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In the field test, Mystic was cool and unique in allowing long-range telepathic communication. In the playtest, it's line-of-sight only, at which point you could have arranged signals or something. I enjoyed the Mystic being able to help a heist group coordinate. There's no feature that scales it up later, or feat you can take to make it better. Sure, maybe FTL communication needs to be prevented, but at least allow planetary communication range.
It was kinda disappointing to see, yeah. I get that they are balancing it along the lines of the message cantrip (kinda), but when everyone runs around with a phone in their pocket that just leaves it feeling lackluster.
SF1 CRB had comms jammers (Enhanced had ant-jammers), and I'm sure the release will as well. Group Chat would allow you to bypass that. (But later SF1 releases also had anti teleapathy equipment/abilities to intercept or jam those messages.)
Using arranged signals is normally a deception check against sense motive/perception for observers to notice you're acting oddly or conveying a secret. Not a perfect solution.
The old SF1 "there's no reason I can't have my force bubble helmet up all the time and subvocalize in my microphone" at least is gone with the new environmental protection rules.
In any case, the communication use of Group Chat is about 1/5 of what is going on. Foce Connection is 2/3, and the rest is the condition/direction tracker.
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Even if we don't get planetary range, line of sight feels very restrictive. Like, if you think about "what could you use a psychic group chat for in day-to-day life?", it's things like, "Well, you could talk to people across the house/ship/whatever without getting up", "You could stay in touch with the team while everybody goes shopping at different places", "You could discuss where to go for lunch with the group", etc.
Pretty much anything I picture a "psychic group chat" being used for don't work if you have to get everybody together able to see one another for them. You need people telephoning messages from person to person to talk around corners.
Give it a little more than "talk in front of somebody without them knowing". I want to feel magical.
Also Armor with the Tech trait has a built in voice activated Comm Unit! Group chat would need to be subtle, telepathy and range needs to be greatly increased so you can maximize it!
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There's 3 parts to Group Chat
1: Those bonded by your mystic connection can always
communicate telepathically while visible to one another.
2: As long as two bonded creatures are on the same plane of
existence and both are alive, they remain aware of one
another’s present state, general direction and distance from
one another, and if they are conscious, unconscious, dying or
dead.
3: You also gain the Force Connection action. Force Connection has a range of 120 feet with no line of sight requirement.
Even without number 1 Group Chat is still really useful, although the name Group Chat doesn't really fit anymore.
The range of communicating telepathically being limited to visible only works well with extending Limited Telepathy of 30 feet. Frequently in SF1e when using Limited Telepathy to communicate with the party silently, often one member of the party is out of range, group chat helps with those situations.
Since some flip mats can be up to 150 x 240 feet, and 270 feet diagonally having a line of sight could be more useful than 120 foot range. Also needing to find a line of sight on a big map makes the encounter more of a puzzle to solve.
Also not sure if I'm reading this right.
"Those bonded by your mystic connection can always communicate
telepathically while visible to one another."
Not sure if that's intended to be
1: As long as the mystic that bonded the group can see you, you can communicate telepathically with anyone else seen by the mystic.
2: As long as the mystic that bonded the group can see you, you can communicate telepathically with anyone else seen by the mystic, that you can also see.
3: Or anyone in the bonded group can communicate telepathically with any other bonded PCs they can see, even if they can't see the mystic that bonded them.
Most party's more or less do this by default just by talking. I don't know whats trying to be prevented, but it really feels like a lot of abilities are just shiny buttons to "press button to push sidewalk"
It was kinda disappointing to see, yeah. I get that they are balancing it along the lines of the message cantrip (kinda), but when everyone runs around with a phone in their pocket that just leaves it feeling lackluster.
A lot of special abilities in starfinder1 got made along the lines of something that sounded good, but then there was gear that did this for far less investment and or just did it better.
The Evolutionist enhancement speed boosts were obviated by, The disguise heavy envoy could be outdone with a skin enhancement, there's a precog ability that can make you look older or younger thats barely a tenth of what you can do with a 20 credit holoskin.