Some multi-armed feats I came up with

[Teridax]

One of the more minor bugbears I've had with the Starfinder playtest is the general lack of feat options for making the most out of being multi-armed. When we first saw the multi-armed rules in Field Test 1, I was hopeful that the tight balancing around multiple arms would be itself counterbalanced by higher-level ancestry feats that would allow you to eventually make full use of them. In practice, we got one 9th-level feat that lets you use your other hands for one round once per day, and that's it.

I've written some more general notes I might share here at some point, but here's the stuff I tried for multiple hands:

Not a change, but made note of a typo: pages 14, 20, 36, and 47 all refer to the Switch Active Hands action, but the actual action for this is called Switch Hands.

Add the All Hands on Deck feat (the one that lets you treat one or two extra pairs of hands as active hands for a round) to the barathu and ysoki’s feat lists, with Grasping Tendrils as a prerequisite for the barathu and Prehensile Tail as a prerequisite for the ysoki (the barathu one could probably let you treat two pairs of hands as active hands, like the skittermander's version, just in case you pick grasping Tendrils twice). Basically, if you can ever get multiple hands from your ancestry, you should probably have access to All Hands on Deck.

Add the following ancestry feats to all of the above ancestries:

Hand-Eye Coordination (Feat 13)
Prerequisites All Hands on Deck

You’re able to focus on your additional limbs more frequently and for longer. You can use All Hands on Deck once per hour, and you gain its benefits for 1 minute when you use it.

Multitasker (Feat 17)
Prerequisites Hand-Eye Coordination

You leverage your extra appendages effortlessly. You permanently gain the benefits of All Hands on Deck.

So effectively, if you really want to focus entirely on being able to use multiple arms, much like how some Pathfinder ancestries might want to dedicate their ancestry feats towards flying, you'd be able to. I haven't tested these feats super-extensively, as they appear only at high levels, but in the instances where I tried them I made the following notes:

Hand-Eye Coordination felt like a big step up from All Hands on Deck, mainly due to the duration increase, and Multitasker comparatively less so.

I was afraid of unwieldy being neutered as a trait with this, but surprisingly it made no difference in nearly every case but the doshko's (and we'll get to that). Unwieldy guns either have a magazine capacity of 1, limiting their ability to be fired multiple times a round, or are AoE and require two actions to fire anyway.

I got to make a skittermander Close Quarters Soldier successfully wield a rotolaser and two doshkos, and that was fun. It sounded very silly, but in practice basically amounted to giving a Pathfinder greatsword the parry trait at the cost of requiring two extra hands and a bunch of feats, which ultimately didn't feel like a big push.

I also played a bit with shields, and carrying two doshkos and a mobile bulwark shield on that same skittermander Soldier felt quite powerful. Making two d12 Strikes in close combat and then gaining +3 AC by Raising a Shield definitely felt above the curve. I can't say for certain whether this is too powerful, especially given the feat investment and the fact that it's not always easy getting into melee, but it felt strong.

Besides the Soldier, other classes didn't seem to get the same benefits. A skittermander Solarian could wield a backup gun alongside their solar weapon and a shield, while leaving hands free for Athletics maneuvers, but the need for a backup gun was mitigated at higher levels where they could access Ultralight Wings and move around a bit better. Operatives could wield three assassin rifles or injection weapons for an early boost in a fight, but by the second round needed to start reloading. In general, the biggest benefit came from being able to carry a shield and Raise a Shield whenever for more AC, plus Shield Block with the feat, without needing to Take Cover.

So while this is too early to make any conclusive statement, and would require a lot more playtesting, my preliminary assessment of these feats is that they didn't seem to do anything that felt broken, particularly not at those level ranges. They did enable a little more build variety on characters, particularly skittermanders and Grasping Tendrils x2 barathus (who'd have retrained all of their ancestry feats towards this), so in a larger ruleset it could be worth adding feats to this effect.

[moosher12]

At a glance, it seems reasonable to me. I like it.

Hand-Eye Coordination is enough that you'll get to use the ability for most fights in their entirety, except for the occasional time you get a bunch of back-to-back fights.

Multitasker feels like it does not have as much gains compared to Hand-Eye Coordination, as you said. As it's usefulness is dependent on how often you'll get a gauntlet of fights.

I don't really think Hand-Eye Coordination would need a nerf. Only way I'd think to do it would be to keep it once per day but the full one minute increment, but frankly that feels a bit stingy for a Level 13 feet, so I think your current approach is about as good feeling as it can get at an immediate player-side and GM-side glance (This is to say, if I was the player, I'd be stoked, and from the GM side, I don't feel an immediate sense of threat from it). The full unlock at Level 17 feels entirely reasonable.

Keep up the playtesting, hope it goes smoothly!

[Teridax]

Much appreciated, thank you! The playtesting process has been really fun so far: even though there's bits that don't work, playing 2e is still a good experience, and it's been enjoyable trying and comparing different iterations of specific mechanics to know what to give for feedback. I might make more threads like these for other bits of the playtest I've iterated upon and had good results with.

[Hai Yu]

I am about to play a Skittermander Envoy and I would love to have this kind of options on this. Very nicely done!

[Zoken44]

If I can recommend one:

"Full barrage"
Requirements: You have more than 2 arms, and are holding one handed firearms in each hand.

You unload all everything you have. you may make a single 2action weapon attack with the area 30 ft Line and suppress traits. This will consume half of all the weapons's max capacity. You choose the damage of one of the four weapons to be the damage type ALL damaged creatures suffer.