 → 0 hp HP loss, 8 THP remaining.

Post-v7.13.0 with psychic resistance + Inspiring Leader + Overload Mastery on the T2 MS: OM negates the 18 from T2 MS. Remaining 6 from T1 Spike halved to 3. THP soaks 3. 0 hp HP loss, 17 THP remaining for the next nova.

That's the upper bound of what's achievable with everything aligned. It requires high level, an external psychic resistance source, ally support, and a short-rest charge spent — but it's no longer "BT is irreducible, deal with it." It's an actual build payoff.

What Doesn't Change

• Concentration startup exception still applies (BT from the activation that starts a concentration feature doesn't trigger a Con save).
• Overload Mastery still negates one Overload's BT, 1/short rest. It now stacks elegantly with resistance and THP — negate first, then halve, then soak.
• Psionic Instinct still waives Psi cost for the first rider per Attack action.
• Steeled Mind still adds PB to Constitution saves to maintain concentration.
• All discipline features, all numerical values, all rider mechanics: unchanged.

Documents

Previous patches: v7.12.0 (Psychic Resistance removal), v7.11.1 (War Caster clarification), v7.11.0 (save-or-suck pass).

Kinetic Vanguard by NixNinja. © 2024–present. Free for non-commercial use with credit.

Kinetic Vanguard v7.14.0 — Polish Pass and Two Targeted Fixes

A mixed patch this time: five wording-only clarifications shaking loose from a careful outside read, plus two mechanical tweaks that came out of noticing edge cases.

The Polish (No Mechanics Changed)

Psionic Instinct rewritten for clarity

Old: "Once per Attack action, the first rider activation on a Manifested Strike hit costs 0 Psi — regardless of the rider's Overload tier..."

New: "When you first declare a rider as part of a Manifested Strike this Attack action, it costs 0 Psi, even if you Overload it. Psi is never spent on that first rider regardless of whether the attack hits or misses..."

The old phrasing could be read two ways: "0 Psi on hit" (implying Psi gets spent and refunded only if you hit) or "0 Psi, full stop" (the intended reading — you never paid Psi for the first rider in the first place). The examples in the rules always treated it as the second reading, but the text could go either way. The new wording says the thing explicitly: Psi is committed on declaration, and for the first rider each Attack action, the commitment is zero. Miss or hit, you spent nothing.

Manifested Strike attack bonus formula spelled out

Old: "You also add half your Proficiency Bonus (rounded down) to Manifested Strike attack rolls."

New: "Your Manifested Strike attack bonus is your Psionic Ability modifier + your Proficiency Bonus + half your Proficiency Bonus (rounded down)."

That "also" was doing a lot of work in the old sentence. It assumed the reader already knew they were getting PAM + PB from the standard weapon attack framing, and the ½PB was on top of that. New players building Vanguards kept asking "wait, do I get PB plus ½PB, or is the ½PB replacing the normal proficiency bonus?" Now the full formula lives in one sentence, no hunting required. The DM Quick Reference's Key Numbers table already showed this formula, so the main doc is catching up to the DMQR.

Savage Attacker note removed from the 19–20 footnote

Savage Attacker requires a melee weapon attack, and Manifested Strike is a ranged weapon attack. The feats-never-apply list in v7.9.0 already made this clear, but the 19–20 damage footnote accidentally suggested Savage Attacker was an option for the T2 1d20+1d12 package. It wasn't. Sentence deleted.

Empathic Sense explicitly labeled standalone

The telepathic scan is a standalone feature with a Concentration cost and optional Overload tiers, same category as Vectored Thrust and Deflection Screen. The rules for standalone Overloads (Section 01) already cover it, but a player flipping directly to the Empathic Sense entry might not connect the dots. Added a parenthetical right in the feature text: "(standalone feature; Concentration, up to 1 minute; Blood Tax applies on activation if Overloaded)". Same wording model as Vectored Thrust uses.

Concentration reminder added to the startup exception callout

Kinetic Vanguard has six features that require concentration across its disciplines and AT picks (Frozen Ground, Firestorm, Vectored Thrust, Gravitic Press, Reactive Barrier, Mass Levitation — plus the new Empathic Sense scan). That's a lot, and a new reader might wonder whether they're all exclusive with each other. They are, per standard 5e/5.5e concentration rules, but since the class is unusually concentration-dense the callout box now ends with a one-line reminder: "Standard concentration rules still apply — you can only concentrate on one feature at a time."

No new rule, just a signpost where players are already looking.

The Mechanics

Vectored Thrust T2 — now scales with Proficiency Bonus

Old: T2 grants +30 ft fly speed (60 ft total).

New: T2 grants +5 × your Proficiency Bonus in feet.

This is a nerf at levels 7–16 and breakeven at 17+. The old flat +30 was an outlier — most scaling features in the class use PB (Reactive Barrier THP, Ember Lance damage, Empathic Sense uses, Steeled Mind bonus, Blood Tax itself). Vectored Thrust was the only spot where a T2 feature handed out a fixed bonus that ignored character level entirely. Now it grows with the character.

The reason I'm calling this a necessary correction rather than a stealth nerf: the v7.10.0 refactor (which introduced the +30 T2) pitched T2 Vectored Thrust as rivaling a monk's walking speed. At level 7, with +3 PB and a monk still sitting at 40 ft walking speed, a 60 ft flat fly speed was actually outpacing the monk by 20 ft. That wasn't the intended design point — the intended point was "T2 is strong and matches the monk's speed curve," not "T2 is the best movement in the game the moment you unlock it." The PB scaling brings it in line: T2 VT matches a monk's equivalent-level movement much more cleanly across the tier curve.

If you're playing a level-7-to-16 Psychokineticist who already had VT T2 queued up in play patterns, this is a real loss. No sugar-coating that. But the class still has T0 flight for free (no Blood Tax), T1 adds no-opportunity-attacks, and T2 still gets you to 60 ft eventually.

Reactive Barrier THP cannot absorb Blood Tax

New: "These temporary hit points cannot absorb Blood Tax damage — your own psionic backlash bypasses the barrier."

The v7.13.0 patch opened up THP as a general Blood Tax mitigation tool, which was intended — party buffs like Inspiring Leader and Heroism now function as BT sponges, which is a real build payoff. But Reactive Barrier creates its own THP under concentration, and nothing stopped a Vanguard from activating RB and then immediately using the THP they just generated to soak their own Blood Tax on the next Overload. That was an unintended same-turn self-healing loop.

The carve-out is tight: RB's THP specifically can't eat BT. Every other THP source still works. The reasoning is also thematically clean — your psionic barrier can stop incoming weapon attacks, but it can't stop the psionic feedback of your own overloads, because the feedback is happening inside the barrier rather than outside it.

This is technically a new carve-out in a carve-out-cleanup era, and I want to be honest about that. The principle I've been applying is "don't restate core rules in feature text," and the reason I made an exception here is that the alternative — either reverting v7.13.0's "THP absorbs BT" change entirely, or adding global rules about which THP pools can soak which damage types — was worse. Keeping the carve-out inside Reactive Barrier's own text (where it belongs, since it's a property of the barrier) is the cleanest way to block the interaction without polluting the BT rules.

Documents

Previous patches: v7.13.0 (crits and THP cleanup), v7.12.0 (Psychic Resistance removal), v7.11.1 (War Caster clarification).

Kinetic Vanguard by NixNinja. © 2024–present. Free for non-commercial use with credit.

Kinetic Vanguard v7.14.1 — Polish Pass from an Outside Read

A documentation-only point release. No mechanics changed. But an outside review caught nine things worth fixing, and a couple of them are the kind of small-but-real issues that can trip up a new player at the table.

The Damage Math Corrections (Items 1 and 2)

Two of the worked examples in the main doc had inflated damage numbers that didn't match the actual MS damage rules. T0 Manifested Strike adds only PAM to damage — not PB. The PB-to-damage bonus kicks in at T1 Overload, not at baseline. I had this wrong in two example turns:

Level 11 Psychokinesis sustained turn — Attack 1 was listed as "avg 17 force." Correct math: T1 MS at level 11 is 1d10 + PAM + PB = 1d10 + 8, averaging 13.5 (round to 14). Turn total was listed as "~35 force" — correct is ~31.

Level 11 Cryokinesis lockdown turn — Attack 1 was listed as "avg 13 cold." Correct math: T0 MS at level 11 is 1d8 + PAM = 1d8 + 4, averaging 8.5 (round to 9). Glacial Spike adds control, not damage. Turn total was listed as "~31 cold" — correct is ~26.

Important: these are documentation corrections, not nerfs. The class performs exactly as it always did. The example text was showing inflated numbers that would have led a player to overestimate their own output if they used the examples as a baseline. If you were building expectations off those numbers, this is the tiny-but-real "here's what the class actually does" correction.

The Clarifications (Items 3, 4, 5, 6, 9)

Psi Cost Reference table (item 3). Concussive Surge and Reactive Barrier were listed in the "20th level" row of the Psi Cost Reference, which made them look like they unlocked at 20th. They don't — both are AT pool options available from 15th onward (AT III / AT IV / AT V). The rows now read "15th+" in the level column and "Universal (AT pool)" in the discipline column, matching how the generic AT pick rows are labeled.

Cliff Notes update (item 4). The Cliff Notes section still said "Your 3rd-level rider fires once per Attack action for free — you're never naked." That was stale. Since v7.6.2, Psionic Instinct applies to any first rider — discipline or Advanced Training pick, any tier. The Cliff Notes line now reads: "Your first rider each Attack action fires for free, even if Overloaded — you're never naked."

Attack Declaration Costs table (item 5). The table's Psionic Instinct note was visually attached to the "T0 MS + T0 rider" row, which made it look like Instinct only applied to that specific combination. Since Instinct actually applies to the first rider regardless of tier, the note has been reworded to "First rider this Attack action is free (Psionic Instinct, any tier)" — same meaning, now unambiguous about scope.

PAM spelled out (item 6). The abbreviation "PAM" (Psionic Ability modifier) was defined on the player sheets but not on the main doc abbreviation list, which made the v7.14.0 changelog entry read like "Polearm Master + PB + ½PB" at first glance. PAM is now added to the main doc abbreviation list, and the v7.14.0 changelog entry has been expanded to read "Psionic Ability modifier + Proficiency Bonus + half Proficiency Bonus (rounded down)."

Empathic Sense reformatted (item 9). The feature's passive half and active scan half were sharing a single prose paragraph, which was hard to parse cold. Now split into clearly-labeled Passive: and Active Scan: sections in the main doc and on all three player sheets. Same rules, cleaner read.

The RAW Closing (Item 8)

An outside reader pointed out that there's a surface tension in how Manifested Strike interacts with features that reference "ranged weapons." The class rules say MS is "a magical ranged weapon attack" but also "not a physical weapon" and "not a wielded weapon." A RAW-focused DM could technically argue that MS is a ranged weapon attack without being a ranged weapon, and therefore features like the Archery fighting style (which applies to "attacks with ranged weapons") don't work.

The Feat Compatibility design note in v7.9.0 already addressed this in the positive — it says Archery applies — but the positive ruling lived in a design-note callout, not in the feature text itself. A RAW-minded DM looking at the MS feature in isolation could still argue the point.

Closing the loophole: the Manifested Strike feature now includes an explicit clause:

"For the purposes of feats, fighting styles, and other features that reference ranged weapons, Manifested Strike counts as a ranged weapon."

This is a belt-and-suspenders fix. The Feat Compatibility callout still lists Archery / Sharpshooter / Elven Accuracy by name, and now the feature text itself backs that up. RAW arguments shouldn't be able to invalidate an explicit class-level ruling, but now they're doubly blocked.

Reactive Barrier and the Changelog (Item 7)

One thing worth flagging explicitly for anyone reading the changelog top-down: v7.14.0 supersedes the v7.13.0 example that listed Reactive Barrier among BT mitigation sources. The v7.13.0 changelog entry mentioned Reactive Barrier as a THP source that could absorb Blood Tax, and that was true at the time it was written. v7.14.0 carved Reactive Barrier out of the THP-mitigation pool specifically — RB's THP can't eat your own Blood Tax, because your psionic backlash originates inside the barrier rather than outside it.

Other THP sources (Inspiring Leader, Heroism, False Life, etc.) still work normally as BT sponges. Reactive Barrier is the only exception, and the exception lives inside RB's own feature text where it belongs.

The v7.14.1 changelog entry now explicitly notes this supersession for future readers. The v7.13.0 entry itself has been left as originally written — audit trail integrity matters, and retroactively rewriting patch notes is a bad habit.

A Note on Past Forum Post Link Ordering

Heads-up for anyone cross-referencing: from v7.7.0 through v7.14.0, the player sheet links in my forum post tables were alphabetized as Cryokinesis → Pyrokinesis → Psychokinesis — but the actual document uploads were in Pyrokinesis → Cryokinesis → Psychokinesis order. That means the Cryo and Pyro links in those tables have been swapped for several posts running.

Going forward, I'm matching the upload order directly. If you clicked a "Cryokinesis Player Sheet" link in a past post and got the Pyrokinesis sheet instead, that's why — and it's the same mistake in every post between v7.7.0 and v7.14.0.

Documents

Previous patches: v7.14.0 (VT T2 rescale, RB carve-out, polish pass), v7.13.0 (crits and THP cleanup), v7.12.0 (Psychic Resistance removal).

Kinetic Vanguard by NixNinja. © 2024–present. Free for non-commercial use with credit.

Kinetic Vanguard v7.15.0 — Reactive Barrier Is Now Just "Barrier," and It Actually Works

The big one this patch: Reactive Barrier has been redesigned from the ground up and renamed to Barrier. The previous version — THP pool under concentration, with a free reaction shove on melee hits — had two problems that playtesting made impossible to ignore, and neither was fixable without a full rework.

Why the Redesign

Problem 1: THP is fungible. 5e/5.5e has no concept of "separate THP pools." If you have 10 THP from Inspiring Leader and then activate Reactive Barrier to gain 48 THP, the new pool replaces the old. The v7.14.0 carve-out ("RB's THP cannot absorb Blood Tax") was unenforceable at the table because there was no way to distinguish "THP that came from Reactive Barrier" from "THP that happened to be there when you activated it." A carve-out you can't enforce is just confusion.

Problem 2: Concentration competition. Every discipline has a tentpole concentration feature — Firestorm for Pyro, Frozen Ground for Cryo, Vectored Thrust or Mass Levitation for Psycho. Reactive Barrier competed for the same slot, which meant nobody actually picked it. Why lock your concentration on a defensive buff when your offensive concentration feature is the reason you took the discipline in the first place?

The fix had to solve both. A THP-based feature with different rules would still hit Problem 1. A concentration-based defensive feature would still hit Problem 2. The only way out was to drop both.

The New Design

Barrier · High Tier · 3 Psi · Bonus Action

T0: For 1 minute, you have resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage from weapon attacks.

Tier 1 Overload: You also gain resistance to fire, cold, and force damage from weapon attacks for the duration.

Tier 2 Overload: You also gain a +2 bonus to your Armor Class for the duration.

No THP. No concentration. One minute duration. Fire-and-forget defensive stance.

What Each Tier Buys You

T0 — 3 Psi — Physical resistance. Half damage from every sword, arrow, club, and spear thrown at you for the next minute. Roughly comparable to Stoneskin (4th-level spell, concentration, touch, non-magical only) but trades Stoneskin's magical-vs-nonmagical restriction for a weapon-attack restriction, and removes the concentration cost. At any level, this is a meaningful defensive boost against the most common damage source in the game.

T1 — T0 + Blood Tax — Adds elemental resistance. Fire, cold, and force damage from weapon attacks. This is the tier you want as Pyrokinesis — wade into Firestorm, eat the enemy torchbearers' fire arrows for half, and still have your concentration free to maintain the feature that's actually killing things. The restriction to weapon attacks is still there, so this doesn't protect against a dragon's breath or a wizard's fireball — but it does protect against fire arrows, cold weapons, and force-damage magical weapons.

T2 — T0 + T1 + double Blood Tax — Adds +2 AC. This is the only AC-boosting feature in the class, and it stacks with everything. At 3 Psi + 4×PB Blood Tax, it's expensive, but for a boss fight or a pre-buff before an encounter you know is coming, it's legitimately the single strongest defensive cooldown the class has access to.

The Restriction That Matters: Weapon Attacks Only

The most important balancing factor is the phrase "from weapon attacks" in every tier. This is what keeps Barrier from being universal damage reduction. Specifically:

• Barrier protects you from: a goblin shooting a bow, a knight swinging a greatsword, a rogue backstabbing, a bugbear throwing a javelin, a fire elemental slamming you with burning fists (its slam is a weapon attack, fire damage), a frost giant with a cold-enchanted axe, a construct punching you (unarmed strikes are weapon attacks).
• Barrier does NOT protect you from: a wizard casting Fireball (spell, not weapon attack), a dragon's breath weapon (breath weapon, not weapon attack), environmental damage (lava, traps, falling), Magic Missile (spell), a mind flayer's Extract Brain (special ability), or your own Blood Tax.

If you were thinking Barrier might trivialize big boss fights where the boss is a high-level caster, it mostly won't — casters ignore it entirely. It's the martial-threat answer, and it's specifically tuned for "a lot of enemies are hitting me with their weapons and I need to not die."

What's Gone

• The THP pool. Barrier gives you zero THP. Other THP sources (Inspiring Leader, Heroism, False Life, etc.) still work as Blood Tax mitigation per v7.13.0 — nothing has changed there. Barrier just isn't part of that system anymore.
• The concentration requirement. Barrier is not a concentration feature. You can stack it with Firestorm, Frozen Ground, Vectored Thrust, or anything else without losing either.
• The "cannot absorb Blood Tax" carve-out. Since Barrier has no THP, this is moot. The carve-out is gone, and the rules are cleaner for it.
• The reaction shove. Previously, while Reactive Barrier's THP remained, you could use your reaction for free to shove melee attackers. That mechanic is gone entirely — and since there's no longer a reaction to speak of, "Reactive" became a misleading name. Hence the rename to plain "Barrier."

Pool Slot Count Unchanged

The Advanced Training pool is still six options; you still pick three of them across levels 15, 18, and 20. Barrier just replaces Reactive Barrier in the same slot. If you had Reactive Barrier picked in a character build, you still have Barrier — no retroactive re-picking required, and the change is overall a buff in actual table usefulness.

One Thing the Changelog Supersedes

Quick call-out for changelog completeness: the v7.13.0 entry listed Reactive Barrier among Blood Tax mitigation sources (because at the time, its THP could absorb BT). v7.14.0 carved that out, and v7.15.0 removes the THP entirely. The historical changelog entry remains as originally written for audit trail, but as of v7.15.0, Barrier has nothing to do with Blood Tax — it doesn't mitigate it, interact with it, or care about it. Blood Tax mitigation now comes from external THP sources (Inspiring Leader, etc.) and psychic resistance, full stop.

Documents

Previous patches: v7.14.1 (polish pass), v7.14.0 (VT T2 rescale, RB carve-out attempt), v7.13.0 (crits and THP cleanup).

Kinetic Vanguard by NixNinja. © 2024–present. Free for non-commercial use with credit.

Kinetic Vanguard v7.15.1 — Barrier Gets Three Modes

A quick iteration on the Barrier redesign from v7.15.0. The resistance-window structure worked, but the "T0 physical → T1 adds elemental → T2 adds AC" ladder was a strict upgrade with no tactical choice at activation time. This patch restructures Barrier as a pick-from-menu feature with three named modes, scaling via pick count rather than strict addition.

The New Structure

Barrier · High Tier · 3 Psi · Bonus Action · 1 minute

Choose one of the following effects, which lasts for the duration:

• Blade Shield — resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage from weapon attacks
• Elemental Shroud — resistance to acid, cold, fire, lightning, and thunder damage from weapon attacks
• Armor Boost — +2 bonus to your Armor Class

Tier 1 Overload: Choose two of the three effects instead of one.

Tier 2 Overload: The duration increases to 10 minutes.

Same Psi cost, same activation, same AT pool slot.

Why Pick-from-Menu

Under v7.15.0, a Vanguard activating Barrier at T0 always got the same thing: b/p/s resistance. That's a solid default, but it's also a default — there's no decision involved, no reading of the situation, no "what do I need right now?" The feature felt identical in every fight.

The three-mode structure puts the decision at the activation table. Walking into a hallway full of skeletons with bows? Blade Shield. Facing a chamber with ice mephits and a fire elemental? Elemental Shroud. Boss fight against a high-to-hit big bad? Armor Boost. Mixed encounter? Overload to T1, pay your Proficiency Bonus in Blood Tax, and cover two threat types.

Every activation is now a read of the table — and the read actually matters.

T2 Is Duration, Not Pick Count

Here's the subtle thing that makes this design work: T2 doesn't give you all three effects. It just extends the duration from 1 minute to 10 minutes. You still have to pick two, same as T1.

Why? Because "choose all three" would collapse the tactical decision. At T2 every activation would turn on every defense, and the mode structure would only matter at T0 and T1. By keeping the pick count at two even at T2, the tradeoff stays meaningful at every tier. You're always leaving one mode off, and deciding which one based on the threat.

What T2 does give you is uptime. A 1-minute buff barely covers a single combat. A 10-minute buff covers a full dungeon floor's worth of encounters if you pre-buff, or most of a long boss fight with phases. That's the T2 power spike — not more raw effect, but more time in which the effect applies. Spend 3×PB Blood Tax and your Barrier lasts through the whole wing.

Mode Breakdowns

Blade Shield covers bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from weapon attacks. This is the bread-and-butter mode — the vast majority of monsters in the MM deal one of these three damage types with their attacks. Goblins, knights, bandits, ogres, giants, dragons (claws/bite), wolves, zombies, virtually anything with a weapon or a physical natural attack. If you don't know what threat is coming, Blade Shield is the safe default.

Elemental Shroud covers acid, cold, fire, lightning, and thunder damage — from weapon attacks only. This list matches the Absorb Elements spell's element list, which should make it easy to remember. Notably this protects against: a flaming sword, a frost brand, a thunderous warhammer, a fire elemental's slam, a cold-damage cryomancer's conjured blade. It does NOT protect against: Fireball, Cone of Cold, a dragon's breath weapon, or any spell effect. The weapon-attack restriction is the key balancing factor — this mode excels specifically against martial enemies with elemental enchantments, not against spellcasting threats.

Armor Boost adds a flat +2 to your Armor Class for the duration. Straightforward. Stacks with everything because it's a typeless bonus. This is the only AC-boosting feature in the entire class, which makes it unique in the KV toolkit. Pair it with Plate (or any heavy armor + shield combo) at high levels and you become genuinely hard to hit.

Overload Economics

At 3 Psi + variable Blood Tax, here's what you're buying:

T0 is the default activation — 3 Psi for a flexible one-minute defensive buff, no Blood Tax. T1 is the fight-tested upgrade — pay PB Blood Tax to cover a second threat type for the same fight. T2 is the deep-dungeon pre-buff — pay 3×PB Blood Tax to lock in your two effects for the next ten minutes of adventuring.

Notice that T1 and T2 both give you the same effect set (two modes), but they scale along different axes. T1 is "pay some BT to be more flexible in this fight." T2 is "pay a lot of BT to be more flexible for the next several fights." They're not redundant — they answer different questions about what you need.

The Weapon-Attack Restriction Still Matters

Same call-out as the v7.15.0 post: Blade Shield and Elemental Shroud both restrict to damage from weapon attacks. This means:

• Barrier protects you from: creatures hitting you with weapons, natural weapons, or unarmed strikes, regardless of whether those attacks deal physical or elemental damage.
• Barrier does NOT protect you from: spells (Fireball, Magic Missile, etc.), breath weapons (dragons, hydras), environmental damage (lava, traps), or any non-attack damage source.

Armor Boost applies to all incoming attack rolls equally — spells with attack rolls (Scorching Ray, Fire Bolt) get hit by the +2 AC too. But spells that only require saving throws (Fireball, Hold Person) are unaffected.

If a boss fight is caster-heavy, Barrier is mostly doing AC work and ignoring the rest. That's the design limit.

What This Supersedes

• The v7.15.0 strict-ladder structure (T0 b/p/s → T1 adds fire/cold/force → T2 adds +2 AC) is gone. The new structure is menu-based with all three options available from T0 and scaling via pick count.
• Force damage is out of Elemental Shroud. The v7.15.0 version used fire/cold/force; the new version uses the Absorb Elements list (acid/cold/fire/lightning/thunder). Net result: force damage resistance is gone, but acid/lightning/thunder are new. Net coverage is broader for most encounters, narrower for force-specific threats.

Pool slot count unchanged. Character builds that had Reactive Barrier picked still have Barrier, and no retroactive rebuild is required.

Documents

Previous patches: v7.15.0 (Reactive Barrier → Barrier), v7.14.1 (polish pass), v7.14.0 (VT T2 rescale).

Kinetic Vanguard by NixNinja. © 2024–present. Free for non-commercial use with credit.

Kinetic Vanguard v7.15.2 — Barrier's Mode List Gets Serious

v7.15.1 gave Barrier three modes: Blade Shield, Elemental Shroud, and Armor Boost. In playtesting, two problems surfaced immediately:

1. Armor Boost was anemic. +2 AC at 3 Psi is the same math as casting Shield of Faith (1st-level concentration spell), and it was the one mode nobody would ever pick over the other two.
2. Elemental Shroud's "from weapon attacks" restriction generated exactly the kind of "does that count?" question at the table that made it feel punishing rather than tactical. Players looked at Fireball, looked at Shroud, and felt like they were being tricked.

This patch rebuilds the mode list to fix both. Armor Boost is gone. Elemental Shroud now works like Absorb Elements. And three new utility modes fill out the menu with actual defensive breadth.

The New Mode List

Barrier · High Tier · 3 Psi · Bonus Action · 1 minute

Choose one of the following effects:

• Blade Shield — You have resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage from weapon attacks.
• Elemental Shroud — Choose one damage type from acid, cold, fire, lightning, or thunder. You have resistance to that damage type.
• Spellward — You have advantage on saving throws against spells.
• Steadfast Guard — You have advantage on Strength saving throws, and on ability checks and saving throws to resist being grappled, shoved, knocked prone, or forcibly moved.
• Mental Bulwark — You have advantage on saving throws against being charmed, frightened, blinded, restrained, incapacitated, paralyzed, or stunned.

Tier 1 Overload: Choose two of the five effects instead of one.

Tier 2 Overload: The duration increases to 10 minutes.

Five modes. Pick 1 at T0, pick 2 at T1, always pick 2 at T2 but for ten times as long.

Elemental Shroud Works Like Absorb Elements Now

This is the big quality-of-life fix. Under the old structure, Shroud granted resistance to five damage types but only from weapon attacks. That meant:

• ✗ Fireball? No. (Spell, not weapon attack.)
• ✗ Dragon's breath? No. (Breath weapon, not weapon attack.)
• ✓ Flaming sword? Yes.
• ✓ Fire elemental's slam? Yes.

The "does that count?" problem was constant. Players wanted Shroud to be their anti-Fireball tool and it wasn't.

New structure: At activation, you pick one damage type from the Absorb Elements list (acid, cold, fire, lightning, thunder). For the next minute, you have resistance to that damage type from any source. No restriction on where the damage comes from.

This means:

• ✓ Fireball? If you picked fire, yes.
• ✓ Dragon's breath? If you picked the right type, yes.
• ✓ Flaming sword? If you picked fire, yes.
• ✓ A single element only. No more five-for-one.

The trade is deliberate: narrower scope (one element instead of five) in exchange for universal coverage (any source instead of just weapons). A Vanguard walking into a fire-heavy encounter picks fire and is genuinely half-damage against every fire source in the room. A Vanguard who wants to hedge across multiple elements needs to Overload to T1 and pick Shroud + Blade Shield, or reconsider whether Shroud is the right pick at all.

Important rule: You cannot pick Elemental Shroud twice at T1 to get two elements. Each mode is a distinct effect, and Shroud is exactly one of them. If you want broader elemental coverage, you either pick Shroud + something else at T1, or accept that Shroud locks in one element per activation.

The Three New Utility Modes

Spellward — Advantage on saves vs spells

Every spell with a saving throw is now a 50% less scary proposition. This covers the big-damage AOE (Fireball, Cone of Cold, Lightning Bolt), the big-control spells (Hold Person, Dominate Person, Banishment), the sneaky save-or-suck effects (Slow, Confusion, Feeblemind), and everything in between. At any tier of play, "advantage on spell saves" is one of the most broadly useful defensive tools in the game.

It overlaps with Mental Bulwark (most mental conditions are imposed by spells) and with Elemental Shroud (most elemental damage spells trigger Dex saves), but advantage doesn't stack, so the overlap is fine. A player who wants to hedge against any spellcasting threat picks Spellward. A player who wants broader coverage against non-spell sources of conditions picks Mental Bulwark. They're not redundant, they're differently focused.

Steadfast Guard — Anti-brute mode

This is the mode with no direct equivalent elsewhere in the class. Advantage on Strength saves (which come up far more often than you'd think — many monster features like Bulette Leap or the T-rex Bite demand Str saves), plus advantage on the contested checks and saves that resist grapple, shove, prone, and forced movement effects.

Who threatens you with these? Ropers, Giant Apes, Hill Giants and up, the Tarrasque's Swallow, almost any grappler monster, BBEGs with Telekinesis, any boss with "pulls you into melee range" legendary actions. A party facing one of these enemies can pre-buff a Vanguard with Steadfast Guard and have a reliable anchor in the front line.

It's the most niche of the five modes, but when it applies, it's the single strongest defensive tool in the kit.

Mental Bulwark — Anti-condition mode

Advantage on saves against the status conditions that shut characters down: charmed, frightened, blinded, restrained, incapacitated, paralyzed, and stunned. If you've ever watched a player lose two or three turns to a single failed save against Hold Person, this is the mode for that. If you're going into a mind flayer lair, this is the mode for that. If you're facing a Fear aura, a Gaze attack, or a Stunning Strike monk, this is the mode for that.

Mental Bulwark differs from Spellward in where the save comes from, not what you're rolling against. Spellward covers everything that's labeled a spell. Mental Bulwark covers everything that imposes these specific conditions, regardless of whether it's a spell, a monster feature, an aura, or a trap. A lot of the dangerous condition-imposers in the MM are not spells — they're innate monster abilities, and those slip past Spellward entirely.

T1 and T2 Are Still The Same Structure

T1 Overload pays your Proficiency Bonus in Blood Tax and lets you pick 2 of the 5 effects instead of 1. T2 pays 3×PB Blood Tax and extends the duration from 1 minute to 10 minutes — still pick 2, not pick 5. The T2-is-duration-not-pick-count design from v7.15.1 is preserved because it's the right call: it keeps the tactical decision meaningful even at max Overload, rather than collapsing into "turn everything on."

The new Overload math table:

Sample Decisions

Goblin ambush at level 5. Blade Shield at T0. Half damage from everything they throw at you. Simple.

Wizard tower encounter at level 9. Spellward at T0. Every save DC against their spells gets rolled with advantage. Overload to T1 and add Elemental Shroud (fire) if you know they're going to open with Fireball.

Grappler monster at level 11. Steadfast Guard at T0. Single threat, single solution.

Mixed mid-tier dungeon floor at level 13. T1 Overload. Pick Spellward + Blade Shield. Covers both the casters and the martials in whatever rooms you find over the next minute.

Boss fight against a mind flayer and its thralls at level 16. T1 Overload. Pick Mental Bulwark + Blade Shield. The mind flayer can't easily stun you, and the thralls can't easily stab you. Both problems covered, for 3 Psi and PB Blood Tax.

Pre-buffing a dungeon floor at level 18. T2 Overload. Pick whichever two modes fit the intel you have. You get ten minutes, which in practice means "every combat on this floor is easier."

What's Gone

• Armor Boost. It wasn't worth picking, and scaling it up would have stepped on other class math.
• Shroud's weapon-attack restriction. Now universal, but narrowed to one element per activation.
• The old "v7.15.1 three-mode ladder." Overwritten.

Pool slot count unchanged. Existing character builds with Barrier picked automatically become the new version.

Documents

Previous patches: v7.15.1 (three-mode Barrier), v7.15.0 (Reactive Barrier → Barrier), v7.14.1 (polish pass).

Kinetic Vanguard by NixNinja. © 2024–present. Free for non-commercial use with credit.

Kinetic Vanguard v7.15.3 — Sync Pass, Nothing Mechanical

This is a documentation patch. No rules have changed. If you're playing Kinetic Vanguard, your character is exactly the same as it was yesterday. You do not need to update anything on your sheet.

What got fixed: an outside review found that several support documents had drifted away from the current class rules over multiple patches. The DM Quick Reference was the worst offender — its title header had been stuck at v7.6.2 (eleven versions out of date) and several key rulings in the body were from even older versions of the class. The player sheets and the main doc had smaller leftovers too. All of it is fixed now.

Why This Happened

Two reasons, in descending order of importance.

First, my audit process had a gap. Docx files store content in multiple XML pieces — the main body is in one file, but headers, footers, comments, and endnotes live in separate files. When I verify patch drift, I've been parsing only the main body file. That means the DMQR's title header, which lives in a separate header1.xml file, has been invisible to my verification scripts. Every time I bumped the version string on recent patches, the header got missed. Eleven patches of silent staleness, from v7.6.2 through v7.15.2, until an outside read caught it.

Going forward, my audit scripts scan every XML file in the docx bundle, not just the main body. This particular failure mode cannot happen again.

Second, the DMQR is a compressed-summary document by nature, and compressed summaries don't get the same scrutiny as the main rules text. When I rewrote a discipline feature in the main doc (like the v7.11.0 save-or-suck pass for Snow Chains), I'd update the detailed feature description but sometimes forget the three-or-four-word shorthand in the DMQR table. Over time, those shorthand rows drifted further from current rules. Even though individual drifts were small, they compounded.

This sync pass audits the DMQR line by line against the current main doc, and it's now consistent.

What Got Fixed

Main Doc (1 item)

• Cliff Notes listed the Advanced Training pool as including "reactive barrier" — a stale reference to the pre-v7.15.0 name. Updated to just "barrier."

Player Sheets — All Three (1 item each)

• The Advanced Training section header read "ADVANCED TRAINING III & IV (15th & 18th)" — mismatched against the actual class structure, which grants picks at 15th, 18th, AND 20th via AT III, IV, and V. Updated to "ADVANCED TRAINING III, IV, & V (15th, 18th, 20th)".

Pyrokinesis Sheet — Play Patterns (4 items)

• The sample turn sequences used pre-version flavor text ("burn," "ignition") that isn't how the current Ember Lance and Fiery Blast features are described. Updated to the current "fire damage + doubling primer" / "AoE fire damage + push" prose. The damage totals and Psi budgets in those examples are unchanged — only the descriptive words are updated.

DM Quick Reference (8 items, the big cleanup)

1. Title header. Previously read "KINETIC VANGUARD · DM QUICK REFERENCE · v7.6.2." Now reads "KINETIC VANGUARD · DM QUICK REFERENCE · v7.15.3." This is the fix that should have happened every patch since v7.6.2 and didn't.

2. Blood Tax section header. Previously said "Self-damage on HIT only. Bypasses THP. Cannot be reduced." Both halves of that sentence were rules that got removed in v7.12.0 (Psychic Resistance removal) and v7.13.0 (carve-out cleanup). Now reads "Self-damage on HIT only. Psychic resistance halves it normally." A DM running a combat behind the screen was reading stale, now-wrong rules. Fixed.

3. Vectored Thrust row. Previously said "None. Fly (hover) self. BA, Conc, up to 10 min." That was the pre-v7.10.0 description. Current VT gives you a 30 ft fly speed at T0, no opportunity attacks while flying at T1, and +5×PB feet at T2. Row now reflects this.

4. Telekinetic Slam row. Previously said "Str. Single, 8–13d10 force. Prone / speed 0 / Stunned." The tier-by-tier effects were wrong — there's no "speed 0" tier for TK Slam, and Prone is T1 not T0. Updated to accurately reflect the current tier structure: T0 is 8d10 damage with a 10 ft push, T1 is 10d10 with Prone, T2 is 13d10 with Stunned.

5. Snow Chains row. The "+cold damage" T1 rider was removed in v7.11.0 (the save-or-suck pass). Row now shows the current auto-speed-0 T0 with Con save or Restrained, no-reactions T1, and Stunned T2 structure.

6. Flare row. Previously had the tier order and effect structure from a pre-v7.11.0 version of the feature. Updated to show: T0 deals 1 MS die fire + save or Blinded; T1 bumps damage to 2 MS dice; T2 replaces Blinded with Incapacitated on a failed save.

7. Explosion/Implosion row. Previously said "Str. 15 ft AoE: Prone + push 15 ft or pull 15 ft." That's the pre-v7.11.0 version where the movement was save-gated. Current E/I has automatic movement (push or pull 15 ft, no save) with Prone as the save-gated effect. Row now shows: 15 ft / 30 ft / 30 ft + PAM force damage across the three tiers, with Str save or Prone as the effect.

8. Advanced Training pool row. The AT pool listing used the stale abbreviation "R.Barrier" (from Reactive Barrier). Renamed to "Barrier" to match v7.15.0.

What's Trustworthy Now

After this patch, the DMQR is current through v7.15.3. A DM running Kinetic Vanguard behind the screen can pull up that document and trust that what it says is what the main rules say. Before this patch, that wasn't reliably true — some of the most-referenced DMQR rulings (Blood Tax interaction, rider effects at key levels) were multiple versions stale.

If you maintain your own cheat sheets or campaign notes based on the DMQR, now is a good time to re-download and cross-reference.

No Mechanical Changes

To be completely explicit: zero rules changed in this patch. No feature was buffed, nerfed, added, or removed. If you're in the middle of a campaign with a Kinetic Vanguard character, you do not need to rebuild, re-pick anything, or update your character sheet. This is strictly a "the documentation now matches the rules" patch.

Documents

Previous patches: v7.15.2 (Barrier mode overhaul), v7.15.1 (Barrier three-mode structure), v7.15.0 (Reactive Barrier → Barrier).

Kinetic Vanguard by NixNinja. © 2024–present. Free for non-commercial use with credit.

Kinetic Vanguard v7.15.4 — Level 20 Play Examples Rewritten, Plus One Rules Clarification

Two things this patch:

1. The Level 20 sample turns on all three player sheets violated action economy. They've been rewritten to actually obey the rules.
2. Ember Lance T2 had an ambiguous rules text that the old examples interpreted inconsistently. The feature text is now explicit about the intended reading. This is technically a rules clarification that affects some player builds.

The Action Economy Problem

I'm going to be frank here: the Level 20 sample turns on all three player sheets had been broken since I first wrote them. None of them actually worked under the rules as written.

The specific problem: each sample turn used the Attack action (4 hits at level 20 with Action Surge + Extra Attack) to deliver the rider sequence, and then also tried to slot in an Action-cost capstone feature in the same turn. Firestorm (Pyro), Arctic Tempest and Absolute Zero (Cryo), and Mass Levitation (Psycho) are all Action-cost features. You can't cast one of those and take the Attack action on the same turn unless you use Action Surge — and none of the old examples mentioned Action Surge.

Worse: the Cryo example stacked two Action-cost capstones (Arctic Tempest AND Absolute Zero) in the same turn, which is impossible. Action Surge gives you one additional action, not two.

The Psycho example had an additional problem: Vectored Thrust and Mass Levitation both require Concentration. Starting Mass Levitation would drop VT and end the flight the example relied on for its "float above the ragdolled enemies" identity.

All three sample turns now explicitly use Action Surge where appropriate, drop features that don't fit, and call out concentration conflicts honestly.

New Pyro L20 Turn

1. Bonus Action: Phase Step T1 (1 Psi) — reposition to flank.
2. Attack action — Hit 1 (Instinct free): Ember Lance T2 → doubling primer (no direct damage).
3. Hit 2: T2 MS + Flare T1 (2 Psi) → MS damage doubled by primer + 2 MS dice bonus fire + save vs Blinded.
4. Hits 3–4: Fiery Blast T1 (2 Psi) on Hit 3 → 3d8 + PAM AoE fire + 15 ft push. Hit 4: naked MS.
5. If a hit drops a creature: Spreading Flames T1 (5 Psi, on-kill trigger) → 3 MS dice AoE fire eruption.
6. Action Surge → Action: Firestorm T2 (3 Psi, Concentration) → 30-ft fire zone.

Action Surge is explicit. Psi budget recomputed honestly: 13 of 16 Psi, 78 BT at PB 6. That's a true nova turn and should be used with Deflection Screen up and a party healer on standby. The budget line now says so.

New Cryo L20 Turn

1. Bonus Action: Phase Step T1 (1 Psi, BT = PB) — reposition to range.
2. Attack action — Hit 1 (Instinct free): T0 Glacial Spike → speed −5 ft auto, Con save or −5 more.
3. Hit 2: Snow Chains T2 (2 Psi) → speed 0 auto, Con save or Stunned.
4. Hits 3–4: T2 MS + Glacial Spike T1 each hit → stacking cold damage + speed reduction on failed saves.
5. Action Surge → Action: Absolute Zero T2 (5 Psi) → 15d10 cold + Stunned on failed Con save.

Arctic Tempest is dropped from this example. It's still a perfectly valid feature — Cryo players will use it when the encounter is clustered and they don't need a single-target boss finisher. This example shows the boss-fight version. You can't reliably fit both AT and AZ into one turn under the rules, so pick the one that matches the situation.

New Psycho L20 Turn

1. Bonus Action: Vectored Thrust T1 (2 Psi, BT = PB) — fly 30 ft + no OA (Concentration).
2. Attack action — Hit 1 (Instinct free): T0 Telekinetic Shove → push target 5 ft into cluster.
3. Hit 2: Explosion/Implosion T2 (2 Psi) → auto push or pull 30 ft + PAM force damage, Str save or Prone.
4. Hit 3: Concussive Surge T2 (3 Psi, AT pick) → 2 MS dice force damage, Con save or Stunned.
5. Hit 4: Mind Blast T2 (3 Psi, AT pick) → 4d8 + 2×PAM psychic, Wis save or Stunned.
6. Action Surge → Action: Mass Levitation T1 (5 Psi) → up to 5 targets Str save or Restrained (hovering) + Incapacitated on failed Con save. Note: concentration transfers to Mass Levitation, ending Vectored Thrust — you land this turn.

Mass Levitation is preserved as the capstone, but the concentration conflict is now called out explicitly. Your character floats above the ragdoll zone for the whole turn, then commits to the big finisher and drops. Narratively this works beautifully — you were setting up from above, and now you touch down to land the hammer blow. Mechanically, it's rules-legal.

The old Psycho example also had some stale rider descriptions that got cleaned up along the way: Concussive Surge T2 is "Stunned" (not "Stunned + no reactions" — the "no reactions" bit is the T0 rider), and Mind Blast T2 is "Stunned" (not "Blinded + Stunned" — Blinded is T0, Stunned replaces it at T2).

Ember Lance T2 — Rules Clarification

Ember Lance's Overload tiers were previously written like this:

T0: The target takes additional fire damage equal to 2 × your Proficiency Bonus on hit. T1: The additional fire damage increases to 4 × your Proficiency Bonus on hit. T2: After this hit fully resolves, the next Manifested Strike hit against the same target before the end of your next turn has its Manifested Strike damage doubled...

Notice what T2 didn't say: whether the activation hit still deals the T1 damage (+4×PB) or whether T2 replaces T1 entirely. A strict reading says T2 is primer-only, no direct damage. A permissive reading says T2 inherits T1's damage because higher tiers typically build on lower tiers.

The old sample turns assumed the permissive reading ("burn + primer"). The main doc was silent. This created a real rules ambiguity that could meaningfully affect play: a T2 activation hit is either 0 or 4×PB fire damage depending on which reading the table uses.

The clarification: T2 is primer-only. The activation hit deals no additional damage, but it sets the doubling primer for the next MS hit against the target. The new feature text reads:

Tier 2 Overload: This hit deals no additional damage (the Tier 1 bonus damage is replaced by the primer). After this hit fully resolves, the next Manifested Strike hit against the same target before the end of your next turn has its Manifested Strike damage doubled...

Why strict and not permissive: The strict reading makes T2 Ember Lance an interesting choice — "do I want the big damage now or a bigger hit next turn?" — rather than a strict upgrade from T1. Under the permissive reading, T2 was just "T1 plus a free primer," which made T1 almost always the wrong pick. The strict reading preserves T1 as a real option for "I want damage on this specific hit right now." It also keeps the Pyro play pattern honest: T2 on the first hit, cash in the doubling on a later hit. If T2 also dealt +4×PB, the math would get silly fast because you'd be front-loading damage on top of a doubled follow-up.

If you were building on the permissive reading: your T2 Ember Lance activation hits get 4×PB less damage than you were expecting. The cash-in hit (the one that gets the doubled MS damage) is unchanged. This is technically a nerf to anyone who was assuming T2 inherited T1's damage — sorry for the ambiguity, but the strict reading is what the design was always meant to support. The old Pyro sample turn said "burn + primer" and was written by someone (me) who was confused about how their own feature worked. That's on me.

Everything Else Unchanged

This is the only rules clarification in the patch. No other feature was touched. No other discipline features were rewritten. No Barrier modes changed. The three new L20 example turns use the exact same features they always did, just sequenced correctly and with the action economy called out explicitly.

If you've been playing Kinetic Vanguard and your Pyro character has been using T2 Ember Lance as an activation damage tool, you'll want to update your play pattern. Everyone else: no changes to your sheet.

Why This Was Broken for So Long

Worth naming explicitly: the Level 20 sample turns have been broken for as long as those sample turns have existed. I wrote them originally and never action-economy-checked them. Every subsequent edit updated rider descriptions and damage numbers without noticing that the action-cost features couldn't actually fit in the turn structure they were wedged into. This is exactly the kind of silent bug that's easy to let drift — the example looks right at a glance, the numbers add up, the flavor is evocative, and nobody catches the missing Action Surge until they try to actually play the turn at a real table.

Going forward, sample turns get a dedicated action-economy pass: one Bonus Action, one Action, one Reaction window. Anything beyond that requires an explicit Action Surge note. No more implicit action budget.

Documents

Previous patches: v7.15.3 (documentation sync pass), v7.15.2 (Barrier mode overhaul), v7.15.1 (Barrier three-mode structure).

Kinetic Vanguard by NixNinja. © 2024–present. Free for non-commercial use with credit.

Kinetic Vanguard v7.15.5 — Pyrokinesis Sync Pass

A focused cleanup. v7.15.4 made Ember Lance T2 unambiguous in the main rules (it's primer-only — the activation hit deals no extra damage), but the clarification didn't fully propagate. The Pyrokinesis player sheet still implied the old permissive reading, the DM Quick Reference summarized the feature with the old wording, and the Pyro L11 example math in the main doc was still calculated under the permissive reading. This patch finishes the sync.

It also fixes a self-inflicted wound from v7.15.4: the Level 10 Pyro sample turn budget got corrupted when my v7.15.4 patch script accidentally pasted L20 numbers into the L10 paragraph. That's restored.

No mechanical changes beyond the v7.15.4 clarification finally landing everywhere.

The Pyro Sync Triangle

Three docs needed to say the same thing about Ember Lance T2. They didn't.

Main rules (already correct as of v7.15.4):

T2: This hit deals no additional damage (the Tier 1 bonus damage is replaced by the primer). After this hit fully resolves, the next Manifested Strike hit against the same target before the end of your next turn has its Manifested Strike damage doubled...

Pyrokinesis player sheet (was stale, now fixed):

• Old: T2: Next MS hit against same target before end of your next turn has its MS damage doubled (strike only, not rider). Applies once.
• New: T2: This hit deals no additional damage (T1 bonus is replaced by primer). Next MS hit against same target before end of your next turn has its MS damage doubled (strike only, not rider). Applies once.

The sheet was technically not wrong — it just didn't say the activation hit dealt no damage, which left the door open for a player to assume T2 inherited T1's +4×PB. Now the sheet matches the main doc word-for-word on the key clause.

DM Quick Reference (was stale, now fixed):

• Old: Ember Lance · 3rd · None. +2×PB / +4×PB / doubles next MS hit.
• New: Ember Lance · 3rd · None. +2×PB / +4×PB / no damage, primes next MS hit doubled.

The DMQR is meant to be the at-a-glance summary a DM trusts behind the screen. "Doubles next MS hit" is true but incomplete — it doesn't tell the DM that T2 itself deals no direct damage. Fixed.

The L10 Budget Restoration

The bug: When I rolled v7.15.4, my replacement script targeted the Pyro L20 budget paragraph for an update. The L10 budget paragraph started with the same word ("Budget:") and got matched by accident. The script overwrote the L10 paragraph with the L20 budget content.

The result: The Pyrokinesis sheet's Level 10 sample turn was labeled "LEVEL 10 — FIRST T2 POWER SPIKE" with the correct header values (MS 1d8, PB 4, 10 Psi, 3 Attacks), but its budget line said "13 of 16 Psi", referenced PB 6, and mentioned an "Action Surge Firestorm" — which is impossible at level 10 since Firestorm is a 15th-level feature. A reader trying to make sense of the L10 turn was getting numbers that came from a completely different character.

The fix: Recomputed the actual L10 nova turn from scratch. With Phase Step T1 (1 Psi, BT = PB), Ember Lance T2 (Instinct-free, BT = 3×PB), T2 MS + Flare T1 (2 Psi, BT = 4×PB), and Fiery Blast T0 (2 Psi, BT = 0), the total comes to 5 of 10 Psi spent and 8×PB = 32 BT at PB 4. That's a heavy nova for level 10 (a fighter at L10 has roughly 80 hp), but plausible with Deflection Screen up.

Importantly, the L10 turn does not need Action Surge — it fits in one Bonus Action + one Attack action (3 attacks at L11+). The L20 turn needed Action Surge because L20 has a Mass Levitation / Firestorm / Absolute Zero capstone Action that has to fit alongside the Attack action. L10 doesn't have those Action-cost finishers in the picture, so the action economy is simpler.

L11 Main Doc Pyro Example — Math Recompute (Not a Nerf)

The main doc's Level 11 Pyro worked example had Attack 2 listed as "avg 25 fire (MS 1d8+4, EL 4×PB on hit). Primes next MS hit for doubled damage."

That number was calculated under the old permissive reading where T2 Ember Lance dealt the T1 +4×PB damage AND set the primer. Under the v7.15.4 clarification, T2 is primer-only — no extra damage on the activation hit. So the new math is:

• Attack 1 (T0 MS + T0 EL): avg 17 fire — unchanged
• Attack 2 (T0 MS + T2 EL): was avg 25, now avg 9 (just MS 1d8+4, no EL damage, primer set)
• Attack 3 (T1 MS + T1 EL, cashing the primer): avg 43 — unchanged
• Turn total: was ~84 fire, now ~69 fire

This is a math correction, not a nerf. The Pyro class deals exactly the same damage at level 11 today that it did yesterday. What changed is the worked example: it was previously documenting a damage number that didn't match the rules as designed. The example is now honest. If you were comparing Pyro damage output to Cryo or Psycho based on the L11 worked example, the comparison is now apples-to-apples — the previous number was inflated by a feature interaction that the rules never actually supported.

The Psi cost (2 of 10) and Blood Tax cost (20 hp) are unchanged. Only the damage line moved.

DMQR Last-Mile Polish

Two small items that ChatGPT flagged from a careful read:

Spacing glitch. The Common Rulings list had an entry that read "• One rider per hit.Discipline OR AT rider, never both on the same hit." — missing space after the period. Fixed.

AT picks Psi column. The Universal Features table had a row for "AT III–V picks" (the summary row showing that you pick three Advanced Training features at 15/18/20). The Psi column for that row read "2–3" — which was meant to indicate the range of Psi costs across the AT pool features, but read like the row itself cost 2-3 Psi to use. Since each individual AT feature already has its own row in the table with its own Psi cost, the summary row's Psi column has been changed to "varies" to make clear that this is a meta-row, not a feature cost.

What's Trustworthy Now

After this patch:

• Main doc, Pyro sheet, and DMQR all say the same thing about Ember Lance T2. The activation hit deals no direct damage; the primer effect is the entire benefit of the T2 Overload.
• The Pyro L10 sample turn has correct level-appropriate numbers. No more PB 6 references in a PB 4 example.
• The Pyro L11 main doc worked example matches the rules as written. The damage total is honest.
• DMQR polish items that have been hanging around for several patches are cleaned up.

If you're a Pyrokinesis player who was building expectations around the old (permissive) Ember Lance T2 reading, your activation-hit damage drops by 4×PB for T2 Overloads. The cash-in hit (the hit that gets the doubled MS damage) is unchanged. Practically speaking: T2 Ember Lance is a setup tier, not a damage tier, and that's now clearly documented at every level of the packet.

Documents

Previous patches: v7.15.4 (L20 examples + EL T2 clarification), v7.15.3 (documentation sync pass), v7.15.2 (Barrier mode overhaul).

Kinetic Vanguard by NixNinja. © 2024–present. Free for non-commercial use with credit.

Kinetic Vanguard v7.15.6 — One-Line Rules Clarification

A picky-DM-proofing patch. No mechanical changes.

The Ruling

Blood Tax for an Overloaded feature is paid when that feature actually fires — regardless of whether the trigger is an attack roll, a standalone activation, or an on-kill proc.

For most features this is obvious: you Overload Manifested Strike, you hit, you take Blood Tax. For standalone features like Vectored Thrust, you activate, you take Blood Tax. The edge case is Spreading Flames — it's an on-kill trigger rather than a normal attack, and if you Overload it, the timing question gets a little fuzzy: do you take Blood Tax on the killing hit, or when the eruption fires?

Answer: when the eruption fires. Same general principle as the standalone-features rule. The trigger event for Spreading Flames is the kill, and Blood Tax follows the trigger.

Where It Now Lives

The Spreading Flames italic note in both the main rules and the Pyrokinesis player sheet has been extended to spell out the BT timing explicitly. The DMQR Common Rulings bullet for standalone features has been extended from "Standalone features (Deflection Screen, Vectored Thrust): no roll, BT always fires" to "Standalone features (Deflection Screen, Vectored Thrust) and on-kill triggers (Spreading Flames): no attack roll, BT fires when the feature fires."

Three places, same ruling. A DM with a question doesn't have to infer it from the general Overload rules anymore.

Documents

Previous patch: v7.15.5 (Pyrokinesis sync pass).

Kinetic Vanguard by NixNinja. © 2024–present. Free for non-commercial use with credit.