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Just a corrective note on the above... Pg.167 of the rulebook states the game assumes that in typical settlements you can find and purchase anything with an item level no greater than your character level + 1, and at major settlements items up to your character level + 2. So my notes about level availability get even worse with more liberal DMing, and could include getting a 2d8 Devastation blade at level 5... Completely eliminating any advantage you got from weapon crystals at level 5. Getting the 2d6 at level 6 is simply playing catch up...

I wanted to just thank everyone who frequents my guide... As of the time of me writing this it has gotten over 10,000 hits. Amazing. I am touched.

Its a solid guide for a brand new class, in a brand new game system! Thanks for putting in the time and effort of writing it! Please don't think my criticisms of the class design is meant to take away from your guide, because it isn't meant to do that at all. Huzzah to you, good sir.

Are you talking about where they compared it to the best TWO handed weapons? and it was still a marginal difference?
Also you cna...

Yes, yes I am. That's kind-of a no-brainer. With a lack of shields in the game (other than the Phase Shield armor upgrade at level 6, which requires heavy armor, that normal solarians cant get, by the way) there really is no reason why anyone would ever use a 1H weapon. Some may say that having the other arm open for a small arms weapon is advantageous... Considering you can hold a 2H weapon with one hand and draw the small arms as part of your move action with BAB +1, they'd be wrong. So yes, let's look at 2H weapons.

lvl 1: Tactical Doshko, 1d12 (unwieldy) - Sure you can only make 1 attack per round with it, but considering you're only level 1 and probably not willing to take the -4/-4 of multiattack, chances are 1 attack per round is all you really want. Marginality is subjective, but personally, I don't consider twice the damage potential to be marginal. My DM let us have up to level+1, as suggested in the Core Rulebook, page 167. So instead I took the Pike below...

lvl 2: Tactical Pike, 1d8 (reach) - Now here, I'll admit that 1d6 vs 1d8 is a rather small upgrade... But to me, the biggest reason to use a Pike over a Solarian weapon is because reach weapons are awesome. Those of us who are long-time gamers know the power of reach weapons... And if you aren't, I'd suggest looking up D&D 3.5 Spiked Chain Fighter builds.

lvl 4, Carbon steel curved blade, 1d10, 1d6 bleed on crit - Like the Doshko above, the marginality of 1d10 vs 1d6 is subjective, but I consider that significant. -But if you crit? Forget about it... I'd personally keep my pike, but min/maxers will want to swap to this from the Doshko, since you probably have enough +hit to use multistrike.

But any of these three options are better than your crappy 1d6 weapon manifestation, that does absolutely nothing special.

lvl 5 - Solarians finally get weapon crystals! So your damage potential goes up to 1d6 + 1d4, average of 6. We are finally getting close to the 1d12 Doshko (avg 6.5) our Armor Solarian had at level 1! /golfclap And it still doesn't compare to the battlefield control you have with a reach weapon. (pike)

Things get a whole lot better at level 6 when you finally get 2d6, but until then... There is absolutely no reason to take Weapon Manifestation. None. Nadda. Zilcho.

So you are basically saying because the Solarian doesn't use Dex to-hit and damage, that Solar Weapon does 1d6 damage at 1st level, and because its key stat is Charisma, it was poorly designed?

I didn't say anything about Dexterity. You did. ;) You're talking about melee stuff, where I was talking about Solarian primary stat for DC, resolve, etc.

If they went to DEX-to-hit & damage, they'd need to do it for the whole game system, not just for the Solarian. Like they did in 5e D&D. I'm not against that idea at all, but it'd need to be a system-wide change, and would require a lot of rebalancing.

But yes, I do think the 1d6 base dmg is indeed a problem at low levels. Clearly when a level 5 Solarian with weapon manifestation can ignore a primary feature of their class by picking up a Pike or Doshko, and do more damage... That's a problem.

But changing it to 1d8 isn't the direction I'd go personally, because, as you showed, multiplying that to 2d8 as they level up becomes problematic. If I were to design it, I'd probably make the weapon manifestation be whatever weapon the solarian manifests, (analog weapons only, of the appropriate level range of course) and use the appropriate dice and rules for that weapon. That way they are more-or-less equal to whatever other characters have.

This would also opens up the possibly of balanced DEX-based solarians, using operative weapons. I find it annoying that Solarians can't take advantage of the "operative" feature on a lot of weapons. They probably wouldn't be very good without an operative's trick attack damage, but at least it'd be a possibility if a player wanted to go that direction.

But back to Charisma, the problem is complicated, but boils down to this: You can demand three stats from any particular class, but demanding four is too much. This goes all the way back to 1st edition AD&D paladins that needed STR, WIS, CON and CHA all to be any good. This was fixed in later editions that took the focus off of Wisdom and Charisma, and completely eliminated the need for Wisdom at all in 5th edition. A Light armor wearing Solarian is no different, because light armor means you must have DEX. Why do you think this guide recommends taking Heavy Armor proficiently so early? It really is a great choice, not only for the reasons detailed in this guide, it solves the DEX problem.

The alternative is to make Charisma a dump stat, and use revelations that don't use DC's, and live with reduced Resolve points. There's plenty of Solarians that do this, and that's pretty sad, in my opinion. But giving Solarians Heavy Armor proficiency baseline solves these problem. And I'd rather see that than changing Charisma as their primary stat.

Just my two cents worth. Sorry to derail the thread.

We've only gotten in four game sessions, but we've already made some changes/deviations from the rulebook for my Solarian. Nothing major, but a couple significant quality of life things:

Solar Weapon Manifestation: Solarian can turn the mote into any analog melee weapon they choose from the basic melee weapons and advanced melee weapons list, up to Level = Solarian level + 1.

Still need to figure out how that's going to scale at 6th+ level, but that's at least a starting point so a Solarian with a Weapon Manifestation may actually want to USE it over a tactical Pike...

I wanted a tanky Solarian, so our DM also added in a Phase Shield as a purchasable item at level 1 for 300 credits, instead of the Armor upgrade only available at level 6 for 4,325 credits. He also let the armor manifestation stack with any armor, not just light armor. We thought about adding heavy armor proficiency baseline, but holding off with that for now.

More later.

An [any race] Icon Solarion that livestreams their fights like some sort of futuristic version of Twitch. Their gear has NasCar-style sponsorship logos all over it, and their XP is tracked in universe via their subscriber count.

LOL, this is literally one of the example characters on pages 10 and 11 of the Starfinder Core book...

I think the quoted section speaks for itself. The variation for them is fairly limitless.

When my group talked about it, we just said it could be most anything (within reason) from the bajillion pop culture examples out there: K2SO & C3PO in Star Wars, the "Arnold" T101 in Terminator, Cylons in Battlestar, Data in Star Trek, Bishop in Aliens... You name it.

We talked about whether an Android could reasonably pass as a human, (and while I think that's a question for your DM), we decided that if that's what the player was shooting for, yes, definitely. But it may not be hard for others to figure out you were an android without skill checks if they were actively studying you or interacting with you (see "Flat Affect" class feature), and especially if combat broke out where you were wounded.

-But on that same note, an Android could also play a lot of things off as Augmentations and cybernetics... So there you go.

24) Have a dockmaster in the port that authorizes all departures. Any that aren't authorized has to deal with a plurality of laser turrets...