Tech Class Playtest Completion

See, I'm not so sure about this choice of art piece, because how am I supposed to focus on these interesting class revisions when there's a sick ass Solar(?) Dragon blasting in my face?!

Three-dimensionality seems like it's gonna be a weird recurring problem for this sort of design space, with the greater allowance for flying creatures and characters and, eventually, exploration of space environments.

Minibots sound fun! A robotic equivalent to pets/familiars to match Drones as robotic companions. I'm immediately envisioning a Minibot Master archetype, surrounded by a halo of tiny drones.

Thanks for the write-up! I'm relieved to see the Technomancer section addressing some of my big concerns. It's been a while since playtesting has had a "requires significant changes", so I was a little worried that the changes needed might be low-balled.

I'd certainly enjoy less feat-intensive drone customization too, but minibots (... Please stop autocorrecting to "mini boys"...) sound like a great addition. The low accessibility of a robot-controlled camera was one of the things that felt off in SF1, and being able to offload some drone jobs to minibots will help!

Who needs aeon stones when you can have minibots!

I'm glad to hear Technomancer is getting some love! Love the idea of minibots, figured it'd be an addition anyway, but this should help out Technomancer a good bit.

Great writeup!

Lengthening the duration of mods and making them usable by allies is great to see, and I'm happy that changes to turrets will be made to make it less confusing. (Still wondering about the fate of the Integrated Weapon Mount drones with area/automatic weapons.)

Also good to see that some of the focus for technomancer is being redirected away from spellshapes, and hopefully this leads to a class that is less slot hungry than even the PF2e wizard. Also, I get the sneaking suspicion that minibots will be Starfinder's equivalent to familiars.

Thank the Lord that mods and turrets are getting worked out. Mechanic damage was way too reliant on mods, which I found mostly unusable.

It kind of defeats the purpose of having a turret if you have to stand next to it all the time to buff it.

I hope ya'll aren't going too far away from the jailbreak spellshapes, they were the best part!

Would honestly LOVE some Technomancer abilities that simulate the abilities of Technomancers from Babylon 5! Summoning solid hologram monsters, electrocuting foes, and even having a protective forcefield all sound awesome!

One quick question though? Will caster classes like Technomancer and Mystic have access to spell levels higher than 6th? I can understand the need to cut down on the sheer power 7th, 8th, 9th, and even 10th spell slots can give but maybe there might be a way to limit that (aka make 7th, 8th, and 9th spell slots usable only once a day and even 10th level spell slots a powerful ritual perhaps)?

One quick question though? Will caster classes like Technomancer and Mystic have access to spell levels higher than 6th? I can understand the need to cut down on the sheer power 7th, 8th, 9th, and even 10th spell slots can give but maybe there might be a way to limit that (aka make 7th, 8th, and 9th spell slots usable only once a day and even 10th level spell slots a powerful ritual perhaps)?

...the answer is that Starfinder 2e casters have the same rank progression as a Pathfinder ones.

One quick question though? Will caster classes like Technomancer and Mystic have access to spell levels higher than 6th? I can understand the need to cut down on the sheer power 7th, 8th, 9th, and even 10th spell slots can give but maybe there might be a way to limit that (aka make 7th, 8th, and 9th spell slots usable only once a day and even 10th level spell slots a powerful ritual perhaps)?

SF1 casters didn't only go up to 6th level spells because of power, but because of space. 1st through 8th got re-scaled to 1st through 6th and 9th became capstone abilities.

I am in love with the playtest Technomancer and I really hope the team doesn't go too far away from it. Especially, when concerning spellshapes. Jailbreaking the perfect perfect spell is the single most fun I have ever had in SF2e and PF2e and cemented the playtest Technomancer as my favorite class.

Significant changes to Technomancer is music to my ears. The class is SO important for selling that melding of magic and sci-fi at the heart of Starfinder's identity, but the playtest draft was deeply troubled.

Excited to see the final result!

I hope they let Mechanic use Intelligence for its Attack Rolls, like Investigator, as currently it is a very Multiple Attribute Dependant class which is frankly at odds with the system (Key Attribute Score and the skill system for the main examples).
Having a -1 compared to other martials is fine, being made to invest in 2 stats just to end up only as strong as classes dependent on a single stat isn't great.
Yes, other classes with this problem exist. No, that does not mean it is not a problem.

As for Technomancer, Ammo Infector Virus should have been a spellshape ability and they should be able to mail themselves.

I'm VERY happy to hear about these changes for both classes.

I really really appreciate the clarity between "we ARE going to do quality of life upgrades to let mines hit flying enemies" vs "we heard that people want to mod equipment for their team, so we're going to TRY to see how to do that". It really helps set my expectations.

I also respect being willing to admit that the Technnomancer is action-starved and kind of difficult to use. I actually don't have too much of a problem with the Technomancer
keeping its mechanical niche focused on Spellshapes, but it's way less important to me than being able to integrate with tech more.

So happy to see the Technomancer is getting a re-write! The previews listed cover all of my major concerns, so that's a huge relief.

Glad mech is getting a slight brush up and bit more juice with mods. Really felt mostly solid and almost ready to ship. More utility and downtime modding is the only extra thing I really wanted from the class.

Thank you for this write-up. I'm particularly happy to read that the Technomancer is getting some more significant changes and more interaction with tech. Very much looking forward to seeing how both classes turn out in the final release!

Glad you've taken notice of the issues with both classes, though I am still concerned that you haven't mentioned the issues with Robot Companions.

On a mostly unrelated note, Minibots sound kind of like purchasable Familiars. I wonder how they're going to compare once we actually see them in action.

Glad you've taken notice of the issues with both classes, though I am still concerned that you haven't mentioned the issues with Robot Companions.

On a mostly unrelated note, Minibots sound kind of like purchasable Familiars. I wonder how they're going to compare once we actually see them in action.

For posterity's sake, which issues are you referring to?

Super excited by this blog! I'm especially glad to hear about technomancer. It sounds like there will be some other paths that don't rely so much on juggling spellshapes, which I'm glad to see. I'm hoping there will be a more and less complicated way for technos to play so folks can build one according to how much they want to engage with that complexity.

{. . .} I'd certainly enjoy less feat-intensive drone customization too, but minibots (... Please stop autocorrecting to "mini boys"...) sound like a great addition. {. . .}

Off-topic, but related in a back-handed way -- this reminds me of an ongoing problem: I am Entertainment Chair for the Boston Street Railway Association, and I take notes for the Entertainment, which as you might imagine often features the buildings where streetcars are stored, which are often called "carhouses" . . . and AutoCorrect in Apple Pages (competitor to Microsoft Word) keeps changing this to "cathouses". Very embarrassing when I send one of these in for review and missed an instance of where this happened.

QuidEst wrote:

{. . .} I'd certainly enjoy less feat-intensive drone customization too, but minibots (... Please stop autocorrecting to "mini boys"...) sound like a great addition. {. . .}

Off-topic, but related in a back-handed way -- this reminds me of an ongoing problem: I am Entertainment Chair for the Boston Street Railway Association, and I take notes for the Entertainment, which as you might imagine often features the buildings where streetcars are stored, which are often called "carhouses" . . . and AutoCorrect in Apple Pages (competitor to Microsoft Word) keeps changing this to "cathouses". Very embarrassing when I send one of these in for review and missed an instance of where this happened.

Slightly ridiculous idea for a Starfinder Affliction: something (virus or curse) which causes you to involuntarily replace words with similarly-spelled substitutes. At first it's just frustrating and inconvenient, but as the aflliction worsens, more hazardous words are used instead... there's a lot of things in the world that don't like it when you say their names...

With Robot companions, I think Pathmaster is referring to their progression and how that progression compares to animal companions. The Robot companions used very different terms and traits than animal companions did, so It was difficult to understand if they were similar.

I would imagine the Mini-bot will be similar to the pet feat. yeah, it's a minion, but the abilities you can give it are very limited. Though given it's also an item, I would think you could pay to upgrade it to a higher item level which would then be able to have more abilities? Theory.

As someone who (way too harshly) defended the playtest designs, I'm happy to hear the pain points everyone was talking about are being addressed. more tech was a huge desire from the technomancer, and while I would argue there was nothing stopping you from placing mines in the air, a lot of people didn't see it that way (and I don't blame them, while I was right, RAW, it's unclear RAI and that is important too)

So will Technomancers keep their unique Spellshape features? It to me is what makes them different then all other casters current in their extreme focus upon them. Removing them would make it feel like a Technological Wizard instead of a Technomancer to me personally.

So will Technomancers keep their unique Spellshape features? It to me is what makes them different then all other casters current in their extreme focus upon them. Removing them would make it feel like a Technological Wizard instead of a Technomancer to me personally.

I personally feel the opposite way: the current Technomancer's excessive focus on spellshapes is what made them feel too close to a spellshaping Wizard to me, especially as their more interesting components were being sidelined. I'd still like to see their spellshape feats kept, but I hope the playtest summary's statement of shifting them away from spellshapes means those spellshapes become fully optional, and the Technomancer's new focus will be on abilities that are markedly different from the Wizard's.

ElementalofCuteness wrote:

So will Technomancers keep their unique Spellshape features? It to me is what makes them different then all other casters current in their extreme focus upon them. Removing them would make it feel like a Technological Wizard instead of a Technomancer to me personally.

I personally feel the opposite way: the current Technomancer's excessive focus on spellshapes is what made them feel too close to a spellshaping Wizard to me, especially as their more interesting components were being sidelined. I'd still like to see their spellshape feats kept, but I hope the playtest summary's statement of shifting them away from spellshapes means those spellshapes become fully optional, and the Technomancer's new focus will be on abilities that are markedly different from the Wizard's.

Yeah, I agree with this! The playtest Technomancer was a class with some really interesting features (and some quite broken ones!)... that ultimately felt like it should've been called "Spellhacker". There was a real gulf between the class fantasy in name and theme versus what its mechanics actually touched.

Teridax wrote:

ElementalofCuteness wrote:

So will Technomancers keep their unique Spellshape features? It to me is what makes them different then all other casters current in their extreme focus upon them. Removing them would make it feel like a Technological Wizard instead of a Technomancer to me personally.

I personally feel the opposite way: the current Technomancer's excessive focus on spellshapes is what made them feel too close to a spellshaping Wizard to me, especially as their more interesting components were being sidelined. I'd still like to see their spellshape feats kept, but I hope the playtest summary's statement of shifting them away from spellshapes means those spellshapes become fully optional, and the Technomancer's new focus will be on abilities that are markedly different from the Wizard's.

Yeah, I agree with this! The playtest Technomancer was a class with some really interesting features (and some quite broken ones!)... that ultimately felt like it should've been called "Spellhacker". There was a real gulf between the class fantasy in name and theme versus what its mechanics actually touched.

I agree as well. The playtest Technomancer could have been released almost as-is as some kind of specialty wizard archetype and no one would have batted an eye.

The class definitely needs improvements, but I'll be a little bummed if the underlying chassis changes too much. Technomancer has a lot of great ideas and mechanics, but a number of them just don't feel worth the effort.

Like at the end of the day one of the biggest differences between "Janky action economy" and "versatile" is just how good those actions feel to use and how wide the toolkit is and the Technomancer suffered on both ends, even if the actual ideas were solid.

A little concerned the mechanic writeup has no mention of drones. Robot companion rules felt incomplete, their progression kind of fell apart and it felt like they were missing tools especially at high levels, and investing in customizations was way too expensive, especially with some of the customizations being low value/flavor first. It wasn't in a terrible place but there were enough gaps, frustrations, and unanswered questions it's a little worrying that there's no mention at all.

I would personally like to see the return of junk magic

I would personally like to see the return of junk magic

Now you've got me thinking of this vision of perverted Technomancers that cast spells through the sending of spam . . . .

It's shocking that this class was ever playtested with 3 spell slots and 6 HP when the core spellcasters are launching with 4. The weakness and incoherence of hte class on that chassis were a very strong argument that the core clases had been brought down to the same chassis. (Mystic did catch a HP cut.)

An Android wrote:

I would personally like to see the return of junk magic

Now you've got me thinking of this vision of perverted Technomancers that cast spells through the sending of spam . . . .

Now's my chance to be a Big Shot...