Mashallah's page

Since many people by now got a chance to read through the book, I think it's time to discuss what we've seen so far.
I'll begin with a quick overview of classes, sorting them in descending order of my early impression of their relative power:
First: Technomancer.

You gain the bonuses for studied combat with your chosen weapon and can use studied strike with your chosen weapon as long as the target of your studied strike is within 30 feet of you.

There are two ways to interpret it:

P.S. On a semi-unrelated note, I find it really odd that Steel Hounds have to pay a tax of two feats just to have their class features work.

Exhibit A:

Power Attack: If I am using a two-handed weapon with one hand (such as a lance while mounted), do still I get the +50% damage for using a two-handed weapon?

Yes.

Exhibit B:

Weapons, Two-Handed in One Hand: When a feat or other special ability says to treat a weapon that is normally wielded in two hands as a one handed weapon, does it get treated as one or two handed weapon for the purposes of how to apply the Strength modifier or the Power Attack feat?

If you're wielding it in one hand (even if it is normally a two-handed weapon), treat it as a one-handed weapon for the purpose of how much Strength to apply, the Power Attack damage bonus, and so on.

They quite directly contradict each other on the matter of Power Attack, so obviously they can't be both true.

I just noticed First Contact monsters only have Perception near Initiative, but not in their Skills section, unlike Pathfinder monsters, which have it in both sections.
Perhaps, hopefully, Perception might finally not be a skill anymore?
That would be a great development.

Azlanti Star Empire having been confirmed as a Starfinder faction is, in my opinion, quite intriguing.
I wonder how are they justified, given that Azlanti blood was very thin and almost nonexistent by even Pathfinder dates.
While this is 100% pure speculation, I think it'd be a really fun spin if they were lead by a resurrected or even undead Aroden, as Aroden was the last pure-blood Azlanti - this would at least give legitimacy to their claims of being the Azlanti Star Empire.
And besides, what could be cooler than an undead deity?

Geekdad have recently publicised the Envoy sheet from Paizocon, which can be seen in their album with Paizocon pictures.

And what worries me a lot is the comparison of that sheet to Keskodai, when both are level 1.

Let's compare them, shall we?
1. Keskodai has objectively superior in-combat healing - higher numbers (2d8 OR 1d8+4 for Keskodai vs 4 for Navasi), the possibility of healing all allies at the same time without expending more resources, action flexibility, not being restricted to only healing allies who were damaged within the last round, healing actual HP instead of SP.
2. Keskodai has spellcasting while Navasi has none.
3. Keskodai's Telekinesic Projectile cantrip is more damaging than Navasi's weapon, even after you account for the accuracy disparity.
4. Mystic has at-will unlimited out-of-combat healing, Envoy has none of that.
5. The Mystic can actually help out dying, unconscious, blinded, or deafened allies, while the Envoy is outright incapable of healing them.
6. The Envoy can only heal a given ally once per encounter, while the Mystic has no such restrictions.

As far as I can tell, the only advantage Envoy has in this comparison is two more skills per level (8+int vs 6+int when neither class is int-based) and the ability to add expertise to two skills, none of which compares in utility to spellcasting, bringing back memories of the dreaded Caster/Martial Disparity that plagued Pathfinder.

Another issue that worries me is the one Envoy talent that was showcased so far on Paizo Blog:

Clever Feint (EX) [sense-dependent]

As a standard action, you can fake out an enemy within 60 feet, making that enemy open to your attacks. Attempt a Bluff check with the same DC as a check to feint against that enemy (though this isn't a standard check to feint, so Improved Feint and Greater Feint don't apply). Even if you fail, that enemy is flat-footed against your attacks until the end of your next turn. If you succeed, the enemy is also flat-footed against your allies' attacks until the end of your next turn. You can't use clever feint against a creature that lacks an Intelligence score.

At 6th level, you can spend 1 Resolve Point to treat a failed Bluff check for clever feint as if it were a success.

This is a standard action, which negates your own feats, effectively punishing you for taking them, and merely gives you +2 to hit on your next turn (or, if succeed on the skill check, your allies also get the bonus - though, because of how Trick Attack now works, it doesn't even enable Sneak Attacking), as Flat-Footed is not simply a flat -2 penalty to AC instead of negating dex bonus. That is absolutely underwhelming for a standard action. This is especially worrisome as this was the sole showcased talent and thus, by nature, cherry-picked, implying this is one of the better ones, implying the other ones are at least as depressing.

All in all, everything shown so far offers serious concerns about the Envoy's ability to be at all meaningful and useful in a party compared to a Mystic.

I would like to present to you, my conspiracy theory about the plot of the first AP.

I'm basing my predictions on several key clues that have been dropped so far.
First, on the cover of the first book, it's clear that the players are fighting off a horde of Akatas. For those not familiar with Akatas, they are these cute little things:
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/aberrations/akata
https://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/pathfinder/images/8/86/Akata.jpg
From that and what was disclosed about the plot of the book so far, it's reasonable to assert that Akatas are what you find on the deserted spaceship, which makes one think how would they end up there, especially given that the spaceship is the plot hook and it's mentioned that it's the first sign of a major chain of events.
Second, it was mentioned that one of the villainous factions of Starfinder is a mysterious group called The Swarm, which feels reasonable to connect to the Akata infestation, especially given that Akatas are vaguely xenomorph-themed.
From these as the baseline, here is my gut feeling on the plot of the first book and how it integrates in to the rest:
You go to the deserted spaceship which brought an asteroid from the drift.
On it, you find a bunch of weird cocoons. As you approach the cocoons, they burst into Akatas who attack you.
As you delve deeper into the situation, it turns out said Akatas are pretty much just scouts of The Swarm which now decided to go on the offensive and devour the galaxy.
You then recover that something along the following lines happened:
The spaceship was scouting for material-rich asteroids somewhere in another solar system. It grabbed one of them and went into the Drift to bring it back home to sell it there. However, the asteroid turned out to be a scout outpost with several Akatas hybernating in it, who were awoken by the spaceship. Them being awoken alerted The Swarm of hostilities, sparking a full-blown war.

5th level Obozaya has 45 SP and 41 HP. That's a total of 86 Meat Points needed to down her.

Let's take a look at her weapons:

First, the flamethrower, as it's the thematically funniest one for this calculation. It deals 1d6+4 damage per hit, that's average 7.5 damage, meaning she needs 12 hits on average to down herself. Her accuracy on the flamethrower is +7 vs EAC, meaning she needs a 17 to hit her own EAC, which is a 20% chance. That means she would need an average 60 attacks with her flamethrower to down her clone. That is assuming not using full-attacks to preserve accuracy. So, she needs entire 6 minutes of flamethrower fire to kill herself.

Second, let's take a look at her melee weapon, as it's the most damaging option she has. It has 1d8+10 damage per hit, average 14.5, meaning she needs 6 hits on average to down herself. An accuracy of +10 vs EAC means she needs a natural 14 to hit her counterpart, which is a 35% chance. So she needs to attack herself about 17-18 times with a doshko. That is almost two minutes of beating herself with a laser polearm to kill herself.

Am I the only one who thinks this is excessively slow?

This means that thrown weapons deal their normal damage (projectiles deal damage based on the size of the weapon that fired them).

Any enlarged item that leaves an enlarged creature's possession (including a projectile or thrown weapon) instantly returns to its normal size. This means that thrown and projectile weapons deal their normal damage.

These spells, despite being equivalent in almost everything sans direction, treat projectile weapons very inconsistently.