| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I agree that Countertech is really bad. The action economy is terrible, you aren't guaranteeed a success, and you have to guess at the appriopriate spell level. Plus you burn a spell to avoid damage, which is basically an after the fact gamble on temp hit points. Just say no.
Empowered weapon would give you a +3 to hit and +3d6 to damage for a 3rd level spell. Very inefficient means of generating damage with a spell, unless you're trying to combo this with 8th level spell hack Spellshot to put as much damage (weapon plus Spellshot plus Empowered Spell) on a target as possible in one round.
Energize Spell is...fine. At 2nd level it's great, but later in your career it's not nearly as useful and you'll probably regret you can't retrain it.
This thread discusses some uses of Fabricate Tech, which expand as you grow in level and they publish more options. At low levels (4th-6th) you mostly want it for drones.
Harmful Spells is ok if you plan to burn lots of spells on AOE damage, but not otherwise. It unfortunately won't combo with stuff like Spellshot.
Quick Scan is apparently meant for Shadowrun style hacking under time pressure missions. It seems doubtful many Starfinder campaigns will be like this.
Robot Influence is an odd one, as Technomancer's have few mind affecting spells, none that are exceptionally good, and have specialized spells for affecting constructs already. I wouldn't take it.
Selective Targeting is good for AOE builds (but doesn't combo with the other hacks that are also good for that), but yeah, not otherwise useful.
Spell Countermeasures is actually decent! You'll get hit with lots of magical effects (monster abilities as well as spells) of the course of your career, and this will help you save against 10% of them.
Technomantic Proficiency is apparently designed for those who want to save proficiency feats but pick up and use a variety of weapons on a quickly changing basis and not for many rounds per day. Not sure that's an idea that makes a lot of sense when Fabricate Arms exists at 5th level. The resolve cost of this is questionable at low levels, too.
Note that Armory introduced two new 2nd level magic hacks.
Recode Gem lets you wipe the spell in found spell gems and replace it with one of those you know. Unless you find lots of garbage spell gems with useless spells as treasure I can't imagine using this.
But Summon Cache is interesting! As a standard action you can summon your spell cache to your hand from anywhere on the same plane. Great for smuggling stuff (null space chamber) or never losing your weapon, depending on what you use as your cache.
None of the 2nd level choices are amazing, but my favorites are Fabricate Tech (utility), Spell Countermeasures (survivability), Harmful Spells (blasting), Empowered Weapon (Spellshot or sniper build), and Summon Cache (utility/spy type stuff).