Solarian and duo enhancers.

[Powers128]

Would duo enhancers work on a one handed solar weapon and solar flare assuming you're holding the solar flare? (Embedded in the palm of your hand)

On that note, would duo enhancers work at all even for twin weapon builds? The terms are different than regular weapon grades. Potency vs tracking.

[crusaderky]

> Would duo enhancers work on a one handed solar weapon and solar flare assuming you're holding the solar flare? (Embedded in the palm of your hand)

I've been pouring over this for the last few days.

RAW, no, because solar weapons don't have a tracking trait, so the potency crystal wouldn't be replicated, and you can't have a striking crystal without a potency crystal to support it.

RAI, I also suspect no. The section about solar crystals clarifies that you need separate crystals for solar weapon and solar flare, and it feels weird that it doesn't mention that you can buy an item to work around it.
I think that paizo thought that having both solarian armaments maxed up is substantially powerful, so you need to heavily invest for that, both in dexterity and in money. Forgetting that your solar flare exists and building a DEX+0 character makes a perfectly reasonable build.

The Solarian iconic at level 5 has 2 separate potency crystals and enough cash to buy a striking crystal (but then again iconics have a habit of being comically undertuned).

Also note that unlike PF runes, Solarian crystals need a single interact action to install/uninstall. If both your armaments have a +1 potency crystal, in a pinch you could move the striking crystal for 2 actions. Not great, but not terrible if all enemies are airborne and you can't fly.

[Powers128]

That really sucks. I could see the utility of moving your upgrades around for your solar flare but for twin weapon builds, there's no merit.

maybe the twin weapon feat is missing some text that they share crystals or something. Would be nice to see in the errata anyways.

[crusaderky]

Powers128 wrote:

That really sucks. I could see the utility of moving your upgrades around for your solar flare but for twin weapon builds, there's no merit.

maybe the twin weapon feat is missing some text that they share crystals or something. Would be nice to see in the errata anyways.

My answer was about Solar Weapon + Solar Flare specifically.

For Twin Weapons, it would be silly if they didn't either share the crystals (like the Exemplar's feat) or allow for Duo Enhancers. I agree that it begs for an errata.

[Justnobodyfqwl]

Yeah, I'm of the opinion that since Solarian Crystals technically have weapon grades, and because I don't want to punish a Solarian player for no reason, they can use a duo enhancer with no problem.

Unfortunately, Paizo seems to specifically RAW and RAI want you to spend actions or buy more crystals for that Solar Flare. It's not the end of the world to me, to be honest- in reality, Starfinder 2e already kinda assumes you have a backup weapon, right? With the amount of resistances, immunities, weapon swapping feats, multiple arms, etc... You really get the sense that the game figures you're going to have a backup weapon that maybe has tracking +1, but not a weapon damage boost.

However, I'm still kinda shocked that your Solarian Crystals don't just automatically apply to all your manifestations at once. It's just honestly a little more fiddly and user unfriendly than you're used to in SF2E. It's a game that makes you jump through hoops less, so the hoops you do notice feel more prominent.

[Powers128]

I am coming at this from a pathfinder rune budget perspective. Is the budget noticably different this time around to carry multiple weapons?

I also noticed all those weapon swap feats.

[Squiggit]

strangely despite how much SF seems to imply it wants you to carry a variety of weapons, not really. Weapons are priced like their PF2 equivalents.

[Powers128]

When I run this game later this year, I'm tempted to go with automatic bonus progression but I think that might be significantly more potent in this system considering area weapons and the multi-arm ancestries.

[Perpdepog]

Squiggit wrote:

strangely despite how much SF seems to imply it wants you to carry a variety of weapons, not really. Weapons are priced like their PF2 equivalents.

Yeah. I mean, it's theoretically possible that the overall amount of wealth a given character is meant to have each level will be higher than PF2E, and that's how you justify having multiple weapons at the ready, but I'm betting that won't be the case.

I know SF1E partially got around this issue by just not having weapons gain to-hit bonuses, so while the damage of a backup weapon may be less it'd still be as likely to connect, but I'm not sure that's going to work in SF2E.

[crusaderky]

Perpdepog wrote:

Yeah. I mean, it's theoretically possible that the overall amount of wealth a given character is meant to have each level will be higher than PF2E

SFS treasure bundles are identical to PFS ones.

There's only a very tiny improvement to Earn Income at level 1 and 2.

I agree that the whole game seems designed around carrying two weapons.

[Xenocrat]

Simply carry a commercial version of every energy type/meaningful trait out there, and load up on Enhanced Weapon at appropriate spell ranks. Many people are saying this.