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Haven't playtested this class yet so take it with a grain of salt
CLASS FEATURES
Solar Flare
- There's so many issues with this ability
- In principle I agree the Solarian, otherwise a melee-focused class, should have an inbuilt ranged attack in case of flying creatures, burrowing creatures, whatever.
- However, Solar Flare is pretty awful at this.
- First of all, it uses an off-stat. We fixed this for Kineticist no longer needing to use Dex for their elemental blast, seeing as this is essentially Solarian's Elemental Blast I don't see why it can't just use Strength to hit.
- Second, the range is terrible. 15ft or 30ft. If this is supposed to be a ranged option, that is pretty low - this may be because it does have +str to damage, but its very close to melee at this range (particularly 15ft, its almost within reach of your reach weapon).
- Third, and most critically, it doesn't scale at all with items, which means not only does the hit bonus suffer due to no item bonus to hit, but it also can't get elemental runes to damage (something shared with the Solar Weapon) putting it even further behind in terms of damage. The autoscaling only makes up partially for this loss, getting an extra dice over striking.
- Fourth, it's not a Solar Weapon so it doesn't become legendary at level 19 (unclear why Solarian has this).
Nimbus Surge
- Hit by melee attack only in this ranged focus game?
- Graviton ability is pretty bad, if the creature has reach or a ranged attack it might just not do anything. Photon is mildly better but it starts out extremely weak (1 or 2 damage at level 1-4), because of no flat bonus. Even something like a 2+half level would help out a lot here.
Solar Weapon
- The biggest issue with this weapon is the fact that it uses Solarian Gems, which is an entirely different subsystem to weapons and upgrades, to scale it.
- I don't see why we are doing this. Why not just have a handwraps of mighty blows equivalent that scales your Solar Shot and Solar Weapon that you can fit out with normal upgrades?
- Because it uses Solarian Gems, and because the gems are worse than normal upgrades, the Solarian is behind in damage. A normal weapon user can have Frost, Flaming, Shock, Loudener on their weapon for +4d6 damage. A Solarian gets 3 gems, the Photon and Graviton ones provide damage but are mutually exclusive so if they slot both they only get +1d6 damage. The persistent bleed one is worse than normal damage due to not stacking, and its also a d4. That means they're between 7 and 10.5 damage behind other characters before considering class feature difference.
- In terms of attunement bonus, Graviton looks to be to set up a Reactive Strike as they can't Step out of your reach now... but you don't get Reactive Strike until level 4, with a feat. So it's not very useful unless you pick that feat.
- Photon attunement has the same issues as Nimbus Shield, no flat bonus means it starts out very weak, and because of the aforementioned Solarian Gems issue you're only equaling a normal unboosted martial's attack (such as Champion or Monk) while in Photon state, not exceeding them to get to Barbarian/Fighter levels.
Weapon & DC Proficiency Progression
- For some bizarre reason, Solarian becomes legendary in its Solar Weapon at level 19.
- Yet, despite that, and despite the fact that it uses Class DC for a number of things, its class DC proficiency progression is the worst we've ever seen.
Save DC
- For some reason, Solarian's Master Will feature is only on successful saves vs mental or incapacitation, rather than all will saves. I'm not sure why.
Solarian Arrangements
- Balanced is pretty bad. Binaric Assault actually does worse damage than just Striking with your weapon twice for a number of levels due to Solar Shot's bad attack bonus, and is barely better than doing so for other levels. Ascended Stability only interacts with 4 feats, all of which aren't very good because they rely on Solar Shot, or in the case of Twin Parry, can't actually be used with Ascended Stability.
- For some reason, at level 1 specifically, Black Hole is just strictly better than Supernova. Defy Gravity is really weird considering flight is available much earlier (by Jetpack or Ultralight Wings) and you don't want flight that can suddenly turn off if you end up using a cycle action. The level 15 abilities both do worse damage than Supernova, despite being 3 actions and Disharmony.
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FEATS
I'm just going to call out the ones that are too strong or too weak
- Solar Shield is very strange, it has no Hardness unless on Graviton. This means that for Photon, the fact that the shield's HP scales is actually detrimental for you and especially if you pick up the Stellar Shield Collapse feat you don't want this shield to have HP.
- Eclipse Strike is actually kinda okay for just being a Strike with Cycle on it.
- All 4 Disharmony feats are pretty bad - Shattering Impact provides too little value for the 2a action cost and 1a to remanifest. Solar Barrage and Unstable Flare both key off Solar Shot which by the point you get these feats will have accuracy and damage issues. Twin Parry for some reason only works on crits.
- Plasma Ejection is probably a decent feat, but the graviton side is way better. Eclipse Strike (Photon) -> Plasma Ejection (Graviton) is a thing I could see being a mainstay for Solarians right now.
- Constellation Vortex might be misprinted. The vortex does damage equal to the weapon damage not weapon damage dice of your Solar Weapon. Why would you ever spend more actions to add 1 damage when it's already starting at 2d8+X? The feat itself seems quite good if its supposed to do weapon damage and not weapon damage dice.
- Flicker Strike should really not be contingent on hitting, same with Momentum.
The one thing I have to add is that it's not necessarily fair to compare Solarian to Fighter or Barb because they exists in a system with much different core assumptions. Compare damage to Operative and Soldier instead. Though I don't imagine it'll compare much better given how cracked Operative looks
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought Starfinder 2e and Pathfinder 2e utilize the same monter/NPC creation methods. Which means the combat opposition is going to be the same for a Fighter, Barbarian, or Solarian.
In the playtest documents, they encourage us to drop in Pathfinder monters. They also expect at some point to see Fighters and Wizards fighting alongside Soldiers and Witchwarpers once fully released.
See, for example, page 4 of the Playtest PDF:
While the exact damage doesn't need to be the same, the overall contribution of the class to combat should be similar to some kind of averaged martial contribution. In this case, Solarian perhaps could be compared to a very inflexible Magus or Thautmagurist perhaps. Or maybe a melee Kinectist? These classes can come at the game from different directions than a pure Fighter, but are expected to pull their weight in combat as well.
The fact of the matter is, it's baseline proficiencies (Perception, Saves, Class DC, skills) are identical or close (why Class DC is slightly worse progression, I'm not sure) to a Fighter's, and it's weapon proficiencies follow a typical martial, except for the legendary Solar Weapon at 19. It is definitely a martial at its core.
As a strength based melee martial class, it totally should be expected to be fulling that melee damage dealing role that Fighters and Barbarians take on, but instead of extra accuracy or rage abilities, they do it with flashy, but inflexible spell-like abilities. These should be on par with things Barbarians can do in their rage, like Giant's Stature, Scouring Rage, and Dragon's Rage Wings.
It has to solve all the same problems that melee Fighters and Barbarians need to solve, which include how to survive the extra damage melee combat typically inflicts as well as getting into melee with targets that don't want to be there. The individual powers don't need to line up, but the overall effectiveness when you combine everything does need to be there. Which is why playtest runs with players will be the true test, but looking at the current rules as written, I agree there are places where the class looks like its going to fall behind where it needs to be.
I do think one thing to note, however, is that since SF has a much more ranged combat focus - the fact that the solarian has a number of abilities that either grant concealment, better deal with cover and concealment, and push/pull and mess around with enemy placement shouldn't be discounted.
They can mess around with an enemy's positioning by getting up in their face and their abilities, which is not for nothing a boon to your party if most are ranged.
Damage is great, but being able to contribute to allowing your allies to make better use of their strengths while also contributing on your own is just as valuable.
For my part, I see them somewhere between a Kineticist, Thaumaturge, and Monk - with maybe a dash of Fighter with their melee focus. But, really, I suppose they are just their own thing.
So far I have seen a level 1 Radiant Solarian in 1 combat and the extra damage does not seem like it be useful long-term in a more complicated battle then an open ship with 6 Space Goblins. Low levels it most likely won't change much till about level 5 where enemies get more and more things they can do and might require less damage and more abilities to support most of your ranged team.
One thing I would personally request would be a level 1 feat that allows for a two handed solar weapon. I don't know if d10 or d12 is more appropriate (d12 feels a bit strong woth two traits or reach, d10 feels weaker when weapons with reach and a second trait have the d10 damage die), but I'd love to make a huge gravity hammer that actually feels huge.
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The one thing I have to add is that it's not necessarily fair to compare Solarian to Fighter or Barb because they exists in a system with much different core assumptions. Compare damage to Operative and Soldier instead. Though I don't imagine it'll compare much better given how cracked Operative looks
It's moreso the monster math which (I presume) will be similar given we've been told to playtest with Monster Core monsters if lacking Starfinder specific monsters, which means assumptions about accuracy and damage still hold.
They can mess around with an enemy's positioning by getting up in their face and their abilities, which is not for nothing a boon to your party if most are ranged.
Damage is great, but being able to contribute to allowing your allies to make better use of their strengths while also contributing on your own is just as valuable.
While true, a lot of their forced movement abilities give rather low distance manipulation and are still gated behind a save. I've always thought PF2e is extremely stingy with how much forced movement they give you, it's a team support thing that isn't really all that powerful on its own, and in Starfinder the problem is even worse because ranged enemies really don't have much reason to group up unless forced (Corpse Fleet Infantry e.g.). At least melees want to group up on a single person to focus fire or flank, ranged enemies can just focus fire while standing far apart.
In fact they're even more incentivised to stand far apart due to autofire and area fire being commonplace.
- Constellation Vortex might be misprinted. The vortex does damage equal to the weapon damage not weapon damage dice of your Solar Weapon. Why would you ever spend more actions to add 1 damage when it's already starting at 2d8+X? The feat itself seems quite good if its supposed to do weapon damage and not weapon damage dice.
So spending the actions does increase the damage by more than 1. Photon also adds 1 fire per weapon, including the first weapon. While Graviton instead adds an additional +2 damage per weapon, including the first one. The extra damage per additional weapon increases by +2 every 3 levels. So on the strictest reading that is +12 damage at 18th level plus the initial +2 from using the two actions to add weapons. +6 more if you are in Graviton mode, or +3 fire if in Photon. For full weapon damage plus 20. Now depending on wording it might actually be higher than that.
Speaking of Constellation Vortex I feel like if you make your Solar Weapon a reach weapon I feel like Constellation Vortex should extend ten feet from you instead of just adjacent. Not that the wording supports that, I just feel like if your Solar Weapon is that long it should effect a larger area when spinning around you.