Impersonator chassis got me thinking about this, so I figured I'd see what it would look like. Ideally, not just looking like a person, but actually being able to speak on behalf of the Mechanic.
So, just taking the chassis gives us trained deception, looking like an ancestry, and +2 to the DC to see through an impersonation as that ancestry. However, they can't speak or hold anything, so it's not going to hold up for anything other than "not drawing attention in a crowd". We're giving up a lot of health and damage, as well as a bit of accuracy, for this, so let's see what it takes to get some actual value.
Fortunately, we start out with a free Commercial Customization, and Mechanic provides an Integrated Weapon Mount. Having a sniper rifle or something in the weapon mount probably solves our damage problems, buuut it gives the disguise away. Oh well, ten-minute install/uninstall time means it's not the end of the world. The Commercial Customization gives us Artificial Personality, critically giving us speech and the ability to attempt charisma-based checks.
They still can't use their hands, which is probably a good thing to remedy to draw less attention. So we'll need one feat for Commercial Customization to get Manual Dexterity. At this point, we're doing okay: we have a person-shaped bot who can casually interact with things and lie. This seems like a great spot to point out that under the current rules, companions can never activate items! This might need to be updated to "can't activate magic items" or something like that, since it does feel like a robot companion should be able to do tech item activations at some point.
A second Commercial Customization feat would help a lot, grabbing Skill Module for Diplomacy. A +1 Charisma is nothing to write home about, but this will let them smooth things over.
We'll also have feats locked in for Mature, Graceful/Nimble (hopefully graceful covers charisma, unlike nimble?), Specialized, and Elite to keep our companion up to date.
When we get to level 6, we need to take Tactical Customization for Expertise Module (Deception) because companion advancements were designed for animal companions, and therefore never advanced the starting skill.
So far, that's 1st, 2nd, 4th, 6th, and 8th spoken for, along with 14 and 18.
At 10th, we'll really want Advanced Customization for Sapient. That frees us up to retrain the Commercial Customization used for Artificial Personality, freeing up a second-rank slot, or that can be used for Upgrade Slot to get a Glamer Projector installed for easy outfit changes.
At 12th, as long as we don't feel we need +2 diplomacy, we're good.
At 14th, we get a specialization. It's not exactly thematic, but Bully gives us +3 to our charisma mod, and we'll take that.
At 16th, Superior Customization gets us Glow Up. It "increases" our charisma to +3, when we have +4. It feels a little bad investing so much into this and only getting that +1 advantage over a tank who took another specialization.
We don't know what level 18's Elite Drone does, but given how important the other similar feats are, I assume it's also important.
For the capstone, Ultimate Drone finally gives us a charisma boost. Diplomat gives us master diplomacy (freeing up Glow-Up and possible skill+expertise modules), and a whopping +4 charisma. 20th level is very late, but +10 charisma helps make up for only having expert deception with no item bonuses. That's... 10 for being a DC, 24 from expert, 10 from mod, and 2 from chassis specialty. That's a DC of 46 to recognize that they're a robot companion. An on-level high perception score sees through that 55% of the time.
At level 19, though, it's pretty rough, with a high perception seeing through it 80% of the time. At 13, before specialization, that's... 10 for DC, 17 from expert, 1 from mod, and 2 from chassis specialty. That's DC 30. An on-level high perception score sees through that 85% of the time.
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Overall, this feels like a lot of work and investment. It feels like we're missing pieces of the playtest, too. The animal companion specializations don't map super well to some of the options robots get, and we're missing the level 18 option. It feels like impersonator acting as face has to make a lot of tradeoffs while still requiring everything to be invested into the concept. Almost the only free feats were ones that were freed up by a customization covering something that used to be necessary.
Can a Mechanic's Drone maybe get a delayed customization progression, or feat that acts like a bulk deal? Even if it's something like Tactical Drone giving a Commercial Customization and Refined Chassis giving a Tactical Customization, where you get the previous rank of customization...
Impersonator Chassis feels like it should also allow any integrated weapon to be concealed while not in use unless somebody beats their Deception DC for impersonation.
I'm going to set aside overclock and jailbreak for a moment. Technomancer has some nice illusion and summons support scattered throughout, and there are other sustained spells. Once you cast a sustained spell, though, you're kind of locked out of your thing as a Technomancer. You don't have the spare action to use a spellshape- at most, you can do it once if you were able to overclock that first round.
Technomancer should probably have options other than jailbreaking to deal with the action cost of spellshapes. Meta-action feat or features like, "One action: Sustain one of your spells. You can use a one-action spellshape. You must spend focus points for magic hacks as normal." It might even be good to bundle a few options into one- "Stride up to half your speed, sustain one of your spells, or interact to draw or swap an item, then use a one-action spellshape."
As a specific example, with the illusion-friendly spellshapes available, it would be nice to cast a hardlight illusory body double and then spend the rest of combat using Incognito Spell to make it confusing about who is casting.
Something that makes it so that just using the regular, non-jailbroken spellshapes doesn't feel like you're playing a featureless caster. Spellshapes make up such a big part of the class that they could really use a little more love outside of the "spend one action now to save one later" setup.
Overclock Boost targets a minion, and from the Overclock section, it must be a tech minion. When you command that minion, you get to sustain a spell.
There aren't any familiar feats, and your ancestry-provided familiar won't work because it's not a tech minion. Even if there's a general feat to get one, that's level three. At level 1, all you have is Summon Robot.
Unfortunately, Summon Robot is three actions. Overclock Gear is one action, and must be used on the same turn, so Summon Robot can never be overclocked off of. Well, fine. We'll get ourselves a minion the first turn, and we'll cast a spell next turn.
Second turn, cast a spell for two actions (preferably a sustained spell- Animate Rope or Leaden Boots seem to be the only Pathfinder options). We're out of slots, but we'll be sustaining two spells at once, and can use a cantrip alongside it! ... Except no, we've just used all three actions, with none left to sustain our robot. It vanishes.
All right, let's go check our focus spell. Signal Relay- for one action, if the next action is casting a spell targeting you, it affects your minion instead. This is normally just a three-action setup that will result in our minion getting dismissed because we can't sustain it. If we somehow Jailbreak it, we copy the spell to target both ourselves and a minion. We'll have an action to sustain with then, but at first level, we can't use this even if we solved the action issue, because we need one non-cantrip spell to get a minion, one non-cantrip spell to overclock, and one non-cantrip spell to make this worth our trouble... but we only have two non-cantrip spells.
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Summon Robot doesn't work with any of the abilities because it's three actions. The subclass needs to go outside the class to have any of its features work. Even with an archetype, you're spending the first level with two spells, five cantrips, and your only feature being the ability to hide the fact that you're casting. And, I guess, you can use a focus point to spend an action to be able to cast a self-only buff on a familiar if you got one from your ancestry?
I love the great illusion/minion support the subclass has going on! But I think a class that doesn't do anything until you go take an archetype is the sort of thing that playtest feedback is important for fixing.
One of the things I've been looking forward to in SF2 is building Arendi, my ysoki Mechanic from SF1. (Technically, he was a dual-class Technomancer, but that was more to get a drone and an exocortex. In SF2, that'll just be a free archetype game with the Technomancer multiclass archetype.)
Arendi had a comfortable live growing up on Verces, and studied to become a programmer and engineer. He took a shot at becoming a tech Space!YouTuber, as many such people are wont to do. He was starting up a series of programming tutorial vids, and tried to include some humor in it. So when he was covering how to run a program on a set schedule, he jokingly picked "daily prayers of appeasement", automating his prayers to Lao Shu Po, Grandmother Rat. Basically like if you programmed your computer to say "bless you" when it detected a sneeze.
He woke up the next day with a rat sitting up at the foot of his bed, carrying a messily written note on ancient rice paper. It expressed disappointment that he refused to speak to his own grandmother and concern that Verces' cities were no place for a young ysoki to learn what life was really like. The writer had made arrangements for him to participate in a planetary expedition in six months. The letter was signed with a bloody pawprint.
He spent the next couple of months cobbling together a drone with sonic weaponry and an aim-assist AI chip in his head, since that was faster for him than trying to train himself up to competence with weapons.
The drone is named Ban, short for "Banshee", and the AI is named Shasa, short for "Rakshasa".
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So, for Arendi, we want: martial proficiency and a big drone with sonic weaponry. Fortunately, the class starts with martial progression rather than needing a subclass for it, so we'll just flavor his exocortex as providing aim-assist. Well be going with the drone subclass.
Ancestry: Ysoki
Heritage: Akitonian (representing training rather than actual birthplace)
Ancestry feat: Cheek Pouches
Background: Tech Support
Level 1 Mechanic:
- Custom Rig: Bundle a bunch of toolkits together and save 1.2 bulk from the total.
- Modify: When you draw a weapon or consumable, get a nice little perk- or just modify it for an action if it's already out. Nicely flavorful.
- Exocortex: Love that tinkering with your nervous system is how you do your class feature better than other people. Going with Drone for this, naturally.
- Drone: Looking at the drones, I was worried because of the melee-only options, but it looks like integrated weapon mount comes free! So we'll pick up a sonic weapon to install. Hmmm... it looks like there's no defined class DC for area fire with weapons? Flavor-wise, tank is the right pick for the drone, but I'm not shooting a weapon with a +1 Dex, that's a waste of everyone's time. Agile chassis it is. It doesn't quite fit Ban, but it's close enough.
- Drone feature: Let's see, what else do we get... DAILY FULL REPAIR! Wooo! That's huge, whew. We also get modify actions for temp HP and bonus damage. Robot companions also get a commercial customization- ah, armor plating! That helps sell the feeling of Ban despite the agile frame.
- Feat: Either High Voltage for getting back some AoE on Ban, or High-Tech Medic because Arendi wants Ban to be able to keep him alive.
Question: High-Tech Medic has you store medical items in your custom rig, and lets you have your drone deliver them. At low-levels, your drone has to be adjacent for you to use this so it makes sense. At higher levels, though, you now have medicine teleporting from your rig to the drone? It's also a little weird how you have to be adjacent to your drone, and... maybe it needs to be adjacent to the target? It says you command your drone; does it get the two actions from being commanded? The wording could use a little clarity.
Note: Not for this character, but I love Multidisciplinary Mechanic! Especially Necrotech! It does feel like "Necrograft Lore" is a lot narrower than the others, and wouldn't let you roll for (as an example) recalling knowledge about Eoxian necrotech ships.
Level 2:
Feat: Modify Drone seems like a good long-term investment, being able to keep its damage a lot higher at the... not inconsiderable expense. Hunker Down would be thematic, though.
Level 3:
Mechanic's Ingenuity: Love it- really helps them from becoming a one-trick "Computers and Crafting" pony, freeing up one skill advancement track for a third skill. Arendi is probably using it for Society despite being stuck on a planet without sapient life, but Survival is an option.
Mobile Exocortex: Heeey, nice! More efficient movement. Reduces the pressure to take things like Hunker Down.
Level 4:
Feat: *scrolls through* Not much for drone... ah, that's why; Tactical Drone. Yep, pet class is pet classing.
Level 5:
Yay, weapon proficiency and damage type flexibility and crit-spec!
Level 6:
Feat: Oh man, looot of good options here for drones. Auto-Target and Defensive Programming both help Ban protect Arendi better. Tactical Customization is really nice, and I kind of wish that one were included in the subclass... maybe that's asking for too much, though. Echolocation fits Ban's sonic weaponry, Hardened Chassis lets Ban feel more tanky, and Share Charge means no reloading battery-powered sonic weaponry. Tough call...
Level 8:
Feat: Refined Chassis, naturally. I assume "nimble" = "agile" and "burly" = "savage"? Obviously, nimble is the only real choice here since it's the accuracy stat. (I'll probably want to take Advanced Targeting System to represent Shasa if there's a chance.)
Level 9:
Remote Mods: Yay, more flexibility! ... Are there any mods you don't need to be adjacent to use normally?
Level 10:
Feat: Advanced Customization. Right, yes, now upgrading also usually involves a follow-up feat. Hmmm... Resistant Panels are nice, but I think that Ban being a simple combat drone means that Sapience isn't such a big deal as it would be on drones with more personality. Let's check the other feats. Flickering Shield is really nice, and I think fits the somewhat cowardly nature better. (It does seem like it turns off if you mod again, so probably good to use judiciously.)
Level 12:
Feat: Glitch Pulse is nice, but I think it might be a good chance to go back and grab Advanced Customization or even a level 6 feat we passed up. I don't need more mods, Ban isn't a melee-focused drone, and Deploy Bunker uses its limited health pool. The feats at this level might actually benefit from a bit of a glow-up? I'd also love to see some kind of bulk deal, spending a 12th level feat to get multiple lower-tier drone customizations.
Level 13:
Enduring Mod: Woooo! A day-long mod! That's... +6 damage to the drone, probably- a nice, reliable passive that's a pain to apply regularly.
Level 14:
Feat: Advanced Drone, naturally. Synchronized Advance and Advanced Targeting System are options to keep in mind.
Level 15:
Manifold Mods: Heeey, nice! Two-for-one is a great deal.
Level 16:
Feat: Ooh... fast healing 5 for the drone is pretty nice. Uhhh... Superior Customization requiring Advanced Drone, while Advanced Customization doesn't? That's unnecessarily confusing. Nothing on the list fits Ban, so fast healing or a level 14 feat is the move.
Level 18:
Feat: Elite Drone, naturally.
Level 19:
Instant Mods: Very fun! I take back the "not needing more mods" from earlier.
Level 20:
Feat: After twenty levels of keeping this disaster of a rat alive, Ban is blessed with free will by Triune themself.
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Overall impression: I enjoy this class a lot, and it does a good job of letting me make a good drone controller. It does feel like I'm dumping an awful lot of feats into a companion, like... a lot a lot. With all the customization feats on offer, it feels like at least Modify Drone should be a freebie. Once you hit level 4, you're going to be investing the drone a bunch, so having such a boring tax feat before then instead of something fun? It's a bummer!
I know that the game doesn't take free archetype into account, but this particular subclass does feel like Mechanic might not be bringing much to the table vs. a robot companion via archetype. That said, if that's really the case, you can always go Mechanic-Turret/Mines-Robot.
I'll definitely need to look at turret and mines in depth later, but I'm happy at Arendi feeling like Arendi.
Research by delving through forgotten dreams for what would have been brilliant inspiration had it been remembered? That's an incredibly fey approach to learning, and I love it.
I'm playing in a fifth-level one-shot tomorrow, and using the chance to play a necromancer. Conveniently, I already have a necromancer raccoon who keeps skeletal minions in her extradimensional clothing-maws. That translates pretty naturally to a tanuki necromancer, so let's get started.
One-shot information: Grim Symphony, a PFS scenario set in an Ustalavian mad scientist's manor.
Martials receive 100 gp, a +1 striking weapon, +1 armor, and a magic item up to 4th level. Casters receive 100 gp, a staff (or converted coda) up to 5th level, a wand of a 2nd-rank spell, and a magic item up to 4th level.
Necromancer Ira
Ancestry: Tanuki, subbing in for raccoon.
Heritage: Steadfast, picking up Teakettle Form. This allows her to turn into a talking skull, which is a really fun trick for a necromancer.
Ancestry feats: Scorched on Cracked Mountain for first level, just being grabbed to avoid skewing playtest results too much with more of tanuki's shapeshifting. Hasty Celebration to fit the character by bursting into celebrations if one of her thralls crits.
Background is Academy Dropout because she's the least dignified of my mage trio. Dubious Knowledge suits her.
Necromancer
Bone Shaper, since she's going with skeletons.
Feats are Necrotic Bomb for a save-based focus spell and Bone Speaker to have a broader knowledge base, and to test if Necromancer can afford to take a fun feat instead of another focus spell.
Feats: Toughness, Read Psychometric Resonance for out-of-combat options, and Pickpocket for shenanigans.
Spell prep:
Cantrips: Figment, Telekinetic Hand to kind of make up for thralls being unable to do anything, Void Warp for a save-based cantrip, Shield, and Needle Darts (reflavored as bone shards) to have a 60ft. ranged option.
1st: Fear (c'mon, she's a necromancer), Illusory Disguise to disguise party members as mindless zombies - probably need to swap that out, since the staff covers it
2nd: Soothe for emergency healing, Ghoulish Cravings as an up-close debuff. Thralls are skeletal and won't satisfy the corpse requirements to remove the debuff.
3rd: Rouse Skeletons because it's too thematic to pass up.
Free items:
Trickster's Mandolin converted from coda to staff (losing all special abilities), giving Prestidigitation, Illusory Disguise, and Ventriloquism.
Wand of Persistent Servant, allowing leaving a "bound spirit" to carry out a task.
Sleeves of Storage, explaining where all the skeletons for thralls are kept.
Notable purchased items:
Rhythm Bone, a magical bone single-use recording device.
Build thoughts: It still feels like there's a missing feat or focus spell. Taking a first-level feat in a fourth-level slot never feels great, but the second-level feat has to be getting up to two focus points. Maybe lose the subclass general feat, as nice as it is, and just give everyone Necrotic Bomb? Otherwise, looking forward to playing her. The Bone Shaper focus spell looks a lot better once it gets to scale a bit- level one is sad.
Building a 5th level Runesmith for a one-shot. I haven't looked quite as closely at this class, but I know that having a free hand is an issue. We'll go with Kholo so that we can have a d8 bite attack, a shield hand, and a free hand. The Int/Str combo works well, and runed-up teeth are a nice visual.
Level 1:
Kholo: Crunch is what makes the build work, so grabbing that. For heritage, we'll have one hand occupied, so not Dog Kholo. Runes don't take up our MAP, so let's go ahead and grab Great Kholo.
Background: Considering Gladiator, but nothing in the background is useful for the character. Let's go with Printer- picked up some runic knowledge that way.
Class feat: Let's start with the feats, and then worry about runes. We have four options to pick from. Backup Runic Enhancement is useless for us because we're going unarmed and can't be disarmed. Engraving Strike is useless for us because we're going unarmed and it doesn't support that. Remote Detonation is useless for us because we're going unarmed and we don't have any Dex to speak of anyway. Rune-Singer is useless for us because our Crafting is always going to be better than Performance and we've built specifically so we always have a free hand. ... So, there aren't any first level feats that do anything for us. Backup Runic Enhancement, I guess. We can at least cast it on somebody else or something in an emergency? Please add a first level feat for shields or unarmed attacks!
Runes: We're going to have six, so let's pick those out. The two shield runes are good picks since we're expecting to be using ours a lot. Whetstones is what we'll be using on our teeth. Let's see... are diacritic runes a separate application? Ah- there's a capstone feat to make them separate, so no. We need at least two offensive runes to stack up on enemies, so let's grab fire and thunder (looks like the only damaging ones, and the only other offensive one is a team liability). For the sixth rune, let's see... we only get three etched runes, and we're probably going teeth and shield for two. I don't know the party, so let's get the reapply diacritic. We can put it on our teeth to be able to spend two actions for 12d6 against a target once per fight.
Skills: Society from background, Crafting and Arcana from the class, Athletics, and we'll fill in the rest as needed. We'll be reflavoring all the runes as arcane. We know a ton of languages thanks to Multilingual.
Level 2:
Class feat: All right, now we can take a real class feat! Fortifying Knock will let us raise our shield and get a second shield rune on it at the same time.
Skill feat: We get Magical Crafting for free at this level. We'll also grab Titan Wrestler so that Athletics doesn't get wasted on bigger enemies.
Level 3:
Grab Toughness or Fleet, and increase Athletics.
Level 4:
Class feat: Definitely can't afford to invest in Intimidate for Terrifying Invocation. Don't need Transpose Etching because I'm not building around it. Artist's Attendance is... weird? If I have a rune on myself, it's stride twice and apply a rune on a different creature, so I guess that works better than I thought on the initial read. Let's go with that for the initial combat charge.
Skill feat: Eyes of the City or Courtly Graces for more out-of-combat options.
Level 5:
Let's go with Ask the Bones. Once per day free action to recall knowledge is some really nice action compression on a busy class.
Thoughts:
Man, having no relevant first level feats is a real bummer! I'm glad there are runes that work for unarmed strikes, but please keep them in mind for the feats as well. I feel like Runesinger could easily be cut for space because it just lets you have a way worse modifier? Backup Runic Enhancement is never fun or interesting to take; it's only ever useful if something has gone wrong.
If the class isn't going to have any subclasses, the low level feats need to pop. As it is, building the character lowered my inspiration, not fed into it.
Necromancer has a lot of ground control, but there aren't any flying thralls and ranges are both limited and usually from a thrall. An enemy hovering at a very casual 35 feet up is immune to just about everything the class can throw at them outside their spells. The class just seems to shut down at that point.
In another topic of discussion, the question came up about mid-air summons. As far as I can tell, it's not something that PF2 prevents like PF1 did. Thralls can't fly (can't even move, generally), so they're just going to drop. A falling creature is a basic reflex save of DC 15 to avoid taking half their fall damage. With a 30ft range, adjacent creatures are saving against 7 damage, while anyone further away is saving vs. less. Or is it a save to avoid half of one damage, since the thrall only takes one damage from the fall?
It's also a way for Flesh Magicians to just create difficult terrain directly, which seems reasonable to be able to do.
Falling skeletons and zombies feel a little silly, so it's probably best if this isn't a secret low-level damage option. I'd prefer any fixes to low-level play to be a little less goofy.
So, the first step for the playtest will be me building out my character from Blood Lords who was a non-caster necromancer.
Vin Barlow was a gnoll from the Mana Wastes sick of just scraping by and living off whatever nasty creatures could be hunted down and burned into some semblance of edibility. He moved to Geb and got some work with the construction guild. Clandestinely, he started performing rituals to tie his hammer to the construction projects themselves, drawing out the secrets the stones held in them. It was enough to make him quite knowledgeable and a passable ritualist. Filled with questionable notions of the gnoll rulers of the area predating Nex and Geb's arrival, he sought to obtain a life of luxury, attended by undead servants and eating inexpensive food prepared by immortal chefs with centuries of experience. After an untimely death, he got an off-the-books resurrection from the Church of Zon-Kuthon in exchange for his worship (however transactional). He'd impressed them earlier with his ability to make undead feel pain. The secrets of the stones shifted to secrets of the shadows, and he mostly paid his debts by inflicting pain rather than enduring it.
Vin was a Thaumaturge (weapon implement primary) with Undead Master free archetype. Wide-ranging knowledge thanks to Diverse Lore, some undead creation rituals, and a scorpion whip reflavored to a spiked chain. His undead mount was four skeletons carrying a throne, reflavored from zombie mount because skeletal mount is way too fragile for combat.
This isn't a particularly one-to-one rebuild, because Vin's build was the best workaround I could do at the time. The overarching goal is one of hedonistic luxury and undead minions to boss around.
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As a Necromancer proper, Vin would be Int-based instead of Cha, which means grabbing Courtly Graces to still fill similar social roles. Undead Lore puts in a lot of work in the campaign, along with Society and Occultism. Int base works better with kholo than Cha, so he gets a free Str boost at the expense of Wis- fine by me.
1st level:
Grim Fascination: Bone Shaper. Zombies make for unsightly and unhygienic servants, and spirits can't do much. That gives one focus spell, Fleet, and the thralls have a 30% survival rate for AoEs. Well, for one of them to survive at any rate. We get Undead Lore (equivalent to a good background selection at this level), and we can damage undead with void spells. Will need GM permission to use this feature in Geb, because it says that it does vital damage instead, which is illegal, but that's probably fine.
So how does level one look? Well, we can make a d6 attack at thirty feet, which is like a weak Kineticist. We have one focus spell which is a fifteen foot line from a thrall. It's an attack roll, so... we really don't want to use it on the same round we summon. It's a d8 instead of a d6. That feels so bad, I might rethink the subclass choice entirely, just like I had to go with zombies instead of skeletons for the mount in the old build.
What else do we have? One prepared spell per day, and cantrips. Uff, level one feels bad. Let's go look at zombies... We get Toughness, an equally good feat. Thralls leave difficult terrain. The focus spell reduces movement, immobilizes, or grapples on a crit fail. Unfortunately, these all end with a single point of damage. Trading two/three actions for one attack action? Ehhh... maybe. Looks like level one is just going to suck regardless. It really feels like Necrotic Bomb should be a freebie so you have a good, reliable option.
Combat cantrips need to be save-based, so that'll be Void Warp and Haunting Hymn. GM permission will be needed to target undead with Void Warp.
2nd level:
As a focus-point class, I need something good to do with my focus points. Bone Speaker or Conceal Spell would be thematic and fun, but I just can't afford to go until fourth level with a bad focus spell and a pool size of one. Necrotic Bomb is some good save-based damage with a useful shape. It's weird that Mastery of Life and Death isn't optional- if I'm an undead necromancer detonating a thrall next to me, I have to damage myself.
With the addition of the second focus spell, the class seems more where it needs to be. Vin can summon a thrall, have it attack, and detonate it. That's twice per fight, after which he needs to start using his two real spells, cantrips, or try to fit in a Consume Thrall. I'm a little bummed that it feels so mandatory to take that.
3rd level:
Reaction thralls on death! It's just fun.
4th level:
Body Shield looks fun, but with one thrall per action, that's a bit impractical right now. Bony Barrage is nice, but cones are hard to place, and again, two thralls is a bit steep right now. Let's go for the old Vin flavor and grab Bone Speaker.
6th level:
Bone Burst, easy call. Next level, we're getting two thralls, and this doesn't take focus points.
8th level:
Conglomerate of Limbs. Big summon to muck up the battlefield and lock people down, plus we hit three focus points.
10th level:
Lifesense, I think? Hmm. It's that or go all the way back to second-level feats and grab Conceal Spell.
12th level:
Reinforced Skeleton or Vital Conduit, depending on what I settled on.
14th level:
We're moving past where the game ended. We've got a few spells here- five thralls that deal a little bit of chip damage on attacks, or a one-action save-vs.-frightened. Those both seem underwhelming for a 14th level focus spell? I know Skeletal Lancers is good action economy and makes thralls, but a successful save against 7d12 is still equal to four lancer hits, and that's a 2nd level feat.
16th level:
Desperate Revival is a terrible choice in Blood Lords. Effortless Concentration, probably- it's just such a good deal, even with so few slots.
18th level:
Ectoplasmic Aura is an easy pick, since I'm not trying to wade into melee.
20th level:
Should Living Graveyard force more saves? If it's just initially, then it's a pretty bad deal. Perfected Thrall makes good use of Effortless Concentration. Oh, but as a thrall it shares MAP with Vin... I guess it's a second 10th-rank slot, then?
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Overall... Necromancer didn't do much at all to fulfill any dreams of undead-supplied leisure. It feels like human Necromancers are the ones getting the full experience, and everybody else is making cuts to catch up. An attack-roll focus spell shouldn't be one of the starting options, because of how anti-synergistic it is with the core class feature, and the flesh starting focus spell shouldn't be brushed off with a point of damage.
I needed a little more from the class. Another focus spell included by default, a fun out-of-combat feature... I'll need to try it in play to see if the actual play experience feels better, because it's entirely possible I'm just dismissing the thrall action too much. At the same time, it feels like I'm also brushing over how with one flying or long-range enemy, and everything falls apart.
This is a very petty point, but I play petty characters. Being a necromancer means being able to wave your hand and some shambling corpse, skeletal servitor, or spectral shade will pour you a goblet of wine. They don't necessarily need to be able to do anything fancy, but I should be able to have menial out-of-combat stuff done without a spell slot. If I have a reason to be casting Phantasmal Minion, then something is off.
- Absolutely, I can ask the GM for this. Almost any of them will say yes, outside of PFS. It's a lot more satisfying to have the class itself support that, and might help the "video game necromancer" feel by giving some roleplay options.
- Yes, there's some cognitive dissonance involved in allowing this without allowing trap checking. (Necromancers should also never walk down a dungeon hallway without sending a disposable undead ahead, but that's not something PF2 balance would ever allow.) But we already have something like that for familiars, so I'm not too worried about that.
Maybe one special thrall per day can be made well enough for this? No duration, takes simple commands outside combat. Then if it's sent to check for traps, it's gone for the day like a Witch's familiar. Or the "attack" option of the cantrip can be an interact or manipulate out of combat.
Maybe I'm being too picky, but it feels like I've stumbled on the overlap of two issues this class has: you must be using a land speed for a lot of feats 'n features, and sniper rifles invalidate a big chunk of feats.
Building a Barathu Operative for a 5th level one-shot, but building them as if they're in a long-term game. I'd like to play as a flying Barathu and invest in fun Barathu feats, not just pump up land speed to a functional level. I'm also going with Sniper for fun, naturally grabbing the Shirren Eye Rifle. It feels like those two choices have pretty much determined most of the other choices.
Subclass feat: Keep Them In Your Sights and Scope Sight. It's not really much of a choice, because keeping a scope on your sniper rifle means losing out on 1d6 damage for a narrow 20 foot window of +2 to hit.
1st level: Already addressed why I'm passing up Scope Sight. Needing to reload every turn means no actions for Creative Cover. Using a fly speed means Elusive Target and Mobile Aim don't work. I've got Keep Them In Your Sights already. Instinctive Aim is solved by... carrying your weapon? Good for social games where you're okay carrying a sniper rifle as long as you aren't wielding it...? Weakening Shot it is.
2nd level: Hair Trigger, Kill Steal, and Double Tap all don't work with sniper rifles. Swift Reposition doesn't work with a fly speed. Reloading every round, we don't have room for the action cost of parry weapons, so Defensive Gunner is out. That leaves Danger Awareness and Peek. We need all the action compression we can get, so Peek it is.
4th level: Bloody Wounds is... useless? Two bleed damage on a crit? Double Draw doesn't work for two-handed weapons like sniper rifles, and Switch Target doesn't work for Unwieldy. We have to reload every round, so we don't have the actions for Stop Them In Their Tracks. That leaves us with the best yet, three feats- Always Ready wins, since it saves us one action per fight. (Or two in the rare case we have our weapon on us but not out.)
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Feature-wise, using a fly speed means we don't even get to use Mobile Reload. Our bonus movement does bring us from five feet to ten, so when we are on the ground and given a step, we can actually take it. On The Move's bonus speed doesn't help our flight, though, and Tactical Advance is just the same as a Step for us.
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Also, just a little gripe about the Recoil trait- the one damage it give doesn't scale up, so we're dropping two boosts into Strength to use a sniper rifle.
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Yeah, this is a particularly poor combination. I didn't set out to make it bad, though- I wanted to play a Sniper Operative, and also try out Barathu. There are a lot of rakes in the path.
It feels like Operative should have some support for fly speeds, given all its mobility. Even if that's a first-level feat that says something like, "If an Operative ability would let you Stride, you can move half your fly/swim/climb speed. If an Operative ability would let you Step, you may Step even with your fly/swim/climb speed, as long as it is at least 10 feet."
Sniper Rifle feels pretty punished as well, but I'm going to try it out. That Deadly d12 might need to be compensated for, but we'll see how it stacks up against the Magnetar Rifle.
Party:
Ysoki Analyst Witchwarper Mil (Broke post-grad who failed to flee college debt despite experimental reality transposition)
Skittermander In the Spotlight Envoy Mitzi (Unethical streamer exploiting misfortune and even tragedy for followers)
Shirren Sniper(?) Operative Mik (Recent ex-Swarm Shirren trying out different jobs)
Borai Solarian Maia (Ghostly arm, Hades II style)
Gear: Weapon, armor, five consumables, adventurer's pack, kits required for skills. GM ruled that since there were no uncommon weapons for Unconventional Weaponry, all advanced weapons count.
Level one game, livestock (hereafter referred to as "cows" despite any unsettlingly horse-like faces) has been going missing on a planet. The livestock is mainly used as food for workers in the main industry of super-resilient glass exports.
We show up, and are given the options of interviewing the farmers or talking with the Governor. We go to the farm. The farmer is a skittermander, and one of Mitzi's 500 followers. One wounded cow was recovered, and we inspected the wounds. A mix of successful and failed knowledge checks eventually got us to laser wolves, and recalling knowledge about them indicated fire resistance. Attacks on livestock are rare for laser wolves. Knowledge checks were a bit of a mess.
We voted to go out to the forest. Mil used his high society and his comm unit to look into what was happening locally that might have changed the laser wolf behavior. The information seemed to be censored, and he followed up with a computers check to get access to more clandestine sources revealing overhunting of glass snakes, the laser wolves predator. From there, it was an obvious conclusion about population explosion and low resources.
By then, we encountered two laser wolves. The first one scores double-crits, one with low damage and one with high, but both with 2*1d4 persistent fire damage. Mil had a hard time juggling low range on the available attack cantrip with trying to set up the quantum field so he could use Warp Probability to reroll a failed attack. Maia and Mitzi mostly tried to stay alive using med patches and patting down (making an attack or two that mostly missed), while Mik did most of the damage and Mil's cantrips got some regular hits in- no rerolls needed. Quantum field knowledge checks weren't useful because we already knew the important things beforehand. The wolves are downed, and the Maia succeeds on ending the persistent damage right after dropping to 0. A medpatch gets her up, and we head back to the farm to recover and report.
We head to the governor's office to report and propose selling hunting licenses to keep the laser wolf population down without needing to address or confront the larger issues with glass serpent over-hunting that are obviously a touchy point. Mil presents the proposal, but has to rely on Mitzi for the actual charismatic presentation. (A business background would have been more helpful here than Scientist.) The presentation is a success, and the one-shot is over.
BUT.
In time-honored tradition, we fight the "you screwed up" encounter anyway. In another reality, the governor pulls a gun on us and calls in some security drones. The Solarian takes him out immediately in one hit. (Turns out he's a level -1 merchant.) That leaves the two drones- Mil didn't touch his spells, and just spams Force Barrage for the fight. Mitzi finally gets to use Get 'Em! and her battle ribbon, enjoying the extra damage. Operative shoots stuff. Solarian plays around with Solar Rush just to try it out. It's a pretty straightforward fight.
---
Witchwarper feedback:
- Analyst field effect felt useless. Getting to apply the same result to two creatures was unclear- did that mean two pieces of information if two of the same creature are in the field? It pretty much had to be two of the same creatures, because it has to be two things applicable to the skill. Outside combat, there's no use checking two things at once, and inside combat, we'd already researched them. Making a bunch of repeated knowledge checks doesn't do much anyway, and needing to Seek in combat is really rare. So, it ended up being an action to prep to use a reaction, that didn't end up getting used.
- Needing the field up to use focus spells means it's all the eggs in the same basket. If the base field effect isn't fun, the whole class isn't fun- you've got no feature without spending actions on it. Getting any additional effects on the field takes a feat and an action.
- Knowledge skills are in a bad place with the addition of Computers. I took Computers, Crafting, Arcana, Occultism, Society, Nature, and Religion just so I could actually make those knowledge checks I would be making over and over. That's too many skills! I'm an Int-based class, burning almost everything just to be able to roll against creatures.
- Knowledge skills are too fantasy-oriented. For some reason, being smart is useless for medicine and biology. Physics and engineering questions are open-ended about where they belong.
- The extra spell slot was helpful. Even focusing on cantrips, having three spells for the day instead of just two made a difference in how free I felt in choosing things. Similarly, the extra hitpoints made being in ranged combat not as worrisome.
- The game needs a long-range attack roll cantrip. The most painful cantrip absence was Needle Darts. Telekinetic Projectile only being a 30ft. range was rough, and the Analyst subclass favors attack roll spells because of their reroll reaction.
- No real fits for background. Scientist background didn't really do what I wanted it to. If I used Assurance, I'd be losing out on the +4 Int bonus. It seems like there should be a Dubious Knowledge background for being from a similar-but-different reality.
- The party would have lost a member if we had been using the starting wealth rules as they're written. You can't afford armor + weapon + basics + a healing consumable or two.
- Arcane/Occult is nice on Witchwarper. If I'd known the party in advance, I'd have probably gone Occult to provide healing.
- The new combat spells lost out to just hitting with Force Barrage, unfortunately.
I've gone through to pick Starfinder backgrounds for a few characters, and while it's early on, I figured I'd provide a little feedback.
1. Dexterity should probably be over-represented as a stat option, given how many classes need it and the system's ranged focus. It's at about a third of the backgrounds, the expected amount, but four of the six classes are light armor, and most of the Soldier subclasses are Dex-based.
2. There's no handling of what to do when your background and class both give you the same feat.
3. There should probably be a background that works with Witchwarper's lore. It's weird playing a character from another reality and not being able to take a background to do anything related to that. Fitting options like "Dream Prophet" don't include Int or Dex as stat options. (In fairness, anime does indicate that the overwhelming majority of people who end up in other worlds would have the Vidgamer background.)
4. Just a few specific things...
4a. Scientist giving Assurance in a Lore skill is very against theme, because that usually means taking a penalty by not using intelligence. I feel like giving Additional Lore in the field of study, providing a scaling bonus in it, fits the theme better and lets them feel like an expert.
4b. While I could fall back on "well, they're from a city..." for a lot of characters, Face In the Crowd is a really niche feat.
4c. I love the Cyberborn background! I wish we had a second like it to cover some more stats, actually. It's great for starting off a character with a thematic augment for a lot of customization.
4d. Similarly, being able to start with Barricade thanks to Trooper is really nice. It helps keep Human's first-level general feat access from feeling like such a big deal.
Computers Legend, and can't write an app. Why am I taking the Computers skill if not for that sort of thing?
Crafting already has snares, alchemical items, and magical gear locked behind feats. Does it really need more feats to stop people from crafting medicinal items? Why are hybrid items not even craftable, period?
We only get so many skill feats, and every one that has to go towards just unlocking something is one less feat doing something fun.
Let's say I'm making a roboticist. I need to advance Computers and Crafting already just for software and hardware. I need Programmer for a feat, and... okay, Tech Crafter isn't actually required.
Suggestion: Some categories of items require being Expert in crafting/computers/whatever. They have first level skill feats that let you craft them just using Trained, and if you become Expert non-temporarily, you can freely retrain to another first-level feat for the skill.
Inspired by looking at spells for an arcane caster at 1st.
Supercharge Weapon especially, but Shifting Surge as well- both give an extra 1d6 on a weapon's next strike within a minute. Touch range, so it's mostly yourself. That's 1d6 damage on a hit, when a cantrip does 2d6 on a hit, or gives a save vs. 2d4 (often against two targets). The scaling is 1d6 for every +2 ranks, which is worse scaling than the cantrips.
So, they're clearly not intended for use in combat. Cast Supercharge Weapon and Shifting Surge on a weapon, and that's 2d6 extra damage if the first shot hits, plus maybe a weakness. But as good as the action economy is, it may not be very clear to players that this is an ambush setup spell. And, at low levels, you do kinda need your slots to be doing more. "I contributed 3d6 extra damage during the day" doesn't mean much at first level.
I definitely get not having something as good as Magic Weapon, but that did what these spells do at low levels, and much, much more. It feels like casters need something in their first level slots that out-does cantrips, even if just to tied them over until later levels. (Hydraulic Push, Force Barrage, etc. are good examples.)
In the field test, Mystic was cool and unique in allowing long-range telepathic communication. In the playtest, it's line-of-sight only, at which point you could have arranged signals or something. I enjoyed the Mystic being able to help a heist group coordinate. There's no feature that scales it up later, or feat you can take to make it better. Sure, maybe FTL communication needs to be prevented, but at least allow planetary communication range.
Second up, Fauxstus Fox! I went through the class feats with a friend on a call, so I'm writing this up after the fact.
Character
Bargain Bin'd Inc. is a company founded by one Chip "Chip" Chelson, a business major whose previous business ventures made him a millionaire. Unfortunately for Chip, he started out with more than that, so that qualified for desperate measures: a diabolical deal. By this time, Hell has quite the portfolio of get-rich-quick schemes for those looking to invest their souls- ones that also advance the Boss's own interests. So Bargain Bin'd Inc. was started, staffed by a few infernal equivalents to interns, and operating on a simple business principle: putting advanced virtual intelligences into toys is expensive, but binding an imp and shoving it in is cheap and the end result is surprisingly hard to tell apart.
On the back of cheap talking dolls, Bargain Bin'd Inc. quickly had a thriving product line lead by the stuffed fox doll Fauxstus Fox, and Chip was able to pull himself out of relative poverty. The next step, as is necessarily the case for a fad toy line, was pivoting into a movie. Chip made sure to conduct extensive market research, or at least ask Chip Chelson Jr. "Nah, dad, nobody cares about movies anymore. People only watch cinematic universes. We need one of those!" And so, Fauxstus Fox (more specifically, the leading bound imp and official mascot of the company) was tasked with launching a cinematic universe on the strength of a fad toy line.
Unsurprisingly, "hard to tell apart" is far from "impossible", and between a few faulty bindings and some investigative vidstreamers, Chip Chelson Sr. wound up in jail. The company itself was slapped with some fines nearly amounting to five percent of the profits it had made, and Chip Chelson Jr. was left in charge of the company, contracts and all. All external negotiations regarding any movies were broken off, leaving Fauxstus Fox with two choices: launch a multi-movie tie-in franchise, or blow up the contract holder.
Now, he raises money for the impossible goal through any means possible, whether streaming or taking out shady jobs, all the while plotting his revenge.
SF1 Build
Not applicable! This just wasn't a character I could build in SF1. If we'd had Poppet, he could have been a knife-wielding Operative...
SF2 Build
... But bazookas are funnier than knives, and Constitution is a much better stat for a slasher character. Obviously, Fauxstus Fox is a Poppet. Build goals are generally slasher character tropes- shrugging off attacks, scaring people, being unstoppable. He's also very much a gremlin-y character, so fire and destruction fit well as secondary objectives.
Let's Get Started!
1st:
Ancestry: I'm not going to worry about Poppet feats/heritages/etc. It's something necessary for the concept, but that's PF2 material that isn't expected to be balanced. Fire vulnerability is pretty funny to keep.
Background: Background is Vidgamer. Cyberborn would work just fine, and give a free Dermal Plating to fit the unkillable vibe, but Vidgamer is funnier.
Stats: We're going Con, Dex, Int, Cha. He's the furthest thing from wise, and despite all his rage, he's still just a diabolically possessed stuffed plush.
Weapon: I left this for later on Mr. Sir, but while going through Fauxstus, I found that I needed to know how much ammo I had. Reloading is a drag, and Soldier spends a ton of ammo each round. We want a burst area, and we're going to flavor it as explosions regardless of what the damage type is. A quick look, and that's Stellar Cannon. Eight shots, so four rounds by default. That's about a fight, but we can reload with an action if we need.
Armor: Let's make sure we'll be okay on bulk. We've used 2 so far. Since we're going with Dex, we can go lower than heavy, but we'd lose out on a point of AC. It does mean we don't need Bulwark, though. Defiance Series looks good. Five bulk total, two spare. Sounds good. How about funds? Defiance is the cheapest heavy armor at 200, and Stellar Cannon is 40, plus 8 per loadout. And we start with... 150. Okay, no heavy armor. Why is it level 0 if it can't be bought? Shotalashu armor it is for a level or two. 40, 40, 8*5 = 40, so 120 credits. 30 left for something else. *checks* Nope, no way to squeeze a Glamer Projector into the budget. (The plush look is important, so we're just going to make the armor look like a bowtie. Love that we aren't losing our theming, and we can afford it by level 2.)
Class: Suppressing Fire lets us debuff enemies. Nice! We may be slow due to heavy armor (eventually), but they still can't get away. 10/10 for theme. Primary Target is what that Dex score is for, and lets us actually deal with bosses, etc. For fighting style, the damage reduction of Armor Storm is very thematic, but Bombard means reliable debuffing and being able to fire without regard for allies. Walking Armory is why we can make use of big weapons and heavy armor! Everybody say thanks to Walking Armory.
NOTE: (The existence of Erudite Warrior makes me happy- although I will say it really feels like it should be the Additional Lore feat, because not scaling the lore is a little odd.)
Class Feat: This is why we had to check the weapon. None of these look good for the character. Strength is niche on the class, Pin Down wastes a shot and spends an action for no damage when we suppress on a success anyway, Quick Swap is melee (which is also a niche strength feat), Ready Reload is for two-action reloads which we don't have, and Whirling Swipe is a third strength build feat. Warning Spray is a much better Pin Down for us, so the only question is can we afford to burn an ammo at the start of every fight. That takes us from reload after four rounds to reload after three, which is fine.
SUGGESTION: Strength/Melee switch-hitter gets three feats here, when the class is Con + Dex. For how many first level Soldier feats there are at first, there are only three "options": Strength build, spend extra ammo for suppressed condition, or reload discount (machine gun/flamethrower). Can we get a little more variety?
Skills: Computers from Background, Intimidation from class, four more. Performance for streaming, Occultism for possessed doll stuff (yeah, yeah, diabolism is religion, but that's wisdom-based), Society for studying a humanoid target, Deception to look like a doll. Three skills being advanced are... Intimidation, Performance, and Deception.
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2nd:
Class Feat: So, Menacing Laughter is great, but Relentless Endurance is for the unstoppable movie slasher vibe. (Can we get 1d8 scaling every two levels? 1d8 + 4 every four is just... such a long wait.)
Skill Feat: We need to pay the Intimidating Glare tax. (Shouldn't this be included in Fearsome Bulwark?)
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3rd:
Class: Fearsome Bulwark! It's a little painful to wait for, but we finally have a skill on our primary stat, and it fits Fauxstus excellently. This is also our last class feature for the rest of the game: everything else is stat bumps. At 9th, we don't get anything. We do get legendary armor and class DC, but... woof.
SUGGESTION: Soldier could use another feature or two, even if it's just a ribbon. Maybe a ten minute break healing ability? At the very least, hitting 9th and not even getting a stat bump is just a bummer.
General Feat: We're here to be an unkillable turret of firepower. Toughness.
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4th:
Class Feat: Collateral Witness would be good, and Punishing Salvo is also solid, but Widen Area really helps with the fact that Primary Target requires placing the burst next to the enemy, or allows hitting a niiice three-target AoE.
Skill Feat: Oh hey, I missed Intimidating Shot. I can't afford to spend ammo on it, but energy weapon Envoys can use it. Well, I guess their range is limited by Quip. Anyway, Skill Feats is just going to be a bunch of Intimidation buffs, plus Feign Death at 6th.
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5th:
Odd levels are Poppet feats and stuff like Fleet. Skipping them from now on.
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All right, just looking at class feats from now on.
6th: As good as Fog of War is, I'll Be Back is perfect. I played a level 2 Soldier with the playtest, and dropping is rough- one action to stand, one action to grab the weapon, and now I can't do Soldier things that turn. Getting all that on a free action, so you can move away and shoot still? *chef kiss*
8th: Overwatch, to stop enemies from running. (Run Hot is cool, but having a round of no gun is a bit too much for me.)
10th: Brutal Barrage is great! 2d10 for an action- great to use for when two enemies are adjacent. Almost perfectly tied is My Little Friend, which is something Fauxstus would definitely reference.
12th: Rocket Jump is amazing- getting movement on an attack when somebody is close by? But unfortunately, My Little Friend is just too perfect, so we're going with that.
14th: Run Cowards! Yesss, that's that's perfect. Nice, solid fear effect. And it means Overwatch triggers to boot? Mmmm, love it! Vector Reflector and Fan the Hammer are also excellent, but we'll stick with what we have.
16th: Soldier's Training means Overwatch can trigger twice a round. (It'd be fun with Vector Reflector too, so we'll keep it in mind for 18th.)
18th: Spread the Love deals with the pesky issue of AoE positioning, and adds a second shot! (It's at this point that I really start to want an expanded capacity like energy weapons get.)
20th: Living Typhoon doesn't remove the unwieldy trait like similar options, so we're going with Hybrid Technique. Brutal Barrage and Spread the Love together- not the best synergy, but it'll usually be an extra 2d10 damage. Maybe retrain Spread the Love to Fan the Hammer and take Living Typhoon...?
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Conclusion
After a weak feat start, Soldier's feats just kept getting better and better until 14th had three great options all competing. Love it!
The features are very numbers-oriented and front-loaded. Soldier seems to be penalized for relying on both class DC and attack, just in terms of those advancing pushing out other things. It'd be nice to have one or two other things.
Ideas
What would be some options for features that don't actually tip balance too much in combat?
- Having a bunch of hitpoints is great for surviving, but it takes longer to heal that back up. Soldier has two hands occupied in combat (by necessity), so investing in Medicine is difficult. They could heal level hitpoints every ten minutes of exploration starting at 9th? That's less than about 6% of their health, and helps take the burden off of the healers.
- Reloading and magazine capacity are problems that get worse over time. Every trick to shoot more costs me 1/8th of an action on top. Getting 50% extra capacity (rounded down) at 9th would help out. That might be too much of a combat buff, though.
- Soldier is pretty limited on out-of-combat stuff, understandably. Having a skill tied to their stat is huge, but there's probably room for a mid-game social or Intimidation perk.
*Kinda. Putting this in general, 'cuz it's also an advanced weapons complaint.
So, the advanced weapons aren't very usable unless they have the Professional trait. Taking a -2 at most levels is pretty severe. But what about area weapons? You don't need proficiency with them! So the advanced area weapons can be picked up by casters, Envoy, whatever, without drawback. I'm happy to have some of them be useful.
The problem is that the "not have proficiency" issue only applies on attack, and Soldier makes attack rolls with area weapons. So, unlike all the other classes, they actually get some penalty for using advanced area weapons- a massive accuracy penalty on primary target rolls. If anyone should be using a plasma cannon, it's the Soldier! Sure, they have a better DC than the other classes, but giving up one of their very few actual features to use it still isn't worth a small damage bump.
All right, let's go ahead and jump into this! My initial pass through the Starfinder playtest is going to be building my SF1 characters in SF2.
FIRST UP! Mr. Sir. (Well, okay. I made my friend an Envoy too.)
"Ladies, gentlemen, and conscientious objectors! It's time once again for the game of lasers, phasers, masers, and tazers, You Bet Your Life!"
Character
Mr. Sir is one of the Halls of the Living's show hosts. He runs a deadly game show called You Bet Your Life, where he pretends to be an overworked middle manager in an abusive company. He blows off steam by "kidnapping" people that remind him of various made-up coworkers, and locks them in his absurdly spacious basement, full of quiz show death traps and obstacle courses.
He enjoys his work- he's a pretty messed up dude. But, he also thinks it's societally beneficial. He views the corporate culture as exploitative and soul-crushing, and views altruistic programs to help people out as insufficient. His show is an opportunity for just about anyone clever to get themselves fame and fortune. Even losing isn't necessarily a setback- if somebody is popular enough with the audience, they can get a crowd-funded resurrection.
He wears a recognizable outfit, a faded gray business suit with a faded orange sackcloth bag over his head with two eye-holes cut into it. Because of the nature of his work, he remains anonymous, staying in the outfit and going by "Mr. Sir" even off work. Despite this, he never acts in-character outside the show, even jokingly. Eox has enough of a bad reputation that it's important to make it clear that the character portrayed in the game show is just for entertainment.
For high level versions of this character, he was one of the defenders of Absalom Station who was killed fighting against Eox's assault shortly after the Gap. He returned to life as a Vaculak, continuing the fight. Despite this, it was hard to find acceptance among the living, and he joined the Eoxian military after they joined the Pact Worlds, and carried on fighting against the Veskarium. When the Swarm invaded, cold war espionage tactics were no longer very useful, and he took a well-earned "retirement" running You Bet Your Life.
Because true undead was not playable, Varculak was used, and he wore a medical bracelet warning Eoxian medical staff to use positive energy rather than negative. He worked hard to conceal this aspect otherwise.
SF1 Build
In SF1, Mr. Sir was a Varculak (in order to get actual immunities to help live on Eox) Operative (since it did a better job than Envoy) Icon. Necrografts helped make him more undead. Operative made wielding a knife an actual threat, useful for his image, and supported using more theatrical one-handed weapons (naturally aiming to complete the full set of lasers, phasers, masers, and tazers). Weapons could be behind the curve thanks to Trick Attack damage. As an added bonus, he could pull out a sniper rifle as ratings stunt. Specialization was Spy (to use charisma), Ghost (for high level), or Gadgeteer (to represent trapsmithing as best as possible). The most important exploit was always Trap Spotter, to reflect running a deathtrap-oriented gameshow. Innoculation helped improve undead-ness, and Utility Belt was the best reflection of having all manner of traps on hand. Voice Amplifier let him be that much more theatrical.
SF2 Build Goals
- "Undead". Borai is the first not-really-undead ancestry, and the less-undead of the two. Expectations on seeming undead will be kept to a minimum for the playtest, and treated as bonus points. Ideally, exposure to vacuum should casually not be a problem. If radiation immunity, not needing to eat or drink, or any other immunities are available, those are secondary priorities in descending order.
- "Game Show Host". Mr. Sir should use charisma, and have abilities that are suited to a celebrity actor who runs a trivia game show. In SF1, this had to mostly be carried by the Icon background.
- "Deadly". Mr. Sir may play a serial killer, but he should also be dangerous enough to hold his own and also make season finale appearances on more than just the monitor.
- "Traps". Mr. Sir runs a game show featuring deadly traps. He should be able to handle all kinds of traps, and ideally prepare them as well.
Let's get started!
1st:
Human Borai Icon Envoy (In the Spotlight)
Stats: Cha primary, Dex secondary, Int and... Con tertiary? Missing out on strength tertiary hurts, but I can't dump Int on the character concept. We'll eat a penalty to something for the first four levels until Dex can go up again.
Ancestry feat: On the human side: Augmented seems nice, especially when we get Necrografts. Natural Ambition is the best feat, as usual. For Borai: Necrotized and Etheric Lineages are not bad. Etheric unfortunately doesn't work while unconscious. Sadly, no feat to bump Low-Light to Darkvision, but we'll have to see about gear for that. Natural Ambition wins, unsurprisingly.
Class: In the Spotlight gives us Impressive Performance and Performance training. Icon gives us Sparkling Performance, so no skill feat overlap. I'm assuming there's text somewhere to let me replace the trained skill overlap. OF NOTE: Sparkling Performance doesn't work with In the Spotlight's sixth level ability.
We get Get 'Em!. The debuff to enemy AC fits Mr. Sir's style better than SF1's attack bonus, and the greater personal damage helps make it worthwhile even for personal use. Size Up feels good for Mr. Sir researching show contestants, and picking promising ones to focus on. We're also unlikely to fit Wis boosts in, so this helps make up for it.
Feats: Quip, definitely! I wish the range were a little better for this, but it fits the character well. (I'll ask the GM to let it work through the show's TV monitors, if that comes up.) Hmmm... I thought Get In There! was first level- without it, I'll need to go revisit whether I want another first-level feat, or just a flavorful lineage feat. If I got another first-level Envoy feat, it'd be getting double charisma assets.
Skills: Intimidation for the "social trio" option, Performance from two sources, and 6 + 1 (Int) + 1 (Background overlap). Deception, Computers, Thievery, Crafting (the three trap skills), Society, Stealth, Piloting, Acrobatics. Hmmm... lack of medical knowledge. Maybe drop Piloting? Oh, and we can't fit in Diplomacy, so we're all in on making everything a performance.
REQUEST: Woof, three skills for interacting with "security" is a lot. :/ The Ysoki feat to disable traps with crafting feels like it just needs to be more generally available somehow.
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2nd:
Class: Suppressing Insults. If we're trading barbs, adding an extra debuff on top is perfect.
Skill Increase: Let's get all these out of the way through level 7, in order: Performance, Intimidation, Thievery, Computers, Crafting, and then a master increase to Performance. (Level 7 ability to have master proficiency for one roll is a godsend!) Man, I really want to fit in Society so that those assets are good for something... Let's go ahead and drop Crafting advancement, I guess, and have that be something that the work crew generally does. If we're using an archetype for it, that'll probably use class DC and won't require crafting checks.
Skill Feat: Method Actor, maybe? This one is really good, but Mr. Sir only has two personas, who share a name, and the crit fail stop seems like a very effective balance to things. He can't shut down the show for a day just because of a bad line. I'm glad this is there, but that'll be for another character, I think- or a flex pick. Inappropriate Joke is good, but the theme... hmmm. Interrupting a caster in the middle of trying to "cheat" in the game is pretty fitting. The alternative is Virtuosic Performer. Oh, right. We also have the feat tax of Intimidating Glare to not be constantly checking languages for my Intimidation build. We'll go with Inappropriate Joke right now, so that we have a nice charisma 30ft reaction build.
NOTE: Realistically, this skill feat is actually going into Snare Crafting or the equivalent.
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3rd:
Class: Adaptive Talent, my beloved! This is how we make the "trivia" part of the game show actually work, by getting Additional Lore flexibly swapped out daily. That does mean it's usually spoken for, so no using it to patch up how many permanent skill feats I want. Wise to the Game is nice for shoring up that low Wis in social situations.
General Feat: Untrained Improvisation or Toughness. If we end up needing our skill feat for archetype reasons, then this will go into a skill feat instead.
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4th:
Class Feat: We still need something for traps, and Search High and Low! is perfect- probably? The bonus is to Seek, so while you could Repeat an Action to give the bonus in exploration, that's Searching, not Seeking. So, you kind of have to repeatedly drop into Encounter Mode to check each room and hall with the bonuses, but they're big ones, and they're handed out to the entire group- a group who probably didn't dump Wis as much! (... It would be nice to get some text allowing the option to use this as an exploration activity to give a bonus to Searching.)
What 4th Level Options are we Passing Up by Taking a 2nd Level Class Feat?: Broadened Assessment does nothing for the character, since it's physical skills. Danger Sense is initiative, not for traps, etc. Head in the Game is allied condition removal, not really fitting the character, and fatigued is really rare. Not In the Face is too sniveling. So, nothing that fits anyway.
Skill Feat: ... Oh, right. If I'm not actually advancing Acrobatics, it's not really doing anything for me. Cat Fall is a lot less good when you can have flight items. I could probably drop that for another trained skill. Maneuver In Flight never sees any use. Anyway! Let's get ourselves that Intimidating Glare we needed.
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5th:
Class: Perception boost. Huh, I expected starting at Expert. Practiced Influencer is a 1/day roll twice and take the better- mainly for Intimidation on this character. And, Weapon Expertise. I enjoy the Crit Spec.
Ancestry Feat: Clever Improviser is really tempting, because it allows doing ANY profession. Confident Actualization is a roll twice that works on Performance, which is nice. For Borai, Deathly Constitution is just... too small of a bonus. OH! Soul Sustenance, that's on our undead features list, instant take.
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6th:
Class/Class Feat: So, we get our alternate leadership now. We only have two directives, and Search High and Low is very situational. So, we need another. Get In There! is perfect, directing stage-hands and the like on set.
No, Seriously, This is the Third 2nd Level Class Feat, Are We Missing Something Good?: Confounding Disquisition is two actions to... mainly inflict Stupefied. I've got that as a reaction on a skill I'm actually good with. Dirty Retort is so-so. Distant Feint is Deception, which we haven't been pursuing, and it's really not "distant". Fifteen feet, in Starfinder? Hang In There is Diplomacy, which we aren't even trained in, probably, and it's way too uplifting for this guy. Hurry! is... mostly a worse Get In There!? Well, maybe I guess- it is only much worse for In the Spotlight specifically, because that wants a second directive. There's a reason I'm waiting until 6th to take it. But I feel like the ten minute limit could be removed, because trading action-for-action is pretty fair, and it doesn't stack with Haste.
Skill Feat: Digital Ambassador or Virtuosic Performer, depending on where things have landed in the campaign.
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7th:
Class: Improvised Mastery! Ahhh, what a sweet relief. All of the worrying about skill advancement, gone. No longer do I need to invest in a skill just because I might need it. Once per day, bam. Got it. Love this. I haven't looked through, but I want a feat to use these once per day things a second time. Leader's Confidence seems like mainly a pre-combat buff, because one action from everyone (and two from yourself) is a lot. But a minute is enough for a pre-combat routine. And Weapon Specialization.
General Feat: Dazzling Performance should really work with In the Spotlight. Anyway, since I can get that at 8th, probably Toughness if I didn't take it. We've eased up on skill feats we really want.
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7th is good enough for a full build. Let's just take a look ahead to make sure the class feats fit better. If we don't have anything at 8th, it might be time to look at Operative again because the character might just not fit all that well.
8th: Master Plan, love it. Perfect, it's directing the others around, and loads up those reaction slots after everything is immune to intimidation. Sidestep would also be something I'd be okay taking, but it's more melee.
10th: Cut 'Em Deep- speak of the devil! This is enough to go ALLLL the way back to first level to spend the human feat on getting Acquire Asset, just so that he can reliably use Quip on enemies. Got 'Em! is amazing too, and good enough that I'm fine if 12th doesn't have anything. I wish Smooth Diversions worked with Sparkling Performance, but that's solidly in the ream of "ask the GM nicely". Tag Team isn't bad.
12th: Okay, yeah, the stuff I wanted was last level. Got 'Em is it.
14th: Do It Now! is excellent. An action to make somebody shoot a target? That fits. Ready to Roll would be okay.
16th: Extend Directive is great for In the Spotlight, after quite a few things didn't fit it. Great option, would definitely take it. (Suggestion: Both Know Your Target and Detect Thoughts, a level 16 feat and cantrip respectively, refer to surface-level thoughts. Detect Thoughts needs to be clearer that you can't read thoughts, or Know Your Target needs to be clearer about what "vague surface thoughts" are.)
18th: ... Get Them! is really late for what it does, especially since there's a way lower level reaction to switch on death. Follow the Leader removes the main subclass feature, which is... hmmm. It doesn't feel great, even if it's good. But, since I don't have that reaction, Get Them! it is.
20th: Endlessly Adaptive! Yes, that's what I'm talking about! True Leader, also great! Actually, Extend Directive and True Leader means give free action to everyone a speed boost, free action to Get 'Em!, everyone can move as a reaction from In the Spotlight, and then you're free to shoot three times. I really like that. Tough choice between them, which is good for a capstone.
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... Let's go check those major features, too.
9th is a second flex skill feat, which will feel amazing. Hidden Agenda is... honestly not something I would almost ever have had trigger? You roll Deception against their DC, they don't roll Sense Motive against you. And I've never once had an enemy roll a knowledge check or gather information check against my character, even in an intrigue game. Does Pathfinder still have spells that reveal information about someone at anything below Uncommon? I don't need anything good at this level with the extra flex skill feat, so maybe this is intentionally not very relevant.
11th: Savvy Influencer: Hey, there's the second usage I was hoping for! Wish I could extend this to Performance. The "nat 1 doesn't auto-crit-fail" is fine.
13th: Effortless Influencer's status bonus doesn't do much for Mr. Sir unless the group is specced for Intimidation, 'cuz I'm still substituting out on Diplomacy. Although, at this level, we've needed to increase a sixth skill to master, so that can be Deception! Nice. The real prize is three uses per day, which is great. And, we also get a two-action directive, which gives different benefits to each party member? Oooh... Envoy can't really benefit much from anything but Defender unless it's extended to "end of your next turn", but the party benefits are excellent. Ah- and it looks like the Lead By Example is the incentive to fit your benefit into that third action, and Defender is the hardest to guarantee. Fair, fair.
15th: Extra flex skill feat! Nice to have that come online with Legendary proficiency. And Legendary Improvisation! I can see why this hasn't gotten more uses per day.
17th: Indescernible Agenda has the same issue... But I guess at this point, bumping crit or success down to failure, that's enough that you can probably force it to matter.
19th: Silver Tongue. Heh... I already have a bunch of roll twice uses, so I think we just take Diplomacy from Untrained all the way to Legendary.
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Impressions:
I'm really happy with the class. I'm coming in with a self-centered showman, and the class supports that. It does so in a way that SF1 Envoy never could, even after the rework. There are plenty of options to make enemies have a bad time and support allies in ways that don't feel like a pep talk or being a sunny disposition cheerleader.
4th and 6th level feats were a rough patch for this build, but one that was perfectly covered by the excellent second level options.
Directives... I had enough for the character. It feels like an important thing to expand on for the class in the future, though, because as it stands, I'm only ever going to play Envoy... twice? Twice sounds about right. Two different In the Spotlight concepts come to mind, and then I'll be good. I'll have a blast, and I don't even normally play support characters.
I'll look at weapons and augments for the build next!
GM friend of mine ran a three-hour one-shot allowing playtest classes.
Level 4, free archetype, ancestral paragon, lump sum starting gear. Set in a pirate town working for the city guard.
Characters:
Captain Ishkur, skeleton catfolk Commander with Viking archetype.
Human Swashbuckler (Wit) with Marshall archetype.
Poppet Druid (Untamed) garden gnome with Beastmaster for a lawn flamingo (terror bird) animal companion.
Build details:
Skeleton heritage canceled out heavy armor penalty (but just used this to free the general feat for a thematic Breath Control instead of Fleet). Skeleton feat gave the collapse reaction to negate a crit by falling apart. Viking dedication allowed moving freely through water and the archetype gave Reactive Shield (which got a ton of use).
Wielding bastard sword and a steel shield.
Play notes:
GM mistakenly treated all failed Recall Knowledge checks as critical failures.
Class Feats:
Combat Assessment
Adaptive Stratagem
Set-Up Strike
Tactics:
Mountaineering Training
Naval Training
Form Up
Strike Hard
Spoiler:
All fights take place in the rooms of a large cellar.
First Combat: two lower-level enemies (ice/water creatures) with late third enemy (misty creature) arrival
First round: Go last, move up to flank, Set-Up Strike to help the lawn flamingo (hit, Combat Assessment to get info on the low-level enemy, crit knowledge to know the icicle ranged attack we saw and a wave attack, plus bonus knowledge that they have two forms.
Mist creature shows up. Flat miss checks start happening, but nobody rolls below 6.
Off-guard set-up results in a crit for the bird.
Second round:
Viking archetype reactive shield blocks an attack.
Set-Up Strike against remaining low-level enemy, miss, second strike hits and kills. Form Up! moves allies into position, using bonus reaction for animal companion.
Third round:
Enemy moves out of flank.
Swashbuckler disincentivized from using One for All.
Move up, combat assessment hit, second attack crit to end the fight.
Second combat: False priest, two low-level mooks who are effectively turned into barbarians, a plot-summoned living waterfall, and a late-arrival tentacled fish that starts flooding the room.
First round: Druid delays to after Ishkur for the movement help.
Water elemental moves up, blocking door, making it irrelevant.
Ishkur hits with Set-Up Strike, and uses Strike Hard to let the Swashbuckler crit. (It doesn't do much without panache.)
Druid has flamingo awkwardly move up to attack around a corner.
Swashbuckler uses Inspiring Marshal stance, an action to get panache, and hits with unbalancing finisher.
Ishkur hit with ranged attack. Reactive Shield isn't enough to stop it.
Ishkur is crit by the water elemental and critically restrained as an engulf. Both manipulate and verbal commands are off the table due to engulf/restrained. Fails both escape attempts fail even with a hero point, and fails a knowledge check on how to help the escape, but can't communicate the false info to anyone.
The flamingo shreds the water elemental, freeing Ishkur. The GM generously ignores the medicine/undead restriction, and Ishkur gets an assurance'd battle medicine for eight health.
Ishkur moves to flank with the swashbuckler, uses Form Up to move the Druid out of the way and the flamingo into attack position. The swashbuckler already riposte'd.
Fish moves up and crits Ishkur, who collapses as a reaction to make it a regular attack.
Thanks to the repositioning, the bird is able to crit both low-level raging enemies and the Druid can electric arc the fish and surviving rager.
Swashbuckler takes out the remaining rager with a nonlethal punch-crit.
Ishkur stands, repositions everyone again for flanking with the bird, and crits on Combat Assessment attack against the tentacle fish, using Sailing Lore.
Ishkur goes down to a crit by the fish. No more collapse trick, and the shield reaction isn't enough to drop it to a hit. The room is filling up with water thanks to the weird fish.
The Swashbuckler is off dealing with the false priest.
The druid takes a turn to move over and draw Ishkur's oil of unlife for "his skin condition".
The fish and bird fight it out, with the fish tripping the bird and taking out most of its health.
Ishkur drops to dying 3.
The druid heals Ishkur to consciousness and acid arrows the fish. The flamingo attacks it with its one action, popping it with an explosion that drops most of the party to a sliver of health.
Ishkur gets up, moves to get the banner in range of everyone (helped due to Viking free movement in water). We realize belatedly that the bird is prone and couldn't actually move. It's weird that the command doesn't allow standing, but probably balanced.
The movement lets the swashbuckler head off the fleeing false priest, and kill him with a confident finisher.
The druid medicines people, and Ishkur uses his remaining salves to top up to full.
Third fight: Ore louse hiding in the closet that would have potentially been involved in the last fight.
Swashbuckler sets up.
Ore louse misses Ishkur.
Ishkur moves over, brings everyone in with Form Up, hits with Combat Assessment.
Druid uses Fear. It makes the flamingo's attack a crit for lethal damage.
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Overall results:
Ishkur critically succeeded a knowledge check, and failed all three others. Since the GM mistakenly gave false info, that would have been an issue, but the questions Warfare Lore could ask weren't very useful. "Weakest save" wouldn't matter, because the Druid only had Electric Arc and Fear, the only special attack we could have done something about was the fish exploding, and the Swashbuckler always tries reasoning regardless. Defenses (weaknesses and resistances) should probably be included, even if it overlaps with Thaumaturge.
Rolling Warfare Lore for initiative was nice, and having a few questions I could ask with good modifiers felt much better, even though the rolls didn't back that up. Combat Assessment necessary for feeling like a knowledge class, and did more work than Rapid Assessment. I would not want to play this class at level 1 or 2.
The number of known tactics is too small. I had two for thematic and out-of-combat use, meaning there was no combat variation. Being able to swap at combat start meant that anything that showed up late wasn't relevant, and judgement calls had to be made before any knowledge checks were rolled.
MVPs of the game were Drilled Reactions and Form Up working together to basically turn the bird (who had the best damage in the party) into a three-action character. Swashbuckler's many reactions occasionally competed, and the bird got default priority because it had fewer actions that were more powerful. The ability to move into position, let everybody else move (providing flanking) and then strike was great. The party greatly appreciated the movement, especially the Druid for their animal companion. It regularly allowed an extra secondary attack or cantrip. Against stationary, tough enemies, Strike Hard was a solid fallback once everybody was set up and movement no longer helped the situation.
Heavy armor for strength focus and a d8 weapon meant that Ishkur was on par with the bird and the Swashbuckler when they had panache. (Poor swashbuckler.) With no martials with a damage boost (Swashbuckler just makes up for being Dex-based) or above a d8 in the party, Strike Hard was only worth it once (although on a normal restrained grapple, would have been useful then too as a verbal command).
External reactions were very important to the playthrough. Melee Commander does not have the actions free to raise a shield, basically ever. The class might benefit from a flourish action to raise a shield while issuing a command? The wording on that might be tricky.
A party of three plus an animal companion was just enough. If it were just a party of three, the class would have felt like a terrible drag.
I don't think I would play Commander without taking Form Up. It's the most useful and versatile option. Getting a full stride off-turn at low levels is big. Pincer Attack or the other free-action movement options would never have done the job, and steps would have been shut down in the second half of the second fight anyway.
- There's no visual trait. Nobody can find your flag to steal it after you cast Invisible Item on it! This doesn't work with the enemy debuff of Glorious Banner, but that's a problem for level 20. This even works with Trick Magic Item and a wand.
- Why not use an Immovable Rod for that flag? At worst, it turns removing it into a two-action activity- possibly three action, as they first waste an action to discover that it won't move.
- The problem with playing Capture the Flag is that when you plant it, the enemy just has to spend an action to get. But when the enemy gets it, you have to chase them down and kill them. Or disarm them, but that's even harder. (Maybe this could be good against a boss with a two-handed weapon? You'll want an adamantine banner so they can't just attack it.) What if we could just get it back from them? This one requires an actual-factual Wizard in your party, but Call Wizardly Tools is at-will retrieval of your banner so long as it's also the wizard's bonded item. (There's also a much, much worse Thaumaturge version that we won't bother with.) Surely there are more options that do this sort of thing... Aha! A basic (but greater) Retrieval Prism is exactly what we're looking for. At three gold a piece and a mere third-level item, this actually seems like the perfect item. (Most of these options have a one-bulk limit.)
- If you get to prepare the battlefield beforehand, plant your banner before the fight, and plant nine duplicates! It's like Mirror Image, but waaay more hassle.
- Speaking of which, maybe this isn't a combat feat after all! Temporary hitpoints are useful against traps and other hazards. Why not just use this when there aren't any enemies?
- You know what the problem with Snarecrafter is? You don't really have a way to get enemies to go where you want. Suuure, Commander says it's all about things like "directing your allies", but I'm seeing legendary class DC keying off intelligence and some great one-action bait.
- The enemy wants to take your flag. That's rude, and also stealing! Hang on, I remember a thread debating what exactly counts as "taking the object into your possession", and I'm pretty sure that capture the flag counts... Bandit's Doom goes from situational to amazing with this. And it's on every list except Primal, although prepared casters have a much easier time justifying this one. It's also got a neat bit of symmetry- if the GM rules a scenario doesn't trigger the curse, it also won't trigger frightened on the party for the flag being stolen.
- ... Wait. You said you want to put something somewhere, and enemies shouldn't be able to take it? And you might have a chance to do that before the battle? Sacré bleu, it's Sovereign Glue! This one really counts on it being easy to designate a new flag (probably as part of the ten minute drills), because once this thing is attached, it's not coming off without its own set of shenanigans. It's a little too pricey to do this without an Alchemist or Alchemist multiclass, and you are committing to the battle definitely taking place where you plan on. The minute activation is far too long to pull this trick in combat. 10/10 when you gotta defend a pass or hold a fortress.
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All in all, I think that Retrieval Prism is the best option available by a long shot. For three gold, it's a free action to teleport your flag back from anywhere on the plane one time, which makes planting a sufficiently sturdy flag practically risk-free. (Okay, the frightened 1 thing is a pain and feels really silly when everyone knows its not really stolen.) You can even have your more charismatic allies act like it's a big deal. It's also not relying on anything that'll have the GM throw a book at you, like using an invisible flag.
Bandit's Doom is a genuinely fun addition to the mix that can make your flag being stolen part of the plan.
Even after all the discussion, though, can we manage "sufficiently durable"? The best value/price option I can find is 20 gp for a one bulk low-grade cold iron object for 9 hardness and 36 hp. Assuming "destroyed" is all that matters, that's one hit for 45, two hits for 27, or wasting a full turn. That's actually good for a really long portion of your career since objects don't get crit, and bone or stone will do for a start. Adamantine jumps up to 350 gp, but once we get to that range, there are more tricks we can pull. It's important we somehow make it as an object, rather than as a thin object, which knocks huge chunks off the stats with no discount at all.
In the past, I've generally done a long-winded thread where I go over my thoughts and concepts. I see no reason to change anything, so here we go!
Before the playtest came out, I had some ideas for what concepts I'd want to play with a Commander class, so I'll grab that for inclusion.
Spoiler:
Things I'm excited about for Commander:
It sounds like an excellent class for playing a noble. If I had to make one now, it would probably be a bard with a lot of reflavoring or a wizard. Commander seems perfect for a third-in-line noble "spare" out with an adventuring party while their siblings jockey for political favor.
Anxious characters. I can see a Commander up late, trying to plan for everything that might go wrong, and hanging back in a fight as they try to help everyone.
Lazy characters. Just have everyone else fight, and hit the enemies who get close. I do want to play a gnoll that leans into that a bit.
Tiny or otherwise less combat-focused characters. Sure, if you're playing a sprite, grabbing caster makes sense. But if I'm playing an awakened housecat, I don't necessarily want them to be a caster, and this gives a nice option for non-magical participation in combat without relying on a weapon.
Erfworld-style isekai protagonist. What do you do if you end up in Golarion but you don't get handed magical cheat powers? Use your vast experience in tabletop RPG battles, naturally! Thaumaturge was my previous top contender, using Esoteric Lore as a codified metagaming skill. Commander lets you be a bit less meta, especially if you play someone only familiar with various editions of D&D. (Post-Remaster, you could probably allow any D&D books as reference without breaking any balance.)
First up: proficiencies. I initially felt bad about getting Wizard level of skills and a lore, but seeing what Warfare Lore gets to actually roll, I'm on board. Heavy armor is a surprise, but not unwelcome. Legendary class DC progression is neat! Standard martial weapon advancement means you're relevant in a fight.
Features:
Commander's banner gives the Standard Leader Buff of +1 status vs. fear, and enemies have a small incentive to play capture the flag. But, notably, you don't need to spend a hand on the banner.
Tactics are at will, two prepped of four, and usable by the whole party unless you really go out of your way to dump your key stat. Changeable mid-day, which is nice. The amount you have on reserve feels a bit small, but maybe having something you could have done has too much sting?
Drilled reactions is an excellent addition that makes this all work with a wider variety of party comps. There's one extra reaction to hand out where it's needed most, if the Fighter already took an important swing.
Shield block, naturally.
Warfare expertise has great functionality that I'd kind of like to see at first, but I'm not going to fault the class for it. Warfare for initiative if you see your enemies, and roll it for all the common creature knowledge checks (except weaknesses/resistances).
We expand our tactics at 7th, 15th, and 19th. Because those give access to stronger abilities and one more prep, we will always be choosing two of four intro tactics and auto-picking the stronger ones. That feels like it undercuts the "prepared" nature a bit. But the tactics aren't slotted, so if you learn more advanced ones, you'll just prep your best.
Tactics: Rather than go through these one-by-one, I'll go over my concepts and see if the tactics support them. But, a few notes!
- Kineticist is kinda dead in the water. There are some "strike" options, but they can't do that. Even the one tactic with casters considered doesn't cover them.
- Shields Up should probably include the Shield cantrip too. Having only one thing that allows spells is a bit of a bummer. A good commander should absolutely be planning around casters.
- Love the one action move speed options. Swim speed for the party is great. The inclusion of Warfare in place of the skills is perfect for this.
Feats: For now, just going to talk about a few low-level ones, and their chains.
Armored Regiment Training is... clocking in around a skill feat or less. Hefty Hauler is double the bulk reduction. This lets you sleep in armor (something that almost never applies because the punishment of being out of appropriate armor jumps an encounter threat by two or three levels) and have the party move at full speed without armor penalty in overland travel (something that almost never applies because games generally have things happen when it's interesting, not based on the rewards or consequences of good or bad travel speed). ... Wait, hang on. It only ignores your armor penalties, so that part only does anything if you're the only one in heavy armor. I feel like this needs a little more oomph.
Combat Assessment is a natural inclusion, and it's got a feat to... let's see, get an extra +2 on the recall if an ally hit it in the last turn, but only on the second round or later? That second feat seems like it's way too restrictive.
Combat Medic is great! Feels like it opens up a whole character concept tree, or at the very least allows a more caring commander. The 4th level follow-up is really nice, giving you something to do with Battle Medic free hand and also improving the help you provide by adding to AC and reflex. 14th level option to bring back the dead is cool for someone who wants to lean into the concept hard.
Commander's Steed makes me picture a scorpion carrying the flag around in its claw. Glad this has the "usually" so I can ask the GM nicely to make it a companion that fits a particular concept. Delayed advancement on the upgrade feats like Ranger. It's a little weird that that's a thing, but hey, it helps keep it from becoming a significant part of the class flavor.
Deceptive Tactics is... look, any time Create a Diversion comes up, it's just a reminder that it doesn't do what people expect (namely, "Be a Diversion") and that the actual effects are a bit weird. Lengthy Diversion is just the crit effect that the base ability is missing. The feinting, that makes sense. The diversion stuff, that's... what, a replacement for stealth on a heavy armor class? Unlike Combat Medic, this isn't really opening up anything new out of combat, except a slim chance to hide. But, unlike Combat Medic, this also adds it onto your existing skill instead of requiring you to advance a skill. It's not for me, because lying and disguise are what I care about for Deception, but it seems fair enough when I lay it out.
Plant Banner is cool and a bit risky. ... I want to put my banner on an immovable rod. Honestly, this seems like good bait for enemies, which is on point for the class.
Adaptive Stratagem/Rapid Assessment are the two mutually-exclusive start of turn abilities. There's a bit of an issue in that Adaptive Stratagem only really works if you have information about the enemies, which Rapid Assessment is for getting. Following up on Adaptive Stratagem only makes sense if you have picked up a few extra tactics. The Rapid Assessment chain is weird, going from one knowledge check, to four, to... six? An 8th level feat is worth +3 checks, but a 12th level feat only gets you +2, and less valuable ones at that? Perfected Evaluations needs to be doing a lot more.
Defensive Swap feels a little more Guardian-ish, but it's here for both selfish commanders and the noble self-sacrificing sorts.
Guiding Shot is the first flourish option, rolling a pseudo-Aid into an attack, setting on the ranged build. It's nice and straightforward for fighting from the rear (presumably, shortbow because of volley and your flag don't play nicely- but if you have a mount run up with your flag, this doesn't require it). It has a follow-up at 10th to always give the crit bonus, and a very tasty damage boost on a ranged attack.
Set-Up Strike is the melee version, and should be fixed so that the single-use off-guard isn't wasted on somebody who already has flanking. It can give off-guard against a ranged attack, though, which is nice. Probably requires somebody delaying or picking another target, depending. No follow-up on this one, and it's not a flourish.
Tactical Expansion gets you two more abilities. Take it early for two more basic options, or spend a higher level feat on it to get more of the stronger abilities. I feel a bit like I'm back in PF1, spending feats to get more of a class option. This might be balanced, but it doesn't feel the best. I'd feel better about taking something like
Since backgrounds are smaller in scope than themes, I figured I'd start up a thread for which theme abilities folks would like to see make a return appearance in SF2, whether as skill feats, archetype abilities, or something else.
For my own part, there are two that stick out in my mind. While there are plenty more themes I liked, I'm talking about the theme abilities that are interesting enough to take a theme for, even if I don't expect the ability to be used.
- Icon's ability to drastically lower the DC to recall knowledge about you. It's already a bit weird that it's harder to know about somebody the higher level they are, but that's just a side-effect. Icon making it so that anybody untrained can still recognize your name, or eventually recognize your face, is very fun for establishing just how famous you are. Is it actually useful to have everyone recognize you? Probably the opposite in a lot of ways, but still fun.
- Xenoseeker's ability to quickly set up a shared language with an individual who doesn't speak anything you do is a lot of fun for characters. Maybe a master Society skill feat? Or a trained one that decreases in time from a week to a day to ten minutes to a single minute at legendary. This is one of those things that you're unlikely to ever actually need, because GMs don't generally like running a bunch of failed communication, but sometimes it's about what a character can do.
I have a character in SF1 that got holographic skin grafts to look like a cartoon pahtra, and commits crimes while in a very obvious disguise. I don't expect every character to carry over, but Analyze Target seems pretty brutal on disguises in general.
- As a cantrip, it autoscales. So if you want to use magic to disguise yourself as someone or just as not-yourself, you need to be caster. Even a max-level spell from a multiclassed caster will lose out to Analyze Target cast by a multiclassed caster, or even somebody granted an innate cantrip through an item or ancestry feat.
- There's no allowance for non-magical disguises. Have advanced hologram tech or elaborate prosthetic disguise concealing your identity? It still gets your real biometrics. Even if items get an automatic rank of half their level, rounded up, it still means needing to re-buy it every two levels just to deal with what's almost certainly going to be one of the most common security measures.
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While I personally noticed this because of one of my characters, there are a lot of non-disguise reasons why a character might not want somebody learning their physiological information and medical conditions from 30 feet away with no save or say in the matter. Players can have a conversation with the GM if it's something that bothers them at a player level, but it might be good to save people the trouble of having conversations about why bodily privacy matters to them personally.
Just some thoughts going through the new field test.
First thing out of the gate, I'm somebody who was only ever particularly interested in PF1 for Mystic's occult angle, so that definitely slants my view of things- Overlord being my favorite of the core batch, although Wisdom-based wasn't a great fit anyway. Figure that's important initial disclosure.
I love that the class gets plenty of spells and some big-ticket features, especially since technology takes a lot of what makes casters unique in PF2 and distributes it to everyone. I really appreciate that undead are mentioned, and that the Vitality Network (despite its name) isn't just limited to vital healing.
Mental Bond is a very cool feature, and gives the Mystic something cool and flavorful that they can do out of combat. Untraceable, instantaneous, silent communication means Mystic has an additional important role in heist sequences. I'm a little skeptical about this being Mystic's thing, since this feels very much like a Mental essence trick, and it's being done with the two non-Mental lists. That's fine, though- it also means that the trick isn't going to be one that their spells could replicate well at some point.
Absolute Bond... that's a bit of a doozy to read, but thinking about it for a bit, I can see some uses. Three-action fireball on your location that ignores yourself, or guarantee your fireball never hits more than one of the party. (RIP to Sir Target Practice the familiar.) Wait, no, a bonded ally is required to use the ability, not just a member of the bond, but it can be used to benefit and bonded target. So... you can exclude a teammate from your fireball, but you can't exclude yourself from your fireball, unless you have a teammate in the area, in which you could exclude either yourself or them. Absolute Bond is a doozy to read. ... Oh, and you can also spend an action to get a 4/6/8 hp refund, although that sounds like something reserved for serious emergencies.
EDIT: Quid from the future, spending an action for a 4 hp refund turns a lot of cool abilities from "a couple times before refocusing" into "at-will for two actions instead of one", and after reading more of the class, I am glad Absolute Bond has that feature.
Okay, let's look at the feats!
First up, Deity's domain. Little deity-centric, but it'd be a shame to have all the printed deity stuff go to waste. Martial Disciple, same deal but less interesting. Oh, it's also not divine-casting locked, missed that on the first read through. Uh, how does Martial Disciple actually work with PF2 deities having PF2 weapons?
After that, we get into the non-deity stuff with a Primal-exclusive. (I know it's just alphabetical, but it feels weird having the class lead with deity stuff.) Viral Order? Love that! But in practice, this just feels bad. You spend a feat on a trained lore and a trio of spells known? I guess it's a first level feat on a caster, but it's still lackluster compared to a focus spell.
And, rounding out first level, Network Spell. Oh, this is fun- in normal combat situations, it's a worse Reach Spell, but you can use it around corners and to make your martial ally look like a caster with some setup. Much more interesting.
On to level two, starting with another deity feat, covering the rest of the deity statblock. It's a huge block of text, and all you get is some spells known and sanctification, along with anathema restrictions. I really don't want divine to just be "spend feats to be Cleric", and it looks like all the divine stuff is deity-based. I really hope that the final version takes some notes form Animist and doesn't just make divine about gods.
Whew... I know the class doesn't have to worship a deity, and this is the field test, which is going to naturally focus more on stuff that carries over from PF2. I'd just appreciate it being dialed back a bit. Especially because, at least in this preview, divine Mystic has to worship a deity to get a second focus spell.
Spot Healing: Pay two hitpoints to turn an action into a reaction, with limits. Fair enough. I do feel like this needs a little text clarifying what happens if the damage would knock them out. Could this reduce the damage, maybe?
Vital Boost: Why the different range for Spot Healing? Just make everything 20 feet if that's the standard range for accessing special bond functions. Four hitpoints for a +1 status bonus... That has a weird curve of getting better as the HP cost drops relative to your pool, and then needing retraining once everybody's got a more reliable status bonus.
Wild Bond: Focus spell for Primal casters. If the natural attacks are always going to lag behind weapons by a full damage die, they should just be cut, right? Couldn't this just give full damage two levels (one rank) after the appropriate item level, when getting a backup weapon starts to get affordable? Or even four levels/two ranks, since then it replaces a backup weapon when it's basically free, instead of always being behind. ... Buuuut I'm being greedy. The tons of movement forms and being a mass-buff at later levels means it'd be a must-take if it were replacing the entire party's backup weapons as well.
Cloud Storage: My biggest suggestion here, getting bold text: Make the Mystic's feats sound like feats for a Mystic! This is a Technomancer joke in the Mystic class, and it means no Cloud Storage spell or Techomancer feat/feature. This feat is amazing, and I love it! Absolutely incredible; shared storage space linked over the entire planet that uses hitpoints to access it? This is enough for me to build an entire character around! But it should have a mystical name. (I also feel obligated to mention for the design team's benefit that it might need a way for somebody else to break in, because otherwise MacGuffins can be put in there impossible for anybody else to retrieve.)
Memory Bank: Same deal as the last one, less emphatically because it does actually interact with tech.
Mental Interference: This feels like something that you'd mostly take for Wisdom-based skills. Looking at the feat, it's basically ranged feint on a different skill, at the cost of 4hp. The dazzled part is only relevant on a crit, so spending the hitpoints probably wouldn't be worth it unless you're moving from charisma to wisdom- although if you're upgrading your connection skill for better hitpoint recharging, then it might be worth it even for something like moving Deception to Performance.
Void Warranty: ... I enjoy puns well enough, but I guess these just feel a little weird coming from Rage of Elements and the remaster, where classes had things named/renamed to be more evocative and thematic. If I'm taking this feat, it's because I want to cast void damage spells. A crack about the silliness of "void" doesn't exactly mesh well with that. Meanwhile, if I'm playing a Mechanic, I absolutely would love to have a feat called "Void the Warranty" that gives me a big boost with an item at the cost of breaking it after the action is complete. That would make me feel more like a Mechanic, while as-is, this makes me feel like less of a Mystic.
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Overall summary:
Love Vitality Network and the associated Mental Bond. I'm really happy that there are feats to expand on uses for those hitpoints and so on. My favorite feat is absolutely being able to store items suspended in the bond itself, allowing party members to access them from anywhere on the planet.
Outside of the initial features, though, the class doesn't feel like a Mystic. Anything that isn't "Cleric Lite" or "Druid Lite" is a joke meant for another class.
Apart from a level 1-2 speed bump, you can get medium armor easily, and heavy in exchange for an archetype dedication. I'd like for that to not be where the class pushes you, but...
You're giving up about five damage per hit with a melee Dex build vs. going Str, and that's pretty rough. Your reach weapon is a d6 instead of d10, maybe a d6.5 because of extra traits, and you'd have to dip into uncommon options to get a d8 non-reach finesse weapon vs. multiple common d12s. That's two damage, and there's another three from stat. You can cut it down to a difference of three damage total if you give up on being relevant in any social or downtime activities, of course.
This is something very much baked into the system, so I don't expect Exemplar to solve it. But if the class is going to have light armor as its base, and focus on nimble heroes of legend, it'd be nice to have the class follow the example of classes like Rogue, Investigator, and Swashbuckler, adding a little extra to finesse weapons. Not enough to bring it to the same damage level (given the extra skills and better reflex), but enough to take some sting out of it. Weapon ikon for finesse weapons that gives more than the usual two damage, maybe? That's far from perfect, since it even more strongly incentivizes just staying in weapon mode.
The Cunning epithet is one that should certainly exist- cunning heroes are plenty famous. In terms of epithets, it's the only one I want to actually play characters described that way.
The problem is that, mechanically, it can hardly ever be used in a cunning way. You get a free feint when you move to your body ikon. Well, feint is melee only, so no cunning ranged combatant, and you probably never trigger this usefully during initiative. You need to feint before an attack, so what you'd want is weapon ikon, but you're not getting that. Additionally, transcending out of weapon ikon generally involves making one or more attacks, meaning you're already on MAP. If you're using a dagger, the classic weapon of the cunning, you're at -8 with one action remaining. So, the only way to use this cunningly is to be in/move into melee with no available flanking and activate the transcend an active worn ikon, and go for body rather than weapon for an attack.
Doing my first PFS game, so here we go... Level 1.
A lot of my regular choices aren't available, so I look at some of the special exceptions for PFS. I'm not spending my starter points on a playtest character. Kobolds are fun, but anything I come up with feels too jokey, especially at level 1. It's lightly armored, so I have to do a Dex build or go through the hassle of the armor feats/archetype mess. Consider ratfolk for a while- dagger, maybe, or a bow. Nothing is clicking, and the level 1 class feats don't help. "Sanctified focus, sanctified focus, two-weapon fighting, two athletics feats in the wrong section."
Eventually, I start humming "It's Good to Be a God" and decide to make Tulio or Miguel from The Road to El Dorado. Dexterity and Charisma, Ascendant Court charlatan selling fake records of who's tried what, doesn't realize he's got a spark of divinity himself. "Tuhl" it is. Human, obviously gotta get the charming smile option (even if it's just worse than the shield booster), so we'll get the sandals because I'm not actually leveling the character up (fun now, but I can't tell you how bad it would feel to actually get this allegedly legendary item to the point where it's replaced by second-rank wands), and the sword/knife group option for +2 spirit damage on twinned daggers. Initial plan is to use Natural Ambition to also get the jumping feats (the better for running away from the Starstone aspirants who realized the guides he sold them were fake), but then I see that the skills are super limited. No first level class feat can compare with two trained skills, so I switch to Natural Skill. Background is Charlatan, naturally.
Thoughts:
- There are a couple effective AC boosters, but Eye-Catching Spot seems almost strictly worse than Palisade Bangles, and it doesn't have an out-of-combat use like Gaze Sharp as Steel. Palisade Bangles hits allies as well and isn't conditional, while the body ikons are self-only and only against certain types of attacks.
- I find myself wanting Eye-Catching Spot to have a small out-of-combat perk, and/or a one-action ability instead of two-action.
- Skybearer's Belt is a trap- if you rely on it, you're locked into maintaining it in combat and staying near allies because dropping it encumbers your allies. It also doesn't affect you, which is weird. You have the ability to make yourself the weakest in the group?
- Thousand-League Sandals run into the Longstrider wand problem.
- First level feats feel sparse, partly because sanctification stuff is narrow flavor and two-weapon fighting is limited.
- I'm on board with low armor for these sorts of characters, but the damage reduction fails on crits healing is limited, and any protections/AC bonuses/etc. will turn off when you shift. It feels a bit off to be required to go with a Dex build, but at the same time, Str build would absolutely demolish Dex build if medium armor were available automatically. Give them a good one-handed melee weapon ikon, maybe? Dunno how to solve that one.
Will update after playing. Cool class, level 1 seems very rough around the edges, probably to try and cram in all the ikons in a balanced way.
I was just thinking about the personal upgrades and moving over to apex items. It'd be a nice touch (although likely too page intensive) to have three apex items per stat: one each for tech, biological, and magic. Obviously, folks can reflavor them if one suits their needs more, but it'd be nice having the three big sources of power in SF represented.
So, the upside of PF2's ancestry system is that while ancestries aren't as front-loaded, they can often end up with more overall. (And as a reminder for folks who haven't seen yet, flight is being looked at to be more available to SF playable species than it is in PF, since ranged combat is a bigger core assumption.)
Personally, I'm looking forward to more Embri options. They're a cool species lore-wise, but none of their features really "pop". That, and Spathinae. They've got a lot of features already, but it'd be cool to see what a high-level feat looks like for them.
We're getting a new edition
Based largely on PF2
So I'll make my own submission
Of what you all could do!
Eox has radiation
Which Eoxians should ignore.
It'd bring me great elation
To play those undead more!
When I play Mechanic,
And brain chip's better suited.
It'd cut down on my panic
If a familiar-bot's included.
Not much a thing for changing
But holograms embedded
Are such a lovely strange thing,
So changes would be dreaded.
(I dunno, it's late, and this struck me on a whim. I did one for each of my three favorite Starfinder characters. I'll explain them.
I know PF2 cut back undead immunities when they're playable, but for me, it really helps get into the setting and so on if we can play undead who can actually live on Eox. I've got an Eoxian deadly gameshow host, and I've got to come up with a bunch of backstory for why he's not really undead, and give him a medical bracelet so people know to use positive energy on him, and invest in necrografts just to get him closer to proper undead. I'd love to see at least enough immunity to be able to walk around Eox outside the Halls of the Living to the same degree that other Eoxians do. It's still dangerous out there, sure.
Mechanic has two main class paths, and maybe that'll change. There are also a bunch of variations to boot. It'd be nice if mini-versions of the major class paths were available as class feats. If I've got an exocortex, being able to get a drone that's on the level of a familiar would be cool. If I've got a combat drone, being able to take a feat that gives me a chip in my head that functions like the various "pick one skill to be trained in at the start of the day" feats- maybe even limited to lores- would be a cool addition. This one is actually inspired by a Starfinder dual-class character I had named Arendi, who had a sonic weaponry drone named Ban (for Banshee) and an exocortex with a synthetic identity named Shasa (for Rakshasa, since she helped him kill things).
And finally, something I love in SF. Hologram skin implants. I've got a character who goes around wearing a hologram of a cartoon Pahtra to hide his real identity with something obviously fake. I'd really love for that option to stick around- and it'd be a nice treat if "specific non-realistic appearance" were a supported early option. Science fantasy equivalent of a mascot suit?)
It's a three-action spell, which would often have the material component pre-remaster. It actually describes a component that is used, so almost certainly material component pre-remaster. The spell description says you grind it up in your hands, plural. There's no tag that indicates that a component is being used.
Let's say I'm a Magus who wants to take metal spells. Can I go two-handed (because the rules don't require hands free to cast spells), am I restricted to having a hand free (because it's got a material component that is no longer conveniently tagged), or do I need to go full unarmed (because the description says I grind the metal between my hands)? Or is the spell just missing one of its tags?
This might be answered in the remastered rules, but I'd just like to have it cued up for clarification consideration if not. It's not a big deal to have a few spells ambiguous in the four to five months of transition, but it'd be a bummer to not have a clear answer long term.
Monk is a pretty cool class, and there's just one thing that's a little annoying.
Monks "should" grab a shield, but it feels wrong. They're unarmed fighters! The last thing I picture is them hauling around a steel shield, let alone a tower shield. But the way the game is set up, Monk gives up basically nothing to hold a shield (since they still have a hand free) and requires next to nothing to do so (even Shield Block isn't needed and you can raise even a cheap shield at any level). Grabbing a tower shield makes a lot of sense too, since the movement penalty doesn't mean as much to Monk and occasionally spending two actions for +4 AC means less when you can attack twice in the remaining actions.
It'd be nice to see the remastered Monk make this less strongly incentivized. A feature allowing them to spend an action for a +2 circumstance bonus to AC if they have both hands free, for instance. It's not appreciably stronger than Monk grabbing a shield, and it doesn't prevent somebody from doing so if it fits their concept. Or perhaps +1 AC, but it grants a reaction.
(I'm also hoping for a style or feat that works with natural weapons, but that's just personal preferences.)
It's not the usual thought experiment, but it's something that came to mind. If I'm playing a level 20 master of an element, I should be pretty scary. Not just in an "I could kill you" way, but as a primal force of destruction. At this level, a Druid can turn into a kaiju to make a point, and can spend all day as a huge-size dragon.
The scenario:
A level 6 farmer has been extremely rude to us. There's no point in killing him (that's what a Fighter or Barbarian would do), but he'll crit-fail anything we throw against him. He only has a single one-acre field, which makes a better way to make our point. (For those not familiar with how big an acre is, it's 43,560 square feet. That's about two 25x35 grid battle maps put together, with five foot squares. In real world terms, it's a bit smaller than a football field, either kind.)
The conditions:
You've got a minute to mess up his field. Anything more than that is just going to start getting embarrassing. You're dedicated gate, so it's gotta be done with one element. If you can find something suitably scary to do to the farmer that doesn't kill him, go for it, but it should be scarier than a casting of Feast of Ashes or the party mage will just laugh.
Time for some really early and premature impressions, before I get into some more actual detail.
Dang I wish Constitution did something for this class. Please, at least something beyond setting DCs. Use it on a skill, scale effects off it, get a special ability that keys off of a fortitude save, whatever.
Auras look amazing. I love having a class with a ton of aura options ranging in level. And with an action discount for swapping auras? Excellent.
The d4 damage on air makes me a little sad.
What's with the random mention of "manifestations" in Clear as Air? The abilities are all specifically not spells, so they don't have manifestations.
I'd really like Air to be able to shut people up and/or have some sort of suffocation effect, even if it's got the Incapacitate trait. You control air; getting rid of it is the quintessential scary thing you should be able to do.
Adapt Element is nice. Pure Adaptation could really benefit from an example of what it means to purify fire.
Thaumaturge is getting Esoteric Antithesis simplified a bit, with a likely name of Forge Connection. It's charisma-based, no longer reliant on Recall Knowledge, and will be able to create a new weakness, trigger an existing weakness, or provide some other benefit, like a debuff.
So, what are some fun in-character explanations for how your Thaumaturge is doing it?
1) Using occult magic to draw on folklore, both inaccurate and true, to make popular beliefs about certain vulnerabilities real.
2) Using divine magic to draw upon the ire of whatever divine or supernatural forces oppose the target.
3) Using divine magic to strengthen the pull of their awaited afterlife on their soul.
4) Interfering in the world's connection with the Akashic Record, altering the properties of either the target or your weapon by supplying false information about how they should interact.
5) Using primal magic to expose weakness, much like nature as a whole does.
6) Using arcane magic to assess the flaws in the target's material expression and exploit them.
7) A fey bargain has given the Thaumaturge glimpses of creatures as they ought-to-have-been, their First World selves, allowing something more real than themselves to be injured.
8) The blessings of Zon Kuthon allow the Thaumaturge to strike not only at the body, but at the shadow as well.
9) Sympathetic magic, mediated through metaphor and pataphor.
Most of the stuff in my personal thread was the same things people have been talking about, but this one seemed worth breaking out for discussion since I hadn't seen it come up.
Psychic only gets one or two top-level slots. That means only one or two reasonable attempts at Charm, Calm Emotions, Suggestion, Dominate, or any other similar spells. Sorc gets three times as many attempts when you hit a new spell level, while Witch, Bard, and even Summoner get twice as many.
The result is that Psychic is the worst Occult caster at some of the most Psychic/Mesmerist-like spells, except on even levels when Summoner's casting proficiency has fallen behind. So, 8, 16, and 19-20 when 10th level slots show up.
Anyway, it's not a big enough thing to redesign the whole class to fix, but it bugged me. A metamagic, non-cantrip amp, or unleash effect to add +1 to spell level for calculating incapacitation effects would be enough to let a specialized Psychic outperform Sorc in a narrow thematic area. If it's capped at max spell level, they at least keep up with Sorcerer.
Taking a break to take a look at Psychic. As usual, this is mostly build stuff, mostly from the vague and nebulous "how satisfied am I making my characters with this".
Overall impressions before building something:
Ouch, those spell slots.
The existing cantrip augs seem really weak for the most part?
I thought Telekinetic Rend scaled at Heightened + 1, and thought that was solid compensation. Ouch upon noticing it's + 2.
Making one of these as usual for my thoughts and build stuff.
Initial impression: Oooh, shiny!
More specifically…
- A more magical martial is nifty.
- I love the theming, drawing on bits and scraps of magic, as well as creating connections.
- Woof. The sheer amount of skills you need to keep up to date feels oppressive. "For example, against a tyrant, you might attach a chain broken to free a captive." - good luck on that, I hope you had Society up to date in addition to the four magic skills. Pretty much the only thing charisma has going for it is social skills, and I can't afford them.
- Implements, absolutely love them. And we're getting more? Fantastic. I'm a little sad that getting a secondary past initiate without compromising your primary costs an 18th level feat, but the initial benefits for these are quite good.
- Amulet- yes. Yessity-yes-yes-yes. Reaction damage reduction, no longer just on Champion. Gonna be taking this one a lot, because I love broad-spectrum resistances.
- Chalice- cool. Not my thing, but all right. It makes sense that the temp HP is lower than the resistance from amulet, but the action cost for something that just lasts a round does seem a bit steep.
- Lantern- stylish. The knowledge bonus means this is doing something for you in combat, which is nice. I would take this for flavor reasons, and it does nice enough stuff that I wouldn't feel about what I was getting. Mechanically exciting for me? Nah, but that's fine.
- Wand- good. Can't comment on how strong it is, and I'm not gonna take it, but I'm glad it exists.
- Weapon- intriguing. I don't have anything that fits the concept, but I like the mechanics on this enough that I'm interested in making something based on this.
All in all, stylish as heck! It is going to hurt going from a loremaster alchemical science investigator to this, though.
Base proficiencies: Unskilled class, good hitpoints, weak BAB. Gonna need the rest of the class to pull some weight.
Adaptive strike: Needs an accurate name. It's not at all adaptive, because you can't change it. The damage is more or less Solarian - 2 once you get going.
Evolution track: One per turn is nice! It's got the feeling of getting stronger over combat. Hopefully.
EP bonuses by round:
1- Five feet bonus movement, as an enhancement bonus. Half the Operative bonus, two levels early, doesn't scale up. *shrugs*
2- Crit effect. This seems like a "feel bad" ability. If you crit on the first round, you don't get your crit effect. And in many combats, this doesn't provide a benefit, because you need to roll a 20.
3- On the third round of combat, my EP gave to me: a movement bonus when I'm already engaged in combat.
4- +1 AC for making it to the fourth round of combat. This is where we get what feels like an actual bonus.
5- Bonus damage, 1/round! That's nice.
6- +1 Enhancement bonus to all saves? It'll overlap with a ring of resistance, but that's at least +2 on saves. Nice. This is pretty far into the track, though- the big ticket spells tend to get thrown around early.
7- At level 14, this becomes accessible. It's the third or fourth round of combat. If I need the movement, I've bought augmentations instead of waiting for this- wait. I'm sorry, I forgot. This is a bonus to any one type of movement, so by this point, it's probably fly. I still don't care much for this being a perk that depends on getting further into the track, since it's more valuable early in the fight.
8- Another +1 AC. A good finisher.
Movement after the first round doesn't feel good; crit effects after the first round occasionally feel really bad.
Now, I know that there will be more effects later!
Spending EP: Well, here's my pretend-to-be-full-BAB option. For gaining no EP per round, you're full BAB outside of Starship combat. This seems like the Vanguard-esque approach. "Draw" your weapon as a free action is unlikely to come up much, but I don't mind it. Getting a movement speed only in combat isn't going to come up much either, but I hope the class will have out of combat movement options as we go along.
Flexible Skill: Solarian-esque, but weaker early on and better later.
Niche: Covering it later.
Adaptations: Ditto.
Augmented Form: Can this be fit into first level so that characters don't feel the need to wait and get any character-critical augmentations later?
Fulcrum: Make your weapon, a weapon. Is a scaling weapon level going to deactivate fusions? I'd need to go review that again.
Skill Boost: Nice list of options to pick from, and I appreciate the flexibility of changing on level-up.
Weapon Specialization: Yay, some extra damage!
Evolution Drain: Hmm. Spend your turn, getting later-turn benefits… I appreciate the guarantee of one evolution point on a hit, and the chance at sickened. The reactive once-per-mini-rest ability is a very solid improvement, though!
Evolutionary Focus:
Augmentation: This gets a little bit into the weirdness of waiting for discounts, but shouldn't be too bad.
Combat: I know this math stuff is good and all, but I never really care too much.
Packmaster: ??? Will need to look into this once I cover adaptations. I'm concerned about what this being restricted to spending EP means for those adaptations, though… I'm going to want permanent out of combat evolutions!
Accelerated Evolution: Wooo! Now we get to have fun! We can spend EP without stalling out progression on the track.
Evolution Drinker: The upgrade is nice. One-in-three chance to nauseate on hit and failed save? That's pretty nice, actually. I like that.
SO.
Before we get into the niches and adaptations… this is feeling like it could maybe be a full BAB class to me. The 10% discount might make Solarian a little jealous, and it might have to drop some late-level skill points.
I hope we get some support for more worn kits. My alchemical studies investigator is a kobold, so I end up with three bulk of gear. If I want to use my lovely three-action snare deploy it takes three turns to retrieve, deploy, and store the kit. That's still preferable to turning a one-action activity into five actions across three turns, so alchemist's tools remain the ones worn.
It'd be nice to have a magical tool bandolier that doesn't cost too much.
Discoluse, I started with some biases against the class concept. Specifically, I don't really want Iron Man or a lightning gun artificer showing up in every other game.
But, I'm gonna do some builds and see how it looks!
The characters:
Cal. His original concept was a gadgeteer superhero who made himself an advanced prosthetic arm. His PF1 version was an Occultist who bound spirits to animate his paralyzed arm. In PF2, he would have been a Magus. Goals: weaponized arm, electrical damage in melee, defensive bonus using the arm, grappling hook, mechanical prosthetic arm.
Mad Science Gal. Her original concept was a mad roboticist who ransoms the city for funding, but also puts out lab safety PSAs. I haven't built her before, but her PF1 version would have been an Alchemist, probably with one of the construct companion archetypes. In PF2, she would not have been buildable in a meaningful fashion. Goals: construct-focused build (sending construct into battle and hanging back isn't a waste of time), suitably hammy abilities, some hold-out weapon or punishment for being attacked directly.
Some kobold. Look, this looks great for a kobold. I still wish they were +Int. Goals: something that fits a cowardly and petty evil kobold. That's fine, though.
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber
Thank you for doing these playtests! Getting the opportunity not only to see what is coming in the future but also getting to hopefully provide meaningful feedback is a huge plus (I think?) and I 100% cannot wait to see more developments in the Mech space in particular!
Summoner doesn't have much actual summoning, which seems a little surprising.
The problem is that it's a class that attracts new players. There is no way I want a new player having to hunt through three bestiaries for something good so that they can try to juggle three creatures in combat for a total of five actions. Even if it only works while the eidolon isn't present, I still don't want to point a new player towards the summoning rules.
Just add some appropriate summoning spells to their repertoire on top of the four spells they pick.
- They're already spontaneous, so even if a character isn't focused on summoning, they can toss out a summons when it's useful.
- It avoids taking power away from the eidolon. The power of an extra spell known is not nearly as big as an extra spell in a free, dedicated slot.
- It allows new players to safely ignore the incredibly rules-intense summoning rules without being weaker for it.
The slightly improved version:
Each eidolon gives a choice of one of two bonus spells known. One is a summoning spell, and the other is a spell that benefits from heightening. Heal, Charm, Magic Missile. Include a sidebar recommending new players take the non-summoning spell.
As a heads-up, that's okay! Investigator really knocked it out of the park for me.
Useful context: I like Summoner in PF1, but I've only done short-lived Synthesist builds. Why? Because generally I don't care about the actual summoner part of it. I had ideas for regular Summoners, but 2+Int skills got in the way. I loved Spiritualist. One of my favorite characters was one with a Kindness phantom. (Okay, with six phantoms thanks to an archetype, but Kindness was the main one.)
I was excited for this to release, but after seeing it, I'm not really that interested in playing one, so I'm gonna try and pick apart why. In the process, I might resolve some of my issues. I hope this is helpful.
A big part of my enjoyment of Unchained Summoner in PF1 was the outsider options. There are a bunch of flavorful outsider types; I'm fond of the various fiends, psychopomps, and proteans. I can maybe get behind an angel with John Dee occult vibes. All of that, though, is now tied to the divine list. No illusions, no charms, very few compulsions, no Haste, in short… no trickery and no shenanigans. And I know Summoner's list in PF1 didn't have most of that either, but I could at least read minds, shapeshift, turn invisible, possess people, and turn people into weasels. Divine list continues to have the boring "black and white" feeling that rankles and doesn't fit the characters I enjoy playing.
So, what lists have those things? Arcane and Occult.
Arcane has a dragon, and will probably add constructs. I'm really not big on the pet dragon thing at all (I quite like Paizo's general approach of making dragons rare and powerful), but in typing this up, I do realize that pretending to be a dragon is one of the things I've wanted to do. My first Pathfinder character was a rather involved backstory Synthesist Summoner with an excuse for why he stopped being a dragon at night. But, I can't do (most of my) magic as a dragon, and I can't use magic items. If the character is working around that by transforming privately to keep up a charade? Okay, that's one character concept! (At least, if Synthesis stops dropping my Deception by four points and removing all my skill feats.)
Construct? I didn't care for Inevitable in PF1 either. Buuut, this won't be restricted to a boring rule-abiding biped. Possible candidate.
On to Occult! This is where I was really excited beforehand. Aberrations! Abominations from beyond the stars!
Playtest wrote:
Regardless of their nature, each occult eidolon has a connection to a particular emotion.
… Darn.
Okay, we're going Spiritualist here! That was one of the predictions, and I like the class. What'd we get for our phantom? Dedication Devotion (good choice on the name change) is not a very exciting emotion, and the abilities are very dry. Stand by your summoner (who is supposed to be hiding or at least flanking) to protect them, better saves, and take two damage to block five damage in an area. The specific phantom is a bit of a let-down coming from a Kindness phantom providing the utility of a bunch of magical healing and a larger Aid Another bonus on all skills.
The problem is, very little I like about Spiritualist is here. Spiritualist was great generalist utility, but I only get four spells known- that's enough to fake it a bit, but I'll be worse utility than a multiclass caster. The phantom was an amazing scout capable of phasing through walls right from first level, but that's obviously not part of eidolons. I was able to build my phantom with versatile tricks like pulling out whatever item was needed, or picking up an obscure skill we needed on the fly, but they don't have feat slots.
Now, it does do one thing much better than Spiritualist. It can fight. I could never get my Greed phantom character idea to the point of actually being useful enough to play, so if we got that, I'd have a ready-made character idea that would work better in PF2.
As far as the Primal list goes, a fey eidolon would be cool, but my character can't cast much by way of fey-like spells using the Primal list (mostly Charm), so I'd probably just pass.
TL;DR
- The spell list limitation kills a lot of my interest in the character possibilities that drew me to Unchained Summoner.
- Occult eidolons are insufficiently spirit-y to capture the Spiritualist appeal, and don't seem interested in doing more corporeal abominations without tying them to an emotion. I've got an idea that works great when they get to Greed, but Devotion is uninspiring and I don't know how to use its main ability.
- The new arcane options are workable. It feels a lot like playing a Chained Summoner, because when I sat down to a blob of stats in PF1, "make a dragon" was the first thing I thought of. On the flip side, that also means it doesn't feel better than getting a blob of stats and a breath weapon evolution.
- PF2's skill progression does provide the "why don't you just go play one in PF1" answer for Summoner, but not for Spiritualist.
What would help fix this for me?
- Make the spell list a suggestion for each summons type, not a requirement. Divine list with Beast for a Gozren or Lamashtan, occult list with Angel for a John Dee-esque character, primal list with Dragon for a primal dragon, and arcane list with Devotion for a necromancer who preserved the mind of their lover.
- More eidolon customization/shared customization. I don't think it's too unbalanced to share skill feats… it's a boost for things like Battle Medicine, it's true.
- Viable eidolon-as-character. The Synthesis restrictions are a little too harsh to do it right now.
