Impressions on Envoy and Leadership Style Issues

[Xemaniis]

At a glance: There's a lot I love about Envoy, which is great, since I loved it in 1e as well. Having a big focus on skills while being able to buff your team, debuff enemies, and still put out a few rounds downrange is great. They get good saves, which is always good when your main focus will be charisma and dexterity 90% of the time, maybe a point or two of wisdom. More perception would help change the battlefield in your favor before teammates take their turn, but more importantly, I never saw an Envoy in 1e who could use Sense Motive past the first couple levels, while it is easier in 2e, I feel it's the kind of thing Envoys should be especially reliable at.

Size Up and Saw It Coming help with this, but the majority of fights in my experience aren't going to involve already having a target to Size up. In other words, a bit more perception would be nice, but the class is so far doing pretty good.

Further in: Directives are great, they're like 1e's improvisations, but Lead By Example makes them even more interesting. As I've always been the party face, I enjoy being able to "Lead By Example," inspiring allies to greater heights, such as telling them to "Get In There!" while I move up, take a shot, and still have the ability to benefit the team afterward using my reactions, such as with Quip, or Watch Out!

Envoy very much appeals as a leadership-focused class, and this is coming from someone who personally views charisma as mandatory, as I love diplomacy, I love making quips, and I love roleplaying it all out. Which leads me to one of the big issues I see here:

Leadership Styles. In theory, pretty cool. I like the idea of envoys getting a bonus feat and a skill from it. although waiting until level 6 to unlock your Acts of Leadership is a bit much. Given that the class was built with action economy in mind, having this at say, level 3, would make a lot more sense. Some of these leadership styles are going to get a lot more use than others. Some are easy to proc, like From the Shadows, while others like Through Desperate Times, will be harder, but you tend to get more benefit for these actions on top of getting your Follow By Example. I think in that regard, these seem balanced. Hotshot seems a bit situational, like the type of thing you take for an adventure, or vehicle-focused adventure path. If you were some kind of motorcycle-cavalier, this would be pretty awesome though.

But as someone who focuses primarily on diplomacy, I see a distinct lack of options. For my first Envoy, I had an idea which would go well with the In The Spotlight leadership style, only I effectively get nothing for it. If Impressive Performance entirely replaced diplomacy, (unlikely) I could see how this might be useful, assuming I could use still use feats like Bon Mot using performance, or if they added performance feats that were useful. However, as it stands, I don't see what "perform" actions I could feasibly take in combat to trigger Acts of Leadership, though the "Issue Another Directive" is a good trigger for this one. The main draw to this style is granted at level 6, which is far too long to gain useful things, especially as other styles grant you something at level 1. So as it stands, I have no reason to get In the Spotlight, despite that it is most fitting for my backstory.

We are lacking in Leadership Styles which focus on diplomacy and intimidate, though with feats like Quip and the ability to get a bonus to intimidate from Size Up, especially with Acquire Asset, I'm already pretty well equipped for quips. Still, being rewarded for my main playstyle in combat would make the Leadership Styles feel more rewarding. I'm surprised that social skills have been largely left out of the Leadership Styles so far. But my movie star can go Guns Blazing, I suppose, since muzzle flash is kind of like a spotlight, and acrobatics can translate well to her doing her own stunts I suppose.

Overall, I'm loving what I see so far, except Leadership Styles, which are still a very cool idea that simply need work. I'm definitely looking forward to seeing all the cool new feats and how much I can do with reactions in the full release. Quip is just the kind of thing I'd always wanted, and I absolutely adore the names for Starfinder 2e feats and class features. And I'm a fan of adding to the slang of the Starfinder universe. Not the focus of the playtest, but definitely a bonus. Keep up the hard work, guys :)

[Xemaniis]

As an addendum, I realized I somehow overlooked Wise to the Game (Great name). It's a good touch and helps to solve the issue I mentioned with seeing through lies. The +2 from the target being your asset is especially nice since you can't simply train up sense motive, and adds incentive to study the people you're dealing with ahead of time. I would still say having expert perception would be nice, so envoys would really be better at it, rather than on par with other classes who have expert proficiency in perception, as they are more "wise to the game" so to speak.

Being that most people will want to shoot and be able to take advantage of their Recall Knowledge skills, Size Up is a big help.

Having a +1 to your mental stats, assuming you go all in on Charisma and Dex, makes this a bit rough, but that seems to be where the faster skill progression comes in, so it helps to balance it out, with a +1 to recall knowledge checks and your ability to become an expert effectively giving you the full bonus someone going all in on that mental stat would have, incentivizing you to learn as much about your target as possible beforehand, while rewarding that effort.

One big problem I noticed, incredible initiative doesn't stack with Saw It Coming. Maybe that's intentional due to its other effect, but it's something worth looking into, if Envoy is to remain at Trained in perception.

Really looking forward to seeing how this plays out in the long run and what gets added/adjusted.

[Mike Kimmel]

Xemaniis wrote:

I'm surprised that social skills have been largely left out of the Leadership Styles so far.

For what it's worth, this is intentional. One reason is that, regardless of leadership style, we want any given envoy to be able to use the three main social skills as needed. The social skills seem like the most "obvious" leadership style options, and we want envoys to have a broader repertoire, rather than a narrow niche (both in terms of skills and round-by-round action flexibility).

That said, feedback like this helps us figure out how our ideas are working for the broader community, so it's much appreciated. This is what playtesting is for! We've already made some adjustments to the envoy for the Playtest Rulebook, which you can learn more about it just a few months. :) So, it doesn't quite look the same as the Field Test envoy any more, and it's likely it'll change even further as a result of the playtest. What might change? Can't rightly say. But your comments are definitely the kinds of things that we're thinking about, and we're excited to see the envoy (and all the other classes) in action!