WatersLethe's page

Area fire weapona take 2 actions to fire, leaving not enough actions left for most casting. Technomancer class DC advancement is also worse than their weapon advancement if I recall correctly

But the more I read them, the more they remind me of things I don't enjoy about PF2e classes. The mechanic promises a cool class fantasy, but they both mostly use the flavor of creation to be a class that hits things good. The technomancer promises a cool gameplay loop, but it requires turns that are either rigid or "best case scenario" just to reliably do what your class promises you.

They don't have the cool abilities that interact with tech, like Androids and Prismeni do. They don't have reliable at-will abilities that help out your team, like Envoys and Mystics do. They don't have cleverly flavored out-of-combat utility, like a Mystic's "Cloud Storage" or an Operative's "Barricade" feats.

Kind of funny that you say this is PF2 problem when Druid exists as an extremely flavorful, versatile, powerful spellcaster class that, if Technomancer had copied the homework of except crossed out nature for tech, would have knocked it out of the park from a flavor standpoint.

If anything, the problem is that the SF2 team is getting a bit lost in the weeds trying to be different from PF2, while not adequately embracing the non-combat technology that exists in the setting.

2) DPS++ Wants you to be shooting a gun, which you in general won't be good at as a full on spellcaster.

Just want to point out that in the PF2 engine, a ranged weapon strike on a damage caster is actually very good. With minimal investment your strikes can be on par with second attacks from most martials, so combining a spell and a shot is surprisingly valuable. This is generally not seen *as much* in PF2 because of the few good handy ranged weapons available, which guns fix.

The reason Technomancer is failing at using guns is their action economy is pretty borked with their focus on spell shapes.

I like it just fine. You get reliable access to a shield that you can use for blocking, no matter what loot drops or what shops or crafting are available. That extra point of hardness on an already Sturdy shield is gravy.

Also, blocking three strikes in a battle covers most battles, no? Not only is that a decent amount of damage mitigated, you also have your main class feature competing for the same reaction resource.

Anyway, looks like a matter of taste to me.

I hope we finally get ice dragons back. The new dragons and the primal elemental dragons combined filled all the mechanical niches I really needed from basic Dragons... except Ice. Nothing has ice breath right now. It's a bit of a glaring absence, especially with one 2E AP featuring one as a major antagonist.

There's so many fun names you could use. Rime Dragons, Glacial Dragons, Hoarfrost Dragons, Winter Dragons, Polar Dragons, etc.

Hear hear!

Yeah, I would agree that Overclock isn't meshing in right. It's giving SF1 solarian. On the surface it looks like an interesting mechanical loop, but when you get down to brass tacks it doesn't jive well with how combats play out in the real world.

Spitballing, but what about a neat and tidy one action focus cantrip that we load all of our hopes and expectations about Tech-integration into?

Something like this maybe:

_________________________
Influence Technology (1A)
Cantrip, Concentrate, Hack, Technomancer
Range: 60ft; Targets: 1 Object or Creature with the Tech Trait
Duration: 1 minute

You temporarily optimize or interfere with the underlying code of the target. When the target is used for (or makes) an attack roll or skill check, grant the target a +1 status bonus or -1 status penalty (your choice) to that check if it would alter the degree of success of the check result. The spell then ends, and the target of this hack is temporarily immune for 1 hour.

If you cast Influence Technology while a previous casting of this hack is still in effect, the previous effect ends.
___________________________

Boost a comm unit to give a bonus to a diplomacy roll, boost your mag boots to give a bonus to athletics, boost your gun for your next shot, etc.

4. Through internal testing it was found that the tech in Technomancer was sufficiently advanced enough to roll back around to it being a magicmancer, or a wizardwizard, or a wizard^2, so they had to go back to an earlier version where it was just a wizard with a phaser to maintain the fantasy.

I'd just like to point out that... they kind of did this.

All the "tech" in technomancer was loaded into their spells, except for the one overclock they get to interact with a tech item, like a gun.

It's an Experimental Spellshaping Wizard with a gun.

So WatersLethe, I didn't mention Augmented reality. I understand what AR/VR are. I said "ALTERED" reality. someone was talking about creating a area where digital constructs became real and such. Creating pockets of Altered reality is explicitly the bread and butter of the witchwarper. So what's being described in that situation would be more akin to a tech themed witchwarper.

I am the one talking about creating an "area" where you can do things like that. But I want to be clear. I want Technomancers to be able to create an "area" of "internet access" on the order of 100's of feet in radius, wherein AR content can be located just as it could in a techno-future city even in a barren wilderness planet. They could then use that "internet access" to do things like summon hardlight versions of their AI programs, or things of that nature. If this sounds too much like a Witchwarper, I'm afraid Witchwarper should butt out not the other way around.

my argument regarding spells is that they have said previously that spells that interact with technology are common since the setting has had high technology for centuries. So a lot of the flavorful tech things you mention, for example creating the HP and stat screen for an enemy, are things spells will cover (or in some of the other cases may) cover.

The problem with this approach is that ANY spellcaster with access to the arcane list is going to be just as much "techno" as a technomancer. A wizard would actually be better, because they can cast more spells per day. It also has a cost from a worldbuilding perspective, where it feels a lot more like a coat of paint on a fantasy RPG engine, because everything technological is also "a wizard did it" here just as it was in PF times.

It could work if there were a lot of tech-specific FOCUS spells that the Technomancer had ready access to, thus protecting their "tech specialist" niche to a great degree. That would align with how, for example, Druid and Bard get focus spells that plant their flavor flags firmly in the ground.

What I worry not many are accounting for is that not all environments will be high tech. and if too much of the class' power budget is put into interacting directly with tech, that may not leave them much they can do in environments without tech. I think that's why they created the OVerclock and modify abilities for these two classes. so that you could always interact with the tech you bring with you and your powers are never turned off because you are in the wrong environment. And then you have a lot of spells that let the technomancer interact with technology in those more creative ways y'all are thinking of, but you can prepare non-tech dependent spells if you know you'll be in a low tech area. that is what I was trying to get across before.

I am arguing that the technomancer should have the ability to bring tech with them. They're playing a science fantasy game and have elected to play a technomancer. If you tell the player they're in a wilderness and there's no tech, and they can't bring enough with them to utilize cool futuristic technology abilities... you're not working with the setting. We can't keep technology at arms length just because someone MIGHT want to make a low-tech campaign, or we're kneecapping our creativity for this SCIENCE fantasy game.

Being able to do a neat trick with one (1) item, especially one as unimaginative as a gun, does a disservice. If they could do many party tricks with data pads, scanners, augmented reality, AI, or a variety of other things, and other classes couldn't easily replicate those, then we're talking. Right now it's not enough.

How complicated have you found it to manage multiple spell shapes loaded onto one spell from a sheer "what all does this spell do" perspective? I'm concerned about that complexity being a roadblock for players who are already shy about the complexity of prepared casters.

For me, a class needs a STRONG justification for why it *could* allow pick-a-list spellcasting. Mystic gains power from a deep connection to otherworldly forces that have varied capabilities, so it gets a pass. Witchwarper has a really broad narrative basis, with timetravel shenanigans to falling between the cracks of realities... it also gets a pass. The spell lists are a huge factor in how a class feels to play, and just letting every class go with whatever dramatically waters down the impact spellcasting can have on class fantasy.

Technomancer combines a scholarly understanding of technology with a scholarly understanding of magic. I don't think the other lists fit at all with that.

Now, their chassis is looking quite anemic compared to the others, that I can agree with. They need more something!

What you described the technomancer doing is the Witchwarper thing. Setting up a field of altered reality. That is a tech themed Witchwarper subclass.

I'd also like to push back on this.

Augmented reality is, essentially, having a heads up display that lets you see virtual objects, information, and entities that are superimposed on the real world, and have spatial coherence.

In the sci-fi future, it can be easily imagined that Augmented Reality could be a big deal, closely linked to a planet's infosphere. Imagine Pokemon Go a thousand years in the future using an unimaginably advanced AR headset. Your group could have full conversations with persistent AI personas that is almost impossible to distinguish from reality. All of this, presumably, relying on the existence of a shared connection to the infosphere that hosts the persistent AR content.

Being able to permanently act as a mini infosphere-hotspot/matrix node/AR node does not, to me, necessarily equate to a Witchwarper. We're not talking about a specific zone becomes difficult terrain type stuff. We're talking letting meatspace individuals see your AI Cortana who is normally only visible in AR, or creating a floating HP meter above an enemy's head, or creating hard-light projections of your programmed minions that aren't themselves magical in nature. Things like that.

If they did print a Witchwarper focused on AR/VR I would call foul that it's 100% trying to eat the Technomancer's lunch.

All of this AR/VR talk may sound like me pulling it out of nowhere, but I'd like to point out that if our futuristic sci-fi game doesn't even have AR/VR capabilities comparable to what we have today, on earth, then we have SERIOUSLY failed the Starfinder setting. I'm going to continue to push for more creativity in the tech space, because it's really what sets this game apart from Pathfinder, and having everything just being gun cowboys in space really makes me feel like we're not giving ourselves enough creative liberty.

I've championed that Starfinder 1e de-emphasized magic too much regularly in the past. Now I find myself facing people saying, essentially, that spells are our replacement for technology in this version of Starfinder, which is bonkers to me.

This is a really good insight; I hadn't noticed it at all. Given how Starfinder has tied in weapons and tech with class DC, this really should be one of Technomancers' areas to shine. Or at the very least not fall behind Witchwarper.

So the basic class feature they have that does magic to technology that they carry around doesn't count because... because.

Real quick wanted to respond to this snarky comment:

"Yeah I'm kind of a tech enthusiast. But only really in one field. Well, one product category. Well... toasters. I am a tech enthusiast for toasters. The kitchen appliance."

I've always understood Technomancer to mean someone who combines technology and magic. Not someone who is, essentially, just really really good at magic. Or in other words, the logical conclusion of an Experimental Spellshaping Thesis Wizard after a few more generations of study.

The only real interface with tech is the extremely limited overclock system. It's so narrowly focused it doesn't feel like someone who's good with tech, it feels like someone who has this one party trick they can do in addition to being super awesome at magic.

I think we can get to a better tech+magic feel with more ribbon abilities, as well as some more nods to in-world tech like the drift, virtual realities, AI, and computing devices.

Things like being able to make magical effects in an anti-magic field by utilizing technologically based stand-ins wouldn't go amiss either.

So you want to add class abilities that can be functionally useless depending on the environment?

Because in the jungles of Castrovel, or in the open wastes of Akiton, or barren rocks in the Diaspora, all of those tech specific abilities you're talking about are useless. Do you want the D&D5e ranger? Because this is how you get the D&D5e Ranger.

I covered this in my previous posts about Mechanic and Technomancer, but I think there's a fundamental failing if they can't *bring technology with them*. I wanted Mechanic to be able to rapidly create or carry with them technological solutions to physical problems, and for Technomancers to be able to do the same in the realm of software by exuding an aura of augmented reality, acting as a Matrix node they can deploy AIs or programs within.

However, that being said, all of my examples work just fine with carried objects in a wilderness setting.

If we're relegating technology to an optional backdrop, that players can't meaningfully interact with even if they choose to build characters focused on it, we are not being creative enough and in my opinion dropping the ball on the whole Starfiner 2e system.

I've just read over it quickly so far, and my opinion may shift, but I'm in full agreement with the OP as it stands.

Technomancer right now looks like a Spellhacker, and very much NOT the "druid/animist of technology" that I would like to see. Everything is hyper focused on modifying spells, which is only a portion of the fantasy of a Technomancer.

There should be things like Voice of Nature (Animal Empathy but for computers/AI/programs/robots/drones) and Wildsong (Secret machine language known only by technomancers and some tech entities), or things in that vein.

Focus spells being only for modifying actual spells is also a missed opportunity. Focus spells were added to the game specifically to let players engage in a specific class fantasy more frequently and reliably. Using them for metamagic is one flavor (though that fantasy would 1000% be shared by something like an Arcanist from 1e or an Experimental Spellshaping Wizard, there's a lot of toe stepping going on if we're all-in on metamagic as Technomancers' *thing*), but the other flavor is "doing things with tech objects and programs in-world in a way that other characters can't".

Imagine a focus spell that let you augment all AI processes in the vicinity, or one that lets you physically enter a computer/tablet/comm unit, or one that lets you be treated as a Construct, or create semi-real objects from a video game, or or or

There should also be more feats for utility and interacting with the world outside of spells.

In the interest of keeping our expectations grounded, here is a short list of a few ways that the playtest could turn out:

1. The team has decided to really double down on the techno in Technomancer, and they have made it a bard class archetype that is really into electronic dance music.

2. The Mechanic was reimagined to fill a more grounded character fantasy, and now must pay a tithe to the Snap-on truck to use their abilities

3. The Technological Equipment section is just a picture of Carl Sagan and the word "Imagination" repeated over and over.

4. Through internal testing it was found that the tech in Technomancer was sufficiently advanced enough to roll back around to it being a magicmancer, or a wizardwizard, or a wizard^2, so they had to go back to an earlier version where it was just a wizard with a phaser to maintain the fantasy.

5. Too much of the Mechanic's abilities were baked into robotic assistants, so, for balance, whenever you build a mechanic you make an NPC that hangs out in town and sends out a robot PC of a different class to do the adventuring.

6. Hacking had to be removed from the playtest because people continually passed out from strapping their hacker goggles on too tightly. They're working on a way to get around this issue.

7. The UPB vs UBP mixup was so common that the team decided to officially rename them "UPB/UBPs" so everyone is right.

8. To keep Aballon from being too cool given the new tech rules, it was moved 37 million miles closer to the sun.

I've given it a lot of thought and to be honest I HIGHLY value cross compatibility, but what I want most of all is for the Starfinder devs to be able to put out a game they're proud of. If the balance between systems gets wonky, I can put up with a bit more homebrew tweaking to get them to mesh if it means a developer feels like they got to make the game they wanted to make rather than the one constraints boxed them into making.

Passion is what makes systems come out fun and last the test of time.

Decrypt these fists, ya keyboard masher!

Just gonna tuck this direct quote away for later

Dumping dex as a strength martial is not sunshine and roses. Without going into Sentinel dedication for Mighty Bulwark you're a trip magnet. You also give up a bunch of your carry capacity afforded by your strength for the heavier armor, spend more actions moving around the battlefield, have trouble getting carried out of danger, and may have to spend more feats just to get into the proficiency to start with.

It can be worth it but for many of my characters it's definitely not.

Quiet Allies is borderline required if you ever want to sneak as a group. It's come up so, SO often that a group of players, all trained in stealth, want to try to sneak and they all look around to find that no one is an Expert and no one has Quiet Allies, and suddenly that stealth training feels a whole lot less valuable.

I'm personally quite glad that you CAN go str+dex and be rewarded for doing so. The either/or mentality is what I find irritating.

In either case, most dex builds get other damage boosting effects to make up for their lack of raw weapon and ability score damage. In my experience, it's felt pretty good in play. The only strength based build I see regularly making people question their damage output is a big two-handed barbarian.

As for the topic of the OP: I still don't think we've heard what specific goals they have for the character beyond the words "Monk" and "Katana".

There are plenty of str+dex concepts that would work quite well with a katana and light armor. You even have boosts left over for wis and con.

With more specificity of the requirements we could all help a lot better.

I'm unclear what an Anacite is, and don't currently have access to AoN. can someone explain that to me?

They're essentially the robot-natives of Aballon. They were created by some ancient species that's lost to history, and some believe they're meant to wait for their return while others believe they should follow in their creators' footsteps.

From the StarfinderWiki

Anacites are the self-modifying constructs native to the world of Aballon. Each anacite is a unique, self-improving construct, and over the millennia of their existence, thousands of different models have developed. Depending on their role, anacites can have any form and can reconfigure themselves to adapt to their circumstances. The most common anacite design is a basic arthropodan form of silvery metal, with multiple legs for efficient travel and claws for accomplishing their assigned tasks.

I’ll see what I can do. ;)

Interesting.

I'm really on board with the Anacite hope. I love those guys

By the way I really like the premise and what I've read so far

I read Basics of Magic, came back here to suggest multiclassing into Commoner for it, remembered that the OP was SuperBidi, and went back to look for the note at the end about not being able to multiclass into Commoner. It's still an incredibly strong feat compared to the other level 1 options, I feel.

The investigator [as described on Pathfinder Wiki] covers murder mystery forensics and might kindof cover archaeology? Not sure. Any class features that refer to medieval tech and magic would need to be swapped out, tho. Shooting people with serum darts optional, but it's a good way to deliver medicines and nanobots at range. Being able to debuff instead of kill also fit the character concept I had.

It's actually trivially easy to play an investigator in SF2. There's nothing you have to do to make it work mechanically, and flavor-wise I can't find anything that doesn't transfer over (not that you need to be over-worried about flavor).

Already seen one in play in SF2 and it was great.

I've already strapped on my hacker goggles.

A LOT of the complexity is reduced by non-obvious means, in comparison to PF1. Bucketed feat choices means you aren't usually comparing hundreds of options at a time, fewer feat trees means you're not planning out things far in advance, and standardized math progression means you can make "mistakes" in a build and still contribute well. Bonuses being fewer and less stackable means you aren't beholden to a complicated meta of buff stacking.

That's all to say that, yes, PF2 is a decently complex game, but in practice it's at least ENORMOUSLY less complicated than PF1, and its complexity is better spent on fun activities like tactical choices during play.

I just want to chime in to say that I grew up religious, became an atheist, and like to play religious characters because I have all the "training" to roleplay a religious person well, and it's fun to imagine there actually being a powerful entity worthy of that level of devotion.

The entity being worthy of your devotion is kind of key there. You have to have a character with firmly held beliefs that align with the deity in question to such an extent that your character would follow them faithfully to further their shared goals.

It's like selling your soul to a devil for power, but that power is specifically given for the purpose of fulfilling yours and that devil's goals, and when you die you get rewarded for it... Being a cleric is kind of a sweet deal.

April is upon us. We're in the end-game now.

I think you're going to love the Medicine skill in the SF2 engine.

I planned to have the party go to a VR gaming center called "The First Volt" run by a NPC technomancer and I thought it was a good pun and now I have to wait another week before I can share it.

Abadar's First Vault houses a perfect copy of everything that's ever existed, sort of like this guy's electronic VR machines can do!

Anyway, I gotta get back to staring out the window wistfully.

The stream was a lot of fun to listen to! I liked the history lessons

Not to be rude, but this sounds more like a problem regarding your play group rather than with Starfinder.

Maybe what your group needs to do is NOT assume you're racing against the clock. Even with all the technology, there is still a human (or nonhuman) element that could give characters time to breathe.

I want to push back on this. Racing against the clock feels correct from a narrative standpoint, at least to my group. Forcing the story to move slower just so that it fits in with the mechanical construct of spell recovery, which works well in fantasy settings, would be detrimental.

Do you find that in your games you have equal expectations about time pressure in SciFi vs Fantasy? I'd be interested to know if my assumption that SciFi being inherently more time-pressurey is false.

Or, you could have your GM rule that your casters only need an hour or 2 of uninterrupted rest to regain all their spell slots?

I would like to suggest that there should be an in-world, RAW way for a GM to do that. Some kind of GM-controlled, use-limited pocket hyperbolic time chamber, or some rare drug, or a break-in-an-emergency mana crystal.

In brief: Science fiction settings tend to encourage faster paced action, which makes resting for 8+ hours to recover resources less narratively satisfying than in Fantasy.

In boxer: What I've found since at least as early as SF1 is that our group tends to instinctively assume a more strict background ticking clock when we're playing in a modern or futuristic setting. With cell-phones, email, security cameras, automated alert systems, internet, software assisted background checks, faster modes of travel... getting your objectives done as quick as possible always seemed to feel much more urgent. Missions also tend to be more complex with more moving parts (robotics megacorp factory infiltration versus cave full of skeletons), and reducing time spent on them reduces unexpected variables.

In our SF2 playtesting this trend has continued, and what it has meant is that spellcasters run out of spells (at least at lower levels so far) with much more regularity. This is exacerbated by the lack of staves giving you a reliable source of extra slots.

In Fantasy settings, news travels at the speed of horse, we have expectations of things like hunting for your own food, making camp, and talking around a campfire. The world turns at the pace of the seasons. Resting for a day or more feels a whole lot more acceptable in a wider range of situations in classical fantasy.

I wonder if it might be worthwhile to build in a spell slot recharge mechanic so that long adventuring days aren't so punishing in Starfinder. I certainly don't want to force Starfinder to adhere to the narrative expectations of Pathfinder, and I don't want casters to feel spell starved.

Thoughts?

Yes, it's one of the reasons my players' Large dragon character could carry her party on her back. It's pretty sweet.

James Jacobs wrote:

WatersLethe wrote:

James Jacobs wrote:

Wherever such a place might be, it'd also be the worst place to set an adventure, so it's thus the least likely place for us to ever spend time detailing. Or even mentioning.

I'm currently working on a Stardew Valley style homebrew with low-stakes and lots of NPC driven down-to-earth stories. Kinda think sometimes we get tunnel vision about what adventures can be.

Perhaps, but the core expectation of the person who picks up the Player Core is VERY DIFFERENT than the core expectation of someone who picks up Stardew Valley. Those games have to work pretty hard to do the other's job.

Yeah, the majority experience (for me when I played Stardew Valley) was non-combat. Yeah you can go into the mines, but honestly combat is hard. And I would mostly just try to run and avoid the enemy, because it was an anthesis to the otherwise chill aesthetic of the game. And like, you could avoid it entirely, but from what I remember there were some cool rewards at the bottom.

For sure there's lots at play about expectations, target markets, and demand. Perhaps a low-stakes adventure would appeal to a vanishingly small playerbase and in that sense a peaceful place would be the worst place to set an adventure. However, I'm not convinced we've adequately explored that space to know for sure, and I *am* convinced the standard AP model is getting stale. My Strength of Thousands experience was excitement about a new style of adventure crushed by what ended up being pretty same-old-same-old.

Also, combat is a pretty big part of Stardew Valley. Caves, Desert Caves, Island Caves are full of fun and exciting combat, and are important for standard advancement. You can even play a version of the Farm that spawns enemies at night! It's also one of the reasons I like the game so much. In fact, I highly doubt Stardew Valley would have gotten nearly as popular as it did without its combat elements. You know what else has fun and engaging combat? Pathfinder!

We can also talk about old-school D&D where the reason you went into the dungeon was to get treasure, not usually because there was some world ending threat you had to face.

(By the way, I'm sick and trying to distract myself)

WatersLethe wrote:

James Jacobs wrote:

Wherever such a place might be, it'd also be the worst place to set an adventure, so it's thus the least likely place for us to ever spend time detailing. Or even mentioning.

I'm currently working on a Stardew Valley style homebrew with low-stakes and lots of NPC driven down-to-earth stories. Kinda think sometimes we get tunnel vision about what adventures can be.

There are RPGs tailored around that, but it's a completely different system.

You can have RPGs be that, but I think trying to make Pathfinder that....isn't the path to go about it. A majority of Pathfidner rules are about combat. If you're story isn't about featuring combat, then there are other systems that are probably better.

Oh no, there's loads of combat. It's just lower stakes. Combat on the players' terms. Enough combat that the vastly superior PF2 combat engine is absolutely a heavy factor in system choice.

Also, Pathfinder 2e's non-combat effectiveness and versatility is super under-sold by the vast majority of the PF2 community. I've had loads of sessions where either there was no combat, or the combat was short and sweet, and it's been a blast every time.

I really think people are just overly tunnel-vision about what an adventure is. You can have low-stakes adventures.

Edit: Also, in my opinion (and full of hot air, as always) every setting should have a Shire (even if where that Shire is changes over time). If there's no place left for some simple folk to live out their lives, and everyone is constantly under some horrifying threat, or part of some war or other, then what's the point? Your setting becomes unmoored. I just happen to think that there's also interesting stories to tell in those Shires. Things like Bilbo there-and-back-again-ing every other week while spending most of his time worried about the village's crops.

Wherever such a place might be, it'd also be the worst place to set an adventure, so it's thus the least likely place for us to ever spend time detailing. Or even mentioning.

I'm currently working on a Stardew Valley style homebrew with low-stakes and lots of NPC driven down-to-earth stories. Kinda think sometimes we get tunnel vision about what adventures can be.

Alternatively, in my home games I aim for AT LEAST 1.5x the wealth by level table because it's way more fun that way. I would heavily recommend any GM to consider the wealth by level table a bare minimum that, if stuck to, should force your PCs to act like little, impoverished, victorian orphans.

Absalom 100%. Yeah, its the most logical target for BBEGs, but at the same time its the safest place since with the amount of APs that take place there and overall APs in general the amount of 20 level characters in that city can keep you totally safe from harm.

You may be right, but I don't know if I would consider having lots of 20th level PCs around as being "safe".

Highhelm and Nantambu also come to mind.

I'm unreasonably excited. We should learn a whole lot more about how SF2 is taking shape.

I'll repost my previous thoughts:

I came in through the D&D 3.5 -> D&D 4E -> Pathfinder 1E pipeline.

4th edition didn't have the spark it needed, and was generally quite boring for our groups (recent revisionist historians like to gloss over its many, many flaws). I thought it was going to be a more streamlined and approachable game for brand new players who I was introducing to TTRPGs, but they all bounced off of it hard and we realized choices weren't compelling, and we weren't able to tell the stories we wanted to tell. The system lacked due respect for the fantasy, pushing homogenized game design over all.

I still remember the look of utter boredom on my friend's face as she wordlessly tapped her Eldritch Blast power card for the umpteenth time in a fight. I thought "oh, maybe TTRPGs aren't for her" but then that same players' eyes sparkled when we started diving into PF1, with its wealth of meaningful choices, customization, and respect for our imaginations. The difference was night and day.

From there, we were all-aboard PF1, playing regularly and with a lot of good stories to tell. I would still be happily playing PF1 if PF2 never came about, and I was convinced a PF2 was not necessary.

After diving into the PF2 playtest, however, I came to realize how much extra work I had been doing as a GM over the years and how much easier things could be. PF2 retained all the charm and zest of PF1, paying respect to the history of the game and keeping all my favorite sacred cows, while modernizing the engine underneath. I no longer had to guide my players into making characters on the same optimization wavelength, and I could build encounters on the fly. My GMing workload dropped to a tenth or less, and the stories we played were just as fun as before. We've played even more frequently than ever previously!

So here I am, enjoying PF2, excited for SF2 to bring those stories onto the same, well-oiled engine.

WatersLethe wrote:

I thought OP's problem would be with the growing number of ancestries with no Fist attacks.

In Pathfinder everyone has a "fist" attack.

Awakened Animal:

Your heritage gives you a special unarmed attack instead of the fist unarmed attack humanoids typically gain.

So unless you pick an animal that happens to also have a Fist attack, you don't have a Fist attack.

I also thought Barathu didn't have Fist, which is why I thought it was a growing list, but I guess they do have fists. I wouldn't be surprised if more Fistsless ancestries come out of the woodwork in Starfinder though.

I will absolutely allow players to start with reload weapons loaded, lord knows they need it, but it does not make sense to keep things loaded all the time in-world. Dangerous, bad for the weapon, unrealistic. So my assumption for a stowed crossbow you didn't plan on using? Not pre-loaded. A go-to part of your combat kit? 100% pre-loaded.

I thought OP's problem would be with the growing number of ancestries with no Fist attacks.

In my games I've been running with a "don't cheese it" stance and letting unnarmed attacks qualify as weapons in most cases. Pretty much if it's a 1d8 dmg or less attack, it works fine with everything, and if it's higher it only works if other high damage weapons would work.

Having free hands is nice, but unnarmed attacks are generally lower damage, have fewer cool bells and whistles, and are often a flavor choice that ends up running into an unfair feeling number of blockers.