WWHsmackdown's page

Little bit worried that runesmith will end up becoming too much of a support. Please add 2 ways of play where 1 can be more offensive and other can be more supportive (a bit worried bc of your comment about it)

Would also love support for shield/2handed usage for Runesmith as it would be cool to not have a hand free as a requirement. After all we can do most spells having both hands occupied

Looking forward to seeing what u will do with it
c:

Ehh, I think we have plenty of DPS martials. Id rather runesmith be more support so it has the budget to be as magical and varied as possible.

I've said it before, but I hope there's an archetype dedicated to the hacking subsystem to get that net runner feel and a build-a-bear drone archetype so anybody can have their R2D2 type buddy. Scifi archetypes are my most anticipated part of SF2E

Paizocon or Gencon will tell us if the impossible book includes summoner and magus

Just got the book and everyone did an amazing job. One of the many highlights for me was crime kingpin: using a reaction to kick a disarmed weapon 20 feet away AND have a flunky in the path of travel pick it up was so disrespectful I cackled. It's my favorite for a tier 2 end boss

I have friend groups that dabbled in a smattering of ttrpgs: zweihander, morkborg, star wars, & shadow of the demon lord, but starfinder and DnD 5e were the only two games I played with any real frequency. When the pf2e dropped I opened it up to peruse in my local nerd shop and saw that rangers and monks were interesting and fun, not shortchanged and suboptimal. I dropped 5e and started GMing for pf2e, being a PC whenever I get the chance. My fixation made me sideline starfinder, but sf2e having the engine I love is gonna get me back into GMing scifi

The playtest ancestries were some of the most fun in the 2E engine so far. Barathu in particular put a big, dumb grin on my face

Mangaholic13 wrote:

Dragonchess Player wrote:

Mangaholic13 wrote:

(since SF1e technomancer was a prepared caster, and I don't really see a reason why they'd change that for SF2e)

Correction: The technomancer, like all SF1 casters, was spontaneous with a limited list of "spells known."

Really? My bad.

...I guess this shows how invested I was in the SF1e Technomancer class...

In fairness to you they did eventually get an option to become prepared casters in Galactic Magic. I really liked that concept, I hope we see something like it again.

I also just realized that, with the mechanic being the deployables class, they may fill the niche of martially-themed necromancer some people were talking about during the Impossible Playtest.

This is my hope, too. A support martial with a map token mechanic like Necro would be a cool addition

Slight tangent, but what's the over-under on SROs showing up on this future tech book.....asking for a friend

https://paizo.com/starfinderplaytest

The playtest notice describes the mechanic as "The mechanic syncs with their exocortex to deploy mines, turrets, or command a drone." Looks like mines, turrets, and a drone might be the subclasses

Galaxy guide is pretty hype for me. World guide was one of the most useful books I got for DMing PF2E; something in that same vein that also categorizes by theme is gonna be choice, the archetypes and ancestries are gravy, honestly.

I'm hoping/guessing that mechanic is a support martial that can also drop drones/turrets like the playtest necromancer's mechanics. Basically a martial inversion of that playtest. Im with Milo on the technomancer: the fewer the spell slots the more cool toys we get, so I hope it's a two slot caster or a wave caster

WWHsmackdown wrote:

Thanks for all the cool Cobyslarni lore, Kendra! It's definitely my favorite school of the bunch

Thank you! I'd love to hear what folks do with it in games (and the rest of the schools, too)!

I'ma finagle the school into my starfinder2E campaign so my players get a novel surprise. Time and space shouldn't be an issue for the big fey god elephant; it'll just be another Saturday for the students...

Thanks for all the cool Cobyslarni lore, Kendra! It's definitely my favorite school of the bunch

Looking forward to the archetypes! An astrazoan AnadarCorp Rep envoy sounds like a great party face to go full sleazy corpo. I'm also interested to see what kind of primal casting xenodruid gets; it might serve as a more flavorful scifi druid multiclass.

Endure and blood vendetta are my favorite rank 1 & 2 spells. Single action spells and reaction spells are what I like for enriching caster turns so they feel less like "move and cast" all the time; this leads me to load up on these kinds of spells so I can have options for keeping my turns varied.

All the posts saying the next book is some SoM successor checks out to me. A reprint of SoM would require a lot of edits and a good number of brand new pages. Unless that space is going to be taken up by some magi and summoner class archetypes or some other brand new content, I don't see it happening.

I'm hoping those classes get rolled with necro and runesmith in a new magic compendium. Elementalist got rolled in RoE, runelord is in RA, shadow caster might be too OGL in material origin, that leaves wellspring, flexible casting, and leylines/true names to find new homes.

I'm curious what the best option here is: putting in the man hours needed into SoM, pruning some of those less used systems to make way for more new stuff in a new magic book, or stuff all of it in and leave the new offerings in a new magic book to mostly consist of the two new classes.

Interesting choices to be made, but anyway, yea my future product hope is a (safe bet) new tome of magic shenanigans framed by war between Nex and Gen.

I enjoyed the mythic rules in WoI and I like callings ramping up to destinies (that's more about me not liking lvl 1 "godlings" and the player attitudes they can engender). The disparities between some destinies is unfortunate but easily fixable. I just appreciate mythic for giving me something that actually justified a free-archetype-esque campaign. A call to action from the gods may be a little trite but having rules to back it up is sweet!

Kavlor wrote:

To be honest, I'm not a fan of Arcadia book. I mean, it could be good, but I'm not a fan of concept of almost fully-native America-analogue, cause I believe that history of colonization and formation of new cultures in colonized lands is interesting too. But if it came out, I would like to get getherer and more info about dog-folk and wyrwoods.

[...]

And about adventure paths, there a few things that I would like to see. For example AP that would denounce Segada Protocol in lore.

"I don't want an Arcadia book because I don't like that it's not repeating the story of foreign colonization" and "I want an AP about ending the restrictions on colonization by Fantasy Europeans empires in Fantasy America" are both wild to just say out loud. I'm very glad you're not making decisions for Pathfinder.

Go re-read any of a dozen "slaughter the natives and take their gold" fantasy books from the 80s and 90s, there's no shortage of those.

New mwangi lore also benefits from being believable as a place with functioning stable empires in the geopolitical scene

Psychic archetype archetype on a magus is the best method I've found for making a bare handed force adept; laughing shadow and the extra slots from magus inches it for me bc monk/psychic doesn't have enough slots and psychic/monk is pretty painful in star spread. Heck, I don't even get imaginary weapon bc magus damage doesnt need the cheese.

I grave spell called harrow where its described as a projected arc of your scythe in a 15 foot cone in front of you thats a reflex save and gives you half the damage in temp hp would be really cool; it might be too much and definitely steps on the toes of draining strike, though. Having something like this INSTEAD of draining strike, though, would free up being able to have a thrall strike that turn. Maybe something like that as an early grave spell would would be too good for stacking temp hp.....idk I'm not a designer.

Good read! I'm excited for the reveal of this book at Paizocon or Gencon

Seas of golarian setting book! Rules and setting details to accommodate a swashbuckling island hopping campaign would benefit wide open, hex crawling, episodic campaigns (the One Piece approach).

Life is better with pets, adopt your own fur baby with beast master archetype!

Runelord does look like a pretty cool midrange wizard from the skimming a did.

Wizards haven’t got any new Wizard-specific content in the last 6/7 books, be they rules or LO. (There was an AP with a new school however! )

I haven’t seen Rivals yet, but Wizards have long overdue some actual content.

A lack of actual class feats is just sad to see. It’s hard to think of a book more perfect to drop a handful of new feats for specific things.

If not the wizard school book....then yea, that's probably it for expecting new wizard feats. O well, runelord class archetype feats might change things up enough to be an a engaging wizard style of play. Beyond that it's probably not worth putting to much thought into wizard until 3e.

On the bright side, the dev commentary about the in house technomancer testing is really cool; it sounds like it'll have class features for augmenting spells through spell hacks and their spell cache. It might not have the studious schtick desired, but as far as engaging features it might make for a good wizard substitute once the core rulebook drops this summer. I have faith if only bc of the remastered oracle (having 4 slots AND class features): I don't think we'll ever have another "spell slots: the class" to worry about

Ooo Mark Seifter is a main author for the book. Nice!

I honestly haven't remembered much developer input or communication during playtests between the release and the wrapup outside of maybe a handful of comments. Seems like a bit of a molehill

An interesting quirk of the Kineticist using a more limited number of at-will feats rather than a larger number of limited spells for their magic is that this kind of design space tends to leave less room for the hyper-niche spells you'd find on many traditions. There are for sure some niche impulses, but you're not going to be pulling some ultra-specific spell out of your back pocket for a huge number of occasions in the same way as a full caster, even with Kinetic Activation. This isn't inherently a bad thing, though as an aside it does mean that if more casters end up following the Kineticist's model in a future edition, characters overall would probably need a separate pool for choosing niche, out-of-combat abilities to gain that wouldn't compete for space with their combat-ready actions.

Id enjoy niche spells finding their way to the skill feat equivalent bucket in a future edition. They could limit it to however many times a day and put class tags on them; martials could get bespoke abilities in that bucket too. Itd be an opportunity to prune some of the stuff that didn't really need to be cordoned off from the skill checks themselves as well.

I wonder if there will be any general wizard feats or if it'll just be the schools and archetypes from the schools.

Idk, my imaginary weapon psychic with rogue feats feels a lot like a ninja......hell I can even cast wooden double like some Shinobi from Naruto. I didn't need a bespoke class for it.

Ooof. Missed my window to edit that, lol. I'll flag it so don't can be fixed

I'm gonna play in an upcoming Season of the Ghost campaign when my buddy switches to fill the GM role after my most current run of Cosmic Birthday. I'll be a tanuki tangible dream psychic that I'll play as a melee ninja with a bunch of tricks and mind game powers. Everyday form and tea kettle form are going to be a lot of fun to play around with, while shield, endure, blood vendetta, wooden double, and time jump should help me mix it up in melee without completely melting (along with rogue dedication for theme and armor). Really I'm just excited for my tanuki to be a silly weeb; the ancestry seems tailored for shenanigans.

For all day, free and clear blasting, AOE, and utility casting, kineticist is fine damage wise. As others noted, the personal draw isn't damage: for me it's getting to saddle into a 4e caster design. Kineticist let's me play in that all day, full gas, martial design philosophy that the game seems to assume pacing wise (at least from my experience running and playing in APs). Vancian magic and spell slots were a concession for the design of this game engine, not a meaningful progression of the d20 fantasy genre ttrpg. You gotta view kineticist damage from the lense of someone who can keep swinging all day with the equivalent of 3-15ish signature spells; that's a lot of utility that HAS to be reflected in single target capability.

Excited to see the wizard feats in rival academies. I doubt there'll be anything to "fix the class" but new toys are always appreciated. I'm hoping for more scholastic type feats and (fingers crossed) fun things you can fuel with your curriculum slots.

Old_Man_Robot wrote:

As per Michael Sayre's own words, it is strawmanning him to think that the game is balanced around Wizard's having perfect preparation.

It's funny because the description Mickael Sayre does of the Arcanist (that I didn't know, I'm not much of a PF1 player) is exactly the one I do of the Kineticist: The class is easy to play but weak. And clearly, I see less complaints about the Kineticist than there are about the Wizard when the Wizard is definitely superior to the Kineticist from my point of view.

Anyway, complexity is an unsolvable issue: It leads to massive difference in player experience but not all classes can be as straightforward as the Fighter.

Absolutely, pound for pound kineticist is weaker, but compared to a wizard it's actions have little to no opportunity cost. 70-80 percent of the power without the quibbles of wasting limited resources is an easy trade for a lot of people. For me at least, most of the impact without the possibility of wasting (bc I can always do it again) equals MORE impact. Accessibility is definitely a form of power in itself. Maybe more as a *fictional* power, as it relates to perception and enjoyment.

Kineticist gets to play the same game as the martials (the game of opportunity cost) AND be a limited caster.

As far as changes/errata that wouldn't really change books much or eat up dev time, I could see them errataing the curriculum spells as mentioned in previous posts to just being extra spells known and wizard becoming a free and clear 4 slot caster. Not an exciting fix, but a functional, minimal impact/effort one.

I can't for the life of me imagine not playing a TTRPG ancestry because of details you don't like in the art. I've never felt that beholden to one specific artist's interpretation.

Oh it wasn't stopping me at all. Just more mildly curious if the jotun on the cover has legs like Cotton from King of the Hill.

WWHsmackdown wrote:

I'm curious if the jotunborn actually have squat legs or if it was a perspective snafu/ sacrifice to fit the character in the desired cover art at an appropriate distance.

The non-cover art in the article show the same legs, so I think it's intended.

Oh, I missed that! Looks regular enough to me; I thought that cover giant was missing knees. The nature sketch further down looks much better proportion wise.

I'm curious if the jotunborn actually have squat legs or if it was a perspective snafu/ sacrifice to fit the character in the desired cover art at an appropriate distance. Regardless, they look really cool! I love the tree stump neck and inscribed skin; seeing the jotunborn actually inspired me with a runesmith PC idea (something I couldn't really imagine ever since the playtest dropped). They have that unique visual quality that I love about golarian goblins and kobolds.

The iconic guardian being two handed makes me smile. That two hander quasi shield raise was one of my favorite feats from the playtest guardian.

If your GM works with you to expand your school spells so they dont have to be spells with heightening effects (and therefore subject to obsolescence in their sanctioned slots) your wizard is boring but largely fine. If your wizard school does have heightened school spells and your GM is just running it as is.....you're kind of hosed. I know I'd hate playing a 3 slot caster that's budgeted as a 4 slot caster. Fingers crossed that vancian and spell slots go the way of alignment in the next edition. As it stands, wizard is just a class for me to avoid in favor of sorc or witch. Necro gives me hope they may eventually make a new studious arcane class, in which case I could ignore wizard completely and move on.

Drat! O well, paizo is always sprinting in terms of writing and publishing content; I won't begrudge the date needing to be farther back. Back to speculating! I need to look closer at runesmith (I was mostly drawn by necromancer) to see a possible mechanic base.

The OG technomancer got some beautiful updates in Starfinder Enhanced. I hope those updates make it into the core class concept for 2e, even though the technomantic talents will definitely need a rework both to fit within 2e's guidelines and divest from OGL spell schools. Being able to (de)buff other people's casting is so cool, and it's a largely open niche.

Also, I doubt we'll get either until much later in the edition, but the three alternate subclasses--divine tutor, drone technomancy, and junk technomancy--are so flavorful. Junk technomancy in particular sounds like a nice way to make a funny gish.

I have a personal little conspiracy theory that the runesmith and necromancer helped influence and were influenced by whatever the mechanic is turning out to be, as one spawns a mass of minions while the other enhances party gear. I have no idea whether it'll be a blend of these (and other) classes (like the envoy mashes up commander/investigator/bard/rogue), or if it--like soldiers and solarians--will be its own thing entirely.

It's definitely interesting looking at those two; id enjoy technomancer being a two slot caster that gets to use the rest of its budget for repeatable cc, buffing, and/or debuffing

So I'm pretty sure it's a given that the Mechanic will have both an augmentation subclass and a drone subclass. I hope they get a subclass that emphasizes boosting armor, shields, and weapons.

Id like that; not sure how they'll differentiate from inventor at that point though.

Excited for the technomancer/mechanic playtest; should be anytime now! This is a last minute thread for speculation and hopes. The necromancer chassis has me very interested for what they could do with mechanic. What are y'all's thoughts?

All valid points, but I expect the upgrade system/track exemplified in the playtest will more or less be what's printed; devs and (whatever percentage of) players seem to want loot drops being a part of progression. Id rather ABP but I won't hold my breath

My ideal fix would be a tiny bump to arcane cascade damage and powerful two action activities (from subclass and feats) for the magus that added in the recharge action for free if you're in cascade. I think that might incentivise more non spell striking turns. Laughing shadow getting to strike from 10 feet away, then hide, and recharge. An indomitable iron getting to strike, shove/trip, and recharge. Etc etc. Stuff to incentivise varied magus turns. The third action remaining on those turns would be used for whatever

Some simple mass combat rules would be great to spice up games in tier 4 of play. Id also enjoy some victor point like siege subsytem.

Yea, army mechanics, more troops, and possibly a troop style companion archetype would be cool. Idk how much power a troop companion could have considering the constraints put on swarm master, though

I'm kind of expecting an archetype that introduces some sort of combat maneuvers like the old 3.5's Tome of Battle. I'm not expecting anything deep since archetypes don't take more than 1 or 2 pages each in the books, but even something simple like 5e's battle master would be enough.

I also would like battle harbinger-like archetypes for other casters (luckily better than battle harbinger, if possible) and, even if highly unlikely, a variant system that allows you to either tweak or create weapons. Ideally something to allow you to treat advanced weapons as martial if you remove some traits or reduce their damage die size would be golden, since with the exception of like 2 advanced weapons I feel using them is a trap most of the time.

Wrestler archetype has a lot of CC, but more options wouldn't be bad. A druid archetype for wave casting and martial scaling on wild shape feats would be pretty awesome