Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
I feel like powered armor weapon slots should have expanded rules.
1- Powered armor should be allowed to have melee weapons attached.
2- Since powered armor is scalable, it should be able to allow for larger weapons to be placed on it based on size (your huge battlesuit shouldn't have to use a regular machine gun. It should have access to a tank cannon).
In my campaign, I've separated weapon slots into melee weapon slots, ranged weapon slots, siege weapon slots and heavy siege weapon slots. I think starfinder should do something similar.
3- Weapon power should be drained from the armor itself. It makes no sense for an attached weapon to use its own power source and have to be reloaded. It's also more fun if you have to resource manage your powered armor's power. In order to prevent abuse, it should also have a per-turn power yield.
Given how few power armor are detailed in the main book I expect them to get a lot more fleshed out in a future book. I think it ran into the just not enough room for everything they wanted issue and power armor especially really fancy ones are likely to be higher level items.
The big issue with using powered armor is the gap of good armor between the battle harness (level 5) and jarl armor (level 15). So at the mid levels your AC will suffer.
Yes and it would be nice to see if there are higher grades of the battle harness as well. Some times when you are exploring other worlds you want the longer endurance of the battle harness type gear and other times you are really neck deep in vresk poop and want something like jarl armor for max armor max violence.
I'd personally like more huge-sized power armor like the Flight Frame.
It's the closest thing we have to mechs in Starfinder at the moment.
I fully expect in some future tech guide we see a lot more power armor and varieties of it up to including some actual mechs as it sounded like the devs really liked the idea of mechs.
Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
It's not really a matter of how powerful it is, as it is a matter of how little detail went into it. From what I got from it, was that powered armor was also supposed to encompass mechas (the flight frame is an example), but it does not provide enough details to do so.
I'm having to homebrew my own rules for it.
Here is an example of the 40k campaign I'm GMing:
XV104 Riptide Battlesuit
Level: 13
Price: 70,000
EAC Bonus: +25
KAC Bonus: +25
Max Dex Bonus: +0
Armor Check Penalty: -10
Speed: 45 feet, fly 90 feet (poor)
Strength: 22
Damage: 3d8 B
Size: Huge
Capacity: 4000
Usage: 2/min (10/min while flying)
Weapon Slots: 1
Siege Weapon Slots: 1
Upgrade Slots: 2
Bulk: 60
Included Systems: Planetary comm unit, blacksun filter
Special:
-Nova Reactor (Ex): The XV104 Riptide is equipped with an experimental power generator that can be activated should the Shas’vre pilot require extra power to sustain his heavy rate of fire. It provides virtually infinite energy when overcharged, but it comes at a risk to the pilot. As a swift action, the riptide's pilot may overcharge the nova reactor. If he does, the riptide does not use energy for one round, but it produces a high radiation field inside the battlesuit.
-Riptide Shield Generator (Ex): The riptide's shield generator is designed to work together with its nova reactor. It provides +2 AC while the nova reactor is overcharged.
I'm considering that weapons attached drain power from the armor itself, and the siege weapons consume quite a lot of power (like 10-50 charges per shot).
Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Pathfinder Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber
The powered armor options in the Core Rulebook are pretty bare-bones. They also suffer a bit in how swiftly they become obsolete: The Flight Frame (level 11), other than reach, is mostly outmatched in a couple levels by Exident Skyfire Armor (level 13) and a Forcepack (level 9); plus, a 13th level character can easily have 22 Str on their own.
@Temennigru: I'm not sure power armor needs to be "upgraded" that much, however. As much as powered armor should be, well powerful, from a game system perspective they should not be so powerful that they become better than all the other options (a problem with some systems like RIFTS). Adding some additional versions and customization options, especially if a character could "mod" the armor as they increased in level* (almost like a mechanic's drone), would definitely be nice.
*- maybe a feat or feat chain with Powered Armor Proficiency as a prerequisite? Sort of like Connection Inkling, Minor Psychic Power/Psychic Power/Major Psychic Power, or Technomantic Dabbler; depending on if you want it to scale like Connection Inkling/Technomantic Dabbler 1st level spell uses per day or be separate like the Psychic Power feats.
Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Dragonchess Player wrote: The powered armor options in the Core Rulebook are pretty bare-bones. They also suffer a bit in how swiftly they become obsolete: The Flight Frame (level 11), other than reach, is mostly outmatched in a couple levels by Exident Skyfire Armor (level 13) and a Forcepack (level 9); plus, a 13th level character can easily have 22 Str on their own.
@Temennigru: I'm not sure power armor needs to be "upgraded" that much, however. As much as powered armor should be, well powerful, from a game system perspective they should not be so powerful that they become better than all the other options (a problem with some systems like RIFTS). Adding some additional versions and customization options, especially if a character could "mod" the armor as they increased in level* (almost like a mechanic's drone), would definitely be nice.
*- maybe a feat or feat chain with Powered Armor Proficiency as a prerequisite? Sort of like Connection Inkling, Minor Psychic Power/Psychic Power/Major Psychic Power, or Technomantic Dabbler; depending on if you want it to scale like Connection Inkling/Technomantic Dabbler 1st level spell uses per day or be separate like the Psychic Power feats.
Like I said, it's not about power level. It's about scalability.
The game I'm GMing is very vehicle-heavy (including mechs), and starfinder's current rules disallow something like that. The amount of rules I have had to write could very easily make an entire starfinder module.
They need to be changed before they are expanded.
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