An Alternate Envoy

[Teridax]

I've ended up writing homebrew reworks for a few Starfinder classes such as the Solarian, Technomancer, and Witchwarper, and this time I've been focusing on the Envoy and their own issues as a class. In summary, here I think are the Envoy's main problems in SF2e:

* The class can easily feel stuck in a rotation: Directives are at the core of the Envoy's identity, yet despite being such a central part of the class, Get'Em! tends to be far more generally applicable than alternatives, only few of which are obtainable via feats. Additionally, because Leading By Example with a directive now entails spending an additional action just to use the directive's prescribed action, instead of synergizing with composite actions, Leading by Example can feel extremely prescriptive, leading to particularly repetitive turns already marked by continuous action taxes.

* The class's design philosophy doesn't fully mesh with 2e: There are some aspects to this that are more obvious, like Dance Partner! talking about threatening enemies when this isn't a thing in 2e, but also more subtle elements, like Savvy Improviser granting multiple per-day uses of an ability instead of lowering its frequency restriction, or Inscrutable forcing failures on fairly situational social checks. The end result is a class that has a lot of feature bloat, but not necessarily as much functionality as all that text would suggest. In fact, it's not always internally consistent with the rest of SF2e, and an unfortunate side effect of directives being only auditory or visual is that deafblind vlakas get completely excluded from the Envoy's key mechanics.

* The class isn't all that unique: Since the playtest, the Envoy's directives ended up getting remodeled somewhat. They didn't get their action taxes reduced, which was one of the main issues highlighted in the playtest, but instead they got many more directives that had allies take actions as reactions, making them extremely similar to the Commander class's tactics in Pathfinder. Trouble is, the Commander has tons of tactics to choose from, whereas the Envoy gets three by default through their core features. Although they do have some unique aspects going for them, like adaptive talent, this is buried under the aforementioned feature bloat that, in my opinion at least, doesn't help make the class stand out as much as it could.

In short: the Envoy did not get very many of its problems addressed since the playtest in my opinion, and in fact I think got made somewhat worse on-release, with an even more rigid action economy in particular. This appears to be an opinion expressed by others as well, such that the Envoy doesn't really seem to come across as a particularly standout class. I feel this is a shame, as the Envoy otherwise strikes me as a class with the potential to really shine as a flexible martial support.

With this in mind, I've been experimenting with a brew in which I've changed some of the class's mechanics. Key changes include:

* Directives as stances: Rather than tax the Envoy's actions each turn, directives in this brew stay on once activated and grant persistent benefits. The main incentive to switch directives is action compression, since when you enter a directive in this way, you also Lead by Example as part of the same action. Outside of that, you can Lead By Example by using the listed action, which can be part of other composite actions.

* Comprehensive skill retraining: Rather than give the Envoy lots of skill increases and feats, the brew takes their adaptive talent and ramps it up to 11, letting the Envoy instantly retrain a bunch of skill increases and feats on the spot. Additionally, the Envoy can do this regularly in the day, making them extremely flexible with their skills.

* Hype auras and motivated allies: Included in the above brew are a few mechanics to both flesh out the Envoy's capabilities out of combat and standardize their abilities: the class exudes an aura of pure hype that lets them influence anyone who can perceive them (including through smell, so hooray for vlakas!), which also determines the range of their abilities and can be expanded further. Additionally, the class can spend time hyping up their own allies during exploration, even Livestreaming their adventure in the process, to Aid them with Charisma skills while also recharging a whole bunch of different abilities with limited uses in combat or per-target immunities.

Effectively, the focus here is mainly on giving the Envoy much more flexibility with their actions and skills, letting them adapt easily on the fly and mix and match their skills and other abilities without too many prescriptive action taxes. Despite not having a huge amount of extra skills at once, the class would still shine as a skill monkey by being able to come up with the right skills and feats on the spot in limited amounts. Additionally, the reworked class in my limited playtests got to integrate much better with 2e's gameplay out of combat as well as in combat, and got to feel like they were constantly the life of the party by using their Charisma in exploration as well as encounters, while never running out of things to do in the day.

[Ascalaphus]

You definitely have some points about the rotations and the overlap with the commander. And the commander doles out extra reactions to their allies to respond with; I don't think the Envoy has that? While the other Starfinder classes actually have quite a few good, frequently triggering reactions. (Like Hair Trigger..)

Nitpick: your listing of class abilities you lose seems to be just about all the non-proficiency ones and a few proficiency ones. But I had to carefully compare them to the class listing one by one because I think you alphabetized them? It would have been easier if you'd just kept the same order in which they appear in the class. Maybe even just shown the class feature table with strikethrough lines?

Motivate Allies: this is basically a "Refocus" ability? I feel like flavorwise this is something you should be able to do stationary, but maybe also on the go (livestreaming your exploits). But it shouldn't come at the cost of being able to do one of the regular exploration activities, it's super annoying when your class tells you that you must do X instead of Search, Avoid Notice etc. Maybe this could be built a bit like the alchemist restocking materials on the go?

Considering how generously the healing connection mystic can try counteracting some effects, I also see room for the envoy to talk people into "walking it off" in between encounters, beginning with counteracting mental effects but maybe with feats also other things.

Immaculate: this seems to have fallen off the page somehow? It's shown weirdly off into the margin, so I can't really read what it does.

Hype Aura: I dunno if this even needs a range tbh. The mystic's vitality network works anywhere on the same plane. I'd be fine with the envoy's abilities working as long as you can communicate with your allies over comms. For affecting enemies 60 feet seems like a decent default range, it could be a cute class feature that other social stuff like Demoralize is also at least 60 feet for you. Would fit with the turn towards ranged combat in Starfinder.

Improvise Talent / removing lots of skills & skill support: For me, getting a skill increase every level was definitely part of the appeal of the class. I don't like moving around too many skills per day, because what skills I have and what skills the rest of the party has, has probably stabilized a long time ago. Moving more than 1-2 skills and skill feats around isn't really needed. I think those features for the envoy actually worked quite okay. So trading all that for Improvise Talent is a big downgrade for me.

I also don't like seeing leadership styles removed completely. Maybe tuned a bit, but overall I liked the theming implied by saying "I'm playing a Guns Blazing envoy". It could maybe be done a bit more Bard/Druid style where it's more like an initial kit and you could later buy into a second kit or double down on your current one.

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I don't want to come across as too negative, and there really are problems with the basic envoy. But I don't think you're quite there yet with the alternative.

I would say the focus should not be on the skill side, that part is already 90% good in the book as-is. The real pain points are in the directives.

Your idea about making directives stances with a once per turn Lead By Example opportunity is simple and a solid way of reducing the too-similar rotations.

I think your change to Get 'Em might be slightly too much of a good thing. Compared to Courageous Anthem this is much much better and that's something widely agreed to be good. It's fine for it to be the default tactic, with other directives being more special-situation. But it shouldn't be so good that you would barely consider even taking the feats to learn other directives. That's also a reason I think the leadership styles should stay; I think the aim should be that a level 1 envoy has 2-4 directives to choose from already.

A possibility actually is to give directives more as class features instead of feats, like the commander does, and that you only have 2-4 of them at hand at any time, with a 10m reconfiguration activity. One of the things PF2 has been doing pretty well is on the one hand giving you broad choice in character building, but narrowing it down a bit during actual play time. Which means that when you're mid-combat you don't have to choose between 20 things to do but only 5, which leads to less analysis paralysis.

[Teridax]

Ascalaphus wrote:

You definitely have some points about the rotations and the overlap with the commander. And the commander doles out extra reactions to their allies to respond with; I don't think the Envoy has that? While the other Starfinder classes actually have quite a few good, frequently triggering reactions. (Like Hair Trigger..)

They do with Fast Synergy at 18th level! My suspicion is that the Commander's design ended up heavily influencing the Envoy's, to the point where the latter's directives just ended up being mostly just more tactics.

Ascalaphus wrote:

Nitpick: your listing of class abilities you lose seems to be just about all the non-proficiency ones and a few proficiency ones. But I had to carefully compare them to the class listing one by one because I think you alphabetized them? It would have been easier if you'd just kept the same order in which they appear in the class. Maybe even just shown the class feature table with strikethrough lines?

Motivate Allies: this is basically a "Refocus" ability? I feel like flavorwise this is something you should be able to do stationary, but maybe also on the go (livestreaming your exploits). But it shouldn't come at the cost of being able to do one of the regular exploration activities, it's super annoying when your class tells you that you must do X instead of Search, Avoid Notice etc. Maybe this could be built a bit like the alchemist restocking materials on the go?

Considering how generously the healing connection mystic can try counteracting some effects, I also see room for the envoy to talk people into "walking it off" in between encounters, beginning with counteracting mental effects but maybe with feats also other things.

Immaculate: this seems to have fallen off the page somehow? It's shown weirdly off into the margin, so I can't really read what it does.

Hype Aura: I dunno if this even needs a range tbh. The mystic's vitality network works anywhere on the same plane. I'd be fine with the envoy's abilities working as long as you can communicate with your allies over comms. For affecting enemies 60 feet seems like a decent default range, it could be a cute class feature that other social stuff like Demoralize is also at least 60 feet for you. Would fit with the turn towards ranged combat in Starfinder.

Improvise Talent / removing lots of skills & skill support: For me, getting a skill increase every level was definitely part of the appeal of the class. I don't like moving around too many skills per day, because what skills I have and what skills the rest of the party has, has probably stabilized a long time ago. Moving more than 1-2 skills and skill feats around isn't really needed. I think those features for the envoy actually worked quite okay. So trading all that for Improvise Talent is a big downgrade for me.

I also don't like seeing leadership styles removed completely. Maybe tuned a bit, but overall I liked the theming implied by saying "I'm playing a Guns Blazing envoy". It could maybe be done a bit more Bard/Druid style where it's more like an initial kit and you could later buy into a second kit or double down on your current one.

Answering these as best I can, in order:

* Yeah, it's a quirk of mine to want to alphabetize things when it would have been simpler in this case to probably clear the lot and state which features stayed. A big part of the aim was to clean up the Envoy's feature bloat, and listing cut features would've probably been better-suited for smaller-scale removals.

* Motivate Allies is a pseudo-Refocus, yes, and like all exploration activities, it is meant to be doable while traveling. However, it also provides its own mechanical benefits, as you're continually Aiding your teammates using a Charisma skill, essentially an exploration-centric One For All: while Livestreaming on top of another activity should be fine, this particular benefit I think was significant enough, and already better than Refocusing, that I didn't want to layer it onto other exploration activities.

* Totally agreed on the Envoy being influential enough to warrant a feat that lets them counteract longer-lasting conditions.

* A consistent issue I've encountered with the Homebrewery, the word processor I used for the above document, is that its formatting tends to break when not used on a laptop and in Chrome. I'm still figuring out how to make the formatting work for mobile displays, but in the meantime, I would recommend reading the document on Chrome and your PC if that's not something you're doing already.

* Agreed on the Envoy's hype aura potentially being able to extend the range of Charisma skill checks. Being able to hype people over comms could be fun as well, but I'd rather have that be a feat than a core feature unless there's a need for more in the base kit.

* It is fair to want to keep the Envoy's additional skill increases. My experience with classes that do this in Pathfinder is that although the Investigator or Rogue can cover many skills, there inevitably comes a situation where a particular skill proficiency or skill feat would have helped that they lack in the moment. Although that model leads to skills being set early on, I also think that can lead to skillsets becoming ossified in parties outside of organized play, where players become reluctant to try skills and feats they deem too situational to be worth taking. I very much enjoyed the Envoy being able to switch up their skill feats, and felt being able to do the same with their skill increases during the day would let them be a skill monkey class that shines through adaptation, rather than being good at lots of different things all at once.

* I can agree that there's flavor in subclasses. My issue as I was going through the Envoy is that their leadership styles featuring unique directives effectively meant that the majority of the class's directives, their defining mechanic, were inaccessible. The only other benefits offered by the subclasses are skill increases and feats, which even in the original class are covered by other features. If I were to keep those subclasses, I'd want to have them provide unique benefits that can't be obtained elsewhere, though a Bard/Druid-style structure where all of their benefits can be poached could also help Envoys access more directives.

* I think it's important to remember that courageous anthem, and compositions in general, are balanced to sit in the kit of a 3-slot caster, who has a vast array of powerful spells at their disposal. The Envoy, by contrast, is not a spellcaster, and so I think their directives ought to be stronger than compositions. I would argue that many other directives also offer extremely powerful benefits, such as everyone being able to RK accurately against a creature no matter what or gaining a +1 to AC and saves, though if there is a discrepancy, I would prefer to buff other directives further than nerf the Envoy's bread and butter, particularly as this martial class otherwise has no great access to damage.

* I wouldn't be opposed to giving the Envoy more directives for free, though past a certain point they wouldn't be allowed to be as powerful. I also just don't think the Envoy needs to follow the Commander's model in general, and would prefer to leave the complexity of prepared tactics to the latter class while letting the Envoy follow a different structure. So long as the class has enough buttons to press, which should include directives but also skill actions in and out of combat, I think they're likely to feel like they have enough going for them.

[Ascalaphus]

I thought it over for a few days, and what I really want is a "surgical brew": something that lets me keep using Starbuilder (once it hits phones) because that's a convenience I don't wanna give up. Also, like I said, I'm mostly happy with the proficiencies and skills.

So I'd be looking mostly at the action economy side. That's something you can change without really altering the math in Starbuilder.

I think I'd be pretty content with two changes:

* Some/most of the "your allies can X as a reaction" can change to "as a free action".

* Directives aren't stances, but pretty similar. They take 1 action to activate. They no longer end at the start of your next turn. (But I want eventual martial arts envoys to be compatible, so they can't be stances.)

* The Lead By Example benefit can be triggered once per turn as well and allows you to change choices of your directive.

For example:

Get 'Em - 1 Action, Directive
Choose a creature you can perceive. While this directive is active, you and your allies gain a +1 status bonus to hit against that creature.

Lead By Example - 1 Action, Lead
You may change the target of Get 'Em. Make a Strike against the target; if you hit you gain a damage bonus equal to (blah blah blah)

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This would cut down rotation sameness a lot because you no longer need to lock in two actions per round. You're likely going to spend one action per round leading by example but that's fine, that leaves two actions over which is about what you need to do some cool defining other thing.

[Teridax]

While your proposal would certainly be more Starbuilder-friendly, letting characters do stuff as a free action rather than a reaction does change the math in the sense that it radically alters action economy around the Envoy. I also think this is the sort of massive buff that benefits everyone but the Envoy, as the class would be the only one not to feel the benefits directly. Thus, I'd rather not include that change, even if I am absolutely in favor of giving directives an indefinite duration. Problem is, though, that would only benefit some directives in current form, which I imagine is why you proposed action economy benefits to the others.

While I'm certainly in favor of keyhole changes in general, I feel the issue with the Envoy isn't even necessarily related to their raw power, so much as their feel: their action economy is clunky, many of their directives aren't terribly exciting in the niche they cover, their features are bloated with cruft, and several of their subclasses offer largely redundant benefits. Perhaps there's a way to fix this all neatly with one small change, but some of these I think require larger-scale work. You could certainly settle for partial fixes with a few smaller-scale changes, but the inconsistent model for directives I think risks making some of the underlying problems worse without more comprehensive adjustments.

[Here4daFreeSwag]

Good to have some free Alternate Envoy stuff out there for SF2e, Teridax. ;)