
Pronate11 |
Hello, I am here for a friend and I, and while i've read the stiked guides, most of them only cover the core rule book and were written in 2018 or earlier. I am playing a detective operative, while my friend is either going solaran or vanguard. what are some good races for any of these? what class options from COM or other books should we look at? as I can't find a vanguard guide at all, what are some useful ideas for that? Thanks for your time.

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The Solarian is covered in the Core Rulebook, Vanguard and a Law Enforcement Theme are in the Character Operations Manual. These 2 are also a good base to start from and then add the Armory next. All 3 of these are available as PDFs, so the expense is less to start.
I believe what the OP is looking for is character building guides like the ones Zenith Games compiled here. What they're looking for is suggestions on optimizing the new classes from the COM as well as what the best things from the new options from the COM and things like Near Space and the AP backmatters are, since the majority of these guides were written shortly after Starfinder came out, and only include options from as late as Armory.

HammerJack |
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Writing up an extensive guide to things is a lot of work for someone to take on, even if they do consider guides worthwhile.
If there are some narrower questions about new character options like "what can I do with feature X that looks interesting to me?" those would be easier to answer quickly.
For example, the OP was asking about vanguards. So the question is, what out of the vanguard class do you want to know more about?
Are you interested in how to get the best use out of entropic strike? You'll mostly want to be looking at weapon properties, since theor damage doesn't matter to you. Reach is probably still the best of those, since blocking is an enhancement bonus (doesn't stack with the AC bonus for having entropy). Thrown is also a good property, but your STR score will matter more since if you are DEX heavy, while you can Entropic Strike with a thrown weapon, the operative property of Entropic Strike does not make thrown attacks not use STR to hit. Alternately, you could elect to go heavy on STR and CON, with low DEX, because STR based big melee weapons can hit harder than Entropic Strike.
Are you planning to use the vanguard's unmatched accuracy with combat maneuvers? All of them have solid uses. Reposit in and Bullrush can be used to shove enemies into dangerous positions and force them to move through your melee friends' threatened spaces. Grapple can shut down any single enemy easily, especially since a garrotte can be used with Entropic Strike damage. Dirty Trick has a flexible suite of options, though the ability to remove the conditions not inflicts keeps it from being grossly overpowered. Disarm will serve you well, but only if you both fight a lot of people, instead of monsters, and keep a hand free to grab the weapon you take, instead of leaving it on the floor to be picked back up. Sunder, also, is best if you fight a lot of people who rely on gear. Invest in the maneuvers you like.
Are you trying to play a bodyguard role? Look at disciplines like Interfere, Intervene and Shimmer Guard.
But without knowing what parts of vanguard you're looking at, describing all of the good options is too big of an answer to give. Especially if yout open to multiclassing, like taking a single level of envoy on a shield using vanguard, so that the Phalanx Fighting improvisation can allow you to extend your shield aligning benefit to allies within 10 ft.