Advice for a Tanker Technomancer

[MER-c]

More of a concept really but I was thinking about having a Technomancer who's profession was a crew member inside a main battle tank. There are, more or less, five roles inside of a tank
Driver, Radio Operator/Machine gunner, Loader, Gunner, Commander.

So the idea is how would one build a character that could fit into any one of those roles. Technomancer is not specifically required I just haven't played that class before.

[Pantshandshake]

It sort of seems like you’d do it the same way you’d make a character good at various spaceship roles, honestly.

Except without the science officer/engineer roles, you don’t really have a place where Intelligence really shines.

Maybe you can shoehorn Int into the radio person, and add some mechanical benefit based on Starfinder?

[Felix the Rat]

Oh, that kind of tank. If it works the same as starship combat, you'll want piloting as a maxed skill to attack with instead of a lower BaB. If skill points are in short supply, you could use the Ace Pilot theme for Lone Wolf to use 1/2 your piloting ranks instead of computers/engineering skills.

Maybe you could use summon creature to cover an additional role when needed? There are summons with the computers or engineering skill. I should note I have no idea about the validity of this, but I like it from an RP perspective.

[Jasque]

You should start with a Dex of 16 and put max ranks into piloting, as the others have said. This should take care of the driver and gunner roles.

The machine gunner role probably requires proficiency with heavy weapons. That's very feat intensive for a technomancer. If that's important to your build, I would consider a 1 level dip in soldier.

The radio operator role probably doesn't need any attention. Everybody in Starfinder should know about basic communication devices. If you are looking for a WW2 feel, maybe put a few ranks into Engineering. Or, for a more Starfinder feel, put those ranks into Computers.

A Commander would need some social skills, just like a Starship Captain. That's going to be a little more difficult on a Technomancer, but you can still do it with the right theme.

If you are homebrewing, ask your GM if he or she will let you use Supercharge Weapon on the tank's main gun. It would also be fun to use the Spellshot magic hack to cast spells through the tank's gun. You can use both those abilities on the machine gun without special homebrew rules.

A tank commander flinging magical nanites from the hatch and casting supercharge weapon on the gun/machine gun sounds amazing.

[The Sideromancer]

To me, the Loader seems like it has the most opportunities for a Technomancer to actually make use of their magic. Aside from buffing the weapon (mentioned earlier), you could also rule that Fabricate Arms could be used for ammo in the event you run low, as well as the possibility of using the Fabricate Scrap cantrip on spent casings for compaction and/or later magic use.

[MER-c]

I was thinking Loader would be best for a Technomancer, mostly becasue who doesn't want to enchant a 205mm howitzer shell to be even more explosive. Then said enchanted shell very far away to destroy their enemies.

[Neuromancer]

Jasque wrote:

You should start with a Dex of 16 and put max ranks into piloting, as the others have said. This should take care of the driver and gunner roles.

The machine gunner role probably requires proficiency with heavy weapons. That's very feat intensive for a technomancer. If that's important to your build, I would consider a 1 level dip in soldier.

I don't think a "tank" in starfinder would have a 5 man crew the bow machine gunner was redundant shortly after ww2. If you watch the chieftains videos on youtube there is one where he describes the process of signing for weapons they had more than 1 mg for every crew member.

And a tank that does not have a gun with CPR rounds is unlikely to need a loader

A Tank in starfinder would be a panzer (grav tank) or possibly a full on gunship (a grav tank that can SSTO)