An idea for a Witchwyrd mechanic

[Neil_poe]

So I've been thinking about making my first Starfinder character and was wondering if anyone had tips or ideas based on what I've come up with so far. I was thinking of making a Witchwyrd arms dealer/manufacturer who has a hobby of keeping and augmenting pets. He'd be a bit eccentric and fairly old, I was thinking 2 or 300 years, and has his own little shop on the station. He'd sell arms, armor, augs and animals.

I was thinking of running him as a drone mechanic with a dip in soilder for the proficiencies. Oh, and I talked to the gm about removing +2 cha and -2 con so could make it work a bit better and keep him balanced. What do you.guys think?

[Garrett Larghi]

You should keep the racial bonuses especially because of your backstory. As an arms trader with pets you don't get into conflict, -2 con, and as a business person you need to haggle to get your prices, +2 cha. Besides proficiencies, why would you take a dip into another class?

[Neil_poe]

Garrett Larghi wrote:

You should keep the racial bonuses especially because of your backstory. As an arms trader with pets you don't get into conflict, -2 con, and as a business person you need to haggle to get your prices, +2 cha. Besides proficiencies, why would you take a dip into another class?

I was thinking of making him a long arms and heavy weapon support guy, while the drone goes in for melee. And I was gonna have him use some bio augmentations, the dragon glad and vemon spur which both do damage based on con, but maybe I should just skip them and keep the racial. One of my thoughts was that he would experiment on the pets and himself with augs, which would work with his background but maybe not mechanical.

[Garrett Larghi]

I like it. Even with the bad con you can put points in it. Ilike where you are going though.

[Neil_poe]

Garrett Larghi wrote:

I like it. Even with the bad con you can put points in it. Ilike where you are going though.

One of the other things I need to get down is where to put points. I know his main is int, and then dex so he can land shots but after that I'm not 100% sure. If I stick with heavy weapons, I'd have to put at least a couple into Strength. So might have drop that and just use long arms? His stats are the biggest issue at the moment I think.

[Jin the Researcher]

This is my witchwyrd bio technician mechanic I have been playing in a PbP. He’s pretty fun. One thing I’d like to note is that if you want to do Longarms then dipping is really gonna be a much larger hindrance in the long run than either of the other two options. You could either bite the bullet and take the feat (not too difficult given that feats are much less numerous and vital in SF) or, alternatively, do what I did with Jin here and go with an Exocortex for enhanced Longarm capability without having to derail your build too much.

As for stats, don’t forget you can always take one of the standardized arrays in the book as they ignore your racial stat modifiers. But honestly the penalty to Con isn’t really as big a deal in Starfinder thanks to the Stamina system which makes it a lot more manageable in my experience.

[Nixitur]

Neil_poe wrote:

Garrett Larghi wrote:

I like it. Even with the bad con you can put points in it. Ilike where you are going though.

One of the other things I need to get down is where to put points. I know his main is int, and then dex so he can land shots but after that I'm not 100% sure. If I stick with heavy weapons, I'd have to put at least a couple into Strength. So might have drop that and just use long arms? His stats are the biggest issue at the moment I think.

I play a Mechanic who's gonna go with Heavy Weapons later, and here's what I do with Strength: Put your one odd leftover point into Strength, so you start with 11. Yes, that means you won't be able to wield a heavy weapon effectively until level 5, but that's probably fine, there's not that many before that point anyway. For level 11+ Heavy Weapons, you need 14 strength, but that's what the ability increase at level 10 is for.

However, she's an ExoMech, so I get Longarm Proficiency for free. For you, that's either a Soldier dip or two feats until you're even proficient with Heavy Weapons. Neither option is that great, but consider this: What precisely would you spend your feats on otherwise?
If you want to go with Heavy Weapons, I would go with 16 Int, 16 Dex, 11 Str. 18 Int, 14 Dex would also work, but your BAB isn't great, so 16/16 is probably better. Once you get Personal Upgrades, you can prioritize whatever you want.