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I'm building my first SF character and wanted to build a Kaylee-like mechanic - a person that doesn't have much combat training and does other stuff in combat. How could I go around doing that without being a burden to my party?
The party is comprised of a soldier, an envoy and a technomancer; the campaign is homebrew.
My first thought is having a drone do all the heavy-lifting DPR-wise. Which one would be better to both deal and survive damage?
What actions would be useful to take in combat besides attacking?
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Do what those other famous non-combatant sci-fi engineers – R2-D2 and BB-8 – did on their epic adventures: repair things, juryrig things, and hack everything with a microprocessor.
Distracting Hack, Quick Patch/Repair, and Holographic Projector are all Mechanical Tricks with excellent combat utility that are not dependent on the Mechanic being a great fighter. The Amplified Glitch Feat is also very useful.
Having said that, Covering Fire and Harrying Fire are potentially useful combat actions by anyone, even if they don’t have the greatest Attack Bonus or oodles of Combat Feats. Tossing Smoke Grenades is also a handy option.
Ultimately, the non-combatant role is a very “party dependent” role to take on. If you have a regular group of players, it shouldn’t be too hard to play. If you’re going to be in “pick up games” as part of Society play, it’s probably best to avoid being a total pacifist. You don’t gotta be a Space Marine, but maybe you could be more Montgomery Scott and less Kaylee.
I would also focus on non-combat things (instead of simply using your drone to attack).
There are so many things covered in the rules you can do to support your allies:
- Hack the enemies systems
- Distract them via hacking
- build barricades to provide cover
- Help another actions
- hack environment systems to change the battlefield (turn of light, move platforms, deactivate artifical gravity etc.)
But be sure to let your DM know that you want to focus on this things, if he is a good DM he would appreciate it and give you the opportunities. ;)
Too bad the Distracting Hack trick only applies to the mechanic :(
Honestly you could probably make it work without to much effort. I would probably recommend exo mechanic simply because once you start getting remote hacking ability there is a lot of hacking type stuff you can do while others are fighting. Most tech people are going to have a personal comp on them and are not likely to be expecting somebody to be pilfering their secrets during the middle of a firefight.
Also if you take the right mechanic tricks there is a lot of remote disruption sorts of things you can be doing in a fight such as jamming peoples weapons/causing alarms to go off and distract them and other various things.
The big issue would be on primitive worlds vs animals or non technical beings. Less stuff to hack/repair/disrupt.
Remote hack is not limited to the exocortex, and going drone would give you a way to contribute to combat, even when you can't hack something, without having to use a gun effectively.
A large part of this depends on what your other party members are doing.
Are any of the others focused on support too? That won't work well in a small party. Pretty much everyone needs to be contributing, even if only in emergencies.
Examples
Is the Envoy planning to pass out morale boosts & stamina in a supporting role? Then your drone won't get any of that, and likely you and a spell-focused Technomancer won't use them much so the Envoy is only supporting one PC? Not good synergy there.
Is the Soldier going into melee? Then a melee drone would be a great addition to get some flanking and spread out the damage taken.
And how many of your skills overlap with those of the Technomancer?
If she/he can do what you can and cast spells too, you're a lump.
And if you're not excited about the drone, maybe Kaylee could be a Hacker Operative, not doing much direct damage, but debuffing enemies (but is the Envoy already going for the same debuffs?)
And even Kaylee had to arm up against the Reavers, so you'll have to gauge how severe this homebrew universe is.
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For what it’s worth, my SFS character is a Ysoki Operative (Hacker) 2 / Mechanic (Cortex) 1; She’s not bad at combat thanks to her naturally high Dex, Operative Trick Attacks, and no one else in the group wanting the high tier pistol that we received as treasure; However, I built her to be a Engineer first, a Hacker second, and a combatant third. I plan to continue mostly as an Operative, because the idea of a “Rat-Girl I.T. Ninja” just appeals to me. (If only I could make her a [u]B[/b]atgirl...)
Anyone who plans to focus on engineering and hacking should probably “dip” a level or two from Operative into their Mechanic build or vice-versa. There’s a lot of synergy between the two classes that expand on this role.
For what it’s worth, my SFS character is a Ysoki Operative (Hacker) 2 / Mechanic (Cortex) 1; She’s not bad at combat thanks to her naturally high Dex, Operative Trick Attacks, and no one else in the group wanting the high tier pistol that we received as treasure; However, I built her to be a Engineer first, a Hacker second, and a combatant third. I plan to continue mostly as an Operative, because the idea of a “Rat-Girl I.T. Ninja” just appeals to me. (If only I could make her a [u]B[/b]atgirl...)
Anyone who plans to focus on engineering and hacking should probably “dip” a level or two from Operative into their Mechanic build or vice-versa. There’s a lot of synergy between the two classes that expand on this role.
That's a good point I forgot.
If you're focusing on a non-combat role, multiclassing can nab some good abilities with synergy. (At the cost of combat ability.)
Why do you want to play a non-combat role in a game where 90% of the rules govern combat?
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Why do you want to play a non-combat role in a game where 90% of the rules govern combat?
Because the quantity of rules about a subject doesn’t necessarily reflect the quantity of that subject during play. Combat requires more rules than social interaction, exploration, investigation, and other challenges do. In my experience, most sci-fi adventure RPGs try for a roughly equal mix of combat, exploration, and diplomacy. Usually more Star Trek/Star Wars than Starcraft.
Furthermore, even if a campaign does focus on combat to a greater degree than other axes of play, not everyone wants to be a primary combatant. Star Wars had it’s C-3PO and R2-D2, not just Luke and Han.
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I always kind of saw those two droids as slapstick narrative devices than PCs.
They were narrative devices, at least in the first movie. They were stand-ins for the audience, the same as the two peasants from Hidden Fortress that they were based on were.
But, there are lots of examples of noncombatant characters, even in combat heavy sci-fi universes, which people may want to play. The one time I played the Serenity RPG, I played a 'Kaylee' style character, it was actually pretty fun.
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Dr. McCoy, Dr. Crusher, Dr. Bashir, Lt.Cmdr. LaForge, Cmdr. Troi, Ensign Kim, Quark, and the Doctor were all prominent characters on Star Trek and all non-combat characters; Dr. Franklin, Ambassador Delenn, and Ambassador Mollari were major non-combat characters on Babylon 5; Ripley is a non-combatant in Alien and most of Aliens; C-3PO, R2-D2, BB-8, Rose, Padmé, Leia (in TFA and TLJ), and Anakin (TPM) are all non-combat characters in Star Wars.
With only a few exceptions in over five decades, the Doctor and his Companions on Doctor Who aren’t combat characters. Heck, one version of the Doctor Who roleplaying game is actually structured so that running away or attempting to schmooze/bamboozle the bad guy always take initiative priority over combat.
Heck, there isn’t a single combatant character in 2001, Moon, Gravity, Interstellar, The Martian, Contact, Sphere, Passengers, or ten-thousand other sci-fi genre films and novels.
Most of the characters you mentioned saw active combat though...
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I didn’t say that these characters were complete and total pacifists, did I? They were engineers, doctors, diplomats, scientists, and other roles we might think of as “support classes” instead of “martial classes.”
Gandalf swings his staff and his sword, now and again, but you’d never call him a Fighter, right?
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Dr. McCoy appears in seventy-six of Star Trek’s 79 TOS episodes, all twenty-two episodes of the animated series, one episode of TNG, and six feature films... In all that span, I can think of less than a half-dozen “combats” he’s involved in.
Most prominent, is “Bread and Circuses,” TOS s.2, e.25, where he basically just holds his shield up and let’s his opponent swat at it. Even his opponent criticizes his poor technique...
He bum rushes Evil Spock and gets judo flipped to the floor in seconds during the final fight of “Mirror, Mirror” TOS s.2 e.9...
He slaps some sense into a pregnant woman in “Friday’s Child” TOS s.2 e.11...
And he karate chops a Redshirt into unconsciousness in “City on the Edge of Forever” TOS s.2 e.28.
There may have been another “all hands on deck” brawl here or there throughout the series that he played a part in... But those were usually Scotty’s time to shine, so I can’t think of any. But despite his lack of combat scenes, McCoy is still a key part of the show’s “Power Trio” and a stone-cold bad ass.
Why do you want to play a non-combat role in a game where 90% of the rules govern combat?
That's a valid question and it highlighted how poorly worded my OP was. I did not mean that I want to build a character that's useless in combat, far from it. I meant that I wanted a character who does other stuff in combat besides dealing damage, since I just started in the system and am not familiar with all the options around. That's why I suggested having a drone to pick up the slack, etc.
Also, my preliminary research showed a mechanic just couldn't compare DPR-wise to the other classes, so I thought of branching out and trying to do different stuff instead of trying to compete.
Anyone remembers the tv series "Riptide" - isn't that the perfect example of a party where one member is a "non combatant" ?
I like the idea of having a non-combat focused character in the group. Maybe he comes up with some tricks or ruses to help their friends or defuse encounters before they escalate further (remember Wash in Firefly? "If you don't go in I blast a crater in this moon!").
I think P&P RPG should be as much about combat as finding creative ways to deal with fights without fighting.
In Babylon 5 Mollari was an expertly trained duelist and pilot, and was able to cold cock a royal guard with his fist. However he is clearly more likely to talk or bribe his way out of issues, so I'd chalk that up to him being a high level envoy that happened to pick up combat capability.
G'Kar is really weird. They portrayed him as a spineless coward in the beginning yet he later showed tremendous strength (compared even to other narns) and could quite easily overpower four security guards. He was also a rebellion soldier.
I just love how complex the Babylon 5 characters are and how much depth there is.
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That’s one of the tricky bits about conversions from outside media into a class and level based system like Starfinder. An effects based open point buy system, like Mutants & Masterminds or GURPS, makes it easier to reproduce characters that don’t fit quite so neatly into Classes. For example, Mollari could very well be modeled by an Icon Envoy with a few combat Feats or perhaps an Operative “dip,” but it’d be much easier to use a M&M-like system to build him from the ground up.
Class-based systems are great at doing the genre and play-style that the designers intended. Starfinder is built with independent, adventurous explorers as the focus, very much in the classic Space Opera style. This means it does action-adventure oriented heroes quite well and the genres related to it: Space Opera, Planetary Romance, Sword and Planet, and Space Western. But not necessarily other sci-fi subgenres, like Hard Sci-Fi, Cyberpunk, Diselpunk, Gothic Sci-Fi, and so forth...
Given the popularity of Pathfinder and Paizo’s continued use of OGL for Starfinder, I suspect will see third-party settings and sourcebooks that expand on the current selection of Classes into ones better focused on those areas Starfinder doesn’t necessarily cover that well. Again, to use Mollari as an example, although he could be built using Envoy, if someone where to make a Babylon 5 game using the Starfinder OGL, we would probably see a Class or Archetype expressly for Diplomats. (Not to mention Psi-Cops.)
According to the suggestions provided, some non-attacking actions might include:
- Hacking the environment to provide advantages/disadvantages.
- Creating distractions by hacking (using the Amplified Glitch feat on 3rd level)
- Creating barricades (using the Barricade feat)
- Could the feat be used two times in a single round to create 2 squares of cover in adjacent squares?
- Tossing smoke grenades to hinder enemies.
- Overloading enemy weapons/armor (requires an adjacent drone or exocortex) at 3rd level
I believe the Soldier is going Dex/ranged, so our group is missing a melee meatshield. Any suggestions on how to build the drone that way?
According to the suggestions provided, some non-attacking actions might include:
- Hacking the environment to provide advantages/disadvantages.
- Creating distractions by hacking (using the Amplified Glitch feat on 3rd level)
- Creating barricades (using the Barricade feat)
- Could the feat be used two times in a single round to create 2 squares of cover in adjacent squares?
- Tossing smoke grenades to hinder enemies.
- Overloading enemy weapons/armor (requires an adjacent drone or exocortex) at 3rd levelI believe the Soldier is going Dex/ranged, so our group is missing a melee meatshield. Any suggestions on how to build the drone that way?
I'm certain you could create multiple instances of cover.
Smoke grenades can impede allies as well as enemies.
@Rune:
Building a tanking Drone isn't really viable unless you only fight 1 combat per day, mainly because its HP is poor, healing the Drone is such a pain, and its AC lags a few points behind a proper tank, even with the AC mod. If you were to attempt it, I'd say you at least need to pick up the Repair Drone trick and the Armor mod. Also it's a plus if your party has a Technomancer that can toss in a Mending (but that's only 1x/day). Make Whole becomes an option later. But healing can be a big problem even for drones that try to stay in the back, let alone those putting themselves in the line of fire.
You might as well tank with a Mechanic before you tank with a drone. More SP/HP, much easier to heal, and higher AC potential.
As for actions in combat, no one has mentioned the Overcharge line of Mechanic Tricks. With the right positioning, you could take two move actions to power up the weapons of two combatants -- say, your party's Soldier and your own Drone. From a DPR standpoint, this option may not be much worse than firing your own weapon.
Agree with Ravingdork on skepticism on smoke grenades. In my experience whenever people start tossing these or spells like Fog Cloud, it's rare that it helps much more than it hurts. There are definitely situations where it can be clutch, but it might only be 1 battle out of 5 or 10.
@Rune:
Building a tanking Drone isn't really viable unless you only fight 1 combat per day, mainly because its HP is poor, healing the Drone is such a pain, and its AC lags a few points behind a proper tank, even with the AC mod.
Thanks for the comprehensive response. You have convinced me to drop the idea of the tank drone (albeit that would be hilarious as a literal tank).
As for actions in combat, no one has mentioned the Overcharge line of Mechanic Tricks. With the right positioning, you could take two move actions to power up the weapons of two combatants -- say, your party's Soldier and your own Drone. From a DPR standpoint, this option may not be much worse than firing your own weapon.
I've looked into it, but I'm not really impressed. The problem is the bonus applies to only the "next" attack - if it applied for a full round buffing the soldier would be quite a fair trade.
Agree with Ravingdork on skepticism on smoke grenades. In my experience whenever people start tossing these or spells like Fog Cloud, it's rare that it helps much more than it hurts. There are definitely situations where it can be clutch, but it might only be 1 battle out of 5 or 10.
Sure, I only meant it as crowd-control. If a fight has 5 guys, I can toss it on the back, forcing a couple of guys to spend a couple actions moving out of cover, etc.
A little late to the party, but speaking from experience whether or not your idea would work probably depends a lot on the GM. I have an Operative (hacker specialization) who has no armor or weapon. I hack everything to contribute (as others have suggested), but here's some highlights from our campaign I've done so far:
-Utilized a mechanical arm loader across the room to drop a several ton crate on an enemy with a Computers check
-Create a "lens flare" on an enemy's HUD that the GM ruled as a distraction enough to count as a blinding spell for one round by hacking into the device and creating a very bright, very large 8-bit middle finger
-Mechanically (as in, not hacking) jury rigged a nearby small space ship to only turn left when it fired up...you can guess the result
If your GM allows for creativity, ALL characters and classes can be non-traditional combatants. There's almost always rules for the things I do, he just has to come up with DC for what I want to do on the fly. I've not once done something that doesn't have a skill or feat (sometimes both) associated with it.
I played a mostly non-combat mechanic in my first foray into Starfinder. Typically, he'd mess with stuff. Turn enemy security systems against them, open airlocks and vent them out into space, feed bad information to people, etc.
Generally, combat went long enough and involved being a lot more defensive than in Pathfinder, and he'd have time to do whatever he was doing. Often his successful hack of something would become the pivotal moment in a battle for those in the party who were hunkered down behind cover with blasts and bullets flying overhead.