Kinetic Vanguard v9.8.1 — patch notes

A maintenance release. No balance changes, no new mechanics, nothing that moves a number in either harness. Nine documentation corrections and two rules clarifications that were always intended but never actually written down.

Worth saying up front why this exists as its own release: after v9.8 shipped I ran a sweep expecting to find nothing, found three small things, and then a second pass found ten more. Two of them had survived every audit since v9.4. The pattern is consistent enough to be worth naming — feature entries get updated when a rule changes, and the prose commentary and worked examples around them quietly don't.

Corrections

The Advanced Training pool is eight picks, not nine. Surge was cut in v9.8. Three references in the main rules and one on each of the four player sheets still said nine.

Overloading a Manifested Strike gives a die step and nothing else. The Attack Declaration Costs table still read "die step + bonus damage only." v9.4 removed that flat bonus. This is the oldest item in the patch and the one I'm least happy about — the rule was correct everywhere else, including the die table directly above it.

Passive Advanced Training picks can't be Overloaded. Advanced Training III, IV and V all said "the chosen feature can be Overloaded normally," which isn't true of Inner Reserve or Overload Mastery II. Now conditional: if the chosen feature has Overload tiers. Their Psi cost in the feature tables also changes from 3 to Varies, since six of the eight cost 3 Psi and two are passive.

Electrokinesis, two fixes. A pattern note still described Voltaic Bolt's Tier 2 as imposing Restrained — v9.7 changed that to Speed 0 and no reactions, and the feature entry was already correct; only the commentary below it was stale. Separately, a Mini Nova row credited Static Discharge Tier 1 with a no-reactions save that belongs only to Tier 2, in a sequence that had already spent its single Tier 2 declaration on the strike. That row was describing an illegal turn.

Static Discharge's Tier 1 now says what scales. It read "the lightning damage increases to 2× your Proficiency Bonus," which could be read as changing the struck target's fixed 2. It's the arc that scales; the target's 2 is unchanged.

Psychokinesis, two fixes. Two level-15 patterns still described Explosion/Implosion's push and pull as automatic with the Strength save applying only to Restrained. v9.6 changed that — one save gates both, and a successful save means neither. Separately, the level-20 example said that transferring concentration away from Vectored Thrust means "you land this turn." Vectored Thrust grants no hover and no safe descent. If it ends while you're airborne, you fall. Position before you activate Mass Levitation.

Magic Resistance applies to everything. Some passages said it gave advantage on your rider saving throws specifically, while the broader magical-effects rule correctly stated that all Kinetic Vanguard features are magical effects. Standardized: creatures with Magic Resistance have advantage on saves against any of your features — riders, standalone Actions, discipline features and Beguile alike. Attack rolls and damage are unaffected.

Unused assumed picks removed. Each sheet's level-15 pattern header named an Advanced Training pick that none of its patterns actually used, implying you needed that pick for the demonstrated sequences. You don't.

And one in my own changelog. The v9.8 entry described Mind Blast's Charisma save governing the escalation, two sentences before correctly noting the save had moved to Intelligence.

Clarifications

Telekinetic Shove replaces Push mastery on declaration, not on success.

If you declare Shove and the target succeeds on its Strength save, it isn't moved — and you cannot fall back on Push mastery's automatic 10 feet for that hit. The previous wording said Shove "replaces your Push mastery for that hit," which most readers took the right way but could reasonably be read as replacement only on a landed effect.

This is deliberate, not an oversight. Declaring Shove trades a guaranteed 10 feet for a shot at something stronger — directional control at Tier 0, and 20 feet plus Speed 0 at Tier 2. Sometimes the gamble doesn't pay. Against a creature with a strong Strength save the mastery's guaranteed movement is frequently the better play, and I'm happy the rule produces that instinct on its own.

Note that Telekinetic Slam's explicit 10-foot push on a successful save is a separate thing and doesn't generalize to Shove.

Blood Tax is taken immediately on declaration.

Not when the attack resolves, not after the package finishes, not conditionally. You declare the Overload, you take the psychic damage, then you roll. A miss doesn't refund it.

This was always the intent — every rule statement in the documents said "paid on declaration" — but nothing explicitly ruled out holding the damage until the attack resolved. It does now. There was a version of this patch that deferred the damage to after resolution, and it was rejected: waiting adds a bookkeeping step and an edge case about being reduced to 0 mid-declaration, and buys nothing.

Files (v9.8.1)

1. Main rules — https://docs.google.com/document/d/12kXqjWnHgCbBurvtQqo4jQ9bjkAG6rBci2PHVCl2jo4/edit
2. Pyrokinesis — https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JZIJOBa8Z_R49yEMya6L1M-0-lo9sGVDgUnRI3aqG30/edit
3. Cryokinesis — https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kYGoL_UlVBBJL4U0AIE-8O2euDg5262cM_m3htRTz1g/edit
4. Psychokinesis — https://docs.google.com/document/d/1978ACnw1U_ok8jGQc7axodXhxtY7dL4UUwbY6ciitOE/edit
5. Electrokinesis — https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cjVgWE3NExrkEWAJpSQugZ7ZmH-EwwO1paD4VBdX2dk/edit
6. DM Quick Reference — https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RbFLpe7X14ZwSgYyjRX9qUESiDJy5ZzpsHVTVii5E9s/edit

The harnesses, the real-monster target CSV and the README are unchanged from v9.8 — nothing in this patch alters a damage figure, a saving throw or a condition, so every published number stands.

The process note

If you maintain homebrew with a similar amount of version history, the failure mode here is worth stealing.

Every time a mechanic changed, I checked the feature that changed. What I didn't reliably do was sweep for the removed thing across every document — the condition that no longer applies, the bonus that no longer exists, the feature that no longer exists. Those references don't live in the feature entry you just edited. They live in a pattern table three sections away, in a design note, in a worked example, in a summary line on a different sheet.

The fix is a keyword sweep for the old mechanic immediately after every change, across all documents, not just the one you were editing. Two of the items in this patch were four versions old and had been read past repeatedly by three separate reviewers.

Erratum — Barrier: Elemental Shroud's damage type can be swapped
A question came up that the text doesn't answer cleanly, so here's the ruling.
The question. Barrier's Tier 2 Overload lets you spend a bonus action and 1 Psi to "replace one of your chosen effects with a different one from the list." If you have Elemental Shroud active with lightning resistance, can you use that to change it to fire resistance?
Read strictly, no. The list is five named effects — Blade Shield, Elemental Shroud, Spellward, Steadfast Guard, Mental Bulwark. Changing lightning to fire isn't replacing an effect with a different effect; it's the same effect with a different damage type. And the clause that says you can't swap into an effect you already have active would independently block it.
The ruling: yes, you can swap the damage type. Treat it as a normal Barrier swap — bonus action, 1 Psi.
Here's why I'm not going the other way. If you hold two effects at Tier 1 or 2, the strict reading is already routable: swap Shroud out for Spellward this turn, then swap Spellward back to Shroud with a different element next turn. Two bonus actions, two Psi, identical end state, plus a turn holding an effect you don't want.
So the restriction doesn't prevent the play. It just means experienced players do the two-step and everyone else reads "you can't change the element," believes it, and eats a limitation the rules never actually imposed. That's the worst way to distribute a rule.
I'd also argued that blocking it prevents reactive swapping — flipping to fire resistance right before you kill the balor, say. But the workaround gives you the same result with one turn of foresight. The difference between the readings is a round of planning, not whether the play exists. That isn't worth a special case, and it certainly isn't worth the fiddliness.
The cost is already there without it. At the levels Barrier exists, your bonus action is competing with Phase Step, Leaping Strike, Vectored Thrust and Second Wind, and every swap costs Psi. That's the brake.
Intended wording, to be folded into the next patch:
Tier 2 Overload: The duration increases to 10 minutes. While Barrier is active, you can use a bonus action to replace one of your chosen effects with a different one from the list, or to change Elemental Shroud's damage type if you have it active. Each change costs 1 Psi point. You cannot swap an effect to match one you already have active.
Two related points while I'm here.
You still can't hold Elemental Shroud twice with two different damage types. Tier 1's "choose two of the five effects" means two distinct effects. With the damage type now swappable there's no reason to want two anyway.
And if you swap Elemental Shroud out entirely and later swap it back in, you choose its damage type fresh at that point.
Nothing here changes a damage number, a saving throw or a condition — the published harness figures stand.

Kinetic Vanguard v10.0.0 — The Chassis Release

After the maintenance-only v9.8.1 patch, Kinetic Vanguard v10.0.0 is the first full chassis revision of the subclass.

The headline change is simple:

Manifested Strike is no longer Overloaded.

Your basic attack now scales naturally with Fighter level, while Overload and Blood Tax belong entirely to the techniques that actually escalate: riders and standalone psionic features. The result is less bookkeeping, cleaner declarations, and a base attack that no longer asks you to bleed just to keep pace with the expected magic-weapon curve.

Kinetic Vanguard remains a 2024 Fighter subclass built around a mental ability score, a short-rest Psi pool, discipline identity, and voluntary self-damage for high-impact turns.

Documents

Core rules

• Kinetic Vanguard v10.0.0 — Main Rules
• DM Quick Reference

Discipline player sheets

• Pyrokinesis
• Cryokinesis
• Psychokinesis
• Electrokinesis

Test harnesses and data

• Real-monster multi-target damage harness
• Damage harness README
• Real-monster control reliability harness
• Control harness README
• SRD 5.2.1 monster benchmark roster

What changed from v9.8.1?

v9.8.1 was a documentation and rules-clarification patch. v10.0.0 changes the chassis itself.

The v10 turn loop

1. Make Manifested Strikes using the die set by your Fighter level.
2. Attach no more than one rider to each hit.
3. The first activation of your 3rd-level discipline rider in each Attack action costs 0 Psi, even if Overloaded.
4. Every higher-level attack rider is limited to once per Attack action.
5. Declare the rider and its Overload tier before rolling.
6. Tier 1 Blood Tax is PB. Tier 2 Blood Tax is 2×PB.
7. Psi and Blood Tax are paid on declaration, hit or miss.
8. One Tier 2 rider is allowed per Attack action; Action Surge opens a fresh window.
9. If Blood Tax drops you to 0 HP, you fall immediately and the declared attack or feature does not resolve.

The risk remains real. The paperwork does not.

Harness results

The benchmark roster contains 28 SRD 5.2.1 creatures across levels 7, 11, 15, and 20. Real AC, saving throws, Magic Resistance, size, creature type, and condition immunities are used. Legendary Resistance is retained as metadata but is not spent.

Single-target damage against the Eldritch Knight benchmark

The main document's published headline uses a 25% voluntary Blood Tax budget. Results are shown as Kinetic Vanguard damage divided by the damage-optimized Eldritch Knight result; 100% means parity.

The intended pattern survived the chassis rewrite:

• Pyrokinesis remains the damage-forward discipline.
• Electrokinesis is strongest early and when targets cluster.
• Cryokinesis and Psychokinesis give up some direct single-target damage for lockdown and positioning.
• All four remain in the intended EK-relative band rather than drifting into either trap-pick or strictly-better territory.

Six-target aggregate damage stress run

The linked multi-target harness also models a deliberately aggressive 50% HP Blood Tax stress budget. Every creature is assumed to be legally positioned inside the selected area or chain effect. These are three-round aggregate DPR means across the full six-creature cluster.

This table is not claiming that every encounter supplies a perfect six-target formation. It shows what each kit does when its area tools have legal targets:

• Electrokinesis kills the room.
• Pyrokinesis becomes a major area-damage threat once Firestorm and its high-tier toolkit arrive.
• Cryokinesis gains meaningful multi-target damage while retaining the strongest lockdown package.
• Psychokinesis remains the least damage-oriented of the four because much of its value is movement, formation collapse, and denial rather than raw dice.

High-level control reliability

The control harness ran 100,000 trials per scenario and target row. “Full” means the complete named effect landed. “Any” includes a feature's no-save floor or lesser surviving effect. “Whole package” also counts the discipline's Kinetic Mastery.

The important result is not that every condition lands equally often or has equal value. It is that the reliability floors are doing their jobs:

• Snow Chains may fail to Stun a boss, but Speed 0 still lands on the hit.
• Mind Blast may fail to Stun, but the target is still Blinded on the hit.
• Flare T1 is pure hit-gated reliability.
• Voltaic Bolt T2 has a lower chance of landing its full root-and-reaction denial, while Sap keeps the complete attack package relevant.
• Telekinetic Shove remains intentionally save-dependent because it buys directional forced movement rather than guaranteed displacement.
• Magic Resistance hurts save-gated escalations sharply, but it does not erase the subclass's no-save floors.

Scope of the numbers

The damage harness measures three-round direct damage. It does not assign damage value to Blinded, Restrained, Stunned, forced movement, reaction denial, ally setup, target death, Spreading Flames, or Mass Levitation's later follow-up damage.

The control harness measures how reliably an effect lands. It does not claim that a 10-foot push, Blinded, Restrained, and Stunned are equal outcomes. It also does not model Legendary Resistance expenditure, positioning, concentration loss, or the extra party damage created by control.

The harnesses are evidence, not an oracle.

What I need from playtesting

The main question for v10 is no longer “can the arithmetic survive another rewrite?” It can.

The useful table feedback is now:

• Does removing Manifested Strike Overload make actual turns noticeably faster?
• Does the level-set strike die feel competent without making Blood Tax optional flavor?
• Does a 25% voluntary Blood Tax cadence feel like a tempting risk rather than a mandatory upkeep cost?
• Do the four disciplines remain distinct in real encounters?
• Do the no-save control floors stay useful against bosses without making the escalation tiers trivial?
• Are players making real choices between damage, control, mobility, defense, and Psi economy in Advanced Training?

This is the playtest baseline. Further changes should come from actual play, not wording churn.

Kinetic Vanguard v10.0.0 is ready for the table.

Kinetic Vanguard v10.1.0

Overload curve cleanup, dead-tier repairs, and refreshed benchmark harnesses

2024 Fighter subclass • release announcement

Kinetic Vanguard v10.1.0 is not another chassis rewrite. The v10 economy remains intact: Manifested Strike is a level-scaled baseline attack, Overload belongs to techniques, and Blood Tax buys escalation rather than baseline competence. This release fixes dead or awkward Overload tiers, regularizes every damage-die ladder, tightens Firestorm, replaces the underused Phase Step ally teleport, and brings the rules package and both public harnesses into one release state.

The practical goal: fewer “why would I ever pay for this tier?” moments and fewer odd 8/10/13-style progressions to remember at the table.

Public release files

• Main rules — Kinetic Vanguard v10.1.0
• DM Quick Reference
• Pyrokinesis player sheet
• Cryokinesis player sheet
• Psychokinesis player sheet
• Electrokinesis player sheet
• Damage benchmark harness (Python)
• Control reliability harness (Python)
• SRD 5.2.1 monster benchmark roster (CSV used by both harnesses)

The CSV link above is the actual target roster consumed by the public damage and control scripts.

Why v10.1.0 exists

• Several Overload ladders increased damage at Tier 1 and then stopped increasing at Tier 2, even though Tier 2 doubles the Blood Tax.
• Absolute Zero and Telekinetic Slam used irregular +2-die, then +3-die progressions that were harder to remember than they were useful.
• Psychic Lance and Deflection Screen were avowed damage/prevention choices whose original Overloads did not consistently justify their self-damage.
• Phase Step Tier 2 spent major Blood Tax on bringing an ally along, a benefit that looked useful on paper but rarely drove an actual Overload decision.
• Firestorm stacked a very large zone, difficult terrain, no-Dash denial, and repeated damage escalation. The package needed tighter geometry, not just smaller numbers.

New table rule: when an Overload ladder increases damage dice, each tier increases them by the same number of dice.

Headline mechanical changes

Constant-step damage ladders

Existing riders, save effects, modifiers, and geometry remain unless noted above. This table is the memory aid: each listed feature now advances by a constant number of dice from T0 to T1 to T2.

“MS die” means the Manifested Strike die for the Vanguard’s Fighter level. Where a feature already added the Psionic Ability modifier at an Overload tier, that modifier remains; the table isolates the die progression.

Phase Step and Improved Phase Step

Phase Step — universal 10th-level mobility

• T0: teleport up to 15 feet to an unoccupied space you can see.
• Tier 1: teleport up to 30 feet instead.
• Tier 2: after teleporting, choose the space you left or the space where you appear. Each creature of your choice within 5 feet makes your Discipline signature save against your Psionic save DC. On a failure, it cannot take reactions until the start of your next turn.

Improved Phase Step — high-tier offensive evolution

• Keeps the discipline-specific damage type and signature saving throw.
• Uses the clean 3d10 / 4d10 / 5d10 damage ladder.
• Retains the larger teleport range and Tier 2 reaction denial, distinguishing it from the universal utility feature without making either one dead.

Refreshed damage benchmark

Official baseline: three-round direct damage, 25% voluntary Blood Tax budget, real SRD 5.2.1 AC and saves, and a two-trigger Firestorm baseline. Results are Kinetic Vanguard damage divided by the damage-optimized Eldritch Knight benchmark; 100% means parity.

About the level-11 dip: KV damage still rises at level 11. The ratio falls because the Eldritch Knight benchmark hits a stacked breakpoint—third attack, stronger True Strike, weapon/ability progression—before Psychic Lance arrives at level 15. Cryo and Psycho’s direct-damage gap at that level is intentionally parked for later playtest review rather than patched blindly into this release.

Firestorm sensitivity

The three-trigger ceiling assumes favorable initiative, perfect retention, no concentration loss, and legal positioning. The damage harness does not assign a penalty for Firestorm’s reduced 10-foot base radius, so the ceiling is intentionally optimistic.

Control harness update

The control harness now includes the new Phase Step and Improved Phase Step reaction-denial pulse using each Discipline’s signature save. At level 15, the equal-weight roster produced the following end-to-end failure rates:

That spread is expected. The feature remains discipline-neutral in rules structure while preserving each discipline’s established save identity.

What did not change

• Manifested Strike cannot be Overloaded and never generates Blood Tax.
• Tier 1 Blood Tax remains PB; Tier 2 remains 2×PB, paid immediately on declaration.
• One rider per hit, one Tier 2 rider per Attack action, and Action Surge opens a fresh Attack-action window.
• The first use of the 3rd-level Discipline rider in each Attack action remains Psi-free through Psionic Instinct; Blood Tax still applies when Overloaded.
• The class remains written exclusively for the 2024 rules with errata.

What the harnesses do—and do not—claim

• The damage harness measures three-round direct damage. It does not price Blinded, Restrained, Stunned, forced movement, reaction denial, ally setup, target death, Spreading Flames, or Mass Levitation’s stateful follow-up damage.
• Area tests assume the configured creatures are legally positioned in the chosen effect. They are ceilings on legal target access, not encounter-frequency predictions.
• The control harness measures reliability, not equal value. A 10-foot push and Stunned are not treated as equivalent outcomes.
• Magic Resistance is applied. Legendary Resistance is retained as metadata but is not spent.
• Both public scripts consume the linked SRD 5.2.1 CSV roster, making the benchmark inputs inspectable and replaceable.

What I want from playtesting

• Do the constant-step ladders make Overload choices faster to parse and easier to remember?
• Does Psychic Lance now feel like the avowed damage choice without crowding out control or defense picks?
• Does Deflection Screen’s prevention justify its Blood Tax even when the Tier 2 Strength save succeeds?
• Does the smaller Firestorm zone reward positioning without recreating the old punishment prison?
• Does Phase Step Tier 2 get used now that it solves a common reaction problem rather than a rare ally-port problem?
• At level 11, do Cryokinesis and Psychokinesis feel underpowered in actual encounters, or does their control compensate for the direct-damage ratio?

Release position

v10.1.0 is the current playtest baseline. The chassis is stable, the damage ladders now read consistently, the universal tools have live Overload tiers, and the public code and CSV match the release documents. Future changes should be driven by table behavior—especially the level-11 control-versus-damage question—not by another round of speculative churn. Kinetic Vanguard v10.1.0 is ready for the table.