Flat vs Rolled Blood Tax — Which Should Your Table Run?

The v8.0.0 vote is ongoing, and a fair number of you have asked some version of "okay, but which one is better?" Honest answer: neither. They're the same cost paid in different currencies, and which currency your table prefers is a temperament question. Here's the full side-by-side so you can pick deliberately.

First, What's Identical

Everything except the moment you pay. Same features, same tiers, same 1:3 ratio (T2 = 3× T1), same Overload Mastery, same psychic-resistance halving. And — this is the engineered part — the same average cost. One flat unit is PB; one rolled unit is your base MS die, and those track within ~1.5 at every level band. Over a campaign, both Vanguards pay roughly the same total HP for their power. The difference is entirely in the shape of the payment.

The Case for Flat (Mainline)

Absolute predictability. Before you declare, you know the exact cost. "Can I afford this turn?" has a yes/no answer, every time. The L15 sequence tables aren't estimates — 8×PB means exactly 40, plan around it to the hit point.

You cannot accidentally kill yourself. This is the big one. With flat tax, a Vanguard at 20 HP knows a T2 Overload costs exactly 15 and declares it with certainty of survival. Blood Tax debt is a price you read off a menu, never a debt collector showing up with a surprise.

Zero added table time. A nova turn already involves attack rolls, damage dice, saves, and rider dice. Flat BT adds no rolls at all. Over a session, that's real minutes.

Stable attrition for the DM. Encounter budgeting around a flat-tax Vanguard is arithmetic.

The Case for Rolled (v7.18.0A)

The fantasy is felt, not bookkept. This is a class about tearing yourself open for power. With flat tax, the recoil is a subtraction. With rolled tax, it's an event — the whole table watches the dice to see how badly you hurt yourself. Sometimes you push past your limits and walk away clean. Sometimes you don't. That's the throttle made visceral.

Sometimes the gamble pays. About one turn in eight, a 3d10 Tier 2 tax comes in at 10 or under — cheaper than the flat 15. Variance cuts both ways, and the cheap rolls feel great.

Every Overload is a decision with stakes. Flat tax answers "is this worth it?" once, in the abstract. Rolled tax makes you re-ask it at the table, at your current HP, with your gut involved.

The Number That Decides It

Here's the same declaration under both rules. Level 15 Vanguard, 20 HP remaining, declares one T2 Overload:

• Flat: costs exactly 15. You survive with 5 HP, guaranteed. You knew that before you rolled.
• Rolled: costs 3d10 (3–30, avg 16.5). Roughly 28% of the time — better than 1 in 4 — that roll comes in at 20+ and drops you. The same declaration that's mathematically safe under flat is a genuine coin-flip-adjacent gamble under rolled.

That's the whole choice, compressed: under flat tax, "suiciding via Blood Tax debt" is impossible by inspection. Under rolled tax, it's a live possibility you manage with judgment and luck. Whether that 28% reads as thrilling or unacceptable tells you which version your table should run.

One more data point: below level 10 the two systems are nearly indistinguishable (1d4 vs flat 2–3, no T2 yet). The fork only matters in tier 3+ play, when the dice get big and the novas get greedy.

A Suggestion

If you're unsure: run rolled for one session at level 11+, with at least one desperate low-HP Overload decision in it. You'll know within an hour which game you're playing. Then come tell the thread — session reports are what decide the v8.0.0 promotion, and "we tried both" posts are worth their weight in gold.

Mainline v7.18.1 (flat) · v7.18.0A (rolled) · The player sheets and DMQR serve both rules.

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

Kinetic Vanguard v7.18.2 — Quick Fix

Spotted a layout slip on the Cryokinesis player sheet: Overload Mastery II and Inner Reserve had wandered into the middle of the Cryo discipline block instead of sitting at the end of the Advanced Training list like they do on the other sheets. They're back where they belong. Nothing mechanical changed anywhere — all five docs bumped to v7.18.2 purely for version cleanliness.

The v8.0.0 flat-vs-rolled trial continues — v7.18.0A pairs with these sheets as before.

Kinetic Vanguard by NixNinja. © 2024–present.

Kinetic Vanguard v7.18.3 — Barrier T2 Toned Down

Small, surgical nerf. Barrier was too juicy a pick, and the culprit was one specific clause on its Tier 2.

The Change

Before: Barrier T2 raised the duration to 10 minutes and let you spend a bonus action each round to swap one active effect for another, free of Psi and Blood Tax.

After: T2 still raises the duration to 10 minutes and still carries two effects (inherited from T1) — but those effects lock in once Barrier is active. No more mid-combat swapping.

Why

The swap clause quietly turned Barrier into an always-correct defense. Caster comes out swinging? Bonus-action into Spellward. Now they switch to weapons? Swap to Blade Shield. Grappler closes in? Steadfast Guard. One pick was answering every threat in the encounter, re-tuning itself round by round for zero cost. That's more than a single Advanced Training slot should do — it was crowding out the actual decision the feature is supposed to pose: read the fight, pick your two, commit.

Locking the effects restores that decision. You still choose the right two for the situation when you cast Barrier — you just have to read the room at cast time instead of hot-swapping after the fact. T2 remains a clear upgrade over T1 (double duration, same two effects); it's just no longer a Swiss-army shield.

Nothing else changed. No other feature touched, no Blood Tax math altered.

Both Tracks Updated

This change ships to both rule tracks — mainline (flat Blood Tax, now v7.18.3) and the rolled-Blood-Tax variant (now v7.18.3A). The variant's Blood Tax rules are untouched; it just inherits the Barrier fix like everything else. The player sheets and DMQR serve both tracks as always.

The flat-vs-rolled v8.0.0 vote stays open — this patch doesn't tip it either way.

Documents

Previous patch: v7.18.2 (Cryo sheet layout fix).

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

Kinetic Vanguard v7.18.4 — Barrier T2 Swap Restored (Now With a Cost)

You asked, and here's the compromise. Two patches back I hard-locked Barrier's Tier 2 effects. You pushed back. So it's getting un-locked — but it's not free anymore.

Two-Patch Quick Recap

• v7.18.3: Barrier T2 lost its mid-combat effect swap entirely. The two effects locked in once Barrier was active.
• v7.18.4 (now): The swap is back. While Barrier is active, you can use a bonus action to replace one of your chosen effects with a different one from the list. Each swap costs psychic self-damage equal to a Tier 1 Overload's Blood Tax — your Proficiency Bonus on the flat track, one base Manifested Strike die on the rolled track.

The 10-minute duration and the two carried effects are unchanged. Same action economy as the original swap; the only new thing is the price tag.

On the Fast Turnaround

I want to be upfront about the whiplash here, because some of you noticed: a hard nerf in .3, a partial walk-back in .4, two patches apart. That's not indecision — that's the development loop working as intended. Fail fast. Ship a change, watch how the table reacts, correct. The hard lock was a real hypothesis (that the swap was the problem), and your feedback was real data (that the swap wasn't the problem — the free part was). Better to find that out in two days of patches than to sit on a half-baked version for a month "to look decisive." The version number is cheap. Your play experience isn't. I'd rather iterate in public and get it right than guard a wrong answer.

Why a Cost Instead of a Lock

The original swap was an always-correct defense: bonus-action into whatever resistance the current threat demanded, round after round, for zero cost. That's too much for one Advanced Training slot. But the hard lock over-corrected — it killed the adaptability that made Barrier interesting, not just the part that made it broken.

A cost fixes the real problem. Swapping now hurts, so you don't do it reflexively every round — but when the fight genuinely turns and you need to re-tune, the option's there for a price you can pay. That keeps the decision live instead of removing it.

Why T1 Blood Tax and not T2: T2 (3×PB / 3 dice) was on the table, and playtesters called it too punishing for a defensive utility — you'd never pay 15 HP at level 15 just to swap a resistance. T1 (PB / 1 die) is enough to make a swap a real choice without making it a trap.

Important interaction: the swap cost is not an Overload, so Overload Mastery does not waive it. No free swaps on your nova turn. This was deliberate — otherwise the OM turn becomes "swap to everything for free," and we're right back where we started.

Both Tracks

Ships to both rule tracks: mainline flat (v7.18.4) and the rolled-Blood-Tax variant (v7.18.4A). The variant's underlying Blood Tax rules are untouched; it just inherits the Barrier change with the cost expressed in dice. The flat-vs-rolled v8.0.0 vote stays open — this patch is track-neutral and doesn't tip it.

Documents

Keep the session reports coming — that feedback is exactly what turned .3 into .4.

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

Kinetic Vanguard v7.18.5 — Barrier T2, Final Cost Pass

Last Barrier patch for a good while. v7.18.4 put a price on the Tier 2 effect swap; this tightens that price to where it actually bites, and then Barrier goes quiet.

The Change

Barrier T2's mid-combat swap now costs 1 Psi point in addition to the Tier 1 Blood Tax it already cost. So each swap is 1 Psi + T1 Blood Tax (your Proficiency Bonus on the flat track, one base Manifested Strike die on the rolled track). Everything else about Barrier T2 is unchanged — 10-minute duration, two carried effects, bonus action to swap.

Why Add Psi

When I priced the swap at Blood Tax only in v7.18.4, I had it half-right. Here's the hole: at the levels where you actually have Barrier (15+), the Tier 1 Blood Tax is tiny relative to your hit point bar — 5-ish HP at level 15, a near rounding error on a Fighter. A cost you don't feel isn't a cost; it's flavor text. You'd still swap every round because why not.

Psi is the fix because Psi is the resource the whole subclass is built to keep scarce — no in-combat recovery, a pool you're constantly rationing between Overloads, Deflection Screens, and your riders. Spending 1 Psi on a Barrier swap means not spending it on offense or defense that round. That's a real decision, and it's the same kind of decision Kinetic Vanguard asks you to make everywhere else. It also closes a gap the HP-only cost left open: a tanky, high-HP build could shrug off the Blood Tax indefinitely. Nobody shrugs off Psi.

The two halves are priced independently and that matters for one interaction: Overload Mastery still does not waive the Blood Tax (it's not an Overload), and the 1 Psi is always spent regardless of OM. So even on your nova turn, swapping isn't free. That was deliberate — a free-swap OM turn would put us right back at the always-correct defense this whole arc was about removing.

Why This Is the Last One

Three patches in a row touched Barrier T2: a hard lock (.3), a Blood Tax cost (.4), and now a Psi cost (.5). I want to be clear that's a mechanic settling, not thrashing — each step moved less than the one before, and we've now taxed every axis a swap can be taxed on: the scarce resource, the health bar, and the action economy (it's always been a bonus action). There's nothing left to add without crossing from "priced" into "punished," and punishing a feature you paid an Advanced Training slot and 3 Psi to have would be bad design.

So this is the resting point. Barrier T2 gives you adaptable defense that costs real resources to re-tune — available and useful, but never reflexive. If it still reads as a problem after tables run it, the answer won't be a v7.18.6 nerf; it'll be a ground-up reconsideration of the feature. But I don't expect that. This feels right.

Both Tracks

Ships to mainline flat (v7.18.5) and the rolled variant (v7.18.5A). The variant's Blood Tax rules are untouched; it just expresses the cost in dice. The flat-vs-rolled v8.0.0 vote stays open and this patch is track-neutral.

Documents

Barrier's done for now — back to the table. Session reports welcome as always.

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

Balance Health-Check: Kinetic Vanguard vs the Field — Full Methodology, Nothing Hidden

I modeled where Kinetic Vanguard actually lands on single-target damage against standard benchmarks, and I'm posting it with all my work shown — the spell list I gave the wizard, the Blood Tax I make KV pay, and every place the model is generous or strict. A damage chart on its own always flatters somebody by leaving out the cost. Here's the version you can audit.

The Chart

https://drive.google.com/file/d/13d_7OdGPOa6mPuREZFym6ghTsyKwqXTD/view?usp=sharing
(I am sorry for the link but directly pasting the chart does not work for some reason)

Ground Rules (the same for everyone)

• Single-target damage per turn, levels 3–20.
• 65% hit chance on everything that makes an attack roll.
• Saving-throw effects discounted by save type: save-for-half ×0.775, save-for-none ×0.55 (assuming ~55% target fail rate vs a level-appropriate DC). This distinction matters — see the wizard section.
• Primary stat 16→20 by level 6 for everyone; standard PB progression.
• Only the two Fighters (Kinetic Vanguard, Champion) get Action Surge. They're drawn with it and, for Champion, without it too, so you can see the gap. Casters have no surge line because they don't get one.
• Casters are opened all the way up — full best single-turn play, best spells, full slot dumps. I deliberately did not hobble them.

The Key KV Constraint — Two Blood Tax Caps

KV's nova is throttled by Blood Tax (psychic self-damage on hit). I modeled two ceilings:

• 25% of max HP — the default. The sustainable everyday nova. This is the solid green line.
• 50% of max HP — the "kill-commit" ceiling. You only push this hard when the extra overload actually drops the target, because half-killing yourself for an enemy that's still swinging is a bad trade. This is the faded green line.

The gap between those two green lines is the "delete swing" — the damage you buy by doubling your self-harm, and you only buy it when it finishes the job.

Show Your Work #1 — The Wizard Spell List

The wizard line is the easiest place to accidentally cheat, so here's exactly what spell it casts at each tier and the math. (I caught and corrected my own error here: Disintegrate is save-for-none, not save-for-half, so it's discounted ×0.55, not ×0.775. That knocked the mid-game wizard down meaningfully.)

That level-17 spike is real: a wizard absolutely will drop Meteor Swarm on a single big threat, and at 140 average it's the hardest single-target nuke in the game. It's why the green-dotted line jumps a cliff at 17 — that's not a modeling artifact, that's Meteor Swarm.

Show Your Work #2 — What KV's Nova Costs in Blood

Here's the bill for the Pyrokinesis nova on the chart, both caps. "Declared" is worst-case if every Overloaded hit lands; "Expected" is what you actually pay at 65% hit, since Blood Tax only triggers on hits.

*Fighter, d10 hit die, CON +2, average HP. T1 Overload Blood Tax = PB; T2 = 3×PB. Psychic resistance halves Blood Tax. Overload Mastery negates one full nova turn's Blood Tax per short rest. Note the default nova holds steady around 20–24% of max HP the whole game — that's the sustainable, repeatable spend. The kill-commit column roughly doubles it to ~48%, and that's the line you only cross to secure a kill.

What the Chart Actually Says

• On its everyday 25% nova, Pyrokinesis is competitive but not dominant. It runs near Champion-with-Surge and ahead of the focused casters through the mid-game — but the margins are modest, and the wizard's Meteor Swarm spike at 17+ briefly out-bursts the responsible Pyro nova.
• The 50% kill-commit ceiling buys ~15–18% more burst — enough to close a kill, not enough to make KV oppressive. And you pay for it in blood every time.
• Cryo and Psycho sit at the damage floor. That's intended — they trade raw numbers for lockdown and repositioning that no damage chart can show. Psycho's spikes at 15 and 18+ are Telekinetic Slam landing as a single-target nuke.
• Champion's surge/no-surge gap (bold vs faded red) is the cleanest illustration that Fighters are spike classes — roughly a doubling between nova round and every other round.

Show Your Work #3 — The Caveats (where to distrust me)

• The wizard is drawn at its best single-target turn, not its average. A real wizard can't Meteor Swarm every round all day — slots run out. Treat green as "wizard's good turn." It also ignores that wizards are AoE/control monsters; single-target is not where they shine, so this line slightly undersells their actual table value while overselling their sustained single-target.
• Champion's no-surge line is unflatteringly low because Champion leans hard on the surge round and has no spell slots to dump instead. Read faded red with that asterisk.
• Hexblade and Paladin are modeled simply — Hexblade as max(Eldritch Blast turn, two-attack pact-smite nova); Paladin as two attacks + best-slot smite on each + Improved Divine Smite. No crit-fishing for either, so both are likely understated on a true alpha-strike. Don't read them as ceilings.
• Save-nuke proxy (×0.775 / ×0.55) is an average; a single turn swings hard on one die roll. The attack-roll lines (Pyro, Champion, Hexblade weapon) use the stricter 0.65.
• The Ember Lance doubling primer is discounted to 65%² (~42%), because the setup hit AND the payoff hit both have to land. Charting it at flat 65% overstates Pyro — a mistake I made in an earlier draft and corrected here.
• Stat and HP assumptions are a single optimized build, not a range. Different CON, point-buy, or feat choices move every line.

Takeaway

With Action Surge shown honestly, the Blood Tax disclosed, and the casters uncapped, Kinetic Vanguard reads as a balanced spike striker: competitive on the responsible nova, a real but bounded extra gear when committing to a kill, and paying for the spike in HP every time. Pyro is strong but not a runaway; Cryo and Psycho look, if anything, under-rewarded on raw damage — which is fine only if their control is pulling its weight at your table. That control is the one thing I genuinely cannot model, and it's exactly what I want session reports on.

If any number above looks wrong, tell me which spell, which save type, or which assumption — I'd rather fix it here than have it surface at a table.

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

Kinetic Vanguard v8.0.0 — One Track. The Vote Is Settled.

After a long run of dual-track releases and a lot of session reports, the experiment is over: the rolled-Blood-Tax variant is retired, and flat Blood Tax is now the one and only ruleset. This is v8.0.0 — a major version bump not because the math changed, but because the project just got a lot simpler.

What Happened to the Vote

For weeks the question was open: keep Blood Tax as a flat number (Tier 1 = your Proficiency Bonus, Tier 2 = 3×PB), or switch to the rolled variant where each point of Blood Tax became a die roll of your base Manifested Strike die. I held the decision deliberately — I didn't want it settled by whoever was loudest, I wanted it settled by what actually felt good to run at a table.

The tables answered. The consensus, especially from DMs: the rolled variant was a fun idea and a genuine pain to run at speed. Rolling a separate fistful of dice for self-damage, every Overload, every turn, on top of everything else a Kinetic Vanguard is already tracking — it bogged the turn down. The flat number is instant: you Overload at Tier 2, you take 3×PB, you move on. That speed matters more over a whole session than the extra swinginess the dice added.

So flat wins, and the separate alternate document (the old v7.18.xA line) is discontinued.

If You Were Already Playing Mainline — Nothing Changed

This is the important part: if you were using the standard (flat) rules, your character is untouched. Every number, every feature, every interaction is identical to v7.18.5. v8.0.0 is the promotion of the flat track to the sole official version, not a rebalance. You can keep playing without changing a thing on your sheet.

What Actually Changed — A Documentation Deep-Clean

With the rolled track gone, all the scaffolding that supported running two rulesets at once came out:

• The three discipline player sheets lost their "this sheet serves both rules" conversion notes and the N×PB-to-dice translation lines.
• The DM Quick Reference lost its rolled-variant bullet.
• The main rules document lost its pointer to the separate variant.

The result is a single, clean ruleset with no "if you're playing the other version, do this instead" caveats cluttering the margins. The five documents — main rules, three player sheets, DMQR — are all that exist now, all on v8.0.0.

I also folded in a small consistency fix while I was in there: the Advanced Training rider list in the "How to Play" section now correctly names Concussive Surge alongside Psychic Lance and Mind Blast (it was always an Advanced Training rider; the list just hadn't named it).

Documents (all v8.0.0)

If you have the old alternate (A) document bookmarked, you can let it go — it's no longer maintained.

Thank You

This is the version I've wanted the project to reach: one ruleset, fully cleaned, decided by people actually playing it rather than by me guessing. Genuine thanks to everyone who ran both tracks and reported back — the rolled variant was worth trying precisely because we found out it didn't hold up at the table, and that's only knowable from real play. That's the whole point of putting it in front of you.

Onward. Same subclass, same identity, one clean book.

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

Kinetic Vanguard v8.0.1 — Barrier Swap Is Cheaper

Quick one. You asked, and it made sense, so it's done: Barrier's Tier 2 effect swap no longer costs Blood Tax — it now costs only 1 Psi point per swap.

The Change

Previously, swapping one of your two active Barrier effects mid-combat cost 1 Psi plus a Tier 1 Overload's worth of Blood Tax. As of v8.0.1, the Blood Tax is gone. The swap costs a flat 1 Psi, full stop. Duration (10 minutes) and the two carried effects are unchanged.

Why It Holds Up

This isn't me caving to a complaint — it's removing the part of the cost that was barely doing anything. Think about where Barrier lives: levels 15+. At that point a Tier 1 Blood Tax (your Proficiency Bonus) is something like 5–6 HP, a near-rounding-error on a Fighter's hit point bar. It wasn't deterring swaps, it was just stinging — and stinging on a purely defensive option, which feels bad in a way it doesn't on an aggressive nova.

The part of the cost that actually makes you think twice is the Psi. Psi is the scarce resource — no in-combat recovery, constantly rationed between your Overloads, Deflection Screens, and riders. Spending 1 Psi to re-tune your defense means not spending it on offense that round. That's the real decision, and it's untouched. So the swap is still a deliberate choice, not a free reflex — it just no longer chips your health for the privilege.

Since there's no Blood Tax on the swap anymore, the old "this isn't waived by Overload Mastery" caveat is gone too — there's nothing left for Overload Mastery to interact with. The 1 Psi is always spent regardless.

Also Cleaned Up

While I was in there: the player-sheet shorthand for this cost still carried a leftover bit of rolled-track notation ("PB / 1 MS die") from before the v8.0.0 single-track merge. With the Blood Tax clause gone, that orphaned reference went with it. The sheets now read cleanly.

Documents (all v8.0.1)

Single track, flat Blood Tax, one clean book. Session reports always welcome.

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

Kinetic Vanguard v8.0.2 — Magic Resistance Ruling + a Psycho Sheet Fix

Two things in this one: a rules clarification that matters against high-end monsters, and a correction to an illegal sequence on the Psychokinesis player sheet.

1. Magic Resistance — How It Interacts with Manifested Strike

The short version: your damage is fine, your riders are not.

Manifested Strike is explicitly "not a spell" — but it is a magical effect (psionics are magical for rules purposes). Magic Resistance covers "spells and other magical effects," so the not-a-spell wording doesn't dodge it. Concretely:

• Attack roll and damage: unaffected. A creature with Magic Resistance takes your full Manifested Strike hit, whatever the damage type. Magic Resistance only touches saving throws.
• Rider saves: at advantage. Every save your riders force — Glacial Spike's Con save, Telekinetic Shove's Str save, Mind Blast's Cha save, and so on — is rolled at advantage by a Magic-Resistant target.

Why it matters: this hits the control disciplines (Cryo, Psycho) hardest, since their whole value is landing conditions. A Pyrokinesis damage build barely notices, because its output isn't riding on saves. And it stacks unpleasantly with Legendary Resistance — against something like a Tarrasque, your lockdown riders are fighting advantage and three guaranteed auto-passes a day. Plan accordingly: against Magic-Resistant bosses, lean on damage and positioning over save-or-suck effects.

This ruling now lives in the Manifested Strike feature text in the main rules (the source of truth) and in the DM Quick Reference Common Rulings.

2. Psychokinesis Sheet — Level 15 Mini Nova Was Illegal

A sharp-eyed reader caught this: the old Level 15 Mini Nova row on the Psychokinesis sheet used both Concussive Surge and Mind Blast in the same turn — two Advanced Training riders. That's not legal. You get exactly one AT pick at 15th level, so you can't field two AT riders at all.

The row is rebuilt:

• Assumed AT pick is now Barrier, not Mind Blast. Barrier is a bonus-action buff, not a rider, so it can't collide with anything on a hit — and honestly, it's the pick most tables grab at 15th anyway. The old "assume Mind Blast" was modeling a build few people run, and it's what created the illegal row in the first place.
• The nova now runs on Psychokinesis discipline riders only — Explosion/Implosion plus Telekinetic Shove — with Telekinetic Slam via Action Surge for the Full Nova. Damage, Psi, and Blood Tax figures are all recomputed for the corrected sequence.

The Pyrokinesis and Cryokinesis sheets were already clean — they build their L15 novas from discipline riders and never double-spent the AT pick — so they're unchanged.

Documents (all v8.0.2)

Thanks to the reader who flagged the Psycho sequence — that's exactly the kind of catch that keeps the sheets honest. Session reports always welcome.

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

Kinetic Vanguard v8.1.0 — the fourth Discipline arrives: Electrokinesis

Homebrew Fighter subclass. Mental-stat psionic striker (Int/Wis/Cha) built on Manifested Strike + a self-damage Overload engine. Made in collaboration with AI assistants; numbers stress-tested with Monte Carlo sims and this community's feedback.

Before anything else — the thread just crossed 6,000 views. Thank you, genuinely. This subclass has been rebuilt dozens of times on the back of your session reports and nitpicks, and it's a better design every time because of it. So here's the biggest update it's ever had.

For four months the Vanguard has had three Disciplines — Cryo locks them down, Pyro burns them out, Psycho throws them around. v8.1.0 adds a fourth: Electrokinesis. Plus the cross-cutting rules cleanup that finally adding it forced me to do.

Electrokinesis — Arcing Disruption · Lightning · Charisma save

The identity is the spreading burst — you don't hit one target, you hit the cluster — and it's deliberately the inverse of Pyrokinesis: it front-loads its control at 3rd level and its raw damage at 7th.

• Static Shock (3rd): on a hit, lightning arcs to everything within 5 ft of the target — no save. T2 adds a Cha save or Restrained.
• Voltaic Bolt (7th): the discipline's payoff — pure, unavoidable on-hit lightning (2 → 3 → 4 MS dice). No save. If the strike hits, the lightning hits.
• Arc Nova (10th): a tight 10-ft burst centered on the target (3d8 → 4d8+mod), T2 shuts off reactions and imposes disadvantage.
• Chain Lightning (15th): true target-to-target arcing — primary 8–10d8 plus jumps to up to 3–5 nearby (4–5d8 each). d8-based, trading Cryo's per-die punch for more targets.
• Ball Lightning (20th): a movable 15/30-ft orb you nudge 15 ft each turn with a bonus action to herd a cluster through it.

Honest weak spot (it's in the DM notes): lightning immunity/resistance exists in the wild — some elementals, constructs, blue/bronze dragons. A softer version of Pyro's fire problem, not a hard shutdown, but plan around it.

The rules cleanup that came with it

• Discipline Signature Save is now a named rule: Pyro = Dexterity, Cryo = Constitution, Psycho = Strength, Electro = Charisma. Features that say "signature save" resolve against your Discipline.
• To make that table true with no asterisk, Flare's save changed from Constitution to Dexterity. Dodging a flash is a reflex, not endurance — and "endure" is Cryo's word. Pyrokinesis is now uniformly Dexterity.
• Concussive Surge is renamed Surge and re-typed: its damage is no longer always force — it now deals your Manifested Strike's damage type and uses your signature save. (Type-flexible AT picks inherit your discipline; Psychic Lance and Mind Blast stay psychic, because psychic is the psionic mind-attack type.)
• New universal Advanced Training pick: Leaping Strike — a bonus-action teleport (30/60 ft) that detonates a 5-ft burst at either end of the jump (3d10/4d10, your MS damage type, signature save). The AT pool is now 9 picks; you still choose three.
• Empathic Sense Active Scan now grants uses equal to half your Proficiency Bonus (rounded down) instead of your full PB. (It starts at 7th, so it's always at least 1.) Small nerf — the old rate was too generous at my table.

Files (v8.1.0)

Read order — main rules first, then your discipline's player sheet, DM reference last:

1. Main rules — https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kuQI2XxvkPP-LI3FACteNd-mcQ8_Kyo7wj4eiHwVZ3I/edit
2. Pyrokinesis player sheet — https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qQql1STDJ1A98JbrXwlsnfzbaBIBWimwNXuKnEfBkHs/edit
3. Cryokinesis player sheet — https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YCEaqrKSL70ktRTfNEtL2c3VNgNNfGEv68yNVljvMHQ/edit
4. Psychokinesis player sheet — https://docs.google.com/document/d/15h654x7O7uY6DhkDBUfifOx9_L1nauAlSv8DK2pfncQ/edit
5. Electrokinesis player sheet (new!) — https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xVW4tR2TNy_IEXXfS1HMjtU2Ru_9bYkfHT4EAlaOtxE/edit
6. DM Quick Reference — https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LEtNHLguQH0chYa9bE6iG3fRiWcPCIrgxVm2YjCA2jA/edit

Full changelog is in the main doc (Section 08). As always: free for non-commercial use with credit. Electrokinesis exists because people kept asking "where's the lightning one?" — so tell me where it breaks. Playtest reports on the new discipline especially welcome; it hasn't been through the Monte Carlo wringer yet.

Kinetic Vanguard v8.1.1 — Electrokinesis balance pass

A small, Electro-only tuning patch on the heels of v8.1.0's new discipline. No other discipline is touched. Prompted by running Electrokinesis through Monte Carlo (60k trials/scenario) — which flagged that its single-target output ran hot at high levels and that its control ladder wasn't ordered cleanly by level.

What changed

Voltaic Bolt (7th):

• Now uses your base Manifested Strike die, not the Overloaded die. It was double-dipping — a Tier 2 strike turned its dice into d20s on top of the strike's own boost. That's gone; the bolt's dice no longer scale with how hard you overloaded the strike.
• Tier 2 no longer adds a fourth die. Instead it plateaus at 3 dice and the target must make a Charisma save or be Restrained. The damage still lands with no save — only the lock is resistible.

Static Shock (3rd):

• Tier 2 softens from Restrained → can't take reactions. Mild control is the right ceiling for an effect that hits a whole cluster off a 3rd-level rider.

The net: the Electrokinesis control ladder now climbs cleanly by both level and delivery — no reactions (3rd-level AoE arc) → Restrained (7th-level single-target bolt) → Stunned (15th-level Chain Lightning). Chain Lightning is unchanged.

Design note clarified: the lightning-immunity soft spot is rarer than Pyrokinesis's fire problem, but just as total when it lands — because Manifested Strike itself is lightning-typed, immunity zeroes the whole kit. The old note undersold that; it's fixed.

Why (the numbers)

With Voltaic Bolt on the base die and the T2 plateau, single-target 3-round output drops into line: L15 lands right at a strong martial (was ~130%, now ~102%), and L20 comes down from ~166% to ~142% — the remaining bit is the generic top-level die + Overload Mastery engine, not Electro-specific, so it's left alone. Cluster output and the discipline's no-save resilience against high-save/Legendary-Resistant bosses (e.g. the Marut) are preserved — that's the identity, and it survives the trim intact.

Files (v8.1.1)

Read order — main rules first, then your discipline's player sheet, DM reference last:

1. Main rules — https://docs.google.com/document/d/1chUNRsAVMctdIakqPmpA0gERJLNByjJRC1w11ONvZe8/edit
2. Pyrokinesis player sheet — https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EU542FL3RrCtZcgIZjfH6O6yirQq20fInGdBWHSsqlE/edit
3. Cryokinesis player sheet — https://docs.google.com/document/d/1M3VClcsJAK38m_1zJxEkmsmCVy_VBV4plyhQx5NqSz4/edit
4. Psychokinesis player sheet — https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FdALMvnbP1tjaIX9yU4LZkgFgtYMz1VecmsH_mZ6ewM/edit
5. Electrokinesis player sheet — https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HTYVqqdhdY00kIhzX5PuOgrw-99JJ56gse7nd3o1mIo/edit
6. DM Quick Reference — https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yakDuGFA639T9ZV4rwoqR02KBfUlVEY7QM6uVZbn1kI/edit

(Only the main rules, Electrokinesis sheet, and DM Quick Reference have real changes this patch — the Pyro/Cryo/Psycho sheets are identical to v8.1.0 apart from the version stamp, refreshed just to keep the set matching.)

Thanks to everyone kicking the tires on the new discipline — this is the sim doing its job before the numbers hit a table.

Kinetic Vanguard — we stress-tested the control, not just the damage. Here's what save type does to your lockdown.

Homebrew Fighter subclass (mental-stat psionic striker), current version v8.1.1. Analysis done in collaboration with AI assistants; the sim code is linked at the bottom so you can check the math or re-weight it yourself.

A while back I ran Monte Carlo on the damage across the four disciplines and shared it. But damage was never the interesting question with this class — control is. So this time we isolated crowd control / lockdown, and the results reshaped how I think about playing each discipline. Short version: which save your discipline targets matters more than which condition it inflicts. Sharing because if you're playing one of these, this changes your target priority at the table.

The one fact that drives everything

Monsters are wildly uneven across the six saves. Aggregating the Monster Manual, saving-throw proficiency runs roughly Wisdom > Constitution > Charisma > Dexterity > Intelligence > Strength, and once you factor in ability scores, the two hardest saves to beat are Con and Wis; the two easiest are Str and Int.

Now look at what each discipline's control keys off:

So the same "save or be Stunned" is a very different spell depending on who's throwing it.

No discipline is "the best at control." It's rock-paper-scissors.

Expected lockdown value per turn (roughly: enemy actions-worth of stuff denied) at level 15:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YOZZG8MHr0DgZKIbyM4Gp1SQoDC6-k3p/view?usp=sharing (heatmap chart)

Each discipline is strong against the enemies weak in its save and weak against the ones strong in it. That's the depth of the class in one table.

The counterintuitive one: Cryo is the "lockdown discipline" but is never dominant 1-on-1

Cryokinesis is built to lock things down — it escalates to Stun harder and earlier than anyone. But it does it with Constitution saves, and Con is one of the two toughest saves in the game (durable monsters have both the proficiency and the high score). So against a single beefy target, Cryo's hard-CC lands no more reliably than anyone else's.

Where Cryo actually earns its crown is breadth, not single-target reliability: it annihilates groups (5.07 vs a 6-mook pack — that's AoE Stun on multiple bodies at once). So the read is: Cryo is your horde-lockdown and area-denial specialist, not your single-boss-locker. Point it at the crowd.

How to actually play each discipline's control

• Electrokinesis (Cha) — quietly the most reliable single-target control across the bestiary, and it dominates undead, constructs, and beasts, whose Charisma saves are often negative. Its whole kit is control-flavored (no-reactions → Restrained → Stunned). If you're fighting the undead legion, this is the pick.
• Psychokinesis (Str) — the trickster. Best-in-class against casters, liches, and aberrations (Strength is their dump save — go throw the wizard across the room). But it's worst against brutes and giants — the heavy things you most want to displace have monster-high Strength. You can't shove the mountain. Lean into locking the squishy backline instead.
• Pyrokinesis (Dex) — the burst discipline; control is its side gig, and that's by design. Its Dex-gated Incapacitate is a nice bonus, not a plan. If you picked Pyro you picked damage — swing away.
• Cryokinesis (Con) — see above. Crowds and zones, not solo bosses.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kpvA7kGeQ6MSrG51iKPLuii5_3cDjMQv/view?usp=sharing (CC reliability chart)

For DMs: your legendaries are safe

Good news if you were worried a striker could hard-lock your big bad: they can't, solo. Between Magic Resistance (advantage on the save) and Legendary Resistance (3 free passes), hard-CC land rates against a legendary collapse to near zero for all four disciplines — the fail rates get so low that one striker usually can't even burn through the three Legendary Resistances in a normal fight. A single Kinetic Vanguard is a damage threat to your legendary, not a lockdown threat.

(The caveat, honestly: a whole party stacking save-or-lose effects together is a different animal — that's true of any party, not this subclass specifically — and it remains the thing I watch at the very top end.)

Pro tip that falls out of the math: Psychic Lance

The Advanced Training pool lets any discipline bolt on control that ignores its native save. Psychic Lance uses Intelligence saves — the second-weakest save in the game — and lands ~80–95% against basically everything except casters and aberrations. Its one blind spot (high-Int casters) is exactly where Psychokinesis's Strength shines. So Psychic Lance + any Strength option covers the entire bestiary. It's the most reliable hard-CC in the whole system, and I'll be honest — I'm watching whether it's a little too auto-include. If you're building for control, it's your first pick.

Why I'm sharing this

Because it's the kind of thing that's invisible until you run 80,000 trials, and it makes the class play better once you know it: read the monster, pick the discipline (or the target) that hits its weak save. That's the game the four disciplines are quietly asking you to play.

Everything here is current as of v8.1.1. The simulation code is attached/linked — weights for how much each condition is "worth" are my judgment calls, so if you think Restrained or Prone should count for more, grab the script and re-run it; I'd genuinely like to see other weightings. And as always, playtest reports beat any sim — if your table's experience contradicts these numbers, that's the data I most want.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/14vYVKVrDOM_zBX_rQNYglCbOdAiMhXzr/view?usp=sharing (Monte Carlo code)

Kinetic Vanguard v8.1.2 — the damage numbers, and the one Pyro nerf they justify

Homebrew Fighter subclass (mental-stat psionic striker). Companion to the CC/lockdown post — this is the damage half, all four disciplines measured against a Champion fighter (single-target) and a blaster Wizard (crowds). It also explains the one change in v8.1.2. Analysis done with AI assistants; sim code linked at the bottom so you can re-run or re-weight it.

Last post I shared the control analysis. This is the other half: I put all four disciplines through Monte Carlo damage sims (60k trials, 3-round window: a nova round with Action Surge, then two sustain rounds) against two yardsticks — a Champion greatsword fighter for single-target, and a blaster Wizard for crowds, since a Champion has no AoE to compare against. One clear problem fell out, and v8.1.2 fixes exactly that.

Single-target, as % of a Champion

Three of the four disciplines land exactly where they should: lean early (they're control/AoE disciplines with no single-target damage riders until their big Action features come online), settling at rough parity with a Champion by L20 (108–115%). That's healthy — they aren't damage disciplines, and a resource-fueled nova sitting a hair above a free, sustainable martial is right.

Pyro is the problem child — and only at the top. It's supposed to be the damage king, so being above a martial is correct. But 178% at L15 and 254% at L20 is too far, and when I dug in, the cause was a specific degenerate loop.

The Ember Lance chain (what v8.1.2 fixes)

Ember Lance's Tier 2 primes your next Manifested Strike hit to deal a doubled strike. Because Ember Lance wasn't limited per action, you could:

Hit 1: Ember Lance T2 → primes. Hit 2: doubled strike + Ember Lance T2 → primes again. Hit 3: doubled strike + Ember Lance T2 → primes again. Hit 4: doubled strike + Flare…

— a doubled strike stapled onto every attack. With 3–4 attacks at L15–20 (and Overload Mastery removing the Blood Tax that's supposed to police it), that chain is what pushed Pyro to 254%.

v8.1.2 — the fix: the Ember Lance doubled strike now resolves only once per Attack action. You can still use Ember Lance on multiple hits for its flat +4×PB fire damage; you just get one doubled strike per action, not a chain. Here's what that does:

It surgically shaves the L15–20 ceiling (the levels where the chain had room to run) and leaves the early game untouched. Pyro stays the damage king — that's the discipline's whole identity — it just can't stack the degenerate loop anymore. The residual (still ~233% at 20) is the class-wide Overload Mastery interaction, which I'm deliberately not touching, because retuning a capstone-adjacent feature to solve one discipline's issue causes more problems than it fixes.

(Also folded into v8.1.2: two Pyrokinesis sheet sample turns still listed Flare's save as Constitution — a leftover from when Flare moved to Dexterity back in v8.1.0. Corrected.)

Crowds: the Wizard is the real yardstick

A Champion can't hit five things, so for hordes the honest benchmark is a blaster Wizard (Fireball line; Meteor Swarm at 20). Total damage to 5 mooks over 3 rounds:

The disciplines sit in a clean band between the Champion and the Wizard, and that's the right place for a martial striker. They all beat a greatsword on groups, but none matches a dedicated blaster — the Wizard's Meteor Swarm alone puts L20 out of reach. What the Kinetic Vanguard trades for that gap: single-target reliability, control a Fireball can't provide, no-save damage, a d10 chassis, and a nova that recharges on a short rest instead of limited spell slots. The Wizard's 1026 is a slot-limited burst; the striker's is repeatable all day (paid for in Blood Tax). Different economies — neither flattered unfairly.

Two things worth calling out from that table: Electro and Pyro are the AoE-damage leaders, and Cryo is the lowest crowd damage of the four — because its capstone (Absolute Zero) is single-target. Cryo's area value is lockdown, not damage, which lines up exactly with what the control analysis showed. A level-20 Cryo is a single-target nuke plus a crowd-controller, not a crowd-nuker.

Where the four disciplines land

• Pyro — single-target damage king (even after the trim), strong AoE. The blaster-martial.
• Electro — the best all-rounder: solid single-target, top-tier AoE, reliable no-save damage.
• Psycho — single-target spike (Telekinetic Slam) plus control; modest AoE.
• Cryo — lowest damage by design; it buys the best lockdown in the class with that.

Files (v8.1.2)

1. Main rules — https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SyB4hGqTIBW0bQY7GV4-42z7UkupJ4wAI2zhPX4lgC0/edit (changed)
2. Pyrokinesis sheet — https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TgMCRvpc2m-BMCDmddD0RAHtiMmJ21kiRPyFQrzYuKA/edit (changed)
3. Cryokinesis sheet — https://docs.google.com/document/d/1strqz22lwDykw6-PxLtsI0RODFPCgLdvR5Fkzz4Vg_U/edit (version stamp only)
4. Psychokinesis sheet — https://docs.google.com/document/d/1df4YkDAMLLTfrDg0V6u-yu7U4T5oMu1aELJLKa-3i0Y/edit (version stamp only)
5. Electrokinesis sheet — https://docs.google.com/document/d/1W_Yk8Mq59QeX3vynosqI3yiv_pK1xdAi3H2R7F4z_Ho/edit (version stamp only)
6. DM Quick Reference — https://docs.google.com/document/d/13xVeQ482yTN9G-5RJD97hSV6ZO36OR0a0UGn6Hcjxms/edit (changed)

Only the main rules, Pyrokinesis sheet, and DM Quick Reference have real changes this patch.

The damage sim code is here — https://drive.google.com/file/d/19DilN9mq1f3wTZumn_5Z_aeiWhJADJaS/view — it has a one-line toggle to flip the Ember Lance trim on and off, plus the Champion and Wizard baselines, and the condition/enemy assumptions are all editable at the top. If you think Pyro's fine as it was, or want to model a different Wizard, grab it and re-run. As always, playtest reports beat any sim — if your table's experience contradicts these numbers, that's what I most want to hear.

Kinetic Vanguard v8.1.3 — "What happens when something walks up to me?"

Homebrew Fighter subclass (mental-stat psionic striker). Small patch this time: no mechanics changed, one long-standing ambiguity closed. Analysis and drafting done with AI assistance.

Someone asked the obvious question I'd never actually written an answer to: Manifested Strike is a ranged attack — so what happens when an ogre is standing on top of you?

The answer is the boring one, and now it's in the book.

The ruling

Manifested Strike gets no carve-out. If a hostile creature that can see you and isn't Incapacitated is within 5 feet, you have disadvantage on the Manifested Strike attack roll — exactly as you would with a bow. No Discipline removes it. No feature exempts it. You are a ranged striker who let something reach you, and that is a mistake with a price.

The price is meant to be painful but survivable. You're not shut off; you're just bad at your job for a turn. That's the lesson, and it should sting without killing you.

Your ways out

Because Manifested Strike counts as a ranged weapon attack, all the normal answers work:

• A feat. Under the 2024 rules, Sharpshooter's Firing in Melee removes the disadvantage — note the Dexterity 13 prerequisite, which a heavy-armor build may not meet. Under the 2014 rules, the feat that does this is Crossbow Expert, not Sharpshooter. (This trips people up constantly. The two editions moved that clause between feats.)
• Hit it with something real. You're a Fighter with full weapon proficiency. Draw an actual weapon and swing it — Weapon Masteries apply normally under the 2024 rules. Your Strength and Dexterity are probably mediocre, so this is a fallback, not a plan.
• Leave. Disengage, or eat the opportunity attack and step off. Phase Step (10th) is the cleanest exit once you have it — a bonus-action teleport is exactly the tool for this.

The trap worth knowing

Do not Overload while at disadvantage. On a miss, the Psi is still spent — you simply pay no Blood Tax. So a bad position bleeds your resources, not your hit points. Getting jumped should cost you a turn and some Psi. It shouldn't cost you the fight.

This also settles an old argument

The DM Quick Reference used to list the feat adjacency clause (Crossbow Expert / Gunner) as "DM call." It isn't anymore — it's a definite yes, and the main rules say so. If your table was ruling it the other way, that's now official.

Files (v8.1.3)

1. Main rules — https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wBiC8EPwhoXO5o91orVJ8ywtbkvwuTzITOTLN0cXE0I/edit
2. Pyrokinesis — https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zXLQnknzYmtrc2c4ZQsvyMbh1OIT9fzJTfEutPa6kXs/edit
3. Cryokinesis — https://docs.google.com/document/d/1A0Fk2PBl8SxtOi4Lo3DSTtPHsRhaLezooLv3fG5cK4M/edit
4. Psychokinesis — https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_jVSWZedN9Tfz3J3d6UcENgeUYVgSTTNtdtQp30Fmuk/edit
5. Electrokinesis — https://docs.google.com/document/d/1m_s9ZvPKRIGlljuQ4KIA5nXw2yyg3FD-aXTJtxw3w_E/edit
6. DM Quick Reference — https://docs.google.com/document/d/15jPCHBy85HiiD-Yw_A7jqhyNHXJYvrPSbTUIeliG0Ic/edit?usp=sharing

No damage or control numbers moved, so the Monte Carlo results from the last post all still stand.

One thing I'm chewing on for next patch: the damage sims keep flagging Pyrokinesis as too hot at high levels, and I think I've found the culprit — Ember Lance is the only damage rider in the class without a once-per-Attack-action cap (Flare, Fiery Blast, Voltaic Bolt, Arc Nova, and Explosion/Implosion all have one). That means its damage multiplies by your attack count and your Proficiency Bonus, so it grows ~3× from level 5 to 20 while a martial grows ~2×. Capping it brings Pyro from ~205% of a Champion down to ~155% at level 20 without touching anything else. If you're playing a Pyrokinetic and have opinions about that, now's the time — I'd rather hear it from a table than from a spreadsheet.

Kinetic Vanguard — Pyrokinesis is too hot at high levels. I know why. I don't know what to do about it. (Input wanted)

Homebrew Fighter subclass (mental-stat psionic striker), currently v8.1.4. This is a design question, not a patch — I have four options, I can defend all of them, and I don't want to pick blind. Analysis done with AI assistance; sim code linked at the bottom if you want to check my work or argue with it.

The problem

I ran every discipline through Monte Carlo damage sims against a Champion fighter (GWM greatsword, Great Weapon Fighting, level-appropriate magic weapon). Single-target, 3-round window, nova opener with Action Surge:

The other three land almost exactly where I want them — lean early, parity with a martial by 20. Pyrokinesis is supposed to be the damage discipline, so being above a Champion is correct. Doubling a Champion is not.

The cause (this part I'm confident about)

It's Ember Lance, and specifically that it has no per-action cap.

Every other damage rider in the class is once-per-Attack-action: Flare, Fiery Blast, Voltaic Bolt, Arc Nova, Explosion/Implosion. Ember Lance isn't — it fires on every hit. So its damage is:

(number of attacks) × (4 × Proficiency Bonus)

Both of those grow with level. The result is Ember Lance's contribution scaling roughly 3× from level 5 to 20, while a martial's damage only scales ~2×. That divergence is the entire problem. At level 20 it's 173 points of unavoidable, no-save fire damage per nova.

I verified it's not something else: at level 20, the Manifested Strike itself is 48% of Pyro's damage — but that's the shared core all four disciplines have. Ember Lance is the differentiator. Nerfing anything else (Overload Mastery, MS dice) would hit Cryo/Psycho/Electro, who are fine.

The options — and why I can't pick

A) Cap Ember Lance at once per Attack action. → L20 drops to 155%.

• For: Cleanest rule. Brings it in line with every other damage rider. Strongest correction.
• Against: It kills the fantasy. Pyrokinesis is "Compounding Pressure" — fire on every hit. And every other discipline's 3rd-level rider (Glacial Spike, TK Shove, Static Shock) stays uncapped, so Pyro becomes the only one that can't stack its signature rider. I'd be trading one kind of consistency for another and losing the identity in the deal.

B) Keep it on every hit, but halve the damage (1×PB / 2×PB). → L20 drops to 171%.

• For: Identity fully preserved. Fire still lands on every hit.
• Against: A blunt numerical nerf. "Your Ember Lance does half damage now" feels bad in a way a rules change doesn't, and it's a weaker correction.

C) Cap at twice per action + trim to 1×PB / 3×PB. → L20 drops to 165%, and it has the healthiest low-level numbers of any option (90% at L5).

• For: Compounding still reads at the table — you're stacking multiple Ember Lances. Best balance across all four tiers.
• Against: Two knobs instead of one. Fiddlier to explain and remember.

D) Leave it alone.

• For: Fire immunity really does hurt Pyrokinesis more than it hurts anyone else. Manifested Strike takes your Discipline's damage type, so a fire-immune target eats the strike and every rider's damage — including Ember Lance, which is where most of Pyro's numbers live. A discipline with a hard counter arguably earns a premium against everything else, and my sims only measure targets Pyro can actually hurt, which flatters it.

• Against: I have to be honest that I've been overselling this argument, including to myself. Two things undercut it:

  • Your control never stopped working. Damage immunity blocks damage, not conditions. A fire-immune creature still gets Blinded (or Incapacitated) by Flare, still gets pushed and Dash-locked by Fiery Blast, still has to deal with Firestorm's terrain. I've just clarified this explicitly in v8.1.4, because the rules never actually said it out loud — and one rider (Static Shock) was worded badly enough that its control did incorrectly evaporate against immune targets. That's fixed. So Pyro vs. a hell hound isn't a bystander; it's a controller doing reduced damage.
  • I'm also considering a "force fallback" — letting Manifested Strike switch to force damage at half value, so no Discipline is ever fully switched off. If that ships, Pyro goes from ~0% to roughly a quarter of a martial's damage against fire-immune enemies, on top of the control it already keeps.

  Put together: the "Pyro is helpless against its counter" case is a lot weaker than I was making it sound, and 206% is a big premium to pay for a downside that's more like an inconvenience. I'd rather say that now than have it come out after I've counted the votes.

What I'd actually like to hear

Sims tell me what a build can do. They don't tell me what a table feels. So:

1. Has anyone actually run Pyrokinesis at 15+? Did it feel oppressive, or did the Blood Tax and the fire-immunity swings keep it honest in practice?
2. How much does "fire on every hit" matter to you? If you play Pyro, is that the reason? Option A takes it away.
3. How often does fire immunity/resistance actually come up at your table — and when it does, does keeping your control feel like enough? This is the crux of option D. If losing your damage but keeping Blinded/Incapacitated still feels playable, D gets weaker.
4. Is 165–171% an acceptable landing spot for a discipline with zero control and a hard counter? Or should the damage king really be closer to ~155%?

I'm genuinely undecided. I lean toward C, but I've flip-flopped twice already, and the "leave it alone" argument keeps nagging at me.

Current files (v8.1.4 — the Ember Lance change is NOT in here yet)

1. Main rules — https://docs.google.com/document/d/11JgZc0w2f7Zv5mXP1lbp1fOmR_wJA3shNFvaVK1RDKo/edit
2. Pyrokinesis — https://docs.google.com/document/d/1w0LXUGJW2cc-K3RNGTLudj-0IJ2lAhtZogre3caNJg0/edit
3. Cryokinesis — https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CBFnvdmqtg7d7mxTFmHVqoy6Uu4kIFzniQGV1_de5Bc/edit
4. Psychokinesis — https://docs.google.com/document/d/1obcFuT6Dv03y_a2gUlXBne64TCb6WQZ56OQ1cocQjK4/edit
5. Electrokinesis — https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nDJV_lHiFfsVGZrNelDE6b7JWtmfQ_5MT8TYohKIcTo/edit
6. DM Quick Reference — https://docs.google.com/document/d/1r-YsEe-OqWdm27NgTgORTquGvvY-99yHdnFvnfxo7N0/edit

(v8.1.4 also lands the immunity/control clarification described under option D, and fixes Static Shock's Tier 2, which was worded so that its control silently failed against lightning-immune creatures. No damage numbers changed.)

Sim code is in the previous post if you want to re-run any of this with your own assumptions — the enemy AC, the Champion's gear, and the nova line are all editable at the top. If you think my Champion baseline is unfair (it's a defensible complaint — a GWM Champion with a +3 weapon at 20 is a strong yardstick), change it and tell me what you get.

Playtest data beats a spreadsheet every time. That's what I'm asking for.

Kinetic Vanguard v8.1.5 — I finally know what each Discipline is for, and the numbers agree

Homebrew Fighter subclass: a mental-stat psionic striker (Int/Wis/Cha) with four elemental Disciplines, a Psi pool, and a self-damage resource called Blood Tax. Analysis done with AI assistance; Monte Carlo sim code linked at the bottom so you can check my work or argue with it.

This is the biggest patch in a while, and it's really one idea with four consequences. I ran the whole class through Monte Carlo — damage and control, all four Disciplines — and the sims told me two things I didn't want to hear and one I did.

Start with the one I did:

Pyrokinesis melts the boss. Electrokinesis kills the room. Cryokinesis stops the room. Psychokinesis rearranges it.

That line is now in the Cliff Notes and the DM screen, because the data backs every word of it. Splash damage to a pack of five, at 20th level:

Electrokinesis is the crowd discipline by well over a factor of two. And Cryokinesis does literally zero splash damage — its zones deal no damage at all, only control. That's not a bug I need to fix; that's "control king" showing up in the numbers exactly as intended. Cryo stops the room. It was never supposed to kill it.

The thing I didn't want to hear: Pyro was doing double

Single-target, 3-round window, versus a Champion fighter with GWM, Great Weapon Fighting and a level-appropriate magic weapon:

The other three land where I want them: lean early, parity with a martial by 20. Pyro is supposed to be the damage discipline — being above a Champion is the whole point. Doubling one is not.

The cause was structural, and once I saw it I couldn't unsee it. Ember Lance was the only damage rider in the entire class with no per-Attack-action cap. Flare, Fiery Blast, Voltaic Bolt, Arc Nova, Explosion/Implosion — all once per action. Ember Lance fired on every hit. So its damage was:

(your number of attacks) × (4 × your Proficiency Bonus)

Both of those grow with level. Ember Lance's contribution scaled about 3× from level 5 to 20, while a martial's damage scales about 2×. That divergence was the 206%. It wasn't Overload Mastery, it wasn't the Manifested Strike dice — I checked both, and both are shared with the Disciplines that are fine.

The fix: Ember Lance is now capped at twice per Attack action, and its damage is PB / 3×PB / 3×PB (was 2× / 4× / 4×).

Pyrokinesis is still the single-target damage king by a mile — everyone else is at ~100% at level 20. It's just no longer double a martial. And the correction lands where the problem actually was: levels 5–10 barely move.

The other thing I didn't want to hear: a Discipline could be switched off

Manifested Strike takes your Discipline's damage type. So a fire-immune creature didn't resist a Pyrokinetic — it zeroed them. Strike and rider damage, all of it, gone. Hell hound, fire elemental, Iron Golem (which doesn't just ignore fire, it heals from it). You showed up to the boss fight with harsh invective.

Two changes fix this, and neither is a free pass.

1. The Holdout Option. You may declare a Manifested Strike as force damage instead of your Discipline's type, for half damage, rounded down. Your riders don't get this — they keep their element. Blood Tax isn't reduced either, which makes Overloading through it a sucker's bet: full price, half the damage.

It's deliberately a fallback, not an escape hatch. Against your counter you go from zero to about a third of a martial's damage (33% at 20th, closer to a quarter at low levels) — present, contributing, clearly hobbled. That's the right place to be.

And the sim makes the "sucker's bet" concrete. You can Overload through it and push higher — but you pay full Blood Tax for half damage, and at 15th level that all-out line costs about your entire hit point total. The disciplined play is an unoverloaded Holdout Option strike, which costs zero Blood Tax. Note also it only helps against immunity: against a merely resistant creature it gains you nothing (half is half either way), so it's a precision tool, not a default.

(Force, not psychic, and that was a real decision. Psi Warrior's Psionic Strike — the official psionic Fighter — deals force damage, precisely because force is the least-resisted type in the game. Psychic would have been thematic and wrong: an Iron Golem is immune to fire and psychic, so a psychic fallback would have left Pyro at zero against the exact monster that most needs answering. Psychokinesis already deals force, so the Holdout Option does nothing for it — which is Psycho's quiet advantage, not an oversight.)

2. Your control never cared about immunity in the first place — and now the rules say so. Damage immunity stops damage. It does not stop conditions. A cold-immune creature still gets Restrained by Snow Chains. A fire-immune creature still gets Blinded by Flare, still gets pushed and Dash-locked by Fiery Blast. This was always true by RAW; it was never written down, so nobody knew it.

Worse — one rider was worded badly enough that it wasn't true. Static Discharge's Tier 2 read "each creature that takes this damage must make a save" — so against a lightning-immune creature, it took no damage, never made the save, and the control silently evaporated. That's fixed, along with two looser phrasings on Flare and Surge that could be read the same way.

Roughly half of what this subclass does is control, and none of it cares whether your element is resisted. That deserved to be said out loud.

Also in this patch

Static Shock is now Static Discharge. No mechanical change. "Shock" implied a single-target jolt; the feature arcs outward from the struck target, and Electrokinesis is the crowd discipline. The name should say so.

Files (v8.1.5)

1. Main rules — https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RHG112iPcB9jTL8q4F6cs3vml7Yf7v6WJ3UH9plNEik/edit
2. Pyrokinesis — https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kV9j8XeZ_nOiM0YlVbnAem1WFLm48PToptf52pm-1wk/edit
3. Cryokinesis — https://docs.google.com/document/d/10anIlKsEVwIVZ32Zqwuw1P_lN1sNiBjlRG-MPj4ZYec/edit
4. Psychokinesis — https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ji0udXqxQ8jCi01iU9pyrRaEixXFzjPQAocM5W-Q1jc/edit
5. Electrokinesis — https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Zu8ES9LwTO4tF8007kTlPJYOI_rliMH0L6vx5d1AwDM/edit
6. DM Quick Reference — https://docs.google.com/document/d/17XyCRyYpyRJAmDR1JdIBvyS678UpZmd92Z0IUn1ojNY/edit

Monte Carlo harness (v8.1.5): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eO5dWuQxSWZxy0JMrOQk4pG4XcxzKCCp/view?usp=sharing

It's one file, numpy only, and it reproduces every number in this post. The Ember Lance knobs are two lines at the top — set EL_CAP = 99 and EL_MULT = (2, 4) and you'll watch Pyro climb straight back to 206%, which is the nerf reproduced in reverse.

The assumptions are all editable and all documented, including the ones that cut against me: it's a 3-round Action-Surge nova (a ceiling, not sustainable DPR), the Champion is a deliberately strong yardstick (GWM + a +3 weapon at 20, while Manifested Strike gets no magic-weapon bonus at all), and Legendary Resistance isn't modelled. If you think the baseline is unfair, change it and tell me what you get.

Two bugs I found while cleaning it up for release, since you'd have caught them anyway: the AoE saves were rolling against a boss save bonus even when hitting mooks, and the save DC was hardcoded instead of derived. Both fixed; both moved the splash numbers up. The tables above are the corrected ones.

What I actually want from you

The sims tell me what a build can do. They don't tell me what a table feels.

1. If you've played Pyrokinesis past 15 — did it feel oppressive before, and does the Ember Lance cap feel like a fair correction or a gut-punch?
2. Does the Holdout Option feel like enough when your element is turned off? About a third of a martial plus your full control — is that "still in the fight," or "still benched"?
3. Does the four-king framing match your experience? Or does your Cryo player feel like a damage discipline, or your Electro player like a single-target one?

Playtest data beats a spreadsheet every single time. That's what I'm asking for.

Errata — Static Discharge does get the free Psionic Instinct activation (doc says otherwise; doc is wrong)

Caught by a rules-lawyer read of my own text, which is exactly what I ask for, so: found one, owning it.

The ruling, if you just need to play tonight

Static Discharge is Electrokinesis's 3rd-level Discipline rider, and it gets the free Psionic Instinct activation like every other 3rd-level rider.

The first time each Attack action you declare your Discipline's 3rd-level rider as part of a Manifested Strike, it costs 0 Psi — any tier, even Overloaded. (Blood Tax still applies if you Overloaded it.)

That's Glacial Spike, Ember Lance, Telekinetic Shove, and Static Discharge. If you're playing an Electrokinetic, your first Static Discharge each Attack action is free. Play it that way.

What's actually wrong

Psionic Instinct is written with an explicit list of the 3rd-level riders — and that list was written back when there were three Disciplines. Electrokinesis shipped in v8.1.0 and I never updated the enumeration. So the main rules and the DM Quick Reference both currently read:

"…your 3rd-level discipline rider (Glacial Spike, Ember Lance, or Telekinetic Shove)…"

Read strictly, that means an Electrokinetic doesn't get their free rider — which would be a real, unintended nerf to an entire Discipline, not a typo you can shrug at. It's been sitting there since v8.1.0.

Two things that limit the blast radius:

1. The Electrokinesis player sheet is already correct. It says "First Static Discharge per Attack action = 0 Psi." So if you've been playing off the sheet, you've been playing it right — and that contradiction between the sheet and the main doc is probably why nobody hit it sooner.
2. No numbers change. Every Monte Carlo sim I've published always treated Static Discharge as the free rider, because that was always the intent. The balance figures in the release posts stand as-is. This is a text bug, not a balance bug.

The fix

Next patch, and I'm not just bolting "or Static Discharge" onto the end of the list. The enumeration is the actual defect — it went stale the moment a fourth Discipline shipped, and it would go stale again if a fifth ever landed. It's getting replaced with:

"…the first time each Attack action you declare your Discipline's 3rd-level rider…"

Naming them individually was never buying anything the generic phrasing doesn't. Same treatment for the DM screen.

Until then, the ruling at the top of this post is the rule. If your DM wants a citation, point them at the Electrokinesis sheet — it's been right the whole time.

Keep finding these. This is the second doc bug this month that a careful reader caught before a playtest did, and that's a good trade every single time.