Class Preview: The Soldier

Friday, May 26, 2017

As soon as we announced Starfinder, there were fans that wanted to know what kind of options there would be for the heavy-armor-wearing, magic-plasma-cannon-firing, jet-packed combatant character. While any Starfinder character can do those things if they dedicate themselves to getting the needed resources, the character who does it most easily (and gets the most class features designed to work with such actions) is the soldier. This is the description the soldier gets in the Starfinder Core Rulebook:

Conflict is an inevitable result of life. On every world that harbors complex living organisms, creatures battle one another for dominance, resources, territory, or ideals. Whether you've taken up arms to protect others, win glory, exact revenge, or simply earn a living, you are the perfect embodiment of this truth. You're an expert at combat of all types but tend to prefer heavy armor and weapons—the bigger, the better. You may be a career soldier, a fresh mercenary recruit, or a lone wolf who rejects authority, but whether rushing in for hand-to-hand combat or firing tactical barrages, you're a consummate warrior, never hesitating to put yourself in the line of fire to protect your friends.

Soldiers are masters of weapons and armor of all types, with a good base attack bonus progression (and good Fortitude and Will save progressions); proficiency in light armor, heavy armor, and grenades; and proficiency (and eventually specialization) in basic and advanced melee weapons, small arms, longarms, heavy weapons, and sniper weapons. Since small arms and many basic melee weapons gain only half the damage boost from specialization that longarms and heavy weapons do, soldiers often prefer to use the bulkier weapon options to maximize the damage they deal. Since specializing in heavy weapons first requires you to be proficient with heavy weapons, which in turn requires proficiency with longarms, it's a much more significant investment for any other class to do the same.

But a soldier is not simply a killer or thug—she's a trained professional combatant with access to thousands of years of military theory and modern education systems. That education tends to be pretty focused, but it's still enough to get the solider 8 class skills and 4 skill points per level. The Athletics skill covers the need to climb, jump, and swim to get to advantageous positions in combat (though by 2nd or 3rd level, jump jets are a common armor upgrade that easily increases mobility, and by 5th or 6th level they're likely to be replaced by a jetpack armor upgrade). That still leaves 3 skill points even for a soldier with a 10 Intelligence to spread around class skills such as Acrobatics (useful if you want to get the most out of that jetpack, but not necessary for basic flight), Engineering, Intimidate, Medicine, Piloting, Profession, and Survival.

Since the soldier class's focus is clearly on combat, there's much more to her offensive and defensive abilities than just base attack bonuses, proficiencies, and specializations. Every soldier begins play with a fighting style, which grants special combat options tied to a specific approach to combat as the soldier gains levels. There are 7 fighting styles to choose from—arcane assailant, armor storm, blitz, bombard, guard, hit-and-run, and sharpshoot. A soldier also picks up some of a second fighting style beginning at 9th level. In addition to fighting styles, a soldier gains gear boosts that enhance the soldier's effectiveness with specific equipment (such as anchoring arcana, armored advantage, laser accuracy, and plasma immolation) at 3rd level and every 4 levels thereafter, and a bonus combat feat at 2nd level and every 2 levels thereafter.

The bonus combat feats leave the soldier free to use the feats all characters gain at every odd level to expand beyond combat effectiveness. Other than proficiencies and specializations, feats generally have at most one other feat and a few base attack or ability score minimums as prerequisites, making even a few bonus feats able to cover a wide range of options. (For example, the Shot on the Run feat requires only Mobility, a +4 base attack bonus, and a 15 Dexterity—all easily achieved by a soldier.) Even at 1st level, any soldier could take Skill Synergy to gain 2 new skills as class skill. Or if a player preferred, by 2nd level a soldier can have selected Weapon Focus and then Versatile Focus to gain the benefit of Weapon Focus with every weapon with which the soldier is proficient.

Since fighting styles are going to be an important part of any soldier's design, here's a look at the 5th-level ability from the arcane assailant fighting style.

Secret of the Magi (SU)

When you imbue a weapon with the rune of the eldritch knight, in addition to its normal benefits, the rune grants the weapon one of the following weapon fusions of your choice: ethereal, flaming, frost, merciful, or shock. The weapon can't gain a fusion it already has, and this bonus fusion doesn't count toward the maximum total level of fusions the weapon can have at once. The bonus fusion ends when the weapon ceases to be imbued with the rune of the eldritch knight. For more information on fusions, see page 191.

With that, we've covered more than half of the Starfinder classes—check out paizo.com/starfinder to find links to previous blogs presenting the envoy, mystic, operative, and soldier. We're going to take a little break from classes next week in order to preview some other elements of the game, but in the months before the game's release this August, we'll preview the remaining three—the mechanic, solarian, and technomancer!

Owen KC Stephens
Developer

Meet the Iconics: Obozaya

Monday, May 15, 2017

The countdown to Starfinder is on! We're highlighting the iconic characters and core classes that appear throughout the pages and covers the Starfinder line. Today we meet Obozaya, the iconic soldier!

Illustration by Remko Troost

In classic vesk fashion, Obozaya Ymeros lets her friends shorten her name to "Obo," but not even Damoritosh himself can protect those who attempt to use her nickname without earning it first.

Obozaya was born on Vesk Prime, the planetary capital of the Veskarium, to a family of low-level military bureaucrats. Distinguishing herself with her determination and ferocity on the sports field and in the dueling ring—if not in her academic studies—Obozaya quickly established herself as a top-notch military cadet, enlisting as soon as her basic studies were complete.

Obozaya took to military life like a swamp lion to water, and soon outpaced many in her cohort. In Veskarium society, social status is most easily earned through excellence in combat, and Obo had no desire to spend her entire life at the same forgettable rank as her parents. Though her dreams of glory were hardly unique, she nevertheless proved herself in several early battles, putting down a vicious rebellion among the feline barbarians of Vesk-6.

Yet in her youthful arrogance, Obozaya overlooked the power of political connection. After dueling and deeply shaming another member of her unit—one with family ties to high-ranking military officials—she found herself promoted and assigned to patrol a section of frozen tundra on Vesk-8, where the staunchly pacifist residents refused to give her any opportunity for righteous combat. It soon became clear that neither appeals to her superiors nor prayers to Damoritosh the Conqueror were going to get her a better assignment. Thus, as her first term of enlistment drew to a close, a frustrated Obozaya took the Soldier's Due, the time-honored vesk tradition of being honorably discharged and taking your government-issue armor and weapons with you.

Still in love with the idea of one day becoming a major player in vesk society, and disgusted by the idea that politics could exist within the Veskarium's vaunted military meritocracy, Obozaya followed in the footsteps of many other legendary vesk warriors and left home to work as a mercenary in the Pact Worlds. Here, at last, she found what she'd been searching for: an endless series of battles and adventures, with no restrictions but her own sense of honor. Rather than signing on with an established mercenary company, Obozaya found herself better suited to working with small groups of explorers and adventurers. Small teams mean more glory per person when you succeed, and she often finds herself the sole front-line fighter on a crew, which appeals to both her vanity and her showboating style. As she's fond of saying, battle is too important to leave to amateurs, and Obozaya believes that the best way to win a fight is to move fast and hit hard. Though she's drifted away from Damoritosh's faith in recent years, coming to appreciate some other races' criticisms of the Conqueror, she still adores using his sacred doshko for her close-up fighting.

Personality-wise, Obozaya is a study in contrasts. While she appreciates material wealth and creature comforts, her true desire is for recognition. This is perhaps best exemplified by the holoprojector on her back, which usually projects a modified version of Damoritosh's symbol to advertise her as a warrior for hire, but which is capable of projecting a personalized holographic war-banner in combat to make sure the enemy knows exactly who's coming for them. Brilliant on the battlefield, Obozaya nevertheless finds herself a little slow on the draw in most intellectual pursuits, having little patience for any education not directly related to her vocation. She believes that honor demands honesty, and while she's not against lying by omission, she would rather die than break her word or renege on a contract. In conversations with new people, she's either unnervingly stoic or direct to the point of rudeness, and thinks that most species talk more than they need to as an attempt to cover up their cowardice.

All of which makes it that much more surprising to discover how much her companions adore her. Sure, Obo may explain her loyalty as a mercenary's pragmatism, yet everyone in her crew knows they can count on "the big lizard" to pull them out of a scrape, no matter the cost. As with many vesk, her gruff manner is punctuated with sudden outpourings of emotion, and with her characteristic directness, Obo finds no fear or shame in telling her friends how much she loves them. Much of her life is spent on or training for missions, yet when Obozaya sets out to celebrate a success, it's with her trademark bombastic zeal. Eschewing the berserker drugs favored by some of her kindred, she's nevertheless fond of the Veskarium nose-hookahs sometimes called "dragon's breath," as well as the mildly hallucinogenic brain snails of Vesk-2 and other traditional vesk snacks. More than one bar has been sacrificed to (and well compensated for) her parties, and the heavy bass of her beloved revelaz dance-pop beats is notorious for bursting rivets on ship bulkheads.

James L. Sutter
Creative Director