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Do you think it's better for an Envoy to invest in long arm proficiency picking up plasma rifles around 6 or to pick up sniper proficiency?
Either works, though to be honest I'd be very tempted by Heavy Weapons, given the ability to grab Versatile Specialization it's only a single Feat extra, after all (plus one each of your level 5 and 10 stat-ups into Str). Flamethrowers and Plasma Cannons are shiny.
Advanced Melee Weapons are also a solid way to go, though obviously a quite different build.
Do you think it's better for an Envoy to invest in long arm proficiency picking up plasma rifles around 6 or to pick up sniper proficiency?Either works, though to be honest I'd be very tempted by Heavy Weapons, given the ability to grab Versatile Specialization it's only a single Feat extra, after all (plus one each of your level 5 and 10 stat-ups into Str). Flamethrowers and Plasma Cannons are shiny.
Advanced Melee Weapons are also a solid way to go, though obviously a quite different build.
Yes unwieldy weapons are very tasty for envoy because you are almost never going to be full attacking. So the downside for heavy weapons for an envoy is mostly losing the AoO chance and I am not sure how often that would get used by envoy anyway.
And yes big melee attacks are also a pretty good option for the same reason maximize what you can do on a standard attack so you can use your other options to boost the party.
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And yes big melee attacks are also a pretty good option for the same reason
My big issue with a melee envoy is that I just don't see it having the ability to take the damage it is likely to draw.
Its also fairly MAD. Need Str, Dex, Con, Cha.
If I went this route I'd almost certainly be a Vesk with a level of Guard soldier (for, essentially, +2 to my AC). I want the Heavy Armor and weapon proficiencies
But this means that you're losing out on one of the coolest things of an Envoy. Skills, damnit :-).
Much more tempted to take a ranged combatant type who hides at the back and pew-pews away. Combat is secondary, face skills is primary.
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I would be more tempted to go heavy weapon ranged envoy than melee myself. Bossy person in the back with a giant cannon yelling at people and telling them how to do their jobs seems about right.
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I'd say Envoy, moreso than any other class, looks like hot garbage if you're looking at it side by side next to any Pathfinder class, but when you get your head around how Starfinder's rules differ the "small" bonuses they toss around are actually quite significant.
It does underwhelm at first level though. Sadly I missed the part of the GenCon demo with ship combat, where they'd shine, and just had to deal with standing still to give small bonuses the rest of the party ignored.
I actually had some experience with this. The Little bonuses from the envoy do seem to add up. It wwas very noticeable.
Captain rolls are crucial in Ship combat. They have been the difference between success and failure for nearly all ship combats our groups have done thus far. It also also comes down to role vs roll for how enjoyable the class is.
The option to roleplay well never forgives negative design decisions.
That said, I haven't fiddled with the system enough yet to know if the Envoy is one of those negative design decisions.
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Anyone happen to remember seeing this math? I know I stumbled across it a day or so ago (or maybe less, can't remember) but can't find it again.I believe someone did some math, and an envoy focusing on supporting others makes for a net gain in damage compared to someone else trying to directly deal damage.
I'm pretty happy with that as if it isn't a net gain, then supporting is just a waste of actions.
Well, +2 to hit alone adds 10% to everyone's damage. Add in Clever Attack and you're giving everyone an effective +4 to hit a particular target, so that's a +20% for everyone. That plus your own damage with a weapon gets pretty impressive.
A relatively optimized Solarian at 20th level, for example, does 160 damage or so average (around there anyway, I'm rounding for simplicity). An Envoy with Str 24, Weapon Focus, and a Swoop Hammer deals about 60 personally and adds 64 or so to the Solarian. That's 124 damage already.
Add in say, an Exocortex Mechanic with Dex 22 taking a single shot after getting Full BAB, and that character deals 49.8 base, and gets an extra 16.6 from the Envoy. That's 140.6 for the Envoy.
And then there's the fourth character. The Envoy's damage is gonna vary quite a bit based on this fourth person. But it's already very nice. It's lower than the Solarian, but the Solarian is the highest DPR class in the game.
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Yeah, I remember Mark Seifter talking about it. From what I remember his comments where that if you have a soldier and a solarion in the group, on a full attack they would be making 3 attacks. So if an envoy spends their turn using get 'em and dispiriting taunt, along with their improved versions, they should be adding a 20% chance to hit on every attack. So adding on average 1.2 hits per turn, in addition to their own attack if they have improved get 'em. It's hard to say if that's better than the contributions of another class or not without knowing the average AC PCs might be facing, but seems pretty much in line with where I expect average amount of hits to be. Although, this doesn't account for cases where enemies are immune to emotion or fear effects, or that the debuffs are usually single target, so any case where an ally drops the target early in the round, the other allies are receiving no bonus to attack.
Personally, I see the envoy being a no brainer for a 6 man party, but take it or leave for a 4 man party, moreso leave it if you have both a mystic and a technomancer in the party, since they're less likely to be full action attacking.
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Yeah, I remember Mark Seifter talking about it. From what I remember his comments where that if you have a soldier and a solarion in the group, on a full attack they would be making 3 attacks. So if an envoy spends their turn using get 'em and dispiriting taunt, along with their improved versions, they should be adding a 20% chance to hit on every attack. So adding on average 1.2 hits per turn, in addition to their own attack if they have improved get 'em.
Something like that, yeah.
It's hard to say if that's better than the contributions of another class or not without knowing the average AC PCs might be facing, but seems pretty much in line with where I expect average amount of hits to be. Although, this doesn't account for cases where enemies are immune to emotion or fear effects, or that the debuffs are usually single target, so any case where an ally drops the target early in the round, the other allies are receiving no bonus to attack.
Well, the one sample CR 20 has AC 34/35. That matches up roughly with the progression of lower CR foes, so it's probably correct to within a few points.
And my example was actually going Clever Feint, not Taunt, which works on more foes (though mindless ones are still immune).
Personally, I see the envoy being a no brainer for a 6 man party, but take it or leave for a 4 man party, moreso leave it if you have both a mystic and a technomancer in the party, since they're less likely to be full action attacking.
It definitely gets more and more useful as a damage dealer the more PCs there are. It does have other abilities in parties with less damage, though. Improved Hurry at 12th can double the number of spells one caster can do in a round, and is the only thing in the game that lets one person cast, say, two level 6 spells in a round, and even before that can allow movement and full attacks. Add in the Stamina healing from Inspiring Boost and various other cool abilities and you can definitely benefit from an Envoy even if you don't get the most out of the straight combat bonuses.
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And my example was actually going Clever Feint, not Taunt...
...Improved Hurry at 12th can double the number of spells one caster can do in a round, and is the only thing in the game that lets one person cast, say, two level 6 spells in a round, and even before that can allow movement and full attacks. Add in the Stamina healing from Inspiring Boost and various...
Yeah, got distracted by something else mid post and lost my train of thought. It should be clever feint for the -2 AC, dispiriting taunt is good with casters for the -2 to saves, but was definitely not what Mark used as an example. I'm not crazy about improved hurry versus the debuffs though, since the debuffs are an all day long thing, where improved hurry can really chew through your spells per day real quick, especially with the reduced number of spells you get with 6 level casting. Will have to see what the standard adventuring day is going to be like. Could always use it for low level spells which you do tend to have plenty of late game, and even if you don't use it every round, it'll still be nice for when you really need to get 2 spells off quick. And by level 12, you could have the option for all 3 of these.
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Having played an envoy now to level 2 (which is, frankly, a lot considering Starfinder is less than a month old) I think a lot of you are missing the point. Sure you can calculate how much extra damage you can do with envoy buffs, but Envoy's aren't meant to do damage. They are buffers, debuff removers, utility characters.
They can heal Stamina, something no other class can do. They can suppress some of the worst status effects in the game (confusion, fascinate) they are skill monkeys, and they are built to be faces.
Listen, Envoy is almost entirely support. Some people don't want to play that, I get it. They like dealing damage and being the one to kill the bad guy. If you are that kind of person, then the envoy is NOT for you. Go soldier or operative or solarion. But if you like playing support, being a skill monkey, and/or a face, then the envoy is what you want to be playing.
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Our group has played 3 of the SFS scenarios so far, and in each and every one the Envoy ability to restore Stamina was critical to our survival. They have far more damage negation potential than the mystic does, and it really showed. The 5 per person per level per fight was way more useful than the mystic's 1/day healing power.
Having played an envoy now to level 2 (which is, frankly, a lot considering Starfinder is less than a month old) I think a lot of you are missing the point. Sure you can calculate how much extra damage you can do with envoy buffs, but Envoy's aren't meant to do damage. They are buffers, debuff removers, utility characters.
The thing is, with the exception of the Unwieldy-wielding Envoy people, most of this thread has been calculating "how much extra damage you can do" by the amount of extra damage the rest of the party is doing. AKA they calculate their DPR by how much better they make the Solarion, Soldier, or other offensively-inclined people. As such, I don't think those people are missing the point at all.
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Having played an envoy now to level 2 (which is, frankly, a lot considering Starfinder is less than a month old) I think a lot of you are missing the point. Sure you can calculate how much extra damage you can do with envoy buffs, but Envoy's aren't meant to do damage. They are buffers, debuff removers, utility characters.The thing is, with the exception of the Unwieldy-wielding Envoy people, most of this thread has been calculating "how much extra damage you can do" by the amount of extra damage the rest of the party is doing. AKA they calculate their DPR by how much better they make the Solarion, Soldier, or other offensively-inclined people. As such, I don't think those people are missing the point at all.
And my point is how do you calculate the beifit of using "don't give up" to have your confused Solarian NOT turn around and Merc your technomancer? Or turn off the fascinate from Space Harpies so that your soldier doesn't just let them rip him apart? Where the Envoy shines is not in DPR calculations, but in stuff it can do outside of statistical analysis.
Sweet Nicole: stamina heal, hull stop. SUPER useful at low levels. Essentially a free heal on everyone 1/person/10 min. Rest, super good when you only have a handful of stamina/HP and the low level AC stuff.
Damage prevented is just as good as damage healed when it comes to statistical analysis.
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I'm playing a level two Mystic and my take on Envoy is this: I wish I could heal stamina like they can and Envoy is a skill monkey's dream class. Their a buff class. That being said our Envoy has killed numerous npcs we faced by doing enough last hit damage to finish them off. I think the class is fine.
Our group has played 3 of the SFS scenarios so far, and in each and every one the Envoy ability to restore Stamina was critical to our survival. They have far more damage negation potential than the mystic does, and it really showed. The 5 per person per level per fight was way more useful than the mystic's 1/day healing power.
And they can heal in a way that prevents people getting into the more expensive/deadly/harder to heal levels of their HP pool. If you can keep people from HP damage then erasing damage during short rests is easy.
And if you give them good medical skills which they already have some good ability with if it does come to HP damage they are probably next best after mystics for healing that too.
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Envoy is a skill monkey's dream class. Their a buff class.
I like Envoys but lets be fair.
The operative is the skill monkey's dream class.
The Envoy will eventually be better in a small number of skills but the operative is going to be decent at just about everything, good at quite a few things, and the best or second best possible at several things.
That "+1/2/3/etc bonus to ALL skills, combined with Skill Focus and the ability to take 10" just can NOT be beaten. EXcept in a couple of specialized skills by the Envoy
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The skill focus and operative edge bonus don't stack, FYI. However, you get the ability to take 10 the same level O edge renders skill focus irrelevant.
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Why wouldn't Andoids benefit from Envoy abilities? Despite "Constructed", they're still affected by mind-affecting effects, or they wouldn't get the +2 to resist, they'd be "immune."
I think that "whichever is worse" is terribly worded, as it's too vague and I'm Willing to believe that RAI wasn't for androids to be unaffected by their Envoy's abilities.
The problem I have with the Envoy is that, without investing an improvisation in "Expanded Attunement", you can't use any of the beneficial ones on your Android party members. This includes "Inspiring Boost" and "Get 'Em". This will be a problem at first level regardless, as taking "Expanded Attunement" first will leave you with no Improvisations that benefit from it.
I'm not sure I buy this. First, there's nothing in the description of Mind-Affecting on page 270 that says anything about constructs anyway, it just says creatures with an INT score of 1 or greater. Second, Androids aren't JUST constructs, they're also humanoids. That's enough to consider them creatures in my book.
The skill focus and operative edge bonus don't stack, FYI. However, you get the ability to take 10 the same level O edge renders skill focus irrelevant.Paper, thanks for pointing this out. It hadn't clicked that the Operative Edge and Skill Focus were both Insight bonuses and didn't stack. Seems a little odd, though. "Here is class ability one, and class ability two. Two overrides One until 11th level, at which point One now Overrides Two.".
It's definitely weird, and possibly unintended, but here we are until the FAQ gods smile upon us, if they so choose.
I agree with ENHenry that Androids should benefit from inspirations. Since inspirations don't target by type, just by whether you're affected by mind affecting or not, "constructed" shouldn't come into play.
Interestingly, this is a change from PFRPG Androids, who don't benefit from morale bonus. Because the Devs deliberately left that out, I assume it was intended for this very purpose.
I would have to hope if one of the core races was unable to be effected by one of the two core healing classes that would be called out specifically.
I'm convinced they don't need it. An ability has to target at the specific level of humanoid or construct before the "worse" thing comes into play.
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Well, +2 to hit alone adds 10% to everyone's damage.+2 to hit adds more like 20% to everyone's damage.
Sure, there's a 10% chance that any given shot would have been a miss except for the envoy bonus.
However, the expected damage output is based on the relative chance to hit, which would mean +20% more damage if the attackers' chance to hit increases from 50% to 60%. 60/50 = 120% damage. (Ignoring crits)
In your example, the Solarian's damage is up 40% and the operative is up 33%.
edit: operative
I meant very specifically 10% of the average rolled damage, which is always true.
I definitely should've been more clear on that, though.
I'm convinced they don't need it. An ability has to target at the specific level of humanoid or construct before the "worse" thing comes into play.
^ this.
The Envoy abilities target allies, not specific types of creatures such as "any humanoid ally".
”whatever is worse" is usually used to break ties when an effect affects both types differently.
That leaves construct healing spells as also applicable to androids.
Robots aren't unaffected by motivational speeches because they're constructs. They're unaffected by motivational speeches because they're not sapient beings. The "whichever is worse" clause does not apply here.
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Pretty sure the insight bonuses not stacking for the operative is a deliberate design decision. Saw a dev post about it not too long ago.
Robots aren't unaffected by motivational speeches because they're constructs. They're unaffected by motivational speeches because they're not sapient beings. The "whichever is worse" clause does not apply here.
There's no rules text for "sapient beings", there's limitations for Language-dependant, Mind-affecting, and Sense-dependant effects. Language-dependant effects require you to be able to communicate with the target (visually, audibly, or telepathically) in a manner they can understand. Mind-affecting abilities affect creatures with an Intelligence score of at least 1. Sense-dependant abilities require you and the target to be able to see and/or hear each other.
So, if a robot has an INT score of 1 or higher, they can be affected by mind-affecting abilities. Such as inspirational speeches. Same with Androids. There's no such thing as an Emotion descriptor in Starfinder, and mechanical entities are no longer completely immune to mind-affecting abilities.
Pretty sure the insight bonuses not stacking for the operative is a deliberate design decision. Saw a dev post about it not too long ago.
Dev Decision or not, it was super-confusing for three of my six players when we were making first characters. It's elegant, but I'm holding the jury yet for whether it is a smooth, easily-understood design.
I do know if they continue to hold to limited bonus-typing closely, it will help keep rampant Char-op abuse in check and keep those "Melee characters with +50 to hit and 70 AC" at bay.
Pretty sure the insight bonuses not stacking for the operative is a deliberate design decision. Saw a dev post about it not too long ago.
Possibly, but it wasn't the decision of the original designer
But that's all kind of besides the point. Here's where we are now.
Circling back to the current discussion on envoys and their inspiration, is there a description of the Technological subtype in starfinder anywhere? I'm curious if that will have a clause that says "immune to mind-affecting and morale abilities" instead of being placed on the construct type.
Subtype abilities go in monster books, wait one month.