Minimight's page

Garretmander wrote:

Personally I was warmonger connection, power armor, and be able to switch hit between the flare and the weapon, downsides including power armor and needing two solarian crystals.

Do you need two crystals if you have multiple manifestations? Since a crystal is inserted into the mote, I would think it would work with both your sword and flare.

Let's see if there's an obvious answer.

The base form of your solar manifestation, when not actively in use, is a mote of stellar energy slightly smaller than your fist that hovers near your head. Beyond the solar mote, your manifestation can take one of two additional forms: armor or a weapon.

You gain a second solar manifestation. You can have only one manifestation active at a time unless you are fully attuned (graviton or photon), in which case you can use two manifestations at once.

You gain a solar weapon, as the solar manifestation ability of a solarian with a class level equal to your mystic level.

From the description, it sounds like additional manifestations either from Extra Manifestations or Solar Connection come as their own mote. Basically, each solar manifestation gives you a mote, and each mote has a mote mode and an active mode. Motes aren't interchangeable, so you'd need a crystal for each mote you wanted to enhance.

And hey, there's no language to stop you from manifesting two solar weapons, right? Wouldn't be beneficial, like at all, but it would look cool as hell.

Minimight wrote:

As for align bonus, that costs a move action, only grants the benefit vs one target, and only lasts for 1 round and still doesn't stack with cover.

I'm sorry, where does it say aligning bonuses only last for a round? From my reading of it it looked like align bonus lasted until that Target is neutralized, or until you align against a different target.

It's in the rules for the solar shield itself:

As a move action you can align the shield to grant you greater protection against one opponent you are observing (Core Rulebook 260), which increases your shield bonus to AC to +2 against attacks from that opponent until the beginning of your next turn.

Emphasis mine.

Thought the shape & type of weapon the mote formed determined the type of damage.

Slashing, Bludgeoning, or Piercing.

That's true for the weapon, but doesn't hold up for shields which can only ever do bludgeoning, regardless of their shape.

In the COM, Solarians got access to two new Zenith Revelations, one photon and one graviton, which both do essentially the same thing: act as a summon creature spell. However, there's one line in them that is leaving me puzzled:

You select which four creatures you can summon each time you gain a solarian level, and they must all be shadow creatures.

For photon, just swap "shadow creatures" for "fire creatures".

So the first part, "You select which four creatures you can summon each time you gain a solarian level," seems pretty clear to me. Summon Creature works by letting you choose four creatures off a list based on the spell level. So you can change which four those four you choose every time you level up.

The second part makes no sense. "...they must all be shadow creatures."

Shadow creatures are one, specific creature that you can summon from the Summon Creature Table. However, that could also be implying that the creatures use the shadow creature template This leads me to two interpretations.

1. You don't actually get to choose which four creatures you summon, and you only summon shadow creatures (though you can of course flavor them to be any shape you want).

2. You do get to choose which four creatures you summon, and you apply both the creature's original template and the shadow creature's template.

Okay, so First off, with the shield, they get a straight +1 to AC which increases if you 'align' it, only it stacks with heavy armor if your solarian takes heavy armor prof. That's clearly just, better than the armor solarian, which is +1 with only light armor, and goes up to +2 at 10th level.

This neglects the fact that shield bonuses don't stack with cover. Armor is always going to apply, in cover or out. As for align bonus, that costs a move action, only grants the benefit vs one target, and only lasts for 1 round and still doesn't stack with cover.