What do people think of the new iconics revealed for the the Character Operations Manual at the PaizoCon banquet? You can see the excerpt with Rob McCreary on Youtube Here (It is towards the end he also talks about Attack of the Swarm!, AA3, and the threefold conspiracy).
The new iconics are
- Biohacker - A sort of aqua colored female Kasatha wearing a labcoat looking jacket and covered in vials.
- Vanguard - A redheaded male Korasha Lashunta in red armour with a blue holographic looking shield.
- Witchwarper A male Human and by far the coolest looking iconic of the three.
The witchwarper looks awesome I just wish he was striking a cooler pose, but those purple robes are just awesome as is the sword he's rocking (hopefully it gets mentioned in his meet the iconics blog post). The vanguard is slowly growing on me and I'm sure I'll like it better when I can see it up close in print. The biohacker will probably also look cooler to me in time but I'm not a huge fan of Kasatha (but hey, four arms means four needles at once).
What's everyone else's thought's, are they good? bad? TBD? Will ponytails be a game mechanics for vanguards? Will Kasatha dominate the Pact Worlds with their superior injecting ability? Will the iconics master the art of power poses?
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I like that they crushed the spirits of the people who thought, despite all evidence, logic, and history to the contrary, that Paizo might ever pick a non-core race as an iconic.
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What Xenocrat said :D A human, a mostly-human, and a four-armed human are...meh, I mean, they're fine? Maybe I'm just spoiled, with all of the ridiculous race stuff available elsewhere in Starfinder. Regardless, I will always take solace knowing that, for a brief, shining, while, I lived in a world where the iconic Witchwarper could have been a skittermander.
But anyways. Someone get that kasatha a pair of space-injection spears, and I'm in.
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Keep in mind that a big use of the iconics is to hand to a new player and say "welcome to starfinder here's your character tonight ok you read it go..."
If something is weird or has moving parts or can't fit int he building or can't see the color blue that's one more thing you need to walk the new guy through.
I thought it was interesting that they picked a Kasatha For the Biohacker. Must mean that they really want to show off the classes ability to use wisdom as its key stat.
-Beta
The class gets more out of having 4 arms than most. You really wanted to full attack with 2 pistols whenever possible while maintaining the ability to aim the right dart at the right target without reloading.
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Starfinder, praised for having dozens of varied alien races to pick from.
Here have another human.
I like that they crushed the spirits of the people who thought, despite all evidence, logic, and history to the contrary, that Paizo might ever pick a non-core race as an iconic.
"despite all evidence, logic, and history to the contrary,"
Iconic-even-though-we-say-he-isn't-but-use-him-exactly-same-way-as-one Antipaladin: Aasimar
Hell's Vengeance Iconics
Nyctessa: Dhampir
Urgraz: Duergar
Emil Kovkorin: Tiefling
I like that they crushed the spirits of the people who thought, despite all evidence, logic, and history to the contrary, that Paizo might ever pick a non-core race as an iconic."despite all evidence, logic, and history to the contrary,"
Iconic-even-though-we-say-he-isn't-but-use-him-exactly-same-way-as-one Antipaladin: Aasimar
Hell's Vengeance Iconics
Nyctessa: Dhampir
Urgraz: Duergar
Emil Kovkorin: Tiefling
It’s the logic part that led you astray here.
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They've used non-core races for Iconics before, in a system with the main selling point being lots of alien races it seemed perfectly reasonable to have other races play the new Iconics, rather than give us another human.
Maybe a corncob should have been an iconic.
Those iconics were specific for that adventure path though, and only in that AP did they give the antipaladin an iconic.
All the other classes' iconics in hardcovers are from the core races.
That doesn't change the fact that they have indeed had non-core races as Iconics.
And again there's the Iconic-not-Iconic Aasimar Antipaladin that's been around since Ultimate Combat.
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So we'll maybe see non-core iconics around the same time around?
Next year we'll get an iconic-not-iconic ala the anti paladin.
In 6 years we'll get an AP that introduces 4 non-core iconics specific for that AP.
Edit: What I'm trying to say with this, those seem to be exceptions, and for now it seems that class iconics follow the core race rule instead.
We've only had the core Iconics, and then these new ones, so thus far not that much of a rule.
There would also be the Starfinder iconics.
A scary thought -- if the evil iconics feature in a future adventure path set in Ravounel, that new nation could be in trouble.
Where can I find these new iconics (stats, images, or other)? I don't see them in the blog or anything.
- Biohacker - A sort of aqua colored female Kasatha wearing a labcoat looking jacket and covered in vials.
- Vanguard - A redheaded male Korasha Lashunta in red armour with a blue holographic looking shield.
- Witchwarper A male Human and by far the coolest looking iconic of the three.
Thanks for the heads up, no idea this video existed.
The korasha lashunta makes sense, since it was the only core race not yet portrayed as an iconic (if you consider different abilities modifiers as enough of a separation between races).
But the other two could have been legacy races, creating the expectation for enough new classes to cover the whole legacy chapter.
They could have been vampiric mutant clowns, too, but it was never very likely.
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At least, humans don't dominate the iconics as much as they did in PF. That's something.
The point of an iconic is less "what is that weird... thing ?" and more "cool looking alien, but what is it doing ?". They're here to show off the class, and that's it.
If say, a barathu or an urog were to be an iconic, the race would completely overshadow the class.
Plus the important factor of "... Wait, I bought two books and I still can't even play the so-called "Iconic" Bantrid Vanguard from the cover and every other illustration ? Really ?"
It's the one reason they have to be core. People don't buy all the books from the get go. I suspect the core and the more rules heavy come first (like the COM), then the BG ones. Ymmv, of course.
Legacy races might appear at some point, as they too are at least in the core book. Although I don't believe they will.
PF's evil iconics broke the mold a bit, but they're only iconics in a very loose sense. They were more random sample evil characters than anything.
Iconics are the ones showing up in illustrations, from feats to APs, spells to Campaign Settings, etc.
I don't think any of them ever appeared outside of HV, if at all out of their own profile. The antipal did, but only once or twice, and he's years older.
PF's evil iconics broke the mold a bit, but they're only iconics in a very loose sense. They were more random sample evil characters than anything.
Seltyiel (Magus) and Meligaster (Mesmerist) are both Evil Iconics, why I was calling the others specifically Hell's Vengeance rather than just Evil.
Dwarves are a legacy race and not a core race in Starfinder. I don't think there have been any legacy race iconics in that game.
*side eyes the humans*
Except the humans. Because most writers are humans.
Except the humans. Because most writers are humans.Humans are Core in Starfinder, not Legacy.
well I mean you'd think losing their planet would present a problem...
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Dwarves are a legacy race and not a core race in Starfinder. I don't think there have been any legacy race iconics in that game.
Literally, the first NPC printed for a Starfinder adventure path is a Dwarf, they opened up the SFS rules to allow Legacy races over a year ago.
I'm not seeing the value in recreating more and more Iconics for new classes of the same 7 Races, esp when they've got another 6 perfectly good ones in the back of the book.
I might have gone with a hylki/akitonian human as a compromise position.
The three new iconics are probably built with the alternate racial rules, at least.