u/No-Air6220

Inspired by my post in the Starfinder 2e subreddit, I thought to myself: what if the Solarian used Kineticist mechanics instead of what we got? So I made this class archetype for the element of 🌠SPACE🌌.

Now the attuned / disharmony mechanics are tied to your kinetic aura / overflow traits, and instead of the Solar Weapon / Solar Flare progressions, we use our kinetic blast.

This can be used alongside the existing Solarian class, it being a more martial approach that interacts with Strikes, and the Astrokineticist being more focused on "DC effects".

I was also inspired by the Stellar Sage, an official "less-martial" version of the 1e Solarian that gave up martial goodies to obtain better skills and feats. Just for funsies I also converted the 1e Electrical Attunement alternate feature. Not sure I'm satisfied with it, though.

I'm open to all sorts of feedback! Please tell me about any unintended interactions you can find.

When SF2e released, me and my friends were some of the first to try the Cosmic Birthday adventure. I like the 1e Solarian, even though it feels very clunky to play, so I made a diplomat vesk solarian for this game. Others were an operative, an envoy and a mystic. Roleplay-wise it was fine, specially when we returned to Little Akiton, but mechanically, I didn't enjoy the game as much.

Being the only melee combatant meant I was the main focus of most enemies (even with me trying to take cover behind boxes and the GM ignoring me a lot of the time to make pressure for the backliners). But I simply didn't have enough survivability: with no heavy armor , shield block, or other forms of damage mitigation, I was the only person who had to be healed in-battle by the mystic the entire adventure (besides a single crit the operative took in the final level 1 fight, so the mystic prioritized them correctly), everyone else survived well enough with Treat Wounds between fights. I didn't have enough DEX to use the solar flare reliably at a range, and the only time I critted (during a solar nimbus reaction) the entire table realized that the Solarian Reactive Strike didn't disrupt on a crit. That was my first exposition to the "ranged meta" in the game.

The game came to an end as soon as we got to level 3 (schedule problems), but honestly, the damage was done. After that I played a few one-shots, but only played as casters (Mystic and Witchwarper), and I have never played with another Solarian in these games. The more I read the solarian feats and progression, the more I feel like the class was undeservedly "shot in the foot", for a lack of a better expression. They don't get legendary in anything (besides their bad solarian weapon), while the Soldier gets Legendary AC, Fortitude, Class DC, best HP in both games, Intimidation tied to KAS... the entire shebang. Operative gets the best features from Fighter, Ranger and Rogue. And Envoy can do so much with the action economy, while Solarians struggle with the action restrictions of the Flourish and Disharmony traits in many of their best abilities.

I really like the class fantasy, being a Jedi / Green Lantern / Space Warrior. But every time I start making a solarian on starbuilder, I just feel... flat. Now that a long time has passed since the release of the system, how are your Solarians doing? Have they felt useful? Has the MAD-ness improved a little, or should I give up on the solar flare?

This is a risky class archetype I wrote for the psychic, themed around diseases and poisons, persistent damage, terminal lucidity and hiveminds. Similar to the Oscillating Wave, it's based around two new mindshift mechanics:

• Placebo: the psychic casts a disease or poison on themselves, then mentally project the effects of the disease or poison against the enemy.
• Incubation: the psychic incubates a special short-lived strain of virus/spore/bacteria in their own body then releases it, and this strain simulates the effect of a mental spell.

This allows the Psychic to cast diseases and poisons with will saves, or mental and emotion spells with fortitude saves, while also circumventing possible trait immunities.

The catch? A Debilitating Dichotomy effect. When mindshifting this way, the Psychic is also subject to the same saving throw as the enemy (since, well, they either injected themselves or became a human petri dish). So, when they swap the saves, they also have to save against the same DC as the opponent. (it doesnt happen if cast normally).

To help alleviate that, they swap their own fortitude and will progressions. The constant diseases and poisons enhanced their body but weakened their mind, meaning they are now legendary in fortitude but only expert in will. They are also a wisdom caster now, which helps... right?

There's a lot that's still open, for example I haven't decided many of the archetype feats yet. Wanted to validate the concept before investing too much time on this. I'm open to feedback and suggestions :)

In many threads we see people recommending the Medic archetype, or taking assurance in Medicine, even if you're a dummy martial with 0 in wisdom. Maybe the party has no healing at all, or maybe the player is playing with free archetype and wants to take a level 6 dedication but has nothing to fill the earlier FA slots. Now I found another reason to take this dedication, even more specially if you have low wisdom and doesn't want to upgrade medicine past expert.

I was reading the Medic feats, and realized something: Treat Condition doesn't specify that you need to target a willing creature. You can actually Treat Condition an enemy. And, if you critically fail, you will actually increase their condition by 1.

I think this is one of the few ways in the game to increase the value of a condition like clumsy, enfeebled or sickened. And, if you take the Holistic Care upgrade, you can now increase the enemy's stunned, stupefied or frightened (although now there are other better ways to increase frightened).

So, how do you do it? Walk around with some shoddy healer's tools, that give you a -2 item penalty to medicine checks, and if you're debuffed (which, by having low wisdom, you will probably be frightened or stupefied more than the average player), even better. Chances are you will either fail (which will do nothing, boohoo) or crit fail (which will worsen their day, woohoo!). You can even use Doctor's Visitation for striding compression if necessary. And, outside of combat, you can still help heal your party, as normal.

At level 20, you can even use assurance in Medicine to guarantee a crit failure against your party spellcaster's debuffs!

(This is a joke, don't take this strategy seriously, this is just a silly rules interaction that I found funny and wanted to share.)

Some archetypes are "nested" within other archetypes, expanding their feats and mechanics. They can have hard requirements of must having another archetype before being able to be picked, for example:

• Halcyon Speaker requires being a Maagambyian Attendant
• Scion of Domora requires being a Familiar Master

Others can have the same hard requirement, or a softer GM-allowed alternative, for example:

• Jalmeri Heavenseeker requires either being a Student of Perfection or training with another heavenseeker
• Trapsmith requires either being a Snarecrafter or having the Snare Specialist ranger feat

Others only allow you to ignore the "dedication plus 2 feats" clause for dedications before taking the archetype, for example:

• Knight Reclaimant and Knight Vigilant can be picked after Lastwall Sentry
• Familiar Sage can be picked after Familiar Master

All of these archetypes are thematic natural progressions of their "parents", and tend to be pretty related in lore. Mechanically, these expanding archetypes usually references abilities and powers from the "parent" archetype. For example:

• Magaambyan Attendant and Halcyon Speaker both use Halcyon spells
• Trapsmith expands on the Snarecrafter snares
• Scion of Domora changes the Familiar Master's familiar
• both Student of Perfection and Jalmeri Heavenseeker's focus spells are treated as monk's qi spells

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Would it be wrong to say that the feats from these expanding archetypes also count as feats from the parent archetype? For example, in Snarecrafter, there's this special line:

>If you are a ranger, you can use Survival instead of Crafting for all prerequisites and functions of feats from this archetype.

Could a Ranger use Survival instead of Crafting for Trapsmith feats as well, since Trapsmith is an expansion to the parent Snarecrafter archetype? Or would they need to invest into Crafting as well for it?

Another example: the Student of Perfection's Perfect Weaponry says:

>You can use melee monk weapons with any Student of Perfection feats or Student of Perfection focus spells that normally require unarmed attacks.

Could you then use a monk weapon with the Heavenseeker's Steal the Sky focus spell? It has a Trigger of "You make a successful unarmed Strike against a flying creature."