This one, single thing would have filled in all the gaps. Not the easiest thing to do, but an actual scaling system for existing equipment—not just a separate category of scalable equipment—would have made the system tremendously more robust.
Unless they're planning to bring out a massive 640-page tome like Pathfinder 2e's original corebook was, there is going to be a lot of fun toys that are going to disappear, and given that SF's publishing schedule is about half the size of Pathfinder's, no idea when they'll be coming back. This honestly may be what leaves us on SF1 for the foreseeable future. Only one player in my group is even playing an original SF1 core rulebook class; we use a tremendous number of the rules, equipment and ability additions, and quirks from the expanded book universe. It's going to be a big step backwards in content before it catches up. I'm not sure that's the end of the world, because SF1 still exists and perhaps won't get too stale in the time it takes those next 1-2 rulebooks to come out, but it does really put a damper on the excitement level for the launch of an edition.
This is not even a little bit the point of the question, but you're absolutely right—half baked was the term I was looking for
The closest analogue, I would think, is primates with prehensile feet—specifically chimpanzees and organgutans or other higher-order primates. They do, quite effectively, manipulate and consciously engage with objects with their feet when they want to use them for things that require attention and not just locomotion. To your point though, and to the point of this system. But it definitely requires more concentration than normal to do both at once. But if you give four-handed characters too many ways they can use four hands to advantage, you might as well delete all the two handed races because nobody will play them. This is the part I disagree with. Plenty of people play non-four-handed characters now, for the various benefits of those species. If you imagine racial abilities and perks in terms of a budget (let's call it 10 points), and we think of a skill bonus as a 1 point perk, darkvision or something as a 1-2 point perk, and reach maybe a 2-3 point perk, I just think extra arms has to be budgeted SUBSTANTIALLY higher than it has been— 5, 6, 7 points of the budget. If the primary perk of playing a Kasatha is the extra arms, they probably shouldn't also have other particularly strong racials - and they don't. But then you have a Skittermander, who has fourextra arms (at apparently no extra budget compared to the Kasatha), an extra move action a day (useful in literally every build), a grapple combat maneuver bonus (a rare bonus to arguably the strongest combat maneuver), and low light vision. Kasatha, to go with their two extra arms, get mobility through deserts/hills/mountains, and a bonus to culture/acrobatics/athletics checks. I really don't think the issue is the balancing of extra arms—its the balancing of certain species that have extra arms. The price for having extra arms needs to be more significant. There's no question that independently balancing the extra arms species, instead of limiting the extra arm capability broadly and universally, is more work. So is balancing rocket launchers individually, and other items that are subject to potential abuse by extra armed characters. It's the right way to do the job though, even though it's more work, because it leaves the diversity of the species in place, which was sort of the point of creating extra armed species in the first place.
So one of the things I was most excited for in enhanced was the scaling equipment system; with Starfinder only providing a 10% return for sold, used equipment (and no way to meaningfully break it down into more than that in usable crafting materials) I've always found upgrading to specific designed goals a little excessively difficult. The designers seem to have appreciated this in their explanation of the system in the Enhanced book noting that looting new weapons and armor along the way "is less optimal for players who crave continuity—either because they have class abilities that rely on using certain weapon types (like many soldier gear boosts) or because using a specific weapon over the course of their character's career has narrative value." Imagine my surprise them to realize that the list of allowable customizations is <u>very</u> limited. Certain builds that require specific categories of weapons or armor are well supported—but others are entirely omitted, either inadvertently or intentionally. What was the point of acknowledging that there are big gaps between when you can get certain types of weapons... and then not allowing for those to be filled in except in a few, specific cases? Some were presumably omitted due to their power—reach, grapple, throttle, double, entangle, flexible line, wide line, guided, ignite, modal, polarize, tail, thought, thruster) Others are crowd control or debuff related (aurora, echo, gravitation, harrying, reposition, sunder) Some I cannot imagine why you're not allowed to spend a valuable BP on this property if you want to (breach, breakdown, conceal, deflect, drain, feint, force, integrated, recall) There are a dozen critical hit effects that simply aren't available for purchase either. What happened to providing specific gear for builds that depended on it? If you need an injector weapon for your biohacker or a trip or disarm weapon, great, but I hope you haven't picked any other combat maneuver to specialize in. Surely, nobody at Paizo thought "you know what's too strong and characters definitely shouldn't be able to specialize in? Sunder." I haven't been able to find anything out there discussing this as being intentional or why it was done, but I was curious if other people had. I understand maybe not including things from adventure paths, but a lot of these are from main books - including the core rulebook itself. Are the designers just softly walking back items and systems they've created that they would undo if they could? If this was a power creep issue, it doesn't make any sense, as the custom weapons tend to have substantially higher damage potential than pre-designed weapons. Was this a simple lack of scope? If these properties were intentionally omitted, that deserved at least a mention; realistically, perhaps they should have been available at substantially higher BP cost (2, 3, 4 BP?) or with damage die limitations (like operative, explosive/blast, and energy properties got) so as to adjust the balance accordingly. Enhanced created a scaling gear system for custom gear... that is barely customizable compared to the vast universe of Starfinder gear out there. The <u>entire category</u> of powered armor was omitted from the system, as were shields, as were I'm sure a ton of other categories of things I haven't caught because I've only played a few classes (are Solarians entirely left out in the cold as well?) Am I crazy? Or is this system just... half finished, at best? |
