Starfinder Precog Playtest Closes Soon!

Yay!

My guess, Dex is key ability score but your anchor determines your spell casting stat.

That’d be a fair guess.

Good to haz a chance at free "precog'n" playtestin for SF out there. ;)

Dang. I hope this class can still end up fulfiling a niche still.

Dang. I hope this class can still end up fulfiling a niche still.

It will end up as a gish-style fighter/wizard, which is definitely a niche.

The thing with Starfinder casting is that, with only 6 levels, you can start almost no investment in your casting stat and still theoretically have enough juice to cast every new spell level as it is earned:

Level 1 spells (character level 1): 11 starting casting stat (+1 from theme)
Level 2 & 3 spells (character levels 4 & 7): 13 casting stat (+2 from Mk. 1 upgrade, a level 3 item)
Level 4 & 5 spells (character levels 10 & 13): 15 casting stat (+2 from level-up at level 5 or 10)
Level 6 spells (character level 16): 17 casting stat (+2 from a Mk. 2 upgrade, a level 7 item, or the level 15 level-up bonus)

Granted, if you rely on spells with saving throws, those DCs will not be good, and you won't get very many bonus spells per day, but you will have max Dex, max Resolve, max Paradox and be an all-around badass. And if your spells are mostly Reflecting Armor, Mirror Image, Haste, and Displacement, the DCs don't matter.

But this just unlocks naturally occurring different ways to play the class. You can just as easily max out the spellcasting stat and be a time wizard powerhouse. You still have to sacrifice less key ability than a Solarian, as you're just splitting between Dex and the casting stat instead of Str, Dex, and Cha like the Solarian. Like, with a smart choice in racial bonuses (increasingly easy with alternate racial options these days) you could be 18 casting stat/ 16 Dex, which is more than sufficient for time wizardry with a side of shooty.

Too bad they are taking away Dex casting. Having played it extensively I never found it to be OP

Too bad they are taking away Dex casting. Having played it extensively I never found it to be OP

It's not really a matter of being OP. Casting in general is pretty nerfed in Starfinder (this is not a bad thing, mind you), so a caster class has an uphill battle to be OP in the first place.

It is however contrary to the design themes of the game overall; it simply is not fair to the Mystic, Technomancer, and (especially) the Witchwarper to make a combat stat also a casting stat.

It would be sufficient to make the casting stat be flexible based on the character's anchor (making that mean something other than when you get your one free paradox per day before level 9), meaning that the character could still have a huge number of options in character builds.

Maybe

Dimension of Time - Constitution
Doomed Future - Wisdom
Fragmented Past - Charisma
The Gap - Roll 1d4 each day: 1. Con, 2. Int, 3. Wis, 4. Cha
Timewarped - Intelligence

I almost like the idea of a Precog that can choose their casting stat from among Int, Wis, or Cha rather than having it specified for them by, well, anything.

Like, what if your anchor is a Doomed Future, and your spellcasting comes from your attempts to analyze (Intelligence or Wisdom) or prevent (Charisma) that fate? You could do a lot of cool stuff that way!

It will end up as a gish-style fighter/wizard, which is definitely a niche.

SNIP

Perhaps, perhaps not. If they remove both dex casting & full bab (which seems likely with this forum's reaction), then it will probably be a worse gish than technomancers are. Especially if the class doesn't end up with far better class features than it current possesses.

Everything you say in this post applies to the other casters just as
well, rather than giving Precog a niche.

Taking off my M&MM hat to be a newbie Starfinder GM for a moment... My old school group was introduced to 3.0 psionics where str, dex, con, wis, cha, and int could all be used as prime ability scores for various powers. Now that changed in 3.5, probably because of balance, but it made for a really interesting dex-based rogue teleporter, con-based telekinetic, etc. Precogs were wis-based, so that works for us from a story perspective.

Sad to hear the class loosing the one thing that made it an interesting caster.

Sooooo glad to see Dex casting may be going away. This class will really be able to shine within the system rather than find excuses for its own existence and overshadowing the other casters.

Having played it, there was no interesting choices to be made regarding stats. It was overpowered in comparison to my other shooty casters and just felt like power creep personified.

I'm super excited to see how they mesh the dex focus and spellcasting going forward, something we haven't seen yet (It's been mental focused classes trying to shore up shooty-ness, not the other way around)