pf2 hasnt added any new traditions, in large part because the entire point of only having four traditions was to avoid all the problems of creating a new spell list for every class. sf2 could add a one, but the way the system works it would not be worth doing when the much easier option is just to create new spells that work in the four traditions as is. maybe also give access to spells from other traditions, which is already pretty common for spell casting classes.
What I meant is the cantrips should be a gun, not either or, nor one then the other, but both at once. The cantrips either conjure a gun, fire from a gun. Whatever. Just gimme the gun wizardI think "Gun wizard" is a fine idea for a class, and that Starfinder would be a better place for having one.
I don't think it's the Technomancer, though. It feels more like a gish class, while the Technomancer really needs to be full caster.
Technomancer had inbuilt support for a gish play style, but it's not what I mean either. Functionally, thematically, I think the technomancer spells should be technology and for spells which hurt people that means weapons, and I think a subclass should be about conjuring turrets, artillery, mortors, missile launchers, grenades etc. This should be one build path supported by the class and it needs not be a gish. Just spells, focus spells, feats and class features
For instance you cast a spell and it makes a "gun" but the gun is spell attacks. Or you cast a spell that instead of summoning a demon it summons an automated turret that shoots dudes with missiles
pf2 hasnt added any new traditions, in large part because the entire point of only having four traditions was to avoid all the problems of creating a new spell list for every class. sf2 could add a one, but the way the system works it would not be worth doing when the much easier option is just to create new spells that work in the four traditions as is. maybe also give access to spells from other traditions, which is already pretty common for spell casting classes.
I really want SF2e to add a new tradition, that only appear in SF2e, since I don't think that Technomancer work as Arcane or Occult. And the reason there is no techno "magic" tradition in Pf2e is because technology isn't that advance yet, maybe Numera have some Technomancer that figure out techno "magic".
|
I think they've already shown us what can be the big gimmick for Technomancers: Glitching
More over, like supression for the Soldier, I could imagine they have a special way to force this onto equipment and creatures, since tech will be so ubiquitous.
So I would imagine they would have some ability like "Arcane Interface" and at first level all it does is basically force them to make some kind of save vs. your spell save DC, and on a fail, they are Glitching 1, with the 1 raising at later levels.
Then later feats would allow you to apply other conditions or achieve other results with your arcane interface.
I think they've already shown us what can be the big gimmick for Technomancers: Glitching
More over, like supression for the Soldier, I could imagine they have a special way to force this onto equipment and creatures, since tech will be so ubiquitous.So I would imagine they would have some ability like "Arcane Interface" and at first level all it does is basically force them to make some kind of save vs. your spell save DC, and on a fail, they are Glitching 1, with the 1 raising at later levels.
Then later feats would allow you to apply other conditions or achieve other results with your arcane interface.
Making the voidwolves glitch is going to be a trick, though.
It's one of the interesting things about technomancer, and to a lesser extent about tech-spells in general. They're all about magical effects on tech things. "Target the tech of your enemies" is an obvious path to do a lot of work on...but at least some of the enemies in Starfinder are primitive or nonsapient and have no tech at all. A lot of places have environmental tech, but certainly not all of them. How does this character play when there's lots of tech around, and how that changes when there's none but what you brought with you? That's some interesting stuff.
Seems like the same problem as "Well, my spell does good damage, but they're neutral"
Or "I focus on spirit damage, but now we're fighting a construct"
The first one is getting fixed. For the second? "Fighting a construct" feels a lot more niche to me than "my enemy happens to be non-tech". Worse yet is the clustering. Like, yeah, you can have an adventure that is All About Constructs (and my understanding is that one of the APs is this way) but that's somethign that gets set up because it's a theme, not because it has to be this way. As soon as you set foot on a primitive planet, you're likely going to be fighting nothing but non-tech (mostly in non-technological environments) until you leave... and for many storylines, that can take a while.
...and at the same time, having a handwavey workaround that says that your tech-targeting spells can work just fine no problem on non-tech enemies is just a massive flavor fail. So I don't really have an answer here.
Maybe you just say "Hey, this adventure is maybe not so great for technomancers" sometimes? I suppose it could be that simple. It's not like running a cleric in an adventure about Rahadoum is going to do you any favors.
|
|
Really, because just from you bringing it up, I could think of a feat to allow it to work on non-tech entities: "Wetware Interface: through examination of cybernetic interfacing, and bio-engineering, you have learned to interface with biological organism as easily as traditional computers and machines. Any spell or ability that would normally require a creature to have the "tech" trait to be affect, can now be affected without it"
Maybe throw in that that their flat bonus to overcome glitching is 5 instead of 10, but yeah. At it makes sense in universe.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Lots of existing SF1 technomancer magic hacks in these ideas.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Lots of existing SF1 technomancer magic hacks in these ideas.
Ah, yes, and surely that makes them worthless. SF2 is coming! Out with the old, and in with the new!
Figuring out which parts of the old system are solid gold and should be preserved is also an important part of the process.
Lots of existing SF1 technomancer magic hacks in these ideas.Ah, yes, and surely that makes them worthless. SF2 is coming! Out with the old, and in with the new!
Figuring out which parts of the old system are solid gold and should be preserved is also an important part of the process.
You have no understanding of the old system and are wasting your time reinventing basic concepts.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I'm starting to come around on the idea that Starfinder would be better served with their own traditions. Especially now that we know that spell casting proficiency is being condensed into a single stat; new traditions wouldn't change that dynamic. And while SF2 is intended to run on PF2 engine, as long as casters have traditions it would still work mostly fine, even if the specific traditions weren't the same in both games.
This would of course mean you couldn't just grab a wizard out of pathfinder and plug them into a starfinder game; they'd need to get assigned one of the new traditions for starfinder play, but honestly I kind of like that idea.
Perhaps instead of Vital/Matter/Mind/Spirit, they were revised to Body/Mind/Soul? Technomancer gets Physical and Mental effects, Mystic Mental and Spiritual (including a slew of the animal and plant communication spells), and Precogs getting Spiritual and Physical? Not wedded to any of those ideas, my main point is it could be done, and doing that might serve the narrative of each of those classes and the game as a whole better than trying to shoehorn the old ideas into the new game.
Edit: I should try to name these, shouldn't I? Lessee, how about "Galactic" for Mind/Body, "Concordance" for Mind/Spirit, and "Quantum" for Spirit/Body? Galactic dealing with connections between objects, Concordance with the connections between intelligences, and "Quantum" connections between planes and places.
I love those new "magic" tradition for SF2e, that are more sci-fi that PF2e traditional fantasy, I really like your idea AnimatedPaper, but I think there can still be a fourth one, that have similiar "magic" to divine, something like "Celestial" that the solarian could use, that deal with the cosmic power, like planets and stars.
|
|
You have no understanding of the old system and are wasting your time reinventing basic concepts.
It's a second edition: The entire point is to reinvent existing basic concepts in the new game "engine".
Trying to figure out ways define the Technomancer in the new system, and what systems that can be brought into the new edition.
You have no understanding of the old system and are wasting your time reinventing basic concepts.
I know for a fact that this isn't the first time this has been pointed out to you, but I feel you could have phrased your criticism in a more respectful way, particularly if the intent was to try to convince someone rather than insult them. Contrast, for instance, "I feel you could have expressed your disagreement in more constructive terms" with "you lack the basic emotional intelligence to converse with other human beings without sounding like a skelm".
The first one is getting fixed. For the second? "Fighting a construct" feels a lot more niche to me than "my enemy happens to be non-tech". Worse yet is the clustering. Like, yeah, you can have an adventure that is All About Constructs (and my understanding is that one of the APs is this way) but that's somethign that gets set up because it's a theme, not because it has to be this way. As soon as you set foot on a primitive planet, you're likely going to be fighting nothing but non-tech (mostly in non-technological environments) until you leave... and for many storylines, that can take a while.
...and at the same time, having a handwavey workaround that says that your tech-targeting spells can work just fine no problem on non-tech enemies is just a massive flavor fail. So I don't really have an answer here.
Maybe you just say "Hey, this adventure is maybe not so great for technomancers" sometimes? I suppose it could be that simple. It's not like running a cleric in an adventure about Rahadoum is going to do you any favors.
I feel the mitigating factor to this could be that you would always have your own tech with you: I do think a technomancer shouldn't be good at working with anything analog, archaic, or even less sophisticated, but then that ought to be all the more reason for them to bring tech of their own, and rely on their party's tech items as well. Barring an extremely niche scenario where you're not allowed to bring any tech with you, the technomancer is never going to be far away from tech in the same way a wizard in 2e is unlikely to be separated from their spellbook, so even if you wouldn't necessarily have as many options in a low-tech environment, you'd still always have something to work with.
You have no understanding of the old system and are wasting your time reinventing basic concepts.I know for a fact that this isn't the first time this has been pointed out to you, but I feel you could have phrased your criticism in a more respectful way, particularly if the intent was to try to convince someone rather than insult them.
If you have any further irrelvant facts to share or strange initiatives to guess my intent, please go ahead, I'm quite proficient at skimming over stuff like that.
If you have any further irrelvant facts to share or strange initiatives to guess my intent, please go ahead, I'm quite proficient at skimming over stuff like that.
You must have critically failed your skill check, then, as you not only visibly neglected to skim over that pertinent criticism, but took the time and energy to formulate a stroppy response dedicated entirely to it, making yours the most irrelevant post in this entire thread. Intent doesn't matter here, the fact is that your replies add nothing to conversation, and serve only to publicly embarrass you with their displays of aimless, puerile hostility.
That is a really good point. We don't know much about the tech we'll be expected to carry, and until we do we won't know how we'll expect the technomancer to really interact with the world.
Agreed: we know that tech weapons will be a part of the game for sure (and I certainly hope the technomancer is incentivized to carry a few of those around), and we'll certainly have many more tech items, but we can only conjecture until we get a few more specifics. Looking at SF1e, we'll likely have tech armor, permanent and consumable tech gadgets, and even cybernetic grafts (and I'll be keen to build a 40k tech-priest if we get those in 2e), which makes me all the more interested in seeing how the presence of a technomancer would not only affect the character's own build decisions, but also those of their allies.
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
We can make some assumptions about overall tech level; after all, we have only to look at SF1 to have a pretty good idea of how tech-y the baseline setting is likely to be. Yes, things will change and meta states and blah blah blah, but I think we can safely assume that every PC, outside of some very niche builds, is going to have a bunch of technological items on hand. All armours (outside of rare cases, like the leathers uncontacted societies might wear) will likely continue to have environmental seals, all PCs will be assumed to, at minimum, have a comm unit that has the same general capabilities of a modern-day smart phone (and the mystic's healing ringtone spell seem to reinforce this), and so on. There will surely be some analog weapons, but I expect the default assumption will still be "all weapons are tech unless otherwise noted."
Anyways, what I'm saying is, if we even get a SF2 technomancer, I'm sure they'll have enough options to interact with the world, even when fighting dinosaurs or primitive aliens wearing hides or whatever. SF1 did a great job in this regard: Space-Fireball only needs you to have a used battery, even if the explodees are carrying pointy sticks, after all :D As another excellent example, consider jolting surge, which can be cast on a tech thing the baddie is wearing, or you can just hold your own tech thing as the delivery mechanism.
I was going to call this a hot take, but after scanning through this thread I think it will only be a slightly warmer than room temperature take.
I think Technomancy should be made a school of magic for Wizards, and Technomancer be a subclass option for Engineer that gets multiclass spellcasting as a Wizard of the Technomancy school as part of their subclass selection. Not JUST that; we're cutting out the versilaity of being able to choose any spellcasting dedication so we have time to do the subclass justice, but in a world were we can have full spellcasters this feels like the better option.
If you need a grain of salt the size of Absalom Station to take this take with, I've marinated in the setting since launch but have yet to actually play a game. So take that as you will.
Respectfully I disagree.
I like how someone put it before
Technomancers veer more toward software
Engineers veer more toward Hardware.
Also, if you are thinking of Technomancy like the old 8 schools of magic, those are now GONE with the remaster
I don't think it's true that one veered towards the other in anyways that was suoer significant. It's was near 50/50, perhaps 60/40. Technomancer has a lot of magic hacks and spells which interact with or outright create hardware, and exo-cortex is software focused on its own. I think the distinction should be martial vs caster in this edition. Two answers to the same question. That question being "what is the tech character like"
I think Zoken meant that as a design direction for SF2, not what was going on in SF1.
I think Technomancy should be made a school of magic for Wizards, and Technomancer be a subclass option for Engineer that gets multiclass spellcasting as a Wizard of the Technomancy school as part of their subclass selection. Not JUST that; we're cutting out the versilaity of being able to choose any spellcasting dedication so we have time to do the subclass justice, but in a world were we can have full spellcasters this feels like the better option.
I'm not totally opposed to making a Technomagic subclass, but I'd prefer it to be of the mystic class, not wizard. Not least because wizards will not technically exist in SF, even if porting them over won't be particularly challenging.
Plus, something feels right about an android mystic that communes with computers like a techno-animist and whose vitality network includes constructs and robots.
I think Zoken meant that as a design direction for SF2, not what was going on in SF1.
I think Technomancy should be made a school of magic for Wizards, and Technomancer be a subclass option for Engineer that gets multiclass spellcasting as a Wizard of the Technomancy school as part of their subclass selection. Not JUST that; we're cutting out the versilaity of being able to choose any spellcasting dedication so we have time to do the subclass justice, but in a world were we can have full spellcasters this feels like the better option.I'm not totally opposed to making a Technomagic subclass, but I'd prefer it to be of the mystic class, not wizard. Not least because wizards will not technically exist in SF, even if porting them over won't be particularly challenging.
Plus, something feels right about an android mystic that communes with computers like a techno-animist and whose vitality network includes constructs and robots.
So, I believe wizards still exist in SF canonically. I believe it was the GM guide portion of the CRB, I forget the name of the book, had stuff about bringing pathfinder classes, and races, in. There is no reason some supplemental material down the line can't have a Starfinder exclusive school/thesis for wizards to make them fit into Starfinder. I think technowizard is fine and cool. I do however disagree with poster about making technomancer a wizard subclass. It should be a bespoke class. I personally associate it the most with SF, but I do have a bias
So, I believe wizards still exist in SF canonically. I believe it was the GM guide portion of the CRB, I forget the name of the book, had stuff about bringing pathfinder classes, and races, in. There is no reason some supplemental material down the line can't have a Starfinder exclusive school/thesis for wizards to make them fit into Starfinder. I think technowizard is fine and cool. I do however disagree with poster about making technomancer a wizard subclass. It should be a bespoke class. I personally associate it the most with SF, but I do have a bias
I think a rulebook somewhere down the line that has Starfinder options for Pathfinder Ancestries and Class, and vis versa, would be a valuable and interesting supplement. I would honestly be surprised if something like this wasn’t in the works for release soon after SF2. Not *right* after, but one of the 2026 releases perhaps.
Edit: I’m also am now firmly of the opinion that SF2 should not use Arcane/Primal/Divine/Occult and create new traditions instead. They would also be an interesting section of this proposed book, with spells that aren’t in one or the other being assigned traditions.
So, I believe wizards still exist in SF canonically. I believe it was the GM guide portion of the CRB, I forget the name of the book, had stuff about bringing pathfinder classes, and races, in. There is no reason some supplemental material down the line can't have a Starfinder exclusive school/thesis for wizards to make them fit into Starfinder. I think technowizard is fine and cool. I do however disagree with poster about making technomancer a wizard subclass. It should be a bespoke class. I personally associate it the most with SF, but I do have a biasI think a rulebook somewhere down the line that has Starfinder options for Pathfinder Ancestries and Class, and vis versa, would be a valuable and interesting supplement. I would honestly be surprised if something like this wasn’t in the works for release soon after SF2. Not *right* after, but one of the 2026 releases perhaps.
Edit: I’m also am now firmly of the opinion that SF2 should not use Arcane/Primal/Divine/Occult and create new traditions instead. They would also be an interesting section of this proposed book, with spells that aren’t in one or the other being assigned traditions.
The more I think about it, the more I think SF should have it's own lists as well. It seems almost universally agreed upon in the forum. I haven't seen anyone in opposition to the idea so far. I would like the magic traditions to reflect the ideological/philosophical/ontological shifts in people in the future. In real life as time has gone on we have become more constructivist and less essentialist. The arcane, occult, divine and primal system is deeply essentialist being based on essences after all. Perhaps in the future traditions are fluid, less rigid
The more I think about it, the more I think SF should have it's own lists as well. It seems almost universally agreed upon in the forum. I haven't seen anyone in opposition to the idea so far. I would like the magic traditions to reflect the ideological/philosophical/ontological shifts in people in the future. In real life as time has gone on we have become more constructivist and less essentialist. The arcane, occult, divine and primal system is deeply essentialist being based on essences after all. Perhaps in the future traditions are fluid, less rigid
Agreed. From what we've heard out of Paizo, keeping the same base four traditions is baked in, but... I kind of don't see the point?
Okay, let's break it down a bit. what do they get from having them be the same?
- They have a lot of experience with what the individual traditions are, and what kinds of things they can do. This is potentially a source of savings in dev time, though I'm not sure how much of one? It doesn't seem like this particular aspect would be that big a deal, but I could be wrong.
- Easier spell poaching between PF2 and SF2, in both directions. This makes it easier for a GM to slip some cross-game spells into a treasure bundle and let the party witch/wizard/technomancer/whatever learn them for a bit of cross/game flair. Is this an idea that people find really exciting? Admittedly, I personally have little to no interest in playing a spellcaster, so I don't know, but maybe this really is a driver of interest and excitement and possibly sales. Maybe?
- Saves them a bit of time in that they don't have to come up with a new magical cosmology and then explain why PF2 has one and SF2 has the other. I guess that's worth something, but it feels weak, as a reason. I feel like SF2 would be richer for having such a thing.
That's really all I got.
What flipped me on this was the unification of magical proficiencies. Once it was all a single stat, keeping the same traditions in each game didn't make as much sense, when having different traditions in each game allowed you to tell different stories with your magical cosmology.