Archetypes-Hopes and Dreams?

[2ndGenerationCleric]

So since they mentioned in the playtest Q&A that archetypes would transcend the class barrier, with "outlaw" being the one they mentioned, what archetypes would you hope to see?

Personally, aside from the outlaw, I'm going they do:

Medic: for players who like being a healer but don't want to play a mystic. Field Medic for soldiers or operatives could be cool.

Droid buddy: since there are plenty of non-mechanics who have Droid companions in fiction, an archetype giving you a Droid would be neat.

[QuidEst]

Outlaw wasn't mentioned as an archetype, it was mentioned as a background. They're like scaling traits.

[Owen K. C. Stephens]

Since we discussed this in the Q&A:

There are themes. Most characters take a theme. It represents a combination of your background and your character's focus, and they grow over time with your character. You don;t give up anything to take a theme.

Then there are archetypes. Archetypes are very much like Pathfinder, except an archetype can apply to any class. We might have some more limited archetypes (one only for spell casting classes, for example), but that would be done only where a universal archetype doesn't make sense.

We don't expect everyone to take an archetype.

[QuidEst]

Theme, that's it! Thanks. Looking forward to themes in particular!

[Torbyne]

So would archetypes play out as something like, "choose one class ability granted between levels 1-3 and replace it with X, choose one ability gained between levels 4-7 and replace with Y"? or are classes much more in lock step with every class has something gained at the same levels of roughly the same weight?

[ryric]

Torbyne wrote:

So would archetypes play out as something like, "choose one class ability granted between levels 1-3 and replace it with X, choose one ability gained between levels 4-7 and replace with Y"? or are classes much more in lock step with every class has something gained at the same levels of roughly the same weight?

I really hope it's not the latter. All classes gaining everything at the exact same rates was one of my 4e turnoffs.

In fact, my archetype hope is that they can pull off these general archetypes while still maintaining the variety we see in Pathfinder classes.

[Torbyne]

ryric wrote:

Torbyne wrote:

So would archetypes play out as something like, "choose one class ability granted between levels 1-3 and replace it with X, choose one ability gained between levels 4-7 and replace with Y"? or are classes much more in lock step with every class has something gained at the same levels of roughly the same weight?

I really hope it's not the latter. All classes gaining everything at the exact same rates was one of my 4e turnoffs.

In fact, my archetype hope is that they can pull off these general archetypes while still maintaining the variety we see in Pathfinder classes.

I'm with you but how would you write up an archetype that replaces or alters class abilities but also has to be general enough to apply to every class? In Pathfinder the only guarantee that a class gains every level is HD/HP and Skill Points so a universal archetype would only have those to play for swap outs. I am assuming Starfinder has a better way of handling it but have no idea what that better way looks like. To me it already seems like Themes are the new Archetypes but we'll have to wait and see what everything brings to the table to find out for sure.

[ryric]

It's a bit clunky, but possibly they could assign a value to each class ability, either a number of just a descriptor like "minor" or "core." Then archetypes could trade out abilities by points - once you've given up the requisite "strength" of abilities, you get the next archetype thing.

[Matthew Shelton]

If the classes were all built with the assumption that a theme would be in play most of the time, they could design them with holes or gaps in the power progression which wlevery theme would be able to plug into.

There might also be a 'vanilla option' or themeless alternative options for the characters of players who don't think any of the themes would be a good fit for the character concept they want to play. The themeless alternative features would have to fit every class too. (Extra feat, extra skill rank, extra hit point, extra starting cash, etc).