Space McMan's page

All this because he didn't mention level as a requirement for fusions in his post, only being a weapon per being on the weapon charts. Minor error but worth the entertainment.

Stop. You were wrong, and you acted like a petulant child when you were proven wrong. Everyone in this thread can see you were mistaken but still doubled down when you got called out. There's no saving face for you at this point. Accept the loss and move on. This thread is done.

I think the big problem with making a swift action +2 AC action is it gives free stats to any build that doesn't care about full attacks. Casters especially benefit, since they don't need to full attack to cast spells.

I don't see why builds that don't full attack should get free AC while builds that focus on weapons only get it situationally.

If you cannot figure out how to take Starfinder's tech progression and tweak it thematically so it fits into other genres, you need to question your qualifications as a DM.

Yes, if you're going to use Starfinder rules to run a game, you need to keep weapon progression. All 'martial' builds are balanced around that progression, and to change it in any way meaningfully impacts the balance of the whole game.

However, the weapons are just numbers when you strip away their sci-fi descriptions. At this level, for this cost, you get this many dice of damage. That's all you need to preserve the balance of the game. Everything else is pure fluff.

I can think of half a dozen different ways to reskin those numbers for different genres and settings just off the top of my head. Is the reasoning behind my reskins somewhat ham-fisted and game-y? Absolutely. But guess what? So is the base system.

Give me a scientifically sound explanation for why the level 20 laser rifle does almost 10 times the damage of a level 1 laser rifle, while still being the same size, weight, and using the same ammunition. That's ridiculous, but it's just a game so we accept it. If you can't think up plausible reasons why modern rifles, or ancient muskets, or magical crossbows can't scale in damage to preserve the mechanical balance of the system, you probably shouldn't be DM'ing in the first place.

This thread has served its purpose and needs to end.

The math has been done, extensively, by multiple people. There is unquestionably a small discrepancy between solarians and other classe as far as saves are concerned.

Is this discrepancy balanced out by the advantages the solarian class has over other classes? This is very much a matter debate and opinion.

However, all the good arguments have been made for both sides of the issue. Most of the posts here are just rehashing concepts which were discussed several pages back.

Since this thread has grown so large, I think it's very safe to assume the developers have seen it. Dev responses on these forums are rare, so there's no point waiting around for an official response.

The issue has been brought to light, and all sides have been argued. Time to move on instead of wasting time repeating ourselves.

Ikiry0 wrote:

No, a given adventure is only as combat heavy as you make it. You can pretty conclusively work out what percentage of the rules are combat-related.

I also stand by my point that if you make a purely non-combat Starfinder adventure, you are not using the game remotely to it's strengths and will be leaving characters out of the game/non-contributing. Much like how you COULD make a combat-focused Gumshoe game but it's a waste of the system.

That's your opinion. But its not up to you how to tell others how to play the game.

It's not an opinion that making a Starfinder campaign without any combat is a poor use of the system. It invalidates the combat classes and Starfinder doesn't have enough social systems to do anything beyond the basics of roleplaying. That's a fact.

No one's saying you're not allowed to run that campaign, but don't act like it's somehow a subjective opinion that the rules of Starfinder support a purely social game just as well as it does a combat game.

Ok. What does the soldier have to give up to be able to use the revelations that the solarian can use?

How about the fact that the soldier has 2 less class skills than the solarian and does not gain sidereal influence.

The solarian is better at a bunch of stuff when compared to the soldier. Yes the soldier can be better at combat and keeping his defenses up.

You very much sound like all the classes should be capable if exactly the same things at exactly the same level.

Different classes have different strengths and weaknesses. Deal with it

Exactly what things is a solarian meaningfully better than a soldier at?

Is it DPR? No, they stay extremely competitive from 1-20.

Is it survivability? No they'll have nearly identical AC and the soldier will have better saves.

Is it mobility? No the soldier and the solarian get exactly the same improved charge mechanic, and while the solarian gets it sooner, the soldier has +10 movespeed.

Is it skills? Barely. They both get the exact same number of skills per level, and with their excess of feats, a soldier can get Skill synergy at any point to get exactly the skills they want. Sidereal Influence gives a solarian a d6 on two skills, four skills after level 11. No solarian or soldier will ever come close to being as useful with skills the other classes, regardless.

Is it class abilities? No. The solarian gets a revelation every other level, but since melee solarians never go into graviton mode, it's really one every four levels. Many of these revelations are simply replicating class abilities soldiers get themselves through abilities or bonus feats(improved charge, extra melee damage, full attacks as a standard action, DR, ect).

So where do solarians outshine soldiers to much that they deserve to have bad saves as a weakness? What solarian ability no soldier can replicate balances no solarian maintaining balanced saves without sacrificing their primary stat?

From a purely mechanical perspective, putting all flavor and roleplaying preferences aside, I don't see why solarians must choose between their primary stat or standard fort and will saves. I don't see their numerical strength that requires this weakness to balance it.

Couldn't you just tell your players that you don't like the idea of them playing melee specialists if they use races that make ok melee specialists? Let them know that you expect them to play against type, and that they need to make sure they aren't trying to gain benefits for their choices.

This advice leads down a very bad path IMO. It's advocating that the DM ban against players, not against mechanics.

If a DM thinks a race is OP or doesn't belong in their world for any reason, they can ban it. But to say "This race is only banned if you're going to use it in a build that would take optimal advantage of its stats" is saying "You must build characters the way I want you to build, and I will ban you from choosing certain options to enforce it."

No matter how you look at it, that's simply not fair, and any player that's done to would be completely justified in feeling discriminated against.

Okay maybe saying it's OP isn't the right thing to say.

How about I say this:

I don't like the design of the Shobhad because it will only be used by people who want to do insane melee builds and nothing else. I like my players to be more creative than that,

there!

What's insane about it? It gives reach (easily gained by reach weapons) and move speed (easily gained from feats, upgrades, augments, ect). It doesn't give more overall benefits than races normally give.

Why can't your players choose a race that does melee well when they want to make a melee character? Do you disapprove of any race that applies to only one role? Seems arbitrarily restrictive.

Ravingdork wrote:

Not really, no.

The +4 Strength doesn't mean much when you have ability score caps and you still only get to distribute 10 points on a 1 for 1 basis. It actually kind of limits you, forcing you more towards melee builds when you might want to try something else with it.

Four arms is not overpowered since it doesn't give you additional attacks or anything.

Large size without any bonuses to show for it can actually be a hindrance. There are likely going to be a lot of ships and urban areas that simply weren't made for someone of your size.

Not even reach is as big a deal nowadays as it once was, since you can only ever get one attack of opportunity.

They are powerful, but due to their available roles being more limited, and all of the reasons mentioned above, I don't think they are strictly better than any of the core races.

It's the melee builds that I am worried about. The kind of player that will pick the Shobhad will not be interested in doing anything other than a blitz soldier.

I know four arms doesn't give you extra attacks, but having two, two handed weapons always at the ready is a big deal. easily switching between ranged and melee.

yeah, one aoo/round, but that aoo is going to be happening a lot.

I just feel like all that, plus 6 HP and 40 speed is a lot to give one beastly creature.

You still can't get more than 18 str at creation, so the bonus str isn't better than any other race that gives str.

Four arms isn't much of an advantage. Sure you CAN hold a bunch of weapons, but can you afford all those weapons? Probably not. Keeping more than your primary weapon up-to-date (which means getting a new one about every 3 levels) is an unnecessary expense when there's so many other important things to spend wealth on.

Extra move speed is good, but the bliz soldier and solarian get an improved charge as a standard action early on. A melee character with only 30' move is still going to be able to reach their target when they can move 3x their speed and still attack.

The reach is, IMO, the biggest advantage. Reach means an enemy you close with cannot take a guarded step away and be out of your threatened area. Suddenly Step Up and Strike isn't a mandatory melee feat. This is actually a bigger deal for the Solarian, since soldiers get so many feats, mandatory feats are less of a burden.

Is the race good for melee builds? Obviously.

Is it overpowered? No.

Letting players ready actions outside of combat should never be allowed. The ONLY purpose for doing so it to subvert the initiative system, and if you allow it in any circumstance you've thrown out the whole point of using initiative and opened the door to extremely cheesy play.

Readying an action is not an action in the way all other actions are. It doesn't represent your character doing something. It represents your character preparing to react to a trigger outside of initiative. If players can do this out of combat, surprise rounds and initiative as a whole ceases to function properly.

If players feel threatened outside of combat, what's stopping them from readying the total defense action triggered by the appearance of the enemy every round they don't need to perform another 'standard' action? If they become aware of an attack in any way (in other words they see an attack coming even an instant before it lands) their full defensive action goes off before the attack. Suddenly they are no longer flat-footed and instead have a bonus to AC against that attack, as well as acting before the enemy next round in initiative.

Why should a DM allow such a blatant exploitation of turn order?Players can tell the DM they "get ready for trouble" all they want. The initiative system still exists. It doesn't matter if you're expecting trouble, initiative determines how quickly you react. If the enemy attacks without player's awareness, it doesn't matter how 'prepared' they are, the enemy still get a surprise round. Abusing a game mechanic standard action outside of combat initiative doesn't somehow nullify the mechanics of surprise and initiative.

Just imagine the results if you allowed NPCs to use readied actions outside of combat. Every enemy NPC would walk around with total defense readied in case of an attack. Every combat, the first player to attack triggers total defense in every enemy who hasn't acted yet before their action goes off, an next round they all act before that player. It's ridiculous.

Initiative exists for a reason. It's not an elegant solution but it's a simple one. Allowing readied actions to override initiative is just opening a meta-gaming can of worms. Either you rule on a case by case basis for when it's allowed and waste game time as players constantly ask for permission to break initiative rules, or you always allow it and give NPCs the same tactics. Of course, NPCs don't have to declare readied actions to the DM, so the players will quickly come to resent what they see as DM cheating when the NPCs always have the ideal actions readied before each combat. It's a no-win situation.

There is no rule that allows readied actions outside of combat by RAW, and nothing to support it by RAI as it directly conflicts with other mechanics.

Space McMan wrote:

Are you building a str or dex soldier? If dex, you can easily keep your str and con low and boost a single mental stat to at least +2 on creation.

I recommend wis, as boosting your will save and perception checks is universally useful no matter what your party is doing.

Good points. I haven't gotten that far yet. Is a Dex soldier viable? Most builds I have seen are STR/DEX even (16/16) or close to that.

Dex sharpshooter soldier is probably the most effective combat build in the game right now. Dex is still the god stat, and the sharpshooter gets several to-hit bonuses that makes them the most accurate build for ranged full attacking.

In practical terms, this means the sharpshooter will land more hits than any other class, and when soldiers get triple attack at level 11, it just gets stupidly dominant.

While the strength soldier is fun on paper with its huge DPR and awesome visual imagery, a melee build requires sacrifices. You sacrifice attribute points to maintain a good dex and con and strength, leaving no room for a good mental stat. You sacrifice a lot of full attacks to move into melee with your enemy. You sacrifice a lot of health when the enemy constantly focuses you as the only exposed target while the rest of your party hides behind cover 100' behind you.

A sharpshooter makes none of those sacrifices. The damage they lose from not getting their primary stat to damage is made up for in all the extra attacks they land from being able to full attack on almost every turn of combat.

And with the excess of feats available to a soldier, boosting several skills to be useful out of combat (stealth, pilot, perception, sense motive, ect) is quite easy. It's a brutally effective build.

Just remember, your fun is not more important than the group's fun. If your character is an unfocused mess trying to imitate an idea that doesn't exist in the game, that's going to play out one of two ways.

The first is that the character you built is just functional enough that the group doesn't feel like it's carrying dead weight, the DM doesn't feel like he has to balance around your special needs, and everyone is amused by your outside-the-box design. This is all good, and optimization be damned.

The second is that, in pursuit of a character not easily built with the current classes, you create a character that does everything poorly and fulfills no role in the group. Your fellow players will be frustrated because they're doing all the work and you're still getting a cut of the rewards. You DM will be frustrated because he can't balance for the number of players present without constantly risking a TPK. The only person having fun with your unique character is you. That's not good, and you will only have yourself to blame when you're asked to roll a new character or leave the table.

So just keep that in mind when you're trying to make a weird character. It's not just you who has to play with the results.

No.

But great post.

I still wish that they had the choice between wisdom or Cha for their key baility

it would represent how some solarians stuyd and train for their powers, or harness them from the force of their own will

my 2 credits

A wis solarian would be strictly better than a cha solarian in any situation where they are not the only cha character in the party. An evnoy or spy operative will make an equally good or better face and captain.

For starship combat, a wis solarian could do what the cha solarian does now when there's a better captain and take ace pilot or go gunner.

A wis solarian gets a primary stat that provides a save (this is huge), boosts perception, sense motive, and mysticism skills (all universally valuable skills) and as the cherry on top, the iconic solarian being a kasathas make more sense.

Unless I knew I was the party's only option for a face character, I'd always go wis solarian, just for the better will saves and perception checks.

Hit and run is all about the free half move at level 5. With haste and movement boosters, you could be moving 30' plus another 60' from haste and get a full attack at level 12. It really doesn't have much to do with ranged combat, because opening volley is not very good.

I say it's better than blitz at high levels, because a full attack will always be 1 more attack than a charge.

Also, the ability to negate opportunity attacks at level 9 opens up some interesting tactical movement options. Such as moving away from a boss after a full attack.

I'd have to disagree about Hit and Run being better for melee soldiers than Blitz at any level. While there are definitely good abilities in Hit and Run, Blitz just offers too many high value skills.

Level 1: It's no contest. Opening Volley is straight useless for a full melee build. Any ranged attack will have lower to-hit and significantly lower damage. The +2 on the next melee attack will never ever be worth the trade.

On the other hand, Rapid Response gives you 10' more movement and improved initiative, both extremely useful for a melee build.

Level 5: Charge Attack from Blitz will be the bread and butter for melee players in a world where every mook has a laser gun with 60-150' range. Charge without this feature is terrible, costing a full round and imposing a -2 to hit and AC. Turning it into a standard with no penalties means you can move up the 3x your speed in one round and still get an attack off, and having a move action to get yourself into a viable charge lane means you can use it almost every turn. Even better, when you reach level 9 you can make a full attack after your charge.

Nimble Fusillade is nice, but only if you're already within half your move speed of your target. Plus, the Step Up and Strike feat tree, which every melee should be taking anyway, does a similar job. While Nimble Fusillade gives better mobility than Step Up and Strike, there is no feat that does something equivalent to Blitz's Charge Attack.

Level 9: This one I'll give to Hit and Run. While I can see many circumstances when getting 2d6 + level in hp back could save your life, it's a relatively small heal compared to the large health and damage values being thrown around by level 9.

However, the hp you'd save by avoid AoO from Duck and Weave is probably greater than the heal from Keep Fighting. Still, this may not be as valuable in practice as it looks on paper. Without having access to a beastiary, we don't know the ratio of ranged to melee opponents in Starfinder. It's very possible most enemies will be primarily ranged combatants, since ranged is unquestionably better than melee in this system for everything but raw damage (and that's only if melee is making the same number of attacks per round as the ranged, which any rpg veteran knows rarely happens.) If there are typically more ranged enemies, that means AoO will be much less prevalent.

Level 13: Another big win for Blitz. Hit and Run gives you +1 AC when you move. Wooo. From everything we know about high level combat, it's going to be a slug fest with both players and enemies having very high to-hit values. One point of AC is rarely going to make a difference.

What will make a difference is Blitz's Perfect Opportunity denying any movement to enemies you successfully land an AoO on when they try to move away from you. This prevents your DM from being a jerk and realizing that, since you have Step Up and Strike and guarded steps are now useless against you, his NPCs will just eat an AoO to run away from you. Now any successful AoO denies all further movement to the struck enemy. Think about that. At 13, it is literally impossible for an enemy to escape your full attacks unless they get lucky and avoid your AoO.

Level 17: I don't really love either of these abilities, but the Blitz ability is still better for a melee build. Harrying Fire from Hit and Run requires you to spend a full round action making one attack, and if it hits, you grant harrying fire (+2 to the next attack until the start of your next turn). That would be terrible, except you can apply it to blast and automatic fire attacks, giving the debuff to multiple enemies. Good for a late-game soldier with all kinds of heavy ranged weapons. Truly awful for a melee soldier to make a single attack with a full attack action and give a +2 to someone else. If there's anyone else in your party who can do more damage than you in a single attack, and thus be deserving of you giving up two of your attacks for a +2 to one of theirs, you've built your soldier terribly wrong.

Against the Odds from Blitz is underwhelming (gain 2 damage for every enemy within 10 feet of you) but extra damage whose only cost is that you be in melee (where you will always be) is still valuable. Getting a +6 to all three of your attacks in a full attack action if you're near 3 enemies is nothing to sneeze at.

Comparing every ability and how they'd play out in a melee build, I think Blitz is the overwhelming winner. The amount of mobility, control, and damage you'd give up by taking Hit and Run over Blitz is not worth Nimble Fusillade, the only decent melee ability in the whole Hit and Run tree.

I'm honestly not seeing what you're trying to accomplish with this build. You've got a few feats and revelations for increasing your tankiness, and then a bunch of random things.

I don't see any feats for improving combat maneuvers or revelations that CC enemies. What you have taken for survivability is unfocused and less than optimal.

If you want to actually focus on survivability, drop str, drop solar weapon, and go high dex with solar armor and longarm weapons. Build around staying in graviton mode to boost survivability and mobility.

A high dex solar armor build also works better if you want to boost your cha for save DCs, since you can ignore str and con (in fact, always ignore con, it's almost worthless in this system outside of fort saves). Then you can take the CC revelations like Crush, Gravity Hold, and Hypnotic Glow and have them land more often.

If you want to go melee with damage and combat maneuvers, you should probably just roll a soldier for the bonus feats. Melee solarian are pretty pigeonholed into one optimal build at the moment. It involving heavy armor, photon revelations, and feats spent on mandatory melee feats like the step up chain, nimble moves for charging, adaptive combat for versatility, and the improved save feats so you don't fail against every spell inevitably cast against you while charging into the enemy line while the rest of your party cowers behind full cover 100' away with their ranged weapons.

If doing big melee damage is what you want, go high str, heavy armor, solar weapon and check out the melee solarian guide already floating around the forums.

If being tanky and disruptive is what you want, go high dex, solar armor, ranged weapons and pick revelations that either give mobility or battlefield control ( but stay away from defy gravity, it's a trap).

This changes a full round action into a standard removes the penalty for said action then gives it additional benefits. I am not saying this is mechanically broken I just predict a change to be a full round action a later date. As it stands you could do a move action ( not well versed in move options at this time )move double your speed attack with no penalty. Or even guarded step away from a foe and then charge a second one

Both the solarian and blitz soldier get a standard action charge for a very obvious reason: ranged combat is king in Starfinder.

The majority of sentient enemies you face will be ranged and the majority of your party will be ranged. The only way for a melee character to be even remotely viable is if they have better mobility options. Thus melee characters get access to charge as a standard, freeing up the move to set up the lane or activate class features.

This was a very purposeful choice on the devs part, and one of the only reasons melee is an even remotely viable option in a system where everyone has laser guns and can use them competently without spending a single feat.

Edit: And there is no point in guarded-stepping away and then charging. Charge gives no benefits beyond the speed. Without the solarian or soldier features, it only imposes penalties.

In the many years I've played Pathfinder, it's always irked me how builds and classes based around strength are almost always sub-par. Strength just never did enough, either in or out of combat, and caused builds that maxed it to be very one-trick. Dex was always the king of physical stats, with modifiers to initiative, reflex saves, AC, and multiple essential skills. There was just no contest. However, the power gap between casters and martials was so severe as to make the gap between strength and dex irrelevant.

When Starfinder came out I was immediately excited about the new balance between casters and matials. Martials were given universal improvements (immediate access to iterative attacks, level to damage, benefits to running MAD over SAD stat builds, better feats, ect.) and casters were all reduced to spontaneous 6th level casting. I loved the concept of the Solarian class most of all, and last night finally built one top to bottom.

Imagine my disappointment upon realizing, after all the love given to martial builds, strength is still unquestionably the worst stat in Starfinder. All the issues with strength builds in Pathfinder were ported over to Starfinder and made all the more glaring by the improvements given to dex builds.

First, let's look at what strength modifies in Starfinder:

Now consider the actual usefulness of each of those points.

Currently there is no way to get dex to damage on any weapons so strength is the best (and only) option for melee builds, and melee builds have the highest damage potential. One point for strength.

Athletics is, at first glance, a great skill. Combining all climbing, jumping and swimming checks into one skill is a definite improvement from Pathfinder. However, just like in Pathfinder, the actual need for these skills are limited. Starfinder is full of options for improving player's mobility. Whether it's through augmentations that give you gills and suction cups, armor upgrades that attach jetpacks, feats that simply grant a climb speed, or all the classic spells for flying and teleportation, the need to actually make an athletic check beyond the early levels is eliminated. There are simply too many universally obtainable mobility upgrades for athletics to retain value throughout a campaign.

Finally, there is carry capacity. Players become encumbered when carrying bulk equal to or greater than half their strength score. For 25c, players can purchase an industrial backpack which increases carry capacity by one more bulk, assuming the bulk is stored in the pack. Thus a character with a flat 10 strength can carry 5.9 bulk. To put that into perspective, the majority of heavy armor and weapons weigh 2 bulk. A character with 10 strength could wear Vesk Overplate armor and wield a IMDS Missile Launcher and still have almost 2 bulk of miscellaneous equipment and weapons stored on her person. If that's somehow not enough, you can purchase an armor upgrade for 2500c to increase your carry capacity by another 3 bulk. As long as you don't intent to carry multiple sets of heavy armor and weapons on your person, no character needs more than 10 strength for carry capacity purposes.

Beyond the ability to effectively smash someone in the face, making strength your primary stat isn't accomplishing much. It gets even worse when you consider what strength CAN'T do.

Strength cannot:

That's right. In starships, dex modifies pilot checks and gunner attack rolls, int modifies engineer and science officer checks, and cha modifies captain checks. Only strength and wisdom are left out and wisdom, a primary casting stat with modifiers to will saves and several good skills (including the most rolled skill: perception) is already in a very good place.

Also, notice that everything strength can't do the other primary physical stat, dex, DOES do. Dex modifies ranged attacks, initiative, reflex saves, AC, two different starship roles and four different skills.

The worst part of strength's failure as a stat is how it's still almost mandatory for one class: the Solarian. There's no question the Solarian works optimally as a melee combatant. Too many of its best class features are melee-only. And because strength is so one-dimensional, the Solarian suffers a lack of versatility. Yet every other class can choose to ignore strength and still work optimally and diversely. If you're not shoehorned into melee, why would you spend even a point in strength (unless you're a soldier with a heavy weapon fetish)?

So not only did the Starfinder devs fail to update strength in any way from it's lackluster origins in Pathfinder, but they also shackled it to the Solarian, dragging what should have been an amazing class down with it.

All in all, I'm disappointed with the dev's lack of effort in transitioning strength, with all it's well-documented and long-standing flaws, into a new system while leaving it practically unchanged.

I genuinely don't understand where your mental block regarding this feat is coming from. The wording isn't perfect, but the intent is absolutely clear. Since it seems your having a really hard time with this, let me lay it out for you.

Strike Back
Benefit: You can ready an action to make a melee attack against a foe that attacks you with a melee weapon, even if that foe isn’t within your reach.

This does not change how readied actions work, or even give you access to a new readied action. It simply broadens the trigger parameters when you make the readied action of "I ready an action to melee anything that makes a melee attack against me."

Without Strike Back if an enemy makes a melee attack against you with reach greater than yours, your readied attack trigger doesn't go off because you are not allowed to attack an enemy who is beyond your reach.

However, with Strike Back, your own reach is no longer a factor when retaliating against melee attacks with a readied action. Whether it's with five feet of reach or forty, if an enemy makes a melee attack against you and you have Strike Back, your ready action trigger occurs.

Could the wording be a little better? Sure. "When readying an action to make a melee attack against a foe who melees you, your attack triggers even if they are beyond your reach."

However, the RAI of the feat is crystal clear, thanks to the flavor text above the feat: You can strike at foes that attack you using their superior reach by targeting their limbs or weapons as they come at you. Do you really need more than that to understand what's happening here?

I'm working on a vigilante to play in an upcoming Hell's Vengeance campaign. While going through the new feats in UI, I found Notorious Vigilante and wanted to create a build around it. Would appreciate some feedback, especially on if this is worth doing over a simpler combat archetype like Serial Killer.

The Ripper
Male Human Vigilante, lvl 11
Lawful Evil

Initial 20-point buy:
Str 10, Dex 18, Con 12, Int 10, Wis 8, Cha 16

Traits:
Blade of Mercy, ???

Feats:
1) Enforcer, Two-Weapon Fighting
3) Weapon Focus
5) Dazzling Display
7) Notorious Vigilante
9) Shatter Defenses
11) Demoralizing Display

Vigilante Talents:
2) Lethal Grace
4) Twisting Fear
6) Up Close and Personal
8) Evasion
10) Mighty Ambush

Social Talents:
1) Renown
7) Great Renown

By level 7 I can begin combat by moving through an opponent's square, taking the swift action attack from Up Close and Personal and demoralizing them via Enforcer, which procs the bonus non-lethal damage from Twisting Fear. Then I finish moving into position and use a standard action Dazzling Display, triggering AoE damage from Twisting Fear.

At 9th level I can unleash full attack actions on the second round, and any demoralized opponent will be considered flat-footed, thus proc'ing the vigilante sneak attack.

Finally at 11th I can choose between setting up flat-footed opponents to full attack down and possibly drop with a successful Mighty Ambush, or I can move again, proc'ing Up Close and Personal and Twisting Fear, then standard action DD'ing, causing AoE damage and fear tracking opponents with Demoralizing Display.

While all this seems cool on paper, I'm concerned it may take too long to come online, and may invest too many resources for the results achieved.

Wow. While this forum does have a reputation for advising "dump the player, delete your facebook, and hit the gym" (no wait, that's reddit) I'd have to strongly agree about kicking this player immediately.

Assuming you've given us the whole story, the player is showing some next-level disrespect for you and the other players by disregarding excessive amounts of help and playing ipad games during a session.

His reasoning is simple: he wants to build this character by himself without any help because he's very prideful. When his builds don't work out he gets upset at the stupid game for having dumb rules and the other players for using 'OP' builds that shouldn't be allowed. To show his discontent he gets moody and plays by himself to make sure everyone knows this is a waste of his time. He can't accept help because if the character suddenly works, he's forced to admit he failed at character building and isn't the amazing gamer he believes himself to be.

If this guy is an adult, kick him from the table and stop inviting him to any gaming sessions, as he has the maturity of a teenager and will be a burden no matter what you play. If he's actually a teenager, kick him from the game but give him a chance again down the road, in case he gains some perspective and maturity from reaping negative consequences.

It's still worth it by far. What you lost is your ability to chew up all of your lowest level spells for nice high-level summons. It's just a little better balanced of an archetype now. Now you have to lose higher levels slots.

Start with 16 INT, 16 CHA. That'll pretty much guarantee you 4 standard-action summons, mins/lvl per day if you chew up three of your 2nd-highest level slots every day. In return for those 3 slots, you get 4 of the best spell line in the game, in the highest slot available, one level early half the time.

The trade is definitely in your favor.

Your other option is Academae Graduate conjurer wizard for standard action summons. You have to make a fort save, and you're trading highest-level slots for highest-level summons...not quite as favorable a trade.

That's far too simplistic a comparison between the occultist and a conjurer wizard. As a summoning focused wizard, you are going to have far more casts per day, thanks to the extra spell slot at every level from your school specialization, as well as being able to put more point into Int which increases spells per day further. Going 16 int 16 cha requires every point of a 20 point buy, while getting int all the way to 18 still leaves you three points.

And lets not forget the wizard's full spell progression, bonded item or familiar, bonus feats, scribe scroll, and school specialization bonus abilities. As an Occultist, all your precious points will be burned on summons, leaving very little left over for any of the arcanist's excellent exploits, which means all you're left with is a caster with sorc spell progression, below average spells per day (both because of low int and because you're now consuming your high level spells for points) and the ability to summon as an SLA four times a day.

Compared to a conjuration wizard with graduate, there's just no compelling reason to go occultist when you lose so much trying to make the new arcane points work.

My group is about to start a homebrew campaign with slow progression leveling. We will be starting at level three, and the DM expects the campaign won't got much past level 12. All hardcover books allowed, no splats or 3rd-party. While not all the party roles have been set, we have a rogue, a frontline melee of some type, and a sorc called (leaving me and one other player to finish the roster).

So, with slow progression, the level 12 as the cap, and the party make-up in mind, what classes would people recommend? I'm leaning towards a divine caster, since there isn't any in the lineup. Druid looks interesting, but so many options, it's intimidating for someone whose only been playing Pathfinder for 6 months. Thoughts?