Hi,
I just went trough the first playtest report that was made available https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo6sidw?Reports-from-the-Field-Starf inder-Second
and even if this look promising I am starting to fear that close combat characters won't have enough spotlights.
the 4 classes presented in the report, especially the operative and the soldat where describe as class that would focus on ranged combat. However, it would be unfortunate that starfinder 2e becomes a "ranged-battles" only systems.
In space fantasy stories, ranged battles are extremely frequent, though you always have close combattants that reach those ranged combattants forcing them to switch to close combat.
I really hope that the solarien won't be the "only" class with close combat capabilities but that the Operative and the Soldier will see a few options as well. Unless envoys will be THE close combattant ( : -) )
We've already seen a close-combat Soldier class path: debuff enemies with melee strikes to slow them down so getting away is impossible, penalize their accuracy for fighting back (bringing them in line with your own strength-secondary stats), and have a reaction to punish them if they try to get away or only have a ranged weapon to fight you with.
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The field test is never going to get to the vanguard or evolutionist, those won't be in the playtest or SF2 core rulebook. We're getting soldier, operative, envoy, solarion, mystic, and witchwarper, it seems.
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I'd like to see an environment where most of the people will be inclined to use ranged fire most of the time, where it may be important to have a melee fallback option, and where a melee-focused character is possible and viable, and gets their own stack of awesome, but is seen as a bit of a niche build. Like, "character who specializes in melee" and "character who specializes in grenades" might be pretty close to one another in how common/normal they are.
That... actually sounds like about where they're putting it, too, which is cool.
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The field test is never going to get to the vanguard or evolutionist, those won't be in the playtest or SF2 core rulebook. We're getting soldier, operative, envoy, solarion, mystic, and witchwarper, it seems.
Then Solarian is the melee class for the core it would seem. I wonder if the Core rule book will get split up like the remaster of pathfinder. If so and there is a player core 2 coming out not too far behind the first we'll have all the classes back fairly quickly.
Then Solarian is the melee class for the core it would seem. I wonder if the Core rule book will get split up like the remaster of pathfinder. If so and there is a player core 2 coming out not too far behind the first we'll have all the classes back fairly quickly.
I'd expect that Solarian would have both ranged and melee builds, much like the Soldier has ranged and hybrid builds. Solarian might have a hybrid build as well.
I imagine the operative might see a melee build as well, since there's a SciFi archetype around knife fighting too.
I'd like to see an environment where most of the people will be inclined to use ranged fire most of the time, where it may be important to have a melee fallback option, and where a melee-focused character is possible and viable, and gets their own stack of awesome, but is seen as a bit of a niche build. Like, "character who specializes in melee" and "character who specializes in grenades" might be pretty close to one another in how common/normal they are.
That... actually sounds like about where they're putting it, too, which is cool.
Maybe not quite that extreme, but I definitely want them to really lean into "ranged is the main form of combat". What I absolutely like, though, is the idea of melee as a common fallback option - basically as ranged weapons are for many melee characters in PF2. The whole idea of "if everything else fails, it's back to straight silver" is one of those things that is way too cool not to include.
What I want from melee specialists is basically the opposite of existing ranged combat - high risk, high reward, high octane gameplay. They are the insane ones that decided that when the chips are down, their plan is to run into the hail of pure death from both sides and swing around a big stick. There are definitely several places for it, but those should reflect this change in the combat environment and that it probably won't be the first choice for the majority of people.
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The Soldier using its class DC for area weapons means you can pump Str and Con and largely ignore dex and still be useful before you've closed to melee.
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In Star Wars, pretty much everyone uses a blaster except for the Jedi… so I’m very okay with “lots of guns, and then Solarians are doing their thing.”
But yes, melee Soldier is already in the Field Test and is something I really want to be viable for PF2 reasons, if nothing else.
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I just want the equivalent of lightsaber blaster deflecting in the game. Whether that's something energy melee weapons can do or just what the solarion can do, I want to be able to march up towards an enemy while knocking all of their shots away or back at them.
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I just want the equivalent of lightsaber blaster deflecting in the game. Whether that's something energy melee weapons can do or just what the solarion can do, I want to be able to march up towards an enemy while knocking all of their shots away or back at them.
Something along the lines of Deflect Arrow and Return Fire. But laser pistol themed instead of arrows.
IMO, there shouldn't be an AOO for using a small arms in melee. Pistols work just fine at zero range.
The capacity for AoOs is already going to be much more limited due to using the PF2e chassis. Only certain classes and monsters/npcs can get them as a reaction. Those that do will tend to be the heavily martial classes. I believe only Fighter got AoOs from the jump but a few other classes could pick them up as class feats.
The field test has not gotten to the solarian, vanguard, and evolutionist yet, those are all more melee orientated classes.I don't like that. I think the Soldier should be the core fighting class, with optional builds to make them more melee or more ranged oriented. You shouldn't need special powers to be good at melee - just appropriate martial training.
But the Soldier isn't the core fighting class any longer, so arguing from that angle isn't particularly effective.
That said, all martial character will already be good at melee purely by merit of proficiency. They have the training and don't need special powers for that. None of that is a problem, including for the Soldier.
Melee being good itself is another matter entirely. That is where this discussion comes in, not before. Because martial training is of really limited value when the other guy can just wipe you out from hundreds of meters away. That's even before you even get into the difference of pure destructive capability that games downplay a lot. Which is fine, because there is still a character fantasy to be had here, but I appreciate things not getting too distorted.
In my eyes that is a really persuasive argument for melee-focused characters needing some kind of special sauce to be viable. Just "dude with a sword" isn't going to cut it (heh) in that kind of environment, so I want the character fantasy to reflect that.
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We've inferred that those six classes will be included, based on what's been revealed so far (Soldier, Solarian, Envoy, Mystic from the initial announcement, Operative and Witchwarper from the Reports from the Field Part 2 blog.)
What gives a little bit of wiggle room, is, we don't know how many classes will be in the core book(s). From what I recall, they mentioned "probably six" base classes in one of the earlier podcast interviews in August; but in something more recent (I think the Rise of the Runelords Interview ? Possibly? They're all running together in my brain lol) Thurston said they hadn't revealed all of the base classes. So we may be getting more than the earlier-suggested six.
(Or maybe the interviews are recorded before, but posted after, info is revealed, so who knows.)
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The field test is never going to get to the vanguard or evolutionist, those won't be in the playtest or SF2 core rulebook. We're getting soldier, operative, envoy, solarion, mystic, and witchwarper, it seems.Wait, what? No Mechanic? No Technomancer? That feels like it *has* to be a mistake. Are you sure they just haven't itemized all the classes included yet?
Nope, as far as we know atm, that is everything that is going to be in the actual playtest next year. Though the Witchwarper seems to have eaten the Precog, so we kinda get one extra. It is impossible to say for sure, but it would be a bit weird for something as complex as a class not to be playtested. So it is fairly certain that that will be the final core lineup at release as well.
I don't think we have gotten official confirmation, but it seems the idea is that it is better to focus the team's resources on a slightly smaller lineup, but do those really well. Hard to argue when SF2 will have to step out of PF2's long shadow on top of everything else.
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The field test is never going to get to the vanguard or evolutionist, those won't be in the playtest or SF2 core rulebook. We're getting soldier, operative, envoy, solarion, mystic, and witchwarper, it seems.Wait, what? No Mechanic? No Technomancer? That feels like it *has* to be a mistake. Are you sure they just haven't itemized all the classes included yet?
My own expectation is that the Mechanic and Technomancer will be released as part of a tech-based Rules book within a year of initial release. So you won't have them instantly, but you should have them pretty early on.
Pretty early on is a relative term considering Starfinder's glacial release schedule.
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17 soon to be 18 books in 6 years is not exactly slow. A slowdown to work on SF2e seems reasonable and expected. I suspect Paizo will push out the core books ASAP when SF2e is released.
Yeah, it's only slow if you compare it to how the PF team just churns out content.
It's possible mechanic is now part of Envoy, since that seems to be the 'skill monkey' of SF2e.
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My own expectation is that the Mechanic and Technomancer will be released as part of a tech-based Rules book within a year of initial release. So you won't have them instantly, but you should have them pretty early on.That would be. . . almost incomprehensibly bizarre. Starfinder is a space opera setting, "figurative and literal tech wizard" is one of *the* most defining character archetypes for the milieu. It'd be like doing a medieval fantasy setting, and relegating the Fighter to a secondary supplement.
I am really keeping my fingers crossed that this is a miscommunication, because if not? It *really* doesn't bode well. The kind of design mindset that would lead to "Eh, who needs the Mechanic class?" would be highly likely to lead to all kinds of other really bad design decisions.
That's... what?
I mean, how does "They're going to need a bit of extra time to workshop properly, and we want to bring them out as part of their own bespoke rulebook" translate to "eh, who needs them?"
Thing is, the fighter isn't just iconic. It's also simple. All you need for a fighter is that they be Good At Stab... and having the "combat with weapons" system in place from the beginning is pretty mandatory if you want your system to function at all.
On the flip side, I think it's entirely reasonable to want a bit of extra time (and pagecount) to get the "all the tech gadgets" stuff to really shine, and then to have the two tech-focused classes be able to come out of the gate with all of that stuff baked in.
the fact that they're not coming out the Very First Thing doesn't mean that they're considered as unimportant.
If anything, I'm cautiously hopeful that having a focus book like that is going to mean that they're better positioned to make them awesome. Like, "our first supplementary rulebook is going to be the tech rulebook" doesn't sound like "this stuff doesn't matter" to me. It sounds like an attempt to make space so that they can do it right.
It's possible mechanic is now part of Envoy, since that seems to be the 'skill monkey' of SF2e.
I have more faith in them than that.
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There's also the timing to consider. Paizo's schedule got... changed suddenly in January. I have little doubt that the original plan for SF2 Core involved more tech, including the Mechanic and the Technomancer, but things changed since the PF Remaster would have needed all hands on deck. Resources had to shift. There will still be some tech because it's science-fantasy, but much of the juicy stuff was pushed back towards an almost inevitable tech supplement. Sadly, that included the classes.
This is all speculation. I want to make that clear. It fits everything we know, so it is at least educated speculation.
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While the situation on the PF side is somewhat different since all those classes already exist on the engine and 'only' need revisions, it might potentially echo the Remaster situation of the classes being split across two core books, even if some of the PF2R Player Core 2 classes could be deemed classic or essential in the current day and age (like champion, barbarian, and sorcerer).
Mechanic and technomancer being pushed back to a Starfinder Player Core 2 (or a new Character Operations Manual, depending on which kind of presentation and naming scheme SF2 ends up going with) does seem like an entirely plausible reality, if a mildly surprising one at first.
edit: somehow the first version of my reply got messed up. This was in response to how do you make room for close combat fighters in the game:
There's a simple tech-fantasy answer to that. Shields that stop, deflect, or attenuate ranged attacks. Or magics that do the same. But then you could end up with situations where there's no use for a sniper or even a rifle. Maybe make it so such shields only reduce your chance to hit, or increase effective range (which I guess is the same thing). Or they work by obscuring things inside the shield from outside it and vice versa.
There is also the whole "deflect everything with your weapon" angle, that is essentially mandatory to be included somewhere. Star Wars is the most prevalent example, but this is everywhere in more modern scifi stuff. I'm currently rocking such a build in the new Cyberpunk 2077 update and yeah, 10/10 I would play that.
Damn, I keep forgetting to add: proper support for mixed gun/melee builds and gunkata builds would be awesome. The wrist/forearm "autoloader" from Equilibrium is way too cool not to have for any reason, really. Give the base model a few mags/batteries and just make it remove the "free hand to reload" requirement, so the cost can be trivial. Stylish and cheap ^^
Totally random thought. I want a pilebunker. For reasons....
Damn, I keep forgetting to add: proper support for mixed gun/melee builds and gunkata builds would be awesome.
I am genuinely curious if a Monk with the Bullet Dancer Archetype actually becomes pretty good when you have access to high tech guns. On the Pathfinder side of things, you're just hampered from constantly needing to reload.
Damn, I keep forgetting to add: proper support for mixed gun/melee builds and gunkata builds would be awesome.I am genuinely curious if a Monk with the Bullet Dancer Archetype actually becomes pretty good when you have access to high tech guns. On the Pathfinder side of things, you're just hampered from constantly needing to reload.
None of them are in the firearms group, so they wouldn't work.
But lets assume they would, because a reasonable GM would almost certainly allow that if they use SF2 content. And you are using the laser pistol as shown in FT1. In that case it's honestly still not that good. Far better than before, yes, but the feats still aren't great. Statistically, it's essentially a Monastic Archer Monk with less damage, less range and still needs to reload semi-frequently - 5 shots are easily gone in less than two full rounds.