Class Preview: The Envoy

Friday, May 5, 2017

Illustration by Miroslav Petrov

When the Starfinder Core Rulebook is released in August, some of the things players are sure to look at first are the classes—envoy, mechanic, mystic, operative, solarian, soldier, and technomancer. Along with the core races and character themes, these classes are a major part of defining a Starfinder player character.

Of course, we don't want to make people wait until August to learn anything about all the fun things we have crammed into our new game, so we're going to be doing a series of class previews over the coming weeks, starting with the envoy. So, let's take a quick look at what the book has to say about the envoy.

“You make your way in the universe with a charming smile, quick wit, and keen sense of self-preservation, and excel at getting others to do what you want. You might be a trickster, hustler, or con artist, or you might serve as an actor, ambassador, or businessperson, paving the way for negotiation through kind words or the occasional dirty trick. You are often the group's strategist, using your quick wit and tactical acumen to push your friends to greater heights. You may also be skilled in diplomacy, serving as the face for a starship crew, talking your way into restricted systems or gaining audiences with local politicians or warlords.”

As that description suggests, envoys are good at social skills. Whether they're using those skills to make friends, fool victims, or threaten foes, envoys often use their wits and charm to get the job done. (And when that doesn't work, well, there's always your laser pistol.) Some of that ability to affect others is modeled by their 8 skill points per level and 16 class skills, which allow them to pick up a lot of social skills while still being able to put ranks into skills such as Acrobatics, Computers, and Stealth, as appropriate for your character concept. The class couples that with an average base attack bonus, poor Fortitude saves, good Reflex and Will saves, light armor, and proficiency (and eventually specialization) with basic melee weapons, grenades, and small arms.

Envoys gain the expertise and skill expertise class features at 1st level. Expertise grants the envoy a 1d6 expertise die that she can add to Sense Motive skill checks as an insight bonus, and skill expertise extends that bonus to one other skill. As the envoy gains levels, she expands the number of skills she can apply her expertise die to and gains expertise talents, which give her additional options for those skills. These can extend the effects of a skill check, allow her to perform acts the skill doesn't normally grant, or alter how long it takes her to use a talent.

Each envoy also gets to select a number of envoy improvisations over the course of her career, beginning at 1st level. These allow the envoy to more directly hinder her foes and aid her allies. Many improvisations are sense-dependent, and some are also language-dependent or mind-affecting. Clever use of envoy improvisations can turn the tide of battle, as the envoy can bolster allies actions and defenses, warn them of impending dangers, and—with higher-level options—even give them additional actions in a turn. Here's an example of a 1st-level envoy improvisation.

Clever Feint (EX) [sense-dependent]

As a standard action, you can fake out an enemy within 60 feet, making that enemy open to your attacks. Attempt a Bluff check with the same DC as a check to feint against that enemy (though this isn';t a standard check to feint, so Improved Feint and Greater Feint don't apply). Even if you fail, that enemy is flat-footed against your attacks until the end of your next turn. If you succeed, the enemy is also flat-footed against your allies' attacks until the end of your next turn. You can't use clever feint against a creature that lacks an Intelligence score.

At 6th level, you can spend 1 Resolve Point to treat a failed Bluff check for clever feint as if it were a success.

We'll present more information on the other six classes in the coming weeks, and of course, you can read the full classes this August when the Starfinder Core Rulebook releases at Gen Con!

Owen K.C. Stephens
Developer

Meet the Iconics: Navasi

Monday, May 1, 2017

The countdown to Starfinder has officially begun, and to kick us off, we're highlighting the iconic characters and core classes that appear throughout the pages and covers the Starfinder line. Today we meet Navasi, the iconic envoy!

Illustration by Remko Troost

Born into a prominent family on Absalom Station, the envoy who calls herself Navasi spent much of her childhood avoiding her parents in their "sky-villa," as they called their sprawling, six-story home in the Nyori Palisades. Navasi's mother had designs on her canny-but-headstrong daughter inheriting the family's business. Her father had visions of a queenly young woman sitting in silk among the station's most prominent socialites.

Navasi wanted neither. A quip on her lips, she eschewed glitzy playdates and family soirees in favor of zipping through Absalom Station's streets with her best friends, the children of the household employees. She'd take the rush of riding a screaming hovercycle over the pompous sniggering of the wealthy any day of the week.

As she befriended more and more stationers from less-privileged walks of life, Navasi's irritation with her parents and their deliberate aloofness from the rest of society turned into outright disgust. The inequities of Absalom Station, where the rich lived in fortified enclaves and the poor lived in little more than metal boxes, pained her. Simply giving away her pocket money didn't seem like enough. She began to dream of a fairy-tale life in which she could steal the affluent's unearned wealth and give it to those truly in need, and idolized the Free Captains of the Diaspora—pirates living by their own rules. Navasi could only imagine the fun she'd have with such freedom—and the good she'd do, of course.

On the eve of her eighteenth birthday, Navasi sat in her plush quarters, staring at the gold-fibered holo-gown that was to be her debut dress. Two choices stood before her. She could don that false uniform, attend the gala, and accept her mother's gift of an executive position in the family company. Or she could leave.

It took less than an hour for Navasi to slip out of the manor and stow away onto a ship bound for the Diaspora.

Navasi arrived on Broken Rock with a pocketful of stolen credsticks and a gleam in her eye. She quickly signed up as a "procurement specialist" with a contracting firm called the Sixth Finger—little more than a starfaring thieves' guild—ready to use her new position to steal from exploitative corporations and make herself a hero to those in need.

The reality of life in a pirate enclave hit her like a meteorite. Having quickly blown through her money, and too stubborn to return home in shame, Navasi found she no longer had a choice in which jobs she took. Under the guildrunners' threats, she roughed up innocents, stole from the less fortunate, and worse. Though she never completely lost her egalitarian beliefs, she hardly recognized the naïve idealist she'd once been. A few years in the streets showed her how much of her former life she'd taken for granted, and taught her that if she wanted to take care of others, she first needed to take care of herself. That, at least, she was good at, and she quickly gained a reputation in the gang as the best fast-talker and facewoman around, spinning bold plans and quick wits into fat paydays.

Now a jaded young woman, Navasi found that the wealth from her scores brought little joy without friends to share it with, and she took comfort in the hardscrabble survivalists and secretly softhearted rogues she recruited to her crews. Yet it was in one particular woman that Navasi truly found herself again. Purple-haired and tattooed, with eyes like blue supergiants, the newcomer was outspoken against those in power. She bucked the pirates' authority and operated alone, pulling the sorts of righteous jobs Navasi had once dreamed of. She was the bravest, most exciting woman Navasi had ever met, and despite Navasi's continuing allegiance to the Sixth Finger, the two quickly became inseparable.

That all came crashing down the day the Sixth Finger arranged to knock over a medship full of supplies bound for Absalom Station. To the gang's leaders, the ship's mission—aiding refugees of a wartorn star system—was inconsequential compared to the valuable drugs in its cargo bays. Navasi's objections were overruled.

It was the final straw. Together, Navasi and her partner formulated a plan, alerting the medship to the imminent heist and carefully sabotaging the fighters the gang had designated for the assault. It all might have gone unnoticed, had the gang's resident technomancer not decided to check the security cams one final time. In the ensuing ambush, Navasi and her partner were pinned down, their backs to the sole spaceworthy ship—a single-seat fighter with only enough life support for one of them. Unwilling to leave her companion, Navasi prepared for them to go out in a blaze of glory—only to have her partner shove her into the cockpit and slam the canopy. As Navasi scrabbled with the latch, the other woman winked, pulled the pins on her grenades, and sprinted straight at their ambushers.

The wealthy scion of Absalom Station died that day, as did the pirate she'd become. As she made her way back to Absalom Station with the medship, knowing that neither the Sixth Finger nor her spurned family would ever stop looking for her, she forsook both of her previous incarnations. Abandoning her old identity, she took the name of her fallen love—Navasi—and swore that henceforth she'd carry on the fight they'd started together, only stealing from those who deserved it, putting her finger in the eye of anyone who thrived on exploitation, regardless of which side of the law they were on. Knowing she'd need a new appearance as well, she continued borrowing from her partner, dyeing her jet-black hair purple and adding a single blue contact. Yet when she considered mimicking the original Navasi's tattoos, she was shocked to learn that they were symbols of Weydan, the god of discovery and equality, famous for taking mortal form. Though her partner had never spoken of religion, Navasi took it as a sign, and even holds out some hope that perhaps her companion might have been more than she seemed, though she recognizes that such thoughts are probably just a manifestation of her grief.

Today, Navasi has built a reputation—perhaps more than is truly wise for a woman with a price on her head—as a talented freelance captain, putting together crews for adventures ranging from planetary scouting and private security to her old talent for "procurement," though she's careful about what sorts of jobs she and her friends take on. Navasi still believes in freedom for all, spreading the wealth, and taking plutocrats down a peg—but she also knows the value of earning credits, and takes pride in the ability to take care of herself and her crew (though she still has a sometimes inconvenient tendency to empty her pockets for those in need). As a scoundrel, a fast-talker, and a brilliant negotiator, Navasi is happiest when the chips are down and lives hang in the balance, as that's when you truly know who your friends are. Above all, she knows to always look beneath the surface, for like Navasi herself, nothing is ever quite what it seems.

Amanda Hamon Kunz
Developer