Honestly, Starfinder would have been a great chance to take a page out of D&D 4e's book and make every single stat affect one of your saves, taking the better out of pairs.
Str/Con: Fort (You are big and strong and tough)
Dex/Int: Ref (You are fast in body and mind)
Wis/Cha: Will (You are wise and have a strong sense of self)
That way, with 2 primary stats, each class has 2 saves it's pretty good at.
I think they need a revelation or something to move through the phases for resolve.
Honestly, Starfinder would have been a great chance to take a page out of D&D 4e's book and make every single stat affect one of your saves, taking the better out of pairs.
Str/Con: Fort (You are big and strong and tough)
Dex/Int: Ref (You are fast in body and mind)
Wis/Cha: Will (You are wise and have a strong sense of self)That way, with 2 primary stats, each class has 2 saves it's pretty good at.
I would also be ok with that
I think charisma could be ok from what I've gathered if they had a revelation to bump saves a little (around +2 or +3 looks like all it would take.)
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Solarians are better at area of effect, (they can take all the same items the soldier can use and use them as well)
SUPERNOVA (SU) [PHOTON MODE]
You can play a bombard and make 1 grenade for free, but you still do less damage than supernova.
Solarians are better at debuffing, Flare, Radiation.
The ability to literally look into the future
Hypnotic Glow.
The ability to give all their allies haste.
The ability to literally travel to anywhere in like 800ft that you can see as a move action.
Battlefield control and aoe damage with MINIATURE STAR.
Thats just the photon side of things.
Awesome battlefield control with Black Hole
Complete target imobalisation through Gravity Hold
Flight
Hide in plain sight and bonus to stealth
A literal reflective wall of full cover for you and your friends.
How about knocking a ton of people prone?
How about the ability to give all of your allies the ability to literally just move 250 or so feet for free.
The categories the Solarian are so much better at is general battlefield control, aoe, and utility.
AoO are not a thing so the only real way for a melee character to control the battlefield is to be a Solarian.
Stop trying to make the Solarian be a soldier, and use it for what it is, a utility front line fighter with crowd control, and lots of other really cool nifty abilities, and still decent damage
Another option for the solarian is to dump their strength and wear powered armor.
Maybe not the best option but it is an option
I don't know I feel like the revelation is best way. simple and I like that it is an option so if you feel your good on that area you don't have to take it.
I am just curious, if we make the Solarian just as good in combat as the soldier, why ever play a soldier?
For fluff reasons, rather than because you are concerned with your numbers being bigger? Good balance enhances roleplay by opening up viable options rather than limiting people to 'Good' options if they want to contribute with the other players.
They will say for ranged combat. I personally expect their to be more options for soldiers that will make them better combatants too.
I agree that we will get those options in the future, but those options are not really there right now.
Ikiry0, I ask then, why does the Solarian have to have the same saves as the soldier?
Cant you just accept that you wont get your "numbers being bigger" in terms of saves with the solarian and play the solarian "For fluff reasons".
The Solarian has a lot of stuff it can do that no other class can do, why dont we take advantage of those instead of lamenting how it isn't as good as other classes with regards to saves.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
1. Yes the solarian has to take a feat for heavy armor, or they can take the solar armor instead of solar weapon. That can net you DR 20 against lasers or cryo weapons basically.
2. Yes, soldiers get lots of feats. I don't argue this, but show me a feat that replicates a revelation? The Solarian gets MORE revelations than the soldier gets feats.
Also, mobility is bogus, the Solarian should be able to outmove pretty much anything. Yes for the first two round of combat the Solarian is slower, after that the Solarian can use Ray of Light.
3. It also makes them capable of actually talking to people and not making them want to shank the character. IE all diplo skills only key off Cha.
There are no other SKILLS in the game, besides Perc that can completely negate an encounter in the same way.
And hey would you look at that, the solarian gets Diplo and Perc as class skills. The soldier doesnt.
4. I wouldnt call 40ft radius point blank.
Black hole is also not the only crowd control.
They can use Flare each and every round.
At will Spider climb after 6th
Gravity hold to pull somebody out of cover.
Radiation for a potent debuff
Blazing orbit to help stop the opponents from closing
Crush to stagger an opponent
Gravity Surge to disarm or trip.
There are significantly more options for the Solarian to use crowd control than you make out.
I was comparing Supernova and the bombard grenade. The grenade can be used once for free per combat. You can use your supernova once every 3 rounds as long as the combat lasts.
The Solarian has so many more options in combat than the soldier does. That is it's strength. Take advantage of that.
Black Hole is also pretty damn terrible. It resets your powers, takes a standard action, needs to be centred on you, hits a tiny area in the era of guns AND gives them a save to negate it when 'Massive charisma' is not likely a strength when they need to raise saves significantly with those stat points. They are not the Technomancer, who has everything based on their primary stat.
The radiation debuff also fails against anyone wearing armour (Armour provides environmental protection). It could be errata'd to bypass that but right now Radiation isn't much threat.
The Bombard Grenade can also be used first turn. Rather than requiring a 3 turn charge up.
Ikiry0
In the first AP so far I have not been in a single encounter where black hole would not be able to be used due to range.
Just because guns are a thing doesn't mean that you are going to be fighting in open fields the entire time.
Black hole is also not the only CC they have.
Yes Radiation might not work against armored opponents.
The bombard grenade can be used once per break of 10 minutes.
Supernova or Black Hole can be used EVERY 3 rounds of combat all day.
At level 20 it is instead every 2 rounds.
Again, show me how the soldier can do anything like black hole?
The solarian has things it can do that no other class really can.
Take advantage of that.
And what would Black Hole DO when you dragged them in? You can't attack them and, unlike the Soldier, you can't actually keep them with you as it's 3 turns until you can do it again.
Honestly, the Soldier is BETTER at what the Black Hole is supposed to do as Anchoring Arcana, Flash Freeze and Perfect Opportunity actually let them be sticky to the guy rather than a vague annoyance. They also allow the Soldier to do it any turn in a battle they want.
When you Black Hole enemies it sets up for your allies to whomp on them.
Speaking of, Black Hole is nice since it can pull things off your allies.
What it allows them to do is pull the guy out of full cover so the 4 other party members can shoot him.
You can use black hole to draw everyone towards you, and then run around all of them with blazing orbit, effectively trapping them in a ring of fire, into which your allies can fire, and they will take damage leaving.
If you are level 16, you can use corona to create a damage aura, then you can pull them in, damage them with Corona, and then use blazing orbit.
Once again, the solarian has options no other class has. Think about how to couple them and you can do some pretty cool stuff
The fact that you're arguing that a melee solarian should even be in graviton mode using underwhelming abilities like Crush, Gravity Hold, and worst of all Black Hole (objectively the worst power solarians have) makes me think you don't understand the basics of a melee solarian build.
The opportunity cost for going into graviton mode and using abilities which will do nothing 50% of the time when enemies make their saves against your low DCs is almost never worth it.
It is far better for a melee focused solarian to stay in photon mode 100% of combat doing the one thing they are good at: melee damage. The actions you would waste and damage you would lose messing around with graviton CC abilities is just never worth it.
Most things a solarian should do in combat (not can, should), a soldier can mirror through abilities or feats. A vast majority of the unique effects solarians can do are never worth spending your limited revelation slots on because an unreliable effect is not worth dropping photon mode and spending standards on not attacking.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
So you are saying that a Solarian is bad because you have decided that the only way to play it is as a melee damage dealer...
That is basically what your last post says.
If you want to take a class and ignore over half of it to do something, go ahead.
I would rather build around what the class gives me and take advantage of that.
If you stop trying to build to be a soldier, as I have suggested multiple times, you can be a frontline battle control master.
Giving up a +1 to damage (that you can change at any time) to give yourself CC abilities (only Zenith Revelations require you to be in the specific mode) to help your allies is not a dealbreaker, nor is dealing damage the only thing Solarions are good at or can do.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
When your response to someone pointing out that a class has numerous more abilities than what you're focusing on and your response is "You don't know how [class] works, do you?", it's time to take a step back from the thread.
On DC's and chance to land abilities. If I choose to I can have exactly the same base dc's as the casters. At the highest levels I am 3 behind on my dc's because I cant take the spell focus feat.
To counter this, all of my revelations can be used as many times a day as I like.
It is the kinetecist argument for starfinder.
I can blind every single enemy in an encounter, for free. The spellcaster has to spend spell slots on that.
1. Flare, I can dazzle every creature in range. Pretty useful.
I can also blind every creature at least once with the same chance that a envoy or mechanic has to land their dc based spells if I choose to build for this.
2. Radiation is bad, I forgot about armor providing immunity. However this is still useful in campaigns against most monsters that won't be wearing armor.
For example, the akata's in the first AP.
3. Yes, if they make their save I can't effect them again, but all it cost me was a standard action instead of a spell slot on the same spell.
I can use it to pull an enemy from cover so all my allies can fire at it.
4. It doesn't exhaust, it staggers, an incredibly powerful condition. And I can continue to maintain the debuff as a move action. EDIT And if you are attuned you can steal there weapon, or drag them out of cover
5. You mean you get to perform a combat maneuver at range, get the effects of a feat for free, can do it every single round, and it "Isn't bad". Sorry, this is incredibly good.
That -8 is the same thing that every other person faces when they try do a combat maneuver. That is no fault of the Solarian.
6. Show me those numbers then?
I don't actually lose my standard powers, I can still use almost all of the revelations. Being unattuned does not stop you using powers.
You have the same chance to drag people as every other caster has to stick a spell.
Except you can effect EVERY SINGLE CREATURE WITHIN 40FT.
Those two guys in cover, they both have to roll or get pulled out. That melee guy wailing on your envoy behind you, he also has to roll. Your fighter who is caught out of position intentionally fails his roll and now has 20ft less to move.
Your operative who the enemy took cover from fails his throw and is now in a position where the enemy no longer has cover.
This level of ability to move people is incredibly powerful.
You say that the soldier can lock people in place.
He only every can have 1 reaction.
A solarian can shut down entire sections of the battlefield by creating walls of fire, dragging people in and out of cover, making them staggered, blinding them, dazzling them, holding them in the air above the cover they were hiding behind.
They can create 15 ft of one way cover, they can give their allies haste, for free, they can give their allies the ability to teleport across the field, they can fly for free, gain spidrclimb for free.
They have so much more they can do if you choose to make use of it
At any point did I say not to take plasma sheath? No I did not.
If you want to play a front line fighter solarian there are more than 1 way to play it.
You can play it your way.
You can play it the CC way.
You can also play it as a mixture by using the revelations that make you bloody diffcult to hurt and drop dex, keep your Str, Con, Wis and Cha high.
You can still do the melee damage, you can still do some of your CC, and you can still be bloody difficult to hurt.
By high levels, everyone wants the improved save feats.
11 onwards, you are probably only taking save feats.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
3. The Soldier has Con as a Resolve Stat, meaning their Resolve Stat not only increases their SP it also increases their Fort Save...
Nah.
|
I doubt +15 at 20 is considered the baseline, wasnt there a dev comment in the lead up talking about how they wanted to reduce the problem of "The martial was mind controled. again."
That comment was with regard to PC/NPC Armor Class, hp, and damage potential. Yes, the soldier is going to get dominated or confused sometimes. She's not going to be able to one-round kill the technomancer.
We aren't Casters, we can't get feats to raise our DCs so they are unlikely to be saved against. Even if we hyper pump Charisma we will have lower save DCs than spellcasters because of that reason.
While I agree Casterlarian is probably not a great idea (though honestly the more I read how bad it is, the more I want to try to make one work just because, but not for a while probably), honestly your Base DCs (DCs without applying stat) aren't *that* far from where the casters will be. Like, within a point or two quite often, or even just 1 level behind. Like, hear me out, here's the math, assuming a caster takes Spell Focus as soon as it becomes available.
Level 2 (Pre Spell Focus)
(Highest) Caster Base DC: 10 + SL 1 = 11
Solarian Base DC: 10 + (2/2) = 11
Level 3 (Spell Focus)
Caster Base DC: 10 + SL 1 + 1 = 12
Solarian Base DC: 10 + 1 = 11 (1 point difference)
Level 4
Caster Base DC: 10 + SL 2 + 1 = 13
Solarian Base DC: 10 + 2 = 12 (still 1 point)
Level 6
Caster Base DC: 10 + SL 2 + 1 = 13
Solarian Base DC: 10 + 3 = 13 (Tied)
...
Level 11 (Spell Focus +2)
Caster Base DC: 10 + SL 4 + 2 = 16
Solarian Base DC: 10 + 5 = 15 (still 1 point)
Level 12
Caster Base DC: 10 + SL 4 + 2 = 16
Solarian Base DC: 10 + 6 = 16 (Tied)
...
Level 17 (Spell Focus +3)
Caster Base DC: 10 + SL 6 + 3 = 19
Solarian Base DC: 10 + 8 = 18 (1 point)
Level 18
Caster Base DC: 10 + SL 6 + 3 = 19
Solarian Base DC: 10 + 9 = 19 (Tied)
Level 20
Caster Base DC: 10 + SL 6 + 3 = 19
Solarian Base DC: 10 + 10 = 20 (At this 1 level you actually beat Casters, a fascinating extra little capstone)
Now this isn't a level-by-level consideration, but the thing to keep in mind is that Caster DCs scale by 1 every 4 levels, excepting 20, and then Spell Focus is just an effective additional scale at certain levels, meanwhile the Solarian's DCs scale every other levels. So for the most part they actually stay pretty well within at most 1 point of each other if the caster has Spell Focus. Put a Solarian against a Mystic without Spell Focus, and you'll actually come out ahead surprisingly often. So if you did for some reason scale your Cha like a caster scales their casting stat, your DCs will hardly be anything to sneeze at.
|
Another option for the solarian is to dump their strength and wear powered armor.
Maybe not the best option but it is an optionBecause you seem to underestimate what a Solarian has to do in order to match Soldier Defense for Melee either.
1. The Solarian has to spend 1 feat for Heavy Armor (we don't get it for free) - If we don't, we have to stick with Light Armor which requires us to hyper pump Dex to get the benefits of - Which we can't do if we are melee. The Soldier doesn't.
2. The Soldier gets a LOT of feats, feats are good. I can make a Soldier that is within 5 points per hit of Solarian Damage (and potentially higher if there are enough enemies around) has better mobility than a Solarian, and can hit twice on a charge. (Solarians can never do that.)
3. The Soldier has Con as a Resolve Stat, meaning their Resolve Stat not only increases their SP it also increases their Fort Save... The Solarian has Charisma as a Resolve Stat, meaning their Resolve Stat does jack all aside from boosting Revelation saves, of which the ones that use it all have limited use.
4. The Solarian gets to Point Blank Area of Effect once every three rounds. If they are lucky. This is not anywhere near as useful as a grenade. I love Solar Flare, but it is not as useful as a Grenade. Also the fact that if I use it it shuts down all of my other Revelations and makes me spend the next 2 rounds booting things back up.
stellr rush may not beable to hit twice on a charge but he does get his explode damage and bull rush options which are decent & he can do a lot of things a soldier cant do
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Something else to consider, what is the purpose of the Solarian class? Having CHA as it's primary stats doesn't mean you need to max it. If you are going gung ho melee beat down build, then maxing CHA isn't really needed. If you want to embrace the utility built into it's design and be more than a one-trick pony, CHA is worth a build for your abilities. Simply put, what are you trying to do with the class and why?
Side note, if min/maxing is your end goal of playing Starfinder (or even pathfinder) you're missing out on a great deal of fun.
How about the fact that the soldier has 2 less class skills than the solarian and does not gain sidereal influence.
Extra class skills is nice, but they have the same number of skill points so that's ultimately pretty minor.
Hell, being less MAD makes it easier for a Soldier to buy up Int later on and having combat feats as class features makes it easier to invest in stuff like skill focus and synergy, too.
Everything else, we don't know, so we can't say if Solarian is notably far from expected target numbers for saves or not.
You might not be able to tell how often you should succeed according to what the designers think is right, but you can pretty easily look at what other classes have with similar arrays to compare.
On DC's and chance to land abilities. If I choose to I can have exactly the same base dc's as the casters.
Can you share your ideal Solarian build with us? Right now it kind of sounds like you're designing Schrodinger's Solarian. At one point talking about them being better at skills and DPR than a solder and another point talking about having save DCs comparable to casters and brushing off their problems with saves as manageable, but rather than talking about all of these things as more or less separate builds you're blending them together.
Side note, if min/maxing is your end goal of playing Starfinder (or even pathfinder) you're missing out on a great deal of fun.
I don't really see the value of dismissing what someone likes about the system as 'wrong' like this. It's also kind of irrelevant, because these issues can crop up without optimizing too and better balance doesn't negatively impact anything in and of itself.
On DC's and chance to land abilities. If I choose to I can have exactly the same base dc's as the casters.Can you share your ideal Solarian build with us? Right now it kind of sounds like you're designing Schrodinger's Solarian. At one point talking about them being better at skills and DPR than a solder and another point talking about having save DCs comparable to casters and brushing off their problems with saves as manageable, but rather than talking about all of these things as more or less separate builds you're blending them together.
While I don't know what J4RH34D's build is, I've got a "caster" Solarian write up, with example statistic blocks at 6th and 12th. It is at the end of the guide presented in this thread: General Solarian Guide. At least that way you can look at damage potential, saves, and offensive abilities with actual choices made while maximizing charisma.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I have to agree with peat here. Even if many revelations are situational, you still gain choices that may be used in situations where it would be advantageous. This is worth something and many people are dismissing these as useless.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
When your response to someone pointing out that a class has numerous more abilities than what you're focusing on and your response is "You don't know how [class] works, do you?", it's time to take a step back from the thread.No it isn't Rysky, not at all.
I know how the class works. I'm probably one of the few authorities on it to be honest. I recommend in both of the guides in using a wide range of abilities both Graviton and Photon. I also know the usefulness of those abilities and how often they can be used, what they do, and what the likelihood of them having an effect is.
Alternatively, if Paizo made a Revelation that allowed a Solarian to spend a Resolve Point to add their Charisma bonus, or just a straight bonus, to a Save that would also be a good work around. Solarians don't have any abilities that use Resolve until level 20 as it is.
Um, aren't Solar Revelations abilities of a Solarian?
There are a number of Solarian powers which can spend resolve before 20th level: Astrologic Sense, Crush, Glow of Life, Reflection, Soul Furnace.