Even the Akashic mystic has a 10th level permanent “talk to computers” feature that’s equivalent to old speak with plants/rocks spells and is potentially very powerful and at least very cool and fun.
Huge change in Mines lethality with 30' option for one action, especially when double deployment and double detonation come into play. Always being able to 30' deploy also makes a big difference for being able to ranged Deploy/Mod(+int damage or avoid friendly fire)/Detonate in one turn, and the useability of Hunker Down, Instant Deployment, Mobile Deployment, Gravitic Dampener. Being able to use three actions to double deployment six mines in a turn with Proximity Alert on them will be very funny at level 10. If no one moves you can still detonate four of them manually next turn.
The Idarii (and Absalom Station) getting retconned to be much larger would be very good things. The PF1 Kasatha population numbers that came on the Idarii meant your average PC probably met like 2% of the entire race in a campaign unless they had a fertility rate of something like 12 per generation since arriving in the Pact Worlds. The whole "we are going to invade Akiton with a miniscule fracion of their population" plan never made sense, either.
"My dead companion? Oh, you mean my no actions required Stun 3 that absorbed actions from the boss? Yeah, I'll have that back up next fight, maybe it'll even contribute some AOE damage if initiative works out better next time. Great class feature."
We also need to remember that all of the weapons in the playtest, ranged and melee, were fairly awful and so adding strength damage made the best of a bad situation. We'll have to see how much ranged weapons got buffed comparatively in the final release.
You're missing that one is a playtest class from a playtest that was widely acknowledged to be overpowered for many of the classes, and probably won't be that way in the final product given the Technomancer playtest and its much reduced capabilities.
Would you be willing to help me understand why the two chassis were too strong, even with the new meta. I am asking with the understanding that you're right, and I don't understand, not trying to argue with you. Because it's supposed to be compatible with PF2, and with the recent (very hated by many) exception of the remastered Oracle all 4 slot (and some 3 and 2 slot) casters in PF2 have 6 HP, no armor. It will be most compatible if it requires few balancing changes, including in class chassis assumptions. The reason given for 8 HP and light armor was to see if was necessary to survive in the "ranged meta" of Starfinder where you might get focus fired by multiple enemies more frequently than in PF2. I doubt the data showed that or playtesters as a whole demanded it. More early AC from armor is helpful because you're going to get targeted at all one on one more often, but probably GMs didn't focus casters down to the point they needed extra HP. Making SF2 spellcaster chassis in line with PF2 makes compatability guidance easier and balancing against the same monsters/encounters per day easier. Instead of having to include a recommended HP adjustment, which feels gross, to casters going one way or the other between systems, they can just say "add/remove armor."
I think the turret is competive on damage once you invest in Area Denial Turret (a 30-45' cone placed 30' away to toast an entire group) and/or Coordinated Fire (MAPless attacks from both you and your turret) at level 2, Self Destruct (one action to tell it to move with Reposition Exocortex or for you to run away, then two actions to detonate gets you a 3 action Fireball with full area), Auto Target at 6th (area fire will provide an incentive to move away for some enemies), and especially Energy Expulsion at level 10 to get a full MAP strike and full DC area blast (if your strike hits) for two actions. It's also not all about damage. With a 1st level feat you get a permanent +2 to AC if you put it between you and enemies, no taking cover action required. There's also the concealment zone and wall off an area/provide group cover options. And if they're shooting at the turret, they're not shooting at you or your allies, that's a benefit in of itself. That said, you should be able to restore it without having to destroy it yourself, and while Self Destruct is great, it becomes something of a feat tax and not applicable in every situation if you can't withdraw from the blast zone or Reposition Exocortex it somewhere that won't toast allies. It's a tech book, we may also get crafting skill feats and nanite patches to repair the turret in combat, but that's not ideal given the existing "just spend actions, if it's hurt enough" refresh option.
I'm a little worried that if you want a fully customized drone, Mechanic won't bring much to the table over taking an archetype on a better base class, at least before the capstone. It's not nothing, of course - free integrated weapon slot, free "dedication", tandem movement, and eventually a permanent damage bonus. Compared to Envoy boosting everyone's attack and damage while getting way more skill stuff, or Soldier getting to AoE and attack while being nigh unkillable, I'm a little iffy. I actually think any drone archetype is going to be missing 80% of the drone mechanic's feat options to enhance it via 1 (PC) action AOE attacks, action economy compression via Hunker Down/Instant Deployment, extra MAPless attack with Coordinated Fire, Auto Target reaction, cloaking/concealment options, difficult terrain zone, wall creation, etc. You need to be choosing wisely among those exocortex enhancement feats, nto just the standard "make drone stronger" feat lines.
These are good points. Perhaps they have some ideas they aren't playtesting for some reason. I did notice the survey asks if we want the additional space in the final release used most heavily for more feats for exocortexes, more feats for mods, or more feats for "other stuff." We didn't get much "other stuff" in the playtest.
With the mod adding int to the turret strikes, I'd be curious to see how the math works out on you both shooting vs your turret for all shots. It's really an interesting choice because adding Int to turret strikes requires you to be adjacent, which raises the value of the take cover action, too, if you invested in Shielded Turret to get Greater Cover. So you have several tactical options. Coordinated Fire plus boost the one turret shot with int, don't take cover. Coordinated Fire, don't boost, take cover. Two unboosted turret shots (maybe you need to attack two different targets), take cover. Boost two turret shots (two different targets) to add Int, don't take cover. Area Fire (with Area Denial Turret), boost Int against multiple targets, don't take cover. Take cover, boost Int, one Strike (high resistance/hardness?) Etc.
I think the issue with focusing on technological buffs is that they'll still be constrained by the overall design that buffing classes like the Bard and Envoy (and I guess Commander and Marshal archetype) fit in. You're not going to be allowed to break the math, so you'll just be making yourself baseline competent as martial with extra steps or adding a +1 to the party. But doing so via tech is going to mean item bonuses, which is very redundant and unhelpful in most cases. How do you avoid being techno barbarian or techno bard in a way that is worth doing?
I don't know, the turret allowing you to double tap anyone with full BABx2 with Coordinated Fire, or blast a group with Area Denial Turret, or Self Destruct a large group with Fireball/Mechanic Mine damage and full 20' AOE, or provide full cover and/or regular concealment, or set up a wall to stop/channel movement or provide extra cover, or shoot/pursue foes from total PC cover around covers (it has it's own sensors, right?), or chase guys down with a difficult terrain aura, etc., all sound pretty interesting to me. There's enough variety of playstyle there to not get bored and it doesn't have the lack of ranged firepower issue that the mines do.
While a drone certainly can ignore all three of the feats that give it a class DC AOE attack, I don't think it's a great idea. You'll want Intelligence for that. And with Legendary perception track, bonus advancements and feats to Crafting or Computers, and the ability to max both those and your choice of Thievery and a magic skill (helped by the Multidisciplinary Mechanic feat), you're set up to be an excellent trapfinder and disarmer. Int will help with Computers/Crafting/Arcana/Occultism - the playtest adventure hazards showed how often those come up in current designs.
"Potential crisis," please get over yourselves. Nerfing universally recognized bloated spellcasting chassis back to compatible PF2 standards won't be a crisis, it'll be what they decided made sense based on playtest data and ease of converting something like a Sorcerer or Witch over by simply giving them light armor and nothing else. If the Technomancer is being pitched with 6 HP, 3 slots, and you have to pay for your later focus spells with feats, after many people questioned whether the Mystic and WW really needed 8 HP, 4 slots, class features, and free focus spells if they wanted PF2 comptability, I think you can reasonably make some guesses that both of those classes lost some of that. Thus the playtest Techno is coming in close to the newly arrived at real baseline so it won't be a sad also-ran option when SFS picks up and you're allowed to play this class alongside the final versions of the Mystic and WW.
No. I actually had a wild prediction that I believed in with moderate confidence that the Technomancer was going to be a charisma caster who talked to machine spirits and could use social skills to open doors and help hack computers (like a late SF1 envoy alternate class feature did). That sure didn't happen.
There's some configurations where it works ok. At second level an Area Denial feat turret using the Pinpoint Shot mod can three action area fire up to a 45' cone/line using the class DC and adding on the Intelligence modifier for extra damage. No dex needed. Mines also have a x2 intelligence bonus option on top of class DC, although it costs a feat and an action to boost it on an action constrained playstyle. Yeah, drones mechanics don't have any special use for it. It's unclear for now how drones are supposed to use area weapons - if they get to use mechanic class DC that's something, at least. But unlikely.
I think the magic hacks are a problem in the way they deny the technomancer the primary benefit of what focus spells are are supposed to be: a replenishable source of combat ammunition that is stronger than a cantrip but weaker than a slot and doesn't require spending a slot. Almost all of them (weakly) enhance a slotted spell or provide a utility benefit, which you may not have (at 3 slots/level) or want to spend. Admittedly 1 action to teleport or an energy shield are good focus spells comparable to options that psychics and other casters have had before. But they didn't make you cast a slotted spell first, and there's zero offensive options. (The "change energy type" one doesn't really count.) The first Viper one is kind of sneaky good as a way to double the use of spell gems via replenishable focus spells, letting you "buy" extra slotted spells at half price, but it's still not sustainable.
One thing I'd like to see is some feat options that borrow from the Starfinder Enhanced-era menu of bonkers grenade options available to mines to give them utility, debuffing, and buffing options. They could spray out foam that provides temp HP or energy resistance, counteract a spell in their area, radiation, the quantum/time scrambling stuff for haste/slow/repositions, etc.
It imposes a reasonable restriction if your PC is 30' wide.
I think the jailbreak meant to reference spell chips, not gems, and destroyed, not broken. That would sort of make sense, but still not be fully integrated into the normal use of the ability that doesn't reference spell chips at all.
I, too, remember being ten years old and sadly learning that Christmas sales didn't really have anything to do with Jesus, Memorial Day sales didn't benefit dead armed service members, and Valentine's Day sales were offered to the single buying nonromantic items as much as couples in love. Truly, learning the basics of retail marketing is a sobering moment in every child's life.
Only You and I doesn't require you to stay within reach once you trigger it. One action trigger, one action to strike, one action to withdraw where you have cover/concealment/multiple reactive strike zones/whatever to hinder them if they chase you. The +3 to hit only matters if they can (or want to) actually attack you. They may prefer to burn their actions (possibly to no effect) trying something else. For maximum lockdown you can do something silly like trigger Only You and I then do a two action stride around a corner or close a door or something. They either play the Benny Hill chase scene with you (spending two strides as the cost of doing business) or just roll will saves to do anything else and not waste actions. If you have Restless as the Tide as your dominion epithet and a reach advantage or parity on a foe you can maximize this strategy using your free step to make them use an extra move action to close the gap on you every time you trigger Only You and I. Reach weapon, Compliant Gold for more reach, and possibly Warped by Rage for yet more reach depending on how you cycle your ikons, can give some extra control to a Only You and I plus free step and Reactive Strike strategy against a melee foe.
No, the transcendence only affects allies in your aura. It doesn't help you. I also thought this for at least a week after the book released before I caught the "ally" limitation.
RIP phantom doorknob and good alchemist bombs.
Personally, I found this decision strange, releasing it before the core book... I really didn't like it.Well, that already discourages me a little, I confess, I'm always negative when something doesn't seem pleasant to me, but anyway, I'll keep an eye out and wait for other releases, if nothing takes my priority until then... I'm sure this was easier/faster to write (didn't need much in the way of playtest finalization), and they must be desperate to book some Starfinder revenue after all this time with SF1 an abandoned lame duck. Waiting to release this book alongside the Core Rulebook at GenCon probably also seemed like a sizeable cannibalization/delayed sales risk, given that Battlecry!! is going to drop at the same time.
I don't think paizo would want a +32 damage bonus plus some dice when things like power attack do a fraction of this (even if it's supposed to be a bit better, not by that much). So I think the literal reading of increasing the damage expression as a whole to exactly what is listed in the transcendence effect is the intended one. But, both readings have some logic to them and a clarification wouldn't hurt. +32 would make it perfectly in line with what Gleaming Blade's transcend does on a fully upgraded weapon at level 20. That one can get you two hits, and that second hit will come with extra base weapon dice (one more than the bonus dice provided by Titan Breaker, so +6.5), full strength and weapon specialization flat damage (+13), and up to three rainbow runes of damage (+10.5). Add it up and that's...+30 for Gleaming Blade vs the +32 from the favorable Titan Breaker reading. Of course that depends on both Gleaming Blade's hitting vs one Titan Breaker hit. But Gleaming Blade is also more likely to get some damage from one hit vs zero for a miss on Titan Breaker. TB has higher variance, GB is more reliable, and GB can totally bypass resistances, which TB can't. I don't really care about the language arguments trying to parse what the written text means. We have two options: did Paizo intend a competent piece of game balance consistent with the other big two hander ikon, or an incompetent piece of game balance consistent with past feats like Power Attack/Vicious Swing? They've published both the good and the bad option (and many other good and bad options not under discussion here), but the good option was in the same book and same subsection as the option under discussion, and I'd prefer to assume competence by Paizo. Ergo, +32 at level 18 for Titan Breaker. But I won't be surprised if Paizo comes out in favor of the bad ability that no one should take except for flavor reaosns, that's not uncommon.
"No one at my table was overusing Sure Strike enough for it to be weird, say hundreds of people mad at not being able to use Sure Strike three consecutive times per fight."
It's not unprecedented, Michael Sayre tried to do the same thing in the Animist playtest on one of the subclasses. When challenged on whether it was a mistake he said "nope, trying it out, it's not a problem." We never got a remastered Rogue marketing blog signed by the lead designer for the remaster, but I would guess he did that one based on this single data point.
Looks like the exploits with multiple retrieval belts was closed, too; it's now an actual belt. Wayne Reynolds' artistic credbility hardest hit. Well I see Arcane cascade still is not worth entering over rechargign your Spell-Strike Class Feature. Can we just have it be a Free-Action to enter at this point? 1-3 damage isn't that special nor does it make it interesting over Spell-Striking. Make it a passive class feature, boom, problem solved. In the Fall 2027, when they finally explain instances of damage, you'll see how Arcane Cascade is an important part of stacking five instances of fire damage (cascade, flame wisp, fire rune, I'm sure there's a couple of others) on something weak to fire a single strike.
Does this link not work for you? The playtest stuff gets sent to the bottom of the forums and you can't post there but its still visible. Thanks, I didn't know where to look. But lmao, I found the post that started this crazy game of telephone that somehow evolved into a Promise to Fix the Kineticist. We're definitely looking into it, and have a couple ideas we're tinkering with to look at increasing compatibility without needing to do bespoke callouts for the kineticist in every tactic.
Was there not also an issue where the Commander couldn’t assist the kineticist/kineticist couldn’t take advantage of Commander abilities during the Battlecry playtest? Or was that not so much the Kineticist and more the wording of the Commander ability? There was one, and only one, tactic that directly impacted spellcasters by helping them with their action economy when casting a cantrip. (It was a "special" entry; the main point of the tactic was to help people switch to a ranged weapon option with better action economy.) Some people were annoyed that this helped spellcasters but not kineticists. Paizo, in the form of one employee in one post on these forums (edit: I looked, it's not in the post-playtest debriefing blog, so it was in the playtest forums that are now inaccessible), said they were looking at possibly making Commander tactics in some way help kineticists. This has since blown up into a weird, surprisingly widespread cult that believes Paizo has promised to rewrite the kineticst so that it works better with all game systems that enhance or support strikes or spells but not impulses. The easier and perhaps better thing to do is drop the cantrip reference from that Commander tactic. Spellcasters, and kinetcists, can still benefit from the generic mobility or "I carry a shield" ones if they want to. Cultist example: The new Errata this Monday the 16th should fix the Kineticist if Paizo is to stay on their word. There's no actual promise for Paizo to fulfill along these lines. If you get a single Commander tactic in the final release next August that does anything at all to help a Kineticist use an impulse, including a blast, then the one-off "maybe we will" comment of one employee will have been fulfilled.
Maya, this is almost enough to make me think they didn’t make an error when they didn’t hire me for the job.
Do you think Paizo's desired metrics are "people [being] ok with it" or "sales minus expenses"? 2024 was a very little indeed Starfinder revenue year, offset by the one time bump in PF2 remaster sales to the extent they didn't just cannibalize or pull forward their originally planned release revenue. They've raised prices, they've got a union agreement presumably constraining their labor use practices, and they're not going to want to cut headcount as part of a deliberate "publish slower to make randos on the internet potentially happier" strategy. The content isn't slowing down.
That would give it Divine Decree/Immolation/Lance/Wrath.
Several broken promises? I know about the scuffle over oracles and PFS, what are the others?A year ago I warned of dark times ahead. I suspect this is just the beginning of the decline.I really don't think that's a fair response to someone leaving for unknown reasons. Micheal obviously did great work but to suggest everything is going to decline because he left just seems disrespectful. OOOOOH. I forgot about the post-exemplar playtest claim that while exemplar was losing its ability to pick domain spells via a 1st or 2nd level feat, there was going to be an archetype to let anyone do that! People feverishly speculated about this alternative to cleric and champion as a way to get domain spell access at 2nd or at least 4th level. And in the fullness of time we got two archetypes that can grant domains! They're both rare and you enter at 12th level - Godling mythic path and Mortal Herald can-be-mythic archetype. Great job, guys, no loss to anyone's playtest exemplar builds. I think there was some other contemporaneous "Paizo's marketing was blatantly wrong and this thing just didn't show up or work the way the guy in the stream had promised" in the last few months, but the domain archetype thing kind of drove it from people's minds.
"Mythic is kind of disappointing" is more of a problem than "mythic is particularly disappointing for kineticists" (and spellcasters, and builds that rely heavily on metastrike feats/abilities instead of plain Strikes).
Rage of Elements' elementalist spell list auto expands with every future spell that has an elemental trait, at least.
W/o engraving strike you are more likely to move trace trace (repertoire of two melee relevant runes permitting) or move trace invoke (bringing your etched runes into play round 1) than move strike trace, imo. You need to make case for striking at all instead of tracing a rune or invoking multiples before you can make the case for chancing a strike plus trace combo. If a strike is truly the best option you have, where a "sure thing" traced rune isn't the superior choice, then sure, add engraving strike to it. But I don't know how often that will be the case.
I very much doubt they are looking into it. I would give good odds nothing is errata'd from War of Immortal or Divine Mysteries. The only bit that gives me pause is the exemplar MC dedication. It's so egregiously bad and hated that they may feel compelled to address it salvage their reputation, but it's so egregiously bad that they may feel they haven't had enough time to figure out how to fix it.
If it's intentional, then why is there a Runesmith pictured with a Maul? “Go find some art slop from our existing catalog that features a warrior and some glowing runes. I know 99.9% of runes stuff is spellcasting, just use anything you can find. I’ll be impressed if you can find more than two.”
snipWaste of page space.Oh yes, forgive me for using a feedback thread about a necromancer to discuss this, because summoning a gravestone giant is just so much more common in media. Sigh. And naturally, it’s perfectly fine to be rude when it’s your side doing it, isn’t it? No. And yes.
Necromancer spending six months alone in his basement morgue dissecting corpses to research, document, and study how they are physically and metaphysically put together: "Man, I sure feel wise and personable in my approach to magic!"Am I misunderstanding what a dirge is? It's an internal spiritual spellbook where you store your spell knowledge. Loser wizards write formulas in books, you make the formula and patterns echo in flesh and blood. You have to listen to/concentrate on it to prepare the energy daily, though, just like a wizard and his book.
Necromancer spending six months alone in his basement morgue dissecting corpses to research, document, and study how they are physically and metaphysically put together: "Man, I sure feel wise and personable in my approach to magic!"
Few ever complain about the Thaumaturge using Exploit Vulnerability, amulet, bell, chalice, mirror, or wand within reach of a reactive strike for some reason.
Kind of guy who only plays spellcaster and alchemists who thinks Paizo regularly provides new class options to everyone.
Do an Archives of Nethys search for "demoralize" and "feat." Tut-tut, Belittling Boast, Deimitic Display, and Menancing Prowess were all feats I found to do this with various annoying access or other restrictions. I'm sure there are more.
Several broken promises? I know about the scuffle over oracles and PFS, what are the others?A year ago I warned of dark times ahead. I suspect this is just the beginning of the decline.I really don't think that's a fair response to someone leaving for unknown reasons. Micheal obviously did great work but to suggest everything is going to decline because he left just seems disrespectful. Never forget, never forgive Meld Into Eidolon.
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