Professor Wonderment's page

Honestly? I don't like them. Of all the concepts Paizo added onto 3.5, one of my favorites was archetypes.

Pathfinder archtypes are simple, versatile, and add a huge amount of flavor. Want your Gunslinger to be a roguish cardsharp? Mysterious Stranger. Like the skills and magic of Bards but don't like performing? Archaeologist. Want to command the undead with SCIENCE! instead of necromancy? Reanimator Alchemist.

Pathfinder archetypes are brilliant because they tweak and expand the flavor of existing classes to add a huge amount of versatility. They make it easier to play the exact character you want, and add another element of customisation.

And Starfinder archetypes can't really do that, because they aren't class-based. Suppose you want your Mechanic to be able to reconfigure their drone whenever they have downtime, rather than on level up, and you're willing to trade some power for that. An archetype won't be able to help you, because they have to apply to every class.

Class-independent templates are a good idea, but Starfinder already has those with themes. Archetypes as they stand just seem superfluous.

Well, that's interesting. I was thinking there were actual undead Pharasmins worshiping The Lady of Graves, because they view the undeath they no longer remember choosing as a sort of original sin they're trying to redeem themselves from.

Or that was an attempt at appeasement:

"Oh great Pharasma, I know our very existence is a mockery of your natural order, but we just wanted to let you know we are really, *really* sorry about that. I know we turned ourselves into abominations in order to escape Your grasp, but we don't remember doing that, so I don't think it really counts? So look, just give us a mulligan on this and don't destroy us or punish our souls for all eternity once we reach the Boneyard, and I promise this won't happen again. Amen."

There's long been a school of thought about 3rd Edition, 3.5, and Pathfinder, that classes should be ranked not by survivability or damage potential, but by versatility - and thus, 9th level caster are the king of the system. A high level fighter may be really really good at killing things, but he's not much good for anything else, whereas casters can pull all kinds of crazy reality-altering shenanigans, and are probably even better at killing.

So speaking as someone who loves casters for their creative problem solving potential, I'm good with this, and hopefully this leads to a more balanced system. My Technomancer doesn't need Time Stop or Gate to be a badass.

I like the idea of an Android that doesn't quite get proper slang and pejorative use, but tries and fails constantly, kind of like Sandra B&#$&*~ in Demolition Man.

I could see a scene such as:

Party plans to start a fight, android exclaims, "Time to physically abuse the livestock!"

....Human leans over and whispers in his ear

"...I mean, time to kick some @$$!"

"I'm here to consume edible adhesives and abuse livestock, and I'm all out of edible adhesives."

It's actually a pretty versatile ability. There's a number of fun things you can do with it. Velisruna already suggested having both reach weapon and a heavy weapon. If you're fighting melee opponents, you're a ranged attacker protected by a buffer of threatened squares, making it a pain for them to get to you without triggering an AoO. If you're fighting ranged attackers, you can get up close and force them to either waste actions escaping or trigger an AoO by attacking.

There's also a lot of interesting but situational new weapons that become more viable if you don't need to waste time switching them out. A flamethrowers is handy for crowds, but swapping it out once the melee folk get in takes a move and a swift, and that's with a feat investment (or you could drop the flamethrower, but should you?}. Got four arms? You can choose between your area attack or something precise for free, every time.

Play a technician. Use a taclash for trips and disarms, wield a doshko for sheer damage, and still have a hand free to catch disarmed weapons.

Finally, you always get to act in a surprise round, because four armed is forewarned.

I'll see myself out.

I'm thinking slotting Shirren into male, female, and host is the result of dual-sexed races trying to translate a radically different reproductive biology into their own social construct. Since neither "male" nor "female" are hosting, the only reason to assign one of the mating types as male or female is the "female" has larger gametes - and since the cells aren't carrying half the genetic material to make a full life form, they wouldn't even be considered gametes.

I could get into a whole thing of how mating type doesn't necessarily mean male and female, but the point is, Shirren have a very alien reproduction cycle, and the human(oid) response to new concepts is to establish points of comparison with established concepts, and that a Shirren "male" doesn't correlate to a human male, or even an insect male.

At level 1. At level 5 it's 14 14 16 vs 14 14 16. At 10 it's 14 14 17 vs 16 16 18.

You start with lower overall stats, but have much more and more
Balanced rather quickly.

Hey, you're right! I hadn't even noticed the changes to ability score advancement.

That makes relying on multiple abilities scores much more viable.

I haven't gotten to try a Solarian yet, but it's worth noting Starfinder's ability point system is harsher on MAD than Pathfinder's point buy.

In PF, an 18 and a 10 cost the same as a 15 & 16. In Starfinder, it's 14 & 14. If you needed three stats, 18,10,10 cost the same as 14,14,15. SF, it's 14,12,12.