Viper Technomancer and Grenades

[Ritunn]

Overall, I quite like technomancer reading through it, however, one thing I've noticed is a few problems with Viper's Jailbreak Spellshape. This allows you to turn used spell gems into electromag grenades until the end of your next turn upon jailbreaking Spell Circuit. However, the one issue here is that grenades rely on Class DC to decide their save DC, which you're notably Trained in forever.
However, level 8 has a feat called Grenade Spell. This allows you to put a burst spell into a grenade and allows you to use your Spell DC for its save DC if its a Reflex save spell (in addition to casting the spell on folks caugh in the grenade burst), but there's a minor issue here. To get your electromag grenade and throw it next turn with requires:

Round One: 2-Action (Typically) Spell Cast > 1-Action Overclock
Round Two: Free Action Jailbreak Spell Circuit > 2-Action Spell Cast > 1-Action Overclock
Round Three: Free-Action Jailbreak Grenade Spell > 2-Action Spell Cast > 1-Action Area Fire with Electromag Grenade

Ignoring the fact that it takes 3 rounds of set up to throw a grenade with a DC that won't suck late game, it sort of makes one of your core class features as a Viper Technomancer useless if you don't take an 8th level feat. An 8th level feat mind you that will only make the grenade have a decent DC with a small selection of spells (a much more minor issue thanks to Spell Cache). Clearly this isn't a terrible issue, but it kind of feels bad to be forced to take an 8th level feat to even justify the action usage of throwing the grenade over anything else. It'd be nice if Viper had the ability to just use their Spell DC for the electromag grenades produced via their own feature in my own opinion just to allow you to make use of them outside of Grenade Spell. However, I imagine there are other solutions too, or perhaps it's fine as is for other folks! I'd love to hear opinions.

[Justnobodyfqwl]

Viper is so focused on being "the spellgem subclass" that I wanna say something that might be controversial: they should just use their spell DC on the gem grenade every time.

It's not their MAIN ability, and ideally you're using the Viper abilities that let you hold onto spellgems. If you entire subclass is about an expensive consumable, and then you get a one-off ability to trade them in for damage, I think it's fine if the DC doesn't suck.

The ability to put any AoE spell into a grenade and toss it with your DC? Now that should be a level 8 feat. But your spellgem should just be convenient to chuck (grenades are NOT scary, powerful items in this system)

[Lonesomechunk]

i dont know if this is gonna be changed in the final version but i did always find it weird that in the playtest witchwarper was way better at using grenades and area weapons than mystic and now technomancer has feats and abilities that encourage grenade use but theyre ALSO still stuck at trained. I feel like it should probably increase to expert along with their weapons and it wouldnt break anything

[25speedforseaweedleshy]

trained class dc seem to be a problem

would be pretty weird if viper are forced to take alchemist or innovator archetype just to get int scaling expert class dc to throw grenade better

maybe paizo will add ability to use spell dc with grenade for viper