The Soldier could use a new name

[WatersLethe]

CHUNGUS!

[gustavo iglesias]

I like Soldier more than any of the proposed alternatives, FWIW

[Calgon-3]

Me too, but they've narrowed the class enough that it comes a lot less close to what you'd expect soldiers to be good at. It's distinctly a specialist role. SF1 soldiers are just people trained with and that can be very good at all kinds of armed combat, which is what you'd expect of a soldier.

I'd much rather there be a soldier class with options to specialize in any kind of weapons they choose than one that pretty much ignores hand to hand, pistols, and rifles.

[WWHsmackdown]

Looking at pf1e classes and the switch to PF2e classes I can say that there's little to no chance of the soldier getting renamed. If the devs want a certain connotation and theming to remain in a name, then no bucking and heaving from a handful of posters is going to sway them on the matter. I distinctly remember the heated summoner discourse which ultimately resulted in a large nothing burger. Soldier as "heavy weapons person who tanks a storm of fire" is narrower than SF1e but still perfectly functional as a name. I don't expect a name change

[Karmagator]

WWHsmackdown wrote:

Looking at pf1e classes and the switch to PF2e classes I can say that there's little to no chance of the soldier getting renamed. If the devs want a certain connotation and theming to remain in a name, then no bucking and heaving from a handful of posters is going to sway them on the matter. I distinctly remember the heated summoner discourse which ultimately resulted in a large nothing burger. Soldier as "heavy weapons person who tanks a storm of fire" is narrower than SF1e but still perfectly functional as a name. I don't expect a name change

I wouldn't bet on it either, but in this case it seems rather more likely than in the case of the summoner. After all, "Summoner" gives a decent idea what the class is about, even if it isn't 100% accurate. So much so that I don't even remember that there was a debate about that and I haven't seen anyone criticize the name since release, so apparently it isn't that bad.

"Soldier" on the other hand is clearly misleading, heavily implying that the class is a lot less specialized than it is. That has already become a problem.

Plus, different devs, so what happened over at PF is not really an indicator of anything.

[Perpdepog]

Karmagator wrote:

WWHsmackdown wrote:

Looking at pf1e classes and the switch to PF2e classes I can say that there's little to no chance of the soldier getting renamed. If the devs want a certain connotation and theming to remain in a name, then no bucking and heaving from a handful of posters is going to sway them on the matter. I distinctly remember the heated summoner discourse which ultimately resulted in a large nothing burger. Soldier as "heavy weapons person who tanks a storm of fire" is narrower than SF1e but still perfectly functional as a name. I don't expect a name change

I wouldn't bet on it either, but in this case it seems rather more likely than in the case of the summoner. After all, "Summoner" gives a decent idea what the class is about, even if it isn't 100% accurate. So much so that I don't even remember that there was a debate about that and I haven't seen anyone criticize the name since release, so apparently it isn't that bad.

"Soldier" on the other hand is clearly misleading, heavily implying that the class is a lot less specialized than it is. That has already become a problem.

Plus, different devs, so what happened over at PF is not really an indicator of anything.

I know of at least one person who still complains about the summoner's name. Also, this isn't the first time that people have discussed different names for Starfinder classes. When Character Operations Manual was released I and some other posters were talking about changes for the witchwarper and the vanguard class names. Nothing came from those discussions, either.

Mostly I am seeing this thread as a fun exercise for potential other names for the class. I don't expect that the soldier is going to have its name changed.

[WatersLethe]

WWHsmackdown wrote:

Looking at pf1e classes and the switch to PF2e classes I can say that there's little to no chance of the soldier getting renamed. If the devs want a certain connotation and theming to remain in a name, then no bucking and heaving from a handful of posters is going to sway them on the matter. I distinctly remember the heated summoner discourse which ultimately resulted in a large nothing burger. Soldier as "heavy weapons person who tanks a storm of fire" is narrower than SF1e but still perfectly functional as a name. I don't expect a name change

Paladin became Champion because they wanted to broaden the concept. Don't see why they couldn't change a name for narrowing a concept.

[WWHsmackdown]

WatersLethe wrote:

WWHsmackdown wrote:

Looking at pf1e classes and the switch to PF2e classes I can say that there's little to no chance of the soldier getting renamed. If the devs want a certain connotation and theming to remain in a name, then no bucking and heaving from a handful of posters is going to sway them on the matter. I distinctly remember the heated summoner discourse which ultimately resulted in a large nothing burger. Soldier as "heavy weapons person who tanks a storm of fire" is narrower than SF1e but still perfectly functional as a name. I don't expect a name change

Paladin became Champion because they wanted to broaden the concept. Don't see why they couldn't change a name for narrowing a concept.

Absolutely, and it was a change they wanted. I just don't think fan input has much sway on their naming conventions

[Metaphysician]

Honestly, this argument is mostly reminding me about how annoyingly hard it is to find stats in Starfinder for "basic members of generic armed forces". Its like no one ever considered the possibility that you might need stats for infantry or ship crew of one of the baseline humanoid races, either as enemies ( because the players decided to tick off someone official ) or as allies ( because they have support from someone official ). Even now, you have to basically hunt and peck from a dozen different sources, and also do the truly bizarre move of taking a bunch of stat blocks under the 'Mercenary' label, and port them *back* into being regular military.

[Calgon-3]

Metaphysician, maybe they just intend for GMs to make that up as needed for the situation.

But yeah it would be nice to have guidance for that. Players are going to go off the rails of the AP from time to time and it's much better if GMs can gently nudge them back toward the enounters they were intended to have, or easily devise alternate encounters that stem from the choices the players made.

What if the characters that are assumed to be sneaking into the space station decide to set off the fire or vacuum alarm as a diversion? What if they decide to fight their way in or out? What if their attempt to sneak fails?

You gotta respond to those things.

[TRDG]

NOTE we have only seen a slice of the Soldier for SF II....

I'd like to keep this name and perhaps go more wild on archtypes and such :)

Tom