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Second up, Fauxstus Fox! I went through the class feats with a friend on a call, so I'm writing this up after the fact.
Character
Bargain Bin'd Inc. is a company founded by one Chip "Chip" Chelson, a business major whose previous business ventures made him a millionaire. Unfortunately for Chip, he started out with more than that, so that qualified for desperate measures: a diabolical deal. By this time, Hell has quite the portfolio of get-rich-quick schemes for those looking to invest their souls- ones that also advance the Boss's own interests. So Bargain Bin'd Inc. was started, staffed by a few infernal equivalents to interns, and operating on a simple business principle: putting advanced virtual intelligences into toys is expensive, but binding an imp and shoving it in is cheap and the end result is surprisingly hard to tell apart.
On the back of cheap talking dolls, Bargain Bin'd Inc. quickly had a thriving product line lead by the stuffed fox doll Fauxstus Fox, and Chip was able to pull himself out of relative poverty. The next step, as is necessarily the case for a fad toy line, was pivoting into a movie. Chip made sure to conduct extensive market research, or at least ask Chip Chelson Jr. "Nah, dad, nobody cares about movies anymore. People only watch cinematic universes. We need one of those!" And so, Fauxstus Fox (more specifically, the leading bound imp and official mascot of the company) was tasked with launching a cinematic universe on the strength of a fad toy line.
Unsurprisingly, "hard to tell apart" is far from "impossible", and between a few faulty bindings and some investigative vidstreamers, Chip Chelson Sr. wound up in jail. The company itself was slapped with some fines nearly amounting to five percent of the profits it had made, and Chip Chelson Jr. was left in charge of the company, contracts and all. All external negotiations regarding any movies were broken off, leaving Fauxstus Fox with two choices: launch a multi-movie tie-in franchise, or blow up the contract holder.
Now, he raises money for the impossible goal through any means possible, whether streaming or taking out shady jobs, all the while plotting his revenge.
SF1 Build
Not applicable! This just wasn't a character I could build in SF1. If we'd had Poppet, he could have been a knife-wielding Operative...
SF2 Build
... But bazookas are funnier than knives, and Constitution is a much better stat for a slasher character. Obviously, Fauxstus Fox is a Poppet. Build goals are generally slasher character tropes- shrugging off attacks, scaring people, being unstoppable. He's also very much a gremlin-y character, so fire and destruction fit well as secondary objectives.
Let's Get Started!
1st:
Ancestry: I'm not going to worry about Poppet feats/heritages/etc. It's something necessary for the concept, but that's PF2 material that isn't expected to be balanced. Fire vulnerability is pretty funny to keep.
Background: Background is Vidgamer. Cyberborn would work just fine, and give a free Dermal Plating to fit the unkillable vibe, but Vidgamer is funnier.
Stats: We're going Con, Dex, Int, Cha. He's the furthest thing from wise, and despite all his rage, he's still just a diabolically possessed stuffed plush.
Weapon: I left this for later on Mr. Sir, but while going through Fauxstus, I found that I needed to know how much ammo I had. Reloading is a drag, and Soldier spends a ton of ammo each round. We want a burst area, and we're going to flavor it as explosions regardless of what the damage type is. A quick look, and that's Stellar Cannon. Eight shots, so four rounds by default. That's about a fight, but we can reload with an action if we need.
Armor: Let's make sure we'll be okay on bulk. We've used 2 so far. Since we're going with Dex, we can go lower than heavy, but we'd lose out on a point of AC. It does mean we don't need Bulwark, though. Defiance Series looks good. Five bulk total, two spare. Sounds good. How about funds? Defiance is the cheapest heavy armor at 200, and Stellar Cannon is 40, plus 8 per loadout. And we start with... 150. Okay, no heavy armor. Why is it level 0 if it can't be bought? Shotalashu armor it is for a level or two. 40, 40, 8*5 = 40, so 120 credits. 30 left for something else. *checks* Nope, no way to squeeze a Glamer Projector into the budget. (The plush look is important, so we're just going to make the armor look like a bowtie. Love that we aren't losing our theming, and we can afford it by level 2.)
Class: Suppressing Fire lets us debuff enemies. Nice! We may be slow due to heavy armor (eventually), but they still can't get away. 10/10 for theme. Primary Target is what that Dex score is for, and lets us actually deal with bosses, etc. For fighting style, the damage reduction of Armor Storm is very thematic, but Bombard means reliable debuffing and being able to fire without regard for allies. Walking Armory is why we can make use of big weapons and heavy armor! Everybody say thanks to Walking Armory.
NOTE: (The existence of Erudite Warrior makes me happy- although I will say it really feels like it should be the Additional Lore feat, because not scaling the lore is a little odd.)
Class Feat: This is why we had to check the weapon. None of these look good for the character. Strength is niche on the class, Pin Down wastes a shot and spends an action for no damage when we suppress on a success anyway, Quick Swap is melee (which is also a niche strength feat), Ready Reload is for two-action reloads which we don't have, and Whirling Swipe is a third strength build feat. Warning Spray is a much better Pin Down for us, so the only question is can we afford to burn an ammo at the start of every fight. That takes us from reload after four rounds to reload after three, which is fine.
SUGGESTION: Strength/Melee switch-hitter gets three feats here, when the class is Con + Dex. For how many first level Soldier feats there are at first, there are only three "options": Strength build, spend extra ammo for suppressed condition, or reload discount (machine gun/flamethrower). Can we get a little more variety?
Skills: Computers from Background, Intimidation from class, four more. Performance for streaming, Occultism for possessed doll stuff (yeah, yeah, diabolism is religion, but that's wisdom-based), Society for studying a humanoid target, Deception to look like a doll. Three skills being advanced are... Intimidation, Performance, and Deception.
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2nd:
Class Feat: So, Menacing Laughter is great, but Relentless Endurance is for the unstoppable movie slasher vibe. (Can we get 1d8 scaling every two levels? 1d8 + 4 every four is just... such a long wait.)
Skill Feat: We need to pay the Intimidating Glare tax. (Shouldn't this be included in Fearsome Bulwark?)
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3rd:
Class: Fearsome Bulwark! It's a little painful to wait for, but we finally have a skill on our primary stat, and it fits Fauxstus excellently. This is also our last class feature for the rest of the game: everything else is stat bumps. At 9th, we don't get anything. We do get legendary armor and class DC, but... woof.
SUGGESTION: Soldier could use another feature or two, even if it's just a ribbon. Maybe a ten minute break healing ability? At the very least, hitting 9th and not even getting a stat bump is just a bummer.
General Feat: We're here to be an unkillable turret of firepower. Toughness.
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4th:
Class Feat: Collateral Witness would be good, and Punishing Salvo is also solid, but Widen Area really helps with the fact that Primary Target requires placing the burst next to the enemy, or allows hitting a niiice three-target AoE.
Skill Feat: Oh hey, I missed Intimidating Shot. I can't afford to spend ammo on it, but energy weapon Envoys can use it. Well, I guess their range is limited by Quip. Anyway, Skill Feats is just going to be a bunch of Intimidation buffs, plus Feign Death at 6th.
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5th:
Odd levels are Poppet feats and stuff like Fleet. Skipping them from now on.
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All right, just looking at class feats from now on.
6th: As good as Fog of War is, I'll Be Back is perfect. I played a level 2 Soldier with the playtest, and dropping is rough- one action to stand, one action to grab the weapon, and now I can't do Soldier things that turn. Getting all that on a free action, so you can move away and shoot still? *chef kiss*
8th: Overwatch, to stop enemies from running. (Run Hot is cool, but having a round of no gun is a bit too much for me.)
10th: Brutal Barrage is great! 2d10 for an action- great to use for when two enemies are adjacent. Almost perfectly tied is My Little Friend, which is something Fauxstus would definitely reference.
12th: Rocket Jump is amazing- getting movement on an attack when somebody is close by? But unfortunately, My Little Friend is just too perfect, so we're going with that.
14th: Run Cowards! Yesss, that's that's perfect. Nice, solid fear effect. And it means Overwatch triggers to boot? Mmmm, love it! Vector Reflector and Fan the Hammer are also excellent, but we'll stick with what we have.
16th: Soldier's Training means Overwatch can trigger twice a round. (It'd be fun with Vector Reflector too, so we'll keep it in mind for 18th.)
18th: Spread the Love deals with the pesky issue of AoE positioning, and adds a second shot! (It's at this point that I really start to want an expanded capacity like energy weapons get.)
20th: Living Typhoon doesn't remove the unwieldy trait like similar options, so we're going with Hybrid Technique. Brutal Barrage and Spread the Love together- not the best synergy, but it'll usually be an extra 2d10 damage. Maybe retrain Spread the Love to Fan the Hammer and take Living Typhoon...?
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Conclusion
After a weak feat start, Soldier's feats just kept getting better and better until 14th had three great options all competing. Love it!
The features are very numbers-oriented and front-loaded. Soldier seems to be penalized for relying on both class DC and attack, just in terms of those advancing pushing out other things. It'd be nice to have one or two other things.
Ideas
What would be some options for features that don't actually tip balance too much in combat?
- Having a bunch of hitpoints is great for surviving, but it takes longer to heal that back up. Soldier has two hands occupied in combat (by necessity), so investing in Medicine is difficult. They could heal level hitpoints every ten minutes of exploration starting at 9th? That's less than about 6% of their health, and helps take the burden off of the healers.
- Reloading and magazine capacity are problems that get worse over time. Every trick to shoot more costs me 1/8th of an action on top. Getting 50% extra capacity (rounded down) at 9th would help out. That might be too much of a combat buff, though.
- Soldier is pretty limited on out-of-combat stuff, understandably. Having a skill tied to their stat is huge, but there's probably room for a mid-game social or Intimidation perk.
Oh I somehow missed Living Typhoon not ignoring Unwieldy. When I first read it I was like why would you take this when you could take Fanning the Hammer at level 14. Then I was like oh Fanning the Hammer doesn't allow Primary Target and this does. But if it doesn't ignore Unwieldly it seems worse than Fanning the Hammer. I guess you could take both to get two area attacks and a Primary Target, perhaps with the feat that lets you make a follow up to your Primary Target. But Living Typhoon specifies you can't make more than two area attacks a round, a limitation I don't think Fanning the Hammer has.
I like the idea of a Prismeni Soldier for charging batteries out of combat instead of having to buy new batteries all the time.
When I was sketching out character builds I too noticed that a bombard soldier doesn't get any really exciting level 1 feats. Burst of Strength is more of an Armor Storm or Close Quarters feat. A Bombard has little use for Pin Down, as you say, though in a possible oversight the current text of the rule doesn't say you expend ammo. Quick Swipe and Whirling Swipe are both melee options. Ready Reload is mainly for machine gunners, at least with the current weapons list. A Bombard soldier is basically picking their first level class feat based on which one is least inapplicable.
The magazine capacity issue gets addressed if you're using an energy weapon but projectile weapons don't get the same benefit. SF2's equipment list has more advanced batteries with higher capacity like SF1 does, but unlike SF1 its more advanced energy weapons don't have increased usage values. For example, an Azimuth artillery laser could take a 20 charge battery and had a usage of 2 while a Corona artillery laser took a 40 charge battery and had a usage of 4. This introduces an imbalance to higher level weapons in SF2 that I don't think was intended whereby higher level energy weapons have to reload less frequently.