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So... I am new here. Yes. At the same time, I notice things. About the Engineer in particular, I notice three things.
- SF2 totally needs to have a Mechanic class - something int-based that's all about being Jut Plain Better at Doing Tech Stuff than everyone else in some meaningful way. This is an action-adventure soft sci-fi setting (plus fantasy aspects). It needs this. It doesn't necessarily need to have that name specifically, but it needs to be that thing.
- It seems like there's not a really satisfying idea of what that class would look like in SF2. How does "really good at tech" translate into getting your share of awesomeness at the table?
- It's not one of the initial 6 classes. That means that Paizo isn't really working on this one yet, and that means that this is a pretty solid time for us to toss out ideas and churn on them and maybe give the folks over at Paizo some more grist to work with when they do come around to working on the mechanic (or engineer, or whatever it winds up being called).
I'll start.
First, they're on a basic martial chassis. You can't be Awesome At Technology if you can't pick up your awesome souped-up gun and Shoot Good. Also, mechanics have this Thing with wrenches. So we're talking about a martial here. Everything else they get is the bonus stuff that you pile on top of a martial chassis to make it worth playing.
past that, I see the following ideas for Cool Things.
- Widgets. Having a bunch of random tech bobbins and whatnot that you can pull out of the many pockets on your overalls to help handle the situation at hand is very much a mechanic thing. Either you just happen to have them on you (and know how to tweak them to make them Do The Thing) or you MacGyver them up on the spot to serve the needs of the moment. Regardless, this winds up looking an awful lot like the alchemist stuff from PF2, just with useful tech widgets rather than alchemy. I feel like Starfinder having alchemy-like Useful Tech Widgets is probably a win anyway.
- Personal Gear. There is absolutely a trope about the person who's totally into the tech and absolutely loves their gun/motorcycle/drone/computer/whatever and gives it the kind of maintenance and upgrades that people who aren't so into the tech simply don't have the time, dedication, or know-how for. Basically, they'd be able to pick some number of pieces of their own gear and give them upgrades... upgrades that would only work properly in their hands because, of course, they know exactly how to use their heavily modded whatever-it-is in a way that no one else really does.
- Proper Maintenance. There are also advantages to having a truly dedicated mechanic on the team. Essentially, this allows the Mechanic to hand out limited versions of the Personal Gear buffs to other people. Possibly some combination of "general check-up" stuff that gives small but meaningful general buffs around reliability, and more focused attention that offers noticeable improvements to a small number of pieces of party gear- like lesser versions of Personal Gear buffs that other people can enjoy. The idea here is to capture that moment where the Soldier finds out that there's going to be a mechanic in the party and starts getting that happy look.
....and, honestly, I think you could make it mostly that. Like, for the drone companion, anyone can get a drone companion by spending the feats for it, but a Mechanic can then pick their companion as one of their pieces of personal gear, and crank up the awesome a notch or two. Bonus points if there's a viable way to apply Proper Maintenance buffs to an SRO party member.
So... who else has ideas? Or things to say about these ideas? Those are good too.
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I hate to bring this up because I know not everyone wants to hear it but... everything you've brought up is exactly what Pathfinder's Inventor does.
It has a feat line for gadgets, your random tech bobbins to pull out as quick consumables for you and your allies. It has your bespoke invention in the form of a weapon (gun), companion (motorcycle/drone), or armor, with unique traits others can't replicate. And it has limited versions of its personal buffs to hand out to the team via feats to share offensive boost or its overdrive feature.
Which is to say, you've hit the nail on what makes this sort of character fun! And I think one of the reasons we aren't immediately seeing a mechanic in SF2e is that, cross-compatibility aside, SF2e is working hard to not make their classes just a space fantasy redress of Pathfinder classes. Which means a mechanic needs a more unique space from the inventor.
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I hate to bring this up because I know not everyone wants to hear it but... everything you've brought up is exactly what Pathfinder's Inventor does.
It has a feat line for gadgets, your random tech bobbins to pull out as quick consumables for you and your allies. It has your bespoke invention in the form of a weapon (gun), companion (motorcycle/drone), or armor, with unique traits others can't replicate. And it has limited versions of its personal buffs to hand out to the team via feats to share offensive boost or its overdrive feature.
Which is to say, you've hit the nail on what makes this sort of character fun! And I think one of the reasons we aren't immediately seeing a mechanic in SF2e is that, cross-compatibility aside, SF2e is working hard to not make their classes just a space fantasy redress of Pathfinder classes. Which means a mechanic needs a more unique space from the inventor.
Broadly speaking? Sure. The issue is that I don't think the inventor did some of this stuff particularly well, and there's some real devil in the details stuff on top of that.
So my proposal is that this is the core of the class. Basically, we start with the inventor. Then we strip out the overdrive thing entirely, and we let them take their "class damage buff" points in just making the gear better. We throw away the idea that it's a single invention that's the focus of all of their attention, and we make it something where they can spread the love around a variety of pieces of gear if they want - and even share a bit of that with others. We get rid of all of the inventor's "spend two actions to make an area-effect attack off of Class DC" tricks (just go buy a heavy weapon if you want that stuff), you make the gadgets more than just a feat line, you reduce the robot companion so it is just a feat line, and the result plays quite a bit differently.
Like, thematically, there's a difference because this Mechanic isn't inventing anything. They buy existing tech off the shelves and then they spend a lot of time reading hobbyist blogs and technical manuals and tinkering. They have different ways of upgrading a bunch of different kinds of gear, and when they do pony up the cash to switch from one gun to another gun, then their gun buffs just transfer over (and maybe swap around a bit) because it's a matter of time and attention rather than being one of monomaniacal devotion.
Practically, there's a difference because there's no offensive boost and there's no overdrive, and there's no explosions. There's buffs to assign, but they're not in the moment, and they're not decided carefully over the course of your career - all of them get applied at the beginning of the day, or maybe get fully rearranged with a bit of downtime. You have gadgets, but the gadgets are actually good, because you have the space in the build budget to make them good. You wind up being a martial whose gear is Just Plain Better than everyone else's, plus some party buff, plus gadgets for a bit of flexibility. That's... not really how the Inventor plays.
So yeah. There are connections between this idea and inventor... but I don't think there are any more than there are between Fighter and the new Soldier, or Rogue and the new Operative.
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I'd like to see Mechanics being able to swing their big narrative... wrench around. Having one in your party should be a bit like bringing civilization with you.
I imagine them meticulously and jealously assembling and caring for their personal engineering toolkit as essentially a personalized key to whatever the situation calls for, inside and out of combat.
A mechanic should be able to solve narrative problems that technology should be able to solve, without the party having to plan ahead or rely on begging NPCs for help. They should be able to quickly and easily convert UPBs into useful tools, and perhaps get some UPBs for free every day, so that they can always have an answer to the party not having the right tool for the job. From making an air conditioned shelter, to putting up a zipline, to building a permanent water harvesting system for a community, a mechanic should represent the kinds of power you'd normally get from utility spells in Pathfinder.
In combat I'd like to see Mechanics be able to do things unrelated to drones or modifying their own gear. Those things, I feel, should be pretty universally available options. I'd like it if they could do something more *sciencey*, possibly using their toolkit as a source of handwavium. Like spot welding enemy boots to the floor, generating a magnetic field that deflects bullets, welding a bulkhead door closed, creating an EMP wave, setting traps and snares, etc.
All in addition to being able to opt into computers/hacking, and naturally being able to use a gun.
I guess I kind of hope they fill more of a caster role in being able to solve problems and make flashy effects, but with the power of science.
I'd like to see Mechanics being able to swing their big narrative... wrench around. Having one in your party should be a bit like bringing civilization with you.
I imagine them meticulously and jealously assembling and caring for their personal engineering toolkit as essentially a personalized key to whatever the situation calls for, inside and out of combat.
A mechanic should be able to solve narrative problems that technology should be able to solve, without the party having to plan ahead or rely on begging NPCs for help. They should be able to quickly and easily convert UPBs into useful tools, and perhaps get some UPBs for free every day, so that they can always have an answer to the party not having the right tool for the job. From making an air conditioned shelter, to putting up a zipline, to building a permanent water harvesting system for a community, a mechanic should represent the kinds of power you'd normally get from utility spells in Pathfinder.
I'll say... I don't particularly like your idea of how they'd work in combat, but I do like this. At minimum, I feel like the ability to do this stuff should be something that mechanics could spec into relatively easily (and if you did it with a tree of class feats, then other classes could get basically the same thing at a lower level via archetyping).
I'll say... I don't particularly like your idea of how they'd work in combat, but I do like this. At minimum, I feel like the ability to do this stuff should be something that mechanics could spec into relatively easily (and if you did it with a tree of class feats, then other classes could get basically the same thing at a lower level via archetyping).I'd like to see Mechanics being able to swing their big narrative... wrench around. Having one in your party should be a bit like bringing civilization with you.
I imagine them meticulously and jealously assembling and caring for their personal engineering toolkit as essentially a personalized key to whatever the situation calls for, inside and out of combat.
A mechanic should be able to solve narrative problems that technology should be able to solve, without the party having to plan ahead or rely on begging NPCs for help. They should be able to quickly and easily convert UPBs into useful tools, and perhaps get some UPBs for free every day, so that they can always have an answer to the party not having the right tool for the job. From making an air conditioned shelter, to putting up a zipline, to building a permanent water harvesting system for a community, a mechanic should represent the kinds of power you'd normally get from utility spells in Pathfinder.
I'm a hundred percent on board with the out-of-combat interpretation. In PF2, I'm playing something like a wizard with particular spells and items to bring the comforts of civilization out on adventures. In SF1, Mechanic was by far the best way to get battery charges in the field, and the class expanding more on that would be nice.
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I will say, any justification of "we don't need x class in Starfinder because it already exists in Pathfinder" is a failure state for me.
In no uncertain terms- if Iconic Scifi characters can't be made in Starfinder without Pathfinder classes being imported, Starfinder is no longer its own game, but just an expansion pack for Pathfinder that I need to adapt Pathfinder classes into in order to have a whole game.
Maybe that's the direction Paizo wants to go. It is not something I would purchase. It is certainly not something I would GM.
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I meant it more as the mechanic should be more than just a repaint of the inventor. In the same way the soldier isn't being a repaint of the fighter and the operative isn't one of the rogue. We absolutely SHOULD have a mechanic, I hard agree on that. It just needs its own space and structure.
I wonder if the SF1 mechanic, with all its alternatives to the drone, isn't worth a hard-split in SF2. One class that does drones very well, another that does custom armor, weapons, or augmentations well.
Possibly class paths instead? "You're a mechanic, and this is the kind of stuff you're really excited about" seems like obvious class path bait. Some class paths are a bit thin. Some are pretty beefy. Letting the Mechanic class paths be pretty beefy seems pretty reasonable.
I mean, the general idea of "anyone can have this kind of technology, but I use it better because this is the stuff that I'm really good at" is pretty much what we're describing in each case. Give them some sort of gear-upgrade currency to work with that represents that time and expert attention, and then talk about what happens when you spend it on your drones, on your weapons, on your armor, and so forth.
I meant it more as the mechanic should be more than just a repaint of the inventor. In the same way the soldier isn't being a repaint of the fighter and the operative isn't one of the rogue. We absolutely SHOULD have a mechanic, I hard agree on that. It just needs its own space and structure.
Exactly. I don't think anyone is suggesting that the mechanic, or something like it, is not needed. But there is a lot of at least superficial overlap with the Inventor, so I can see them needing to take the time to make the mechanic distinct from the Inventor.
I want to have the final product be something where, if a player of both classes sit at the same table, they feel at least as different as a witch and a sorcerer.
Plus, the rules for technology are not finalized, while the fantasy aspects being ported into SF2 largely are. That makes classes that lean heavier into the fantasy side easier to update at this time than ones that lean into tech, since they can concentrate more on what makes those classes awesome and less on how they function at all.
I meant it more as the mechanic should be more than just a repaint of the inventor. In the same way the soldier isn't being a repaint of the fighter and the operative isn't one of the rogue. We absolutely SHOULD have a mechanic, I hard agree on that. It just needs its own space and structure.
But if that means that whole sections of gameplay are being lopped off because "it exists in Pathfinder" then I'm not in favour. Soldier being space fighter is fine because there isn't a fighter in starfinder. If Soldier is locked into being a narrow slice of "space warrior" that isn't conceptually covered by fighter then that is a failure of Starfinder to be its own game.
Starfinder 1 was it's own game. From Core Rulebook, with no pathfinder content required. And it's base classes covered an overwhelming majority of Science Fantasy niches.
Starfinder 2 needs to be that or it is a failure. Simple as.
Exactly. I don't think anyone is suggesting that the mechanic, or something like it, is not needed. But there is a lot of at least superficial overlap with the Inventor, so I can see them needing to take the time to make the mechanic distinct from the Inventor.
I want to have the final product be something where, if a player of both classes sit at the same table, they feel at least as different as a witch and a sorcerer.
That's sort of what concerns me most about SF2e's Mechanic, honestly. The bucket list described by OP SanityFaerie (a martial character based around self-modification and gadgets and cool gear) is the essence of what 1e Mechanic was. Furthermore, that concept is just about as basic an archetype you can get with sci-fi adventures. It'd suck for this mold of character - assembled with the nuts and bolts representative of a sci-fi setting - to receive no support in Starfinder 2e, Paizo's premier sci-fi rpg, simply because a very similar mold was already created for high fantasy. That's honestly why I don't think I'd mind if they re-skinned Inventor and modded it with alternate class features. Maybe do the same for Envoy and release them both in a big Numerian 'Finder crossover splatbook.
Still, I think there's room to explore a fresh class here. I kind of enjoy Perpdepog's idea of leaning into the drone side of the class, although maybe with a slightly different focus than being SF2e's "animal companion" class, as it were. Instead, it might be interesting to have an intrinsic philosophy for Mechanic characteristic of technology in a sci-fi setting itself: "I am everywhere."
Instead of Mechanic treating their drone as a combat unit, the Mechanic should use their companion as reconnaissance and tactical support. Maybe split between three varieties: a traditional drone, a living hologram, and a satellite-vehicle.
I picture traditional drones being the most combat-ready, scaling cliffs or difficult terrain to get behind an enemy's cover, and using a magnetic beam to steal their weapons out of their hand, or rapid-printing a temporary 3d replica of the player's own weapon, allowing the player to effectively shoot from two different locations on the map. Or they could just flank a Mechanic's enemy engaged in melee. Essentially, drones should be about giving the Mechanic direct physical access to a target from two different directions at once (while only personally being in one).
A living hologram, alternatively, links with the Mechanic's exocortex and moves across the battlefield without becoming a vulnerable target. Instead, they can move behind solid barriers, map out the features of terrain to uplink to the Mechanic's visor, detect technological devices present (perhaps can be upgraded to detect lifeforms) and produce spell-like, hampering effects, ideally in places where the Mechanic suspects hostiles to be located. General idea here being that a living hologram is more blind going into hostile spaces and won't be giving you line of sight access to a hostile, but also won't be vulnerable to blaster fire, can still produce area-hampering or illusion effects, and is probably better at hacking computers. So the hologram is the Mechanic's way of causing chaos behind an enemy's cover while they shoot them safely from afar.
Lastly, the vehicle sits at a balance between the two, floating overhead and shooting down intelligence and support fire, or maybe sitting in front of the Mechanic as cover, but is also pretty conspicuous and probably less specialized in combat and sabotage than their drone and hologram counterparts. On the plus side, they are also a vehicle! So the Mechanic can use them to be in any place on the battlefield in a short span of time.
I have more ideas, but my lunch is over. Cheers.
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Starfinder 1 was it's own game. From Core Rulebook, with no pathfinder content required. And it's base classes covered an overwhelming majority of Science Fantasy niches.
Starfinder 2 needs to be that or it is a failure. Simple as.
I believe that Starfinder will cover the Science Fantasy niches just fine. The trick is that it won't do that by trying to repaint non-space fantasy niches.
I have a helpful thought for you. The devs who are writign Starfinder? They love Starfinder. It is sadly the case that a lot of peopel out there writing movies (for example) about the genres we love are not, in fact, fans. It shows, and it taints them. That's not what's going on here. Just to take an example, it is really clear that if you love mecha, then Senior Developer Jenny Jarzabski has your back. It's not because you're shouting your complaints loud enough to be heard or because she's pandering to the audience or anything (not that pandering is bad). It's because she also loves mecha, in a real and fundamental way, and this is her opportunity to make them awesome and she's absolutely going to do everything she can to make mecha in Starfinder 2 awesome because she wants awesome mecha in this game that she's helping to write into being, at least in part so that she can play in a game of it later and get a mecha with her character and have it be awesome.
You interact with some of these devs a bit, and that whole attitude just starts dripping off the page. They love the game, and they want to make it awesome, and their management supports them in it. I get that you have concerns... but it's pretty clear by now that the Starfinder devs have no intention of making SF2 in any way dependent on PF2. If anything, the attempt to dodge the sometimes overly generic PF2 classes is likely to result in classes that are more interesting and distinct and fun than you'd get otherwise. Even now, even just having seen this much, Soldier is already more interesting than PF2 fighter.
I will say, though, that your'e right about one thing. It probably won't cover the overwhelming majority of Science Fantasy niches, right out of the box, with just the Core Book... and that's good for you. If it covers the overwhelming majority from the core rulebook, then that means that there are very few niches left to expand into with later books. That means that your first classes have to stretch and be super-generic in order to vaguely cover Lots Of Things with the dev time and page space allotted, and then later classes wind up being really conceptually cramped because there's no space left. In the long term, you're much better off if you get a solid, playable set out of the core rulebook that covers a nice healthy chunk of the niches but still leaves a decent amount of space to play in so that they can come back later and build classes into those niches with the kind of attention that they deserve. In the long run, you wind up with a set of classes that still cover all the same stuff, but they're all more interesting and fun to play and better designed overall.
I mean, I'm assuming that you don't have a terminal disease that's going to kill you off in three years or something. If you do, then you have my profound sympathy, and the things I've just written are not applicable in your case. If you're going to be around long enough to see the new classes come, though... it's better to give them that time.
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I get that you have concerns... but it's pretty clear by now that the Starfinder devs have no intention of making SF2 in any way dependent on PF2. If anything, the attempt to dodge the sometimes overly generic PF2 classes is likely to result in classes that are more interesting and distinct and fun than you'd get otherwise.
Yes and no. Based on the STFU podcast, Starfinder is going to stand on its own, but they also aren't going to ignore what's already out there. Particularly with creatures I'd wager, if it's already in Pathfinder it's not going to be a priority for putting into a Starfinder book. And it is a stated design goal that classes in either system, both in Pathfinder and Starfinder, will feel different if played at the same table.
As another example, they also said that they're probably going to skip much of the rules parts of the CRB in the Starfinder playtest document, since the CRB is going to be out there and there's no need to reprint it in the playtest document. They will be reprinted (and of course revised and put into new context) in the Starfinder CRB.
It's also not impossible (though not planned yet) that there might be a book down the line that, for example, releases a slew of fighter feats that are balanced and intended to be played in Starfinder rather than Pathfinder. And honestly I really like the idea of such a book. I do agree with the design direction that they don't want the core to have "fighter in space", but a book that does specifically do that (and also does "Nanocyte/Witchwarper in a gravity well") would be an instabuy for me.