HolyFlamingo!'s page

I don't think the overall number of classes is a problem (original D&D launched with just three and still did its thing just fine), but each member of the current selection still feels a little awkward, and the lineup doesn't really cover all the essential fantasies one might have about being a space adventurer (cough couch techie classes).

I think, if I had the same time/resource restrictions as the SF2 team, I would have launched with just four classes: envoy, soldier, mystic, and mechanic. I would have been sure to really flesh these options out to be adaptable to multiple character fantasies each, so that you could feasibly have duplicate classes within the party occupying different roles. For example, a soldier could be either a stealth specialist or melee bruiser (only somewhat possible now). All future supplements could build up from this all-purpose core.

Yeah, 1e books were much prettier, albeit more difficult to navigate. I do really enjoy the legibility of stat blocks in PF2, but sometimes they give off a bit of a high school textbook vibe. Reading can feel more like studying than playing a game.

A bigger design miss for me is the 2e character sheet. The remaster dramatically improved it, but the legacy version was a downright eyesore, both unpleasant to behold and difficult to navigate. I miss the crisp and utilitarian 1e sheet, despite it being so intimidatingly dense.

The problem with ban lists is that they require additional game knowledge that isn't present in official materials. Thus, the people who need it most--brand new GMs--are least likely to have it.

Circling back to what I said earlier about over/underpowered options, I'd like to acknowledge that, yes, stronger and weirder options are part of Starfinder's appeal. Furthermore, a lot of PF2's ancestries (especially the earlier ones) are far too conservatively tuned, to the point that they undermine their own point for existing (see: strix). So there's a balance to be struck here: we want to see the core fantasy of each ancestry fulfilled, but we don't want any of them to have clear supremacy over any other. Erring towards safety and stability may result in a boring, disappointing game, but erring towards making things fun and genuinely different can introduce the kind of toxic powercreep I mentioned yesterday. It's difficult to thread that needle.

I'll probably make a seperate thread about elebrians at some point, as I believe there's a lot more wrong with the ancestry than just being way too strong. I think they'd make a good case study in bad ancestry design. Thing is, most people don't have access to Guilt of the Grave World yet, and I'd feel bad dunking on something that isn't even officially out yet.

After giving it some thought, I came to a couple conclusions re: badly balanced ancestries.

1. When it comes to core character functionality, your ancestry does not matter all that much. You could give yourself a generic 8HP/2ft movement/2 boosts with zero extra senses, heritage perks, or ancestry feats and still do mostly fine (hell, some builds can even get away with 6HP/20ft). This is because the bulk of your power comes from your class, with ancestries mostly providing some fun little bells and whistles. You can also just buy flight or darkvision if you want it, so at worst a bad ancestry amounts to a few extra expenses here and there. So, a fairly small, manageable nerf in the name of flavor. No big deal.

2. Problems emerge, however, when one ancestry does everything another ancestry does, except either better or with more goodies on the side (as is the case with vesk versus dragonkin, pointed out in the OP by Squiggit). This means that you are actively missing out if you choose the weaker version. That can lead to some sour feelings, especially when both the stronger and weaker option are present at the same table. The weaker player might feel like their ancestry is dead weight, or like they're being punished for choosing flavor over function. In a game that includes dozens of wacky alien species as part of its sales pitch, making a player feel bad for choosing the wrong one is unacceptable.

This leads me to conclude that undertuned ancestries are safer than overtuned ones. An undertuned option is a mild inconvenience at worst, only ever rendering itself undesirable. But an overtuned option is actively poison, as it has the potential to ruin multiple ancestries around it. This could get really bad for Society play in particular, as (excluding core rulebook options) players need to purchase specific books in order to gain access to the ancestries within. Not only is this pay-to-win (and *steep* pay-to-win at that, given how costly these books are), but it can lead to a lot of resentment if the thing someone spent $20-$90 for is powercrept by something else a year later.

All that said, vesk are still a little more popular than dragonkin at the tables I've seen so far, likely because they're free and come with a lot of fun lore and flavor (people find the ornery warmongers endearing). Flight and darkvision are also not exactly gamebreaking thanks to flashlights and pistols being dirt cheap. So while I sounded very doom and gloom above, the reality isn't so dire... yet. I nonetheless encourage the Starfriends to be careful, and am especially on guard after reading Guilt of the Grave World.

Just wait until you see what Guilt of the Grave World brought to the table: one level 9 elebrian ancestry feat gives them a better than 50% chance to negate a crit as a reaction.

It's kind of annoying as a GM because I prefer to be able to trust Paizo to do the balancing for me, but with SF2 I find myself doing a lot of buffing and nerfing. I don't like this extra work, but the game feels fragile and unhealthy without it.

The Abomination Arsenal is still my favorite campaign write-up of all time, so getting to revisit it with this reflection blog was a nice treat.

Alright, so trying to summarize everyone's gripes so far: damage is a little too low, weapon traits are a little too stingy, and special moves (locked behind class feats) are spread a bit too thinly to make up for either shortcoming. So we're left with a kit that could be great if at least one of those things were better, but all aspects being just slightly undertuned makes for an underwhelming package. Does that sound right?

This is for the people complaining, mind you; it looks like plenty of folk are satisfied with the kit as-is.

I think this is definitely a side-effect of discord discussions vs play experience.

Not to hurl dueling anecdotes at you or anything, but the only reason I checked the math is because I noticed a handful of solarian players struggling. I wanted to confirm that I wasn't imagining things.

Again, I don't think it's so undertuned that it's unplayable--and the playstyle it enables is legitimately fun and flashy and cool--but there is a problem, enough that I want to experiment with some homebrew tune-ups to see if I can nail the feel.

It's awesome that you're having fun with the class as-is. I've personally had some great times with "bad" classes myself (to the point that I legitimately had no idea what the community's problem was), but I still think solarians could use a little boost, preferably an official one for my SFS players' sakes.

Yep, it's a little undertuned. Not to the point of unusability, but enough that the class feels... off. Even at level one, solarians seem to lag behind the other martials despite allegedly being melee specialists. I've noticed a couple of my SFS players (but not all!) walking away from the table feeling a bit disappointed in their characters.

I was the one who checked the math in that one Discord server, so there are numbers to back up my feelings: the class comes close, but it's not quite enough. An extra starting power and slightly more damage would likely close the gap.

Welcome aboard! And yep, Paizo store's the only place to buy scenarios. The subscription just automatically buys the modules for you. There's no extra cost or savings since the product line is entirely digital; you're fine just buying stuff a la carte. You can get them for free if you're subscribed to multiple rulebook lines or are an official venture agent, but the former's a lot of money, while the latter's a time commitment. That said, if you're thinking of running your games as a Starfinder Society gig, those local orgplay friends you mentioned might be able to hook you up.

There aren't any VTT modules for the post-release scenarios... yet. However, the playtest module includes all four playtest scenarios and two multi-session adventures, and I can confirm that the production value is pretty solid. I've personally been playing on Foundry, which doesn't have a full SF2e system yet, but does have an add-on for Pathfinder 2e that works just as well in the meantime (the two games use the same core rules, so it's easy to mix and match). Even without a module, though, it's pretty easy to rip maps from scenario PDFs and upload them into your VTT of choice. They're a little low-res, but they work (although you can always buy higher res versions separately if you want; I just never do).

Right now, I think the best character manager is Hephaistos 2e (sf2e.hephaistos.online). It's still in development, but it's the most approachable of the small pool of current options. Eventually, there will be a Starbuilder app that works a lot like Pathbuilder (pathbuilder2e.com), but that likely won't come out for another month or two (both Hephaistos and Pathbuilder are solo projects maintained by dedicated fans). Hero Lab is probably fine--some of my Society players use it--but I've never touched it myself.

As for registering and reporting your sessions as part of Starfinder Society, you don't have to do that... unless you think it'd be neat to have your players bring their home-made characters to official convention tables. The whole process is pretty easy to set up (albeit a little archaic). But yeah, all you need is a Paizo account ID number from everybody to get started; the whole point of organized play is to be accessible to everyone. The only extra step I had to take as an in-person organized play GM was ask a few senior members to help me get set up at a local venue. You can read about specific rules and expectations at lorespire.paizo.com, but for a closed table like yours, all you really need to know is how credit and XP awards work.

Things like a subclass or an entire grouping of weapons seem to me to be a space issue. The SF2e Player Core page count is the same as the PF2e Player Core, so I'm guessing the page count was set from the start of development.

Yes. That's what I meant by "wrestling with the page count." Getting everything to fit and deciding what had to go was likely very difficult.

Wait, wait, it does? I noticed that happening in the Galaxy Guide, but in the GM Core too?

Yep: Hotshot envoy subclass, Fabricator feat, injection weapons. It's likely just a byproduct of having a very tight, very messy production schedule. I wouldn't be surprised if the authors were wrestling with Player Core's page count up until the very last second, well after its sister books had already gone to the printer.

The GM Core references subclasses, feats, and weapons that were cut from the final release of Player Core. It definitely went to print much earlier, so it wouldn't surprise me if plans have changed since then.

Ooh, loved that bit of micro-fiction, Quid! Figuring out how radically different biologies and cultures would use technology and coexist with each other is one of my favorite parts of science fiction.

Something I haven't seen mentioned yet: haptic suits. Smell has poor temporal resolution because it lingers in the air, but touch is immediate. A haptic feedback device could deliver environmental information rapidly, even within vacuum.

For example, let's say a deafblind vlaka is repairing a satellite: their haptic suit could--through vibration location, strength, and pattern--coordinate with suit-mounted cameras and lidar scans to tell them the size, shape, position, and velocity of nearby debris.

I knew the reptoid removal was coming (Dustin Knight talked about it over Discord quite a few months ago), but the loss of grays is new to me. It really sucks that bad actors at public tables and the increasing violence and mainstream power of conspiracy theorists IRL has made these two iconic pop culture aliens unsalvageable in Paizo's eyes (although TBH reptoids should have probably never been included in the first place, as the antisemitic association was still plenty obvious in 2017). It's probably healthier for the game to not include elements so easily abused or associated with ugly real-life stuff, but as someone who has a soft spot for ufology, it's still a bummer.

At least Pazio was smart enough to never include Pleiadeans/Nordics or the Annunaki. Those guys make the jump from plausibly deniable antisemitism to full-on white supremacy! I was actually kind of shocked to see the munavri included in PF2, as they reference a similar conspiracy BS milieau.

Funny aside about David Icke: As disastrously stupid and wrong as he is, he's since backpedaled on the antisemitism and has been trying to divorce his "theory" from its unfortunate associations, going so far as to take public swings at other prominent conspiracy theorists for their even more blatant antisemitism! I'm not expecting an IRL redemption arc from the dude or anything, but it's interesting (and kind of scary?) to see one of the world's top antisemites basically admit that things have gone too far.

The sniper operative reminds me of PF2's magus, tbh: ridiculous damage potential choked out by brutal action taxes.

I think the subclass still works, but you kind of have to accept that you need to choose between aiming and reloading on some turns (like when Hair Trigger pops and you start your turn with an empty mag). That said, I'm considering not tracking ammo in my home games at all because it's frankly ridiculous for a neolithic weapon to have better action economy than a futuristic one.

I hope Paizo's bold with their ancestry. I was really delighed by the commander and guardian, and would love to see something with a different relationship to death and corpses than typical. So, an iruxi or kholo would be neat.

THE TIME IS NOW!

Unfortunately, I don't get my paycheck until tomorrow, so I can't get it until then.

Don't worry, Archives of Nethys has pulled through surprisingly ahead of schedule: https://2e.aonsrd.com/

Well, the first of the big online community tools just dropped:

https://2e.aonsrd.com/

Some ancestries (humans lol) can sometimes sneak in an extra lv1 class feat. So, spellcasters have lv1 feats, even if most of them can't pick them up until lv2.

1. "Let the modders GMs fix it." is not a common sense fix. It is the Bethesda/WotC motto.

Too late! Book's published. Getting your hands dirty is the only available solution (unless you wanna just sit around and beg Paizo for errata, but like, what are you gonna do in the meantime?).

2. I literally have no homebrew in this this thread. So I have no idea what the last sentence even means?

You literally posted a proposed fix about the prismeni ability not affecting fuel stores or broken components. What is that if not homebrew?

Like, it's okay to be mad about a broken feature making it all the way to publication. I agree that the heritage perk is problematic. But it's hypocritical to bash other people for trying to help you fix it while proposing a fix yourself. Unless the only way you'd actually be satisfied is if Paizo canonized your homebrew, in which case... come on, dude. No company is going to just yoink stuff off the forums and publish it. Ethically and legally, that's a nightmare.

Pardon me if anyone else has already said this (I got a little worn out by the back-and-forth so wound up skipping most of the more recent posts), but I did manage to think of an out-of-combat use case for simple, damaging traps: escalation of danger.

It's true that a hazard that doesn't do enough to take somebody out is basically just a time sink, while traps that kill you instantly are kind of unfair and annoying in a game where building a character can take hours. But there's, like, a spectrum between the two, right? So, you could have a series of simple hazards that steadily increase in damage as the party gets closer to their goal. The first one might be a case of "yeah, whatever, lay on hands, let's keep moving," but the second might do more than that, and the third even more, until failing to navigate the hazard(s) could very well result in death. I feel like steadily ramping up the danger like this could help add tension and encourage the party to explore and problem-solve more thoughtfully.

This, of course, doesn't negate the fact that old-school sensibilities don't mesh well with PF2's design, but it was interesting to come up with a use case for a flawed subsystem regardless.

I fear the forever GMs are the ones most opposed to common sense fixes and PF2 design in general. Because if we don't put asteroids in the Starpath of new GMs, that means you don't need their experience to be a good GM.

Seriously? You have an entire thread of people giving you common sense fixes for a rules-as-written issue, and you're accusing them of gatekeeping because they didn't like your specific homebrew?

Like, I was in agreement that adventure-negating abilities like create water and talking corpse are bad design--specifically because banning or writing around those options is unneccesary extra work--but you're such an unpleasant person that I feel dirty giving you an inch.

Congrats! Also, ooh, it being a solo game makes it easier to fit into my schedule. And both the core and expansion are on sale for less than five bucks each!

Sarenrae gets a passing mention in the backmatter of Murder in Metal City. No new stats or anything, but apparently she's surprisingly big with anacites, who are solar-powered.

Got mine! Haven't had the chance to read it yet, so I've just been CTRL-Fing the PDF to answer questions for Discord buddies. I was pretty critical at first, but the more I read the more I like.

They had a seperate playtest this spring. They'll be in Tech Core, which comes out sometime next year. It's a weird split, but tech and mech proved to be difficult to design, and thus needed more time in the oven.

Yep, 37 if we add SF2 and its two playtest classes to the count. Personally, that number irritates me on account of it being prime; I want to neatly sort everyone into cute, equally-sized parties. So if the next book after necro/smith could just do one class, that'd be great.

If classes are not designed to do relatively equal damage or effectiveness, it's much harder to design encounters to challenge the stronger class and the weaker class at the same time. Which is why the unequal damage is a problem.

Okay. Two problems here. First, it's not just hard to design an encounter to challenge two different classes equally--it's impossible! So stop trying! Let players take turns in the spotlight. So long as you're not consistently bullying the same character over and over (by over-prioritizing single-target damage, for example), you'll be fine.

(Sidebar: That 90/10 number you gave me is super uncomfortable. That's how often you deviate from your preferred encounter style? Ten percent of the time? Bruh.)

Second, you have created a skewed play environment by teaching your players that single-target damage is the only metric that matters. Judging each other's performances by who has the biggest numbers is a habit that a lot of GMs try to train players out of. The problems you're running into now are a result of not nipping that in the bud. That isn't to say that it's badwrongfun to run how you run, just that you've reinforced certain behaviors through your GM style that impact how players approach the game. And this isn't unique to you: every long-term play group is a freak little ecosystem that evolves habits and idiosyncrasies that don't translate to other tables.

For example, I tend to pump up encounter difficulty by forcing players to split their attention. It's something I have to do, because my regular play group is large enough that they can overwhelm me with sheer action economy. In fights where I don't split them up, they brutalize enemies one by one while shrugging off most AoEs thanks to sky-high reflex saves on one half of the team and strong elemental resistances on the other. This habit of mine--combined with the fact that it's common to be down a different player every time thanks to scheduling issues--has prompted my players to prioritize independence, flexibility, and high mobility (as mentioned previously).

Of course, now that I've skewed the play experience for so long, this party is now bad at the kind of force multiplication that your party absolutely crushes. So if I switched to fewer, harder, concentrated targets as you do, they wouldn't have the tools to blend through them like an "optimized" party does. This means that I ironically have to be really careful when I put together a boss fight (the thing I pivoted away from because they were getting way too easy), as the tools they'd need to succeed as easily as your party does have atrophied in the face of unique selection pressures--they've all evolved into generalists! The two characters who'd thrive during boss battles due to their spiky, easy-to-support nature--the rogue and magus--both changed classes!

Stronger characters perform well regardless of if you build to counter the group. The relative strength will still show through making encounters equally difficult to design.

Do you know how easy it is to make a rogue look like a chump? Precision immunity. All-around vision. Focused fire from multiple, distant targets. That last one in particular is nasty, as although rogues have incredible saving throws towards the endgame, they have so-so AC and limited reactions. Counteract their buffs if you want to get cheeky.

You're experienced enough with the system now that you can start getting experimental with victory conditions and monster/map design. The fact that your players have a locked-in routine that always succeeds is proof that you hit the natural limits of the default system, and it's time to mix things up.

Now, since you're Dual Classing, your players have likely shored up their weaker defenses, in which case you've broken the game (congrats) and will probably need to compensate with an inflated encounter budget. More guys on the field means more chances to break through those universally good saves, more difficulty for single-target aficionados, and more chances for those classes you specifically dunked on to shine. Try the split attention trick I (unfortunately) overused. It works so well that it eventually turned my boss-crushers into boss-crushees (oops).

I know encounter design extremely well. I have been DMing for 40 years with never an empty table. Should be apparent as I'm still playing 40 years later with a full table. I make an entertaining and challenging game.

40 years is plenty of time for your own habits to become invisible to you. I played under a guy who was similarly seasoned once. I thought it was really weird that I was the only one acting in character at his table at first, but it turned out the dude just didn't roleplay. My attempts to actually interact with NPCs like they were people tripped him up, and any out-of-combat creative problem solving I tried was met with confusion and hesitation because he straight up didn't know how to improvise. This was a veteran, paid GM with a ton of accolades. His regular players loved him! He'd been running at conventions since before I was born! And yet he just... had this huge gap in his skills because he never really needed them: he only ever ran pre-written adventures with a focus on sticking to RAW and not deviating from the material. Those conventions where he honed his GMing style prioritized speed, consistency, and sticking to the script; otherwise he risked not getting through the modules on time. It took me some time to adapt to his table's expectations and not feel like something was missing. Again, freak little ecosystems: this guy was a great GM according to his regulars, but to me--someone who'd mostly played casual homebrew up to that point--he felt weird.

So, you're weird, Deri. I'm weird. Everybody's GMing style is real freakin' weird when compared to their peers. You can keep the same group of players perfectly happy for decades and still have outsiders treat you like an alien. Like, I'd be bored out of my mind at a table that expected me to create and stick to an MMO-like routine, and you'd probably find my encounters annoyingly overdesigned and gimmicky.

If anyone has a forum you can go to where people discuss the numbers and how to maximize them for PF2, let me know.

Okay, so great news actually--those discussions exist! Reddit loves that stuff (so long as you ignore the handful of people who will accuse you of badwrongfun for trying to minmax). YouTubers SwingRipper and Mathfinder are also really analysis-heavy, and SwingRipper has his own Discord community that discusses character builds and party optimization. I'm sure there are tons more, but you're definitely not alone in wanting to squeeze every ounce of mathematical efficiency out of your party.

As for me, I find that stuff interesting in theory, but stifling in practice. Like Blue_frog alluded to, a solved game is a boring one. Hence why I tend to rely on lateral rather than vertical difficulty for encounter design and avoid meta builds myself.

Torradin341, the cancelled SF1 book you're thinking of was a guide to in-universe factions like the Stewards and Hellknights. There was also a planar guide in the works, as well as early concepts for a heavy armor caster. I can't find the source right now because I've already lied about going to bed twice tonight, but in one of the earlier interviews with SF2's designers, Thurston Hillman talked about how they had to quickly shift production and repurpose whatever they could. A lot of the information about factions and loose mechanical elements for their related archetypes made it into the Galaxy Guide.

Chiming in to support this - I recall Deriven having similar issues with the Summoner, another self-contained class.

Yes! I remember that thread as well! And I kind of had the opposite experience, where I was consistently getting good results with "bad" classes because I was choosing to plug compositional holes in unbalanced parties rather than try to leverage some kind of high-power meta build. Back in 2020, my chirurgeon alchemist--the "worst" the CRB had to offer according to discussions at the time--was MVP of our Age of Ashes run. And I'm not a particularly good player or anything; I just saw that we needed a guy who could cover elemental damage, skills, and healing. Playing something more "optimal" would have left one of those roles unattended or forced my friends (all first-time players) to abandon their lovingly crafted characters.

The summoner I GM for (in the same party as my wife's fire/air kineticist) is similarly doing really well. This is another group where everyone was pretty inexperienced and just made cool OCs, without much thought of what the rest of the party was doing besides avoiding doubling up on classes. Add to that, it's a large group with spotty per-person attendance, so of the six total players, a random assortment of three to five of them shows up on any given week. Having dedicated roles within the party wouldn't work for them, as any individual piece of the puzzle is likely to go missing at some point. This has resulted in all of them converging on independent, sustainable, flexible builds, each with a splash of support that can cover for absentee characters without being essential to party functioning overall.

SNIPPED: Description of rockstar gunslinger party.

Your gunslinger-centric party sounds like how the game is "supposed" to be played, according to meta discussions. It looks very similar to what whiteroom experts would recommend, but as you described it's very sensitive to being knocked off-rhythm. Honestly, that's something that surprises me about Deriven's combat breakdowns: there aren't many instances of his group ever experiencing that sort of thing. I know Inkfist accused Deriven's GM of softballing combats, but I don't think there's any shortage of Extreme+ encounters in his games. Rather, I think it's a case of player skill outstripping the GM. Challenging high-level players isn't as rough as in PF2's sister games (3.5, 5e, Starfinder 1e, etc), but it is tricky, especially if you hand the players a bunch of extra tools (Dual Class) without spoiling yourself as well. This isn't to say Deriven's GM sucks, just that they likely have some predictable habits that a gang of hardcore optimizers can easily play around: I've noticed Deriven talking a lot about how solo boss encounters are the only ones that matter to the story, for example. He and his buddies have perfectly adapted to that environment, just like my players have adapted to their chaotic availability and my own idiosyncrasies (like oversharing on RK checks, lol).

That said, I believe that the kineticist has something to offer boss-killing parties. Up until the commander, air kineticist was the only at-will way of moving allies out of turn, meaning they can deliver your hasted melee rogue or flurry ranger right to the target so they don't even need to move. That seems an important role! This is all theory, since I'm an eternal GM, but I'm curious if that works.

Ah yes, the thread topic! Wood/water/earth kinnies have a ton of forced movement/area lockdown abilities as well, and most elements have some kind of defensive buff for either themselves or the whole party. Even fire has some supportive options (such as Kindle Inner Flames) to enhance party mobility and damage. The fire aura can also specifically be specced to just do damage with no saving throw attached, and while it isn't a lot, that kind of reliability is important when attacking something with approximately six million AC.

That said, fire kinnies are still at their best when they get to move around and attack multiple targets. So, they're going to suffer a bit against solo bosses, which sucks for Deriven because that's what he seems to value the most. Although--sidebar!--wondering about why my wife's fire/air guy never struggled made me realize that I vary rarely run solo bosses, as I'm almost always running with a larger group, so solo encounters are really hard to make fun and challenging without invoking field hazards or being genuinely unfair.

Rambly post is rambly. Apologies for the yapping. Going to bed now.

QUICK EDIT: Deriven has since stated that he DMs more than he plays. In which case, it's probably his habits that players are noticing and responding to. In which case, now that he's noticed a problem with the class, I recommend he take the next step: Mix up encounter design a bit. Try more targets in less cramped maps. Experiment. Use your game knowledge to bend and push specific creature abilities. Whip out, like, way too many troops with some attached leaders for extra sauce. Go nuts.

(I lied about going to bed right away. Heading there now. Nobody post anything else interesting until 7am US Central.)

If there's two whole sections of 1e jargon being used in the same 2e ancestry, then I truly know in my heart that this is a Paizo game. If they somehow managed to go a whole product without printing something that Literally Doesn't Work, I would get deeply suspicious about the company.

LMAO! But yeah, they were easy enough to translate into 2e-isms. "Strength 16" obviously means Strength +3, and "move action" just means one action. It might trip up brand new players, but even they will probably figure it out or just houserule a reasonable alternative.

I would like... a little more polish in my $35 product, but I don't feel ripped off or anything.

Yeah, reading over this thread, it seems like the bigger issue isn't that kinnies are lacking in single target damage (it's a little on the stingy side but still a fair tradeoff for everything else they can do), but that they're much harder to support.

You can build an entire party around a rogue, thanks to how much of the rogue's kit is centered around exploiting advantages created by teammates. So, in a party that works together well--providing buffs, debuffs, positioning, et cetera--the rogue goes off like a hydrogen bomb.

Kinnies just kinda... operate about the same... regardless of how much the party invests in them. Which makes sense as they're designed to be the self-sufficient, fit-anywhere, go-all-day class, but it hurts them in hyper-optimized parties. You don't need area control and multi-target blasts if you have a wizard. You don't need perpetual healing if you have a cleric. You don't need defense if you have a champion or guardian. Kinnies pay to have access to all these things at once by giving up single-target damage and skill progression--two things rogues really excel at--but that access just isn't needed in a gang of dedicated specialists.

Add to that, kinnies benefit less from party buffs and such because impulse blasts don't count as strikes for some reason (which is easily fixable via houserule, but a lot of people prefer to run RAW for one reason or another). Plus they don't really have any abilities that ping off of receiving support (save for the usual "get them to clump up and lower their saves" stuff that every caster appreciates). So instead of the rogue's massive spikes in efficacy (which become baseline in an especially coordinated party), kinnies just run at a consistent, reliable pace that ramps up nicely when there are multiple opponents on the field, but that's it.

So like... is the kineticist bad? On the contrary, I'd say it's excellent: it's consistently been the star performer in my home game and PFS sessions. But these are, notably, not hyper-optimized environments: my close friends and local society members are just playing what looks cool. Thus, a class that can easily take on multiple roles without asking for much from the party in return does a great job. My wife's hyper-mobile AoE machine fire/air kinnie will probably fall off if the allied druid and monk ever figure out how to coordinate, and that one wood kineticist who keeps showing up at my FLGS on Friday nights absolutely rocks unless he's asked to share space with more dedicated defenders and healers.

Meanwhile, in these more casual environments, rogues have kind of... sucked? They're too weak defensively to handle the frontline by themselves, they absolutely need a measure of team support and coordination to keep their spiky damage consistent, and while the skills are nice, most casual/PFS environments have multiple ways around a problem, so you're rarely screwed for lacking coverage. So this absolute monster of a class in the hands of an expert turns out to be kind of "meh" for casuals and beginners.

So like... I don't think Deriven Firelion is wrong to notice kinnies underperforming in his personal games. They're designed to flexibly fit into any party and sustainably provide whatever their chosen elements are good at. However, they don't spike. That means an optimized party--one that bends the game into making those spikes happen as often as possible--has little need for them.

Is this lack of spikiness a design failure? I don't know! I kind of like having classes that are so accessible and immediately impactful for new players, and I love my jacks-of-all-trades that can help hold unbalanced parties together and open up more options for everyone else. Seeing kineticists drop off as coordinated players gain system mastery is a bummer, but every class's success is dependent on having the right play environment (see: 90% of optimized martial builds becoming exercises in misery as soon as you take away caster support and give a bird a gun).

As for the original question posed by this thread, I think single-target options could probably be better, but considering everything else a kineticist can do, it might be too much of a boost. Doing something equally well as a dedicated specialist while also doing a billion other things is how you make that specialist obsolete. I also agree with others in that OP's analysis is a bit skewed--he's comparing a whole party's worth of teamwork to the output of one character--but considering how difficult kinnies are to actually support, I'm willing to forgive this oversight.

Shipping estimates say I should be getting my copy via Friday, which gives me two weeks to learn the basics of each class before I start teaching them to people. Other books are already out in the wild. First impressions are... about what you'd expect given the game's development constraints.

I read the bonus ancestry included in Murder in Metal City, and caught two whole instances of 1e jargon slipping past the editors. Despite that, it was a delightful addition to the roster, with enough material to make it silly, creepy, cool, mystical, or just plain chill depending on which feats and heritage you choose.

Seconding what Torradin341 said, as my complaints are basically the same. Although I don't think WotC's attempt to revoke the OGL is to blame so much as Paizo's nuclear response to it, coupled with a failure to give SF2 the company support that it needed. The product was pumped out at breakneck speed by a skeleton crew of designers, none of whom were part of the original PF2 or SF1 design teams.

When put in context of who they are and what they were given to work with, I think the SF2 designers did as well as they could without working themselves to death. Every complaint I have about SF2's details comes down to asking a small team with limited engine experience to basically remake one of the most content-rich, rules-heavy books in Paizo's lineup in a very short amount of time. At this point, I just hope the product is successful enough that Paizo's willing to invest more resources into it; otherwise we're going to get trapped in the vicious cycle of a game doing poorly because it wasn't given enough support, so they cut support because it did poorly, and then it does worse because it had less support, and on and on until it ultimately fizzles out.

So yeah, if Paizo manages to actually throw the Starfriends a bone, I feel like SF2 will be a phenomenal game in, like, a year from now. For the time being, it's a cute little futuristic expansion to PF2, if only because it doesn't quite have enough meat on its bones to stand independently just yet. Maybe the GMG and Alien Core will change that, but given how small AC is compared to other bestiaries, I'm not so sure.

On the bright side, what little we do have is g$#*+%n delightful, despite being rough around the edges. The vision and passion are there. That tiny, tiny team of designers did their damndest to make it work and got most of the way there.

Although, to be totally fair to OP, I'm also a little disappointed with SF2's weak launch lineup. It's Paizo's smallest to date, and (based on previews, playtests, and the Murder in Metal City PDF I'm reading) seems to lack the polish of its medieval fantasy big sister. The Starfinder team desperately needs more time, resources, and 2e engine expertise.

Hey OP, take a chill pill and go play one of the dozens of other sci-fi TTRPGs out there that are more grounded and feature complete. I rec Stars Without Number, as it's free and easy to learn. Traveller's the other big one, if you want something crunchier.

Or, if you like the idea of Starfinder but don't want to wait a couple years for the new edition to flesh itself out, go play 1e. It's a lovely game.

SF2 not having enough content upon launch is a totally valid critique, but I think it's one you can articulate without throwing a temper tantrum on the internet.

I want to explore YuriP's troll example a little more. Trolls are, according to their stats, not very smart (-2), but have similar awareness and survival instincts to any animal or the average human (+0). However, the remaster added a new weakness: they're gullible (-4 to perception checks against being deceived). We can use these stats along with flavor text to paint a rough picture of what's going on inside a troll's mind.

So the troll walks up, and sees two individuals: a big, bulky one and a smaller, less physically intimidating one. Trolls are very territorial and always hungry, so they're likely in the mood to turn both these intruders into their next meal.

Now, a predator generally knows to go for weaker prey to maximize the odds of a successful kill while minimizing the chance of getting hurt themselves, so the troll's original plan is likely to take out the wizard first to guarantee a meal, then either kill or chase off the big one. But then, the big one starts hooting and hollering and threatening them in a language they probably don't understand. This behavior is distracting, but also clearly some kind of challenge or threat.

So, does the troll:

A.) Stick the plan and go for the easy meal first, or

B.) Respond to the direct challenge to demonstrate dominance?

Which answer is correct depends on the personality of this specific troll. Are they more of an opportunist who'd grab what they want and run, or are they prideful and overconfident? The taunt prompts the GM to make a roleplaying decision in the moment about whether the troll is more on the "hungry" or "angry" side of "hangry."

On a meta level, the GM has to consider which would be more tactically engaging. If the trolls swings for the wizard first, then the guardian gets to pop off with their reaction and powerful attack, which is fun for the guardian and marks them as a dangerous obstacle. If the troll attacks the guardian, then the party gets a little extra time to get into position, while the guardian gets a roleplay moment with the troll. Both are decent outcomes.

Let's say the troll decides to attack the guardian. Does that mean that they're locked into only attacking the guardian? Of course not! The minute that wizard whips out a fire spell, they're going to shift focus back onto themself, because fire actually poses a lethal threat to the troll (unlike physical damage). This means that the guardian is still going to get to use the active defense/punishment side of their kit. The troll's attention will be forced to ping-pong between the thing they really need to kill and the thing that makes scoring that kill difficult. I can actually imagine this troll running away once they realize that the source of the fire spells is so well-defended, which is the opposite of suicidally attacking a "hated enemy!"

Just got my first SFS session set up. Launching the weekend after GenCon so that I have a week to prep. I made a little poster to hang up at my FLGS and everything!

It's worthwhile to compare the guardian's big angry swing to other punishing abilities, like a champion's reaction and a reactive strike with reach. All of them are battlefield control methods that push the enemy into a lose-lose scenario.

- A (good) champion's reaction forces the enemy to choose between either taking a massive debuff (and potentially damage) or contending with likely the highest AC on the team (plus shield block). No matter who they target, their attack is less effective than they'd like. If they target the champion every single time, then more of their attacks will miss, their damage output will be reduced by shield block, and the rest of the party can do whatever they want without fear of reprisal. Yes, this is a little more boring for the champion because they're not getting to use their cool ability, but the threat of that ability is enough to influence enemy behavior, so the champ's still doing their job. And--because of the champion's higher HP and easy one-action self-heal--the likelihood of a costly KO is reduced, meaning the rest of the party is more aggressive and action efficient, and the enemies still have to deal with all party members in active initiative.

- A fighter's reactive strike with reach turns a 25ft square of the map into a zone the enemy cannot pass through without getting bonked, so they have to choose between either taking damage or wasting actions to step/go around. Even if they always choose to step or go around--denying the fighter the chance to do nasty damage--all those wasted actions amount to less damage done to the party: a monster that lives three turns but utterly wastes one of them has the same overall impact as one that dies after two. The defensive fighter is still doing their job. Hell, they're still doing their job if the enemy chooses to take the third option and focus on the fighter exclusively, because that frees up the fighter to absolutely whale on their foe, with plenty of actions to spare on their class-defining metastrikes and press maneuvers.

So, a guardian who draws aggro at the cost of not being able to use their spiky revenge strike (dunno what it's called, no book yet) is still playing effectively. The threat of big bonk is enough to influence enemy behavior and keep all party members on their feet. The potential damage output the guardian lost is made up for by enabling more offensive play from the rest of the party and "wasting" enemy actions via damage reduction and missed attacks.

TL;DR: Tanks like fighters, champions, and guardians work by forcing negative consequences on enemies regardless of their tactics. Monsters that fight cautiously in the face of these consequences may be less exciting (only threatening to use your spicy ability is generally less fun than actually getting to use it), but they're still equally strategically favorable to the players. Basically, good tanks win by being both the proverbial rock and the hard place.

So it looks like PDFs for Player Core won't be available until the 31st, so that nobody spoils the release for anyone else. Bummer, but 2 weeks isn't that long of a wait. But hey, my credit card was charged yesterday, so maybe I might get my book before that? Who can say?

Anyway, what vague character concepts are y'all hoping to realize? I've got an idea for a vlaka borai operative who "survived" getting their face torn off, and now stalks from the shadows like a skull-faced movie monster. If I'm especially lucky, operatives will get better melee support than the playtest initially provided, and maybe a few built-in intimidation goodies so I can make my duder extra scary. If not, oh well, I'll make it work somehow: maybe dump stealth and make them an armor storm soldier or degredant solarian instead...

As far as I know, the plan is to have SF2 and PF2 be different systems with modules you can install to bring the content of one into the other. The timetable they're shooting for is as close to release as possible, but I haven't heard any specific dates yet. I'll post again in this thread if I find more information.

Thanks for the advice, everyone! I have a dedicated notebook I use for TTRPG stuff and a stack of blank index cards, so I'll start copying important things from my Pathbuilder sheet on my nect day off.

Lmao that's a great bit, Driftbourne. I might have to steal that.

Isn't the purpose of these factions to give GMs tools to help flesh out their campaigns? I don't think John Paizo will repossess your hardbacks if you decide to cast the Hellknights as a morally gray or even heroic organization. Not to say you can't be disappointed in the writing or anything--I personally much prefer it when authors leave it up for individual tables to make moral judgements themselves--but the only real consequence here is the need to make some extra effort with your players/GM to get the tone you want, right?

That said, the vibes I got from GG were that the Hellknights were a bunch of edgy rent-a-cops, same as always. The writing in GG is a little more conversational and less academic than most 1e material, so it's less interested in staying neutral. As I said before, this isn't quite my style, but I think it works fine so long as you recognize that the lore isn't presented objectively and that you can/should put your own spin on it.

Which is why I will be roasting the hell out of the Free Captains for trying to dress up their criminal organization as a leftist commune, and also maybe do a corruption plot within the Knights of Golarion as a treat. Good guy/bad guy divisions are a little dull; it's much more fun to let the players make friends and enemies themselves.

You end up getting another The Gap instead, by accident, six days after release

Aaaaahhh don't jinx me!! I had enough issues getting my Galaxy Guide.

I do have Pathbuilder, Claxon, and it's been very helpful for character creation. I don't know how efficient it is for referencing things in session, however. Spells, sure, but I'm worried I might forget about certain feats. Good rec, though!

Hi everyone,

I recently got a surprise invite to a friend's Fist of the Ruby Phoenix campaign at a game shop down the street (yippee!). Problem is, I've never played anything that high-level without a bunch of digital tools doing the math and organizing my character sheet for me. Worse, I decided to play a druid (because it fits the party comp well and the current discourse has it on my mind)!

So, for those of you running complex, high-level characters at physical tables, how do you stay organized, roll/calculate quickly, and remember what your character can do?

Thanks in advance!

Got my "4 to 15 business days" email last Wednesday, so subscriber PDFs could start dropping as soon as tomorrow (although with my luck, I probably won't get mine until after official release, lol).