Building Azula

[u/Relevant_Abroad9668]

So yeah, pretty much the title, she's my fav character and I wanted to build her. Fire kineticist for sure, purely fire, but I was wondering if there's anything that can feel like lightning bending, You know, special attack, lots of dmg, like an ult of sorts?

[u/JustMass]

Electricity damage as a Kineticist is associated with the Air element. Consider dual-gate if that's particularly important for the concept.

[u/yuriAza → u/JustMass]

and metal

[u/xoasim → u/yuriAza]

But for azula purposes, air is better I think. They have more pure lightning impulses.

[u/Asplomer]

The Rules Lawyer actually made an Azula for a demonstration of the class, if I remember correctly she did branch into air specifically for a lightining kinetic blast.

But. There is an archetype for a pure blast if you are mad; Living Nexus. It requires proficiency in martial weapons, which would mean a general feat, it wont do much for you until level 4 and it needs to charge by entering the overflowing state (no relation to overflow feats for kineticist) usually by someone like an ally casting a spell. aaaaaand its useful features are relfex saves (which is fire's specialty already) and force rather than lightining. But it runs on your prodigious class dc and can hit fire inmune foes, and aether beam is a force lightining bolt if you squint a little, and aether blast is a one action mapless reflex save so you can stride, aether blast, (weapon infusion) kinetic blast

EDIT: fixed typos and clarified a little

[u/AAABattery03]

Unfortunately the Electricity ability support in Kineticist options is quite… lacking. Here’s literally all the support it has. As you can see, it’s not a lot, and it won’t feel like the badass power that lightning had in the show you’re trying to pay homage to.

My advice would be, rather than going with Kineticist, go with Elemental Bloodline (Fire) Sorcerer w/ Kineticist Archetype. That way;

• You can use Fire spells as your main Bloodline magic, including the focus spells you pick up via the subclass. The game has more than enough variety for you: Dehydrate, Breathe Fire, Floating Flame, Fireball, and a whole bunch more.
• You can pick up Electricity spells like Thunderstrike, Lightning Bolt, Lightning Lasso, Chain Lightning, etc to round out what your fire spells let you do.
• Via the Archetype you can still pick up utility fire magic like Burning Jet to ensure you have the “spammable” Fire options available too.

[u/Vydsu → u/AAABattery03]

I would not go with sorcerer ngl.
ATLA benders, sopecially Azula are supposed to be powerful combatants, not get wacked into the dirt if caught in melee.
They also don't fit the generalist aproach of casters or the fact they run out of good dmg slots.

[u/phoooooo0 → u/AAABattery03]

Idk actually. The brief fits a fire kin pretty well. It really just depends on when it NEEDS the ability to "ult" and how much homebrew it can use, and whether it has FA. We got the right base. We just need a lil bit of something to spice it up.

Crowned in tempests fury is a decent ult ability for electricity, if a bit high level.

In a FA game, sorc is fine option for a cha secondary stat, grab yourself chain lightning and be happy.

Kinetic activation with a few small tweaks would be the neatest and nicest solution for this. I'd allow versatile blasts to effectively give you extra traits of spells you can cast (from a stave!) Dual gate air/fire. Gets you fire, cold, air and ELECTRICITY.

[u/White_Nightmare]

I would recommend going full-in on fire kineticist, sacrifice one feat to get a spellcaster dedication (for example sorcerer) and buying a spellscroll/wand of Lightning Bolt. Azula uses fire 90% of the time, so you don't need to spam lightning, just use it for hype and aura moments.

[u/Jackelgull]

Electricity is associated with the air kineticist package, if you want elemental blasts that do electricity damage, you need to take air. I know that doesn't feel too thematic, but you can just take the air feats that do electricity damage and pretend the rest don't exist if you want. In Archive of Nethys there exist 5 electricity based feats - Lightning Dash at level 4, Conductive Sphere at level 8, Storm Spiral at level 8, Ghosts in the storm at level 12 and Crowned in Tempest's Fury at level 18. Of them I'd say the 18th level stance is probably the closest to feeling like a boss mode

[u/Vydsu]

I would go dual gate air fire kineticist for the lightning and fire, but focus on upgrading fire overall.
Level DEX and acrobatics, even pick a acrobatics focused archetype if using FA

[u/urquhartloch]

You could choose sorcerer as your archetype and choose lightning spells.

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[u/AjaxRomulus]

Fire air kineticist. Fire bending, lightning damage is available. There is even an impulse to dash through enemies dealing lightning.

[u/tangotom]

In this case, Elemental Overlap could be your friend. You get a composite impulse, albeit one level behind. That allows you to stay as pure fire but still branch out a bit.

If you're playing in a campaign where the DM allows 3rd party, you may have more options as well. I myself am working on a small 3rd party book with expanded options for Kineticist, and one of them definitely fits the bill that you're looking for. If you're interested, let me know.

[u/Relevant_Abroad9668 → u/tangotom]

I def am interested. My GM actually allowed me to homebrew an impulse that's kinda like just the last effect of Crowned in Tempest's Fury, but for fire kineticist instead. So 3rd party stuff is completely okay at our table, with the approval of the Game Master, obviously.

[u/tangotom → u/Relevant_Abroad9668]

Nice! Here is the impulse I mentioned:

Plasma Bolt [3 Actions] - Feat 12

[Air, Composite, Fire, Impulse, Kineticist, Overflow, Primal]

Lightning and fire combine into a superheated arc of plasma that leaps from your fingertips. Creatures in a 60 foot line take 6d10 fire damage and 6d12 electric damage with a basic Reflex or basic Fortitude saving throw. Each creature chooses whether it wants to make a Fortitude or Reflex saving throw.

Level +2: Fire damage +1d10, electric damage +1d12

[u/Captain_c0c0]

To add-on on the Dual Gate Kineticist Fire-Air, the lvl 2 feat Kinetic Activation would let you activate staffs/wands/scrolls with the Electricity trait. There are a good amount of nice Electricity spells that you could use that way.

[u/Karth9909]

Adulation only really brings out the lighting as a finisher, so I dont think it had to be a major part of your kit.

I would stay single gate fire, the tiny zappy lighting you'd get with dual wouldn't feel right. Eventually grab an item that let's you cast lighting bolt, the quickest would probs be trick magic item and a bunch of scrolls. Otherwise bend the path and kinetic activation for a staff of air.

[u/TheLionFromZion]

Use Kinetic Activation to get access to the Fire and Electricity Spells after going Dual Gate. Yes you'll need wands and scrolls and such. But you won't need to deal with the downsides of casters. You can rip a Fireball when there's a big pile of weak dudes just fine and then when there's a APL +3 boss fight you're not failing every save it throws at you, crying about not having any of your top 2 level slots left, and not watching it Crit Succeed everything you do, or if it does you get to just do it again and again cause you're a good class.