Post-release Envoy Sadness

[oimandibloons]

In the playtest the Envoy had the problem of being too one-note, what with one directive available at level 1 and more through feats. However, Acts of Leadership at level 6 highly increased flexibility. Adding subclass directives and moving Acts of Leadership to level 1 would have squared the circle in my opinion.

However, the released state of Envoy makes me very sad.
-The flavourful skill feats (Inappropriate Joke, Sparkling Performance, Dazzling Performance) getting removed does affect Envoy because it's a leader class that doubles as a skill user, and as such has a PF2 Investigator amount of skill increases.
- The structure of directives changing to the 1 action bonus with 2 action Lead By Example really feels restrictive to the point of "boring".
- Limiting directives to once per *round* feels unnecessary (though I wonder if it was balanced like Pathfinder Bard's Composition Spells).
- Now onto two subclasses and their directives:
-- Guns Blazing's Ready Arms directive (two action) does not say that you can Strike/Area Fire/Auto Fire with any gun you may be holding, and requires you to change weapons (drawing/swapping arms/swapping) to even shoot the damn thing.
-- In The Spotlight is very perplexing. In the playtest, this subclass at lvl 6 got to Lead By Example by issuing a second directive, thus acting as an extremely versatile martial support. Now, it's a soft-locked melee build that does not have the hardiness as From The Front. And Dance Partner confounds me even more because:
--- It nominates an ally *within ten feet* of me. Then I stride, and then ally strides to me.
--- It then counts any enemy we both "threaten" as "flanked". Now I do not know 1e jargon but I've been told that "threatening" refers to "having enemies within my melee reach".
--- After that, we're both concealed to ranged attacks *within ten feet of us*.
First of all, why is there this limitation of 10 feet for both picking my ally AND being concealed to ranged attacks? Furthermore I do not believe this subclass has the hardiness of From The Front to be able to withstand any amount of melee pressure that ends up being more action intensive than a Pathfinder Rogue feat (Gang Up at level 6).

As for what I'd do with the subclass directives:
- Ready Arms: The two action Lead By Example can simply be used to Strike/Area Fire/Auto Fire and then an ally can spend a reaction making a ranged weapon Strike.
- Dance Partner: For all this action intensiveness, I'd rather nominate an ally within at least 30 ft of me, and be concealed against ranged attacks within 30 ft of me. Furthermore, being limited to melee targets in this Ranged Meta will be difficult to justify using over Get 'Em, so I'd've preferred if "enemies you both threaten" were changed to "enemies within reach or the first range increment of both of you and your weapons", for added versatility and action-intensive ranged flanking.

[Finoan]

I'm sorry that you are sad.

That is one of the few downsides of doing public playtesting. People get to see the rough drafts of these classes - some being too weak and some being too strong. And if the playtest version is decided to be too strong and is reined in for the release, then people will naturally like the playtest version better because it is stronger.

[oimandibloons]

Finoan wrote:

I'm sorry that you are sad.

And if the playtest version is decided to be too strong and is reined in for the release, then people will naturally like the playtest version better because it is stronger.

Too strong? How so? Would you say that In The Spotlight was too powerful during the playtest?

Personally the direction taken for Spotlight Envoy was not clearly signposted and now a few builds that were anticipated from the playtest don't really function well anymore and that's not great.

For what it's worth, I'm Okay with how Envoy is now. It's still a potent martial leader class that can put in work with skills and other actions that aren't directives. Ironing out the weird bits of the two directives I brought up should smooth it over for me though.

[Christopher#2411504]

I think leadership actions had to go, for future proofing and ease of use.

Ease of use is obviously - the 1-2 Action Activity pattern is way simpler to understand then "this is the normal way + leadership actions".

Future proofing can be hard to understand without a good example, but here is one.
Future Leadership Actions and Directives could have caused all kinds off wierd interactions with the existing ones. Best to not even risk that.

Making the followup action predictable helps a lot.

[WatersLethe]

I think it turned out quite well, especially as a base class that beginner players will be interacting with.

[Squiggit]

Dance Partner feels like it's missing something. The other directives all tend to give you an extra action and a benefit when you perform the two action version, but Dance Partner doesn't and its benefits aren't particularly amazing either? Like I don't get a 'so strong it doesn't need the second action' vibes from it. It feels like there should be a strike if you use the two action version or something.

.. It's also not necessarily a problem, but a little funny to me that In The Spotlight is the melee subclass while 'From The Front' has a 60ft range on its ability and somewhat incentivizes you to make it inconvenient for enemies to target you to force them to eat a penalty, so being on the other side of a room and ducking behind a pillar is not only viable but possibly even an optimal way to play 'From The Front' ... goofy.

[Justnobodyfqwl]

Dance Partner is...rough.

The one-action version is very generically good, but the two-action version is significantly more specific.

Flanking requires us BOTH to be in melee range, but the Envoy is the only martial to not have any melee options at all.

In the ranged Meta, the difference between properly flanking and both being adjacent to someone is incredibly insignificant - why make that a huge advantage? Why use "threaten" for the first and only time in Starfinder 2e?

And making an ally have cover to (1) ranged attacks (2) within 10 feet (3) as long as they don't move. There's those Pathfinder 2e Caveats and Restrictions that Paizo likes so much.

I think I can see the vision. I get that it's supposed to all about Dance Partners and moving across the battlefield together, and it's better for supporting melee classes. But the combination of abilities keeps suggesting a bunch of ideas about how you're supposed to use it that just seem like hoops to jump through.

The more I read it, the more I think it seems more powerful when you dumb it down. 1 Action= My ally and I move in the same direction. 2 Actions= I move a melee teammate closer to an enemy, and they can plant down and get a bonus to AC.

Bam! All of a sudden, it seems more powerful, albeit now it's very clear that you probably won't use the two action version in certain party compositions.

[Squiggit]

I mean I'd argue In the Spotlight is sort of an implied melee option, since the ally you move can't move away from you, and the flanking benefits of the 2a version require you to put an enemy within your reach, albeit it's a soft lean because it doesn't actually give you any direct benefits to wielding a melee weapon.

Still feel like it could really use a Strike or another action to go along with it.

[ninjaelk]

To me the class seems to be designed around Get 'Em buffing your party while doing reasonable damage on its own. Mathematically that's really strong, even if it's not particularly flashy. It also makes a lot of these other directives make more sense if they're designed mostly to be a situational option you use *sometimes*.

Like the forced swap on Ready Arms! makes a lot more sense if it's a fallback option. If you just take that restriction away from the ability it becomes kind of insane. You and your whole party get an optional weapon swap, then you can make an Area Fire or Auto-Fire attack (which normally takes 2 actions on its own), and THEN your ally gets a react strike on top of all that? The only thing bringing it back down to earth is that it forces you to use your own react to swap, and that you have to have another weapon on you to swap to. I'm not a fan of that design but again, it makes sense if it's viewed through the lens of assuming the Envoy is just using Get 'Em most turns and occasionally might pull out a flamethrower and torch a group of enemies.

The issue I have, is if you have a Rhythm Mystic in the party, the status bonuses from Anthem and Get 'Em don't stack. At that point, Anthem is the far more dependable buff of the two, forcing the Envoy to do something other than Get 'Em. That's where things start to fall apart because all these other directives seem to be designed as fallback options, not primary options.

All that being said, I also have no idea what is going on with Dance Partner. Do we have any clarification on what "threaten" means in the context of sf2e? Because they use similar wording on the Soldier's Overwatch "You concentrate fire on a specific target operating within
your weapon’s threat range." I think most people are assuming it means "melee reach" because of previous editions and the way certain other games work, but if it means your weapon's first range increment it makes tremendously more sense.

[pauljathome]

ninjaelk wrote:

The issue I have, is if you have a Rhythm Mystic in the party, the status bonuses from Anthem and Get 'Em don't stack. At that point, Anthem is the far more dependable buff of the two, forcing the Envoy to do something other than Get 'Em. That's where things start to fall apart because all these other directives seem to be designed as fallback options, not primary options..

I also very much had that worry, especially in SFS where you don't know either the other players nor their characters.

But it seems to be working out ok. Twice now I've played at tables with both a Rhythm Mystic and an Envoy and both times the Envoy player seemed quite happy that Rhythm was also a thing. They were still getting their own +4 to damage for a single action (essentially) and could do other things.

In a campaign with the same characters I'd very definitely have a session 0 discussion with both players to make sure both were happy with it. But the overlap isn't as bad as I thought it would be.

[Squiggit]

ninjaelk wrote:

All that being said, I also have no idea what is going on with Dance Partner. Do we have any clarification on what "threaten" means in the context of sf2e?

I just checked and you're right, the concept of threat/threatening with a weapon is never defined in SF2 player core.

.. To be honest I'm having trouble finding a definition in PF2 material too.

[PossibleCabbage]

I don't think "threaten" is a game term in PF2/SF2 anymore (reactive strike just refers to actions made within your reach). Dance Partner should probably be rephrased.

[Driftbourne]

Squiggit wrote:

ninjaelk wrote:

All that being said, I also have no idea what is going on with Dance Partner. Do we have any clarification on what "threaten" means in the context of sf2e?

I just checked and you're right, the concept of threat/threatening with a weapon is never defined in SF2 player core.

.. To be honest I'm having trouble finding a definition in PF2 material too.

It's on page 255 of the SF1e Core Rule book. At least that's where it came from in Starfinder.

Reach and Threatened Squares .

[Ectar]

Driftbourne wrote:

Squiggit wrote:

ninjaelk wrote:

All that being said, I also have no idea what is going on with Dance Partner. Do we have any clarification on what "threaten" means in the context of sf2e?

I just checked and you're right, the concept of threat/threatening with a weapon is never defined in SF2 player core.

.. To be honest I'm having trouble finding a definition in PF2 material too.

It's on page 255 of the SF1e Core Rule book. At least that's where it came from in Starfinder.

Reach and Threatened Squares .

It's trivial to find in PF1E material as well. But that's still a failure for the text of Dance Partner.

[ninjaelk]

pauljathome wrote:

ninjaelk wrote:

The issue I have, is if you have a Rhythm Mystic in the party, the status bonuses from Anthem and Get 'Em don't stack. At that point, Anthem is the far more dependable buff of the two, forcing the Envoy to do something other than Get 'Em. That's where things start to fall apart because all these other directives seem to be designed as fallback options, not primary options..

I also very much had that worry, especially in SFS where you don't know either the other players nor their characters.

But it seems to be working out ok. Twice now I've played at tables with both a Rhythm Mystic and an Envoy and both times the Envoy player seemed quite happy that Rhythm was also a thing. They were still getting their own +4 to damage for a single action (essentially) and could do other things.

In a campaign with the same characters I'd very definitely have a session 0 discussion with both players to make sure both were happy with it. But the overlap isn't as bad as I thought it would be.

I think I was a bit overstating things when I said that's where things "fall apart". I think the envoy contributes fine at a table with a rhythm mystic, it's just that his kit starts to become rather clunky and the design overall feels less cohesive. Get 'Em is a perfectly usable action even if you're not providing the buffs (which speaks to how strong it is when it does), and the other directives are still situationally very viable as usual. It just feels inefficient, there's a lot of overlap, and stuff that just isn't working together smoothly. I don't think it needs a strict buff necessarily, I think the power level and the amount the class can contribute even with a rhythm mystic present is fine, it just feels like it needs a bit of rearranging.

If anything I think that Get 'Em *without* a rhythm mystic might be too strong, and the class could benefit from that power being redistributed more evenly through the rest of its kit.

[Christopher#2411504]

PossibleCabbage wrote:

I don't think "threaten" is a game term in PF2/SF2 anymore (reactive strike just refers to actions made within your reach). Dance Partner should probably be rephrased.

"Threaten" is a DnD 3E/PF1 Rules term.

It doesn't exist in PF/SF2. But if is still occasionally used as shorthand for "being in weapon or unarmed Reach" in discussions.

[PossibleCabbage]

"Threatened squares" is no longer a general rule since "Reactive Strike" (formerly Attack of Opportunity") is not universally available to all classes or monsters. So you only get to do what Reactive Strike, or whatever comparable reaction, says it does. Notably reactions have triggers (conditions under which you can use them) and Reactive Strike reads "Trigger: A creature within your reach uses a move action or leaves a square during a move action it’s using."

So "threaten" isn't a game term in PF2/SF2. A rewrite of Dance Partner should read something like "If you used two actions, any enemy within the reach of both you and your ally counts as being flanked regardless of your relative positions."

[Squiggit]

The trouble is the phrase "threatened" is used only twice in rules elements in SF2. In Dance partner, it might describe your melee reach. In the other it unambiguously refers to the weapon's first range increment. So hopefully the errata clarifies how Dance Partner is supposed to work.

[PossibleCabbage]

Squiggit wrote:

The trouble is the phrase "threatened" is used only twice in rules elements in SF2. In Dance partner, it might describe your melee reach. In the other it unambiguously refers to the weapon's first range increment.

What's the other one? It seems better to just use unambiguous phrases like "reach" and "first range increment" going forward.

[Driftbourne]

Ectar wrote:

Driftbourne wrote:

Squiggit wrote:

ninjaelk wrote:

All that being said, I also have no idea what is going on with Dance Partner. Do we have any clarification on what "threaten" means in the context of sf2e?

I just checked and you're right, the concept of threat/threatening with a weapon is never defined in SF2 player core.

.. To be honest I'm having trouble finding a definition in PF2 material too.

It's on page 255 of the SF1e Core Rule book. At least that's where it came from in Starfinder.

Reach and Threatened Squares .

It's trivial to find in PF1E material as well. But that's still a failure for the text of Dance Partner.

Never played PF1e so wouldn't know. But after reading Dance Partner, I don't see any problem at all.

Lead by Example: If you used two actions, you and your selected ally count any enemies that you both threaten as being flanked, regardless of your relative positions, until the start of your next turn. Your ally becomes concealed against ranged Strikes made by creatures within 10 feet until the start of your next turn or the ally moves, whichever comes first.

Key word flanked

[Ectar]

The problem is that "Threaten" doesn't mean anything in the context of SF2.

There's probably players who'll read that and think of the common usage of the word "Threaten" and verbally accost their foes to gain flanking with that ability.
The Exploration activity version of Coerce uses that kind of language, even.

[PossibleCabbage]

Yeah, since "threaten" is only used by the rules in a natural language sense you could make the case that "I'm threatening everybody I can see because I have a gun out and I could Strike them" which is probably not how the ability is intended to work.

[Driftbourne]

So Dance Partner lets you flank, but you don't need to be on opposite sides of the opponent to do so. But it doesn't let you avoid the other condition you must meet to flank, which could be summed up as threatening. Since flanking is the only rule mentioned in that sentence, I would still refer back to the flanking rules, which say

"Additionally, both you and the ally have to be able to act, you must be wielding melee weapons or be able to make an unarmed attack, you can't be under any effects that prevent you from attacking, and you must both have the enemy within reach. If you're wielding a reach weapon, you use your reach with that weapon for this purpose."

But since threatening with a ranged weapon would need different rules, it seems best to refer to whatever rules threatening is used with, then making threatening a separate rule.

[BigNorseWolf]

Finoan wrote:

I'm sorry that you are sad.

That is one of the few downsides of doing public playtesting. People get to see the rough drafts of these classes - some being too weak and some being too strong. And if the playtest version is decided to be too strong and is reined in for the release, then people will naturally like the playtest version better because it is stronger.

the 2es have a problem where abilities tend to be fairly weak, so nerfing them turns them into an absolute nothingburger. I don't think its the fault of the powergaming munchkins when something just plain isn't worth using, ever.

One of the benefits of 2e is having a lot of optional actions, but that exacerbates the above problem. Anything you want to add on to that pile HAS to be at least situationally better than the other options your character has or it doesn't get used. IE, if something isn't better than firing a pistol at -10 its the same as it being worthless.
Starship combat had that problem when options were worse than "more hands on the guns"

[Teridax]

Having playtested the Envoy, I never got the impression that they were too strong. As far as I was concerned, they were pretty much in the middle of the pack in terms of balance, and my personal desire was for Paizo to get rid of all of the unnecessary forced Charisma check results in the class features in exchange for amping up the class's skill flexibility and fleshing out their directives a lot more. If nothing else, doing what OP mentions by moving Acts of Leadership to 1st level and just adding subclass directives would've made the class feel amazing to play in my opinion.

Although I don't think the end result is bad by any stretch, I'm disappointed that directives were more or less turned into Commander tactics, and the balance between subclasses is really rough. I don't understand the rationale behind giving extremely powerful general feats to some subclasses and equally niche skill feats to others, and the usage of outdated terms like threatening enemies doesn't inspire the most confidence in me either. I look forward to errata on this that clears up the most obvious mistakes, but I suspect the core aspects of the Envoy that I wish had been done differently are going to be set in stone for the whole edition.

[ElementalofCuteness]

To me Envoy is the none-magical baby if Bard x Commander. It doesn't know what it is trying to be and does it worse then it's Pathfinder 2E Parents. IT has good ideas but why can't Get'Em add full Charisma to your damage?

Why does it requires in some Directives to burn your ally's reaction? Which if this was Pathfinder 2E that be good not every class gets a good reaction but Starfinder 2E changes that. Every class gets a good Reaction starting as early as level 1/level 2. Or perhaps you got a Soldier who can't use your Gun's blazing Reaction because Area Weapons.

Oh let's not talk how weak Get'Em is compared to being a bard. Same KAS, same Hit Points, same armor but this just shows that the Envoy is not good when my main thought defaults to Bard instead every time Envoy is brought up as a class choice.

[Driftbourne]

ElementalofCuteness wrote:

IT has good ideas but why can't Get'Em add full Charisma to your damage?

It does for your attack when you also use Lead by Example in the same round, and everyone else also gets +1 to their damage, too, on top of the +1 to hit. If everyone hits in a party of 6, that's an extra 9 points of damage if the envoy has +4 charisma.

I converted my SF1e operator that pretended to be a safety inspector to get easy access to buildings, to an SF2e through desperate times envoy with the watch out feat, and then specialized them in finding and disabling hazards, who is now a real safety inspector. They use a boom pistol (boost and razing)to deal with hazards that have hardness.

I have yet to play my enovoy, where they were the only envoy in the party, so we took turns using Get'Em. Even with 2 envoys, Get'Em wasn't always used; the players tended to try to use their leadership style instead when the situation worked for them. A lot of the players here are using enovys to play rock stars. I'm also using envoy for a goblin vidgammer with an infosphere channel that thinks they are the best real-world pilot despite having no piloting skill.

[Driftbourne]

BigNorseWolf wrote:

Finoan wrote:

I'm sorry that you are sad.

That is one of the few downsides of doing public playtesting. People get to see the rough drafts of these classes - some being too weak and some being too strong. And if the playtest version is decided to be too strong and is reined in for the release, then people will naturally like the playtest version better because it is stronger.

the 2es have a problem where abilities tend to be fairly weak, so nerfing them turns them into an absolute nothingburger. I don't think its the fault of the powergaming munchkins when something just plain isn't worth using, ever.

One of the benefits of 2e is having a lot of optional actions, but that exacerbates the above problem. Anything you want to add on to that pile HAS to be at least situationally better than the other options your character has or it doesn't get used. IE, if something isn't better than firing a pistol at -10 its the same as it being worthless.
Starship combat had that problem when options were worse than "more hands on the guns"

The listing for Starfinder Galactic Ancestries is now up on the Paizo store. It says it has "a host of stellar options for familiar ancestries, including Starfinder favorites like reptilian vesk and insectoid shirrens," not sure if that's the complete list of core ancestries getting new options, but I'd be surprised if it's just those two.

I suspect the book you are hoping for is the Compleat Guide to Ysoki Cheekpouch, a 400-page book with a fold-out poster-sized map showing everything you can fit in a cheekpouch. I'm also hoping for the Complete Guide to pizza topping from around the galaxy for shirren, so many options... so many choices... I think the Vesk book would just be the Alien Core, renamed Things You Can Hit With A Doshko, with the end of the book having more types of doshko.

[kaid]

Squiggit wrote:

The trouble is the phrase "threatened" is used only twice in rules elements in SF2. In Dance partner, it might describe your melee reach. In the other it unambiguously refers to the weapon's first range increment. So hopefully the errata clarifies how Dance Partner is supposed to work.

The later would make that skill a lot better for an envoy. Let a melee get up to punch something and you in range to shoot stuff.

[PossibleCabbage]

Letting someone flank everybody within, say 30 feet is incredibly strong. Not game-breaking, mind you, but not something you should have at low levels. This is a good option for a higher level feat or feature upgrade though.

[Driftbourne]

If it Dance Partner is only meleee, Battle Ribbin seems to be made for an Envoy with Dance partner. Even better if your partner is a Dragonkin you are bonded to. Besides reach a Battle Ribbion also has Finesse and trip, which goes well with the dance theme. If your dance partner also has reach, that works even better.