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This has been in the works for a while, but I'm finally done brewing up a take on the Shifter class, which you can view here. If interested, I also made a Pathbuilder custom pack and a Foundry module.

In my opinion, the Shifter class is expected to do three things: people want a class that can basically use battle forms better than an Untamed Form Druid, people want a class that has its own special battle form, and people want the Shifter to be able to mix and match aspects of different battle forms. Here's how the above brew goes about doing this:

Inspired by this thread the problem statement that this item tries to address is the following:

This is an idea that came out of this thread: a few players have been criticizing the arcane list, and while I do believe the tradition is still very powerful, one of the facts that came about is that the arcane list features the smallest number of exclusive spells relative to other traditions. In particular, certain iconic spells from before the remaster, like power words, weren't kept in the jump, leading some to question what the identity of the arcane tradition is meant to be.

This is an attempt to introduce a few new arcane-exclusive spells, and so by creating a special new law trait:

Law: Spells with this trait alter one or more of the fundamental constants of the Multiverse, causing reality to reassert itself and temporarily prevent further meddling. A target of an effect with the law trait is temporarily immune to further law effects for 10 minutes.

In short, your spell messes with the laws of reality, and you can't do that to the same target too quickly... just like the old power words! Let's use that to try to create spells exclusive to the arcane tradition, defined by extreme reliability, but weaker effects:

Law of Inertia (Two-Action, Spell 3)
Traits: concentrate, law, manipulate
Tradition: arcane; Range: 30 feet; Targets: 1 creature

You strip the target of all motion, briefly freezing them in place. The target is stunned 1, or stunned 3 if its level is less than twice the spell's rank.

Heightened (8th): You can cast the spell as a single action. A target 3 or more levels below twice the spell's rank is stunned for 1 minute.

---

Effectively, it's a weaker, earlier-rank power word stun, except instead of speaking a word of power you mess with the laws of motion. Let's try another:

Law of Entropy (Two-Action, Spell 1)
Traits: concentrate, law, manipulate
Tradition: arcane; Range: 30 feet; Targets: 1 creature

You increase the constant of entropy, instantly dissipating large amounts of the target's constituent matter. The target takes damage equal to five times the spell's rank (no damage type), or ten times the spell's rank if its level is less than twice the spell's rank. If this damage brings the target to 0 Hit Points, it is blasted to fine powder; its gear remains.

Heightened (9th): You can cast the spell as a single action. A target 3 or more levels below twice the spell's rank is instantly blasted to fine powder, regardless of how many Hit Points it has.

---

So now we have power word kill! Let's do power word blind next:

Law of Refraction (Two-Action, Spell 2)
Traits: concentrate, law, manipulate
Tradition: arcane; Range: 30 feet; Targets: 1 creature Duration: varies

You change the way light bends so that it hardly reaches the target's eyes. The target is dazzled for 1 round, or 1 minute if its level is less than twice the spell's rank.

Heightened (7th): You can cast the spell as a single action, and the target is blinded instead of dazzled. A target 3 or more levels below twice the spell's rank is permanently blinded.

---

Now, let's see how we can apply this formula to another effect:

Law of Coordinates (Two-Action, Spell 4)
Traits: concentrate, law, manipulate, teleportation
Tradition: arcane; Range: 30 feet; Targets: 1 creature

You rewrite the target's position in space, causing them to instantly reappear where you want them to. The target teleports up to 10 feet away from its original position to a location an unoccupied space within range you can see, or up to 60 feet away if the target's level is less than twice the spell's rank. If this would bring another creature with the target—even one carried in an extradimensional container—the spell is lost.

Heightened (9th): You can cast the spell as a single action. A target 3 or more levels below twice the spell's rank is teleported to any location within 1 mile. You don't need to be able to see the location, as long as you have been there in the past and know its relative location and distance from you.

---

And hey presto, you get an extremely reliable reposition spell! Not as cheap as acid grip, but certainly more versatile and effective against enemies with high Reflex saves. Let's try something a bit different:

Law of Dispersion (Two-Action, Spell 5)
Traits: concentrate, law, manipulate
Tradition: arcane; Range: 30 feet; Targets: 1 creature; Duration: 1 round

You weaken the constituent bonds holding the target together. The target gains weakness to damage for 1 round equal to the spell's rank, or twice the spell's rank if its level is less than twice the spell's rank. This weakness applies only once each time the target takes damage.

Heightened (10th): You can cast the spell as a single action, and the weakness is always twice the spell's rank. The spell's duration is 1 minute against a target of a level less than twice the spell's rank; if the target is 3 or more levels below twice the spell's rank, you can designate any number of additional targets in range of the same level or below with the spell.

---

So with one casting of this spell, you create one round where everyone gets to significantly increase their damage. So far, we've done two-action spells that turn into single-action spells many ranks later; let's see if we can play with this framework a little:

Law of Negation (Reaction, Spell 6)
Traits: concentrate, law
Tradition: arcane; Range: 30 feet; Targets: 1 creature
Trigger: A creature Casts a Spell of a lower rank than this spell.

You erase the creature's magic from existence, as if the triggering spell was never cast in the first place. You automatically counteract the triggering spell.

---

So with that, you'd have an extremely reliable, once-per-enemy counterspell for when you really need that Power Word Nope. It'd be stronger than nullify by virtue of being of a lower rank and not inflicting self-damage, but let's be honest: nullify isn't a very good spell to begin with.

In essence, the basic structure here is: with these arcane-exclusive spells, you get an extremely reliable effect that's counterbalanced by a relative weakness to other similarly-ranked effects that incur a roll, as well as a 10-minute target lockout. At higher ranks, you get a lessened action cost when applicable to cast these spells alongside others you might cast for added flexibility, while also getting a "nice to have" disproportionately strong effect against trivially low-level creatures. This would fill out the arcane list with a few more exclusive spells that'd make the tradition exceptionally reliable, giving arcane casters specialized tools to get a specific job done, and limited-use buttons to press in encounters that do exactly what's desired with perfect reliability.

Stop me if you've heard this one: you're walking through a corridor when a party member trips a wire. Blades immediately descend from the ceiling, damaging the whole party... who then promptly heals up as if nothing happened. Big whoop.

And as silly as this sounds, I think this is a pretty serious issue with simple hazards that makes them not work at all well as standalone threats in PF2e. As part of encounters, they can be really interesting as a way of spicing up the environment, and complex hazards are effectively encounters of their own, but simple hazards tend to be really binary: either they deal enough damage to wipe the party, in which case they're likely to feel extremely unfair, or they don't, in which case PF2e's general lack of attrition means their effects are promptly erased. It's pretty binary and generally out of place, which to me makes me feel like those traps are more the product of a design philosophy from prior editions than something fully-adapted to the current system.

It doesn't have to be this way, though, and I feel traps of any kind could be pretty threatening in dungeon crawls if their effects were about inflicting debuffs, rather than damage. If a damaging trap left you drained from blood loss instead of inflicting easily-negated damage, then even a simple hazard like that could have a lasting impact on future encounters, and the party would have a reason to pay even smaller traps more mind without having to dangle the threat of a TPK via a single hazard reaction or the like. Similarly, other hazards could inflict other conditions, such as hidden poison darts leaving you clumsy or enfeebled, or a haunt leaving you stupefied or frightened for an extended duration, and because those conditions generally require resources to clear, those could play into longer-term gameplay in a way damage just doesn't really achieve in 2e. This would also help enrich those simple hazards when used in encounters, too, as they could trip party members up in an even greater variety of ways.

So yeah, the TL;DR is that I think simple hazards as implemented now feel mostly like a relic of past editions than a fully-functional gameplay element in 2e, because just dealing damage or a very short-term condition isn't a threat in a game where Treat Wounds exists unless that damage is immediately lethal (which I don't think would make for a very fun simple hazard either). If simple hazards instead focused on inflicting lasting debuffs to the party that would be difficult or costly to clear mid-dungeon crawl, then they'd be much more relevant as solo threats to the party while also having their function enriched when used to spice up encounters.

This thread has been brewing for a little while, with this other thread giving me the motivation to write it in full. Before then, I also wrote a separate brew for implementing characters without attributes in PF2e, and that had a number of interesting implications for dedication feats.

To start with the problem: although archetypes in general vary wildly in effectiveness and desirability in PF2e, dedication feats in particular tend to be the most underwhelming part of many archetypes, especially multiclass archetype dedications. In theory, because we opt into multiclass archetypes to get a taste of what makes a certain class so interesting, the dedication feats ought to start providing a little bit of that: in practice, however, their benefits are often generic, repetitious across dedications, and rarely good in and of themselves, as if they were a price to pay to start accessing the more interesting bits of a class. Their attribute prerequisites are either trivially easy to meet or essentially impossible to fulfil without twisting your character out of shape, which makes many archetypes arbitrarily incompatible with many classes. When a multiclass archetype offers any tangible amount of a class's power in its dedication, that dedication becomes a notable outlier, and on the other side of the spectrum you can get clunkers like the Swashbuckler Dedication, whose extremely specific attribute requirements reward you with... one trained skill. That's it.

In my opinion, it doesn't have to necessarily be this way. Although it's important for these multiclass archetypes to respect niche protection in 2e, I think it's possible to change how they're written in ways that would make them less restrictive, more streamlined, and better-equipped to feature a taste of their class. Here are a few examples of how I think this could be implemented:

1. Roll class DC training into the multiclass trait

Starting with the small fry: every martial multiclass dedication makes you trained in the class's DC, so might as well roll that into the multiclass trait, e.g. "When you select a feat with the multiclass trait, you become trained in the class's DC." This would be the same kind of change as the remaster moving the three-feat investment requirement to the dedication trait, and its only change from now is that it would make you trained in the class DC of spellcasters too, a trivial benefit given how most casters don't use their spell DC at all.

2. Skill prerequisites, not attribute prerequisites or trained skills

Trained skills are a filler benefit in most multiclass dedications, giving a bit of power that is neither directly relevant to the class nor all that tremendously useful when skill increases and Untrained Improvisation are easy to obtain. Meanwhile, attribute prerequisites are at best arbitrary and at worst needlessly prohibitive, so it could be worth killing two birds with one stone here: rather than have certain attribute modifiers as prerequisites, multiclass dedications could instead require certain skills as prerequisites, typically the skills you'd become trained with when picking the dedication. You'd then no longer become trained in those skills from the dedication. On its own, this would be a nerf, but it would open up more space in those feats' power budget to give something more specific to the class (and, as a generic replacement, you could always give a 1st-level class feat instead). In general, this would remove the element of arbitrary restriction on certain class archetypes, and as a minor side benefit would make Intelligence characters particularly good at multiclassing due to their plentiful trained skills.

3. Initial spellcasting benefits

Spellcasting archetypes condense a lot of their benefits into spellcasting benefits, which helps avoid a lot of repetition, yet for some reason this doesn't extend to spellcasting dedications, which nonetheless follow an extremely standard structure. There are effectively three types of spellcasting:

Harm and heal are, in my opinion, two of the best-designed spells in the game. Their flexible action costs and variable effects give them a large variety of different applications, and as the iconic vitality and void spells, they're perfect mirrors of each other, affecting the living and the undead in opposite ways, and each applying healing and damage. Surely, this must mean they're equally good?

Well, not really, and in my opinion this is because parity is broken on the two-action version, in a way that favors heal much more than harm.

Heal is, as the name indicates, a healing spell first and foremost: party members are generally much more likely to be living than undead, and the damage against undead is more of a side benefit: this makes its two-action version really good, because the boost to healing caters directly to its main function. It doesn't really matter that the healing doesn't get increased, because you'd be using the two-action version to heal and will probably have other spells to blast instead.

Harm, by contrast, is a damage spell first and foremost: although this can be used to heal party members with void healing, even heal an entire undead party, that requires a lot of party buy-in and limits other healing options, so its main purpose is to damage the living. So when the two-action version boosts its healing, but not its damage, that doesn't cater to its main function: although it's really good when you do heal an undead party member, 1d8 void damage per spell rank is barely above cantrip damage, making its two-action version quite a poor blasting option.

This disparity I think matters because of the Cleric's divine font: it's generally known among experienced players that heal font deities tend to offer more benefits than harm font deities unless you're running a party setup specifically built to benefit more from void healing, simply because heal is the best healing spell in the game, whereas harm... well, it's not that great a spell. Although the two are treated as equal, one spell is markedly better than the other, and this imbalance has a meaningful impact on deity and build choices.

With this in mind, here's the fix I propose: have the two-action version of both spells increase the damage by 1d8 per spell rank.

... and that's it. The single- and three-action versions would remain unchanged, and that's fine because they offer benefits in action economy and massive AoE respectively. While this would buff heal, an already strong spell, that buff would be a lot more situational than for harm, whose two-action version would become a solid blasting option against the living. Whereas a heal font Cleric would be a top-tier healer, a harm font Cleric could become a solid single-target blaster, able to also heal undead party members while still generally lacking in AoE blasting until later on.

The Druid is a relatively polarizing caster in PF2e: although some do love the class's flavor and some of the builds that can be achieved, they also have a reputation for lacking "wow" features on the same scale as, say, the Cleric's divine font slots or the Bard's compositions. They're not the weakest caster around, but they also often underwhelm due to a perceived lack of standout features. My opinion has always been that the Druid is equipped to do their job as a primal caster: they have the HP, armor proficiency, Shield Block feat, and ability to build Strength to get up close and personal, which means they can do stuff other casters can't always do as well, like use gouging claw without exposing themselves as much as a 6 HP/level cloth caster, and their starting package is solid enough for the class to feel substantial. However, playing a Druid at high level has changed my opinion of the class somewhat, and after giving it some though, I think I've figured out why.

Essentially, a lot of the Druid's "unique" power can be obtained through general or class feats at a very early level, and these feats tend to be at their most effective at early to mid levels. Just to explain where I'm coming from, let's do a comparison between the Druid and the most obvious alternative, the Cloistered Cleric.

Just to highlight the commonalities: both are 8 HP/level Wisdom prepared casters. Both have similar proficiency tracks, including fairly early Fortitude expertise at 3rd level, who can prepare from all the common spells in their spell lists, so those benefits can be crossed out on either side of the equation (though the spell list makes a difference and I'll get to that). Both also get at least one focus spell to start with (though I'll talk a bit about those too). The main asset the Cloistered Cleric has is therefore their 4-to-6 divine font slots, a notably powerful feature. How does the Druid compare?

So here's the name of the game:

A common discussion that crops up in these spaces (and that just cropped up again recently) is that of the Oracle and how they were mishandled in the remaster. The criticisms throughout are pretty consistent:

Now that the playtest period has concluded for the tech classes and the feedback forums have died down once again, I think it's an appropriate time to share some thoughts that go beyond the playtest's scope. I did a similar thread for the Witchwarper, and it seems I ended up with a similar document for the Technomancer as well.

Much like the Witchwarper when the original playtest launched, the Technomancer has drawn a significant amount of pretty consistent criticism. The main axes of complaints are:

Pathfinder 2e is a tabletop game known for its engaging, tactical combat, and its centerpiece is melee: by nature, melee combat tends to require actions to get in range, but Paizo added a huge amount of depth and options to this with various skill actions, particularly Athletics maneuvers but also Feinting for Charisma classes, and positioning-based flanking. The end result is a combat system that is hugely diverse, with plenty of room for smart plays, tons of mechanical hooks for characters to build upon, and melee builds that can easily feel amazing at what they're meant to do.

... and then there's ranged combat. Although some skill actions can be used at range as well as melee, many can't be used at range without specifically committing to certain build options. The only ranged-exclusive mechanic is cover, a situational mechanic that often harms more than it helps, since having cover from an enemy means that enemy also has cover from you. As a result, ranged combat doesn't have that same diversity, those same mechanical hooks, or that same depth of play.

For a while, this was largely fine, as Pathfinder's combat is primarily melee-based (this is likely also why melee received more attention). However, this is becoming increasingly less true in a system that has expanded a lot since the original release of the CRB:

To resume with a TL;DR: 2e did an awesome job of fleshing out its melee combat, but ranged combat is significantly underdeveloped by comparison. This is not great for ranged-specific martial classes and subclasses in Pathfinder, who often struggle to contribute as meaningfully and play as interestingly as their melee counterparts, but is especially bad for Starfinder, whose ranged-centric combat fails to offer the tactical depth and diversity of play needed for what is meant to be its core gameplay. I don't necessarily know how Paizo could go about addressing this cleanly, if there is even a desire to change or expand ranged combat rules in the first place, but doing so would in my opinion bring major positive returns to many character builds in Pathfinder, and significantly increase the success chances of one of Paizo's biggest upcoming products.

There's a fair bit of player demand for PF1e's Kinetic Knight, a Kineticist archetype that trades off some class features in exchange for elemental weapon abilities, elemental defenses, and some of the Samurai's defensive features too. To its credit, PF2e's Kineticist already incorporates many knightly elements, such as armor infusions, master armor proficiency, extremely strong Fort saves, and even weapon-shaped Elemental Blasts, so it's not too difficult to approximate that kind of character using existing methods. However, there's room to explore a more gish-oriented playstyle I think, specifically one that incorporates Striking and not just weapon-like elemental blasting: Elemental Blasts famously do not interact very well with Strike effects, and so accommodating elemental Strikes could open the door to playstyles the Kineticist isn't designed to accommodate.

With this in mind, here's a one-page Kinetic Knight brew. This is a class archetype for the Kineticist, and changes the base class in the following ways:

Finishing up this round of playtesting feedback with the Mechanic. As with the other write-ups I've posted, I'll split my post into sections, spoiler them, and add a TL;DR just so it's all a bit easier to navigate.

TL;DR I ran the Mechanic 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 Mechanic's features to see how that would affect their gameplay. The most unusual aspect here is that I sometimes dumped the Mechanic's Intelligence for certain tests, and I'll explain why further down.

TL;DR The core class I think is pretty solid. It's not perfect, and I do think the class needs to guarantee that Int will directly contribute to their class features (it's not really the case for the Drone subclass), but overall the Mechanic felt like its own class with a unique niche and interesting choices to make when they weren't just adding their Int to their mine/turret damage.

TL;DR Although the Drone feat line is completely garbled right now, even post-errata, I found the Mechanic's feats quite fun to choose and use. I'd like to see more mods and more feats that work off of environmental tech in the release version, but otherwise I have no huge criticisms to make here.

The concluding TL;DR is that in contrast to the Technomancer, who I think misses the mark as a tech-focused caster, the Mechanic I feel delivers much better on their class fantasy. Overall, the class's design and balance feel much closer to PF2e in many good ways, and sit much closer to what I expect from 2e classes. There are still some flaws, but most I think are fairly easy to address, and the core mechanic of modding and deploying stuff feels both fun and novel in my opinion. I think the Starfriends did an excellent job with this class overall, and I look forward to seeing what gets added to it on release!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

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.

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:

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.

To begin: this thread is an offshoot of this homebrew thread from A Butter Idea, whose concept serves as a starting point for this one. I very much recommend reading their post first, as they cover several issues with detection and senses in Pathfinder 2e really well, and that thread gives context to what's being presented here. I initially thought of posting this concept on their thread, but didn't want to crowd out their work with my own divergent homebrew, so I decided to post it here instead. With that established, let's go over a few points of criticism I have for senses and detection in PF2e:

In short: detection and senses sit in this little island of highly complex, overlapping, yet also sometimes confusing and ambiguous rules mostly separate from the rest of the game's mechanics. There's a lot to take in, but even then the question of whether or not one can detect a creature or Hide from them isn't super-clear, particularly when senses other than sight get involved. A Butter Idea addresses the bias towards sight in their brew, and I think we can go even further and streamline these rules even further.

Before listing specifics, I think it's worth listing the general roadmap of what I'd like out of an ideal detection subsystem in a game like Pathfinder, which could take on a variety of implementations:

A quick introduction: this homebrew started with the Magus, and how to do the Magus differently. Starting with the foundation of the Magus, I wanted to let the class opt into different traditions, perhaps even emulate the features of other classes besides the Wizard's spellcasting, while also leaning more into utility... and realized that what I was developing wasn't the Magus at all, but something entirely new.

From this concept came the Scion, a completely different take on a gish class. The Scion is a hybrid class in purest form, in that they draw from the power of two separate classes, one caster and one martial, and combine spells and Strikes in combat in their own unique way. Here are the highlights:

There's been a lot of discussions around the Wizard since the remaster, none of them all that positive. There's a consensus that the class has changed for the worse, and that the general landscape has evolved in a manner that's left them behind, which does not bode well for what seems to be an otherwise flavorful expansion themed entirely around wizarding academies across Golarion. For those who aren't familiar with the discussions already, here I think are some common points:

In short: the Wizard fell behind at a time where every other caster pulled significantly ahead, and as a result people are questioning their place in a game where their power struggles to stand out, and their flaws have become much more apparent. Lots of players want a new and better Wizard, but nobody can agree upon what that Wizard would look like, and so most threads critiquing the class often devolve into squabbling.

With this in mind, I can't really claim to offer a one-size-fits-all solution, because I don't think one exists for this particular problem: I do, however, think there is an approach to take here that could satisfy a greater number of players, and that is to let the player choose what they want the Wizard's specialty to be. If you're interested in specific details, I wrote a 25-page Wizard homebrew that adopts this approach. Beyond those specifics, here I think are the broad lines of how the Wizard could be improved, in whichever form that takes:

It feels like a good portion of criticism of the Necromancer class revolves around the static and largely inanimate nature of their thralls: the reasons behind that are mechanically understandable, as the class is built to just create more thralls instead of controlling them all on an individual basis, but thematically that's chafed with quite a few players, who see the class more as this more generic token-mancer than the master of an undead horde. I imagine it feels like something's missing in that respect, and I wonder if that's a gap that could be filled with an extra starting grave cantrip. For instance, something along the following lines:

Rouse Thrall (One-Action, Cantrip 1)
Traits: Uncommon, cantrip, concentrate, grave, manipulate, necromancer, thrall

With a command, you spur a thrall to action. The thrall Strides up to your Speed, or Burrows, Climbs, Flies, or Swims instead of Striding if you have the corresponding movement type. If the thrall ends its movement adjacent to an enemy, it can make a melee unarmed Strike using your spell attack modifier for the attack roll. This attack deals your choice of 1d6 bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing damage. This Strike uses and counts toward your multiple attack penalty.

If you have the expert necromancy class feature, you can command up to two thralls, increasing to three if you have master necromancy and four if you have legendary necromancy. A target can't be targeted by more than one thrall's Strike at a time, and you do not increase your multiple attack penalty until all of the Strikes have been made.

Heightened (+2) The damage increases by 1d6.

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Effectively, instead of creating an existing thrall, you could move one around and have it make another attack from potentially farther away. This'd probably still not be a great ability to have at low level, especially given how a lot of thrall-based abilities have such short ranges, but with multiple thralls, this could potentially get more interesting as you make more attacks. Thralls right now have the problem of being permanently ground-bound, which makes the Necromancer quite difficult to play at higher levels when flying enemies become more common, so having them potentially inherit a fly Speed you may have could help alleviate that issue. Most importantly, though, this cantrip could let you do more with your thralls besides just consume them, and this time it'd be your thralls actually doing something too. What do y'all reckon, would this help make thralls feel a little less like static tokens?

This is more of a manifesto and a proof of concept than a brew in its own right, so I'll start with the point I want to prove: in a future Pathfinder edition, I think characters ought to be resourceless by default, because it's much easier to convert a resourceless character to daily resources than the reverse. To prove this, I homebrewed a class archetype for the Kineticist called the Kinetic Mage. The full details are in the linked document, but here are the highlights:

Of all the news we just got from the latest Paizo blog, this one's my personal favorite:

One new element we'll be introducing is the traversal trait. This new trait mostly applies to player-facing rules that reference Stride. When it applies, traversal allows the use of alternative movement types (burrow, fly, and swim) to be used in place of land Speed, akin to how Sneak works. Expect to see this greatly impact some abilities used by the envoy and solarian (to name a few).

One of the many things I love about 2e, both with Pathfinder and Starfinder, is the system's modularity and its ability to compress a lot of meaning and functionality into traits, akin to functions in programming. This new addition, in my opinion, is a shining example of this, and how powerful 2e's system design is. I've been wanting to see exactly this kind of trait in a game that has a lot of movement abilities, and am very happy to see this, as this will not only improve many mechanics in Starfinder, but could also benefit several in Pathfinder too. Thank you for this new trait, Paizo; I look forward to seeing it in effect!

The premise here is fairly simple: the Battle Harbinger is meant to be a divine class who can fight well in martial combat and deploy auras. As it so happens, there's a divine martial class in Pathfinder that already comes pre-packaged with an aura and even spell proficiency progression, specifically the Champion. The latter class even comes with causes and tenets that spur them to action, much like a battle creed, and they can even take up oaths to combat specific foes! Thus, with just a few feats, I think the Champion could be easily made to fit the Battle Harbinger's niche much better than the Battle Harbinger themselves. Here are my suggestions, with a TL;DR below:

TL;DR: With just a few feats, you could easily have the Champion use their aura to buff or debuff to an even greater extent than they do now, and so more smoothly than with a Battle Harbinger. In fact, with just one capstone feat that would reward a 5-feat commitment to a Cleric archetype, you could even go full Battle Harbinger with wave casting!

Based on some ongoing conversations around making use of class DC, I think a few elements jump out:

Based on some ongoing discussions around the Animist, here's the premise: the Animist's Lore skills are really cool, and as a hyper-versatile Wisdom caster that has room to opt into Intelligence as a fourth score (at the expense of maybe Strength or Dexterity, which both feed into other apparitions and feats), I think there's plenty of room for an apparition centered around Recalling Knowledge. Here's the idea:

Speaker of Untold Tales

Speakers of untold tales appear wherever knowledge is exchanged in great amounts, often in bustling cities rich with gossip and intrigue. They eagerly seek out animists who will readily share their own life experiences, and for every story they are regaled with, they tell an equally captivating tale in return. There is nothing a speaker of untold tales hates more than a secret, however, and they will relentlessly pursue its keeper until it is revealed.

Apparition Skills Mercantile Lore, Theater Lore

Apparition Spells Cantrip message; 1st mindlink; 2nd blistering invective; 3rd hypercognition; 4th countless eyes; 5th sending; 6th phantom orchestra; 7th retrocognition; 8th unrelenting observation; 9th overwhelming presence

Vessel Spell pry

Avatar Hero of the Untold Story Speed 50 feet, ignore difficult terrain and greater difficult terrain; Melee (single-action) pointed retort (deadly 3d8, finesse, reach 15 feet), Damage 6d8+6 piercing; Ranged (single-action) deafening oration (range 120 feet, versatile mental), Damage 6d6+6 sonic

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Pry (One Action)
Uncommon, Animist, Concentrate, Focus

Duration sustained up to 1 minute

Your apparition spurs you to uncover what others would keep hidden, filling the gaps in your knowledge with rumors that might just prove true. For the duration, you become trained in Secret Lore, a special Lore skill that can be used only to Recall Knowledge, but on any topic. When you Cast this Spell and the first time you Sustain it each round, you Recall Knowledge using a Lore skill, which can be Secret Lore or any other Lore, and can immediately announce any knowledge you obtained from the check.

The information you obtain from your apparition is mostly hearsay, so you take a -2 circumstance penalty to checks using Secret Lore, but it provides additional details to your other knowledge domains, granting you a +1 circumstance bonus to checks to Recall Knowledge using any other Lore skill in which you're trained.

Heightened (3rd) Your proficiency in Secret Lore is expert, and the circumstance bonus is +2.

Heightened (5th) Your proficiency in Secret Lore is master, and the circumstance bonus is +3.

Heightened (9th) Your proficiency in Secret Lore is legendary, and the circumstance bonus is +4.

___

Effectively, you'd get an apparition that'd be really good for Recalling Knowledge, obtaining and communicating information in general, and also blasting out your foes' eardrums and setting them on fire as you spill the tea. Though useful on any Animist build, it'd be especially useful on an Animist who builds Intelligence, especially one that accumulates additional Lore skills or chooses their apparitions specifically for the Lore they provide. What do you think?

We're now several months into the Starfinder playtest, and these feedback forums are pretty much dead. I figured this might be a good time to discuss how the Witchwarper could be done differently, without the risk of burying any currently active discussion focused on more direct criticism and playtesting reports.

At this stage, I think it's pretty safe to say that the Witchwarper needs some work, specifically around their quantum field. Just a cursory look at this subforum shows many, many, many, many threads exclusively criticizing its quantum field for the same reasons, and even other threads which criticize the class more broadly, including a playtest report I wrote, cite its quantum field as a key pain point. The criticism tends to be pretty consistent, too: the quantum field is hard to move as combat goes on, and is so loosely-connected to the rest of the class's mechanics that it becomes all too easy to ignore. If nothing else, this should set a pretty clear message that this part of the class needs work, and so to address those specific issues.

On my side, as I was playtesting the Witchwarper, after collecting a certain amount of data I started tweaking the class and seeing how those changes panned out. This included stuff like baking the functionality of certain "must-have" quality-of-life feats into the core class like Quantum Pulse, which the developers also implemented in the playtest's 3rd wave of errata, but also more extreme stuff like changing the way the class's slot spells worked around their quantum field. After a fair bit more tweaking, testing, and refining, I wrote down the results in a document. To make things clear: this isn't a "implement this homebrew exactly as written" thread, nor even a request to change the Witchwarper into what's listed in the document. Rather, the goal here is to offer some material for comparison, as well as break down some general concepts included in the document that I think could apply to the Witchwarper in a variety of different ways. If you do decide to try out the changes outlined there, I recommend doing so after playtesting the vanilla class so that you can get a good impression of how the two differ.

Just to list some of the ideas in the doc and explain them a bit more, with the breakdown in spoilered text:

Along with the above, I made some more minor changes that probably require less explanation, like letting Restorative Recollection actually work while stunned, changing Radiant Zone to work as a persistent effect like other zones, knocking the unnecessary extra focus point off of Reality's Anchor so that it works like other full FP restoration feats, and removing the RNG elements to certain damage type effects in favor of player choice. When I playtested the class with these changes, I found the class to be a bit weaker overall to the baseline Witchwarper (they were squishier, had fewer slots, and couldn't cast spells as freely across encounters), yet also significantly more fun to play in my opinion, as they had many more interesting options at their disposal and bent the rules of spellcasting in a way that made them play in new ways from other casters. I could perhaps be wrong with my assessment, and there's of course likely a degree of bias at hand, but my experience with this version of the Witchwarper was really positive, certainly a lot more so than with the playtest version.

Although there are a lot of moving parts to the document, the principles behind them I think are fairly straightforward: nearly all of these aim to make the Witchwarper's quantum field better to use and a more important part of their gameplay, and try to drive as much unique gameplay as possible on a spellcasting class whose most central feature has them lay down a localized area. Even if the whole thing or the specifics of its implementation may not wind up in the end product, I do think the principles behind them are worth at least considering, if not applying in some form or another to the class as currently written.

For a game that's all about gun-based combat, Starfinder seems to be struggling to make guns feel good to playtesters. Threads critical of guns or their mechanics are among the most common discussions that appear, to the point where some even question their effectiveness over melee weapons entirely. Though I wouldn't go that far, I've written several critical reports of guns myself, and in my playtesting experience I found there were a lot of aspects to guns that were needlessly restrictive or tedious, some of which I think genuinely made certain classes worse to play too. To summarize some of the common criticisms made in these types of discussion:

From the latest wave of errata:

Replace the effect of Restorative Recollection with the following: “There is a part of your mind in another reality always processing your situation. You can Recall Knowledge with any skill you are trained in. Decrease your stunned value by 2 or slowed value by 1. If you lost an action this turn due to the stunned or slowed condition, you can use Restorative Recollection as a free action.”

For reference, here's how the stunned condition works:

You've become senseless. You can't act. Stunned usually includes a value, which indicates how many total actions you lose, possibly over multiple turns, from being stunned. Each time you regain actions, reduce the number you regain by your stunned value, then reduce your stunned value by the number of actions you lost. For example, if you were stunned 4, you would lose all 3 of your actions on your turn, reducing you to stunned 1; on your next turn, you would lose 1 more action, and then be able to use your remaining 2 actions normally. Stunned might also have a duration instead, such as “stunned for 1 minute,” causing you to lose all your actions for the duration.

Emphasis added to the part most important here. You still can't use Restorative Recollection to reduce your stunned value, because if you have any stunned value, you can't act. By the time you can act once more, your stunned value will have disappeared.

Obligatory disclaimer: this is not a "Magus bad" thread. I don't consider the Magus to be at all a weak class, and in fact I think they're really strong in certain aspects and situations. Similarly, I don't find the Magus to be an unsatisfying class overall; I quite enjoy the class's flavor and several of their mechanics, even if I do think some aspects of their gameplay could be improved. It is this perceived opportunity for improvement that I'd like to try to express in feedback here, which may not reflect everyone else's opinion of the Magus but which is likely to overlap with some other criticisms made of the class in these discussion spaces, such as this popular meme that made the rounds on Reddit.

With that established, here's the gist: as a class that explicitly sets out to fill the spellblade niche so many players want out of a TTRPG character, the Magus I think satisfies a big part of this niche quite well, and the way Spellstrike works makes good use of both 2e's 3-action economy and multiple attack penalty mechanics to have the class combine spell and weapon attacks. However, as time went on, I think the class's limitations have also started to show, and the Magus I think has some of the most constrained turns and most restrictive build options out of any Pathfinder class, bar a few exceptions. I think the class could stand to have more flexibility with their turns, as well as the kinds of spells and weapons they want to use. For clarity and readability purposes, I'll split this post into sections, put my more detailed criticisms in spoilers, and add a TL;DR at the end of each.

TL;DR: The Magus is the closest this game gets to a class with a fixed action rotation, in a game that really isn't about having action rotations. Needing two actions to Spellstrike in melee range by itself is already a more limiting class feature than what most other martial classes get, and that would be fine if it weren't for the additional action taxes of Arcane Cascade and recharging, both of which crowd out more diverse options. The Magus could do without this rigidity, and could instead do with other means of varying their turns.

TL;DR: Whereas most other martial classes get to opt into better usage of certain weapons and armor through feats, the Magus has to lock themselves into one of a handful of subclasses, limiting their options. Arcane Cascade further limits these subclasses by locking the Magus out of their benefits until the stance is activated. In my opinion, the class would've been better-served with feats that gave them benefits when Spellstriking with certain weapons, and just generally more actions to vary their turns while benefiting from the use of certain weapons and armor.

TL;DR: In theory, the Magus could be a versatile hybrid class that supplements their potent burst damage with limited amounts of spell-based utility. In practice, the class is all too easily incentivized to just put all their eggs in one basket and commit purely to attack spells and burst damage, further contributing to the feeling of the Magus being a touch too narrow for their own good.

The big TL;DR to all this is that, in my opinion, the common player impression that the Magus is an overly busy, limited, and narrow class is not completely unjustified: the Magus is full of action taxes that constrain their turns and make them more repetitive, their combat style is defined by one of five subclasses rather than the much more freeform system of class feats other martial classes use for their own fighting techniques, and their features and attribute requirements all too easily incentivize overcommitting to attack spells for Spellstrike instead of a more varied assortment of utility. They certainly can deal an incredible amount of burst damage when critting with a slot or imaginary weapon Spellstrike, but when that's essentially all you're aiming towards as a class, they can all too often feel like a one-trick pony. Should the class ever get a remaster, I'd like to see them freed up in all those different ways, so that they'd feel able to build and play in a greater variety of ways.

How the class ought to change more specifically is something that probably warrant its own thread, and is not the main focus of this post. If I were to hazard a few suggestions, they'd probably be along the following broad lines:

TL;DR I'd like to free up the Magus's action economy and spell selection significantly by removing Arcane Cascade and changing how Spellstrike works a little, while letting them opt into different fighting styles through feats rather than subclasses, and instead using their subclasses to let them opt into different spellcasting traditions. I can't speak for everyone here, but I'd be prepared to sacrifice a bit of the upper bound of the burst damage a Magus can inflict to achieve this too.

Concluding this series of playtest notes with the Mystic. For those interested, I've also done similar threads listing notes from my playtests for Starfinder's classes (i.e. the Envoy, Operative, Solarian, Soldier, and Witchwarper), Barathu ancestry, and guns. I'll split my post into sections, spoiler them, and add a TL;DR just so it's all a bit easier to navigate.

TL;DR: I ran the Mystic many times mainly through the official playtest scenarios at their low level range, using a variety of ancestries and party compositions. As I put the class through the same encounters, I altered some parameters over time to see how they would affect its performance.

TL;DR: The Mystic's bond and vitality network worked incredibly well in my opinion, giving the class tremendous freedom of options and complementing their spellcasting perfectly. The class overall felt distinct from any other spellcaster in all the right ways, and their subclasses largely enhanced this with a clever choice of synergistic spells, harmony effects, and skills. The class felt overstatted, though, which I think could be solved by reducing their HP per level and defense proficiency to cloth caster levels, and they still need a proficiency bump to their Perception at later levels.

TL;DR: I found the Mystic's feats did a terrific job of feeling both generally powerful and distinct to the class, addressing common concerns of caster feats in 2e. Besides certain unlimited-range feats needing a couple more checks to avoid abuse cases, my main recommendation would be to just give occult Mystics a bit more feat support to be in line with the others.

I saved the Mystic for last in posting my playtest notes here, as my experience of the class was the most positive, and I really had a blast playing one. They really felt distinct from any other caster I'd played, and in general came across as both a solid starter class and a good healer class for players who, for one reason or another, would not normally pick a healer in a tabletop game. You get to heal while blasting, laying down utility, or even just healing some more, and the class felt like they had some of the greatest freedom out of any caster, both in terms of actions and character build options. Aside from some issues with the character's base stats (they're overstatted and likely need less durability, but could also do with a proficiency bump to Perception at higher levels), and occult Mystics lacking feat support compared to the rest, there weren't very many real issues I took with the class. I've had some harsh words to say for some of the playtest's other classes, with several of them featuring design elements that gelled poorly with 2e's action economy or general design philosophy, but the Mystic by contrast I think was implemented in a way that made use of 2e's three-action economy and general approach to casters to the fullest. Kudos to the Starfriends for implementing the Mystic so well in 2e, I look forward to playing much more of the Mystic and even integrating them into my Pathfinder games.

Nearly done with these playtest notes, following similar threads for the Operative, Solarian, Soldier, and Witchwarper classes, the Barathu ancestry, and guns. In this thread I'll be discussing the Envoy class, and will split my post into sections, spoiler them, and add a TL;DR just so it's all a bit easier to navigate.

TL;DR: I ran the Envoy many times mainly through the official playtest scenarios at their low level range, using a variety of ancestries and party compositions. As I put the class through the same encounters, I altered some parameters over time to see how they would affect its performance.

TL;DR: Directives I think are a solid core mechanic to a martial support class that let the Envoy buff their team, with an interesting aspect of opting into even greater benefits. My main issue with them as implemented now is that needing to spend an action on a directive every turn makes the Envoy far more repetitive and rigid than they ought to be. When I experimented with making directives work like stances, this eliminated those action economy issues and made the Envoy's turns much more dynamic and flexible overall.

TL;DR: Adaptive Talent and the Envoy's ability to become good at a skill that's needed in the moment are standout features that I think make the class shine as a skill-user in a manner completely different from Pathfinder's Investigator and Rogue. On the flipside, the class's core progression is ridiculously overloaded with extraneous, number-boosting features that I found added little to the class and felt more like they belonged in 1e than 2e. I would much prefer to give center stage to the class's directives and skill-based adaptability from level 1 onwards, and leave the rest either as feats or just prune them completely.

TL;DR: I found the Envoy's feats to be tremendously flavorful, balanced in my opinion, and fun to use. They made the class very supportive, canny, and nimble overall, reinforcing their role nicely, and the naming and flavoring of the feats I found was brilliant and added significantly to the joy of selecting them. Aside from Acquire Asset feeling essential to benefit consistently from Size Up (and this I think is more an issue with Size Up, which I'd find more appropriate as a feat than as a core class feature), all the feats I used felt solid.

The overall TL;DR from all this is that my experience of the Envoy was really positive overall. The class is by no means perfect, and I think is currently held back by repetitive action taxes on directives along with a serious amount of feature overload, but the Envoy nonetheless stands out for their team support capabilities and their skill-based adaptability, and so in a way that makes them distinct from any other class in 2e. I'm glad Paizo is giving the Envoy more directives, as that I think is the way to go, and I would strongly advocate for making directives work like stances to ease the action cost, while pruning most of the class's core features in favor of making their ability to swap out skill feats and maybe even skill proficiencies on the fly their other big selling point.

Past the halfway mark now of the playtest notes I've written down, with class notes on the Solarian, Soldier, and Witchwarper, general notes on guns, and a few on the Barathu ancestry. I'll be discussing the Operative in this one. I'll split my post into sections, spoiler them, and add a TL;DR just so it's all a bit easier to navigate.

TL;DR I ran the Operative many times mainly through the official playtest scenarios at their low level range, using a variety of ancestries and party compositions. As I put the class through the same encounters, I altered some parameters over time to see how they would affect the its performance.

TL;DR At the core of the Operative, there's this really solid playstyle of moving around quickly on the battlefield and picking off enemies with potent bursts of ranged damage, all while using exploits to do sneaky stuff along the way. However, that playstyle right now is smothered under a damage steroid that encourages the Operative to mostly just stay in the same place and spam as many attacks as they can. Aim I think makes the class less interesting and enjoyable to play, and the class is overloaded with features that simply do not need to be there, in many cases causing it to each several other classes' lunch.

TL;DR Hair Trigger is an obvious outlier for how much power it outputs for such little restriction, whereas Parkour felt like such a positive game-changer that I genuinely want the feat to be a core class feature at level 1 as a replacement to On the Move (with adjustments to let Parkour provide more mobility on its own and accommodate different movement types). Besides that, there were a handful of feats that stood out for positive reasons, like Kill Steal, but right now I feel the Operative's feats are mired in what came across as this 1e-style approach of pumping as much power into the class without necessarily generating any new gameplay. This I think is primarily due to inserting Aim into pretty much everything the Operator does, which made the mechanic feel even more mandatory and devoid of interesting gameplay, and beyond that I felt a lot of the feat list ended up brushing up too close to the Fighter's in the kinds of things it did. While some Strike enhancers or action compressors would certainly benefit the class, I think there's much more room for interesting effects that capitalize on the class's mobility, range, and subclass.

When I started writing down these class feedback threads, I mentioned that I started with the ones whose design turned out the least well in my experience, and would go up from there. Of the classes I've written these threads on so far, the Operative I think is perhaps the first to enter genuinely positive territory. The big TL;DR here is that the class has a really solid bit of core gameplay hiding inside of it of having incredible mobility and range, and could really stand out if it weren't for a mechanic that I think actively makes the class much shallower (i.e. Aim), along with a heap of unnecessary class features and several feats that make the class far stronger than it needs to be, without really enhancing its gameplay at all. Unlike the Witchwarper, whose defining mechanic is held back by poor implementation, the Operative I think has all the elements it needs to succeed already, it just needs to focus on those rather than lots of excessive power that's very low on gameplay.

Above all, I would want to streamline the class significantly around being really mobile, and using that mobility to deal more damage, rather than a boring damage steroid you have to turn on every round. This may require expanding the rules for ranged combat in addition to changing the Operative, in ways I experimented with and listed in another thread, but in my opinion it would be well worth it. If I had to make just one suggestion, it would be to make Parkour the Operative's central mechanic, and not Aim. A Parkour-based Operative that had genuine reasons to maneuver behind enemy lines and pick off targets from there I think would be significantly more interesting than the current Operative that just wants to Aim + Strike x2 every turn, as the class would be much more dynamic and interactive than it is now.

Taking a slight break from writing class feedback after the Solarian, Soldier, and Witchwarper (plus playtest notes for the Barathu ancestry) to discuss one of the core aspects of the Starfinder playtest: the guns. How do they hold up? How did the new traits and mechanics feel to playtest? What state is the game's ranged meta in at the moment? Here are my findings from about a month of playtesting, which I'll split my post into sections, spoiler, and add a TL;DR just so it's all a bit easier to navigate. Some of the recent errata addressed some concerns I had, which I'll note in my feedback, but also raises or highlights other problems, which I'll also note.

TL;DR: I started out by varying my weapon usage as much as possible on different classes and ancestries, before eventually settling on a smaller subset of picks. I ended up using the pre-errata seeker rifle and martial guns more than any other type of weapon, because simple weapons were otherwise weaker than martial guns and advanced weapons were mostly inaccessible.

TL;DR: Non-physical weapons are a great addition to weapons and tactical play but are currently costed too highly in my opinion, and the game doesn't seem to have adjusted its resistances and other NPC stats around the lower damage of guns. Aside from sonic crit specialization being overtuned and the extra upgrade slot on weapons harming compatibility through power creep, the basic 2e framework works well in Starfinder as it does in Pathfinder, though it would've helped to have been able to access advanced weapons more easily for playtesting purposes.

TL;DR: The system of magazine sizes, expends, and reloads bogged down play quite significantly while often having no effect on many guns and NPCs. I feel this is currently one of the major pain points of guns as implemented, as I think these stats make Starfinder's combat much less smooth to run and even more drawn-out than it ought to be. I'd go as far as to suggest removing expend and magazine sizes entirely, making most guns reload 0, and giving a trait to some of the remaining reload guns that let them make 2 or 3 shots before needing to reload, which I think would make for a similar end result while making guns significantly easier to track.

TL;DR: Starfinder introduces some interesting traits, particularly the aeon, boost, caster, and professional traits, though my ability to properly test out these traits was limited due to the inaccessibility of advanced weapons and busy action economies of the classes that might want to boost their weapon. Aeon as a trait needs renaming to avoid clashing with aeon creatures, and unwieldy I think needs to be nixed entirely due to being almost entirely redundant.

TL;DR: AoE weapons in my experienced performed so poorly that I don't believe they are fit for purpose as written. They are clunky, altogether weak, and don't actually feel like real weapons so much as a different mechanic altogether shoehorned into a few guns, breaking several basic interactions along the way that risk causing even bigger problems further down the line (if an actually strong advanced AoE gun gets added, for instance, literally anyone could take it). Because the Soldier is made to use these weapons, these are a major contributing factor to the problems I experienced with the class in playtesting. As loath as some people would be to see this, I very much recommend Paizo try implementing these weapons as regular guns that deal splash damage in bursts, cones, and lines alongside their Strike damage, perhaps even also add the agile trait to automatic guns, as trying out versions of these guns significantly improved the gameplay of AoE weapons in my experience.

TL;DR: The ranged meta exists in Starfinder in that guns were the default weapon to use, but I don't think is entirely successful as implemented right now. Ranged fights are slow and repetitive due to the lower damage of guns and the overuse of cover, which to me suggests 2e needs to add more meat to the bones of its ranged-versus-ranged combat, obviously not a focus for Pathfinder but definitely one for Starfinder. Defenses need to be deflated in SF, and I think there needs to be additional mechanics added to encourage grouping up and reward good positioning, while punishing long-term entrenchment behind the same piece of cover.

The big TL;DR to all this is that I think Starfinder's gun-based combat has some solid elements owing to its 2e framework, but also quite a few shaky bits that will need refining. Some new mechanics added to Starfinder's weapons I think need reworks or outright removal, as they didn't pan out well in practice, and above all I think the game really needs to speed up its combat beyond its current pace, mainly by deflating enemy defensive stats and discouraging excessive entrenchment in cover. Other players have noted that guns felt weak and need buffing, and while I do think guns could be improved in many ways (chiefly, by streamlining them with the removal of the magazine and expend statistics for the most part, and by making most guns reload 0), the underlying issue I'd say is more that Starfinder needs to harmonize its NPCs with its gun-based gameplay, which I think ought to mean lower HP and resistances overall. I think one of the challenges the current playtest missed was adapting 2e's framework to ranged-centric gameplay: Pathfinder doesn't flesh out ranged combat terribly much, but Starfinder really needs to if it wants to be on the same level of tactical play, in my opinion.

Continuing from the Solarian and Soldier feedback threads, here's my feedback on the Witchwarper class based on around a month of playtesting. I'll split my post into sections, spoiler them, and add a TL;DR just so it's all a bit easier to navigate.

TL;DR I ran the Witchwarper many times mainly through the official playtest scenarios at their low level range, using a variety of ancestries and party compositions. As I put the class through the same encounters, I altered some parameters over time to see how they would affect the its performance.

TL;DR The Witchwarper's quantum field is thematically interesting, but its ability to provide good area-based gameplay is stymied by its extreme clunkiness and a set of core features and warp spells that only sometimes interact with the area. I was really looking forward to this mechanic, as I feel it's full of potential and flavor, but right now it feels more like a gimmick than a fully functional core feature.

TL;DR The class is missing a key feature and strangely relies on a up-to-master class DC that messes up its high-level scaling, but is also massively overstatted right now, to the point where they can ignore their quantum field mechanic and still end up being a really strong, generic caster. This I think is the least interesting way of engaging with a caster class (the remastered Oracle I think suffers from the same problem), and I'd much rather take out a lot of power from the Witchwarper's core stats if it means making their quantum field much easier to use and significantly more powerful.

TL;DR There are some solid elements to feats that interact properly with the Witchwarper's quantum field, which I found the most enjoyable. A lot of feats interacted only superficially with QF in that they just needed it up, others seemed to add power without real gameplay, and zone effects need more consistent writing.

The big TL;DR from me here is that the Witchwarper was the class I was looking forward to playing the most due to their theme, but their core mechanic I don't think is fully there yet. I wanted the class to lay down one or even multiple quantum fields for area control and extremely concentrated power in a localized area, but instead the class is currently just generically really strong and saddled with a gimmick that's not fully functional and doesn't entirely integrate with the rest of their spellcasting. If I were to make one suggestion, it would be to tone down the Witchwarper's base stats and make their QF both much smoother to use and much more powerful, and beyond that I had more ideas that may or may not be worth trying out (I did have a good time playing with these alterations after playing the base class RAW, but that may be just me):

In summary, I'd like the Witchwarper to be much more concentrated around their Quantum Field -- I think it'd be quite interesting to play a caster class whose spells are focused exclusively around one or a couple of highly localized areas, and when I tried a version of this I ended up making very different decisions from other casters. I ended up feeling much less free in certain respects, of course, but much more powerful in others, with the additional freedom of being able to target enemies from a greater range. Even if the specifics of the above don't make it into the final version, I'd like to see more of that direction, which already exists in the class to an extent, and if fully realized could really make the Witchwarper stand out from everyone else in a good way.

Following up on the Solarian class feedback thread I wrote, here's my feedback on the Soldier based on playtesting the class for about a month. I'll split my post into sections, spoiler them, and add a TL;DR just so it's all a bit easier to navigate.

TL;DR: I ran the Soldier many times mainly through the official playtest scenarios at their low level range, using a variety of ancestries and party compositions. As I put the class through the same encounters, I altered some parameters over time to see how they would affect the its performance.

TL;DR: AoE weapons in my experienced performed so poorly that I don't believe they are fit for purpose as written. They are clunky, altogether weak, and don't actually feel like real weapons so much as a different mechanic altogether shoehorned into a few guns, breaking several basic interactions along the way that risk causing even bigger problems further down the line (if an actually strong advanced AoE gun gets added, for instance, literally anyone could take it). Because the Soldier is made to use these weapons, these are a major contributing factor to the problems I experienced with the class. As loath as some people would be to see this, I very much recommend Paizo try implementing these weapons as regular guns that deal splash damage in bursts, cones, and lines alongside their Strike damage, perhaps even also add the agile trait to automatic guns, as trying out versions of these guns significantly improved the gameplay of AoE weapons in my experience and made the Soldier feel a lot better to play (after adjusting the class around these mechanics).

TL;DR: The Soldier generally felt samey, repetitive, and overly simplistic, with a feature list that mostly just pushed the class to do the same thing all the time and max out a very specific stat list. Despite this, I was very reliant on Dexterity for Primary Target, which I disliked, and didn't feel like the Soldier's contributions shone through: the class didn't really get much of a chance to deal lots of AoE damage, they didn't really apply all that much crowd control, and as a result they often got ignored by an enemy who often targeted the Mystic or Witchwarper instead, which to me explains why the latter classes needed more defenses. More than anything else, the class just felt extremely rigid due to the implementation of AoE weapons and all of their class features that ride on their use, and felt like they were being given just one big hammer to smash against every problem instead of having a slightly more varied toolset.

TL;DR: Although several of the low-level feats I tested had some issues, I actually quite enjoyed the Soldier's feats overall. I don't think they give the class as much variety as I'd hoped, but that I think is a problem with the base class mainly, and there are quite a few flavorful options that are fun to use.

My concluding TL;DR is that right now, the Soldier suffers mainly because their design is built around the giant pile of clunk that is AoE weapons. Their feats are largely fun to use, and the class stands out from other martials, so that I think is a success for what was originally "Fighter in space", but AoE weapons felt so bad to use, and the class is so overly-focused around making two-action AoE attacks and increasing their attributes in a certain way, that right now the class feels like it's got the worst of both worlds, with the rigid action economy of a caster and the restricted options of a martial class.

Based on my experience with both the class and AoE weapons in general, the one recommendation I'd make is to just take AoE weapons back to the drawing board, and work from there. Based on the experiments I'd made with tweaked versions of both AoE guns and the Soldier, making those guns work like actual weapons, Strikes and all, made them worth using on many more classes besides the Soldier, and made the Soldier themselves feel like an actual full class, with a proper range of options and a greater feeling of agency. Other factors, like tweaks to ranged combat, also brought out the Soldier's AoE capabilities more, and once the Soldier started laying down more threat, they started getting targeted more, which took the heat off of the party's casters in particular. For those wondering, the Soldier also still felt distinct from classes like the Fighter even when making more Strikes, as the class's contributions and feats differ quite significantly from the Fighter's.

After playtesting the Starfinder 2e playtest for about a month now, I'm feeling ready to write down some more detailed notes on specific aspects of the game. In this one, I'll be discussing the Solarian. I'll split my post into sections, spoiler them, and add a TL;DR just so it's all a bit easier to navigate.

TL;DR: I ran the Solarian many times mainly through the official playtest scenarios at their low level range, using a variety of ancestries and party compositions. As I put the class through the same encounters, I altered some parameters over time to see how they would affect the its performance.

TL;DR: Solar Shot felt like a crutch to the frequent dysfunctionalities of the core class more than anything else, and even then it didn't feel like it really worked properly. It's meant to be a backup ranged attack, but sometimes I had to pull out a backup gun for some fights due to its limited range, and it did not feel fun having to make ranged attacks at between a -1 and a -3 penalty compared to my melee attacks, even if the damage rolls were better than on most other classes. I really don't think this should be part of the core class, as the Solarian in my opinion is meant to be the one melee-centric class in Starfinder, but given their other problems it feels like a necessity at the moment.

TL;DR: Solar Nimbus felt nice to have, but not really worthy of being a core feature, whereas the Solarian's solar weapon felt quite restricted in several odd ways. Because melee strikes inherently tend to deal more damage, Striking in melee with a solar weapon felt much stronger than the average ranged Strike, especially when triggering weaknesses, but I don't think it compares all that favorably to Pathfinder melee damage even with the photon-attuned damage bonus, due to the weapon being one-handed.

TL;DR: Attune needs some tweaking to avoid feeling like a pure action tax, and could benefit from just letting you choose your attunement regardless of subclass. Balanced felt strong-yet-boring as a subclass, Degradant's first revelation was super-useful due to its gapclosing abilities, and Radiant didn't feel as good due to the lack of gapclosing. In general, I felt like the Solarian consistently needed a gapcloser out of their initial revelation, not a once-per-encounter ability.

TL;DR: The Solarian's chassis, like with other Starfinder playtest classes, is full of little awkward deviations from the norm that feel more like accidents than conscious choices, but the worst flaw by far, and the Solarian's biggest problem in my opinion, is that they fundamentally lack the ability to close gaps, despite being a melee-centric class in a game where enemies can fly and shoot as early as level 1. The class in my opinion is not fit for purpose for this reason alone, and coupled with awkward defenses and a general over-reliance on Dexterity also makes the class far squishier and less able to draw focus from enemies than they ought to be. More than anything, the Solarian desperately needs built-in gapclosers at level 1.

TL;DR: The Solarian's feats need a consistency pass where they're given the appropriate traits and texts you'd expect from their effects in 2e, such as photon abilities having the light trait or Stellar Rush letting you use other movement types (the Solarian's effects also need to be made magical in general so that their light doesn't get instantly extinguished by magical darkness). More importantly, the feats felt fairly inflexible in how they mostly require attuning first, which I don't think is necessary. However, several feats did feel cool to use, so once the Solarian becomes more functional, I think they'll be able to do some more fun and impressive things, especially in melee.

The final TL;DR to this is that if my assessment feels like it's really negative, it's because it is. When I decided to start writing down my playtest findings of Starfinder's classes, I chose to begin with the one I think was the least successful. As a melee-focused class built for Starfinder's primarily ranged combat, the Solarian in my opinion absolutely needs to be able to get within melee range of their enemies: it doesn't have to always be easy, but it ought to always be possible. This is currently not the case, and while the class can be fairly powerful in melee for a Starfinder class (less so a Pathfinder class), they really don't feel great when they can't get in melee, and even worse when enemies are out of range of their extremely limited Solar Shot. As written, the Solarian is therefore, in my opinion, unfit for purpose.

If I were to make just one suggestion, it would be to give the Solarian gapclosers at level 1, whether it be a fly Speed, reusable initial revelations that let them close the distance between an enemy, or both. Currently, the class has a ton of stuff that has no relation to their core purpose, and that could easily be moved to feats, later-level revelations, or done away with entirely. If instead of that they had the means to actually engage consistently in melee, the class I think would come out much better for it.

Automatic Bonus Progression is a fantastic variant rule, allowing a GM to automatically hand out certain bonuses that are essential to character progression without worrying too hard about giving exactly the right items with the right fundamental runes at the right level. It's a rule I use often in my games, and it's quite a popular variant in general, which is likely why it got included in the remastered GM Core. It's also generally cited as a reference for when characters should be expected to have which item bonuses outside of ABP, and thus extrapolated as a larger reference for which effects are essential to character progression, making it a useful tool even to players not using the variant.

It is, however, not a rule without some flaws, and this is what this thread sets out to outline. For starters, a few points just so that we're on the same page:

The barathu's been a particularly fun ancestry to play in the Starfinder playtest, owing mainly to their fly Speed. Their ability to recombine their genetics and retrain ancestry feats super-quick has also been fantastic to play with too, and I very much enjoyed their feats altogether. I'll also note that a few players on the forums criticized the ancestry's need to Fly each turn, but in practice barathus can simply use Fly to move around at ground level, without falling any further if they spend a turn not moving, so that was surprisingly unproblematic.

Here's what stuck out to me as having some room for improvement or expansion:

One of the more minor bugbears I've had with the Starfinder playtest is the general lack of feat options for making the most out of being multi-armed. When we first saw the multi-armed rules in Field Test 1, I was hopeful that the tight balancing around multiple arms would be itself counterbalanced by higher-level ancestry feats that would allow you to eventually make full use of them. In practice, we got one 9th-level feat that lets you use your other hands for one round once per day, and that's it.

I've written some more general notes I might share here at some point, but here's the stuff I tried for multiple hands:

Pathfinder Second Edition is a game that prides itself on being fully functional right out the box, and with good reason: its math is smartly-constructed, and its design cleverly bakes essential progression automatically into classes and their key items, allowing characters to naturally excel at what they do and make choices freely from there. Options are genuinely about adding gameplay, and not just power, so that you generally don't have to choose between the option that's fun and the option that just makes you straight-up more powerful. So clear-cut is this progression that the Automatic Bonus Progression variant rule gives you a list of all the bonuses you'd need to apply from items, should you choose to forgo magic items altogether in your campaign or just simplify the essentials of progression. You could follow this variant from level 1 to 20 and be just as powerful as if you'd just used magic weapons normally.

That is, of course, right up until you're not.

Despite appearances, ABP does in fact miss a few crucial elements: many who have run this variant will have noticed how it doesn't cover the scrolls, staves, and wands that form the core of caster item progression, and we'll talk about that, but first, let's talk about the other, less talked-about glaring issue with both ABP and the game's math, which is damage property runes.

In case you're not familiar with Pathfinder 2e's upgrade system, it works based on runes, which are sorted into two categories: you have fundamental runes, which are essential to a character's item progression and are factored into the ABP variant, and then you have property runes, which are "nice to have" runes that are mostly about adding neat little effects to your weapon that aren't essential to its progression, and are thus not factored into ABP. The core assumption is that if a rune straight-up increases your weapon's raw damage, such as by increasing its accuracy or damage dice, it's a fundamental rune, and otherwise it's a property rune.

Now, you can probably see where this is going: despite being property runes, and therefore only optional, damage property runes do in fact straight-up increase your weapon's damage, which is why in practice players tend to load up on these runes to the exclusion of most others. Looking at these runes, like flaming or shock, each adds 1d6 to your damage, and while this doesn't look like much, it adds up: at level 8, that's an additional 3.5 damage to each hit on average. Let's just pick a d12 melee weapon on a full Strength Fighter, where the relative increase in damage will be the smallest possible: at level 8, a weapon with one of these runes deals on average 2d12+1d6+4+3 = 23.5 damage on a hit, compared to 20 damage without. That's about a 17.5% increase in damage, which is quite significant. At level 19, a maxed-out weapon on that Fighter with a full complement of damaging property runes will deal 4d12+3d6+7+8 = 51.5 damage on a hit on average, and 41 average damage without, an even more significant 26% damage increase. On the flipside, if you were a regular martial with a piddly d4 ranged weapon, those property runes would increase your damage by 50% at level 8, and 66% at level 19. That's too large an increase to really qualify as "optional".

Martial characters aren't the only ones left out here: as is more well-known with ABP, the variant doesn't include any caster items, despite the power they hold in both versatility and spell output. A caster with a staff can cast an extra spell just below max rank, or a variety of different lower-rank utility spells, can cast additional free spells up to one rank below max with wands, and can cast even more spells in a pinch with scrolls. Versatility is power on casters, but so is spell output, so omitting this core progression entirely deprives casters of a lot of their power.

You might be thinking: this isn't so bad in practice, because you can just pick up these runes and items as you play, right? Well, unfortunately, this kind of omission carries a few negative consequences regardless:

(For the record, there's no official previous threads to this, I just couldn't resist a title with a reference!)

As you may have guessed, this is another thread about AoE weapons. There's been a lot of those going around lately, because as playtesters are starting to find, AoE weapons have a lot of problems, some of which have been raised over a year ago. This isn't just an "AoE weapons bad" thread, though I'll go over some of my play experience and reasoning as to why I believe AoE weapons are not really workable in their current implementation: rather, this is a thread to present some alterations I've tried with AoE weapons that, from my playtests so far, have in my opinion successfully made those weapons both generally desirable and particularly good for the Soldier (not just good on the Soldier, good for the Soldier, and I'll explain why). Here are my findings:

Episode I: The Phantom Mess
If this is your first time encountering this kind of thread, the starting criticism here is: AoE weapons are not very good, and in my opinion they'll never be good in their current shape. In case you've seen all of this before or just don't feel like going through an entire opening crawl's worth of text, I've spoilered the list of reasons and left a TL;DR below.

TL;DR: AoE weapons are doomed to deal awful damage compared to regular guns, are ineffective even in the absolute best-case scenario where you catch lots of enemies bunched up together, are undesirable to nearly every class, and interact poorly or not at all with all of the things that make single-action Strikes so good. Coupled with their reliance on a stat that has nothing to do with weapon usage or even AoE, these weapons are, in my opinion, unfit for purpose. They also just strike me as an attempt to fit a square peg into a round hole, offering the false promise of making classes good at a thing they're not meant to be good at, using mechanics that are not designed to accommodate AoE terribly well, and involving weird use of certain stats that are both unintuitive and already prone to abuse.

Episode II: Attack of the Clone(d Trait)s
So, now what? If current AoE weapons are doomed to disappoint, should we just scrap them altogether? Personally, I wouldn't want that, because I do think there ought to be room for weapons that play a little differently from each other, especially in a game like Starfinder where rotolasers and stellar cannons would cater to many a player's character fantasy even when not playing a Soldier. I think it's still worth trying, especially because precedent exists in 2e for letting weapons deal a bit of AoE damage.

Now, you might be thinking: "I've got a bad feeling about this." And I'd normally agree with you, because I'm talking about the Scatter trait, a trait that lets you deal 1 damage per weapon damage die to enemies in a burst radius around your initial Strike target on a hit. This sounds terrible, and for a long time I also thought the trait was terrible, because scatter firearms are just not very good.

However, after modifying a few guns to incorporate this trait, along with a few custom traits I wrote that riff off of the same theme, I actually ended up having a really good time. For starters, here are the traits and modified weapons I used in my playtests, with an explanatory TL;DR:

TL;DR: I took the Scatter Trait, made it more of a reliable source of splash damage rather than added single-target damage, copied it for lines and cones, and modified AoE weapons to use these traits. All AoE guns therefore became regular guns that dealt splash damage on anything but a critical miss with every Strike.

So, how did these weapons do? Surprisingly, quite well! I've listed some more details in the spoilers below, along with the TL;DR below that:

TL;DR: Splash guns performed significantly better than their AoE counterparts. Although they wouldn't be must-haves on every class, particularly the Operative who'd prefer on-crit traits, they became actually usable on everyone, gave the caster a bit of reliable third-action damage, and at worst basically functioned like a capable damage stick with other traits. They also allowed for much more fluid turns, particularly for the Envoy and Operative I tried out who had options for their third action. Even if I'd downgraded these weapons' damage die by a step, they'd still have been far more usable than current AoE guns.

Episode III: Revenge of the Soldier
So, splash weapons are a success! All that's left is the biggest question: what about the Soldier? Their entire kit is made to work with Area Fire and Auto-Fire, so how does this benefit them?

So, as mentioned above, I ran these experiments with a Soldier, and before talking about the results it's worth mentioning that I heavily modified the class's core features to work with these new guns. The details are in the spoilered bit and the summary's in the TL;DR below:

TL;DR Instead of Primary Target, I gave the Soldier an Area Fire action that's basically a spellshape for your splash guns, letting you deal lots more AoE damage. Other effects like Suppressing Fire and Shot on the Run are instead single action flourishes that let you Strike with a bonus, whereas Whirling Swipe just adds splash damage to your two-handed weapons and lets you interact with your other feats. The overall intent here was to make the Soldier much more flexible and give them more interesting choices to make in an encounter.

So, how'd the Soldier do? As it turns out, very, very well. Compared to my previous playtesting experience, it was like night and day. Same deal as the above, details are in the spoilers and summary in the TL;DR below:

TL;DR: With the above changes, the Soldier felt significantly better to play, in large part due to their flexibility. Their AoE damage was better overall, and they were able to handle themselves a lot better when enemies weren't grouped up too. Importantly to me, it felt like I was making many more interesting choices with this Soldier, and could do a much greater range of things.

Episode IV: A New Hope
AoE guns, as written right now, aren't working very well, and in my opinion are unlikely to ever truly work. However, there is still a niche for AoE on guns, especially if enemies are to group together more often, and from my playtesting experience, the above altered guns worked much better. Classes who wouldn't normally touch those weapons would find greater use for them, and with a few adjustments, the Soldier I think would become a class with more flexibility and diversity to their gameplay without sacrificing their AoE effectiveness. Beyond just allowing more classes to pick guns that do a bit of AoE, the above altered weapons I think allowed the Soldier to have more choices, deeper gameplay, and just more opportunities to shine overall. This is why I think the above sorts of guns would be good for the Soldier, not just on the Soldier, and that alone I think is reason enough to at least give the above a try.

Here's a thought experiment that ought to be fairly easy to playtest: Bubbles the Barathu hates Solarians. Maybe a Solarian burned their cat, or maybe their cat just decided to become a Solarian and ran off. In all cases, they want to kill a Solarian, so they do a bit of research, strap on their commercial laser pistol, pack an obscene amount of batteries, and set off to find a Solarian... and they do! In fact, they're 8th-level while Bubbles is a piddly level -1 civilian, so if they knew anything about encounter rules they'd realize this would go well beyond Extreme and into certain death territory. Regardless, they float 35 feet in the air, follow the Solarian around wherever they go, and start plinking them down relentlessly with their laser pistol... and they win! Because despite this solar knight wielding cosmic powers beyond most mortal comprehension, they have absolutely no innate means of using any their abilities against a big stupid jellyfish that can just float around and shoot at the same time.

Now, this scenario is obviously meant to be quite silly, and if that Solarian had a laser pistol of their own, Bubbles would be toast (or they could use a seeker rifle instead and float a bit higher). The point is to illustrate that the Solarian, a melee class in a ranged-centric game where characters are allowed to fly from very early on, has no inherent means of using their abilities against flying enemies, particularly if those enemies can shoot too. The playtest asks if the Solarian needs more ways of closing the gap between themselves and their opponents, and in my opinion this example proves that yes, they very much do. It's not just that they need actual gapcloser abilities, they need to be able to move much more freely if they're expected to get into melee range (or close to it) to function properly. Flight on one subclass at level 9 does not cut it. While the Solarian already has a lot of stuff going on at 1st level already, I would personally gladly trade away their solar nimbus and solar shot if it meant letting them move in range of any target they choose.

Now, you might be thinking: wouldn't a class with flight at level 1 break compatibility with Pathfinder? Yes, it would, in the same way as a Barathu would break compatibility too. That much is a concession the Starfriends have already allowed for Starfinder in order to enable its ranged meta. What's more, though, it is also something that could be relatively simple to address with a compatibility note: for instance, you could just state that any ancestry or class that gets flight at 1st level instead gets a bonus to their Speed, and that would let them function just fine in PF2e. In fact, you could just make this a trait (e.g. give every low-level flying creature the "flying" trait) and add compatibility rules to the trait itself. In all cases, a Solarian that can fly at 1st level would be able to actually function smoothly against flying or otherwise difficult-to-reach ranged enemies, and being able to fly right off the bat would feel pretty rad too.

Following the debrief we got for two upcoming Pathfinder classes, I think it's time to bring up a familiar topic: area weapons in Starfinder 2e, as outlined in Field Test #1, make targets do a Reflex save against your class DC. The premium user of area weapons is meant to be the Soldier, a class also outlined in that field test. However, this isn't entirely true, and as written in the field test, the best user of area weapons is in fact the Kineticist, a Pathfinder class whose class DC is the only one to go all the way up to legendary proficiency rank.

Now, at the time, this generated a lot of discourse: a common line was that it made mechanical sense for the Kineticist, a class with lots of access to AoE, to be good at AoE weapons, but it still didn't really make thematic sense for Aang from Avatar to spray a rotolaser more accurately than the battle-trained soldier who specializes in exactly that, nor is it good form in 2e for a class to encroach on an entirely different class's specialty like that (we certainly don't see classes in Pathfinder getting legendary weapon accuracy by accident). Eventually, it was suggested to factor in the weapon-user's proficiency in said weapon somehow, so that only those meant to be good at using those weapons would truly excel at area attacks, and that looked like it would resolve the issue. Unless, of course, we ended up with a class that had both master martial weapon proficiency and a legendary class DC...

So yeah, the Commander is a class with both master martial weapon proficiency and a legendary class DC. In many ways, their problem is the inverse of the Kineticist's, where they're perfectly-suited thematically for firing area weapons, but mechanically have absolutely nothing in their kit that makes them inherently good at AoE damage. Sure, the Soldier's tankier and can shoot one target in their area an extra time, but that in my opinion still doesn't hold up to a +2 to weapon accuracy in Pathfinder given what the Fighter can achieve, and that's before factoring in the entire unique system of tactics the Commander brings to the table. One could dismiss this by saying the Commander's a Pathfinder class and this is Starfinder (even though PF2e and SF2e are meant to be mutually compatible), but this problem is bound to appear if we ever get a martial class with a legendary class DC in Starfinder, which is not impossible. Clearly, if area weapons are still to keep relying on class DC (and maybe weapon proficiency), then something needs to be done to make sure that the Soldier doesn't get beaten at their own game by some random other class that happens to have a legendary class DC.

Now, there are lots of ways this could be achieved: you could pull a Gunslinger, for instance, nerf area weapons, and put that power back into the Soldier so that they'd be the only class who'd really want to use them. You could double down on the Soldier's usage of area weapons by giving them a legendary class DC, plus lots of other perks that guarantee they wouldn't get outmatched. You could even give the Soldier some bespoke mechanic that let them override the DCs of area weapons in a way that always worked to their advantage. Personally, though, I'm of the opinion that basing area weapon damage on class DC is a fundamentally bad idea: as shown with the Commander, class DC isn't a bucket that automatically signals good AoE damage, and we could see this already in other Pathfinder martial classes that use class DC mainly for single-target effects. In general, class DC isn't a bucket that signals anything in particular, which is why it's used so differently from one class to another.

There's a ton of other issues tied to switching from attack rolls to Reflex saves on a weapon that I won't rehash here, but the long and short of it is that area weapons, as written in the field test, could probably use a different implementation for their AoE attacks. Given how these weapons specifically tap into AoE damage, which martial classes in 2e typically aren't supposed to have, I'd even go as far as to suggest bundling them into a brand-new weapon category, so that Pathfinder classes like the Fighter and Gunslinger can't access them easily, but classes like the Soldier or any other AoE-capable character in Starfinder can. Perhaps the implementation for AoE weapons has already advanced far beyond that field test and accounted for all of the above, so this post could very well already be obsolete, but if that's the case, I'd also be curious to read a developer update on the subject, as I otherwise do really like the concept of AoE weapons and am looking forward to playing with them in SF2e.

Given the number of threads that have popped up recently around casters and how their design could be evolved in the future, I figured it'd be worth posting a brew I made a while back that's relevant to the subject matter. The starting point was: what would a thematic caster look like? A lot of players mention dedicated blasters, and I think this can be extended to any sort of specialty, like controlling, buffing/debuffing, and healing, and can all be expressed in roleplaying and flavor terms as well, like a light mage or a poison mage. The intent behind this homebrew class was to be able to express a variety of different themes in as simple a framework as possible.

For reference, here is the link to the class, which I'll summarize below.

The pitch behind the Paragon is: a thematic caster who revolves around a conceptual sphere of power, casting a very small number of spells based on a handful of traits more freely than other, more generalist casters. Because this kind of topic tends to be contentious, let me start by listing the tradeoffs this caster makes, just to make it clear I'm not trying to develop an overpowered class:

So here's how I'm seeing it: I really like the new angle the Guardian brings to tanking, but I also feel that in order for a concept to justify its existence as a fully-fledged class, it needs to have a certain critical mass of core features that are either too powerful or complex to properly encapsulate in just an archetype, or require a specialized chassis to put to full use. The Commander, for instance, had complex and powerful mechanics in the form of their banner and multiple tactics, which the current Marshal archetype doesn't approach, and all of those mechanics are well-served by a combination of sub-par HP, legendary DC, and Int key attribute that can't be perfectly replicated altogether on another class, not even Int martials like the Investigator. In my opinion, the Commander's existence as its own class is justified.

With the Guardian, however, I'm less sure: looking at the class's core features, their proficiency track is extremely similar to the Champion's, and past level 1, most of the class's unique features are free feats and number boosts, and not the kind of number boost like the Fighter's +2 to attacks. The two standout features are Intercept Attack and Taunt, which to me raises the question: what's stopping Paizo from just having those be feats on characters like the Champion, the Fighter, or even other martials like the Barbarian? Perhaps I'm wrong, but neither feature looks to me like it's complex or game-changing enough to define a whole class, and in the same vein a lot of the Guardian's feats look like they would be at home on other tough, brawny martial classes. A Fighter that intercepted damage and taunted enemies would be durable enough to survive, if not quite as tough as a Guardian, and in my opinion would still feel like a Fighter thematically. Similarly, a Barbarian with those abilities would still feel like a Barbarian, and a soak tank too, and a Champion would diverge even less from their existing theme given that feats like Devoted Guardian exist.

I guess all of this is to say that, based on a look at the playtest material at least, I don't feel like the Guardian currently stands out mechanically or thematically to justify its existence as a separate class. If its two unique actions and class feats were cannibalized by Strength-based martials that currently play with heavy armor, damage mitigation, or just tanking damage to varying degrees, I don't think that would really cause those classes to break from their current theme or niche.

The stunned condition has always been a little problematic when it comes to being stunned on your own turn, such as from a Stunning Fist, and from the looks of it, this isn't a problem that went away with the remaster. Because you can't act while stunned, a likely interpretation of RAW is that getting stunned on your turn effectively ends your turn prematurely, which is generally rare but makes the effect disproportionately effective in certain edge cases. In my opinion, this ambiguity needn't exist, and I feel the stunned condition could be cleaned up significantly if it were decremented with an action similarly to the sickened condition. Here's my take on what that could look like:

Stunned
You've become senseless. You can't act while stunned except to try to regain your senses as a single action. Stunned usually includes a value, and each time you spend an action to attempt to regain your senses, you reduce your stunned value by 1. Stunned might also have a duration instead of a value, such as “stunned for 1 minute.” In this case, you can't act for the listed duration, no matter how much you try to recover.

If we want to keep the interaction with the slowed condition: Any actions you lose from being slowed count towards attempting to recover from the stunned condition. So, if you were slowed 1 and stunned 2 at the beginning of your turn, you would lose 1 action from slowed, and would then become stunned 1.

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Would this work? In most cases, this wouldn't functionally change how the stunned condition works, but on the rare occasion where someone gets stunned on their own turn, the main appeal is that this would let them immediately try to recover by losing actions on that turn, instead of being stunned for the rest of their turn for "free" and then having to lose actions on their next turn.

As commonly perceived, Intelligence feels somewhat lacking relative to other attributes like Strength or Charisma. Whereas the latter two skills tend to provide consistent use as a fourth attribute due to their strong benefits in combat (Strength) or social encounters (Charisma), as well as other advantages, Intelligence doesn't feel like it has the same standout strengths, with its additional trained skills and languages feeling only situationally useful compared to the benefit of other stats. The proposal here is simple: rather than give the player additional trained skills and languages, what if increasing Intelligence gave more 1st-level general feats instead?

For example: Ezren the Wizard starts out with +4 Intelligence at level 1. Normally, this would let him know 4 additional languages and become trained in 4 additional skills, for a total of 7. Under this variant, he instead gains 4 1st-level general feats: if Ezren really wants more trained skills, he can take Skill Training 4 times and stay at 7 trained skills, though fewer languages known. If he wants to become a polyglot instead, he can take Multilingual a couple times for those 4 additional languages and still have room for some more general feats, such as Canny Acumen or Incredible Initiative. Perhaps he may want to master the arcane arts early instead, and take Arcana skill feats such as Quick Identification or Recognize Spell. As he boosts his Intelligence to +5 at 10th level, +6 at 17th level, and +7 at 20th level, he gains an extra 1st-level general feat each time, giving him additional benefits.

Effectively, the proposal here is to buff Intelligence's versatility, though not necessarily its direct power: as noted with the example of Skill Training and Multilingual, trying to replicate the exact benefits of Intelligence as currently implemented would leave you worse off. However, you'd have significantly more options as an Intelligence-based character, affording you much more character customization early on and the opportunity to build on your existing strengths too. As a side benefit, this would let Intelligence-heavy, skill-based classes like Investigators distinguish themselves significantly better from Rogues and their own large set of trained skills, as they'd have lots of flexibility and versatility but not necessarily lots of different skill proficiencies (unless they want those).

I'd be keen to see how this performs in playtesting, and would also be interesting in hearing preliminary feedback in case there are some standout abuse cases. Some thoughts: