oimandibloons's page

I'm sorry that you are sad.

And if the playtest version is decided to be too strong and is reined in for the release, then people will naturally like the playtest version better because it is stronger.

Too strong? How so? Would you say that In The Spotlight was too powerful during the playtest?

Personally the direction taken for Spotlight Envoy was not clearly signposted and now a few builds that were anticipated from the playtest don't really function well anymore and that's not great.

For what it's worth, I'm Okay with how Envoy is now. It's still a potent martial leader class that can put in work with skills and other actions that aren't directives. Ironing out the weird bits of the two directives I brought up should smooth it over for me though.

If we're talking about 2e Vanguard/Entropath class schticks, I'm going to fling these ideas at a metaphorical wall and see what sticks.

-12 + CON HP
-Expert unarmored defence
-Reaction to resist damage directed to it or an ally (specifics can be workshopped)
-Stances that give specific unarmed strikes and/or Area Fire effects.
-Big punchy attack you can do after doing the damage-absorbing reaction (similar to swashbuckler's finisher)

In the playtest the Envoy had the problem of being too one-note, what with one directive available at level 1 and more through feats. However, Acts of Leadership at level 6 highly increased flexibility. Adding subclass directives and moving Acts of Leadership to level 1 would have squared the circle in my opinion.

However, the released state of Envoy makes me very sad.
-The flavourful skill feats (Inappropriate Joke, Sparkling Performance, Dazzling Performance) getting removed does affect Envoy because it's a leader class that doubles as a skill user, and as such has a PF2 Investigator amount of skill increases.
- The structure of directives changing to the 1 action bonus with 2 action Lead By Example really feels restrictive to the point of "boring".
- Limiting directives to once per *round* feels unnecessary (though I wonder if it was balanced like Pathfinder Bard's Composition Spells).
- Now onto two subclasses and their directives:
-- Guns Blazing's Ready Arms directive (two action) does not say that you can Strike/Area Fire/Auto Fire with any gun you may be holding, and requires you to change weapons (drawing/swapping arms/swapping) to even shoot the damn thing.
-- In The Spotlight is very perplexing. In the playtest, this subclass at lvl 6 got to Lead By Example by issuing a second directive, thus acting as an extremely versatile martial support. Now, it's a soft-locked melee build that does not have the hardiness as From The Front. And Dance Partner confounds me even more because:
--- It nominates an ally *within ten feet* of me. Then I stride, and then ally strides to me.
--- It then counts any enemy we both "threaten" as "flanked". Now I do not know 1e jargon but I've been told that "threatening" refers to "having enemies within my melee reach".
--- After that, we're both concealed to ranged attacks *within ten feet of us*.
First of all, why is there this limitation of 10 feet for both picking my ally AND being concealed to ranged attacks? Furthermore I do not believe this subclass has the hardiness of From The Front to be able to withstand any amount of melee pressure that ends up being more action intensive than a Pathfinder Rogue feat (Gang Up at level 6).

As for what I'd do with the subclass directives:
- Ready Arms: The two action Lead By Example can simply be used to Strike/Area Fire/Auto Fire and then an ally can spend a reaction making a ranged weapon Strike.
- Dance Partner: For all this action intensiveness, I'd rather nominate an ally within at least 30 ft of me, and be concealed against ranged attacks within 30 ft of me. Furthermore, being limited to melee targets in this Ranged Meta will be difficult to justify using over Get 'Em, so I'd've preferred if "enemies you both threaten" were changed to "enemies within reach or the first range increment of both of you and your weapons", for added versatility and action-intensive ranged flanking.

Horrible that these corporate twerps think they can just take stock they don't own and/or got on credit and sell it without paying you.

They should either not being able to do it or beyond forced to consider you a debtor they have to repay with the liquidation.

Even then the liquidation will hurt book companies because the stock will be liquidated for pennies and will end up in clearance stores that won't give any of the sales to the publisher will also selling them cheaper.

Buy direct, folks! Avoid clearance emporiums for books if Diamond gets away with this. They are basically trying to fence stolen goods!

From what I can find, Paizo has claimed creditorship, so at least the company has that recourse.

My personal unannounced dreams of SF2e are:

-Nanocytes becoming a martial class whose gimmick is controlling multiple AoEs.
-Vanguard as a 12+CON HP class with expert in unarmored defence and a class gimmick of taking damage to gain energy to discharge in an attack option depending on stance. Entropy and other physics-y flavour highly desired.
-Weapons upgrades that are basically the SF2e equivalent of reinforced stocks and bayonets, but also expanded to d4 pistols that attach to melee weapons.
-Archetypes that are designed around focusing on one ranged weapon group, like an archetype around plasma weapons or laser weapons, etc.
-A 2-slot prepared occult spellcasting class that can create hardlight walls at-will, and have burst damage focus spells (and feats) revolving around old-school prismatic magic. Think PF2 necromancer but hardlight walls.
-Any indication of the abandoned Armored Mage class that was talked about in either PaizoCon or GenCon 2024.

Glad you've taken notice of the issues with both classes, though I am still concerned that you haven't mentioned the issues with Robot Companions.

On a mostly unrelated note, Minibots sound kind of like purchasable Familiars. I wonder how they're going to compare once we actually see them in action.

For posterity's sake, which issues are you referring to?

Great writeup!

Lengthening the duration of mods and making them usable by allies is great to see, and I'm happy that changes to turrets will be made to make it less confusing. (Still wondering about the fate of the Integrated Weapon Mount drones with area/automatic weapons.)

Also good to see that some of the focus for technomancer is being redirected away from spellshapes, and hopefully this leads to a class that is less slot hungry than even the PF2e wizard. Also, I get the sneaking suspicion that minibots will be Starfinder's equivalent to familiars.

I was wondering about this too, I can't find any guidance for this. All other animal companion abilities that have a DC tell you how to determine it on a case by case basis.

Even on the mechanic, the drone exocortex feats that give your drones stuff like spinning blades call for the Mechanic's class DC. Maybe this is belated playtest feedback but I think Integrated Weapon Mount, if it's going to make it to final release, should have a clause about Area and Auto Fire using, idk, Mechanic class DC or something.

If I install a Stellar Cannon or Machine Gun on my drone with an Integrated Weapon Mount, am I able to use Area/Auto-Fire? If so, what DC do I use?

Welcome to the team, Aras! Also happy to have a fellow engineering student-turned-2eFinder Person aboard. ONE OF US!!

Looking through the feats, Cloud Storage and Void Warranty(!) are utterly hilarious! Seriously, whoever wrote Void Warranty has earned themself a confection of their choice. The general design of feats around the vitality network is also very lovely and is leaving me wanting for MOAR.

The spells are very flavourful in this field test. I'm particularly jazzed about more one-action cantrips, and Doom Scroll is hilarious.

With regards to the 4-slot-per-rank caster topic, I, as someone who fully intends to mix and match PF2 with SF2, am curious about how sorcerers, wizards, and witches will fare compared to the beefier mystic. (Potential material for a Pathfinder-Starfinder crossover supplement? Call it Path to the Stars? Would be very funny. Also the thought of a technomagus or honestly any PF2 class in a high-tech sci-fi makes me giddy.)

QuidEst wrote:

I do feel pretty strongly that arcane goes against both Mystic's identity being not the rote formulae of arcane, and equally against arcane's biggest limitation of not having healing magic. The class's focus on the bonds between people is very occult in feeling, but that doesn't carry over to arcane at all.

While for the most part I agree, it's the least likely to get a connection and probably should be, don't forget that it's happened before.

This feels like it would be in a Galactic Magic-esque supplement, and more likely as a class archetype of the Mystic than just a connection (mainly because the arcane spell list is designed to not have any healing at all).

I think I see a technomancer being more drawn to occult than divine magic. (Then again I'm a PF2 player who doesn't have it in him to try Starfinder 1e.) Also there is potential for a lot of focus spells (subclass focus spells or otherwise) that could be drawn from the magic hacks in the Enhanced Technomancer (as seen in Maple Table's vid ofc). (And if the Mystic field test is anything to go by, one-action cantrips might just get to be very juicy for action economy purposes)

While I can see the Technomancer focusing on the software side of things to better differentiate it from the Mechanic, I'd instead like to see those sorts of distinctions broken up via subclass.

So, the Technomancer as a whole would focus on the broader integration of magic and technology, but each subclass would focus on different types of technology. You'd have a subclass for software, one for hardware, one for wetware, "animaware" (soul-based technology), etc.

To add onto that, a feat like the Psychic's Parallel Breakthrough could work here too. Maybe it can be called "Import Library" to keep up the programmer theme.