Solar Rampart and Armor Specilization

[Decorpsed]

The Solarian's Armor Expertise explicitly calls out the specialization for light an medium armor.

Solar Rampart talks about gaining proficiency. But does not mention anything about also gaining the Armor Specialization. So you would not get Armor Specialization with heavy armor, even though you can wear it.

Seems like an oversight

[Mangaholic13]

Decorpsed wrote:

The Solarian's Armor Expertise explicitly calls out the specialization for light an medium armor.

Solar Rampart talks about gaining proficiency. But does not mention anything about also gaining the Armor Specialization. So you would not get Armor Specialization with heavy armor, even though you can wear it.

Seems like an oversight

I think the bigger issue is the following:

Armor Expertise let's you use the specializations of Light and Medium armor... yet the Armor Specialization Effects area claims that only Medium and Heavy armors have specialization effects...

[Perpdepog]

Looks like solarian armor specialization was just removed in the latest wave of errata.

[DMurnett]

Yeah that's what Solarian needed. A nerf. To survivability, no less. I know they also got buffed a little but it's still funny to me

[Teridax]

This may be an unpopular opinion, but I'd say it's okay for the Solarian to not have armor specialization. Armor specialization is only rarely given out in 2e, and mainly to classes whose theme specifically involves training with armor. What I find more problematic is for the Solarian, a Strength-based melee class, to not be proficient in heavy armor as a baseline and be feat-taxed for that proficiency with Solar Rampart (and at level 2, so you have a gap level where you're stuck with medium armor). It pushes the class even more to pick Dex as their fourth score when they could so easily have the freedom to pick Charisma or even Intelligence instead, as well as have more AC from the get-go. At this stage I see little reason not to just give heavy armor proficiency to the base Solarian and nix Solar Rampart.

[Perpdepog]

Teridax wrote:

This may be an unpopular opinion, but I'd say it's okay for the Solarian to not have armor specialization. Armor specialization is only rarely given out in 2e, and mainly to classes whose theme specifically involves training with armor. What I find more problematic is for the Solarian, a Strength-based melee class, to not be proficient in heavy armor as a baseline and be feat-taxed for that proficiency with Solar Rampart (and at level 2, so you have a gap level where you're stuck with medium armor). It pushes the class even more to pick Dex as their fourth score when they could so easily have the freedom to pick Charisma or even Intelligence instead, as well as have more AC from the get-go. At this stage I see little reason not to just give heavy armor proficiency to the base Solarian and nix Solar Rampart.

I'm with you there. I'm sure there are tankier, more defensive solarians, and having a--probably graviton-attuned--feat or something that lets you zero in on that aspect, maybe even granting something that looks like armor specialization if you squint, would be cool, but solarian fantasies tend to lean toward being mobile, moving through gunfire to mess up the enemy.

'Course, that could also be a fantasy that was boosted because, by and large, photon was more popular than graviton attunement in SF1E, likely because photon attunement gave you extra damage while graviton gave you a boost to reflex or something.

And needing to take a feat to become proficient with heavy armor for solarians was annoying in SF1E, and that hasn't changed, IMO.

[Serge Slade]

People tend to ignore the fact that heavy armor just isn't a viable option at lvl 1. The cost is well beyond any reasonable starting gear value, and last I checked, has been this way since PF2e originally dropped (and since SF2e is based directly on the PF2e core ruleset, this is just how things are for now). I've had some close calls HP wise wearing medium armor during A Cosmic Birthday, but nothing I wouldn't call unmanageable. Yes, I was dumping actions to use medpatches when the mystic was unable to immediately dump its HP sippy-cup all over me, but that's because I prioritized survival (and therefore the ability to continue to provide damage instead of just falling over dead). Classes aren't designed to operate in a vacuum, they're intended to synergize with each other. For this reason, party that lacks a Mystic is literally doing themselves a disservice. This results in reliance on medpatches, resulting in action economy hits for all involved.