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I'm looking for some feedback on a character concept I'm working on developing, and whether or not said concept is a good idea.
I wanted to try out the Technomancer class, especially by combining it with the Arcanamirium Sage archetype, which I understand isn't too big an issue from previous threads I've started on this board.
The species I've chosen is endiffan, whose abilities naturally lend themselves to espionage and disguise shenanigans, which is important since the character's being designed for Against the Aeon Throne.
The catch is that to take advantage of the endiffans' natural talent for these shenanigans, I'd need to invest in skills outside the normal realm of Technomancer skills, and I'm not sure how much to invest. The Skill Synergy feat makes two skills class skills, so I could get Bluff and Disguise as class skills, but the vibe I get from these boards is if you take one face skill like Bluff, you need to take them all (Bluff, Diplomacy, Disguise, Intimidate and Sense Motive); go full-on party face or go home.
Since that would either necessitate taking Skill Synergy multiple times, which would likely be decried on these boards as a waste of feats, or multiclassing into something like Envoy or Operative, which means I'd lose out on Technomancer's capstone, I'm wondering how to proceed. Is this character trying to do to much at once? Am I trying to fit a square concept into a round ruleset? Can I get away with taking Skill Synergy just once for Bluff and Disguise, or do I really need to commit to being the group's face if I want to pull off convincing disguise shenanigans? Am I setting myself up for disappointment?
...Technomancer capstone? A little ambitious, considering that AtAT ends when you hit level 7. I do take your meaning though. Losing levels in a caster class can hurt a lot.
I played through AtAT with a full Envoy, and I was extremely glad of it, because of all of the social opportunities (his team was a bunch of hardened murderers, so I couldn't really rely on diplomatic assistance).
I do have a Technomancer face, though, using the Steward Officer Archetype. Steward Officer gives you Diplomacy and Culture as Class skills, which can reduce the amount of Skill Synergy that you need to take. Steward Officer also lets you use the Demoralize aspect of the Intimidation skill with your Diplomacy, which can be fun lead-in if you know that you're about to get into a fight.
Steward Officer also gets you free proficiency and specialization in Longarms or Advanced Melee Weapons (or Improved Unarmed Strike & Improved Combat Maneuver), which can be extremely valuable for a Technomancer.
I know that there are a couple other Steward archetypes out there (Stalwart and Infiltrator, I think?) and they have similar bonuses (I think the Infiltrator gets Bluff instead of Diplomacy).
Good Optimization takes into account what is being optimized for.
Losing the capstone is pretty irrelevant for against the aeon throne.
I have a mystic whos taken skill synergy and skill focus without any depreciable loss of function. He just doesn't go in for a lot of spells with DCs
What stats are you looking at for those guys?
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...Technomancer capstone? A little ambitious, considering that AtAT ends when you hit level 7. I do take your meaning though. Losing levels in a caster class can hurt a lot.
I played through AtAT with a full Envoy, and I was extremely glad of it, because of all of the social opportunities (his team was a bunch of hardened murderers, so I couldn't really rely on diplomatic assistance).
I do have a Technomancer face, though, using the Steward Officer Archetype. Steward Officer gives you Diplomacy and Culture as Class skills, which can reduce the amount of Skill Synergy that you need to take. Steward Officer also lets you use the Demoralize aspect of the Intimidation skill with your Diplomacy, which can be fun lead-in if you know that you're about to get into a fight.
Steward Officer also gets you free proficiency and specialization in Longarms or Advanced Melee Weapons (or Improved Unarmed Strike & Improved Combat Maneuver), which can be extremely valuable for a Technomancer.
I know that there are a couple other Steward archetypes out there (Stalwart and Infiltrator, I think?) and they have similar bonuses (I think the Infiltrator gets Bluff instead of Diplomacy).
Infiltrator actually gets Diplomacy and Culture as class skills at 2nd level, and then Bluff and Disguise become Class Skills at 4th, so that would be quite effective. It's effective, though it does give me other concerns...specifically in how it impacts the character's relationship with Cedona.
Besides that, I also was looking at Arcanamirium Sage to sort of capture the idea of the character being fascinated with the intersection between magic and technology, such as the Rune Drive the PCs will discover, as well as reverse engineering any Azlanti technology they either loot or steal.
I was under the impression that at least one PC knew Cedona personally. As in, yes she was a steward, they are good friends and occasionally spent time at the bar discussing such.
A steward PC would have a very good reason to know her personally.
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I'm curious as to why the connections with the themes in the first book seem indicative that the PCs know Cedona but don't really KNOW her.
Bounty Hunter: You had a high-paying job that seemed to have gone bust, as your quarry had slipped away to another planet without leaving behind any clues. You were about to admit defeat when Cedona contacted you with some information—your quarry's location. You collected your quarry and your pay without any difficulties. Cedona has provided you with unexpected but useful information from time to time ever since, and the two of you have become friends, although she hasn't ever revealed her information sources.
Icon: Cedona happens to be a fan of your type of performance or field of study. The android is polite and friendly, and the two of you have bonded based on her appreciation of your work. She asked that you come visit her in Madelon's Landing if you ever found yourself out in the Vast. You could tell that she didn't really think you'd find the time in your busy schedule to get out that far, and you look forward to surprising her with your presence.
Mercenary: You took a job a few years ago clearing some invading forces out of a ruined factory, and one of the mercenaries working alongside you was an android named Cedona. It became clear to you that she was no ordinary mercenary but was seeking a particular individual you later learned was an escaped convict. Regardless, Cedona was cool under fire and very professional, and you appreciated that. She saw the same in you, and the two of you became friends. You have an ongoing, good-natured dispute about which of you could take the other in a fight, but you've never pushed it to the test—deep down, you might worry that you'll lose.
Outlaw: Despite your back-alley dealings and efforts to avoid legal entanglements, you kept running into an android named Cedona. You might have thought she was a bounty hunter or a police officer, as she so frequently seemed to know where to find you, but she didn't seem interested in capturing you. She was more interested in finding out why you were charged for your crimes, and whether you had done illegal things for the right reasons. Cedona seemed to actually like you, when so many others were willing to cast you aside or turn you in, and you struck up a friendship with her. She once showed up to provide you a transit pass and fake identification documents when forces of the law were closing in on your home, and you feel like you still owe her for that.
Priest: Cedona was a friend of a friend whom you tended through a difficult illness. Although Cedona doesn't share your religious conviction, you learned over long hours at your mutual friend's bedside that she is a good and caring person. When your friend passed away, you and Cedona both agreed to keep in touch, but you drifted apart nonetheless. You heard she retired to an AbadarCorp colony in the Vast, and you resolved to rekindle your friendship.
Scholar: You attended a short series of lectures a few years ago about the business of religion, but you found the presenter's conclusions ill-founded and lacking in intellectual rigor. You met another attendee—an android named Cedona— and struck up a friendship while complaining about the lectures. Cedona was primarily interested in learning about AbadarCorp colonies; she hoped to join one of those colonies once she retired from her current job, although she didn't mention what that job was. When she was approved to join AbadarCorp's colony on Nakondis, Cedona asked you to come visit her when you could, to see “religion and business in the field.”
Spacefarer: You're the reason Cedona came to Nakondis in the first place. You've been to the system before, although it seemed to have little to recommend it to anyone. Sure, Nakondis is lush with beautiful, healthy forests and thick with sparkling fog, but you aren't the sort to consider settling down on a rural planet. Your acquaintance Cedona agreed it seemed pleasant, and you weren't surprised when you heard she retired to the AbadarCorp colony there. You would like to see her life on the planet you first introduced her to.
Xenoseeker: You chafed at the confines of civilization in the Pact Worlds, finding your center in remote gardens or little-traveled wildernesses. On these journeys, you occasionally encountered an android named Cedona. She never told you what she did for a living, but she talked often about how she was looking forward to retirement on a wilderness planet far off in the Vast. When she was approved to join the colony on Nakondis, she invited you to a going-away party to celebrate her good fortune, and she asked that you look her up some day.
Themeless: You were Cedona's neighbor for a few months, and she was the only person in the neighborhood you really considered a friend. She had a pet named Cubber—a vulpine creature known as a squox (see Starfinder Alien Archive 2)—that she occasionally asked you to feed while she was away for work. You never learned what Cedona did professionally, but she seemed glad to retire from it. She was happy when she told you she'd been accepted to join an AbadarCorp colony on Nakondis, although it meant she'd have to find a new home for Cubber. Whether you now own Cubber is up to you.
The general impression that all of these give, at least to me, is that Cedona was secretive or at least vague about her position with the Stewards, building to the point where the PCs are contacted by the Stewards at the start of the second book looking for help rescuing Cedona, prompting a "Whaaaaat?! Cedona was a Steward?!" reaction from the PCs.
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Good Optimization takes into account what is being optimized for.
Losing the capstone is pretty irrelevant for against the Aeon Throne.
I am aware of this, but what if a potential GM goes beyond the books? I want to be prepared for such a possibility and I feel like Starfinder, as well as increasingly Pathfinder, really, REALLY wants you to stick with a single class. Multiclassing has kind of always felt "bad" with me, like I dropped out of class college and my character will always feel "incomplete" without that capstone. The only exception to this is Prestige Classes, which have capstones of their own to bring that sense of accomplishment, and Starfinder doesn't HAVE Prestige Classes.
I have a mystic whos taken skill synergy and skill focus without any depreciable loss of function. He just doesn't go in for a lot of spells with DCs.
I see...Admittedly, there's only one guide for Technomancers at the moment (as opposed to two for Envoys and Operatives and three for Solarians), so I only have one paradigm of what constitutes a "good" Technomancer.
What stats are you looking at for those guys?
Operating off the one guide I mentioned, I was looking at the following stat spread:
STR 13 DEX 12 CON 10 INT 16 WIS 10 CHA 12
The Strength is for Heavy Armor Proficiency, a feat the guide strongly recommends, Intelligence high as the primary casting stat and key stat for the class, and the Charisma boost comes solely from the endiffan's modifiers, which are -2 DEX, +2 INT and +2 CHA.
My plan was specifically to boost INT and DEX the most through level ups.
Besides that, I also was looking at Arcanamirium Sage to sort of capture the idea of the character being fascinated with the intersection between magic and technology
Ah, you wanted him to be one of those rare technomancers who is interested in both magic and technology. Yes, clearly that would require an archetype.
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Besides that, I also was looking at Arcanamirium Sage to sort of capture the idea of the character being fascinated with the intersection between magic and technologyAh, you wanted him to be one of those rare technomancers who is interested in both magic and technology. Yes, clearly that would require an archetype.
Ha ha. I meant more in the sense of "magitech," building and investigating hybrid items, examining how Azlanti technology is so dependent on aeon stones, that kind of thing, as opposed to being "ALL SPELLS ALL THE TIME!" and their only "tech" being a glorified spellbook.
STR 13 DEX 12 CON 10 INT 16 WIS 10 CHA 12The Strength is for Heavy Armor Proficiency, a feat the guide strongly recommends, Intelligence high as the primary casting stat and key stat for the class, and the Charisma boost comes solely from the endiffan's modifiers, which are -2 DEX, +2 INT and +2 CHA.
My plan was specifically to boost INT and DEX the most through level ups.
That charisma is REALLY low to be a face in starfinder. Unlike pathfinder where there were skill boosts falling off of trees in starfinder if you really want to be good or even reasonable at a skill you need to eke every bonus you can out of it.
You can skip heavy armor proficiency unless you're going to double down as a melee technomancer. Most of my PFS characters are still walking around in their level 1 or 2 armor at 8 6 and 5 (the 6 spends a fair bit of time in melee)
Starfinder armor simply doesn't stop you from getting hit unless you go all in on it ANd have level + armor. In an AP unless you're doing a weird loot system you won't have that. The good heavy armor is going to the melee and you're getting hand me downs. It's good for holding armor upgrade slots otherwise.
Str 11
Dex 8
Con 10
Int 18 6+2
Wis 10
Cha 16 4+2
You can get this spread by taking a theme with points in str, Int, or charisma.
the good news is that Unlike pathfinder where you got a set of armor around 5 and then upgraded it, in starfinder you get an entirely new set of duds every level. So if you go through levels 1-4 in light armor and pick up heavy armor at 5, no biggie. Just use one of your level 5 boosts to get to 13 strength
I actually played AtAT as a Technomancer who was the face of the party and captain of our ship.
It's not too hard to make it work. Obviously I wasn't as fully optimized as I could've been, but you really don't need to be in AtAT.
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STR 13 DEX 12 CON 10 INT 16 WIS 10 CHA 12The Strength is for Heavy Armor Proficiency, a feat the guide strongly recommends, Intelligence high as the primary casting stat and key stat for the class, and the Charisma boost comes solely from the endiffan's modifiers, which are -2 DEX, +2 INT and +2 CHA.
My plan was specifically to boost INT and DEX the most through level ups.
That charisma is REALLY low to be a face in starfinder. Unlike pathfinder where there were skill boosts falling off of trees in starfinder if you really want to be good or even reasonable at a skill you need to eke every bonus you can out of it.
You can skip heavy armor proficiency unless you're going to double down as a melee technomancer. Most of my PFS characters are still walking around in their level 1 or 2 armor at 8 6 and 5 (the 6 spends a fair bit of time in melee)
Starfinder armor simply doesn't stop you from getting hit unless you go all in on it ANd have level + armor. In an AP unless you're doing a weird loot system you won't have that. The good heavy armor is going to the melee and you're getting hand me downs. It's good for holding armor upgrade slots otherwise.
Str 11
Dex 8
Con 10
Int 18 6+2
Wis 10
Cha 16 4+2You can get this spread by taking a theme with points in str, Int, or charisma.
the good news is that Unlike pathfinder where you got a set of armor around 5 and then upgraded it, in starfinder you get an entirely new set of duds every level. So if you go through levels 1-4 in light armor and pick up heavy armor at 5, no biggie. Just use one of your level 5 boosts to get to 13 strength
See, it's stuff like this that makes it clear I've got no bloody clue what I'm doing when it comes to making my PCs "git gud" as they say.
If I took that setup, would I be able to get away with Skill Synergy for my first two feats (1st and 3rd level, the character isn't human, obviously) or does this necessitate the Stewards Infiltrator archetype to get the necessary skills for free?
Skill checks in APs tend to not start out too hard, but then scale up at a rate that can be difficult to keep up with.
Iirc, I had a 14 Cha on my technomancer, and took Skill Synergy at 1st level, but didn't actually bother going beyond that during the course of the AP. It went okay. I took Skill Focus in Bluff when the AP ended and we levelled up to 7 (in preparation for Signal of Screams), but didn't really need that much investment otherwise.
Don't worry about it. it's a lot of moving parts and a lot of them aren't obvious from the rules themselves. (there's absolutely zero way to determine your income from the core rulebook for example). Folks are still developing the meta around this.
If I took that setup, would I be able to get away with Skill Synergy for my first two feats (1st and 3rd level, the character isn't human, obviously) or does this necessitate the Stewards Infiltrator archetype to get the necessary skills for free?
most Archetypes are so bad for non soldiers that even on a caster I would dip into another class to get the class skills rather than give up all of your hacks to get them if that was the only option but...
Unlike pathfinder feats are in general a little meh, triply so for casters. You need 1 to increase your DC 1 to increase spell resistance and.. thats really all you can take to boost your spellcasting at this point. You can easily go skill synergy and then skill focus. on a few skills.
Look at what the rest of the party is making so you can see how much you have to cover. Our group for dead suns PBP did a google sheet with who has what skill at what bonus (with special attention called to starship combat skills)
You should also look at the arcanarium sage and see if it gives up anything you like or not. The extra spell gems are functionally an extra spell per day and it matters a lot.
So you can definitely cast and face in starfinder.
My biggest worry is that spells are a little tight in starfinder. It's almost designed so that casters need to pew pew with the lasers a bit on the lowbie fights. Techno spells are offensive so you need to jack the DCs, you don't have a good strength score to melee things and you have a species penalty to dex for shooting which would be the go to solution for soing "what am i doing if i have less than 3 fireballs today"
So between int and charisma there's not a lot of room for dex to shoot or strength to beatstick (which would probably also take con)
You can probably pick up some summoning spells so that you the player have something to do on longer fights where you're not bringing the tpain.