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I like the look of the Cyborg It seems like a really strong option even the only thing you ever grab it for is the initial perk of having it as your versatile heritage. That is a lot of extra augment slots without a lot of investment if you don't need/want some other versatile heritage.
So... there's a general/diplomacy skill feat called "Chat, Help!" where as a free-action when you roll initiative you can recall knowledge using performance. Yup you need pretty good performance and need to be live streaming but I can see envoys/luminary rocking this feat as it is both fun and makes sense for those types of characters.
Paywall should almost become a domain spell for Abadar. Trivial cost for civilized people and impassable to those who don't embrace civilization or can't such as animals. It just seems to be super thematic for an adabarian priest to use. I would also agree on emojis becoming a universal language. Given how wild and diverse the amount of species there are out there in starfinder emoji shorthand universal symbols makes a lot of sense.
Viper looks very strong. Being able to basically pick up effectively wands/scrolls from any tradition and just pop them off I think must make them probably the most out of the box flexible spell caster out there. You don't even need to mess around to grab them and hold them to use them. Just stick them in the backpack or pocket and blast them off as needed.
Yup the ooze type things are mostly from engulfing type abilities where they just glob over you so effectively share your space.
I can see a lot of turret and drone mechanics dipping mines. Even just the basic mines and mine functionality could be a damn good option to start stuff off that won't eat MAP for the turret or interfere much with the drone.
I noticed the turret healing as well. I would have to play with it but it looks like they are in a better spot for what they can do if their turret gets broken but not destroyed which was an awkward spot for them before. Mines continue to look really strong. If you just want to blow stuff up/slather on debilitating conditions and maybe even aoe heal it covers the bases. What they showed from the drone path looked better but did not give us a look at the drone modifications so hard to say what was cleaned up/updated from beta which I am super curious in.
Ah yeah they work a lot better with the recharging pool like alchemists bombs. Makes sure you can always toss out a couple mines before having to go back to casting gun a lot not that mechanics are slouches at blastin fools.
Really happy to hear about all of the Technomancer and Mechanic changes! Do we know at all if the Mechanic's Mines still get to refresh like Versatile Vials every 10 minutes? The article indicates they get 2 back every 10 minutes along the lines of the way VV recharge. EDIT I am really looking forward to seeing the mechanic stuff. I want a drone mechanic so I am curious as to the feat fixes/clean up which seems like the bulk of what they needed to work well.
I'm confused. The magnetar rifle says its proficiency is advanced?Magnatar rifle is a good example of some of the oddness. There are a few great area/automatic weapons but they are advanced. But due to how area weapon works their advanced prof only ever matters for soldiers. That is what I am reading as well so unless somebody uses some weird way like that erubian prop thing to make advanced weapons use martial prof it is another case of there being very good simple weapons and advanced ones but with the martials being weirdly situational with only the plasma pistol being a more reasonable upgrade over laser rifles.
Most of the critters I can think of that are reach 0 and not tiny tend to be oozes/swarm type critters. Stuff that is basically engulfing their target.
Magnatar rifle is a good example of some of the oddness. There are a few great area/automatic weapons but they are advanced. But due to how area weapon works their advanced prof only ever matters for soldiers. I think the main need is some options in more general use martial pistols/rifles. Right now there is mostly the plasma "pistol" and the sniper rifles currently.
Yup if you ever see reach 0 it means it has to be in the space as what it is attacking. You see this with tiny critters and some other things as well.
This is one thing I really like in starfinder 2. Laser rifles/pistols are very legit quality weapons that basically anybody can wield. It sort of makes sense it is effectively the most point and shoot style weapon possible. No recoil/no bullet drop just point at target and pull the trigger. I think the issue is we don't have the full assortment of martial weapons currently. There are good melee ones but the ranged ones are sporadic and often pretty situational. This is where I hope they focus the new weapons the player core has plenty of strong advanced weapons and the simple weapons available are really good but they need more martial weapons.
Still if necromancers are considered a common class then smart enemies should have some clue that necros can use them to do things. The first time they eat a reactive from one casters are going to have some reason to use an attack to clear a thrall from threat range before they cast.
I can see smart enemies trying to ignore thralls at the start of the battle but after the necro uses some for focus shennigans with explosions/bursts of bones and what not they have to make a choice. Do I let an enemy keep building up this resource they will use to attack us or do we spend some actions to thin the herd. If an enemy just ignores thralls completely that just cranks up the amount of stuff necros can do and leaves land mines around the map just ready to be ordered around/blown up or otherwise utilized. That is the push and the pull of thralls weak enough you want to ignore them but dangerous resources if you do. I would imagine if you are a necro and you are constantly having to work from zero thralls at the start of every round it lowers your versatility of what you are doing a lot.
Someone should flag the plasma rifle thing for errata... I think the stats in Player Core are actually for the rifle, just with the wrong artwork and name, lol.It's all just weird in general. It's called a a plasma caster, the description says it's a pistol and some things refer to a a plasma rifle. And it seems like there should be both a plasma pistol and a plasma rifle. The SF2 book packed a ton of stuff in so not surprising that they could not include everything they wanted to. With the next two big books being tech related that should go a long way into filling any holes in available gear that need filling.
For intelligent enemies they have to make the calculation can I safely ignore this thrall or do I want to clear some out to avoid having them blown up in my face/ turned into a blizzard of bone shards/a bone spear or other antisocial events. So even though they know thralls are not directly much of a threat there are still reasons for intelligent enemies to "waste" attacks clearing out the thrall herd a bit.
Honestly it seems like sending mindless thralls around to trip into traps/open doors thing seems like a pretty normal expected thing to do with a necromancer. If you want trapped doors have them be locked and have trap go off only when door is opened. Thrall can't lock pick. It really should not slow down game play too much just have them lay out what they are in general doing and go accordingly. A lot of the thrall types are going to be a lot lighter than a human the ghosts/skeleton for sure are simply not going to be heavy enough to trigger a lot of pressure plates aimed at human/larger prey. You could also have magic traps that have wards to not trigger on undead which would make sense in a lot of crypts/runes as those may be the expected defense force so no point having your own mindless guardians tripping your own traps.
I think for tech revolutions the weapons I hope help cover a few gaps in the current selection. You get things like the plasma "pistol" that is two handed and some gods having a domain weapon of plasma rifle which implies a plasma rifle should exist haha. 6 pages of new weapons should help add a bunch of options and given the next big book appears to be another tech book I think we will be in a pretty good place.
This is going to be one of those sleeper spells that makes GMs properly read the falling rules for potentially the first time. It is really some road runner v coyote hilarity for sure. That is a spell that is totally going in my spell book on any character capable of using it.
Those necrogliders tend to be fighters based off some larger carrier ship so would make some sense if they can tie in with a bigger ships sensors to extend their range. I also assume there probably is some kind of scan target/use sensor action that probably lets you spend an action to focus further out.
Upside is if you are playing a flurry ranger they do what they say on the Tin. If that calls to the primal hunter then this is a feature not a bug. But for others yeah I cast arrows ever action can get a bit dull but they are REALLY GOOD at it so at least you feel useful/effective.
It does sounds like they are leaning in more towards letting players make use of their classes strengths on the ship and not just focusing on a few specific skills and if you don't take them be kinda useless. I am looking forward to see how this plays out I think this is probably a better direction than a full on tactical format when you have all your people driving the same bus.
Eidolons tend to be pretty solid at grappling/tripping you can get their main attacks with those as traits and the abberant one seems like a really solid new addition. The initial ability of reactive strike vs anything hitting your pet at level one is really legit. I think necro could be an interesting archetype for a summoner the ability to throw out some more bodies and some good 1-2 action stuff to do. I am not sure about guardian though you really want things trying to punch your pet not taunting them away from pet but if you can get them held/tripped could work nicely.
Yeah, Kineticist versatile blasts swapped earth to poison. Wood is also poison for whatever reasonIn PF1, yeah. Not in PF2.I thought acid was associated with Earth just like cold is associated with Water and electricity is associated with Air.On the topic of Rune traditions, does anyone else find it strange that Thullax, Rune of Corrosion is Arcane rather than Primal?The other offensive damaging runes may be primal, but they also have elemental connections, unlike acid. Seems like a fair enough distinction to put it under arcane instead. I always saw this as earth = inorganic poisons wood = organic poisons.
At least with the mechanic after the end of playtest errata and updates seemed pretty solid and playable. I am pretty confident it is going to be in good shape. Technomancer is going to be more interesting to see its final form. Of the two technomancer needed more work to flesh it out and add the tech to the mancer part more solidly.
For pressure loss I suspect it will be like guardians of the galaxy ships if your hull gets breached some kind of emergency force field pops up to keep the insides inside and the outsides outside. Given even basic body armors are described as having forcefields to do stuff like this it seems odd to not expect starships to have even more robust internal shield options. Use of force fields could also work for fire control allowing you to seal off small effected areas and evac atmo in just those rooms boom no more fire. We shall see what the rules actually say but given hardlight is a thing in the setting and complex environmental sealing forcefields are common it opens up what you can do for ship layouts a lot especially to have crew with different atmospheric/pressure likes/dislikes.
That matches with the floormap of the ship used in the nova rush/and the eox AP. The halls all were pretty set for letting large sized folks get around and a lot bigger/more open room to fit your full catalog of rando alien players.
Reapers get martial weapon access so step one is find a good reach weapon. They have a lot of tools that make good use of extended reach and being able to be close enough to chop something without pulling a reactive strike is pretty key.
I believe he might also feel weak because of your specific playstyle. Versatile vials are the equivalent of focus spells: quick to use, quick to replenish. But since you usually chain encounters without time to pause, your alchemist will probably feel the lack of resource. In theory this effects alchemists less than focus classes. They regain VV charges without having to do any specific action just the passing of time. No need to stop to do it every 10 minutes you get more vials.
You are correct that thrown weapons are not ammunition. I think shuriken are flagged as ammunition.
Tandem movement is nice for more overall ability. Tandem movement for you and pet to do a move action then act together to do your normal stuff. Still I don't think it is mandatory really depends on how you want to play. The benefit for tandem movement is for one action you and your pet can do a move and then you can use your remaining 2 actions to act together for you and your pet so basically gives you one extra overall action. If you have a plant eidolon probably don't have much need/use for tandem movement. The plant is going to sit there and just dominate a large area of the battlefield and not need/want to move much but some other eidolons could benefit from more movement for repositioning.
If there's hope for giantkin, at the very least, Starfinder was pretty willing to have giantkin as a playable race, so we can likely count on that thanks to compatibility. There is a starfinder 1e planet that is totally giant controlled so having a giantkin option would make sense. Frankly once you allow dragonkin as playable I don't see hill or stone giant being that much more wild as a player option.
The Scorpion Animal instinct for the Remastered Barbarian. Reach Unarmed is back. Is your war cry I PINCH!
For soldiers proficiency does matter for making their primary attacks but for everybody else as they say close counts in auto guns and rocket launchers. When you can lay down explosions and copious amounts of automatic fire precise accuracy is not really needed so it does sort of make sense.
It always seemed weird to me that wizards of all casters seem to have kinda meh focus spells. As sort of the master of arcane magic one would think they should have pretty top tier focus spell options.
For full context this character is a level 7 skeleton wizard runelord of gluttony and I am spending a month of downtime (or more) retraining my entire class to Necromancer. I am also swapping out some items, like my Mage's Hat for a Pendant of the Occult, and my customized staff will be slightly different. So I decided on Reach of the Dead over Death Speaker. I also grabbed Bone Burst, Bone Barrage and Widespread Fascination for spirit tap.Well in that case perhaps a better level 1 feat is in order. I have natural ambition as a skeleton that used to be a human, but my GM turned on ancestry Paragon haha.I recommend Reach of the Dead. It is INCREDIBLY versatile, especially when many of your focus spells have a limited range. Oh yeah then for sure pick up reach of the dead if you are basically starting them at level as it is easy to pick up one of the other tasty focus spells AND get the reach right away. I was plinking around with some friends just messing around and at level 1 having corpse explosion, bone spear and then in my case the spirit lifetap one. It felt REAL strong right out of the gate having a real strong aoe fort save, strong line reflex save and a solid utility heal option.
Well in that case perhaps a better level 1 feat is in order. I have natural ambition as a skeleton that used to be a human, but my GM turned on ancestry Paragon haha.I recommend Reach of the Dead. It is INCREDIBLY versatile, especially when many of your focus spells have a limited range. I think the two hot items as level 1 feat is reach of the dead which as you say is just excellent but I was playing around with the one that gives you an extra fascination focus spell. Starting at level 1 with 3 focus points and being able to have 3 of the strong focus spells right from the jump is tempting. I think if you are not expecting to get to high level starting with the extra focus spell probably is the play I will go with. If the adventure is likely to get to mid high levels reach of the dead is way way better as you are going to get extra focus stuff soon enough.
Also a reasonable third attack in a round for an alchemist if the necro does not care about losing a thrall. At that point extra damage is extra damage.
I thought they were a mix with tian ancestry given there is a viable land bridge between that part of the world and tian xia.
That was most likely a Harm font Cleric.I ran a society game 5th level where the user has 5 slots to do that. So every round they could spend a slot to heal everyone and harm everyone. If you take invert harm more of a two trick pony. You have a strong offensive spell that is also a strong support spell. Pretty efficient for at two slot caster. Given they are going to be leaning on mostly focus spells and their cantrips for a lot of their diversity of offensive/utility powers allocating spell slots for a harm that is also a strong heal seems pretty reasonable for at least your top few spell levels.
Presumably they will be able to manipulate their shape so you probably get a bunch of pseudopods like the new ooze eidolon.
Almost every class seems good or good enough early. What separates the classes is how they scale to the high levels. That scaling concerns me since my games tend to move as fast as possible to level 10 plus. Yeah that would be the trick here how well they maintain at high level but they have excellent feats that power up their bread and butter create thrall then boss thrall around loop that it at least on paper looks like they should have really good endurance.
Necromancer has the chassis that Wizard wishes it had. 2 slots per level and a pile of useful and powerful focus spells. I was plinking around with a necro on pathbuilder and realized you can at level one if you take natural ambition or get it some other way can start level 1 with three focus spells/points. With my main spirit fascination I had corpse explosion and took bone spike with the extra fascination level 1 feat. That gives at level 1 a strong aoe fort save focus spell 1 line aoe reflex save focus spell and a utility drain/debuff and heal ally focus spell. Given they also can get two back focus point per 10 minute rest and puppeter can once per day get one extra by eating a thrall. That is a crap load of power right out of the gate. Then they also have the basic 1 action cantrip to boss thralls around seems like the spell slots are going to be for utility or special use or high damage aoe situations. Two spell slots looks like it should be plenty.
I like the rarity system. It helps give GM some idea as to what should be just available and what may require a bit of thought if the GM wants it in his adventure. In my groups a lot of the uncommon stuff is available if you pick a background/nationality it would make sense. Like if you really want a katana and you make your character from tian xia then no reason to not allow it. Other stuff tends to be for more exciting loot in dungeons and adventuring. If your character has all the spells/items they want what is their reason/goal adventuring. If they already have everything they want why bother? Rare and uncommon and even relic stuff are goals to acquire in an adventure where you go into strange places and find ancient secrets and items.
I think this change was done just to bring the archetype in line with the necromancer class which had those traits but the archetype was missing them. Reapers are a bit tricky and I would not be surprised if eventually the errata reaper summon thrall specifically for that subclass to ditch those traits.
I just found out that the wonderful folks at Archives of Nethys have Impossible Magic up already! Nice my book got delayed in shipping so nice to be able to at least read stuff there until I get mine.
Could be a number of things. We know of ancient advanced civilizations, cross galaxy magical teleportation, slower than light colonization ships. But there is also actual divine intervention options gods nudge/forge races into their own images.
I suspect if you are going to go out and explore a new planet there will be a tendency to visit ones you suspect would have a compatible biosphere. That said with tech armor even aliens with wildly divergent breahting requirements are pretty easy to deal with and almost any space station/space ship should be able to fill a living quarter with whatever air mix/pressure needed.
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