Jamie Charlan's page

The mechanics should be properly balanced so that we don't even need the big 6 in the first place.

It better not be ewok analogues or we're going to have to glass a lot of worlds.

Gravity means you do need your engines functional, and particularly bad quality engines might be at risk if something happens.

In pretty much any planar condition short of "inside a star" (also deep fire-elemental zones) the ship itself should be able to handle itself just fine, or that means someone's cut some serious corners in the design: That's what you get for buying Flaypple products assembled in Caina by nervestapled halflings who can no longer kill themselves, for coppers on the platinum, and still paying top-latinum for the thing because of the brand name.

Simply put; if ships aren't tougher than their bloody OCCUPANTS, then why do they even exist in the first place? (this is why we'll need them to be capable of improvement so they don't get utterly surpassed in damage by the party bard by level 11 and resilience by a naked wizard with no spells in an AMF by level 12) Good design necessary. Absolutely necessary. Mark that down, devs; it's an easy one to screw right up.

Of course, the real danger would be if you take significant damage. The heat shouldn't be an issue, though you may need to keep an eye when firing in combat, but it's when your shields are down and hull breached that the conditions are suddenly where they should not. Like deck 5. Deck 5 has 40 demons in it now. That's four tens. And that's terrible.

Colossal differences in class design quality and narrative power need to be gone and stay gone; if that means complete loss of pathfinder compatibility so be it.

No space kenders.

And let's try not to shoehorn 'lessons' too heavy-handedly with all the races and what not; the only thing "afterschool specials" ever did was ruin our hopes of getting to watch cartoons and force us to choose between the weather channel and the news.

I'd certainly like for it to stop working in those particular conditions when I put a phaselocking railgun slug through their foreheads, that's for sure.

"lol DC 14 reflex half that can never be raised on weapons you can't even fire once let alone afford till at least level 10 lol" Is rather insulting as well. That kind of thing should never even have to make it to playtesting before getting caught, let alone printed as-is. Someone should've been smacked upside the head and quite clearly was not.

Outside the US, though, it's the exact opposite.
The GM goes "that's ten miles away" and people kinda blank for a second, then try to figure out what that equates to. Can't even really picture a 50ft rope, we just have it marked down because that's the item, and the GM will always tell you either that's enough or you'd need 2 or 3 of them put end to end. You've got reason to believe he'd say that no matter how long they were, but he'll catch on if you buy string.

It's 15.24 meters by the way. They're usually more likely found in 20 meter lengths if sold here.

Grams are nice and precise and really easy to scale up for large batches.

That's how the rest of the world feels about imperial.
"What the hell is that 113? Above boiling??? No wait, USA." And then we have to subtract 32 and divide the result by 1.8. OH. It's 45.

** spoiler omitted **

To much of the world that's exactly how imperial units read like nowadays.

Well firstly, 1" is just a teeny bit above 2.5cm (it's 25.4mm), so for most gaming purposes that need a battlemat you're fine. We use feet when we must since it doesn't matter too much as long as you stick to JUST feet, like on a battlemat playing pathfinder (5 per square, and all measures divisible into 5' squares anyways)

Squares will usually represent 1m (bit over 3.2') when in metric games at the personal scale. Larger tactical scales usually use hexes and will usually have their own value, like, say, 50m (Heavy Gear regular combat scale), or 250m (HG air combat scale) or 500m (space).

The big advantage is that no matter what conversion in metric is always mindlessly simple, even if you're trying to figure things out between two completely different scales. Also great is that something like a 1m-across 'square' makes two guys dagger-fighting a bit less silly in adjacent squares, as well as one's zone of control to prevent people from rushing by you.

Canada mostly just uses imperial because one of our largest trading partners insists on it. It's almost entirely metric, except when your aunt exclaims she lost a whole 40 pounds (as opposed to that time she gained a mere 20kg) or when you get something that's obviously meant for the US market because we all look alike to Chinese manufacturers.

All the official measurements are in metric and have been for some time.

"We don't want to change therefore we're right" is... sad.

You do realize that the majority of the players are used to the imperial system? (Don't call it gibberish, please. It's not that hard for one-dimensional units.

Is the majority of players actually fully just the US? Because most of the people I play with are ... well... not. I think one guy on roll20's American?

Now let me show you some real gibberish!

1 foot is 12 inches. 3 feet is 1 yard. 22 yards is 1 chain. 1 furlong is 10 chains. 1 mile is 8 furlongs or 5280 feet.

1 fathom is 6.08 feet. Too clear? Alright, it's 2.02667 yards. YEAH. 100 of those makes a cable! And 10 cables makes a nautical mile. What? Yes, The normal mile wasn't boaty enough, so it's 6080 feet not 5280. But that's not good enough for the british navy (at least the americans didn't take that one with them): Nay, a fathom has to be 6 feet... despite the rest of those calculations! AWWWIGHT! YEAH! LOGIIIIC!

Mmmmmm... Base-10 measurements...

And yet they still couldn't conceive of how powering up your weapons and targeting the other guy would *not* be seen as an act of friendly greeting.

It can be as simple as it only affecting - like in traveller - matter enclosed in the effect.

So you can FTL a message probe - and those comm boats are basically gigantic databanks containing the entire week's worth of the entire internet - but radio or particles sent out drop back down to LS as soon as they'd cross beyond the bubble - which they can't really because it's a big fat shield of plasma keeping it all in.

There was another aspect/limitation to the jump drives in Traveller that shaped the way the universe there works; Jumps take a week and leave you 100D at best from destination planets and large gravitic bodies.

So even once a fight begins, chances are even if reinforcements arrive, it's only because they were originally going to be there in the first place, they're gonna be coming in from the outer system (the 100D minimum distance applies to stars as well far as I remember, so you can't just warp to mercury's orbit), and most likely be known about for hours.

Many systems especially sci-fi tend to have psionics instead of magic. Part of that is the perception that it's a "sci-fi" thing, even though the roots of psionic systems are in ancient epics like the Mahabharata; affecting the universe with your will is basically walking - depending on the mythology - towards apotheosis, or enlightenment.

While Shadowrun's magic is MECHANICALLY much closer to D&D psionics than it is to vancian casting (drain aside, it's an entirely mental exercise to manipulate the local manasphere) You'll find psionics in various forms in various other systems, from Traveller to Warhammer 40k.

Hardness. Better than DR, and more appropriate when you've got a big ceramic shell around you anyways. SOME deflection (AC), some hardness, and a bit of absorption from its own HP(you do have to *punch through* it in many cases)

Remember that even DR/- (anything else basically doesn't work for anything but monsters designed to be a threat to lower level non-adventurers) is inapplicable to a wide variety of damage methods (including lasers), and that in pathfinder the way it scaled it was often a dangerously inconsequential ability compared to the damage output of appropriate-CR enemies at any given level.

Sure you had DR 4/- on your level 16 barbarian, but you have 229HP and that CR 16 dragon is hitting you for 21+14+14+5+6+19=79 after DR; you'll die from a third full attack if it gets to do so, whether you had the DR or not.

"Uh, it doesn't, the station wasn't built to deal with gravitational forces so it would shear apart if you tried to aim it at the planet it orbits"

"So we'll move it a little further out"

"Uh, that, um, no it would, you can't aim it anymore"

"Yeah, I'm gonna do a bit of math for a minute here, we can be patient, we'll fire it off into space. No targeting, just, from these coordinates, with this specific direction that we've moved ourself to. We ARE able to control the attitude of the station in deep space right?"

"yeah of course"

"GOOD. The relativistic slugs hit the planet in 28.116 hours."

"Wait what?"

"The planet'll be there when the trajectories intersect."

"But... but..."

Seriously; "uh, you can't because um, fiat" is nothing but a dare. If not blowing up planets is SO important, all the more reason to find ways to commit geocide before all the baddies realise they can just hide behind a planet and be safe.

Here's what I see looking at those classes:
I have 243/343 PPs.
I use this power, it costs 5, plus 7 worth of augmentations. 231/343
In the morning I recover everything. 343/343 Done.
The augments are either metanotmagic or straight up paying the scaling from caster level increase (as unlike the vancian spells they don't autoscale so if you want that 10d6 fireball, you're paying more than a 3rd level power); things you'd keep track of with spells as well, but: One number value at the top of the page to track.

Meanwhile, Sorcerer:
6/9___9/9___7/9___0/8___5/8___2/7___4/7___1/6___6/6
Okay I want to cast dimensional anchor, but I can't anymore. But I could change its spell level and thus value with metamagic and could then cast it with a different slot. I'll go down to 4/8 if I just take a +1, but if I +4 it that's the last 8th level spell I can cast today... I'll Extend.
6/9___9/9___7/9___0/8___4/8___2/7___4/7___1/6___6/6
"how many I have of each level I'm allowed to use" is extra steps for sure. Had to choose variables there as well. Even in the morning, it's also more writing than the power points.

And wizard's even worse. The work comes all in the morning when you choose and memorize. "Do I want two empowered acid arrows, or do I want a maximized augury (no I don't know why you'd maximize augury), how many heightened limited wishes do I set up here today?

Um, how is it anything but less bookkeeping?
You have one stack of points, and powers known. One big "we swear it's not MP" pool. Subtract the cost.

Compare that to tracking remaining slots of each different level, as well as (in case of prepared casters) which spells of your spells known list are stored in each slot and expended for the day once cast.

psionics would definitely fit better than vancian psychic casting though.
less bookkeeping, too; the "more complicated" claim has always felt a little... stretched?

While I still believe gods should be more... resident of their own star systems...

Iomedae: So evil trumpets is still around? You'd think that other than the desperate zealots on Golarion, any number of other worlds would've fixed that little problem already. Seriously, given her own official material she shouldn't still be around, let alone known as a galactic paladin idol.

Erastil: Hunting maybe a bit less, but there could be entire agri-worlds dedicated to mass production of foodstuffs. Community and Families are still a thing as well.

Torag: Are there no dwarves anywhere else? He covers several portfolios as well.

Sarenrae: Seriously depends: Goddess of one star system (golarion's) sun is rather minor in the grand scheme of things, and would be highly inappropriate as a major interstellar deity. "All suns" would be extremely powerful though, and doing so would mean you gotta accept Sarenrae as being in the very top of deities worshipwise, because many stars will have one or several worlds around'em.

Desna: The most likely non-local deity, as you've pointed out.

Abadar: Civilizations in general, rather than exploration. A god of having new places to visit, not of actually going out and finding them.

Irori: Speaking of "the Gap", is the starfinder society going to be as abjectly... unethical... as the pathfinder society? Still remains to be seen if "the gap" will be used tastefully in the background or if it'll be a cheap heavyhanded thing, however. Focusing on golarion's races while taking it out and going "well now uh, all these worlds are golarion's peoples except golarion, do not attempt to land there" worries me quite a bit actually.

Gozreh: How is the empty void not nature? It's some of the harshest parts of nature, but it's nature.

Pharasma: Another one that could be planet-locked; if you think back to previous editions for example, most crystal spheres had their own death gods (yeah sometimes more than one). Most worlds for example would've nuked Toril after they stoppered the flow of souls from their own gods being such tantrum-tossing little a$!!##+s that they couldn't keep enough worship for themselves... There could easily be other gods doing that job in their own star systems.

Nethys: Is perhaps more quietly in the background, since any sufficiently advanced technology... (and vice-versa, any well-understood enough 'magic'...)

Gorum: Another possibly 'local' deity, one with a lot of other friends out there. A LOT.

Rovagug: It would probably be best if there were more than one of this. Otherwise it makes it too easy for APs and fluff to fall into a lazy "but what about golarion" focus on the setting all the time. Plus it gives high level players something to face off against in their best ships once in a while.

A 1pp and its 3pp counterpart, because hey, plenty of us use psionics.

Ships should probably allow a measure of externalizing/scaling-up abilities by default, in particular stuff like one-man fighters.

Geomancer Custom
These one-man fighters are adapted to their intended owner's preferred form of energy manipulation. In addition to standard scale-amplification functions, Geo-Customs can shunt up to one point of Burn per round as a free action to the shield generators if online. This reduces the shields regeneration value by one per point of burn for the remainder of the encounter, and cannot be performed if it would bring this value below 1/rd

Astral Shell
Aegii channeling their abilities through this vessel may not only apply certain customizations to the ship as usual, but also grant the effects of Invigorating Suit and any Environmental adaptations (swim speed, burrowing, darkvision, UW breathing) to the ship and the occupants within!

That's more along the lines of using the claim as evidence of itself. I mean I could tell you a certain part of me not to be mentioned in polite company is magically delicious, but that doesn't make my "lucky charms" actually magical.

Some info would certainly be appreciated though.

well, more like a swarm of jawas.
to lose against spear wielding teddybears with creepy rapeface grins when you're wearing power-armor and wielding plasma weapons just shows how bad those troopers had gotten.

At the same time, far too often the drawbacks are often completely debilitating trap options, OR basically mean nothing and may as well not exist. The fragile quality being one of the latter when it comes to magical weapons. HP/Hardness in pathfinder don't really come into play for items unless someone is purposefully sundering them, and unless you're built for that you can forget it no matter how vulnerable the little blade in your opponent's hand is, even though by all means it should probably have shattered on your shield.

The benefits and drawbacks can be kept simple if A) they are well documented, and B) organized properly. The use of keywords and straightforward wording can make it just as simple as the single material modification in pathfinder is/was.

Could be simple headers in, say, a weapon entry.
Submachine Gun | Variant: Laser | Laser Material: Nd:YAG
<the usual statline, directly altered straightforwardly from the above goes here>

Man-Portable Cannon | Variant: Gauss | Generator: Prana-Capacitor | Ammunition Type: Zol-Orichalconium
<the usual statline, directly altered straightforwardly from the above goes here>

That's only around one world though. Other regions may very well have their own gods. Sure, the ones around that one, from a local's little point of view may have been preventing the end of the universe, but take a step back to the galactic scale and "what do you mean they caged *A* rovagug in there? did no one have a broom? what were they thinking those things are filthy!"

Back in Planescape and Spelljammer for example, most pantheons had a single planet.... and some were such petulant tantrum-tossing little a+@%++%s that they wouldn't even have that much if they hadn't blockaded the flow of souls to avoid a complete loss against the "goes to plane of alignment" system default. Each of those pantheons tended to make DAMN sure they were their worshipers entire universe, lest they lose that tasty tasty psychic food to those people just leaving for grander things

Don't see why 'druids' would have to be hunted down. Rather it's the kinds of terrain they deal with that are different (and the ones trying to keep hard vacuum pristine are probably seen as going a little far by other druids too). Perhaps some druids will have to accept that they can protect a forest a lot better given a GPS unit and a couple of motion trackers though.

Tech/Magic shouldn't really be at odds with one-another anyways, since the former is merely an application of existing discoveries. What do you think a wand is? Someone figured out a way to store a whole bunch of spells for later, in a portable, easy-to-use way that doesn't involve blowing your own brains out from storing eldritch patterns way above capacity. The entire "magic items" section of any game is nothing more or less than metaphysics-based technology.

You're just as likely to see a fireball amplifier granting a ship's mage's spells the full backing of a fusion reactor, or stabilizing fields protecting life-support from nasty little dispels, and an AI with technological geomancy sounds rather fun.

Maybe it'll be easier to revive; just bag the head and stick it in a growth tank a few days?

DR specifically would be a bit of an issue; far too many things (and there's no way magic wouldn't go up in damage to follow after all) ignore it entirely.

Now if armor offered Hardness...

Of course, if things can only be immune to ranged (screw you, mythic-combat-reflexes+smash-from-the-sky) that would be broken as all hell. Sucks if something's immune to axes as well; and why wouldn't be? Backwards golarion has effective immunity/total-negation of high technology available in its spells/abilities, maybe starfinder things have anti-primitive-crap fields.

All that to say: immunities are a very heavy-handed solution of the "nuh uh you can't you have to solve the problem this way" variety.

Gravity should likely be a multiplier. In microgravity it's mostly the amount of acceleration you can impart to an object that matters, whereas in an environment with 24.79m/s acceleration, you should at least be multiplying your effective carried load by x2.5 (and include the multiplier on your weight as additional encumbrance). It's simple and viciously reasonable: If you're running around in double gravity, your body's got twice as much to handle, and oh the impacts. If you thought grandpa falling and breaking his hip was bad on earth, imagine the same shattered bones from stepping down the stairs!

As for strength; many of its functions could be taken over by CON, and strength should affect things a bit less directly much of the time. Your score would be "highly trained human" by default, but it's potentially the score with the biggest variation since a simple set of hydraulic replacements could have you throwing golf-carts, and the high-end stuff puts you in vehicle scales.

Don't you just "love" it when one spell can give total, complete (and even selective; it only slows things down if a small lead ball was fired by a gun but not by a slingshot) and potentially permanent (you can!) immunity to an entire class and set of archetypes? I wonder why antimagic field doesn't stop magic nearly as well as this does tech.

...Or rather more interestingly for all you wizards out there: why is there no such thing as protection against low techs in the technological side? And what are you *waiting for*?

I mean wouldn't "Anti-Archaic Field" (seriously needs catchier name) be exactly as selective but a whole lot more useful for 95% of mages and encounters? Most people running around with axes and swords and bows.

Plus it offers some utterly hilarious potential moments if built to affect anything older than firearms like "what do you mean Bob's full-plate still works? that makes no sense!"
"Because guns were invented before it so it's actually higher tech! A spontoon would stab perfectly well into the field as well you know."

I'd suggest tuning it to moderns at least to make it the a special balance where high-end-crossbows (if they actually existed in the game, but it's a good chance to write in ones newer than "greek era" here) and muzzleloaders could get through, but technically "anything older than matchlocks" would be the proper reverse of antitech field's capabilities.

While this does not offer the offensive power of a Warsoul, let alone the Psychic Armory archetype, the Living Legend has an unbelievably smug-looking iconic on the cover.

The skill bonuses offered by most roles are very high; enough to make you a "skill monkey" with one stat (each, so 2 every day). No charm person, sure, but hello diplomacy if you're a Marshal.

Archmage is basically the Warlock the vigilante had promised us, but with mystic bolts that work. It buffs int stuff

Champion is a standard basic "soulknife" but with other roles available to flesh out. It buffs strength checks and skills.

Guardian grants reach, a hands-free shield, and a solid layer of temporary HP whenever you focus. While that's not that much THP at a time, no real reason you wouldn't have a full recharge of it every round.

Hierophant is one of the more interesting ones, granting you domain powers, an *excellent* nonlethal option and bonuses to wisdom and wisdom skills. There are a lot of domains, so much that this could probably stand alone with ease.

Marshal's a half-assed Tactician, you'll need to build a bit to make use of those abilities. Big bonus to Cha checks and skills, and order people to come back to life as a capstone, but if you're not building towards it, except for a fancy ball or negotiating table you'll never touch the thing.

Overmind is not great alone actually: Overmind needs some building on with certain blade skills, but if you do, those one a day each abilities auto-augmented to ML30th that could cause some tears.

Trickster is TWF, Dex and buff-stealing. It works.

Honestly it's hard to justify building in a way that will use all the roles instead of 2-3 you'll focus on, but that opens up for a lot of characters anyways, and even those you don't normally need could still see use in downtime or the like.

A bit sad that the Living Legend is so incompatible with other archetypes and many bladeskills, but it's pretty much its own class, so take that as you will.

The swashbuckler's quite broken...

Broken as in the transmission's busted and the undercarriage is entirely rusted through.

Just to note: Bracers of Falcon's Aim *are* now erroneously priced.
A 1st level spell of 1min/lv at CL1 in a continuous-operation enchantment is worth 4000gp.

By becoming a 1/day for 1 minute charge item on-command, the new cost should now be (1*1*1800*2)/5 Giving us 720gp for 1/day.

Gonna need errata for the errata!

It's not even fortunate anymore, and anyone that *finds* one will probably not get one with the second use still functional.

More of an Uplifting Primer of the Swindled Guardsman now.

Technically it would mean you flip over the other ship (we don't have nearly enough rules covering making or fixing vehicles in the first place to really work with this though).

This is... not very useful off-world, but at least it's probably handling the ship extremely roughly.

I do not think the class is underpowered at all. I've read complaints about what it can do at higher levels then a Druid yet they seem to miss something. Druid's cast spells meaning they are limited to how often they can use them. Kineticist often can use it's abilities at will. Feather Fall and Fly at will. How is that not awesome. The other abilities are just as awesome.

Fighters have it rough, so they aren't a great comaprison, but anyways:

The "at will" thing was what originally scared the crap out of people when 3.5 introduced the Warlock. However, as it turned out, reality is never quite so kind.

The "how often you can per day" of full casters ever since 3rd edition tends to prove itself an illusory limit, when compared to the "at will" of other classes. Not only are the spells powerful and long-lasting, but their limits quickly overtake the number of encounters, puzzles and fights one can reasonably expect to happen between rests.

Sure, that fighter can swing his sword all day, and that kineticist can blast all day... But on average, you'll have 3-4 encounters, the combat ones will last around 3-4 rounds, and a good number of the 'buff' spells you'd only get to do once a day are going to last you through at least two of those encounters because they're in hours. HP and ability damage -the limited resource of those poor guys eating it in the frontline- are also a consideration; parties will stop to sleep, and in fact there's even spells to help make sure nothing will prevent this full recovery of spells.

Just like eldritch blast turned out to mean "about 12 times a day, 15 on a bad one", and at-will flight turned out to mean "I get to keep up with 'overland'". One has to be careful as a result, for it becomes easy to undertune an ability, making it of little to no value, simply due to the illusion of "all day".

You are being deliberate with attempts misdirection and appeals.

What's your angle, really? What characters, specifically, are about to be affected by this feat, and *why* is it pissing you off so?

It keeps going over and over again.

Just please, please, please read the rules. Animated shield requires and activation (move action), work only for 4 rounds, and have a cost of +2. Why do you compare just 1 (one!) feat with this, I do not understand

4 rounds is on the long end of the average encounter in Pathfinder. You have your dancer up for the whole fight. I thought you said a few k is nothing at level 12-13? It's just a +2, and doesn't even eat a pair of feats.

I do not care if shields are already weak. I do not care if you could have taken Dodge. I don't care if you can, or can't apply shield bonus vs rays, etc.

and that is where you went wrong. There are plenty of abilities, items and effects in Pathfinder that are, for lack of a better term, "underpowered". A common fix we used to see in 4e was exactly this: tax "fixes" such as that one feat that grows to +2 and +3 attack after it was realized offense wasn't keeping up with basic levelling and the 3 "+1" feats were too exorbitant a cost.

Shields are no good, this helps them be of use sometimes when the shield gets to apply and instead of putting it to use people get a conniption.

Not like it'll help when the bear-druid casts Flamestrike(something he coincidentally gets to do for just one feat!), and you could've had fortification on your armor already; don't pretend it was impossible without a shield; I can't remember the last time I saw a two-hander user that didn't have it "despite no shield"

Jamie Charlan wrote:

A feat with multiple requirements that doesn't even *give* something, just lets you not lose what little you get from having the weakest type of shield?

Multiple requirements? Doesn't give something? +7 AC isn't something? fighter level 4 and 1 feat are multiple requirements? Oh, wait a sec... It reminds me... Weapon Specialization.

That Shield AC can be obtained from things like dancing shields already without a feat. The feat only lets you not lose the gear bonus from a piece of equipment; it in and of itself is NOT providing +7AC.

Besides, one of those AC is from Shield Focus. You could've grabbed Dodge and have a +1 that's negated less often, isn't conditional on what you've got in hand, as well as applies to your Touch AC.

Shields do little to nothing against touch attacks or save-based "not attacks" unless you've got 3rd party materials. Not without large feat-chains such as the ray-deflecting one.

A feat with multiple requirements that doesn't even *give* something, just lets you not lose what little you get from having the weakest type of shield?

If it weren't for shields being something you can stick an enhancement bonus on, this would be outright worthless. And I say this from the view of someone who uses 3pp, because without things such as Defensive Expertise or Iron Tortoise, shields are just plain bad.

Too Powerful? This? Gods, it's like Crane Wing all over again. Someone needs a good smack behind the head.

[edit: regarding "feats shouldn't do much", do those same people balking at keeping a buckler think Sacred Geometry and Natural Spell are totally A-OK? I'd not be surprised]

I'm actually gonna disagree the other way, here, with some earlier posts. The entire Tech Guide is unfortunately a terrible thing to compare with, because it's the most overpriced stuff in the game. The cost of a single shot of a laser pistol is measured in *hundreds* of arrows ... and the arrows hit harder. Actual effectiveness versus equivalent costs is needed.

Your current blaster version:
10 charges between reloads is one battery. We can't get TWO colossal location artifacts (needed to craft and charge them) so that's 100gp. Even if it wasn't, we're looking at 5gp a shot. 50 100GP (weapon and A battery) would net you a +5 magical weapon if you instead used your gold elsewhere. The absolute minimum level you could be to get this by WBL is level 10. Hope that's not a Fort save for that stun; enemies get rather good at that by CR 8!

1d4 nonlethal is uh... let's call it low. Not only low, though. At the level you can afford this weapon it's beginning to be something that doesn't work against enemies on occasion, and increasingly often as time goes on

2 charges for 2d4 force damage is bad. It may not be *halved* like energy damage against objects, but it's low.Have to reload often too, screwing your damage output further.

If you really need the damage to be specifically force, spend 3000 on an item that will fire off 2 magic missiles, at will, all day every day. You can use the other 46900 to buy yourself a real weapon that does far more the rest of the time. This mode is both highly expensive and somewhat feeble.

5 charges - I'm not sure anything can fail the fort save required by the time you could afford doing this. It's not bad in regards to having it handy for things other than critters, though.

10 Charges - If I wanted to do 10d6 fire damage, I wouldn't use fire for it because everything and its mother is immune, and I wouldn't pay 50.1 grand for one shot of it either.

People are too quickly blinded by "but it hits touch AC". This is no more worth 50k than a laser rifle is worth 20k. Not when an adaptive longbow given to a guy with strength 12 will get higher DPR starting at a small fraction of the price despite all that accuracy.

Regarding Firearm APs; it should probably be as their touch calculation; 1st increment for ancients, all increments for crossbows, 5 increments for 'advanced', and all for high-tech. (actually I suggest 9/10/12 for pistol/rifle/cannon beam weapons, but with a -1 per two rangebands due to dispersion)

As for charges, the difficulty lies in the purposefully, maliciously intentionally skewed balance in the technological guide and iron gods adventure books.
1 Battery costs the same as 2000 arrows. It gets worse if you try to mention crafting; arrows are cut down to 1/3 their cost (or lower) while it requires feats and multiple *artifacts* to create new batteries at half cost (one battery, crafted = 3000 arrows crafted, and the latter can be done in the woods)... batteries that burn out 20% of the time any time you try to recharge one... and it takes 2 or more to reload a single weapon once!

So, to put it bluntly, you can either make 5pp for 2d6 (or worse, plenty of things require multiple charges to fire once) which is a horrible deal, OR you've got an Armory-of-Conqueror weapon backed by Elemental Focus so it's not completely worthless against all things in existence by level 10 and you seriously could never even hope to afford a full reload at such an insane cost...

OR, you can use the classes and/or abilities (such as the psi-core) in psitech to make technological equipment viable and usable.

Because getting a single fight of attacks should *not* cost 6000 arrows when the arrows would've hurt way more!

tldr; make spare capacitors a thing

Repeaters are a trap option, plain and simple, designed and placed where they are to punish people for daring to want to use them.

Most crossbows are, actually. The original d20 system developers hated them with a passion, but unfortunately paizo continued to defend the tradition.

Thus you get a weapon that is slow to reload "because realism", but not given the power it should have if using such loading mechanisms "because balance" and "because mechanical", even though technically crossbows were composite (AND rated for specific strengths) before bows ever were (and longbows were never made composite back then).

They can have some utility, but one of the main thing they're touted and hyped as having is kinda broken.

In the same way as the clock on my wall is broken (I'll get around to that battery one day). Or a bunch of the lights on an Xmas tree are broken. Or the way this mechanical pencil is broken.

That is to say; the Kineticist needs bigger batteries, a new pack of LEDs, a new little clicker spring, but it would be cheaper to just get a new and better one.

I'd settle for actually being able to blast at range with reasonable effectiveness however. The Gambler archetype helps a little, but not enough.

Over the course of a day, the caster's resources gradually deplete in a way such that their strength in each successive encounter is less.

Past level 1-2, that statement requires there to be so many encounters that most parties would be dead thrice over without the caster's encounter-changing spells. Well above and beyond the regular 3-5 one can expect in a given day. In practice, it simply isn't true.

People initially believed the 3.5 Warlock to be a gamebreaker for similar reasons: It brought infinite casting to the table. Turns out infinite was but a quality-of-life bookkeeping schtick, and infinite wasn't really, as you were putting them to bed about as often as you did everybody else.

In terms of martials, well, Full Attack, Charge and Combat Maneuvers are all what the grand majority of one's feats go straight into, with even what should be basic proficiency split into three or four feats (such as altering how you hold a reach weapon, vital "tax-season" strike, and any combat maneuver). In all but certain specific discipline cases of the initiator classes, the primary resource is HP; a resource actually used and depleted at a rather high rate without a caster to prevent loss and replenish it between encounters. This HP goes down and goes down fast in combat when the other side gets their turn; and the other side DOES get their turn, except when a caster has decided they will not.

Now, certainly, a well built initiator ('swordians' as you call them, but given they're wielding weapons not being talking weapons I really can't agree with calling them that) can in fact - given a few minutes of rest in between - go pretty much all day until sheer exhaustion finally takes him, but their ability to keep swinging all day - as handy as that can be - does rather pale in comparison to the literal campaign-rewriting capabilities of a similar level full caster.

"You can keep fighting all day" vs "you can alter the course of history and solve entire encounters, puzzles, quests or dilemmas a few times a day" just happens to actually become true on the former side with a well built initiator class, as it really isn't with a mere martial that lacks those disciplines.

Plus you gotta admit that any god that limits how many smitings his paladins can make in a day, no matter how much smiting or terrible enemies of that very god the paladin might need to smite that day, is a bloody cheapskate!