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How do you like what you guys can find so far about the classes for Starfinder 2E? Is it as you expected, is there something wrong with them? Mine is the fact that with compatibility in mind for Pathfinder 2E and Starfinder 2E the Envoy feels like a lesser Commander, in a white room where I can only be Starfinder classes the Envoy is great but the fact it uses many of the Commander's gimmicks just doesn't do it for me personally.
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There's some pretty big differences between Envoy and Commander. I can definitely see why one might prefer Commander if you specifically want to make a military officer, but that's only a subset of what Envoy covers. Envoys can be influencers, politicians, smugglers, and the like. So a lot of their power budget goes to skills, but there's also a difference in how theh lead. Commanders create plans for their allies to execute. Envoys shout, "Into the Garbage Shoot, Flyboy!" and, "Come on, men, Do you want to live forever?". That's why lead by example is part of the Envoy package and not commander.
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Envoys can also be recall knowledge heavy with some Int investment, the right subclass, and putting additional lores into your flexible skill feats. You can afford to do something like full advancement of society, occultism (least important), and arcana plus Animal Lore to cover four of the five core monster recall skills. Now you just need religion. Additional lore Undead Lore covers a lot of that.
You do probably need thievery (unless an operative or mechanic is doing it, but your perception advanced faster I think) and at least one social skill, so it’s is hard to do it all well.
There's some pretty big differences between Envoy and Commander. I can definitely see why one might prefer Commander if you specifically want to make a military officer, but that's only a subset of what Envoy covers. Envoys can be influencers, politicians, smugglers, and the like. So a lot of their power budget goes to skills, but there's also a difference in how theh lead. Commanders create plans for their allies to execute. Envoys shout, "Into the Garbage Shoot, Flyboy!" and, "Come on, men, Do you want to live forever?". That's why lead by example is part of the Envoy package and not commander.
A class shouldn't rely on flavor to cover for worse mechanics. A commander can also be an influencer a politician smuggler or anything else the player wants to use the class chassis to represent. You can have a Soldier thats a soldier, an envoy thats a soldier (Drill Sergeant), A soldier thats a Brutaris player etc. The classes name alone does not lock in or prevent other mechanics from reaching the players idea.
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There's some pretty big differences between Envoy and Commander. I can definitely see why one might prefer Commander if you specifically want to make a military officer, but that's only a subset of what Envoy covers. Envoys can be influencers, politicians, smugglers, and the like. So a lot of their power budget goes to skills, but there's also a difference in how theh lead. Commanders create plans for their allies to execute. Envoys shout, "Into the Garbage Shoot, Flyboy!" and, "Come on, men, Do you want to live forever?". That's why lead by example is part of the Envoy package and not commander.A class shouldn't rely on flavor to cover for worse mechanics. A commander can also be an influencer a politician smuggler or anything else the player wants to use the class chassis to represent. You can have a Soldier thats a soldier, an envoy thats a soldier (Drill Sergeant), A soldier thats a Brutaris player etc. The classes name alone does not lock in or prevent other mechanics from reaching the players idea.
I don't know where I implied Envoy was worse? I said it did things differently, and that commander might be better suited for the fantasy ElementalofCuteness wants. I did say the class put some of it's power budget into being a skill monkey, but I fail to see why that's a bad thing.
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There are two areas where Envoy shines.
Envoy wields a lot more power between fights than Commander. Commander has maybe... four out-of-combat options? Group climb and swim speeds, Int-to-medicine, and a mid-level feat to get some extra skill increases and feats. Envoy, meanwhile, is rocking double the skill advances, flexible skill feats (which are at least as good as "Additional Lore in whatever we need for the day"), and at the ability to roll with Master proficiency two levels early on any skill once per day. All of that without touching their feats. Adding in feats, they can get +1 circumstance on social skills against prepped targets, with a substantial combat advantage if it devolves into a fight.
The other advantage that Envoy has is in ranged support. When it comes to tactics, Commander is stuck spending two actions to give one ally a ranged strike as a reaction until 15th, and I'm definitely not looking at 15th+ features for any sort of comparison. They need to spend a feat for Guiding Shot or Set-Up Strike to help one ranged ally, conditional on a successful strike. Moreover, Commander doesn't hand out any bonus damage. Meanwhile, Envoy is helping all ranged allies with their accuracy and damage without spending any feats and no chance of failure. The damage isn't a ton to start, but even a little means a lot when you're rolling one die, and their own bonus damage is appreciable.
If you don't care about doing more out of combat, then yeah. Envoy's going to be a bit lackluster as the SF2's main skillmonkey.
Ranged operator and soldier looking like they'll be menaces once you get past the initial awful damage of ranged weapons.
Witchwarper too with twisted dark zone since it doesn't affect allies. D8, light armor and 4 slots with flexible key stat and tradition too. Kinda weird that their class dc doesn't scale with their spell dc to legendary but w/e.
Denying legendary DC to the “get teleported at will, you poor fools” 18th level feat (and Twisted Dark Zone with double zone) may be the only thing that prevents highest level encounters from being a cakewalk. Constantly dumping people in a max level Irradiate area or next to a Singularity Seed (you have a feat to take an off list spell), is death. Cast a single spell and then just spam your resourceless action in groups and even bosses.
Just kinda bothers me that they spend 18 levels in lockstep only to deviate at 19-20
So how does Primary Target and Punishing Salvo work? Is it just another Strike at -5 or does it do something funny and ignore MAP because of how silyl the wording of Primary Target is worded?
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Your MAP is at -5 because Area Fire/Auto-fire has the Attack trait, but Primary Target doesn't contribute to it