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This programming language began as the AbadarCorp standard for heat sinks, especially in hostile environments, and was quickly adopted as the universal language of armor, environmental protection, and satellite defense software. The simple but elegant code is designed to minimize the possibility of potentially life-threatening errors that could cause a system to malfunction and has endless applications for personal defense.
I’m going to be upfront about this, I cannot figure out this subclass. If it could Overclock other peoples armor, that would make sense. But it can’t. This subclass increases your defense and resistances and gives you thorn effects, but, importantly!, you’re a pure caster. You can’t take a hit, and this subclass really wants you to get hit to trigger those thorn effects. So, let’s look at what it does, and maybe I can figure out something.
Each subclass has several features: a given spell line, focus spells, a level 1 spellshape feat, an Overclock Boost, and an additional Jailbreak feature for their given spellshape feat. That’s. Honestly a lot. And while it does boost your survivability, the jury is out on if it increases it enough.
So, Spell Cache, the list of always available given spells. We’ve got:
- Protection: Gain a status bonus to AC and Saves.
- Resist Energy: Gain resistance to one type of energy.
- Haste: Become quickened for Stride or Strike.
- Unfettered Movement: Ignore circumstance penalties to Speed, Escape vs immobilized, grabbed, restrained.
- Scouting Eye: Create a magic eye to look for you.
- Repulsion: Force creatures away from you.
- Energy Aegis: Gain energy resistance for a day.
- Gravity Field: Increase gravity, creates Greater Difficult Terrain, grounds flyers.
- Foresight: Gain a status bonus to initiative, immune to off-guard in certain situations, gain defensive reaction.
This list definitely understood the assignment better than DPS++ did, though there are a couple of outliers here (Scouting Eye?). I will dock points however, for there not being any tech spells on here. This is the Technomancer, after all. But, whatever. I’m sure they’ll be flavored appropriately.
Next, Focus spells:
- Energy Sink: Spellshape a no duration energy damage spell, gain resistance to the same energy type.
-- Jailbreak: Gain resistance to all energy instead.
This is the only one I’m going to look at for now, because it’s the only one you get for sure. The other two Focus Spells for FORTRUN are for FORTRUN, but are locked behind feats.
So, the FORTRUN Spell Cache does not have a damaging spell on the list. The player must pick an elemental spell to get any use out of this. This is an almost guaranteed thing to happen, but it is not guaranteed, and truly it must be kept in mind that if a player can screw themselves with a choice, a player will screw themselves with that choice.
Otherwise, solid defensive spellshape. As long as you have a spell to use it with. Cantrips work beautifully for this, since they auto-highten, which means you’ll always have the maximum resistance. You’d just need to keep in mind that you wouldn’t be able to Overclock off of a Jailbroken Cantrip.
Moving on to the Given Spellshape Feat. FORTRUN gets an initial spellshape of:
- Denial of Safety: Increase the area of AOE spells that have no duration.
-- Jailbreak: Double the increase.
While this is an absolutely fantastic spellshape, I feel it misses the mark a bit for the stated theme of the subclass. While you have plenty of AOE spells in the spell cache, they all have a duration. So, again, the player must pick spells that will work with this spellshape. Additionally, there’s only 1 (one) cantrip that can benefit from this spellshape, and it’s a Pathfinder spell. Odds are good that unless you’re specifically thinking about it, DoS is only going to be used on spell slot spells. Which, especially at low levels, means it’s not going to get much use.
Finally, the pièce de résistance, the Overclock Boost, the core of the subclass. It does two things:
- You get a +1 circumstance bonus to AC until the start of your next turn. (Raise Shield)
- You gain a thorn effect. Anytime someone touches you, damages you with an unarmed melee, or damages you with a non-reach melee, they take damage.
I. Do not know what to do with this, honestly. Since the AC bonus only lasts for 1 round, it’s literally a guessing game as to when to Overclock to benefit from it. It also becomes the secondary effect, thus making the thorn effect the primary effect, since that one lasts. Which. Why? Why does a pure caster want a thorn effect? FORTRUN has no particular melee capability, and Starfinder 2 is infamously a “ranged meta”, so what is going on with this? When are you supposed to benefit from this?
Moving on, at level 3 you get Jailbreak, and that comes with FORTRUN’s super special Jailbreak bonus for Denial of Safety.
- FORTRUN Jailbreak: When you Jailbreak Denial of Safety on a damaging spell, you can move yourself in any direction a number of spaces equal to the spellshaped spell’s rank as a forced movement. You are not effected by the damaging spell if this movement moves you out of its area of effect.
This is not bad. This lets you massively increase an AOE, drop it on yourself and everyone around you, and get out of it before it goes off without incurring a Punitive/Reactive Strike. You just need to make sure you pick spells that this will work with, because, again, your Spell Cache doesn’t give you any.
Okay, so that’s your guaranteed kit. As with all of the subclasses, FORTRUN only has one feat and it’s two focus spells specific to it down the line.
- lvl4 - Spell Protection Protocol: You or an ally gain an aura that gives a status bonus to saves versus spells and magic effects. It’s a larger bonus if they’re your spells or magic effects that are being saved against.
As with the Jailbreak bonus, this feat wants you to be dropping AOEs all over the place, even on yourself or allies. This is actually kind of fun, though the other players may not be as on board with this playstyle. Once again, my only real problem with this is that it requires players to pick spells that can be used in conjunction with this feat, though since this is an optional pick, you’re more likely to pick it when you’ve already got those spells.
- lvl6 - Advanced Magic Hack: Rank3 Active Defense Firewall: Load a hostile, single target spell into your armor. When a creature touches you, damages you with an unarmed melee, or damages you with a non-reach melee, you can cast the spell as a reaction with the triggering creature as the target. You can dismiss the spell to recover the spell slot it was loaded from, but you can only use that slot to Download Spell. The loaded spell remains loaded until your next daily prep.
This is fun, in a vacuum. But it runs into a lot of the same problems as FORTRUN’s Overclock Boost, in that it’s a thorn effect. It’s proactive preparation for being hit under very specific circumstances, and is only retaliatory in nature. It doesn’t do anything to bolster your defenses, just punishes an enemy for hitting you at point blank range (“it’s a ranged meta!“).
There’s also a bit of interpretation to be going on with the spell. It doesn’t say you can’t load a cantrip into your armor, but the final paragraph implies that it has to be a spell slot spell. Personally, I’d allow cantrips and spell gem spells to be used, but. Like Alakablam, it’s unclear and open to debate.
- lvl10 - Greater Magic Hack: Rank5 Overclock Armor: You give yourself a force field.
No notes, this is perfect. A++ focus spell.
There are other feats, and of course spells, that fit the theme, but this is everything Technomancer has specifically for FORTRUN. Except for DoS and ADF, it’s decently on brand with the stated theme.
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Okay, so, how does it play?
At level 1, you’ll only have two spell slots and maybe a spell gem. You’re mostly saving that for big fights. You don’t have anything to spend Overclock on, and the effect is purely defense-based-offense. Unless you run into a fight with point-blank melee enemies, there isn’t really a need to use it. So this is where your playstyle really comes to light. You’re either melee focused, which can work at low level, or you’re staying in the back and casting spells. Staying in the back with this subclass feels really bad, since you don’t do anything with it, so let’s theorycraft melee.
In that case, you’ve either built +3/+3/+3 INT/DEX/CON to maximize your HP and DEX bonus, or you’re +4/+3/+2 INT/DEX/CON to maximize your spellcasting, and DEX bonus, and you’ll just make due with less HP. Or, daringly, you went +3 CON/+2 DEX because you want to get hit to trigger your thorns, and you’d rather have better HP to soak more hits. In either case, you definitely want the shield cantrip, and probably want to invest in an actual shield or parry weapon for when/if you become immune to the cantrip.
You’ll also need to invest in a melee weapon (a baton has both finesse and parry, so that’s a good choice) and AOE spells. Caustic Blast is a must, as it’s the only AOE cantrip on the Arcane list, And then you’ll want one or two first level cone, line, or burst damage spells.
With all our parts in play, what’s the action routine look like? Turn 1 wants to be cast Engergy Sink (for no effect) into Overclock, move to melee. If you’re fighting melee enemies, you’re likely just casting 2 action cantrips and Shield for the rest of the fight. You’re theoretically closer than your backline, and so likely to be attacked before they are, which works to your purpose. If you’re fighting ranged enemies, then you’ll want to continue advancing until you get to melee, always being sure to cast Shield. If you ever Shield Block, then you’ll want to break out your actual shield, so you can keep that circumstance bonus to AC (you may want to be hit, but you don’t want to be hit a lot).
Once you get to a big fight, then you break out your spell slot spells, dropping Protection on either yourself or whoever’s in melee with you. Alternatively, this is when you bust out your big AOE spells, spellshaping them with DoS for bigger blast areas, or using Energy Sink to get some kind of resistance. If you do spellshape your spell slot spells, then you don’t have actions to Overclock, so you’ll want to stay out of melee and just cast cantrips after you slots are used. If you have a gun, you can take a pot shot with your third action, or take cover (if there is any).
At level 3, Jailbreak comes online, which means you can now Jailbreak DoS for extra effects, massively increasing the size of an AOE and letting you get out from underneath it if you have to drop it on yourself. You also get your rank 2 spells, which means you have Resist Energy on tap, allowing you to be more cavalier about getting into dangerous situations. You also get your first big choice of general feats. Do you take Shield Block, so you can shield block while you’re immune to your cantrip? Toughness, so you can better soak hits? Or Diehard, because you’re probably going down like a sack of bricks in melee, and you want to make sure you live to see level 4?
Level 4 brings access to Spell Protection Protocol, which makes you even more careless about where you drop your AOEs, as long as you remember to buff first. Otherwise, your routine is still mostly the same: focus spell into Overclock, move to melee, cast cantrips, though you do have more spell slots now, so maybe use those instead. Don’t forget to shield! Unless you’re going to drop an AOE on everyone’s heads, then be sure to use SPP first. Maybe Jailbreak DoS into the AOE.
Level 6 offers up Advanced Magic Hack, so you can double down on destroying someone for hitting you. Or you can take White Hat Hack to help remove the Glitching condition from yourself or allies. Neither of these substantially changes your combat to combat routine. ADF can be done between combats, as the duration is until daily prep, and WHH is a situational option. You also get your second general feat, which is probably something you’ve really been looking forward to after the debate at level 3.
Level 8 doesn’t offer anything in particular to FORTRUN. But level 10 does. If you’ve built this crazy melee build, picking up Greater Magic Hack is a must. Being able to Overclock off of giving yourself a force field is just too dang good.
This does introduce a rules puzzler though. If an enemy touches/damages your force field, but not enough to break it, does that trigger your thorn effect? Needs clarification. RAW, I think, precludes that, as it is your force field being touched, not you, but I think ROI would allow it. But this is the Technomancer we’re talking about, so who knows what even is intended or not.
At level 12 you can pick up the Reactive Firewall feat, to give disadvantage to an attack once per hour. This reaction feat is missing its trigger, so we don’t know when precisely it can be used. It is likely triggered off an attack hitting you, however, based on the rest of the text. It’s not a FORTRUN specific feat, so it might even just be any attack, and not a point-blank melee attack.
And that’s it. There’s nothing else specific to FORTRUN, and no other feats that particularly play into its presumed playstyle.
I’m still thoroughly perplexed by this subclass - it just feels so dang weird. If it was all about AOE spells, or buffing the party, it would make so much more sense, but it really wants to be hit. And, hey, no shame if that’s what you like, but it’s so counterintuitive for a pure caster. If you don’t put yourself in situations where you’ll be hit, then your primary class feature and your second focus spell are mostly worthless. You’d just be using them “just in case” and nobody likes that for a primary class feature. The spell cache is fine, because all of those defensive spells can be put on yourself or someone else, and none of those effects are limited to being hit in point blank melee.
And that’s before we take into account that your baseline AC will fall behind, because caster. Your DEX is never going to be as high as a DEX class, and you just do not have the ability to wear medium or heavy armor. You’re also always going to be comparatively low on HP. And, frankly, THE THORN DAMAGE ISN’T EVEN WORTH IT. You’re only dealing 1-10 damage when someone else hits you in point blank melee. The tradeoff just isn’t worth it.
So this leads directly into my fixes. Just like with all the other subclasses, I feel Overclock Gear should be a focus cantrip. 2 action for this class, and modify it so that first, you can Overclock any ally’s armor. Let you give the thorn benefit to someone who’s already going to be in that situation to get hit in melee. ALTERNATIVELY, ditch the arbitrary point blank melee requirement. It’s the Technomancer, surely it can be flavored to damage an enemy at range - something about arcing feedback or whatever. And for the love of Mike, let it trigger off of being hit, not off taking damage. Shields and force fields are a thing. Second, let the AC bonus last the whole duration of the Overclock. If that’s too powerful, just bestow a 1 action ability while Overclocked to apply the bonus. It’s just Raise Shield by another name, and no different than having a Deflecting Field installed, except that you can’t Shield Block with it.
I do think that either the level 1 feat or the rank 1 focus spell should be changed. For the feat, give them a modified Shield Block. Double down on that whole defense thing, and let them Shield Block like the Shield spell (ie, block any attack, not just physical attacks). They’re a caster, let them shenanigan.
A replacement focus spell could easily just be changing Energy Sink to a 2 action spell that does the same thing. Pick an energy type, gain 2 resistance to it. Heighten +1, increase the resistance by 2. Targets 1 creature, lasts a minute.
Active Defense Firewall just needs to lose the “take damage from a point blank melee attack” requirement. As with the Overclock, let it trigger off being hit. The installed spell has a range, let that limit it.
In short, embrace the defensive support caster with a side of AOEs.
Finally, give them a feat at 14, 16, or 18. None of the subclasses get anything past level 10, and it just feels lackluster.