Trick Attack and Full Attack, not if you don't have a weapon drawn!

[HWalsh]

Shinigami02 wrote:

Out of curiosity, why does having Charisma as a primary stat make your feats be at a premium?

Charisma is the hands down worst Ability score in the game.

Strength - Melee/Thrown Attack, Melee/Thrown Damage
Dexterity - Ranged Attack, Armor Class, Reflex Save
Constitution - Stamina, Fortitude Save
Intelligence - Skill Points
Wisdom - Will Save
Charisma - Nothing

Charisma helps to resist Intimidate - Sort of, your base chance to resist (15 + (1.5 x CR)) is usually better. It also helps with some skills. (Diplomacy, Bluff, Intimidate, Performance)

(Melee) Solarians need Strength, Dexterity, and Charisma - Meaning they will lose saves, it is virtually unavoidable save for with an exceptionally narrow build. Charisma is a bad stat overall.

[Shinigami02]

Yeah... that's still not adding up to me. Even at CR 20, by the chart in Alien Archive, the typical ability DC for enemies will be 25. At level 20 a Solarian with 10 Wis will have +12 Will Save. So you have a 40% chance to pass any given Will Save. Spell Save DCs will be even easier on anything but a level 6 spell. Pretty sure that doesn't really need a feat. And Fort Saves are the same. Now maybe a Dex-ignoring Solarian, since they have Dex as a bad save, but everyone needs Dex anyways, including melee Solarians (even Heavy Armor misses out on a fair bit of AC if they never boost Dex, this isn't 5e after all.)

[HWalsh]

Shinigami02 wrote:

Yeah... that's still not adding up to me. Even at CR 20, by the chart in Alien Archive, the typical ability DC for enemies will be 25. At level 20 a Solarian with 10 Wis will have +12 Will Save. So you have a 40% chance to pass any given Will Save. Spell Save DCs will be even easier on anything but a level 6 spell. Pretty sure that doesn't really need a feat. And Fort Saves are the same. Now maybe a Dex-ignoring Solarian, since they have Dex as a bad save, but everyone needs Dex anyways, including melee Solarians (even Heavy Armor misses out on a fair bit of AC if they never boost Dex, this isn't 5e after all.)

Base spell save is 23 for CR 20. 25 is for a 3rd level spell. Remember at level 20 you'll be frequently facing 5th-6th level magic, the non-magic DC is a 27 base. A 5th level spell is DC 27.

With a +12 at level 20, and no stat bonus, you need to roll a 15 or better to make that save. That is not a 40% chance of making the save. That is a 30% chance.

Remember, spells don't scale like they do in Pathfinder. You don't cast a 2nd level spell in combat. You usually cast an adjusted spell that is of the level of spells you have.

Note: Even with the +5 Dex that Heavy Armor Solarians have at 20, which the game isn't just about level 20 mind you, they are going to be hard pressed to clear a 27, even a ring of resistance.

[MatthewHudson]

It seems this thread has gotten far off topic and devolved into a debate against Operatives vs. Solarians.

The key suggestion I was making started with focusing on something that seemed thematically out of place, and resulted in noticing MORE things that were thematically out of place. I don't think the Solarian is thematically out of place here since they can charge and draw their weapon as part of the charge, and starting at level 2 even have an ability to support charging as a standard action (allowing 3x movement when also using your move action to move up to your speed). I'm being up front and saying I don't know a lot about the Solarian as it already feels like a pretty gimped class with lots of quirkiness, a heavy distribution of attributes it requires, and a three round build up for what appears to be a couple of let down powers at early levels. The classes all feel extremely unique in that I've noticed a small pile of balance issues when comparing one class ability against another, but the kind of errata and balancing that would be required to truly bring all the classes in line would probably be on par with numerous patch rollouts of buffs and nerfs in an MMO. Starfinder and Paizo can't support that level of change, and it would be a huge shot in the foot.

My suggestion has been pretty consistent that ALL of the issues and arguments about combined actions get resolved with one minor change, remove the swift action consumption from the full action. It just happens to be a large change based on how many things it opens up not only in just the core rules, but also in certain class builds and options, and without a thorough examination of ALL possibilities to make sure it doesn't royally break something, I'm sure it just isn't going to be a change they adopt.

[Shinigami02]

Okay on double checking I'll admit I was looking at the wrong array, still getting used to this generation system. But still, 27 DC on non-spell abilities. That's a 15 or higher, with 10 Wisdom/Constitution, at level 20. That's hardly horrible. And you do get 4 level up bonuses, so if you, say, alternate between Con and Cha with one of your 4 slots (assuming your other three are probably going to be Str, Cha, and Dex), then even if both started at 10 that's 14 at level 20. Which brings your bonus up to +14, back to that 40% chance.

As for spells, yes, they are a bit harder than non-spell DCs on a Caster NPC for higher level spells. All the way up to 29 for 6th-level spells... which means the strongest magic in the game, you still have a 20% chance of succeeding any given save at level 20. 30% (almost 1 in 3) if you do the stat alternation thing mentioned above.

Reflex saves... are your weak save, so of course they're going to be the worst off. So how fortunate that said save is just Reflex. Reflex save spells are, to be quite frank, not that great. Especially compared to Fortitude's only-thing-to-use-d20s-for-damage Disintegrate, or Control Gravity to potentially flat remove non-flying creatures from the game, or Will's effects like Fear that flat remove you from the fight, or heavens forbid stuff like Unwilling Guardian that turns you to the other side. I'd really much rather have the 30% chance to save against those than even the 13d12 Chain Burst that is the strongest spell Reflex can hurl.

As one last thing, yes the game isn't just about 20. But the thing is, that's generally when your chances are probably going to be the worst. As such, comparing there will generally be worst-case.

[Kalderaan]

MatthewHudson wrote:

My suggestion has been pretty consistent that ALL of the issues and arguments about combined actions get resolved with one minor change, remove the swift action consumption from the full action.

Absolutely agree here.

It just makes all of those economy abilities and feats for swift actions somewhat pointless in retrospect.

[MatthewHudson]

Maybe it would be helpful to compile a list of all of the things that either are swift actions by default or that become a swift action as a result of a feat, race feature, or some other ability in addition to all the current full actions to break the norm to see if any of those are grossly imbalanced when combined with the ability to take any full action in combination with a swift action?

Swift actions in column A, full actions in column B, and see if any matches seem really terrible.

It would also show all the things that right now as written you CAN'T do together, even with those special features that make actions faster.