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The problem is that it explicitly calls out that anyone can craft Tech items, and implicitly states that you don't need a feat to do so. The sidebar on pg204 calls out that you would need the Magical Crafting feat to craft magical items and the Programmer feat to craft virtual items. Nowhere does it state that you need Tech Crafting for anything. It's not even a prereq for Machine Magic, which is required to craft hybrid items.

Yeah, you're totally right! And in my opinion, needing a separate feat for crafting tech items in Starfinder would be like needing a separate feat for flying a spaceship.

I think the feat needs to be reworked entirely in order for it to work and not be bad.

Fully agree! Sadly, the current version feels like a hard slap in the face of the Crafting skill, as Computers with Fabricator can do all the same but better. It is cheaper, it is faster and it costs the same amount of feats for creating tech items. Also with the Maker’s app you can get all formulas for the whole adventuring gear for 10 credits, including the one for the paragon Creator caspule, which reduces the cost for completing technological items to 1/7 - not with Crafting, but Computers!

I guess at that point you could just move Repair to Computers as well and just get rid of Crafting altogether ...

... which I would absolutely hate! I adore crafting. Even in a tech heavy setting, I want master craftspeople to be out there instead of just throwing a formula into a printer to get a shiny paragon armor.

Really hope I just got that totally wrong and there is still a good spot for Crafting?! ^^

Oh I see, yes, I was indeed proposing to only apply modifiers when switching pairs of arms between actions during the same turn, so the modifier would have reset after your turn is finished. Thus I thought there was no tracking issue - granted, applying a penalty to your shield AC would indeed mean you have to remember something, also, delaying an action...

So, yeah, my intention for allowing to switch for free between turns was to keep the coolness of being a multi-armed character, while still giving it a bit of an edge when switching during a single turn (apart from spending additional actions), to keep it from being overpowered. Basically, your primary pair of arms would then be determined by the one you used first during your turn. But still, if that doesn't solve the issue, it's not a solution.

And I fully agree that tracking in between turns is not feasible at all and I'm all in for reducing complexity!

Thanks both of you for your insights! :)

What do you think of, instead of the cost of an additional action, a penalty of lets say -1 is applied for each shift to another pair of arms to represent some additional brain work?
So for example the Multiple Attack Penalty after switching to another pair of arms is increased by 1; raising a shield provides 1 less AC; -1 for skill checks...

There might be an ancestry feat at later levels to remove this penalty.

Please note, that I only have played SF1 but no PF2 yet, so I cannot tell if a -1 penalty makes sense, but since the soldier inflicts a -1 with their Suppressed condition, it looks like it has some weight to it.

(Also thank you Teridax for your detailed post, that helped me PF2 n00b a lot to understand the possible problems concerning action economy.)