My issues with Technomancer and proposed solutions

[DMurnett]

To be clear I already love this class. Much more than Mechanic. But it is very clear that they're struggling in multiple areas and I don't want that for them, so I figured I'll toss in some suggestions for what to do about it (I'm no game designer tho so take it with a heap of salt).

Technomancer's action economy is bad and multiple subclasses struggle to get mileage out of their gimmicks. I think this would be alleviated if, across the board, their level 1 focus spells were 1-2 action spells that are meant to synergize with their spellshapes and overclocks and jailbreak benefits, instead of Even More Spellshapes. They could also get action compression feats that let them do X action plus spellshape, such as step/stride, shoot/reload, or take out an item like, for example, a spell gem.

Paradoxically enough, they also don't really get good one-action tasks to fit into their turns, that aren't spellshapes at least, which means they're much more railroaded into always casting spells. While giving them ways to spellshape alongside other actions could alleviate this, I think the class just needs more to do in general. We've heard of casters that focus on their casting, Wizard and Sorcerer are both more or less no-frills hyper-effective casters, while I think there's definitely space (heh) to explore that even further in Starfinder I definitely don't think a concept as brimming with identity as "Technomancer" should be the place to do it.

Which leads into my next point actually, which is that Technomancer doesn't have a ton of techy things to do despite the name. The flavor of the class is on point but the class really needs more ways to interact with ambient tech or carried gear above and beyond their spell list and the fairly narrow Overclock. This could be a perfect space to slot in more one-action feats and features past their spellshapes. More things like the Ammo Infector Virus! Technomancer is a fun idea, they need to do more with it!

[Teridax]

I agree very much with this. I'm still playtesting this class and will likely do my own write-up in a month, but so far the main criticisms for me are:

The Technomancer's way too resource-hungry at low level, and being economical with your spell slots means you can't really make full use of your class features, including all of those spellshapes you get.

Unlike other 2e casters, the Technomancer lacks solid resourceless options when they burn their spell slots, because their initial focus spells are all spellshapes that mostly work best on slot spells. Overclocking could've helped address this, but can't right now due to its heavy action and resource cost.

The Technomancer gets way more spellshapes at level 1 than they need or can meaningfully use with their 2 spell slots. The 1st-level spellshape feat they get from their subclass could instead be used to give them some kind of benefit more directly synergistic with their focus spellshape.

Several of the Technomancer's subclasses straight-up do not work properly at low level, specifically ServoShell with its need for a minion and Viper with its need for spell gems, which are incredibly costly consumables at level 1. Again, this is a problem that could be solved by swapping their 1st-level spellshape feats to more relevant benefits, such as a basic construct companion or the ability to produce a temporary spell gem each day.

The Technomancer feels like a class that wants to use grenades and AoE weapons, i.e. actually interact with tech, but their class DC scales too poorly and their action economy is too congested to allow for this.

The Technomancer could do with a bunch more ways to produce or interact with tech, including by just having feat lines for robot familiars and companions (which already exist and would be easy to implement), but currently has very little to that and is overly focused on the "hacks into magic" flavor, which is great but IMO only describes a portion of the class.

In general, I feel like the Technomancer was an attempt to improve Pathfinder's Wizard, particularly with Download Spell being a much more effective Spell Substitution. A lot of what the Technomancer brings to the table is stuff I would've loved to have seen on the Wizard, and while I think it's thematically and mechanically very good for the Technomancer to have lots of spellshapes to play with, I don't think that can really be the whole class. Integrating tech a bit better into the Technomancer would not only improve their flavor, but could genuinely also make their mechanics work a lot more smoothly, and most of it needn't come at the expense of their magic hacking either.

With this in mind, I also think the solutions proposed in the OP would help a lot: moving slightly away from spellshape overload at level 1 and instead helping the Technomancer unclog their action economy would make the class play better and improve their chances of actually using tech more often in encounters, for starters. Having more small magical things to do on turns when they want to use tech weaponry instead of cast another spell would also go a long way towards achieving the fantasy many players want of the class, specifically a magic-user who excels at layering magic onto tech and not just the other way round. As mentioned above, more tech could also help fill the gaps in several subclasses too. My request here is definitely "more tech", and I could also say the same about the Mechanic tbh.

[ElementalofCuteness]

Honestly it is cool but if it suppose to be just Wizard but 2.0 it needs a 4th Spell-slot, it eats resources very quickly and most of the focus spells require none focus points slots to make use out of them. Which juwt makes the class feel resource hungry because you need 2 resources to make them work instead of Psychic which focus point Amp'd Cantrips which are free and unlimited...However the class looks great if it is indeed trying not to be Starfinder 2E Wizard 2.0

[Justnobodyfqwl]

I think I pretty much agree with most of the points here. I'm curious to playtest them and see if it changes my opinion

One thing I've been asking myself is what it would look like if the class had a more generically useful one action ability. I think that's a big part of what makes other sf2e classes avoid this problem

I like the way that the Mechanic has a generic "mod" action, and you keep adding onto what "mod" can do. Maybe the technomancer wants to consolidate its overclock actions and spellshape actions into one action?

This could also be a way for the class to interact more with tech or non-casting actions. A special property of a technomancer's "hack" spellshape would be being able to "spellshape" certain other actions. "This spellshape increases the range of your spells, but also your leaps". "This spellshape lets you cast spells using a piece of technology 30 feet away as the origin, and a bonus to hacking checks against that device". Etc

[Torradin341]

Justnobodyfqwl wrote:

This could also be a way for the class to interact more with tech or non-casting actions. A special property of a technomancer's "hack" spellshape would be being able to "spellshape" certain other actions. "This spellshape increases the range of your spells, but also your leaps". "This spellshape lets you cast spells using a piece of technology 30 feet away as the origin, and a bonus to hacking checks against that device". Etc

Considering their tagline of "hack reality," this would actually fit quite well.

[WatersLethe]

Spitballing, but what about a neat and tidy one action focus cantrip that we load all of our hopes and expectations about Tech-integration into?

Something like this maybe:

_________________________
Influence Technology (1A)
Cantrip, Concentrate, Hack, Technomancer
Range: 60ft; Targets: 1 Object or Creature with the Tech Trait
Duration: 1 minute

You temporarily optimize or interfere with the underlying code of the target. When the target is used for (or makes) an attack roll or skill check, grant the target a +1 status bonus or -1 status penalty (your choice) to that check if it would alter the degree of success of the check result. The spell then ends, and the target of this hack is temporarily immune for 1 hour.

If you cast Influence Technology while a previous casting of this hack is still in effect, the previous effect ends.
___________________________

Boost a comm unit to give a bonus to a diplomacy roll, boost your mag boots to give a bonus to athletics, boost your gun for your next shot, etc.

[Teridax]

I'd personally lean in favor of giving the Technomancer a full deck of magic hacks, i.e. focus spells, at level 1: Download Spell? Make that a single-action focus spell instead of a free action every 10 minutes. Overclock Gear? Make that another single-action focus spell that you can activate on its own, instead of this thing tied to casting a slot spell. And with that, you'd get to give the Technomancer much more to do without dipping into their spell slots, and so without affecting their existing mechanics by all that much. The added benefit is that it would also let you choose how much of each aspect you want to lean into: want to just overclock? You can do that. Want to fully lean into the spellshape? You can do that. Want to just switch to your cached spells? Can do. Want to do one of each every encounter? That's something you can do too!

[AestheticDialectic]

Teridax wrote:

I'd personally lean in favor of giving the Technomancer a full deck of magic hacks, i.e. focus spells, at level 1: Download Spell? Make that a single-action focus spell instead of a free action every 10 minutes. Overclock Gear? Make that another single-action focus spell that you can activate on its own, instead of this thing tied to casting a slot spell. And with that, you'd get to give the Technomancer much more to do without dipping into their spell slots, and so without affecting their existing mechanics by all that much. The added benefit is that it would also let you choose how much of each aspect you want to lean into: want to just overclock? You can do that. Want to fully lean into the spellshape? You can do that. Want to just switch to your cached spells? Can do. Want to do one of each every encounter? That's something you can do too!

If overclock becomes a focus spell, I think it should be able to affect more than one thing and not just on your person. I also think it and overclocking after casting a slotted spell should exist simultaneously because I do think you shouldn't be stuck only able to do one jailbreak per focus point. Unless that gets overhauled.

I could see a technomancer at level one with 3 focus spells for download cache, overclock and jailbreak, you getting to choose between the three abilities each combat. This technomancer would not have other kinds of focus spells and that would be replaced by feats that enhance these focus spells, and finally like I mentioned before, technomancer specific skill feats for the computers skill in order to do stuff like combat hack at range etc

[25speedforseaweedleshy]

each spellshape cost 1 feat

this is the problem wizard run into at the start of 2e as well

they were suppose to be the best at metamagic but there is simply not enough feat slot to take more than 4

[Teridax]

As much as I find Jailbreak Spell super fun to use, I feel it'd work better as a feat, rather than as a core class feature.

I think what we're quickly seeing with the current playtest is that the Technomancer's current focus on spellshaping doesn't really work with their spell slots: I think it's a very good thing that they can hack into magic, so I'd very much like to keep their spellshapes (in fact, I'd like even more), but at low level they just lack the spell slots to be able to do very much of that at all, especially given how Overclock Gear imposes an additional resource cost. I do think the Technomancer should be able to build to be an incredible spellshaper, and I do think having a spellshape focus spell is good even at low level, but I think what they need the most right now is stuff that doesn't rely on spell slots to be effective, ideally stuff that's based on tech.

So, with this in mind, here's how I'd redo Jailbreak Spell:

Split up current spellshapes and their jailbreak effects into separate spellshape feats whenever possible. This should include the jailbreak benefit you get from your subclass, which could perhaps be a subclass-specific spellshape.

Make Jailbreak Spell a single-action focus spell you can pick up at low level (let's say level 4) that lets you pick any two single-action or free-action spellshapes and apply them to the same spell (and you'd still need to spend an additional Focus Point to use your focus spellshape). This would basically roll in the current function of Double Spellshape.

Add another feat at low level that lets you deactivate your overclocking as a free action to cast any hack spell as a free action.

So you'd still get to jailbreak your spells, and with much less setup than right now, with the option still to sacrifice your overclocking for a free-action double spellshape. It'd just be something to opt into, rather than a core feature, and the Technomancer's subclass features could instead focus on granting some kind of bonus that'd synergize with the spellshape in some form, like a robot companion or a free 1st-rank spell gem each day.

[Kitusser]

I really like the fact they are good at spellshapes, and even the focus point spellshapes. But yeah I agree they just can't utilise them properly. Out of all the classes, I think Technomancer needed 4 spellslots per/lvl more than any caster.

I also agree that they don't interact with tech as much as they should. I sort of want them to feel like a hacker class, and not just them hacking spells.

Both Viper and ServoShell definitely need some way to get spell gems and minions.

[25speedforseaweedleshy]

overclock could do more with equipment

there are no feat give replacement overclock option at all

if everyone doesn't stuck with the subclass one there could be a lot more design space