Can you believe Starfinder Tech Core is almost out? We are so excited to share the book with our fans that we’ve hacked our own blog to share delicious spoilers and previews with a series of blog articles starting with the return of two of Starfinder’s most anticipated classes: the mechanic and the technomancer!
Raia and Quigg infiltrating the bridge, by Ivan Koritarev
The mechanic has received significant upgrades since the playtest. Its two most notable class features are its ability to Modify and its exocortex. Modifying gear is pretty straight-forward: You can customize a piece of gear to enhance it. Some of the options have been improved since the playtest. For example, Long Range Propulsion now increases the range of any item by 30 feet and Magnetic Levitators grants both the hover speed and a fly Speed of 10 feet. Additionally, you can now mod multiple items without deactivating prior modifications.
Mine exocortex received the most changes from the playtest. Mechanics with the mine exocortex can now create a number of mines equal to 4 + your Intelligence modifier per day (which goes up per level), deploy them up to 60 feet away, and mines can now hover to hit flying enemies. And you still get 2 mines every 10 minutes you spend in exploration mode.
Several of the mechanic’s feats have been improved. My personal favorite include the High-Tech Medic feat, which can now apply mods to medpatches and serums to apply additional effects in addition to their normal properties. The new 1st level feat Spontaneous Crafting allows your mechanic to swiftly create weapons, shields, and adventuring gear in just two-actions using your custom rig!
There’s also a new 20th level feat called Apocalyptic Explosions that doubles the area of your mechanic’s explosives when they absolutely and positively must clear an entire building.
The technomancer received the most changes from its playtest incarnation, receiving an overhaul to its play patterns and action economy. Overclock Gear is now a free action! This powerful effect allows you to empower your tech gear with your residual magic after casting a spell from your spell slots, unlocking your programming language’s overclock boost, additional bonuses when you apply spellshapes to a spell using the Jailbreak Spell action, and the all new Overclock Pulse action.
Overclock Pulse is a special single-action activity granted by your Programming Language that gives you a bonus when you use your overclocked gear. For example, DPS++ gains the Overclock Weapon ability that let’s you Strike with a +1 status bonus to your attack rolls and a status bonus to damage equal to half your level. These bonuses are in addition to the Overclock Boost ability granted by your Programming Language. Technomancers also gain an advanced jailbreak at 8th level that further enhances the bonus spellshape feat granted by their programming language!
The 1st-rank magic hack focus spells are no longer spellshapes, but instead distinct spells with their own abilities like the Viper programming language’s amplify vulnerability spell that gives a target weakness to spell damage!
The technomancer has a host of new feats granting it new focus spells and bespoke actions, including those that require the use of specific tech items. For example, Turbocharge Armaments is a 10th-level feat that allows a DPS++ technomancer to Strike with their tech weapon to lower a creature’s saving throws against the next spell they cast.
Technomancers using minions are also going to love the minibots we previewed alongside the luminary playtest that allows them access to a tech minion during exploration mode without the need to pick up a familiar, allowing them to overclock their faithful beatbot or butlerbot before they start summoning more powerful allies!
In Conclusion…
If you are as excited as us to see the new classes in Starfinder Tech Core, you should pick-up the Starfinder Rulebook Subscription today and get a subscriber PDF copy so you can be an early adopter to the hottest new tech! And stay tuned to our blog as we post more previews from Starfinder Tech Core, including details on our Starship Encounters in next week’s blog: Starfinder Tech Core: Something New.
Dustin Knight (he/him)
Lead Designer