Class Fantasy

[siegfriedliner]

So when I think of the solider class in starfinder 2e I get an image in my head of Arnold Swartzenger in cheesy action movie smoking a cigar and making awful quips and mowing down a hoard of faceless minions with a machine gun.

Obviously if I wanted a build for my fantasy this I would go action hero and take the machine guns and spec into intimidate.

When I think of the envoy I think of Johnny silverhand scheduling a gig just outside the corpo office he wants to infiltrate.

For mystic I think jedi though no specific jedi and for witchwarper bizarrely mass effect adepts come to mind.

I don't really have a good idea in my head of what 2e solarian is meant to be and the operative will always be Molly Millions (neuromancer) and Thane (mass effect) in my head.

So what images do the starfinder class invoke in your heads ?

[WatersLethe]

I think Mystic and Solarian both tap into Jedi stuff, with Mystic being more of the spellcasty kind (sith sorcerer or jedi sage), and Solarian being the martial, lightsaber battlefield Jedi.

One of my favorite Solarian builds is a version of Ryoko Hakubi, however. The summoned light weapon, the blasts, the mystical abilities... it all fits really well.

The Witchwarper has started to remind me of the archetypical "academic who goes missing doing esoteric research", I like the idea of them coming back after mastering their time or alternate reality shenanigans.

[Perpdepog]

With witchwarper's new flavor I keep thinking of shows like Doctor Who, Quantum Leap, or films like Back to the Future with them. It sounds like a very fun fish-out-of-water class now.

Mystic I've got no strong feelings about, they mostly feel like space mages/priests to me. A lot of that comes from SF1E, to be fair, where they were the more "magical" mage class. They've never really felt like Jedi or Sith to me, mostly because the way they cast spells doesn't jive with how I imagine the Force works.

Solarians always felt that way, though, with their feats and revelations being discrete, repeatable effects that loosely follow a theme. The Force tends to lean to mentalism and telekinetic moves, and then gets more diverse in the abilities, while solarians tend to focus on movement, increasing or stopping it, projecting flames, and making defensive gravity nonsense, with their powers getting more esoteric as the edition went on.

Operative always makes me think of space ninjas and unarmed combatants, for some reason, even with the newer emphasis on guns. I also tend to imagine operatives as belonging to some organization, like the Specters, or the Envoys from Altered Carbon, who ironically sound like they're much more intended to be Starfinder envoys, but feel more like operatives.

[WatersLethe]

I think what makes mystic feel like a jedi sage to me is the mystic bond, where you have 10 targets you can be bonded with, one of which might be an important NPC, who, if they are harmed back on absalom station 1000 light years away, your PC can say "I sense a disturbance in the force"

[DMurnett]

For me Envoy is very easy to imagine but hard to find a comparison for. Damned be my never watching any movie or show ever.

Mystic is in the same boat as Envoy for me. There sure is a class there and I know that what I'm imagining when I play one is a social friendly type but what I can compare that to is nothing. I've got nothing. That said I did while writing this spontaneously have the idea of playing a Persona protagonist whose "Social Links" are literally their bonded allies. I gotta write that down somewhere.

Operative to me immediately conjures the image of a Ghost from StarCraft. No more, no less.

Solarian leaves me with no thoughts head empty. Ostensibly they're very Jedi-like in some ways but I could not for the life of me imagine Luke Skywalker as a Solarian. I do feel inspired to make my own Solarian but it's a rare moment where I feel more restrained by what a class is than freed by the character concepts it allows for. Like... With the Inventor I could make anything ranging from Donatello from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (archetypal tinkerer), to William Afton from Five Nights at Freddy's ('twas a bad time for that springlock power armor to fail the unstable flat check innit), to Sol Badguy from Guilty Gear (it's easy to forget that the thing he's waving around is a thing he invented that he duct taped more things to that he also invented and it could theoretically explode on him at any moment.) But with the Solarian I can make... A Solarian.

Soldier makes me think of two things. Just like, a marine from StarCraft, and Big Barry Syx from Sarstruck Odyssey. Either way we're still dealing with machine weapons and heavy armor so not that far off from what's already been said. I believe it was the great Dick Kickem that said something about gum and/or ass.

Witchwarper is pretty self-evident as the "Strange Sci-Fi Thing(tm) gave me powers" type, and for me that brings to mind Dr. Paradox from Ben 10. Realistically he'd probably be more like a Chronoskimmer or something but you know, right ballpark.

[Driftbourne]

I don't really have class fantasies for my characters, they tend to have other personal goals.

My SF1e mystic plays as a hardcore battle medic in combat and loves music and collects concert t-shirts and autographs whenever there is free time during a mission. They have had the luck to work a concert and more recently managed to get Zo!'s autograph. I'm playing Chk Chk in the play test, not too hard of an adjustment for me, Chk Chk just has darker taste in music. Strawberry Machine Cake and Bug Space were fine bands for the SF1e character to like, but with Zon-Shelyn now in SF2e Starfdner is going to need some official goth bands.

My ysoki safety inspector skill money operative in SF1e will likely end up as a skill monkey envoy in SF2e. They're not really safety inspector, they just bluff being one to get easy access to the building. But there is some real-life hard-core inspiration for them being a safety inspector. One day at work I was talking to a customer who turned out to be a retired Navy Seal, we didn't talk about that much. After the Navy, he became one of the regional directors of OSHA and was the person who personally during an inspection arrested and handcuffed the CEO of a company I used to work for. I might be the only person who's ever thanked a Navy Seal for their OSHA service. So if I'm lucky at 20th level my character will finally get to arrest some dragon CEO corruptly running a cooperation on a safety violation.

A lot of fun for me in Starfinder and PF2e is really leaning into playing my character's species.

One PF2e class I really want to play in Starfinder is the inventor who is a space goblin Ace Pilot who has not put any ranks into their piloting skill, but still brags about being the best pilot in the galaxy. Will anyone feel safe in Starfidner with an inventor working on a starship, What could go wrong? Maybe that one qualifies as a class fantasy.

[25speedforseaweedleshy]

just imagined solarian with bright solar flare shield and black hole head flail

pretty cool image

if only it was not worst class in the playtest

[Dragonchess Player]

How about a pouncer pahtra vidgamer operative (skirmisher) who considers adventuring "just another game?" Leaning into Acrobatics, Athletics (including Parkour), and Piloting (another type of game, right?)...

[Perpdepog]

DMurnett wrote:

For me Envoy is very easy to imagine but hard to find a comparison for. Damned be my never watching any movie or show ever.

Envoys are your Captains Kirk and Hans Solo, mostly.

[Driftbourne]

Perpdepog wrote:

DMurnett wrote:

For me Envoy is very easy to imagine but hard to find a comparison for. Damned be my never watching any movie or show ever.

Envoys are your Captains Kirk and Hans Solo, mostly.

Envoys are also the infosphere personalities in Starfinder The person that I think of as an example is Michelle Khare, her videos for Starfinder would be things like.

I tried Starfinder training (Scenario #1-01: The Commencement)
I tried Starfinder diplomatic service (Scenario #1-32: Acts of Association)
I tried Pact World Warriors(Scenario #2-01: Pact World Warriors)
I tried Starfinder survival training (Scenario #3-01: Crash Down)
I tried working as a Roddie (Scenario #5-08: Tarnished Legacy: Star Sugar Superstar!!!)

More of the music side of things I think Davie504 "IS" the envoy of bass. Perfect inspiration for a character to play in Band on the Run assuming everyone in the band plays bass. If you agree "Slap like now!"

For an actual sci-if character example of a media/new personality envoy Max Headroom comes to mind. You could even play Max Headroom as a hologram. Playing an envoy hologram is now on my bucket list.

[Dragonchess Player]

Another idea for an envoy: a vesk military-themed infosphere "influencer" sharing their adventures as "the way to do it;" possibly using whatever the vesk idiom is equivalent to "buckle up, buttercup" as a catch-phrase.

[Mangaholic13]

My class fantasies are mostly based on pop culture references, so I'll just list what fictional characters the classes make me think of.
In order of their listing in the Playtest:

Envoy:

Roger Smith from Big-O (or more specifically, in his The Negotiator aspect, not the giant robot pilot part).
Peter Quill from Guardians of the Galaxy.
Any Starfleet commander from Star Trek
Commisars from Warhammer 40k

Mystic:

Ork Weirdboyz from Warhammer 40k (and psykers from 40k in general).
Jedi Consulars from Star Wars
Dune (just about any strange power from that franchise)
The Characters of Soul Eater
Steven from Steven Universe
Miss Martian from Young Justice

Operative:

Parker from Leverage/Redemption
Han Solo from Star Wars
Deadshot from DC comics
Agent 47 from Hitman
Any Assassin from Assassin's Creed

Solarian:

Anything involving laser weapons
The Lanterns from DC comics
Kuwabara from YuYu Hakusho
Admiral Kizaru from One Piece
Homura Kougetsu from EDENS Zero

Soldier:

Space Marines from Warhammer 40k
Marines from StarCraft
The Heavy from Team Fortress 2
The Doom Slayer from DOOM

Witchwarper:

Elizabeth Comstock from Bioshock 2
Doctor Strange from the MCU
The Doctor from Doctor Who
Geomancers from Final Fantasy

[Overly Veskly Vesk]

Dragonchess Player wrote:

Another idea for an envoy: a vesk military-themed infosphere "influencer" sharing their adventures as "the way to do it;" possibly using whatever the vesk idiom is equivalent to "buckle up, buttercup" as a catch-phrase.

PUT YOUR CLAWS OVER YOUR HEAD PUT YOUR SNOUT BETWEEN YOUR LEGS AND KISS YOUR TAIL GOODBYE!