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Also a Starfinder character can drop 300 credits for a bayonet bracket and not even need to switch weapons. Like half of the two handed advanced melee weapons can be used with that. Or like put a tether on their pistol.
And honestly, gear only gets you 10% of your credits back anyway. I'll take a better racial ability and just eat the minor loss if I drop the weapon and can't get it back. It's a pretty niche situation really. And if automatic gear progression is in place I just get that item back when I level.
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I always thought it was odd that characters with 4 or 6 or more arms did not get more attacks per round. So tonight, I started to think about what creates in nature with multiple arms and how they use them. The first thing that popped into my mind was scorpions, crabs, and mantis. That's three creatures with either 6, 8, or 10 legs and only using the foremost pair as a weapon. There are some crabs that even only have one oversized claw. Scorpions are the only ones with a third non-bite attack using their tail stinger.
This could be reflected in future species design by adding more multi-armed species with pairs of arms adapted to different tasks. Shirren all ready have this, but because they are considered private, they don't see much gameplay.
Octopuses likely are the winners of using the greased number of limbs simultaneously, but to do so, each tentacle has its own mini-brain.
I had been 1/2 joking about how to make General grievous by having 5 people play the body, legs, and head, and one character and the 4 arms each as separate characters. But if you wanted to take species design way outside of the box make a 4 armed species that has full use of all of its arms. having each pair arms having up to 3 actions and tracking multi-attack penalties separately. To balance it have to count as playing two characters. Something like a Shobhad or large version of an SRO could also justify having higher HP as a species that counts as playing two characters. taking non-combat action would reduce the number of attacks action you get but could not exceed 3 actions.
Crazy idea, but there's nothing like that in any game I can think of. It would be great for tables with fewer players that don't want to fill in with NPCs or play two separate characters. Another type of species that counts as two characters could be a double-headed spell caster. Add a two-character healer and you got a complete party.
Thurston Hillman mentions this in this very thread, but from the looks of it, it will in fact be possible to have a character who can use all of their extra arms simultaneously. The only difference from certain expectations here is that doing so will require taking some ancestry feats, and not just be given to certain ancestries at level 1. Really, 2e so far hasn't really been a game of hard "nos", so much as one of giving players the options to build practically any character they want, so long as they commit the appropriate feat investment. Starfinder 2e won't prevent us from breaking the hand economy in this respect, so much as prevent us from breaking the hand economy for as low a cost as picking the right starting ancestry.
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PF2 sort of rejects the idea that the limiting reagent for "how many attacks you can make" is your arms/weapons, and identifies the limiter as more "your mind and your training."
Like basically every character can always do these things:
-Strike
-Stride
-Step
-Use a Skill
-Interact with an item/the environment.
Everything else you can do is an option that is enabled by a feat or a specific item (like in the Field Test Automatic and Area Fire are properties of the weapons.) So whatever you can do with many arms that's special is something a feat or an ability gave you.
Without something like the Marilith's Bladestorm though (which is the model for the most powerful option for "what you can do with a bunch of arms"), you wouldn't want to "fire six pistols in a round" since 4 of those attacks are going to be made at -10 anyway.
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But we aren't talking about making 6 attacks with 6 limbs. We are talking about making an attack with hand 1 and an attack with hand 3 without having to spend an action to think about. 2 attacks, 2 actions, 2 hands. The fact that you used the ice pistol instead of the fire pistol is the benefit of having multiple limbs. Saying you have to spend an action first but you can buy a feat to not spend an action is creating a problem and selling a solution.
Again, if firing hand 1 and hand 3 without spending an action breaks something, it's hard to imagine the scenario where the actual problem isn't something else.
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Yeah, I think the rule for "active pair of hands" and "inactive pair of hands" should apply when you have two-handed weapons involved (since like, you might need to move your rifle out of the way of your magmasledge or vice versa) but not for "I am wielding only one-handed items".
The system does apply a cost to "two-handed weapon" in that "it precludes you from doing something with another hand" that should somewhat apply here.
You can only have one/two 2-handed weapons readied/active unless you spend actions/feats, or something along those lines, is a much more palatable rule than "The creature with 100 tentacles can only use two of them at a time and has to think hard to pick which two".
I do however think there is a ton of design space for abilities/feats to allow nonsense like using all 6 limbs to attack. If the rules don't allow for this by level nine, then the designers are cowards. However, that probably wouldn't be by providing 6 actual attacks. More like grant new weapon qualities like the Fusillade feat. With more feats providing more options or bonuses. Having different effects depending on different combinations of elemental weapons would be a lot of fun.
*Edited for nonsense*
Feat: That's a lot of guns!
Prerequisite: other feats
For 3 actions, you can make an attack with 6 different weapons. This allows you to make 4 attacks, with the second attack taking no penalty, and the third and 4 attacks take multi-attack penalties as normal. This expends 3 times the normal amount of ammunition from each weapon and each attack must be made against the same target. Because you are absolutely unloading gansta-style, you may not take any movement this round, even if another ability would otherwise allow you to. If you can not make an attack with 6 different weapons, you may not use this ability.
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I get wanting to see things but keeping the problems on the product rather than the creators and posters goes a long way.
One thing I think the text should emphasize is that two-handed weapons are always wielded by opposite pairs of hands, so as to use the body for stability, bracing, generating additional torque, etc.
Then you can make a Kasatha (or whoever) feat that lets you break this rule.
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Multi-armed characters is something we're exploring in this space too. There's going to be some action-tax for swapping arms in some ways (or high-level ancestry feats as some have guessed), because it's out intent to create some potent one-shot area weapons (hey missile launcher!) that we don't want say, a soldier, to be able to wield 3 of when playing a skittermander.
They are Heavy weapons, make the carrying capacity (bulk) the limit that prevents people from wielding three.
You could also have it that a character can never wield more than one unwieldy weapon.
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I want extra arms to be a moderate perk, like ysoki cheek pouches. I don't want to "have" to play a skittermander or a kasatha if I want to be a martial character. I'd much prefer things balanced on the "many arms" side of things, rather than every weapon needing to be balanced against the possibility of having a bunch of them at the ready. I don't want Automatic Bonus Progression to be excluded from SF2 because skittermanders are only balanced if they can't afford a full set of on-level missile launchers. I don't want grenades to be nerfed or cost twice as much just because somebody might have four spares drawn at the start of combat. I don't want "get one extra robotic arm" to still be a level 11 augmentation.
"An action to swap" very quickly and neatly solves pretty much all of the balance issues, and so long as the other arms can still open doors, chug potions, and do other non-attack stuff, it's still a moderate perk.
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One thing I think the text should emphasize is that two-handed weapons are always wielded by opposite pairs of hands, so as to use the body for stability, bracing, generating additional torque, etc.
Then you can make a Kasatha (or whoever) feat that lets you break this rule.
Opposite pairs limit there being a chance for a two-handed shield. Two-handed weapons were designed by people with two hands. To get really creative, I'd like to see species with 4 to 6 + arms have a 3 or 4 handed weapon.
A two-handed sword only has room for two hands, with a spear any number of hands could fit.
Managing Creative Director (Starfinder)
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The current rules for multi-armed characters are part of our test. The inherent balance of having multiple arms in the system is a MAJOR factor in how we're wanting to balance things. Inherently, having multiple available arms that can all take actions independently without some kind of investment makes it incredibly difficult to balance class and weapon design. It creates weird "isms" where when we design a weapon that is predicated on being one "big shot" that assumes a reload happens (like a missile launcher or a hand cannon) that it might now be 2-3x as many shots before any action economy is necessary. Given the average length of many combats, this starts skewing the math heavily. It also greats weird disparity between the meaning of two-handed weapons, since a kasatha could effectively wield two 2-handed weapons (a ranged and a melee) and get all the benefits, which if you see how the Soldier is currently structured, would just negate some feats entirely.
Again, we're experimenting here, but we also want to make it so that kasatha, skittermanders, or other multi-armed creatures don't have this mechanical collar weighing them down. This is different than flying, where our game assumes everyone has a ranged weapon capable of firing and hitting them—our game does not assume everyone has multiple sets or arms, nor do we want to create a game state where it's the "optimal play" to be a kasatha/skittermander or spend augmentation slots on picking up extra sets of arms.
This is all stuff we're working on. We just wanted to include the reference to where our thoughts were on multi-armed characters right now, since we figured questions would pop-up. :)
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Having the action cost associated with the big one shot weapons instead of the arms feels like the better solution. Off hand, an automated computer with a helping hands spell chip creates the same problem as having multiple arms. Obviously I can't speak to SF2 but that's a cheap and easy combo by SF1 standards.
Spitballing:
Instead of 1 shot per reload being the limiter, there is actually an action cost associated with using the weapon itself. An action has to be spent to brace the weapon before it can be fired, or the kick is so powerful an action has to be spent the next turn to recover. Or maybe the powerful kick causes some sort of status condition that can be removed with an action. So firing the weapon once gives you 'kickback 1', a second time 'kickback 2', etc. Or maybe firing the weapon gives you the kickback condition, but you can spend an action to brace yourself to avoid it. A character with the kickback condition can't firing a big shot weapon. Then abilities, feats, gear, and spells could interact with more directly with the weapon than whether or not you have multiple limbs. Helping hands could keep it's full SF1 utility and not interact with big one shot weapons, but a higher level spell could.
And all that makes me think of using heat as a reverse ammo system. Certain weapons building more heat as a balancing point, which gives room for abilities/feats to make those weapons better. But that's a bit too far off topic.
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If I may, one reason there might be an action tax is... aiming. When you use a pistol you aim down sights. Anyone trained with a pistol uses both hands on it normally, or at least if they are competent, holds it in a way to aim down the sight. You can't do that with two pistols at once even with two hands. If you are firing two pistols at once, you aren't trying to be accurate, you're going for Quantity of shots over quality.
this would be even MORE true for limbs that can't, or at least take longer to, come to eye level (where aiming happens)
My fix to make this a bit more equitable is to make a "shoot from the hip" rule, where you CAN use a one handed ranged weapon without the action to switch hands, but you take a penalty to hit. And this would apply even if your character only has two hands. And has been suggested, feats to reduce the penalty or remove the action necessary. Or you might get an action called "volley fire" where weilding multiple one handed weapons at once you can make an area attack, the damage being equal to the total of the two weapon damages.
A class like the soldier or operative might even get that automatically since those classes are probably expected use ranged weapons exclusively.
I'd say the same general class of problems also applies to using multiples of most melee weapons or their combinations.
Melee combat is fast and generating force as well as redirecting/stopping it takes time and muscles. Perhaps more importantly, you simply very quickly get to the point that your other arms/weapons simply block any paths the others would need to take. This is already a massive problem with two arms/weapons, imagine more! The pure bulk of your weapons and limits of your bodies' biomechanics impose some hard restrictions on what you can actually do.
On the other hand, some attacks always work. For example, just stabbing a bunch of smaller weapons forwards into your target. But stuff like that limits you to an incredibly simplistic fighting style, which is a bad idea. The thing many-armed ancestries would be amazing at is offense-defense combinations. Parrying an incoming strike with several shorter weapons or defensive implements and stab them with the rest. So basically what real-world "dual wielding" does, but turbocharged.
If they were two-handed on the other hand, as PossibleCabbage already hit on somewhat, I'm pretty sure most of it just devolves into pure impracticality without very extensive cyberware or other technological aids. At least for the otherwise humanoid ancestries. Throwing that much mass around sounds like a great way to get stabbed after your first swing. And the length of your weapons will make anything beyond the most simplistic maneuvers basically impossible.
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Maybe I'm missing something, but - the reason that skittermanders, kasatha, etc aren't broken in SF1 is because holding many weapons is nice and all, but you're still limited in how many actions you can take to make attacks - plus some special rules like Unwieldy weapons, low ammo capacity / high ammo usage, etc. Same for drawing items, opening doors, etc - it's nice to have six hands for those times when you have six levers in front of you - but you still only have so many actions to actually do the pulling in one turn, right?
Wouldn't that still be true in a Three Action System? If a specific gun is too deadly to shoot more than once a round, then make it take 2 Actions to shoot, to account for recoil, gyroscopic auto-stabilising, complicated priming or cooling cycles, etc?
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So the problem spots for "many arms" are, from where I see:
- Normally "using a 2h weapon" is balanced as though it were a cost. A greataxe does more damage than a battleaxe because the former occupies 2 hands and the latter only needs one.
-The most obvious cost here is "you cannot use this weapon with a shield" which goes out of the way once you get a 3rd hand. AC is very important in this ruleset, so "one ancestry can have the same damage output with higher AC" makes that ancestry just a better choice.
-Single use items are supposed to have "pulling this out of your bag/off your bandolier,etc." as a cost (in actions). If you can start out holding more grenades than anybody else (because you have more hands) this is an insurmountable advantage you have.
Making a lot of attacks really isn't a problem since you're still limited by 3 actions. But for things like "spamming missile launchers" expect an action tax for swapping them to replicate how other human-shaped bipeds have to draw/reload instead.
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Hand economy is an important factor in 2e as well as action economy. As an example: let's say you have a kasatha fighter in 2e, and your kasatha can make use of all of their arms simultaneously. Your kasatha can hold a greataxe in two hands, a shield in one hand, and keep one hand free. On a typical turn, this means your kasatha can Strike twice with a d12 damage die on each hit, and use their third action to Raise a Shield and gain a bonus to their AC. On some turns where it is advantageous, they can use their free hand to Grapple, Shove, Trip, maybe even Disarm, as well as Interact. Here's how that compares to a two-handed character:
So that's already a massive amount of power, and it's not even the worst it can get: a skittermander could do all of the above, except also wield two one-handed weapons in their extra pair of hands, accessing all of the dual-wielding feats and weapon-and-free-hand feats at the same time on top of the rest. Alternatively, they can wield two one-handed guns, accessing feats for those, and becoming able to reload those guns with their free hand without needing to use feats or opt into the gunslinger class, while still being able to inflict meaty d12 attacks of opportunity. By PF2e standards, that's an incredible amount of power just for picking an ancestry.
Important to note, however, is that none of this is a degree of power that is forbidden in 2e: the point to the above, and presumably to the active hands mechanic, isn't that this is power you can never access, but rather that this is power you can access with the right build investment. Picking enough ancestry feats of appropriate level would likely be enough to let you have that kind of power; simply choosing an ancestry at level 1 is not. What is appropriate for a level 1 ancestry is having an action economy boost to certain actions tied to your hands.
Maybe I'm missing something, but - the reason that skittermanders, kasatha, etc aren't broken in SF1 is because holding many weapons is nice and all, but you're still limited in how many actions you can take to make attacks
Wouldn't that still be true in a Three Action System?
Not really. Because in SF1 you only have 1 standard action that you can use each round for anything you want. Then you have more limited move action options, and even more limited swift action options.
Moving to a 3 symmetrical action system means that if it only costs one action, then you can do it three times in one round.
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Also, as is mentioned by others previously, carrying multiple things in-hand at the start of a battle is a benefit all of its own. As is having hands free for doing things like grapple, reload (reload less important with the larger capacity weapons expected in Starfinder setting), and defense.
For anyone familiar with PF2, an ancestry getting Quick Draw for free at 1st level with the drawback that it is only usable twice per round would seem really powerful. That is essentially what a Kasatha using grenades is going to feel like. Because they can go into battle with two hands full of weapons and have two grenades also in-hand and ready to go - no action cost needed to draw them first.
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I do kind of hope that the rules for Starfinder characters with many arms are written in a way that they could be back-ported to Pathfinder and remain balanced. The two games are compatible, but not necessarily balanced, but there are valid reasons for wanting to play a Conrasu with extra arms.
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Maybe I'm missing something, but - the reason that skittermanders, kasatha, etc aren't broken in SF1 is because holding many weapons is nice and all, but you're still limited in how many actions you can take to make attacks
If you're holding a space pike* and a giant laser gun no one can get near or away from you without getting whacked. PF2s power curve is so low and tight that free whap of opportunity and freely switching between the weapons when something walks up to you is too good for most people to ignore.
*the pole arm. Not the fish. Though you could combine them....
I posted this on another topic, but I'd love for Paizo to rework the "multiarmed" trait for aliens, so they actually get something good from shooting 4 bullets at once...
An extra damage die, a bonus to attack (negating the penalty), 4 actual attacks with 4 times the used ammunition, whatever...
Getting shot by someone wielding 4 pistols should be as dangerous as getting shot by 4 people wielding 1 pistol each. Make it threatening and advantageous in some aspects...
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Wow, I'm sorry I didn't come across this thread earlier. I've been playing multi-armed characters and had this conversation once or twice. The problem, as others have said, isn't the number of arms, it's the number of heads controlling them. Aiming a weapon or casting a spell requires focus and attention. Switching attention from hand to hand shouldn't be more difficult than changing your focus to a different object.
Carrying multiple objects or manipulating controls is where multiple hands would be the most OP, but taking actions should be limited by the one mind that the character has. (We'll save the Two-Headed template graft for another thread.)
tl;dr One mind means three actions per turn (2nd Ed. style), regardless of the number of hands a being has. Yes, extra hands are a benefit, but mechanically, a very small one. If (as was hinted) it breaks balance, then balance was broken to begin with.
This is different than flying, where our game assumes everyone has a ranged weapon capable of firing and hitting them—our game does not assume everyone has multiple sets or arms, nor do we want to create a game state where it's the "optimal play" to be a kasatha/skittermander or spend augmentation slots on picking up extra sets of arms.
If you keep the Dual Cybernetic Arms augmentation (a CRB augmentation), everyone does have the option of multiple arms at high level. Whatever you do, it will potentially affect every race.
Maybe the solution is to assume multiarmed creatures, either naturally or via cybernetics, and reduce the level at which you can get the cybernetics.
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I feel like it's not a good idea to feel like "you need to pick a specific ancestry or get cybernetic arms to be the best at combat." Normal humans with no cybernetics shouldn't lag that far behind at "doing combat."
"Putting on a jetpack" doesn't change that much about what I think about my character as "getting extra arms attached."
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While we're talking multi-arms, I thought it would be a good time to go full cantina on species with multiple arms.
In a universe with a 3-action economy, nature would likely evolve more 3-armed creatures for maximum efficiency.
Most creatures with four arms tend to have the extra pair placed right under the top pair. This has very little increase in the total range of reach. Maybe it's just for extra grip. Having an extra pair of arms spaced more evenly, say at the hips, would give a much greater range of reach, being able to reach lower things that the upper arms could not.
A second pair of arms facing your back could be helpful in carrying your young while working. Or to be able to defend your backside while climbing from flying creatures diving at you. Could help reduce the flanking penalty.
Having four arms with one strong pair and the other dextrous.
Or one pair with three long sharp claws and the other with more fragile hands and lots of fingers that are great at manipulating small parts and things.
Hands on the same side of a multi-armed creature that alternates directions, so arms on the same side could use a two-handed sword. And or the bottom pair has the thump on the bottom side of the hand, not the top side of the hand.
Arms that split at the elbow into two separate forearms and hands.
Tentacles arms that end with hands or claws.
Three armed creatures might have all their thrums in the same direction if their arms are equally placed around them. If they have a thrid arm centered, that hand might have thumps on both sides or no thumbs at all.
A third arm might have a shovel-like hand made of hard shell-like material used for digging.
A third long arm pointing up could be a way to pick fruit higher up in trees like a giraffe. Perhaps on a creature without a human-like head.
A third or fifth arm in place of a tail.
One big strong arm on one side and two smaller dexterous arms on the other side
Seven armed creatures. With one hand like a dice tray, one like a dice tower, one to roll dice with, one hand that works like a clipboard, one to hold a pencil, one to hold a drink, and a long arm to reach across the table to move minis.
Besides how multi-arms affect combat, please also consider its effects on bartending for the sake of the cantina. It's hard to keep up at happy hour. We need all the hands we can get.
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I feel like it's not a good idea to feel like "you need to pick a specific ancestry or get cybernetic arms to be the best at combat." Normal humans with no cybernetics shouldn't lag that far behind at "doing combat."
"Putting on a jetpack" doesn't change that much about what I think about my character as "getting extra arms attached."
I feel like picking a special core ancestry to get multiple arms just to lose 1/3 of your actions a round to be able to make use of them is also going to feel bad.
I don’t feel like we have quite enough information to figure out the details, but really seems like an area that can use some play testing to see just how often the multi arms helps if you charge an action to make use of any past the first two.
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Requiring an action to "swap arm focus" is probably the single worst part of what has been revealed so far on SF2 for me. It feels deeply unreasonable in my mind to require a full action for a creature that has lived with multiple limbs all it's life to switch from using one limb to another limb. It tears me right out of the illusion that we're trying to model "fantasy reality" in a fair but realistic way. Instead, it's a transparent mechanical ball and chain.
Given the wild variety of species in Starfinder with different physical capabilities, I think the game would be far healthier if it didn't balance its weapon and defense options around the number of hands they take to use.
I'm curious to know: for the people who dislike the active hands mechanic and the Switch Active Hands action, what would you do, personally, to balance having two, four, perhaps even more extra arms at level 1? Would you give those ancestries tradeoffs to offset that power, would you implement some other kind of mechanic to help balance those extra arms, or do you believe nothing more would need to be done for gameplay to remain balanced?
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I'm curious to know: for the people who dislike the active hands mechanic and the Switch Active Hands action, what would you do, personally, to balance having two, four, perhaps even more extra arms at level 1? Would you give those ancestries tradeoffs to offset that power, would you implement some other kind of mechanic to help balance those extra arms, or do you believe nothing more would need to be done for gameplay to remain balanced?
Opportunity cost: if you're picking an ancestry for this, you're not taking some other cool ancestry.
Opportunity cost: if you're picking an ancestry for this, you're not taking some other cool ancestry.
That was one of the options that I mentioned earlier. That multi-armed ancestries won't be cool for any reason other than being multi-armed. They won't get any other nice things.
I'm curious to know: for the people who dislike the active hands mechanic and the Switch Active Hands action, what would you do, personally, to balance having two, four, perhaps even more extra arms at level 1? Would you give those ancestries tradeoffs to offset that power, would you implement some other kind of mechanic to help balance those extra arms, or do you believe nothing more would need to be done for gameplay to remain balanced?Opportunity cost: if you're picking an ancestry for this, you're not taking some other cool ancestry.
Aesthetic is not a trade off for power and vice versa.
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I feel like they've generally done a good job balancing a wide range of bizarre PF2 ancestries so they're all mechanically viable at more or less anything. Like you get to be a skeleton, or a tiny sprite, or a toy that got wished alive and these things are all comparable to "humans, elves, and dwarves" in terms of adventuring.
I would suggest the best way forward is to make the "multi-armed" feats a general package of feats that apply to any multi-armed ancestry, so that the feats you print for the Kasatha can highlight other things about Kasatha culture that might get a player to want to play one that have nothing to do with "extra arms.".
Like a player who is into the Kasatha because of the whole "refugees from a dead planet", "warrior code", "quiet but menacing" stuff who wants to spend exactly 0 feats on "doing stuff with more than 2 arms" should also be a viable character. Like if all you want to do with your extra arms is "wave to people" you shouldn't be that far behind.
In a universe with a 3-action economy, nature would likely evolve more 3-armed creatures for maximum efficiency.
No, it would evolve towards two arms and a two action economy in a 4 second combat round.
Aesthetic is not a trade off for power and vice versa.
This is not a good faith reading of opportunity cost.
Opportunity cost: if you're picking an ancestry for this, you're not taking some other cool ancestry.
In a vacuum, sure, but as Thurston Hillman pointed out, opportunity cost is not enough, and having four or more hands usable without restriction is significantly more powerful than what is allowed at level 1 for an ancestry. While my own comment doesn't necessarily reflect developer opinion on the matter, it should hopefully give at least some idea of the kind of stuff that can be done with two or more pairs of arms in 2e. Thus, opportunity cost alone would not balance a multi-armed ancestry even if that ancestry had nothing but four arms as a trait. We therefore come back to the same question: what would you do, personally, to balance having two, four, perhaps even more extra arms at level 1?
I will say that the action for "switch arm focus" is exactly the same action cost that a person with 2 hands needs to draw a weapon or change their grip (e.g. going from 1h to 2h with a Bastard Sword.)
I imagine that's the reason that it's set up this way to begin with. However, since Quick Draw and Dual Handed Assault exist, there are ways around these costs that are not super expensive in terms of build resources (n.b. though class feats are higher value than ancestry feats.)
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I'm curious to know: for the people who dislike the active hands mechanic and the Switch Active Hands action, what would you do, personally, to balance having two, four, perhaps even more extra arms at level 1? Would you give those ancestries tradeoffs to offset that power, would you implement some other kind of mechanic to help balance those extra arms, or do you believe nothing more would need to be done for gameplay to remain balanced?
What if multi-armed ancestries instead had specific limits on two-handed weapons and shields? (Which in real life tend to be held cross-body or covering the body.) But you can use all the 1-handed weapons or tools you have hands for?
I'm curious to know: for the people who dislike the active hands mechanic and the Switch Active Hands action, what would you do, personally, to balance having two, four, perhaps even more extra arms at level 1? Would you give those ancestries tradeoffs to offset that power, would you implement some other kind of mechanic to help balance those extra arms, or do you believe nothing more would need to be done for gameplay to remain balanced?What if multi-armed ancestries instead had specific limits on two-handed weapons and shields? (Which in real life tend to be held cross-body or covering the body.) But you can use all the 1-handed weapons or tools you have hands for?
There still needs to be a cost for "starting the fight holding 4 grenades" though that could just be a low one since quick-draw and quick-bomber are low level feats.
You should probably make the low level option not apply to Missile Launchers, immediately lest the normal way to start combat become "holding one missile launcher and 1 regular weapon."
Opportunity cost: if you're picking an ancestry for this, you're not taking some other cool ancestry.In a vacuum, sure, but as Thurston Hillman pointed out, opportunity cost is not enough, and having four or more hands usable without restriction is significantly more powerful than what is allowed at level 1 for an ancestry. While my own comment doesn't necessarily reflect developer opinion on the matter, it should hopefully give at least some idea of the kind of stuff that can be done with two or more pairs of arms in 2e. Thus, opportunity cost alone would not balance a multi-armed ancestry even if that ancestry had nothing but four arms as a trait. We therefore come back to the same question: what would you do, personally, to balance having two, four, perhaps even more extra arms at level 1?
The problem seems to be the mechanics of other things, not the extra arms. Big one shot weapons are balanced around having to spend an action to reload them. So if you can hold multiples of them, you can use a big shot weapon multiple times without reloading, which skews the math. But if the big one shot weapons are balanced around you having to spend an action to use them, then the fact that you are holding 10 of them doesn't matter. The actual use of the weapon itself is what has the action cost. The 2-handed tag has a rule about only being able to have one "readied" at a time.
Being able to wield a two handed gun and a two handed melee weapon is solved by a 300cr heavy bayonet bracket. A light bracket lets you hold a gun, a melee weapon, and a shield. Getting 4 arms was a level 1 spell that granted you an extra non-attack action. There are numerous ways to achieve "holding more than two things" and there will only ever be more options as new releases for a sci-fi fantasy game come out. Fix the thing that breaks when you have more than one, not that it is at all possible to have more than one.
If literally no other ancestry has abilities that compare to having 4 arms, that feels like an awfully low floor for fantasical sci-fi species. What about sharks with laser eyes? Do ancestries not even have abilities that compare to a level 1 spell?
Also, the benefit from using multiple weapons is often balanced by their cost. A lot of times the cost even outweighs the benefit. Those 4 rocket launchers are nice and all, but the soldiers 1 big chain gun should compare up to all 4 of them and outweigh any one of them. Because up to 4 times the resources could be spent on one item. Having 4 arms seems less of a problem then how cheap and good the one shot weapons are.
There still needs to be a cost for "starting the fight holding 4 grenades" though that could just be a low one since quick-draw and quick-bomber are low level feats.
If drawing, notching, aiming, and loosing an arrow are all one action, then grabbing the grenade from your belt, pulling the pin(or pressing a button), and throwing it are all one action. Balance grenades accordingly.
You again don't seem to be considering that Starfinder1e and the Pathfinder2e game mechanics core are two very different games that have different balance considerations. Because you keep bringing up Starfinder1e mechanics as though that is going to be relevant to the balance considerations of SF2. The balance considerations of PF2 are closer, though even those are not going to necessarily be an exact match.
And in PF2, grabbing a grenade (bomb) from your belt, activating it, and throwing it - is two actions. One for the draw. One for the activate and throw.
There are a couple of feats that can be taken to lower the action cost to one action.
Edit: To be clear, I think that bringing up Starfinder1e mechanics is fine with the intent of 'this is what I like, can we get something that feels similar when actually played under the new system'. What doesn't work is 'This is what SF1 does. So it should work exactly the same in SF2.'
Yeah, just from experience from the PF2 playtest arguments along the lines of "well, I'll no longer be able to do this thing I did in the previous edition" go nowhere, since there are likely all sorts of other new things that you can do now that you couldn't do before to balance those out.
The goal is not, and will never be "reproduce all characters and concepts from a previous edition" and specifically when it comes down to it thematics matter much more here than mechanics.
Because SF2 has very different meta and balance considerations. In exactly the same way that flight is a level 13 ability in Pathfinder and a level 1 ability in Starfinder.
I'm not bring up the mechanics of SF1, I'm bringing up the meta of SF1. SF1 has a bunch of level one options that makes having multiple arms barely anything. That same reality is true in PF2. For instance, in PF2, I'm not lighting the fuse on a bowling ball bomb. In Starfinder, I'm grabbing a thermal detonator from the mag clip on my belt, pressing the button with my thumb, and throwing with the same motion of my arm.
Again, I can break using a bow down into a lot of actions that more closely fits the PF2 rules that changing your grip is an action. But bows are not balanced around being one big shot that uses 3 actions. They are balanced that you can use them to make 3 attacks with them if you want. Use the same logic to balance grenades.
If grabbing a grenade from my belt is an action, then grabbing an arrow from my quiver is an action. If grabbing a quiver from my arrow without a feat isn't an action, then neither should grabbing a grenade from my belt without an action. Where is the disconnect for you?
Even if you don't have a disconnect with that logic; Flight is a level 1 ability in SF2 and a level 13 ability in PF2. Why should SF2 grenades follow the meta of PF2 grenades? How is that actually more relevant than the meta of SF1?
"It's for balance" keeps getting thrown around as if this is a difficult concept to grasp that some people just aren't getting. It isn't. I just don't find "This is how it's down in PF2" to be much of an argument against a differing of mechanics or meta. We aren't playing SF2. Even by the dev's "100% compatibility" measure its not much of an argument. We know the meta and balance of SF2 is different than PF2.
And in PF2, grabbing a grenade (bomb) from your belt, activating it, and throwing it - is two actions. One for the draw. One for the activate and throw.
Alchemist does it in one action via Quick Bomber.
Rogue and Ranger do it with a feat Quick Draw, although the Rogue is unlikely to do this until Remaster when they get proficiency with martial weapons.
If there is a feat anyone can get to allow switch and strike (but not necessarily compound actions) that would probably work. It would mean someone could not (as an example) switch weapons and Sudden Charge as a single action.
I will return to my statement that this really needs some play testing to see how it works out. You want multi arms to be useful, but not feel like you are at a significant disadvantage without it.
Random idea: the first time you use it each round, the Switch Active Hands action could allow you to use a single action related to the "new" pair of hands as part of itself, so "for free".
I'm too tired to really think this through, but given that the manipulate thing is going away the "action tax" problem seems to be only one remaining. This would help?
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The different meta considerations sort of fall flat when we have the lead developer in this thread saying: "we don't want say, a soldier, to be able to wield 3 [missile launchers] when playing a skittermander."
The pressing design principle is not to balance the game againsts SF1 or against PF2, but should be to balance different ancestries against each other. If the Skittermander or Kasatha is the A1 best, unbeatable alpha-striker character, then this is a problem since it makes people feel bad about playing Humans or Shirren or whatever since they're automatically less capable.
Every combination of ancestry, class, and playstyle is supposed to be about as viable as every other combination. This is the design goal. The trends in PF2 development tilt even more in this direction, since they recently updated the game to make "ancestry flaws" wholly optional explicitly to open up more class/ancestry combinations.
After all, the point about "flight is less of an issue in Starfinder" is about "people have guns, and you have no cover when you're flying" so flying characters are have less of an advantage than they do in Pathfinder. "People who want to wield three missile launchers" are at *more* of an advantage in Starfinder than they are in Pathfinder, because there aren't any missile launchers in Pathfinder.
Because SF2 has very different meta and balance considerations. In exactly the same way that flight is a level 13 ability in Pathfinder and a level 1 ability in Starfinder.
I'm sorry, but I'm finding it difficult to believe that you are insisting upon this line of argumentation when one of the game's actual designers came to this forum to explain precisely what they meant by having a "different meta" from Pathfinder. Specifically, flight at level 1 is allowed in Starfinder because pretty much everyone has ranged attacks, even at low level, and so there will effectively never be a combat encounter where a player character can just take to the air and rain down ranged attacks while being completely out of every enemy's reach. By contrast, there is no similar reason why four arms at level 1 would be balanced.
The problem seems to be the mechanics of other things, not the extra arms.
"It's not the extra arms, it's the entire rest of the game that is the problem" is a non-answer. All this says in the end is that being able to use four arms at the same time is fundamentally very strong in 2e, which brings us back to the same question, which you've conspicuously failed to answer.
If literally no other ancestry has abilities that compare to having 4 arms, that feels like an awfully low floor for fantasical sci-fi species. What about sharks with laser eyes? Do ancestries not even have abilities that compare to a level 1 spell?
Some ancestries have darkvision, which when always on is about the equivalent of a 4th-rank spell. The problem is that you are still reasoning in 1e terms, where the balance and mechanics are fundamentally different, while actively refusing to engage with 2e and the way it works. Being able to break the hand economy is a lot stronger than a 4th-rank spell in 2e, particularly given that martial classes, arguably the greatest beneficiaries of extra arms, are a lot stronger in this system, and so cannot be given at level 1 without incurring tradeoffs or otherwise breaking the game's balance, balance being a far bigger developer concern in 2e than in 1e.
At the end of the day, we can either have a productive conversation where we discuss alternative ways of balancing multi-armed ancestries, or you can just keep setting yourself up for disappointment by refusing to acknowledge even the possibility of having to rein in multi-armed ancestries in any capacity at level 1. Up to you.