After playtesting the new classes a fair amount, I think it's time I wrote some playtest notes. This is something I've done for other classes and elements of the Starfinder playtest, and you should be able to find the list below. I'll split my post into sections, spoiler them, and add a TL;DR just so it's all a bit easier to navigate.
I ran my playtests mostly across levels 1-15, as I ran them mostly using the official Starfinder playtest scenarios and field tests. I ran some playtests at higher levels using Pathfinder content, but treated those as secondary to the playtest scenarios.
I ran my Technomancer with a variety of party compositions, mostly with just other Starfinder classes. I eventually started adding Pathfinder classes into the mix, and treated those playtests as secondary.
I tested my Technomancer using different Starfinder ancestries, including ancestries from the Galaxy Guide.
I ran the scenarios RAW for the most part, only adjudicating when something broke or was missing from the rules (or the class's core features). I then started playing with certain parameters, chiefly the Techomancer's own features, and treated those findings as secondary.
As per standard, I maxed out the Technomancer's Intelligence, then Dexterity, then Constitution, and finally Wisdom.
I settled for the most part on a laser rifle to "cast gun". While trying out different subclasses, I went out of my way to try to accommodate their item needs when possible, such as buying a spell gem at level 1 for the Viper subclass.
TL;DR I ran the Technomancer through a series of playtest encounters from low- to fairly high level, using a variety of ancestries and party compositions. After a little over a week, I started experimenting with altering the Technomancer's features to see how that would affect their gameplay.
Overclock Gear:
There's a lot to be said about Overclock Gear, in my opinion. It might not seem it, as the mechanic doesn't have all that much text to it, but that I think is part of it:
First, let's talk cost. Overclock Gear requires you to cast a non-cantrip spell, which means that your choice is to either cast a slot spell, which is particularly costly at low level when you have only 2 to begin with, or to cast your focus spellshape for the sole purpose of activating this feature. I order to overclock consistently, I ended up using the latter, which on some level did feel hack-y and thus thematically appropriate, but for the most part felt wasteful, especially when there wasn't much else I could do on that turn.
At low level, DPS++'s weapon overclock felt genuinely really good to use, as my attacks were hitting more often and dealing a higher minimum amount of damage, and it was one of the few overclocks I could put to immediate use by Striking as my third action. At higher levels, though, my Strikes were so weak compared to other things I could do that I ended up overclocking mostly just for Jailbreak Spell.
Fortrun was more consistently useful for its +1 to AC, if not its retaliatory damage on a ranged and extremely squishy class.
ServoShell was literally useless due to not having a permanent tech minion.
Viper ended up having the most useful overclock at higher level (in fact, the versatility it provided was perhaps a little too strong), but at low level was prohibitively expensive to use due to the cost of spell gems.
Although activating Overclock Gear is necessary to use Jailbreak Spell, I mostly ignored this at low level, because I simply did not have the resources to do both consistently enough (and especially not if I used my focus spellshape to overclock). Instead, I stayed overclocked for as long as I could when using DPS++ and Fortrun. At higher levels, though, I started overclocking purely to jailbreak, and disliked this, as overclocking felt like the only aspect of the Technomancer that actually has them use magic to interface with tech and not the other way round, and I didn't enjoy it being used mostly just as a means to something else.
One thing to note is that if you jailbreak a slot spell, you can Overclock Gear on the same turn to regain your overclock effect. This will effectively negate the benefit of jailbreaking as a free action, but lets you save resources. This is one of those hackier elements of the class that I found both nifty and a little awkward at the same time.
A more minor gripe I have with the mechanic is that you can overclock any gear, not just tech gear. This means you could overclock analog or even archaic gear, which to me feels like a bit of a thematic miss.
In general, I felt there was something lacking to this mechanic. I really wanted to overclock more stuff, and just interact with tech a lot more. Instead, I had one designated way of overclocking, with other "overclock" effects just being focus spells with the word in the name and no mechanical relation.
TL;DR Overclocking felt underbaked, and more as a means to the end that is jailbreaking than its own mechanic. Although Viper's overclock shines at high level and DPS++ at low level, the mechanic felt inconsistent in its power scaling, costly to use at low level, and ultimately really limited on what is meant to be the tech caster. I really feel this mechanic could use more love, as I think there's so many different ways to overclock, so much more tech to play with, and the current overclock focus spells could be tied into Overclock Gear better too.
Jailbreak Spell:
I have a fair bit to say about Jailbreak Spell, which I also discussed in a separate thread, so I thought I'd give the feature its own section here:
For starters, and to make one thing clear, this feature is very fun to use. This is by far the most powerful way of modifying a spell in 2e so far, and feels like a major power-up when you get to add lots of riders to your spell (and as a free action, too!).
The big caveat here is that this feature is very fun to use... when you get to actually use it. At low levels, I barely used Jailbreak Spell at all, because setting it up typically requires spending a spell slot, and you need another slot spell to get the most bang for your buck. At 3rd level in particular, I had only 5 spell slots to work with for the entire day or scenario, so despite how strong the feature felt, I couldn't justify spending a huge portion of my limited resources on it.
While Jailbreak Spell is quite impactful, it's also fairly complex and takes some getting used to. On my first few uses, it took me a little while to track all the moving parts, particularly when factoring in subclass features. Every spellshape also ended up becoming quite a bit more complex and wordy as a result of needing a special jailbreak entry.
On a similar note, I also felt that some jailbreak options were more restricted than the mechanic would suggest. The jailbreak effect on Incognito Spell, for instance, could have been an amazing spellshape on its own, and in practice felt like a poor fit for a base spellshape that's meant to allow spells to be cast unnoticed.
TL;DR Jailbreak Spell succeeds at its goal of providing a spellshape that feels super-powerful, but at the cost of significantly complicating the Technomancer's spellshapes and amplifying their low-level resource problems. As much as I like the mechanic, I question its place as a core class feature.
Core Class:
Splitting my feedback on the class's core chassis, subclasses, and feats for readability:
I'm personally actually quite a fan of the class having lower base stats than the Starfinder playtest classes. This new baseline feels much more appropriate, and while the class felt squishier than others, that squishiness wasn't a dealbreaker by any means either, and made sense on the Technomancer. I'd even argue that the class could stand to lose its light armor proficiency and work as a full cloth caster, much like a Pathfinder Wizard.
Much like Pathfinder's Wizard, however, I'm not a big fan of the 3 + Int mod skill proficiencies at level 1. Just because an arcane caster uses Intelligence doesn't mean in my opinion that they should have less than the minimum number of skills; their Intelligence and higher number of trained skills I think is meant to be part of their advantages. Not a dealbreaker, though, and more of a pet peeve.
My experience with the Technomancer's spell slots is as follows: on its own, I actually quite like that the Technomancer isn't yet another 4-slot caster, and think it's okay for the class to have fewer spell slots. However, the class is chock-full of mechanics that push them to use spell slots, which made them feel resource-starved at low level, and I don't think those mechanics necessarily make up the gap in power either. That, however, I think is a problem with the class's other mechanics, not their spell slots, and I'd personally want them to have less dependence on limited resources at low level than more spell slots, as I think they do fine with those at higher levels.
Download Spell is effectively what I've wanted from Pathfinder's Wizard and Spell Substitution for a long time, and the reasons why are clear on the Technomancer. It feels fantastic to switch to a reliable and thematically-fitting spell on the spot, and this has subtly been the most impactful mechanic on the Technomancer in my opinion on several encounters. It definitely does feel like the Technomancer's hacking into magic.
The Technomancer's focus spellshapes feel great... at high level. When you have spell slots to spare, it feels great to have lots of ways to modify your spells. When you don't, it means your only resourceless ways to contribute are the bare minimum of guns and cantrips, and even with overclocking that does not feel very good. It also means that with overclocking and jailbreaking, a huge portion of the Technomancer's power is contingent on their use of spell slots, which prevents them from making full use of their mechanics at low level.
While the Technomancer's ability to hack spells definitely felt well-established, their identity as an actual technomancer, i.e. a character that uses magic to act on tech, did not. Overclocking is the only core mechanic that lends itself to this, and I think it falls short for the reasons detailed in its own section.
Reinforcing the above I think is the class's DC. It's bog-standard for casters in that it remains stuck at trained, which means the Technomancer's accuracy with grenades and many other tech weapons drops off quite significantly over time. Adding insult to injury, the Witchwarper gets a class DC proficiency that scales up to master rank, making the latter better at using many kinds of tech than the actual Technomancer.
TL;DR The core Technomancer in many ways felt like they had everything I always wanted from the Wizard, with a better Spell Substitution mechanic and lots of spellshapes to begin with. I think this sits well with their lower durability, and leads to a class that feels like they get a lot of control over their own magic, which is great for a caster that's being put forth as a spellhacker. However, the class has way too much pressure overall to use spell slots and poor resourceless fallback tools, which does not sit well with their 3 spell slots per rank. Additionally, the core class didn't really feel like a technomancer, at least not the view I had where they could interact with tech in plenty of different and impactful ways.
Programming Languages:
When playtesting the Technomancer's different subclasses, I felt there was enough variance to them that it was worth talking a bit about each of them individually:
I'd first like to start by mentioning how much I love the subclass names. The references to actual programming and scripting languages are fantastic, and really helped sell the class's theme in my opinion.
Although spellshapes can be quite useful, I did not get that much use out of the subclass spellshape feats. Again, I think this is because the Technomancer has too few spell slots and is pushed to spend them in too many different ways, which led me to feel that the class had all of their eggs in one spellshaping basket when they could have benefited from a little bit of diversification.
DPS++ felt like one of the more functional subclasses at low level, mainly because their overclock felt genuinely impactful and their cache spells were pretty directly useful. However, thermoelectric phase change does not interact with supercharge weapon, the subclass's 1st-rank cache spell, so I started off using that focus spellshape purely to overclock. At higher levels, by contrast, I ended up overclocking purely to jailbreak, as my Strikes felt really limp and inaccurate even when overclocked.
Fortrun succeeds at making you feel pretty durable, particularly when you can give yourself a +2 bonus to your AC (+1 status from protection, +1 circumstance from overclocking). However, same as with DPS++, there is no interaction between this subclass's focus spellshape and its own 1st-rank cache spell (nor any of its other cache spells, for that matter), which reinforced the notion that a lot of the class was clashing with bits of itself, especially at low level. My small handful of attempts to test out the retaliatory damage ended up with my character getting chunked and dealing only piddly damage, so I ended up ignoring that entirely and instead using a jailbroken Denial of Safety (which, again, has no interaction with the subclass's cache spells) to yeet myself out of an enemy's melee reach if they ever got that close. I could've made more use of overclock armor to protect my HP and active defense firewall to prep a nasty spell and get more bang for my buck, but I honestly believe both work better as situational precautions rather than tools you'd use to actively put yourself in the front line.
ServoShell is just not fit for purpose. The Technomancer has no inherent means of obtaining a minion that can be Commanded, rather than Sustained, so its overclock effect is nonfunctional. Summon minion, while obviously appropriate for the subclass, makes it impossible to use on a turn where you want to overclock (which you might want to do to jailbreak). Signal relay has the benefit over DPS++ and Fortrun of actually synergizing with the subclass's 1st-rank cache spell, except it is so overly reliant on it that you must summon a minion first before getting to make any use out of the spellshape, a significant resource cost that is far too large at low level.
Finally, Viper I'd say is the subclass that comes out on top, but only at higher levels. At low levels, even your lowest-rank spell gems will be prohibitively expensive to buy constantly, even when you get to stretch their use out a little more with dynamic frequency scaling. When you do get to consistently use spell gems, though, Viper becomes immensely versatile, and because their subclass features actually work with each other, the subclass feels really good to use. At higher levels I ended up becoming a bit of a do-everything caster, particularly with higher-rank focus spellshapes letting me heighten non-arcane spells from spell gems and temporarily add them to my spell cache. I will say, however, that the jailbreak benefit dropped off quite significantly in effectiveness at higher levels given that I was making Area Fires with my perma-trained class DC, so that didn't feel so good.
TL;DR The Technomancer's subclasses have a lot of potential, and can genuinely impact the class's playstyle, but are also incredibly janky, especially at low level. ServoShell in particular felt almost like I was playing with no subclass at all, and Viper struggled with gem costs at early levels before shooting into hyper-effectiveness at higher levels. There is a shocking lack of synergy between many of the subclasses' spellshapes and their own cache spells, particularly at low levels, and I would have much preferred to have had feats that actually benefited my subclass rather than more spellshapes.
Feats:
I mostly focused on level 1-14 feats during my playtests, owing to the level range at which I mostly played:
First, let's start with the positives: there's a vast number of different spellshapes, many of which feel impactful and novel, and this makes me very happy. I've always wanted more spellshapes for Pathfinder's Wizard, as I think there's a lot of untapped potential to those, and it's good to see that potential tapped here, even if it's on another arcane caster class.
Second, and this I think bears mentioning: the feat names are awesome. Starfinder's ability names are at their best when they lean into the material they dig into and reference stuff we players are familiar with, in my opinion, and as a programmer I found it particularly appealing to identify and recognize all of the tech references. This I think really helps drive home the Technomancer's flavor.
On the more critical side, I was very disappointed to see so few tech-centric feats. The bulk of the Technomancer's feats are about spellshaping or playing with spells, and my expectation was that the class would also have many feats that would let them interact with tech-based items, hazards, environments, and so on in unique ways, much like how Pathfinder's Druid and Ranger have tons of feats that let them interact with natural features. This to me reinforced the notion that the Technomancer wasn't really living up to their name, and felt more like a Wizard in space with a bit of tech flavoring.
Adding to the above, it didn't really feel like I had many feat paths to focus on my gear if I wanted to. There are a small handful of gun and grenade feats, the latter of which struggle against the class's perma-trained class DC, and that's about it.
There is a sore lack of feats for tech familiars and robot companions, which is all the weirder considering how the Mechanic has a robot companion feat line. Either would've been a great 1st-level feat for a ServoShell Technomancer and would've solved a lot of their problems.
An issue I ran into with spellshape feats was how packed each one was. Each feat was basically two spellshapes rolled into one, and I feel there could've been a simpler way to do this that would have avoided that kind of bloat. Specifically, Double Spellshape at 4th level feels like it could've worked well as the baseline model to follow for jailbreaking.
On a much more minor note, Sudo Spell does not do what the name suggests it does. "Sudo" is a command that's generally known for running programs with maximum user privileges, and has no inherent link to duplication. It feels like "Copy and Paste" would've been more appropriate for that feat, and "Sudo Spell" could be a fitting name for the Root Level Access feat that gives you an extra 10th-rank spell.
TL;DR The Techomancer's feats offer a ton of fun spellshapes and have quite possibly some of the best feat names I've ever seen. However, there is a serious lack of feats that interact with tech of any kind, and in general it feels like there was far too much of a focus on manipulating spells, which feels more appropriate for a Pathfinder Wizard than a class that's meant to also have an affinity with tech in the same way a Druid has an affinity with nature.
The big TL;DR to all of this is that based on my experience, I think the Technomancer needs a lot more work unfortunately. They're among the weakest and least functional classes I have ever playtested at low level, and even at higher levels I never really felt the class was fully living up to their fantasy. Part of this is because I expected the class to interact much more with tech, when in practice the class hyperfocuses on spellshapes and uses its overclock mechanic more as a means to that end, rather than as its own fully-fledged aspect. There is far too much pressure on the class to use their limited spell slots on their class mechanics, and I feel this problem would still exist at low level even if the class were a 4-slot caster. My biggest recommendation would be to take at least a few eggs out of that spellshaping basket, and instead put them into the class's tech aspect, if only so that they can have more useful abilities at level 1.
If interested, here are the notes I compiled on adjustments I made to the Technomancer that worked well for me:
Adjustments and Recommendations:
I experimented with converting Overclock Gear and Download Spell into single-action focus spells, dropping their current restrictions on frequency or needing to cast a non-cantrip spell. This in my opinion made the Technomancer feel much more functional at low level, because they could overclock much more easily and without added resource expenditure, giving them the fallback tools they currently sorely lack. In general, it made the class more flexible and I think made the focus spellshape more palatable, as it didn't feel like you were being locked out of a useful focus spell at low level.
I experimented with swapping out the spellshape feats on a few of the subclasses and instead giving them feats that synergized with their other mechanics: with ServoShell, I gave them a basic robot companion, and that made their spellshapes and overclock so much more functional from the get-go. With Viper, I homebrewed a feat that let them choose a 1st-rank arcane spell, and become able to create a 1st-rank spell containing that arcane spell for free each day: this made a massive difference as well, because it allowed the subclass to function without imposing a huge credit drain on itself. My recommendation at this point would be to take out all spellshape feats on the subclasses, and replace them with other feats more directly beneficial to those subclasses.
I tried splitting up spellshapes and their jailbreak effects into separate spellshapes that I could then mix and match with Jailbreak Spell, as with Double Spellshape. This definitely made the Technomancer more versatile, but also just gave them even more spellshapes to play with. I didn't experience anything unbalanced either, so I'd go as far as to say that cutting Jailbreak Spell as a core feature and instead having Double Spellshape be the way to mix and match spellshapes could make sense on the class.
I experimented with giving the Technomancer a class DC that scaled at the same rate as their spell DC. This generally did not actually make a huge difference, other than it made a few grenade-based features and feats more functional and meant grenades were always a viable option on the tech-based class. I do think this could be added to the base class without unbalancing it, and doing so I think would guarantee that it would interact properly with certain tech items.
TL;DR In my playtesting, I experimented with making the Technomancer less of a hyperfocused spellshaper, and instead turning some of their existing features into a deck of magic hacks that could be used without needing to expend spell slots. I also gave them a scaling class DC so they could use grenades better, and swapped their subclass spellshape feats with feats more directly synergistic with their subclass features. This in my experience led to a significantly more functional class, especially at low level, that felt like it could play at least a little more with tech. This may come down to taste, but I didn't feel the reduction in their spellshaping aspect that strongly, because at lower level I did not have enough spell slots to spellshape much anyway, and at higher levels I had so many spellshapes to choose from that I could easily become a master spellshaper if I so wished. Based on this, my recommendation would be to force less of a focus on spellshapes on the base class, and instead give them the tools they need to make more use of tech and still be effective at low level when not expending spell slots. Because many bits of tech don't use daily resources, and existing feats in 2e allow the generation of daily resources for free, I think the two go hand-in-hand.
I was gonna say: how was it using Area Fire with a class DC that remained stuck at trained? I do agree Area Fire makes it difficult to "cast gun" with a stellar cannon and use a spell or cantrip at the same time, but that can be circumvented by using grenades instead, whose Area Fire uses one action (though you might need to spend an Interact action to draw one first); the thing that can't really be worked around here is the poorly-scaling class DC.
A curious detail I've noticed is that Overclock Gear doesn't exclusively work on tech items: if you wanted, you could overclock an analog weapon or armor, which in this case I think might actually be detrimental to the Techomancer's theme (and, conversely, making overclocking exclusive to tech gear could allow it to be made stronger). There's also a bunch of tech that could be overclocked but isn't touched upon at all, including grenades, missiles, upgrades, medpatches, adventuring gear, and a whole bunch of magic items, to say nothing of tech hazards and non-minion creatures. That looks like a lot of room for more interaction with tech to me.
I'd say even the in-combat tech elements are missing from these classes. I can understand not giving out every feat that's set to be in the final product, but given that this is meant to be part of the tech playtest, I'm surprised to not see a lot more interaction with tech. Given that the Technomancer in particular is stuck at a trained class DC, they can't interact very well with common tech items like grenades. This is in spite of several features and feats on the class pushing them to use grenades, and in spite of the Witchwarper receiving an up-to-master class DC specifically to make use of explosives, which is why I'm all the more confused as to how that got missed on what is meant to be the tech caster.
But the more I read them, the more they remind me of things I don't enjoy about PF2e classes. The mechanic promises a cool class fantasy, but they both mostly use the flavor of creation to be a class that hits things good. The technomancer promises a cool gameplay loop, but it requires turns that are either rigid or "best case scenario" just to reliably do what your class promises you.
I'd argue this is a problem much more specific to the SF2e playtest than PF2e. Pathfinder classes tend to have a variety of things to do, and while some do have more math-y benefits, the majority have mechanics that are quite flavorful, open-ended, and conducive to cooperative play. The Starfinder playtest classes, by contrast, were chock-full of numbers boosters, and several bent over backwards to justify their key attribute, the Soldier in particular. Every SF2e class in the original playtest has a fixed rotation, which PF2e classes avoid in their design, and that in my experience made several of them quite rigid to play in practice. That this problem persists on the Technomancer especially I think is more a continuation of past errors than an emergent issue.
I think the rule of thumb in 2e, whether Pathfinder or Starfinder, is that by default you will very much want to boost Dex, Con, and Wis even if your class doesn't explicitly tell you to do so: Dexterity is responsible for your AC and your Reflex saves, Constitution is responsible for your HP and your Fortitude saves, and Wisdom is responsible for your Perception and Will saves. Unless you can substitute one stat for another, such as Strength for Dexterity if you're a heavy armor class, these attributes will have such an impact on your character in and out of encounters that you're better off boosting them along with your key attribute than not. This I think is all the more true in Starfinder, where gun-based combat will have most characters boosting Dex for their Strikes.
This is also why I don't think the Mechanic in particular being required to boost Dex on one of their subclasses is necessarily a huge deal -- that's already something they're going to be doing, because they'll want Dex to shoot anyway. There's a case to be made for using Int on the turret instead, but even so, the Mechanic will still want to boost Dex for all of the reasons mentioned. If the Mechanic had reason to boost those four scores and then Strength or Charisma, then they'd be properly MAD (and the Inventor has this problem with their Strength-based melee Strikes), but as it stands there's very little reason to build Strength in SF2e unless you're a Solarian, and the class has no special reason to go for Charisma either. There is therefore plenty of room to get exactly what you'd want from this class using your four attribute boosts every five levels.
I think this is a solid assessment. I do think the design and balance of both classes are an improvement over the initial six, as they fit 2e's framework a lot better, but there are a few issues with the two tech classes that need sorting out.
I'll likely do a full write-up of each class, but in my opinion there are a few commonalities: both classes in the playtest are hyper-focused on a specific thing (deployable-based area control for the Mechanic, spellshapes for the Technomancer), and that hyperfocus in my opinion has come at a large cost to their other mechanics, including a severe lack of basic functionality in some respects. The Mechanic's drone progression is completely messed up, but also the class is only loosely-tied to their key attribute, to a degree where it's quite easy to ignore it entirely on one, if not two subclasses. The Technomancer is made extremely dependent on spell slots due to their focus spell being a spellshape, and that dependence is increased even further by Overclock Gear also being dependent on casting a non-cantrip spell, all while subclasses like ServoShell and Viper have features that are outright unusable out of the box.
One of the bigger problems I'll note is that despite these two classes being part of a tech rulebook, neither seem to interact very well with tech. The Mechanic doesn't have all that much tech interaction, and their mine exocortex I think could have been a sterling opportunity to instead have a rig that lets you make grenades on the fly, with mods that could let you turn them into mines and other fun kinds of explosives. The Technomancer, meanwhile, lacks the class DC scaling to do well with grenades at all at later levels, which does not bode well for their grenade-based features and feats, and their overclocking is so action- and resource-restricted, while also being consumed by Jailbreak Spell, that it feels almost like a means to an end rather than a proper feature in its own right.
With this, my feedback would be for the developers to pull back somewhat and consider other aspects of the classes they're dealing with: it's great for the Mechanic to be able to control minions and areas, but it'd be nice for them to do more actual mechanic stuff and play a bit more with items. It's great for the Technomancer to use tech to hack into magic, but it'd also be good for the class to have more room to use magic to play with tech in new ways. Neither class needs to put all their eggs in one basket to shine at what the developers are aiming for, and in the Technomancer's case in particular I think the class needs to be good at things other than spellshaping at early levels if they want that aspect of them to work.
The loop I've fallen into at low level was supercharge weapon into Overclock Gear, then injury echo into a Strike (and then stumble into a Strike after that unless I need to spend actions doing something else). It's actually quite strong at that level, but it better be given that you spend your entire first turn setting up. I also fear that at high level, that part of the Technomancer may fall off quite badly, as not even the partial cover negation would make up for the comparative -4 to your attack rolls at that stage.
I agree with this assessment. Overclock Gear I think is at the heart of a lot of the Technomancer's current problems right now, because it clogs up their action economy and makes them even more hungry for spell slots than their focus spellshapes already make them. That two of the subclasses can't benefit at all from the overclock effect I think ties to a slightly different issue (the Technomancer needs 1st-level feats that aren't spellshapes, and that instead cater to their subclass better), but nonetheless make overclocking feel even less relevant on what is meant to be the caster for interacting with technology.
With this in mind, I'd definitely support making the effect a focus spell without needing to cast a spell first, and in general I think the Technomancer could benefit from having this large deck of focus spells at level 1 to have more resource-free things to do, and more choice over what to commit to in an encounter. I'd also perhaps also support making each overclock effect into its own focus spell, which could open the door for more overclock spells and perhaps make it easier to poach overclock effects across subclasses.
While I haven't yet extensively playtested the Technomancer at a high level, I'm also in agreement that the overclock effects on DPS++ in particular may end up not being so valuable: not only does the class have the standard caster weapon scaling, they also lack the scaling class DC to use area weapons and grenades well, which carries its own heap of problems, and have little feat support to overcome this. Giving the class a scaling class DC, potentially even up to legendary, would address this issue, allowing the class to always use AoE weapons and grenades competently.
As I understand it, the idea is to treat guns as their own separate weapon subset from Pathfinder firearms, as guns and firearms are balanced differently: specifically, guns are balanced to be on par with other weapons (in theory, at least), whereas firearms are made intentionally underpowered in Pathfinder so that they're less likely to be used by everyone, with Gunslingers receiving extra features to bring them back up. Thus, I'd say that in this case the incompatibility may be intended.
Okay, so at least part of my assessment was correct, then. I'm going to push back once more on the criticism of the Mechanic's need for Dex, because martial classes that key off of a mental attribute don't need to use it for their attack rolls to be encouraged to build that attribute. The Investigator isn't just a minority here, they're the exception, and Devise a Stratagem is meant to be a defining mechanic of the class.
Just to break it down as much as possible:
Even if you made the Mechanic use Int for their Strikes, they would still need Dex for saving throws and AC (plus important skills like Piloting), so it would remain a stat so important as to be essentially mandatory. The Investigator, who can use Int for their Strikes, very much boosts Dex still for those same reasons.
As mentioned already, you can boost four attributes at every attribute boost level, and boosting Dex, Con, Int, and Wis gives you an immense variety of skills to choose from, more than you can pick at level 1. Being made to boost Dex as well as Intelligence is therefore not, in my opinion, a significant hit to the class's versatility unless you also want them to commit attribute boosts to Strength or Charisma.
The -1/-2 to accuracy is a weakness shared by several other martial classes that tends to enable stronger features as a result. It seems this isn't something you take major issue with, so I won't press further.
While I agree that the Mechanic currently isn't tied properly to Int, as I said in my first comment on this thread, your proposal is not the only solution to this, nor do I believe it would be necessarily the most helpful. I too would like the Mechanic to be rewarded for boosting Int no matter their subclass or feat choices, but I think there are ways of going about it that'd be a better fit, and would hopefully feel less math-y.
As much as I find Jailbreak Spell super fun to use, I feel it'd work better as a feat, rather than as a core class feature.
I think what we're quickly seeing with the current playtest is that the Technomancer's current focus on spellshaping doesn't really work with their spell slots: I think it's a very good thing that they can hack into magic, so I'd very much like to keep their spellshapes (in fact, I'd like even more), but at low level they just lack the spell slots to be able to do very much of that at all, especially given how Overclock Gear imposes an additional resource cost. I do think the Technomancer should be able to build to be an incredible spellshaper, and I do think having a spellshape focus spell is good even at low level, but I think what they need the most right now is stuff that doesn't rely on spell slots to be effective, ideally stuff that's based on tech.
So, with this in mind, here's how I'd redo Jailbreak Spell:
Split up current spellshapes and their jailbreak effects into separate spellshape feats whenever possible. This should include the jailbreak benefit you get from your subclass, which could perhaps be a subclass-specific spellshape.
Make Jailbreak Spell a single-action focus spell you can pick up at low level (let's say level 4) that lets you pick any two single-action or free-action spellshapes and apply them to the same spell (and you'd still need to spend an additional Focus Point to use your focus spellshape). This would basically roll in the current function of Double Spellshape.
Add another feat at low level that lets you deactivate your overclocking as a free action to cast any hack spell as a free action.
So you'd still get to jailbreak your spells, and with much less setup than right now, with the option still to sacrifice your overclocking for a free-action double spellshape. It'd just be something to opt into, rather than a core feature, and the Technomancer's subclass features could instead focus on granting some kind of bonus that'd synergize with the spellshape in some form, like a robot companion or a free 1st-rank spell gem each day.
I'd personally lean in favor of giving the Technomancer a full deck of magic hacks, i.e. focus spells, at level 1: Download Spell? Make that a single-action focus spell instead of a free action every 10 minutes. Overclock Gear? Make that another single-action focus spell that you can activate on its own, instead of this thing tied to casting a slot spell. And with that, you'd get to give the Technomancer much more to do without dipping into their spell slots, and so without affecting their existing mechanics by all that much. The added benefit is that it would also let you choose how much of each aspect you want to lean into: want to just overclock? You can do that. Want to fully lean into the spellshape? You can do that. Want to just switch to your cached spells? Can do. Want to do one of each every encounter? That's something you can do too!
Bonus customizations sounds good, yes! I'd still want to bake a basic level of Int dependence into the base Mechanic, rather than expect every current and future subclass to have it, but if the drone needs a boost (and I'm not entirely convinced it does, as it's not meant to be as powerful as a PC), that could certainly do it. I do still think the idea of having the number of mods you get scale with Int would be a smooth solution, including in addition to what's being proposed, because it'd achieve that Int scaling on the core class in a way that I think would make thematic sense (the smarter you are, the more ways you know to modify stuff), while still allowing a Mechanic to take less Int if they so choose at an appropriate tradeoff: if you get 2 + Int mods as a baseline, plus the two from your subclass, going for 0 Int still means you'd have several mods to choose from, you'd just be less versatile than a high-Int Mechanic. If you just want two baseline mods anyway and don't care about the rest, that could be fine on your build, and Mechanics boosting their Int more would be rewarded with more options.
As I understand it it's mature at 4th level (Tactical Drone), graceful/burly at 8th level (Refined Chassis), advanced at 14th level (Advanced Companion), and specialized at 18th level (Specialized Drone). As a few others have mentioned, someone messed up the progression as well as the prerequisites, as the order should be advanced/mature at level 4, graceful/burly at level 8, and specialized at level 14.
The above puzzles me, as I found myself having little trouble picking options, including well beyond the level range at which I playtested my zero-Int drone Mechanic. Here is the list of options I found useful, with the ones I picked bolded out:
1st: Commercial Customization, Explosive Shot, High-Tech Medic (you use the item's level if your Int mod is low), Multidisciplinary Mechanic. This is four out of the seven available feats, more than half.
2nd: Coordinated Fire, Hunker Down, Instant Deployment, Modify Drone, Remote Operation. This is five out of the eight available feats, more than half.
4th: Adaptive Camouflage, Tactical Drone. This one's a no-brainer (and also, half the other feats are exclusive to other subclasses).
6th: Auto-Target (I would've picked this one), Cloaking Companion, Defensive Programming, Tactical Customization. This is four out of the six available feats, more than half.
8th: Activate Targeting System, Refined Chassis (I would've picked this one), Cloaking Field, Instant Install, Transmutative Casing. Refined Chassis is the no-brainer option here, but that's still five out of the seven available feats, more than half.
10th: Advanced Customization. A weak level at one out of five available feats, but then Advanced Customization itself offers seven different options.
12th: Deploy Bunker. Quite possibly the weakest level at one out of five available feats, but the option still works.
14th: Advanced Drone (I would've picked this one), Advanced Targeting System, Convertible Chassis, Synchronized Advanced. That's all four feats on offer.
16th: Self-Repairing Exocortex (I would've picked this one), Superior Customization. That's two out of the three available feats, so more than half, and the third is exclusive to the mine exocortex anyway.
18th: Elite Drone (I would've picked this one), Enduring Exocortex, Permanent Mod. That's all three feats on offer.
20th: Auto Loop (Looks extremely good if you have Auto-Target), Multitasker, Ultimate Drone (I would've picked this one). That's all three feats on offer.
So with the exception of three levels, a zero-Int drone Mechanic can choose from more than half the feats available to them at that level, and this is counting the feats that require other subclasses as prerequisites. The number of feats you can't pick due to low Intelligence are a minority, and there are enough feats that you never have to pick the same feat twice if you don't want to. Perhaps going for a melee-centric build in a ranged-centric game like Starfinder is what limited your options, Cupi, but the claim that there aren't enough feat options for a zero-Int drone Mechanic smells like BS to me.
I might write a thread about this, but I think it's fine for the Technomancer to have worse stats than the playtest Mystic and Witchwarper, and I think that reflects an evolution in Starfinder's balance where the Starfriends took critical player feedback on board. My suspicion is that the Mystic and Witchwarper will find themselves with lower stats than what we've seen in the playtest, because both classes were seriously overstatted (nearly every SF2e class was) and many players made note of that.
As for why the Technomancer is locked to Arcane, my guess is that Arcane is by far the best fit for a class that uses tech to hack into magic. Arcane is the magic of structure that gives you the cheat codes to the Universe, so it'd make sense for that to the Technomancer to embody that with their magical programming languages. Occult magic by contrast relies a lot on vibes, which I think makes it a less good fit. I agree with WatersLethe that a class needs good justification to be able to choose between traditions, and while I do think there's room for that in 2e (I do think Pathfinder's Psychic could choose between arcane and occult spellcasting), I don't think the thematic justification is strong enough on the Technomancer unless we go with a "ghost in the machine" angle that currently isn't really implemented in the playtest class.
I found it fairly complex, and I'd list myself as someone fairly familiar with 2e. There's certainly a learning curve here where you will probably get used to all the moving parts over time, but the first time I used Jailbreak Spell, the game ground to a halt for a solid three to five minutes as I went to the spellshape (Thermoelectric Phase Change, which by the way does not synergize with the 1st-rank cached spell on DPS++), back to the spell, back to the spellshape for the jailbreak benefit, then back to the spell again, double-checking every time that the spell was valid for the spellshape and that I'd applied the effects correctly. To top it all off, I used my remaining third action to Overclock Gear again, which made me question why I had to turn it off in the first place!
When you gain this feat, choose one spell. You can only change your choice of spell by retraining this feat.
Each day when you make your daily preparations, you produce a single temporary spell gem containing your chosen spell, heightened to half the level at which you selected this feat rounded up (this will be 1st-rank). This temporary spell gem lasts until the next time you make your daily preparations.
You can select this feat more than once. Each time, you can choose a different spell, or a spell you've already chosen heightened to a different rank.
Because this would be so much less flexible and powerful than Scroll Esoterica (you can only generate a single spell gem for the same arcane spell each time, rather than up to 2 scrolls of any common spell), this could perhaps be enough to be valid as a 1st-level feat.
My apologies if I misunderstood, the impression I got was that you were in fact claiming that boosting Dex made the Mechanic MAD, and that dumping one of their scores for Charisma was something they should be allowed to do without much consequence. If that's not the case, then disregard that part of my post.
I will, however, continue to push back on Wis supposedly not being this score the Mechanic can boost, because it is. It doesn't have to be a super-high value at early levels to be an attribute you can boost to +4 or even +5 across your career thanks to your four boosts every five levels. This is also the standard on martial classes, none of whom so far have Wis as a key attribute, and none of whom use Wisdom to Strike. Let's then please not pretend that the Mechanic is at an unusual disadvantage here, because they're in literally the same situation as every other martial class in this respect.
The same world where a class' KAS does not contribute to their main "to-hit" (inteded as Attack Roll, DCs and/or Class-relevant skills).
I don't think you really understood the point here. Unless you're a Solarian, Dex is an attribute you'll always be boosting in Starfinder, because it's the attribute you use to shoot. Perhaps it could make more sense for the drone to shoot using Int, but ultimately you're using it as a ranged weapon, and will be needing Dex for Reflex saves and AC, so having to use it in some way, shape, or form isn't exactly this draconian build expectation when you have four ability boosts to spare.
PathMaster wrote:
A number of things: Intimidating foes into obedience, being harder to kill or remembering your deity's teachings better.
That's the beauty of Pf2e's ability boost and skill systems: your class doesn't conpletely define your role, you can branch out without shooting yourself in the foot.
And why is it necessary for the Mechanic to be able to dump their key attribute to become good at Intimidation without any meaningful tradeoff? Again, you seem to have missed the beauty of 2e's attribute boosts, which is that getting four of them at every attribute boost level lets you pick a variety of skills: just sticking to Dex, Int, and Wis, there's Acrobatics, Piloting, Stealth, Thievery, Computers, Crafting, Society, Arcana, Occultism, Lore of various kinds, Medicine, Nature, Religion, Survival... everything except Athletics and your Charisma skills, really, and Athletics is still something you can make good use of via Assurance. At it stands, the Mechanic has the opportunity to put their attribute boosts towards any of those skills, and there's more on offer than even their starting 8 trained skills would let them pick. Oh, and being able to boost Con also means you get to be harder to kill without sacrificing any of the above, too. This very much strikes me as this classic case of a kid stamping their feet because they only got most of the presents, when they wanted all of the presents.
This is what I'm disagreeing with. It sounds like you are wanting to put limitations in just for the sake of Int dependence. Why? It is unnecessary.
Interesting how you're only viewing this as a limitation when what I'm proposing would give you access to additional mods at higher levels. It seems I'm not the one who's tunnel-visioning here.
And as stated already, by now several people, a class depending on their key attribute is a good thing. It is good to feel rewarded for investing in your class's key attribute by being directly more effective at your class's core mechanics, just as it wouldn't feel good for it to make no meaningful difference. What I'm proposing is also not a particularly severe limitation, yet even that much seems to be too much for you.
"Dr." Cupi wrote:
I've already proposed two int dependent shifts:
*Class DC to weapon aoe for drones
*optional int as stat to-hit for turrets.
And both are irrelevant, because they only apply to optional mechanics, not core parts of your class. You're not addressing the problem here, and given your protests against even the softest attempts to do so on the actual core class, methinks this is deliberate.
"Dr." Cupi wrote:
The second is so that the main class feature (turret) isn't forcing MAD.
I'm sorry, what game are you playing if you think pushing a ranged character to boost Dex constitutes "forcing MAD"? What are you even trying to do with that extra ability score you're freeing up?
Haven't seen a thread for this specific mechanic yet, so here goes: Jailbreak Spell is a core class feature the Technomancer gains at 3rd level, which lets you trade in your gear overclocking for an action compressor on a spellshape, plus an additional jailbreak benefit, plus an additional benefit if you use a specific spellshape granted by your subclass. This probably starts to get to one of the things I want to discuss, but just to lay out the steps, here's how you jailbreak and what you get out of it:
First, you cast a non-cantrip spell. Because your only non-cantrip spells from your class at lower levels are spellshapes, it's likely going to be a slot spell.
Then, you use Overclock Gear, another Technomancer class action that grants a specific persistent benefit to some of your gear based on your subclass. This and casting the spell will likely take up your entire turn, and you must do both on the same turn.
On some later turn in the same encounter, you use Jailbreak Spell. This ends the overclock effect on your gear.
You then get to apply one of your spellshapes as a free action.
In most cases, your spellshape will also have a special jailbreak benefit, which you apply to your spell in addition to the basic spellshape effect.
If you're jailbreaking your spell with the spellshape gained from your subclass (not the focus spell, the other one), you also apply another jailbreak benefit from your subclass, for a total of four separate benefits.
Now, I'd first like to start with the positives: when you do get to use this, it does actually feel like you're jailbreaking your spell. The Technomancer gets lots of juicy spellshapes that add cool new effects to spells, adding another jailbreak benefit pushes the spell modding element even further, and doing all of this at no added action cost really feels like a huge boost. In the very limited few times I've used this mechanic so far, it felt like a really high moment, and I think the Starfriends really aced the design of a class that can hack magic with this mechanic.
Now, the less positive stuff: as the above should hopefully indicate, the process of jailbreaking is... well, it's a lot. The mechanic is complicated to set up, can be fairly complicated to use, and importantly, takes up a huge number of actions and resources to put to full use. At 3rd level in particular, your Technomancer will only have 5 spell slots, so you're not exactly going to be able to blow 2 spell slots per encounter at that stage, nor would you necessarily want to. This, along with a bunch of other mechanics on the class, I think contributes heavily to them not feeling fully functional at low levels, because they lack the resources to make proper use of their class mechanics, and have no real fallback options when they run out. It's also in this respect fairly encounter-centric, given how you need to power up and cast another spell beforehand, when I think there's space for jailbreaking spells outside of encounters and in situations where you wouldn't be doing all of that setup (for instance, Incognito Spell in a social encounter).
The other issue, in my opinion, is how this contributes to another problem some others have brought up: sacrificing your overclocking to gain this benefit puts some of the Technomancer's mechanics directly at odds with their ability to do more with tech. In my opinion, it's part of the reason why the "techno-" aspect feels like it's playing second fiddle to what otherwise plays like what many have wanted an Experimental Spellshaping Wizard to be this whole time.
Finally, and on a much more minor note, I feel the way jailbreaking is currently implemented is a little... restricted? Most jailbreak effects feel like they could just be regular spellshapes in their own right, and in fact the Double Spellshape feat you can get lets you apply two spellshapes instead of one spellshape and its jailbreak benefit. The same also applies to that extra effect you get from jailbreaking your subclass's spellshape: you might as well just be layering two to three independent spellshapes on top of one another, and breaking some of these jailbreak effects into their own spellshapes and implementing the effect of Double Spellshape as a baseline by letting you mix & match could both avoid overloading individual spellshapes and make it much easier to add new ones in the future, while also unlocking even more options.
TL;DR Jailbreak Spell giving the benefit of essentially two to three spellshapes plus action compression feels like a major power-up. Unfortunately, I also think right now it's a bit clunky to use and super resource-hungry. I really like the mechanic and definitely should stay on the Technomancer, but ideally I'd like it to be a bit more straightforward to use, and not come at the expense of their interaction with tech.
While I do obviously support making the Mechanic more Int-dependent, I don't think you can just force Int dependence on their drone's core mechanics without making those diverge significantly from other companions. The base drone is almost entirely copy-pasted from the Inventor's construct companion (with many more options attached, though, so that's good), so unless you want to replace their 2-action Command with something Int-dependent, there's not much in the base rules for companions that will let you kludge your Int into their stats or basic actions. The Inventor gets away with having a subclass that's not Int-dependent because Overdrive, their core damage steroid, requires a Crafting check and adds bonus damage based on your Int mod, so they do need Int.
For the Mechanic, something like giving the class a number of mods equal to 2+Int instead of 6 would bake Int dependence into their core mechanics without actually changing how they'd work as a baseline at low levels. At the same time, it would also enable some flexibility if you wanted some other benefit and were ready to sacrifice one or two mods for it, so it'd be a fairly low-impact way of coupling the Mechanic and their key attribute a little better. This'd be similar to the Commander, who technically can dump Int and avoid Int-dependent tactics and feats, but still scales inherently with Int due to how it affects the number of people they can use tactics with. The dependence on Int doesn't need to be "max this out or die", it just needs to be there no matter what and meaningful enough to make some difference.
I agree very much with this. I'm still playtesting this class and will likely do my own write-up in a month, but so far the main criticisms for me are:
The Technomancer's way too resource-hungry at low level, and being economical with your spell slots means you can't really make full use of your class features, including all of those spellshapes you get.
Unlike other 2e casters, the Technomancer lacks solid resourceless options when they burn their spell slots, because their initial focus spells are all spellshapes that mostly work best on slot spells. Overclocking could've helped address this, but can't right now due to its heavy action and resource cost.
The Technomancer gets way more spellshapes at level 1 than they need or can meaningfully use with their 2 spell slots. The 1st-level spellshape feat they get from their subclass could instead be used to give them some kind of benefit more directly synergistic with their focus spellshape.
Several of the Technomancer's subclasses straight-up do not work properly at low level, specifically ServoShell with its need for a minion and Viper with its need for spell gems, which are incredibly costly consumables at level 1. Again, this is a problem that could be solved by swapping their 1st-level spellshape feats to more relevant benefits, such as a basic construct companion or the ability to produce a temporary spell gem each day.
The Technomancer feels like a class that wants to use grenades and AoE weapons, i.e. actually interact with tech, but their class DC scales too poorly and their action economy is too congested to allow for this.
The Technomancer could do with a bunch more ways to produce or interact with tech, including by just having feat lines for robot familiars and companions (which already exist and would be easy to implement), but currently has very little to that and is overly focused on the "hacks into magic" flavor, which is great but IMO only describes a portion of the class.
In general, I feel like the Technomancer was an attempt to improve Pathfinder's Wizard, particularly with Download Spell being a much more effective Spell Substitution. A lot of what the Technomancer brings to the table is stuff I would've loved to have seen on the Wizard, and while I think it's thematically and mechanically very good for the Technomancer to have lots of spellshapes to play with, I don't think that can really be the whole class. Integrating tech a bit better into the Technomancer would not only improve their flavor, but could genuinely also make their mechanics work a lot more smoothly, and most of it needn't come at the expense of their magic hacking either.
With this in mind, I also think the solutions proposed in the OP would help a lot: moving slightly away from spellshape overload at level 1 and instead helping the Technomancer unclog their action economy would make the class play better and improve their chances of actually using tech more often in encounters, for starters. Having more small magical things to do on turns when they want to use tech weaponry instead of cast another spell would also go a long way towards achieving the fantasy many players want of the class, specifically a magic-user who excels at layering magic onto tech and not just the other way round. As mentioned above, more tech could also help fill the gaps in several subclasses too. My request here is definitely "more tech", and I could also say the same about the Mechanic tbh.
Soldier gets legendary class dc, and their entire thing is AoE.
I was going to say the exact same, yeah. Paizo certainly was more timid with legendary class DCs up until the Kineticist, but with the Commander, the Soldier, and the Runesmith all getting a legendary class DC as well, and three of those four classes having access to repeatable AoE, it's clear that classes intended to be good at AoE are now being given the appropriate class DC for it, even when that AoE can be used at-will. I do agree that the Mechanic was likely given legendary Perception to be good against traps, but I still don't think it makes a whole lot of sense for mechanics to always be these eagle-eyed scouts, and I'd much prefer that power were shifted to something more central to the class, like their class DC. It'd certainly help out the Mine exocortex device a lot, and it'd help make those drone feats less piddly too (1d6 damage with a basic Reflex save and a 1d4-round lockout is really nothing to write home about).
Well, the Alchemist is already a good example of a class who can give out item-based buffs without treading on the Bard or Barbarian's toes, but on top of that there's plenty of examples of buffs that add damage to weapons, and even certain mechanics that add extra property runes, which in Starfinder's case would mean upgrades. Even if we operate on the basic premise of giving armor and weapons bonus upgrades that don't take up an upgrade slot, that already leaves a ton of room for a wide variety of buffs, and what's more, those buffs would integrate neatly with Starfinder's variety of tech, such that I'm surprised there isn't more of that on the existing class even in feat form.
The Mechanic does get a trained-to-master class DC, I agree though that it could go to legendary on the class (in fact, I'd prefer that to legendary Perception, which I don't consider a great fit here). Companions can only benefit from item bonuses to Speed and AC (and the item bonus to AC is limited to +3), so as far as I know there's no way of boosting the accuracy of their special attacks with items, particularly as those don't use the Area Fire action. Because all of those drone AoEs use a Reflex save, this puts you at a -1 to a -3 relative to the Area Fire action against what is arguably the strongest save in Starfinder, which doesn't sound terribly reliable.
I don't think casuistry really helps with the fact that, as proven by the 0-Int drone Mechanic, the claim you raised that "plenty of aspects of the mechanic class operate off of int" in direct response to my example is false. It cannot be true when the class can easily build in such a way that Int doesn't factor into its core playstyle at all, and if it were true, it would be directly inconvenient to your own purposes, so I really don't understand why you even tried. The OP and others are correct to point out that the Mechanic doesn't make the best or most consistent use of their key attribute, and I do think it is worth suggesting to address that by either baking more Int dependence into their kit (my preference), or shifting their key attribute to something like Strength or Dex to enable the flexibility you want while giving them a key attribute they'll be much more likely to boost.
Where I do think no contradiction exists here is the desire for versatility and a class relying on their key attribute as intended: in 2e, classes can boost 4 attributes at a time, which means that even when boosting Int, your Mechanic will also have enough boosts to put into Dex, Con, and Wis. In fact, thanks to their medium armor proficiency, you can even try going for less Dex in some cases and more Strength. If the class depended on 5 attributes, then they'd struggle, but as it stands they have plenty of different build options at their disposal, particularly so given the number of skills they can pick up.
I'm going to disagree, Teridax. Plenty of aspects of the mechanic class operate off of int. I don't think the class needs any more int dependent-ness at its core (except int to hit with the turret I would be a fan of). I consider being able to dump the main stat and still have a functional character a plus.
Plenty of aspects of the Mechanic clearly don't operate off of Int, since as already pointed out, I operated with literally the least amount of Int you can have on the class without it meaningfully affecting its core mechanics on at least one subclass. I get that this is your personal preference, but I don't think it really helps discussion to make provably false claims just to push an agenda here.
I'll add that there's meant to be room in-between for using other bits of tech, including "casting gun" at lower levels, though I don't think that eliminates the above or really shines through either. If the Technomancer's class DC actually scaled, that would give them more incentive to carry around and use certain AoE weapons later in the game, but as it stands the class has a perma-trained class DC, bog-standard caster weapon proficiency, little feat support for weapons (there's Alakablam and Grenade Spell, and that's about it, not even Bespell Strikes), and needs to spend an entire turn just to overclock before they can make use of the benefit, so I'd even say the class looks like they'll have a harder time blending magic and weapons than some other casters.
In short: the Witchwarper gets a scaling class DC up to master proficiency, presumably because their 1e version was also good with explosives, whereas the Technomancer's class DC gets stuck at trained proficiency, making the Witchwarper better at handling common bits of tech than the tech-themed caster class.
Beyond the bit of grumbling around theming, this is also mechanically relevant, because several of the Technomancer's abilities rely on grenades: the Viper subclass's Jailbreak Spellshape function has you make an Area Fire action as you treat a spell gem as an electromag grenade, and the Grenade Spell feat at 8th level also lets you infuse a burst spell into a grenade, which you throw with the Area Fire action. Because the Area Fire action uses your class DC for its Reflex save, you'd be using your trained DC both times, making both actions scale extremely poorly.
With this in mind, I think it would be to the Technomancer's benefit for them to receive a scaling class DC. Unlike the Witchwarper, I think it could even go to legendary, and I don't think this would break anything: the class is clearly good at AoE and is intended to do well with AoE weaponry, so being good at Area Fires ought to be an intended strength, and archetype or ancestry feats that rely on class DC almost always let you use your spell DC instead, so there would be no change there.
I feel some of the class's current problems could be improved with a few targeted changes to their subclass features and Overclock Gear. For instance:
Instead of Overclock Gear being an action that requires a non-cantrip spell to be cast, make each overclock function into its own single-action focus spell, giving the Techomancer 2 Focus Spells to begin with.
Replace the spellshape feat in each programming language with another 1st-level class feat that offers some kind of persistent power, and ideally synergizes with their spellshape focus spell. For instance, ServoShell could have a basic robot companion, and Viper could produce a temporary 1st-rank spell gem each day containing the same predetermined spell each time.
And with just this, the Technomancer would be far less resource-hungry early on, and several of their subclasses would become a lot more functional.
I'll mention that sometimes classes do have expensive feature combos that you can't use all the time to begin with, but in the case of the Technomancer I do think there are a few problems. I think it's quickly becoming obvious that the class, while likely able to shine at high levels, is fairly dysfunctional at low levels, i.e. the levels most people play and the first impression players will get of them. It's extremely costly to overclock and hack a meaningful spell in the same encounter, so your early levels are likely going to be spent doing either just one or the other, and sometimes it'll be neither, as you only start off with two spell slots and many of your focus spells aren't super-impactful on cantrips. In the case of ServoShell, you're going to need a minion from some source external to your class in order to keep using your spellshape, because you won't be able to summon robot every encounter at low level, and with Viper you probably won't be able to use your magic hack at all to start with unless you commit 40 of your 150 starting credits to a spell gem that will only last you a day anyway. I wouldn't call Sleep Mode a feat tax, as it's a late-level feat that you can only use once per day, but I'd still definitely want to take it when I can for the action economy benefits.
All of which is to say: I don't think the Technomancer really needs to be saddled with quite so many spellshapes early on when the class doesn't have that many spell slots to shape. I don't think the Technomancer's overclocking ought to have such a heavy action and resource requirement when being able to interface with technology is arguably what players expect from the class at least as much as their magic hacking component. Because overclocking is so costly, jailbreaking is even costlier and more setup-dependent at a level when the Technomancer still can't afford to burn lots of spell slots. I think it would be to the class's benefit if overclocking weren't tied to casting a spell from a spell slot, and in general I think the class really needs its starting features to depend a lot less on spell slots.
I spent a hot minute trying out a Mechanic with a drone exocortex device and 0 Int (Leshy for the attribute flaw to Intelligence), and dumping my key attribute made surprisingly little difference. I wasn't stunningly amazing at Computers checks, and my Desperate Repair mod was perhaps a little weak, but neither were really core to my character. I wouldn't necessarily recommend it as a top-tier build, because the Mechanic doesn't gain terribly much from Strength or Charisma, but the fact that it's possible to dump your key attribute and barely feel it is a little strange.
For this reason, I agree with the OP that Intelligence should perhaps factor more into the Mechanic's core kit, though I don't think the class necessarily ought to Strike with their Int modifier. Personally, I'd target mods, and so in the following way:
Make current mods class feats of appropriate level.
Your rig gives you a number of 1st-level feats with the mod trait equal to, say, 2 + your Intelligence modifier, plus 2 extra mods based on your exocortex. Raise your Int later on, and you can take more mods.
You'd still have room to boost Int to less than its maximum, but at least it would be directly impactful to the core class no matter what. I think it would sweeten the deal as well to have many more mods for each of your exocortex devices, so you'd get to choose how many generic mods to take on versus how much you'd want to specialize into your subclass.
I don't think the old exocortex actually fits well with the new Mechanic, though. The new mechanic's subclasses deal with area control (By putting extra bodies on the field or using AoEs). An augmentation to your own prowess like the Barbarian's Rage, the Operative's aim, or the Inventor's overdrive doesn't really fit in the class.
I think you've correctly identified the intended niche of the Mechanic's subclasses in the playtest, but I don't think that ought to exclude other subclasses with a different niche that are appropriate for the class. If we put augmentations aside, a rig that let you produce ammo on the fly, plus temporary weapon and gear upgrades that could even bypass the normal upgrade limit, would be perfectly in line with the Mechanic's theme while catering to a more supportive buffer niche instead. There's probably room for a mech subclass too, one for hardlight constructs, and so on, not necessarily in this tighter playtest but definitely something worth having nonetheless. Area control need not be the only thing the Mechanic's good at, and there can be room for a subclass closer to the old exocortex where the Mechanic focuses on technological buffs.
There may be a page space consideration, as this playtest doc is especially compactly-formatted, but then we've had plenty of playtest documents that had lots of white space before, so I don't know if that was the real reason. It may simply be that the devs either forgot or focused on other aspects of the class instead; I don't see a reason why the Technomancer wouldn't be able to have that kind of feat.
I'm personally of the camp that the Technomancer could definitely use a bit more techno- in their kit. It's not just that that aspect feels oddly subdued on a class whose focus in fiction generally revolves around magically interfacing with technology: right now, there are mechanical gaps as well in the Technomancer's kit, particularly with programming languages like ServoShell and Viper, that ought to be filled with magic that produces or interfaces with technology. I would also say that this need not come at the expense of their current magic hacking angle, and in fact could help round it out, especially in the form of more options. For instance:
You could easily have the whole feat line for robot companions on a Technomancer. Giving ServoShell a basic robot companion instead of Incognito Spell could go a long way towards making their overclock boost and initial magical hack spell make more sense.
Similarly, it would make perfect sense to give the class a tech familiar feat line. Pathfinder's Druid even gets to have the option of both a companion and a familiar depending on the subclass you take, so you could vary the subclasses more by having some offer feats other than spellshapes (and you'd still have your magic hack spellshape, plus those feats available).
A feat that lets you produce temporary spell gems each day, much like how certain Pathfinder feats let you produce temporary spell scrolls, would go a long way towards making the Viper subclass more able to actually use its features at early levels.
Being able to use Computers actions from a distance, and potentially also on multiple devices at once, sounds like a no-brainer feat or series of feats on this class.
You could have a spellshape feat that lets you use nearby tech as the origin point of your spell.
Making overclock options into their own focus spells instead of a thing you have to spend your whole turn and a spell slot doing would put overclocking at the forefront alongside your spellshape, and allow players to modulate how much of either they want to use in an encounter.
In short, there's room as-is on the class to easily accommodate tech-oriented options, and doing so would be to their direct thematic and mechanical benefit. Everybody wins.
I disagree and think this is backwards. The inventor subclasses were a direct borrowing/adaptation of the post-Character Operations Manual SF1 Mechanic subclasses. Core Mecehanic already had a drone, so none of this conceptually came from Inventor except adopting the advancement/numbers from PF2, and COM had a weapon and armor Mechanic that obviously inspired the Inventor subclasses.
I feel this is an answer to a point that was never made. The current subject of discussion isn't the genealogy of the Inventor's mechanics, but the predicament the Starfriends found themselves in when adapting the Mechanic to 2e, a process that chronologically followed years after the Inventor's release. The difficulty comes not just from the thematic closeness to the Inventor, who likely did take inspiration from 1e's Mechanic, but from the general process of changing systems and quite possibly the amount of time the developers had to decide on the mechanics. The drone could very well have followed a different model from the Inventor's, for instance, and the Mine exocortex could have instead used Starfinder's grenades. What we got was a class whose mechanics didn't always innovate when I think they should've, yet sometimes did reinvent the wheel when they could've built upon existing content instead, which to me suggests there was a level of difficulty in deciding how to implement this class in the playtest.
I think this is where the idea of overclocking ought to be expanded a little more to enable the creation of certain bits of tech. ServoShell needs a minion for a lot of its stuff to work, so might as well have a focus spell to summon a robot. Similarly, because Viper requires you to have spell gems, might as well have the subclass actually let you create weaker and temporary spell gems to then play with. From there, overclocking specific bits of tech would become much more consistent, and would have the benefit of letting you use your abilities more easily even if you find yourself on a low-tech planet or other part of the Universe.
That's also fair; if the intent is to have a class that focuses entirely on self-modification, then might as well save that for the Evolutionist. I do think it's a shame to hold back on one thing that'd work really well on one class just because it's also meant to exist on another, but then I suppose that's always going to be bit of an issue on the Mechanic when they sit so close to the Inventor already.
I do think there's room for a class to synergize with ambient tech without becoming completely powerless in its absence. The Druid is a good example of this, because they have lots of spells that require you to be in or near a certain natural feature to work, and yet can work perfectly fine in an urban setting. The Technomancer I suspect would have an even easier time, because you're always going to be carrying some measure of technology thanks to your weapons and gear. Thus, I'd also be in favor of bringing out the techno aspect of the Technomancer a bit more, especially as I don't think their spellhacking aspect works at its best right now when it's the only thing you can do with your Focus Points on the class at early levels.
One of the issues that I'm starting to come up against on the Technomancer is that they're a glutton for actions and spell slots in order to access their class features. You essentially need to blow a spell slot to overclock your gear, and that takes a full turn, and if you want to access the benefits of Jailbreak Spell, that's another spell slot you'll want to spend... and all of this assumes you're using two-action spells, which doesn't work so well for ServoShell and summon robot.
I'll want to playtest the class more before doing a full write-up, but so far my thoughts on the matter are the following:
Overclocking gear feels like something that should be made directly available to the Technomancer without having to expend spell slots, both to reduce resource dependency and to bring out the techno aspect of the Technomancer a little more.
The Technomancer needs a better baseline of functionality when they run out of spell slots, as without them you can't overclock and your focus spells aren't always going to be a huge boost on cantrips. ServoShell in particular leaves you unable to use its initial focus spell at all if you're out of spell slots unless you get a minion via an ancestry.
I feel even the concept of overclocking could be generalized a bit more to just interact with technology in novel ways. ServoShell could easily use summon robot as a focus spell, as that's the basis of a lot of their interactions, and it looks like there's room for more effects that play with tech in the environment.
I do think OP's request could have been addressed quite easily by having a fourth subclass that let you take on additional augmentations, and slot those in and out much more quickly and without a check (and perhaps also do this with your own gear as mod actions). You'd basically be the ultimate self-customizer. I also agree with moosher that the term "rig" would be more appropriate as the general name for your piece of tech, with the exocortex being the rig specifically built for self-augmentation. I also find it strange how there's no option to let you Hack from a distance using your rig, particularly as that's a heritage benefit you can get on the Android.
I get the impression the developers had a tough time coming up with subclasses for the Mechanic, which is why we have one that's directly lifted from the Inventor (though with actual companion options, so that's an improvement), and another that's basically another companion that doesn't move and uses your Dex to attack from range. The mine option looks interesting for area control, but as mentioned in the OP the ranged deployment looks costly, the mod options are surprisingly low on utility, and it doesn't look like you're really deploying a minefield at a time so much as just throwing grenades with lots of extra steps.
I do think the idea of explosives makes perfect sense on a Mechanic, though, so I'd be fully up for a demolitionist who can produce and throw lots of explosives on the fly. In fact, I feel this playtest could have been a good opportunity to test out delayed explosives, a player request that came about quite frequently and would likely have been great to test out on one or both tech classes. Even just having a mod that delays your grenade's explosion by 1 round in exchange for massively enhancing its effects would be great for flushing enemies out of cover, and could have added some more variety to the class. Similarly, one could easily implement a mine function by having a mod that lets grenades stick and lets you detonate them as an action or reaction later on. Really, adding more functionality to grenades instead of coming up with an isolated mechanic could likely have given the Mechanic a lot more options, plus would have given playtesters an easy way to integrate a whole range of new items in Starfinder into their playstyle.
This is true, though making it a focus spell also means it cuts down on the number of frequency-gated stuff you get, as right now it's essentially a pseudo-focus spell you'll be able to use alongside everything else you'd get, including at 3 FP. Giving it an action cost as a tradeoff to put it on par with others means you could theoretically get the option to switch to 3 cached spells in an encounter (effectively all of your spells at level 2), but at the cost of overclocking or spellshaping, so it'd be like a deck of limited hacks per encounter to layer on top of your spells and gear.
I do think a Wizard could find other skills in the place of Computers, such as Crafting or Stealth, but I also see where you're coming from. FWIW, I also dislike how Intelligence pushes you to be a generalist when it could instead let you commit more towards the skills you want to be good at, and even wrote wrote a bit of homebrew to let Int-based characters pick more 1st-level skill feats instead of getting the usual combo of trained skills and languages. Similarly, I dislike how spellcasting tends to push you heavily towards being a generalist no matter what, and similarly wrote a homebrew class to enable ultra-specialized caster builds. I do still think there's value in having someone who's decent at a lot of different things on the team, as that helps avoid catastrophic failure when your team really needs a particular skill or effect and everyone's hard-specialized into something else, but it'd be even better for that to be optional on a character rather than their only available path.
Even with the above, though, I'd still prefer it for those classes to have the basic 4 trained skills to choose from. I'd rather not the Wizard pick Skill Training with one of their Int boosts just to be on par with everyone else's baseline, and I'd especially not want the Magus to commit a proportionately far larger portion of their own Int benefits for the same. The benefits of Intelligence ought to be an actual benefit on top of a healthy baseline, not something that's deducted from your class's baseline on the assumption that you'll make up for it in some form, particularly as the attribute is frequently neglected in favor of other scores. It's less likely to be the case in Starfinder, as Computers looks to be a pretty important skill while Strength looks almost entirely irrelevant, but even so, I do think there's room for that one extra trained skill on the Technomancer regardless of which model's being followed.
What if the technomancer has their spellshape focus spell from their subclass and a focus spell that simply overclocks something that is just given as a baseline part of the chassis (2 focus point to start). And nothing else is changed, no loss in power or abilities. Does this solve the issue?
Further clarification you can overclock normally with a slotted spell, or by using said focus spell. Both work
I support this as well. 2 Focus Points at level 1 is relatively strong, but I do think there's room for it on the Technomancer's chassis, and it would preserve both the spell-hacking component and enhance the tech overclocking aspect. If you wanted to push it, I'd even support dropping the class to cloth caster proficiency to make Download Spell a focus spell too with an action cost, so the class would have the unique feature of starting with 3 Focus Points (which tbf the Psychic could benefit from too with their much stronger amps).
I do think the issue isn't so much that the Technomancer is a 3-slot caster, but more that the Mystic and Witchwarper were 4-slot casters with a meaty base chassis on top. That was a majorly complained-about element of the playtest, and it looks to me like the Starfriends have tuned down the balancing to match Pathfinder's more closely, with the Technomancer being one of the results.
What I will say, however, is that being a 3-slot caster might be a problem still for the Technomancer, not so much because the class is weak (some of their mechanics look super-strong, especially Download Spell), but because their rank 1 and 3 focus spells are all spellshapes, meaning that once they run out of spell slots, their only fallback options will be cantrips, which at levels 3-4 especially would be quite a sharp drop. As much as I like the fantasy of hacking into magic and want that preserved, I do think this ought to be the opportunity to move the gear overclocking to focus spells, rather than a class feature that requires you to spend a spell slot first, so that you can then get a free-action spellshape in the fight (which, again, piles on a resource cost). Not only would this make the class less resource-hungry, it'd also put their techno aspect more to the forefront, as that's been one of the more immediate criticisms of the class right now.
Setting a minimum/maximum on the dice roll could certainly help, but you'd also want to make sure that's only something you can do with a lot of Hero Points, as opposed to just one. I also don't think fixing the degrees of success necessarily addresses the key point here, which is that spells 1 rank above what you can currently cast and feats 2 levels above your current level aren't such a huge power increase as to make for a large spectacle. If it were 5 ranks above or 10 levels higher then yeah, for sure, but then we hit that point you mentioned where you don't want the team intentionally getting really injured just to start throwing out desiccates at level 5.
Going back to Claim Cardinal Domains, this is making me think of a possible variant you could have where instead of choosing a feat immediately on level-up, or adding spells to your repertoire, you can instead leave the feat open. You could then spend a Hero Point later on to immediately fill in the option with your choice, which becomes permanent at that moment. That way, you could get the cool cinematic flavor of developing a new ability under duress, and at a reasonable price too, but without it needing to be this huge fight-swinging spectacle every time either.
