Starfinder vs Pathfinder 1e

I'm not really sold on envoys healing staminia. The action economy is pretty heavy, and for the same action they could potentially drop an opponent , resulting in less damage taken.

It depends partly on party composition. Our party includes a Soldier who is really gung ho about mixing it up in melee or short ranged shooting. Keeping him up and fighting is often more worthwhile for my Envoy than plinking away at an enemy with small arms.

Also, since I cannot do that much healing, my go-to combat tactic is "Get 'Em!" anyway.

To be honest, I think that any character that isn't already using long arms or advanced melee weapons (that isn't an operative) has made a mistake.

Feats in Starfinder aren't that good, it's worth spending 2 to get weapon proficiency and versatile specialization.

Envoy may be one other exception where you're likely to have other actions to do every turn, but if your shooting every turn, you should be shooting a better weapon.

The envoys action economy very quickly becomes shoot AND buff AND do another thing with you move action. Improved get em, which is worth it for the +2 alone, means you can Shoot AND get am.

An envoy really shouldn't stay with pistols. They work a lot better with long arms, heavy weapons, preferably big slow unwieldy ones. Either a sharpshooter soldier dip or spending the feats for weapon proficiency do amazing things to your damage with zero effect on your buffing abilities.

Either a sharpshooter soldier dip or spending the feats for weapon proficiency do amazing things to your damage with zero effect on your buffing abilities.

That's exactly where I went with my envoy.

So far as Inspiring Words go, my envoy uses it but I agree - the choice of that vs. Impr. Get'em is a really tough one. At least the 'once per combat per PC' makes that decision a little easier.

The envoy in our first game got so fed up with their small arm by level 8 the GM let them wholesale rebuild their character's ability scores and feats to pick up longarms. They had a blast after that.

While I really like a lot of the simplified Starfinder math (vs. PF1) I do agree that small arms are underwhelming. They should do less damage than longarms, but the difference is just too great - especially when your character is level 5-15. I haven't run a home game of Starfinder (just SFS) but if I do I've already decided on my fix:

Weapon Specialization adds your character level to ALL weapons for everyone EXCEPT operatives.

(Subject, of course to some player not finding a way to cheese it all up.)

That makes those mid levels less of a hurt for small-arms wielders without making operatives too overwhelming. Longarms will still do more damage overall. (I suspect operatives are the reason for the half-level bonus to begin with).

I actually think the current system is OK. Starfinder fights are long enough that every bit of damage helps and small-arms characters are still contributing. The problem is that because the fights last so many rounds every class can expect to be using weapons for a significant portion of their adventuring day. (As opposed to PF1, where a caster may expect to be casting a spell every round and never use a weapon past 3rd level.) Since longarms do more damage, players with small arms feel like they aren't contributing "enough." Which leads to avoiding classes that only have small arms, etc. It's a perception issue, but one with real party impacts.

For two feats an envoy doubles their damage contribution. Envoys don't really have much to spend their early feats on anyway, as they don't need skill focus (it really doesn't work with their expertise) and they can't get feint/improved feint till higher levels (getting them a better feint than the envoy mostly flat footed feint and freeing up some improvisations)