siegfriedliner's page

Dwarf fighters can build themselves pretty much your going to be slow so I commend unburdened iron and heavy armour.

Then it comes down to how you perceive yourself fighting if you want to wield two weapons double slice is almost mandatory.

If you want to be a duelist wielding a one handed weapon in one hands and grappling manuevering with the other then snagging stance is great, so is combat grab and dueling parry at 2. I recommend sudden charge as generally useful even more for the slow dwarf.

For all maritals I rate speed increasing items and feats, so maybe get fleet and boots of bounding at later levels as having to spend another action or not getting to strike because your off by 5 or 10 feet of movement and can't reach an enemy is always annoying.

This isn't really a feat advice but if you wield a polearm or reach weapon your reactive strike feature will likely end up being substantially more powerful and see quite a few reach fighters with slam down who are looking to create as many reactions triggers as possible.

Transpose is a tenth level summoner feat that lets you switch places with your eidolon (via teleportation) it's kind of cool.

I was thinking that for a necromancer having a similar feat to switch positions with their thralls would be very cool and would add some mobility to thralls they don't currently have.

One of the concerns people have is runes stacking together to do a massive amount of damage.

I was wondering if the solution could be that when you invoke two damage ruins instead of getting one each of effect you get a new composite effect based on both those runes.

In practice it would mean you would need a smaller number of starting runes to balance the number of combination effects but I recon it would be pretty cool to be able to combo your runes into different effect.

Personally if I wanted to make the rune smith more martial, I would create resonance effects where a rune inscribed on your weapon interacts with a rune inscribed on the enemy for some sort of effect alongside invoking one of the runes.

Like for example if you had a wind rune on your weapon and the enemy had a fire rune whacking them would instead of the usual firey burst effect create a flaming vortex ring that does perhaps half damage but imbolised on a failed save and does some additional damage if they are still immobilised in the ring at the end of their next turn.

Quote:

This is one of the things which I think shows how what the hobby treats as the traditional view on what meta-gaming is and what should be done about it are rooted in inherently GM-versus-players mentality.

To be honest, calling "metagaming" is usually a way to try to bludgeon disruptive players back into line. I don't think there's a consensus view on what is and isn't metagaming—and there definitely won't be one for a game designed to be a tactical game like PF2E.

Heck, "metagaming" is viewed very unusually in most online 2E discussion spaces. For example, when was the last time you heard anyone say, "But your magus has no reason to suddenly gain psychic powers—that's metagaming!" Yet that is precisely one way (and a very common way) to bludgeon people with the metagaming hammer in other games. "Why are you doing this optimized build that makes no sense for you in-character? That's metagaming!"

I also think there's never been a clear line across the hobby on what metagaming even is. A lot of puzzle-filled dungeon crawls are fairly metagamey, and are designed as challenges to the player rather than a challenge to the player's character. Is it metagaming to use OSR tactics in these situations, like the 10ft pole or using water to check for traps? Does it depend on if your character would think of it themselves? Different tables tend to fall in different places on this issue.

Besides, even if the person described in the original post is clearly being a bit silly, I think there's reasonable arguments not far from where they are. Things that are good play (like using Bon Mot before Synesthesia) can indeed begin to feel a bit metagamey to some sensibilities. I can reasonably see someone asking, "Why do you always insult them before you cast spells at them? That's oddly calculated and repetitive. Would your character really do that? Isn't it pretty mean? You're so nice out of combat." Likewise, it'd be fair to ask, "Why are you casting Fear all the time? Do you enjoy people being scared...

I take it as written that caster know that irritated and afraid enemies are more susceptible to mental magic and ruthlessly exploit any advantage they can get. Because exploiting all advantages is the only way to become and old or experienced adventurer.

Ravingdork wrote:

"our characters don't possess any knowledge of the game's mechanics; of every +1 that they can get. I'm not going to metagame."

Nice. Toxic metagaming in the opposite direction.

Yes, a certain level of metagaming is necessary for the players to be able to tell a shared story.

There is also a certain amount of 'railroading' that is necessary too.

I always assumed characters new how their mechanics work so s rogue knows that they are good at taking advantage of an enemy bring distracted by an ally.

Rune of Clumsiness
Whilst inscribed on a person they are clumsy 1

When invoked they must make a reflex save or fall prone and take some bludgeoning damage from a dramatic prattfall. Possibly 1d6 per two levels due to the inclusion of the prone effect.

Damaging runes scale in line with blast spells (fireball, lightning bolt etc) at 2d6 those damages can be fair high and usually just above that of a strike and are balanced against being two actions and only once per turn.

Now from reading the feats and actions are designed with spamming runes in mind so you can have 2-3 going off per average per round with a little optimisation. So it appears that the runes have been designed to be used several times a turn like strikes but without the limitations of MAP and with damage on par or better than strikes which seems stranger.

What is even stranger is how throughly the designers have been conservative especially in the playtest before this in limiting the damage of at will spell like abilities for example the kineticists could only dream of having a damaging effect that scales at 2d6 each level where the runic smith can do it multiple times per turn and later include some area effects with considerably smoother action economy.

Which has me questioning why the change to a more adverenturous design choice.

So one damage invocations seem to be appropriate in terms of damage for two actions.

So then balance wise unless they substantially nerf the damage they are going to have to probably limit you to either one invocation per action or make tracing two actions.

Perhaps having it scale a 1d8 would be the best bet.

pH unbalanced wrote:

The one thing I just want to be sure and say is that I am not interested in playing a Runesmith as a blaster. I want to play it as a competent martial who can provide meaningful party buffs and other support. I would expect to get more value from etchings than from invoking.

This isn't to say that I don't want blasting to be viable -- because I hope it is able to support that playstyle for people who want it. I just hope that the power curve on the blasting isn't *so* high that they have to weaken the parts of the toolkit that I am actually interested in to keep its overall power in line.

Thank you.

When one imagines a martial Runesmith, do high explosives enter the picture? Heck, does tagging Runes on enemies themselves as one's default attack routine spring to mind? Right now, free hand + shield w/ boss/spikes is the best supported build.
This whole blaster aspect, esp. at will and competitive, boggles me.

what I am getting from the class in terms of imagery is more of an anime magic user who puts lots of exploding magic circles on thing. It's not an aesthetic I dislike.

siegfriedliner wrote:

Personally I think given the current rune scaling there probably shouldn't be an option for a 1 action trace.

This would still leave the class doing decent damage but not quite so overwhelming.

It would also make their action routine incredibly boring

2 action trace>something
2 action trace>invoke

Repeat

That best thing about this class right now is yes versatility and creativity with it's action compression. It's the exact opposite of a Magus and that makes it great.

I maintain invoke being once a round and scaling in 2d4 would be enough.

But I'd cave to 1d8/6 scaling to keep this level of interactivity and creativity.

Personally I am not convinced the action economy would be boring you have traced, invoke

The trace, ranged detonation

Then engraving strike, invoke

Then at 6 trace,trace
Trace, invoke over two turn
Or move strike invoke

So lots of options

Personally I think given the current rune scaling there probably shouldn't be an option for a 1 action trace.

This would still leave the class doing decent damage but not quite so overwhelming.

I am of the mind that they best way to dismiss thralls is to explode them with any of the number of focus spells and feats that let you do so, so adding more feats that let you do that would be great.

I do have issues with crste thrall by the biggest is that you only get 1 for the first 6 levels and that makes using all the cool way to destroy them a little too action intensive.

So my version would look like this

1 Action Flourish, 30ft range
You conjure forth two expendable undead thralls in range. If you have the expert necromancy class feature, you can create up to three thralls, increasing to four thralls if you have master necromancy and five if you have legendary necromancy. When you cast the spell, you can have up to one thrall created by this spell make a melee unarmed Strike using your spell attack modifier for the attack roll. This attack deals your choice of 1d6 bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing damage. This Strike uses and counts toward your multiple attack penalty. You can choose the sacrifice a number of thralls equal to or less than the amount you can create with this spells to do additional 1d6 void damage per thrall you sacrificed in this way.

Heightened (+2) The damage increases by 1d6

Finoan wrote:

Thrall wrote:

A thrall has 1 Hit Point, is automatically hit by attacks, and automatically fails all saving throws.

Adding 10 to that save bonus to convert it into a save DC ...

still doesn't make these checks saving throws. Which are rather specific checks. The question isn't whether you can make acceptable homerule, you can. The problem is that rules aren't complete.

Your correct one of the reason I brought it up was so people might flag it in the playtest feedback.

But it's not an entirely awful assumption that a DC of 10 plus automatically fail saves (basically an amount that ensure they always fail but never critically fail) equals a DC of automatically succeeds but does not critically succeed. Especially given that is how attacks work for thralls.

Thrall wrote:

A thrall has 1 Hit Point, is automatically hit by attacks, and automatically fails all saving throws.

Adding 10 to that save bonus to convert it into a save DC ...

I guess means that any maneuver action will automatically succeed (but not critically succeed).

That's my take.

This maybe be play style issue but if I am putting a lot of thralls near enemies it's probably to save my allies and actions to flank and that isn't the situation I would use necrotic bomb which I would probably use by placing a thrall next a several enemies and detonating on the spot.

I understand you point but why you will care about to use an Escape/Stand action when you can create another thrall with same action and Strike?

About critical in manuvers if you was able to critical success a thrall with a Trip you will just kill it like as you Strike it. If you use Grab and critical hit you will restrain it but as I said before try to escape makes no sense when you can create a new thrall with one-action without any checks.

Basically debuff thralls is senseless due how cheap and fragile they are and the fact that most focus spell doesn't really make then attack but uses then as fuel.

Mainly just for the 40hp grappling thrall, the 200 hp whacking thrall and the 400 hp thrall that leaves smaller thralls in its wake.

Currently there is a little uncertainty on what the DC for save based dcs (trip, tumble through etc) for thralls.

My take is that like AC if people use these maneuverd they get an automatic success but not a critical success.

So you can reliably tumble through them but they still are difficult terrain

It's worth noting that currently the focus spells thralls that move have no ability to stand up from prone so they probably need immunity to prone, grabbed or at least the ability to crawl, standup, escape ( probably using your spell attack).

Being 1d8 behind amped IW—which is a melee-only spell on a 6 HP class—seems right to me. It is very painful at level 1, though.

Given bone spear is nominally three actions ideally over two turns to avoid map I rate IW higher.

I am not sure why bone spear doesn't start at 2d8.

I really like the necromancer it's cool and looks like it would be fun to play.

The most powerful feature the necromancer seem to have besides spellcasting is above average focus/ grave spells which are pretty cool and utilise their thrall mechanic.

But power wise I suspect it might be a little weak especially when compared to the new oracle and animist who have similar defences, double the spell slots and also very powerful focus spells which are comparable in strength with the necromancers grave spells.

Half the spell slots for class that seem to have similarish chassis seems like a fairly punishing. I wonder if the class could afford to be three slot ?

This is morevfeedback for the 20th level thrall grave spells but they need the option to get up from prone otherwise they are completely stymied by a 1 action trip.

When it comes to 20th level necromancer feats two stand tall, one of them knocks enemies prone and drops lots of your thralls where you want them and tanks by taking up space and having a tonne of hp the other let's your thrall do respectable damage and tank a little.

Both will benefits lots from the almost mandatory effortless concentration. Personally I feel living graveyard is way cooler but perfected thrall might be more powerful at that level because creating lots of thralls is quite easy.

What do you think ?

That went away with alignment

Mastery of Life and Death currently only seems to do anything for necromancy grave spells and feats where it lets you ignore immunity to void damage from being undead and immunity vitality damage from being alive. As necromancy grave spells and features don't call out living or undead target specifications.

Pretty much all the spells that do void or vitality damage call out targets and this ability doesn't do anything for them.

Thematically this is kind of annoying but it does stop spells like vitality lash and sunburst suddenly becoming way better because of removing the target limitation that were a part of the balance of those spells so probably it's intended.

SuperBidi wrote:

Easl wrote:

That sounds like a great build for Ruby Phoenix or another high level campaign. But, sometimes it's not the destination it's the journey. "My level 8+..." is for many campaigns close to the destination, it's not the journey. So I'm happy to see cleric get a class archetype that gives 'aura gish' as a hit-the-ground-running option.

At low level, the Battle Harbinger is fine as a bunch of rank 1 spells is a nice feature up to level 4. It's at level 5 that their Font starts being lackluster. At level 7, it's hardly a feature and that's the moment where you'll feel like a second grade character.

And while I agree the journey is important, no one cares about a character effectiveness at level 1. The end of the journey is much more important than the beginning.

I mean, a lot of the mechanical benefits of their 1st rank spells are not unlike the Bard's, and if a Bard can maintain +1's from 1 to 20 and be considered a powerhouse class, so can the Battle Herald.

Bard still has better proficiencies, scaling, and spell list, but this is coming across as if a +1 status bonus to attack rolls or AC is bad after 5th level, when the tight math and constant relevance says otherwise.

They are 1 action spells with a much bigger natural area effect and a lot of feats support.

But even so they still feel less impressive at later level unless they are suplmented by haste, herorism, synaesthesia etc spells the bard have a much more of at a higher DC.

siegfriedliner wrote:

I think the font should include options for herorism and gizarjanes march because I don't like the fact it's a feature that should be giving them a a scaling resources but is instead giving them a first level spell slot from 1-20

Heroism would fit. For it to include an AP spell specifically practiced by the Terwa Lords would be surprising, though.

I agree it won't happen but as scaling battle aura with sustain effect it does very neatly fit mechanically.

I think the font should include options for herorism and gizarjanes march because I don't like the fact it's a feature that should be giving them a a scaling resources but is instead giving them a first level spell slot from 1-20

In starfinder 1e pretty I went full borg, I was playing a melee solarian and there was a good leg mod that boosted speed that let me get into melee super quick, once I started I thought how much of my characters body could I replace until I stopped being my character (ship of thesus) you know you have gone off the deep end when you are adding necromantic flesh nodules to your brain. That was kind of fun from a cool thing as long as I don't overthink it perspective.

Now personally I am ok with augmenting yourself being more powerful and have faith wealth constraints will mostly balance it.

I think most people who get shot at on daily basis would see the merits of bullet resistant skin and being in that environment most people would get on board not to fall behind.

So we encountered some creatura who we couldn't speak to and I had a spell that would allow me to do that and a bardic level diplomacy. So I may have gotten a little excited and thought yes finally an opportunity to use this spell which had ended being far more niche than I expected it to be.

Then they attacked rolled well in initative when the party rolled poorly went first attacked our barbarian who didn't appreciate being attacked and immediately counter attacked.

At that point it became a combat problem rather than a communication one.

You're commiting to the same logic flaw you're pointing out :D

Just consider that your character started casting their spell and got interrupted because by the time they were not even at half of it the fight had escalated out of control.

But I see how all of this happening can question verissimilitude. I personally allow PCs to roll for their spellcasting skill in these circumstances (which is in general rather high so they end up more often at the top of the initiative chart than at the bottom). I may even give them a small circumstance bonus to help luck a bit (but it's mostly because I encourage skill resolution of encounters over combat resolution).

Personally just a little embarrassed that casting a spell to avoid a combat lead to one and happy to leap on the idea that technically I didn't. It was such an obvious error but I was kind happy for a good opportunity to use the spell which had mostly been sitting in my repetriore un-cast.

I had an interesting bit of time dilation happen in one game. We encountered some creatures who didn't speak common and combat hadn't happened yet so I saw I will cast true speech our GM then said they see you casting a spell roll for initiative.

So we rolled I came last they went before me attacking the rest of the party I was in the back and by the time it got to my turn I decided I wasn't going to cast true speech but use battle medicine on my damaged ally and raise a shield.

The combat went ahead and it was only afterwards that amusing thought came to mind the spellcasting that triggered the combat never happened.

Now in practice this is just an inevitable result of everything happening both sequentially and all at once. But it did allow my pc to say to one of hist party members who ribbed him for starting the fight "I don't know what your talking about I never cast that spell" and be technically correct the best kind of correct.

I suppose theoretically you could have working like the starfinder primary target where on a successful hit it downgrades a success to fail but that would be incredibly powerful.

siegfriedliner wrote:

Angwa wrote:

Yes, Tumble Through being a masked stride, but somehow better because you do not have to actually tumble through anything is...

But that's what the action has always been from the start. Its always been stride, swim, fly plus.

It's not cheesy to use the action to do what it says it does. Honestly all this negativity about mechanics working they way they work is only going to create a bunch of pointless time consuming rolls where players move through other creatures spaces not for a tactical value but just for the sake of apeasing meaningless convention.

The problem with Tumble Through not requiring you to tumble through anyone is that it makes it more difficult to design new Feats and Abilities that interact with actually tumbling through an opponents space.

Better design would have been Tumble Through requiring an attempt to move through a space, and a different action created for generic moving that was "one of Stride, Fly, Swim etc". It's better design because then the name of the ability would better match the actual action, which is always preferrable.

Oh well. Not where we ended up.

There are quite a few feats and features that interact with the tumble through action already and the vast majority of them just state that their effect happens when you move through an opponenents square or give bonuses to the acrobatics check too move through an enemies square or have some effect based of the degrees of success of that check. Tumble behind is old as the system and we have had new material building off it every year since the game began so there isn't problem with designing new content for it.

From the my interpretation of what I read on the discord post the main reason they chose tumble through is that its a move action but more stylish and also it allows them to give a stride an rule out haste and other free strides procing the benefit. Mechanically its kind of smart that they can by just chosing the right action achieve a fair few mechanical outcomes and it saves words and space which is important for publications like these.

I suppose the dissonance is coming from the fact before now to gain any additonal benefit from the tumble through action you needed a successful acrobatics check and this is a rare exception.

Yes, Tumble Through being a masked stride, but somehow better because you do not have to actually tumble through anything is...

But that's what the action has always been from the start. Its always been stride, swim, fly plus.

It's not cheesy to use the action to do what it says it does. Honestly all this negativity about mechanics working they way they work is only going to create a bunch of pointless time consuming rolls where players move through other creatures spaces not for a tactical value but just for the sake of apeasing meaningless convention.

This might add context

Another user said:

"Honestly it’s really good to know that the tumble in that is intended to be able to be used as just a stride since there’s been a lot of debate about that. Thank you for the clarification!"

To which he responded

"I mean, if you're not backflipping as you go you're literally doing it wrong, but we were very cognizant of how Tumble Through works."

Tumble Through does this

You Stride up to your Speed. During this movement, you can try to move through the space of one enemy. Attempt an Acrobatics check against the enemy's Reflex DC as soon as you try to enter its space. You can Tumble Through using Climb, Fly, Swim, or another action instead of Stride in the appropriate environment.

siegfriedliner wrote:

Just an update Michael Sayre was on discord and said

"Or, and hear me out here, maybe those are two completely different things.

Quick Spring's problem was that it was functionally two Strides for the cost of one as a single feat.

Animist had tons of playtest feedback pointing out how quick and easy it was to get Leaps to the same functionality as Strides so the 9th-level liturgist ability is intentionally "a move action with style while you Sustain". (And as others have noted, it's not literally all Strides, because it won't work with e.g. quicken effects that let you Stride.)"

So it's raw and Rai were in fact in alignment

I'm not happy with it because this is just way too strong but I appreciate the clarity.

If have some balance concerns with it but not the ones you have, once you can leap and sustain you effectively have movement sorted and stride is likely only a little longer.

My balance concerns is feats like elf style (you step twice and now sustain twice) and manoeuvring spell (from sixth pillar archetype it lets you lead as a free action before or after you casta two action spell which is a lot with a free sustain chucked in).

I wonder if the ability should have been siloed off in it's own action so it can't stack onto of other action enhancers.

I tried my hand at gming recently to mixed results and ultimately gave up after a tpk. My mistake was for 9/10 of my encounters I would feel like I was doing nothing to them so I would escalate and eventually they would just lose. But I struggled to get the encounter I were looking for where they were really challenged and then overcame it. I can't imagine I will try again any time soon.

But during that time I played there was one item that came to really irritate me the humble phantom doorknob spellheart. It's an item that blinds on a critical hit and blind is one of more annoying conditions to monitor.

If I was to gm again I probably would ban it to save me the headache. This lead me to wander what other items, feats and archetype do other gms frequently ban and so I thought I would ask this question here.

shroud wrote:

I mean, the conversation already went sideways as soon as it got dominated by magus and IW stuff already...

This thread isn't about magus and alchemists? ;)

The exemplar archetype is so clearly an error of some sort that after a while discussing it becomes pointless because the vast majority of us are in agreement to some extent, this has lead to tthe topic has becoming are the any other feat quite this egregious which is a more interesting topic.

Just an update Michael Sayre was on discord and said

"Or, and hear me out here, maybe those are two completely different things.

Quick Spring's problem was that it was functionally two Strides for the cost of one as a single feat.

Animist had tons of playtest feedback pointing out how quick and easy it was to get Leaps to the same functionality as Strides so the 9th-level liturgist ability is intentionally "a move action with style while you Sustain". (And as others have noted, it's not literally all Strides, because it won't work with e.g. quicken effects that let you Stride.)"

So it's raw and Rai were in fact in alignment

siegfriedliner wrote:

This is such a bad take. There are a host of things for spell strike balanced around 1d12 or 2d6 per rank. Imaginary Weapon is 2d8 which is a big step up. Then there is the multitargeting ...

You are saying there is a problem with the design of the class instead? Look Magus works fine. It may not be for you, or what you want. Fair enough but lots of people like it.

I love the concept of the Exemplar. It just seems to have some issues around the edges.

Animist on the other hand repulses me as a concept.

Imaginary weapon is strong spell balanced around by it's inherent riskiness, it's a spell attacks that focused can't be combined with ring that lets you target fort or Dex DC so inaccurate and requires you to being melee with two enemies to get it's full effect.

I have seen it get a psychic pc killed because those two enemies then immediately retaliated.

The Magus and especially the starlight one entirely bypasses the elements that make using it risky and make the spell a lot better.

So imaginary weapons is balanced in the context of the psychic and not in the context of the Magus so that issue isn't with the spell but with the Magus or the multi class rules.

Tumble Through is a move action that includes a stride and once you use the action you have the option at any part of you stride to tumble through an enemies space but don't have to.

As Liturgist doesn't have a requirement in that you tumble through successfully (unlike tumble behind and several other features that interac with tumble through) I believe using the action is enough.

You have still used the flurry of blows and its flourish even if you kill the enemy with your first hit and only effectivley strike. The action you take doesn't change just because you didn't use all of its features.

ElementalofCuteness wrote:

I still think it is just on par with being a Magus archetyping into Imaginary Weapon

Well that is on obvious problem as well.

It is not so much that these powers break the game, it is just that they are obviously significantly better than the alternatives so we just no longer see players take the other options. Sometimes that is just players not being open minded but there are a few things now like Exemplar Archetype, Imaginary Weapon and Ancestral Memories which are just head and shoulders above their alternatives.

Imaginery Weapon is a little different in of itself its not really that impressive for focus point cantrip it and really any of the 2d6 scaling cantrips as well just have a great synergy with Magus.

In this case the problem is with magus and spell-strike and not imaginery weapon. I remember at the time of the playtest suggesting that Magus should have solid scaling focus spells to use spell strike with. But the Devs wanted people to use focus spells for action economy so we ended up with those players like me fishing for the focus spells to make our big damage more sustainable else go fishing elswhere for them. 4 times a day is just not enough for me do do my big move. Before imaginary weapon I used fire ray. I suppose if they felt frequent high damage spellstrikes would be a balance issue they could have limited it to magus spells only but they didn't so here we are.

Whereas a +2 spirit damage per weapon dice is just a universaly good thing for any martial and allowing it fromt the archetype really steals the main classes thunder.

So after paizo nerfed the monk archytype to no longer offer the monks stiker feature at 10th level, I am dubious that they intentionally let you grab the exemplars striker feature/ source of extra damage at level 2 because they haven't done than before and its too powerful for a second level feat.

Which means there is some typo, or failure of joined up thinking going, or maybe their is a limitation that got emitted due to space that really shouldn't have been.

Which unfortuantly means that I can't imagine I will be able the to the use Archetype with any gm any time soon which is a shame I hope the errata comes soon.

So kineticists have a closed actions system where they have specific actions only they use and interact with. Because they are a closed internal system they will inevitably struggle with a lot of team work mechanics.

This was highlighted by the commander playtest where none of the classes action enabling worked for them apart from movement abilities and is playing through again in mythic.

In the playtest for commander indicated that they would include some tactics to include kineticists but there failure to do so for mythic doesn't fill me with faith that they will remember to do so.

Now personally I am not sure why they made it as closed a system as they did given impulse attacks are for the majority of the time worse than strikes allowing strike action support to apply to them would be fine. The same could be said with impulses and support feats for spells. Paizo were too conservative in the kineticists and this meant to they now have do additional work if they want to keep the class relevant with any new meta.

In starfinder 1e the solar weapon was a freely scaling melee weapon that was on the lower range of melee damage which you could supplement with a crystal (that were still cheaper than equivalent weapons) to be roughly on par with the best melee weapons in the game.

So the solar weapon class feature gave you the benefits of free/cheaper melee weapon in 2e solar weapona coat the same to scale as any other weapon.But in practice it's a relatively weak melee weapon compared to other weapons.

It compares poorly to best melee weapon in starfinder 2e, the doshoko (flaming and normal), the pain glaive, the frostpike all do better damage than the solar weapon with better traits. So your class feature isn't giving you assess to a cheaper weapon it's just tying you to inferior weapon.

The class would be stronger if you removed solar weapon and changed any reference to it to melee weapons which isn't ideal. Now I know you could compare if to thief with sneak attack but that feature does add to damage whilst limiting your ability to use the best weapon, solar weapons don't.

The cynical take would be stuff like this evidences the merits of a playtest.

What I find funny about the mythic proficiency is that inversely scales with level to a certain extent.

If you are level 2 and use rewrite fate to re-roll a saving throw with mythic proficiency and are only trained in the skill then you get an equivalent of a +8 to that save (& a reroll) if you are levl 15 and legendary in that save you get a +2. Now a +2 and a reroll is still really really good but a +8 plus a reroll is insane so rewrite fate at least is going to have less of a wow factor as you level.

Trip.H wrote:

As a brief aside, I need to ask how many tables allow an Amped Img Wpn spellstrike to hit 2 targets? Because that's *very* much against the rules, and a Magus being able to do that would certainly contribute to their damage output going over the top. No idea how much that "houserule" could be involved in the perception....

Even then, the gap between a d6 & d8 cantrip seems... a bit over-focused on.

Nobody takes IW to hit 2 targets which the rules indeed clearly do not allow, or just because it is a D8 cantrip instead of a D6.

Could it be you missed the real reason people value IW so much?

-> Amp Heightened (+1) The damage increases by 2d8 instead of 1d8.

Unless your spell swiping or whatever the 8th level feat is which its kind of perfect for.