Yeah, I think the Soldier's KAS should be Strength after all.

[25speedforseaweedleshy]

important question is not wether it is possible for soldier to use str as key

problem is does switch to str mean soldier will get brutal instead of stay mad

every player know mad is awful yet paizo continue to do it from start of 2e to now

soldier are already mad in the playtest so switch to another set of mad are not impossible

3 out of 6 class in sf2e playtest are mad and in recently released pc2 alchemist are still mad despite years of player complain

so what does soldier gain by switch key to str but doesn't get brutal

4 to 7 melee damage and 2 less fort save

other than Whirling Swipe how many feat benefit from this

[Teridax]

25speedforseaweedleshy wrote:

so what does soldier gain by switch key to str but doesn't get brutal

I mean, let's assume the Soldier gets made a Strength class but doesn't have Strength key into Primary Target, unlike all their current feats that make Con do the function of other stats. Here's what we'd still get out of it:

The Soldier would be able to carry lots of heavy weapons and wear heavy armor without needing a feature to kludge that in.

The Soldier would be able to move around more easily with Athletics and use the skill to crowd-control enemies without needing a feature to kludge that in.

The Soldier would be able to easily opt into Intimidating Prowess for better Intimidation checks without needing a feature to kludge that in.

So already, that's a lot of space freed up from the Soldier's core class features that could be used to let them actually do things, especially if those things happen to be new and interesting. Personally, I'd actually quite like to get rid of Primary Target as well, and instead give them lots of extra area fires by default that let them attack with different AoEs, catch enemies in bigger blasts, and otherwise have an easier time hitting at least two enemies at once, all while suppressing them or threatening them in other ways.

[25speedforseaweedleshy]

free up chassis budget is a interesting possibility

many player see soldier aoe only target reflex as a problem

maybe soldier aoe could gain the ability to always target the lower of fort or ref

similar to how concussive trait target lower of b or p resistance

not sure if get rid of primary target are good for soldier

they need the single target damage

maybe it could switch from attack roll to extra reflex save but just for one target

that would be major buff paizo may not willing to give

[Sean_Powell]

Executive summary: Soldier just doesn't feel like playing a soldier should when at the table. Soldier wants to be a Str/Dex class. Solarian wants to be a Con Kineticist with the elements of Light (fire), Gravity, Steel & Earth (matter), radiation (air). That would be a LOT more in line with Pathfinder compatibility.

I understand what Paizo was trying to do with Soldier but I don't think it works. The character isn't engaging. I've played 2 games now with a Human Action-hero using a machinegun at level 1 and 5. My thoughts is that the character just doesn't feel like the walking tank that they are supposed to be. The suppressive fire is 'neat' but but functionally it's a secondary ability.

Combat is like:
Roll Initiative and [Warning Spray]. DM makes 3 saves and player subtracts 6 rounds of ammo.

Round 1: (14 bullets remaining)

1 of the bag guys has beaten you with initiative. 50% that they were suppressed from 25ft to 15ft of movement. Of that 50% that it slows them down enough that they lose 1 action charging you. 0% chance that they care if they now move and use a ranged or AOE like 'screeching wail' or something.

Maneuver to get the bad guys in a cone and then 2 actions for auto-fire with 1 primary target. 6 rounds of ammo gone for the autofire, and 1 for the ranged attack. Player rolls 1d20 to strike and 1d10 for damage. Trained not expert in weapon and Dex is 2nd highest stat. 50% chance of rolling d8+no_stat for 4.5 damage. Meanwhile GM rolls 3d20 for saves.

Bad guys move an attack as best their speed allows. Everyone is trained in their armor. Everyone took enough dex that their allowed armor max dex is their dex so everyone HAS THE SAME AC. (Really, unless you are a low dex character without armor, everyone has the same AC) 50% chance you are hit for trivial damage.

Round 2: (7 bullets remaining)

1 action move because a player ran into your cone of fire?
2 action Auto-fire again and 1 primary target. DM rolls 2 to 3 saves. Player rolls d20 and 1d8 for damage. Odds are that if the player hit round 1 they missed round 2 so player has rolled 3 dice to the GMs 6

Soak some damage.

Round 3a: (2 bullets remaining)
2 attacks with MAP and secondary stat with no stat bonus damage. (Why am I using a ranged weapon in melee? Because they don't have reactive strike and my backup is a knife. There isn't even a bayonet option)

Soak some damage.

Round 3b or 4: (0 bullets remaining)
2 action reload (because you took warning spray). Make 1 attack with secondary stat and no stat bonus to damage.

Rounds later: Grab machinegun by the muzzle and beat foes with a club. Oh look d6+Strength damage! With a Str of +2 it does MORE damage than a spray of 7.62mm ammo for $0 in ammo.

Results:

Player has suppressed targets 3 times. First time those that failed used a ranged attack instead. Those with strike penalties may have switched to AOE if it was an option. Player has made 3 strikes at full map and 1 at -5. A pathfinder ranger would have flurried arrows all over the place. A pathfire gunslinger would have gotten off more shots.

DM has rolled 9 saves to the players 4 strikes. The player is stacking dice out of boredom.

The Envoy has ended the fight faster because they debuffed the targets AC, not movement. The Vesk Solarian is annoyed because they had to waste a move going out to the target because the target was too slow to get to the party. The damage reduction from de-buffing the oppositions strike is 50% of 5%. Mostly it just messed with the GMs action economy on round 1 and then everything that wanted to be in melee was.

Player is out 20 credits of their 150 starting credits and can expect to burn through that much each combat. Players AC is no better than the trained of the rest of the party so as long as no one in the party dropped or changed actions to avoid dropping it doesn't matter who took the damage. Mystic transfers that much vitality to whomever and the game continues.

Suggestions:
As a player I would MUCH rather make 4 rolls against a targets reflex save to suppress them than ask the GM to make 4 reflex saves against my class DC. Numerically it's the same but game involvement it's very different. Also I can hero-point my rolls but not his.

Con really DOESN'T help in combat, it allows combat to go longer when the objective is to achieve victory faster. Unless CON bonus can be applied to wearing armor without getting tired, without suffering dex to AC and Dex to skills penalties there is no reason to wear heavier armor than dex allows. Unless Con can be applied to strike or damage rolls all it does is up the class DC for the oppositions saves.

Make Solarian a Kineticist Give them Con. Operatives are Dex, Fine make Soldiers Strength AND tweek it so strength is more important for ranged weapons.

Use Strength to offset some armor Max Dex and Move penalties so soldiers can wear heavier armor. Use Strength to offset some MAP from high recoil weapons so they hit more often rather than do more damage (now that's an interesting juxtaposition melee fighters but it makes fighters less Dex dependent). Have soldiers make ranged suppress rolls like intimidate works so the players are involved. For action heros allow them to spray in UP TO a 90 degree cone to give them more flexibility to not hit party members. Maybe cap number of targets sprayed by Strength stat.

Suppressing a target is not dissimilar to a feint, Bon-Mot or Intimidate. It really deserves to be an option used in select circumstances. Also, much like Paladin retributive strike, targets who are mindless or unaware of the power of modern weapons shouldn't cower from being hit. Targets should have the OPTION to take damage rather than be debuffed.

Those are my thoughts. I'm gonna play an operative next game. Or maybe a Solarian.

[Karmagator]

Teridax wrote:

So already, that's a lot of space freed up from the Soldier's core class features that could be used to let them actually do things, especially if those things happen to be new and interesting.

This, exactly.

Even looking beyond MADness, power and all that jazz, the side effects of CON being the key stat need so much space. Mostly on the page, but it also occupies some brain space for the reader. Granted, it's not much, but it is there. And Paizo care a lot about things like that, especially in the core.

And what those features do for quite a lot of words is just shuffle some stats around.

Anything would be more fun and interesting than that.

[PossibleCabbage]

It's not really possible to balance "choose your KAS" between one stat that use to roll to hit and one stat that's not. The +1 to hit the former is going to have for half the levels is just too high a hurdle to clear.

CON is singular among the stats in that it's generally completely passive, so you're either a CON class or you're not, there's no "pick one or the other" option available.

But to me the Soldier makes sense as a CON class, since the thing that selects for "who carries the Heavy Machine Gun" is not "who is the strongest" but "who's not going to get tired carrying the Heavy Machine Gun".

[moosher12]

If it's not going to be Con, I'd be tempted to go the Fighter Route, which is to say, Strength or Dexterity. Mostly on the choice of whether you want to focus ranged or melee.

But Con gives you the choice on which to focus. 18 Con, and 16 Str or Dex, on a minmaxxed build.

Ultimately I do think Con still makes sense for the Soldier.

[Squiggit]

The one interesting thing strength does is make some of the handful of melee options feel a bit more satisfying. Stock Striker (setting aside how atrocious a d6 two hander that can't be upgraded is for a moment) makes a lot more sense. Damoritosh too (setting aside for a moment the lack of melee synergy non-close quarters soldiers have).

Regarding "square peg round hole" I don't actually think the problem is Con. At least in a conceptual and design space, having a high Con is really cool and the class should have some incentive to be bulky.

The problem is Dexterity. The class keeps bumping into the friction of it being absolutely mandatory for ranged combat yet being entirely incongruous with everything the soldier represents aesthetically. My walking tank with high reflex saves and Stealth as their best skill? Gross.

Clearly what we need is more stat replacements here, right?

Soldiers should get to add Brutal to two-handed ranged weapons. It's obviously time to take that trait out of cold storage.

[Perpdepog]

Squiggit wrote:

The one interesting thing strength does is make some of the handful of melee options feel a bit more satisfying. Stock Striker (setting aside how atrocious a d6 two hander that can't be upgraded is for a moment) makes a lot more sense. Damoritosh too (setting aside for a moment the lack of melee synergy non-close quarters soldiers have).

Regarding "square peg round hole" I don't actually think the problem is Con. At least in a conceptual and design space, having a high Con is really cool and the class should have some incentive to be bulky.

The problem is Dexterity. The class keeps bumping into the friction of it being absolutely mandatory for ranged combat yet being entirely incongruous with everything the soldier represents aesthetically. My walking tank with high reflex saves and Stealth as their best skill? Gross.

Clearly what we need is more stat replacements here, right?

Soldiers should get to add Brutal to two-handed ranged weapons. It's obviously time to take that trait out of cold storage.

Or have a feature akin to the kineticist's Elemental Blast that lets them use their Con to hit in a specific circumstance.

[Karmagator]

PossibleCabbage wrote:

But to me the Soldier makes sense as a CON class, since the thing that selects for "who carries the Heavy Machine Gun" is not "who is the strongest" but "who's not going to get tired carrying the Heavy Machine Gun".

The mechanics certainly don't reflect that, but if we are going by pure flavour: if a character cannot carry or hold up the heavy machine gun or control its recoil, how much does it matter how not tired they get while they do it? Because all of that is STR, not CON.

And even without key CON, any Soldier would stack CON and have high Fort anyway. You end up with maybe 2 or 3 less, which still represents a very "enduring" character.

[Teridax]

There seems to be this underlying expectation among some players that the Soldier needs maxed-out Con to be a tanky character, and that if they didn't have a Con key attribute, they'd just stop being a tank altogether, which is flat-out ridiculous. Even with just a regular Con mod, the Soldier would still be the tankiest class in all of 2e, beating even Pathfinder's Champion due to their legendary Fort saves on top of their legendary AC. The Soldier is arguably too tanky for their own good right now, and could stand to have some of it shaved off (I also don't think they need to be quite as tanky as a tank class built to take more damaging melee hits).

I'll also say that if we make the Soldier a Strength class and incorporate Squiggit's proposal to make their two-handed weapon attacks brutal (which, I'm sure you'll agree, sounds thematically appropriate), the class wouldn't need any other stat-swapping features to excel at everything they'd want, because they'd have a lot more flexibility: because you'd just need Strength+Con+Wis for your major abilities and defenses, you could easily opt into Charisma for better Intimidation (which you could easily supplement with Intimidating Prowess), or Intelligence if you want a more erudite Soldier. By contrast, the current Soldier is often going to have to go for a mix of Strength + Dex + Con + Wis because you'll need the Dex for Primary Target, as well as Strength for Athletics, melee, and lugging stuff around (and obviously Con because it's your key attribute and Wis for Will saves and Perception). Despite all of the stat-swapping going on, the current Soldier is therefore not all that flexible with their attributes. Really, if we look beyond the symbolism of Con being the "tank stat", Strength I think would work on the class a lot better.

[Karmagator]

Tbf, Champion gets master in two saves and pretty early too (9 and 11), which is arguably more impactful than legendary in just Fort.

But let's not forget the suppressed condition. So even if you take away key CON, you still have:

- the second best armor progression across both systems and the best in SF2
- heavy armor
- a big health pool
- a +1 to AC for you and your entire party against any suppressed enemy

If that isn't tankiness incarnate, I don't know what is.

[Teridax]

I double-checked the progression for both the Soldier and the Champion, and it's actually even better than I expected:

The Soldier and Champion both have the same armor progression, reaching expert at 7th level, master at 13th level, and legendary at 17th level. As you point out, only the playtest Guardian does this better.

The Soldier and Champion have the same Will save progression, starting at expert proficiency and becoming masters at 11th level.

The Soldier's Fort save progression is better than the Champion's, becoming a master at 7th level (rather than 9th level for the Champion) and legendary at 15th level.

So the Soldier isn't just straight-up tankier than the Champion, their defenses are at worst the exact same, and that's without counting their added HP from their Con key attribute. Right now, they just blow Pathfinder's tankiest tank out of the water, when they should arguably be less durable, particularly due to suppressed reducing enemy damage as you mention.

This maybe goes into a tangent, but I think Starfinder ought to be a game where every character, player or NPC, ought to be a little squishier than in Pathfinder: guns deal less damage than melee, so reducing the amount of effective HP overall in an encounter would prevent fights from taking longer to resolve as they do now, but also being able to attack well from range is a significant advantage that Pathfinder characters generally don't have by default, and when they do it comes at a cost in survivability. Whereas Pathfinder martials need generally strong saves to survive in melee, I feel Starfinder martials would probably be okay with just one strong save, with the exception of the melee-focused Solarian who should still have two. An Envoy, Operative, and Soldier that went expert-to-legendary in Will, Ref, and Fort saves respectively, but only trained-to-expert in other saves, would still have all the durability they'd need. I'd even go as far as to say that the Soldier's ability to tank would actually improve if their armor proficiency only went up to master, because at that point they wouldn't be exceeding the AC of a caster in greater cover, which currently guarantees the Mystic and Witchwarper will always be the more desirable target to an enemy that can reach them (and because this game has a ranged meta, they will).

[Karmagator]

Oh woops, I just completely read over the Soldier getting master in will all this time. Thanks XD

[ElementalofCuteness]

I keep saying Soldier & Solarian need the Ability to attack using their Class DC -10 or their KAS. That is how you quickly fix both of those classes or perhaps just let it work on Envoy too with Get'Em, let them attack with Charisma. It is pretty fun idea in the end but without CON what is a Soldier but a Barbarian or Fighter without their gimmicks?

I think the issue is Ranged Combat is DEX. What good is STR for a Soldier now you lose your high CON/HP for +4 STR, +3 DEX, +1 CON vs +! STR, +# DEX, +4 CON, you could do +2 STR, +3 DEX, +# CON but that makes AoE weapons slightly weaker. At this point how good is Primary Target vs Fighter Class with the same gun?

[GameDesignerDM]

I don't think the solution is to turn two - three, with the Envoy - into a weird version of a space Kineticist.

[ElementalofCuteness]

But it's not though, it's using a small "incredibly niche" part of the Kineticist class's feature which is like saying Operative can't hav3e legendary guns because the fighter does that. Just because we're taking a small piece from a class already made does not mean we can't make a entirely new concept using a Mechanic. Which is where I think is tripping people up. Investigator can use Int, Kineticist use Con. So why can't the one of the classes like Soldier use Con to attack with freeing up their Dex Stat to do other things or the Envoy being able to use Cha even fi once per round like the Investigator? It opens up build diversity instead of always seeing +3/+4 KAS paired with +2 Dex.

[Teridax]

This is perhaps a discussion better suited for the Solarian subforums, but let's make one thing clear: neither the Solarian nor any other class is remotely similar to the Kineticist in theme or playstyle, and while I don't necessarily endorse making Class DC-10 attack rolls, implementing this would still not make classes play like the Kineticist.

For starters, the Solarian is firmly a martial class, and their explosive powers are heavily limited by both frequency and feat access: a Solarian isn't going to be spending their every turn spawning black holes, going supernova, or making Solar Shots, because their superpowers get to happen only once per fight each at best, and they'd much rather get into melee range to use their solar weapon instead of making much weaker attacks at range. That in my opinion is quite significantly different from most Kineticist builds, where you'll be using one or two of very many different impulses from range, with the option to use most of those again the next round. The same can be said for the Soldier, a fully martial class whose abilities come specifically from using a narrow range of weapons.

So with this, we can still critique the use of attack rolls over DCs, whether to use class DC over some other stat, and so on. Pretending however that any class DC-based attack roll, or the use of Constitution as a key attribute, will automatically turn a class into the Kineticist, I don't think really makes any kind of true statement, and so in my opinion doesn't meaningfully criticize the mechanic itself.

[GameDesignerDM]

The person who suggested it made a thread in the Solarian that outright said to make it 'SF2E Kineticist' so yeah, hence my reply. That's where the idea is coming from, full stop.

A change to a paradigm established with the Kineticist - and so far, only the Kineticist - is not necessary to address issues with any SF2E class, and shouldn't be something used in the book that should be friendly to new players, imo.

[Teridax]

"Someone else said it, so I'll say it too, even though I know it makes no sense" isn't a terribly convincing argument. If the Kineticist is a red herring, might as well leave it out of the conversation: the issue here isn't that making Class DC - 10 attack rolls is too close to the Kineticist, because those classes are still not going to be playing like the Kineticist even with that change. Rather, if we wanted to say something meaningful, we could, I don't know, examine the impact of those changes on the gameplay of the respective classes. Karmagator made an excellent thread doing just that for AoE weapons and the Soldier, which I'd recommend reading, and I think they make a pretty good case for the mechanic, even if I'm personally not a fan.