Past the halfway mark now of the playtest notes I've written down, with class notes on the Solarian, Soldier, and Witchwarper, general notes on guns, and a few on the Barathu ancestry. I'll be discussing the Operative in this one. I'll split my post into sections, spoiler them, and add a TL;DR just so it's all a bit easier to navigate.
Methods:
Here are the methods I've used for my playtest:
Most of my playtests took place at levels 1-5, as I ran them mostly using the official Starfinder playtest scenarios and field tests. I ran some playtests at higher levels using Pathfinder content, but treated those as secondary to the playtest scenarios.
I ran my Operative with a variety of party compositions, mostly with just other Starfinder classes. I eventually started adding Pathfinder classes into the mix, and treated those playtests as secondary.
I ran my Operative under different ancestries, as I was playtesting those too.
I ran the scenarios RAW for the most part, only adjudicating when something broke or was missing from the rules (including base features that were missing on the core class). I then started playing with certain parameters, like enemy behavior and compositions or the Operative's features, and treated those findings as secondary.
I maxed out Dexterity, then Constitution and Wisdom on my operative. I then tried to match my fourth attribute boost to my subclass's skill, and in the case of the Skirmisher and Sniper I went with Charisma, which I found had generally better returns than Strength or Intelligence due to Demoralize. On a Striker, I maxed out Strength as my key attribute but still maxed out Dex as my second stat for AC, Ref saves, and backup ranged Strikes.
I used single-shot rifles quite a bit, but ended up favoring the plasma caster and especially the pre-errata seeker rifle for their ability to fire multiple shots in a single turn (and also for better synergy with Hair Trigger, which we'll get to in a bit). I'll discuss this in more detail below.
TL;DR I ran the Operative many times mainly through the official playtest scenarios at their low level range, using a variety of ancestries and party compositions. As I put the class through the same encounters, I altered some parameters over time to see how they would affect the its performance.
Core Class:
Splitting my feedback on the class's core chassis and its feats for readability:
Aim is the central feature of the Operative, allowing them to deal additional damage to a mark and reducing the benefits they get from cover. It is also, in my opinion, the least interesting part of the class by a long shot, and I'd go as far as to say it makes the class less interesting. I often found it optimal to Aim + Strike x2 every turn whenever I could, or Aim + Strike + Reload when using a single-shot gun, and because I didn't need to maneuver to reduce or eliminate an enemy's cover, I often had no real incentive to use the tremendous mobility at my disposal. What in my opinion should have been a very mobile and dynamic class ended up becoming extremely static and repetitive as a result. I think this feature really worsens what could otherwise be a very interesting class, and would want to see it replaced with much more interactive gameplay than just an on-demand self-buff.
The Operative's class features are significantly overloaded: Urban Operator and Critical Aim felt more like flavorful class feats than core class features, whereas Tactical Barrage, the circumstance bonus from Operative's Edge, Mobile Reload, and On the Move (with the ramping benefits to Tactical Advance for double-dipping on the Speed bonus) all made the class outperform others that each specialized in one of these aspects individually, from my limited playtesting experience at high levels. As a result, the class felt significantly overtuned despite the lower damage of guns relative to melee weapons in Pathfinder. My opinion ended up being that practically all of these features could either have been made into feats or stripped from the class outright and the end result would still have been a strong class.
With that said, I will say that when I moved as an Operative, it felt incredible. Moving into the perfect position feels right for the class, and I feel that should be the central element to their gameplay, rather than their current loop of Aiming then shooting from a static perch.
I found it interesting for the Operative to be an expert in only one defense at the start, and appreciated how this made the class more of a glass cannon. However, this rapidly vanished as the class quickly slid into a regular martial proficiency track. I feel this is a missed opportunity for a fresh approach to defenses in Starfinder, as I feel most SF2e martial classes should have generally worse defenses than Pathfinder martials in exchange for their greater range. I'd even go as far as to want to push the Operative to have legendary Reflex saves in exchange for being stuck at Expert proficiency at maximum on Fort and Will saves.
I started out using single-shot rifles, which I felt were the best thematic fit for Operatives, but ended up getting much better results out of guns that could fire more than once per turn. Because Aim adds its bonus to all of the Strikes you make, you end up dealing even more damage with guns that shoot more than once a turn, and because single-shot guns were generally less effective (reload is a much bigger downgrade on those than seems to be accounted for), I ended up using the pre-errata Seeker Rifle a lot. When I experimented with alternatives, as I suspected the gun would get a nerf, I tried the plasma caster instead and then the artillery laser at very high levels when the Operative's advanced weapon proficiency finally equalized, and in all of those cases the results were generally more impressive than with single-shot rifles. I wish there were more rifles that could make two or three shots before needing to reload, if only for variety's sake.
I was looking forward to making a Barathu Operative who'd snipe from the air with single-shot rifles, but found that this didn't work due to Mobile Reload only enabling Stepping or Striding, and not Flying. The Barathu worked perfectly fine sniping from ground level, but it highlighted a general need to make all of these mobility effects let the user move in ways other than just Stepping or Striding.
While I liked the specializations pushing the Operative into different directions, I felt most of them didn't change my playstyle by much, simply because Aim + Strike x2 was such a dominant strategy compared to Sabotaging or trying to use Ghost Tap. The Ghost's initial exploit did provide some significant first-turn benefits when playing stealthily, however, and the Striker did change my playstyle significantly, as did the Skirmisher's enhanced exploit, so those were fun to try out.
With the Ghost and Sniper Operatives, Aim currently ends the hidden condition RAW, so I had to rule otherwise for some of their features to work.
I also found it strange that the Sniper's exploit let you ignore the volley trait of guns, as I thought that the intent of both sniping and the volley trait was that you'd work best at range. Rather than remove the inconvenience, I feel it would've been better to introduce a greater benefit for fighting at a distance. If the inconvenience needs to be removed for those guns to work, then that is a problem that needs to be addressed directly at the level of those guns' traits.
I get the impression the Operative was designed with newer players in mind, what with their fairly straightforward playstyle and developer commentary around the class, but if that is the case then I don't think the current implementation succeeds very well at this. There are several different bonuses to track that add to the Operative's other actions, such as Aim's damage dice or On the Move's Speed bonus, plus more complex interactions with mechanics like cover (Aim really makes you need to know what the values are for different cover types), as well as additional modifications on top of all this based on your subclass. I feel like the general idea behind these various effects could be implemented in 2e in a more elegant way, such as by having actions that make you move at high speeds instead of Speed bonuses, or having specializations specifically give you higher-level class feats ahead of time rather than mechanical rewrites.
TL;DR At the core of the Operative, there's this really solid playstyle of moving around quickly on the battlefield and picking off enemies with potent bursts of ranged damage, all while using exploits to do sneaky stuff along the way. However, that playstyle right now is smothered under a damage steroid that encourages the Operative to mostly just stay in the same place and spam as many attacks as they can. Aim I think makes the class less interesting and enjoyable to play, and the class is overloaded with features that simply do not need to be there, in many cases causing it to each several other classes' lunch.
Feats:
I mostly focused on level 1-4 feats during my playtests, owing to the level range at which I mostly played:
Let's get this out of the way: Hair Trigger is busted, and at this point most players seem aware of this. It's got the powerful effects of Reactive Strike, except unlike the latter's limited radius, Hair Trigger can trigger against anyone at a range of up to 120 feet, effectively the entire battlefield. Because nearly everyone's triggering these reactions by making ranged attacks, this amounted to a free, MAP-less Strike every round that was especially disruptive to enemy spellcasters. For this reason, I very quickly started taking this feat out of my playtests to avoid skewing results, unless it was to experiment with altered versions. The best iteration I got so far was requiring the enemy to be off-guard to the Operative, which worked particularly well with stealth play, bounced off of others' utility, and made the feat much more conditional, while still useful. It worked especially well with a house rule I tried out where enemies Taking Cover are off-guard to angles where they're not covered, further complementing the Operative's mobility.
On the flipside, and despite coming in significantly above the level range at which I was mostly playing, Parkour felt absolutely incredible to use. It breaks the game's normal restrictions on movement by letting you break down your move into as many subcomponents as you want, and that really felt like a game-changer on the class. I enjoyed this feat so much I ended up incorporating it into the class at level 1 with a few changes (I used it instead of On the Move, so I took out the Speed bonus, let you parkour up to twice your Speed, and had it let you use other move actions instead of Striding), and that made the class stand out far more than Aim ever did in my experience. When I experimented with rules changes that encouraged moving around, this really let the Operative shine as a hyper-mobile damage-dealer, to the point where I didn't feel the class needed a damage steroid to feel good at what it did.
Creative Cover runs into a problem present across several other mechanics in this playtest, where it's clearly built with another game element in mind (in this case, Barricade), but rather than incorporate that game element into itself, as would be the norm in Pathfinder, it instead repeats itself by having a baseline effect and an enhanced effect when the player also has the intended gameplay element. Simply giving the player the Barricade feat as a free feat and improving its use would have been a better implementation in my opinion to an otherwise fun and situationally useful feat.
All of the Aim action compression feats largely did not improve my choices or gameplay enjoyment, so much as just make me stronger at what I was already doing. Mobile Aim was a clear winner at level 1 simply because of how much more general-purpose it was than the others, and when I needed to move, I could still Aim + Strike x2 as well. This in my opinion "solved" an interesting dilemma that I think really did not need solving, as having more than one compelling choice is what makes gameplay good.
On a similar note, most of the Operator's feats seem to trip over themselves to incorporate Aim into pretty much any Strike the class makes, which highlights just how perfunctory the mechanic is in my opinion. Even on feats that were otherwise interesting and fun to use, like Kill Steal or 360 No Scope, this was a factor.
A lot of "Aim + Strike + something else" feats felt quite similar to the Fighter's "Strike + something else" feats, which made me feel like the class was getting a bit too close to the "Fighter in space" problem of the 1e Soldier owing to their similar weapon proficiencies and prevalent reactive Strikes. I don't think Aim is a very interesting mechanic, and I wish there were many more feats that instead encouraged clever positioning or things other than just Aiming and Striking.
Devastating Aim is a no-brainer for just dealing straight-up more damage, and is a clear-cut example of a feat that adds power and no gameplay. This feat ought to be removed, and if the Operator really needs this power (which I don't think is the case), then just buff Aim's base damage dice to d6s.
TL;DR Hair Trigger is an obvious outlier for how much power it outputs for such little restriction, whereas Parkour felt like such a positive game-changer that I genuinely want the feat to be a core class feature at level 1 as a replacement to On the Move (with adjustments to let Parkour provide more mobility on its own and accommodate different movement types). Besides that, there were a handful of feats that stood out for positive reasons, like Kill Steal, but right now I feel the Operative's feats are mired in what came across as this 1e-style approach of pumping as much power into the class without necessarily generating any new gameplay. This I think is primarily due to inserting Aim into pretty much everything the Operator does, which made the mechanic feel even more mandatory and devoid of interesting gameplay, and beyond that I felt a lot of the feat list ended up brushing up too close to the Fighter's in the kinds of things it did. While some Strike enhancers or action compressors would certainly benefit the class, I think there's much more room for interesting effects that capitalize on the class's mobility, range, and subclass.
When I started writing down these class feedback threads, I mentioned that I started with the ones whose design turned out the least well in my experience, and would go up from there. Of the classes I've written these threads on so far, the Operative I think is perhaps the first to enter genuinely positive territory. The big TL;DR here is that the class has a really solid bit of core gameplay hiding inside of it of having incredible mobility and range, and could really stand out if it weren't for a mechanic that I think actively makes the class much shallower (i.e. Aim), along with a heap of unnecessary class features and several feats that make the class far stronger than it needs to be, without really enhancing its gameplay at all. Unlike the Witchwarper, whose defining mechanic is held back by poor implementation, the Operative I think has all the elements it needs to succeed already, it just needs to focus on those rather than lots of excessive power that's very low on gameplay.
Above all, I would want to streamline the class significantly around being really mobile, and using that mobility to deal more damage, rather than a boring damage steroid you have to turn on every round. This may require expanding the rules for ranged combat in addition to changing the Operative, in ways I experimented with and listed in another thread, but in my opinion it would be well worth it. If I had to make just one suggestion, it would be to make Parkour the Operative's central mechanic, and not Aim. A Parkour-based Operative that had genuine reasons to maneuver behind enemy lines and pick off targets from there I think would be significantly more interesting than the current Operative that just wants to Aim + Strike x2 every turn, as the class would be much more dynamic and interactive than it is now.
It really seems to me that the "your aim dice are d6s" should be something reserved for the sniper operative, since the benefit of using a large, highly accurate, high powered rifle is "you can hit the parts that do the most damage with more power" rather than a feat that is most attractive to people who strike twice a turn.
It really seems to me that the "your aim dice are d6s" should be something reserved for the sniper operative, since the benefit of using a large, highly accurate, high powered rifle is "you can hit the parts that do the most damage with more power" rather than a feat that is most attractive to people who strike twice a turn.
This could be one way of making the Sniper stand out from the rest as a class feature, for sure. I'd perhaps make sure to have it specifically work on weapons where reloading is actually meaningful, as opposed to guns with large magazines that won't need to reload in an entire fight, and perhaps even limit it to one Strike per round, but that would otherwise fit the subclass much better than incentivizing them to fire at closer ranges like their current benefits.
I enjoy these write ups and find them very interesting from a game design perspective. I really like the General Ranged Adjustments to Combat Engagements (GRACE) that you posted, and I'm thinking I'll include them in my regular PF2e game, just to spice up ranged combats and make them more then just basic pot shots until people can close into melee.
I really hope to see more posts like these from the community at large, but I know how much time that takes, and I'm sure most are just submitting regular feedback.
