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Name: Section 0x29A
Class: Vanguard 8
Theme: Death-Touched
Race: Android
Alignment: CN
Deity: Groetus
Strength 10
Dexterity 22
Constitution 20
Intelligence 14
Wisdom 12
Charisma 8
Aspects: Boundary (Sunder), Momentum (Bull Rush)
Disciplines: Evasion, Intervene, Shimmer Guard, Curative Deconstruction
Feats: Weapon Focus (Advanced Melee), Skill Synergy (Stealth, Pilot), Enhanced Resistance (Kinetic), Iron Will
EAC: 25
KAC: 26
DR 8/-
Resistances: cold 5, fire 5
Stamina: 104
HP: 68
Resolve: 9
Fortitude: 11
Reflex: 12, evasion
Will: 5
Situational: +2 android vs. things constructs don't care about, +1 death-touched vs. things undead don't care about
Attacks:
Entropic Strike +15 vs. EAC, 2d8+13 acid or bludgeoning damage. Delivered via shadow chains it gains reach, trip, disarm.
Attack of Opportunity: +17 to hit, 2d8+16, due to Opportunistic fusion
Acolyte Shadow Chains (without ES): +9 vs. EAC, 3d4+8 cold damage; +2 to hit /+3 damage on AoOs.
Skills:
Acrobatics 11
Athletics 11
Culture 15
Diplomacy 3
Intimidate 3
Life Science 6
Medicine 6
Mysticism 12
Perception 15
Physical Science 6
Piloting 17
Sleight of Hand 7
Stealth 17
Survival 12
Equipment:
Advanced Lashunta Tempweave
Jetpack armor upgrade
Thermal Capacitor Mk 1 armor upgrade
Acolyte Shadow Chains with Holy and Opportunistic fusions
Personal Upgrade Mk 2 (Dexterity)
Personal Upgrade Mk 1 (Constitution)
My character concept was a bit Altered Carbon/Eclipse Phase inspired: 29A is an infolife sleeved into an android body and deployed in the field whenever the Society detects a significant threat. Since 29A is only put in the field during crisis situations, the infolife actually likes those situations and doesn't mind pissing off the Azlanti Star Empire by stealing their ship; big chance to be put in the field again. The infolife is also deeply fascinated by real and theoretical apocalypses and cultural collapses (high Culture and Mysticism).
The party as a whole consisted of: my vanguard, an ysoki vanguard 8 played by James; a biohacker played by Agyra, and a technomancer played by Nils. We played the four-player high tier.
After a mission briefing we discussed starship roles and it turned out we were fairly well covered. The ysoki vanguard and the technomancer were both capable engineers, the biohacker and me were good pilots, the biohacker, me and the other vanguard were good gunners, and the technomancer was obviously suitable as science officer. We selected the Drake 8, looked at its sheer amount of guns, and didn't bother with a captain, going to:
Me: gunner
James/Vanguard: second gunner
Agyra/Biohacker: pilot
Nils/Technomancer: science/engineering
We travelled to the destination station, heard just how big it is (about twice Luxembourg, about twenty times Absalom Station/Idari) and commenced the strafing run before landing. We had to choose where to land: a greenhouse where the Azlanti were doing something mysterious, or the construction yard where they were probably keeping the King Xeros. It seemed obvious that we should choose the construction yard, at least at first, because ensuring the Azlanti didn't get the King Xeros was our primary mission.
We end up on the map on one side, and Azlanti on the other. In the middle is a building, on the ground around the building is coolant fog that would do a bit of cold damage. Enemies immediately go into the building and onto the roof. "Scars", the ysoki vanguard immediately goes into the building, which is all 5ft corridors. The rest of us jetpack onto the roof where we face off against first one azlanti operative with a jetpack, then some more guards that climb up because they're also hindered by the 5ft corridors.
I'm deploying in front or to the side of my teammates, using Shimmer Guard to protect them. Then I close into melee with the operative and start beating him up. He has acid resistance but the biohacker removes that, and it turns out our entire party has acid weapons. After he goes down we wipe up the mooks. Altogether I've taken 18 stamina damage (out of 104 stamina). The fight felt pretty straightforward, we walk in there, and keep pressing on them until they crumble. At no point were we really taking serious damage or worried. I got an entropy point from Boundary aspect, as did Scars; we never got hit for 16 damage so didn't get any the regular way.
We talk to the locals. It turns out we have a pretty decent packet of skills and persuade all but one of them to help us. We get some nice boosts to our ship and then we get a call that the Azlanti are trying to escape with the King Xeros so we need to chase them down and stop that. We go after them and have a battle against a tier 10 ship piloted by a level 7 crew, with our nominally tier 8 ship with some boosts.
For me the space combat was exciting enough, pitting the Drake's "I really want to win initiative so we can aim our front weapons" against the King's weird Azlanti weaponry. Interestingly, the Azlanti managed to succeed at almost all crew checks even though they're a level 7 crew on a tier 10 ship. They have a defensive item that seems grossly undercosted but we have a plethora of heavy weapons, and my gunnery bonus (+14) is the highest you can have at this level. They give us some good scares but we manage to avoid taking hull damage, while our 10d6 and 10d10 weapons connect a couple of times, and eventually a broadside finishes them off.
We go to the ship, skip the optional encounter due to time. Later we review the scenario and the encounter would have been a waste of time because it doesn't really matter how many CR 3 mooks you throw against level 8 vanguards with DR and energy resistance; you're not going to get through. We notice that the ship's drives appear to be in trouble and figure we'd better hurry below deck to see if we can fix that. We pass some rooms that we could loot if we had the time, but of course we'd better go down to Engineering first. It's nice to run through some areas that look familiar from PFS though. We trigger a trap, but my Evasion prevents most of the damage, and the biohacker removes most of what I took.
When we get to engineering, four player adjustment removes most mooks, and the remaining one gets ripped apart in the first round by Scars giving me a direct route to the boss. He never gets out of his corner and is quickly beaten to death. He manages to Inject Nanobots on me but I pass the save, taking only 14 damage, so just a scratch. The biohacker giving him acid vulnerability didn't help his case any, because we were all doing a lot of acid damage. Afterwards we discussed if the genetics study field is really supposed to cause the Vulnerability property, or if it's just meant to remove more resistance than a regular counteragent. Because a status effect that lets the whole party do 50% extra damage is insanely strong.
After beating the boss into a corroded puddle we investigate the trouble with the engines. In a nice callback to PFS, it appears the King Xeros will disappear again soon, so we just have some time to gather the most interesting tidbits. Perhaps in 10 year we'll see it again in whatever game follows Starfinder then. Anyway, we have a bunch of rooms to search using various skills. We have pretty good skill coverage as a party and manage to get most of them before we need to escape.
Thoughts on the Vanguard as it appeared in play...
* Entropic Strike is strong. Really strong. It does a good bunch of base damage dice for its level, targets EAC, and it's driven by Dex+Con, two stats that you want to have anyway.
* This scenario was on the easy side. There were a lot of fights with "surely lots of CR 3 mooks can challenge a level 8 party?" No, they can't. They needed to roll 18+ to hit me, and needed 20s to hit the other vanguard. They needed to roll maximum damage to get past my DR or energy resistance. And I have 104 stamina, so I'm really not worried.
* As an intelligence 14 android, I get 8 skill points per level. With Dexterity maxed out, and Aspect bonuses, I was also good at those skills. I was totally loving the "skilled warrior" role. That said, I had to take Skill Synergy to get piloting and stealth as class skills. It feels weird for such a dexterity-loving class not to have them as class skills. Isn't the "entropy, decay, everything breaks" class supposed to have stealth?
* Entropy Points didn't really play a role. Enemies didn't do enough damage to give me any, I only got them from Boundary. I suspect that as-is, Boundary is going to be the must-take Aspect. It splits the case of "these enemies can't hit me to give me EP", and it gives a bonus to Perception.
* Entropic Attunement didn't play a role. It's so circumstantial: you have to gain an entropy point before critting, or you have to gain an entropy point before using a niche weapon property.
* I got to use 3/4 of the disciplines I took. Shimmer Guard is quite powerful, and seems broken in its duration; RAW, it doesn't end at end of combat, it just keeps going forever once activated. And activating it doesn't even cost a separate action. Evasion saved me from some trap damage. As a Dex-heavy Reflex-strong class it's a perfect discipline. Intervene I also used to transfer some damage to myself before filtering it through energy resistance. Both Intervene and Shimmer Guard are pretty good for letting a vanguard be a tank, by just making it less effective to attack anyone but you, without "antagonize mind control" that makes some GMs see red.
* I didn't use a shield. I was using a two-handed weapon of course, but I also didn't really fancy spending move actions on it constantly. I have loads of stamina and high AC. Just a bit more AC isn't worth the loss of mobility or full attacks to me.
* Although delivering Entropic Strike through a weapon is very powerful, I'm not in love with the flavor of it. I used Shadow Chains mostly for reach, but that's not normally an operative weapon; it's a somewhat heavy 2H weapon actually. If I use it the regular way, my to-hit with it drops by 6! Since we're overriding some key things about the underlying weapon (always use EAC and operative), it feels like the underlying weapon is just being kinda de-flavored and cheapened. You have to dump enough cash in it so that the WBL police don't get on your case, but the level 7 shadow chains isn't doing anything for me that the level 1 shadow chains don't do, except being level 7. It's greater damage doesn't matter at all. I can't realistically use it as a regular weapon (against an acid and bludgeoning immune enemy) because losing the Operative property is just too big a change in to-hit. So having to use a level 6+ weapon to be able to use my level 8 vanguard entropic strike with Reach just feels like an administrative duty to the WBL police, not like anything cool.
* I had a worryingly low Will save. I didn't have to roll any Will saves this adventure, but I think vanguards are rather vulnerable to Fear effects used to send them running away like little girls. Of course there's a Discipline to resist that by spending Entropy points, but if you get hit with such an effect in the first round of combat (which makes a lot of tactical sense for enemies to do), then you won't have any EP.
* There was some wonder about succesful Entropic Strike giving you the Block effect, while having an Entropy Point also gives you an insight to AC, so they don't stack. This means competion between class features that you both always get, which is confusing and a bit dumb.
* Although I get Bull Rush and Sunder maneuver improvement from my aspects, I didn't use it. Locations where bull rushing accomplishes more than just hitting people are rare; they basically require the scenario writer to put enemies with their backs to a cliff, and that doesn't happen very much. Sunder may have some use cases. You can smash an operative's pistol (they have this annoying habit of moving away from your melee build without provoking and then trick attacking). And you can break someone's armor to lower their AC, but for that to be economical you have to inflict the broken condition in one hit, and the reduction in AC should make the difference for the rest of your party in consistently hitting the boss. So it's only useful if the boss has armor that provides a lot of AC but doesn't have too many HP (determined by item level), and the boss has so many HP that you can't just kill him directly. That's fairly niche.
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Closing thoughts
I really enjoyed playing this character. I like playing solid melee guys and this class delivers on that. I also place a high value on skills, and this class delivers on that as well. I think we're in a fairly good place with regards to both strength and dexterity vanguards being plausible, but I still need to go test a strength vanguard. Heavy armor dexterity vanguard also worked out well for Scars.
Entropy Points need a lot more work. Some abilities are supposed to key off of them, but gaining them is too unreliable. In this class you're really expecting to use your Resolve to heal after the fight, and also you need you move actions to get into melee where you can pin down enemies. I'd suggest a change like this:
- You start each fight with 1 EP.
- You gain EP if you take at least your level, not double you level in damage.
- You gain a way to use EP offensively from level 1 onwards, such as maybe a Burning Hands style acid cone attack. You can spend more EP to boost the area or damage a bit.
The idea being that EP comes faster but you also have more outlets to spend it in.
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I ran 1-27 as well and had a hard time hitting the vanguard. Its almost as if you don’t want to pump your armor class.
I dunno. I think people fixate on entropy points and their problems too much.
I got to play a tanky guy with good melee damage, accuracy, skills, and survivability. With my disciplines I was able to shield off my allies.
I had a great time and entropy points didn't play a role in it. You don't have to get hit as a vanguard for things to work out right.